The Double Silence (Andas Knutas 7)

for the ferry.
    It was the height of the tourist season. The economic crisis of recent months meant that many more Swedes had decided to be tourists in their own country. The tourist bureau predicted that the number of visitors, which was normally between two and three hundred thousand during the summer, would increase by another hundred thousand, as far as Gotland was concerned. Those were enormous numbers, considering that the permanent residents barely totalled sixty thousand.
    The flood of tourists also made the crime statistics rise. The question was whether the murder that had been committed on Stora Karlsö had anything to do with summer tourism. It was certainly possible, even though most of the tourists who visited Stora Karlsö were middle-aged people interested in nature, and they neither littered nor startedbrawls. The police had interviewed the chief ranger, as well as the other employees, but no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary about any of the visitors who were on the island during the relevant time period. No incidents. No jealous fights. Not the slightest hint of any discord. On the surface, everything had appeared calm and harmonious.
    The police had their hands full trying to track down all the visitors, but they hadn’t yet located everyone. Then there was the matter of the people who had come to the island just for the day – those who arrived on the morning ferry and went home in the afternoon. Their names were not registered anywhere.
    Another possibility was that the murderer had spent the night in a tent or maybe under open skies. The summer heat meant that it was quite pleasant to sleep outdoors at night. Maybe Sam Dahlberg had acquired some enemies over the years; he was a relatively controversial director.
    Knutas recalled one of his films from a few years back that contained explicit sexual scenes that dealt with issues of religion and prejudice against homosexuals. It had aroused strong reactions all over the country, especially among the nonconformist religious circles. Particularly because one of Sweden’s most famous Pentecostal pastors was portrayed as a perverted fascist in the film. No name was ever mentioned, but no one who saw the movie could have had any doubts as to who the character was intended to be.
    One theory was that someone had taken their own boat to Stora Karlsö, killed Dahlberg, and then escaped unnoticed.
    Knutas went over to the window with his unlit pipe between his lips and looked out over the ring wall which surrounded the town. If someone had deliberately wanted to kill Dahlberg in cold blood, why go to so much trouble? Why follow him out to Stora Karlsö?
    Unless the murder was committed by a member of the group that was spending the holiday together. How reliable was the information that his wife Andrea had given the police? Could the perpetrator be one of the neighbours? Who knows what might be hidden under the friendly surface? thought Knutas. A person’s best friend, somebody that he thought he knew inside and out, could turn out to be someone else entirely. Thatwas something he’d learned from bitter personal experience. Leif Almlöv had been dead and buried for a long time now, but that didn’t stop Knutas from thinking about him – almost every day. And where the hell was Stina Ek? Did she have something to do with the murder? Had she pushed Dahlberg off the cliff and then bolted? The question was what her motive could be. According to everyone else in the group, she and Sam got along well and had never had any quarrels. The police needed to dig deeper into this group. Find out everything about their lives, their habits, their pasts.
    He was interrupted by someone knocking on the door. Karin Jacobsson stuck her head in.
    ‘Hey, we’ve got something. Stina Ek’s handbag was found in a ditch on Fårö.’

THEY TOOK KNUTAS’S old Mercedes so as not to attract too much attention and drove to Fårösund.
    ‘The bag was discovered a few hours ago by a man taking a walk along the road between north and south Sudersand,’ said Jacobsson. ‘There’s a tractor path that goes out to several summer cottages, almost right across from the pizzeria – you know, the place that has such good pizzas, baked in a wood oven. What’s it called? Oh, right. Carlssons.’
    ‘I know exactly the place you mean,’ said Knutas. ‘We spent a lot of time up there after the murder of … you know.’
    ‘Peter Bovide.’
    Knutas gave Jacobsson a quick