Read Online The Viper by Hakan Ostlundh - Free Book Online Page A

clinging to her leg like a monkey.
    “Please, Emma,” she said helplessly and shuffled on.
    Fredrik and Gustav looked at each other, and just then came a loud crash from the kitchen table as Rune Traneus slammed his fists down full force onto the table.
    “That bastard. He’s a bastard. Him and that goddamn father of his. Murderers.”
    “Mommy!” Emma cried out in fright from the next room and then started sobbing loudly.
    Rune Traneus had stood up and was glaring at Fredrik and Gustav, while he shouted out his words, only they didn’t quite come out as real shouts. It was as if they had run into some kind of resistance, smothered by a deep and powerful anguish.
    Gustav had already moved next to Rune in order to, if necessary, restrain an outbreak like the one they had witnessed earlier outside the house. But it was already over. Rune Traneus stood there rooted to the spot, his gaze confused, his blue lower lip trembling. An old, frail man. Gustav gently took hold of his extended left arm and helped him sit back down again.
    “I’ll go in there,” said Fredrik softly.
    When he entered the living room, Sofia Traneus was squatting on the floor, trying to comfort her clinging, sniveling daughter. The girl’s cheeks were flushed from crying.
    Sofia looked up at him with anxious, wide-open eyes.
    “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, “for the moment anyway … But Rune was very upset when he came to the house. Do you think you can manage this? Is there anyone who could come here and help you? Or else … maybe we should take him with us. To a doctor, I mean.”
    “I’ll be all right,” she said after thinking for a moment. “I’ll call my husband. He can be here in five minutes.”
    “And Rune?”
    “It’s better if he stays here.”
    She fell silent.
    “The photograph,” Fredrik reminded her after a moment. “If it’s not too much trouble?” he said glancing at the child. “We can always get a copy of his passport.”
    “Oh, no, I know where I’ve got one.”
    She managed to free herself from Emma and sat her down on the couch together with the baby. The girl stayed there while Sofia quickly walked over and unlocked the bottom cabinet of the bookcase.
    “Here,” said Sofia and returned with an open photo album in dark-red imitation leather.
    It was a group photo with five people neatly lined up in front of the camera. Fredrik immediately recognized Sofia and Rune. In his eyes the woman next to him was little more than a girl in the picture, eighteen or nineteen maybe.
    “It’s five years old, but it’s still a good likeness. Then there’s my brother and my mother. It was taken at my father’s birthday. Two months later they got divorced.”
    She worked one of her clear-coated nails in underneath the edge of the photograph.
    “The only question is whether I can get it off.”
    Fredrik was about to suggest that they just borrow the whole album, so she didn’t have to ruin it, when the photo ripped free from the black construction paper.
    She handed over the picture. He took it and tried to avoid touching the glossy surface, more out of respect for Sofia than concern for the photograph.
    “Does your father have any distinguishing marks that you know of? By that I mean scars, tattoos, that kind of thing?”
    She let out a laugh.
    “Tattoos?”
    “For example,” said Fredrik.
    She shook her head and looked at him with a slightly dubious expression, as if he had asked her something inappropriate.
    “It’s better if you ask my mother about that.”

 
    Tuesday, October 31
    Gotland
    Ninni was in the car, on her way from Havdhem to Hablingbo in the dirty gray twilight. The drizzle had made the road wet. The tires spattered loudly and the wipers swept across the windshield at the longest interval setting.
    She was driving fast along the winding road, too fast she felt and lightened the pressure on the gas pedal. She didn’t want anything to happen to her, too. She had to look after