The Hidden Child by Camilla Läckberg

stomped over to his desk and sat down. The dog looked from Annika to Bertil then, having decided that the worst was over, wagged his tail and went over to join his new master.
    The others exchanged surprised glances, wondering what the dog saw in Bertil Mellberg that they had apparently missed.
    Erica couldn’t stop thinking about Erik Frankel. She hadn’t known him well, but he and his brother Axel had always been an integral part of Fjällbacka. ‘The doctor’s sons’, they were called, even though it had been fifty years since their father had practised medicine in Fjällbacka, and forty years since he’d died.
    She recalled her visit to the house which had once belonged to their parents and had become home to both brothers. It had been her only visit. The elderly bachelors shared a fascination with Germany and Nazism, each in his own way. Erik, a former history teacher, collected artefacts from the Nazi era. Axel, the older brother, had some sort of association with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, if Erica remembered correctly, and she also had a vague memory that he’d run into some sort of trouble during the war.
    She’d phoned Erik and told him what she’d found, describing the medal to him. She’d asked if he could help by researching its origins and maybe explain how it might have ended up among her mother’s possessions. His immediate reaction had been silence. She’d said ‘Hello’ several times, thinking he might have hung up on her. Finally, he told her in a strange-sounding voice to bring over the medal and he’d have a look at it. His long silence and odd tone of voice had bothered her, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about it to Patrik. She convinced herself that she must have been imagining things. And when she went over to the brothers’ house, she didn’t notice anything odd. Erik received her politely and ushered her into the library. With a guarded expression, he had taken the medal from her and studied it carefully. Then he asked whether he might keep it for a while in order to do some research. Erica had agreed.
    He’d gone on to show her his collection. With a mixture of dread and interest, she’d looked at the artefacts so intimately connected with that dark, evil period. She couldn’t resist asking why someone like him, who was so opposed to everything that Nazism had stood for, would collect and surround himself with things that would remind him of that awful time. Erik had hesitated before answering. He’d picked up a cap bearing the SS emblem and held it in his hand as he formulated his reply.
    ‘I don’t trust people to remember,’ he’d said at last. ‘Without having things that we can see and touch, we so easily forget what we don’t want to remember. I collect things that will serve as reminders. And part of me probably also wants to keep these things out of the hands of people who might see them with other eyes. Regard them with admiration.’
    Erica had nodded. She sort of understood, and yet she didn’t. Then they shook hands and she’d left.
    And now he was dead. Murdered. Maybe not long after her visit. According to what Patrik had told her, Erik had been sitting in the house, dead, all summer long.
    Again she thought about the strange tone of Erik’s voice when she’d told him about the medal. She turned to Patrik, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, channel surfing.
    ‘Do you know if the medal is still there?’
    Patrik gave her a surprised look. ‘I have no idea. It didn’t even occur to me. But there weren’t any indications that he’d been murdered as a result of a robbery. Besides, who would be interested in an old Nazi medal? They’re not exactly rare. It seems to me there are quite a lot of them . . .’
    ‘Yes, I know, but . . .’ Erica said. Something was still bothering her. ‘Could you ring your colleagues tomorrow and ask them to check on the medal?’
    ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Patrik. ‘I think they’ve got better