Slowly We Die

by Emelie Schepp

  “A pullover sweater??” Per asked. “I thought he only wore button-downs.”

  “Who?”

  “Karl.”

  “Yes,” she said, taking the bag, “but...not since he got sick. I’m sorry, Per, I really have to go now.”

  She moved quickly toward the exit, feeling Per’s searching gaze on her back and hearing him call: “Say hi to your father for me.”

  * * *

  Henrik Levin tried to ignore the sweet smell coming from the woman opposite him at the interrogation table.

  “Rita,” he said, and Rita Olin, clearly completely lost in thought, looked up quickly, as if he had just come into the room and surprised her.

  Her outfit was simple, and she seemed mature in her manner. Definitely not the type to overdramatize, exaggerate or crave attention for the sake of it.

  “Importing scented candles,” she said, pushing her glasses farther up the bridge of her nose.

  “Scented candles,” Henrik repeated.

  “Yes. I’ve always dreamed of owning my own business,” she said. “So I quit my job in pharmaceutical sales, and my husband and I began importing children’s clothing. Then we got into home decorating products of various sorts, and that went fairly well. But we noticed that what always sold well were our candles, so we decided to focus solely on those. Our business is called LLJ, for Light, Love and Joy.”

  “So you both work with that now?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “You have an accent,” Henrik said.

  She laughed.

  “Yes, I’ve traveled a lot over the past few years. That might be why.”

  “Where do you travel to?”

  “Mostly to China, actually, where the factory is. My husband and I are going there in a week.”

  “So you’re married?”

  “For twenty-six years.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Adult children; four boys and all of them have moved out, thankfully.”

  Henrik felt a headache starting behind his eyes. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and knew it would be a while before he would be able to get something in his stomach. Two more people to question after this. And then a conversation with Katarina Vinston’s boss, Eva Holmgren. He didn’t have time to continue the small talk.

  “Let’s take it from the beginning,” he said, asking her to tell him what had happened from the time she got to Katarina Vinston’s house until the police arrived.

  “I can do that,” she said.

  Henrik listened carefully as Rita described how she found the cat outside her house, recognized it, and around eight o’clock in the morning had gone to Katarina Vinston’s house. She had rung the doorbell and waited a few minutes for Katarina to open the door, and when she didn’t, she had unlocked the door and gone in.

  “I have one of her spare keys, and she has one of ours.”

  “It says here that you didn’t see anyone else in the house while you were there.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “But I never went farther in than the hallway, from where you can see into the bedroom, and that was where she...well, sat. I turned around immediately. I couldn’t stay, not even for a second. It was completely horrible.”

  “I understand. And when you left, was there anything else you noticed?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay,” Henrik said, feeling how his shoulders sank.

  “But it depends on what you mean by ‘anything else.’ The mailman was driving past.”

  “Yes, we’ve talked about the mailman.”

  “And then there was the Audi.”

  “The Audi?”

  “Yes, it was around yesterday morning. But your typical Audi maybe isn’t so suspicious?”

  * * *

  Jana maintained a steady grip on the bag of clothes. She wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible and walked with determined steps toward her apartment.

  As she turned down Skolgatan, she noticed a car with two men in it. They were drinking coffee. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up when they noticed her. They seemed to follow her with their eyes. There could have been a number of reasons why they were looking at her, of course, but the only thing she could think of was that they were on a stakeout.

  With her gaze straight ahead, she continued to walk, all the while listening for the sound of a car door being opened or closed.

  She stepped into the hustle and bustle of Knäppingsborg, but instead of going straight home, she rounded the building, stopped and looked around from behind the corner.

  She’d been right.

  The men were no longer in the car, but she didn’t see them anywhere. A tall, blonde woman with coarse features walked past. She hunched her shoulders to appear shorter and not stick out. A bike messenger pedaled by in a red shirt and wearing a helmet and sunglasses. Farther down were two younger men in ball caps. Behind them, she suddenly caught sight of the two men from the car again. They had their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the ground. They were walking away from her.

  She gave a sigh of relief, rounded the corner and continued home. The whole time, she wondered what was going to happen to her. Why did she think that the police would have put officers on her? If they suspected she was hiding Danilo, they would have kicked in the door to her apartment—not sat in a car and drank coffee.

  She went up the stairs, thinking how Danilo had now been able to hide in her apartment for a number of days. The neighbors didn’t know a thing. A whole winter could pass without you even seeing your neighbors.

  She cast a glance backward before unlocking her door.

  Danilo sat on the floor with his arms around his knees. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.

  “Enjoy,” she said, tossing the bag onto the floor.

  He pulled it toward himself and pulled out the pants.

  “What the fuck are theses? Chinos?”

  “That’s what they had,” Jana said.

  “You couldn’t have bought a pair of normal jeans?”

  “Aren’t chinos normal?”

  “And a pullover,” he said, pulling the top from the bag, yanking off the price tag.

  She looked away when he pulled off the filthy shirt. She wasn’t quite fast enough and noticed how developed his chest muscles had become from exercise; a web of veins stood out along his arms. His features were symmetrical and sharp, but didn’t attract attention. She also saw the scar that shone white against his skin, just under his ribs on the left side.

  She was the cause of that wound. She, three months earlier, had left him to die near a boathouse in Arkösund. It was her fault that he’d ended up in the hospital.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Does it fit?”

  She glanced at him, at the tight-fitting shirt.

  “It fits,” she said, leaving the room.

  * * *

  Mia Bolander looked quickly at the sunlight streaming from the clear blue sky. For over a half hour, she had been trying to get a hold of some friend or acquaintance who could help with her car again. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, she impatiently regarded her cell phone, wondering if there was anyone else she could bother.

  Ola or Henrik?

  She chose the latter and went to his office, but the room was empty. She had better luck with Ola, who sat with his nose to the screen, as always. She could hear him humming some tune as he tapped on the keyboard.

  “My car is dead once again,” she said. “Do you know anything about cars?”

  “What kind?”

  “Fiat?”

  “Wait a minute,” he said without looking away from the screen. “Let me just finish this first.”

  Mia stood there, looking around his office, looking at all of the gadgets he surrounded himself with: the cu
stom keyboard, the black headphones, the new cell phone lying on his desk.

  What did she wish for that she didn’t already have? Everything, she thought. She also wanted to be able to afford a new cell phone, and to travel south in the dead of winter. A larger apartment, downtown. An even larger apartment in Spain. No, not that. She’d never enjoy that, surrounded by strange people who spoke a language she would never care enough to learn. She didn’t even like paella.

  “There we go,” Ola said. “It took a while, but I’ve been able to find exactly the model of the Audi the neighbor saw near Katarina Vinston’s house. An Audi A5. Blue metallic.”

  “How did you do that?” Mia asked. “Are you sure it’s the right model?”

  “Completely sure.”

  “How so?”

  “I called her and asked her to describe the car in more detail. It was simple.”

  “You know cars, then?”

  “Only their appearance. What’s wrong with yours?”

  “It won’t start.”

  “Did you buy it from a dealer or privately?”

  “A dealer, place called Biva.”

  “Make it easy on yourself, call them and ask them to look at it. They’re open until six. The address is Fjärilsgatan 2. They’re open until four on Saturdays, too, I see.”

  “Thanks,” Mia said. “I don’t understand how you know so much.”

  “I used Google.”

  * * *

  The website of the local newspaper showed a picture of Katarina Vinston. In the photo, her face was alive and almost shamefully pretty. Henrik Levin brought the phone closer to his face and skimmed through the article entitled “Forty-four-year-old woman found dead.”

  He looked at the photo and thought that someone, maybe her mother or father, was also now looking at the photo and he felt his stomach tighten. Her parents and brother had been notified, and they’d be called in for a longer questioning as soon as possible. Notifying next of kin was the hardest part of the job. Being confronted with the sorrow, hearing the screams and seeing the pain of the victim’s loved ones. Looking on as they realize there was nothing they could do, only the unrelenting emptiness that tears apart their existence. And then the questions, which in this early stage, seldom had answers.

  Across the region, people were seeing the same picture. And everyone was wondering collectively: Who did this, and why?

  Henrik had just thought how it was up to him to deliver answers when he heard steps in the hallway outside his office. He looked up and saw Mia approaching.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, getting up from his chair.

  In his heart of hearts, he was a bit nervous to have Mia in the interrogation with Ted. She wasn’t usually good at ignoring provocations. Another mark against her.

  They walked slowly to the interrogation room.

  “I’ve talked with Katarina Vinston’s boss at the hospital,” he said.

  “Could she give us anything to go on?”

  “Unfortunately not,” he said. “The only thing I found out, really, was that Katarina had been sick this past week. But I requested the call list from her cell phone, and the forensic techs are going through her computer.”

  “So we still haven’t found a clear connection between her and Ted Henriksson?”

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  * * *

  Jana Berzelius slowed her steps when she heard her new cell phone ringing. She’d run six miles at top speed, and her heart was pounding. She took two deep breaths before answering. She’d expected the slow, thick voice of her father, but it was Elin, his caretaker, she heard on the other end.

  “Am I bothering you?” she asked.

  “No,” Jana said. “What’s this about?”

  “I don’t know. Karl asked me to dial the number. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” Jana said.

  She heard the nurse’s soft voice call for her father. She heard him mumble something and then heard his shuffling steps as he pulled himself forward in his wheelchair.

  “Nn... Jana,” he said.

  She lifted her eyes, looking at Louis de Geer Concert Hall lit up by artificial lights, thinking how her mother and father had visited the concert hall regularly over the years, sometimes to experience the symphony orchestra, sometimes to listen to some of the world’s best opera singers. Mother had loved classical music. Jana thought she had, at least. Or maybe it was one more way for her mother to suit her father’s interests.

  “Abut funrl...funerl,” he said.

  “It’s on Friday, in a week,” she said.

  “Whr?”

  “Where will it be?”

  She didn’t know what to tell him. She still had no idea where the ceremony should be held, nor had she decided where Mother should be buried. She had avoided even thinking about it.

  “What do you think?” she said, with her gaze still on the concert hall.

  He breathed heavily into the phone.

  “Matts chrch.”

  She tried to imagine the ceremony in a church, tried to see the flowers, casket, a choir singing psalms, but it didn’t feel right.

  She closed her eyes and saw her mother in front of her, standing on a cliff and looking out over the sea. An image of Swedish summer: an older woman in a dark blue vest, white knit sweater, carefully pressed pants and clean tennis shoes. The woman walked slowly across the stones, her short hair ruffled by the wind. Her face was relaxed, happy. She turned around and waved with her whole hand. The sunlight filtered down through the branches of the trees.

  When Jana saw the image of her standing there waving, she understood. She knew where Mother should find her final resting place.

  “No,” she said. “The funeral won’t be held in any church. I’ve decided that her ashes will be spread at the summerhouse in Arkösund.”

  “Need prmissn.”

  “I know that requires permission from the county board. But you can see to that through your contacts.”

  “I cnt takk.”

  “Send an email, then,” she said, irritated. “You have a week.”

  He was breathing even more heavily now. Whether it was because she’d gone against his suggestion of a religious ceremony or if it was because he had a hard time forming the words, she didn’t know.

  “I wnt to see hr,” he said.

  “Sorry?” Jana said. “I didn’t hear...”

  “If shs gong to becm ashs I wnt to see hr!”

  “She’s at the morgue. Ask Elin to set up a time for you.”

  “Yu do t.”

  “Me?”

  “Magrtas deth concrns yu an me onl. Nt Eln.”

  “But...”

  “No!”

  She fell silent, understanding it was pointless to argue with him now.

  “Whatever you want. I’ll set up a time,” she said, hanging up.

  * * *

  Mia Bolander looked down at her papers while Henrik Levin tapped his upper lip. The silent tension in the tight little interrogation room was palpable.

  Ted Henriksson had refused the offer to have a lawyer present. In the beginning, it was an advantage because it gave them more room for questioning. At the same time, it was a signal that Henriksson didn’t think he had much to hide.

  He thought that the interrogation was going to be about his relationship with Shirin Norberg.

  Mia turned her gaze to him and tried to interpret his facial expression. What was it she was seeing? Distrust? Or self-righteousness? Yes, she thought. Henriksson was self-righteous and was not thrown off by long silences. After he had commented that Henrik had a “new little dame” at his side, he hadn’t said a word.

  Mia and Henrik waited a long time before beginning their inquiry. Usually, the silence and the wait made th
e suspect more nervous, more open. But Henriksson looked calm.

  “Tell us about your relationship with Shirin Norberg,” Henrik began, a simple question to get the conversation started.

  “What do you want to know?” Henriksson asked, looking at him.

  “Were you engaged to her? Or somebody else?”

  Henriksson sneered.

  “No,” he said.

  “So this isn’t your ring?” Henrik asked, showing the picture of the gold ring they’d found at Katarina Vinston’s house.

  Henriksson shook his head.

  “A ring on the finger isn’t really my style,” he said. “Why limit yourself to one, when you can have a good time with many?”

  “So you have other women friends that you see besides Shirin Norberg?”

  “I haven’t been seeing anyone besides Shirin. But I’m not exactly a stranger to seeing someone with Shirin. What do you say? Do you like to share, Commissioner?”

  Henriksson looked suddenly at Mia, who didn’t move a muscle. That seemed to provoke him.

  “Do you know who this is?” Henrik asked, placing a picture of Katarina Vinston on the table. Henriksson cast a quick glance at it, pulling air in slowly through his nose, delaying his answer.

  “No,” he said finally as he exhaled. “But I wouldn’t have anything against getting to know her.”

  Henrik placed his fingertips against each other.

  “Your girlfriend has just been murdered, and you don’t seem particularly bothered by it...”

  “Yes, I am. I just show it in my own way.”

  “Your own way?”

  Henriksson sank back in the chair.

  “Yes, my own way.”

  “I think you really need to start talking now, Henriksson. Otherwise this could end up with you in jail for murder,” Henrik said.

  “Exactly,” Mia said. “We know you had a relationship with Shirin Norberg. We also know that you systematically abused her. But why did you kill her?”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  Mia examined him. Had she underestimated him, in spite of it all? He was hard to read. The method of suggesting they already knew everything wasn’t working on him.

  “We just want to understand you, Ted,” Henrik said. “What drives you?”