Concentrate on death instead.
Manfred Olsson drops the thick stacks of paper on the table with a bang and continues:
“The investigation was one of the most extensive in Swedish history, maybe the largest, other than the Olof Palme murder, of course. We interviewed hundreds of witnesses and acquaintances, mapped and took samples from a hell of a lot of people. Yes, we found a cigarette butt outside the door, so we had DNA from what could have been the perp. The case was covered extensively on TV. There was even a journalist who wrote a book about it, in which he argued that Calderón was the victim of a Chilean assassin who hunted down political refugees in Sweden with the permission of the Swedish intelligence agency. You surely remember all of this, Hanne?”
I nod.
“And now this,” Manfred Olsson continues, and slowly adds what appear to be new photos to the table. “On Sunday night a young woman was found murdered in the suburb of Djursholm. The cause of death was numerous blows to the neck, just as in the Calderón case. The head was removed from the body, placed standing on the floor, facing the front door.”
“Were the eyelids taped open?”
I’m almost surprised that I dare to ask the question, that I’m actually capable of speaking.
The dark-haired woman shakes her head.
“No, no tape. And in this case we found the murder weapon onsite, too. A machete. It’s been sent to the National Lab for analysis.”
I can’t help glancing at Peter. He looks pale and has his arms crossed in front of his chest. He is visibly upset, and somehow that feels like a triumph: a small, dirty, but enjoyable victory.
Manfred Olsson continues: “I remember you had a lot of interesting theories about the killer at the time. I’d like to ask you if you believe it could be the same perp.”
I look at the pictures of death and chaos spread out in front of me. As usual, I feel a kind of sadness, but also a fascination with the irrepressible urge of human beings to kill each other. And something else: a tingling, maybe a longing to bury myself in the case, turning and twisting it from every angle. Slowly building an image of the perpetrator, turning him or her into a human being made of flesh and blood.
I love my research, but there’s something about police work that offers a totally different kind of satisfaction. I spend my days working on theories. It’s incredibly cool to apply that knowledge.
Suddenly I realize how much I’ve missed this.
“As you might imagine, I can’t really say anything definitive without looking more closely at the investigations,” I say. “But my first impression…The victims are obviously different—a man and a woman—as are the crime scenes. And in this new case the murder weapon was left at the crime scene, which also differs from the Calderón case. But despite that, I would say that the similarities in approach are too great to ignore. You should definitely take a closer look at this. But you’ve surely already realized that, or you wouldn’t have asked me to come here.”
The heavy policeman nods.
“Who would do this?” the dark-haired woman asked. “A lunatic?”
I smile faintly. The word “lunatic” is so often misused in our society.
“It depends on what you mean by ‘lunatic.’ Of course, it could be argued that a person must be crazy in some sense to commit this kind of crime. But if we were dealing with a perpetrator who is severely mentally ill, then he would be unable to take care of himself, and he also wouldn’t have been able to cover his tracks or keep hidden. Most likely, you’d already have apprehended him.”
“You say ‘him’?”
The policewoman bends forward and meets my eyes.
“Yes, the vast majority of murderers are men. Especially with this kind of…violent murder. But of course, you can’t exclude the possibility that it’s a woman. We’re talking about probabilities here; it’s not an exact science.”
“And chopping off the head and putting it on the floor, what does that mean?” she asks.
I shrug my shoulders, then say, “Well, I remember we speculated that it might be a way to demean the victim; the perpetrator probably knew Calderón and harbored a deep hatred toward him. Strong enough to want to demonstrate it to the world. The action itself, the beheading, is an indication of…rage. Historically, decapitation has been used worldwide for thousands of years as punishment for the most serious crimes. The term ‘capital punishment’ actually comes from the Latin caput, meaning ‘head.’ And it’s still used today in some places, like Saudi Arabia, for example. Sweden had its last beheading in 1900, but in many European countries beheadings went on well into the twentieth century. It’s estimated, for example, that more than fifteen thousand people were beheaded in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945.
“In many European countries beheading was considered more honorable than, for example, hanging or burning, and it was the method of execution reserved for nobles or soldiers. But in some cultures, for example in China, it was considered a disgrace. The Celts decapitated their enemies and hung the heads on their horses. After a battle those heads were embalmed, saved, so they could be displayed later—something that angered the Romans, who thought the Celts were barbarians. But for the Celts, it was natural to behead their enemies, because the head symbolized life, the soul itself.”
The room is silent, and I realize that my lecture might have shocked these hardened police officers.
“Is there any connection between the victims?” I ask.
“Not that we know of, but we’re working on it,” Manfred Olsson says. “We actually have a suspect for the murder last Saturday, so we’re investigating whether or not he has any ties to Calderón.”
I look again at the photo of the severed female head. Trying to imagine what it would take to do that to another human being. What mechanisms must be set in play for a person to commit such a crime.
“Who was she?” I ask, and slide my finger gently over the photo.
The room is silent. Outside the window, the snow continues to fall. Big, soft flakes flutter by in the strong wind, obscuring everything outside.
“We don’t know,” Peter says suddenly, and meets my gaze for the first time.
I sense the pain in his eyes before he looks down. The others don’t seem to have noticed the tension between us, because the heavy police officer quickly adds:
“I wonder if you’d be interested in helping us a bit with the case. On a consultancy basis, of course. It wouldn’t be a full-time job, just a few hours. If you have the time and the inclination, that is.”
—
Stockholm is wrapped in a white haze as I walk along Hantverkargatan toward City Hall. Snowflakes whip against my face, and everything is quiet. It would have been quicker to take the subway, but I needed to clear my head, to clear away Peter, who’s crept into my life again. Traffic rolls by slowly through the dense snowfall, and my steps crunch as I slowly head back toward the city.
Peter Lindgren.
Actually, it’s odd I haven’t run into him earlier. I continued working quite a bit for the police afterward. Sometimes I used to think of him sitting there, somewhere in the police station, working on a case like nothing had happened. At the time, it made me so upset I found it hard to breathe. But that’s just how life is. People betray each other all the time, and life goes on, whether you like it or not. Life doesn’t care about what we want.
City Hall’s reddish tower disappears into the haze, as if it went on all the way to the sky and beyond into the blackness of space and into eternity. Maybe one day my memory will be so affected that he’ll fade away, I think. Blurred away like the city in this snowy mist.
I hope so.
Or in the worst case, the opposite will happen—everything else will disappear, and the only thing left will be the memory of him, his body, his words.
We met when I was consulting on an investigation into the murder of two prostitutes in Märsta, just north of Stockholm. I remember that he didn’t make a particularly stron
g impression on me at first. He was just one of many police officers who crossed my path. Perhaps I thought he was a bit weak. There was something almost insecure about him—not in the physical sense; something in his way of expressing himself was tentative, a little roundabout. I remember thinking that he was an odd police officer; police officers tend to be direct, clear, and confident.
And then came the incident in the elevator.
They were renovating the police station and managed to saw through a power cable while Peter and I were riding the elevator between the first and second floors. In an instant, it went pitch-black, and the elevator stopped. A few seconds later a weak, bluish light at foot level was illuminated, presumably some sort of emergency lighting. We spent a long time talking to a confused guard over the small wall-mounted intercom, until we were told the only thing to do was sit down and wait for help, which might take a while.
It turned out that we had to sit for more than three hours before the fire department came to our rescue. And it was during those three hours that I got to know Peter.
At first, we talked about this and that. Mostly about work actually, about the case we were investigating, and how it was that two ordinary teenage girls could end up as prostitutes when on the surface it seemed like they had everything they needed. But pretty soon we drifted into more personal territory. I told him about my relationship with Owe, and I remember surprising myself by how honest I was with Peter; I told him things about Owe and me that I wouldn’t even say to my friends. But there was something about his manner, that gentle but persistent fumbling after the important things in life, that made me let him into my most private spaces.
Perhaps it was also because he dared to share his darkest, most forbidden thoughts.
He told me about the sister who died as a teenager and the love affair that fell apart. About his five-year-old son, whom he almost never saw, and his sadness at turning into a person he didn’t like. What it felt like to come to the gruesome realization that he wasn’t a particularly good man. Those were the exact words he used to describe himself: “I’m not a very good man.” He said it in a matter-of-fact tone, as if talking about a car or an apartment. And he seriously seemed to believe that Albin, his son, was better off without him.
I tried to explain to him that everyone has their faults but that children—especially little boys—need a father, even if he isn’t perfect. Our society tricks us into believing that parenting is about perfection, when really just showing up is so much more important.
But what did I know anyway? I didn’t have any children.
He said that the only thing he knew for sure that he was good at was being a police officer, and so he was determined to stick to that. Maybe I should have taken that as a warning, but instead I was curious. As usual when I met somebody who was a little broken, I felt an urge to try to heal them.
As if I could fix Peter.
Two weeks later I went home with him after work. I don’t really know how; it just happened. I slept over in his small one-bedroom in Farsta, and we made love the whole night. I remember I thought it was magical; he aroused something in me that had been asleep for many years. That feeling of complete connectedness: physical, emotional, and, yes, almost spiritual.
I shudder when I think of it. It feels so horribly banal now, here in the midst of a snowstorm ten years later. What did we have in common really, other than a kind of bitterness about how life hadn’t turned out like we’d imagined it? A loneliness that pushed us into each other’s arms. How would we have been able to build a life together—he was ten years younger than me, and I was married. Very married. We didn’t have the same background, interests, or frames of reference.
And yet.
All night, all day. His arms greedily groped for my body. We made love in his bed, in his service car, and in the restroom at work. Like we were teenagers. We could barely sit in the same room without looking at each other, blushing and giggling. Our colleagues exchanged meaningful glances and shook their heads.
I stop at Berzelii Park. Try to make out the contours of the Royal Dramatic Theatre through the snowstorm. Turn my face upward, open my mouth, and let the snowflakes land on my tongue. Tasting the sky as it falls down on me.
Owe noticed, of course, that I was in love. Things like that, people can just tell—even if you don’t think so yourself. But he didn’t comment on it. Not then.
After a year or so, Peter and I started talking about becoming a real couple, living together. I was actually the one who had doubts—for all the wrong reasons, I admit now. I thought too much about what people would think if I left my husband for a police officer ten years my junior and settled in the suburbs. I who had everything: a beautiful home, a brilliant career, and a man everyone looked up to.
Except me, of course.
But Peter was stubborn. He wanted me, he explained. Even though we could never have any children, and would certainly have to pay a high price for our love. He wanted me because he loved me and couldn’t live without me.
Blah blah blah.
Words, just words. Or maybe he truly did feel that way in the moment. Yes, that must have been how it was.
Anyway, he finally managed to persuade me in the end, and I decided to leave Owe. I went home to pack what I needed, and Peter promised to pick me up at my door that evening at five.
I remember that I felt excited and also guilty, like a kid stealing candy, as I packed my bag. Just as I was leaving the apartment Owe came home, which was not part of the plan—he usually didn’t come home before six. I told him how it was, that I’d met somebody else and was leaving him. That I didn’t love him, and our marriage felt like a prison. He got angry, started shouting that I would regret this, that it was only a matter of time before I came crawling home, begging him to take me back. I didn’t answer, just left without even closing the front door behind me. All the way down to the entrance, I could hear him screaming up above. Long after the words were discernible, his furious voice echoed in the stairwell.
Outside it was dark, and a light drizzle fell on the asphalt. I put my bag on the stoop and sat down next to it, suddenly overcome by a numbing fatigue. It felt as if someone was pulling me down to the ground, and my legs couldn’t carry me anymore; I was that tired.
And there I sat.
The clock struck five and then five-thirty. At a quarter to six I called Peter to ask where he was, but he didn’t answer. At half past six, I started to realize he wasn’t coming, but I didn’t have the strength to move, couldn’t leave the stone stoop. It stopped raining and a cold wind that smelled of sea and exhaust blew in. It snuck in under my thin jacket and made itself comfortable around my heart. Chilling me from the inside.
When Owe came downstairs and picked me up at nine o’clock I didn’t protest, though his fierce grip on my upper arm hurt. I followed him up to the apartment without a word.
A letter arrived a week later. Peter explained that he couldn’t live with me, that he would only hurt me—that that’s who he was; that he “wounded people”—and that it was best for everyone involved, myself included, if we didn’t see each other anymore.
I arrive at the Svenskt Tenn store on Strandvägen, press my face against the snowy window, and peek in. It looks almost like our apartment. Colorful, bourgeois elegance with ethnic touches. Exclusive without being ostentatious. Tasteful without being anxious. A tram passes by on the street, and I close my eyes, trying to drive Peter from my consciousness. Trying to be in the here and now, in the middle of a snowstorm. On my way home to the man I still don’t love. With oblivion as my only salvation.
PETER
A murder investigation is like a life: It has a beginning, middle, and end. As in life, you never know what point you’re at until it’s over. Sometimes it ends before it’s barely started, and sometimes it seems to go on forever, until it dies a natural death or is abandoned.
The only difference is that, unlike life, an investigation is about reaching the end of the sh
it, and knowing that you have. Though sometimes I wonder if life might not be that way too.
I used to think it was part of the allure of the job—the unpredictable, the element of chance that couldn’t be controlled. But now that too has become routine, just like everything else.
The woman sitting in front of us in the interrogation room is named Anja Staaf. Whether or not she’ll be able help us get any closer to figuring out what happened at Jesper Orre’s home on Sunday, I don’t know, but she’s certainly one of the women he’s spent the most time with over the past year, according to his friends.
She has dark, almost black hair, set in a way that is reminiscent of an old-fashioned pinup girl. Her skin is pale and her makeup heavy: thick eyeliner and dark red lips. She’s wearing a dotted dress that accentuates her breasts, a small cardigan, and black boots. And she seems calm, unusually calm for being in an interrogation room at a police station.
Manfred pours her some water and turns on the tape recorder, explains that she’s being interviewed in connection with the murder that took place at Jesper Orre’s house last Friday. She nods seriously and fiddles with one of the small, gleaming mother-of-pearl buttons on her cardigan.
“Nice jacket,” she says, nodding toward Manfred’s mustard-yellow wool blazer. Manfred retains his composure, but lightly strokes his hand down his right lapel. “Thank you. One does one’s best,” he mumbles. “Can you tell us when and how you became acquainted with Jesper Orre?”
Her eyes turn up toward the ceiling, as if she’s making an effort to remember.
“It was at the club,” she says. “At Vertigo, where I work. He went there sometimes and, well, we started talking. Then we started getting together now and then. Sometimes we ate dinner, sometimes he just came over and spent the night.”
The Ice Beneath Her Page 9