Finally, Irene said, “Do you know where we’re going?”
“Yes. Turn down toward Hällingsjö, and after a kilometer1 or so there will be a sign for Norssjön. That’s where you turn in, and then I’ll show you the way.”
“How come you know the roads so well?”
“I went there once, for a crayfish party.”
“To the teacher’s home?” Irene asked, surprised.
“No, it was at his parents’ cottage.”
Her sense that something was fishy was confirmed. There were probably several reasons for her boss to have reacted the way he did, but one of them was clear. In some way, he was personally mixed up in this.
A crayfish party at his parents’. . . . Suddenly even friends of the superintendent’s were popping up! He spent time with people and attended their parties. Wow! Irene decided not to let the conversation end.
“Then you don’t know the teacher at all?” she continued.
“No. I’ve never met him. Only his sister.”
“Is she also a teacher?”
“I don’t know. She was little then.”
He took a deep breath and turned his face toward Irene. “I know what you’re wondering. It was seventeen years ago. I was recently divorced, and my cousin thought that I needed to get out and meet people. That’s why I ended up at the parents’ crayfish party. They’re acquaintances of Georg and his wife, Bettan.”
Irene pondered. She had to admit that this unexpected trip woke her investigatory instincts. But it wasn’t concern over the teacher’s fate that had stirred them up, but rather sheer curiosity about the superintendent’s personal life. They had known each other so long, and she had never supposed that he had one.
“Have you ever seen them again?” she asked.
“No.”
So, no lasting friendship had developed.
“What do the teacher’s parents do?”
“The father is a pastor. The mother is probably a housewife. Pastors’ wives probably have a lot of work to do at home. Church coffees and stuff like that,” Andersson said, evasively.
Irene decided to try to find out as much as possible about Andersson’s newly discovered social life. “How was the party? I mean . . . it was held at a pastor’s house. There’s usually quite a bit of drinking at crayfish parties.”
The superintendent broke into a smile. “You can say that again! It ended with the pastor passing out drunk as a skunk in the porch swing. His wife had thrown in the towel several hours earlier and gone to bed inside the house. She seemed to have no tolerance for alcohol at all. The rest of us in the group were pretty drunk.”
“Were there many people there?”
Andersson thought for a moment before he answered, “Nine—no, ten including me. This is where you turn off.”
He pointed, Irene turned off, and Andersson directed her to take another left just after that. “Go straight for a few kilometers, and we’ll reach Norssjön,” he said.
Irene had been driving on autopilot while her brain processed the information she’d received from Andersson.
“Is it a large summer cottage?” she asked.
“No. Pretty ordinary. Georg and Bettan had a camper, so we slept in that. Bettan’s a teacher and works at Georg’s school. She was probably the one who thought of inviting me to the party. It’s better these days since we don’t see each other as often, but she used to try to fix me up with all her boring teacher colleagues.”
“Did it work at that party?” Irene asked.
Andersson just chuckled softly.
The road to Norssjön appeared. Snowy woods lined both sides of the narrow asphalt-paved road. Now and then they glimpsed a small glade with a house, or a small gravel lane snaking its way into the vegetation.
“Slowly, now. It’s here somewhere,” Andersson said.
As far as Irene was concerned, everything around them was underbrush and it all looked the same. She was impressed that Andersson had such a good memory after so many years.
“There. Turn,” he said.
A hand-painted sign placed by the main road pointed toward a narrow gravel trail. “Luck Cottage” was written on it in faded blue letters on a white background. There was a barely discernible flower border around the sign.
Irene turned onto the gravel. The road was bumpy and poorly maintained. A thick forest of spruce hemmed them in. Three small cottages popped up between some trees a short distance down the road. Irene started slowing, but the superintendent told her to continue. They drove for about another hundred meters* until the road ended. Irene saw a fence surrounding a house that was painted brick-red. Irene parked the unmarked police car outside the gate.