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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Inspector Ann Lindell
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
A bright June morning. A mother and daughter are run over and killed on the road to Uppsala. Was it an accident or deliberate attack? That same morning the deceased woman's husband also disappears. He recently bought a property in the Dominican Republic, but when a macabre discovery is made in a nearby forest it becomes clear he hasn't departed for sunnier climes. It is up to Inspector Ann Lindell to piece together the clues and motives that tore this family apart.
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STONE COFFIN
KJELL ERIKSSON
Translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg
CONTENTS
STONE COFFIN
PROLOGUE
The lizards darted in and out of the wall, lightning-quick. They were celebrating the sun, which would be rising out of the sea in half an hour. A morning ritual.
The stone wall could easily have been in Ireland. The stone was different, but the style of it was the same. Stone on stone, haphazard at first glance, and yet so beautifully functional. The wall rose to a height of one and a half metres, encircled the garden, and along one edge of the property, linked to the wall of a building.
The grey expanse of the fibre cement roofing tiles was framed by dark vegetation. A couple of palm trees, a citrus tree, and a couple of midsized trees he did not recognise. He had collected a few of their brown seedpods, shaken them, listened, and fished out a couple of dark seeds. They looked poisonous. They lay in his palm darkly gleaming, almost metallic, like mystical messengers, and for a moment he had the impulse to toss them down his throat.
Poisonous? No matter. They were beautiful and he would save them to plant later.
The rain began suddenly. The drops gathered in the undulations of the corrugated roofing tiles. They gleamed as they left the roof and fell towards the ground. They glimmered just as they were about to drop. He had the notion that they were a melody played out on a keyboard. A dance across the keys. Soundless music. He – tone deaf – was blinded by the beauty of their fine music.
Pull yourself together, he thought, and in that moment the rain stopped.
The sea washed in over the beach. Yesterday evening he had tried to figure out the pattern of the unceasing movement of the waves. Was there a pattern? Seven small waves and one large? At some point everything grew very still, a resounding silence, as if the sea were holding its breath. Two, three seconds, nothing more.
A flowering creeper resembling a morning glory encircled his feet. He sifted sand through his fingers and looked out over the water. A container ship was huffing in the distance. He made plans but was too tired to be rational and too disoriented in that scene to find any peace in it. Exposed, he thought, I am exposed on this beach, and it is here that I must make up my mind.
But instead of making any decisions, he went to the little bodega that also doubled as a bar. A shack made out of wood and sheet metal, resting up against a tree and with a view of the road. Ramon, ‘The Baker’, held out his hand across the packets of chewing gum stacked on the counter.
A white-haired man, his face deeply lined, was watching him intently. There was a woman sitting across from him. She wore a tight-fitting green dress.
He ordered a beer, sat down at the other table, nodded at the old man, and lifted the cold beer bottle to his lips. If I could only stay like this, he thought, here at this table. The water came from the mountains and the salt from the ocean.
‘Good,’ he said, and he knew that he was going to get drunk. As long as he kept drinking, the Baker would keep his establishment open.
He signalled the Baker that he should serve beer to the old man and the woman.
We are the new conquistadors, he thought, and sighed.
‘Problems?’
Sven-Erik Cederén nodded and raised his bottle. He had been to this country five, six times, but he had never been here alone before. Each visit had shifted his parameters. The first couple of times he had sought out the usual tourist places, drunk rum, and watched the women, but without taking any initiative. Now he went to the Baker, mostly sat quietly at his table, and drank Presidente.
‘How long are you staying?’ the Baker asked.
The couple at the next table turned around and looked at him enquiringly, as if his answer was of the greatest import.
‘One more week.’
The old man raised his bottle.
‘I will buy some land. Just outside Gaspar Hernández.’
‘That’s a village of idiots,’ the old one said.
‘What does your country look like?’ the woman asked.
He started to give the usual response – the cold, the snow, the ice on the lakes, the forests – but then he stopped. He wanted to express something more.
‘We live …’ he started tentatively, ‘we live a fairly good life.’
He began to talk about his daughter. He started on another beer. The Baker opened a bottle of rum and poured him a glass. He rested his arms on the counter. Sven-Erik looked at him and they smiled at each other.
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Of course.’
‘There is something else that you miss more,’ the Baker said.
‘One always misses one’s homeland,’ the old one said.
The Swede shook his head.
‘You miss a woman.’
‘Perhaps.’
What had he done? Could it be fixed? No. He could only patch it up. He was the sinner who had repented too late. For almost forty years he had marched to the beat. Now he was falling out of line. He was scared. If only he could sit in this shack, drink beer, and talk with the people who came by. The Baker and his shop would give him absolution.
He was afraid, but not for himself. Lies! Of course he was afraid of the sentence. He escaped to a bodega full of beer, Pringles, and chewing gum.
He kept on talking about his country. What do I choose to tell? What do I know about Sweden? Should I talk about life in Uppsala-Näs, the Edenhof golf course, about my colleagues, lectures at the business association, the tiled bathrooms, and the dock that I spent a hundred thousand kronor to renovate?
He glanced at the woman as he talked. She was between twenty and thirty. Her arm rested close to his. Maybe he could. The wad of bills in his pocket. The cock that swelled in his pants.
He took a sip of his beer. The Baker looked at him and nodded.
ONE
‘Come up here on the road! You’re getting your shoes dirty!’
The girl tore off a last flower and held the clover flowers up to her mother.
‘Four leaves means good luck,’ the girl said.
‘We’ll put those on the grave.’
The woman arranged the flowers, peeling away a withered leaf.
‘Nana liked clover,’ she said thoughtfully, looking off at the church and then at the child by her side. One day, she thought, you got only one day together on this earth.
Six years and one day ago, Emily was born, and the very next day her grandmother died. Every anniversary of her death they walked to the church and laid flowers on her grave. They also sat on the low stone wall for a while. The woman would drink coffee and her daughter some juice.
The walk took them half an hour. They could have taken the car but preferred to walk. The slow trip to the church enabled reflection. She had loved her mother above all else. It was as if Emily had filled in for her nana. As one love slipped away, another arrived.
She and her newborn had been transported in the Akademiska hospital to the unit where her mother lay in a state between consciousness and sleep.
The little girl had been lifted into her arms. At first it looked as if she thought yet another burden was being added to her already ravaged body.
The woman guessed that the baby’s scent brought her mother to life, because her nostrils widened suddenly. The gaunt, needle-riddled hand patted the tiny bundle in her lap and she opened her morphine-obscured eyes.
‘I want to run the last bit,’ the girl said, interrupting her mother’s thoughts.
‘No, we’ll stay together,’ she said, and right before she died, she realised that she might have saved her daughter’s life if she had let her go.
The car struck them both with full force. The child was thrown some ten metres and died almost instantly. The mother was thrown forward and the front left wheel of the car ran over her body. She lived long enough to grasp what had happened, that she might have been able to save her daughter. She also had time to note that the car swerved and slid as it accelerated and disappeared in the direction of the church.
‘Why are you killing us?’ she whispered.
TWO
Ann Lindell was savoring her colleague’s good mood. Sammy Nilsson had read the horoscope of the day with a serious face, but when he arrived at the final line, ‘… and why not give in to love’s invitation that comes your way today?’ he burst into laughter.
‘Love’s invitation,’ Lindell said. ‘That’s something.’
‘Maybe Ottosson will offer you a cup of coffee,’ Sammy said. ‘I think he’s working on you.’
Ottosson was the unit commander for Violent Crimes. He had called a meeting for nine-thirty, and both Lindell and Sammy thought he would likely announce a reorganisation of the unit.
Everything seemed to be undergoing reorganisation. The community policing initiative that had been introduced with great fanfare lay shot and gasping. It was going to give up the ghost at any moment. There was talk that the community policing in Gottsunda and other far-flung areas would be relocated to the Fyrislund industrial area. ‘Community’ was likely to gain a new definition if Commissioner Lindberg got his wish.
‘How are you doing? I hear rumours that you’re seeing someone.’
Lindell looked up abruptly. Sammy thought she seemed almost frightened.
‘Seeing someone? No way.’
‘Didn’t you hook up with some guy?’
‘I went out and partied with the girls.’
‘I heard something else.’
Lindell smiled. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear. It was just one time.’
‘And one time doesn’t count?’
Lindell just smiled in reply.
Ola Haver walked up to them. Lindell saw in his face that something had happened, but he sat down at the table before he started to talk.
‘We have a hit-and-run,’ he said. ‘Two dead.’
‘Where?’ Sammy asked.
‘Uppsala-Näs.’
‘Any witnesses?’ Lindell asked.
Haver shook his head.
‘Someone who drove past the scene called it in. One of the dead is a child. A little girl.’
Haver was white as a sheet.
‘Shit,’ Sammy said.
‘Maybe six years old.’
Lindell checked the time: 9.12.
‘I’ll call Ottosson,’ she said and got up.
Love’s invitation, Lindell thought as she jumped into Sammy’s car. Hardly. These were the kinds of invitations that came their way.
She glanced over at Sammy as he turned onto Salagatan. He swore quietly about the traffic, drove up Sankt Olofsgatan, and stared furiously at the driver who came from the right and forced him to stop.
Haver was in the back seat talking on his phone and Lindell heard that he was getting information directly from the patrol unit on the scene.
Wednesday, July 14th. One of those summer days that promised so much. The valley sloping down towards Lake Mälaren was flourishing with vegetation. The field grasses were tall. In some plots they were even gathering the first harvest. At Högby a man had left his tractor by the side of the road and was taking dignified steps through the clover and timothy grass that almost reached up to his waist. For a moment, Ann Lindell had an almost physical recollection of Edvard. It could have been him walking across that field and running his hand across the top of the sheaths. A stabbing sensation. Everything was over in a moment, and yet it wasn’t. He was there. In the landscape. Even after half a year, Edvard Risberg existed as a shadow inside her. She heard his words and felt his hands. No one had touched her like he had.
A deer buck peeked nervously out of the edge of the woods, up towards the Lunsen forest. The sun was shining straight into Lindell’s face, but she did not fold down the sun visor in the car. Instead she let her face bask in the rays. Edvard, are you walking by the sea?
One kilometre up the road, a woman and her daughter were lying next to a ditch.
Haver said something that Lindell didn’t quite catch.
‘It’s probably Ryde,’ Sammy said. ‘He’s the only one who drives such a rusty Mazda.’
And so it was. Eskil Ryde, the forensic specialist, was already on the scene. He was leaning over the ditch, one hand running through his thin hair, the other gesticulating.
One of the uniformed policemen waved on a minivan. Lindell caught sight of something in the ditch as she climbed out of the car. A child, she thought and glanced at Sammy. They exchanged the briefest of glances.
Ryde lifted the grey blanket. The girl’s forehead was cracked. Åke Jansson, the second uniformed officer, was sobbing. Haver put an arm around him and Jansson balled up his hands. Lindell brushed his shoulder as she went to kneel next to the girl’s body. She didn’t really see it, only the tiny legs sticking out, the right hand with light-pink-painted nails, the pattern of the red dress, and the blonde hair that had been coloured just as red.
Lindell straightened up so fast she felt dizzy.
‘Do we know who they are?’ she asked of no one in particular.
‘No,’ Jansson said. ‘I’ve searched for a pocketbook, purse, or something like that, but there’s nothing. They must live in the area. The lorry driver who spotted them thought they looked familiar. He drives this route daily.’
Lindell had already registered the presence of the lorry that was parked some thirty metres away.
‘Stay the hell away from my bodies,’ Ryde said.
‘I wanted to know who she was,’ Jansson said, insulted.
‘Maybe they were on the way to the church,’ Haver said.
‘The girl had picked flowers,’ Ryde said.
‘How do you know?’
‘Her hands,’ Ryde said.
Four police officers circled around a child’s body. Ryde gently pulled the cover back into place.
‘Let’s take a look at the woman,’ he said.
The woman had been beautiful. Her hair, the same shade as the girl’s, was cut short and added a touch of toughness to her face. Not much toughness left now, but Lindell could see that she had been the type of woman that you noticed, that you listened to. She thought she could read self-awareness and will in her features, even though a sharp rock had cut into her chin as if the woman’s lip had been pierced by a ring with a blackened jewel.
There was gold in her ears; she wore a substantial gold ring on her left ring finger, and on her right hand a silver ring with precious stones. Her nails were well groomed. ‘Probably five hundred kronor,’ Lindell noted. Those nails had carved patterns in the gravel between the lush green of the ditch and the black, cracked asphalt.
Her dress was khaki, summery thin with marks from a car tyre across the narrow back.
Her eyes were blue, but her gaze was broken.
Lindell looked up and let her gaze wander. Summer lay like a warm breath over the landscape. There was absolutely no wind and the sound of a motorboat carried from the lake. A man came walking along the willow allée leading to Ytternäs farm. He walked slowly, but Lindell saw that he was attentive to the gathering of cars parked along the road. Here comes the first gawker, she thought and quickly turned around.
‘Identification, that is the most important thing. Who is the minister around here?’ Lindell asked and looked over at Sammy, who shook his head.
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll go up to the church. There may be a bulletin board.’
Lindell walked over to the lorry. According to Åke, the driver was sitting up front, and as she drew closer, she saw his face in the rearview mirror. He opened the door and slid down from his seat in a seasoned and yet stiffly awkward movement.
‘Hi, Ann Lindell from the police. You were the first on the scene?’
The man nodded and shook her outstretched hand.
‘Do you recognise them?’
‘I think so.’
‘Sorry, what was your name? I forgot to ask.’
‘Lindberg, Janne. I live up there,’ he said and pointed.
‘So you’ve seen them before?’
‘Yes. They often walk along the road. I think they live up towards Vreta Point, but I don’t know her.’
‘She was a beautiful woman.’
Janne Lindberg nodded.
‘You were coming from home and headed into town? When was that?’
‘Around nine.’
‘Tell me what you saw.’
‘I saw the mum first. Then the little girl.’
‘Do you wear glasses?’
‘No, why?’
‘You’re squinting.’
‘Because of the sun.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘I checked to see if they were alive.’ The man shook his head. ‘Then I called.’
‘And it wasn’t you who ran them over?’
The question made him flinch and he stared at Lindell. ‘What the hell,’ he got out. ‘You think I would run over a mother and child? I’m a professional driver, damn it.’
‘It’s happened before. May I see your mobile phone?’
‘Why do you need to see that?’
‘I want to see when you called us.’
He sighed and handed it over. Lindell selected ‘Recent Calls’ and saw that Lindberg had made the call at 9:08 a.m. Before that he had made a call at 8:26. She also wanted to check ‘Incoming Calls’ and see if Lindberg had received any calls shortly before the emergency call. And sure enough, someone had called at 8:47.
‘You got a call before you dialled 112. Who was that?’
‘A guy from the asphalt gang. I drive asphalt but had a little problem with the car this morning. He called to check to see if I was on my way.’
‘So you were in a hurry this morning?’
‘Yes, I should have been at the plant a little after six.’
‘Wasn’t it the case that you were stressed, got a call, lost your focus, and didn’t have time to swerve?’
‘Lay off! I haven’t run anyone over my whole life!’
‘May we contact the guy who called you?’
‘Of course.’
‘You understand that you have to stay here. We have to examine your vehicle. I don’t think you’ve hit anyone, but we have to check it out. Okay?’
Janne Lindberg nodded. ‘I keep thinking about that little girl,’ he said.
The man that Lindell had spotted in the allée had almost reached the lorry by now and she decided to wait for him. He had a slight limp.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Did someone hit a deer?’
‘No,’ Lindell said. ‘It’s a hit-and-run.’
The man stopped abruptly. ‘Is it Josefin and Emily?’
His voice cracked.
‘I saw them on the road,’ he said. ‘Is it them?’
‘We don’t know. Perhaps you can help us.’
The man started to sob.
‘I saw them on the road. I knew they were coming today.’
‘It was a woman and a little girl. Could it be them?’
The man nodded.
‘Will you help us?’
Lindell took a step closer to the man. She was touched by his weeping and obvious despair and she was also feeling close to tears.
‘That’s her,’ the man said when Lindell raised the grey cover.
His face was ashen and Lindell feared that he would faint.
‘Let’s go sit in the car. Then you can tell me what you know.’
At that moment, Sammy returned. ‘The minister is on his way,’ he said as he stepped out of the car.
‘I don’t need a minister!’ the man said.
‘He’s not coming for your sake,’ Lindell said soothingly.
‘Can you come over?’ Ryde shouted. He was crouched down by the woman.
‘Talk to him,’ Lindell told Sammy and walked over to Ryde.
‘I don’t think she died immediately,’ Ryde said. ‘She dragged herself along the road towards her child. See?’ He pointed to a faint trail of blood on the roadway.
‘She broke her nails,’ Lindell said.
‘She wanted to reach her daughter.’
Lindell knelt and stared down intently. The woman’s hand was slender. The stones in the silver ring glittered. Lindell saw that the skin on the index finger had been worn away.
Ryde crawled closer and bent his head to get another angle.
Lindell could barely stand to observe the remnants of skin left on the road. The two officers looked at each other, bent over a woman’s beautiful hand on a sunny June morning.
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Ryde said and got up to his feet.
‘You don’t think?’
Ryde looked around before answering.
‘It was daylight, a straight and decently wide stretch of road,’ he said finally.
‘You mean this was murder?’
Ryde didn’t answer but got out his mobile phone. Lindell remained standing where she was. The girl had picked flowers, she thought. She looked over at the grey cloth that covered the little one. The mother had not managed to reach her. How many metres were left? Seven, eight?
A car appeared. Haver flagged it down and Lindell took out her phone.
THREE
An initial meeting and review at the police station took place at shortly after 6 p.m. A dozen officers from Violent Crimes, a few from Surveillance, and a couple from Forensics were present. Sammy Nilsson led the meeting.
‘What do we know? Josefin Cederén, thirty-two years old, living in Vreta. Emily, six years. It was her birthday yesterday. We know that they were on their way to the church where Josefin’s mother is buried. They went there every year on this day. Several of the neighbours have confirmed it. Ryde, what did the pathologists say?’
‘It was a passenger car. At least according to the pathologists, that’s what the injuries indicate. Death must have been instantaneous, at least for the little girl. She was thrown in the air and must have died at the moment she hit the ground. There were some signs that the mother may have lived on for a short while after the accident.’
‘Okay,’ Sammy said, ‘as you know, the husband, Sven-Erik Cederén, is completely MIA. As is the car, a blue BMW – 99 series – with sunroof and all the extras. Haver checked with Novation, where he bought the car. With cash, I might add.’
‘Where does he work?’ Lundin asked.
‘MedForsk. It’s a company that develops pharmaceuticals. High-level research. A relatively young company, a spin-off from Pharmacia. Sven-Erik Cederén never showed up to work today. MedForsk has some twenty employees and we have talked to all of them. No one has seen him.’
‘But we know that he left for work as usual,’ said Norrman, who had been in charge of the door-to-door questioning in Vreta. ‘He left shortly after eight o’clock. We’ve talked to about twenty neighbours. The one who lives across the street said a few words to Cederén around seven. Both of them were out to pick up the newspaper.’
‘And he said he seemed completely normal,’ Berglund added. ‘They talked about the usual, weather and wind. According to the neighbour, Cederén was like a clock.’
‘Where is Lindell?’ Beatrice asked.
‘With Josefin’s father,’ Ottosson said.
‘Does he live in town?’
Ottosson nodded.
‘And in Vreta. Josefin Cederén was actually born in that county.’
‘Apart from that, it’s probably mostly moved-in outsider shits,’ Haver said.
‘What do you mean, shits?’ Ottosson asked.
‘Okay,’ Sammy said, ‘we know that he left Uppsala-Näs as usual, but that he never turned up at work. Where did he go?’
‘His summer house,’ Lundin said.
‘They don’t have one.’
‘Arlanda,’ Haver suggested. ‘He knew that his wife and daughter were going to walk to the church, waited somewhere in the bushes, ran them over, and left the country.’
‘We’ve checked,’ said Sixten Wende. ‘No Cederén has left via Arlanda.’
‘A lover,’ Beatrice said.
‘We’ve put out an APB on him as well as the car. I’m sure we’ll at least know where the car has gone within a day. That’s no ordinary ride.’
Ottosson’s certainty stemmed from thirty-five years on the job, of which the last twenty had been in Violent Crimes. Cars had a tendency to turn up. People were trickier.
‘He may also have been hit,’ he went on. ‘I have trouble imagining that he would first wipe out his family and then disappear.’
‘People have done worse things,’ Wende said.
‘I know. But to run over your own child, isn’t that too much?’
‘Maybe he was out of his mind?’ Sammy said.
‘But the child,’ Ottosson insisted.
‘Beatrice will take on the family’s finances, assets and debts, insurance, the whole thing. I want a complete briefing tomorrow. You can have Sixten on this too,’ Ottosson said, turning to Beatrice.
When Ann Lindell wasn’t present, there was some confusion about who should lead the conversation. Sammy had the psychological advantage, as he worked the most closely with Lindell, but on the other hand, Ottosson was the boss. Ottosson, however, often sat quietly during meetings, completely confident in Lindell’s ability to pose the right questions and assign tasks in a sensible way.
‘What’s the motive?’ Ottosson asked. His role in the meeting could perhaps best be defined as the engine, weighing the arguments, asking lots of questions, forcing his colleagues to sharpen their thoughts.
‘Jealousy,’ Haver said. ‘Maybe Josefin had found someone else.’
‘I think she was pregnant,’ Beatrice said suddenly.
Everyone’s gaze turned towards her.
‘When Ann and I examined her, I thought I could tell.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘Her belly. Breasts. Especially the breasts. She just looked pregnant.’
‘What did Lindell say?’
‘She doesn’t have kids,’ Beatrice said.
‘That’s so fucked,’ Haver said emphatically.
‘Well, we’ll soon find out what the circumstances are,’ Ottosson said and turned to Beatrice.
‘Could you see if there’s any more information available?’
She got up reluctantly and left the room. At that moment Riis walked in. They met in the doorway without exchanging glances.
Riis had few friends, and everyone else had to think long and hard about whether it was worth it to be friendly to the grumpy detective. Beatrice had been one of the first to abandon any attempt at cultivating a collegial relationship or even collaborating with him. ‘Riis is a grumpy old man in a transitional age,’ she would say. ‘He hates us all.’
Riis sat down and everyone waited for what he had to say.
‘Well?’ Ottosson said finally.
Riis opened his notebook with a sweeping gesture.
‘Cederén was a man with vision,’ he said and looked up. ‘He wanted to do something with his life. He was successful, not least in terms of material wealth, he is probably unhappy, and he is very dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Mentally dead,’ Riis said and sighed.
‘Are you jealous of his money?’ Haver said calmly.
Riis shot him a quick glance, smiled, and continued.
‘He has just bought a house in the Dominican Republic, if anyone knows where that is. It is a country in the sun, and that’s where Mr Cederén wants to go. He does not want to live in Uppsala-Näs. He also plays golf. He came in first in the most recent tournament at Edenhof.’
‘Get to the point,’ Ottosson said.
‘I think he ran his family over with his car and fled. He wanted to play golf in the Caribbean.’
‘I’m happy to go there and check it out,’ Wende said.
Ottosson turned and looked at him as if he were seeing him for the first time.
‘Two people have died and all the two of you can do is talk shit,’ Haver said, convinced that Riis was simply counting the three days until he went on vacation. He was more than happy to turn a summer murder over to his colleagues.
‘In my opinion,’ Riis went on, ‘the Cederéns are well-to-do, stable, well-adapted, and social. Neither of them has had any run-ins with the law before. Nothing that we have found in the house so far indicates anything unusual. There was tasteful art on the walls – or what I believe to be fine; it didn’t actually depict anything. There were thick carpets, a lot of glass, and fine magazines. As it should be, in other words.’
‘The classic question: was there an answering machine?’
Ottosson leant forward to look squarely at Riis, who was leaning back in his chair.
‘No messages,’ Riis said.
‘A calendar? Address book?’
‘We haven’t found one yet. He must have it.’
‘What do we know about his work?’
Ottosson was trying to regain control after Riis’s harangues.
‘There was something,’ said Riis, ignoring the change of topic. ‘There were no flowers, not a single potted plant. Can you believe it?’
‘Because of allergies, perhaps?’
‘Who is allergic to plants?’
An unfamiliar silence broke out, as if everyone were trying to imagine a home without plants.
What a group, Norrman thought. Here we are sweating away, with Ottosson sitting there like Jesus with his beard and mild face. Who is Judas? Who is Peter? Who is Thomas?
‘There are thirteen of us at this table,’ he said, breaking the silence.
They all looked around.
‘His work,’ Ottosson repeated.
‘MedForsk is a so-called star performer engaged in very advanced research. Everyone that we have talked to is understandably in shock, but behind the feeling of unreality and anxiety, there was a strong sense of self-confidence, wouldn’t you say, Ola?’
Haver nodded.
‘Yes, the place breathed success. Like a soccer team that has won enough times to feel basically invincible. Like a unified team headed into the finals, convinced they were going to win. Like an assumption.’
‘Just like us,’ Riis said. ‘A winning team.’
‘They’re about to go public. What does that mean? Money? There might be a lot at stake. I’m bad at that kind of thing,’ Sammy said.
‘“This happened at an unfortunate time” – one of them let that slip,’ Haver said.
‘Can there be a connection to the company, or is this a family drama, pure and simple?’
Ottosson’s question was left hanging.
‘Did Josefin Cederén have any connection to the company?’
‘There’s certainly a lot of questions,’ said Wende, who had come out of his shell. Earlier he had tended to sit quietly during meetings and to speak only when answering a direct question. Ottosson wanted to hear new voices but was at the same time slightly irritated at Wende’s new role. I just miss Ann’s voice, he thought, that’s all.
‘We’ll have to work through them one by one, or rather, at the same time,’ Sammy said. ‘I think we have a pretty clear idea of our assigned tasks. It’s Wednesday today. Molin stays on MedForsk and works his way through Cederén’s computer and paper files. Fredriksson is on Vreta. Within a day we should know everything about the Cederén family’s finances and private relationships; we should have mapped out all of Sven-Erik Cederén’s movements today and at the very least have located the car.’
The meeting ended. Ottosson stayed behind, in his seat, studying the forensic team’s photographs, turning them over one by one. He muttered something inaudibly. ‘Can you run over your own child?’ he asked himself. The girl would have been starting school in the autumn.
When he reached the picture of the edge of the road, with the woman’s hand outstretched and the lines that her fingers had etched into the gravel, he imagined her struggle. How she had dragged herself.
Ottosson felt a headache coming on. He felt heavy, not just in his head, but in his entire body. That morning he had felt happy about the beautiful weather, the approaching summer, and the early morning meeting scheduled with Sammy and Lindell. He had just been given the green light to raise their salaries.
FOUR
A gull was sitting at the very end of the dock. It appeared to be using the water as a mirror, admiring its whiteness, the faint curve of its beak and the sharp gleam of its eye. Its head turned slightly, as if it heard Edvard’s steps or as if it just wanted another angle on its reflection.
Pride, Edvard thought, that is what it sees. He sat down on the bent trunk of the pine tree. The light-brown bark often offered him a little extra warmth, but today he didn’t need it. It was almost twenty-five degrees. Absently Edvard rubbed his knee. The fall from the ladder had resulted in a nasty abrasion, which smarted.
The gull seemed unaffected by his presence. Perhaps it recognised him. You are sitting in my spot, he thought, but that’s all right. Go ahead, look at your reflection, dream a little. There was a sense of thoughtfulness about the bird that appealed to him. Maybe he’s pleased with the day, digesting a fish, savouring the sun. Or else it’s the direct opposite: he is melancholy, he has lost something. Perhaps he dropped that fish.
Edvard didn’t want to interrupt, but he was also slightly irritated that the gull was lingering so long on the dock. He coughed discreetly but this didn’t help. The gull stayed put.
Edvard waited. Viola, the old woman who owned the house that he lived in, had put dinner on the table and they were about to eat. He wanted to stand at the end of the dock for a while first.
Suddenly the bird took off, flying out over the bay; some droppings splashed into the matt green water below. Edvard immediately stood up and walked out on the dock. For a moment he had the impulse to jump in but decided to wait until evening. It would be the first swim of the season.
The temperature of the water here around Gräsö Island in northern Uppland had long hovered around fifteen degrees, but now he thought it had risen to seventeen, perhaps even eighteen.
Squawking, the gull was now barely visible as a smudge across the water. It was moving towards the mouth of the bay and the open sea. Edvard wished for the same – to be able to lift off.
The dinghy tugged sleepily on its line when a faint breeze blew in. It was not a strong burst, more like a puff or a breath. Perhaps it was the flapping of the gull’s wings carrying across the water.
Edvard Risberg stood as far out as he could, his toes hanging off the edge of the dock, like a diver. He stretched his arms up towards the blue sky, stretched all his limbs, and looked out. The sounds of human activity could be heard from the other side of the bay. Probably a vacationer setting things in order. He lowered his arms and took a deep breath.
Standing on the dock gave him a deep sense of satisfaction. It was his, erected on the ice at the end of February, now sunk into the mud. Inside the dock was granite, part smooth, rounded stones collected on the shore, part sharp pointed pieces shattered by the ice.
It resisted the wind and the sea and kept the nor’easter in check. Victor’s two boats and the dinghy rested peacefully inside its protective arm. Tons of stone. Timber. It held steady, built by Victor and Edvard and Edvard’s two teenage sons, Jens and Jerker.
Victor had built many docks and stone-filled cribs in his day, but this was likely his last. He had risen to the challenge as never before, seemingly indefatigable.
The process had taken a full week, and the boys had been there the whole time, sanding boards, nailing them down, and screwing in bolts. They had carried stone, and finally at the very front of the dock facing the sea, they had attached a brass plate, engraved with the date and their four names.
One afternoon they had put on their hockey skates and taken off across the grey ice, skating almost all the way to the mouth of the bay. Edvard had watched after them, happy and proud, but also nervous about the cracks and fragile edges of the ice. They had returned, their cheeks blazing. Edvard had made a fire and grilled hot dogs on the beach. Viola had come down with coffee and hot juice for the boys, just as at the Studenternas stadium when the home team Sirius was playing in town.
Jens had reminded Edvard about the bandy games, about the times when they had packed grandfather Albert into the car and headed into town. His voice had been like it was before. For the first time in over two years, the boy had spoken unreservedly with Edvard. He had been eager but interrupted himself when he saw his big brother’s face. Jerker had not said anything, just stared out over the ice.
The boy had given his father a quick glance and stopped. Edvard went over to his older boy, stood very close to him. Victor had kept talking and was putting more wood on the fire, but even he fell silent at the sight of the two of them. Edvard wanted to say something, break two years of isolation. He saw the defiance but also the repressed longing in his son’s pained expression. He knew that he had to take the first step, so he put his arm around the boy.
They stood like this, completely still, silent. Edvard knew that words could wreck everything and struggled not to break into tears. There had been enough tears. He just wanted to hold his son. If everything was going to hell, at least they had this moment.
‘You’ve grown,’ he said and let go.
They ate several hot dogs. Viola, feeling cold as usual, complained about the wind and stepped closer to the fire.
‘Rubber boots are cold,’ Jens said. Viola chuckled and muttered something. Victor had pulled over a large pine stump that he threw onto the blaze. Dusk was sneaking up on them and the temperature fell as it grew darker. They all drew closer to the warmth.
‘We’ll probably see the stars tonight,’ Jens said, and Jerker flinched as if he had been hit. It made him think of Edvard’s stargazing in Ramnäs, and he did not want to recall that time for anything in the world. As a first measure after Edvard moved – or rather fled – Marita demolished the old outbuilding that had functioned as the observatory. Jerker hated clear starry evenings and nights as much as Marita had.
Edvard suggested that they play cards instead, so they did. They had spent the whole week together and had built a dock that was the sturdiest on the entire island, at least according to Victor. One week, and then the boys had come out some weekends during the winter and spring. Slowly but surely they rebuilt their relationship and Edvard could experience some of the old joy with his sons.
This weekend they were headed back to Gräsö Island. Edvard knew that they took the bus out to the island in part just to be nice. Under Jerker’s grumpy exterior and Jens’s sometimes nervous prattle, there was a touching impulse to please. It was Edvard’s life force.
After Ann left him, he had sunk deep, convinced he would have to live alone, aided only by Viola’s care and his work, which allowed him to sleep heavily at night. But now he had a brighter outlook on life and his own existence. It was as if he had regained his place in the landscape.
He had also resumed his contact with a couple of his old friends from the time he was a farm labourer, especially his associates from the union. Fredrik Stark, who was the same age as Edvard, politically active, and a landscape gardener, had been out to visit on several occasions. He had stayed a few days, working on his computer and reading several long extracts aloud when Edvard came home. He claimed that he was writing a novel, and Edvard was alternately irritated at and envious of Stark’s confidence.
He had called Ann in a burst of optimism and a sense of hope that she might still be interested. He did not know if they could resume their relationship or if they could live together, but the one thing he had learnt during those dark winter nights was that he did not want to live alone for ever.
Would she call him back? And if not, would he try again?
FIVE
The man sitting across from her was scratching his head. He had done this almost incessantly since she had entered his kitchen.
An old American box clock was ticking on the wall. Lindell’s parents had one just like it. In fact, there was a great deal about Holger Johansson’s kitchen that reminded her of her childhood home in Ödeshög. The smell, the fifties decor, the pattern on the waxed tablecloth, the old cookie tin on the counter, and the embroidered tray cloth.
They had a great deal on common, but one thing set them apart: death. Holger’s kitchen would never be the same. From this point on, his furniture and household items, the vases, the prints on the walls, and all of the small things that a person collects over the course of a life would lose more and more meaning. They would eventually gain a layer of dust and grease, sadness and old age.
The objects would lack significance; he would hardly notice them. He had aged fifteen years in one day. Emptiness and sadness had suffocated this man, this father, withering away in front of Lindell’s eyes.
‘She was my only child,’ he said.
Lindell gripped her pen hard and wished she had brought someone with her. She knew from experience that she was more emotional, more easily affected by another’s grief if she was alone. Her mind simply worked less well.
‘Did Josefin and Sven-Erik have a happy marriage?’
‘I think so,’ he whispered.
He stared out the kitchen window.
‘No fights?’
‘Who doesn’t fight?’
‘Were you close?’
He nodded. His hand fumbled helplessly over the wax tablecloth.
‘What do you think of Sven-Erik?’
‘He … worked a lot. Josefin sometimes complained. Since he got that new job he was gone even more. Went here and there.’
‘Business travel, you mean.’
Another nod.
‘He has disappeared, you know. Where do you think he could be?’
He did not respond.
‘You can’t think of anywhere in particular?’
‘That would be Spain. He always travelled there.’
‘Where in Spain?’
‘I don’t know. He just said Spain.’
Lindell was quiet for a moment. Holger Johansson’s neighbour could be seen in the garden. It was a woman who was in the house when Lindell arrived. She sensed that they were not simply neighbours and was glad that the man would not be completely alone.
The woman was busying herself with the summer flowers and looked up at the house from time to time.
‘Can you understand that Emily is dead?’
He stared at Lindell with a bewildered gaze and she knew what his next sentence would be.
‘A six-year-old. What had she done? If only it had been me in her place. Thank god Inger isn’t alive,’ he said, and Lindell knew he meant his wife.
He fell silent and looked back out the window.
‘Lately something was up. They would come up here, not every day, but often. She would take the stroller. She liked to walk. Then they started to bike. Sometimes they came by every morning. Vera and I have a cup of coffee every day at half past ten.’
‘Did something change recently?’
‘That was my impression. Jossan – Josefin – seemed more distracted, I guess you can say. As if something was weighing on her. I asked her once. She just smiled and said that everything was fine, but a father sees …’
Holger Johansson huddled over the table. It was as if Vera sensed it because at that moment the front door opened. Without even looking at Lindell, Vera walked up to the man and laid her arm around him. Lindell fixed her gaze on Vera’s hand resting on his shoulder. She leant her forehead against his greying head. Her hand was covered in liver spots, and the weeds that she had pulled at so frenetically had left green streaks and stains. Lindell stared at her hand and her thoughts raced between her home in Ödeshög and the little girl in the ditch. There was also Edvard and his old Viola in the house on Gräsö Island.
She got up very slowly and laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder. Vera looked up, expressionless. When Lindell turned around a last time, she had straightened her back. She was staring out of the window. Lindell followed her gaze. The mock orange shrub in the garden was blooming.
The man scratched his head and Lindell caught sight of abrasions through the thin, backcombed hair.
Lindell drove out of the yard and almost ran into one of the fence posts. After fifty metres she braked and came to a halt. Unable to rid herself of the image on her retina, she whimpered silently as she thought of the girl’s mangled body. Inside she was in turmoil. A murdered child – she regarded this as a murder – was worse than anything else. She had seen a child’s corpse only once before. At that point she had been a police trainee, around twenty years old. It was fifteen years ago. That time it was a confused mother who had strangled her baby in a crib. Terrible enough, but this was worse. Was it the summer, the valley idyll, the girl’s delicate limbs sticking out from her dress, and the fact that she had been picking flowers?
Lindell rolled down the window. She had not eaten anything since her morning coffee and felt miserable. It was six o’clock but still a beautiful day. She took some deep breaths and her nausea receded somewhat.
She already hated Sven-Erik Cederén. Where was he? She looked around as if he were to be found somewhere nearby. Was he holed up somewhere? Would he be watching the news tonight?
Why kill his wife and child? There was only one motive and it was jealousy.
‘I’m going to find you, wherever you are,’ she said, her teeth clenched, putting the car in gear and starting off down the gravel road.
Then it struck her that he might not be the guilty one after all. Why assume this? she thought. It only blocks the lines of deductive reasoning. He might also be dead. She drove slowly, crawling along the narrow road. Perhaps he had been a witness to the accident, had found his wife and child along the side of the road, and had become so distraught that he left.
It sounded unlikely, but nothing could be assumed. Too many mistakes had been made as a result of preconceptions.
She knew that the meeting was already under way but decided to linger a while longer in Uppsala-Näs. It was unusual for her to be absent. She didn’t like to miss any information and was committed to being a team player, but right now the meeting room seemed like an oppressive bunker, with the same tired faces saying the same things.
She wanted to think, to be left in peace. She did her best thinking at Cafe Savoy, because even though she wanted to be alone she also wanted to have people around her. She liked to sit there drinking her coffee, maybe reading the paper, but above all observing the clientele. People were her stock-in-trade, to study and seek to understand. At the cafe her brain rested but was also working at full capacity. She could recall several times at the cafe when she had identified connections and had had crucial insights into investigations, with the conversations of the mothers, the loud screeches of the children, the discussions of the tradesmen, and the rustling of newspapers as background.
Lindell drove in the direction of Villa Cederén. She had a feeling that Fredriksson was still there. Maybe also Berglund. That was all right. Both of these gentlemen would let her walk around as she wished.
A small group of curious onlookers had gathered on the road outside the house. They tried to look casual, as if it were their habit to congregate there, but their hungry gazes betrayed them. Maybe I’m being unfair, Lindell thought. They might be good friends of Josefin and Emily, and their gathering here a reaction to the shock.
She swung into the driveway, got out, and spotted something that she had not noticed on her quick visit earlier in the day. Right next to the flagpole, almost hidden behind the lilac bushes, was a doghouse. A bowl with dried food remnants was to one side of it. Lindell crouched down to peek inside. She saw a blanket and some chew toys.
No one had mentioned a dog. She remained standing outside the kennel. The voices of the neighbours on the road could be heard, and Lindell decided to get to the bottom of this immediately.
A waft of scents of the early summer struck her as she walked out onto the road. She steered her course towards a man who was standing with a packet of mail in his hand.
‘My name is Lindell. I’m with the Uppsala police.’
The man shook her hand. ‘A terrible thing.’
‘Are you a neighbour?’
The man nodded, dropping a newspaper and a couple of letters at the same time. Embarrassed, he quickly picked these up, glancing at Lindell.
‘Do you know if they have a dog?’
‘Yes, a pointer. Isabella.’
‘He takes it along sometimes,’ a woman interrupted.
The man took a step closer to Lindell, as if to shield her from the woman, and told her eagerly about the dog and the Cederén family’s routines.
It turned out that the dog was difficult. Josefin Cederén had never taken to it and it was a source of annoyance for the neighbourhood. Outside, alone in its house, it would howl mournfully and long. Inside, the pointer chewed everything – rugs, curtains, and flowers. As a result, Sven-Erik Cederén often brought it to work. He was the only one who appeared to be able to handle the animal.
I should take the time to stay and listen, she thought, but her urgent need to be alone drove her to politely deflect the questions of the curious neighbours.
She returned to the yard. Fredriksson’s car was parked in front of the main entrance. He had returned and was now starting to resume his old form. After a heavy fall and the winter’s murder hunt, he had taken sick leave. No one believed that Fredriksson would return to the unit, but he reappeared in time for a complicated gang rape. Even Ottosson had looked astonished.
Fredriksson’s presence at the morning meeting had set off an unusual silence in the room, as if a dead man had returned. Ottosson had coughed and stood up. A collective smile spread among the assembled officers. Sammy had pulled out Fredriksson’s old chair.
Now he was reviewing a pile of papers in the living room. He looked up quickly and with an expression akin to relief. Perhaps he thought it was Riis who was coming back.
‘How is it going?’
‘There’s plenty of papers.’
‘What are they?’
‘Old documents, the kind one ends up accumulating.’
Fredriksson leant back in the sofa and rubbed his eyes. ‘I think I’ll have to get a pair of reading glasses.’
Lindell sat down across from him.
‘We’ll have to put out a search for Isabella,’ she said, and walked once around the room.
‘Who is that?’
‘The dog.’
Fredriksson made an effort to return his attention to the papers, but then sank back on the couch.
‘If you look around, what impression do you get of the Cederén family?’
‘Wealth,’ she said simply.
‘Yes, wealth, but something else too. It’s messy and not a little dirty. Behind all the artistic glass pieces, there is a ton of dust, there’s dirt under the rugs, the kitchen is sticky, and the bathtub is grimy.’
‘So?’ Lindell said.
‘A house of almost two hundred square metres – neglected. We know that Josefin was a stay-at-home mum. She had been home since the girl was born. Whatever she was doing all day, it wasn’t cleaning.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. People are different. I wouldn’t have been able to stand this mess for a single day.’
Lindell was quiet. His observation gave her no ideas.
‘I think she was unhappy,’ Fredriksson said. ‘She allowed one of the finest houses in Uppsala-Näs to go to the dogs.’
‘She had other priorities,’ Lindell said tartly.
She didn’t like Fredriksson speaking ill of the dead. Tossed in the ditch at the side of the road, on her way to her mother’s grave with her daughter, though separated from her by several metres at the moment of death. Josefin Cederén had not even had the chance to give her daughter a final hug. An untidy house, yes, but now she was dead.
‘I don’t think she was happy here,’ Fredriksson resumed. ‘That tells us something.’
‘But it may not have anything to do with her death,’ Lindell objected.
‘That’s true, but it’s a question mark.’
‘There are many question marks in people’s lives,’ Lindell said. ‘We happened to be dropped into this.’
She got up and walked out to the kitchen. Fredriksson’s observations were correct: the kitchen was sticky. There was a large open space with a freestanding island, the massive beech top of which was covered with kitchen utensils, a couple of plates with dried yogurt on them, an open tub of margarine, and bread crumbs. She must have been planning to clear this away after visiting the grave, Lindell thought, but the fact was, the kitchen verged on disgusting.
Who would clean now? Her father?
Lindell walked upstairs. The girl’s room was full of stuffed animals. The double bed in the master bedroom was unmade. A white pyjama top had been thrown on the floor. A couple of slippers peeked out from under the bed.
She walked over to one of the bedside tables and picked up a book. An American novel. On the other table there was a folder full of notes that Lindell assumed had to do with MedForsk. She flipped through the pages. Tables of explanatory text – some in English, some in Spanish. Occasionally in the margin there were hasty notes, scribbled in pencil in a difficult-to-read hand – a question here and there, a couple of exclamation points.
Everything had to be examined, page by page, in the hopes that there would be something that would explain why he had slain his family. Or was he lying dead somewhere too? Was there a third party that had slaughtered the entire family?
And in that case, where was he? Lindell thought of the dog. A pointer. Was that a spotted kind?
She stood there with the folder in her hands. The front door opened, and she assumed that it was the technicians returning after a quick meal.
There were two other rooms on the second floor. A guest room with Spartan furnishings; a sewing room with a sewing machine, a dressmaker’s dummy, and a table draped in black cloth. Lindell pulled out the uppermost drawer in a dresser that looked out of place with its baroque style, marble top, and curved legs, and carefully looked through the bits of fabric. The next drawer was filled with paper – sketches, from what Lindell could tell. At the back of the drawer, under some patterns, there was a blue book with a linen cover. Lindell opened the book to the first page and immediately realised that she had found something that would help her understand Josefin Cederén, because it was her book. She deduced this both from the fact that it was hidden in her room and also from the handwriting.
It was a diary beginning at the end of May 1998. The first entry read: ‘After a year of uncertainty I now know everything. I can’t say that I am surprised, but it hurts so much. Perhaps I am the one to blame.’
The handwriting was clear and easy to read. Lindell turned the page. A person’s innermost thoughts, recorded over a period of two years. The last entry was dated the fourth of June.
There was sadness in the blue book. Josefin wrote in it instead of cleaning.
Lindell kept searching the drawers for other notebooks but didn’t find anything else. Either this was the only one or Josefin had stored her earlier diaries somewhere else.
She brought the journal with her and went downstairs.
‘I’ve got some reading to do tonight,’ she said and showed her find to Fredriksson, who was still sitting at the table.
He looked up. ‘I wish that I could find some personal notes, but these are simply documents from his work. I need a medical researcher to translate.’
Allan Fredriksson looked fresh and alert despite his recent illness.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ Lindell said.
There was a time when he had not met her gaze. Now he looked at her with a smile and nodded.
One of the technicians came out of the kitchen. Lindell had taken a second look at him earlier. He was in his thirties and had that appealing blend of strength and softness that Lindell liked. ‘He’s married. Happily married,’ Sammy Nilsson had said when he noticed her look.
‘We’re sorting through the rubbish and the only item of note is the remains of an airplane ticket. All of the rest is an ordinary collection of refuse. Would you like to see the ticket?’
They went out into the kitchen. Lindell could not help sniffing the scent of his aftershave or whatever it was.
He held up a piece of paper with a tweezer.
‘I think it’s the back of an airplane ticket,’ he said. ‘There’s a handwritten note that says eight twenty-five. Other than that there is only the name of the company. British Airways.’
Lindell looked at it without expression.
‘Keep it,’ she said and left the kitchen.
‘Think I can take one?’
There was a bowl of candy in the living room. Lindell was extremely hungry, and the sight of the candy made her mouth water.
‘Maybe they’re laced with poison,’ Fredriksson said.
Lindell twisted off the wrapper of a Marianne. Normally she didn’t eat candy, but right now the treats were irresistible. She took one and then another.
Fredriksson looked up. ‘You should eat some food instead.’
‘I’m hungry, but not at the same time. Candy is exactly what I needed.’
‘I don’t think people need to eat more than bananas,’ Fredriksson said.
‘Bananer.’ Lindell chuckled.
She held the journal in her hand. She knew that there were threads she could start unravelling. What had pushed Josefin to start to write? The inner pressure had become too great and she had been forced to write down her anxiety and despair. What had she sensed and then become convinced of? She would find out tonight.
As Lindell left the house, she bumped into Berglund and Haver. They were going to assist Fredriksson.
‘At least until ten o’clock,’ Haver said.
‘Go home to your girls instead,’ Lindell said.
He had become the father of a little girl in May. But Haver simply smiled. They briefly discussed the outcome of the morning meeting.
