As the finishing touch she broke into a coughing fit so violent that she bent in half. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lucas’s face take on a much redder hue. She knew that her exaggerated claims would be exposed in a closer inspection of the house. But until then, it was some small consolation to be able to annoy Lucas a bit.
Kjell looked very relieved when he got outside in the fresh air again, after being shown all the cellar’s good points by an enthusiastic Erica. Lucas was silent and passive during the rest of the tour. With a pang of uneasiness she wondered whether she’d carried her childish prank a little too far. He knew that a real appraisal would show that none of the ‘drawbacks’ of the house that she had revealed would have any substance, but she had attempted to make him a laughingstock. And that was something that Lucas Maxwell could not tolerate. With a slight feeling of dread Erica saw the agent drive off, waving happily, after promising that they would be contacted by a certified appraiser who would go through the house from attic to cellar.
Lucas followed her into the hallway. The next second she felt herself plastered to the wall, with Lucas’s hand in a brutal grip around her throat. His face was no more than half an inch from hers. The anger she saw there made her understand for the first time why it was so hard for Anna to get out of her relationship with Lucas. What Erica saw was a man who let no obstacle stand in his way. She stood stock-still, much too afraid to move.
‘Don’t you ever, ever do that again, do you hear me? Nobody makes a fool of me like that without consequences, so watch your step!’
He snarled the words so fiercely that he sprayed her face with saliva. She had to resist the impulse to wipe his spittle from her face. Instead, she stood as motionless as a pillar of salt, silently praying he would get out of her house and go away. To her astonishment he did just that. He released his grip on her throat and turned on his heel to head for the door. But just as she was about to heave a deep sigh of relief, he spun round and with a single step was in front of her again. Before Erica could react, he grabbed her by the hair and pressed his mouth to hers. Lucas forced his tongue between her lips and at the same time took such a tight hold on her breast that she felt the underwire of her bra cut into her skin. With a smile he turned, headed for the door, and vanished into the winter cold. Not until Erica heard his car start and drive off did she dare move. She sank down onto the floor with her back to the wall and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth in disgust. His kiss had somehow seemed more threatening than his stranglehold; she felt herself starting to shake. With her arms wrapped around her legs she leaned her head on her knees and wept. Not for her own sake, but for Anna’s.
Monday mornings were not associated with pleasant feelings in Patrik’s world. He didn’t begin to turn into a real human being until eleven o’clock. So he woke from an almost trance-like state when the hefty stack of papers landed on his desk with a thunk. The awakening was brutal. In one stroke, the pile of documents had doubled, and he let out a groan.
Annika Jansson gave him a mischievous smile and asked innocently, ‘Didn’t you say you wanted everything that’s been written about the Lorentz family over the past years? Here I do a magnificent job digging up every single word ever written about them, and what do I get as payment for my efforts? A groan. How about your eternal gratitude instead?’
Patrik smiled. ‘My eternal gratitude isn’t good enough for you, Annika. If you weren’t already married I would marry you and cover you in mink and diamonds. But since you broke my heart and insisted on keeping that lout of a husband of yours, you’ll have to settle for a simple thank-you instead. And my eternal gratitude, of course.’
To his great delight he saw that he’d almost succeeded in making her blush this time.
‘All right, now you’ve gone one step too far. Why do you want to look through all this? What’s it got to do with the murder in Fjällbacka?’
‘No idea, to tell you the truth. Let’s call it woman’s intuition.’
Annika raised her eyebrows. She decided that she probably wouldn’t get any more out of him for the moment. But she was curious. Everyone knew the Lorentz family, even in Tanumshede, and if they were somehow involved with a murder it would be a sensation, to say the least.
Patrik looked up as she closed the door. An incredibly efficient woman. He sincerely hoped that she could stand to be under Mellberg’s command. It would be a great loss for the station if she decided one day that she’d had enough. He forced himself to focus on the stack of papers Annika had placed before him. After quickly leafing through them, he could tell that it was going to take him the rest of the day to read all the material. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and picked up the first article.
Six hours later, he massaged his weary neck and felt his eyes itching and stinging. He had read the articles in chronological order, starting with the oldest newspaper clip first. It was fascinating reading. A lot had been written about Fabian Lorentz and his successes over the years. The great majority of it was positive, and for a long time life seemed to have dealt Fabian a winning hand. The company took off with astonishing speed. Fabian seemed to be a very talented, if not to say a brilliant, businessman. His marriage to Nelly was reported in the society columns with accompanying photos showing the handsome couple in evening attire. Then photos of Nelly and her son Nils began appearing in the papers. Nelly seemed to have been unflagging in her work for various charity and society events, and Nils was always at her side – often with a frightened expression and his hand securely held in his mother’s.
Even when he reached his teens and should have been a bit more reluctant to be seen with his mother in public, he was unfailingly there by her side, now with her arm tucked under his and with a proud expression on his face. Patrik thought he looked extremely proprietary. Fabian was seen less and less often; he was mentioned only when news of some big business deal was reported.
One article was different from the others and caught Patrik’s attention. Allers had a whole feature about Nelly in the mid-seventies when she took in a foster child, a boy who came from a ‘tragic family background’, as the Allers reporter described it. The article showed Nelly, carefully made-up and dressed to the nines in her elegant living room, with her arm around a boy of twelve. He had a defiant and sulky expression on his face. When the picture was snapped he looked as if he were about to shake off her bony arm. Nils, who was then a young man in his mid-twenties, was standing behind his mother, and he wasn’t smiling either. Serious and ramrod straight in a dark suit and slicked-back hair, he seemed to blend into the elegant atmosphere completely, while the younger boy stuck out like a sore thumb.
The article was full of praise about the sacrifice and great social contribution Nelly was making by taking in this child. It was hinted that the boy had been involved in some terrible tragedy in his childhood, a trauma that Nelly was quoted as saying she had helped him overcome. She was confident that the healthy and loving environment they were offering him would heal the boy and turn him into a productive human being. Patrik found himself feeling sorry for the boy. What naïveté.
About a year later, the glamorous society photos and enviable ‘at-home-with’ reports were replaced by big black headlines: ‘Heir to Lorentz family fortune missing’. For several weeks the local newspapers trumpeted the news, and it was even considered important enough for the Göteborgs-Posten to report. The eye-catching headlines were accompanied by an abundance of more or less well-founded speculations about what might have happened to young Lorentz. Every conceivable and inconceivable alternative was aired – he had embezzled his father’s entire fortune and was now in an undisclosed location living the life of luxury. Or he had taken his own life because he discovered that he was not actually the son of Fabian Lorentz, who had made it clear that he didn’t intend to let a bastard inherit his considerable fortune. Most of these rumours were not published in so many words, merely intimated discreetly. But anyone who had the least bit of sense could easily read between the lines.
Patrik scratched his head. For the life of him he couldn’t understand how he was going to link a disappearance from twenty-five years ago to the current murder case, but he had a strong feeling that there