by Karin Nordin
‘Don’t worry, Ove. I’ll make sure everything is filed properly.’ Esme’s mind was a steel trap when it came to organisation. Were it not for her Kjeld would have been buried beneath paperwork years ago.
Ove glanced back down at the body. That dry wit of his was replaced with abrupt solemnity. ‘It really grates on me, you know. I remember those other women. The ones who didn’t make it. Every time they brought another one in my heart just sank. We threw a party the day you caught that bastard.’
Kjeld frowned. His thoughts had drifted and he was only half paying attention. His phone buzzed again, the sound louder in that confined, windowless space. ‘I know how it looks, but this doesn’t feel like someone impersonating Hägglund to me. This is too planned. Too—’
‘Practised?’
Kjeld shivered at the thought. ‘Let’s hope not.’
‘Why’s that?’ Sixten asked.
‘Because that would mean they’ve done this before,’ Kjeld said, shrugging his shoulders against the cold in the room. ‘And that they might do it again.’
Chapter 10
The bell above the door jingled.
Andrea didn’t look up. Instead she tore open the plastic from the carton of filtered cigarettes the shit-for-brains supplier had wrongly sent to her. She’d ordered Marlboro Reds. They sent her Marlboro Golds. This was the third time this year that the supplier had misread her orders and it was only February. Andrea was beginning to wonder if the man was doing it on purpose because Andrea had refused to stock those cheap plastic earbuds that he offered her on discount before the holidays. Nobody bought earbuds from a convenience store. Not when there was a perfectly decent media store three blocks away and certainly not after eleven p.m. which was when she received most of her business. Cigarettes. Snacks. Low-alcohol cider. That’s all anyone wanted after eleven. Everything else was just to make the shop look stocked.
No, he was probably jerking her around because she’d turned down his sleazy offer of a drink and a night out.
She should have opened a pub. That’s where the real money was. Except Andrea had a record and there was no way she’d ever qualify for a liquor licence. Besides, her wife already complained that she wasn’t home enough as it was.
She stuffed the packs of Golds into the slot on the shelf behind the counter until there wasn’t any room left. Then she shoved the rest of the box underneath the register. She had enough Golds to last a full six months and almost no Reds. She was going to lose a profit there for sure. Maybe she could find another supplier. One with less of a misogynistic grudge. Or, at the very least, one who knew how to read an invoice.
Andrea ripped off the tape from the next box and gave a sigh of relief.
Thank God she’d had the foresight to order extra snus. Personally, the stuff disgusted her. She hated how it contorted people’s faces like a cartoon rabbit when they stuffed it under their upper lip, protruding from their front teeth when they talked. And she hated how it left a gooey brown residue that sometimes dribbled out of the corner of their mouths when their lip loosened and lost its grip. Andrea had spent twenty-odd years in and out of the drug trade – pot, cocaine, heroin – and nothing grossed her out as much as cheap snus slobber.
She shoved the plastic snuff containers onto the empty slots on the shelf.
The doorbell jingled again. This time she looked up. No one there. She craned her head to peer out the window, but the rain streamed down the glass, distorting her view. Weird.
Two hours later Andrea’s shift ended and she headed out into the still-dark morning. She’d lost her driver’s licence a few years ago and never tried to replace it, but thankfully her shitty flat was only a twenty-minute walk from the store. Technically she could probably make it in ten, but Andrea was a dawdler. And she liked to smoke when she walked which, for one reason or another, always slowed her down.
Who was she kidding? She was just avoiding Ingrid. They hadn’t been getting along recently and were bickering all the time. Hell, they were just looking for reasons to hurt each other. The last argument was about Andrea forgetting to bring home a new carton of milk after she’d accidentally bought one too close to the expiration date and it went bad before Ingrid could use it. Andrea didn’t even drink milk. Why couldn’t Ingrid buy her own damn milk?
If she followed the walking path she’d get to her place sooner, but Andrea liked cutting across the football field in Sunnerviksparken. There were two reasons for this. The first was that football fields always reminded her of the good memories of her childhood. Growing up in Strășeni had been a constant struggle for her family, especially when her father lost his job, but her brother always tried to improve her spirits by teaching her how to play football. Which worked until he died of an overdose at seventeen. The second reason was that it took longer to get home and gave her time to think. By “think” she meant stopping to get high. During the day, the park was full of children playing and local sports clubs practising. But once the sun went down it was a hub of degenerate activity. Andrea was simply one of many.
Except today. It was early and it was still raining, albeit less now than when she was stocking the store, and Andrea was alone.
Or, at least, she thought she was.
A figure approached her from across the field. At first she thought it was one of her junkie pals, hoping to bum a hit off her. But as the figure came closer she realised they were much taller than anyone she knew. Not freakishly tall, but leggy. And they didn’t walk with that typical junkie hunch.
She slowed her pace and when the person was in closer view, she stopped.
‘Andrea Nicolescu?’
The stranger was bundled up in a thick winter sweater and wore a balaclava over their face. For a split second, Andrea thought she recognised something about the voice, but she was distracted by the lack of emotion in the stranger’s eyes. There was nothing. Not even a glimmer. Just an empty expression that caused the muscles in Andrea’s stomach to clench involuntarily.
‘Yeah?’ Her hand trembled. She tried to hide her nerves by taking a drag on her cigarette. It didn’t help.
The stranger didn’t reply.
Andrea glared in annoyance. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
The stranger raised their left hand quickly. Andrea flinched, her breath caught in her throat. Then she realised the hand was empty. An open palm. What the hell was this person playing at? But in her distraction she didn’t see the other hand shoot out from the stranger’s side.
Andrea’s heart leapt into her throat. Her instinct was to run, but she was frozen in fear. The cigarette slipped from her fingers and landed in the wet grass. And her last thought as she stared down the barrel of the gun was that she should have just bought the damn milk for Ingrid.
Chapter 11
Alice Pihl’s office was located at the end of a mostly forgotten corridor in the administrative wing of the Gothenburg City Police Department. While the police had always offered some form of counselling services to its officers and staff members, the decision to provide a full-time presence for them was relatively new. Alice was one of two part-time counsellors who took turns manning the oft-underused office. The first time Kjeld had met her was after his confrontation with Nils. All officers were required to attend a mandatory number of therapy sessions following the discharge of a weapon. And Kjeld had not only discharged his weapon, he’d shot a man. He’d shot a serial killer. He’d shot a friend.
When the investigation into Nils’s involvement in the Aubuchon case intensified, Kjeld found himself on the opposite side of his colleagues – suspended while SU looked into the possibility that he was also involved in the brutal murders that had shaken the city to its core. And his time with Alice increased.
Kjeld took a sip of the chamomile tea Alice had steeped for him and glanced at the framed photo of a creamy white cabin in the woods, which sat on the shelf behind her desk. The room was sparsely decorated. There weren’t many distractions aside from an oversized clock near the d
oor. The style of the numbers, with its serif curvatures and pseudo antique colouring, was meant to look old-fashioned. Classic. But Kjeld would bet anything that it was plastic. There was probably an IKEA price sticker on the back. Product of Sweden. Made in China. Alice sat across from him in a single chair that matched the sofa in colour and design.
She said something, but he didn’t hear it.
‘What was that?’
‘I asked if you felt guilty,’ Alice repeated. She had long hair, ironed flat in that late 1960s style. Strawberry blonde was the phrase often used to describe the colour, although Kjeld never did quite understand that. Strawberries were red. Bright red. Like fire engines and sports cars. And blonde was blonde.
She caught him staring and turned her gaze down to her notepad where she scribbled something indecipherable from his position on the two-seater sofa across the room. When she was done she looked up at him from behind her glasses. Angular, thin-rimmed. Rose-coloured with a speckled pattern that brought out the pinprick polka dots on her blouse.
‘Guilty about what?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Is this a guessing game? What are we talking about?’
‘Let’s start with Nils.’
Kjeld crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I don’t feel guilty about shooting Nils.’
‘I didn’t say shooting. I just said Nils in general.’
Kjeld pursed his lips and turned his attention to the window, collecting his thoughts. It was hard to say his ex-partner’s name. He always unconsciously gritted his teeth afterwards. Sometimes hard enough to leave an ache in his jaw. ‘I’m not responsible for what Nils did. Do I wish I’d seen it earlier? Yes, of course. But how can I feel guilty for something I knew nothing about?’
‘You could feel ashamed for having been friends with the man.’
‘It wasn’t a real friendship. It was a façade.’
Alice tilted her head up from her notepad, expression blank. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because real friends don’t kill people.’
Alice wrote something down, but Kjeld couldn’t see what. ‘What about your sister?’
Kjeld winced. ‘I’m not responsible for the actions of others.’
Alice nodded. ‘True, but that doesn’t mean you might not feel responsible. The mind doesn’t often work through trauma in a logical way. When a tragedy occurs, our emotions can cloud our ability to see our role in them clearly.’
‘I can’t change the past. Better to put it behind me and move on.’
‘Assuming, of course, that you can move on.’ And it was clear that Alice didn’t believe he had. But before he could respond, she continued, ‘How’s your relationship with Bengt?’
‘Better.’
Alice pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose in quiet disbelief.
‘It’s strained, but at least we’re talking. Sort of. It’s complicated.’
‘Is it? Or are you just making it complicated?’ Alice set her pen down and looked directly at him. ‘You were in a relationship with someone. You were raising a child together. And then that person found someone else and moved on. There’s nothing complicated about that. The only thing that’s complicated are your feelings about it.’
Kjeld looked away from her and stared at the framed photograph of the cabin on her shelf. It made him think of his father’s home in Varsund. A home that was empty ever since he’d moved his father to a care facility in Östersund. Eventually he’d have to go back to Jämtland and decide what to do with everything that was left behind. The house included. He’d also have to visit his father. He wasn’t looking forward to that.
‘Have you spoken to Bengt about how you feel?’
Kjeld laughed. ‘What good would that do?’
‘It might ease the tension between the both of you. It could also help him to understand why you’ve been having difficulty being a father to Tove. And it might give him the opportunity to see how much your relationship meant to you. Still means to you.’
Kjeld shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. ‘Like you said, Bengt moved on.’
‘Because he had to. You didn’t give him any other choice. But you’re making strides now. You’re doing the right things. That might change his perception of the situation.’
Kjeld returned his focus to Alice. There was nothing but sincerity in her expression. No sympathy. No pity. Just simple honesty. Kjeld appreciated that. He knew he wasn’t immune to emotions. He had his moments of fragility just like anyone else. But he struggled to let it be seen because he hated the response it elicited in people. It made him feel weak and incompetent. The same way he felt when he thought about all those years Nils had spent fooling him.
But Alice might be right. Perhaps it was time to finally open up to Bengt about everything.
‘I’ll think about it.’
The clock on the wall ticked into the new hour. Time was up. Kjeld pulled himself off the couch and grabbed his coat from the rack on the door. It was still wet and had dripped a damp puddle on the carpet.
‘How’s the case going, by the way?’ Alice asked.
Kjeld slipped his arms into his coat. ‘It’s going to be a difficult one.’
‘This is your first time back in the field after your suspension,’ she said. It wasn’t a question, but Kjeld felt like it ought to have been.
He nodded as he buttoned up the front of his coat, idly wondering why he hadn’t listened to Esme about getting his zip-up winter coat from the back of his closet. He supposed he was just anxious for spring. ‘It’s fine. I’m ready to get back out there.’
‘It’s okay if you aren’t, you know.’
‘I am,’ Kjeld said, his half-hearted attempt at a smile falling flat. It was the first thing he’d said to her during their session that didn’t feel like the truth, but he needed to believe it.
Chapter 12
Esme rushed home after adding the pathology report that Ove provided them into the case file and typing up her notes on the events thus far. Normally she would delegate some of those tasks to the other team members, but she saw how shaken up Kjeld had been at the crime scene and wanted to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. As a result, she ended up staying in the office longer than planned and didn’t have time to do anything more than spray on a new layer of deodorant and change her shirt before she hurried out to meet her friends for dinner.
Esme was looking forward to seeing Tilde and Miriam, two friends she’d known since high school, as it had been months since they’d had the opportunity to get together and catch up on each other’s lives. As it was, Esme had missed their last two planned outings because of work, which was always frustrating for Tilde who drove up from Malmö. But as she hurried to make it to the café on time, Esme caught herself thinking about the case they were working on and wondered if she shouldn’t cancel again.
The lack of substantial evidence from Louisa’s crime scene plagued her thoughts. It was still early days, but she was trying to reason what they might have missed in the initial examinations the entire way to the restaurant. Thirty minutes later as she sat at one of the tightly packed tables against the wall in Blackbird café, one of her favourite restaurants and her choice for their long-awaited girls’ night out, she was still thinking about it.
Blackbird wasn’t a traditional dining choice, but it was “very Esme” as her friends said. It was a vegan restaurant with a relaxed and welcoming energy. She’d thought it had been a good choice for their girls’ night out. A comfortable location for a fun, casual dinner. But if she’d known Miriam was going to invite her friend, Britta, from her baby yoga class, she might have chosen differently.
‘What is this exactly?’ Britta poked at the meat substitute with her fork.
‘They call it lyckling,’ Esme said. ‘It’s one of their specialties. They make it from seitan, a wheat gluten. They marinate it in mango, ginger, lime, and coriander and then pan-fry it or heat it up in the oven. It’s really good with the curr
y. Would you like to try some of mine? I ordered extra sauce.’
Britta turned up her nose. ‘No, thank you. I’m on a strict paleo diet from my dietician. Mostly lean meats, fish, and nuts. It’s supposed to help me get my pre-pregnancy figure back.’
Miriam laughed. ‘My youngest is already sixteen months and I still haven’t lost a single pound of my baby weight!’
‘Tell me about it,’ Tilde said. ‘I swear I could be on a diet of water and rice cakes for an entire month and I’d still have this belly. But it’s worth it, isn’t?’
Miriam and Britta nodded in agreement. Esme spread another layer of green curry mix on her ciabatta and took another bite. She didn’t really know what to say.
‘But it is nice to get an evening to ourselves for once.’ Miriam smiled.
Esme noticed then that Miriam looked a little older around the eyes than the last time she’d seen her, but she still exuded that vibrant energy she’d had when they were growing up. She wasn’t jealous, but she did feel a sense of misplaced yearning. Like she was missing out on something that she’d been actively trying to avoid.
‘It’s so difficult to schedule things when you have children. I practically had to beg my husband to give me an evening off.’ Britta waved over the waitress and ordered a glass of wine.
‘Is merlot on the paleo diet?’ Miriam grinned.
Britta shrugged. ‘It’s made from grapes.’
Esme had to force herself to laugh with the others in response.
‘I’m just glad we were finally able to find a day that we all had free,’ Esme replied. She felt a little left out of the conversation, but tried not to let it show. All of this talk about children made her think of the anguish in Abel Karlsson’s eyes when he realised his daughter was dead and Esme found herself staring aimlessly into the ceramic ramekin that held her extra curry dressing. Like Kjeld, she’d hoped for the Karlssons’ sake that the body wasn’t Louisa’s, but even if that had been the case it wouldn’t have changed things. If it hadn’t been Louisa it would have been someone else’s loved one who was murdered. Either way someone would be hurt. And either way Esme would still have to find the killer.