Lifetime

by Liza Marklund

  The lad had changed his story during the trial.

  Most peculiar.

  David himself had claimed that by the time the police arrived a fight was already in progress, and that they had probably saved Tony Berglund’s life with their rapid intervention. The two friends who had been with Tony had been chased off by a couple of other officers, and were unable to support any of his statement. The other officers on the unit had corroborated David’s version of events.

  Further information revealed that Tony Berglund had a criminal background. Foster-homes, remand school, probation for minor drugs charges.

  Annika sighed. Poor sod.

  She put Tony Berglund’s case notes down and moved on to the second report.

  A man named Timmo Koivisto (Was his name really Timmo? Apparently so) had been on his way to a minor amphetamine deal in Ropsten. He had gone for a piss in Central Station, but when he was in the Gents the door had been yanked open and a large, blond man in a police uniform had come in. At first Timmo had thought it was someone dressed up as a policeman, then the man had grabbed him by the ears and asked, ‘Are you Timmo?’ He had got scared and tried to twist free but the man had started banging his head against the tiles on the toilet wall, and he couldn’t remember anything after that.

  The ambulance had been called by David Lindholm, who said he had found a seriously injured man lying unconscious in the toilet, and that he had probably saved his life with his rapid intervention.

  Timmo Koivisto stuck to his story right until the case went to court, when he had suddenly changed his mind.

  Timmo Koivisto’s background details revealed him to be one of society’s more unfortunate children, with a similar history to Tony Berglund. Three short prison sentences for drug-dealing.

  He’s guilty. He did it. He beat these small-time crooks to within an inch of their lives, but why? On whose orders?

  Annika got up and went over to Berit’s electric coffee-machine. She could never work out how these things operated. At home she had always had a French cafetière, the sort where you poured in coffee and boiling water, then pressed down a filter and it was all done. Here you had to pour water into various containers, and fit paper filters into other bits, measure out the coffee and wait for what seemed like hours.

  Instead she went to see the children in the living room. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is Moomin good?’

  Ellen leaned to one side. ‘Mummy, you’re in the way.’

  Annika went back into the kitchen. She ran her fingers over the reports. Made a feeble attempt with the coffee-machine and gave up.

  She wondered about getting her computer out, but didn’t want to take over Berit’s kitchen table with her stuff. Instead she called Directory Enquiries and asked for a Tony Berglund’s number.

  ‘Do you have the address?’

  No, she didn’t, of course.

  ‘I’ve got sixty-three results in Stockholm and the northern district.’

  ‘What about Timmo Koivisto?’

  ‘In Norrtälje? The Vårtuna Home? He’s the only one I’ve got in the whole country. It’s a mobile number. Do you want me to connect you?’

  Annika said yes and the call went straight to voicemail. The man had a strong Finnish accent, and explained in a rather long-winded way that this was Timmo and he’d call back as soon as he had time. He wished the peace of the Lord to everyone, and said that the love and forgiveness of Christ applied to everyone, no matter where on earth they were.

  Then came the bleep and Annika hesitated.

  ‘Er,’ she said, ‘yes, I’m calling from the Evening Post. My name’s Annika Bengtzon. I was wondering if this was the Timmo Koivisto who had a rather unpleasant … encounter eighteen years ago with a police officer. His name is, or was, David Lindholm. If you are that Timmo, and if you feel like talking about what happened so long ago, please give me a call.’ She gave her mobile number, then hung up.

  She got up and looked out towards the road. Still no sign of Berit.

  She went back to the kitchen table, picked up her mobile again and called Nina Hoffman.

  She answered after four rings.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ Annika asked.

  ‘What do you want?’ She sounded tired and sad.

  ‘I’ve had a few thoughts about David,’ Annika said. ‘I understand that he was accused of physical abuse, and I know it was a long time ago, and that he was never found guilty, but I was wondering if you knew anything more about those cases.’

  There was silence but for faint traffic noise, so she knew the line hadn’t gone dead.

  ‘How did you find that out?’ Nina said eventually.

  So she knows.

  ‘Why do you ask? Is it strange that I should know about the complaints?’

  More silence.

  ‘I don’t want to discuss this on the phone.’

  Annika glanced towards the living room. She’d just have to take the children with her. ‘I can come to the pizza place,’ she said.

  ‘No. Too many of my colleagues go there. Do you know where Nytorgsgatan is? There’s a café on the corner with Bondegatan.’

  11

  Berit came into the kitchen and put three large bags from the ICA supermarket on the draining-board. ‘It’s going to rain this afternoon,’ she said. ‘The clouds are practically sitting on the tops of the trees.’

  ‘Did you know that David Lindholm was accused of physical abuse?’ Annika said. ‘Not just once, but twice?’

  Berit leaned against the worktop and thought for a moment. ‘No. Was he found guilty?’

  Annika stood up to help her empty the bags. ‘Of course not. The first incident was twenty years ago, when he was with the rapid-response unit in Norrmalm. He worked with a Christer Bure, who seems to have been one of his big buddies.’

  She opened the fridge and put in the milk, with a packet of chicken drumsticks.

  ‘According to the prosecution, David Lindholm kicked and broke the cheekbone of a young lad who was arrested during a street brawl. The lad changed his mind in court and said he’d only made the complaint against David to cause trouble for the police, and that one of the gang they were fighting must have kicked him, he just didn’t see which one.’

  ‘That could well be true,’ Berit said.

  ‘Of course,’ Annika said. ‘In the other case, David was said to have attacked a drug dealer in a toilet at Central Station, banging his head against the wall so hard that he ended up with serious concussion. He was left with permanent injuries, including double vision and impaired hearing in his left ear.’

  ‘Which could have been the result of serious drug use?’

  ‘Sure. The weird thing is that the same thing happened as before: the lad changed his mind when the case got to court. Said another junkie beat him up, and that he tried to blame David to cause trouble for the police.’

  ‘What did David say?’

  ‘Exactly what the victims ended up saying in court: that they were attacked by other criminals and blamed the police to damage the force.’

  ‘So David was cleared?’

  ‘The cases were dropped. Even if he’d been found guilty he’d have been allowed to keep his job. The personnel committee had already decided that.’

  Berit nodded thoughtfully. ‘He was evidently a controversial but popular officer right from the start,’ she said. ‘How long ago was the most recent complaint?’

  ‘Eighteen years ago.’

  ‘So he’d kept his nose clean since then?’

  Annika was folding up the bags. ‘Well, he was never charged. Where do you keep these?’

  Berit pointed at the bottom kitchen drawer. ‘Have you seen the papers? We’re running your piece on Julia on page twelve. It’s very good.’ She handed both tabloids to Annika, who sat down at the kitchen table with them in front of her. Both the Evening Post and the competition had exactly the same picture and headline on the front page: ‘WHERE IS 4-YEAR-OLD ALEXANDER?’

  The photograph
showed a small boy, smiling uncertainly at the camera. The classic marbled background indicated that it had been taken at nursery. So that was how he had turned out, the little boy who was born six months after Ellen. He had untidy blond hair, finely chiselled features, and was almost girlishly pretty. A shirt-collar could just be seen at the bottom of the picture, presumably a gesture in honour of the occasion. The picture unsettled her. He looked so defenceless, so vulnerable, and the headline seemed to imply that he was already dead.

  What if Ellen or Kalle was missing?

  She shuddered and opened the paper. Berit put on her reading glasses and sat down next to her.

  They read in silence for a while. Moomin had been replaced by Pingu, and the jaunty theme tune found its way into the kitchen. The wind whistled through a gap under one window.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ Berit said. ‘Where could the boy have got to? If the mother hasn’t hidden him, she must have killed him, but when could she have done that?’

  Annika opened the other evening paper and turned to pages six and seven, which always carried the heaviest news. Both pages were covered with a photograph, stretching across ten columns, of a forest clearing with a little red cottage in the middle, white eaves and a water-pump at the front. It was an atmospheric picture, the light filtering through the treetops on to the white shutters beside the windows, and the blue and white tape of the police cordon.

  ‘POLICE SEARCH FOR ALEXANDER, 4,’ Annika read. ‘They’ve got exactly the same angle as us,’ she said.

  Berit sighed. ‘I still don’t see how it all fits together. If the mother took him to their summer cottage and killed him there, did she go straight home afterwards? Or did she wait a day or two? And didn’t the father think it was odd that she came home without the boy?’

  ‘Maybe she lied about where he was,’ Annika suggested, ‘said he was staying with a friend, or with Grandma and Grandpa.’

  Berit read on for a while. ‘But why go to such trouble hiding him? She wasn’t remotely bothered about trying to hide the murder of her husband.’

  ‘Maybe she’s sent him away,’ Annika said, ‘abroad, to distant relatives or something.’

  Berit shook her head. ‘What sort of mother would do something like this?’

  ‘Or what sort of person?’ Annika said.

  ‘Maybe something went wrong when she shot the father,’ Berit reasoned. ‘Maybe she’d planned to kill him and hide his body as well. Is that your phone ringing?’

  Annika sat up straight and listened. Yes, it was her mobile. She ran to the dresser by the door and looked warily at the screen as the ringing continued.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Berit asked, turning a page of the paper.

  Annika put the phone down on the dresser where it bounced and vibrated against the wood. ‘It’s Anne Snapphane. I have absolutely no desire to talk to her.’

  ‘Oh,’ Berit said. ‘I thought you were friends.’

  ‘So did I,’ Annika said. The telephone fell silent, only to start jumping and ringing again a moment later. Annika groaned and picked it up again. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘It’s my mother. I have to take this.’ She went outside and stood on Berit’s porch.

  ‘Annika?’ her mother said, in an agitated voice. ‘Annika, is that you?’

  She sank on to a step, letting the wind tug at her clothes. ‘Yes, Mum. How are you?’

  ‘Has your house burned down?’

  Annika shut her eyes and put a hand over them. ‘Yes, Mum, our house has burned down. There’s nothing left.’

  ‘Buy why haven’t you called and said something? Well? I found out in the shop, from someone I work with – what on earth were you thinking?’

  Annika sighed quietly. ‘Well …’ she said.

  ‘Do I really have to hear news like that as gossip? About my own child? Do you have any idea how that made me look?’

  Annika couldn’t suppress a laugh. ‘So I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?’

  ‘Don’t be so nasty,’ her mother said. ‘Can’t you see how insulting it is to have that sort of thing thrown in your face? As if I don’t know what’s happening to my own child?’

  ‘Well, you don’t, do you?’

  ‘I still think—’

  ‘Now that you’ve got me on the phone, you can ask me how we are,’ Annika said, and got to her feet. ‘You can also ask what really happened. Maybe you’d even like to volunteer to help somehow, with a place to stay, or by looking after the children, money maybe …’

  Now it was her mother’s turn to laugh. ‘You want money from me when I might have to take early retirement on grounds of illness? Social Security are looking into it. I have to go to the Mälar Valley Hospital once a week nowadays, but I don’t suppose that’s important to someone living in Stockholm.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mum.’ She ended the call, and in the silence that followed she could hear her heart racing.

  Berit came out on to the porch with a mug in each hand. ‘Coffee?’

  Annika took it gratefully. ‘Can you trade in your parents?’ she asked.

  Berit smiled. ‘Don’t be so hard on her. She’s doing her best.’

  Annika sat down on the step again. ‘She only ever thinks of herself. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, she’s always the interesting one.’

  ‘She’s a small person with a narrow frame of reference,’ Berit said. ‘She hasn’t the capacity to see you for who you are, and isn’t even aware of it.’

  Tears welled in Annika’s eyes. ‘Why can’t I have a mum like everyone else’s, someone who supports and helps me, someone who cares?’

  Berit sat down beside her. ‘Not everyone has a mum like that,’ she said. ‘A lot of people have no mum at all. I think you have to realize that you can’t change her. She’s never going to be the sort of mum you’d like. You just have to accept her the way she is, just like she’s going to have to accept you.’

  They sat in silence for a while, looking out towards the forest. The wind had got up, and the firs were swaying. Annika looked at her watch. ‘Is it okay if the children stay here with you while I head into the city for a bit? I’m meeting Nina Hoffman again.’

  Berit nodded. ‘I can’t stop thinking about this business of the missing boy,’ she said. ‘The whole story really is very peculiar.’

  ‘Anyone can go mad,’ Annika said. ‘When everything’s going to Hell, human beings are capable of absolutely anything.’

  Berit looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t agree,’ she said. ‘Not everyone could kill their child. There has to be something missing for someone to do that, some sort of internal barrier that just isn’t there.’

  Annika looked at the shimmering grey water of the lake. ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ she said.

  A moment later it started to rain.

  Nina Hoffman was waiting for her at a messy table in the café on Nytorgsgatan. She didn’t notice that Annika had arrived because she was sitting with her back to the door, staring blankly out of the misted-up window. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she was wearing a grey padded jacket. The light fell across her profile, giving nothing away. She was resting her chin on one hand and seemed to be miles away.

  Annika went round the table. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Nina stood up and they shook hands.

  Annika went over to the counter. ‘One coffee, black.’

  She returned to the table. The café was starting to fill with lunchtime diners. Their wet jackets exuded the smell of damp wool.

  ‘There was something you were wondering about?’ Nina said. ‘Something about the allegations against David?’

  No small-talk, then.

  Annika lifted her bag on to her lap and hunted through it, finding a bag of sweets and the folder of documents from the National Police Board’s personnel committee. ‘So you know what David was accused of?’ she said, putting the sweets back in the bag.

  Nina Hoffman’s eyes flashed. ‘How did you find out?’

>   Annika put her hands on the tabletop. ‘I checked at the NPB,’ she said. ‘Why do you sound so surprised?’

  Nina looked out of the window again. ‘I didn’t know …’

  She was silent for a long while. Annika waited. A woman with a pushchair forced her way past them to the next table, but Nina didn’t react. Eventually she turned towards Annika, pulled in her chair and leaned towards her. She had dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ she said, ‘because I don’t really know what it means. Can I trust you?’

  ‘I won’t write anything without your consent, you know that. You’re my source, and your identity is protected under the constitution.’

  ‘I got a bit confused when you called me because I thought those old complaints had been buried and forgotten.’

  ‘How did you find out about them?’

  Nina adjusted her ponytail. ‘Julia showed me. The last time we met before the murder. She’d come across them in David’s archive down in the cellar.’

  Annika suppressed the instinct to reach for her pen and start taking notes. I’ll just have to try to remember. ‘Why did she show them to you?’

  Nina hesitated again. ‘I’ve always tried to support Julia, and it hasn’t always been easy. But when it really mattered, she knew she could come to me. I thought she was on the verge of leaving him. She never said as much, but I just got the feeling …’

  She moved even closer to the table and lowered her voice still further. ‘Did you see any police on your way in here?’

  Annika looked carefully at her. ‘Should I have done?’

  ‘I chose this place because none of my colleagues usually come here. David often treated Julia very badly, and the rest of the force are no better. The way they’re treating her now is appalling. Regardless of what she may or may not have done, they’ve decided she’s guilty. She’s never going to get a fair trial.’

  The espresso machine behind the counter hissed and whined, and Nina waited until it had stopped. ‘You were right about him being a control freak. Julia always had to watch herself when David was listening. She could never be really honest then.’