‘How long ago did this happen?’
‘I left here just before five.’
‘What? This morning?’
‘Yes.’
Every sound receded.
‘For fuck’s sake, Sebastian!’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know …’ Sebastian was searching for the right words. He failed to find them. ‘I mean … what the hell should I do?’
Torkel looked around. Saw the uniformed officer standing with Billy and Vanja as they discussed door-to-door enquiries. Saw Ursula fetching a black bag and a different lens for the close-ups. Then he looked back at Sebastian’s colourless face. The man he had let into the investigation – which had just turned into a nightmare as far as the police were concerned.
‘You will go back to the station. And you will stay there until I get back.’
Sebastian nodded almost imperceptibly, but made no attempt to move.
Torkel shook his head in frustration and turned to the uniformed officer. ‘Someone needs to drive this man back to the station – can you get it sorted, please?’
Then he went back to join Ursula in the apartment. Back to the terrible crime which had previously seemed complex enough, but which now appeared to be the simpler of two problems.
Sebastian didn’t recall much about the drive back to Riksmord. He remembered that he had chosen to sit in the back of the car. He remembered that the driver had been a female officer. He was fully occupied in trying to understand this day somehow. The paralysing feeling of panic began to subside around halfway to the station. His logical thought process returned. He welcomed it. He needed to be able to function. He needed his intellect. The situation was critical. Annette Willén was dead. Murdered. The big question which Sebastian hardly dared ask was whether he had been allocated a role in the course of events. He had slept with Annette Willén. She had been murdered shortly afterwards.
He wanted to believe in chance.
Coincidence.
A twist of fate.
His entire being wanted it to be a mistake. But how great was the probability that the murderer had just happened to choose Annette Willén? Almost non-existent.
So far they hadn’t been able to find any kind of geographical pattern in the murderer’s choice of victim. One in Tumba, one in Bromma, one in Nynäshamn. And now Liljeholmen. The other women had been murdered in their own houses – two detached, one terraced. Now he had struck in a large apartment block, which involved a greater risk of discovery, and suggested even more strongly that this was not a random attack. Unfortunately. However Sebastian turned things over in his mind, he always reached the same conclusion.
There was a connection of some kind.
Him and Annette.
Annette and the murderer.
Sebastian went up to Riksmord. He didn’t really have a plan. He would wait for Torkel. He didn’t even know if he would be allowed to stay around for much longer.
He found his way to the Room. At least he could close the door and be alone with his feverish thoughts. He went and stood in front of the board with the photographs and notes. Looked at Billy’s timeline and the pictures of the previous victims. Soon Annette Willén would be joining them. None of them was exactly young. They were all over forty. Perhaps there was something in that. They all had history. More possible patterns in their past. He knew Billy had already gone through everything, but he had to wait for Torkel anyway, and it could be hours before he got back. He might as well do something. With a bit of luck, working would keep those other thoughts at bay.
On the table lay the three files about the victims, left behind by the team when they dashed off to Liljeholmen. Sebastian sat down and pulled the files towards him. They contained all the available information on each one, from official tax documents and details held on the electoral register to forensic evidence and interviews with everyone from the victims’ nearest and dearest to work colleagues and neighbours. Could he find something that no one else had noticed? The chances were very small. This team was the best in Sweden. But he intended to try.
He needed to do this.
He needed to try to understand.
He began to read. The first victim. Maria Lie. Separated from her husband Karl relatively recently, but the divorce hadn’t gone through yet. There was a lengthy interview with the ex-husband-to-be; it ran to ten A4 pages. Maria and Karl had been married for a long time, but the relationship had been childless, and they had drifted apart. Maria Lie worked as a finance officer with a recruitment company in the city. He worked for Tele 2, and the previous year he had met a younger woman and started an affair. Then came the discovery, the quarrels and the break-up in quick succession. Maria Lie had bought Karl out of the house; he needed the money, because his new partner was already pregnant. Maria Lie had recently applied to go back to her maiden name, Kaufmann, and they had …
Sebastian stopped. Read the name again. It couldn’t be.
KAUFMANN.
Ursula had finished taking photographs and wanted to wait for the crime scene investigation team to arrive before the body was moved and examined. The body wagon had been held up due to a serious road accident, and Ursula walked over to the living room windows to rest her eyes on something other than the pale, dirty grey body and the congealed blood on the bed.
Outside it was still a perfect summer’s day, with a clear blue sky. The blazing sun had moved west and was no longer shining straight into the apartment with full force, but the heat was still stifling in the stuffy room. Ursula carefully opened the balcony door and stepped outside. At least it was slightly cooler out there. The balcony was small, but had been lovingly tended; a beautiful yellow climbing rose in an ornate terracotta pot covered the concrete wall. Two folding chairs stood by the French-style bistro table in white-painted metal. The only thing on the table was a pale blue sugar bowl with slender white flowers on the enamel surface. Before long no doubt someone would pick it up and wonder what he or she should do with it, and all the rest of the stuff in the apartment. The things we leave behind. Ursula went over to the railing and looked out over the Essinge intersection and the green forest beyond. She watched the cars speeding by on the multi-lane highway. Inside the apartment a life had ended, while outside life continued to race by. That was how it worked. Life was a river; you couldn’t stop it however much you wanted to. However hard it seemed on the person who had been affected, just a short distance away life went on.
She took a deep breath, letting the oxygen fill her lungs. Closed her eyes and thought. There wasn’t a shred of doubt that it was the same murderer. Everything fitted, from the nightdress, the nylon stockings, the gaping wound in the throat to the rape from behind. In order to be absolutely certain she had looked for the storeroom that could be locked from the outside. There was nowhere inside the apartment itself, but Ursula assumed that not much had changed since she herself had lived in an apartment, even if it was many years ago. There ought to be a storeroom. And there was. In the cellar.
On the other side of a steel door she found a long corridor with a concrete floor. Naked light bulbs every five metres illuminated small storage areas behind chicken wire attached to wooden battens. A rough wooden door with a bolt on the outside led into each separate storeroom. A faint but unmistakeable smell of mould.
Ursula had walked past the identical cages until she reached 19, the number of Annette’s apartment. The padlock was broken. She had opened the door slowly and carefully, wearing gloves, and peered inside. This must now be regarded as part of the crime scene. There was comparatively little in Annette’s storeroom. Most of the ones Ursula had passed along the corridor were more or less packed. Annette’s housed only a few cardboard boxes, a floor lamp, a folding table, and four wooden chairs stacked on top of one another. In the middle of the floor the supplies were neatly arranged: the soft drink, the biscuits, the bananas, the bar of chocolate, the empty bottle for urine. They stood in a perfect line, each item precisely equidistant from the next. Exactly the
same as at the other crime scenes. Ursula, the experienced crime scene technician, suddenly shuddered; it was something she would never admit to the others, but she found the precision with which the perpetrator re-created the same arrangement in every case terrifying. She crouched down, took out a small metal ruler and measured the distance between the items. As she suspected: 4.5 centimetres. He must measure it on every single occasion, she thought. That took time. But he allowed himself the time. That was how cold he was. How unstressed. That was how important it was to get it right.
To complete the ritual.
To do exactly the same as Hinde.
She had shuddered again.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard Torkel walk into the apartment. He seemed to be looking for her; he didn’t notice her on the balcony and headed for the small kitchen.
‘Torkel!’ she called out, tapping on the window. He looked up and nodded to her. His expression was serious. He came out onto the balcony and started with the simple stuff. The stuff he could understand.
‘We’ve been knocking on doors, but nothing so far. Annette was a quiet, respectable person. Didn’t draw much attention to herself. Apparently her ex-husband was a bastard, but nobody’s seen him for months.’
Ursula turned back to the view. ‘What about the friend who found her?’
‘Lena Högberg; she lives not far away. They were supposed to have lunch today, but Annette didn’t turn up. Lena kept ringing her all afternoon, but there was no reply.’
Ursula nodded in confirmation. ‘She’s been dead for less than twelve hours.’
‘Evidently things had been pretty tough for Annette over the last few years,’ Torkel went on, ‘so Lena got worried and decided to come over after work. She saw bloodstains on the floor through the letterbox …’
‘In what way had things been tough?’
‘The divorce, the son moved abroad, she lost her job. She was at a pretty low ebb, apparently.’ Torkel looked over at the traffic before continuing, ‘Vanja’s checking out the ex-husband.’
‘That’s probably a good idea, but it’s the same murderer. No one else.’
Torkel sighed heavily. Ursula looked at him. His expression was particularly grim, she thought.
‘We just have to make sure we do everything by the book now,’ he said, perhaps more to himself than to her. ‘We mustn’t miss anything.’
They fell silent for a moment, both gazing out across the motorway. Torkel took her hand and looked at her. She was surprised, but didn’t pull away.
‘We’ve got a problem. A big problem.’
‘What?’
‘Are you sure she’s been dead for less than twelve hours?’
‘It’s difficult to say because of the heat, but somewhere between six and twelve hours. Why?’
Torkel squeezed her hand even harder. ‘Sebastian had sex with her last night.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Sebastian Bergman had sex with her and left this apartment about twelve hours ago.’
Sebastian felt everything flow out of his body. Everything. The air. The power to act. The physical ability to orientate himself. He almost fell to the floor, and saved himself only by grabbing hold of the table. He clung onto the laminated surface as if it was the only thing keeping him from the abyss that had just opened up in front of him.
It was an impossibility.
It was a complete, utter impossibility.
And yet it was true.
This was what he had realised as he feverishly searched through the pictures, the interview transcripts, the witness statements, the personal details. Everywhere he discovered connections and memories he hadn’t seen before. The truth rose up before him like a pale figure, obliterating doubt, hope and blurred uncertainty. It took over his soul like an alien force. He was shaking, he could hardly breathe. The brutal realisation reminded him of that time on a beach in Khao Lak, where his inner being had met that deathly-white, implacable figure once before. On that occasion as he sat half-naked, sore and bleeding among wreckage and palm leaves, the movement had been coloured by the blackness of grief, paralysing him. This time in an office at police headquarters the insight crystallised into pure terror. Destructive fear. He tried to concentrate, to push away the thoughts so that he could somehow deal with the panic that was threatening to overwhelm him. He banged on the table with his clenched fist. Forced out a strangled roar. Anything to find some kind of focus and direction. After a few minutes he managed to get to his feet with a gargantuan effort. He swayed, but regained his balance and staggered over to the window, desperate to look at something other than the images of the dead women spread all over the table and pinned up on the wall. Outside, the sun was still shining. It had been shining on the beach on that day too, he found himself thinking, and suddenly he was groping for Sabine’s hand in his mind. He wanted to hold onto her. Not let go this time. Hide inside her child’s hand, disappear into her sun-warmed skin, her soft fingers. For a brief second he could see her there in front of him, those rounded cheeks, the blue eyes full of life, the hair curling over the back of her neck. He held her tight. Wanted to protect her as well as seeking protection himself. Protection from the truth that was there in that impossible connection. Disappear with his daughter forever.
But suddenly she was gone. Torn from his grasp. Again. He was standing there all alone. In a conference room full of pictures of other dead people. With the devastating truth as his only companion.
He stretched.
Just as he had done on the beach that day, he straightened up.
And slowly walked away.
At first Ursula’s reaction had surprised Torkel. He had expected fury, but her response was more like a pale silence. Then came a barrage of questions. How was this possible? Could it really be true? It wasn’t unusual for Sebastian Bergman to mess things up, but to do so on this scale and in this particular way was unbelievable. Sebastian had slept with the woman in that room. The woman who had subsequently been murdered. Everything had happened within the course of half a day, give or take a few hours. Someone was copying Edward Hinde. Down to the very last detail. Sebastian was the person who had been responsible for putting Hinde away, the person who had put the final pieces of the puzzle together. It had been Sebastian’s finest hour as a profiler, and it had made him the man he was. However Ursula turned things over in her mind, she kept coming back to the same impossible conclusion.
There was a connection.
But that just couldn’t be true.
Together they had quickly decided that the rest of the team must be told. As they ran down the stairs a small part of Torkel was relieved that he had had the wisdom to involve everyone in the decision to bring Sebastian in. Otherwise this would have been exclusively his problem. He hated thinking that way; it felt petty when there was a woman lying murdered in an apartment upstairs. But the thought was there.
Billy had moved away from the police cars and the curious onlookers who had begun to gather. He was on the phone, walking up and down as he talked. Vanja came to meet them and nodded in Billy’s direction.
‘He’s trying to locate the ex-husband so we can send a car. We’ve found Annette’s son in Canada, and the local police out there are going to speak to him. If he doesn’t get in touch with us, we’ll call him later.’
Torkel nodded impatiently. That was all very well, but informing the next of kin was way down his list of priorities at the moment.
‘Tell them you’ll call back if you haven’t got hold of him yet,’ he said sharply to Billy.
‘They’ve just gone to find him.’
‘You’ll have to ring back. We need to talk. Now.’
Billy ended the call. It was very rare for Torkel to use such a peremptory tone. Obviously whatever he had to say couldn’t wait.
Those who had gathered behind the police tape looked at them curiously as they stood in an intimate circle.
‘We have a situation,’ Torkel began. ‘Sebastian slept with t
he victim about twelve hours ago.’
Billy and Vanja stared at him in silence. Billy’s phone rang. Presumably the ex-husband had been located. Billy didn’t take the call.
Torkel and Billy sped back to the station in Vanja’s car. They had decided that Ursula would head over to the lab to try to persuade them to establish a definite time of death for Annette as soon as possible.
Vanja was really gunning for Sebastian this time, but Torkel had asked her to calm down for once. For a while, anyway. They needed to know what had happened, they needed to gather facts and information, then act. They mustn’t forget that four women were dead, and that had to be their main focus. Nothing else. They would need to deal with Sebastian professionally. They couldn’t let their feelings gain the upper hand at this stage, however powerful those feelings might be. Vanja gritted her teeth and shut up, but Billy could see that she was seething.
They parked in the underground car park and took the lift up to the department in silence. They started by looking for Sebastian in the Room. It was empty, but the table was a mess; the files relating to the previous victims had been opened, and there were pictures, transcripts and A4 pages strewn all over the place. A chair had been overturned. Someone had been there. Sebastian, in all probability.
‘Stay here and see if you can sort this lot out.’ Torkel made a sweeping gesture across the table as he turned to Billy.
‘Okay.’ For a second Billy thought about asking why Vanja couldn’t do it instead. But this was not the time.
‘Check that nothing’s missing. If it is, I want to know,’ said Torkel, heading for the door.
Billy stopped him. ‘You don’t seriously think Sebastian is involved in all this?’
Torkel’s expression was grave as he turned back to face Billy, his hand on the door handle. ‘As far as we know, he was the last person to see Annette Willén alive. So yes, he is involved.’
The Man Who Watched Women Page 17