Killer's Island

by Anna Jansson

  “They were saying the sample was not broad enough for the results to be significant. Several patients had dropped out because of diarrhea. The tiniest bit of resistance and they gave up even though it could have helped them in the long run. Sometimes people don’t see what’s best for them. In fact the statistical basis of the study was perfectly adequate; they were only questioning the conclusions out of antagonism.”

  “Did Linn know you were coming?”

  “No, it was on impulse. I wasn’t sober, I said.”

  “Before we came we took the liberty of checking your bank accounts.”

  Maria got out some copies of the pages she’d been given by Sam Wettergren’s bank. “Do you want to comment on a payment of 153,000 kronor from the producer of the material you used in the study?”

  “It was for my expenses.”

  “Expenses of 153,000. What, for pens and paper and a few erasers?” Ek’s fingers drummed against the doorframe.

  “None of your goddamn business. I’ve paid my taxes, there wasn’t so much left by the time I was done. It’s all in my accounts, I’ve got nothing to hide.” Sam Wettergren demonstratively checked his watch. “I have work I need to get on with. Patients who are waiting.”

  “Okay, we’ll leave it for now. Just a couple more questions and then we’re done. Do you know a man called Harry Molin? Could be a patient of yours.”

  “Harry Molin? Doesn’t ring a bell, exactly. I couldn’t rule out that he’s been here, but I don’t remember him.”

  “What did you do with the money? We can see it’s not in the account any more. Have you been doing any house repairs at home? Gone overseas perhaps? Or paid off loans?”

  “I haven’t done any DIY for twenty years. How would anyone have time for that, with my working hours? I divided the money among my children. They’re studying and I don’t want them to take out student loans. The household budget’s leaking like a sieve.”

  “One last question, and then we’re going to ask for a saliva sample.” Maria took out a kit of cotton swabs from her briefcase. “What did you think about Linn Bogren’s relationship with Sara? How would you have dealt with it if she’d still been alive today?”

  “I’m the boss and I have to be fair. Obviously I would have fired her if she refused to go voluntarily. It doesn’t matter if the patient is a man or a woman, as a health service employee you’re not allowed to enter into a relationship with a patient. I would have reported it to the relevant authority at the Department of Health and Social Security. If Sara Wentzel had reported her it could have led to a civil law case. I have to treat everyone the same, regardless of what I think about them or their sexual orientation. Otherwise my leadership position would be undermined.” Sam stared at the cotton swab Maria handed him. “What’s that? A DNA test? I didn’t fucking do it. Have you asked her husband? Well have you? He if anyone had reason enough to beat the shit out of her. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You think so?”

  “Surely you do see it was him?”

  “Take this cotton swab and rub it against the inside of your cheek.…” He stared at Maria with intense disdain, but did as she asked. “Make sure you’re contactable.” She rolled the cotton swab inside the circle of the FTA card and covered the sample.

  “What do you need the computer for?”

  “Just borrowing it for a while,” said Ek. “We’re aware of the fact that it’s County Council property and we’ll return it in the same condition as we found it. You should count your lucky stars we’re not taking you in as well.”

  Sam stared at them with the kind of hatred that could have made a concrete bunker self-ignite, but he didn’t say anything until they’d closed the door behind them. They heard a long tirade of curses.

  “Shouldn’t we have brought him in?” said Ek.

  “I’ve put him under surveillance. Let’s see what he does once we’ve left the scene.” Ek headed for the driver’s side, but Maria was too quick for him. She slipped behind the steering wheel, while Ek had to go around the car to the passenger seat. It was so typical, she reflected, the way Ek always assumed he was driving.

  In the virtual world he’d learned to quickly and strategically counter any unexpected events. Any emotional expression at his command was minimal and easily understood. Terror, hatred, the flush of victory – no other emotions were required. There were rules. Everyone had to observe them. The consequences were clear. Unfortunately, in real life things were not always so predictable. Stupidity had an unacceptable amount of room to maneuver. In idiocy there are so many more variables than in intelligence and logic, which have the capacity to boil things down and prioritize. How is it possible to predict situations when people do so many things without any beneficial effects for themselves? They act on the basis of pathetic, irrational concepts such as empathy and love. How could people come up with the idea of doing things for other human beings, when it was actually detrimental to their own interests? The inherent idiocy of it was so provocative, it had to be studied one more time. These delicate and as yet only partially-articulated questions had to be answered: “How much was I worth to you? How much can I cost you now?”

  Linn had been a mistake. Yet she was a chip that could be used in the game he’d set in motion. The USB stick had been in her purse in the hall.

  She should have taken better care of it. She should have taken better care of herself.

  CHAPTER 28

  ERIKA LUND TURNED ON her private cell phone. Four missed calls and as many text messages. All from Anders. Want to see you again. Miss you. Why don’t you answer?

  “Because I have a job that’s eating me alive,” she said to herself as she pressed call-back. “Well I seem to be popular today.… What can I do for you?”

  “Can we meet? I want, I want, I want!”

  “What do you want?” she laughed.

  “Arm wrestling, board games. Anything, as long as it’s with you. I’d even play leapfrog around a pole or go for the first swim of the year in ice-cold water, as long as we do it together. That’s the whole thing about Midsummer, isn’t it?”

  “Midsummer. So that’s why Maria threw a few herring tails on a plate. I hate marinated herring. The new flavors anyway. Coriander herring. Lime herring. Cranberry herring. Orange herring. Chocolate herring.…”

  “And sour herring.… When can I see you?”

  “I’ll just get my things together. We could meet here in an hour.”

  “A whole hour.… Why does it have to take an hour? I’ve got withdrawal symptoms, I need you here NOW!”

  Erika hurried down to the locker room to take a shower.

  She bumped into Maria down there, who was a step ahead of her, blow-drying her hair. Her body lotion smelt of grapefruit.

  “I just thought of something.”

  “No, stop it!” Erika covered her ears. “I have a date!”

  “Harry Molin had an article on his desk about sleeping dysfunction and medication for it. Are you listening?”

  “Reluctantly!”

  “An alarm report has come in from Japan about a pharmaceutical drug called Fumarret, used as an aid to help people stop smoking. But it has side effects. In twelve known cases it has made people sleepwalk. All the people affected in this way were sleepwalkers as children, or were known to sleepwalk at times of stress or if they consumed alcohol. The drug seems to reactivate the tendency. One of them ended up being run down by a car and had life-threatening injuries.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Harry must have been thinking about it. And Jill Andersson, that witness you interviewed, saw a man struggling with a heavy sack that same night Linn Bogren was murdered. She said he walked clumsily with his legs wide apart as if he was drunk or sleepwalking.”

  “And… ?” Erika waved her hands in the air. “I’d look pretty clumsy if I was carrying my own body weight on my shoulders in a sack. I don’t think a lot of people could just casually toss a sack weighing 143 pounds on th
eir shoulders. Why did she think he was sleepwalking?”

  “That’s how it looked, she said. I’ve checked the medication mentioned in Harry’s article and it’s also available in Sweden. It’s become a bestseller.”

  “Fumarret. I recognize the name.”

  Erika hurried down to reception. It hadn’t been her intention to let Anders wait, but she was a good deal later than the time they’d agreed. He sat slumped in an armchair, reading a brochure from the Crime Prevention Council. As she drew close, he pretended to be absorbed in the information leaflet. She winked at him, motioning for him to follow. They would have their cuddle outside; she really didn’t want to give her colleagues this icing on the cake.

  “So where’s Julia, then?” Erika had meant not to mention her, but the question jumped out before she knew it. Hopefully little Miss Insufferable had something more important to do than ruining Daddy’s date.

  “She’s at riding camp in Fröjel all weekend.”

  “Oh what fun. Does she have friends there?” Erika tried to hide her smile.

  “No, but she may make a few new friends. To be honest that’s one thing I’m a bit concerned about. She never keeps any of her friends. All girls at that age have a best friend they see intensively for months or years, but not my Julia. They split up into couples and she’s been the odd one out. Sometimes she goes home with someone and then there are three of them, so she gets pushed out. Is that some biological law? Do girls get vicious with each other if they have to share a girlfriend?”

  “It’s like that at a certain age. It usually gets better later on.”

  “I was supposed to be at the parents’ evening last night, but a colleague called in sick so I had to take another shift last night. Julia has taken to a guy who works as a classroom assistant. I was hoping to find out a bit more from him about how she interacts with the other girls in the class. I don’t trust Julia’s teacher, she doesn’t deal with things as they are – just wants to make life easier for herself. But this guy grabs hold of things, even though he’s very young and doesn’t even have an education. I have to thank him. Sometimes I think about buying her a horse; would it help her get more friends, do you think?”

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.” Erika felt at a loss. Buying one’s friends could never lead to lasting friendship. The fault probably mainly lay with Miss Sulky herself. If one never compromised, always looked in the wrong direction and complained about being unfairly treated while sneering at people and looking for personal advantage, then surely it could never be easy finding friends.

  “I read somewhere that girls have best friends as transition objects to break their reliance on their mothers. Don’t ask me if it’s true, I really don’t know. I played mostly with boys, actually.”

  “Could that be the reason why she doesn’t have a best friend? Because her mother died and she doesn’t have an emotional reliance to transfer to someone else?” Anders lost himself in his musings while they walked toward the parking area. Erika would have done anything to be able to enter into his thoughts. They were obviously about Isabel. Would he ever get over her death?

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise. First back to your place to pick up what you need for tonight and then… I’m not telling you anything else.”

  “Exciting! What should I bring, you have to tell me what we’re doing. A dress or rain boots?”

  “If you wear a dress with red rain boots I promise to worship the ground you walk on. Okay, this was my way of thinking: we’re invited to Ljugarn for a party. A colleague of mine has invited a group to Pigstugan and then the idea is we go back to their house. I told them we might come, but it’s up to you. I rented a cottage over the weekend.”

  “Fantastic. But I’m a bit curious about your place. I haven’t been there yet, you know.”

  “You can see it when it’s ready. I’ve stripped the old wood floors, polished them up. There’s only the kitchen left to do. Then I’ll invite you over.”

  The evening sun lay like a warmer nuance over the sea and the little red cottage with its dove-blue window shutters was absolutely delightful.

  There was no wind and the air was warm.

  The cherry tree by the corner of the house had already flowered and was full of unripe fruit; the fragrance of the bird cherry trees descended over them like a cloud of fine powder.

  “So sweet.”

  “Just wait till you see what it looks like inside.” He opened the door to the main house. “You can bake bread in the wood fireplace. I rented here last winter when I wanted to get out of town for a while. I was going to stay here over Christmas but then Julia came down with cabin fever after two days. So we had to go back. And you know she had her computer with her and the teaching assistant had given her games and other clever things to occupy her. Social life doesn’t work the way it did when I was a kid. In those days we played games together, now the children spend time by themselves at the computer.”

  “They socialize over the Internet and even if they’re not in the same room I’m not sure they’re so lonely or isolated, really.” Erika picked a bouquet of Midsummer blooms – oxeye daisies and columbines with a border of ferns that were growing outside the doorstep – and put this on the table by the window. They got the fire going and opened a bottle of wine while Anders told her about the old bathing resort.

  “Ljugarn has been a well-known bathing resort since the end of the 1800s, with five seaside hotels, if you can believe it! Princess Eugènie stayed at Fridhem on the west side of the island. She attracted Stockholm’s cultural elite and aristocracy. It became very fashionable to spend your summers on Gotland.”

  “A sort of Stockholm Week but much earlier, like when the whole of Stureplan moves here in July?”

  “Something like that. I was thinking we could bring a picnic tomorrow and go to the Folhammar Rauk Area, with all the stone columns. It’s just about right for a decent walk along the beach.”

  “Sounds nice. Then I’d like to try a restaurant. I read the menu when we drove past Smakrike… lamb chops with wild garlic butter.… It looked really good.” Erika gave him a pleading look.

  “I’ll invite you out another night this summer. Tonight we’ll head north along the beach to Lövängens Pension and Pigstugan. The hotel’s maids used to live there in the old days but now it’s a pub. If you continue up the coast you eventually get Strandridaregården.”

  “Strandridare, Beach Rider, what does that mean?”

  “The Beach Riders were customs men working in the harbors where tar, lime, limestone, and wood were exported. And on the other side of the museum is the marina.”

  Erika sipped her wine.

  “What time do we have to be at the party?”

  “The others are probably already there, but well-brought-up folk like us always get there a bit late.”

  CHAPTER 29

  ERIKA LAY IN THE COOL water looking up at the pale stars. Her entire body except for her face was enveloped by water. The sounds of the party faded. Her mouth tasted of salt. Making little movements, she floated weightlessly in the silence. Her loneliness was as great as the universe, it seemed. She’d had more to drink than she should have. That was how it was. She drank more than a woman should, because there were different yardsticks for men and women, everyone knew that. In Anders’s group the ladies hardly drank and were coquettish about their weight. She had realized this too late.

  The evening had kicked off with a drink. Anders put his arm around her back so that the others would understand they were a couple. Maybe he was already regretting it. The others seemed to know each other well; right from the start they were talking about absent friends. Fond memories were brought up. Insider jokes made everyone roar with laughter. Anders laughed until he was practically yelping, and let go of Erika. He was swallowed up in the bosom of his friends, while she hovered at the edge of the circle with a smile on her lips that grew increasingly strained. He should have introduced her,
helped her establish some common ground. She noticed she was being evaluated and judged; more or less like being back at school, standing there in a new classroom every time they moved – which was frequently, because of her father’s job in the military. Why does it never end? Why does one never really grow up?

  They ate herring and potatoes at a long table on their hosts’ veranda, singing drinking songs she’d never heard and even harmonizing with their voices. She tried to move her lips and imitate the others. Probably it looked like a poorly dubbed film, but she wanted so very badly to be one of them. Not to seem like a dull person – Anders mustn’t think she was dull. He had been placed right at the other end of the table. He was safe there among his friends and seemed to have no idea that she was feeling abandoned and ill-at-ease. Unfortunately the box of red wine had ended up next to Erika, and she continuously had to top off people’s glasses. When it finished, another box was opened. She had more wine than she thought and, though she still felt stiff, her head grew increasingly sluggish.

  Then there was the music quiz. They split up into teams. Anders was in top form. One minute he was waving his arms in the air, the next he was grabbing the women in his team, quickly nicknamed Dizzy Tits and Fat Hips by Erika. The girls seemed to know all the songs and they even sang like real pros.

  “Who was the drummer in AC/DC on the record Stiff Upper Lip?”

  “Phil Rudd!” said Anders without even stopping to think, and he got a loud smooch on his cheek from the beautiful blonde woman at his side. She was younger and slimmer than Erika and her halter-top dress was incredibly revealing – Anders couldn’t take his eyes off her breasts. Erika hoped she’d spill red wine on it, try to wash off the stain in the sea and then drown.

  “What guitarist played on Kent’s first CD?” The question was for Erika’s team. She didn’t have a clue; nor did the others.

  “Martin Roos,” said Self-Important Jackass who was their quiz master. His name was Petter and he was reading directly from the album liners. To Erika he looked like some overgrown schoolboy on University Challenge.