Henrik took me to his heart. After our first meeting I was caught fast. I, a weak-willed person who melts when someone really sees me.
That was exactly two years ago. From his own clumsy handwriting he could see that the words had been written under the influence of his medication. They might not have dulled his brain as so many other psychiatric drugs did, the ones he refused to take, but they had taken away his courage. Foundation course in RE – he had made a mental note of the course Henrik had been thinking of taking, even though they had both been drunk when they first spoke.
When the register was called on the first day, he recognised Henrik at once. The hesitation he felt on walking into the university building disappeared. Earlier he had questioned his motives, had almost felt stupid, but no longer.
He had raised his hand in greeting across the lecture room. Henrik looked puzzled at first, and then he knew.
When Henrik nodded in response, the world around them faded away. Henrik burnt with charisma, drawing people to him, indifferent to what anyone thought of him.
Culture and Society in Ancient Civilisations had come later. Ann-Marie Karpov had been wearing a black, sheer blouse through which you could see the outline of her bra. She was already flaunting herself in front of Henrik, even back then.
Henrik didn’t notice Axel at first, but that didn’t matter; he was nothing if not patient.
It happened a little way into the first term. They ended up in the university library and picked up the discussion where they had left it at the Nefertiti in the early hours of the morning. He had prepared his opening remarks very carefully, had talked about Christianity, Catholicism, the Swedish church and the mission church, and the conversation took unexpected, amusing turns. They got on well; this was a topic on which Axel felt completely at home and Henrik was impressed, that much was obvious. They missed a lecture because they couldn’t tear themselves away from each other.
Henrik invited him for a drink and he drank again even though he hated the way alcohol affected him; however, if there was one thing at which he excelled, it was adapting to fit the perception of others. Before he knew it, he was someone. For a person on the run – which of course he was – it was balsam to a wounded soul. He didn’t have to be himself, and he didn’t have to be alone.
If it hadn’t been for Ann-Marie Karpov, he would have been someone for ever.
Once Henrik fell for Ann-Marie, it was as though no one else existed. Ann-Marie sucked the nectar out of Henrik, the nectar that Axel himself would have dared to wish for. Henrik blossomed with Ann-Marie.
And Axel had become a nobody once more.
Ann-Marie had got in the way.
Rebecca had never troubled his hold. Axel soon became Henrik’s confidant, gaining an insight into every corner of the couple’s relationship. It was revolting and exciting at the same time. Henrik talked about their constant bickering. How rarely he and Rebecca were intimate, how she took away his freedom and exerted control. Sooner or later, Henrik would have broken free of Rebecca’s chains, Axel was sure of it. All he needed to do was bide his time.
Yes. He’d got a lot of things wrong. Axel had been sure that the charming, slapdash boy was nothing but a persona, and he had deliberately let Henrik’s constant flirting go unremarked. As a rule it involved young women, foolish enough to be impressed by knowledge and charisma. It all made perfect sense: Henrik’s weak spot had been his vanity, the admiration of others his drug of choice – he had craved it. And yet in his stupidity Axel had been certain that Henrik would never overstep the mark and act on it.
Axel had revelled in the fact that he was the one who could see through his friend’s disguise, recognising beneath the mask a person who was like him in many ways: a serious person, deep down, a man of morals.
Henrik’s looks would soon disappear. In the years to come Axel would have been able to watch the bald moon on the back of Henrik’s head gain new ground; Henrik would not have been able to play the attractive bohemian for much longer.
Axel would have swooped in. He had secretly longed to be the one who caressed Henrik’s bald patch when no one else gave him a second look. There was nothing inappropriate in his fantasy. He wasn’t like those men who had sex with one another; the very idea of being like them appalled him. What he had felt for Henrik was different. It was indestructible. Unattainable.
In the future, when all this was over, he could delete from his memories that part of the story where Henrik had crossed the line and had destroyed everything.
The taciturn but dedicated student, Axel Donner had found a good use for his outstanding ability to learn and to adapt. He had never revealed a hint of who he actually was.
He had wobbled on just one occasion: in Istanbul. He had been drawn along with the others, had filled his body with alcohol and, for a short time, he had allowed depravity to possess him. Minutes, perhaps fifteen or twenty, when he had been himself. Spoken in his own voice, seen his surroundings through his own eyes. But Henrik hadn’t noticed a thing.
The only one who had noticed was Annelie; he regretted this, and yet he didn’t. The uncontrollable need to talk had made him turn to Annelie when Henrik was caught up with Ann-Marie Karpov’s viper tongue. At times he had been unable to suppress his sudden surges of hatred towards his tutor.
He had frightened Annelie; he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, but he had definitely lost control.
That was one of the reasons why he must go and see her now. To shut her up. The fear that he didn’t have the necessary courage or perseverance had stopped him before. But no, there was nothing more he could do for Henrik now. Henrik had been dispatched. No point in grieving and remembering and thinking, even if he was thinking constantly.
He had failed with Carla too. But he would not allow the despair to take root inside him again. If he could just get Annelie to understand that she shouldn’t tell all and sundry – as she had told David – about what had been said to her in confidence. If not, then perhaps there was no alternative. He would have to put her out of action as well. He hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.
When Axel Donner looked back at Istanbul, he could begin to understand human frailty. It was tragic-comic, the way Annelie had boasted of her vulgar affair, trying to ennoble it by insisting that she and the married man were kindred spirits, when everyone around the table knew exactly what it came down to: flesh. Passion. But they had all been drunk, on alcohol and on Istanbul. They had all overstepped the mark in their own ways.
Annelie had made a big thing of the fact that she and Henrik got on so well. Any attempt to divert her attention had fallen flat, and Axel was angry and disappointed. Who was she, what was she? She was a nothing, just like him! It had infuriated him when she had openly, shamelessly, ridiculed the way he clung to Henrik. As if she thought she had seen through him.
But Annelie probably wasn’t that close to very many people. She wasn’t the type who gossiped or gave much away. That was one of the things he had liked about her.
59
Gothenburg
His pale reflection shone in the mirror above the washbasin. Gonzales splashed away the worst of the morning’s tiredness before collecting his file and diary and heading for the conference room. The only empty seat was directly in the sun. He went over and drew the blind before he sat down.
Höije stopped in the middle of a sentence, but Beckman got there first.
‘So, how are you feeling?’
‘Fine. It didn’t last long. Prawns.’
He had expected to see Tell at the meeting; he was supposed to be back from holiday and Gonzales thought he had glimpsed him in the car park earlier.
Höije carried on. ‘A man by the name of David Sevic has been murdered. I’ve put together a rough schedule which I’ll go through with you at the end of this briefing. The investigation will run parallel with the Linné murders, which will remain our priority. I will continue as CIO until Tell returns from holiday, which he should have don
e today. Let’s see if he turns up.’
‘I think you’ll find that seat’s mine,’ said Tell from behind Höije’s back.
Höije half turned, awkwardly, and appeared to be weighing up his options. ‘I think I’ll stay where I am,’ he said eventually.
‘Why?’
‘Curiosity.’
‘Fair enough.’
Tell sat down at the other end of the table. ‘OK. I’ve had an excellent debrief on where we are. We’ll be working on the new case. As far as the Linné murders are concerned, I would suggest that we continue looking into the background of both victims and talking to those known to them. We will continue to focus our attention on the archaeology department, but we’ll also widen our scope.’
Bärneflod waved his pen half-heartedly in the air. ‘Before we shift our focus from Henrik Samuelsson—’
‘We’re not shifting our focus from Henrik Samuelsson.’
‘. . . I’d like to mention his friend. Axel Donner. He’s the dodgiest character known to either of the victims. He has an alibi in the form of the phone call Rebecca made to him on the night in question, but that only lasted a few minutes. If you check the time of death and the distance between Donner’s home and the crime scene, he could easily have done it.’
‘And—’
‘I haven’t finished, Gonzales. I had a chat with Donner. You can see he’s depressed. He’s got virtually no possessions, maybe ten or fifteen things: a grubby mattress, a table, the odd chair, a laptop, a few books and—’
‘We don’t need this level of detail,’ said Tell.
‘I almost had the feeling he was ready to take off. And he freaked out completely when I asked him about his past, to the point where he just refused to answer. He seemed incredibly defensive.’
‘Has something happened?’ asked Karlberg. ‘It’s just that before he was really cooperative.’
‘He and Henrik followed the same freestanding courses at the university for several terms,’ Bärneflod continued. ‘Courses with a completely different theoretical content, I mean. It’s as if they’d somehow planned to do everything together.’
‘Doesn’t that indicate a strange attachment?’ Beckman agreed.
‘Perhaps they were in a relationship?’ Karlberg ventured, but Tell shook his head.
‘We’ve spoken to a lot of people who knew them, and there’s nothing to suggest a homosexual relationship. Besides, Henrik was already having an affair with Ann-Marie. Although . . . No, that doesn’t sound realistic.’
He scratched his head and squinted at Gonzales. ‘Bärneflod, you were saying something about his apartment but I can’t think what . . . Gonzales, what were you about to say?’
‘I left a note on your desk when I had to go home, Bärneflod, about a call to Annelie Swerin. Do you remember her?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Beckman. ‘She was mentioned early on, but we couldn’t follow it up because she was away on a dig.’
Bärneflod’s expression remained unchanged, so Gonzales went on. ‘Anyway, I managed to get hold of her and I asked about her relationship with Samuelsson and Karpov. I don’t know if this important, but she did mention, without prompting, that she thought Axel Donner was terribly upset about his best friend’s death, that he’d been to see her or at least appeared to have been hanging around near her apartment ever since she’d got home, although she didn’t really know why. She said his behaviour had overstepped the mark, and she almost felt as if he was stalking her. And then she told me a long, confused story about one evening on the trip to Turkey when he’d had too much to drink. Apparently he came out with all kinds of stuff and became slightly threatening. She was in the middle of a messy relationship with a married man and had told the others. Apparently this man ran a corner shop not far from where she lives; she’d started working there to earn a bit of extra money, and that’s how they got together. She was finding it very difficult, but Axel Donner had something to say about the morality of—’
Beckman sat bolt upright. ‘A corner shop? Not far from where she lives? What the fuck . . . Has anybody got the list handy, the list of people we still have to contact? I thought . . . Doesn’t she live on Gråberget?’
She quickly leafed through her own papers. ‘Do you remember the name of the married man, Gonzales?’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘But don’t you get it?’ She was ready to carry on, but Tell stopped her in her tracks.
‘Don’t forget he’s only just got here,’ he said, turning to Gonzales with exaggerated calm. ‘Listen up: a corner shop on Gråberget has been robbed. Or so we thought. A man was murdered – David Sevic.’
Gonzales nodded; now he understood. ‘I’ll check whether Annelie’s married man was called David Sevic. But going back to what I was just saying: when they were in Istanbul, Annelie told Axel about this relationship. He was extremely judgemental. Then he turned and . . . She thought it almost seemed as if he was in love with Samuelsson. As if he thought they were in a relationship. She did sound a bit embarrassed when she said that.’
‘What did I say?’ Karlberg exclaimed triumphantly.
‘Anyway, she thought he sounded crazy, quite threatening as I said, then he started talking a load of rubbish about a . . . hang on, she had a name . . .’
He checked his file. ‘Here: Carla Burke, a girlfriend he’d had in England. He said he’d wanted to “hold onto her until she understood”; Annelie thought the whole thing sounded weird.’
‘What do you mean, hold on to?’ asked Tell. ‘Was he talking about kidnapping her?’
‘She didn’t mention that.’
‘For fuck’s sake . . . Did he have a computer in his apartment, Bärneflod?’
‘There was a laptop case – I didn’t look inside it.’
Tell turned to Karlberg, who was ready for action. ‘Start a search on this Carla – an international search. And everything you can find on Axel Donner. Check the net as well. Google Carla . . . what was her name again?’
‘Carla Burke.’
‘Check if there’s anything related to kidnapping, that kind of thing. It might have been picked up by the press.’
Tell took off his jacket and loosened his tie. ‘What else?’
Gonzales looked at his boss, his expression tense. He was excited, but concerned that he hadn’t seen the significance of the information himself.
‘That’s about it. Oh, she also said Axel had talked about military discipline. The thing is, she said he’d been sitting in the courtyard of her apartment block looking up at her window. She kind of sounded as if it wasn’t really all that serious, because after all they knew each other well, and . . . I thought he probably fancied her and didn’t quite know where to draw the line, that’s what it sounded like, not . . .’
‘Karlberg!’ Tell let out a deafening shout down the corridor. ‘Check . . . whatever the fuck they’re called. Military academies, paratroopers, that sort of thing.’
He didn’t wait for a response. ‘Bärneflod, you’re with Karlberg once we’ve finished here, looking for anything that might back up our hypothesis. I’ll go to Donner’s apartment.’
‘You mean the hypothesis that Axel Donner is our killer?’ Beckman clarified.
‘Yes, because you know what else has occurred to me? That computer you saw, Bärneflod. It could have been stolen from Linnégatan; Ann-Marie Karpov’s laptop disappeared and it still hasn’t turned up. Several of the people we’ve spoken to have said that Donner was fanatically opposed to computers, so it’s obviously not his, is it?’
Beckman agreed. ‘That would also explain how the murderer got into the apartment without damaging the door. They let Axel Donner in, of course they did. But why did he take the computer?’
‘To hide the evidence, maybe?’ Tell suggested. ‘Maybe he’s afraid that something he sent to Ann-Marie will come to light?’ He drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. ‘Call Annelie Swerin and see how she is. I’ll pick you
up when I’m leaving, just give me two minutes. We’ll take a radio car so we can bring someone in to force the door if it comes to that.’
Höije shook his head firmly.
‘You mean when you go to see Donner? You want me to come with you to bring him in?’ Beckman asked.
Höije tried to interrupt by raising his index finger in the air, but Tell pretended not to notice.
‘We’ll have the bastard in no time,’ said Tell, despite the fact that his stomach was looping the loop.
Beckman left the room.
‘Tell,’ Höije said eventually. ‘If you strongly suspect or have proof that this Axel Donner is our man, then you are definitely not to go there alone without a plan. You know perfectly well that this is a job for the specialists.’
Tell got to his feet, drawing out every movement.
‘No, I don’t have any proof. The only thing I know is that some people think he’s behaving oddly and is confused, and that he has a computer even though he hates computers. And I’m not going alone. I’m taking Beckman with me.’
‘I can’t back you up if . . . No strong suspicions or proof means no smashing down doors. That’s just the way it is. You are not to take any risks. And – one more thing before you go.’
‘Yes? Or no, for God’s sake! I don’t have time right now.’ Tell backed towards the door, his expression apologetic. ‘I’ll see you when we get back.’
‘So how long are you going to be angry with me?’
‘I’m not ang—’
‘But isn’t this some kind of fucking childish protest?’ Höije exclaimed. ‘Bloody hell!’
Höije was so frustrated he almost looked astonished. The sight of him made Tell want to laugh out loud, even though he felt anything but cheerful.
‘I know,’ he said from the doorway. ‘Not much longer.’
60
Gothenburg
Babylon Page 30