Then he turned toward her, his muscles tense under his sweatshirt. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and Jana felt a rush of emotional relief pass through her. Danilo would finally be leaving her apartment, finally be disappearing from her life.
“Good,” he said. “I’m ready. Are you?”
* * *
Henrik Levin took a deep breath when he stepped out into the fresh air. It was a relief to leave Erika Sandell’s house.
He heard children laughing as they crossed the street and, a little farther away, saw a car backing out of a driveway. He turned his head and looked toward the end of the street where the fields began.
Mia came up alongside him, her cell phone in hand.
“I’ve finally gotten a hold of Lina Engström.”
“What did she say?”
“She wasn’t completely sure, but she thought Philip had been home the night Katarina was murdered. She couldn’t say about Johan, and I think she was difficult to talk to. She sounded upset, almost confused.”
“Do you think we need to send someone over to her house?”
Mia shook her head.
“She had a friend there.”
“Good. Should we...” he began, but then fell silent when he saw a woman in her sixties walk across the street. She was wearing a red down vest, dark jeans and rubber boots with polka dots. Her ash-blond hair was cut in a pageboy, and her bangs reached past her eyebrows. She stopped when she saw the police tape and then continued up the gravel path that led to the large house next door.
“I’m just going to...” Henrik said to Mia, gesturing toward the woman.
“Should I come, too?”
“No, I’ll do it myself.”
Henrik left Erika’s house, went through the gate and walked with long strides after the woman who was already standing at her front door.
“Hello!” he called. “Please wait.”
The woman turned around and looked at him with a questioning gaze.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said.
“What about? What’s happened?”
“It’s about Erika Sandell, your neighbor.”
Henrik pulled out his badge, introduced himself and asked if he could come in for a moment.
“It will only take a few minutes,” he said.
“Then we might as well stand out here,” she said.
“You have a lovely home,” Henrik said.
“Yes, I hear that a lot,” she said.
“Are you married?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just asking.”
“There’s a man in my life, if that’s what you mean.”
She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
“How long have you been living next to Erika Sandell?”
“Let me see. I moved here thirteen, maybe fourteen years ago.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Oh, a long time ago.”
“And you don’t think that’s strange?”
“No, why would I? She’s probably abroad most of the time. She has...an injury.”
“Why would she be abroad?”
The woman looked at him as if she were embarrassed by the question.
“If she’s not home, where else would she be?”
She put her hand on her hip.
“Erika was found dead in her home today.”
“She’s dead?” The woman looked at him again, this time with an empty stare as if she were having a hard time understanding the meaning of what Henrik had just said.
“What happened?” she said.
“I can’t disclose details,” Henrik said, “but I’d like to know if you, her closest neighbor, have seen or heard anything that could be helpful to us? Have you, for example, seen anyone going to or from the house lately?”
She shook her head.
“I see her daughter now and then.”
“Her daughter?”
“Yes.”
“But from what I understand, Erika Sandell doesn’t have a daughter.”
“Oh yes, she does.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No, we usually just say hi, and I’ve just talked to her only a few times, but she’s a very pleasant and pretty young woman, with eyes like emeralds. It’s so nice that she’s taken care of her mother all these years, but I’ve always thought she should have a life of her own with a handsome man and some children.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“Yes, of course. She lives there.”
* * *
Lina tried to stand up, but the effort nearly made her vomit. She held her hands to her mouth and swallowed multiple times before looking at Sandra again.
“What was that about?” Sandra said.
Lina took a deep breath before answering.
“It was the police,” she answered as if she almost didn’t want to form the words.
“What did they say?”
She put both hands over her face and shook her head.
“I can’t. I just want to lie in bed and cry when I think about...”
“We don’t have time to cry right now,” Sandra said. “Tell me what they said!”
“They asked if I could give him an alibi.”
“Alibi for what?”
“For the night when Katarina was murdered...and that doctor...”
“Did they say anything else?”
Lina wrapped her arms around herself and sat still, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“They said that they’d taken him into custody, that he’s suspected of murder.”
“Good,” Sandra said.
Lina blinked a few times and looked at Sandra.
“What?”
Sandra stood, picked up her backpack and left the room.
“What’s good about that?” Lina asked, but the only answer was the sound of the bathroom door closing.
* * *
With the feeling that everything was going to return to normal, Jana left her apartment and stepped into the elevator. It descended slowly, the steel cables squeaking.
Her legs felt relaxed as she walked through the long hallway that led to the garage.
To avoid the risk of being seen with him, of meeting anyone while they were together, she had gone first and taken the elevator. He was going to take the stairs.
She felt her pulse quickening in her temples as she approached her parking space. She stopped between two cars. She saw herself in the side window of the car next to her. But then she caught sight of another familiar face.
“I see you,” she said.
“That was the point,” Danilo said.
“There could be cameras here,” she said, mostly to stress the risk of what they were doing.
“No, there aren’t,” he said, grinning.
He began to walk toward her, going around a car to draw it out. He was ten steps from her, five, three, two, one...
She was just about to unlock the car when the door from the basement swung open, and to her horror, her neighbor came out with a bag in her hand and headed in her direction.
Danilo grabbed her. He pressed his face against hers, and she felt his skin against her cheek.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Pretend I’m kissing you. And be quiet now, or I’ll do it for real. With tongue and everything.”
She didn’t breathe, tried to release the air she had in her lungs, but she couldn’t.
They stood silently, pushed against each other, until the neighbor had started her car and disappeared through the garage door.
As soon as it had closed, she pushed him off her.
“Don’t you dare look at me,” she said harshly.
When he didn’t look
away, it overflowed in her, all of the adrenaline and hatred. It overwhelmed her, making her heart pound hard. She looked down, meeting her reflection in the car window again. She could see the tension in her face and told herself to calm down. And breathe.
* * *
“But there isn’t one single piece of information that indicates Erika had a daughter,” Ola Söderström said.
“Look again,” Henrik said.
He stood outside the house in Fiskeby with his cell phone pressed to his ear.
“But where else should I look?” Ola said. “Do you not trust me?”
“Of course I trust you,” Henrik said, rubbing his hand over his face. “And Erika was never married?”
“No.”
“But she must have lived with someone, then...?”
“Maybe so, but live-in partners aren’t registered anywhere, as you know.”
“I know. I know! But call me if you find anything.”
“But...”
Henrik hung up with a sigh.
“No luck?” Mia said, looking at him with raised eyebrows.
“Nope,” he said, turning his gaze to the house again. He wanted to stop his thoughts, structure them and gain clarity about everything that had happened.
It was impossible for Erika to have a biological daughter. But the neighbor had been sure that a younger woman lived in the house and that the woman herself had claimed to be Erika’s daughter.
So who was that young woman? he thought, again focusing his gaze on the wooden star hanging in one of the windows. At the same moment, Anneli Lindgren appeared at the front door.
“Henrik! Mia!” she said. “You should probably come back into the basement.”
Henrik nodded and walked back to the house, closely followed by Mia. The musty smell hit him again, but he tried to ignore it as he went down the basement stairs.
“I think you’re going to want to see this,” Anneli said, walking toward the drapes that hung behind the dead woman. Dust whirled up as she pulled it farther to the side, revealing a desk behind which hung a bulletin board. Henrik was looking directly into the pale blue eyes of Katarina Vinston, who stared back from a photograph. Where her mouth should have been was instead a black hole. He looked away, took a step back and surveyed the other photographs that had been pinned to the bulletin board.
“Shirin Norberg,” he said in a low voice. “And Johan Rehn, and...who is this?”
He pointed to a crossed-out face he didn’t recognize.
“That must be Annikke,” Mia said, “the nurse anesthetist. But it’s hard to say when you can’t really see her face. And those must be Joe and Anders.”
Mia pointed to two other crossed-out faces.
“So what we have before us are pictures of the surgery team?” he said.
“Yes,” Mia said, “and how that sick bastard probably planned to kill all of them.”
Henrik felt his heart pounding hard in his chest when he looked at Shirin’s missing hands and Johan’s missing legs. Far to the right hung a picture of Philip Engström, hanging all by itself, far from the others.
He glanced down at the desk and saw several black notebooks closed with thick cords. He picked up the top one, loosened the cord and began flipping through. Mia stood close to him, reading over his shoulder.
March 3
Dear Diary,
I’ve turned on the light and am looking at the pictures on the wall. Looking at the faces that look so irritatingly happy and simultaneously unaware of any evil. So full of expectations, as if it were obvious that their lives lay before them. As if they had the right to live.
Today is ten years since your operation, Mom, ten years since they destroyed our lives, ten years ago. How have they been? Have they lived life? As if the operation was just a bagatelle, a parenthesis in their lives, a bad morning. Nothing more.
For us, it’s been hell. Since then.
I know who did what at the hospital. You’ve talked about it so many times.
I can’t give you your life back, but I can punish the ones who took it from you. You will get your revenge now, Mom. I’ll take the hands of the surgery nurse who stood at a loss in the operating room; I’ll take the tongue from the paramedic who forgot, FORGOT! to say that they’d turned the helicopter around. And I’ll take the legs from the surgeon who handed the operation over to a medical student. TO A MEDICAL STUDENT! How the hell could he justify that?
I truly hate Philip. I hate his cocky attitude, hate him because he doesn’t understand what he did, hate him because he doesn’t know that I hate him. Because he only lives in his own world as if nothing were wrong.
I’m going to turn off the lamp now, because it’s time to begin.
And I know exactly how I’ll do it. I have everything figured out. My plan is ready.
They won’t get away from this, Mom. They destroyed your life. They destroyed my life. I’m going to destroy theirs.
That’s what the voices in my head are saying.
And that’s how simple it is.
The truth.
Henrik looked up and met Mia’s gaze.
“Who the hell wrote this?”
Henrik looked at her for a long time before closing the notebook and putting it back on the desk.
“What is it, Henrik? Where are you going?”
He heard Mia’s questions, but he didn’t have time to answer, instead running back up the basement stairs. He rushed into the living room, stood in the middle of the room and looked at the wooden star hanging in the window.
He went closer, feeling a chill as he reached out his hand. The star was made from wooden pieces glued tightly to each other. He unhooked it and turned it over.
It looked like the sort of star you made in art class in school. He had come home from school himself with one figure after another, and among all of the things he had brought home, there’d been a similar star. If this star had been made at school, it should also be marked with a name.
Henrik continued turning it between his hands. Then he stopped. He held the star closer to his face. The paint had faded, but he could still see the name that stood there.
S, he read. Sa...and then a number.
He squinted again. And then he saw it.
It said, “Sandra, class 9A.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
JANA BERZELIUS CAST a glance in the rearview mirror and saw that Danilo was still lying down in the backseat. She returned her gaze to the road and thought how they were finally on their way north, toward Nyköping, Vagnhärad and Södertälje.
Toward freedom.
For a moment she considered flooring the gas pedal, but she forced herself to calm down. She couldn’t risk being caught for speeding now, so she remained at the exact speed limit, forty-five miles per hour.
They were approaching an uncontrolled railroad crossing when her phone rang. She didn’t let it ring for more than a few seconds before she answered.
She heard a scraping sound before her father’s voice came through.
“It’s done,” he said.
Jana felt her heart beginning to pound and had a hard time subduing her eagerness.
“Have you gotten the DNA result?” she said.
“Yes.”
Maybe she misunderstood his tone, but she thought that there was something wary in his voice—to the extent that it was possible to sense anything in his abrupt answer.
Danilo looked at her. She felt his eyes on her but didn’t look back.
“So you have a match?” she said.
The phone was quiet for a number of seconds, which didn’t necessarily mean anything other than that her father was thinking. She waited for an answer, but there was nothing. He was silent for so long that she wondered if they’d been cut off. Maybe Elin was within earshot?
/>
“Tell me,” she said.
“Not on phone.”
“I can’t come to your house,” she said. “You have to tell me now. Whose DNA was it under Mother’s fingernail?”
She slowed down as she drove over a stream and saw that dense brush concealed a small promontory that stuck out into a lake. She thought that his breath sounded closer, as if he were holding the phone as close to his mouth as he could.
“The reslt said tht...tht...”
He was struggling with the words.
“Yes?” Jana said.
“The result showed that the DNA came from... Frm Sandr Gustfsson.”
She felt her body tense as she listened to the sound of the engine.
“And that’s definite?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s defnit. But who’s tha?”
* * *
“I have a few follow-up questions that I need answers to,” Henrik Levin said when he was let into the cell where Philip Engström sat. “And I need answers quickly.”
“Okay...?” Philip said, rubbing his hand over his neck.
“Did you see Erika after the operation?”
Philip swallowed and looked down at the floor.
“Yes,” he said. “I did, I told you about it. I visited her at the hospital a few weeks after the operation.”
“Did she ever say anything about having a daughter?”
“No, why would she say that to me? You have to understand that she hated me. She truly hated me.”
“Yes, you said that,” Henrik said. “So you’ve never been to Erika Sandell’s house?”
“Is that her last name? Sandell?”
“Yes, but answer my question now. Have you ever been to her house?”
Philip stared at him quietly.
“But you’re not listening to what I’m saying,” he said, his voice rising almost to a falsetto. “I don’t know her. I’ve never had anything to do with her after the operation.”
“So you’ve never been to Leonardsbergsvägen in Fiskeby?”
“What? No,” he said, looking suddenly upset. “Does she live there?”
“Yes, and we were at her house today,” Henrik said.
“In Fiskeby? What did she say?”
Philip looked at him.
“She didn’t say anything,” Henrik said. “She was dead, had been for many years.”
Slowly We Die Page 32