The Man Who Watched Women

by Michael Hjorth

  Edward slowly shook his head. ‘You’re not due any more answers.’

  ‘I’ve agreed that you can phone Vanja Lithner, haven’t I?’ That was it, Haraldsson just couldn’t sit down any longer. He got up and took a step towards the bed. ‘That’s worth another answer.’

  ‘But you asked me why I wanted to ring her. I told you. Truthfully.’

  Haraldsson stopped dead, deflated. His ‘why?’ had been a pure reflex. It wasn’t even a question. It was obvious that Hinde wanted to speak to her, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked for permission to ring her, would he? That didn’t count. Hinde was cheating. But Haraldsson could fight back when necessary. The gloves were off now.

  ‘You can forget that phone call,’ he said, underlining his words by pointing a finger at Hinde, ‘unless you give me a name.’

  ‘Don’t break a promise you’ve made, Thomas. Not with me.’

  Suddenly Haraldsson saw a different Hinde, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t moved a muscle or raised his voice. His eyes had darkened. There was an intensity in his words that Haraldsson hadn’t heard before. There was a threat in his voice.

  Mortal danger.

  Haraldsson got the feeling that the last thing the four women Hinde had murdered had seen before they died was the man sitting in front of him now. He edged towards the door.

  ‘I’ll be back.’

  ‘You’re always welcome.’

  The old Hinde was back as he calmly leaned forward and quickly spirited the bottle and jar into the bed, out of sight. The metamorphosis happened so fast that Haraldsson wasn’t sure whether what he had seen had actually happened, but a glance at the gooseflesh on his forearms confirmed that it had.

  ‘You will get your name,’ Hinde said quietly. ‘When you do one last thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Haraldsson was whispering too.

  ‘Say yes.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘You will understand when and to what. Just say yes. Then I will answer one more question.’

  With a final brief look at Hinde, Haraldsson left the cell. That hadn’t gone according to plan. Not at all. But he had one more chance. Say yes. What could Hinde possibly mean by that? What did he want with Vanja Lithner? What was he going to do with the things Haraldsson had given him? Many questions. Too many for Haraldsson to be able to concentrate on ‘Lövhaga 2014, Visions and Aims’.

  He decided to make use of his flexi-time again and go home. To Jenny.

  Sebastian woke at five. He had slept better than expected. The dream had woken him as it always did, but it lacked something of the devastating power it sometimes had. He relaxed his right hand and stretched cautiously. She was lying beside him.

  He slid out of bed and put on his underpants. Went to see if the newspaper had arrived. The doors to all the other rooms were wide open. The way she had left them. With a certain measure of reluctance he went to close them. He hadn’t been inside three of the rooms for several years, so he couldn’t help taking a quick look before he closed the doors. It really was a beautiful apartment, if you looked at it with fresh eyes. Her eyes. Particularly when the low morning sun shone in through the big windows. But the open doors and the rooms beyond belonged to another life. A life he didn’t want to be reminded of. The fact that Ellinor had forced her way in was enough of a change. The rest of his life would remain untouched and intact.

  Last night they had talked about everything possible. He and Ellinor. In the kitchen. She had told him about Harald, her ex-husband, who had come home one day and announced that he wanted a divorce. Just like that. He had met someone else. It had obviously been immensely painful. It had made her doubt herself, she said. That was a few years ago. She had tried internet dating for a while, but hadn’t met anyone. It was so difficult. What about him? Why was he alone? Sebastian had successfully managed to dodge the question. He had let her do most of the talking while he sat there with a cup of coffee listening to her banal nonsense and her women’s-magazine analysis of sex and relationships. Oddly enough he didn’t hate every word as he usually did. Presumably he was weak and at a low ebb because of everything that had happened, but however he looked at things he came to the same conclusion.

  He liked having her there.

  She laughed a lot, kept a normal, easy conversation going and didn’t take much notice of him. It was strange to have someone around who wasn’t really affected by his snide remarks. It made him feel less compelled to continue. She was entertaining. She brought ordinary, everyday life into his apartment. He wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with it, but it was a diversion. Something new.

  He put the morning paper down on the table, picked up his phone and rang Trolle. Still no reply. The anxiety returned. Why wasn’t he answering? Something must have happened. Suddenly he felt a strange urge to crawl back into bed with Ellinor. Press the pause button on reality. Ignore everything. He suddenly realised what she was to him. She was someone to hold when things got difficult. Who was always pleased to see him. Who forgot all the unpleasant things he said to her.

  He realised with great clarity why he didn’t feel guilty when he thought about Lily.

  Ellinor was like a pet.

  Some people got a dog, but he had ended up with Ellinor Bergkvist.

  Satisfied that he had defined their relationship, he made coffee and read the paper. He went to the 7-Eleven around the corner and bought breakfast for them both and lunch for Ellinor. He didn’t want her to have to go shopping for food; he wanted her to stay indoors to be on the safe side.

  She was sitting in the kitchen wearing his shirt when he got back.

  ‘Oh, you’ve been out and bought breakfast for us! You’re so sweet.’

  He started unpacking the food. ‘I don’t want you to go out. You have to stay in the apartment.’

  ‘Aren’t you overdoing things a little bit?’ She came over and kissed him on the cheek, then jumped up and sat on the worktop. ‘I mean, I’m not going to disappear just because I go out for a little while.’

  Sebastian sighed. He hadn’t the strength to argue with her. ‘Can’t you just do what I say, please? Please.’

  ‘Absolutely. But in that case you’ll have to do some shopping for dinner on your way home. I’ll make a list.’ She jumped down. ‘Pen and paper?’

  Sebastian pointed to one of the drawers under the worktop where she had been sitting. Ellinor opened it and took out a black pen and a small notepad. She sat down at the table and started writing.

  ‘Pasta, fillet steak, salad, shallots, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, veal stock, cornflour. Tell me if you’ve already got any of this.’ She broke off. ‘You’ve got butter, I presume? What about red wine?’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  Ellinor looked up from her list with a surprised expression. ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Not alcohol, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  There were reasons. A few years ago he had spent a few months trying to avoid the dream with the help of booze, and had almost ended up an alcoholic on top of everything else. He was a person with an addictive personality. He had problems when it came to setting limits. Nothing she needed to know.

  ‘I just don’t,’ he replied with a shrug.

  ‘But if you’re passing, can you get a bottle of red for the sauce? You don’t mind if I have a glass?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you rather have potatoes instead of pasta?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Okay. Is there a dessert you particularly fancy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll decide.’

  She carried on writing. He carried on with breakfast. Normality and everyday life. He had never gone shopping with a list in his entire life. But then he had never met anyone like Ellinor before either.

  Sebastian had decided to take a walk; he strolled through the city up to Kronoberg and arrived at Riksmord before everyone else. He sat down in the Room and waited for the others. He picked
up the phone and rang the number he had now tried countless times. In spite of the fact that there was still no answer from Trolle, this gave rise to less anxiety within his body. After breakfast he had gone back to bed with Ellinor. From a purely sexual point of view, they were extremely well suited. It wasn’t love. Definitely not. But it was something. Love hurt. This didn’t.

  Before he left, Ellinor had laid out a fresh shirt and asked him to have a proper shave. Life was strange. His recent journey had been so intense that soon nothing would surprise him. But he needed to find Trolle. The question was how he should go about it. Could he get Billy to help? He didn’t have to tell the whole truth, but could let his colleague know that he had gone to see Trolle when he realised he was being followed. Asking an old friend for help wouldn’t sound too far-fetched. Billy was usually pretty good at keeping secrets, and his relationship with Vanja seemed somewhat strained at the moment, so there was unlikely to be a leak in that direction. It was obvious that Billy had started trying to work his way up in the hierarchy, and Vanja was fighting back. She would never admit it, of course, but it was clear to Sebastian that she thought Billy had started to get above himself. A group always worked best when everyone accepted their role and didn’t question the role of others. That was why he had never been able to fit into a group; questioning was his life blood. Billy had actually impressed him, and had proved himself to be a pretty good police officer. He had also helped Sebastian off the record in Västerås when it came to finding Anna Eriksson and getting hold of her current address. He could be a useful ally in the search for Trolle. Sebastian was intending to call at Trolle’s place after the morning briefing. If he didn’t find anything there he would have a word with Billy. Satisfied with his plan, he went and got himself a coffee from the machine in the dining room. Gathered his thoughts and promised himself he wouldn’t fall out with either Vanja or Torkel today. He needed to protect his presence within the team, to be cooperative rather than confrontational.

  Thirty minutes and two cups of coffee later, the others came trooping in. They hardly looked at him, even though he was wearing a clean shirt. Wouldn’t the two women notice something like that, if not the men?

  Ursula went first, turning to face the others as she placed the folder she was carrying on the table. ‘Shall I make a start? I’ve got the autopsy report on Annette Willén.’

  ‘Carry on,’ Torkel said.

  Ursula laid out several enlarged photographs of Annette’s mutilated naked body. The wound in her throat gaped at them. This was the first time Sebastian had seen her dead, and it affected him more than he had expected. It was difficult to make the emotional leap between the image he had of her in life, in that dress, warm and desperate for love, and the way she looked in the photographs. Ursula took out yet another close-up of the slashed throat.

  ‘Trachea and carotid artery severed. One blow and a sharp movement outwards. Exactly like the others.’

  ‘Would she have felt much?’

  Ursula looked at Sebastian. There was no doubt that his question came from the heart. She answered without a trace of empathy.

  ‘It was very quick. She choked before she bled to death, so the end came quickly. Relatively quickly.’

  Sebastian didn’t answer. He looked even paler. Ursula addressed herself to the others. He deserved to suffer.

  ‘It’s difficult to determine the exact time of the attack. She was lying in direct sunlight. But if Sebastian left her at five, then the murderer definitely turned up very soon after. The preliminary estimate is between five and ten a.m.’

  ‘So he followed Sebastian to her apartment?’

  ‘That’s a reasonable assumption. Particularly as we now know that Sebastian was being followed.’

  The room fell silent, a silence evoked by the proximity between Sebastian and the murderer. Sebastian searched feverishly for some memory of that fateful morning. Had he seen anyone? Anything? Met anyone on the stairs? Heard a car door slam and turned to look? Caught a glimpse? But there was nothing.

  ‘I didn’t see anyone, but then again I wasn’t looking either.’

  ‘No, I assume you just wanted to get away as quickly as possible. Cosy breakfasts don’t seem to be your thing,’ Vanja said acidly. Sebastian lowered his gaze. Didn’t want to respond. Wasn’t going to respond. Wasn’t going there again. Cooperation not confrontation.

  Torkel joined in with the discussion. ‘We’ll send out some uniforms to conduct fresh door-to-door enquiries now we’ve narrowed down the time frame. One of the neighbours might have seen someone hanging around.’

  ‘Ideally in the vicinity of a blue Ford Focus,’ Billy chipped in.

  ‘Where are we up to with the cars?’ Torkel asked.

  ‘We didn’t get any more from the Focus, and the Toyota has passed a number of congestion-charge pay stations; the most recent was yesterday morning …’

  There was a knock on the door and a young constable came in, looking stressed. ‘Excuse me, but there’s a phone call for you, Vanja. Apparently it’s important.’

  ‘It’ll have to wait, we’re in the middle of a meeting.’

  ‘It’s from Lövhaga. Edward Hinde …’

  They all stiffened. For a second they thought they had misheard.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Vanja asked, sounding dubious. ‘Edward Hinde?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  Vanja pulled the phone on the table towards her. ‘Put him through, please.’

  The young constable quickly turned and left the room. Vanja leaned forward, waiting for the call. The others also edged closer. It was as if the cream-coloured plastic object on the table had become the room’s centre of gravity, drawing them all towards it. Billy stood next to Vanja with one hand on the speaker button; at the same time he placed his mobile next to the loudspeaker with the other hand. They all waited in silence. Only Sebastian stayed where he was, a little distance away. He was frantically trying to work out what was going on. Why was Hinde on the phone? What was the purpose behind his call? Should he try to stop it? This didn’t bode well, he felt instinctively. As usual, Hinde was ahead of them.

  He acted.

  They reacted.

  Never the other way round.

  The sound of the telephone made them all jump, even though they had been waiting for it. Billy pressed speaker phone and the recording function on his mobile simultaneously. A soft rushing sound came through the loudspeaker. Someone was on the other end. Suddenly Hinde was there with them. Subconsciously Vanja leaned forward even more, as if she were trying to hear if he was really there in the silence.

  ‘Vanja Lithner …’

  The answer came quickly and clearly. ‘This is Edward Hinde. I don’t know if you remember me.’

  It was definitely him. The well-modulated voice. Calm, focused, and behind the self-possession the certain knowledge that he had the advantage. This was obviously his next move. Sebastian could see him in his mind’s eye. The smile, the cold watery eyes, the telephone held close to his mouth.

  Vanja attempted to sound equally composed. ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘How are you?’ Hinde’s tone was relaxed, intimate. As if he were ringing an old friend for a chat.

  ‘What do you want?’ Vanja almost hissed. ‘Why are you calling?’

  They heard Edward laugh out loud.

  ‘Vanja, this is my first telephone call for a very, very long time. Can’t we spin it out a little?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t allowed any calls.’

  ‘They made an exception.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sebastian took a step towards Vanja. He was asking himself the very same thing. Someone at Lövhaga had done a deal with Hinde. And had undoubtedly come off worst. He felt that this conversation should be brought to an end right now. Hinde’s tone was too playful, too familiar. Too self-satisfied. There was something about it that scared the shit out of Sebastian. That was his daughter, having a conversation with a man who always had a plan. Who alway
s carried it through. Torkel saw that Sebastian was about to move forward, and stopped him with a keen glance. Sebastian hesitated. His mandate was weaker than ever. He had lost Torkel’s trust. He gave his temporary boss a pleading look, but Torkel shook his head. Meanwhile the conversation continued.

  ‘I have information you ought to be aware of.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Just you. Because I presume the others are listening at the moment.’

  Vanja looked enquiringly at Torkel, who gave her a quick nod in response. In all probability Edward knew that Vanja would never take the call alone, and lying felt like more of a risk.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The information I wish to pass on is for your ears only. But perhaps you won’t be allowed to come and see me again?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Sebastian seemed very protective of you. It was almost as if he thought you wouldn’t be able to cope with me on your own. Is he there?’

  Sebastian answered without asking Torkel’s permission. Went and stood next to Vanja.

  ‘I’m here. What do you want?’

  ‘Vanja can come over and have a little chat with me, can’t she? Please?’

  ‘Why? If you’ve got something to say, you can say it now.’

  ‘No. Only to Vanja. Face to face.’

  ‘Never,’ Sebastian heard himself saying.

  But it was too late. There was a clatter as the phone was put down and the rushing sound disappeared. The connection had been broken. Hinde was gone. Vanja got to her feet with a determined expression on her face. Sebastian immediately realised where she was going.

  ‘No, Vanja. Don’t do it. Don’t go there.’

  She looked at him crossly. ‘Because?’

  ‘He won’t give you anything. He just wants attention. I know Edward Hinde.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. We suspect he’s involved. He rings and offers information. Are we just supposed to ignore that?’

  ‘Yes.’