The Drowning

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2008

Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden

Translation copyright © Tiina Nunnally 2011

First published in Swedish as Sjöjungfrun

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

FIRST EDITION

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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 ebook 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.

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: 9780007419517

Ebook Edition © July 2012 ISBN: 9780007419524 Version: 2018-08-13

To Martin

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Acknowledgements

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

He had known that sooner or later it would come to light again. Something like that was impossible to hide. Every word had led him closer to what was unnameable and appalling. What he had been trying for so many years to repress.

Now escape was no longer an option. He felt the morning air fill his lungs as he walked as fast as he could. His heart was pounding in his chest. He didn’t want to go there, but he had to. So he had chosen to let fate decide. If someone was there, he would have to speak. If nobody was there, he would continue on his way to work, as if nothing had happened.

But the door opened when he knocked. He stepped inside and squinted in the dim light. The person standing in front of him was not the one he had expected to see. It was somebody else.

Her long hair swung rhythmically from side to side as he followed her into the next room. He started talking, asking questions. His thoughts were whirling round and round in his head. Nothing was what it appeared to be. This was all wrong, and yet it seemed right.

Suddenly he fell silent. Something had struck him in the solar plexus with a force that stopped his words in mid-sentence. He looked down and saw blood starting to seep out as the knife was pulled from the wound. Then a new stab, more pain, and the sharp blade twisting inside his body.

He knew it was over. It would all end here, even though there was still so much he had left to do and see and experience. At the same time there was a kind of justice in what was happening. He hadn’t deserved the good life he’d enjoyed, or all the love he’d been given. Not after what he had done.

After the pain had numbed his senses and the knife stopped moving, the water came. The rocking motion of a boat. And when he was enveloped by the cold sea, all other sensations ceased.

The last thing he remembered was her hair. Long, and dark.

‘But it’s been three months! Why haven’t you found him?’

Patrik Hedström gazed at the woman in front of him. She looked more exhausted every time he saw her. And she came into the police station in Tanumshede once a week. Every Wednesday. She’d been doing this ever since her husband disappeared in early November.

‘We’re doing everything we can, Cia. You know that.’

She nodded without saying a word. Her hands were trembling as she held them clasped in her lap. Then she looked at him, her eyes filled with tears. It wasn’t the first time Patrik had seen this happen.

‘He’s not coming back, is he?’

Now her voice was trembling as well as her hands, and Patrik had to resist the urge to go round his desk and give the fragile woman a comforting hug. Somehow, even though it went against all his protective instincts, he remained cool and professional, considering how to respond. Finally he took a deep breath and said:

‘No, I don’t think he is.’

She didn’t ask any more questions, but he could see that his words had only reinforced what Cia Kjellner already knew. Her husband was never coming home. On the third of November Magnus had got up at six thirty, showered, dressed, waved goodbye first to his two children and then to his wife as they left for the day. Just after eight o’clock Magnus was seen leaving the house on the way to Tanum Windows, his place of work. After that nobody knew where he had gone. He never showed up at the house of his colleague, who was supposed to give him a ride to the office. Somewhere between his own home in the neighbourhood near the sports pitch and his colleague’s house by the Fjällbacka miniature golf course, Magnus Kjellner had vanished.