Read The Preacher for Free Online Page B

but he tried to look friendly and said as gently as he could, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. There are biscuits on the table outside, you can have some of those.’
    ‘I want ice creeeeeeam!!!’ The boy whined and jumped up and down, and now his face was bright red.
    ‘We don’t have any, I tell you!’ Patrik’s patience was starting to wear thin.
    ‘ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM …’
    Victor wasn’t going to give up easily. But he must have seen from Patrik’s eyes that a limit had been reached, because he quieted down and slowly backed out of the kitchen. Then he ran crying to his parents who were sitting out on the veranda, ignoring the tumult in the kitchen.
    ‘PAPPAAA, Uncle Patrik is mean! I want some ICE CREEEAM!’
    With the coffee pot in his hand Patrik tried to turn a deaf ear and went out to greet his guests. Conny stood up and held out his hand. When Patrik greeted Britta he too experienced her cold-fish handshake.
    ‘Victor’s going through a phase right now,’ she said. ‘He’s testing the limits of his own will. We don’t want to hamper his personal development, so we’re letting him find out where the dividing line runs between his own wishes and those of other people.’
    Britta gave her son a tender look, and Patrik remembered Erica telling him that she was a psychologist. But if this was her idea of raising children, then psychology was a profession that little Victor would be in close contact with when he grew up. Conny hardly seemed to notice what was going on, and he shut his son up by stuffing a good-sized piece of cake in the boy’s mouth. Judging by Victor’s rotundity, this was a frequent tactic. But Patrik had to admit that it was effective and appealing in all its simplicity.
    By the time Erica came downstairs, freshly showered and with a much more alert expression on her face, Patrik had set the shrimp and other dishes on the table. He’d also managed to fix the children each a pizza after realizing that it was the only way to avoid a total catastrophe at dinner.
    They all sat down and Erica was just about to open her mouth to say ‘bon appetit’ when Conny dug into the bowl of shrimp with both hands. One, two, three big fistfuls of shrimp landed on his plate, leaving barely half of the original amount in the bowl.
    ‘Mmm, delicious. Now I’m a guy who knows how to eat shrimp.’ Conny proudly patted his stomach and dug into his mountain of shrimp.
    Patrik, who had put in the serving bowl fully two kilos of ruinously expensive shrimp, merely sighed and took a small handful that hardly took up any space on his plate. Erica without a word did the same and then passed the bowl to Britta, who morosely took the rest.
    After the unsuccessful dinner they made the beds for their visitors in the guest room and excused themselves early, on the pretext that Erica needed to rest. Patrik showed Conny where the whisky was and escaped in relief upstairs to peace and quiet.
    When they finally got into bed, Patrik told Erica what he’d been doing all day. He had long since given up trying to keep his police activities a secret from Erica, but he also knew that she kept her mouth shut about what he told her. When he got to the episode with the two missing women, he could see that she pricked up her ears.
    ‘I remember reading about that. So you think they might be the ones you found?’
    ‘I’m fairly sure of it. It would be too big a coincidence otherwise. But as soon as we get the report from the ME we can start investigating the matter properly, but for the time being we have to keep as many options open as possible.’
    ‘You don’t need any help digging up background material, do you?’ She turned eagerly towards him and he could see the gleam in her eyes.
    ‘No, no, no. You have to take it easy. Don’t forget that you’re actually on sick leave.’
    ‘Sure, but my blood pressure was back down at the last check-up. And I’m going stir crazy being at home