“Björn Ahlmann speaking.”
“Hi, Björn, this is Jana,” she said. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“Not about Johan Rehn, I hope. I haven’t had the chance to perform the autopsy on Johan Rehn’s body yet...”
“No, it’s something else.”
“Tell me.”
She fell silent, listening to the murmuring of others around her, the clinking of silverware on china, then suddenly she heard herself saying: “What conclusion would you draw if you saw bruises on the nose of a dead body?”
“Child or adult?”
“Adult,” Jana said. “An older woman.”
She swallowed and looked around to confirm that no one was eavesdropping.
A man came in through the door and walked clumsily over the floor toward a girl who was slim and short—she didn’t even reach his chest. The girl gave him a quick hug, and he smiled at her, kissing her on the head.
“As you know, bruises and other signs of violence can show up many hours after the time of death,” Ahlmann said.
“I know,” she said, feeling a chill spread through her body.
“But it’s difficult to draw a conclusion off the cuff like this, without knowing what we’re talking about,” he said. “You have to give me something more to go on. Are the bruising marks symmetrical? Do they run together? Do they cover the whole nose, or just parts of it?”
“The woman has bruising on the wings of her nose and hemorrhaging on the inside of her upper lip.”
She heard Ahlmann breathing, followed by a long silence. The silence made her heart begin pounding.
“The way you describe it...” he began.
“Yes?”
“It could be from an attempt at resuscitation. But it sounds as if they are the type of injuries that might have arisen if someone wanted to obstruct the breathing passages, in other words, as if the person had been smothered.”
* * *
Two people remained in the crew lounge after Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander left their meeting with Eva Holmgren. To their disappointment, neither of them was Sandra Gustafsson. They arrived at Mia’s car and got in. Henrik pulled out his cell phone.
“I’m going to try Philip again,” he said, dialing the number and listening to it ring.
“Fucking suspicious that he’s not answering,” Mia said when Henrik shook his head.
He dialed the number to Philip’s wife instead.
“This is Lina.”
Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.
“Hello, this is Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin again. I’m wondering if Philip has come home.”
“No, he’s still at work, like I said.”
“They said that he’s on his way home.”
“Why would that be?”
“He was feeling sick, they said.”
“What?”
“So you don’t know?”
“No, I haven’t talked to him.”
“Can you ask him to call us when he comes home? We’re very anxious to get a hold of him.”
“Of course...”
“Thanks.”
Henrik ended the conversation and looked straight ahead. They had looked for Philip Engström at home, at work, and called him multiple times. They had talked with his wife and his boss and now knew a little more about him, but Henrik still couldn’t say that anything had actually become clearer. Quite the opposite, in fact.
He was just about to ask Mia to start the car when he caught sight of it.
“The Audi A5,” Henrik said, opening the passenger door.
“Where are you going?” Mia called after him.
But he had already started over the parking lot.
* * *
She had ended the conversation with Björn without saying goodbye. Jana Berzelius was in shock and was now trying to grasp the thoughts whirling around in her head.
Smothered? Could that be possible?
“Here you go, one rice noodle salad,” the waitress said. She barely noticed the woman placing the plate on the table in front of her.
Jana considered asking for a take-out container. But instead, she sat there, trying to collect herself, her gaze unfocused on the food for a long time.
Smothered!
Chief physician Eliasson, an acquaintance of her father’s, had told her that her mother had died a natural death from a heart attack. If a clinical autopsy were required for cases of natural death, the bruising would probably have been found earlier, and the cause of death would have been different. Now, she was the only one who knew.
As Margaretha’s daughter, she could request an autopsy. But what would that lead to? Only problems, she thought. The police would start an investigation, begin looking at her and her father in detail, asking questions and digging in the past.
She didn’t want to involve the police. But she wanted to know what had exactly happened and why.
She picked up her fork and slowly twirled the noodles as she formulated her thoughts. Mother had been home alone when she’d had the heart attack. Father had been at the rehabilitation center in Örebro with Elin, and even if he’d been home, it wouldn’t have been physically possible for him to smother her. Not in his current condition, at least. But could someone have smothered her in order to get to Father? Did all this have to do with his role in the Policegate scandal?
Mother had called the ambulance herself in the middle of the night, and it had come quickly. She didn’t want to disturb Karl. Despite this, they couldn’t save her. Had she already been dead when the ambulance arrived?
No, she thought. If Mother had been dead, the ambulance personnel wouldn’t have taken her body; they would’ve contacted the police.
So what had actually happened between the time they picked her up in Lindö and when they arrived at Vrinnevi Hospital? Only the ambulance paramedics could answer that. But who were they?
* * *
Henrik Levin was confused. He stood facing four cars parked in a row and thought how there were even more questions surrounding Philip Engström now. He had quickly pulled out his phone and dialed Gunnar’s number before Mia even caught up with him.
“Yes, Henrik?” Gunnar Öhrn sounded stressed on the other end of the line.
Henrik spoke as quietly as he could even though no one besides Mia was nearby. Mia kept her eye on him, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Things are taking shape,” Henrik said. “We found a pair of shoes at Philip’s house, Nikes, size nine and a half.”
“So, it could have been Philip who was walking around in Katarina’s yard?”
“Yes, with great probability...because we’ve now also discovered that it was Philip’s wedding band that we found in her bedroom.”
“Has he said why?”
“That’s just it. We can’t get a hold of him. He isn’t answering his cell phone, and he’s not at home or at work.”
“But where could he be, then?” Gunnar said.
“Per his coworkers, he got sick and was heading home.”
“Okay.”
“There’s just one problem,” Henrik began, looking at the sign that said the parking spaces were only for staff. On the asphalt under the sign lay an ice-cream wrapper and a receipt.
“Tell me,” Gunnar said impatiently.
“His car is still in the parking lot outside the ambulance station.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m standing in front of it right now. An Audi A5. Blue metallic paint.”
“An Audi A5,” Gunnar repeated. “So he could just as well still be there?”
“Yes, or he left work some other way. What should we do?”
“And no one knows where he is?”
“No,” Henrik said, watching a gust of wind that moved across the asphalt and
made the wrapper whirl up into the air. “Maybe Philip chose to leave the car because he didn’t feel well. Maybe he took the bus. Or did he suspect something?”
“Do we have a reason to think that he is purposely avoiding us?” Gunnar said.
“In which case, he becomes more and more interesting to the investigation,” Henrik said.
“You mean more and more suspicious?” Gunnar said.
“In short, yes,” Henrik said. “We need to get a hold of him.”
“So then,” Gunnar said. “I suggest that we find him as quickly as possible. Have the uniformed patrols been informed? And the on-duty officers?”
“Not yet. We wanted to know what you thought first.”
“What I thought? I just told you what I thought. Let’s get out there and find him.”
* * *
He sat completely still with his gaze fixed on a single birch tree. It was a straggly, wild little birch tree that had fought its way up beside the other trees in the small grove. The tree was twisted from its struggle for light and air, first in one direction, then in the other. A few feet above the ground someone had carved something into its bark. Two letters, maybe?
With shaking hands, Philip Engström pulled out his cell phone and saw that he had missed multiple calls from the same unfamiliar number again. Lina had called, too.
He returned her call, and heard her pick up after three rings.
“You just hung up before,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve done something stupid,” he said.
“What did you do?”
He could almost see her in his mind’s eye, standing there with her hand in front of her mouth.
“I’m hiding. The police are looking for me, and I think I’m being hunted by a murderer...”
She gasped.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? I’m in a state of total panic over this. Where are you now?”
“Where am I?” he said. And what the hell should he say? That he was hiding behind a tree, in a grove, near a soccer field? It sounded too dumb.
“I ran because I didn’t know what I should say,” he began. “It’s too much, Lina... I don’t know what I should do anymore. I’ve made a mistake, I know it. I was stupid and I lied, and you’re right, you don’t know everything about me, and I should have told you the truth from the beginning, but I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t, and now it’s too late, and...goddamn it!”
“What did you do? Tell me, please, Philip!”
“There’s nothing to say,” he said.
“There’s lots to say if you just start talking, but you never want to talk!”
“It’s not so easy...”
“Do you know that I go around all the time wondering whom I’m married to? I have no idea who you are anymore, Philip. You never tell me anything. And now this...”
“I understand that you’re angry, but...”
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “I make so many mistakes all the time.”
“But I’m the one who made the biggest mistake by getting pregnant with you.”
Philip blinked hard, as if he was having a hard time understanding what she had just said.
“You’re pregnant?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t said anything?”
“I took the test this morning after you’d gone to work.”
She heard only silence.
“You’re not going to say anything?” she said, irritated now.
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know, but how about that it’s fantastic, magnificent, wonderful news?”
“But it is completely fantastic,” he said, drawing a deep breath.
“It doesn’t sound like you think so.”
“I do think so. But the timing is all wrong. You don’t understand...and I need to tell you...”
He fell silent again. He heard her breathing and leaned his head back, looked at the birch tree in front of him for a long time. He looked at the carving, the two letters, and only now did he realize what they were.
Two halves of a heart. A heart broken in two.
“Lina?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Don’t hang up. Stay with me.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
HENRIK LEVIN WAS back in his office at the police station. He hung up his jacket and wondered where the day had gone. It was already late afternoon. Gunnar had called a meeting that was to begin in five minutes, and Henrik wanted to talk to the paramedic Sandra Gustafsson before then.
She answered on the second ring.
“This is Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin. Can you talk?”
“Yes,” she said. “I may have to hang up if there’s a call. But how can I help you?”
“I need to talk to you again,” he said, “about your colleague, Philip Engström.”
“Have you gotten a hold of him?”
“No, he wasn’t home. Do you know where he might be?”
“He said that he was going to go home, but if he’s not there, I don’t know where he could be.”
“This is how it is,” Henrik said, looking at the clock, which showed there were three minutes left before his meeting, “we’re investigating the murder of another one of your colleagues, Katarina Vinston. We’ve gone through her cell phone and saw that she and Philip have had quite a bit of contact between shifts. Do you know what sort of relationship he had with Katarina?”
“They almost always worked together,” Sandra said. “And I know that they’re friends.”
“Could they have had a...romantic relationship?”
“That’s possible, of course. But I doubt it.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, first, he is married. And besides, I would say that Katarina is a fairly sensitive person, and Philip simply isn’t...”
Sandra fell silent.
“I’m not following,” Henrik said.
“Well, it’s a little difficult to get close to him. I think most would say that he’s a...well, a little bit aloof, a bit cocky.”
“And is he?”
“He likes to be in charge, to be right all the time and stuff like that. Even when he’s wrong.”
She laughed a little.
“I remember once when we were playing cards with another coworker, I think it was poker, and we’d bet something silly, like three dollars each. Philip lost the pot, got really upset and accused our coworker of cheating. Then he threw his cards on the floor, left the room, and went and lay down in one of the bunk rooms. I don’t think I ever saw him play poker again.”
“Has he always been like that?”
“I think so...”
“How long have you worked with him?”
“Almost a year,” she said. “But we hang out outside of work, too. Or rather, I hang out with his wife.”
“You know her, too?”
“Yes. We met at a staff party.”
Henrik looked at the clock again.
“Both you and Philip were called to two crime scenes this past week.”
“Yes, unfortunately. You never know what’s going to be waiting for you when you go out on a call, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen or will see anything like this week. That thing with the hands, and, well...ugh. You have to shut yourself off, just do your work, not think about the person who’s been injured. But I think that was easier for me than it was for Philip.”
“Why is that?”
“He knew all of them, of course.”
“Wait a minute
, now,” Henrik said. “All of them? Who do you mean?”
“Well...”
Sandra took a deep breath as if to summon all of her strength before she continued.
“...he knew all of the victims. I guess he’d worked with all of them.”
The line went silent.
Henrik wrinkled his brow.
“And by ‘all,’ you mean Shirin, Katarina and Johan?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“He told me himself. Before he went home today, actually.”
Henrik focused his gaze on a notebook that lay on the desk. He felt his heart pounding faster. It was amazing, he thought, how things began to create a pattern.
“How had he met them, do you know?”
“At work, as I said...but he was upset this morning when he told me and...”
She stopped.
“...he isn’t usually, but lately...”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if this is right. But he has actually been...a little different.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s stressed out. Angry, things like that. Has a hard time focusing and is always tired.”
“Do you know why?”
“I don’t think I should be answering all these questions, actually,” Sandra said. “Even if I wanted to. It’d be better if you talked with Philip yourself.”
“I think it’s best if you say what you’re thinking,” Henrik said. “It’s important.”
“Okay,” Sandra said. “I’ve seen that he, or rather, I think that he’s taking pills.”
Henrik didn’t say anything, instead letting her continue.
“It’s gone so far that he has a hard time focusing on his work,” she said. “He even fell asleep on a call last week. I think it was Wednesday. We were going to get a patient in Lindö who’d had a heart attack, and it was impossible to wake Philip up in the ambulance. I tried multiple times and finally...”
“And the patient?” Henrik said.
“She didn’t make it.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t remember, it was an older woman...”
His thoughts were racing.
“I’m glad you told me all of this,” he said.
“Of course,” Sandra said.
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