memories. There was something alarmingly familiar about those cries, but she had been very young when she lived here. These memories, if that was what they were, had to belong to the house itself, not to her.
‘Do you think we’ll be able to manage?’ asked Tobias, leaning on the sledgehammer.
Lost in her own thoughts, Ebba jumped at the sound of his voice alongside her. He grabbed the T-shirt hanging from his belt and used it to wipe his face. Then he looked at her. She didn’t want to meet his eyes. Instead, she gave him a furtive glance as she continued to work on a board that was refusing to come up. He made it sound as if he was talking about the renovation, but she realized that his question encompassed much more than that. And she had no answer for him.
When she didn’t reply, Tobias sighed and picked up the sledgehammer again. He banged it against the floorboards, groaning with every blow. A big hole was starting to take shape in the wooden floor in front of him. Again he raised the sledgehammer. Then he slowly lowered it.
‘What the …? Ebba, come and see this!’ he said, motioning her over.
Ebba was still working on the stubborn plank, but her curiosity got the better of her.
‘What is it?’ she said, going over to him.
Tobias pointed down in the hole. ‘What does that look like?’
Ebba squatted down to see better. She frowned. A large dark patch was visible where the floor had been removed. Tar was the first thing she thought, but then she realized what it might be.
‘It looks like blood,’ she said. ‘Lots of blood.’
Dagmar was smart enough to realize that it wasn’t solely because of her skill as a waitress and her beautiful face that she was hired to work at parties given by the wealthy. There was never anything very discreet about the whispering that went on. The host couple always saw to it that everyone at the table immediately knew who she was, and on this occasion she once again felt the eyes of the sensation-seekers fixed upon her.
‘Her mother … The Angelmaker … Executed …’ The words flew through the air like tiny wasps and their sting hurt, but she had taught herself to keep a smile on her face and pretend not to hear.
This party was no exception. As she walked past, the guests would put their heads together to murmur and give small, telling nods. One of the women put a hand to her mouth in fright and openly stared at Dagmar, who was filling her glass with wine. The German pilot observed with apparent astonishment the commotion she was causing, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him lean towards the woman seated next to him. The woman whispered something in his ear. Her heart pounding, Dagmar waited to see his reaction. The German’s expression changed but then his eyes glittered. Calmly he studied her for a moment before he raised his glass to her. She smiled back and felt her heart beat even faster.
The sound level at the large outdoor table rose as the hours passed. Darkness began to fall, and although the summer evening was still warm, some of the guests withdrew to the rooms inside where they continued their drinking. The Sjölins were generous with the liquor, and the pilot also looked as if he’d had a good deal to drink. With a slightly trembling hand, Dagmar had refilled his glass several times. Her reaction surprised her. She had met a lot of men, and a number of them had been quite handsome. Many had known exactly what to say and how to touch a woman, but none of them had caused this sort of vibrating sensation in her abdomen.
The next time she went over to serve him, his hand brushed against hers. No one seemed to notice, and Dagmar did her best to appear unperturbed, although she did thrust out her bosom a bit more.
‘Wie heissen Sie?’ he said, gazing up at her, his eyes bright.
Dagmar gave him a puzzled look. Swedish was the only language she knew.
‘What’s your name?’ slurred the man sitting across from the pilot. ‘He wants to know your name. Tell the pilot, there’s a good girl, and then maybe you’d like to come over here and sit on my lap for a while. And find out how a real man feels …’ He laughed at his own joke and patted his fat thighs.
Dagmar wrinkled her nose in disgust and turned back to the pilot.
‘Dagmar,’ she said. ‘My name is Dagmar.’
‘Dagmar,’ repeated the German. He pointed with an exaggerated gesture at his own chest. ‘Hermann,’ he said. ‘Ich heisse Hermann.’
After a brief pause he raised his hand to touch the back of her neck, and she felt the little hairs on her arms stand on end. He said something else in German, and she turned to the fat man sitting across the table.
‘He says that he wonders what your hair looks like when it’s loose.’ The man again laughed loudly, as if he’d said something enormously funny.
Dagmar instinctively put her hand up to her hair, which was gathered in a bun. Her blonde hair was so thick that she never managed to fasten it properly, and a few stray locks were always coming loose.
‘He’ll just have to keep on wondering. Tell him that,’ she said, and turned to go.
The fat man laughed and uttered several long sentences in German. The pilot didn’t laugh, and as she stood there with her back to him, she felt his hand again touch the nape of her neck. With a tug he pulled out the comb and her hair came tumbling down her back.
Her posture rigid, she slowly turned to face him. For a few moments she and the German pilot stared at each other, accompanied by the fat man’s roar of laughter. Between them a tacit understanding arose, and with her hair still loose, Dagmar walked up towards the house where the hooting and howling of the other guests shattered the peace of the summer night.
Patrik was crouching down next to the big hole in the floor. The planks were old and rotting, and it was obvious that the floor needed to be replaced. So what they’d found underneath was all the more surprising. He felt an uneasy lump forming in the pit of his stomach.
‘Good thing you called us immediately,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the hole.
‘It’s blood, isn’t it?’ Tobias swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know what old blood looks like, and it might be tar or whatever. But considering …’
‘It does appear to be blood. Could you ring the tech team, Gösta? They need to come out here and take a closer look at this.’ Patrik stood up, grimacing when he heard how his joints creaked. A reminder that he wasn’t getting any younger.
Gösta nodded and moved a short distance away as he tapped in a number on his mobile.
‘Do you think there’s something else … underneath there?’ asked Ebba, her voice quavering.
Patrik realized at once what she was hinting at.
‘It’s impossible to say. We’re going to have to rip up the rest of the floor to see what we can find.’
‘It’s true that we could use some help with the renovation, but this wasn’t exactly what we had in mind,’ said Tobias with a hollow laugh. No one else laughed.
Gösta finished his phone call and came back to join them. ‘The techs can’t come out here