Fatal Isles Read online

  Arild wipes the outside of the glass with a green bar towel and plonks it down in front of Karen.

  ‘Actually, it started before then, while the wife was still alive,’ he continues. ‘I guess that’s how they funded the commune or whatever they called it. A dodgy lot they were, either way, living up on old Gråå’s farm.’

  Karen recalls what her mother told her and the stories she heard as a child about Lothorp Farm.

  ‘Those crackpots only stayed for about a year, then they dispersed,’ Egil Jenssen puts in. ‘But the Lindgrens stayed on and sold off their land instead of putting in an honest day’s work. Made paintings no one wanted to buy, that’s all Lindgren did, until the bitter end. Lord knows how his wife and little Susanne bore it. They had no income and they had to pay for food and clothes somehow, so I suppose that’s why they auctioned off the family fortune, bit by bit.

  ‘I bought a strip of forest myself, adjacent to my property. It must have been in seventy-four or possibly seventy-five, if I remember correctly. Bloody good deal, I’ll tell you that.’

  Clearly cheered up by the memories and the gossip, Jaap Kloes smiles out of the corner of his mouth, raises his glass to the others and drinks deeply with the pleased look of a suckling infant.

  ‘Crazy Swedes,’ Kloes continues after putting his glass down and wiping his mouth. ‘Remember when they bought geese? Thought they could roam free both day and night. The fox took every last one before the summer was over. But you know what they say: you can season it with Bretons, Friesians and Flemings . . .’

  ‘. . . the Dogger soup still mostly reeks of Scandinavians,’ Karen finishes with a weary smile.

  Jaap Kloes chuckles delightedly.

  ‘Well, I believe there were both British and Dutch people in that commune,’ Egil Jenssen says curtly and turns to Karen. ‘I’m surprised they stayed as long as they did. Your father bet a hundred shilling the whole commune would give up before the first winter. That was a lot of money back then.’

  ‘My dad? How come?’

  ‘Not just him, they had a pool going down at the Anchor. Harald Steen was the bookie and there was a lot of bickering about how to distribute the money when it turned out the Lindgrens stayed and the others shoved off. What year was it they came here? Sixty-nine?’

  ‘Seventy,’ Kloes says. ‘Same year my youngest boy was born. I remember when they arrived in their Peruvian knitted hats, talking a big game about organic agriculture and living off the land and all kinds of nonsense like that. They were going to share everything, they said.’

  ‘Mrs Lindgren almost drove my wife batty with her lectures about pesticide-free produce and plant-based dyes and God knows what,’ Jenssen says. ‘Probably smoked a bit of the jazz tobacco, too, I’d wager. No, I never understood what they wanted here.’

  ‘The green wave,’ Odd Marklund says. ‘Quite a lot of people came out here during those years. Went to Frisel, a lot of them. Back to nature, and whatnot. There were farmers down there who made a pretty penny off them; they’d sell them a piece of meagre land at a hiked-up price and buy the whole lot back at a lower price when it turned out life in the countryside wasn’t that easy. They couldn’t live off what they managed to grow.’

  ‘Well, the Lindgrens certainly didn’t have to buy land. The wife, Anne-Marie, I think her name was, inherited old Gråå’s property – he was her grandfather, so it was all hers, even though she’d never set foot on the island before then, as far as I’m aware. He was a stingy old bastard, was Vetle Gråå; remember him, Karen? Bent over like a scythe but he did the rounds of his property until the day he died. Two sons he had, one drank himself to death, the other married a Swede, so no wonder the old man was grumpy,’ Jaap Kloes says.

  ‘So, Anne-Marie’s dad,’ Karen says. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Wasn’t he the one who fell off a scaffold at a construction site in Malmö and died?’ Odd Marklund says and is met with a triumphant nod.

  ‘Yep. Despite all those wondrous workplace safety laws they have over there. Old Vetle had no time for our brothers in the east after that, Scandinavian though he was.’

  Karen shakes her head. Of course she’s heard of Vetle Gråå. Her mother had been right in saying his name had survived him. But Karen had never paid any attention to who owned what land or who cheated whom in the endless series of inheritances, emergency auctions and trades her parents discussed at the kitchen table. Everyone in the village, both young and old, had, however, known that old man Gråå’s properties in Langevik had been extensive.

  ‘So Susanne’s mother was Gråå’s grandchild,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘And yet you’re telling me that the only thing left for Susanne to inherit was the house.’

  ‘All that remained of Gråå’s property was the garden around the old stone house where Susanne lived, the one the Lindgrens moved down to after the commune failed. That’s when they sold the farm up at Lothorp and the land around it. And whatever was left – tracts of land stretching all the way to Kvattle and the forest – was slowly sold off by Per Lindgren over the years; when he popped his clogs, there wasn’t so much as a strip of grass left.’

  ‘This commune,’ Karen says searchingly, ‘how big was it? I mean, how many people lived there?’

  ‘Well, I never exactly popped over for a headcount,’ Egil Jenssen says. ‘The Lindgrens, of course, and another Swedish family. And a Danish lady, I seem to remember. I think my wife talked to her a few times and said she seemed perfectly reasonable. A better sort than the rest of them, she told me.’

  ‘I think there were people from the UK, too, or maybe Ireland; either way, they often spoke English to each other; you’d hear it when they came down to the village. I’m not really sure, but I reckon it was about eight or ten adults, and children, of course. But I don’t know any of their names . . .’

  Odd Marklund turns inquiringly to his drinking mates who both shake their heads.

  ‘The other Swedish woman was a looker; that I remember,’ Jaap Kloes puts in. ‘We’d sit down at the Anchor, fantasising about what went on up there when the lights went out. We were all a bit curious what with all that talk about Swedes and free love, you know.’

  ‘Speak for yourself; I certainly never had the time to go snooping around Lothorp Farm in the evenings,’ Arild Rasmussen retorts and disappears into the kitchen with a plastic crate full of empty pint glasses.

  Karen studies the scruffy old men. What they’re talking about happened nearly forty years ago; they must have been in their thirties when the Lindgrens and the other members of the commune arrived. About the same age as them, probably, but from very different worlds. To a thirty-year-old man – on whom fifteen years of North Sea fishing had already taken a toll – people who were prepared to abandon comfortable lives to grow vegetables on a windswept island in the middle of the sea must have appeared out of their minds. For people whose childhoods had consisted of wood-burning stoves and kerosene lamps, an existence without modern conveniences held no romantic appeal. There was no rhyme or reason to voluntarily giving up what others toiled so hard to acquire. Back then, migration flows had mostly gone the other way; why would any sane person trade modern Sweden for Doggerland?

  Karen has no trouble imagining the islanders’ fantasies about the members of the commune; next to the prematurely aged fishermen’s wives in Langevik, the young women must have come across as exotic, to say the least. The women of the village had probably been a great deal less enthusiastic at the sight of tie-dyed, braless freedom. On the other hand, not even the drooling menfolk at the Anchor appeared to have welcomed the newcomers into the fold. Despite their curiosity, they seemed to have viewed the members of the commune with equal measures of schadenfreude and jealousy. And yet, despite this hostility, Per and Anne-Marie Lindgren had stayed. What had made them stick it out?

  And now the whole family’s gone and no one seems to mourn any of them, she realises with a sense of unease. No one has anything good to say, not ev
en about Susanne, who grew up in Langevik. What must it have been like for her to grow up in the village?

  ‘Do we know anything about how the commune worked? They did keep at it for over a year, after all, living together and sharing everything, you said. Were there no rumours about discord or fighting?’

  Kloes shrugs, as though he’s lost interest in the subject.

  ‘Well, they did leave, so clearly it got to be too much free love and organic bullshit even for them,’ Jenssen says. ‘I don’t mind telling you I wouldn’t share my wife either. Not that anyone wants her,’ he adds with a laugh that turns into a roaring coughing fit.

  Odd Marklund puts his pint down and meets Karen’s gaze.

  ‘A lot of people were exploring different ways to live back then; some were looking for something different and others were probably running away from something. They’re not the only ones who’ve fled both to and from here over the years, are they, Karen?’

  He knows, she thinks and looks at her hand clutching the bar, studying the damp handprint it leaves on the dark wood.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, lass?’

  Odd Marklund studies her with a look of concern; she gives him a reassuring smile.

  ‘I’m just a bit light-headed. Haven’t had anything to eat since lunch, so I think it’s high time for me to be heading home now.’ She turns to Arild Rasmussen who has returned from the kitchen.

  ‘Just one last question. You said something about Susanne not owning the land above her house anymore, the plot with the windmills. But she was still in a fight with the power company?’

  ‘Well, I guess that was the problem. She didn’t know the land had been sold, thought she still owned it. Until surveyors and engineers turned up, uninvited, on what she thought was her land. It was just after she got divorced and moved back, so I guess she didn’t have a clear idea of what was what. But then her father died and she found out everything had been sold off a long time ago.’

  ‘No wonder she felt duped,’ Karen says. ‘What she thought was her land had already been sold, and now it was being sold again and forty-two wind turbines were being built next door.’

  ‘You’re wrong there,’ Arild Rasmussen cuts her off. ‘The owner of the land never sold it. Wily bastard managed to get Pegasus to sign a fifty-year leasehold with profit sharing and the whole to-do. Talk about having your cake and eating it. Lord knows how he pulled it off.’

  Rasmussen’s voice is now brimming with equal parts contempt and admiration. Karen, for her part, mostly feels awkward about Susanne Smeed’s bad fortune.

  ‘That does sound like a good deal,’ Karen says drily. ‘And who is this “wily bastard” then – do you happen to know that?’

  ‘Axel Smeed’s boy Jounas, of course, who else?’

  27

  ‘Wait, let me help you!’

  ‘That’s OK, I’ve got it, but if you wouldn’t mind holding the door, I’d be very grateful.’

  Cornelis Loots does as he’s told, walking briskly from the lift to the frosted glass door leading into the CID. Feeling distinctly unhelpful, he then watches while Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby shuffles through the door sideways, her face bright red, panting under the weight of the enormous box she’s lugging.

  ‘Goddamn it,’ she mutters when her big carrier bag slips off her shoulder.

  Cornelis Loots feels like an idiot when he can’t think of any other way to assist her than to lift up the bag and walk next to his boss while she lumbers on with her heavy load, tipped back, feet wide apart. When she turns off toward the kitchen, he can’t take it anymore. Together, they manage to put the beast of a box down on the floor without any alarming sounds. Karen shoots him a grateful smile and rubs her tender hands.

  ‘Bloody lucky you were here; I would never have got that door open by myself. Are you good at technical stuff, by the way? Would you mind helping me set this up before the others get in?’

  She makes a sweeping gesture toward the box; only now does Cornelis realise what the picture on the glossy cardboard is of.

  ‘Christ, that’s a monster,’ he says. ‘How much did something like that set you back?’

  Karen shrugs.

  ‘You don’t want to know. But Haugen was very clear about giving us all the resources we need.’

  ‘And you don’t think he meant in terms of extra staff . . .?’

  ‘My professional assessment is that we can’t carry on with this investigation with that atrocious excuse for coffee as our only fuel.’

  Karen waves vaguely at the brown coffee maker on the counter. Someone has put the unwashed glass pot back on the heater; the sour smell of yesterday’s coffee suffuses the small kitchenette.

  After twenty minutes, Cornelis Loots puts the screwdriver down on the counter and rolls his shirt sleeves back down while he and Karen contemplate their joint achievement. She has watched him hook the machine up to power and water with a mix of respect and surprise. Now she won’t have to call the janitor, Kofs, and listen to his whingeing about how this isn’t in his job description. She takes a step forward, wipes a fingerprint off the machine’s shiny chrome shell and snaps her forefinger against the bent arm of the steam wand, making it spin. Purchasing’s going to throw a fit.

  ‘Doesn’t something like this need special coffee?’

  Thirty days before the invoice arrives . . . Smeed might be back by then. She pushes the thought down and smiles broadly at Cornelis. Then she pulls two one-pound bags of whole coffee beans out of her messenger bag.

  ‘You fire that monster up and I’ll pop across the street for a bit. I have a quick meeting with Vegen and Haugen starting’ – she glances at her watch – ‘two minutes ago.’

  28

  ‘Seems to me we should be able to strike Smeed off the list of people of interest; I see no reason why he can’t come back to work.’

  Viggo Haugen quickly covers up the faint tremble in his voice by ending the sentence in a deep, chesty baritone. They’ve gathered in the prosecutor’s office, sitting in the group of armchairs at one end of the room.

  Karen sighs inwardly and exchanges a quick look with Dineke Vegen. Vegen’s good, a curling at the corner of her mouth signals that she’s well aware things are not as simple as the chief of police is trying to make them out to be, but her raised eyebrows reveal that she’s going to leave this particular fight to Detective Inspector Eiken. She hasn’t seen a reason to step in and take over the investigation yet.

  ‘I understand where you’re coming from,’ Karen replies, looking straight into Haugen’s ice blue eyes. ‘Of course it would be great if we could clear Jounas right now, but there are still too many unanswered questions.’

  Viggo Haugen opens his mouth to interrupt but shuts it again when Karen pushes on with feigned conviction.

  ‘Like you, I have a very hard time picturing Jounas killing Susanne, but that’s not enough. He still doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder and there are, unfortunately, a few circumstances that might be seen as incriminating. He has been to Susanne’s house recently – six days before the murder according to his own information – and their relationship can be described as complicated, and that’s putting it mildly.’

  ‘Well, no wonder; that’s hardly a solid lead. If everyone who had a “complicated” relationship with their ex-wives were automatically considered suspect . . .’

  Viggo Haugen makes quotation marks in the air and spreads his hands.

  ‘Karen’s right,’ Dineke Vegen’s voice puts an end to his little performance.

  Haugen fall silent with a surprised frown on his face.

  ‘Once the casefile is made public,’ the prosecutor continues, ‘you can be sure it will be picked apart by every journalist in this country; there mustn’t be anything to suggest we let Jounas’s position influence the investigation. On the contrary, we have to take special care to get to the bottom of anything that could be used against Smeed.’

  Viggo Haugen clears his
throat, his mind racing. Unlike Karen, Dineke Vegen radiates the kind of female authority he actually respects. More education and elegance and less . . . surly bitch. He turns to the prosecutor with a smile.

  ‘Naturally, I didn’t mean that we should . . .’

  ‘Not least for Jounas’s own sake,’ Karen puts in. ‘Unless he’s completely cleared of all suspicion, it’s going to be hell for him to come back. And believe me, I’m going to do everything I can to clear him,’ she adds.

  Viggo Haugen replies instantly with a sidelong glance at Dineke Vegen.

  ‘I would suggest you focus on finding the actual killer instead. I think that’s what would serve Jounas best.’

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ Karen mutters softly. ‘I didn’t express myself clearly.’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly the first time. Anyway, I hear you and I’ll let Jounas know as soon as we’re done here.’

  Dineke Vegen raises her well-groomed eyebrows again.

  ‘About his continued sabbatical, I mean. Nothing else. All right then, it’s decided,’ he announces and gets to his feet.

  Karen throws Dineke Vegen another glance and receives a hint of a small smile in return.

  29

  Langevik, 1970

  ‘Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine we’d ever have to put up with their kind here. Poor old Gråå would turn in his grave if he could see what they’re doing to his farm.’

  The woman at the till in the hardware shop firmly, almost angrily, punches in the price of three hundred wood screws while she speaks, then looks up at her customer, seeking agreement.

  Anne-Marie Lindgren is standing between shelves lined with paint cans and wood oil and kerosene. She was bending down to pick up paintbrushes but has frozen mid-movement, hunched over, as though ashamed.

  Do they know she’s there? Do they want her to overhear or did they just miss her coming in? Her cheeks flush; the words feel like a slap in the face.