The Hidden Child. Camilla Lackberg
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it looks like we’ve had a little accident here.’ She cast a sympathetic look at the dog, who gratefully moved closer to her.
‘A little accident? Ernst has shit on my floor.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Martin, entering with Paula close behind.
Gösta, who by this time had completely lost the battle to contain his laughter, could barely get out the words: ‘Ernst … has shit on the floor.’
Martin looked from the little pile on Mellberg’s floor to the dog pressed close to Annika’s leg. ‘Don’t tell me you named the dog Ernst?’ he said, and then he too dissolved into giggles.
‘All right, all right,’ said Mellberg. ‘Get this cleaned up, Annika, so we can all go back to work.’ He stomped over to his desk and sat down. The dog looked from Annika to Bertil then, having decided that the worst was over, wagged his tail and went over to join his new master.
The others exchanged surprised glances, wondering what the dog saw in Bertil Mellberg that they had apparently missed.
Erica couldn’t stop thinking about Erik Frankel. She hadn’t known him well, but he and his brother Axel had always been an integral part of Fjällbacka. ‘The doctor’s sons’, they were called, even though it had been fifty years since their father had practised medicine in Fjällbacka, and forty years since he’d died.
She recalled her visit to the house which had once belonged to their parents and had become home to both brothers. It had been her only visit. The elderly bachelors shared a fascination with Germany and Nazism, each in his own way. Erik, a former history teacher, collected artefacts from the Nazi era. Axel, the older brother, had some sort of association with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, if Erica remembered correctly, and she also had a vague memory that he’d run into some sort of trouble during the war.
She’d phoned Erik and told him what she’d found, describing the medal to him. She’d asked if he could help by researching its origins and maybe explain how it might have ended up among her mother’s possessions. His immediate reaction had been silence. She’d said ‘Hello’ several times, thinking he might have hung up on her. Finally, he told her in a strange-sounding voice to bring over the medal and he’d have a look at it. His long silence and odd tone of voice had bothered her, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about it to Patrik. She convinced herself that she must have been imagining things. And when she went over to the brothers’ house, she didn’t notice anything odd. Erik received her politely and ushered her into the library. With a guarded expression, he had taken the medal from her and studied it carefully. Then he asked whether he might keep it for a while in order to do some research. Erica had agreed.
He’d gone on to show her his collection. With a mixture of dread and interest, she’d looked at the artefacts so intimately connected with that dark, evil period. She couldn’t resist asking why someone like him, who was so opposed to everything that Nazism had stood for, would collect and surround himself with things that would remind him of that awful time. Erik had hesitated before answering. He’d picked up a cap bearing the SS emblem and held it in his hand as he formulated his reply.
‘I don’t trust people to remember,’ he’d said at last. ‘Without having things that we can see and touch, we so easily forget what we don’t want to remember. I collect things that will serve as reminders. And part of me probably also wants to keep these things out of the hands of people who might see them with other eyes. Regard them with admiration.’
Erica had nodded. She sort of understood, and yet she didn’t. Then they shook hands and she’d left.
And now he was dead. Murdered. Maybe not long after her visit. According to what Patrik had told her, Erik had been sitting in the house, dead, all summer long.
Again she thought about the strange tone of Erik’s voice when she’d told him about the medal. She turned to Patrik, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, channel surfing.
‘Do you know if the medal is still there?’
Patrik gave her a surprised look. ‘I have no idea. It didn’t even occur to me. But there weren’t any indications that he’d been murdered as a result of a robbery. Besides, who would be interested in an old Nazi medal? They’re not exactly rare. It seems to me there are quite a lot of them …’
‘Yes, I know, but …’ Erica said. Something was still bothering her. ‘Could you ring your colleagues tomorrow and ask them to check on the medal?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Patrik. ‘I think they’ve got better things to do than spend time looking for an old medal. We can talk to Erik’s brother later on. Ask him to find it for us. It’s probably still in the house somewhere.’
‘Oh right, Axel. Where is he? Why didn’t he discover his brother’s body?’
Patrik shrugged. ‘I’m on paternity leave, remember? You’ll have to ring Mellberg yourself and ask him.’
‘Ha ha, very funny,’ said Erica. But she still felt uneasy. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that Axel didn’t find him?’
‘Sure, but didn’t you say he was off somewhere when you went over to their house?’
‘Well, yes. Erik told me that his brother was abroad. But that was back in June.’
‘Why are you worrying about this?’ Patrik shifted his gaze back to the TV. Home at Last was just about to start.
‘I don’t really know,’ Erica said, staring blankly at the TV screen. She couldn’t explain even to herself why this feeling of anxiety had come over her. But she could still remember Erik’s silence on the phone and hear that slight catch in his voice when he asked her to bring over the medal. He had reacted to something. Something having to do with the medal.
She tried to put it from her mind and focus on Martin Timell’s woodcarvings instead.
‘Grandpa, you should have seen it. That black bastard went to cut in line and – Pow! One kick and he keeled over like a tree. Then I kicked him in the nuts and he lay there whimpering for at least fifteen minutes.’
‘And what good did it do, Per? Aside from the fact that you could be charged with assault and sent off to a juvenile institution, you’re not going to win any sympathy that way. You’ll just have everybody ganging up on you even more. And instead of helping our cause, it’s going to end with you mobilizing even more opposition.’ Frans stared at his grandson. Sometimes he didn’t know how he was going to curb all the teenage hormones surging through the boy. And he knew so little. In spite of his tough demeanour, with his army camouflage trousers, heavy boots, and shaved head, he was nothing more than a fearful child of fifteen. He knew nothing. He had no idea how the world operated. He didn’t know how to channel the destructive impulses so that they could be used like a spear point to pierce right through the structure of society.
The boy hung his head in shame as he sat next to him on the stairs. Frans knew that his harsh words had got through. His grandson was always trying to impress him. But he would be doing Per a disservice if he didn’t show him how the world worked. The world was cold and hard and relentless, and only the strongest would emerge victorious.
At the same time, he loved the boy and wanted to protect him from evil. Frans put his arm around his grandson’s shoulders, struck by how bony they were. Per had inherited his own physique. Tall and gangly, with narrow shoulders. All the gym workouts in the world wouldn’t change that.
‘You just need to stop and think,’ said Frans, his voice gentler now. ‘Think before you act. Use words instead of your fists. Violence is not the first tool you should use. It’s the last.’ He tightened his hold on the boy’s shoulders. For a second Per leaned against him, as he’d done when he was a child. Then he remembered that he was trying to be a man. That the most important thing in the world was that he make his grandfather proud. Per sat up straight.
‘I know, Grandpa. I just got so angry when he pushed in. Because that’s what they