by Jens Lapidus
I took my own laptop out of my bag, the one I’d been gathering information on. Since that’s what I used it for, I had a few different cables with me. First, I linked it to Peder’s computer. In under ten minutes, I’d managed to copy half his hard drive over to mine.
Then I reached for the other computer. Opened it. I tried the same username and password I’d seen Peder put into the first computer. It was a complete gamble. And now, with hindsight, I know it was the stupidest gamble I’ve ever made. Because it worked.
At first, all I could see were a load of files with nonsense names. But I looked a little deeper and found some more folders, ones with more suspect names. XXXDream. XXXBelow13. And for some reason, I had the same impulse I’d had with the first computer. I made a copy of everything I found.
An hour later, Peder came back. He said: “Mats, if you’re done here, I think it’s time for you to go home.”
He followed me out. There was a black car already waiting on the gravel outside. “Thanks so much for coming. I know everyone found it incredibly beneficial.” Peder winked and took hold of my arm.
When I got home, I turned on my own computer. I clicked on one of the files I’d copied over. It was a film.
I could see a dimly lit room and a double bed. Four men. A woman, though maybe woman is a bit of a stretch—it was a girl. I couldn’t tell her exact age, but I don’t think she could’ve been much older than thirteen, fourteen, I’m sure about that. She was on all fours on the bed. One of the men was having sex with her from behind. She was having oral sex with another. And I’m pretty sure she was crying.
I clicked on another video file. It was a different room, but I could see more bare walls, tile flooring, brighter lighting. This time, there was a girl tied up with what looked like rubber straps. She had something in her mouth, a ball. And there was something between her legs, a bottle maybe. Her body was covered with brown smears. It must’ve been shit. There was a man in the video too, urinating on her face.
I opened a third file and then a fourth, but I could only manage a few seconds of each. It’s the sickest thing I’ve ever seen….
JS: Do you know whose computer it was?
M: No, but the passwords were the same.
JS: But if it wasn’t his, who would you guess owned that second computer?
M: I have no idea.
JS: What did you do then?
M: Nothing. And I regret that to this day.
JS: No, come on, it wasn’t your responsibility.
M: That’s not how I see it. I should’ve done something back then. It’s everyone’s responsibility.
31
When Emelie was small, they used to celebrate midsummer in Roslagen. Her aunt had lived there back then, in a small village: Berhagen. She and her husband had rented the place as a summerhouse at first, but then they’d bought it and moved in.
The yearly midsummer celebrations took place down by the village hall. Emelie and her cousin Molly used to go down there every day. They would buy ice cream, look at the old mill wheel, and talk about anything and everything. They weren’t close, they barely saw one another for the rest of the year: but right then, for one week of summer every year, they could talk about everything. That kept Emelie going the rest of the year. No matter what else was going on in her life, no matter how she felt about school, her teachers, her friends, or her mom. And dad. She always had Molly: in a bubble, shielded from everything else.
The celebrations would start at twelve, with the dressing of the maypole. The year-round inhabitants, summer guests, and assorted other visitors went down there with birch twigs and flowers. After that, the majority of people went off to eat midsummer lunch. Pickled herring with sour cream, chives, and potatoes. Crisp bread and mature cheese. Västerbotten pie, egg and anchovy salad, strawberries with whipped cream. And, of course: the schnapps. At three, the real celebrations began. The pole had to be raised, it was more than thirty feet tall: a job for the men. Emelie was always terrified her father would hurt himself, or even worse: that he’d cause the pole to roll and hurt someone else. Because midsummer was one of his favorite holidays: one of the few days in the year it was socially acceptable to drink strong spirits and get “a little bit squiffy,” as he liked to say.
She was probably about twelve when it finally happened. Emelie, Molly, her mom, aunt, and the others had been dancing around the maypole, following Olle Högström, who was leading the group. He’d been dressed in traditional clothing like usual; according to Aunt Ingrid, he’d done it for thirty years. Ritsch ratsch filibombombom, filibombombom, they sang. They did the movements, jumped around. If that had been the day aliens chose to make their way down to earth, to see what life was like on our little planet, they would’ve turned straight back around. Madmen like that couldn’t possibly be part of an intelligent civilization.
There was no sign of Dad, but Emelie had been able to see the unease on her mother’s face.
After a few more songs, people started to talk, some were laughing. Others had peeled away from the dancing and gone over to the little bridge over the stream. They stopped. What was going on? Her mom’s face again: deep worry in her eyes.
Emelie and her mother had unlinked their hands. The dancing stopped. The music fell silent.
They went over to the bridge. Molly at their side. A few people turned around and looked at Emelie. Their mouths were smiling, but she’d seen something else in their eyes. She hadn’t realized what it was at the time, but she felt like she knew by now: it was pity she’d seen.
Her father was sitting in the stream. Naked apart from the wet shirt clinging to his body. His knees were bleeding. He was half singing, half screaming some kind of poem: “The evening is festooned with golden clouds and the fairies dance in the meadow, the leaf-crowned Nacken plays his fiddle in the silvery brook.”
Emelie never forgot that sight. Of all the times he’d put them to shame, been embarrassing and stupid, this was the time she remembered most clearly. It wasn’t the first time, or even the worst. But something else had made it stand out. Maybe because he’d been practically naked. Or maybe because Molly had been there. Molly—who was supposed to be protected from Emelie’s world. Molly—who was supposed to be untainted by the family secret.
They never celebrated midsummer in Berhagen again.
Today, she was the one drinking. Emelie and Josephine were at a party, at one of her guy friends’ places.
A rooftop flat on Linnégatan, super-deluxe renovation. Jossan had told her beforehand: “He flew in these old wooden doors from a castle in Bordeaux and then turned them into a table. He designed his own TV unit, too, and got the carpenters at Svenskt Tenn to make it from walnut and gold leaf. You’ll see. It’s really something.”
Terrace doors wide open: it was a nice evening. Emelie wondered whether Jossan wanted to sleep with the guy in question. He worked for SEB Equities, Enskilda before that, and was a definite up-and-coming star in the world of investment banking. Emelie had actually worked with him on a transaction a few years earlier, but she’d never really understood the appeal. He had an irritating habit of sniffing his hands all the time. Though maybe that was why Jossan saw a kindred spirit in him: she was pretty much a lotion and hand cream fetishist.
First, they ate dinner. Twelve of them. The others all talked about the same acquaintances, the same bars, cackled at the same jokes. Emelie wondered if they’d all known each other already—though she knew that wasn’t the case.
They drank martinis before the food. Wine and beer with it. Then shots: Stolichnaya Elit and OP. She knew she shouldn’t get drunk: the side effects of her pills might kick in if she drank too much. Emelie’s thoughts went back to her father. She didn’t understand why her mom didn’t just leave him. Why he didn’t stop drinking.
And now: her mom had called to ask if she and her father could come up to Stockholm for a vacation, maybe stay with her. Now that everything was better with him. Come on: stay with her—the idea was bizarre
. But she hadn’t had the heart to say no. She would just have to camp out in the office for a few days.
Their host was talking about a leveraged buyout he was working on. Jossan and the other girls clearly weren’t interested. That was the strange thing about Josephine—she was an incredibly gifted lawyer: if you asked Emelie, the best of her generation in the office. She’d worked her ass off to climb the ladder; she was on the firm’s entertainment committee, involved in the cultural club, the football tournament, and the pro-bono work they did. She had all the prerequisites for being a partner. But at the same time, she was completely uninterested in anything relating to business, and in the areas their clients actually made money. She just loved the law. Maybe that made her even more perfect—she was never jealous of the clients. Those guys who earned a hundred times what she did, worked half as much, and seemed brain-dead in comparison.
Emelie had tried to dress up tonight. She’d stood in front of the mirror for hours, trying on more or less her entire wardrobe in varying combinations. Eventually she’d settled on a pair of loose-fitting silk trousers from Zara and a thin black blouse from Marc by Marc Jacobs—probably the most expensive thing she’d ever bought.
Despite that, she still felt wrong somehow. Josephine and the other girls looked much cooler than she did. Jossan was wearing a diamond-encrusted watch and had a Cartier Love bracelet on one wrist. Another girl had a Collier de Chien bracelet, black leather and rose gold—Emelie wouldn’t have even recognized it if Jossan didn’t spend her time browsing those brands’ home pages the moment she had a spare minute. Emelie asked her where she’d bought the bracelet. Outside her comfort zone: but that was what you were supposed to do when you made small talk—you discussed the gym, interior design, clothes, where you could buy things. She’d almost learned by this point—she was nearly thirty, after all.
Her thoughts drifted to the case. Teddy was different, tense. Emelie didn’t even know what he was doing; his phone had been off for days now. She had to talk to him.
Jan had been in touch with more test results from the house: DNA. The news wasn’t exactly encouraging. They’d found Benjamin’s DNA in several places inside. Maybe he was guilty. Maybe he’d murdered the man in the house after all. She tried to bat back that thought. It wasn’t her place to decide. She was a lawyer—her overriding duty was loyalty to her client. But emotionally: If he was a murderer—how could she work toward getting him acquitted? Fight for his release into society, back on the street, where he might do the same thing again?
She’d called Cecilia to ask if there were any doctor’s notes about Mats. She’d given the envelope from the bank to Jan for analysis. She’d been to see Benjamin. He was still in bed, eyes tightly shut, but after she’d been there a while, trying to get him to acknowledge her presence, he uttered four words: “Has Teddy found anything?”
Emelie hadn’t known what to say.
She’d gone back to the bank in Kungsholmen and asked who usually came to the safe-deposit box. They said they didn’t know. Maybe they were lying, but in any case, it wasn’t something they could really talk about. She should have known that.
Jossan and the other girls were talking about Instagram feeds—their own, but mostly others’. Emelie didn’t have an account, she barely had Facebook, or at least she never checked her own page—she’d stopped getting any friend requests on there anyway.
Their talk moved on. A new lipstick that made your lips swell so they looked fuller. They toasted, ate dessert: strawberry trifle. The sponge cake in the bottom layer was soaked in some kind of liqueur, mixed with sliced strawberries, vanilla custard, and cream. Emelie loved the taste, though her mother would’ve laughed at the idea of having catered food for midsummer. The waitress poured sweet dessert wine. Emelie was starting to feel drunk.
They moved on to what they would be doing over the summer. Jossan was going to Biarritz, unless she ended up in an enormous transaction like she had last year; the banker boy was going to his family’s place in Båstad. Two of the girls were headed to Torekov.
“You know, real Torekovers, the ones in the know, they go to Orskär from the sixteenth of July, once the shooting season’s over. You go there before then, you don’t know anything. You’ve got no business in Torekov,” one of them said.
“No, no, real Torekovers, the old ones, the ones in the know, they take the boats to the left when they go to Kohallen, because the swimming’s worse there. But the new ones, their boats are always on the right, because they think: there’s no one there,” another said.
The guy sitting opposite Emelie was named Eugene, a lawyer at one of Leijon’s rival firms. He said: “Full of newbies. I even saw a nigger in Torekov last summer.”
The boys laughed. Emelie stared at Eugene.
Jossan put down her wineglass on the table. Noisily. Everyone turned to her. Jossan in the center. “Say that word again, and I’m leaving,” she said.
Bad vibes in the attic apartment.
Fifteen minutes later. Emelie’s phone rang. Teddy’s number. She pushed her chair back and breathed a sigh of relief at being able to leave the room.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
“What’re you up to?”
“Trying to celebrate midsummer with a bunch of idiots,” she replied. “What are you doing?”
“Not much.”
“Why didn’t you call me back? I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”
“Emelie, I don’t have time to argue with you now. Listen: if you don’t hear from me within an hour, call the police straightaway. Okay? I’m in Killinge, at the far end of Lidingö. And all I want is for you to call 112 if you haven’t heard from me by twelve at the latest.”
32
Midsummer’s eve in the country.
Midsummer’s eve with Emelie. She was beside him in the car. He definitely hadn’t asked her to come. The opposite, actually: he’d protested. But she’d refused to give in. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’m coming, I’ll call a taxi. Stay there.”
For some reason, he’d waited for her. Maybe: it felt good that she cared. Or maybe it was just a precaution, pure and simple: doing what he had planned, two was better than one.
Midsummer’s eve outside a barn in Killinge. If this place had been out in the countryside: a refuge for cows or horses, for housing tractors and other machinery, for storing anything and everything—grain, tools, hay, potatoes. But not this barn. This barn contained something much more valuable. Its sliding doors were closed.
Teddy’s pistol was tucked away in his pocket. Again: he gave thanks to his old treasure trove in the woods.
He hadn’t told Emelie what he’d been up to the past few days. Fredric McLoud had given in fairly quickly back at Liljevalchs, followed him out. The brat hadn’t wanted to cause a scene; it was understandable.
Peaceful Djurgården outside. A tram had rolled past, and Teddy’s thoughts had turned to Kum’s words. Djurgården might well be the most beautiful spot in the entire country. In the distance, he could see the entrance to the Skansen museum. The last time he’d been there must’ve been in school. No, that couldn’t be right: he’d gone with Linda and Nikola once.
“It’s simple,” Teddy had said. “I want to do a deal with you.”
Fredric McLoud’s eyebrow twitched, and he’d started to fiddle uncontrollably with one hand. It looked like he was having spasms.
“There’s something fucking wrong with you.”
“Nope, I’m fine these days. I’ve been worse, believe me.”
“You’ve ruined my life. My business. Everything.”
They’d stopped opposite the entrance to Skansen. Families with small children were flooding toward the entrance.
Teddy said: “The deal isn’t finalized yet. Nothing’s closed. And without me, the other side has no evidence about anything beginning with ‘c’ and ending in ‘ocaine’—you know, the thing you like so much. So here’s my plan: I don’t h
elp them. You earn a hundred and ninety million kronor on that alone.”
Fredric sniffed. Then he’d smiled. His odd behavior seemed to have vanished just like that.
“You serious?”
“Yup.”
“You’re a star. But it’ll be two hundred million?”
“Nope. A hundred and ninety.”
“Why?”
“I said we were doing a deal. I’m keeping ten. And I want a million of it by tomorrow.”
The edge of Lidingö. Killinge. The bush. The middle of nowhere. The barn: surrounded by a fence. Teddy had gone there earlier to check the place out. He’d seen the dogs. Two Dobermans, plus security cameras. They probably had motion sensors, too.
They’d been sitting in the car for thirty minutes. Just waiting. Teddy wanted to be sure no one was there. The dark treetops looked like a black backdrop against the deep blue sky. The lightest night of the year. A dumb night to attempt something like this. But on the other hand: a good night. No need for a flashlight; no need to draw the cameras’ attention.
“What’re you planning, Teddy? Tell me now.”
“You just stay here in the car. I’m going out for a while.”
“That didn’t even slightly answer my question.”
“You’re a lawyer.”
“I am.”
“It’s best if you don’t know everything.”
“Why?”
“A lawyer’s supposed to prevent injustice, isn’t that the rule?”
“Yeah, but our primary duty is loyalty to our clients. That’s also in the rule book. Benjamin’s my client. And you’re helping me support him. So, my question to you is as follows: Is whatever you’re planning going to benefit Benjamin?”
“Depends how you look at it.”
Silence in the car. The smell of leather seats and her perfume. Teddy wondered who she’d been at the party with.
The illuminated display read midnight.