‘I’m not sure you want to hear that, boss.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Okay.’ Max shrugged again. ‘I had a best friend, a girl, actually; she was a few years older than me. We arrived at the home at more or less the same time. She got there a couple of months before me. We already knew each other; we used to live in the same block. She was like my big sister. Her name was Nadjesta. Nadjesta Nazarova.’
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Johansson thought when he saw the expression in Max’s eyes.
‘If you feel up to it,’ Johansson said. ‘Tell me about Nadjesta.’
84
Monday evening, 16 August
Nadjesta Nazarova was three years older than Max. She lived in a house across the yard, in the same block as him. She shared the yard with him and the hundred other kids of a similar age who grew up in the same block. Who her father was was unclear; her mother’s boyfriends were grown-up men she never got to know. They weren’t all nice. Her mother died a couple of months before his grandmother.
‘What did she die of?’ Johansson asked. ‘Nadja’s mother?’
‘She fell off some scaffolding, drunk as a skunk. Died instantly.’
‘What the hell was she doing up a load of scaffolding?’
‘She worked there,’ Max said with a smile. ‘She was a builder, used to plaster the outsides of buildings. We’re talking Russia here, boss.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Johansson said.
When Max ends up in the children’s home at the age of six, Nadja, nine years old, is already there.
‘She ended up being my big sister,’ Max said. He nodded to himself, no longer thinking about Johansson, who was lying there on his sofa.
‘We ended up in the same section. Different rooms, though, seeing as I was a boy and she was a girl, but we spent most of the time together. In the evenings, when everyone else had gone to sleep, she used to sneak in and cuddle me,’ he said. ‘Whisper to me, tell me stories, whisper in my ear until I fell asleep.’
‘So what happened?’ Johansson said, even though he had already worked out the details. He could even see it in his mind’s eye.
‘Nadja was really pretty,’ Max said. ‘Even though she was nine, there were lots of people who wanted to adopt her.’
‘But she stayed with you,’ Johansson said. Bloody hell, he thought.
‘Of course, because she’d promised to take care of me until we were old enough to escape and move into a house that only we knew how to find. We’d get married and have children who we’d kiss and cuddle the whole time. Once a Swedish couple came, and they were willing to pay any amount to get her, and they seemed pretty normal, actually. He was some sort of director, his wife was a teacher; they lived in Västerås. I’m pretty sure of that. Västerås,’ Max repeated. ‘Västerås in Sweden, of all places.’
‘What happened?’ Johansson asked.
‘I was sure it was over. It’s all over now, I thought. But then Nadja faked a hysterical attack, went mad and thrashed about on the floor, and tried to scratch out the eyes of the woman from Västerås. The staff had to drag her away and lock her in the office. The couple from Västerås picked another kid instead, a poor little thing who didn’t say a word. So everything was okay. You can imagine how relieved I was.
‘But then she got hair between her legs,’ Max said. ‘And then it really was all over. For real.’
Nadja hit puberty before she turned twelve. Grew breasts and hair in her crotch. Like all the others, she was sent to the home’s doctor for her first gynaecological examination. And, just like all the other pubescent women that he thought were attractive enough, she had her first sexual experience.
‘He fucked her,’ Max said, with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘He fucked all the girls in the home as soon as they grew pubes. All the kids knew about it. None of the adults who worked there had a clue. At least, that’s what they said when the cops showed up. Nadja shut herself off completely. It was like I no longer existed. She didn’t want to talk to me any more. She didn’t even look at me. She just went round like a zombie.’
‘The police,’ Johansson said. ‘Why did they show up?’
‘Nadja died that night,’ Max said. ‘The last time he fucked her. He spent all his time in his room. And he got her drunk first. So she wouldn’t scream when he did it. He must have drunk a whole litre himself. Vodka. The fuel that has always driven Mother Russia. Then he fell asleep. Just passed out. Nadja had been strapped down in the chair where the girls had to sit when they were examined. She’d fallen asleep, too, or passed out. I don’t really know.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Johansson said. Why can’t you ever keep your mouth shut? he thought the moment he said it.
‘I was the one who found her.’ Max stood up with a jerk, his thin, bony face as white as a sheet, expressionless. ‘Excuse me, boss,’ he said, pressing his clenched fist to his mouth and rushing out.
‘Okay,’ Max said when he returned ten minutes later. ‘Where were we?’
‘You said you were the one who found her,’ Johansson said.
‘Yes. I got up to go to the toilet, in the middle of the night. The toilet was next to the doctor’s office. I don’t know how, but suddenly I just knew. The door was locked, so I grabbed a fire extinguisher and smashed it open.’
Nine years old, Johansson thought.
‘Nadja was already dead,’ Max said. ‘Not that I realized it at the time, because I tried to shake her awake. Apparently, she’d drowned in her own vomit. The doctor was lying there asleep, flat out on the floor, completely out of it. I went and got the fire extinguisher and hit him in the head with it. I only had time to hit him once before the other staff showed up and wrestled me to the floor. Then the cops came.’
‘What happened after that, then?’
‘He left,’ Max said. ‘That was pretty much all that happened. If you’re wondering, boss, his name was Aleksander Konstantinov. He was the doctor at several children’s homes. The first time I was put in a secure children’s home in Sweden, under paragraph 12, I ran away. I got the boat to Finland, then the ferry to St Petersburg. I was planning to put an end to it, give him one last message from me and Nadja.’
‘How old were you then?’ Johansson asked.
‘Sixteen,’ Max said. ‘But I already looked the way I do now, so that was no problem.’
‘Did you get hold of him, then?’
‘No,’ Max said. ‘I did my best, but he’d died the previous year. He got drunk, fell into the Neva and drowned. That’s probably the second-biggest sorrow of my life.’
‘I understand,’ Johansson said. After Nadja, he thought.
‘No,’ Max said. ‘With all due respect, boss, you’re a good man. And a good man like you can’t really understand any of this. You never will, boss, and you should be fucking grateful for that. I understand from Evert that you were brilliant at locking up murderers when you were in charge of the police, boss. That doesn’t count. What I’m talking about is something completely different. When you asked me to check that registration number from the vehicle registry, the one belonging to that paedo Staffan Nilsson, who murdered that little girl, I almost started to believe in God,’ he went on.
‘Why?’
‘To start with, he was born in 1960, the same year as Dr Konstantinov. And there was a physical resemblance, too. I found a picture of Nilsson on the internet. Not a new photograph, exactly, but they looked similar. Could have been brothers. Maybe that’s what they are, anyway. Men like Konstantinov and Nilsson. The sort of men who fuck little girls to death – they’re brothers. The moment before I gave Nilsson that slap across the nose, I actually believed that there is a God. A God who had given me Staffan Nilsson in place of Aleksander Konstantinov, who sadly managed to go and drown himself before I got my hands on him.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t kill him.’
‘With respect, boss,’ Max said, ‘just as I was about to do it, it struck me th
at he actually belongs to you, boss. That you were the one who found him, so he belongs to you, not me. And that’s something I can’t change.’
85
Tuesday, 17 August
‘You’ve got a visitor, boss,’ Matilda said, nodding towards Johansson as he lay on his sofa, relaxing after lunch.
‘Jarnebring,’ Johansson said. What’s so hard about phoning first? he thought irritably.
‘Nyet,’ Matilda said, for some reason. ‘No wolves in sight. And little Max is in his room, playing computer games. Your best friend is probably at home chewing on the bones of some poor sod he ran into out in the city. This is much better, though.’
‘How?’
‘A girl. A young, pretty girl. Well, fairly young, anyway.’
‘Is she as pretty as you?’ Johansson asked, suddenly in that mood.
‘Maybe,’ Matilda said. ‘She’s a different type, certainly.’
Lisa Mattei, Johansson thought, and suddenly felt completely calm. Calm, and slightly distant, the way he usually felt when he took one of those little white pills, which he probably did far too often.
‘Lisa Mattei,’ Matilda said. ‘Says she knows you, boss. Says you know what it’s about. I hope she’s not disturbing you.’
‘Sit yourself down, Lisa,’ Johansson said, gesturing towards the armchair closest to the sofa. ‘Can I offer you anything?’
‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ she said, nodding at Matilda.
‘And a double espresso, no milk. Can you shut us in, as well, please?’ Johansson asked, waving his hand in the general direction of the kitchen.
‘How are you, Lars?’ Lisa Mattei said, sitting down and modestly crossing her legs. The hem of her blue skirt fell just below her knees. ‘You look even brighter than when I saw you yesterday,’ she said.
‘I’m in tip-top condition,’ Johansson said. And you’re never going to call me boss again, are you, not now you’re all grown up? he thought.
‘What a lovely room.’ Lisa Mattei looked round at the bookcases.
‘Never mind all that, Mattei,’ Johansson said. ‘Get to the point.’
‘Okay.’ She looked at him with a serious expression. ‘For the first time since I met you, which must be more than ten years ago now, I was actually hoping that you’d turn out to be wrong. That even you had made a mistake for once.’
‘But I hadn’t,’ Johansson said. Who does she take me for? he thought.
‘No,’ Lisa Mattei said. ‘That was stupid of me. The DNA in the blood on that paper napkin you gave me matches the DNA found in the perpetrator’s sperm from Yasmine’s murder. According to our experts, the chance of it being someone else’s are less than one in a billion. And they even managed to get a DNA trace from the hairgrip. Microscopic fragments of skin on the inside of the clip.’
‘And?’
‘Yasmine Ermegan,’ Mattei said, and the moment she said it she put her right arm protectively across her stomach.
86
Tuesday, 17 August
‘I’ve got a number of questions, as I’m sure you can appreciate,’ Lisa Mattei said. ‘I hope you don’t have any objections?’
‘Of course not,’ Johansson said. ‘Go ahead.’
‘The first is actually from the scientist who isolated the DNA sample. The blood on the napkin. He thought it was blood from the nose, which would be rather unconventional in a situation like this.’
Whoops, Johansson thought. ‘What made him think that?’ he said.
‘Nostril hairs in the blood – three of them, to be precise. The result of energetic treatment of a bleeding nose, according to our expert. So I can’t help being a little curious.’
‘Nothing serious,’ Johansson said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Delaying any longer would have been hazardous, and one of my colleagues got a little impatient. Asking him to stick a cotton-wool bud in his mouth wasn’t really an option, as you’ll appreciate.’
‘There are other ways,’ Lisa Mattei said. ‘Without necessarily rousing his suspicions.’
‘He doesn’t smoke or use chewing tobacco. There’s a chute for rubbish in his building. He’s careful about locking his flat, and his car is kept locked, alarmed and very clean. When he’s in a bar having a drink, he never leaves his glass on the table. Jarnebring spent a week watching him, without success.’
‘You could have called me.’ Lisa Mattei gave a slight smile.
‘I know. I could have called lots of former colleagues from my time in the business. The lads in the rapid-response unit could have done it in fifteen minutes, regardless of the amount of blood plasma required. I chose not to do that. You don’t have to worry. The bastard is still alive, and in good health. Considerably better health than me, if you’re wondering. He lives a very comfortable life, in spite of what he did to that poor girl twenty-five years ago. So there’s no need to worry about him.’
‘I’m not at all concerned about him,’ Mattei said. ‘I assume you’ve already found out almost everything about him?’
‘I’ve found out the usual,’ Johansson said. ‘Within the natural limitations that come with being a pensioner these days, and taking into account the fact that I’ve avoided talking to former colleagues who can’t keep their mouths shut. And that I had a stroke not all that long ago.’
‘Can you tell me his identity? That would make things a lot easier for me, as I know you realize.’
‘Negative, not as things stand at the moment. Come back in a week when I’ve had time to think.’
‘No criminal record?’
‘Not in Sweden, anyway. Is he still active as a paedophile? I’m quite convinced that he is. Has he done anything else? Almost certainly, but nothing that comes close to what he did to Yasmine. You and your colleagues probably shouldn’t start hoping that I’ve found a hitherto unknown serial killer for you.’
‘I’ve uploaded his DNA on to our international network,’ Mattei said, ‘in case you’re wondering, and you’re the only person who knows about that. I did it just before I came here.’
‘Then we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that something crops up that way,’ Johansson said. ‘Try the usual places where people like him go to ground. Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico, Central America, Russia, the Baltic states, the southern Balkans. I’d start with Thailand, if I were you. But I think you can forget about Sweden and our Nordic neighbours. I haven’t been able to come up with any unsolved sexually motivated murders of young girls that match. No girls going missing or other extreme paedophile activity either.’
‘I’m in complete agreement with you on that point,’ Lisa Mattei said with a smile. ‘I checked that yesterday, as a matter of fact. One more question. How would you describe him, in social terms?’
‘Swedish, middle-aged, single, no children, neither successful nor a failure, makes a living from various activities in the property industry. And, if you’re wondering, he looks perfectly normal. Nice, even, to be more precise. Let me put it like this – we’re not dealing with another Anders Eklund.’
‘I understand precisely.’ Lisa Mattei sighed, for some reason.
‘So do I,’ Johansson said. ‘If this were to leak out, bearing in mind who Yasmine’s father is and what we know about him, I venture to suppose that you would have a potentially explosive political problem to deal with.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Lisa Mattei said. ‘I’ve already informed the Director General.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He sends his regards and hopes you get well soon. If you’re thinking about coming back to work, you just have to give him a call. Essentially, he thinks the same as you. That Joseph Simon should be regarded as such a formidable adversary that our perpetrator deserves the attentions of the forces defending the Swedish constitution.
‘One final question,’ Lisa Mattei said, as she got to her feet and gestured towards the boxes of documents on the floor of the study.
‘Okay,’ Johansson said. One final que
stion before I have yet another headache pill, he thought.
‘How long would it take me and my colleagues to find him?’
‘Longer than a week, anyway. So you can save yourself the bother.’
‘I’ll take that as a promise,’ Mattei said, ‘that you’ll get in touch in a week’s time and tell me who he is.’
‘On the condition that you and your bloody comrades don’t try to spy on me,’ Johansson said, and smiled.
‘I’d never dream of spying on someone who can see round corners. And if any of my colleagues were to come up with such a ridiculous idea, I promise to set them right immediately.’
‘Look after yourself, Lisa,’ Johansson said, nodding towards her protruding stomach. Wonder if I’ll get to see her kid? he suddenly thought.
‘You look after yourself, Lars,’ Lisa Mattei said, suddenly serious. ‘Remember, you’ll soon have a christening to go to.’
Then she leaned over and gave him a hug.
Go now, he thought, as he felt his throat tighten. Go now, before I burst into tears.
V
Thine eye shall not pity: life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot …
Book of Deuteronomy, 19:21
87
Wednesday, 18 August: Day 44
High time to get something done, Johansson thought when he woke up that morning. High time to make contact with Staffan Nilsson. High time to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Killing Nilsson, cleaning up afterwards and then getting on with his life would, naturally, have been easier, in purely practical terms. He had all the knowledge and resources he needed, and evidently no shortage of willing hands. But it was an unthinkable idea, and an impossible act, despite the wave of emotions raging through the people around him, and even inside him. It was easy enough to dismiss the idea when it came down to it, because in his world there was no end that could justify that sort of means.
Hanging him out to dry in the media and letting the ensuing lynch mob do the job for him was also out of the question. As was contacting Yasmine’s father and letting him deal with the whole thing in his capacity as principal mourner, with all the support he could find in the Old Testament’s rules about justice.
The Dying Detective Page 34