Stone Coffin

by Kjell Eriksson

  “I think it’s clear that she changed his regular path,” Lindell said. “He became unfocused, as many people have said. This may have had to do with her.”

  “Maybe he was also starting to doubt his work,” Haver said.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Lindell objected. “We have to remember that he was a professional researcher and had devoted his life to developing new medications.”

  “I think you may have an overly idealized idea of the pharmaceutical industry.”

  “Let’s talk about the Dominican Republic,” Lindell said.

  The room fell silent. No one wanted to talk about this because nothing new had emerged about this topic. Plans to send someone to the island to investigate the extent of Cederén’s affairs had been shelved. The local police had provided all necessary information. It was simply a real estate transaction. There were no other connections between Cederén and the island, at least as far as they could tell.

  They had questioned the builder with the contract, and he had had only professional dealings with Cederén. He had received a small advance in order to purchase the building materials and to be able to hire workers. Now he did not know what he was going to do with the cement or the money that was left over.

  “It’s strange to be building something on the other side of the world without being there,” Haver said.

  “I don’t think it would be a problem as long as it was other people’s money,” Berglund said. “He was using the company’s accounts. Maybe he had hired someone else over there to manage the whole thing.”

  The Swedish police had also asked their colleagues in the Dominican Republic to search for anyone named Piñeda who might turn up in connection with the construction project. To date they had not received any answer, however.

  At that moment there was a knock on the door and Sammy Nilsson came in.

  “Oh, good, we were just reviewing where we stand,” Lindell said.

  Sammy sat down in the only armchair.

  “I know how this all hangs together,” he said, stretching out. He paused.

  “We have Josefin’s father. He is the only one with a strong enough motive to revenge himself on the woman who was an indirect cause of his daughter’s death.”

  Lindell conjured up an image of the old man from Uppsala-Näs sitting at the kitchen table, scratching at the open sores on his head, completely baffled by what had happened to his daughter and grandchild. Granted he had lost the big love of his life, but was he really capable of murder?

  “Maybe he went there to talk to Gabriella, got angry, and strangled her,” Sammy went on.

  “How did he find out about her existence and where she lived?” Berglund asked.

  “Josefin may have known about her husband’s mistress. How many did she confide in? I bumped into Magnusson in the garage and he mentioned that he had called the waitress at the Wermlandskällaren again to see if she could remember more details from Cederén’s visit. She mentioned that she had gone out to Uppsala-Näs to visit Josefin’s father. She wanted to give him her condolences because apparently they’d had a good relationship when she was working as a home assistant. In other words, the father knew that we were looking for an unknown woman who had accompanied Cederén to the restaurant. He knew who she was, but instead of talking with us, he may have decided to look her up himself. Perhaps it wasn’t to murder her, more to look her in the face and bawl her out, I don’t know. People operate in such different ways.”

  Lindell couldn’t help but smile at Sammy’s final words. It was the only conclusion in his long and speculative account that she could agree with.

  “Go on, laugh,” he said. “But can you come up with something better?”

  He pulled himself out of the chair, reached for the thermos on the table, and shook it, only to discover that it was empty.

  “No one’s laughing,” Lindell said. “But you have to admit that you’re an imaginative type.”

  “This is about motive,” Sammy said. “Strong motives. And what is stronger than a father’s grief at his only daughter’s death? He couldn’t revenge himself on Cederén. Gabriella was the only one left.”

  “I think this is messier than that,” Haver said. “I mean, everything is connected. There is not only familial grief in this drama. There is also MedForsk, primates, and activists.”

  “Okay,” Sammy said and got up. “Then I guess I will go think up a new theory. Are you here for another half an hour?”

  “Another theory in half an hour is about right,” Lindell said. “Then maybe we’ll catch the killer in a couple of days.”

  “But I do think we should interrogate the father,” Sammy said.

  “I’ll do it,” Lindell said.

  “Check his shoes,” Haver said.

  * * *

  Lindell decided to drive straight out to Josefin’s father. On her way there, she stopped at the church to visit Josefin’s and Emily’s graves. But she immediately regretted it and simply stayed in the car gazing out over the beautiful landscape.

  A pastoral landscape, she thought. Very fitting next to a church. She lingered for ten minutes, toying with the idea of calling Edvard, but what would she really say? Would he call again or had he changed his mind? That would be good in a way. Then she wouldn’t have to decide if she was going to tell him about the child. Then he was the one who had made the decision.

  She decided that if Edvard didn’t try to contact her again, if their Midsummer night had only been a nostalgic game, she would have the baby.

  She drove on, noticeably more at peace, and passed by Cederén’s house, which lay empty. It would be sold, and as far as she could tell, Sven-Erik’s and Josefin’s parents were the heirs.

  Holger Johansson was sitting in a garden swing with his neighbor, Vera. He showed no surprise at Lindell’s appearance.

  Lindell couldn’t help but check his scalp to see if the sores were still there, but she didn’t see any. Vera went to fetch her a cup of coffee.

  Johansson had aged during the weeks that had gone by since they last saw each other. He seemed slightly lost. He must be on medications, Lindell thought.

  She told him very briefly that they had found the woman that Cederén had been seeing. Johansson did not look particularly surprised. He raised his eyes and gazed at Lindell as if to say: Of course, all this was Cederén’s fault. It was his infidelity that killed my daughter and grandchild.

  “Cederén’s girlfriend is also dead. Murdered.”

  He put his cup down with a clatter and stared at her in amazement.

  “How?” he managed as Vera returned. In one hand she held a cup, in the other a plate with slices of Swiss roll.

  Lindell repeated what she had said. Vera froze where she stood.

  “Was she the one who was written about in the papers?”

  Lindell nodded.

  “Coffee,” Johansson said. “Give her some coffee.”

  Vera poured her a cup.

  “It didn’t say that it had anything to do with Sven-Erik,” she said.

  “No, we never told the media.”

  “How did she die?” Johansson asked.

  “She was strangled.”

  It felt strange not to be able to say that Gabriella Mark had been a good person. Someone who had been beaten down by life but was finding her way back.

  “How terrible,” Vera said and shot Johansson a quick look as if she had said too much.

  “So I have to ask what you were doing the evening of the twenty-ninth.”

  She hated asking the question, and in her next breath she explained that it was routine inquiry.

  “I understand,” Johansson said. “I was home as usual. Since Jossan died, I’ve hardly left the house.”

  “I can vouch for him,” Vera inserted swiftly.

  “I believe you,” Lindell said. “I have to ask two more questions: What is your shoe size?”

  “Forty-four,” Johansson answered with surprising alertness.

  “
Thank you,” Lindell said and took her first sip of coffee.

  “You had two questions.”

  “Yes. The second may seem a little strange…”

  “As if the one about my shoe size wasn’t that already,” Johansson interrupted.

  Lindell had to smile.

  “My second question is, was there any kind of alcohol that Sven-Erik didn’t like, that he couldn’t drink?”

  “I don’t know, but he mostly drank whisky. Without any ice or water. How many evenings haven’t we sat here with a drink.”

  Holger Johansson sank into thought and Lindell gave Vera a look.

  “Never a schnapps or a cocktail,” he went on. “Is that enough of an answer?”

  “Thank you,” Lindell said.

  She stayed for another fifteen minutes. When she stood up from the table she asked yet another question.

  “You had a home assistant for a while, a Maria Lundberg. Have you spoken to her since she stopped working here?”

  “No,” Johansson said, puzzled. “Should I have?”

  “We met her in another context and she mentioned that she recognized you. But you haven’t seen or spoken to her?”

  He shook his head.

  “This is an odd conversation,” he said. “But I guess it must be normal for you.”

  Vera got up and followed her out to the car. When they were almost there, Vera grabbed her arm.

  “You’ll have to excuse Holger,” she said. “But he forgets things. Maria, the home assistant, has definitely been by to visit.”

  Lindell nodded.

  * * *

  She left Holger and Vera, feeling oddly disconnected. Was it because the couple in the garden swing reminded her of her own parents? The same stillness that seemed to inhabit the air around them, the same clatter of coffee cups and a slightly pathetic passivity. The garden swing swung back and forth. It was most likely Vera who occasionally gave it a discreet push with her foot. That was probably how it was—she was the one who supplied the motion. Holger swung along, perhaps unaware of the motion at all.

  That was how it was back home in Ödeshög. Growing up with her father, she had learned that her home would fall into complete stillness without these little pushes. Her mother would probably not sign off on this assessment. She was able to keep her home in motion as a matter of course, so pointing this out would be received as a sign of familial disloyalty.

  “It’s not easy for him,” she often said when Lindell pointed out that her father could be more active or help out with the housework. Lindell had never understood what she meant but viewed her mother’s self-imposed tasks with a mixture of tenderness and contempt.

  * * *

  All this talk, she thought. It doesn’t lead anywhere. “Monotony” was the word that came to her. She saw herself driving the same way an endless number of times. Somewhere along the road were the violent criminals, murderers, drug dealers, and rapists. In her mind’s eye she saw her and her colleagues dashing back and forth, making notes, talking on their cell phones, and discussing the cases with one another. The perpetrators smiled confidently, smirking at the dull police officers.

  Only once or twice did they make an unplanned turn from the main road, driving onto a side road that no one had paid any attention to earlier, and suddenly the investigation took on a new life. New landscapes and people emerged.

  That’s how we should work, she thought. We should do the unexpected. Which side roads have I overlooked? she wondered at she turned onto the 55 toward Uppsala by Skärfälten.

  She drove quickly, much too quickly, and it did not take her long to reach the edge of the city, but instead of going back to the station she drove toward Rasbo.

  * * *

  She walked toward Gabriella Mark’s house with a strange feeling in her body that was difficult to define. Dead land, a dead house, dying vegetable beds. There was nothing left of the cottage idyll. Instead, the property and the surrounding forest were draped in anguish.

  She walked around, feeling sad. The cabbage plants in their beds lay like used, wrinkled gloves that had been thrown to the ground. A couple of days of sun had ruined them, and nothing could be done to revive them. Death leads to death, she thought darkly. The light glinted in the glassed-in beds. To what end did you labor with all this?

  Lindell avoided the stone coffin, the mound where they had found the body. In a way she felt that Gabriella was still there. Once beautiful and warm, with an inviting body, but now cold, twisted, and besmirched. The soft skin no longer evoked caresses and kisses. It seemed perverse in its corpse-gray nakedness.

  The stock doves called from the woods. Lindell walked along the road. At the edge of the property there was a very old pear tree, and on the ground there were piles of unripened fruit that the tree had released. She crouched down and picked up one of the rejects. It was shaped like a small pear but completely unripe.

  The doves sang their melancholy song. At least they are a couple, she thought. Suddenly there was a faint rustling sound from deeper within the woods and Lindell immediately stood up. The unripened fruit fell from her hand. She strained her senses to their full capacity and took a step closer to the old tree trunk as if to win an ally. The knotty trunk of the tree with its deeply notched bark was the only comforting presence in this landscape of death.

  The rustling came again. Lindell stared between the spruce and alder. She sniffed like an animal to pick up the scent of the new element. She glimpsed something between some trees. What it was, she didn’t know. Terror came over her abruptly and she pressed herself close to the tree as if for protection. She tried to control her breathing and stood completely still, with only one thought: not to die like Gabriella Mark.

  Curse the day I applied to the police academy, she thought. I want to walk in the forest, press my cheek against the massive weight of a pear tree and feel its warmth, but not with death as my companion. I want to live like a normal woman, not mingle with the dead, rummage through their homes, wander across blackened lands. I want to love, see life around me. I want to have children, she screamed inside.

  Footsteps in the forest. Movement between the branches. It was as if the woods concealed everything inhuman and violent. It was all there, rustling, perceptible but invisible to the eye.

  The stock doves called out. Lindell spun around and gazed back at the house. Where could she take cover? Had the murderer returned? Was there anything of significance left in the house? Something he had missed? There were always details that were visible only to the evildoer.

  She considered running back to the car but couldn’t see herself rushing back like a victim. Whatever was out there, regardless of whether it was the murderer or not, it was her job to investigate it. She had to deal with her terror as best she could. Whether that meant wine or sleeping pills didn’t really matter.

  It was Gabriella’s terror that she was experiencing. Suddenly the murderer seemed like a kinsman, someone very dear who had desperately been searching for the truth. Mark had loved and lost everything, not once but twice. Death had come from the forest. It had slain her and the tender shoots in her garden. Lindell pressed her body against the tree, peering out to see if she could catch sight of whatever was moving through the thick vegetation.

  She glimpsed a large body. An animal. Suddenly an elk cow appeared. It raised its large muzzle into the air and stared toward something unseen that she knew was there. She could not have been more than ten meters from Lindell. She had never been so close to a large wild animal before.

  The cow took a couple of steps, then looked back. Behind her was a calf that now dared to emerge into the small clearing. It had to be the calf that Gabriella had written about in her almanac, Lindell thought.

  The calf was moving with great difficulty. Its right hind leg was injured. A large, red, open, and infected wound. Lindell saw the flies buzzing around its hindquarters. Every step had to be an effort, she thought. The elk cow turned its head and looked at its child. Did she know t
hat it was lost? She shook her sturdy head a little as if to express dismay at her little calf. Lindell thought there was only sorrow in her gaze.

  They were keeping to this place because they couldn’t move any real distance. The calf looked half-starved and weak. Marked by death, it picked at a few leaves.

  Lindell stood as if turned to stone next to the tree and watched the patient cow wait as her badly limping calf tried to follow her. They disappeared into the greenery again. The tragedy in the mother’s tenderness and the courage of the calf, the inevitable death that awaited the little one, almost caused her to burst into tears.

  “So damn cruel,” she muttered.

  Twenty-two

  The morning meeting began with a brief review of what had been found out the day before. Three tips had come in from Rasbo. Two could be dismissed immediately, but the third—from a woman who had called the station late at night and been transferred to the Criminal division—was of significantly greater interest.

  The woman lived about a kilometer from Gabriella Mark, and on the evening of June 29, around eight o’clock, she had seen a car she didn’t recognize. There were only five houses including Mark’s past the woman’s house, so she normally recognized the cars that went by.

  That evening a red car had driven past. It had a small area in the back, like a little van. She didn’t know anything about makes, but she had never seen it before.

  The car had gone by quickly, “much too fast for our little gravel road,” and she had not been able to see who was in the car. The strange thing was that it had not driven back again. At least not while she and her husband were still up, which they were until half past eleven. She also claimed that they would wake up when a car drove by. “We are unused to cars, so we always wake up if we hear one.” The report was taken down ten minutes before midnight.

  “We’ll have to check up on it,” Ottosson said. “This is a job for Nilsson, who was born in this district where they aren’t used to cars. Then I think we’ll have to send someone to Spain,” he said and made it sound as if it was a punishment.

  Four hands immediately shot into the air. The interested parties were Wende, Beatrice, Sammy, and Jonsson from Forensics.