Like now.
He quickly cast off and sped away. After just a few minutes he could see the lights of Sandhamn. The gnawing fear in his belly was spreading. As a police officer he had learned to trust his instincts, and this didn’t feel right.
If it had been anyone else, he might have thought it involved a little fling while Henrik was away, but in Nora’s case that was out of the question. She was far too faithful, and of course she knew that Henrik would be back during the night.
The Linde family’s jetty appeared in the darkness. He slowed down and pulled in. With practiced fingers he tied up the boat, then strode up toward the house.
Henrik met him at the gate. “Come in,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
They went into the kitchen. The table was neatly laid for one, with a plate of chicken in the middle. It looked as if it had been there for quite some time.
“Does this look as if she was planning to spend the evening somewhere else?”
Thomas shook his head.
“There’s something else.” Henrik pointed to a used pen needle. “This means she took her insulin. She always takes her insulin just before eating. You have to do that if you’re diabetic. Otherwise, the body can’t process the sugars and carbohydrates ingested during the meal.”
“But she’s taken her insulin.” Thomas didn’t understand what Henrik was getting at.
Henrik picked up the plate. “Yes, but she hasn’t eaten. This hasn’t been touched. And there’s a bar of chocolate here, too. Nora loves dark chocolate. But she hasn’t eaten it.”
Thomas still didn’t get it. “So what?”
Henrik glanced at him impatiently. Slowly, as if he were addressing a child, he explained, “A diabetic who has taken her insulin must also eat. Very soon. Otherwise, she’s at risk of hypoglycemic shock. She could end up in a coma.” He paused and swallowed hard. “If you take too much insulin without eating, you lose consciousness and die. In the best-case scenario you just end up with brain damage. Now do you understand what I’m saying?”
The color drained from Thomas’s face as he realized how serious this was.
Henrik sank down onto a chair and buried his head in his hands. “Where the hell can she be?”
“How long have we got?” Thomas asked, his brain analyzing the situation.
“That depends on when she took the insulin. After a few hours there could be permanent damage, even if she’s found alive.”
Thomas felt the beads of sweat break out on his upper lip. “Go back to her parents’; they might have some idea where she could be. Try the neighbors, and ask if anyone has seen her.”
He suddenly thought about the letter they had found in Krister Berggren’s apartment.
The missing link they had been searching for all along.
He turned to Henrik. “Signe Brand might be mixed up in this. I’ll go over there.”
Thomas ran the short distance to the imposing house next door. The Brand residence looked desolate and lonely. The whole of Kvarnberget was deserted at this time of night. The young people who came to Sandhamn to work for the summer liked to go there on fine evenings on the weekend, but now it was silent and empty.
He banged on the door. There was no movement inside the house. The external lights were switched off. He banged again.
“Signe,” he shouted. “Signe, it’s me, Thomas. Open the door, please.”
No response.
Thomas stared at the dark windows, unsure of what to do. Then he ran around the back of the house, which faced the sea. Sometimes the greenhouse door was open; he might be able to get in that way.
But the door was locked, the glass room in darkness.
He could see a silhouette through the window; it looked as if someone was sitting on the wicker chair. Thomas knocked again. No reaction. He thought he could see Kajsa lying on the floor beside the chair, but she didn’t move.
He hesitated; breaking and entering wasn’t exactly recommended within the police force. But this was an emergency.
He pulled his sleeve down over his fist and smashed a pane of glass, then pushed his hand through and opened the door.
Signe was leaning back in the chair, deeply unconscious. Her face looked peaceful, almost as if she were relieved about something. A well-used blanket lay across her knees.
Thomas had always thought of Signe as constant, timeless. It seemed to him that she looked exactly the same as she had when he was a little boy and got to know her through Nora’s family. But now she seemed thin, transparent.
An old woman.
A lonely woman.
Kajsa lay by her side, her front paws crossed. Her tail had come to rest forming a semicircle. She wasn’t breathing. The black coat was completely still.
Thomas bent down and felt Signe’s neck. A faint pulse, almost imperceptible. Her breathing was shallow.
He grabbed his phone and quickly called Carina.
“It’s Thomas. I know it’s the middle of the night.”
He waved an agitated hand in response to Carina’s sleepy objections.
“Listen carefully. I’ve found Signe Brand unconscious in her house on Sandhamn. I can’t determine the cause. You need to send a helicopter to pick her up and get the team over here. Nora Linde has disappeared. Put out a call right away, and call me as soon as you hear anything.”
He ended the call and ran across to Nora’s parents’. They were standing in the hallway with Henrik.
“Henrik, can you go over to Signe Brand’s house? She’s in the greenhouse, unconscious. I’ve sent for the air ambulance.”
Nora’s mother looked at him. “What’s going on, Thomas?” she asked anxiously. “What’s happened to Nora?”
“I don’t know, Susanne,” he said. “Stay with the boys. We’ll keep looking for her. Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll find her soon.”
Thomas wished he were as confident as he sounded.
CHAPTER 76
The man in the recently purchased Arcona 36 was whistling as he adjusted the mainsail. For many years he had dreamed of having a decent yacht, and now he relished every second he spent at sea. As he leaned back in the cockpit he had to stop himself from reaching forward and patting the tiller.
He had always preferred a tiller to a wheel in a yacht. It provided a much better sense of the movement of the boat in the water. With a firm grip on the tiller he could cope with both wind and waves while holding a steady course.
Sailing was almost better than sex, he thought.
Well, not far off.
When he had suggested to his wife that they should sail overnight from Horsten to Runmarö, she had thought he was crazy. She had shaken her head at the very idea.
“You must be crazy. Why on earth would anyone want to go sailing at night? What if we hit another boat?”
But after a while she had given in; she had said she didn’t have the strength to argue with him any longer. She was curled up on a cushion in the cockpit clutching a mug of tea as they sailed past skerries and islets.
“This wasn’t such a bad idea, was it?” the man said with a smile.
His wife smiled back. “No. It’s lovely.”
The man adjusted the tiller again.
There was a gentle downwind breeze, just enough to maintain a steady speed. The Arcona was easy to sail, effortlessly cleaving through the surface of the water. The big genoa jib caught the breeze and exploited it to the full.