LITMIR.BIZ

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he was already regretting making a suggestion which would entail more work for himself, but he nodded wearily and followed Martin out the door. It was just a matter of making it through the work week. Come the weekend he’d be out on the golf course by seven in the morning, both Saturday and Sunday. Until then, he was just treading water.

      Thoughts of Erik Frankel and the medal continued to haunt Erica. She managed to put it out of her mind for a couple of hours and make a start on her manuscript, but as soon as her concentration faltered she began to replay the brief meeting that she’d had with Erik. He had seemed a gentle, courteous man, eager to share his knowledge of the subject that interested him most: Nazism.

      Admitting defeat, she closed her manuscript file and Googled ‘Erik Frankel’. A number of hits turned up, some clearly referring to other individuals with the same name. But there was no shortage of information on the correct Erik Frankel, and she spent nearly an hour clicking through the links. Born in 1930 in Fjällbacka, he had one sibling: a brother named Axel who was four years older. His father had been a doctor in Fjällbacka from 1935 to 1954. Many of the links led to blogs about Nazism, but she found nothing to indicate that he was some sort of Nazi sympathizer. On the contrary. Though some of the blogs betrayed a reluctant admiration for aspects of Nazism, it seemed that Erik’s interest was motivated by pure fascination with the subject.

      She had just shut down the Internet browser, reminding herself that she really didn’t have time for this, when there was a cautious knock on the door behind her.

      ‘Sorry, am I bothering you?’ Patrik opened the door and poked his head in.

      ‘No, don’t worry.’ She spun round in her desk chair to face him.

      ‘I just came up to tell you that Maja is asleep and I need to nip out on a little errand. Could you keep this in here while I’m out?’ He handed her the baby monitor so she’d be able to hear if Maja woke up.

      ‘Er … I really should be working.’ Erica sighed. ‘Why do you need to go out?’

      ‘I have to go to the bank, and we’re out of Nezeril so I thought I’d call in at the pharmacy, and then I might as well get a lottery ticket and a few groceries too.’

      Erica suddenly felt very tired. She thought about all the errands she’d done during the past year, always with Maja sitting in the pushchair or in her arms. More often than not she’d been soaked with sweat by the time she was done. There’d never been anyone to watch Maja while she waltzed off to the shops. But she put these thoughts out of her mind; she didn’t want to seem petty or cranky.

      ‘Of course I can look after her while you’re out,’ she said with a smile, summoning some enthusiasm. ‘I can keep working while she’s asleep.’

      ‘That’s great,’ said Patrik, giving her a kiss on the cheek before he shut the door behind him.

      ‘That’s great, all right,’ said Erica to herself, opening her manuscript document and preparing to put all thought of Erik Frankel out of her mind.

      She had no sooner set her fingers on the keyboard when a crackling noise issued from the baby monitor. Erica froze. It was probably nothing. Maja was just moving around in her cot; sometimes the monitor was overly sensitive. She heard the sound of a car starting up, and then Patrik drove off. As she moved her eyes back to the screen, struggling to think of the next sentence, she heard the crackling noise again. She looked at the baby monitor as if she could will it to stay quiet, but her efforts were rewarded with an audible ‘Waaaaaa.’ Followed by a shrill ‘Mammaaaa … Pappaaaa …’

      Feeling resigned, she pushed back her chair and got up. How typical. She went down the hall to Maja’s room and opened the door. Her daughter was standing up, crying angrily.

      ‘But Maja, sweetheart, you’re supposed to be sleeping.’

      Maja shook her head.

      ‘Yes, it’s time for your nap,’ said Erica firmly, setting her daughter down in the cot, but Maja sprang up as she were made of rubber.

      ‘Mammaaaa!’ she cried with a voice that could break glass. Erica felt fury gathering in her chest. How many times had she done this? How many days had she spent feeding, carrying, playing with Maja and then putting her down for a nap? She loved her daughter, but she had a desperate need for some respite from the responsibility. To rediscover what it was to be a grown-up and do grown-up things – exactly the way Patrik had been able to during the whole year that she’d been home with Maja.

      No sooner did she put Maja down in the cot than she clambered back up, even more furious.

      ‘You need to sleep now,’ said Erica, backing out of the room and closing the door. Anger surging in her chest, she picked up the phone and punched in the number for Patrik’s mobile, pressing the buttons a little too hard. She heard the first ringtone and then gave a start when she realized it was coming from downstairs. Patrik’s mobile was on the kitchen counter.

      ‘Bloody hell!’ She slammed down the receiver, angry tears welling up in her eyes. She took a couple of deep breaths and told herself it wasn’t the end of the world if she had to jump in for a little while, even though it might feel like it. She realized this whole thing was about the fact that she felt unable to let go, unable to trust Patrik with the baton she had passed him.

      But there was nothing she could do about it. And the most important thing was not to take out her feelings on Maja. It wasn’t her fault, after all. Erica took another deep breath and went back to her daughter’s room. Maja was wailing, her face bright red. And an unmistakable odour had started to spread through the room. The mystery was solved. That was why Maja didn’t want to sleep. Feeling a bit guilty and extremely inadequate, Erica tenderly picked up her daughter and comforted her, pressing the little downy head against her breast. ‘There, there, sweetie, Mamma is going to change the nasty nappy. There, there.’ Maja sniffled as she pressed closer. Downstairs in the kitchen, Patrik’s mobile was ringing shrilly.

      ‘It feels … creepy.’ Martin was still standing in the entry hall, listening to the sounds characteristic of all old houses. Small creaks and squeaks, faint sounds of protest when the wind picked up.

      Gösta nodded. There was definitely something creepy about the atmosphere in this house, but he thought it was because they knew what had happened here, rather than anything inherent in the house itself.

      ‘So you said Torbjörn’s given the all-clear to go in, right?’ Martin turned to look at Gösta.

      ‘Yes, Forensics are done with the place.’ Gösta nodded his head towards the library, where traces of fingerprint powder were clearly visible. Black, sooty particles that disturbed the image of an otherwise beautiful room.

      ‘Okay, then.’ Martin wiped his shoes on the doormat and headed for the library. ‘Shall we start in here?’

      ‘Might as well,’ said Gösta with a sigh.

      ‘I’ll take the desk while you go through the file folders and ring binders.’

      ‘Sure.’ Gösta sighed again, but Martin paid no attention. Gösta always sighed when confronted with an assignment.

      Martin cautiously approached the big desk. It was a huge piece of furniture made of dark wood, ornately carved, that looked as if it belonged in some English manor house. The desktop was very neat, with only a pen and a box of paper clips, aligned in perfect symmetry. A little blood had stained a notepad that was covered in scribbles, and Martin leaned closer to see what had been scrawled there. ‘Ignoto militi’ it said over and over. The words meant nothing to him. He carefully began pulling out one desk drawer after another, methodically going through the contents. Nothing piqued his interest. The only thing he could tell was that Erik and his brother seemed to have shared the work area, and they also seemed to share a fondness for neatness and order.

      ‘Doesn’t this border on the obsessive?’ Gösta held up a binder and showed Martin the neatly arranged documents inside, complete with a table of contents on which Erik and Axel had meticulously detailed what each scrap of paper

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