“No. I haven’t set foot in that place in eleven years. I had nothing to do with any of the employees either. I broke away completely from all of that … then.”
“When you divorced?” Irene clarified.
Barbro nodded in response. Irene looked into her blue-gray eyes and could see the pain. She was surprised. A lot of time had passed since the couple had split up. Perhaps the divorce was still an open wound that was best left undisturbed. She decided to try another approach.
“It’s not the murders or the divorce that I came to ask you about. We need your help.” Irene let her words sink in.
Barbro’s tense shoulders relaxed slightly, but her voice was still suspicious as she asked, “Why would you need my help?”
“Well, you worked at Löwander Hospital for many years. You were married to Sverker for … how many years?”
“We were married for thirteen years. I worked at Löwander for six years. I started half-time after Julia was born.”
Barbro snapped her mouth shut as if she felt she had given away too much. Irene could hardly agree. She tried a new question.
“What kind of people were your in-laws?”
Barbro could not hide the look of surprise that flickered across her face. Finally she shrugged and said, “I can hardly see how they’d have anything to do with the murders. Just as little as I would.” She thought for a moment. “Sverker’s mother died when he was nine years old. My ex-father-in-law, Hilding, died the year before our divorce. He was eighty-nine. A strong man until his last year of life. Then he had a stroke, and … everything went downhill fast. He was furious.”
The hint of an affectionate smile played at the corners of her mouth. Irene was surprised. Apparently Barbro had liked her father-in-law.
“Why was he furious?” Irene asked.
“He was forced to loosen his grip on Löwander Hospital. The hospital was his life. He’d stopped performing surgery years earlier, but he did all the administration work and the day-to-day running of the place.”
“How did Sverker feel about that?”
Barbro gave Irene a cold look of disdain. “He thought it was just fine. He had all the time in the world to run after Carina.”
“So Sverker did not want to run the hospital.”
“No.”
“Did your ex-father-in-law ever remarry?”
“No.”
“Do you know of any stories circulating around him … about other women …?”
Irene left her sentence unfinished on purpose to see if Barbro would swallow the bait. She did, with a bitter grimace.
“I read the article in the paper about Nurse Tekla. Of course I’d heard her story. Everyone who worked at Löwander knew it. I don’t believe it. Ancient gossip and rumors.”
“It looks like Sverker didn’t know anything about any relationship between Hilding and Nurse Tekla.”
“Well, it’s possible. He did know that she’d hanged herself in the attic, and people said she haunted the place. But he never talked about any of it. Perhaps no one dared mention the gossip to his face.”
“So there never was another woman in Hilding’s life as long as you knew him?”
“Never, but he was seventy-two when I met Sverker.”
“I understand that his parents were fairly well along in years when Sverker was born.”
“Yes. Hilding was fifty, and Lovisa must have been … almost forty-five. Oh, I’d never thought of her as that old. She’d been dead many years by the time we got married, and Sverker never talked much about her. But then there were many things he didn’t talk about.”
Barbro was back to the divorce like a tongue probing a loose tooth. Even though it hurts, you can’t stop.
“So he never told you he’d started a relationship with Carina?”
“Of course not! I was the last to know, as usual. I was presented with a fact. Carina was expecting, and so now he wanted a divorce. For the baby’s sake. Not thinking he already had two children. He never gave them a thought while he was busy chasing that cat’s tail, just like she’d planned. He fell into the oldest trap in the book.”
Obviously Barbro saw Sverker as an unknowing victim of Carina’s wiles. It takes two to tango, Irene couldn’t help thinking. She kept her thoughts to herself and carefully posed the next question.
“How long had their relationship gone on before you knew about it?”
“About six months. The worst thing was his lying and sneaking around. That they were doing it almost right in front of my eyes. I’ve never been so humiliated in my whole life.”
Finally some color had come into Barbro’s face and a spark into her eyes, but it was not attractive. Her hate and bitterness shone through.
Irene felt it was time to ask the most important question. “Someone at the hospital told me that you accused Carina of setting fire to the old mansion.…”
Barbro sat silent for a moment. Then she said stiffly, “No one would listen to me. No one believed me. But I saw her.”
“Where did you see her?”
“Outside the house. She was circling it. I saw her try the basement door, but it was locked. Then she moved backward to look up at the upper floors. She stood there for a long time. I heard her laugh to herself and saw her raise her fist and shake it at the house. Like this.”
Barbro bent her head back and laughed a hissing laugh. She shook her fist toward the ceiling.
“Were you still living in the house at the time?”
“No, the children and I had moved out.”
“What were you doing there?”
Barbro looked depressed, but now she was more willing to talk. “There was a police investigation after the house burned down. The police asked why I’d been there. I’ll tell you what I told them: I wanted to see what Sverker and Carina were up to.”
“So you were spying on them?”
“Yes.”
“Was Carina living in the house with Sverker?”
“No, she hated that house and never intended to move in. That’s why she burned it down. She and Sverker denied it during the investigation. They said I suffered from a jealousy bordering on mental illness.”
Again the deep pain appeared in her eyes, and she pressed her lips together. Irene realized that would be about all she would give. She thanked Barbro Löwander for her time, lifted her leather jacket from the hook, and left.
FOR THE REST of the afternoon, Irene busied herself with all the paperwork that had collected on her desk. She read through her report of her conversation with Barbro Löwander several times without feeling any wiser. It was not pleasant to meet with such hatred and pain. Irene had the impression that Barbro was the kind who cherished her grudges, whether they were real or imagined. It looked like she was the one who had suffered the most from the divorce, since her mental health appeared so unstable. Was there any truth in her accusations against Carina Löwander? It certainly was high time to meet Carina herself.
Irene’s colleagues were all taking their chairs in the conference room. To Irene’s surprise, Birgitta was back in her seat. She nodded in reply to Irene’s greeting. The superintendent did not comment on Birgitta’s reappearance but handed the floor to Svante Malm immediately.
“I can begin by saying that we found the same kind of dark fibers on Linda Svensson’s clothes as we had on Marianne Svärd’s clothes. The fibers seem to have come from the same garment—namely, the nurse’s uniform found in the burning garden shed last Saturday evening. There was enough left of the uniform dress so we could establish that fact with absolute certainty.”
“No such fibers on Gunnela Hägg?” Tommy asked.
“No. On the other hand, Gunnela had a great deal of talcum powder on the upper part of her skirt. We even found a fuzzy handprint. The murderer appears to wear size seven and a half in gloves.”