by Peter Mohlin
“Pass on the assignment,” he repeated. “I don’t believe that for a second. The media’s going to be all over this case. Passing up all that attention isn’t like you.”
“It’s only good PR if I win. And I usually do—do you know why?”
“Because you’re a divinely good lawyer, I assume?”
“You might very well think that,” said Erina, choosing to ignore the irony. “But no—it’s because I work harder than everyone else. I anticipate what the prosecutor is going to do and I make sure I’m prepared. That’s why it’s not forensics and witnesses that keep me awake at night—it’s the X factor. The unknown element that’s been concealed from me and that I haven’t had the chance to prepare for.”
The lawyer lifted her face from the table so that she could turn her head toward him.
“That’s why I have a nonnegotiable policy,” she continued. “If I sense there’s an X factor, I quit the assignment immediately. And you—my friend—smell like X factor from a mile away.”
John held out his hands and did his best to look injured.
“I don’t understand how I’m gumming up your chances of successfully defending Billy Nerman. All I’ve done is to tip you off about a job. Without me, he wouldn’t even be your client.”
“And that’s exactly what’s bothering me. How did you know he’d been arrested? And why do you want me to defend him? You haven’t asked for a tip-off payment. Not yet, at any rate. It’s obvious you’re hiding something from me. So, either you tell me who you are or I’m out.”
John searched for something to say but couldn’t find the words. His attempt to apply the principle that a good offense was the best form of defense had failed, and now he had no idea what to do next.
“I think you should consider two things before you make up your mind,” she said, fixing her gaze on him. “One: I have a zero tolerance policy toward lies. If you lie and I find out, then I’ll quit. Two: our conversation is taking place within the scope of my defense of Billy Nerman. That means anything you say is protected by confidentiality and will never leave this room.”
John looked at the woman on the massage table. Erina Kabashi meant business. Her conditions weren’t the opening of a negotiation—they were absolute demands.
“I want her to leave the room,” he said, nodding toward the masseuse. Gewalin seemed to understand John’s gesture. She put a warm, double-folded towel over the lawyer’s backside and then vanished noiselessly out the door.
“What I’m going to tell you is confidential. If it gets out, my life will be in danger. Do you understand?”
“Let me repeat what I just said: everything you say to me is protected by lawyer-client confidentiality. If I violate that, I’ll never be able to work as a lawyer again.”
John met the serious gaze. He had no choice but to trust her. If he wanted to keep the promise he had made to himself and his Swedish family, he had to make sure his brother got the best possible defense.
“Billy Nerman is my half brother,” he said, pausing to let her process the information.
“Yes—it was either that or you’re his lover,” she said without even a hint of surprise in her voice. “And why is that a secret?”
“Can we leave it at the fact that I’m currently in witness protection? There’s a threat against me that has nothing to do with the accusations against Billy.”
Erina clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth while she considered whether the answer was sufficient.
“Okay,” she said. “But then I need to know who you’re posing as. I assume you’ve been given a new identity?”
“Yes, Fredrik Adamsson.”
The lawyer sat up rapidly, struggling to ensure all the towels continued to cover her body.
“The Fredrik Adamsson? The one who appears in the preliminary investigation I just read? The one who found the body?”
John nodded reluctantly.
“Wait, let’s take this nice and slow so I can keep up. You’re part of the cold cases team investigating the AckWe case—in which your own brother is the prime suspect?”
“Half brother,” John corrected her.
“Okay, half brother. But that doesn’t change anything. And you’ve managed to find out where Emelie Bjurwall was buried all by yourself?”
“I understand that it must seem odd,” John said.
Erina sighed at the understatement.
“It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. You give the prosecutor the final piece of the jigsaw to put Billy Nerman away for life while also leaking information to his defense. Seems kind of schizophrenic. Which side are you actually on?”
John crossed his arms and looked at her.
“That of the truth,” he said.
“Oh no, not one of those,” Erina groaned. “Turn around, please.”
John did as he was told while she wrapped herself in a dark blue kimono and sat on the table with her legs dangling.
“I have absolutely no interest in the truth,” she said. “For me, it’s not about whether someone has done this or that—it’s about whether the prosecutor can prove it. So if you want to help your brother, I suggest you think less about the truth and more about the evidence.”
“I don’t want to help my brother like that.”
“No, I gathered that,” she said. “If you had, you would’ve left that girl in the ground. So what is it you want?”
“For him to get a fair trial—and I don’t think he’ll get that if Bernt Primer leads the investigation. There needs to be a counterweight—that’s your role.”
The lawyer looked at him. She tried to hide it, but John still spotted the hint of an amused smile beneath the serious facial expression.
“So, you’ve found out that he doesn’t care about the truth either.”
John felt the flames of anger beginning to rise. Erina Kabashi might be good at what she did, but she completely lacked a moral compass. Like hell was he going to let her treat him like a schoolboy! If there was anyone who knew how rotten the world could be, it was him. But that didn’t mean you had to throw all your principles overboard.
“Sorry if I provoked you,” she said, sensing the atmosphere in the room.
John didn’t reply. It felt good that Erina was now on the defensive. She could stay there a while longer.
“You had something you wanted to say to me—that was how this conversation began,” she said. “Now you’ve told me who you are, I’m happy to listen.”
John pulled the stool closer to the table but was careful to ensure the distance was still big enough that she wouldn’t interpret it as a silent acceptance of the apology.
“It’s about the DNA evidence against Billy. I want to know if he’s said anything new about it in his conversations with you.”
“No comment. To answer that would violate his confidentiality.”
“Okay, I understand. But let me put it like this: how are you going to deal with the fact that your client’s semen was found right next to Emelie Bjurwall’s blood?”
“I don’t know yet. But I can tell you that the strategy he’s relied on until now won’t work.”
John thought about what Ruben Jonsson had said to him in the car outside the tattoo parlor. The DNA evidence was the prosecutor’s strongest weapon and the defense would have to expend a lot of energy neutralizing it.
“So you’ll ask him to tell an alternative narrative?”
“I’m not in the habit of asking my clients to lie.”
“But you’re not especially interested in the truth either,” said John, regretting it right away. It wasn’t in his interest to provoke her. “My brother has stuck to the same story over the years,” he added. “Isn’t that strange, given how easy it would have been for him to come up with a lie that explained why his semen was found there? Maybe there’s a slim chance he’s telling the truth.”
“What do you mean?” the lawyer said.
“Well, what if it isn’t his semen? It wouldn
’t the first time a lab had screwed up.”
“Sounds far-fetched.”
“But worth checking—if only to rule it out.”
That was his best argument. The lawyer had nothing to lose by requesting a new test.
“I’ll think about it,” she said at last.
“Thanks. That’s all I needed to hear,” John said, heading for the door.
“Are you going back to the police station? Confidentiality or not, I have to say I think it’s highly inappropriate for you to be involved in the investigation.”
John turned around.
“Don’t worry about it. Primer took my badge.”
The lawyer looked surprised.
“So, he knows?”
“He knows about my relationship to Billy, yes.”
Erina made the irritated clicking noise with her tongue against the roof of her mouth again. It seemed to be a tic of hers whenever she received and processed new information.
“Now I understand better,” she said. “You want me to be your mole in the investigation now that you don’t have eyes on the inside.”
“I want you to represent my brother and nothing else.”
“That’s funny,” she said, disregarding his interruption. “Here I was, thinking you’d give me information—and it turns out your plan is the reverse. I assume Primer is going to launch an internal investigation?”
“I don’t actually know,” John replied truthfully.
He took a few steps back into the room and sat down next to her on the massage table. Out in the corridor he could hear new customers being shown to their rooms.
“Does this change anything for you?” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, are you going to continue defending Billy, now that you know I’m a police officer and that I’ve been tossed off the investigation?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Of course. You’re no longer an X factor.”
28
Heimer looked at his wife’s eyes. They were red from crying. When he told her that the police had found Emelie’s remains, she’d fallen into his arms. It didn’t matter that he had thrown up on the catwalk and was wearing sweaty running clothes. She still pressed herself against him.
They were sitting on two plastic chairs in a windowless room behind the stage. Outside they could hear the rattle of the roadies taking down the banked seating. The steel parts clanked against each other as they were carried onto the loading.
There was a cautious knock on the door.
“The press conference,” Sissela said in a low voice. “Tell them they’ll have to manage without me.”
Heimer took his wife’s face between his hands and kissed her gently on the forehead. Then he got up to open the door. He was worried the nausea would return when he changed position, but he noticed that he was steady when he stood up. In the corridor outside, the young assistant who had gotten him past the bouncers earlier was waiting.
“We need Sissela for a bit,” she said, smiling at him.
Heimer smiled back.
“I’m afraid she needs some time to herself.”
He was ashamed to admit it, but saying no to the assistant was almost intoxicating.
“But the press conference starts in ten minutes. Nyla’s team is asking where she is.”
“You’ll just have to handle it. You should assume that she’ll cancel all appointments in the short-term,” he said, before closing the door without any further explanation.
He returned to Sissela and crouched in front of her.
“Do you feel up to leaving?”
Sissela didn’t let go of Heimer’s hand in the back seat of the taxi. She cried again, but differently this time: more calmly and with greater depth in her inhalations. He imagined that a frozen ball of grief inside his wife had finally been allowed to defrost. Perhaps she felt just like he did but hadn’t dared admit it. Perhaps all the talk of moving on and not getting stuck in the past had just been a way of protecting herself from the pain. Perhaps thoughts of Emelie also came to her during the hour of the wolf.
He squeezed Sissela’s hand extra hard as the taxi drove up to the entrance outside the forensic medicine center. Bernt Primer was standing on the steps waiting. Heimer had spoken to him on the phone and apologized for his behavior outside the house earlier. The policeman had reassured him that he understood but was still reluctant to show them the body. When Primer learned it was also what Sissela wanted, he gave in and promised to be there in person.
The first thing Heimer thought about when they entered the building was disinfectant. The place smelled and looked like a hospital, but the crucial difference was that the staff in the corridors weren’t in a hurry. And why would they be? The patients were already dead.
Primer went up to a door and turned to face the visitors.
“She’s been in the ground for ten years. You won’t recognize your daughter in there.”
“We understand,” said Heimer.
Primer nodded and pressed a button on the wall, making the electronic door swing open. They followed him into a room with tiled walls and a linoleum floor. There was a man in a green coat standing by a stainless steel gurney—he raised a hand in greeting. What was on the gurney was covered with a white sheet.
“I just want you to know that we treat the deceased with the greatest of respect here,” he said. “The goal is always to leave as few traces as possible on the body when we carry out our examinations.”
Heimer thought the phrases sounded like lines that had been memorized. Like a flight attendant going through the safety procedures before takeoff.
“I’m ready when you are,” said the pathologist, taking a step toward the body.
Heimer put his hand on Sissela’s shoulder.
They were ready.
The man slowly pulled away the sheet. Heimer stared intensely at what was lying on the gurney in front of him. Their daughter had been transformed into a skeleton with naked bones exposed in many places. There was rotting tissue on top of the rib cage that still hadn’t decomposed fully.
Heimer swallowed and forced himself to look at the head of the gurney. All that remained of Emelie’s once-beautiful face was the cranium. On the right-hand side there was a clear contusion. Two cracks ran from an impact point—one slightly longer and wider than the other. It looked absurd and unreal, as if someone had played with the props for a production of Hamlet and had dropped the skull on the floor.
“The cause of death is almost impossible to determine this many years after the fact,” the pathologist said. “It’s not possible to identify any injuries to the soft tissue. On the other hand, she has been subjected to head trauma—as you can see. That may have been what killed her—either by itself or in combination with other injuries.”
Sissela quickly looked away and hid her face in her hands.
“I think we’re done here,” said Primer.
The man nodded and covered the body again.
“Just one more thing,” he said, handing over something that had been lying on the table behind him. It was a sealed plastic bag containing a metal object.
“We don’t need this any longer.”
Heimer took the bag and held it up to the light. Inside was Emelie’s silver heart.
It had gotten dark by the time they got home to Tynäs. They were sitting on opposite sides of the glass table in the living room, waiting in silence for the kettle to boil. Heimer thought there was an understanding in the silence between them. They both probably needed some time to process the experience. The point was, they had done it together.
The kettle began to whistle and Heimer got up to make the chamomile tea that Sissela liked so much. He took the kettle off the heat and waited a few moments so that the temperature would fall a few degrees.
Once the drink was ready, he sat down in the Lamino armchair again. He usually didn’t have much time for chamomile, but today it tasted good. Sissela’s phone was next
to her cup on the glass table. It was set to silent, but it would light up at regular intervals as the world tried to penetrate into their bubble. She turned it over so she didn’t have to look at the screen and leaned back against the soft cushions on the sofa. Heimer got up and sat down next to her.
“Shut your eyes,” he said.
“Heimer …” she protested quietly.
He hushed her and stroked his hand over her face to make her close her eyes. He took the plastic bag given to him by the pathologist out of his pocket. He opened the seal and took the silver necklace out of the bag, his hands trembling. The heart had been a gift from both of them to Emelie on the day she started middle school. Despite her changes in fashion taste, new haircuts and styles, their daughter had worn it every day.
Heimer fumbled as he tried to attach the chain around his wife’s neck. But he finally managed to get the thin silver hook to slip into the eyelet. He carefully turned it so that the heart fell on her breast and the fastener was on her neck.
Sissela opened her eyes and smiled weakly at him. She took the heart in her hand and rubbed her thumb on the shiny surface.
“The bite marks are still there,” she said.
Heimer smiled too, remembering Emelie with the heart in her mouth. They had nagged her that it wasn’t good for her teeth, but she had kept on chewing on the necklace when she needed to concentrate that extra bit harder on her homework.
Sissela let go of the heart and Heimer saw a flash of concern cross her face.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Heimer. It’s a beautiful necklace and I’d like to buy a good case to store it in. But I don’t want to wear it every day. I can’t do it.”
Heimer tried to stay calm. He didn’t want to show how disappointed he was. So that was how Sissela regarded the memory of Emelie: like a millstone around her neck that she couldn’t bear to carry.
“I can see that you’re upset,” she said.
“Don’t worry. You shouldn’t wear anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”