When he got home he was unable to eat and instead poured a large whiskey. He had heard that some of the neighbors were going to start patrolling the area at night after what had happened, but that they didn’t want to ask him to join. Nobody wanted to ask anything of him. Out of sympathy. His conscience was surging over him and he began pondering whether he should begin building water mains in Sudan, give all his money to homeless or join a monastery. But it passed. What did any of that have to do with Göran’s death? Maybe he could just sign up to be a Homework Help instructor with the Red Cross. It had just been an accident, after all.
He lay down on the couch, pulled a throw over himself and tried to read. When the doorbell rang, he didn’t know how long he had slept. It was the two police officers. Something seemed to have changed. Now the young woman stood in front while her male partner stood to one side behind her, his head slightly bent. And it was she who spoke first.
“Could we come inside, we have a few more questions.”
They asked about his evening with Banegas, about the opera and the supper. Adam answered to the best of his ability and kept to the schedule. What might Banegas have told them?
“Have you spoken to him?” Adam tried to smile. “He can be a bit confusing sometimes, maybe the Swedish police would make him nervous if . . .” He fell silent. Something was obviously wrong, enormously wrong. The two police officers exchanged a glance. The woman cleared her throat.
“He is dead.”
“Dead?” At first, Adam felt immensely relieved. His worries about what Banegas might say had been totally needless.
“Banegas was found murdered on Kastellholmen,” the police woman said. “Beaten to death with a blunt object. We estimate the time of death to between ten p.m. and midnight. In other words, shortly after you left the opera.”
Adam had nothing very satisfactory to say and chose to give an uncertain nod.
“There are a few details we find confusing. We thought you might help us fill in the blanks.”
Was this when he should insist on having a lawyer present? Or was it too early? Would it seem suspicious instead?
Before he had reached any conclusion, she went on: “Maybe we could do this down at the precinct.”
They took turns questioning him. The older policeman seemed anxious to explain that it was all just routine, nothing to worry about. He had a kindly smile.
His female partner didn’t. She pulled out Banegas’ schedule. “Do you recognize this?”
Adam nodded.
“What happened to your supper? At the Gyldene Freden they have no memory of you, and there was no reservation made in your name.”
Adam managed to strain out an answer he felt reasonably satisfied with, about having forgotten to reserve a table and that anyway it had turned out Banegas had preferred to go for a walk on his own. If he had said anything else earlier, he must have mixed things up. She silently wrote down what he said. Then her partner took over and explained that of course this was no interrogation, but would Adam consider helping them out by staying on for a couple of hours?
In fact, only around three-quarters of an hour passed before the police woman returned. “Your schedule says that Harald Thorvaldsson at the Export Council was supposed to join you at the opera.”
Damn it!
“However, when we spoke to Mr. Thorvaldsson he denies that any such thing was ever even considered on his part. In fact, he dismissed it very firmly.”
The answer Adam managed this time was less satisfying. She put a few resulting questions, and Adam got himself still more entangled. After a while she suggested that they could take a break and continue later. He declined to have a lawyer present.
When he was brought back into the room, the kindly policeman was gone and the woman in the strict ponytail questioned him alone. As before, she wasted no time on small talk or smiles. “We have had an interesting conversation with a member of the Grand Hôtel staff. The day after the murder someone tried to gain access to the room where the Banegas couple stayed. That person acted nervously and gave a name that turned out to be false. However, you were identified from the photo we took in connection with out other investigation.”
Adam’s efforts to explain were torn to shreds by her furious counterquestions. He needed to sleep and clung to the single point which seemed to speak in his favor. “But why would I have anything to do with Señor Banegas’ death? It’s absurd!”
“Actually, we’ve learned a reasonable motive from his widow. It seems that you have spent a long time discussing some major road construction project. But Banegas had already given the commission to some American consortium. He was going to tell you before leaving for home.”
What a bastard! “But you don’t kill anyone because—”
But she wasn’t interested in Adam’s reasonable objections. They let him go home to sleep but brought him back again the next morning. At first, the atmosphere seemed more relaxed. The kindly policeman said that they accepted Adam’s statement that he had left for home immediately after the opera. Adam said that he was glad to hear it, and the policeman seemed pleased as well. But the female officer remained silent and resolute throughout. Without any warning, she asked:
“So could you tell us why you didn’t get home until two hours later? And wearing rubber boots?”
Suddenly the interrogation veered off on a new, horrible track.
The lawyer looked up from his notes. “So that was when you decided to confess to the murder of Banegas?”
Adam nodded. “I just can’t bear to be convicted of murdering Göran, my father-in-law.” He thought of Kattis and the children and closed his eyes. “This way I get an alibi for that.”
“But now you claim that you had nothing to do with Banegas’ death?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you. But on the other hand—”
The lawyer held up a deprecating hand. “One thing at a time. Let us focus on the crime you have been arrested for.”
He summed up the situation in a few tired platitudes and looked at his watch. “We’ll see,” he said. “Complicated. Must consider strategy, consult my colleagues.”
A police officer arrived to return Adam to his cell. He was led along a corridor and past the open door to a room. In the room was a sobbing, rotund little woman dressed in black. She was leaning her head against the shoulder of a woman officer, but despite that Adam immediately recognized Mrs. Banegas. She glanced up at him. Her sly eyes shone triumphantly and her mouth curled in a superior smile.
She really was crazy.
Magnus Montelius was born in 1965 and returned to live in Stockholm after many years as an adviser on water and environmental management in both Africa and Latin America; he has also worked extensively in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. He began writing in earnest in 2009, winning a short story competition that year and another one in 2011. In 2011 he also published his first novel, Mannen från Albanien (The Man from Albania), a universally praised spy thriller set during the 1960s and 1970s, which has been sold to eight countries and will become a Swedish feature film. Magnus Montelius is at work on his next novel.
SOMETHING IN HIS EYES
DAG ÖHRLUND
Many of Dag Öhrlund’s Swedish readers may be surprised by his story for this book.
After starting to write for publication at fifteen, Dag Öhrlund worked as a journalist, essayist, reporter, and photographer for many years before turning his hand to fiction. His first novel, written in collaboration with Dan Buthler, was published in late 2007. Since then, the writing team of Buthler and Öhrlund have produced a further seven novels, while Dag Öhrlund alone has written one. All of them are crime fiction, but of a kind not common in Sweden: Dag Öhrlund, both on his own and with Dan Buthler, writes what may perhaps best be characterized as hard-boiled, action-oriented crime novels. All but one of the Buthler and Öhrlund collaborations share the same protagonist, Criminal Inspector Jacob Colt, and in most of the novels Colt is pi
tted against the same villain, psychopath, and serial killer, Christopher Silfverbielke, a man who—in Dag Öhrlund’s phrase—“actually does the things other people just imagine doing.”
The Colt-Silfverbielke novels have become very popular indeed in Sweden, perhaps because their villain’s total break with the strong sense of consensual social control dominating Swedish society appeals to an otherwise seldom revealed wish to revolt that may well smolder within many Swedes. But the stories have also made their authors’ names synonymous with action-packed plotting, inventive gruesomeness, and, unfairly, with the callousness and misogyny characteristic of their recurring villain.
“Something in His Eyes” shows very different aspects of Dag Öhrlund’s writing and concerns.
THE SCREAM BURST FROM LENYA THE MOMENT SHE LOST CONTACT WITH the balcony rail and fell.
It seemed strange to her that so many thoughts could pass through a brain in only a few seconds. An icy wind burned her cheeks.
Her life became a movie. As a small child she toddled around with Azad. Of course they squabbled, like all siblings, but she didn’t love anybody else the way she loved her big brother.
He was God, and Love, and everything else, even though she wouldn’t truly understand that until much later.
Would he ever forgive their father, after this?
A second or two later, her thoughts ceased as her head hit the asphalt.
Lenya Barzani died instantly.
If any angels lamented, her father’s howl from the balcony drowned them out.
Detective Captain Jenny Lindh’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she fought back nausea.
Her car was stuck in traffic on the Essinge freeway leading downtown. The line of cars inched forward a few feet at a time through the heavy snow, and the wipers were hard put to keep the windshield clear.
Right now, Jenny hated everything.
She’d gotten the call a few minutes earlier. A patrol car had been sent to an apartment building in the suburb of Tensta after a witness had reported seeing a lifeless girl lying on the ground. In the midst of the blizzard, they were scarce on patrol cars, field investigators and everything else.
So Lindh got the job.
As if I didn’t have enough problems, she thought.
Her life, as the ’burbs kids would say, had gotten totally fucked over about a week ago.
That night.
Jenny had felt sick during the night shift. She excused herself by saying she must have caught a bug, and left for home several hours early.
She didn’t want her colleagues to know she was pregnant.
At least not yet.
She managed to grab a Kleenex just in time, catching the small gob of vomit that came up as the images returned to her mind.
Cursing under her breath, she rolled down the window, threw out the slimy tissue and was blasted in the face by a whirl of snow.
Daniel and . . . the whore.
Yeah. She had looked like a whore. Blonde, a bit too fat, in a lace bra and black garters, moaning and riding Daniel on the bed.
Their bed. Her bed.
The nausea that had been tormenting her for hours was forced aside as she stood immobile in the doorway. It was replaced by rage, kindling in her stomach and working its way up her throat to her mouth.
She had screamed. Seen the slut’s eyes bulge as she slid off Jenny’s husband’s cock and tried to cover herself. Seen Daniel sit up, raise a hand in some kind of defense.
“Jenny, it’s not what you think . . .”
The stupidest fucking sentence she had ever heard.
That was when she had drawn her gun.
It had been a funny sight: Daniel and the whore, practically naked, racing out of their home as she aimed at them. Tumbling around in the snow outside as they tried to get dressed.
For no discernible reason, the line of cars slowly dissolved. Jenny Lindh pulled out a cigarette, lit it and wondered if she had any pain relievers in her handbag. She had been up drinking whiskey until two in the morning, and her head was pounding.
Yeah, sure—she shouldn’t drink while she was pregnant.
Yeah, sure—she had taken up smoking again two days ago, even though she knew better.
Who cared? She would have an abortion. Her marriage was over. Her picturesque life had ended. Her dream of a good life with another cop had turned into a pathetic game of roulette where her money was on the wrong number.
Clara, her only support, had made the difference between extinction and survival. Tough, smart Clara, who had always been there. Who always had answers, could comfort and encourage. And who had an outlook on men and relationships that was completely different from Jenny’s.
Everlasting love is fucking bullshit. So I’ll help myself, get laid, have fun and move on!
Clara was one of a kind.
Smacking her hand against the wheel, Jenny shot the car into the left-hand lane and sped up. Her right hand fumbled for the rotating blue light, managed to get it up on the roof above her and turned it on.
Get the hell out of my way!
Sixteen minutes later, she stood outside the blue-and-white police tape and observed the scene in front of her.
The first thing that struck her was the ugliness of the building, and she wondered who had thought it up.
Had anyone been thinking?
Roughly forty years ago, the politicians of a small country called Middle-of-the-Road suddenly realized there weren’t enough homes.
One million apartments.
It took them ten years to build that million, and here in front of her was one of the results.
It looked awful.
The first patrol on the scene had cordoned off an eighty-by-eighty-foot area. The forensics team’s gray-blue Volkswagen van was parked just outside the police tape. A tent had been erected close to the building to cover something that had to be the body, in order to stop the press photographers from taking pictures.
A man dressed in a coverall and boots came plodding up to her through several inches of snow. As he approached, she recognized him as Björkstedt. A reliable workhorse who had been investigating crime scenes since forever.
“Hi. You can come in if you want.”
“Thanks, Anders.” Jenny lifted the tape and slipped under it. “So what have we got?”
“Balcony girl, model One A.”
“Which means?”
“No footprints, no other tracks anywhere near her. She must have died from the fall alone. The neck is bent at an unnatural angle.”
“So, broken?”
“I’m no medical examiner, but yeah, I’ll bet my next paycheck on it.”
“Anything else?”
“She wasn’t wearing outdoor clothes, just jeans and a T-shirt. Her cell phone fell out of her pocket. It’s crushed; must have ended up under her body when she landed.”
“Can I have a look at her?”
“Sure.”
Björkstedt turned and walked ahead of her through the snow. She had to crouch to enter the tent, where a strong lamp cast a cold light on what, until recently, had been a living teenager.
The girl was on her stomach with her head turned to one side. Her face had stiffened into an expression that was anything but peaceful. There were scrapes and bruises on one cheek, but the rest of her face was unmarked.
Lindh pointed to the marks. “What do you think?”
Björkstedt shrugged. “She hasn’t been moved. You can see that the snow has been pushed aside by her cheek, and there’s blood. So she could have gotten the scrapes when she hit the asphalt, but they could also have been caused before she fell—I can’t swear to either.”
“Do you know anything about her?”
Björkstedt jerked his thumb at the building. “I talked to our colleagues. Lenya Barzani, seventeen years old. Lived on the fourth floor. The uniforms are up there.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Jenny left the tent, he
r boots leaving a straight track in the snow up to the police tape closest to the main entrance.
My husband cheated on me with a whore. In our bed.
A seventeen-year-old girl is dead, maybe murdered. Gotta focus. Damn, it hurts!
Head pounding, she took the elevator to the fourth floor while fumbling for painkillers in her pocket. From inside the shaft, she could hear a commotion that got louder the higher she rose.
She opened the elevator door and stepped out into chaos, pushing aside a woman who flailed her arms and cried. Distressed neighbors spoke loudly in a language she didn’t understand. Uniformed colleagues patiently kept them from entering the apartment they were guarding.
Lindh showed the colleagues her badge, pushed through the throng of upset people, and stepped into the hallway where she was met by yet another uniformed policeman.
“Hi. Jenny Lindh, criminal investigations. What have we got?”
The officer consulted the small notebook in his hand.
“The dead girl is Lenya Barzani, seventeen. A Kurd from northern Iraq. Her father Schorsch is in the living room. Nobody else was here when we arrived. We’ve had a look around. The living room and balcony are a mess; one of the techs is out there now.”
“Thanks.”
Jenny walked past him, into a long hallway. A bedroom door stood open to her right; she paused and looked inside.
It was a typical girl’s room. A Justin Bieber poster on the wall; a vanity table with a laptop squeezed in between lipstick, deodorant and perfumes. A speaker with an iPhone dock; a teddy bear and pink pillows on a sloppily made bed. A pair of jeans, a spaghetti top and some underwear discarded on a chair.
Lenya’s room?
She kept walking. The doors to the other rooms were closed, and the hallway led her into the living room.
The man on the couch might have been sixty. He was dressed in brown pants, a beige shirt and a brown knit sweater. He sat slumped over with his head in his hands, sobbing. Next to him sat a female cop, her hand on his shoulder, trying to speak calmly to him.
A Darker Shade of Sweden Page 22