Before the others reached the door, she looked at her mother’s right arm, letting her eyes sweep from the upper part past her elbow to her hand and nails.
One of her nails appeared broken off.
She took her mother’s hand into her own and felt its chill and lifelessness. Under all of her nails she could see a thin layer of dirt. Or was it dried blood?
She broke off a piece of a nail that was cracked, took a tissue from her pocket and placed the nail in it and put it away. Then stepped backward from the gurney and stood still as Sören Erixson came into the room with Elin Ronander pushing her father in his wheelchair.
Jana met Elin’s gaze and could read the sorrow in her face. She listened to Sören’s words of condolences, saying that it was fully normal to stay in the room for a long time to say goodbye, as she observed her father’s calm, attentive face.
“Now I’ll leave you in peace,” Sören said, leaving the room.
Elin pushed the wheelchair to the opposite side of the bed until Father held up a hand to show that he didn’t want to move any closer. She rested a hand gently on his shoulder and whispered, “I’ll wait outside.” Then she closed the door behind her. The flames from the candles flickered, but after that, the room was completely still. An almost unpleasant silence filled the room.
Jana didn’t move. She stood silently, her gaze on her father. His face was suddenly strangely pale. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to her, and there was something different in his eyes. They were bottomless.
“We...we met n,” he said, “to a wondrful... Now I dnt rember what they playd, Beethovn, I thnk...”
She could barely understand what he said. She looked at him, saw his serious gaze, how he concentrated to control every twitching nerve, every tremble, as he talked.
“I don know f you can unnerstan dit,” he said. “But I’ve ben proud tht she nvr wanted fr anything.”
He carefully touched Mother’s thin arm as he whimpered, a moaning sound. It came from deep within, as if he only at that moment understood that she was truly dead.
“Margaretha...”
He fought to bring his hands to his face and cried quietly.
Jana moved back and felt an urge to leave the room immediately.
“We’re done here, aren’t we,” she said.
“No,” he said, irritated, and rubbed his trembling hands over his face in an attempt to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“It wasn’t a question,” Jana said. “I have a meeting to get to.”
“Go, then,” he said.
“I’ll see you at the funeral,” she said, walking quickly across the room. She turned around in the doorway.
“I almost forgot. I want you to order the flowers for the funeral.”
“Flwrs?” he said.
“You know what kind she liked, right?”
He was silent.
The realization of how little he actually knew about Mother made her sick. She swallowed multiple times, repressing her anger toward him.
“Peonies,” she said sharply and left the room.
* * *
Philip wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, felt pursued by them. He was sweaty, trembling and tired.
I’m not crazy, he thought as he stepped into the empty crew lounge. It’s just a part of me that has given way, burst at the seams.
He sank onto the sofa and thought about Sandra Gustafsson. He regretted having dragged her into his problems. She would only see it as an invitation and continue with her nagging questions—questions he couldn’t stand. Why had he confided in her?
As he rested his feet on the table, his cell phone rang again. It had been ringing all fucking day, and he had just decided to let it ring when he realized that at least this time it was a number he recognized. He answered.
“You lied again,” she said. “I don’t get how you can stand...”
“Wait a minute, Lina,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “I’m just going to...”
“Just what?”
“Get out of here. I’m not in a good place for talking.”
He left the lounge and went into the locker room, checked that he was the only one there and sat down on the bench in front of the lockers.
“What did I lie about now?” he said.
“As if you don’t know?” she said. “Katarina is dead and you knew it, didn’t you?”
Philip closed his eyes. It took a moment before he answered.
“Yes.”
“You knew it,” she said, “but you didn’t say anything to me?”
“I forgot.”
“How could you forget that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are you now?”
“At work?”
“Are you sure?”
Philip opened his eyes and leaned back, feeling the cold locker door through the fabric of his shirt.
“Why would I lie about that?” he said.
“You lie about absolutely everything else,” she said.
“No, I don’t.”
“You lied that you’d been at work,” she said. “But in reality you were at Katarina’s.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“You’re an idiot.”
“That’s also true.”
Lina was quiet. After a moment, he heard her take a deep breath.
“Were you having an affair?” she said.
“What sort of question is that?” he said. “I’ve told you no. Don’t you believe me?”
“I do, but the police don’t. They’re probably on their way to you now.”
“Here?”
“Yes. You didn’t answer your cell phone. They asked a bunch of questions about Katarina, but I said it would be better if they talked to you. They took your shoes, too, and they asked what sort of car we have. What did you do, Philip? Did you kill Katarina?”
“Fuck!”
He stood up and raked his hand through his short hair. He felt the sweat break out in his armpits.
“Philip!” he heard Lina say, but he didn’t answer. He put down his phone, already lost in thought.
It was an absurd idea, but he still couldn’t let go of it: he wasn’t only the murderer’s next victim; he was also suspected of murder.
What the hell was going on?
The room was spinning, he felt something closing in on him, and he heard a voice. It nagged him.
They think it’s you.
Shirin, Katarina and Johan.
He was having a hard time breathing. He tried to focus his gaze, searched for the exit.
They’re coming to take me in, he thought before putting his phone in his pocket and hurrying out of the locker room.
* * *
“Can I help you?”
A mustached man in his thirties looked questioningly at Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin and Detective Inspector Mia Bolander, who had just walked into the ambulance station in Norrköping.
“We’re looking for Philip Engström,” Mia said.
“I just saw him in the locker room. You can check there.”
“And that is...?”
“One floor up, to the right.”
“Thanks.”
Henrik and Mia walked between two ambulances, past a room intended for outerwear and shoes, and continued up the steps to the second floor.
Three men and two women were sitting around a table discussing vacations, but they fell silent when Henrik and Mia stepped in.
“We’re here to talk to Philip Engström,” Henrik said after introducing himself and Mia.
“Sandra, do you know where Philip is?” one of the girls asked, nodding expectantly toward a woman wearing work clothes who was standing in the kitchen. She had green eyes, and Mia remembered her from the questioning.
“Sandra Gustafsson, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you know where your colleague is?”
“He got sick suddenly and just left for home. Said it was something with his stomach. He looked really pale.”
“That’s too bad,” Mia said, “but before we go, do you know if your boss, Eva Holmgren, is here?”
“She was just in her office,” Sandra said. “Her office is down the hallway to the right. I can show you.”
“Thanks.”
Henrik and Mia followed her.
“Would it be possible to have a few words with you after we’ve talked to your boss?” Henrik said when they stopped outside Eva’s room.
“If I’m still here,” she said. “It might be that we’re out on a call. But you can definitely call me if there’s anything.”
* * *
Philip walked quickly out of the ambulance station. His cell phone rang and rang, but he didn’t feel like answering. He continued walking forward and only stopped when he’d gone a good distance.
What was he going to do? Where was he going?
He was having difficulty collecting his thoughts, and his heart was pounding in his chest.
At the entrance to a footpath, he turned off and started to run straight through an apartment complex. He jumped over a low fence, walked through a sandbox and continued to run diagonally across a soccer field.
I shouldn’t be running, he thought. People will notice me and begin to wonder.
But he couldn’t stop. His legs were moving as if of their own accord.
When he got to Vilbergen Center a few kilometers away, he was having a hard time breathing and slowed down. He went as slowly as he could, keeping to the side of the square and trying to appear as normal as possible. Yet he felt all eyes were on him. And only then did he realize he was still in his work clothes.
Everyone is looking at me, he thought.
The panic welled up inside him, and he began running again.
* * *
“I assume you’d like to speak privately,” Eva Holmgren said, closing the door to her office. “Please sit.”
The office was small, light and Spartan. No flowerpot in the window, but there were nicely framed pictures of children, probably grandchildren, Mia Bolander guessed.
“You have some further questions about one of our staff members?” Eva said, clasping her hands and laying them in her lap.
“Philip Engström,” Henrik said.
“Philip...” she said, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “He has worked with us for many years.”
“Can you tell us about him?”
Eva took a deep breath, as if she wanted to have time to think before answering.
“Philip is an ambitious person who likes working hard,” she said. “He is punctual, professional and engaged in his work.”
“Sounds like a perfect employee,” Mia mumbled.
“No one is perfect. Even Philip has his faults.”
“Such as?”
Eva took yet another breath, more like a sigh this time.
“Philip has been having a fairly rough time as of late. Our staff must be ready for anything when they go out on a call. It might be a car accident, fire, murder, suicide, suicide attempt, rape, illness, drowning and so on. The list goes on and on. And in these situations, you must assume that the person who comes to the rescue will be able to work under circumstances the patient can’t handle themselves, not only medically, but also the situation itself and everything related to it.”
“I understand,” Henrik said.
“These work conditions are tough. Our staff experience things daily that many others don’t experience during a whole lifetime, such as severed limbs, dead bodies, decay... It also doesn’t have to be the horrible sight with a lot of blood and serious injuries. It might be a loved one standing and screaming in their ear, ‘Do something! Do something!’”
Eva leaned forward and picked up a pen, which she twirled around her fingers.
“I’m saying this so you understand that this is about extreme pressure. At the same time as we must provide physical care, we also must comfort grieving loved ones. You can’t even imagine how difficult it is to guess exactly how a person is going to react to all of this. Some dare to show what they’re feeling, others don’t seem to be bothered at all. It can also vary from call to call. And when we’ve finished a call, we’re supposed to just deal with our own feelings. It’s impossible to get used to the seriously ill, dying and dead.”
“We know,” Mia said.
“I know that you know, but I just want to...I don’t know...clarify it, maybe. And now we’ve been hit by a terrible death ourselves...it wears on the staff, it really does...”
“But what do you do to manage these feelings?” Henrik asked.
“We talk to each other,” Eva said, putting the pen down. “We have something called ‘peer support’ here. Peer support requires that people feel they can trust each other, which I think the vast majority of our staff does. They spend many hours at the station in between calls. They eat, work out and sleep together, and because of that, a particular togetherness is formed in the group. A good partner is ninety-nine percent of the job. I know that Philip and Katarina worked really well together. They were a tight-knit team.”
“So Philip and Katarina worked together,” Henrik said. “I don’t remember you saying that when we talked on the phone.”
“I hardly remember what I said. This thing with Katarina, it’s so...terrible. It’s incomprehensible. But yes, they worked together a lot.”
“So how did Philip react to Katarina’s death?” Henrik said.
“I don’t think it has really sunk in yet for him...”
“What do you mean?”
“As you know, even before the event with Katarina, he had been witness to a very unpleasant call. He was first on the scene at the murder of the surgery nurse who has been featured in the newspapers. Additionally, he was first on the scene at the murder of the surgeon... Considering everything that has happened, he has, if I can be honest, hardly shown any emotion at all.”
“And what do you think about that?” Henrik said.
“I’ve offered him a few days leave, but he refused. So actually, I’m not thinking about it much right now. Many times I’ve seen staff who consciously distance themselves from what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s a strategy that largely comes from experience and number of years in this career.”
“You mean that you get desensitized?” Mia said.
“Don’t you?”
They fell silent. Mia opened her mouth, but it was Henrik who answered.
“As in all lines of work, we gather experiences that we always carry with us,” he said. “But certain images you never forget...”
“Yes, true,” Eva said. “Even if the staff talk about it and work through the situations they’ve experienced, these images always remain. We carry them with us, unfortunately, like a little backpack. The older you are and the more you’ve worked, the larger the backpack you have to carry.”
“But sometimes it must get to be too much,” Mia said.
“Absolutely,” Eva said. “It does. We’ve obviously had staff who haven’t worked for more than a couple of years, who couldn’t handle the physical and psychological stress of this job. We’ve seen personality changes and dealt with all sorts of drug abuse. We are constantly watching our staff and help them in any way we can.”
Henrik raked his hand through his hair. “We’re hoping to have a chat with Philip,” he said, “but he seems to be sick?”
“Yes,” Eva said with a troubled expression. “He is...he’s seldom sick, but I can imagine it’s a reaction to recent events.”
“So you don’t think it’s odd that he is sick today of all days?”
“No, why would I think that? It must be almost healthy to react to the loss of a colleague in some way? Not to mention he is entitled to be sick.” Eva nodded.
“You spoke earlier of the fact that Philip doesn’t usually show any emotions,” Henrik said, turning his gaze to Eva. “Has he ever overdone it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, to the point that he couldn’t take it, that it became too much?”
“No, not from what I know. Philip is a very good employee. But he’s human.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know what I am trying to say by that, really. It’s maybe just my way of excusing Philip.”
“For what?” Mia said.
“It’s obvious that those of us in health care also make an occasional mistake,” Eva said.
“What did he do?”
“I don’t know if I can say anything. I’m bound by professional secrecy.”
“Well, then I’ll inform you,” Henrik said, “that our query is regarding an ongoing investigation.”
“That’s what I assumed...but I don’t want to muddle up the investigation in any way with outdated information.”
“We don’t think you will.”
Eva was quiet for a moment.
“As I said before, we all have our own tools for coping with stressful events in our lives. Many turn to alcohol.”
“And Philip? Does he turn to something?”
“I stumbled upon his pill use once.”
“At work?”
“Yes. But it was five years ago, when he’d just started. He had left a pack of pills in one of the bathrooms. We had a conversation about it, and ever since then, I haven’t had any reason to suspect him. But now, with you sitting here in front of me, of course I’m beginning to wonder. How nervous should I be for him?”
* * *
She sat at a table at a restaurant called Fresh Market and waited for the rice noodle salad she had ordered. Jana looked forward to being alone, in peace and quiet.
She took out her cell phone and looked closely at the pictures of her mother that she’d taken at the morgue. She lingered a long time on what might be bruises on her mother’s nose, then flipped to the photos of her mother’s upper lip before dialing the number to the crime lab.
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