The Double Silence (Andas Knutas 7)

suffering that had lasted all her life. First the nine months of her pregnancy. The nausea in the mornings.The shame, the humiliation. This was the riding teacher who had taught her the half-pass and collected gaits with military precision at the riding school. He had tackled her to the floor of his living room with all the happy family photographs hanging on the walls above them. Then he had forced his way into her next to the TV and coffee table where his family gathered in the evening. There he had robbed her of her virginity. And a significant portion of her life. Sometimes the hatred would surge inside her so strongly that the world turned black. It was lucky that the riding teacher had died before she turned twenty. Otherwise she might have murdered him.
    In some ways it felt as if she were living her life in a straitjacket, and she could never be rid of it. A corset tied tight with strings from the past. At long last she had decided that there was only one means of escape. She had to contact her daughter and find out who she was.
    Finally she gave up any attempt to go back to sleep. She got out of bed, made a pot of strong coffee, and took a shower. After breakfast she decided to go out. It was a beautiful day, and she was restless with impatience. She thought about the circle of friends from Terra Nova. What was it about those people? Bergman seemed to be somehow connected everywhere she looked, but it was among the group itself that she’d find the answer. Two of them were dead, and none of the others seemed able to contribute any concrete information that might carry the investigation forward.
    Jacobsson had been to Terra Nova only once after Dahlberg was murdered. She glanced at her watch. Eleven fifteen. The perfect time to take a bike ride out there.
    Quickly she tied her shoelaces and left the flat.
    When she reached the other side of the wall, she realized that she’d left her mobile back home on charge, but she resisted an impulse to turn around. People used to get along just fine without mobile phones, and she wouldn’t be gone long.
    She passed Lindh’s big nursery and turned on to Norra Glasmästargatan. She pedalled slowly along the road, looking at the houses and gardens, each one more beautifully tended than the last. She stopped in the middle of the development, in the small car park. There she got off her bike,locked it, and looked around. The Dahlberg family home looked empty and dreary. Jacobsson walked around the cul-de-sac and then continued along the deserted street. Anyone who hadn’t left on holiday was probably spending the hot day at the seaside.
    The police had done several interviews with the four people in the Terra Nova group who had survived the holiday trip, but without any significant results. For once the police had taken the unusual step of questioning the older children, too, asking them both about their parents’ activities and what they thought of the apparent harmony among neighbours in the area. Unfortunately, this hadn’t produced anything of interest. The colleagues, grandparents and siblings of those involved had also been interviewed. The more time that passed, the wider the investigative circle had been expanded from the core group. Maybe it’s time to broaden our approach beyond Terra Nova, thought Jacobsson. Maybe we should talk to people outside the inner circle. Maybe there’s somebody who wanted to become a member but was pushed aside. Somebody who was so upset by this that he or she wanted revenge.
    It wasn’t unreasonable to think that those who remained might be threatened, but so far no one other than Andrea seemed to need police protection.
    Jacobsson reached the end of Norra Glasmästargatan. The three couples involved in the case lived ridiculously close to each other in their houses on the small cul-de-sac. Andrea and Sam owned a large wooden house in the early-twentieth-century style; then came Beata and John’s house, which was the biggest and most ostentatious, built of white sand-lime brick; and finally the home belonging to Håkan and Stina, painted a pale lavender with blue trim around the doors and windows. The outbuilding was the same lavender colour. Jacobsson looked at the house, feeling great sympathy for Håkan. He had completely fallen apart after Stina’s body had been found, and he was still in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. He was willing to talk only to his children and his first wife, Ingrid. No one else seemed able