Shadow Read Free Page A

Marianne pulled out another and flicked through the pages with her thumb. She gasped when she saw that all the pages were crossed out with a thick red marker. In certain places the text seemed to have particularly incensed who ever held the pen. Those pages had been obliterated with such force they were unreadable and the paper was almost torn.
    ‘Why the hell did she do that?’
    They checked one book after another, and they had all been subjected to the same fate. The red lines shone blood-red on the pages, and here and there the pen had made small punctures. Marianne pulled out a book by a different author but found the pages untouched.
    ‘Hmm.’ She didn’t usually make comments, especially not about things that had taken place in the person’s own home and didn’t harm anyone else. But she found it odd, to say the least, that someone would intentionally destroy a signed book by Ragnerfeldt. Particularly in a home like this where the extra income from the sale of a valuable item might have been welcome. Perplexed, Marianne shoved the book back in place.
    ‘So, what do you think?’ said Solveig. ‘Do you have everything you need for now?’
    Marianne opened her bag and took out the folder of inventory forms.
    ‘We just have to fill out one of these now.’
       
    When the form was completed and Solveig had left, Marianne remained standing at the living-room window. She took in Gerda Persson’s view. A tree, a lawn, the dull green façade of a block of flats in the background. Behind those windows the lives and secrets of other people.
    Everything she needed for the time being was packed into her bag. If no relatives contacted her after the death notice appeared, she would have to resort to the provincial records office and the church birth registry. And the names in the address book. She would do everything she could to find as many pieces of the puzzle as necessary to honour Gerda Persson at her funeral. Now her real work began. The hunt for Gerda Persson’s past.
    She had already found one name.
    Axel Ragnerfeldt.

3
    ‘N o one had a greater influence on my father and his work than a man by the name of Joseph Schultz.’
    With his finger poised over the name in his lecture notes, Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt paused dramatically and gazed out over the large auditorium.
    ‘I don’t recall how old I was when my father first told me about Joseph Schultz, but I grew up with the story about the choice that he made and his fate. Joseph Schultz was my father’s ideal, his great model for humanity. And I remember that every time my father told me about him, I understood even more that although it’s good to think good thoughts, genuine goodness emerges only when one takes action.’
    The spotlight was blinding him. He could only see the people in the front rows, but he knew that the rest were out there. An anonymous audience waiting devotedly for him to continue.
    ‘So who was this remarkable Joseph Schultz? Is there anyone here who has heard his name?’
    He shaded his eyes with his hand. A woman was sitting in the front row over to one side of the stage. He had already noticed her, but now he took the opportunity to study her more closely. Lovely chiselled features. Her breasts swelled under a shimmering blouse with taut buttons, a little opening where they failed to close. The dark gap aroused his interest. He lowered his arm.
    ‘Joseph Schultz was a young soldier in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. On the twentiethof July 1941 he and seven of his fellow soldiers were in Smederevska Palanka on the Eastern Front. Their mission was to suppress the partisans’ resistance. It was the height of summer, harvest time, and Schultz and his detachment had been sent out on what they thought was a routine patrol…’
    He stood quite still. A sudden movement would have broken the atmosphere he was building up. He had become very skilled at this; experience had fortified his self-confidence, and now he could