Slowly We Die

by Emelie Schepp

  When she lay there in the hospital bed, she’d looked at him with contempt. She had repeated that she hated him, repeated it over and over. These powerful words had become sobs and finally just silence.

  He had tried to say he was sorry, but the words meant nothing. He had fallen silent, too. Just before he left the room, she had said something to him, a few barely audible words.

  Now an icy chill ran up his spine and down his arms. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and suddenly he heard a chair creak. He opened his eyes and looked at the man and woman who interrogated him. They were still sitting quietly there across the table from him. Their faces looked grainy. He swallowed hard and looked up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling. He wondered how many other people were looking at him right now, watching him, studying his body language and facial expressions. The situation was completely unreal. But he had chosen this for himself, and he had to follow through on what he’d decided to do.

  He was going to tell them everything.

  “A lot of things went wrong,” he said, feeling his heart pound in his chest.

  He took a deep breath, gathering courage.

  “It was a Thursday in March. I was doing my residency and was going to help perform a gastric bypass surgery. On the operating table lay Erika Silver. I was told that she’d been looking forward to the surgery for a number of years.”

  He swallowed, trying to stay calm despite the thundering pulse in his head.

  “The operation was to be performed with the aid of what we call ‘peephole surgery.’ There were six of us in the operating room. A surgery nurse, Shirin Norberg, and an OR nurse, Anders Svensson; a nurse anesthetist, Annikke Straum; and two surgeons, Joe Nordin and Johan Rehn, and myself. Johan was going to be the main surgeon, and I would be the observer. But at the last moment he delegated the actual surgery to me. I shouldn’t have said yes, but I did, and I’ve come to regret it so many times.”

  Philip fell quiet and heard the whisper of the HVAC system.

  “When I inserted the first trocar, her aorta burst...”

  He fell silent again, couldn’t bear to continue. He just wanted to leave the room, return home, take a pill and sleep.

  “Please continue,” said the investigator in front of him, and he knew that he had to tell the whole story. He couldn’t go home, not now, not yet. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened his mouth again.

  “Puncturing the aorta is a dreaded, but highly unusual complication,” he said. He remembered the panic that set in when he realized his mistake. “All surgeons know where the vessel is, but when the patient is lying down, the distance between the skin and the vessel is very small, and exactly where the abdominal wall lies can be difficult to judge. It’s not an excuse, I just...wanted to explain it more fully.”

  He wrung his hands nervously. “I didn’t know what I should do. Johan called for help, but there wasn’t a vascular surgeon immediately available, so he had to act. Erika had already lost a lot of blood. I knew that it was terribly urgent to get the aorta sewn up, but I couldn’t do anything. I was only the resident, the student, I just had to sit there and look on. Erika was placed under observation in the ICU. But when she woke up in the afternoon, she was complaining of severe pain in her legs. She couldn’t move one leg. It turned out that Johan had made the sutures too tight so that the blood flow to her legs had been cut off. It was clear that she needed to be under the care of a specialist in Linköping, but the MedFlight helicopter was broken...”

  He was talking to a point on the white wall, a few feet above the policeman’s head.

  “This must sound like I’m making it up, but it’s true. All of it.” He laughed oddly.

  “There was some kind of engine problem, so it never came, but the ICU didn’t know that until much later.”

  “And this is where Katarina comes into the picture?” the policeman said.

  “Yes, she was the one who should have reported the situation with the helicopter. But she didn’t. That’s why it was eleven o’clock before Erika was transported to the university hospital in Linköping via standard ambulance transport. The legs can withstand six hours without oxygenated blood. But it had been eleven hours by the time Erika arrived in Linköping, and her legs had to be amputated.”

  Philip looked down at his hands.

  “I destroyed her life. That was ten years ago now. And in a way...”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “...I maybe destroyed my own, too. I never wanted to have that level of responsibility for a patient again. Instead, I wanted to make sure the patient ended up in the right hands, in the right amount of time.”

  “Have you heard from her over the years?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “But you’re sure that she’s the one behind the murders?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “She said so, she said it clearly, at her follow-up exam. I knew she was confused. I don’t think I took it seriously then.”

  He felt his lips beginning to tremble.

  “What exactly did she say, Philip?”

  He sank lower in the chair and buried his face in his hands. And behind his closed eyelids, he saw the woman lying in the bed, heard her say that he was the one who’d taken everything from her, everything.

  And as he was about to leave the room, she had said a few barely audible words: I will get my revenge.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  JANA BERZELIUS FELT the floor vibrate. She was on her way up in the elevator of the police station along with Henrik and Mia after the interrogation was over.

  None of them said a word to the others during the short elevator ride. Neither Henrik nor Mia looked at her or each other. They were presumably deep in thought about what Philip Engström had revealed.

  It had begun to get dark when Gunnar and Ola met them in the conference room. Jana placed her briefcase on the floor before sitting down.

  “Tell me right away what you’re thinking after your talk with Philip,” Gunnar said even before everyone had taken a seat.

  “Yes, what do we think?” Mia said.

  “If I can start,” Ola said, pulling his light blue cap back so that his whole forehead was exposed. “I’ve looked, but there’s no Erika Silver that’s the right age in any database. Not with the IRS or the DMV or anywhere else, either.”

  “Nowhere?” Henrik said, looking inquisitively at Ola.

  “No,” Ola said. “There’s no Erika Silver, and there may never have been one, either.”

  “Have we looked up this Joe, and Annikke?”

  “Yes,” Ola said. “Joe retired before he died of a cerebral hemorrhage a number of years ago. Annikke moved to Norway but died last summer. Breast cancer. I also looked up this OR nurse, Anders Svensson, and found that he’d also moved away from Sweden. He lives in Washington State, in the USA.”

  “Did he just make up someone to lay the blame on?” Mia said.

  “You think Philip is lying?” Henrik said.

  Mia laughed. “Yes! How else would you interpret what Ola is saying,” she said. “It’s not enough that he’s a serial killer; he’s a pathological liar, too. What a fucking combo.”

  “Or maybe he simply got the name wrong,” Henrik said. “It was ten years ago that this happened, after all.”

  “He’s lying,” Mia said. “I know it. He’s like a fucking puppet master who’s playing with us. He came in through a blind spot, wormed his way into the investigation, and now wants to lead us down the wrong path. He has a fucking great disguise, too—a paramedic. Sorry, but I think we’re sitting here like a group of lost idiots, making a fuss about motives and MO, and now we’re also supposed to take a suspected murderer’s statement seriously? Engström’s doing it to fucking confuse us.
”

  “But still,” Henrik said. “We can’t exclude any possibility. It’s our damn responsibility to twist and turn every little detail.”

  “But Mia’s right, we can’t put all of our focus on a person who probably doesn’t exist,” Gunnar said. “I can’t put more resources on it just for Philip’s sake.”

  “You can’t? We just released staff from the Peña case,” Henrik said, earning a look from Jana.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “Danilo Peña was seen in Motala and seems to have been involved in the dispute at the shelter there,” Henrik said. “As a result, we’ve reprioritized our resources, and we could really use them now.”

  “But that doesn’t mean that we can use them to exonerate Philip,” Gunnar said. “There is no Erika Silver. End of story.”

  “Then I want to talk to Engström again,” Henrik said, “because there’s a motive here. To my ears, it sounds like Erika Silver, imagined or not, would have a very clear motive to kill. Revenge for what she was subjected to. A personal, emotional, aggressive reaction to a serious mistake.”

  “You mean that Erika would brutally kill three people in revenge for an operation gone wrong?” Gunnar said.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “But do we even know that such an operation occurred?”

  “We haven’t gotten confirmation yet.”

  “So we’re just guessing?” Mia said. “Drop it, Henrik. Engström is the murderer. And furthermore, you’re forgetting something: Erika Silver, imagined or not, is assumedly in a wheelchair.”

  Henrik took a deep breath, collecting himself.

  “You might be right, Mia, but if she does exist, in a wheelchair or not, she has a clear motive. And perhaps she enlisted someone else to carry out the murders on her behalf. It’s more than you have in your theory that Philip is the murderer.”

  Silence fell around the table.

  Gunnar clasped his hands behind his neck and rocked slightly in his chair.

  “There’ve been three brutal murders,” he said, “and I want us to work ourselves to the max to solve them.”

  “So why won’t you let us put some resources into searching for this Erika?” Henrik said calmly.

  “Because I’m worried we’ll be on the wrong track, that we’ll waste time unnecessarily. We don’t have that sort of time right now!”

  Outside the room there were echoes of footsteps and a rolling cart.

  “I know,” Henrik said when the sound died away. “But I think we’re going even farther down the wrong track by not listening to Engström. Everyone wants a solution, and I know you also want that.”

  “So we’re supposed to take what he is saying seriously?” Gunnar said.

  “He has an alibi for at least one of the murders,” Henrik said.

  “But is it tight?”

  “His coworkers have confirmed that he was working nights when Shirin was butchered. He was the attendant on the scene when she succumbed to her wounds.”

  “What about Katarina Vinston?”

  “He was supposedly at home with his wife. The same for the murder of Johan Rehn.”

  “And has his wife confirmed that one? Engström apparently was on the scene for that one, too.”

  “We haven’t had the chance to check.”

  “You haven’t had the chance to check...” Gunnar said.

  Henrik crossed his arms over his chest.

  “We will check,” he said, “but in the meantime, isn’t it silly to just sit here and wait?”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Gunnar sighed again. “Ola, see to it that you find this woman.”

  Gunnar took his hands from his neck, pulling them over his head and making his hair stand on end.

  “How the fuck are we going to find a person who doesn’t exist?” Mia said dejectedly.

  “Same thought here,” Ola said. “Where am I supposed to look? There is no Erika Silver.”

  Jana met Henrik’s gaze and saw a spark in his eyes. A thought popped into her head, and she leaned forward. “All surgeries are recorded,” she said, and saw the whole team turn their faces toward her.

  “Yes,” Henrik said.

  She straightened her back and continued: “And this surgery went wrong, right?”

  “Correct,” Henrik said.

  “Then a report must have been filed somewhere in Sweden. All health-care workers are to report situations that have contributed or could have contributed to a serious injury to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate. If Philip is telling the truth, this botched operation should be documented. On every report, the patient’s name will, in all likelihood, appear, and also the patient’s social security number. If we find the report, we’ll find Erika Silver.”

  * * *

  Philip Engström sat on the floor of the interrogation room, his legs outstretched. He was exhausted, and his body was completely limp after the interrogation. His mouth was dry, and his head hurt.

  Erika Silver, he thought. Finally, he had been able to tell someone about the botched surgery. He hoped every police officer was searching for her now. And when they found her, he would bury his memory of her and his involvement in her surgery forever.

  He whispered to himself, letting his gaze leave the window and looking at the door. He wondered when he would be able to go home. He thought about Lina, about what she might be doing in that moment.

  He saw her before him. He saw her face, the corners of her mouth turned down, sad and anxious. But she wouldn’t need to be anxious much longer. He would soon be home with her again, would make everything right again, tell her everything, everything he had just told the police.

  * * *

  “You can speak undisturbed in here,” her father’s caretaker, Elin, said to Jana when she opened the door to the library at the house in Lindö. The bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling and held masses of literature, most of it of a legal nature. Heavy curtains hung over the window, and a patterned rug lay on the floor. A brown leather armchair and round table were in the middle of the room. Elin pushed Jana’s father’s wheelchair in and stopped it tightly next to the armchair.

  “Karl often likes to sit here when he wants to be left in peace,” she said, smiling at Jana. “Would either of you like something to drink?”

  But before Jana had been able to answer, Father had raised his hand. “Leave us,” he said thickly.

  Elin nodded, turning on a floor lamp with a bronze stand, and closed the door behind her. Jana heard her steps disappear.

  The armchair was the only other seat besides his wheelchair.

  She sat down and felt far too close to him. The sudden intimacy made her uneasy. She looked at her hands as she searched for the words.

  “This is a little sensitive. And maybe not even a correct hypothesis. But I want to ask...for a favor,” she said.

  “What ist?” he asked in his thick, labored speech.

  She cast a quick glance at him and saw that he was waiting for her to continue.

  “I need a DNA analysis, but not an official one. So I’m wondering...what I mean is...you have to help me.”

  She interpreted his silence to mean he didn’t understand what she had said, so she clarified.

  “I don’t want to file a report. Or more accurately, I can’t, because then the police will begin a preliminary investigation, and neither you nor I want to be at the center of that.”

  She fell silent and looked urgently at him as if she were waiting for a confirmation that he had understood this time.

  “I haf to know wht this is about.”

  “It’s about Mother.”

  He met her gaze.

  “Margaretha?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t say any more than that.”

  “You hf to!”
/>   “I can’t,” she said.

  It was silent for a number of seconds. He raised his head somewhat. The circles under his eyes were dark. Maybe it was because of the dim light in the room, or perhaps the gravity of the conversation.

  “Wht are you lking for?” he said.

  “I want answers,” Jana said.

  She stuck her hand in her pocket and took out the napkin, laid it on the round table and unfolded it so that he could see the bit of fingernail. He opened his mouth, fighting with the words.

  “You thik somthing hapnd to her...?”

  His throat clenched, and his voice cracked when he said the words. He had probably tried to push out a rational question, but the emotional confusion and pain took over.

  “I suspect that something happened to her, yes,” she said.

  “Wht? I want to know!”

  “I can’t say yet. The only thing I want to know is if my suspicions are right. I just want answers. And I want what is on this nail to be checked against a Philip Engström and a Sandra Gustafsson. Their DNA profiles are already in the system.”

  She looked at him and waited for him to say something.

  “Ansrs take time,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “But I’m sure you can rush the process.”

  His tired eyes had taken on a sharp look. She pushed the napkin even closer to him and waited again.

  “If not for my sake, you can at least do this for Mother’s,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  But then, completely unexpectedly, he reached his hand out. It trembled as he picked up the napkin and folded it. He made two attempts to put it in his own pocket before finally succeeding.

  “I’ll do wht I can,” he said.

  His mumbled promise was barely audible, and Jana realized that the conversation was over.

  * * *

  Anneli Lindgren stared at the computer screen and thought about Gunnar. She had attempted to make eye contact with him after the meeting, but he had just walked sullenly into his office and closed the door behind him.