On the contrary.
A crisis meeting was taking place.
Yet another of their mates had been badly beaten up the previous evening. Benseman, the northerner, the guy who had read a hell of a lot of books. He had broken bones all over his body. His spleen had ruptured and the doctors had struggled all night to stop the internal bleeding. The guy in charge of reception had been to the hospital earlier in the morning.
‘He’s going to survive… but we won’t be seeing him here for quite a while.’
People nodded a little. In sympathy. Tense. This wasn’t the first attack of recent times, in fact it was the fourth, and the victims had all been homeless people. Rough sleepers, as they had been called in the papers. And it had been the same each time. Some youths had sought out one of them at a well-known meeting place, and beaten them up. A really nasty beating. And they also filmed the whole bloody thing and then posted it on the Net.
That was almost the worst part of it.
So fucking humiliating. As if they were nothing more than punchbags in a ‘reality’ documentary about violence as entertainment.
And almost as hard to deal with was the fact that all four had been sellers of Situation Sthlm. Was that just a coincidence? There were about 5,000 homeless people in Stockholm, and only a tiny proportion of them were sellers.
‘Are they just picking on us?’
‘Why the fuck would they do that!’
Of course there was no answer to that. Yet. But it was unpleasant enough anyway to frighten the group in the room – and they were already shaken.
‘I’ve got hold of some teargas spray.’
That came from Bo Fast. They all looked at him. Everybody knew Bo, his name sounds pretty stupid and when pronounced as one word it meant something completely different, bofast means ‘permanent resident’. They had given up teasing him about that years ago. Now Bo held up his powerful spray for all to see.
‘You know it’s illegal,’ said Jelle.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘A spray like that.’
‘So what? How legal is it to beat people up?’
Jelle didn’t have a good answer to that. He was standing by a wall with Arvo Pärt next to him. Vera stood a bit to one side. For once, she had kept her mouth shut. She had taken it really badly when Pärt phoned and told her what had happened to Benseman just a few minutes after she and Jelle had left the park. She had been convinced that she could have prevented the assault if only she had stayed behind. But Jelle didn’t think so.
‘What the hell would you’ve done?’
‘Fought them! You know how I floored those guys who tried to grab our mobiles out in Midsommarkransen!’
‘But they were pissed out of their minds, and one of them was almost a midget.’
‘Well, in that case you’d have had to give me a hand, wouldn’t you?’
Now Vera didn’t say a word. She bought a bundle of magazines; Pärt bought his bundle, while Jelle could only afford five copies.
They went out onto the street together and suddenly Pärt started to cry. He leaned against the rough façade and put a dirty hand up to his face. Jelle and Vera looked at him. They understood. He had been there and had seen it all and not been able to lift a finger.
Now it was all coming flooding back.
Vera gently put her arm around Pärt’s shoulders and bent his head down towards her shoulder. She knew how frail he was.
His real name was Silon Karp and he was from Eskilstuna, the son of two Estonian refugees. But during a nocturnal heroin trip in an attic office on Brunnsgatan, he had caught sight of an old newspaper with a picture of the shy composer and been struck by the amazing likeness. Between Karp and Pärt. He saw his double, quite simply. And during the next fix he had slipped into his double, and two became one. He was Arvo Pärt. Since then, he had called himself Pärt too. And seeing as the company he kept couldn’t care less what people were really called, he became Pärt.
Arvo Pärt.
He had worked as a postman for many years and had delivered letters in Stockholm’s southern suburbs, but weak nerves and a craving for opiates had dragged him down into what was now his rootless existence. As a homeless magazine seller for Situation Sthlm.
Now he stood here crying against One-eyed Vera’s shoulder, inconsolable, he cried because of what had happened to Benseman, because of how bloody awful everything was, all the violence. But most of all he cried because life was the way it was.
Vera stroked his matted hair and looked up at Jelle, and Jelle looked down at his bundle of newspapers.
Then he left.
* * *
Olivia turned in through the college gates at Sörentorp and parked her car immediately to the right. It stuck out a bit, among the dark grey saloon cars of various types. She had nothing against that. She glanced up at the sky and wondered whether she ought to put the roof up, but decided against it.
‘What if it starts raining?’
Olivia turned around. Ulf Molin. A guy the same age as her, and in her class too. A guy who had a remarkable talent for always turning up in Olivia’s vicinity without her actually noticing. Now he had appeared behind her car. I wonder if he’ll follow me, she thought.
‘Well then I’d have to put the roof up.’
‘In the middle of a lesson?’
This sort of totally meaningless conversation got on her nerves. She took her bag and started to walk off. Ulf followed her.
‘Have you seen this?’
Ulf was by her side holding a swish tablet.
‘It’s that assault last night, the rough sleeper.’
Olivia took a look and saw a bleeding Benseman being hit by several kicks to various parts of his body.
‘It’s posted on that same site again,’ said Ulf.
‘Trashkick?’
‘Yes.’
They had discussed the site the previous day, at college; everyone had been very upset. One of the teachers had explained how the first film and a web link had been posted on 4chan.org, a site that was visited by millions of young people. The film and the site had been flagged pretty soon and removed, but a lot of people had already seen the link and so it spread. The link went to the trashkick.com site.
‘But can’t they close it down?’
‘It’s probably hosted by an obscure web hotel, not entirely easy for the police to track down and close.’
The teacher had told them that.
Ulf put away the tablet.
‘That’s the fourth film they’ve posted now… it’s so fucking sick.’
‘What, that they get beaten up, or that it’s out on the Net?’
‘Well… both of them.’
‘And which do you think is worse?’
She knew that she shouldn’t start up a conversation, but they had about two hundred metres to the college building and Ulf was going the same way. Besides she liked to make people say what they thought. She didn’t really know why. It might just have been a way to keep her distance.
Attack.
‘I think it’s all connected,’ said Ulf. ‘They beat people up so they can post it on the Net, and if there wasn’t a site to post it on then perhaps they wouldn’t beat them up.’
Well done, Olivia thought. A long sentence, coherent thinking, sensible reflection. If did a bit less sneaking around and a bit more thinking then he would definitely rise a couple of notches in her estimation, and she had her standards. Besides, he was pretty trim and half-a-head taller than her, with dark brown curly hair.
‘So what are you doing this evening? Fancy a beer or something?’
Ah, now he was back at his old rating.
The classroom was nearly full. There were twenty-four students in Olivia’s class, divided into four basic groups. Ulf wasn’t in her group. Åke Gustafsson, their tutor, was standing beside the blackboard. A man in his early fifties with a long police career behind him. He was very popular in college. Some people thought he went on a bit. Olivia tho
ught he was charming. She liked his eyebrows, the bushy type which seem to have a life of their own. Now he was holding up a file in one hand. There was a whole pile of them on the table next to him.
‘Since we are going to go our separate ways in a few days, I’ve thought up something – and this is a bit outside the course – something that you could do during the summer holiday, and it’s completely voluntary. This is a file with a number of old unsolved Swedish murders, I put it together myself, my idea is that you can choose one of them and make your own analysis of the investigation, look at what could have been done differently with modern police methods, DNA, geographic analysis, electronic surveillance, and whatnot. This is a little exercise in how cold cases can be tackled. Any questions?’
‘So it isn’t compulsory?’
Olivia glanced at Ulf. He always had to ask something just for the sake of asking. Åke had already said that it was voluntary.
‘It’s completely voluntary.’
‘But it might boost our marks a bit, right?’
When the lesson was over, Olivia went to the table and picked up a file. Åke approached and nodded at the folder in her hand.
‘Your dad worked on one of those cases.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes, I thought it’d be a bit of fun to include it.’
Olivia settled down on a bench some distance from the college building, next to three men. All three were silent – they were made of bronze. One of them was Handsome Harry, a notorious conman from the old days.
Olivia had never heard of him.
The other two were Tumba-Tarzan and Constable Björk. The latter had a police cap in his lap. Somebody had balanced an empty beer can on top of it.
Olivia opened her file. She hadn’t been intending to spend any time on college work during the hols, and this was voluntary too. But it got her out of the classroom so she wouldn’t have to listen to Ulf harping on about nothing.
Now she was curious though.
Her dad had been involved in one of the cases.
She quickly thumbed through the file. The summaries were very brief. A few facts about methods, places and dates, a bit about the investigations. She was quite used to police terminology. She had heard her parents discussing legal cases at the kitchen table throughout her childhood. Her mother, Maria, was a criminal lawyer.
She found the case almost at the end of the list. Arne Rönning had been one of the people in charge of the investigation.
Detective chief inspector in the national crime squad.
Dad.
Olivia looked up and let her gaze take in the view. The college was situated in the midst of almost unspoilt countryside, with large well-kept lawns and beautiful woodland areas that stretched right down to the bay, Edsviken. An extremely serene setting.
Her mind was on Arne.
She had loved her dad, deeply, and now he was dead. And he’d only made it to fifty-nine. That wasn’t fair. And now the thoughts were back. The ones she had suffered from, often, and which she could almost experience as a physical pain. The thoughts about her betrayal.
Her betrayal of him.
They had been extremely close all through her teens, and then she had let him down when he suddenly fell ill. She’d gone off to Barcelona to study Spanish, work, chill out… have some fun.
I just ran away, she thought. Although I didn’t realise it at the time. I did a bunk because I just couldn’t get to grips with the fact that he was ill, and that he could get worse – that he could actually die.
But he did. When Olivia wasn’t there. When she was still in Barcelona.
She could still remember the phone call from her mum.
‘Dad died during the night.’
Olivia rubbed her eyes gently and thought about her mum. About the time after her dad’s death when she had returned from Barcelona. A dreadful time. Maria had been devastated and was locked up inside her own grief. And that grief had no room for Olivia’s guilt and anguish. Instead they had tiptoed around each other, not saying anything, as if they were afraid the whole world would shatter if they gave voice to their emotions.
Eventually, things settled down, of course, but it was still something they steered well clear of talking about.
That was putting it mildly.
She really did still miss her dad.
‘Have you found a case?’
It was Ulf, who had materialised in front of her in his own unique way.
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
Olivia looked down at her file.
‘A case from the west coast.’
‘When was it?’
‘Eighty-seven.’
‘Why did you choose that one?’
‘Have you found anything? Or perhaps you’re not going to bother? I mean, it wasn’t compulsory.’
Ulf gave a slight smile and sat down on the bench.
‘Does it bother you if I sit here?’
‘Yes.’
Olivia was quite good at speaking her mind. Besides, she wanted to concentrate on the case she had just picked out.
The case that her dad had worked on.
It was a rather spectacular case, as it turned out. Åke had written such an interesting summary that Olivia wanted to know more straight away.
She drove to the National Library and went down into the basement to the reading room with all the old newspapers on microfilm. The woman behind the counter showed her how to find things on the shelves and which microfilm readers she could use. Everything was arranged meticulously. Every single newspaper from the Fifties onwards was now on microfilm. All she had to do was to choose which newspaper and which year, sit down at the reader and get going.
Olivia started with a local newspaper that covered the island of Nordkoster. Strömstads Tidning. She had the date and the location of the murder from the file. When she launched the search function it didn’t take long for the headlines to fill the screen: MACABRE MURDER ON ISLAND SHORE. The article had been written by a fairly excited journalist but did actually provide some hard facts about the time and place.
She was hooked.
She spent the next few hours working her way through the regional papers, Bohuslänningen and Hallandsposten, and then widening her scope bit by bit. The Göteborg newspapers. The Stockholm-based evening papers. The big national dailies.
And she made notes.
Feverishly.
Major features as well as details.
The case had really attracted nationwide attention. For several reasons. It was a deliberately brutal murder, the victim was a young pregnant woman, and the perpetrators were unknown. They hadn’t got any suspects. No motives had come to light. They didn’t even have a name for the victim.
The case had remained an unsolved mystery ever since.
Olivia became all the more fascinated. Both by the case as a phenomenon, but above all by the murder itself. It had taken place on a moonlit night in the Hasslevikarna coves on the island of Nordkoster. A diabolical method of murdering a naked pregnant woman.
With the tide.
The rising tide?
That was quite simply torture, Olivia thought. An extreme form of drowning. Slow, hellish.
Why?
Why that spectacular method?
Olivia’s imagination was in overdrive. Were there links to the occult? Tidal worshippers? Moon worshippers? The murder had taken place late in the evening. Was it some sort of sacrifice? A rite? A sect? Were they going to cut out the fetus and sacrifice it to some lunar god?
No, mustn’t get carried away, she thought.
Olivia turned off the reader, leant back and looked down at her full notebook: a mishmash of facts and speculation, truths and guesses, and more or less credible hypotheses by various crime reporters and criminologists.
According to one ‘reliable source’, traces of a drug had been found in the victim’s body. Rohypnol. Rohypnol is a classic rape drug, Olivia thought. But wasn’t she in the final sta
ges of pregnancy? Had she been sedated? Why?
According to the police, a dark cloth coat had been found up in the sand dunes. Hairs matching the woman’s had been found on the coat. Where were the rest of the clothes if that was her coat? Had the murderers taken them but forgotten the coat?
They had tried to ascertain the woman’s identity via Interpol but this had led to nothing. Strange that nobody missed a pregnant woman, she thought.
The police described the woman as between twenty-five and thirty years old, possibly of Latin American extraction. What was meant by ‘Latin American extraction’? How large an area did that cover?
The entire sequence of events had been witnessed by a nine-year-old boy named by a local reporter as Ove Gardman. The boy had run home and told his parents. Where was he today? Could she get in touch with him?
According to the police, the woman was unconscious but still alive when Gardman’s parents came to the beach. They tried to resuscitate her but when the air ambulance arrived the woman was dead. How far away did the Gardmans live? she wondered. How long did it take for the helicopter to get there?
Olivia got up. Her brain was battered with impressions and reflections. Halfway up, she almost lost her balance.
Her blood pressure had fallen through the floor.
She sank down into the car on Humlegårdsgatan outside the library and felt her stomach protesting. She dealt with that by taking a PowerBar from the glove compartment. She had been sitting for several hours in the library reading room and was rather surprised when she realised how late it was. Time had simply vanished down there. Olivia glanced at her notebook. She realised just how fascinated she had become by the old beach case. Not just because Arne had worked on it, that was an extra fillip, but for all its remarkable ingredients. Above all, one specific detail had fastened in her mind: they had never established the identity of the murdered woman. She was, and remained, unknown. For all those years.
That spurred Olivia on.
She wanted to know more.
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