* * *
Chapter 63
'He's said he killed them, that they deserved it and he doesn't need a lawyer to defend him. I don't suppose he thought there was anything to defend.'
Tell and Bärneflod were round the back of the police station, a dreary area with its neglected paving and half-rotten wooden benches. A concrete bin full of sand was strategically placed for those who hadn't managed to give up when smoking was banned in the building.
'So you can't get anything out of him?'
'Not a word. Literally. He hasn't spoken since he confessed. He told his story, and since then he's kept his mouth shut. It's bloody frustrating, I can tell you.' Bärneflod let out a long whistle between his teeth. 'Who would have thought the little shit could be so cocky - he seemed like a nervous wreck.'
Tell lit his second cigarette in five minutes. Since he had taken himself outside to smoke, he might as well make the most of it. In the past he often used to close the door of his office, open the window and lean out, using one of the plant pots as an ashtray - God knows how they'd ended up on his windowsill in the first place. However, since he had found out about Ostergren's lung cancer, he had followed the rules and taken the lift down here. That's how banal and predictable he was.
'I don't know if he's cocky,' said Tell, thoughtfully furrowing his brow.
He had spent a number of hours with Sebastian Granith. There was no longer any suspicion that he might be protecting another murderer in the cases of Lars Waltz and Olof Bart. Particularly because his fingerprints matched the ones they had lifted from the rented Jeep, and the tyre tracks of the same vehicle had been found at the crime scene. And since the murder weapon had turned out to be the same in both cases, Granith was also tied to the murder of Lars Waltz.
The case of Sven Molin was more difficult. Tell was convinced that
Sebastian Granith knew who had killed Molin, but once he had got over his initial shock, he hadn't shown the least sign of distress or given any indication that he might start talking. Tell was becoming increasingly angry at being denied a final solution to the case.
'No,' he said after thinking for a while. 'He isn't keeping quiet because he's cocky. He's just switched off. It's as if he's sitting there thinking about something else entirely, as if he really can disconnect from reality at will.'
'It seems to run in the family,' muttered Bärneflod. He looked as if he might well have developed his theory if he hadn't been stopped by a coughing fit that came from somewhere deep inside his lungs. He turned his back on Tell, his whole body shaking, and Tell thumped him between the shoulder blades. For a moment he felt like an actor in a bad comedy film.
'Are you OK? You sound like someone with TB. What were you saying?'
Bärneflod walked inside and pressed the lift button.
'I was just saying that it runs in the family. I got exactly the same feeling with the mother. That she just switched off from time to time - she didn't even notice I was there - and at other times she was all too aware of me. What a psycho. It's hardly surprising he went over the edge, poor kid.'
Tell nodded absently. He was heading to the cafeteria instead of his office, since he had the feeling he wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything properly. Bärneflod followed in his wake, still talking. They both picked up a coffee and a cinnamon bun and took them back to the department, where Gonzales caught up with them.
He seemed desperate for company after spending hours alone at his desk. 'My wrist is absolutely killing me,' he complained. 'Don't you think we should have headsets?'
Tell smiled to himself. There were a lot of similarities between Gonzales and his younger self: impatient, enthusiastic and hungry for practical experience. No doubt Gonzales was just going through the first wave of disappointment that the reality of the job fell short of expectations.
'Did you get anything from visiting the mother?' asked Gonzales with a nod to Bärneflod, who took a bite of his bun, shook his head.
'Not much, really. Apart from the fact that she's completely crackers.
Pretty unpleasant, if you ask me. I wouldn't want to bump into her in a dark alley.'
'OK, well, I have found something. I've been on the phone to-'
Gonzales stopped as Tell held up his hand.
'Hang on. Something else struck me as a bit odd. While we were with the old woman, this girl turned up. Well, I say girl - she was maybe thirty-five, forty. Said she was a home help, but both Bengt and I thought there was something that didn't quite add up, didn't
we?'
Bärneflod nodded vigorously. 'If she was a home help, then I'm Donald Duck. Her clothes were all wrong, and so was her attitude. And she gave the old woman an alibi for the time of the murder.'
Tell nodded. 'I'd like to sit down and go through all this in more detail. Is Beckman around?'
'She had really short hair and huge earrings and lipstick,' Bärneflod went on. 'She looked as bold as brass. And she had a horrible great big snake tattooed on her neck, like some old sailor.'
'She had a what?!'
Gonzales banged his knees against the table, gesturing wildly before he managed to express himself a little more clearly.
Just as Tell slammed on the brakes in front of the reddish-brown building, after a slalom drive along the motorway with flashing blue lights, the display on his mobile lit up, showing Michael Gonzales' number.
Tell had noticed Gonzales' disappointment when he was told to stay at the station to find out as much as possible about the woman with the snake tattooed on her neck, and quickly. It wasn't the knowledge that Bärneflod would be deeply offended at the merest hint that he should stay at his desk that influenced Tell's decision. However prejudiced and socially inept he might be, there was no disputing that Bengt Bärneflod had over thirty years' experience of this kind of situation. He operated on autopilot these days, apparently unmoved whatever the circumstances and kept a cool head in situations where experienced officers lost it. Whether this was because he was too emotionally handicapped to be affected by other people's crises was unclear, but in the present situation it was irrelevant. Tell had to admit that even though he could get heartily sick of his colleague - and God knows it happened often enough - his presence was always reassuring when difficulties arose.
Of course this visit to Solveig Granith hardly put them in critical danger. At the most there were two women in the apartment, however crazy they might be. It was just that Tell had a bad feeling in his stomach. He also had an inkling that their tactics over the next couple of hours would hold the key to solving this case.
Gonzales briefly confirmed the information he had received from Greta Larsson: Selander had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic on three occasions between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. He had requested access to her notes, but they could take some time.
'Before that she was in a secure unit for just over a year - until she came of age. She was under a youth care order. Sentenced to psychiatric care by the court at the age of nineteen, for attempted murder. The person she tried to kill was Gunnar Selander - her father. That's all I've got for the moment. Be careful.'
The quickening of his heart was familiar from his time on patrol. The sharpened senses and heightened eye for detail. Tell noticed that the handle of the rubbish chute on the second floor was loose, and the door had been left ajar. A faint smell of rotting rubbish filled the landing. It struck him that since he had become an inspector the number of strange stairwells he frequented during the working week had dropped dramatically.
He groped for his wallet in his inside pocket. The weight of the pistol felt unfamiliar but gave him a sense of security, as it always did on those rare occasions when he strapped on his holster. He rang the doorbell, held his ID to the spyhole and waited.
Not a sound could be heard from inside the apartment. He turned and looked at Bärneflod. His hand too was resting on his gun. He nodded.
Tell pushed down the handle and the door opened silently.
They found Solveig Granith sitting exactly where they had left her.
She was staring vacantly in front of her. Her hands were on her bony knees with the palms turned up. She looked resigned to whatever might happen to her.
Shards of the broken dove still lay on the floor. Tell lowered his gun and gestured over his shoulder. Bärneflod began to search the rooms, looking for traces of Selander, but they already sensed she was no longer in the apartment.
Tell crouched down near Solveig. 'Where is Caroline Selander?' he asked calmly.
She gave no indication that she had seen him.
'We will find her, Solveig. It's just going to take a little longer without your help. If you protect her, the only person you're hurting is yourself.'
He moved a little closer. Still crouching, he gathered up the fragments of the dove and placed them on the coffee table next to Solveig Granith. Her eyes narrowed and the reddened hands cupped instinctively, as if she wanted to pick up the shards and protect them.
'You can't protect her, Solveig.' Tell moved much closer but didn't touch her. 'You don't have the strength. And besides, she doesn't deserve it. After all, she's left you here, hasn't she? She didn't bother taking you with her, so why should you risk anything for her sake?'
For a while the only thing he could hear was doors opening and closing, the muted sound of Bärneflod's movements.
She hasn't even fucking blinked.
Suddenly Tell saw in Solveig what he had seen in her son. It was just as Bärneflod had said earlier: they both had the ability to switch off reality when it became unbearable.
'Where is she, Solveig? You haven't killed anyone, have you? All these things that have happened. None of that was you. But until we can talk to Caroline Selander, you're the only one with a motive and no alibi. So start talking, Solveig, if you know what's good for you.'
As he uttered the last sentence he heard a shout from Bärneflod, who appeared a second later in the doorway, his gun weighing down his right arm. His expression was grim.
'Come and take a look at this, boss.'
Tell dashed into the hallway. The unpleasant feeling in his stomach peaked, and it dawned on him.
Seja and her irrational feelings of guilt and her bloody journalistic ambitions. In the foyer of the police station: of course she had been trying to tell him something about Caroline Selander. She had found out something, but he'd been too arrogant and too tired to listen. Instead he had driven her here. To this dark, stinking, disgusting apartment with these two psychotic…
Holding his mobile to his ear, Bärneflod stepped into the corridor and pointed to the smaller room from which he had emerged. A bulb on the ceiling shed light on the grubby brown carpet.
A woman in her thirties,' he heard Bärneflod's matter-of-fact phone voice. 'No, no, she's alive. But I think she's received a severe blow to the head… Yes, that's right. I think she's actually one of the witnesses we interviewed earlier.'
She was lying in an odd position, with one arm bent under her body. At first glance it looked as if her neck were broken. Tell went cold, but then he saw that it was twisted because she was lying on her hair. There was blood in the doorway and underneath her.
Presumably she had been struck on her way into the room, then dragged another half-metre so that she wouldn't obstruct the door. Nobody bothered to put her in a more comfortable position, he thought with helpless irrationality. The sinews of her neck were stretched taut in a way that made the whole scene look as if it had been arranged. This vulnerability disturbed him the most: how long had she been lying with her throat exposed in this madhouse?
He sank to his knees and straightened her arm and her head. Her hand twitched as he touched it.
Bärneflod had clearly managed to get hold of the inspector at Borås. He let out an inappropriate whinnying laugh. Tell's anger was channelled into concentrated rage against Bärneflod, who had merely established that Seja was alive before settling down for a nice chat with Björkman.
Bärneflod let out a whistle. 'Yes!'
From the conversation that followed, Tell gathered that Bärneflod had information about a vehicle, a camper van registered in Caroline Selander's name.
'Keep it down, for fuck's sake,' said Tell between gritted teeth. 'And put out a call for the van straight away.'
'I know how to do my job, thank you.'
Bärneflod was still sufficiently buoyed by the breakthrough not to let Tell's mood get him down.
'We've got the bitch, Tell!'
Seja's eyelids flickered as Tell gently laid her head on his knee. There was blood on his trousers although most of it had coagulated into a sticky mass around the wound in her head.
'They'll be here soon,' said Bärneflod, flicking his phone shut. 'Have you seen all this?' He gestured around the small room, a dressing room which had clearly served a different purpose.
Only now did Tell notice the meticulous shrine to Maya Granith. The walls were covered with photos of her: as a child, naked by a paddling pool in the garden; as a ten-year-old in shorts, her arms and legs disproportionately long; fourteen years old, her hair dyed with henna. There were banners carrying political slogans and clothes Maya must have worn at different ages. Vinyl records were stacked on a bench along with teenage novels, school yearbooks and music magazines. Posters of bands like Sisters of Mercy and The Cure. One of the walls was papered with poems and pages torn out of diaries.
He moved closer and was able to read her teenage musings.
On a table covered with a lilac cloth stood a dusty bouquet of dried roses. A card protruded from the flowers: Congratulations on your 18th birthday, Maya. Above the table hung an enlargement of a black and white photograph in a gold frame. Tell guessed it was one of the last ever taken of her. It was a full-length picture, capturing Maya on a flight of wide stone steps, laughing at the photographer, apparently unprepared but completely relaxed. Compared with the sullen teenager in the adjacent photo, Maya had blossomed into a woman. It was a lovely picture. Tell could easily understand why someone would choose to pray to this particular image.
Bärneflod appeared beside him.
'Horrible, isn't it? A real temple of the dead.'
Just as the paramedics knocked on the door frame and stepped into the apartment, Seja opened her eyes.
'Shit,' she said as she caught sight of Tell.
* * *
Chapter 64
Without bothering to explain himself to his colleagues, Tell went in the ambulance with Seja to the hospital in Borås. She was awake, if somewhat confused, suffering from what turned out to be a severe concussion. Flashing his ID, Tell managed to get a doctor's attention remarkably quickly. The wound on Seja's head would need stitches and probably result in a substantial lump.
They hadn't found anything in the apartment that could have caused the injury. The doctor suggested it might be something rough and blunt, possibly a baseball bat. Seja couldn't remember, and despite gentle pressure from Tell, didn't want to talk about what had happened.
'I saw the shadow of a person, then I felt my head explode. That's all I can say. And that's all I want to say right now. I'm grateful that you came with me, Christian, but you can go now. I'm tired and I know you've got a lot of work on.'
'Wrong time for pride,' he said, mildly reproachful. 'Besides, they can manage perfectly well without me for a couple of hours.'
He didn't have time to say anything else before a sweaty boy dressed as a nursing assistant stuck his head around the door.
'Christian Tell? I have a message…' He leaned forward gasping, his hands on his knees. 'I'm sorry… I've run across the hospital looking for you… You're to ring Karin Beckman. It's obviously
important and, I quote, "bloody urgent".'
Tell ducked out into the corridor, opened his phone and keyed in Beckman's direct line. A nurse walked past, frowning. She pointed meaningfully at a sign on the wall showing a mobile phone with a cross through it. Tell mimed a vague apology.
'Beckman? What's going on?'
'What do you mean, what's going on?'
He realised from the tension in her voice that something must have happened.
'Where are you? Bärneflod said you went to the hospital with Seja Lundberg?'
'Never mind. Carry on,' he said.
An agitated man in a white coat was approaching, and he turned towards the wall with the telephone partly hidden by his lapel.
'Caroline Selander has been arrested in Ystad, at the ferry terminal for Poland, and…' Beckman's voice broke up.'… the police down there have searched the camper van and found…' Her voice disappeared in a rushing noise.
'For fuck's sake!'
'… a knife which could well have been the one she used to kill Molin… It's been washed, but according to forensics they ought to be able to find traces because the handle is made of wood.'
'Good,' said Tell. 'I'll take over when they bring her in. What did they say about the arrest? Did she-'
'Christian,' Beckman broke in, 'Ostergren collapsed in her office two hours ago. They had to send for an ambulance, and she's been taken to hospital.'
Tell stumbled back and leaned against the wall. He felt dizzy and became aware of a bitter dryness in his mouth. When did I last eat properly? he thought vaguely. Was it yesterday I bought that pizza?
'Hello, Christian? Are you still there?'
He pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead. 'I'm still here. How is she?'
'I don't know. The hospital only gives out information to next of kin. Renée had a mobile number for Ann-Christine's husband, but he hasn't picked up since he got the news and took a taxi to the hospital. Oh God. I don't know if I can cope with this.'
It sounded as if she was crying, which surprised Tell. He had never thought Beckman had a close relationship with Ostergren.
Frozen Moment Page 43