Third Voice

by Börjlind, Cilla

  He’s used you, Olivia, as you promised yourself never to be used again.

  She turned around.

  The veins were pumping in her forehead, her jaw was clenched, her cheeks tight. Welander was coming towards her.

  ‘Was that a difficult conversation?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see that. You’re shaking. Was it about Sandra?’

  ‘No, it was about you.’

  ‘Me?’

  Olivia took two steps forward and gave Welander a big slap straight across his face. He tripped over the table, and fell onto an alabaster lamp and straight into the wall. The lamp crashed onto the floor without going out. Welander slid along the wall and ended up on all fours. There was blood running from his nose, down over his mouth, down onto the floor, he was gasping heavily.

  Olivia didn’t move.

  A number of seconds passed, perhaps a minute. Finally Welander turned up to face her.

  ‘I understand you,’ he sniffled.

  ‘What exactly is it you understand?’

  ‘I should have told you.’

  ‘Yes. Get up.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Get up.’

  Welander was still on all fours.

  He knew he’d locked the door.

  He knew what he kept hidden behind one of the old books on the shelf.

  * * *

  Mette was still holding her mobile in her hand. She was standing by the desk in her office. Lisa was sitting on a chair and Bosse was leaning up against a wall.

  ‘Did she recognise the voice?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it Magnus Thorhed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So who was it, then?!’ Lisa said and got up.

  ‘She didn’t say. She just said, “I’ll be in touch.” Then she ended the call. She sounded…’

  Mette fell silent. Bosse and Lisa looked at her.

  ‘How did she sound?’

  ‘I don’t know, strange? Tense?’

  They looked at each other. Olivia must have understood how important it was that they found out whose voice it was. How urgent this was. All she needed to do was say the name. Yet nevertheless she ended the call. Why did she do that?

  They all thought the same thing.

  Maybe she was with the person in question?

  ‘Where is she?’ Bosse said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Call her again!’

  Mette had already set about calling Olivia. She waited. Voicemail.

  ‘She’s not answering. I talked to her about an hour ago and she was on her way to someone who might have information about Magnus Thorhed. She didn’t say who.’

  ‘Might someone else know?’

  ‘No idea,’ Mette said.

  But she picked up her mobile and tried the only person she could think of.

  ‘Hi, Tom, it’s Mette. Do you know where Olivia is?’

  ‘No. She was going to talk to someone, maybe she’s still there?’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘A priest. Someone Bengt Sahlmann knew.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Mette had already ended the call and rung Sandra’s aunt, Charlotte Pram.

  * * *

  Welander had got up, eventually. Now he was standing leaning up against the bookshelf, wiping the blood off his face with his smoking jacket. The alabaster sheen from the floor lit up his pitiable figure. Olivia was still standing in the middle of the room. Her rage had not subsided.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Welander’s voice was hoarse and broken.

  ‘To the police.’

  ‘Because you recognised my voice?’

  ‘Because you have witnessed a crime.’

  ‘It wasn’t intentional.’

  ‘You’ll have to explain that to the police.’

  ‘But don’t you understand what that will mean?’

  Olivia saw tears running down Welander’s cheeks.

  She was repulsed.

  ‘Don’t you understand what will happen if this gets out?’

  ‘I couldn’t give a shit about that.’

  ‘But my congregation does! I am their shepherd! I am the one who comforts and supports them! Many of them live miserable lives and the only thing that keeps them going is my words! I am the one who gives their lives hope and love.’

  ‘Maybe you should have thought of that before indulging in hardcore pornography.’

  Welander stared at Olivia. He was breathing heavily. His eyes narrowed. His voice became lower, tighter.

  ‘And who are you to pass moral judgement over me?’ he hissed. ‘You come to me asking for help, because you can’t cope with telling Sandra the truth. You’re a coward.’

  ‘Shall we go now?’

  ‘The door is locked.’

  Olivia looked at Welander. She took a couple of steps towards the door and pressed down the handle. It was locked.

  ‘Open it,’ she said.

  ‘Do you like music? Classical music?’

  ‘Open the door!’

  Welander reached over to his music player on the book-shelf and turned it on. The music came blaring out, the whole room was reverberating. Olivia hunched over and got out her mobile. Welander was standing over by the bookshelf watching her.

  ‘It’s Scheherazade!!’ he screamed through the blaring music. ‘My favourite piece!’

  Olivia called Mette.

  While she was waiting for her to answer, she saw Welander pulling out a thick book from the bookshelf.

  * * *

  Charlotte had given them Tomas Welander’s address.

  Mette and Bosse held on tightly as Lisa sped past a bus. Mette had tried to call Olivia again. She wasn’t answering. In the middle of a crossroads, she received a call. The number display was clear: OLIVIA RÖNNING. When Mette picked up, all she could hear was blaring music and Olivia’s voice shouting: ‘I NEED HELP!’ Then the voice disappeared, but the music carried on.

  The line wasn’t broken.

  Mette tried to shout into the phone.

  No response.

  * * *

  It was a small gun. It didn’t take up much space behind the book. As he held it in his hand it felt almost light, but he knew what it could do. He had inherited it from his father and had used it a couple of times at Lundsberg. To scare those in need of a good scare, teach them a lesson. One time he’d fired it, just after midnight, somewhere not too far from the school, during a punishment ritual. One of the younger boys had not been following the rules, and had actually even threatened to go to the housemaster. That could not be tolerated. He was taken out to an old stone cairn and stripped naked. He liked animals. Jean had got hold of a little white rabbit. He held it up by its ears in front of the young pupil. It was squirming. Then it was shot through the head right in front of the terrified, wayward little boy.

  After that he followed the rules.

  The woman facing him now was not following the rules. She was making her own. She was disregarding a divine messenger. She was a Pharisee, consumed by arrogance.

  A wayward little girl.

  ‘Sit down!!’ he yelled, pointing at the armchair with the little gun.

  Welander shouted so loudly that his voice could be heard above the music. Olivia tried to assess the situation. The music was roaring in her ears and she realised that the man in front of her was probably very unwell. Or at least totally off balance.

  She sat down in the armchair.

  Welander went and stood right in the middle of the room, a couple of metres away from her, in the middle of the acoustic intersection. He took off his smoking jacket with the gun pointing at the armchair.

  He was naked underneath.

  ‘If you move I’ll shoot you!’ he screamed. ‘Like a rabbit!’

  Olivia looked at his white, wrinkly body. Online porn? It’s men like him who pay to see women being degraded and sexually exploite
d. Men with bodies like that. She knew that she was generalising. Sadly men with far more lithe bodies did the same thing.

  Like Borell.

  Why?

  She followed Welander’s movements across the floor. She saw that the music permeated his body, consuming him, his naked, bony body writhing as the music escalated. She saw that he had scratch marks on his forearms, the gun in his hand was pointing at her chest. His head started moving, back and forth, searching, as though looking for more music.

  Then it stopped, in the middle of a crescendo, and his eyes closed shut.

  * * *

  When Lisa slammed the brakes on outside the building on Banérgatan, Bosse jumped out first. They’d got hold of the door code and he was in the stairway just seconds later. Lisa rushed in after him. Mette moved as quickly as she could. She recalled when she stayed outside Forsman’s building and what had happened then.

  Now she wanted to go inside!

  Upstairs!

  Bosse had stopped outside Welander’s front door. The music was blaring out into the stairway. Nevertheless he rang the doorbell.

  Pointless.

  ‘What do we do now?!’

  Lisa had made her way up the stairs.

  ‘The caretaker?’

  ‘A locksmith!’

  ‘That’ll take for ever,’ Mette said.

  She was gasping as she walked up the last step and stopped outside the door. All three of them realised that none of them would be able to break it down. The police only did that in films. And none of them were keen on shooting the lock off either.

  Suddenly the music stopped. The noise of a gunshot broke the silence.

  Followed by a muffled scream.

  Bosse pulled out his gun. Mette and Lisa backed off. Just as he raised the gun and pointed it at the lock the door opened. A naked man was standing in the doorway. A dark smoking jacket was hanging over his shoulders and his hands were holding his crotch. He was obviously in pain, as though he’d been kicked. His hair was hanging down over his eyes. Bosse pointed the gun at this head.

  ‘Where is Olivia?!’

  ‘Here.’

  The voice came from behind Tomas Welander. It was Olivia’s. She pushed past the man standing in the doorway. He stumbled out a couple of steps into the stairway. Lisa got out some handcuffs. Olivia stepped forward holding a little gun in her hand.

  ‘We were just on our way,’ she said.

  Chapter 27

  Tomas Welander was wearing a clean white shirt and a pair of dark of trousers. The collar was unbuttoned and exposed a thin chain with a gold cross around his neck. Mette and Lisa sat opposite him in an interrogation room at the National Crime Squad headquarters. There was a laptop on the table. Bosse was following the interrogation from an adjoining room.

  They’d gone through the formalities.

  Mette went through the sequence of events in Welander’s flat. She’d heard Olivia’s version, and now she wanted the man sitting opposite her to confirm it. He did not object to her description as such, but he did react to Mette’s interpretation of the situation.

  ‘I never threatened Olivia,’ he said.

  ‘You pointed a gun at her and said that you’d kill her if she moved. “Like a rabbit.”’ Mette had to contain a smile, it sounded quite ridiculous. ‘Is that incorrect?’ she said.

  ‘It is correct that I pointed a gun at her, but she’s fabricated the rest.’

  ‘Why did you point the gun at her?’

  ‘Because I was afraid. She’d attacked me. I was acting in defence.’

  ‘In what way had she assaulted you?’

  ‘She knocked me down.’

  Mette knew that this was true, Olivia had admitted that. She also knew why it had happened and had a certain understanding of why Olivia had reacted the way she did.

  But it was indeed assault.

  And without any witnesses there was nothing that contradicted Welander’s version.

  So she let it go.

  For now.

  ‘I’m going to show you a film,’ she said.

  Lisa opened up the laptop and started the film that Jean-Baptiste had sent them. Welander reacted strongly after a few seconds. He realised what he would be forced to watch. The murder he’d witnessed via the webcam. He held up a hand to cover his face. Mette paused the film.

  ‘Take your hand down,’ she said. ‘You are going to watch this film from beginning to end.’

  Mette’s voice signalled that there was no room for objections. Welander lowered his hand. Mette started the film again. Welander squinted, he knew what was coming, and when it did he was forced to avert his eyes. But he could not avoid the woman’s piercing scream. It bounced off the walls of the small interrogation room. Welander clenched his hands on his lap, his arms were shaking all the way up to his shoulders. Mette and Lisa were watching him the whole time. Welander looked up again.

  ‘There are three voices to be heard on the film,’ Mette said. ‘Two of them belong to Bengt Sahlmann and Jean Borell, the third one belongs to you, is that correct?’

  Welander nodded.

  ‘I want you to answer the question loud and clear.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Welander said.

  His voice was hardly audible, very thin and dry, as though he’d swallowed a load of altar bread. Lisa poured him a glass of water and passed it to him. He drank half of it.

  ‘Can you tell me about the background to this?’ Mette said.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To what we’ve just seen?’

  Welander’s body sank down in his seat. He knew he’d have to tell them, he knew he wouldn’t get out of this room until he had.

  ‘It started at Lundsberg. Jean and I and Bengt had a very strong connection there. We stuck together. We had lots of fun. Then we went our separate ways, but we stayed in touch.’

  ‘You met up?’

  ‘Yes, but only once a year or so.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘We relived some of the happy times at school. We drank alcohol and talked about old memories.’

  ‘And watched porn on the Internet?’

  ‘It was something of a tradition, from the old school days, to watch pornography, quite innocent, the online porn thing came later. It was – I don’t know how to describe it – some kind of forbidden male thrill, as though we were young again.’

  Mette and Lisa peered at each other.

  Welander drank up the rest of the water.

  ‘The last few years we’d been using a service called porn-online,’ he said.

  ‘Livestreamed pornography,’ Lisa said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like the one we just looked at.’

  ‘Yes. It was Jean who’d asked Bengt to order it.’

  ‘A BDSM session.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you order a recording of the session too?’

  ‘Yes. Jean wanted it. He is – he was interested in that sort of thing.’

  ‘BDSM?’

  ‘Yes. Like in that film there, I believe?’ Welander pointed at the laptop.

  ‘Yes,’ Mette said. ‘What happened that night?’

  Welander was breathing heavily. He tried to recall the night it happened. How they had all met up out at Jean’s house on Värmdö, drunk booze, hooked up to the online session at the agreed time and started watching. More and more aroused, more and more drunk. How they had spurred them on more and more to perform more advanced and perverted sex acts. Finally the naked, tied-up woman in the room had reacted, started screaming, but the act continued.

  ‘Even though she didn’t want it to?’ Mette said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, in practice, it turned into rape?’

  ‘It could be described that way.’

  Mette and Lisa looked at each other. Their thoughts were clearly visible in their expressions.

  ‘Then that awful thing happened that you saw in the film,’ Welander said.

  ‘The man in t
he room killed the woman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you react to that?’ Mette asked. ‘You’d just witnessed a sex act that you had ordered and paid for ending up as murder?’

  ‘We were terribly shocked. We just sat there. When we came to our senses we started discussing what to do, whether we should call the police.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We didn’t know what to say. We couldn’t do anything about what we’d seen, we didn’t know who the people in the room were, we didn’t know where it had taken place, just a room somewhere in the world.’

  ‘Hypocrites,’ Mette said calmly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The only thing you worried about was making sure that no one found out about what you’d been doing.’

  Welander didn’t reply.

  ‘So you decided to keep quiet?’ Lisa said.

  ‘Yes, but it was very tortuous, I felt absolutely terrible afterwards.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  Mette looked at Welander in disgust. She’d talked to many people with different crimes on their conscience. This man was one of the most pitiful she’d seen. She opened a brown file in front of her.

  ‘I want to spend some time talking about the murder of Bengt Sahlmann,’ she said. ‘How did you find out about it?’

  ‘First I heard that it was suicide.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Jean. He rang me at lunchtime and said that Bengt had been totally off balance and was threatening to go to the police and tell them about the irregularities in Jean’s company and about what had happened that night. Jean was freaked out. Then he rang later that evening and said that he’d been to Bengt’s house to talk some sense into him and that he’d hanged himself. Then I found out that Bengt had been murdered.’

  ‘What did you think then?’

  ‘I was shocked. At first I didn’t want to believe it. Then I got scared and started thinking about Jean.’

  ‘Whether he was the one who murdered Bengt?’

  ‘Yes, it was an unbearable thought. That one of my friends would have murdered another of my friends? It was awful.’

  ‘I understand. But you received two phone calls from Borell that same day, first one telling you about Bengt’s threats and then one stating that he’d been to Bengt’s home. Is that correct?’