front of her, between her legs. She looked down at him with excitement. Slowly he licked the champagne off her skin. He sucked up the bubbly that had filled her navel and then ran his tongue over her sun-warmed skin. She tasted of champagne and sweat. He raised his eyes and looked at her. Keeping his eyes fixed on hers, he reached for the edge of her bikini bottoms and slowly pulled them down. When he began licking her, he heard her panting breaths mixing with the sound of the seagulls screeching overhead. They were alone. All alone in the world.
Leif Hermansson took a deep breath before he stepped inside the small interview room at the police station. Helen Persson and her parents, KG and Harriet, were waiting inside. He knew the parents – everyone in Fjällbacka did – though they were no more than chance acquaintances. It was different with Marie Wall’s parents. The police in Tanumshede had had countless opportunities to meet them over the years.
Leif wasn’t happy about being police chief. He didn’t enjoy supervising others or having to make the decisions. But he was too good at his job, and it had got him promoted. Of course it was only the police station in Tanumshede; he had politely but firmly turned down all opportunities that would have meant moving somewhere else. He had been born in Tanumshede, and that was where he intended to stay until the very end.
Days like today made him hate being the boss. The responsibility of having to find the perpetrator, male or female, who had killed a little girl, rested heavily on his shoulders.
He opened the door to the dreary room with the grey-painted walls, allowing his eyes to rest for a moment on Helen’s slumped figure as she sat at the table. Then he nodded to Harriet and KG, seated on either side of their daughter.
‘Is it really necessary for us to have this talk here at the station?’ asked KG.
He was chairman of the Rotary Club and a big shot within the local business community. His wife Harriet was always impeccably dressed, with her hair styled and her nails exquisitely manicured. But Leif had no idea what she did with her time other than taking care of her appearance and attending meetings of the Home and School Association. She always seemed to be at KG’s side at various functions and parties, always laughing and with a martini in her hand.
‘We thought it would be easier for you to come to us,’ said Leif, signalling an end to that discussion.
How the police chose to do their job was their own concern, and he had a feeling that KG would try to take over if he didn’t keep tight control of the conversation.
‘It’s the other girl you should be talking to,’ said Harriet, tugging at her freshly ironed white blouse. ‘Marie. She comes from that dreadful family.’
‘We have to talk to both girls, since all indications are that they were the last ones to see Stella alive.’
‘But Helen has nothing to do with this. Surely you understand that.’
KG was so indignant, his moustache quivered.
‘We’re not saying they had anything to do with the girl’s death, but they were the last ones to see her, and we need to go over the chain of events if we’re going to find the perpetrator.’
Leif glanced at Helen. She was sitting in silence, staring down at her hands. She had dark hair like her mother. She was pretty in a quiet, ordinary sort of way. Her shoulders were tensed, and she was plucking at her dress.
‘Helen, can you tell me in your own words what happened?’ he said gently, surprised to feel a certain tenderness for the girl.
She looked so vulnerable and frightened, and her parents seemed much too focused on themselves to notice their daughter’s terror.
Helen glanced at her father, who nodded curtly.
‘We promised Linda and Anders to babysit Stella. We live nearby, and sometimes we go over there to play with Stella. They said they’d give us twenty kronor so we could go to the kiosk with Stella and buy ice cream.’
‘When did you pick her up?’ asked Leif.
The girl looked up at him.
‘I think it was around one. I went over there with Marie.’
‘Marie,’ snorted Harriet, but Leif raised his hand to silence her.
‘So it was around one o’clock.’
Leif jotted down the time in the notebook in front of him. The tape recorder was silently running in the background, but taking notes helped him to organize his thoughts.
‘Yes, but Marie would know better than me.’
Helen shifted position.
‘Who was at home when you picked her up?’
Leif stopped writing and smiled at Helen, but she still refused to meet his eye as she picked invisible lint off her white summer dress.
‘Her mother. And Sanna. They were about to leave when we got there. She gave us the money so we could pay for the ice cream. Stella was really happy. She was jumping up and down.’
‘Did you leave at once? Or did you stay at the farm for a while?’
Helen shook her head and a lock of her dark hair fell into her face.
‘We played on the farm. Jumped rope with Stella. She likes it when we each take one end of the rope so she can jump. But she kept stumbling and getting tangled up, so we got tired of the game.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘We took her with us and walked to Fjällbacka.’
‘That must have taken quite a while.’
Leif made a quick calculation. It would take him personally about twenty minutes to go from the Strand farm to the centre of town. With a four-year-old in tow, it would take much longer. The child would want to smell the grass and pick flowers and then she’d get a pebble in her shoe, or she’d have to pee, and her legs would get so tired that she wouldn’t want to go any further. Walking from the farm to Fjällbacka with a four-year-old would take for ever.
‘We took a pushchair with us,’ said Helen. ‘The kind you can fold up so it gets really small.’
‘A collapsible pushchair,’ said Harriet.
Leif gave her a look that stopped her from saying anything else.
Helen cast a quick glance at her mother.
Leif put down his pen.
‘So how long did it take you to get there? With Stella in the pushchair.’
Helen frowned.
‘It took ages. It’s a gravel road up to the main road, and it’s hard to steer a pushchair on gravel. The wheels kept getting stuck.’
‘But approximately how long did it take?’
‘Maybe forty-five minutes? But we didn’t check the time. We don’t have watches.’
‘You do have a watch,’ said Harriet. ‘You just refuse to wear it. But I’m not surprised that other girl doesn’t have one. If she did, it probably would have been a stolen watch.’
‘Mamma! Don’t say that!’
Helen’s eyes flashed.
Leif looked at Harriet.
‘If you don’t mind, let’s stick to the matter in hand.’
He nodded at Helen.
‘Then what? How long did you stay in Fjällbacka with Stella?’
Helen shrugged.
‘I don’t know. We bought ice cream and sat on the wharf for a while, but we didn’t let Stella go near the edge because she can’t swim, and we didn’t have