The Man Who Watched Women

by Michael Hjorth

  ‘I’m not staying.’

  ‘But surely you can come in for a little while?’

  Ellinor’s expression was hopeful. Sebastian thought briefly, and decided that his errand wasn’t really something that ought to be tackled while standing in a hallway. Not even when it came to Ellinor Bergkvist. He kept his coat on, but followed her into the living room. The windowsill crowded with pot plants. Sofa, armchairs, coffee table with a shelf for magazines underneath, a bookcase on one wall with a small number of books. A few ornaments lined up, souvenirs from trips abroad perhaps. No photographs. Two pedestals with large green plants on either side of the door.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked when he had sat down on the sofa.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? How about a coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve bought some real ground coffee since you were last here, and one of those cafetière things.’ She used her right hand to demonstrate pushing the plunger down in the pot.

  ‘I don’t want any coffee! Thank you. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  Was there a hint of expectation in her voice? Could he detect a hopeful little smile? He had no idea what she thought he had come to tell her, but there was no point in trying to soften the blow. He took a deep breath and embarked on the explanation he had prepared.

  Four women had died. (Yes, she’d read about that.)

  They had all had a sexual relationship with Sebastian. (What a coincidence!)

  It was possible that someone had been following him for quite some time, so there was a risk that the murderer also knew about their one-night stand. (What did he mean by that?)

  She could be in danger.

  Ellinor perched on the edge of one of the armchairs and gazed at him, her expression serious. ‘You mean he might come here?’

  ‘There is a risk of that, yes.’

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘The best thing would be to go and stay with someone. Get away from here for a while.’

  Ellinor clasped her hands in her lap and seemed to be considering what he had just said. Sebastian waited. Just as with Anna Eriksson, he wanted to be sure that Ellinor understood the gravity of the situation before he left, and that she was actually intending to leave the apartment.

  ‘Who shall I go and stay with?’

  All he knew about Ellinor was what he had found out after the talk on Jussi Björling, and they hadn’t really touched on the issue of who she should go to if she suddenly had to leave her home. She knew he couldn’t possibly know the answer. And yet she asked him anyway. That bothered him. Of course.

  ‘How the fuck should I know? There must be someone, surely.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  Ellinor fell silent. Sebastian stood up. He had done what he came to do. He had warned her. What she did with that information couldn’t possibly be his problem. And yet he found himself almost feeling sorry for her. Her question suggested that there was no obvious place for her to go in an emergency. Was she really so alone? He had no idea. And he didn’t really care. But she looked so small, perched on the edge of the armchair with her hands clasped.

  ‘You could go to a hotel if there’s nowhere else.’

  Ellinor nodded without speaking. Sebastian thought for a second. Could he just leave? There weren’t really any rules of etiquette to determine how long you ought to stay after you’d told someone their life was in danger. If there had been, he would have ignored them anyway. But should he stay? Have that cup of coffee? No, it would be misinterpreted. She would read something into it. Half an hour in the kitchen wouldn’t make her any less lonely. Forget the coffee. He would stick to the plan.

  ‘I have to go.’

  Ellinor nodded again and got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  They went into the hallway. Sebastian opened the door and stopped. He felt as if he ought to say something, but he couldn’t work out what. There was no point in warning her again. She had grasped the seriousness of the situation, he could see that from her face. He set off down the stairs and heard the rattle of the security chain as she closed the door behind him.

  Ellinor leaned against the door and smiled to herself. Her heart was beating faster. Her legs were trembling. He had come back. Of course he had. Ellinor went into the living room and sat down on the sofa in the spot Sebastian had just vacated. She could still feel a little of the heat from his body. It made her feel warm inside, not just because of the physical warmth he had left behind, but because of his consideration. All this talk of not letting anyone into the apartment and being wary of strange men who might approach her; what was all that if not a roundabout way of saying that he didn’t want her to see anyone else? That she belonged to him?

  She leaned back. Thought she could pick up his smell. He was shy. You wouldn’t have thought it; he hid it so well behind that rough, boorish exterior. She had given him a couple of opportunities to say what he really wanted, to come out with the real reason for his visit, but he hadn’t been able to do it. Instead he had come up with that ridiculous story.

  She couldn’t stay there.

  She had to get away.

  Ellinor had struggled to maintain her serious expression. Play along. She really wanted to leap out of the armchair and give him a hug, shake him and tell him she understood. But she would let him do it his way. Ellinor smiled to herself once again. The fact that he found it so difficult to tell her that he wanted her with him was quite sweet, really. But she understood. She understood him so well. Twin souls, that was what they were. She closed her eyes and luxuriated in the sensation of sitting where he had been sitting. She could indulge herself for a few minutes.

  Ursula slid down into the warm water. She rested her head on the edge of the bath and closed her eyes. Tried to relax. It had been a shattering day, to say the least. The case had taken a turn that no one could have predicted. No one on the team was untouched by it, but Ursula felt that she was probably affected more than the others.

  The connection with Sebastian brought back memories she had deliberately striven to erase. Memories she had consigned to oblivion. And now they came surging forward, unannounced and unwelcome, making her feel tense and irritable.

  Suddenly she gave a start. Was that a noise? From downstairs? She lay motionless in the water, listening carefully, but she heard nothing more.

  Fantasies.

  Ghosts.

  Micke wasn’t at home. He had gone out for dinner with some clients. It could be late. Would be late. She hadn’t been invited. She rarely was. Micke didn’t go in for the type of client entertainment that required a wife by his side. Which was fortunate. To be perfectly honest, she wasn’t particularly interested in his job. Things were going well and he was happy. She didn’t need to know any more than that.

  She had still felt hungry when she got home. She had eaten a bowl of cereal with yoghurt in the kitchen, and made a cheese and sliced pepper sandwich with Danish rye bread. When she had eaten she had gone into the living room with a cold beer to watch TV, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate. Sebastian Bergman. The memories kept coming back. Feeling restless, she had switched off the television and decided to have a hot bath. She had checked that all the doors were locked and all the windows properly closed before she went up to the bathroom. She placed a bath bomb containing essential oils in the bath and turned on the taps. While the bath was filling she got undressed and put on her dressing gown. On her way back to the bathroom she had hesitated briefly, then shook her head; the idea was crazy. But she had still got out her service weapon and taken it into the bathroom with her. It was lying on the lid of the toilet. She would be able to reach it easily before someone could force the lock on the bathroom door. She pushed the thought away.

  Stupid.

  Nobody would come. She wasn’t in any danger. She was safe. For the simple reason that no one could possibly know that she and Sebastian had had a relationship. They had
been so clever. Well, there was one person who knew: her sister Barbro. She and her husband Anders were the only people Ursula and Sebastian had spent time with outside work.

  One summer’s day when they were laying the table on the patio, Barbro had asked Ursula straight out, ‘What’s going on with Sebastian?’

  Ursula had looked across at Anders and Sebastian, who were standing over by the barbecue with a beer in their hands. Out of earshot.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what’s going on with Sebastian?’

  ‘We work together, we get on well.’

  ‘Are you sleeping with him?’

  Ursula hadn’t replied. Which of course was a reply in itself.

  ‘And what are you going to do about Micke?’ Barbro had asked in the same tone of voice as if they had been chatting about the weather while she carried on setting out the cutlery.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When was the last time you were in Linköping?’

  ‘The weekend before last.’

  Barbro’s eight-year-old daughter Klara had emerged from the house with a bowl of salad. Barbro had taken it and patted Klara on the head, giving Ursula a meaningful look at the same time. ‘Thanks, sweetheart.’

  Klara went back indoors.

  ‘You think I’m a bad mother.’

  ‘I just think you should finish one thing before you start on the next.’

  They hadn’t discussed it again. Not during the rest of that evening. Not later. Never again, in fact. Ursula had thought about the conversation a great deal in the days that followed. Why didn’t she finish with Micke? What she had with Sebastian was something she had never experienced before. It was much more than the sex. He was clever, and he appreciated the fact that she was clever. He didn’t back away from an argument. He lied when it suited him. He made sure he always kept a tiny distance between himself and everything else, including her. He was closer to himself than to anyone else.

  He was like her.

  She loved Sebastian, although she wasn’t at all sure that it was mutual. They were together a lot, but not all the time. She wanted to see him more often than he wanted to see her. They had sex, spent the night, but never discussed moving in together. They never talked about a shared future. Was that why she didn’t split up with Micke? It would move the goalposts. As long as she was married and went home at regular intervals, there could be nothing more than there already was between her and Sebastian. But if she suddenly became available, told him what she wanted, how she felt, what would happen then? She wanted to find out, and yet she didn’t. Things were good between them, she told herself, while at the same time she longed for something more permanent. A commitment. But if she were to make such a demand, would she lose Sebastian? That was the risk.

  During the autumn, she and Sebastian saw each other less and less often. Micke had more to do because of work, which meant he found it more difficult to manage on his own in Linköping, and for a few months he was drinking too much again. Ursula was needed at home. She took some time off work and moved back. Once she was there, she realised what her absence had done to her relationship with Bella. Sometimes she felt as if her daughter regarded her as a stranger. Someone who had just stepped in to resolve the situation until her father came back. Micke stayed away most of the time. He always did that when he fell off the wagon. He didn’t want anyone, least of all Bella, to see him then. Ursula did her best to keep things together at home and to fix her relationship with Bella, but she wanted to be somewhere else. Bella’s grandparents had to take over more and more frequently. She blamed work. Went back to Stockholm. To Sebastian. But something had changed. It was hard to put her finger on exactly what it was, but things weren’t the same. Was it because they weren’t seeing each other so often? Or was it something else? After her third trip back, Ursula had the distinct feeling that he was being unfaithful.

  Sebastian was Sebastian. She knew that. His reputation as a ladies’ man was well known. But she had really believed that she would be enough for him. She had hoped so. But she had no intention of making do with her hopes and his words. After all, she was Sweden’s top forensic technician.

  After a weekend with Sebastian she had taken a sheet from his laundry basket. A sheet that bore clear traces of sexual activity. She had taken it to the lab at Linköping and asked one of her former colleagues for a favour. She wanted to run a DNA test. The colleague quickly realised this wasn’t part of any police investigation; he was understandably reluctant to get involved, but allowed her to use the lab. So she did it herself. It was simple.

  She had collected Sebastian’s DNA from some strands of hair in his hairbrush. The test result showed that one trace of DNA on the sheet came from Sebastian. Of course. But the other matched Ursula’s DNA only at certain points. With growing horror Ursula realised what she was looking at.

  It was elementary forensics. If the DNA profile didn’t have exactly the same pattern, but was similar, it could well belong to a relative. The closer the relationship, the more similar the DNA profile.

  These were very similar.

  Like sisters.

  She had confronted Sebastian, who had owned up immediately. Yes, he was sleeping with Barbro. As far as he recalled, he and Ursula had never promised to be faithful to one another. She’d been away for several months, more or less. What was he supposed to do, live like a monk?

  She had walked away from him.

  Maybe, just maybe, she could have coped with his infidelity. With a stranger. But not with Barbro. Not with her sister.

  When she had left Sebastian she had driven straight out to Mälarhöjden. The whole family had been at home when she stormed in and confronted Barbro with what she knew. What was it she’d said about finishing one thing before you started on the next? Barbro had denied everything. Ursula had shown her the DNA report. Anders had been furious. Klara and Hampus had started crying. Ursula had left a home in chaos. That was the last time she had seen her sister. She eventually heard from her parents that Barbro and Anders had split up and moved away. She didn’t know where. Didn’t want to know. She had no intention of ever forgiving Barbro.

  She had gone back to Linköping. To Bella. To Micke, who was back on his feet again. They had discussed the situation, and after a while Ursula had managed to persuade the family to move to Stockholm. She loved her job. She wasn’t about to give it up just because Sebastian Bergman was a pig. They would be able to work together. She would make sure of it.

  She had gone on ahead of the others and visited Sebastian. Spelled things out. They would work together. She hated him, hated what he had done, but she wasn’t going to give up her job. She would not allow him to destroy anything else for her. If he as much as whispered to anyone else that they had been together, she would kill him. She had actually said that. And meant it. Sebastian had been uncharacteristically cooperative. He had kept his promise, hadn’t breathed a word about their relationship to anyone, as far as she knew. Micke and Bella moved up to Stockholm. Life went on. It worked on every level. Her family. Her job. But nobody was happier than she was when Sebastian left Riksmord in 1998.

  But now he was back.

  Now neither hot water nor essential oils could make her relax.

  Now she was lying here with a loaded gun on the toilet.

  Now she was thinking about events she had spent several years trying to suppress.

  Yes, Sebastian Bergman was back.

  In the worst way imaginable.

  Outside it was a perfect summer’s evening, still light and warm, but as usual the inmates of the secure unit were making their night-time preparations. Some had already gone into their cells, but a few were still sitting in the common room. Lock-up was at 19.00. The inmates had thought this was rather early when they were informed that their evening activities were being curtailed by two hours, but their protests had been in vain.

  Edward was always the last in the washroom. This evening, however, he was not alone,
but had the company of the new arrival who did not yet understand the routines of the unit, and had turned up at quarter to seven two days in a row. His behaviour was annoying Edward, and he had already decided that when the opportunity arose he would make it clear that the washroom was his, and his alone, at this particular time. The veterans already knew this, and would silently leave the room just before he arrived. Hinde was standing in front of the mirror, gently washing his face. The washroom contained a dozen washbasins in front of a shatter-proof mirror which ran all the way along the tiled wall. On the other side, a little further down, were the showers and toilets. Edward contemplated his wet face and didn’t even glance at the two warders as they walked past.

  ‘Lock-up in fifteen minutes,’ they called out before going into the common room to deliver the same message. Every evening was exactly the same, and Edward didn’t bother to listen anymore. His routines were embedded in his body, almost down to the second, and he no longer needed a watch. He knew exactly when he was going to wake up, eat, read, shit, walk, talk and have a wash. The only positive aspect of this was that the identical pattern of each day gave him time to focus on what was important, what was significant, rather than everyday life; he got through that on autopilot by now.

  Hinde picked up his black electric shaver. It was one of the few things he still disliked a great deal. He wanted to have a proper shave, but any kind of razor was out of the question in the secure unit. He longed for the day when he would feel the honed blade against his skin again. That would be freedom. Holding something sharp. That was probably what he longed for most. The metal blade in his hand.

  He switched on the shaver.

  In the mirror he watched as the staff turned off the wall-mounted TV and nodded to the three men sitting on the sofas in the common room to indicate that it was time. The same three as usual. They got up without making a fuss and headed off down the long corridor towards their cells. Behind them lay the only way in or out of the unit; he heard the click of the lock as the cleaner arrived. Same time as always. The inmates cleaned their own cells, but the communal areas had been contracted out. LS Cleaning. A long time ago the inmates had been expected to clean these areas as well, but that had stopped ten years ago after a violent dispute over who was actually supposed to be doing what. Two prisoners had been seriously hurt. Since then the work had been undertaken by a cleaning firm, but always after lock-up. The cleaner, a tall, thin man in his thirties, was pushing a big metal trolley containing all his equipment; he nodded to the guards as he wheeled it along the corridor. They greeted him cheerfully; they knew him. He had been cleaning there for some years now.