Dark Angel (Anders Knutas 6)

impossible to foresee how she was going to react. Why had she denied so strongly that her daughter had broken off their relationship?
    That was as far as he got with his muddled thought before Veronika appeared in the doorway, her expression tense.
    ‘I’d like you to leave now,’ she said, sounding stressed.
    ‘But I do have a few more questions,’ Knutas said. ‘How are things with your eldest son, Mats?’
    A cloud passed over Veronika’s face. She had to gasp for air before she repeated her demand.
    ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Get out of my house. Now,’ she snarled, spraying saliva.
    Knutas stared at her in astonishment. He saw a hint of insanity in her eyes. This woman is off her rocker, he thought.
    He stood up and slipped past her.
    ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said quietly.

AFTER HIS MEETING with Veronika Hammar, Knutas rang Jacobsson at the police station. She told him that everything was going smoothly, and his presence wasn’t immediately needed. He decided to pick up his car at headquarters and drive out to have a look at the site of the fire near Holmhällar. The techs had finished their search of the area without finding anything new, other than to reinforce the theory that the fire was the work of an arsonist. It had apparently started in the kitchen, which indicated that the perp had also been inside the cabin.
    Knutas was frustrated by the fact that they didn’t have the faintest lead on a possible suspect. The perpetrator’s shadow kept dancing before his eyes but he couldn’t distinguish any features. There was no pattern. First a man was poisoned to death, and by all indications it was the wrong victim who had died. Now they were dealing with an attempted murder by arson. This was clearly not someone who was a hardened criminal or a cunning murderer. In fact, all the circumstances pointed to someone whose actions were prompted by intense emotions, someone who had a strong personal connection to Veronika Hammar. Maybe it’s one of her children, thought Knutas. Or else she has a relationship with somebody that we don’t know about yet. He needed to talk to her again. And her children too. He would have preferred to meet all four of them in person, but her son Simon refused to answer any phone calls. And both Mats and Mikaela were still away.
    Knutas drove south along the coast road. It was a beautiful day, offering a hint of the summer that would soon arrive. The birches were sprouting leaves, and spring flowers were just starting to come up along the road.
    As he approached the exit for Holmhällar, he happened to think about Sten Bergström. Had anyone interviewed the man again? Knutas reminded himself to check with Rylander. Viktor Algård’s former competitor lived only a kilometre or so from the summer-house area where the fire had occurred. Was that just a coincidence? Maybe Bergström’s fight with Algård over clients was not the only thing he was hostile about. He was about the same age as Veronika Hammar, and they were practically neighbours out here in the country. When they interviewed Bergström, he and Karin had confined their questions to the conflict between the two companies owned by Algård and Bergström. Could there be something else behind their animosity?
    There was one other person that he kept thinking about: Elisabeth Algård. After the initial interview, he had essentially crossed her name off the list of potential suspects. She did have an alibi for the night of the fire, but was it possible that he had let her off too easily? He was well aware that it could be disastrous for a detective to lock himself into one line of thought at the beginning of an investigation.
    The police in Stockholm had finally got hold of Veronika’s son, Simon, and had gone over to talk to him. The interview had produced very little. The officers reported that he seemed physically weak and in a much too fragile psychological state to have committed a murder. That’s one way of looking at it, thought Knutas sarcastically. Normally the conclusion would be just the opposite. People committed murder precisely because they were in a fragile psychological state.
    Before reaching the Holmhällar bed and breakfast, he turned on to a narrow forest road. The area around the cabin was still cordoned off.
    Knutas spent a long time walking through the rubble on Veronika Hammar’s property. All that remained of the cabin were the soot-covered foundations. He looked in the direction