He went through the rows of faces and the names under the image, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t manage to finger anyone as a potential suspect, except for Claes Mällvik, who was now dead. He put down the yearbook and rubbed his temples. What had he missed?
His thoughts moved to the sacrifice-like place where he’d found Claes. How could he have been there for more than an hour before the others arrived, and missed the moss under the victim? He had overlooked the moss in the shape of a human body — the true message — and the most important part of the entire installation. Fabian knew it revealed the perpetrator himself in the shadow of Claes.
In the shadow of Claes, he thought to himself again.
He had been looking at the class photo the wrong way. He and all the others had stared themselves blind at what was in the picture, when it was all about what wasn’t in the picture. Fabian could feel his energy returning as he reached for the otoscope. It was meant for examining ears, but it would have to do as a magnifier for now. He turned on its light and held it up to the class picture. This time he knew exactly where to look, and sure enough he was there: the killer stood in the shadow of Claes Mällvik.
He was almost completely hidden behind Claes, so it wasn’t possible to see any part of his face. Tufts of his hair were all that revealed his presence. Fabian and the other officers had thought it was Claes’s hair, but looking at the photo through the otoscope made it very clear that the hair belonged to another person behind Claes. But who?
Fabian had no memory of another person in his class. Could he really have forgotten that there was one more of them? He double-checked the names under the picture: twenty names with no one listed as “not pictured.” He had thought there were twenty people in his class. But in the picture, there were actually twenty-one. Someone had been among them all along, whom no one had noticed, whose name hadn’t even been included under the class picture. Could this really be true, or was it just an optical illusion?
64
ASTRID TUVESSON WALKED AS quickly as she could through the hospital corridor, wishing that the doctor, who was following her like an annoying fly, would be paged and forced to leave her alone.
“This really isn’t a good idea,” he said for the umpteenth time. “Especially considering what happened yesterday.”
“I promise to take it slow.”
“Okay, but in my opinion she’s not strong enough. It is therefore my duty to —”
Tuvesson stopped and turned to face the doctor. “I don’t know how you could have missed this fact, but we are in the middle of an investigation, which has bodies piling up one after the other. For the first time, we have a survivor and if we can help jog her memory then that is my goddamn duty.”
“But why can’t it wait until she —”
“Because another victim could turn up at the morgue, any time. Maybe you’d like to take responsibility if that happens?”
The doctor sighed. “I want to ask her if she’s comfortable with you coming in and questioning her. If she doesn’t want to, it’s a no, okay?”
Tuvesson chose not to respond and kept walking down the corridor. Her patience was gone, and she was bone-tired despite having managed a few hours of sleep while Klippan and Lilja made sure that everyone from the class who claimed to be out of town really had been. All but one of them had been able to provide proof that they were out of the country. According to information given to her team, Seth Kårheden was supposed to be in Spain, but thus far he hadn’t answered his cell. He was also divorced and a bit of a recluse. It was too early to tell whether this meant he was their guy, but either way, he was a suspect.
Tuvesson stopped by the two uniformed cops who were sitting on either side of the entrance. She nodded at them, and one stood up and opened the door to the hospital room where Ingela Ploghed was sitting up in bed, flipping through Hemmets Journal.
“Hi, Ingela, do you remember me? We met yesterday.”
Ingela nodded without looking up from her magazine. Tuvesson took a seat on the chair next to the bed.
“You look like you’re feeling much better today.”
Ingela shrugged.
“Do you remember what we talked about last time I was here?”
Ingela nodded.
“You told me that you were out with some friends, having drinks on the S/S Swea, and all of a sudden you felt like you were under the influence of something other than alcohol. Has anything else come back to you?”
Ingela shook her head but didn’t move her eyes from the knitting pattern in the magazine.
“How would you feel about coming along for a ride in my car? It might help jog your memory.”
Ingela looked up and met Tuvesson’s gaze. “I don’t know.” Her eyes moved to the doctor and back again.
“Ingela, right now you are our best, if not only, chance of identifying and apprehending the man who subjected you to this terrible cruelty.”
“Is it the same person who killed the other people from the class?”
“We don’t know yet. There’s a lot to suggest it’s all one person’s doing, but there are also some things that indicate otherwise. Perhaps with your help, we can get an answer.”
Ingela Ploghed looked down and appeared to vanish back into the world of knitting. Then she closed the magazine and looked up.
*
TUVESSON TURNED ONTO KUNGSTORGET and found an empty spot right in front of the S/S Swea, which was moored broadside to the quay. Ingela Ploghed sat in the passenger seat and looked out at the boat with an expressionless look.
“Are you okay?”
Ingela nodded. Tuvesson climbed out of the car, lifted a wheelchair out of the trunk, unfolded it, and helped Ingela get seated.
“I’ve never been here. Is it a nice place?”
“Sure, I guess it’s... fine.”
“Do you come here often?”
“No, only when I’m out with the girls. It’s sort of become our place.”
Tuvesson pushed the wheelchair across the gangway and into the restaurant. They were met by a man in chef’s uniform, who informed them that the place was closed. She showed him her police badge and explained that they just wanted to look around. The man muttered something about making it quick and vanished into the kitchen.
Ingela pushed herself about in her chair as she looked around the room, which had walls panelled in mahogany and round, shiny brass portholes. Coloured spotlights and speakers were mounted on the ceiling: they were on the dance floor. There was a bar containing rows of liquor bottles along one wall, and a covered blackjack table stood in a corner. This place is shabby and sad, Tuvesson thought, like all nightclubs in daylight.
“Can you tell me a bit about what you remember from the night you were here?”
“I told you everything I remember.”
“Okay, but maybe you can tell me again.”
“We ordered some drinks, and after a while I felt weird and dizzy.”
“Nothing else has come back to you now that we’re here? It doesn’t matter how small. Any little detail can help. Sometimes the tiniest thing is enough to jog all the rest of your memories. What were you wearing, for example?”
”Black jeans and a white blouse, the kind that you sort of tie around your waist.”
“How about your shoes — high heels?”
“I never wear heels. I don’t even know how to walk in them. I was wearing my regular old sandals, like I always do,” Ingela said as she continued to look around.
Tuvesson studied her from a distance. Risk had said Ingela was one of the most well-liked students in his class, and the only one who had stood up for Claes, which must have taken courage and quite a lot of spunk — an image that didn’t fit with the person sitting before her in the least. Aside from the effects of the recent attack, there was something heavy and grey about her entire personality. She looked okay, but her stringy, mousy hair, unfashionable shoes, and makeup-free face suggested that this was a person who had given
up.
“Did you have fun? Before things went wrong, I mean.”
“I don’t know if I would call it fun.” Ingela shrugged. “I mostly just go along with whatever my friends want. You have to hold on to the few you have left, after all.”
“Have you lost many friends?”
“Not lost, exactly. But you know how it is: you drift apart, live different lives, and before you know what’s happened it’s been too long to just call and say hi.”
Tuvesson nodded. She was familiar with the problem; she knew exactly what Ingela was talking about. The difference was that new friends showed up in most people’s lives.
“We might as well go. I don’t remember anything else anyway.” Ingela rolled toward the door and Tuvesson helped her across the gangway.
“Do you remember anything about when you left?”
“No, I told you I... hold on...” She stopped the wheelchair in the middle of the gangway and looked down at the water. “It felt like I was going to fall into the water so I held on to the railing with both hands.”
“Like this?” Tuvesson grasped the railing and Ingela nodded. “And then what? What happened next?”
Ingela considerd the question before speaking. “It was blue. The car was blue. A little darker than that one.” She pointed at a blue car driving by.
“So a blue car stopped outside here?”
“No, it was already parked and someone came and helped me. At first he felt strong and safe because I was so scared of falling in the water, but then I got scared of him.”
“Why were you scared?”
“He was holding me so tight. I tried to get away, but he was too powerful and he shoved me into the car.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I never saw his face.”
“What about his body? Tall, fat, or —”
“I don’t know. Normal.”
“His age?”
Ingela thought about it. “Middle-aged, or... I don’t know. But I remember the blue car.”
“You don’t remember the model?”
“No — all cars look the same these days.”
Tuvesson took out her phone and pulled up a relatively recent picture of Seth Kårheden that Klippan had found online, and showed it to Ingela. “Was this him?”
“That’s Seth Kårheden.”
“Yes, I know, but was he the one who helped you into the car?”
“How should I know? I never saw him.”
Tuvesson gave up and wheeled Ingela back to her car. It was time for their next stop.
65
DUNJA HOUGAARD’S GENITALS STILL HURT, and Kim’s thumb had left a big bruise just above her pubic bone. That was the extent of the physical injury; the real pain came from the degradation, which drilled deeper and deeper into her, even though it had been no more than a vulgar demonstration of pseudo-power by a fettered alpha male.
She had gone through her options. Reporting the sexual assault would mean his word against her own, not to mention she had voluntarily allowed him into her apartment. Forging his signature in a separate incident didn’t exactly help her credibility. The alternative was revenge. She could contact his wife or Ekstra Bladet and tell them what had happened, or she could lure him into a trap.
She discarded each idea and decided that it would be best to bide her time and hold her head high. His goal had been to quash her and put her in her place, so the most effective strategy would be for her to show him that he hadn’t succeeded. She needed to show him that she was stronger than that — stronger than him.
The problem was, he had succeeded. She felt broken, weak, and exhausted at the very thought of holding her head high.
The kettle whistled. She poured the water into the teapot, went to the living room, crawled onto the sofa with her tablet, and turned it on. His face was the first thing she saw: he was more or less staring straight at her; it felt as if he were still in her apartment.
KIM SLEIZNER SPEAKS OUT
So Kim had decided to eat humble pie, that smarmy bastard. She clicked through to the article, where he said in contrite terms that he wanted to apologize first and foremost to his family, but also to the Danish people. He blamed his misstep on being far too overloaded with work, which had led him to neglect his family and seek solace elsewhere. Asked whether he planned to resign, he’d responded:
If they still want me, I’m willing to stay, but in the meantime I need to take a timeout. I’m not the only one having a difficult time with this; it is worse for my family. I’m hoping that you will respect our need to be left alone as we take care of each other. Everyone wants to be a superhero, someone who can handle anything and then some, but at the end of the day, we’re all just humans who have faults and shortcomings. All leaders should remember this, but far too many forget.
Dunja turned off her tablet. She felt like throwing up.
66
“MAYBE SHE JUST GOT tired of the guy and took off,” Klippan suggested to Lilja on their way to the central library through the shade-dappled city park. “I’m sure there are lots of frustrated women out there who want nothing more than to buy a one-way ticket so they can disappear; women who want to get as far away as they possibly can. Not to mention a lot of frustrated men.”
“What about the daughter? Do you think she would have run away from her, too?”
“That depends on how desperate she was.”
They walked into the library, which was dominated by a concentrated sense of order. Lilja took a deep breath and inhaled that unmistakeable scent of books, the smell that only exists in libraries. It took her back in time and felt almost like coming home. As a little girl, she had loved to spend time in this very library. Every Saturday, while her mother was working at Reflex — a high-end fashion boutique down on Järnvägsgatan — she had whiled away the hours here. She had gone to the children’s plays and movies and read almost all the books for kids. The hours flew by, and she hadn’t been bored for a second.
Now and then she would go on an adventure in the large library complex, which was made up of a number of connected buildings. You might find a door to a totally new, unexplored room when you least expected it. Once she had discovered a door in the middle of a shelf — a door she’d walked past many times without noticing. It was unlocked, and it led her into a study room that was empty except for two adults who had been far too busy with each other to notice her. That was the first time she saw it for real. Once she had heard her mom doing it after a drunken night out at the Charles Dickens pub. But watching was different.
She’d recognized both of them. The woman, who was leaning over a table with her panties around her knees, usually sat at the lending desk, and the man who stood behind her, pressing his crotch against her in hard, rhythmic jabs, was the library janitor. His big key ring jangled with each thrust. She’d been neither disgusted nor frightened — she was mostly just fascinated, so she sneaked further into the room to get a better look. Then the man turned around and caught sight of her. She didn’t know if she should flee the room. His face cracked into a smile and he kept thrusting into the woman, harder and harder, and with every thrust her cries became louder and louder.
After a while, the man started groaning too. He pulled his member out of the woman and let it rest in his hand like a heavy piece of meat. His eyes were glued on Lilja the entire time. Even though something inside her told her she should run away, she hadn’t been able to stop watching. To this day, she could still remember how large she thought his penis was. It was hard, veiny, and glistening with the woman’s juices. He had used his free hand to turn the woman over, and he’d pressed her down and put it in her mouth, his eyes still fixed on Lilja.
“How may I help you?”
Lilja woke from her reverie and noticed that the librarian behind the lending desk was the same woman from the secret room, only twenty-five years and probably the same number of kilos later. As Klippan explained their business at the library, she wondered if the janitor stil
l worked there too.
“Elsa Hallin,” the librarian repeated. “Yes, she was here yesterday, but I actually haven’t seen her today.”
“How late did she stay?”
“Let’s see... yesterday was Thursday. She works until four thirty that day, so she probably left around then. Her shift ends early on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she probably went straight home as usual. Oh... actually, she had an appointment to get a facial before going home to fix dinner. She and her husband have a very strict schedule to divide their duties equally.”
“Apparently she never arrived home to make dinner,” Klippan said.
“You didn’t happen to see exactly when she left?” Lilja asked.
“No, sorry.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Around three p.m. yesterday, I think. We were both on a coffee break.”
“Did you notice if she was acting different in any way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was she extra nervous or tense? Did she say anything about feeling threatened, or was there anything that seemed out of the ordinary?”
The librarian thought about it. She was just about to say something when a man approached the desk. “Where is your English-language literature?”
“Just go in and up the stairs to the right.” The man vanished and the librarian leaned over the desk toward the police officers, speaking in a lower voice. “Elsa was in that class, you know, and the rest of us certainly wondered if she was worried, but she didn’t want to talk about it and waved it off, like it didn’t have anything to do with her. But if what the papers say is true — that those guys Jörgen and Glenn were bullies — then I would be worried if I were her.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ll put it this way: I don’t have anything against her personally, quite the opposite, in fact.” She looked over her shoulder. “But there are other people here who don’t feel the same — people who have pretty serious issues with her. A few people have quit because of Elsa.”
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