She was alive.
“The second was a few minutes later on Mälarvägen by Edssjön, when a cyclist on her way home says that she was almost knocked over by a car driving south at high speed. Her description fits the getaway car and she said more than once that she thought there were ‘several’ of them in the car. A few more minutes on the same road and you reach . . . Söderby. The scene of the crime.”
She was alive when they left her there to slowly disappear.
Mariana Hermansson had more to report, but stopped. She had looked several times at his bloody bandage since Solna and the way he was now driving through red lights and bumper-to-bumper traffic, it was impetuous, as if someone was giving chase who Ewert Grens couldn’t frighten off with his bark.
“Ewert?”
“What?”
“What is it?”
“What?”
“I don’t know . . . something’s up.”
For a moment, he left the cars zigzagging in front of the hood and looked at her.
“Something’s up?”
“Yes, with you.”
Every intervention has a consequence that in turn has a new consequence.
He had just done his job. And if he was to stand there again, he would do the same again.
“Hermansson?”
“Yes?”
“In that case . . . butt out.”
———
“You go on up. Werner is waiting for you. I’ll be there shortly.”
He walked toward what was a garage within a garage, a big, ugly metal box built across four parking spaces. He knocked, but didn’t wait for an answer, pushed the door to one side and went in. Nils Krantz was on his knees beside a white Mercedes, which only a few hours earlier had filled ten screens on the wall of the County Communications Center, a locked trunk and a motorcycle police officer who looked into the camera on the helicopter in order not to feel alone.
“Here.”
The flashlight shone an infrared light on the forensic scientist’s hand, he then directed it at the fabric on the backseat of the car, but wasn’t satisfied and swapped it for an ultraviolet light.
“Can you see? The bloodstains have sunk in.”
It wasn’t often that Ewert Grens could in fact see what Krantz was pointing out and talking about. But this time he could. When the light shone on the flecks, they became darker and stood out.
“She received the first blow here. And the second. And the third. And the fourth. And then she was taped up, in the same place.”
Grens balled himself up so he could see more, two grown men kneeling on a backseat was one too many.
“The big stains come from her left thigh, which was bleeding heavily. But the splashes slightly farther up on the seat could be her blood contaminated with another person’s blood.”
“The man who punched her.”
“We’ve got DNA on the way to the NLFS. Brown paper bags with pieces of packing tape for the fingerprint section. This blood, Ewert, might be your third piece of technical evidence.”
“Him.”
———
Floor eight.
It wasn’t often that he was there, a few times a year, but it always looked and smelled the same, the only corridor with the same persistent smell of sweaty jackets as Homicide. Ewert Grens hurried past the closed doors, slowing by the first interception room, passing it, passing the next one, keeping on toward the one that was farthest away and slightly smaller than the others, for those who didn’t belong there, random visitors who wanted to follow incoming and outgoing conversations without getting in the way.
“Have you fixed it?”
Sven and Hermansson were sitting by a rectangular table and Gunnar Werner was standing, hunched over, in front of a shelf full of cords and monitors. They each held out a hand and said hello. Grens had known the slightly hunchbacked sergeant in the interception unit for as long as he could remember.
“I’ve fixed it. And I told the bitch to clean the apartment.”
Werner got a chair from the stack by the door and put it down in front of Grens, who waved it away. With his stiff leg it was sometimes easier to stay standing.
“It might take some time.”
“I’ll stand all the same.”
“And I want you to listen carefully.”
Gunnar Werner held up a piece of paper and changed the image on two of the screens.
“We got the tapping warrant you requested six, nearly seven hours ago. We’ve got four lines. And chose to prioritize tapping the four known hangarounds and prospects—or whatever they like to call themselves—who according to information from the SAGC have most frequently been in the vicinity of Jensen and Milton. They’re all minors and domiciled with a guardian. So far . . . thirteen telephone calls and twenty-seven text messages.”
“And?”
“She did it. And then I told the other whore, no more booze in the apartment.”
“I’ve gone through all the transcripts. Nothing about the absconders. Nothing about the breakout. Nothing at all about anything that might have something to do with them. Everyone’s had their orders. Nothing is said and nothing you might use will be said on the phone.”
Grens couldn’t stand still.
“Then you’ll have to tap more lines. And intercept more.”
“I don’t have more.”
“Well, get them then.”
“However, Ewert . . . on the security police’s orders, we’ve been intercepting six other numbers, so-called unit phones, for the past eight weeks.”
The tall detective sergeant pressed a key on the keyboard that controlled one of the screens.
“Tomorrow. A gray Mazda.”
“Cell phones that we’ve known about for a long time, smuggled in and hidden by inmates in a total of four units in three different prisons.”
“A gray Mazda?”
“I can’t tell you why we’re actually doing it, which aggravated crime the warrant applies to. Nor can I tell you how we found out about any of the phones. The tapping is in connection with another investigation, another crime, and what I have been granted special dispensation to play for you is what we call surplus information.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“A conversation from three weeks ago. We are certain that one of the parties, the one with the higher voice, is Gabriel Milton and that the place he is calling from is, within a hundred-meter margin, one of the addresses in Råby Allé. We are equally certain that the other person speaking, the one with the rougher voice, is Leon Jensen, and that the place where he is calling from is almost certainly one of the units in Aspsås prison.”
“Front seat. And left front wheel. And maybe the sun visor.”
“A drug delivery. Two phone calls and a crime that has nothing to do with our warrant. Surplus information. Nothing we can or are allowed to use.”
That timeline again. This time without images, just voices on an electronic line on a computer screen.
Gunnar Werner moved the cursor and opened a new document.
“But what I really wanted you . . . all . . . to listen to was this. Recorded from the same telephone. But considerably more recent.”
“Brother?”
Grens looked at Werner and pulled over the chair indicated. He understood now. And he wanted to listen carefully.
“To be more precise—recorded yesterday evening at nineteen fifty-two hours.”
“Nineteen fifty-two hours?”
“Yes.”
The detective sergeant handed a pair of rather big headphones to each of them and then pulled the door shut.
No one else was to listen to this.
“Twenty-five minutes after the last breakout. After your last trace.”
He stretched over and adjusted Grens’s earphones, which were askew. In order to hear the background noises as well, it was important that they covered the entire ear.
“A conversation that stands out from the rest. Someone pho
nes, the call is answered, but the conversation is not between two phones. The voices that are talking are all in the same place and they are only talking to each other, not to the person who has been called.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“I’m guessing, judging by the sounds, that they are in a car. We’ve identified the position as being very close to the highway exit in Upplands Väsby. The person has called a voicemail, a top-up card, holder unknown. The person calling hasn’t phoned to talk to anyone, he’s just called and then lets the voicemail record an ongoing conversation.”
He adjusted Ewert Grens’s headphones again, they were still crooked.
“I want you to listen from here.”
The detective sergeant from the tapping unit leaned his long body over Grens’s shoulder and arm and pressed the key immediately below the screen with his index finger, which appeared to be shaking.
Clear sounds from inside a moving car.
Then another sound.
Once.
Once again.
Something banging against metal, and yet a muffled, almost imperceptible sound.
“We’ve just listened to the phone calls from yesterday evening and last night. And I don’t have the transcripts yet. But that sound, Ewert . . . you can’t hear it in any other recording.”
Ewert Grens turned to the screen, looking for the timeline.
19:54:22.
She was still alive then.
The sound again.
And again.
“Brother, stop!”
A voice they haven’t heard before.
Not as clear as Jensen’s hoarse voice and Milton’s high voice. Could be from the passenger seat, maybe from the backseat, someone sitting farther away who was not holding the telephone.
And again.
“Brother, stop. The bitch, she’s . . . I can’t stand that fucking kicking . . .”
Ewert Grens looked at Sven, at Hermansson, at Werner. They were all thinking the same thing. The sound of someone lying in the trunk and kicking was obvious. So they must have heard her. That’s to say, she could also hear them. Tied up with a tape over her mouth and in the dark. It wasn’t possible to imagine her fear, or rather, terror.
“Brother, stop. The bitch, she’s . . .”
“Wait.”
A new voice.
Lips and mouth close to the telephone microphone, the voice that now spoke was the person holding it.
Leon Jensen.
“Brother, fuck, should we . . .”
“Shut the fuck up and stay there. I’ll fix it.”
Grens sank deeper into the elongated worm that was a sound file.
The sound of a car door opening.
The sound of wind, of traffic, of a car honking, twice.
Hermansson moved closer and unfolded a map.
“Upplands Väsby. The roundabout by the highway exit.”
The sound of quick footsteps.
The sound of a lock opening, maybe a car trunk.
“The horn, Ewert, that’s the guy in the tanker, the driver who called in.”
“I’ll fix this. She won’t kick anymore.”
The hoarse voice holding the telephone, that had phoned no one in particular and who they recognized from earlier phone calls.
A sharp sound.
“Take it easy, brother, for fuck’s sake!”
A choked, gurgling noise.
“Leon, Jesus, take it fucking easy, we—”
A dull sound.
Then footsteps, then a car door shutting, then an engine starting.
“Let’s go.”
“What about her?”
“She’ll be quiet now.”
Ewert Grens looked at the black line that said no more.
And then turned to Werner.
It seemed as though his long, almost transparent hands were still shaking.
“Anything more?”
“No.”
“No more phone calls? Before? After?”
“Just that. Just the one phone call yesterday from that phone. And without talking to anyone except a voicemail.”
Grens ran his finger along the black worm on the screen.
It didn’t move.
“Are you still intercepting?”
“Yes.”
“And if you get any more . . . surplus information of the sort you can’t talk about?”
“You know that I can’t say anything then, either.”
Ewert Grens took off the headphones and handed them back to Werner, but then suddenly changed his mind and put them on again, askew.
“I want to hear it again.”
“Which part?”
“You know which part.”
Gunnar Werner moved the cursor back along the timeline.
A sharp sound.
A choked, gurgling noise.
A dull sound.
Grens looked at his colleague and peer who had been involved in just as many investigations about people who had taken the right to change another person’s life.
“Do you hear what I hear?”
Werner nodded.
“Yes.”
“Will you ever understand it?”
“No.”
Ewert Grens got up from the uncomfortable chair and moved toward the door, only to stop again immediately.
“I want a copy of this.”
“You’ve already got one.”
Gunnar Werner pointed to the CD that Sven had in his hand. Grens nodded his thanks and carried on, more convinced than ever that there were things that he would never really be a part of.
A black line on a computer screen that moved the viewer forward or backward in time.
A round, plastic disc that could at any time replicate the voices and sounds that forced someone to stop breathing.
Ewert Grens went from one arm of the Kronoberg building that housed various police bodies to another. With heavy, limping footsteps he moved between the walls as fast as his legs would carry him.
And a short phone call punctuated by frequent, noisy panting.
“Ågestam?”
“Yes.”
“It is him.”
“You said that the last time you called.”
“And it’s still him.”
“So, a DNA analysis . . . you’ve got one?”
“Not yet.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Soon.”
“Blood? Fibers?”
“In a few hours.”
“Grens, I need all four. And when you’ve got all that—an accurate time of death.”
“You’ll get it. And more.”
“More?”
The limping slowed. Ewert Grens was playing with a plastic disc in his jacket pocket, sounds that would not be stilled.
“More.”
The forensics lab was empty. His brown beret was lying on one of the benches, and his black bag stood open on one of the tables, the one that was always there like an extension of his heart at any crime scene. Grens had worked with Nils Krantz for thirty years and as with Werner, a colleague whom he had known for so long, but never met outside work, not even for a cup of coffee at the café on the corner of Bergsgatan, had never talked with him about his family, soccer, the weather, how high taxes were, the sort of things people talked about together. None of them had learned to do it.
He sat down close to the brown bags with autopsy written by hand on every one. Bodies in particles. Investigations that were to be subjected to microscopes and carbon dust in order to be more than just guesses and suspicion. Surrounding the bags, a pile of used gelatin lifters, tweezers, a magnifying glass, brushes, labels, pins, light cords, toothpicks, plastic containers, rubber gloves—the detective superintendent stood up, impatient, opened one door at a time, the one to the storeroom, to the darkroom, to the fiber room for the perpetrator’s clothes, and finally to the fiber room for the victim’s clothes.
Nils Krantz was standing there. In the confined space that wasn
’t much bigger than a cell.
“Fibers.”
The forensic scientist turned with hunched shoulders as he put some black tights and a pair of white pants into a bag each.
“I need your analysis of their clothes, the fourth one, are you listening, Krantz, I need fibers.”
Her dark-blue uniform jacket and light-blue uniform shirt were hanging to dry in a humming drying cabinet, cut up arms dancing excitedly against the glass door.
Frightened. Grens looked at the empty clothes and pictured José Pereira in front of a wall of faces and his description of walking a short distance with the young woman who had worn them through one of the underground passages in Aspsås prison. She was frightened.
“You’ll get my analysis when I’m finished.”
She had been lying in the backseat and then in the trunk. She had been so close to the man who took her life, her clothes had also been in contact with his. Krantz smoothed out her uniform pants on the table, cut them into strips for reference samples, and put the strips into two baskets—textiles that would later be compared with the prison clothes found in the first escape vehicle.
“Well then, get finished. Give me an answer!”
“You and I don’t really do the same thing. Answer, Ewert? You’re looking for your truth. Whereas I . . . I’m looking for the truth. When I’m done here, 85 percent of my work still remains. Compiling reports and records, the truth.”
There was a smell of disinfectant. Every trace of the previous victim’s clothes had to be purged before the next victim’s clothes were allowed in to come into contact with the same scissors and drying cabinet.
“You question someone. And the truth is something that someone chooses to tell you, their interpretation of the truth then becomes your interpretation of their interpretation. But when I write, Ewert, I have to be able to stand up in court with whatever I write! The truth. I don’t interpret and I don’t guess. In a few hours, I will have everything you want. DNA, fingerprints, blood, and this, fibers. But right now, let the ones who have to analyze, analyze. Then you will get the truth.”
Two Soldiers Page 28