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Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 1-3: The Ice Princess, The Preacher, The Stonecutter
Camilla Lackberg
The first three crime thrillers from worldwide 10 million-copy bestseller Camilla Lackberg, ‘the hottest female writer in Sweden’(Independent).The Ice Princess: The body of crime writer Erica Falck’s childhood friend is discovered, wrists slashed, in an ice cold bath. Was it murder or suicide? The investigation leads her to a community on the brink of tragedy.The Preacher: Twenty years ago, two young women disappeared in Fjällbacka – now their remains are found, along with a new victim. As Patrik Hedström works to solve these murders, do the dark secrets of a local family hold the key?The Stonecutter: When a little girl is found in a fisherman’s net, the police realize it was no accidental drowning. Patrik Hedström investigates the death of a child both he and Erica knew well.
CAMILLA LACKBERG
3 Swedish Crime Thriller Novels: The Ice Princess, The Preacher, The Stonecutter
Copyright
These novels are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2004 and 2005
Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden
English translations © Steven T. Murray 2007 and 2008
Camilla Lackberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Ebook Edition © 2012 ISBN: 9780007513314
Version: 2017-08-18
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ue9c4ab51-2903-52d6-831a-c58ac4781c16)
Copyright (#ua36f8d52-8f60-57bc-a1d1-969d00a04b07)
The Ice Princess (#ucad4ef20-0e3e-5714-aa81-79b5f9b91031)
The Preacher (#u7faca006-b3c5-5b5e-9e2d-7dfec132b712)
The Stonecutter (#u7f57ceca-b3cf-510c-a555-fd6daf17be93)
About the Author (#u17c0935f-e9fb-5cbb-a0a9-56a23672c1b7)
By the Same Author (#u1723adce-1667-51f9-b6e8-daf9e51e1ebc)
About the Publisher (#ua6b611e1-d5aa-5bd6-adf5-810d7b47c4ab)
CAMILLA LACKBERG
The Ice Princess
Translated from the Swedish by
Steven T. Murray
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2004
Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden
English translation © Steven T. Murray 2007
Camilla Lackberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Fjällbacka map by Andrew Ashton © HarperCollins 2008
Cover Design © www.blacksheep-uk.com (http://www.blacksheep-uk.com) Photography © Shutterstock
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007416189
Ebook Edition © 2012 ISBN: 9780007313693
Version: 2018-07-18
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
For Wille
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u3b579a19-60e6-549b-bdd4-37bc4bd3ea94)
Copyright (#ubbf35048-88b3-54f8-9f32-745c6ab811f2)
Dedication (#u6df57c5d-91cb-5dad-a254-82e2743a9806)
Map (#u2e602f9b-5e8b-54ef-968c-ece05e4646b1)
Chapter 1 (#u9acbac52-4d1c-5bd2-92cf-7fecb23699e9)
Chapter 2 (#u16df9555-5ae4-5a72-a8d5-6b87b96049ca)
Chapter 3 (#u95ea47dc-d9cc-56cb-be14-26ab5382c0f3)
Chapter 4 (#u7ee24532-b49d-53c1-b765-9e5a71db290b)
Chapter 5 (#u7c5a4ee7-364a-53af-8dd3-b8b243c834d5)
Chapter 6 (#uc95531b2-f33d-570a-9ae4-1280e8467436)
1
The house was desolate and empty. The cold penetrated into every corner. A thin sheet of ice had formed in the bathtub. She had begun to take on a slightly bluish tinge.
He thought she looked like a princess lying there. An ice princess.
The floor he was sitting on was ice cold, but the chill didn’t bother him. He reached out his hand and touched her.
The blood on her wrists had congealed long ago.
His love for her had never been stronger. He caressed her arm, as if he were caressing the soul that had now left her body.
He didn’t look back when he left. It was not ‘good-bye’, it was ‘until we meet again’.
Eilert Berg was not a happy man. His breathing was strained and his breath came out of his mouth in little white puffs, but his health was not what he considered his biggest problem.
Svea had been so gorgeous in her youth, and he had hardly been able to stand the wait before he could get her into the bridal bed. She had seemed tender, affectionate, and a bit shy. Her true nature had come out after a period of youthful lust that was far too brief. She had put her foot down and kept him on a tight leash for close to fifty years. But Eilert had a secret. For the first time, he saw an opportunity for a little freedom in the autumn of his years and he did not intend to squander it.
He had toiled hard as a fisherman all his life, and the income had been just enough to provide for Svea and the children. After he retired they had only their meagre pensions to live on. With no money in his pocket there was no chance of starting his life over somewhere else, alone. Now this opportunity had appeared like a gift from above, and it was laughably easy besides. But if someone wanted to pay him a shameless amount of money for a few hours’ work each week, that wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t about to complain. The banknotes in the wooden box behind the compost heap had piled up impressively in only a year, and soon he would have enough to be able to move to warmer climes.
He stopped to catch his breath on the last steep approach to the house and massaged his arthritic hands. Spain, or maybe Greece, would thaw the chill that seemed to come from deep inside him. Eilert reckoned that he had at least ten years left before it would be time to turn up his toes, and he intended to make the most of them, so he’d be damned if he’d spend them at home with that old bitch.
His daily walk in the early morning hours had been his only time spent in peace and quiet; it also meant that he got some much-needed exercise. He always took the same route, and people who knew his habits would often come out and have a chat. He particularly enjoyed talking with the pretty girl in the house farthest up the hill by the Håkebacken school. She was there only on weekends, always alone, but she was happy to take the time to talk about the weather. Miss Alexandra was interested in Fjällbacka in the old days as well, and this was a topic that Eilert enjoyed discussing. She was nice to look at too. That was something he still appreciated, even though he was old now. Of course there had been a good deal of gossip about her, but once you started listening to women’s chatter you wouldn’t have much time for anything else.
About a year ago, she had asked him whether he might consider stopping in at the house as long as he was passing by on Friday mornings. The house was old, and both the furnace and the plumbing were unreliable. She didn’t like coming home to a cold house on the weekends. She would give him a key, so he could just look in and see that everything was in order. There had been a number of break-ins in the area, so he was also supposed to check for signs of tampering with the doors and windows.
The task didn’t seem particularly burdensome, and once a month there was an envelope with his name on it waiting in her letter-box, containing what was, to him, a princely sum. He also thought it was nice to feel useful. It was so hard to go around idle after he had worked his whole life.
The gate hung crookedly and it groaned when he pushed on it, swinging it in towards the garden path, which had not yet been shovelled clear of snow. He wondered whether he ought to ask one of the boys to help her with that. It was no job for a woman.
He fumbled with the key, careful not to drop it into the deep snow. If he had to get down on his knees, he’d never be able to get up again. The steps to the front porch were icy and slick, so he had to hold on to the railing. Eilert was just about to put the key in the lock when he saw that the door was ajar. In astonishment, he opened it and stepped into the entryway.
‘Hello, is anybody at home?’
Maybe she’d arrived a bit early today. There was no answer. He saw his own breath coming out of his mouth and realized that the house was freezing cold. All at once he didn’t know what to do. There was something seriously wrong, and he didn’t think it was just a faulty furnace.
He walked through the rooms. Nothing seemed to have been touched. The house was as neat as always. The VCR and TV were where they belonged. After looking through the entire ground floor, Eilert went upstairs. The staircase was steep and he had to grab on hard to the banister. When he reached the upper floor, he went first to the bedroom. It was feminine but tastefully furnished, and just as neat as the rest of the house. The bed was made and there was a suitcase standing at the foot. Nothing seemed to have been unpacked. Now he felt a bit foolish. Maybe she’d arrived a little early, discovered that the furnace wasn’t working, and gone out to find someone to fix it. And yet he really didn’t believe that explanation. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his joints, the same way he sometimes felt an approaching storm. He cautiously continued looking through the house. The next room was a large loft, with a sloping ceiling and wooden beams. Two sofas faced each other on either side of a fireplace. There were some magazines spread out on the coffee table, but otherwise everything was in its place. He went back downstairs. There, too, everything looked the way it should. Neither the kitchen nor the living room seemed any different than usual. The only room remaining was the bathroom. Something made him pause before he pushed open the door. There was still not a sound in the house. He stood there hesitating for a moment, realized that he was acting a bit ridiculously, and firmly pushed open the door.
Seconds later, he was hurrying to the front door as fast as his age would permit. At the last moment, he remembered that the steps were slippery and grabbed hold of the railing to keep from tumbling headlong down the steps. He trudged through the snow on the garden path and swore when the gate stuck. Out on the pavement he stopped, at a loss what to do. A little way down the street he caught sight of someone approaching at a brisk walk and recognized Tore’s daughter Erica. He called out to her to stop.
She was tired. So deathly tired. Erica Falck shut down her computer and went out to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup. She felt under pressure from all directions. The publishers wanted a first draft of the book in August, and she had hardly begun. The book about Selma Lagerlöf, her fifth biography about a Swedish woman writer, was supposed to be her best, but she was utterly drained of any desire to write. It was more than a month since her parents had died, but her grief was just as fresh today as when she received the news. Cleaning out her parents’ house had not gone as quickly as she had hoped, either. Everything brought back memories. It took hours to pack every carton, because with each item she was engulfed in images from a life that sometimes felt very close and sometimes very, very far away. But the packing couldn’t be rushed. Her flat in Stockholm had been sublet for the time being, and she reckoned she might as well stay here at her parents’ home in Fjällbacka and write. The house was a bit out of town in Sälvik, and the surroundings were calm and peaceful.
Erica sat down on the enclosed veranda and looked out over the islands and skerries. The view never failed to take her breath away. Each new season brought its own spectacular scenery, and today it was bathed in bright sunshine that sent cascades of glittering light over the thick layer of ice on the sea. Her father would have loved a day like this.
She felt a catch in her throat, and the air in the house all at once seemed stifling. She decided to go for a walk. The thermometer showed fifteen degrees below zero, and she put on layer upon layer of clothing. She was still cold when she stepped out the door, but it didn’t take long before her brisk pace warmed her up.
Outside it was gloriously quiet. There were no other people about. The only sound she heard was her own breathing. This was a stark contrast to the summer months when the town was teeming with life. Erica preferred to stay away from Fjällbacka in the summertime. Although she knew that the survival of the town depended on tourism, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that every summer the place was invaded by a swarm of grasshoppers. A many-headed monster that slowly, year by year, swallowed the old fishing village by buying up the houses near the water, which created a ghost town for nine months of the year.
Fishing had been Fjällbacka’s livelihood for centuries. The unforgiving environment and the constant struggle to survive, when everything depended on whether the herring came streaming back or not, had made the people of the town strong and rugged. Then Fjällbacka had become picturesque and began to attract tourists with fat wallets. At the same time, the fish lost their importance as a source of income, and Erica thought she could see the necks of the permanent residents bend lower with each year that passed. The young people moved away and the older inhabitants dreamed of bygone times. She too was among those who had chosen to leave.
She picked up her pace some more and turned left towards the hill leading up to the Håkebacken school. As Erica approached the top of the hill she heard Eilert Berg yelling something she couldn’t really make out. He was waving his arms and coming towards her.
‘She’s dead.’
Eilert was breathing hard in small, short gasps, a nasty wheezing sound coming from his lungs.
‘Calm down, Eilert. What happened?’
‘She’s lying in there! Dead.’
He pointed at the big, light-blue frame house at the crest of the hill, giving her an entreating look at the same time.
It took a moment before Erica comprehended what he was saying, but when the words sank in she shoved open the stubborn gate and plodded up to the front door. Eilert had left the door ajar, and she cautiously stepped over the threshold, uncertain what she might expect to see. For some reason she didn’t think to ask.
Eilert followed warily and pointed mutely towards the bathroom on the ground floor. Erica was in no hurry. She turned to give Eilert an enquiring glance. He was pale and his voice was faint when he said, ‘In there.’
Erica hadn’t been in this house for a long time, but she had once known it well, and she knew where the bathroom was. She shivered in the cold despite her warm clothing. The door to the bathroom swung slowly inward, and she stepped inside.
She didn’t really know what she had expected from Eilert’s curt statement, but nothing had prepared her for the blood. The bathroom was completely tiled in white, so the effect of the blood in and around the bathtub was even more striking. For a brief moment she thought that the contrast was pretty, before she realized that a real person was lying in the tub.
