Schyman lost his train of thought and realized he was quite breathless. ‘His name’s Lars? How the hell do you know that?’
Annika leaned across the desk. ‘He’s calling round all your sources and introducing himself. Is what you said to the TT news agency true, by the way? That it’s all bollocks?’
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. ‘I know I should have managed that a bit more professionally.’
She shoved Viola Söderland’s briefcase across the desk. ‘You decide what to do with it!’
She walked out through the glass door, closing it hard behind her.
*
Annika sat down at her desk, grabbed her notepad and pen and called Commissioner Q’s direct line.
‘Bengtzon,’ he said, when he answered. ‘It’s been several days since you last called. I thought you’d broken up with me.’
‘I like to play hard to get,’ she said. ‘Have you got much going on?’
‘I’m not going to say a thing about Nora,’ he said.
‘I don’t give a damn about Nora,’ she replied. ‘I’m after another missing woman now. Do you remember Viola Söderland?’
‘Golden Spire? What about her?’
‘Were you involved in the search for her?’
He chuckled. ‘Your faith in me is so great it’s almost touching. No, Bengtzon. Twenty years ago I was a duty officer in the Southern District. I never had anything to do with Viola Söderland.’
She made her voice bright and cheerful. ‘I was thinking that maybe you could look up what happened in the case? If you haven’t already got too much to do, of course …’
He laughed again. She could imagine him shaking his head and scratching his navel. ‘I thought your boss told the nation where she’d gone?’ he said. ‘Didn’t she run away to Russia?’
‘It looked like it,’ Annika said. ‘She planned her escape very carefully, bought a car without anyone’s knowledge, changed her name a year before she disappeared, managed to get hold of two passports, picked up a load of cash from the Cayman Islands, sewed the money into her clothes, packed a case with her dearest memories … She must have ended up somewhere. You lot must have something after all these years. Haven’t you?’
Q was quiet at the other end. She could hear him breathing. ‘She changed her name?’ he said at last.
Annika looked back through her notes. ‘She added her mother’s maiden name and started using her middle name. Viola Söderland became Harriet Johansson.’
‘What did you say about her having two passports?’
‘She reported the first one stolen and got a new one. She left the new one in the house when she fled, but the old one would still have worked as long as no one checked it with the official Swedish register.’
She heard Q tapping at his computer.
‘Okay, Bengtzon,’ he said. ‘Could you tell one of our operational analysts what you’ve just told me, about Viola Söderland, and I’ll see if I can’t find some way to help you?’
Annika was lost for words: this was too good to be true.
‘What are you up to now?’
‘Who, me?’ She straightened in her chair. ‘You never give in this easily.’
‘One of our analysts will call you later this afternoon.’
Then he hung up.
Annika was left holding the receiver, astonished.
Nina had been waiting in the road outside the villa in Vikingshill for twenty minutes when Kristine Lerberg finally drove up in her Nissan Micra and turned into the drive. The woman got out with jerky, abrupt movements, her mouth set.
‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,’ Nina said, as she walked over and shook hands. ‘I could have come to your workplace.’
‘We’re busy with the budget,’ Kristine Lerberg said curtly. She dug in her handbag for her keys as she walked towards the house with short, quick steps. Her neatly cut hair bounced against her collar each time her heels hit the ground. ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked, without looking at Nina. She turned on the light in the hall, hung her coat on a hanger, brushed off the shoulders, then took off her boots and put on a pair of indoor shoes. She went into the kitchen.
‘Don’t go to any trouble on my account,’ Nina said, taking her shoes off.
‘Well, I’m going to have a glass of wine,’ Kristine Lerberg said, filling a long-stemmed glass from a box in the fridge. She sat at the kitchen table and took a large sip. Nina sat down opposite her and discreetly put her mobile on the tablecloth with the recording app switched on.
‘I heard that social services are looking after the children now,’ she said, checking that their conversation was being recorded.
Kristine Lerberg smoothed a crease from the cloth. ‘I can’t have them,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a job to go to.’
Nina wasn’t sure if the woman meant short- or long-term, so she didn’t respond.
‘Ingemar’s got worse,’ Kristine went on. ‘They don’t know if he’s ever going to wake up again.’
‘So I heard,’ Nina said.
Kristine nodded to herself. ‘You never know what plans the Lord has,’ she said. ‘Have you found him?’
Nina was unsure what she meant.
Kristine gestured with her hand. ‘The man who did it?’
‘Not yet, but we’re exploring a number of lines of inquiry. That’s why I wanted to talk to you again.’
Nina took a small notebook from her inside pocket and read out loud from it. ‘Friday, the third of May,’ she said. ‘Do you remember what you were doing that day?’
The woman sat perfectly still and shut her eyes. She hadn’t touched her glass of wine since the first sip. ‘I have Fridays off,’ she said, in a toneless voice, ‘so I must have been at home …’ She seemed to slump in her chair. ‘The third of May … That’s, what, last week? I was looking after the children. Ingemar was away on business and Nora had one of her thyroid appointments at Södermalm Hospital.’
Nina studied her carefully. She seemed to be telling the truth. She certainly appeared to believe what she was saying. ‘Do you often look after the children at times like that?’
She nodded again, then swallowed. ‘I try to help whenever I can. And I like the children, I really do.’
‘How often would you say it happens?’
‘Me looking after them? Once a month, something like that, and sometimes in the afternoon if Nora has to do the accounts … She does the bookkeeping for Ingemar’s company, and she’s very particular about it. It takes a lot of her time.’
‘Is she often busy all day?’
‘Thyroid treatment isn’t an easy procedure, Nora usually wants to rest afterwards, which can make the days rather long, but obviously …’
‘You told me before that Nora put a lot of effort into her family, looking after the children and the house.’
Kristine Lerberg put her face into her hands, then sat up and looked at Nina defiantly. ‘We all do the best we can, don’t we?’
She had taken the question as criticism. Nina concentrated on keeping her face expressionless and tried not to feel irritated. ‘Are you sure Nora didn’t have any help in the house?’
‘Absolutely,’ Kristine said. ‘Ingemar would never have allowed it. I don’t have any help with the cleaning either – it’s unnecessary. It’s a privilege to have a home to take care of.’ She lifted the glass, but took only a small sip.
Nina turned a page in her notebook. ‘So the children spend quite a lot of time with you,’ she said. ‘What do they usually do when they’re here? Do they like drawing?’
Kristine Lerberg nodded. ‘Oh, yes, especially Isak. He’s very talented.’
‘Could I see some of his drawings?’
The woman looked at her. ‘What for?’
‘Unless you don’t keep them?’
Kristine stood up. ‘Of course I do,’ she said, and marched out of the kitchen. Nina followed her into the dark corridor leading to the bedrooms.
The room on the far left was furnished with a bunk-bed and a cot. There was a red-painted child-sized table and chairs in the middle of the floor, and beneath the window an old desk with a chest of drawers and a laminated top.
‘What do you want to see? Isak’s latest drawings?’
‘And his crayons as well, if I could,’ Nina said.
Kristine went over to the desk and pulled out the top drawer. She took out a box of crayons and a small sheaf of drawings and laid them on the desktop.
Nina picked up the box: Winsor & Newton Oil Bars, fifty millilitres. ‘Did you buy these crayons, or did Nora?’
Kristine looked at the cot. ‘I did.’
Nina put the box back and picked up the top drawing. It was a picture of three children and a little angel. Kristine moved to stand beside Nina and smiled. ‘He’s got a wonderful imagination – he talks the whole time while he’s drawing. That’s him and his brother and sister and their guardian angel.’
She reached for another drawing. ‘This is me,’ she said, pointing to a cheerful figure in a dress and high heels.
‘The guardian angel,’ Nina said, looking at the first picture again. ‘Who’s that?’
Kristine’s smile widened. ‘Isak’s faith is very strong and clear, even though he’s so young. He has an angel who looks after him, his brother and sister. He says she watches over them when they sleep.’
‘Does he ever take his drawings home?’
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He’s so desperate for his mother’s approval that he’s always taking little presents home for her.’
Nina smiled cautiously. ‘Thanks for letting me take up your time again.’ She indicated the picture in her hand. ‘May I keep this?’
When she got back to the car she did a quick Google search for Winsor & Newton Oil Bars on her mobile phone. Then she cast a last glance at the brown brick house. She could see Kristine Lerberg moving about behind the kitchen curtains. Nina started the engine and drove off.
She had reached the motorway back to Stockholm when her mobile rang. She put her ear-piece in and answered. It was Commissioner Q. ‘How’s it all going out in the real world?’ he asked.
Nina kept both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. ‘The child’s drawing that was found on the victim in Kråkträsken could have been produced in Kristine Lerberg’s home,’ she said. ‘The crayons might well match. She bought them some very high-quality oil-based ones, the same as Forensics identified from the drawing found at the crime scene. They cost seven hundred kronor online for a box of twelve …’
‘Wow,’ Q said. ‘Have you got a sample we can analyse?’
Yes, she had.
‘Anything else?’ Q asked.
‘Nora fooled her sister-in-law into thinking she’s been having monthly treatment for her thyroid at Södermalm Hospital.’
‘Fooled?’
‘There’s no such treatment. There’s something called a TRH stimulation test, which is indirectly to do with the thyroid, but it’s not a treatment as such, and certainly isn’t administered regularly … Nora had one of these “treatments” last Friday.’
‘When we know she flew to Zürich for the day,’ Q said. ‘Very interesting. While I’ve got you on the phone, there’s something else I’d like you to do. You know Annika Bengtzon from the Evening Post, don’t you?’
Nina clutched the wheel more tightly. Yes, she did.
‘I’d like you to call her,’ Q said. ‘She’s got some interesting information about a twenty-year-old case that might be worth taking a closer look at.’
Nina felt a cold shiver run up her spine. What had she done wrong? Why was she being taken off the Lerberg case? Disappointment rose into her throat and she had to cough. Oh, well, she wasn’t in charge of the way their work was allocated.
‘Who should I hand over the Lerberg case to?’ she asked curtly.
The head of Criminal Intelligence chuckled. ‘Nina,’ he said, ‘don’t be so negative. You’re not being taken off the case. You have my permission to divulge information about the preliminary investigation to Bengtzon. She may be a hack, but she knows how to keep her mouth shut. Use your own judgement, tell her what you have to about the Lerberg case.’
Then he hung up.
As Thomas looked at the weather website, anxiety rose inside him. Just in time for the weekend the weather was going to change: the rain was going to stop, and it would be sunny, twenty degrees. Everyone in the city would be out in the streets and parks, turning their faces to the sun, smiling at each other and swinging their bare arms, without gloves.
He couldn’t wear his hook without sleeves. How could he sit on a rug in the park with a long-sleeved top on (he couldn’t button shirts with one hand, so had to wear T-shirts under his jacket) when everyone else had theirs off?
He’d have to sit indoors until September, when the cold and rain set in again, hiding himself and his mutilated body away from the light and warmth, away from all the hypocrites and morons.
Mind you, it did get cold in the evenings, properly cold, even in July and August. It would be okay to wear a sports jacket then. And a sweater.
He clicked away from the site and stared at the background to his desktop, drowning in its blue until his vision clouded and he realized he was crying. There was no point in trying to resist – he had learned that. It was better to let the pain pass through him until it dissolved.
He hadn’t gone back to work after that meeting at National Crime. He’d felt exhausted, having those women staring at him. The blonde bombshell and the model with chestnut-brown hair. He had noticed the brunette staring at his hook – they hadn’t been expecting that.
He wiped away the tears with his right hand. His hook lay useless in his lap.
Slowly he got up from the computer and went into the kitchen, his shabby, poorly laid-out kitchen. Once the pain had passed, it left a vacuum that slowly filled with gnawing irritation. It was lucky he never did any cooking – it would have been impossible in this dump. When he had lived here with Annika, she had attempted to cook her basic kindergarten recipes on the gas stove in the evenings, and they had tasted pretty much as expected. He particularly remembered the mango chicken – God, the crap he’d had to stomach for the sake of domestic harmony over the years. These days he bought delicacies that were either already cooked or could be heated in the microwave. That was one of the great advantages of being in charge of his own life: the quality of cuisine had gone up by about a thousand per cent in the past six months.
He opened the fridge. Serrano ham, strawberries, vendace caviar, prawn salad – the very finest food. But he wasn’t very hungry – he could easily wait a while for dinner.
He went back to his computer and refreshed the weather website. No cold front had appeared during his excursion to the kitchen, and the weekend was still predicted to be warm and sunny.
He went onto the Evening Post’s website. He usually avoided it, didn’t want to risk coming across Annika when he wasn’t expecting it, but it was okay as long as he was prepared. Sometimes he even watched her dreadful video reports. She’d aged since she’d left him, all wrinkled and hollow-eyed.
At least she wasn’t the lead item on the website today, which was something. Instead the editor-in-chief was deemed the most important story of the day.
THE LIE OF TRUTH
All the facts about Viola Söderland’s disappearance
Anders Schyman had written a long, rambling piece in which he dismissed the accusations online. He was using the paper to promote his own personal cause, with page after page of pointless documents that were supposed to provide proof of his innocence.
Irritating. Men in positions of power never took responsibility for their actions. Whenever someone yanked their trousers down they just stood there whining and complaining. Curious, he moved on to the Light of Truth to see how the blogger had responded to the attack. It was a hotbed of activity. So far that day the Light of Truth had published forty-eight new pos
ts, with references and links to various media, and a torrent of comments was pouring in. He (or, rather, Gregorius) read a few of the comments posted by other readers, and gave them his approval by awarding them five stars, to show his active appreciation.
Then he looked at his own comment from two days ago:
Gregorius:
Anders Schyman is a hypocrite!
No one had given him any stars. Not a single one. No one had left a comment.
Bile rose in his throat.
Schyman and Annika and all the other powerful, influential people in society were seen and heard all over the place while he was completely ignored. He rubbed his nose to stop it running.
Then he went back to the most recent post on the Light of Truth and wrote a short, incisive comment inspired by the blogger’s argument:
Gregorius:
Anders Schyman should be fucked up the arse with a baseball bat. Hope the splinters form a bleeding wreath around his anus.
The comment appeared on the site at once. He felt his breathing speed up, and his anxiety melted away as his scalp began to itch.
Was it too much? Too childish? Was ‘anus’ the right word in this sort of context? Should he have said ‘arsehole’ instead?
After just ten seconds his contribution to the debate flashed.
Five stars.
His breathing got even faster.
There was a ping, a response to his comment:
hahaha, way to go man! U butfuck him real good
Okay, ‘butt-fuck’ was spelled wrong, but the feeling was undeniable.
He was starting to get hard.
Annika was standing in a carriage on the Underground, squashed between a hundred-and-fifty-kilo woman and a teenage immigrant when her mobile rang. She apologized and dragged her phone out, accidentally hitting an elderly man’s head with her elbow. He glared at her as she managed to answer.
‘Yes, hello, this is Nina Hoffman,’ the woman at the other end said.
Without a Trace (Annika Bengtzon 10) Page 22