“Yes, but we can’t question her parents before we—”
He interrupted himself.
“What is it?” asked Sara.
“Damn,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
He was already on his way out the door.
“Think about what?” Sara called after him.
Fredrik hurried into his office and grabbed the phone. He called Sydsvenska Dagbladet and asked to speak with Hannes Wiklander. He waited impatiently and listened to a desolate snapping on the phone. After a long minute the receptionist came back.
“He’s not answering. You can have his cell phone number if it’s urgent.”
Fredrik thought about it.
“Can you connect me to the payroll office?” he asked instead.
There he got a response. It took the woman on the other end twenty seconds to pull out Katja Nyberg’s travel expense account from November sixteenth. The destination was Copenhagen.
It was Katja Nyberg who wrote the comment on Malin Andersson’s blog.
78.
Göran stood up behind the desk when Fredrik and Sara were far enough along in their story that he could understand the importance of it.
“Now you’ll have to tell it to Klint,” he said. “Then we’ll see if we should bring her in.”
They hurried over to the prosecutor, found him in his office, and told the whole story again, unfolded the map of Gothenburg.
“And how would this fit together, do you think?” said Klint, rocking backward in his chair. “How do you see it?”
Fredrik looked at Sara, who nodded that he should respond.
“Rather simple,” he started. “Katja Nyberg meets Henrik at St. Petri; either they start a relationship, or else it’s just something she wants. Let’s say that they do. Henrik soon gets tired of it, or realizes that it’s not a good idea, but for Katja Nyberg it gets much bigger. He is forced to make it clear to her that he is not interested, not in that way. He has children and has no intent of leaving Malin.”
“So far an ordinary extramarital affair,” said Klint, adjusting the watch on his left wrist.
“Yes. Exactly what happens with Katja Nyberg later, I don’t know, I can’t make a diagnosis, but for some reason she can’t let go. She finds Henrik Kjellander’s house on GotlandsResor’s website, maybe she’s looking to rent something else on Fårö, to be near him, maybe see him, get him to change his mind. But now she gets in sight of his house and gets a different idea. She chooses a street in Gothenburg from memory, searches for an existing family on the street, creates a Gmail address, and rents the house. At that point maybe she doesn’t even know why. And then, well, you know what happens then. The threats, Ellen, and finally the murders.”
Peter Klint looked worriedly at them.
“Shouldn’t Henrik have said something?”
“He kept quiet about Malin’s sister,” said Fredrik.
“Yes, but when that thing about Maria came out in the open he ought to have had the sense to tell about this, too. If it really is as you believe.”
“So what do we do?” said Sara.
Peter Klint thought a moment and then tipped his chair forward. That was clearly the decision-making position.
“Find out as much as you can about Katja Nyberg until…”
He looked at the clock.
“Shall we say five?”
“You don’t think this is enough?” said Fredrik.
Peter Klint got a sharp crease between his eyebrows.
“I want to do this in the right order. We should get to the bottom with this woman, but before we bring her in I want to know more. Okay?”
“Okay.”
They got up and Fredrik folded the map.
“And then you have to question Kjellander.”
* * *
It was twenty to three; in other words, they had over two hours to work with. Fredrik and Sara quickly divided up the work between them and Fredrik ended up with Henrik.
Henrik was in the car when he got hold of him.
“It’s a little hard to talk right now,” he said. “I’m sitting here with Ellen.”
“I understand,” said Fredrik.
“I’m on my way to Fårö.”
“I heard that you had decided to move home.”
Ellen’s voice was heard in the background. Henrik asked her to wait.
“It wasn’t good for Ellen at that hotel. Not for me, either. It was like sitting in jail. Don’t be offended. I know that you tried to arrange everything for the best and I’m grateful for that, but we simply had to get out of there.”
“No, I understand but—”
“Listen, can I call you when I get there?” said Henrik politely but a little stressed.
Fredrik considered whether he should say something about Nyberg or wait. He decided to mention her anyway.
“We have to talk about Katja Nyberg.”
“I see?” said Henrik lingeringly.
“We think that you met her in Copenhagen on the fourth of October. At the hotel.”
Henrik did not answer. Fredrik could hear engine sounds and the sound of tires against asphalt. “Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true. But listen, I have to hang up now. I’ll have to call you when I get there.”
79.
Henrik slowed down and inched the final bit up to where Malin’s Honda was still parked. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the sky was covered by a thin layer of clouds. The gravel cracked under the rough tires of the SUV.
One of the police officers who worked with the crime-scene investigation had driven the Mercedes down to Visby for him. Fredrik Broman had been considerate enough to ask whether he needed his car. Henrik thought that sooner or later he probably would. He hadn’t intended to stay in Visby forever.
“Mommy’s car,” said Ellen in a pitiful voice.
Henrik had stopped completely. He reached out a hand and carefully stroked her across the head.
“Yes,” he said.
He listened to the rough rumbling of the engine under the hood and looked down toward the house. It was the same. Yet he got the feeling of a summer house that had been closed up for the winter. Things put away in the garden, locked up.
He put the car in reverse, backed in beside the Honda, and turned off the engine. They remained sitting without moving, silent. He listened for sounds, something to fix his attention on, but heard nothing. Realized at last that he was the one who would have to break the paralysis.
“Shall we get out?” he said, pulling the key out of the ignition.
“Okay,” said Ellen, opening the door on her side.
Henrik got out of the car and took the groceries and the bag of clothes and other belongings they had with them at the hotel, carrying them in one hand. He locked the car and took Ellen by his free hand. He had to let go of her to open the gate, squeezing through with what he was carrying and closing it behind them.
Katja Nyberg? The woman at St. Petri? Did Fredrik Broman mean that they were investigating her? It sounded completely nuts. Would it continue like this? Would they hunt out every woman he had ever looked at, turn his whole life inside out?
He tried to picture Katja Nyberg here at Fårö, but it didn’t work. She was a woman in a bar in a hotel in another country.
He looked toward the edge of the forest, saw how it darkened where the trees got denser. He heard in the distance the call of a bird. He knew nothing about birds, thought it sounded like a call from someone who had been abandoned deep in the forest.
Had he made the right decision? Maybe they should have left the island instead, chosen a completely different place. Maybe he had already made the wrong decision two years ago, when they decided to buy the house.
“Daddy?”
Ellen looked at him inquiringly. He smiled at her, squeezed her hand, and continued down toward the house.
He felt a growing discomfort as they got closer, but it was not fear. He squeezed Ellen’s hand. I
t helped a little, made it so that he didn’t collapse, anyway. He had not believed that it would be like this to lose someone. He had not believed that he would feel so terribly alone.
Henrik asked Ellen to wait at the bottom of the steps while he took out the key and unlocked the front door. He opened it carefully and looked in.
The hall and kitchen bore no trace of what had happened. The only thing that betrayed what had played out there was the feeling of vacuum. The hall was empty. Clothes, shoes, umbrellas and shoe horns, and all imaginable accessories that had been hanging on hooks, put away on shelves, or simply tossed somewhere were gone.
Henrik did not know where they had gone. Some of it the crime-scene technicians had surely taken care of, but the rest? Had the cleaning company thrown it away?
He tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter. He turned around and waved Ellen to him.
“Come in,” he said.
He tried to take a few bold steps into the house even though his legs felt uncertain and his heart was pounding hard in his chest. He did not want to transfer his emotions to Ellen. The room meant nothing to her and he really wanted it to stay that way. She knew nothing. Not about that.
“Take off your shoes,” he admonished her when she was on her way in across the newly scrubbed floor.
It was almost strange how clean and innocent the room seemed. How had they gone about it? The walls shone white. Had they repainted them? He sniffed the air. It did not smell like paint.
Ellen got out of her shoes and Henrik turned around and closed the door. He turned the lock, went over to the alarm’s control panel, which had been placed at the back of the wardrobe closet so it was concealed from the entry, and activated the cameras. He quickly shifted between the three cameras to assure himself that they worked. The gate and road up by the parking area, the stairs outside the door, and the hall.
Henrik continued into the kitchen and set the grocery bag down on the table. Let it stay there. He looked around the kitchen and again got a feeling that he had come to a summer cabin that had stood empty over the winter. That he and Ellen had made a little outing to the country, were staying in someone else’s house. A house that for some inexplicable reason was full of their personal belongings.
He heard a couple of thuds from the living room and went there. Ellen had laid down on her back on the couch with the red jeans jacket on. Henrik sat down beside her and placed a hand on her lower leg.
CDs, DVDs, magazines in a careless pile on the coffee table, toys on the floor, a sweater across a chair, three glass candleholders with burned-down candle stubs. Outside the window the lilacs rocked from a gust of wind.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Ellen shook her head.
These everyday practicalities felt good. Eating. Sleeping. Taking off your shoes in the hall. Brushing your teeth. That was the sort of thing that held life together.
For a long time he had done his best to think the opposite. The everyday routines, trivial details, were the sort of thing that drained life of joy. For that reason it was important to always keep yourself in motion, always think creatively, always be open to adventure. Anything at all so that you wouldn’t be standing there with the dental floss and the yogurt and feel … ordinary.
And the thought was not completely wrong, keeping the drive forward, but he had stopped being afraid of the everyday, of those practical trivial things. Right now that was all he had. If he could build up a kind of everyday existence of sandwiches and sorting laundry he would be the world’s happiest person. No, that was not true. Not the world’s. Not even happy. Happy was a foreign word. But he could be a functioning person. Feel that he was alive, that he had the right to live and that he could look ahead. He tried to convince himself that it was okay. As a person it was right to want to survive.
80.
It was already five o’clock. They had gathered in the smaller conference room: Fredrik, Sara, Göran Eide, and the prosecutor.
Fredrik had contacted the doctor who put Katja Nyberg on sick leave when she was a student.
“The doctor had no recollection of her, but that’s not so strange,” he said. “It was more than six years ago. He found the medical record anyway. ‘Depression in connection with separation.’”
“Interesting combination,” said Sara.
Peter Klint nodded silently. Fredrik continued.
“‘According to the patient’s description, with a tendency to manic periods. Prescribe Zoloft. Return visit in four weeks.’ Katja Nyberg came to the return visit. Apparently it was mostly to fine-tune the dosing of medication. Then she had no more contact with the doctor.”
“So she herself broke off the treatment?” said Göran.
“That’s probably how it has to be interpreted.”
“I checked with the staffing agency in Malmö that was on her CV,” Sara continued. “Nyberg quit there when she got the temporary job at Sydsvenskan. Then she got in touch again last spring. Because almost a year had passed since she last worked for them they decided that she should come in for an interview on the fourteenth of April. But Nyberg never showed up.”
“It sounds like something happened during the spring,” said Göran. “First she loses interest in her job, misses the extension of the temporary position, plans to go back to the staffing agency, but never shows up at the interview.”
“She decides to make contact with Henrik Kjellander, but instead it ends with her renting his house,” Sara filled in.
“How did it go with Kjellander?” Klint asked. “What did he say about Nyberg?”
“He confirmed that he met her at the hotel on the fourth of October, but we haven’t managed to have a real interview.”
“But he confirmed that they had a relationship?” said Klint.
“Only that they had met. He was in the car with his daughter. They’ve gone back to Fårö.”
“He has to be questioned properly.”
“Sure, but he never called back and I’ve tried to reach him.”
“No, no, I understand,” said Klint.
“Do you have anything else?” asked Göran. “Have you checked her phone?”
“The cell phone number in her personal information for Sydsvenskan hasn’t been used since February.”
“Has she called Kjellander?”
“No, but Kjellander has called her. One time, on the twenty-third of October.”
“Three days before Henrik makes the second trip to Copenhagen,” Fredrik pointed out.
“Yes, and according to the connections she has also been in Copenhagen on the twenty-sixth of October, besides the fourth of October and sixteenth of November that we already know about.”
They looked at Klint.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s that much to discuss,” he said. “We’ll have to ask Malmö to bring her in.”
September 11
And who is she, grinning in Aftonbladet? An old whore who sucked you off fifteen years ago.
The long hair that she should trim. The puffy cheeks that say she should diet. The silly smile with her head at an angle. The neck that ought to be snapped.
Why her? How could you let her into your life for a whole year, but turn your back on me after a couple of nights?
Do you understand what I’ve done for you? Do you understand how you fulfilled me? No, you don’t understand, you don’t know. If you did you would be here. It can’t be this strong, this intense, without it meaning something. Meaning everything. It must be there in you, too. It can’t just be me. That’s what I think.
Then I think that I’ve misunderstood everything. That you aren’t worth it. That you are an evil damned egotist who never cared about anyone other than yourself. Then I want to kill you. Erase you from this fucking earth. And I could do it. You know I can.
But then I calm down and then I love you again. I wish I could let it go. I’ve tried to kill myself for your sake. I’ve taken pills for your sake. I’ve killed for your sake. I’ve t
ried to stop loving you. But it doesn’t work. Not more than a minute or two. When I want to kill you.
And then her. Why not me, may I ask? Why a mediocre woman with her head at an angle? Sometimes I wish they would come here and take my picture and tell my story. Not because I care about those newspapers, not because I want my picture there, but so that everyone would know. I want the world to know how much I love you. How much you love me.
You can’t have forgotten how you moaned out my name as if your life depended on it. I haven’t forgotten. Oh my God, you are so beautiful … you are so beautiful. Don’t those words ring in your ears, too? They ring in mine. Every morning when I wake up. Every night when I go to bed. Every hour, every minute.
If you hear them you must know that it’s true. It’s not the kind of thing you just say. It’s not possible to just say. Not like that.
81.
“Hi, this is Alma Vogler, your sister.”
Henrik turned completely cold. At the same time he felt the cell phone getting damp in his hand.
“Yes?” was all he could force out.
He went over to one of the windows, looked toward the barn and the pile of timber that was visible behind it. It was calm and quiet.
“I am truly sorry about what happened,” said Alma.
It was like a bolt of lightning in Henrik’s head. For a moment he thought Alma was apologizing. But of course it wasn’t like that. She was expressing sympathy.
“The whole thing is just terrible. You truly have my condolences,” she said, confirming his thought.
“Thank you,” he managed to say.
He moved the cell phone over to his left hand and wiped the other against his pants leg.
He noticed how Alma braced herself on the other end, by breathing in.
“I want you to know that I am thinking about you and Ellen. And that I think it’s sad that it’s been the way it has between you and us.”
Alma paused. Henrik did not know what to say. Was she expecting him to say something?
“I truly understand that it’s hard for you to accept that. Truly. But I want you to know it.”
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