Frozen Moment

by Camilla Ceder

  If only Krister hadn't gone on about it so much. Krister, who thought death metal was a joke, just like all the others he hung out with. Nobody they knew dressed like that or hung out with other death metal freaks. Nor did Sebastian, and Krister had only wanted to go to the party because they sold strong beer to fifteen-year-olds without checking their ID.

  He always gave in to Krister, to everybody. He had no backbone, no clear will of his own. He blew this way and that, following the path of least resistance.

  So it was his fault that Maya was lying in that bed, regardless of his protests that he hadn't asked to be saved, that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself and that he could do without Solveig's cloying oppressive anxiety, which was nothing but egotism when it came down to it. The logic was simple.

  But the thought had crossed his mind. As Maya set off on her bike and rode out through the gates, he had heard one of the Neanderthals - the one whose mate had had a go at him earlier - shout something nasty, something filthy after her.

  Sebastian had hidden on the dark staircase leading up to the first floor and watched through a small window as she pedalled away. That was why he had to take the blame this time: because he had just sat there with the feeling that she might never make it to the main road. He hadn't stopped her despite the fact that she had been raped and killed over and over again on the cinema screen in his mind.

  But she hadn't been raped. The doctors had said this several times, as if it might make Mum and Sebastian feel better. She had no physical injuries apart from the wound to her head, which she had sustained through falling on to a sharp stone which had crushed her skull. The police investigation had proved this.

  Maya had scratches on her face and hands from running through the trees.

  Nobody could yet explain what had made Maya run like that, straight into the dark forest. However, Sebastian thought he knew what she had felt as she ran. If he didn't put every ounce of strength he had left into keeping it at bay, he could easily allow his own body to be filled by her panic until it imploded.

  He kept this insight into Maya's panic during her final minutes locked deep inside his body. He stored a lot of things in that locked room. Sometimes he thought about what would happen on the day he chose to take out the key, open the door a fraction and wait for the great flood. Woe betide anyone who was standing in the way; he could only hope that he or she deserved to be there. Because evil people did exist, that much was certain. Whatever the doctors and the police said, he was convinced that Maya was lying there as a result of evil.

  Why would she have thrown down the bike and run into the forest if she hadn't feared for her life? No, it was pure fear that had made Maya tear her hands and cheeks on the frozen branches. He was quite sure of that. Once again he had to drive the fear out of his own body. It must not take over. He crept back to the dark waiting area and sank down on to the sofa.

  In general, accusations and guilt ran off him like water off a duck's back; he had acquired a thick covering of waterproof feathers in order to survive life with Solveig. In order to avoid becoming like Maya, who got into arguments with her all the time, and who had been ready to kill Solveig more than once. He had decided at an early stage that he was not going to join in. He had had to live with the fact that his punishment had been a withdrawal of love and a permanent place as silver medallist when it came to his mother's favours.

  A nurse with clattering clogs and rattling keys came into the waiting area and switched on a floor lamp. Its soft glow reached Sebastian's shoes.

  He couldn't sleep here at the hospital, of course. That would attract attention, even if he could easily imagine sitting here on this shabby sofa for the rest of the evening, staring into space. The only thing he really missed was his Walkman. To be able to hide behind a wall of death metal would be a release right now; nothing else could make him tear himself away from the indefinably meaningless failure that was Sebastian himself.

  Solveig reacted nervously to outfits inspired by horror, black and white make-up and other things that reinforced the association with violence and blood and death. That was the whole point. That just for a little while you didn't have to think about the fact that even the creators of extreme music were just a gang of ordinary lads.

  He couldn't go home, that much was certain. Maya's bag was still in the hallway. Maya was lying in a room somewhere like a cabbage. The doctors were already one hundred per cent certain that she would never be anything but a cabbage. And nothing he said to himself about his responsibility or guilt would ever change the fact that Solveig thought it was his fault.

  It was his fault, therefore he couldn't go home. He would have liked to go to Maya, except she was surrounded by a whole troop of healthcare staff. He would have liked to explain to her, to tell her why he had

  reacted as he did when she came to fetch him that evening. And how important the music had become to him: it was the thing that made him forget. There were to be no bridges between the two lives, no links between his refuge and school, his mother, the pointlessness of it all. She ought to have understood, if anyone could. If there was a risk you might be found, then it was no longer a refuge. If only he could talk to her.

  It was likely that Solveig would not be sleeping at home tonight; experience told him that the hospital staff were unlikely to let her out in her current state. She would end up in the unit for crazy people, and she would probably stay there for a while. In other words, the apartment would be empty.

  He decided to go home, have a sleep and pack his most important possessions tomorrow morning. To be on the safe side he would leave as soon as he woke up, so he wouldn't be caught unawares if Solveig came home earlier than expected. He just couldn't cope with seeing her.

  When everything had settled down he would come up to the hospital at night, when there was only one nurse on duty. He would ask if he could sit with Maya for a while. She was his sister after all; what could they say? And it wasn't as if Maya would notice any difference between night and day.

  It would all sort itself out, as long as he kept out of Solveig's way.

  * * *

  Chapter 36

  2007

  'I'll have to ask you for the surname as well, Inspector,' said the man with a voice that suggested he had a terrible cold, or perhaps it was the result of many years' smoking or even the phone line. Tell thought about Marlon Brando in The Godfather, but he concluded that any similarities between Brando and Knut Jidsten, one of Olof's foster- fathers, ended there. After dogged detective work he had managed to track Jidsten down to a little village north of Ostersund.

  'I think we must have had about thirty placements here over a period of twenty-five years. And that's not counting the ones who were only here for a few days. We were the local emergency foster home for a few years at the beginning of the 90s,' he explained. 'But it all got too much. Our own kids just couldn't cope with all the coming and going.'

  Tell stretched and tried to recline his desk chair even further, which turned out to be impossible as he was already virtually lying with his feet on the desk.

  They had spent a depressing morning on the telephone and computer without achieving any significant results. Together with Sofia Frisk, Gonzales had set up a system to list all the proud owners of Jeep Grand Cherokees in the area. The details were then passed on to two constables from Kinna, who had been given the uninspiring job of contacting the owners for an initial check and to establish if they had an alibi. It was a time-consuming task. So far nothing of value had turned up, apart from the news that Kasper Jonasson, who was well known to both the drugs squad and the violent crimes unit, was driving a Jeep these days. He had spent the relevant evening, night and morning at the Radisson Hotel. It was his younger brother's twenty- fifth birthday, and fortunately for Jonasson lots of people were able to confirm his presence.

  They also checked car rentals within a hundred-kilometre radius of Gothenburg and Borås. Tell was more inclined to believe that the m
urderer had hired or borrowed cars - judging by the forensic report, it seemed likely that two different vehicles of the same make and model had been used in the murders. No Grand Cherokee had been reported stolen in the weeks leading up to the murders, and the search had been extended to the whole of western Sweden.

  Their work was made easier by the fact that comparatively few rental firms offered a Grand Cherokee, but they still had to ring up and ask. This consisted mainly of listening to themselves asking the same question over and over again, speaking to bored assistants who never turned out to have been on duty at the time in question, who had no access to details of previous rentals, or who had to wait for permission from their boss before revealing anything at all.

  They also contacted petrol stations within the same area. That was even worse. Partly because they got the impression that at least ten people covered a single day. And partly because every single employee appeared to have an average age of seventeen. Tell's experience told him that teenagers were aware of nothing apart from the displays on their mobiles and the music on their iPods. Most of the larger petrol stations had CCTV cameras, and they would no doubt end up going through every single tape. Ostergren had promised Tell that if the tapes were brought to the station, she would try to find people to carry out this deathly dull task.

  'Get Bärneflod to go through them,' Beckman had said. 'He's too idle to lift his arse off the chair anyway.'

  Well yes, but there was a considerable risk that he would simply fall asleep.

  'Pilgren,' said Tell, attempting to scratch his ankle without tipping over backwards. 'Olof Pilgren. He came to you in 1975. He was eleven then and-'

  'Olof, yes, of course,' Jidsten broke in. 'Olof lived here for several years, until… 80 or 81,1 should think.'

  'So you think he would have been… sixteen or seventeen when he moved out?'

  'I think he ended up in some kind of institution, when he made a complete mess of things.'

  'You mean Villa Björkudden?'

  Tell underlined the name in the photocopied notes from social services.

  'That might have been the name, yes. The whole thing was a bit odd, actually,' said Jidsten thoughtfully. 'It was odd that he messed things up, I mean. Don't misunderstand me, I've seen most things; foster-children are rarely little angels.' He allowed himself a humourless laugh. 'Then again, angels probably don't have to go through half the crap our foster-kids have been through before they come to us. But I still remember I thought that what happened to Olof was strange.'

  'Why strange? I see from his notes that he tried to rob a petrol station. And there was a stolen car as well.'

  Jidsten exhaled. 'No, I just mean that Olof always gave the impression of being so… cautious. He was a bit peculiar, really. Slightly submissive, almost scared. Couldn't look people in the eye, as I remember. So it seemed strange that this boy, who seemed incapable of action, should suddenly get the idea of shoving a gun in somebody's face and demanding money. I remember I almost thought that it was some kind of perverted progress. That he'd actually done something on his own initiative for once. I know the police would see this as a strange way of reasoning, but I think you understand what I mean.'

  'So Villa Björkudden was some kind of sanction following this crime?'

  'Exactly. It was an educational facility or something like that. He was only there for a year, but I'm sure that's in your notes. We carried on being his contact family, so he came home at weekends for the first six months.'

  'And then?'

  'Social services changed his support so that it no longer included a contact family.'

  'And when he'd served his time?'

  'You probably know that better than me. We lost contact with Olof.' He gave a rueful chuckle. 'I presume things turned out badly for him, otherwise you wouldn't have come looking for us. I'm impressed that you managed to track us down.'

  Tell brought the conversation to an end, then stood up and rubbed the base of his spine. It was hard to get used to the idea that his body no longer served him without complaint. That age was beginning to take its toll. He realised he ought to take some exercise.

  In years gone by he had played regularly with an indoor ice hockey team on Thursday evenings, ending up with a sauna and sometimes a beer in town. It had been good fun. But those evenings had been conspicuous by their absence over the last few years. He sat down at the computer again and sent an e-mail to Kenth Stridh, who had been team captain at the time. Good habits should be preserved.

  As far as Tell was able to interpret from the notes, Olof Pilgren had moved to a place of his own after Villa Björkudden. He couldn't find the address, other than it was an apartment in Hjällbo. The name Thorbjorn Persson was written in the margin, along with a telephone number. Naturally, when he tried calling, the subscriber had not been available on that number for a long time. Instead he called Birgitta Sundin, and she explained that Pilgren had been offered a place in a block of apartments for young people that was overseen by a contact person.

  Tell spent the next half-hour ringing up people called Thorbjorn Persson in the Gothenburg area, asking if they had worked as a contact person in the 8os. Finally he struck lucky. Fortunately Persson was still living in the city, at an address in Hisingen, and had time to meet him.

  'I'll be there,' said Tell, just as Gonzales appeared in the doorway with a phone to his ear.

  'Bingo. A girl at a petrol station in Hedvigsborg outside Borås apparently served a customer filling up a Grand Cherokee. The time matches, and they're going to give us the tape from the CCTV camera. And two car rental firms have come back to us after the appeal we made the other day: one on Molndalsvagen, but apparently their camera is broken, and one just outside Ulricehamn - they haven't got any surveillance. But in both places they remember very clearly the client who hired the Jeep.'

  'What did you say?'

  'That we're on our way.'

  'OK.'

  Tell arranged a time with Thorbjorn Persson after lunch in two days' time. If his back hadn't been so bloody painful, he would have leapt out of his chair with joy.

  He had planned to call Lise-Lott Edell's neighbours, Bertil and Dagny Molin, to find out if they were familiar with the name Olof Pilgren-Bart, but he could do that later.

  'Let's go,' he said, punching Gonzales on the shoulder.

  * * *

  Chapter 37

  Gonzales walked into the petrol station as Tell took a stroll around outside. A woman in a fur coat was filling up her vintage Mercedes. She reached into her pocket and for a second Tell thought she was going to light a cigarette, but instead she extracted a small make-up bag and applied her lipstick with a practised hand.

  The door crashed open and a couple of lads came in. 'Forget it, I paid last time!' They started grabbing cans of beer and packets of crisps, making plenty of noise. Gonzales glanced at the headlines in the evening papers while he waited to speak to the assistant; her name badge said ANN-CATHRINE HOLBERG. She didn't ask the lad for ID when he came to pay, although she was no doubt under strict instructions to do so. Maybe she just couldn't cope with the same old routine: I've left my driving licence at home. Anyway I always shop here. There was no problem last Friday - and so on.

  The woman in the fur coat came in and paid for her petrol. On the way out she bumped into a scruffy man in his thirties. He picked up an evening paper, then went over to the till and started fiddling with a packet of condoms.

  'Are these any good?' he asked, exposing yellow teeth in a grin. Ann-Cathrine Hogberg gave him a dirty look.

  'I think you need two people to use that particular brand,' she said coldly, rapidly keying in the cost of the newspaper. 'Will there be anything else?'

  The man shook his head sulkily. Gonzales watched him cut across past the petrol pumps, his head down between his shoulders, his footsteps unsteady. There were no customers left in the shop.

  Gonzales went over to the till and showed his ID. 'We spoke on the telephone.'


  The girl laughed nervously and slammed the drawer of the till shut. 'Oops! I was expecting someone in uniform.' She had gone bright red, possibly because she had just sold alcohol to someone who might be under age.

  'I only have a vague memory of the man with the Jeep.' She ran her fingertips under her eyes to hide her embarrassment. 'I might not be much help.'

  Gonzales shook his head and said that any information could potentially be important. The girl relaxed and seemed to be thinking.

  'He wasn't threatening in any way, I'm sure of that - if he'd behaved oddly I would have remembered.'

  She told him that when she heard that the police were looking for anyone who might have seen a dark-coloured Grand Cherokee, she had phoned straight away, even if the times didn't quite match. She had finished work at midnight, and she was sure she had served the driver of the Cherokee at least a couple of hours before the end of her shift. Yes, it could have been a similar car but a different make; she wasn't all that brilliant at identifying cars. And she'd only seen it from a distance. But she was reasonably sure it was a Grand Cherokee. At any rate, the tapes from the CCT V camera would show the exact time, and would also provide a more precise description of the man in question.

  'Kurt, my boss, he's just sorting out the tape,' she said, nodding to Tell, who had just come in.

  As she mentioned her boss they heard an impatient voice from the depths of the shop. They followed Ann-Cathrine into the staffroom. The voice turned out to belong to a middle-aged man with a comb- over and yellow-tinted glasses. He was in a room where a fridge, two hotplates and a sink gave a vague impression of a kitchen, sharing the space with a two-seater sofa and a small television.

  Without bothering to say hello the man pressed the remote. He pointed helplessly at the black and white grainy mess on the screen, the CCTV recording from the day in question. You could see the four pumps and the entrance to the shop, with blurred figures moving between the two. However, it was impossible to make out any details.