The Last Lullaby

by Carin Gerhardsen

  He looked a little shamefacedly at Sjöberg, but there was also a glimpse of something reminiscent of happiness in his eyes.

  ‘We travelled around for several months and we were actually really in love. She put me in a good mood. Then I brought her home to Sweden, she moved in with me here and we got married. Then the children came. Fine kids. Nice, easy to deal with, no shrieking and quarrelling. Catherine was good with them, a good mother. But it was like I ran out of steam after a while. There was really no reason for it, but I’m just that way. I became more and more my old self again and I guess Catherine wasn’t able to put life into me any more, so finally she got tired of it. There was no arguing or anything, but one day she and the kids moved out and it was probably only right. She has to live, even if I am the way I am.’

  They sat quietly for a while, listening to the sound of Sandén’s rooting around in the bathroom. Sjöberg wondered if and when the news would sink in. Something was wrong with the guy. Whether he was depressed or lacked empathy in general Sjöberg could not judge. What was that called? Autistic characteristics? Could it be connected with violently flaring aggression?

  ‘How did they die?’ Christer Larsson asked calmly.

  Sjöberg tried to meet his gaze, but once again it was aimed down at the rug between his feet.

  ‘Their throats were cut,’ Sjöberg answered factually.

  No reaction now either.

  ‘The children too?’

  ‘The children too.’

  Christer Larsson still did not raise his eyes. Sandén came out of the bathroom shaking his head.

  ‘Are you the one who bought the apartment for Catherine?’ Sjöberg asked.

  ‘I don’t have any money.’

  ‘So what do you live on yourself?’

  ‘I’m retired.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Depression.’

  ‘Since … ?’

  ‘For many years.’

  ‘But you don’t take any medication?’

  Christer Larsson shook his head.

  ‘Didn’t think it helped,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you pay any child support?’

  ‘That’s never come up for discussion.’

  ‘No, really?’

  ‘No, I don’t pay any support.’

  ‘And Catherine, what kind of work did she do?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was unemployed since she had to leave that cleaning company.’

  ‘I can tell you,’ said Sjöberg in a rather sharper tone of voice now, ‘that the apartment on Söder that she is listed as the owner of and where she and the children lived cost an awful lot of money, more than two million. How do you think she came across such a sum?’

  Christer Larsson did not answer.

  ‘Either,’ Sjöberg continued, ‘she earned a lot of money somehow or someone else paid for that apartment. Do you have any comments about that?’

  Larsson shook his head. Sandén felt a tougher edge was needed.

  ‘She may have won the lottery, she may have robbed a bank, she may have been a prostitute or she may have met a rich man who took care of her. She seemed to have had frequent visits from a man your age; could it have been you? Or do you think it was her pimp?’

  Sjöberg glared at Sandén, but had to admit to himself that he was curious about the response. Larsson defiantly met Sandén’s gaze.

  ‘She was not a prostitute,’ he said in the same drawling way as before, but with a more acid tone. ‘She didn’t rob banks. But sure, she may have met a man. I haven’t talked to her for ages.’

  ‘Perhaps you got jealous and took matters into your own hands?’ Sandén continued, but Larsson sat quietly.

  ‘Did she have any circle of friends that you know of?’

  Sjöberg tried the friendly angle again and Larsson seemed to respond to it because he answered in his normal, flat voice.

  ‘She had a girlfriend who was also from the Philippines. Vida is her name; they were co-workers.’

  ‘At the cleaning company?’

  ‘Yes, and afterwards too.’

  ‘Cash-in-hand jobs?’ asked Sjöberg.

  Larsson nodded lamely.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about that when I asked a while ago.’

  ‘You’re the police, damn it. I’m saying it now.’

  Sandén reluctantly swallowed a snide comment and asked instead, ‘Who did she clean for? How did she get customers?’

  ‘As I understood it she cleaned for individuals that she met at the companies where she cleaned as an employee.’

  ‘How much did she bring in for that?’ Sandén continued relentlessly.

  ‘Seventy kronor an hour, I reckon. It might be a couple of thousand a week.’

  ‘Cash in hand!’ Sandén exclaimed. ‘That’s what nurses earn, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘In any event, it’s not enough for an apartment in Norra Hammarbyhamnen,’ Christer Larsson pointed out.

  Sjöberg and Sandén exchanged glances.

  ‘Do you own any weapons?’ asked Sjöberg.

  ‘No,’ Larsson answered quickly.

  ‘Do you have any objection to us looking around a little?’

  ‘You’ve already done that,’ Larsson replied, clenching his hands and hitting his knuckles against each other.

  ‘We would like to do it a little more thoroughly,’ Sjöberg answered in his friendliest voice.

  Do you mean a house search?’

  ‘No, but it can be if you don’t cooperate,’ said Sjöberg threateningly, hoping to frighten Christer Larsson into submission.

  ‘Do as you wish,’ said Larsson dejectedly. ‘I’ll sit here.’

  ‘May I ask for the key to the cellar storage room?’ said Sandén with a crooked smile, reaching out his hand.

  Forty-five minutes later they left the peculiar man without having found anything that shed the slightest light on the case. Sjöberg did have his fingerprints, however, in an envelope in his inside pocket.

  ‘That was one really shady character,’ said Sandén as they got in the car.

  ‘Well, he’s obviously depressed,’ said Sjöberg doubtfully. ‘It seems to add up, don’t you think?’

  Sandén turned the key in the ignition and cast a glance over his shoulder before he backed out of the parking spot.

  ‘He wasn’t exactly in floods of tears when he found out that his wife and children had been murdered.’

  ‘Depression can be a kind of emotional paralysis. If he’d had strong feelings for them, he probably wouldn’t have let them disappear from his life,’ Sjöberg thought out loud.

  Sandén turned the steering wheel and drove slowly ahead, out on to the street.

  ‘Maybe that was just what he didn’t do. He did away with them instead. In a classic manner. He was lying to us. What reason would he have for that if he doesn’t have anything to hide? Why didn’t you call him to account for that, by the way?’

  ‘You mean he knew where they lived? That was not exactly a direct lie,’ Sjöberg replied. ‘We can chew on that a little.’

  ‘He is big and strong and could easily have carried out the murders,’ Sandén observed. ‘Didn’t need to force his way into the apartment; he was certainly let in with no problem. And he has had plenty of time to do laundry. There was a washing machine in the bathroom, the laundry basket was almost empty and there was nothing in the bin either.’

  Sjöberg glanced towards the DN skyscraper. It looked naked and gloomy in the cold grey March light.

  ‘I can’t get over how slow that guy talked! I was about to explode.’ Sandén grinned, shaking his head.

  ‘Yes, I noticed that,’ Sjöberg muttered. ‘It’s a good thing we’re not both as impatient as you. No tablets in the bathroom cabinet?’

  ‘No tablets in the bathroom cabinet,’ Sandén confirmed. ‘He’s probably like that without any help.’

  ‘Speaking of medicines, how are you feeling yourself?’

  Sandén hesitated a moment before
he answered. He preferred to avoid the subject, Sjöberg knew that, but it could not be helped. It was only six months since his colleague had had a stroke and collapsed during a witness interview. An ambulance had been called promptly, which had saved his life. He had been rushed in for treatment, was on sick leave for a couple of months and came back to work part-time. The stroke had limited the mobility of the left side of his body, but with a single-mindedness that Sjöberg had hardly believed Sandén capable of, he had worked his way back, and was now physically almost completely recovered. He would, however, have to live with the threat of another, more serious stroke hanging over him. But every cloud has a silver lining: Sandén had changed his eating habits and must have lost twenty kilograms.

  ‘Good,’ he answered. ‘It’s okay. I take my warfarin, otherwise everything is as usual. No stress.’

  ‘Any plans to go up to full-time again?’

  ‘Damn it, I’m already working full-time,’ Sandén replied with a crooked smile.

  ‘Yes, but then see that you get paid for it too.’

  It was starting to snow. Big heavy flakes floated down from the sky, but before they reached the police station on Östgötagatan the snowfall had turned into rain. Catherine Larsson would not have liked that, thought Sjöberg.

  * * *

  When Sjöberg got back to his office at the police station a box was sitting on his desk. Bella Hansson had, not unexpectedly, kept her word and sent over Catherine Larsson’s life in words and pictures, neatly packaged in what resembled a shoebox. The little plastic bag he had got earlier was next to it. He closed the door and sat down.

  He started with the photographs and soon determined that Catherine Larsson did not seem to own a camera. The pictures she had were all either taken by family in the Philippines or by Swedish professional photographers. He sat for a while with a group of portrait photos of the children at various ages in front of him, presumably from preschool.

  With a sigh he set them aside and took out a photograph of the whole family and a few from the wedding day, those too taken by a professional. He devoted a few minutes to thoughtfully studying the loving couple. Christer Larsson’s greying hair was well combed, he was tanned and looking into the camera with a vague smile. He was wearing a dark suit with a red rose in the buttonhole. Catherine, in a simple white dress, looked up in semi-profile at her new husband. He was more than a head taller than her and his big right hand enclosed her entire bare shoulder.

  Was he a murderer? He didn’t look like one here, but how much had happened since the picture was taken? People change, circumstances change. Christer Larsson had reverted to his old self again, whatever that might mean.

  And what was it that had happened with Sjöberg himself? He had jeopardized his and his family’s future. He had put his relationship with his life’s great love, his best friend, his life companion, his beloved Åsa, at risk for the sake of an unknown woman. A woman who had come out of nowhere, who could not reasonably mean anything to him.

  Margit Olofsson was the woman in his dreams, but not in any way his dream woman. It was not often he allowed himself to think this thought through, but now it was there and he could not stop it. What was he playing at? He summoned all his mental powers to convince himself that this story had to end. Now. Or the next time they met. He and Margit did not meet often, but when he felt shaken it was her embrace he sought. Why, he did not know. Åsa had always been a good comforter, but since that dream started coming to him he had changed. He had become a different person. He had become a scared, desperate, treacherous little piece of shit.

  In the dream he is always standing on a lawn wet with dew, looking down at his bare feet. He does not dare look up although he knows he should. His head feels so heavy that he can hardly lift it. He gathers all his courage and all his strength to turn his face upwards, and then he sees her. The beautiful woman with the dazzling red hair like a sun around her head. She takes a few dance steps and her gaze meets his with a surprised expression. He reaches up his arms towards her but loses his balance and falls suddenly backwards. The woman is Margit, had become Margit since he met her for the first time during a serial murder investigation over a year ago. Rationally he knew he had to end it, but she had such unfathomably great significance for him. She awakened something in him; what, he did not know. Something new? Something old?

  With a shiver he shook off the unpleasant thoughts and continued browsing through the photographs. He cleared his throat, cleared away the feeling of shame about his own behaviour. The throat-clearing somehow made him a grown man again and he straightened up as if to further confirm his authority.

  A strip from a photo booth aroused his interest. It was Catherine and another Asian woman in four colour pictures. In the first two they just looked pleasant and happy, in the third they were pulling funny faces and in the fourth they were no longer sitting down but instead appeared to be dancing around in the booth with their arms in the air and new grimaces on their faces. So this is Vida, thought Conny Sjöberg. We have to find her.

  He guessed that the rest of the photographs depicted friends and relatives from Catherine Larsson’s homeland. She herself did not figure in any; presumably they had been sent to her since she moved to Sweden. There were no pictures from her life with Christer Larsson. The letters and postcards she had all came from the Philippines and were written in a language unknown to him. He would see about having them translated.

  Sjöberg quickly went through the contents of the box and placed everything that had to do with Catherine Larsson’s finances in a separate pile: receipts, bills, account information and tax documents. As he set to work on them he still had not found even a hint of a lead in any direction whatsoever.

  Needing to stretch his legs, he got up and went out into the corridor. He glanced into Einar Eriksson’s office. Still unoccupied. Sjöberg swore quietly at the thought of now having to run the type of enquiries himself that normally would be Eriksson’s job: telephone calls to the authorities, searches in computer registers, and other things that Sjöberg was not skilled at.

  A few hours later, despite his reluctance, he had managed to discern a structure in Catherine Larsson’s financial activities. Her apartment had been paid for, by her, on the first of June 2006, when a sum of 2,115,000 kronor had been transferred from her account with SEB to the seller’s. This was after a down payment of 235,000 had changed hands in the same way a few weeks earlier. The money had been deposited in her account in cash, by Catherine herself, 20,000 kronor at a time over a six-month period, at various Stockholm branches. In addition, since she had taken possession of the apartment, at the end of every month 5,000 kronor had been deposited into her account. By ringing round the various bank branches, Sjöberg managed to speak to a couple of employees who thought they remembered a few of those transactions, and they were in agreement that it really was Catherine who had made the deposits. The question was: where had this money actually came from?

  In other respects too she managed her financial affairs on her own. Besides the 5,000 kronor, child benefit was also deposited into her account every month. She had not received any benefits beyond these payments. She paid her own bills on time, once a month. The money in the account covered almost exactly the fixed expenses she had. Day-to-day expenses she seemed to have paid for with her current earnings.

  With the help of a colleague in the financial intelligence unit, Sjöberg also investigated Christer Larsson’s finances, and found nothing to suggest that Catherine’s money could have come from him. He too had an account with SEB, and he could have made transfers from his own account to hers without attracting attention, if he had wanted to. Which obviously he had not, because there was no trace of any such support to be seen.

  Had there been a mysterious benefactor in Catherine Larsson’s life, and if so, who could it be? Someone who loved her? Someone who exploited her somehow but still paid his way? Someone who was in debt to her? Or was it really her own money – no doubt dubiousl
y earned, but still hers?

  Sjöberg reached for the phone and, absurdly enough, called Information to be connected to Telia, the phone company. After a number of wrong turns he ended up talking to the right department, and after many ifs and buts managed to obtain a list of incoming and outgoing calls on Catherine Larsson’s line during the past six months. He would have it by fax twenty minutes later.

  Then he clipped off the top picture from the photo-booth strip, pasted it on to a piece of white paper and with a ballpoint pen drew a circle around the unknown woman. Then he wrote in legible handwriting under the picture: ‘Does anyone know who this woman is? The Hammarby Police need to contact her in connection with a murder investigation as soon as possible. Please call the number below …’ Then he put on his jacket and rushed along the corridor and down the stairs with the paper fluttering in his hand.

  Fifteen minutes later he was on Skånegatan, at the Catholic ministry for Spanish-speakers, pinning up his homemade search enquiry on the notice board. A short, middle-aged, South American-looking man appeared beside him.

  ‘Hi, my name is Conny Sjöberg, Hammarby Police,’ Sjöberg said, extending his hand.

  ‘Hi. Joseph,’ said the man, responding to the greeting with a smile.

  Sjöberg ran his hand through his hair, wet from the rain, to push a strand back into place.

  ‘We’re investigating a murder,’ he explained. ‘Or to be more precise, three murders. This woman and her two children were found dead in their home this morning.’ He pointed at Catherine Larsson’s happy face and continued. ‘She did not seem to have a large circle of friends, but this may be her best girlfriend. They both came originally from the Philippines. Do you have many parishioners from there?’