Who Watcheth

by Helene Tursten

  “I don’t know yet, but hopefully this Gisela Bagge will be able to tell me more.”

  Irene wanted to be there. She had met Gisela Bagge during the investigation into Sophie’s death, although Gisela had had a different title back then, if Irene remembered correctly.

  “Listen, I’m going to call the bank and see if I can reschedule the meeting. After all, I know quite a lot about Angelika as a result of Sophie’s case; I also met Gisela Bagge back then. It might be a good idea if I come along; judging from this photograph, it looks as if a lot has happened to Angelika over the past five years.”

  “If you can’t change the appointment at the bank, you go to the House of Dance and I’ll go and talk to the banker. I’m guessing the personal banking thing didn’t work out too well for Angelika,” Sara said with a smile.

  Irene looked down at the photograph again. What the hell had happened?

  Nothing much had changed at the House of Dance. Irene walked into the spacious entrance hall that held a cafeteria and a cloakroom. The students’ changing rooms were at the far end of the hall, beyond the locked glass doors leading to the classrooms. Several young people were sitting, chatting and drinking coffee. Most of them looked exactly the way one would expect: tattoos, piercings. In their black clothes they reminded Irene of a flock of crows, huddled around the tables.

  Irene realized she was looking for Lina, the little dancer with the long, shocking-pink hair who had taken the role of the princess in The Fire Dance. But none of the girls was Lina. She must be at least twenty-four by now. She must be a hardworking dancer on her way to a brilliant career, Irene thought.

  Without hesitation she headed for the door marked administration and rang the bell. After a while a metallic voice from the speaker next to the door asked who she was. She was buzzed through, and went up a flight of stairs to reach the admin department.

  The room was equipped with a reception desk and several chairs. A slim woman was standing in the middle of the floor. Irene couldn’t see her face, because of the light from the tall windows, but she recognized her anyway. Irene remembered thinking there was something ethereal about this tiny woman the first time they had met. Gisela had been the only one among all those they had interviewed who had wept over Sophie’s tragic fate. Perhaps she had been right when she said she was Sophie’s only friend.

  They shook hands and Gisela led the way into the small office where they had sat five years earlier. Irene felt a faint shudder. The past was making its presence felt, and now she was back here to find out what had happened to Angelika.

  Gisela was still beautiful. Her blonde hair was cut in a short, flattering style. The lines around the bright blue eyes might possibly be a little deeper, but the years had been kinder to Gisela than to her former colleague Angelika.

  Irene briefly outlined why she had asked for the meeting. She got straight to the point and described the incidents that had affected her family lately, and she explained that Angelika was definitely responsible. When she had finished, Gisela sat in silence for a long time before she spoke.

  “Harassing you and your family . . . no, that doesn’t surprise me. Angelika has become so . . . full of hatred. Everyone is against her. She already felt that way when she resigned. She had plenty to say to me, too.” She paused, her expression grave.

  “We know she’s had mental health issues over the last couple of years. Is that why she stopped working here?” Irene asked.

  Gisela gazed at her for a moment. “She might have been sick back then, but she started behaving very oddly. The money . . . she partied hard. Came to work under the influence, and I don’t just mean booze. This was after Frej had been diagnosed. According to the doctors he was suffering from a serious personality disorder. Angelika was furious and insisted there was nothing wrong with her son. She had managed to deal with Sophie’s death, but the idea that her darling little Frej . . . she couldn’t handle that at all.”

  “When did she resign?”

  “Five years ago come Christmas. She came rushing in here on the last day of term, complaining about everything and everybody. No one in this place was worth jack shit. We had never appreciated her work, or realized what an outstanding dancer she was. I was totally incompetent, and . . . well, you get the picture. When she ran out of words she knocked everything off my desk onto the floor, and the contents of my bookshelves went the same way. When she’d finished she simply resigned, and she’s never set foot in the place since.”

  “Could she just do that? Give up work, I mean? I know she inherited quite a lot of money from Sophie, but not enough to enable her to retire. And she had big plans for the house in Änggården.”

  Gisela nodded. “She was going to marry the guy she was with . . . I can’t remember his name. As you say, they were renovating the house in Änggården, but things didn’t quite work out the way Angelika had intended. Her rich boyfriend, who wasn’t exactly in the first flush of youth, caught her red-handed with Marcelo Alves. He simply turned on his heel and walked away. Marcelo told me himself. He also said that Angelika had started using cocaine in increasingly large quantities and scared him with her outbursts.”

  “Is Marcelo still here?”

  “No. He left, too. I think he’s living in England now.”

  The answer was brief, and Irene remembered her suspicions about Gisela and the handsome Brazilian. Tactfully she moved on.

  “So Angelika was left to her own devices with the project in Änggården.”

  “Yes. As I said, I heard she was partying hard, pretending everything was fine. She carried on with the renovation as long as the money lasted, but when it ran out, that was the end of that. She had great difficulty selling the house because it was far from finished. The rumor was that she sold it at a considerable loss. Frej was in bad shape, and she had reached crisis point . . . it was all too much. She was admitted to a psychiatric unit, and I believe she’s been in and out ever since.”

  “You haven’t seen her since she resigned?”

  “No.”

  Without another word Irene took out the photograph of Angelika and placed it on the desk in front of Gisela, who stared at it for some time.

  “Oh my God, how terrible! Poor Angelika.”

  “She’s certainly changed.”

  “Could it be due to her medication?”

  “Possibly. I don’t know much about that kind of thing, but I do know that certain psychiatric drugs can lead to weight gain. And of course she’s been a junkie, which can affect the metabolism. And I’m guessing she used to drink a lot, too.”

  “Absolutely. The number one calorie bomb. As a dancer you learn to avoid the pitfalls of alcohol at an early stage. It impairs your mental and physical capabilities, but worst of all . . . you get fat. That’s a mortal sin for a dancer!”

  Gisela managed a little smile. She looked as if she had never drunk anything but fresh spring water in her entire life. Somewhere in the back of Irene’s mind her guilty conscience came to life. Was it that bottle of wine on the weekends that was making her jeans feel tight? Immediately she pushed aside the thought.

  “Have you had any contact with Frej over the last five years?”

  “No. He gave up dancing. He was training to be a photographer, but all that stopped. When Frej realized that the police knew he was the one who had set fire to the cottage where his father died . . . that’s when he got really sick. I assume he’d suppressed the whole thing. He sank into a deep depression, and sometimes he was completely manic. Apparently mental illness ran in his father’s side of the family. I never noticed anything when he was growing up. He always seemed bright and cheerful when he was here at the House of Dance. But he was carrying it all inside; the poor kid must have been such a mess.”

  Irene knew that Gisela had known Angelika’s children for many years. Both children had starting dancing at a young age, and Gisela had been the
ir teacher. Sophie loved dance and had remained in that world, while Frej had chosen his own path.

  Gisela looked at Irene. “But surely you must have been aware of all this? It was Felipe who told me—he must have mentioned it to you?”

  “Katarina said a couple of things, but of course she only knew what Felipe told her, and he was only in touch with Frej, not Angelika. I had no idea what had happened to her. Felipe didn’t see Frej at all during that last year. Frej refused to have anything to do with him. He made it clear he didn’t even want Felipe to call or write. Felipe hasn’t said much, but I think he was very worried.”

  “He was. We spoke quite often . . . Frej was a mutual friend, after all.”

  For a moment Irene wasn’t sure how to proceed. It struck her that she didn’t know whether Felipe had attended Frej’s funeral. Katarina definitely hadn’t been there; she would have said something about it to Irene if she had. But Felipe?

  “Did you go to Frej’s funeral?” she asked.

  “No. Angelika didn’t even post a death notice. I’m guessing she was the only one there. Felipe and a few other old friends from the House of Dance put a little notice in the newspaper: I think it said ‘In memory of our friend Frej,’ but there was no date of death. I don’t think they knew when he died.”

  Suddenly Irene saw a face before her: sparkling blue eyes, streaked blond hair and a charming smile. Frej had been just twenty-seven years old when he took his own life. She felt a lump in her throat.

  “Such a tragedy,” she said sadly.

  Gisela nodded. “The whole of that family’s story is a tragedy.”

  Sara held up a copy of an article that had been cut out of Göteborgs-Posten on May 15, 2004. “Woman goes crazy in bank.”

  “Do you remember this?” she asked.

  “No. Angelika?” Irene guessed.

  “Exactly. I think Tony Barkén, the personal banking advisor, had cause to regret his choice of profession that day. He gave the newspaper the whole story because nothing comes under the rule of confidentiality. It’s all in the article.”

  “Tell me. I’m feeling lazy today,” Irene said, leaning back in her chair.

  Sara glanced at the article once more before beginning her account.

  “Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson walked into the branch of the Nordea bank on Axel Dahlström Square. Although it actually says ‘a forty-five-year-old woman.’ She walked straight past the line and demanded to speak to her personal advisor, who happened to be this poor guy, Tony Barkén. The idea of making an appointment like everyone else didn’t occur to her; she wanted to speak to Tony, pronto! In order to keep her quiet, Tony took her into his office, where Angelika informed him that she wanted to borrow three million kronor right away. She was offering the house in Änggården as security. Tony had to tell her this was impossible, as it was already mortgaged to the hilt. At that point she lost it. She started screaming and throwing things around. They had to call the police to get rid of her.”

  “Was she charged?”

  “No. Her mental state was so fragile that she was sent to a secure psychiatric unit. That was the first time, and she’s been back there several times since then.”

  Irene nodded without saying anything. That family really had fallen apart. Would they have survived if she and her colleagues hadn’t uncovered the truth about the fire in 1989? Would Frej and Angelika have escaped mental illness? She knew the answer.

  It would only have been a matter of time before what really happened caught up with them. It would have festered inside them and sooner or later the abscess would have burst, and the truth would have come pouring out like a stinking river of pus. Irene had witnessed the process many times during her years as a homicide investigator.

  The truth. The one thing everyone fears. The one thing people will do anything to hide, even to the point of committing murder. But it doesn’t help. The truth always comes out in the end. Only then can the victims gain redress.

  You feel safe, two floors up. You think no one can see what you are doing. But I can see. And I am very disappointed in you. I am sitting on the hill opposite with my binoculars, watching over you. The dense cover of the trees and bushes protects me. The darkness is my friend. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.

  I am the one who watcheth in the darkness.

  We have an agreement, you and I. But you have broken it. Therefore, you must be ready to accept your punishment.

  The punishment is death.

  22.

  Freshly showered, surrounded by a faint scent of expensive aftershave, those brown eyes bright and sparkling, Matti Berggren looked like the very personification of an ad for some miracle multivitamin. The impression was reinforced by the fact that Irene felt like his polar opposite: someone who needed a powerful shot of vitamins. In the absence of a magic potion, she took a deep swig of coffee instead, which immediately made her feel a little better.

  “We found Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson’s fingerprints on the sabotaged brakes of the bicycle belonging to Katarina Huss, and on the urn that was thrown through Irene’s window. In short, we’ve nailed fru Malmborg-Eriksson,” Matti said cheerfully, with an encouraging nod to Irene.

  Irene tried to respond with a smile, but the best she could do was a weary grimace. There’s too much going on at the same time, she thought. I can’t cope with all this. In spite of the fact that they had slept in their own beds back at the house last night, she still felt exhausted. Delayed reaction. With a huge effort she dragged herself away from her own thoughts and tried to concentrate on what her colleagues were discussing.

  “. . . good to know that we’ve got the person who’s been harassing the Huss family. We can’t question Angelika this week, according to her doctor, but she’s in a secure unit. Which means we can focus on the Package Killer,” Tommy said.

  Thylqvist was still in Stockholm but would be returning on a late-evening train. So tomorrow we will be able to enjoy her snippy comments again, Irene thought.

  Suddenly she became aware of her own thoughts. What the hell am I doing? All these negative emotions when I ought to be happy! New dog, new place to live, better finances in the very near future—everything has worked out perfectly for Krister. And Angelika is safely locked away. Why am I complaining? She gave herself a mental kick in the butt and told herself to get her act together.

  “Any more leads?” Tommy asked Matti. Tommy also looked slightly the worse for wear, sitting next to the young technician who was bursting with energy. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s had a hard time, Irene thought with a vague feeling of guilt.

  “. . . not really. The twine is a perfectly ordinary washing line; it’s made in Taiwan and imported by Polyplast Sweden in Stenungsund. It’s sold all over the world. The killer has made sizable loops at either end so that he can get a better grip, and to stop the twine from slipping out of his hands when he strangles his victims. He didn’t do that on his first attempt back in March, and . . . the victim survived.”

  “Marie Carlsson,” Sara quickly supplied.

  Matti gave her a grateful smile, and Sara blushed to the very tips of her ears. Wow, things are looking up, Irene thought, feeling a warm glow.

  “Can you describe these loops?” she asked.

  “They’re just ordinary granny knots—no fancy sailors’ knots or Boy Scout specialties. And the twine is too thin for us to be able to secure any prints. He probably used gloves anyway—we didn’t find any prints on the plastic or the tape.”

  “What about the oil on the outside of the plastic?” Hannu wondered.

  “Thin engine oil. We’ve sent off samples to try to establish the manufacturer, but it could be a while before we get the results,” Matti reported in the same optimistic tone of voice.

  “And the soap?” Irene asked without much hope.

  “Nothing y
et,” Matti replied as expected.

  Irene wished the reality were more like the American CSI series, where people inserted samples into machines and received precise answers right away: place and date of manufacture, sometimes even the name of the person who had made the item. All within minutes. In Göteborg it didn’t quite work like that. All they could do was wait patiently for the results from overworked lab technicians. It took a long time—sometimes months.

  “Do we actually have any other suspects, apart from that nut job Daniel Börjesson?” Jonny asked.

  “Not really. And we have no evidence whatsoever against Daniel. I’m not sure if he is a nut job, as you put it, or just very odd,” Irene replied.

  “Can you run through what we do have?” Tommy requested.

  Irene finished her coffee as she tried to organize her thoughts.

  “His name is the only one that’s come up in the investigation, but that’s because he was the man who asked Marie Carlsson a couple of strange questions at the ICA Maxi store, and because he didn’t smell too good. We can’t even be one hundred percent certain that was Daniel, to be honest. He’s a loner, and he doesn’t seem to have much contact with the outside world. His grandmother took care of all the practical stuff. It’s clear there’s something wrong with him. When his grandmother died he lost his way for a while. I’m guessing that’s why he was on sick leave, and now he’s claiming benefits. He’s a general laborer, and he used to make a living doing temporary gardening jobs. He’s physically strong, and as I said, he’s very odd.”

  Tommy and the others seemed to be thinking over what she had said, and when nobody spoke, Tommy gave her a brief nod and said, “What would suggest that it might not be him?”

  “When Jonny and I went to his apartment, he didn’t stink. Okay, he didn’t exactly smell of roses—more a mixture of sweat and dish soap. I saw a bottle of Yes in the bathroom, which indicates that he probably was the guy who asked Marie Carlsson which brand was best.”