Beckman's expression told him that she knew as well, and suddenly it became distressing for them both.Ann-Christine. As if she had lost some of her authority as soon as she confided in them and exposed her human frailty for the first time.
'The worst thing is that I feel so… inadequate,' he said eventually.
'Because you're afraid?'
'Because I feel…' He thought for a second. 'Because I feel something is expected of me. But I don't know what. I don't even know what to say to her.'
'What makes you think she expects more of you than anyone else?' 'I don't know if I think that… Can you just check that we're heading in the right direction?'
Beckman checked her printout and directed him on to a gravel track at a dark crossroads.
'In your capacity as a colleague, or as a friend?'
'How the hell should I know? Both, maybe. I've worked closely with her for a long time so… We've always made a good team.'
'You think you're going to miss her.'
'For fuck's sake, Beckman!'
He took a bend unnecessarily quickly, and Beckman reached out for a grab handle on the dashboard.
'You're forever putting words in my mouth, do you know that?' Tell snapped. 'Is that something they recommend on your bloody psychology courses?'
She opened her mouth to reply, but changed her mind and focused on the road ahead.
The air went out of him with a sigh.
'I feel like a clumsy child. And the worst thing is that my first thought was about the vacancy, when she… leaves. Not that I want it, but the fact that I'll have to make that choice. Isn't that terrible?'
Beckman slowly shrugged her shoulders.
'What was your second thought?'
'That I hope I don't end up in the same situation, knowing there's nothing that can be done. Knowing I've got maybe a year left. A year of pain, perhaps.'
He slammed his hand against the wheel once again and gave a humourless laugh.
'You can hear the way I'm talking - she's going to die, and it's still all about me.'
'Do you know what I hear? I hear someone who's fairly egocentric, wallowing in his guilty conscience. You are, honestly! Sometimes I think it's as if you walk around carrying some kind of imagined guilt. Maybe you don't even know where it comes from, or why. But it seems to be bloody exhausting.'
She fell silent for a moment. When she went on, she lowered her voice.
'I don't think you should blame yourself just because death frightens you. Isn't it only human to react selfishly when you're confronted with your greatest fear?'
'You mean my greatest fear is death?'
'I don't know. Is it? If it is, you're not the first person to feel that way. And I've thought of something else, Christian. It would be good if you didn't get angry again.'
He gave a wry smile.
'You probably don't need to say much. To Ann-Christine, I mean.'
'No, maybe not.'
'I mean it. What makes you think that anything you say will change her situation, how she feels? It would be a bit presumptuous to think you had that power.'
She paused to give him a chance to respond. His silence gave her the courage to continue.
'But I have noticed one thing. Since you, or rather we, found out that Ostergren was ill, you've been avoiding her - at least, that's how it seems to me. It's as if you can't cope with being in the same room as her. Isn't that true?'
'If you say so, it must be true.'
His tortured expression took the sting out of the sarcasm.
'I think that's much much worse,' Beckman went on quietly but undaunted. 'You don't need to have all the right words to be there for a friend, but you do need to bloody well be there.'
It was so long since Tell had cried he wasn't sure if it really was tears that were beginning to throb behind his eyelids. Bloody Beckman. It was so typical of her, thinking she knew it all. She knew nothing about the mess in his life, or why he couldn't look Ostergren in the eye. She talked about being there, hiding behind the right words, the empty phrases, the psychobabble. As if it was her strong point. And yet she-
'Stop!' she yelled.
He hit the brake so hard he thought he had strained his calf muscle.
'Back up a few metres!'
Triumphantly she pointed to something at the side of the road. Among the trees a car gleamed in the headlights. Somebody had taken the trouble to park there instead of at one of the passing points along the road. There was only one reason for that: somebody had wanted to hide it.
He switched off the engine. The map confirmed that Sven Molin's
place ought to be very close by. Instinctively they lowered their voices to a whisper.
The farm consisted of a low metal-covered annex and an older house, which was virtually in darkness when they arrived on foot, their torches switched off. Between the two buildings misshapen clumps of grass forced their way up around the wheel ruts where the earth was compacted.
They didn't make a sound, apart from the faint swish of Beckman's jacket. The lamp on the end of the annex cast a pool of light in front of it, with a blurred reflection of the glowing globe in the glass of the veranda. If anyone was home, they were sitting in the dark.
As if by silent agreement they had both taken out their service weapons. Nor had either of them suggested out loud that they should leave the car beyond the bend, but here they were, with neither a vehicle nor the light from their torches, trying to make as unobtrusive an entrance as possible.
A rustling in the bushes behind them made them jump. Beckman spun around, her gun pointing in the direction of a shed.
When it was quiet again and their breathing had more or less returned to normal, they carried on towards the house.
'Take the back,' mouthed Tell, walking slowly up the steps towards the front door. He leaned over the fence and peered in through the window. A kitchen lay in darkness, with only the digital displays on the fridge and microwave visible. The place seemed dead.
He lowered his pistol and replaced it in the holster. The garden was a shadowland in a pitch-black sea. He couldn't see any movement and didn't hear another sound until Beckman appeared around the side of the house, moving through the long grass. She too had put her gun away.
'Seems quiet,' she whispered. 'There's nobody here.'
'Molin's probably done a runner.'
Tell met her at the bottom of the steps. The moon emerged from its hiding place behind a cloud, extending their field of vision.
'Shall we take a look around before we go?'
Beckman nodded and walked towards the annex. She could see Tell moving around the perimeter of the garden.
As the tension eased she realised her feet were freezing; they were actually starting to hurt in the cheap trainers she had bought on impulse the week before Christmas. She was desperate to get home, to the children and a hot bath. A glass of wine.
The door was locked. She peered inside. By the glow of a fluorescent bulb she could see rows of cages piled on top of one another and the mink inside.
'If the activists want to get in, they will,' she muttered with satisfaction after she had tugged at the iron grille covering the window.
Then she heard rapid footsteps in the grass behind her, the muffled sound of breathing, and before she managed to draw her gun someone was pulling at her jacket. It was Tell. He was pressing a finger to his lips and there was a desperate look on his face.
'Bloody hell,' she hissed. 'You nearly frightened the life out of me.'
'This way,' he whispered, pulling her with him.
Her heart was in her mouth. A few seconds later she was trying to think clearly as Tell stared at her with an encouraging expression. He was shining his torch at the back of the shed.
A rucksack was propped against the wall, with a well-thumbed map poking out of the outside pocket. A neatly folded sweater lay on top of it. A pair of binoculars was balanced on the sweater, and the remains of a fast-food meal were a couple
of metres away.
Beckman turned to Tell with a look he interpreted immediately.
'Of course he's coming back: he's left the binoculars and… He's not far away…'
The words died on his lips as a twig snapped not far off in the forest.
Tell clamped his jaws together. As quietly as possible they moved over to a dense clump of fir trees just a few metres away.
Here I am again, Beckman said to herself as she grabbed the sleeve of Tell's coat, thinking that the beating of her heart could be heard for miles around because it was threatening to smash through her chest. Terrified and unreasonably euphoric in equal parts.
Later they would discover that the man had a pistol in his jacket pocket and a hunting knife in a sheath on his thigh. However, he wasn't even close to getting either of them out when they jumped him.
* * *
Chapter 56
The chair was flimsy, with a plastic back. Presumably the table was fixed to the floor. It didn't matter. He didn't have the strength to hurl it at the locked door. Considerable anger was necessary for such a feat, and he was no longer angry. And when it came to strength, if it had ever been contained within him, it had run out through his feet, into the moss, there in the darkness next to Sven Molin's house. When his arms were forced behind his back by the tall red-faced man that, in his confusion, he had mistaken for Caroline.
He had taken into account that this might happen. Perhaps not exactly like this, but that he might be caught before he had completed his task. He had quickly adapted to the new situation without wasting time and energy on cursing himself for his carelessness, for moving too far away from his camp in an attempt to cure his restlessness. For leaving behind clues, unforgivably, that had given him away and delivered him straight into the arms of the police. The mistakes of an idiot, an imbecile, ruining months of preparation. He could hear Solveig's voice in his head: What have you done, Sebastian? Your sister would never have failed like you. And she would have been right.
He had offered no resistance, but had cooperated as much as possible without answering their questions. The brief cryptic message he had prepared but not expected to need was sent with a couple of practised clicks on the mobile phone in his pocket.
He knew she would understand.
Afterwards, while they were waiting for the circus to get under way, he had dropped the mobile where he was standing. Of course it would be found later when the area was searched, but by then it would be too late. He had pushed it discreetly into the damp soil with his foot.
When the car arrived and the female officer carefully guided him into the back seat, he felt able to indulge himself with a secret smile.
The inspector looked as if he had stepped straight out of a crime film - tall, with a crumpled suit and a three-day beard. Then there was the short fat one with a low forehead, the waistband of his jeans somewhere down below his beer belly. The mannish old bag with the police logo on her sweatshirt. They all believed he would be an easy nut to crack. They had hauled him ashore like a fish in their net, and would hardly need to get started on their good cop/bad cop parody before he broke down, allowing the truth to seep from him like air from a punctured tyre.
In fact he hadn't settled on his strategy as he sat in the small windowless room. His silence was a passive rather than a conscious act, and had nothing to do with a refusal to admit what he had done.
The ridiculous little team clearly had a plan for situations like this, each one with a designated role to play. Beer Belly, uninspired and unprofessionally aggressive, but too stupid to recognise the solution to a problem even if it was staring him in the face. Old Bag, seeking eye contact and trying to get him on side. The Suit alternated between playing the good guy, offering cigarettes and fetching sandwiches, and slamming his fist on the table and demanding answers.
None of this was going to make him talk, since nothing they said was of any importance to him. If there was one thing he had acquired, it was the ability to leave his body, to transport his thoughts to a peaceful place where no one could reach him, their voices coming and going in an unintelligible blur of sound.
In the windowless room he had lost all concept of time; he knew only that a large part of the night had passed.
Out of sheer curiosity he considered trying to explain how it had all happened. To see if they understood. He wasn't afraid of going to prison as a result of his confession; he almost expected to end up there sooner or later.
Several times he opened his mouth to begin speaking, but closed it again when he realised that his words would not penetrate through the interference. From time to time the roaring sound filled the entire room. Only when the Suit leaned across the table could Sebastian make out individual words.
'You murdered the wrong man, didn't you, Sebastian? You intended to murder Thomas Edell, because you think he tried to rape your sister Maya that night twelve years ago. Thomas Edell, Olof Pilgren and Sven Molin.'
The Suit pressed the palms of his hands against the surface of the table so that his fingers turned white.
'Because it was dismissed as an accident and because there was no proof, because they said she could just as easily have tripped and hit her head on a sharp stone. As if she'd suddenly taken leave of her senses and run straight into the forest and the darkness of her own free will, throwing herself headlong into the snow to die. Because the police did such a bloody useless job.'
Sebastian could feel their eyes burning against his skin. The roaring had stopped and the words were hurling themselves mercilessly at his eardrums; it was impossible to defend himself.
'Because she ended up in a coma and died, thanks to those three vile men. And so you dedicated yourself to doing what the police ought to have done: asking questions, drawing conclusions. Finding out who was behind it all. And once you knew, you embarked on a campaign of revenge, to avenge your sister. Thomas Edell, Olof Pilgren, and Sven Molin, isn't that right? But you failed, Sebastian. You only managed two, and one of those turned out to be the wrong man.'
Sebastian Granith's sparse fringe was plastered against his forehead. Slowly he raised his head and met Tell's gaze.
There was nothing there that Tell could interpret.
'You didn't know you'd murdered the wrong man, did you, Sebastian?' Tell was speaking more quietly. 'You've only just found that out, haven't you?'
The air between them was almost too thick to bear.
'You thought he was Thomas Edell because it was Thomas Edell's farm and his name was on the sign and he was married to Lise-Lott Edell. Not so strange, is it? You shot him in the head and drove over him several times, until he was spread all over the ground. How could you know he wasn't Thomas Edell? How could you know that the man you'd just squashed was in fact Lars Waltz, Lise-Lott's new husband, who'd never been anywhere near your sister?'
The uniformed policeman came to Tell's rescue before Sebastian Granith's hands fastened around his throat. He had hurled himself across the table, just to put a stop to the words pouring out of the inspector's mouth.
He sank back into his chair. 'Just give me five minutes,' he gasped.
Tell waved the uniform away with a gesture towards the door. Drops of sweat flecked the green-painted floor as Sebastian shook his head. The sound of his sobbing rose and fell like a guttural song.
Half an hour earlier Tell had considered breaking off the interview and continuing the next day. Now the night was almost over, and Granith's defence was collapsing.
'Five minutes,' Tell agreed eventually.
For a decade he had beaten himself up. Ten long years of grovelling before he finally understood where the blame really lay. As soon as he had gained that insight, it had been like lifting a dusty veil from his eyes, allowing him to see clearly for the first time in years. Sometimes it had felt like floating.
'I did it. I killed them.'
Granith had spent his five minutes sitting with his arm across his face. Now his expression was again empty, so disturbingl
y blank that Tell almost thought he could see his own reflection in it.
However, behind the reflective surface, Olof Pilgren continued to die. Over and over again his skull cracked and his internal organs burst as he was crushed between the garage wall and the grille of the jeep. It was the only sequence in Sebastian Granith's memory worth anything. Whatever happened, nobody could take that away from him. If he concentrated hard enough on the images burned into his retina, it would help him to get through this.
'The only thing I regret is that I didn't get the third one.'
'You mean Sven Molin.'
Tell leaned back and stole a glance at his watch. As soon as possible, he reminded himself, he needed to check on how they were getting on with finding Sven Molin. Presumably he was terrified and hiding in some cottage somewhere. Or he was somewhere else altogether, blissfully unaware that his life had been in danger, in which case he would come home eventually. The local constable watching the house had the job of telling him the danger was over, if he hadn't done so already.
Getting a confession had been easier than Tell had dared hope. The boy was obviously a nervous wreck, even if he seemed calmer once he started to describe how he had gone about killing the two men. But that was usually the case with criminals. Somewhere deep inside the human soul lay the hope that if you confessed your sins, you would be forgiven. He even seemed slightly excited about his crimes, as if he actually thought he had done something positive. A well-intentioned avenger, correctly apportioning blame. And in a way there was an element of reason in his particular brand of twisted logic: a life for a life. His sister's life.
From time to time, although rarely, a murderer succeeded in arousing feelings of empathy in Tell.
He shook off the notion, stood up and pushed his chair neatly under the table. It was dawn and he intended to go home. Knock back a glass of wine and hope it would help him to sleep well. It would be the first time for ages.
* * *
Frozen Moment Page 38