Open Grave: A Mystery Read Free Page A

because already after a decade Heinrich Ohler had built up a considerable fortune. That Queen Kristina contributed a few estates on Ö land and right outside V ä stervik did not make circumstances worse.
    From that soil the Ohler family tree sprouted, where one branch became the “pharmacists/doctors.” There was also a minister branch, an officer branch, and an agricultural branch.
    Just as happily as Bertram talked about his children and grandchildren, he could also, not without pride, tell the story of poor Heinrich, who came to Stockholm with an empty hand. In the other hand he had a knapsack.
    *   *   *
    In his bed, whose headboard was war booty from Bratislava, the professor argued with selected representatives on the extensive tree and came to the conclusion that the Nobel Prize outshone all else that had been presented to the family: being raised to nobility, loads of medals and distinctions, and through the centuries membership in a number of learned societies.
    A conclusion even his father Carl would have endorsed—that was the professor’s final, triumphant thought before he fell asleep at four o’clock in the morning.

 
    Two
    The voice was not reminiscent of anything he had heard before, sharp and aggressive but at the same time anxious.
    It was Swedish, with no obvious dialect or accent—he was always attentive to that sort of thing—but still a voice foreign to the extent that when he told his daughter about the episode a few hours later, he hesitated when she asked if it was a foreigner.
    “In a way,” he said. “Maybe it was an immigrant, someone who has lived here a long time.”
    “Maybe someone who was disguising their voice,” his daughter suggested, “someone you know.”
    “Who would that be?”
    “Have you called the police?”
    Bertram von Ohler laughed, even though he’d had that thought himself, because half-awake in the early morning hours he had experienced the call as an actual threat, just as real as if someone stood in front of him with a weapon raised to strike.
    “It’s the sort of thing you have to expect.”
    “But what did he say exactly, is there something you’ve missed?”
    Misunderstood, he realized that his daughter meant.
    “No, he said he would see to it that I ‘would never receive the prize,’ and then he muttered some vulgarities.”
    “What were they?”
    “You don’t want to hear that.”
    “Of course I do!”
    “Abusive language never deserves to be repeated. Besides, it didn’t mean anything.”
    The fact was that what he called abusive language was what perplexed him the most, but there was no reason to drag his daughter into that.
    He regretted mentioning the episode to her at all, and tried to guide the conversation to something else, said that Agnes showed up, even though she was supposed to be off. She had obviously congratulated him, but in that reserved way that only a person from a Roslag island can do, as if a Nobel Prize did not mean all that much, whether in S ö derboda or in Norrboda.
    No, she had viewed the matter purely professionally. The house must be, if not decontaminated, then gone through anyway and more thoroughly than what Ohler had allowed until now. She had threatened to bring in her sister Greta to help out.
    “Then I gave her free rein, just so she doesn’t involve that ghost under any circumstances.”
    Birgitta laughed heartily and the professor understood that for the moment he had diverted the danger, but to be really certain he continued.
    “Agnes will order new curtains in the drawing room and the library and ‘polish’ all the floors, as she says. Then it will be the silver’s turn.”
    “You’re lucky to have her.”
    “Of course,” said the professor.
    “That was lovely of you, those statements you made on TV. But you must be sure to use a comb, your hair was standing straight up.”
    “It was windy.”
    “But why didn’t you go inside the house?”
    “Agnes phoned and forbade me from