Unspoken

“That’s all for now. Both lines of inquiry need to be explored without bias.”

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14
    It felt as if the dawn would never come on that cold December morning. Knutas was having oatmeal with his wife and children in the kitchen. They had lit candles, which made their shared breakfast a bit more pleasant. Lina and the kids had baked saffron rolls while he was out at the site where Fanny was found. He was going to need them. Today he had to pick up the ME at the airport and then drive back out to the forest clearing. He put on a wool sweater and got out his warmest winter jacket. The frost of the past few weeks was holding on.
    The children were upset and worried, and they wanted to talk about Fanny’s murder. They had been greatly affected by the death, since Fanny wasn’t much older than they were and they knew her by sight. Knutas ran the palm of his hand over their cheeks as they stood at the front door on their way to school.
    In the car on his way to the airport, he felt a cold sweat come over him, and he was overcome by such nausea that he had to pull over and stop for a moment. Everything swam before his eyes, and he felt a tight pressure in his chest. Occasionally he suffered from panic attacks, a form of anxiety, but it had been a long time since the last one. He opened the car door and tried to calm his ragged breathing. The images of Fanny’s body, combined with his worries about his own children, had apparently brought on this attack. With his type of work, it was impossible to protect his kids from all the shit he was forced to deal with: drunkenness, drugs, and violence. As his children were growing up, society seemed to be getting more and more brutal. It was probably worse in the big cities, but even here on Gotland the change was noticeable.
    He tried not to say too many negative things about his job. At the same time, he could seldom come home and tell them that he’d had an uplifting sort of day. Of course he was always relieved when a case was solved, but it was hardly a matter of feeling elated. When an investigation was successfully completed, he just felt tired afterward. There was no sense of catharsis, as some people might think. Instead, he mostly had a feeling of emptiness, as if he were utterly deflated. Then all he wanted to do was go home and sleep.
    After a few minutes he felt better. He rolled down the window and slowly continued driving to the airport.
    The ME was waiting for him outside the terminal. His plane had landed earlier than anticipated. It was the same doctor that Knutas had worked with last summer, a lean man with thinning hair and a horselike face. His extensive experience lent him an air of gravity and authority. On their way out to the site where the body was found, Knutas told the doctor about everything they knew so far.
    By the time they arrived, it was ten fifteen in the morning, and Fanny Jansson’s eyes were still staring up at the gray December sky. Knutas grimaced with dread as he thought about what the beautiful girl lying on the ground might have gone through. Her body looked so small and thin under her clothing. Her cheeks were brown and smooth, her chin softly childish. Knutas was annoyed to feel tears welling up in his eyes.
    He turned his back and gazed at the woods, which were dense and inaccessible. Over near the tractor road he could see that the forest thinned out a bit. Since he had previously studied the map of the area, he knew that some distance away there were open fields and pastures. A crow cawed from far off, otherwise everything was silent except for a quiet rustling from the dark green branches of the trees. The ME was now fully involved in his examination, and would be for the next several hours. Erik Sohlman and a couple of the other techs were assisting him with his work.
    Knutas realized that his presence wasn’t needed. Just as he got into the car to drive back to police headquarters, Karin Jacobsson called him.
    “There’s one person who has ties to both Dahlström and Fanny Jansson.”
    “Really? Who is it?”
    “His name is Stefan Eriksson, and he’s the stepson of Fanny’s aunt in Vibble. She has a daughter of her own, but she divorced the father early on and married someone else, a man who had a son from a previous marriage. Fanny and this Stefan have seen each other for years at various family gatherings and the like. He’s forty years old, married with two children, and he also happens to own a horse