by Peter Mohlin
“You need to take control of your thoughts,” she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with my thoughts,” John replied.
“No, of course—you’re an FBI agent. I forgot. You just take an aspirin and get on with it.”
He closed his eyes to shut out the sarcasm. It was irritating when someone didn’t hold back as they touched his most sensitive nerves.
“When do they hit?” said Mona.
“What?”
“The attacks. What triggers them?”
John thought about it without showing her that he was. He was fully aware that the pain in his neck came at moments of pressure, when his thoughts returned to the mock execution at the port in Baltimore. The moment when he’d been certain his life was over.
“Five months after that boy died, I was back at work,” Mona said. “Just the idea of holding a weapon again made me anxious, so I requested desk duty. I did that for almost a year before deciding to take control of my own head.”
She hesitated for a moment, as if searching for the right words.
“I can’t explain where the strength came from, but one day I realized that I couldn’t undo that raid. I would always hate myself for the fact that the boy died, and that was okay. I could live with that. The next day I spoke to my boss. A week later I was back in my old job and did my first operation without having a panic attack.”
John squeezed the leather upholstery of the passenger seat with one hand. He knew where she wanted to go with this story. But was it even true? He doubted it. She was probably just trying to get him to open up to her. He had used the same method to get close to some of the guys in Ganiru’s gang. Shared stories about childhoods with absent fathers, when in reality his own had been more present than he sometimes would have liked.
“I’m really sorry I fucked up. It was rotten luck to have a migraine hit today.”
Mona took a hand off the wheel and held it up in an apologetic gesture.
“Like I said, I don’t know anything about your baggage. But I know one thing: you are in charge of deciding how to deal with it. What’s done is done and there’s nothing you can do to change that. You can only do it differently next time. And you have the power. It’s there. You just haven’t found it yet.”
John felt a new bout of nausea and put the window down a crack. He managed to hold it down until Mona hit the brakes hard and stopped at a crossroads. He couldn’t wait any longer. He opened the doors, stumbled to the ditch, and threw up what little there was in his stomach.
“Anything new on the radio?” he said, shortly after getting back into the car.
Mona looked at him sympathetically. He sincerely hoped the psychoanalysis session was over so that they could concentrate on catching Primer.
“It’s okay. I just needed to get it out,” he said, trying to convince both himself and Mona that it was true.
A patrol car with its blue lights flashing and siren blaring passed them at high speed. Mona switched her attention to it and accelerated.
“Primer has turned off and is heading toward Älmsta. He’ll get caught in our roadblock in just a few minutes,” she said.
They continued following the patrol car. Tall pines flew by on either side of the Passat. John held firmly on to the handle above the side window to avoid slipping out of his seat on the turns. Then the landscape opened up before them. The forest gave way to meadows and open fields. A few hundred meters farther ahead on the other side of one of the fields he saw what they were heading for.
It looked like a spaceship had landed in the middle of the rural idyll. Three patrol cars, their blue lights flashing, and two more unmarked cars were positioned in a circle around something that had to be Primer’s Nissan.
“We’ve got him,” the radio crackled.
They quickly looked at each other before Mona pressed the button.
“Roger that. We’re almost there.”
They reached the roadblock, but just as Mona was getting out of the car, her phone rang.
“I’ve got to take this,” she said, stepping to one side.
John hesitated for a few seconds, but then he opened the door and stepped onto the asphalt. He walked slowly toward Primer’s car, where three uniformed police officers were standing with their weapons drawn. An obese man in a white shirt and with hunched posture struggled out of the driver’s seat.
“It’s him,” said Mona, who had appeared at John’s side. “Linköping is done with the analysis. It was Primer’s semen on the rock.”
PART 4
2019
44
John came out of the front door of the apartment complex that recalled the Empire State building and squinted up at the sky, which was clear blue for the first time in ages. He pulled his sunglasses out of his coat pocket and polished them with his sleeve. They hadn’t been used since he was in Baltimore.
It was twenty-four hours after the operation in Stockholm. Primer had been taken to the prison in Karlstad, where he was in custody, awaiting questioning. When Mona had dropped John off outside the apartment, she told him to rest. She told him he needed to recover before they got back to Primer.
The mandatory leave was connected to the migraine attack—or whatever he was supposed to call it—in the underground garage. But he didn’t intend to dwell on it. Mona could stick with her idea of what happened. The most important thing was to pull himself together and focus on at the questioning ahead.
Since the Chrysler was still parked at the police station, he took a taxi. On the way, he scrolled through the news to see if there was anything about the arrest. It seemed Mona’s efforts to keep a lid on it had worked. Despite the helicopter and roadblocks, no reporter made the connection to the AckWe case.
When he got out of the taxi, it was already quarter past eleven in the morning and he hurried inside. As he entered the station, he almost bumped into Ulf Törner, walking through reception with a bundle of papers under his arm. The fine weather appeared to have had no positive impact on the man, who glowered resentfully and walked on without greeting him. Ruben was standing behind the information desk holding open the staff entrance. He saw it all and was laughing loudly.
“What’s up with him?” John asked.
“What do you think?” Ruben grinned and took a big bite from the doughnut in his hand. “I guess Yanks are good for something after all. Damn good idea if you ask me.”
He laughed again as he wiped chocolate from his mouth.
“What are you talking about?”
“The kitchen, obviously,” he said, letting John into the inner sanctum of the building. “You coming up or going down to the den of mold?”
John felt his curiosity growing. Primer could sweat a little longer.
“Up,” he said, heading for the kitchen with Ruben in his wake.
The formerly soulless coffee room had been transformed into something that was akin to a cozy café. A short-haired young man, wearing a well-ironed shirt and black trousers, was moving among the tables with a practiced air. The worn-out tables were covered with linen tablecloths and adorned with cut flowers in white vases. In the middle of the room was an old-fashioned tea cart. On it was a large basket of doughnuts and Danish pastries, as well as a silver platter of fresh fruit.
John’s first thought was that he had missed Ulf’s birthday and that his colleague was pissed off about it. But then he saw what it said on the back of the young man’s shirt.
Fredrik Adamsson’s Kitchen Week—in partnership with Manpower.
This was Mona’s promise to solve the kitchen chore issue. The battle of the kitchen schedule was over and with her help, John had triumphed.
“I was about to go and take a dump—do you think he’ll wipe my backside too?” Ruben whispered.
John couldn’t help grinning.
“I’ll ask,” he said.
His colleague departed for the men’s room laughing, and John headed for the elevator. Mona was waiting for him in the basement. She waved at
him to follow her into one of the rooms on the narrow corridor that ran around the edge of the office. The room was no more than ten square meters and furnished with two chairs and a desk with three ancient computer screens squeezed onto it.
Two of the monitors were off, and the third was showing a black-and-white image of a bleak room with a single chair in front of a rectangular table. John looked at the tangle of cables trailing from the screens down to a similarly antiquated control panel where there was a bulb faintly glowing yellow.
It’s old stuff, but it should work,” said Mona.
John wished he was back in the more modern spaces a few floors up in the building, where the interviews with Billy took place. But that wasn’t an option. The rumor about Primer would spread through the building like wildfire.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Yes, we tested them earlier.”
She looked at him.
“How are you feeling?”
“Just fine.”
“Did you get some sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said, breathing in as if she was about to continue. Instead, she slowly exhaled through her lips. John was grateful. He wasn’t up for a lot of questions about his mental health.
“Ruben Jonsson will be acting chief and will take over Primer’s duties until further notice,” she said, changing tack to something less loaded.
“Okay,” said John, smiling slightly. “I just ran into Ruben. He seemed to appreciate my week on the kitchen schedule.”
“Good. I hope your lovely mug gets left alone in the future,” she said with a smile.
The sound of a door opening made them both direct their attention at the monitor. For a moment, John thought the prison guard had brought in the wrong person for questioning. The poor resolution of the screen and the big t-shirt flapping around his body made Primer look both older and fatter than he actually was. His panting breaths rattled through the speakers and Mona adjusted the volume down.
John leaned toward the screen and saw Primer clumsily squeezing in between the table and chair, both of which screwed into the floor. A second later, he quickly turned his head to look up toward the camera, as if he knew someone was watching him. His face was as blank as when he was arrested.
“Let’s do this,” said Mona, pressing the control panel a few times before heading for the door.
The yellow light went red to show it was recording and the counter in the bottom corner of the screen began to run.
“Do you want anything before we get started? Water? Coffee?” Mona asked, once she and John had sat down at the table in the interview room.
Primer said nothing. He merely shook his head slowly without raising his gaze from the table. The skin around his reddened eyes was swollen and his cheeks were shiny. It was apparent he had been crying.
Mona pulled a few tissues from her bag and placed them in front of Primer, who immediately put them to his face.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, once he had blown his nose and crumpled the tissue into a ball. “This is unfortunate. Tragic from start to finish.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mona asked, exchanging a quick glance with John.
Primer was noticeably affected and it took a few seconds for him to reply.
“Everything … all the circumstances that led to this mess. I should’ve said something a long time ago, but I couldn’t. Call it cowardice, fear, ego, or whatever you want. But … I couldn’t do it.”
His voice was thick and halting, as if the feelings of guilt were growing in his throat and on the verge of suffocating him. His eyes filled with tears and he reached for a new tissue.
“Are you ready to talk about what happened?” said Mona, once he pulled himself together again. “I assume you know why you’re here?”
“Because I’m a gigantic idiot,” he mumbled.
Mona ignored the comment.
“Forensics ran the sample you provided the day before yesterday,” she said. “Your DNA matches the semen found next to Emelie Bjurwall’s blood on the rocks out at Tynäs.”
John studied each shift in Primer’s teary, red face. He was still struggling to look them in the eye. He sat in silence, squirming on the uncomfortable chair.
“Let’s take it from the beginning,” Mona said eventually. “I’d like you to tell me about your relationship with Emelie Bjurwall. How did you first come into contact?”
Primer once again attempted to look at them and this time he managed to make eye contact with them.
“I became acquainted with her father.”
“Heimer Bjurwall?”
“Yes, exactly. We met through the boating club and went out fishing together a few times.”
“Did Emelie come with?”
“No, it was just Heimer and me. But that was a long time ago, when Emelie was still little.”
Primer spoke slowly and the words stumbled out, as if he had to process each sentence.
“She was one of the kids you saw running around down by the jetties when families were heading out onto the lake. It was only many years later that we were introduced.”
“When was that?”
“When she was nineteen or twenty. I was working in narcotics here in Karlstad back then, and I would give talks about drugs and addiction at different schools and treatment centers around Värmland. I used to go up to Charlottenberg.”
“To Björkbacken?” John interjected.
“Yes. We had a fairly close partnership with the therapists there and I usually went four or five times a year.”
“And that’s where you came into contact with Emelie?” said Mona.
“Yes, that’s where I met her. She came up to me after one of my visits and asked if I recognized her. I didn’t. But when she said who she was, I could tell it was her. She’d grown up so much. We chatted briefly on a couple of occasions, but then I tried to avoid her.”
“Avoid?” Mona repeated. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I got the feeling that she was … flirting with me.”
“And that wasn’t something you reciprocated?”
“No.” Primer fell silent. “Not then and there,” he added, clearing his throat.
He looked ashamed and John noticed that his breathing had become heavier. His neck had turned flaming red and beads of sweat were forming on his brow.
“Once she got out of Björkbacken, she looked me up again,” he said reluctantly. “Obviously, I should have said no, but she wouldn’t give up. Eventually … well, I couldn’t hold out anymore.”
“And it was at this point you started your relationship?” said Mona.
“That’s right. Somehow, I felt for her. Things at home with her parents were messy. I just felt sorry for her.”
John felt his irritation rising. Primer’s way of painting himself as a victim and laying the responsibility on a young girl was galling him.
Couldn’t hold out anymore.
I felt sorry for her.
It was the worst bullshit he’d heard in ages. The asshole had likely taken every chance he got to sleep with her.
“It was a sexual relationship?” Mona asked, her mind on the same track.
Primer wiped away the sweat running down his fleshy face.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Okay, and how long did your relationship with Emelie last? Did you see each other right up until she disappeared?”
“Do you know what, Mona? It doesn’t feel good talking about this. I know it’s important and everything, but it’s really hard.”
She glanced at John again and then switched into a different, softer tone of voice.
“Yes, I know it must be. You should take all the time you need. And if you want a short break then just let us know.”
Primer nodded slowly and sat in silence for a long time. Mona asked John to get a glass of water, and when he returned the agonized man looked more composed.
“We saw each other on and off for a few months,” he sai
d, once he had drained the white plastic cup. “Then in the autumn she moved to Stockholm and started school.”
“But you stayed in touch?” said Mona.
“She got in touch when she came back to Karlstad for the holidays.”
“Did you see each other then?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t sustainable. I was going to end it several times … but I never did.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just never seemed to get around to it.”
Mona opened the folder on the table. She picked out several of the photographs from the promontory at Tynäs and put them on the table in front of Primer.
“You’ve probably seen these photos a thousand times.”
He laughed bitterly.
“At least.”
“Did you have sexual intercourse with Emelie Bjurwall on August 14, 2009—the night she went missing?”
Mona nodded toward the photographs. Despite the fact that all three of them knew there was only one answer to the question, Primer seemed to be reluctant to tell them.
“Yes, I did,” he said eventually, looking down at his hands. “That was a big fucking mistake.”
John glanced at Mona. Her face was still grim, but he could discern a certain satisfaction behind the determination. The interview was taking the direction they had hoped. Now they needed to encourage Primer to keep talking and give a timeline.
“Why did you meet there in particular?” she said.
“Emelie had sent me an email earlier—she said she was going to a party nearby and wanted to see me out there at midnight.”
“An email?”
Mona looked thoughtful and John realized why. The girl’s computer had been seized early on in the investigation and reviewed thoroughly on several occasions. Forensics had even recovered deleted emails, but they hadn’t found anything that moved the preliminary investigation forward.
“I got her to create a Gmail account,” Primer said, noticing her frown. “It was anonymous and that’s how we kept in touch. I wanted the relationship to be as discreet as possible.”
“I understand,” said Mona. “So she wrote that she wanted to meet you out on the promontory at Tynäs in the middle of the night?”