B0031RSBSM EBOK

contact with her than with many of our guests. She’s extremely nice. A very happy and open sort of girl. Her mother’s from Gotland, you know. Martina has been to the island quite often.”
    “Where is her mother from?”
    “Hemse. Both her mother and her grandparents are dead now, and Martina told me that she doesn’t have any other relatives on Gotland. But she usually spends a week here every summer, on vacation.”
    “Do you know where she usually stays when she’s here?”
    “From what I understood, her family usually stays at the Wisby hotel. Apparently there’s a special suite that they always reserve. She told me that her father knows the owner.”
    “I see. What’s his name? Or her name?” Johan quickly added, realizing that he was in fact sitting across from a female hotel manager.
    Kerstin smiled. “His name is Jacob Dahlén. We were in the same class in middle school.”
    “Maybe that’s where Martina is.”
    “I don’t think so,” said Kerstin, shaking her head. “If so, why hasn’t she called anyone? Surely she would know that everyone is worried.”
    “Yes, you’re right,” Johan agreed.
    The link to the hotel owner in Visby was interesting. He would follow up on it later.
    Kerstin took her cell phone out of the pocket of her linen shirt and punched in a number. When someone answered, she got up and went over to the railing that surrounded the restaurant area. She hopped up to perch on the railing as she talked. Sitting there and dangling her legs like that, she looked like a young girl. Johan instantly started thinking about his newborn daughter. In a few years she would be able to sit like that.
    Kerstin came back to the table. “Jacob Dahlén doesn’t know anything,” she said. “He was shocked. He said he didn’t even know that Martina was on Gotland.”

 
    Because of the photo torn out of a newspaper that Jacobsson had found under Martina’s pillow, they decided to drive farther south to Fröjel, which was about six miles from Warfsholm. They wanted to have a talk with the excavation leader, Staffan Mellgren.
    At the church Knutas turned off from the main road and parked outside the former school building, which now contained a café and a small exhibition space with a display about the excavations.
    A ladder led down to the dig area, and as they approached, they saw Mellgren walking among the students, who were hard at work. The ground had been divided into rectangles that were about a foot and a half deep. In several of the pits, portions of skeletons could be seen, along with other objects that Knutas had a hard time identifying. On a long table in the middle of the area lay folders, maps, and plastic bags marked with various labels. Mellgren had stopped and was writing some notes in a folder. He looked up when Knutas and Jacobsson greeted him. A tall, athletic man with thick, dark brown hair with a touch of gray, he had to be in his forties, Jacobsson guessed. His eyes were an intense brown, and she concluded that he was good-looking—more attractive than in the photos she had seen.
    “We’d like to talk to you about the disappearance of Martina Flochten,” Knutas began.
    “Of course. Just a minute,” said Mellgren. He turned to a younger woman in the next pit, asked her a question that they couldn’t hear, and jotted down some illegible squiggles.
    There were objects inside the plastic bags on the table—bone fragments or tools. Jacobsson exclaimed with surprise when she saw a bag containing a silver necklace and another with silver coins.
    “What are you going to do with all this?” She turned to Mellgren, who now seemed to have finished writing his notes.
    “Every item we find is documented.” He gestured to the ground behind them. “These spaces are called pits. We divide up the ground to facilitate both the excavation and the documentation. The items we find are placed in a bag on which we record the exact location and time of the find, in which pit and at what depth. When the workday is over, we lock up everything in those carts you walked past on your way here. Later the material is taken to our office at the college, where it’s sorted and examined. Finally it ends up in the Antiquities Room for storage.”
    “Could we sit down somewhere and talk?” asked Knutas.
    “Of course.”
    Mellgren led them to a corner of the excavation area where there was a plastic table and a few simple chairs.
    “How long have you been digging here?” asked