Chapter 57
When the telephone woke her she felt as if she had only been asleep for a few minutes. She had spent the night drifting between the living room and the kitchen, drinking tea that became more and more insipid and listening to music that usually calmed her nerves: Rickie Lee Jones, Manu Chao, Rebecka Tornqvist. Towards morning she had brewed a large strong espresso which she drank in small sips, curled up on the sofa. No point trying any more, she had thought, but obviously sleep had been lying in wait, and had crept up on her when she was least expecting it.
As she reached across the low table for the phone, she knocked the dregs of the cold coffee over her sleeve.
'Oh flick. Hello?'
'Hello?' There was no mistaking Hanna's gravelly voice. 'What's the matter with you? Got a hangover?'
Seja got up so quickly that everything went black. She flicked ineffectually at the coffee on her sweater with the back of her hand then wobbled and sat down again.
'Hi. Yes, or rather no. I haven't. But I bloody well feel as if I have. I hardly slept a wink last night.'
'I sympathise.'
In the pause that followed from the other end of the line, Seja recognised the sound of a lighter as Hanna lit up, took a deep drag and cleared her throat.
'Are you busy?'
Seja laughed.
'Not at all.'
An asymmetrical brown stain had appeared on the pale green fabric of her sweater. Between her feet more coffee was soaking into the wooden floor.
'OK. I've been thinking about you a lot since we met up. It's been such a long time since we used to hang out and… All that business with… well, your research, or whatever you want to call it…'
Seja rubbed the palm of her hand over her eyes to try to stave off an incipient headache.
'I know, Hanna. I know it must have seemed strange to you. I didn't mean for you to get dragged in.'
'No, no,' Hanna protested, 'don't start with all that stuff. What I wanted to say was… well, I know you asked me to trust you and to respect the fact that you couldn't tell me any more. But it struck me afterwards that Bjorn - you probably don't remember him, he was a couple of years younger than us. I still see him from time to time. On a completely platonic basis, that is.'
'Right, but who-'
'His wife won't let him meet up with female friends, particularly when it's an old flame, so we've met in secret a few times and had a coffee in town. All perfectly innocent, as I said.'
'But what's he got to do with-'
'Well, what I was going to say is that Bjorn is a friend of a guy who was really close to that girl - the one in the white leather jacket, Tingeling. Her name was Maya, by the way, the one who disappeared. It's a small world.'
'Hanna…'
The headache definitely had her in its clutches now.
Hanna giggled nervously, but immediately became serious again. 'I realise I wasn't supposed to talk about this with anyone, but it's done now, even if I didn't know enough to say anything at all, really.'
'What did he say, this Bjorn?' Curiosity began to edge out her irritation.
'He didn't say anything; it was just that he recognised her alias and remembered that she used to hang out with John back then - that's the other friend. Bjorn said John was the last person she was friendly with, so to speak. They were in the same class, or something. I've got his phone number.'
'Whose? John's?' Seja realised she was holding her breath.
'Exactly. If you're interested. I thought you seemed to need to poke about in all this old stuff to find some kind of closure.'
'Give me the number.'
After once again fending off Hanna's questions about what she was doing, Seja sat there with the number in front of her, hastily scribbled in the margin of the Saturday supplement of Goteborgsposten.
Christian Tell's anger at the fact that she had overstepped the mark was fresh in her mind. She knew the right thing would be to swallow her pride and go down to the police station, where he would be sitting in all his self-righteousness. Hand over the information and go home. Not that she had anything other than the telephone number of a person who might have known Maya over ten years ago. It probably meant nothing, in which case she would have humiliated herself unnecessarily.
On the other hand, it would be a good way of showing that she realised she had to respect his point of view. That she could be trusted. Somewhere in the depths of her disappointment a hope was beginning to grow, a wish that things would be good between them. Even if she would have liked him to take the first step and seek her out. But the telephone remained silent.
After making herself a fresh cup of coffee, she sat down at the desk.
The folder Tell had found, with the unfinished texts and the blurred pictures of the body at Thomas Edell's workshop, was neatly inserted between the course material for her upcoming exam on ethics and journalism. She still hadn't started her preparation. She switched on her laptop and keyed in her password.
Saturday's paper was close enough for her to be able to see the numbers. She picked up the phone and decided to give it a go. If the conversation yielded anything of importance, Tell would be the first to know.
John Svensson answered after the first ring.
* * *
Chapter 58
According to Tell's watch it was quarter past seven when he left the department, but he didn't give it any thought. Despite his longing for wine and bed, he had ended up drinking coffee with Beckman and Karlberg. They also seemed to be harbouring a subconscious reluctance to go home. Maybe the need to sum up events was stronger than the need for sleep.
Whatever the reason, they often got together after finishing off one of their more demanding cases. They would rummage in the cupboard and find a forgotten packet of biscuits, then sit there dunking the biscuits in their coffee as they went over the various phases of the investigation. Perhaps it was what top management referred to as debriefing.
Afterwards Tell's office had refused to let him go, with its accusing piles of paper and the flashing light on the answering machine. What should have been half an hour's tidying to calm his nerves before he went home had got out of control. Certain people might accuse him with some justification of not taking the administrative aspect of his work seriously enough. However, nobody could say he wasn't effective once he got going.
He walked past reception now, finally ending his working day when most people were just starting. The clock on the wall made him realise his watch must have stopped at some point the previous evening - at quarter past seven, in fact. Behind his eyelids felt like gravel, and his longing for bed was no longer theoretical but physical in the form of spaghetti legs and a total lack of strength in his arms. Even his briefcase felt heavy, and it had just got heavier. Before he left the office he had grabbed the top layer of a dangerously high pile of the case summaries, circulars and memos that constantly poured into his in tray. Reading them all would have been a full-time job. He now intended to use some of them as an excuse to stay at home for a day or two. To catch up.
'Christian!'
Seja reached him in just a few strides. After hesitating for a fraction of a second, she reached out one arm and hugged him gently. She smelled faintly of vanilla. He stiffened and she must have registered it, because she quickly took a step back.
'I've been trying to get in to see you for half an hour. This place is like a fortress,' she said in an attempt at a joke.
Neither of them smiled.
'It isn't,' he replied tersely. 'I asked them not to put through any calls and not to let anyone in. I was busy-'
'Are you busy now?' she interrupted him nervously, pulling a strand of hair out of the loose knot at the back of her head. 'Because if you're not I really need to talk to you.'
'Yes, I am busy.'
He watched her winding the strand of hair around her fingers. A childish action that suddenly irritated him. Earlier he had been feeling tired but satisfied; that feeling had vanished the
moment she thoughtlessly pressed her body against his. The lack of sleep over the past few days made the anger that had been simmering in the car on the way up to Bengtsfors boil over.
'I'm usually busy when I'm at work, oddly enough. And if I'm not busy right now, I'm bloody exhausted, so I'm going straight home to get some sleep.'
'I understand.' She hesitated. 'It's just that I'd really like to talk to you about-'
He lost his last scrap of patience.
'Listen to me. I'm absolutely shattered. If you want to see me about something to do with my job, then ring me during office hours. Right now I'm going home.'
She opened her mouth with an expression that suggested she wasn't sure if she'd heard him correctly.
'If I want to see you about… What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And what if I want to see you about something that isn't to do with your job - what then?'
She moved back a couple of steps towards the door, increasing the distance between them.
Out of the corner of his eye Tell saw a colleague raise a hand in greeting, but he didn't respond. The arm carrying the heavy briefcase was aching, but if he put it down, that would mean he was giving in to her. He didn't want to give her any more time.
'Christian, I realise you're angry with me, even if I do think you're overreacting. Maybe you're right to be angry - what do I know? But in any case I think you could spare me five minutes. You'll be interested in what I have to say.'
Deep down inside Tell knew that the woman in front of him had just received both barrels because of a whole lot of issues for which she was not to blame: the way he had let Ostergren down, both professionally and personally; his embarrassing inability to deal with the big questions, with life and death, with love. With closeness. That was the nub of the matter: she got on his nerves with her demands for intimacy. Closeness. Just like every woman he had ever known: they had all suffocated him with their desire for fusion, sooner or later.
'I haven't made any demands of you,' she said quietly, as if she could read his mind. 'I haven't asked you to commit yourself to a shared future, or to tell me everything you do and everything you're thinking. And if you're pretending I have, then you're being unfair. That's why I don't understand why you're so angry with me for not telling you everything.'
'There is a difference, for fuck's sake.'
'No. I'm here now because you wanted me to tell you everything I know. This is to do with Maya, her last two years. I think what I have to say-'
'It's too late now,' he said simply. 'It doesn't matter any more. It's over.'
'As I said, I think what I have to say will interest you.'
'I find that very difficult to believe.'
He enjoyed spitting out the words, despite the fact that disappointment was instantly etched on her face. By making a big deal of moving the briefcase from his right hand to his left, he managed to avoid meeting her eyes, although he knew it was a coward's way out. Her gaze burned into his back as he left.
A fleeting image of them holding each other close beneath the sloping ceiling in the loft brought tears to her eyes, more from humiliation than sadness. It was too early to talk about a broken heart - they hadn't known each other for long enough. Sorrow over what could have been, perhaps. Over unfulfilled expectations.
He had turned out to be a different person. And she had once again thrown herself head over heels into something uncertain, and had come out on the other side more battered than before. With only herself to rely on once again.
She felt completely alone as she stood there in the middle of the reception area, the doors opening and closing in the morning rush. She felt as if everyone walking past was evaluating her and coming to the conclusion that she was damaged goods, a person who had believed too much. They were always the most ridiculous. Those who came running up, full of enthusiasm, like a dog with its tongue hanging out as soon as someone called its name.
The receptionist was a middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair caught up in combs at the sides. She winked and smiled sympathetically. Automatically Seja tried a polite smile in return, but it ended up as more of a grimace.
She welcomed the anger when it came surging up from her belly. She pictured the inspector once again - because that was what he was: he was his job more than a man or a person - beneath the sloping ceiling or standing by the fire in her kitchen, too stressed to sit down. His back. The way it had looked when he had strode down the hill outside her house towards the footbridge, his briefcase in his hand. How it looked a couple of minutes ago, when he walked out of the main door of the station.
Men are institutions, one of her tutors had said. It was during a course in basic feminism many years ago. She hadn't understood what the phrase meant, and was too young and insecure to ask. Later she had reconsidered the large dose of questions and answers surrounding women's issues which she had absorbed during a period in her life when she was heavily engaged in such matters. Some aspects had been integrated into her personal viewpoint, some had been rejected. Nonetheless, from time to time she had pondered what her tutor might have meant. And for the first time she thought she was on the way to finding the answer. An institution was a self-evident fact. Something that never had to question itself, which took itself extremely seriously. Detective Inspector Christian Tell.
She might have been able to understand his anger at her failure to pass on her memories of that evening. She could accept that he believed he had the right to those painful memories. She could even accept that she should have put her integrity to one side and talked to him earlier instead of carrying out her own investigation, as he put it.
On the basis of this reasoning, she really had taken his disappointment seriously. She had opened up to him in order to try to explain what had been going on in her head that night. Over the years since that night. During the past few days, when she had chosen to wait rather than talking to him straight away.
But he hadn't listened. He'd been far too busy playing the wounded hero struggling in a headwind.
There had been a reason why she had tried to forget the bad feeling she had about Maya's fate. Now it had floated to the surface, the memory of that night was demanding her attention. She would never be able to escape its cold fingers touching her soul, her conscience.
In order to find peace, she had to act. She realised that now. And since all her obligations towards Christian Tell had been wiped out at a stroke, she was free to act in accordance with her own aims. She had the outline of a crime story on her computer, a story she had already begun, and the folder lying next to the massive compendium on ethics and journalism. The exam was in just a few days, and so far she hadn't opened a single book.
But, she thought, what's the point of being a journalist if you don't write?
* * *
Chapter 59
It was obvious the hunting cabin hadn't been used for a long time. It had been part of the deal when he bought the farm, but Sven Molin had rarely set foot inside it. He wasn't all that keen on hunting; he felt the physical exertion was disproportionate to the financial gain in terms of meat, particularly since the EU had introduced cheap alternatives to most things. And he had never enjoyed it much either. The porch floor was rotting, and the front door had swollen and was jammed shut. The evening he arrived he had nothing with which to prise it open, no tools apart from the knife on his key ring. It had been too dark to look for a branch or a sharp stone to lever the door open, but eventually he found a window that wasn't fastened. He wriggled in and landed on the floor with a thud. A well-aimed kick from the inside released the door, after which he stood absolutely still for several minutes.
Breaking the silence went against the grain. The cabin was about as far from civilisation as it was possible to get, and as far as he knew nobody was aware of it; the farm deed of purchase had only mentioned it in a sub-clause. Even the traces left by children who had played there - a doll with no legs and some dried grass in a couple of buckets - looked as if they had
been there for many years.
He had slunk through the forest like a hunted animal after loading the pickup and leaving it parked outside the house as a smokescreen while he crept out the back way, taking the ignition key to his neighbour's Saab from where he kept it. He was a hunted animal, and if he had managed to suppress this knowledge while he was surrounded by the bright lights and minutiae of everyday life, it came home to him now with full force. Someone was after him, and this someone had presumably found it reasonably easy to track him down, although he had never made any serious effort to cover his tracks; he had never really thought it would be necessary.
The fact that he had cut his losses and left Olofstorp after the Accident didn't really have anything to do with any fear of legal repercussions. He wasn't even sure a crime had been committed; he preferred to think of it as nothing more than bad luck. What he had been running away from was the memories, which grew stronger each time he saw his two childhood friends, or heard their voices, or was reminded in some other way of that nightmarish December night outside Borås.
He had wanted to get away, and didn't think there was much to keep him in Olofstorp. The suffocating concern and trembling anxiety of his parents. The pathetic bachelor flat in the basement of his parents' home, which was nothing more than a boy's bedroom in disguise. His boring job in the warehouse. He wanted to be his own man, and he wanted a family. And with the mink business and Lee he had achieved his goal. He had been happy. He was starting to forget about the Accident, just as he had predicted. It belonged to the misguided kid he had once been, not to the family man and provider he had become.
The morning after the Accident he had thrown up all over the hallway and the steps down to the basement, shaking and crying like a child. His parents had never mentioned it until now, when his father had grimly gone through the facts from which he had drawn his conclusions. He had been perfectly objective, as if none of it would have been of any significance but for the fact that Lise-Lott Edell's second husband and Pilen had been murdered within a few days of each other.
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