Dark Secrets Page 10

  “You too.”

  Sebastian turned and set off toward the gate. To his great relief there was no “we must meet up one evening” or “let’s have a beer sometime” from Torkel. He obviously felt as little need to resume their relationship as Sebastian.

  Once Sebastian had turned to go home, Torkel noticed that Ursula had emerged from Clara’s house and was standing on the steps. She watched the man disappearing behind the place next door. If Torkel’s expression had been one of utter surprise when he saw Sebastian, Ursula’s was radiating something entirely different.

  “Was that Sebastian?”

  Torkel nodded.

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Evidently his mother lived next door.”

  “I see. So what’s he doing these days?”

  “Cultivating his useless side, apparently.”

  “No change there, then,” Ursula snapped.

  Torkel smiled to himself as he recalled how Ursula and Sebastian had battled over every detail, every analysis, every single step in an investigation. They were actually very much alike, which was probably why they couldn’t work together.

  They turned to go back into the house. Ursula handed Torkel a sealed plastic bag. He took it and looked at her questioningly.

  “What’s this?”

  “A T-shirt. We found it in the laundry basket in the bathroom. It’s covered in blood.”

  Torkel looked with renewed interest at the item of clothing in the bag. Things weren’t looking good for Leonard Lundin.

  It had taken rather longer than Vanja had hoped to speak to Lisa Hansson. She had gone to Palmlövska High, just outside Västerås. It was obviously a school with aspirations. Trees neatly planted in rows, yellow-painted stone walls with not a trace of graffiti, always in the top ten when it came to national tests. A school that wasn’t even on the radar for kids like Leonard Lundin.

  This was Roger’s school. This was where he had moved from Runebergs, right in the middle of town. Vanja had a feeling there might be something in this change of school that she ought to check out. Roger had moved from one environment to another. Had anything happened in connection with the move? Big changes can lead to conflict. Vanja decided to find out more about who Roger really was. That would be the next step. First of all she needed to sort out those missing hours that Lisa Hansson so stubbornly refused to acknowledge.

  By the time Vanja had finally discovered what class Lisa was in, found the right room, and interrupted the English lesson, half an hour had passed.

  The other pupils started whispering curiously to one another when Lisa stood up and, in Vanja’s opinion, made her way with almost provocative slowness toward her. A girl in the front row put up her hand but didn’t bother waiting for any kind of response from either her teacher or Vanja before she spoke.

  “Do you know who did it yet?”

  Vanja shook her head.

  “No, not yet.”

  “I heard it was a boy from his old school.”

  “Yes. Leo Lundin.” That came from a boy with a buzz cut and two huge fake jeweled earrings. “From his old school,” he clarified when Vanja didn’t react to the name.

  She wasn’t really surprised. It was a relatively small town, and the kids were constantly connected. Of course they had been texting, tweeting, and posting on MSN that one of their contemporaries had been taken in for questioning. And under fairly spectacular circumstances. However, Vanja had no intention of doing anything to spread the rumors. On the contrary.

  “We are speaking to as many people as possible and we are still investigating every possible avenue,” she said, before allowing Lisa to pass and closing the classroom door behind her.

  In the corridor Lisa had folded her arms across her chest, boldly stared at Vanja, and asked what she wanted. Vanja explained that she needed to double-check a couple things Lisa had told her.

  “Are you allowed to question me without my parents being present?”

  Vanja felt a stab of irritation but did her best not to show it. Instead, she smiled at Lisa and said as steadily as she could:

  “I am not questioning you. You are not accused of anything. I’d just like a chat.”

  “I’d still prefer it if my mother or father were here.”

  “But why? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  Lisa shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’d still prefer it.”

  Vanja had been unable to suppress a sigh of annoyance, but she knew better than to continue the conversation against Lisa’s will. The girl called her father, who evidently worked nearby, and after Lisa had refused Vanja’s offer of a cup of coffee or a cold drink in the cafeteria, they had gone down to the ground floor to wait for him.

  Vanja had taken the opportunity to call Billy and Ursula. Billy had told her that it was virtually impossible for such a brutal murder to have taken place on Gustavsborgsgatan. The proximity of Mälardalen University, a swimming pool, and a sports ground meant that there was a fairly high volume of traffic and passersby. The areas that were not built up were occupied by parking lots and open spaces. It was certainly too early to dismiss Leo Lundin from the investigation, but they had to come up with a different, more realistic scenario. The good news was that Billy had spotted CCTV cameras on the street. If they were lucky, the events of that Friday night would still be accessible somewhere. He was about to go and check it out.

  Ursula didn’t have much to report, except that the bloodstained T-shirt had been sent for analysis. She had gone over the garage and the moped—no traces of blood on that—and was about to make a start on the house. Vanja reminded her to be particularly meticulous in Leo’s room, only to be informed that it was not possible for Ursula to be any more meticulous than she already was, on every occasion.

  Lisa had been sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, watching Vanja wandering around with her cell clamped to her ear. Lisa gave the impression of being pretty bored, but her brain was busy trying to work out what that policewoman wanted to ask her this time. And how she was going to answer. Eventually she decided simply to stick to her strategy. If she was asked about details, she wouldn’t remember.

  Roger arrived.

  Homework.

  Tea.

  TV.

  Roger left.

  An ordinary, slightly boring Friday evening. The question was whether or not it would be enough.

  Lisa’s father arrived after twenty minutes. Vanja didn’t know if it was because the gigantic beaded Jesus was still fresh in her mind or if it was the cheap pale-blue suit and the neatly combed Ken-inspired haircut that made her think “Bible-thumpers” as the extremely agitated man came rushing down the corridor. He introduced himself as Erik, then spent the next three minutes informing Vanja that he had every intention of reporting the fact that a police officer had tried to interview a minor without the presence of a parent or guardian, and in his daughter’s school! They might as well hang a sign saying “suspect” around her neck! Did she have any idea how teenagers gossip? Could she not have been a little more discreet?

  Vanja explained as calmly as she could that Lisa was not actually a minor in the eyes of the law and that she was still the last person to see Roger alive—apart from the murderer, she added just to be on the safe side—and all Vanja wanted to do now was to check on certain pieces of information. Moreover, as soon as Lisa had expressed a wish for her father to be present, Vanja had agreed, and so far she had not asked Lisa one single question. Erik looked at Lisa for confirmation, and Lisa nodded. Vanja also offered to accompany Lisa back to class and to explain that she was in no way suspected of any involvement in the murder of Roger Eriksson.

  Erik seemed satisfied with this; he calmed down somewhat, and they moved to a clean and tidy common room and sat down on the soft sofas.

  Vanja explained that, during the course of the investigation, they had learned from two independent sources that Roger was in town just after nine o’clock on Friday evening, and
not at home with Lisa as she had stated. To Vanja’s surprise Erik didn’t even turn to Lisa before commenting on her assertion.

  “In that case they’re wrong. Your sources.”

  “Both of them?” Vanja couldn’t conceal her surprise.

  “Yes. If Lisa says Roger was with her until ten, then that’s where he was. My daughter does not lie.” Erik placed a protective arm around his daughter as if to reinforce his statement.

  “But she might have made a mistake about the time—that kind of thing happens,” Vanja ventured, turning her attention to Lisa, who was sitting by her father’s side in silence.

  “She says Roger left when the news started on Channel 4. It starts at ten o’clock every evening, unless I’ve been misinformed.”

  Vanja gave up and spoke directly to Lisa instead.

  “Is there a chance you might have made a mistake about the time Roger left? It’s important that we get everything as accurate as possible so that we can find the person who killed him.”

  Lisa pressed a little closer to her father’s arm and shook her head.

  “Right, that’s all clear then. If there’s nothing else, I need to get back to work,” said Erik.

  Vanja didn’t mention that she’d waited half an hour for the opportunity to ask her question and that she also had a job to do. Probably more important than his. She made one last attempt.

  “Both of the people we’ve spoken to are sure about the time, completely independently of each other.”

  Erik stared at her, and when he spoke his voice took on a harsher tone. Vanja sensed that he was a man who wasn’t used to being contradicted.

  “And so is my daughter. Which means it’s just one person’s word against another, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Vanja could get no further. Lisa didn’t say a word, and Erik made it clear to Vanja that he intended to be present at any future interview. Vanja didn’t bother telling him that his presence or otherwise would be up to her and her colleagues, and not him. Instead she waited in silence as Erik got to his feet, hugged his daughter, then kissed her cheek, shook Vanja’s hand, and gave a brief nod before leaving the common room and the building.

  Vanja stood gazing after him. It would be great to have a parent who was 100 percent on the side of his child. All too often in her job Vanja encountered the polar opposite. Or, rather, families in which the teenagers seemed to be more or less strangers, and the parents hadn’t a clue what their kids were doing, or with whom. So a father who came rushing over from work, put his arm around his daughter, trusted her, and defended her ought to be a welcome change in Vanja’s world. Ought to be. Because she couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that Erik was defending the image of the perfect family with the well-brought-up daughter who never lied, rather than sticking up for Lisa herself. That avoiding gossip and speculation at any price was more important than getting to the truth about what had happened that Friday night. Vanja turned to Lisa, who was chewing on the nail of her ring finger.

  “I’ll walk back to class with you.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I know, but I’ll come anyway.”

  Lisa shrugged her shoulders. They walked in silence past rows of lockers, and by the door of the cafeteria they turned right and went up the broad stone staircase to the first floor. Lisa kept her head down, and her bangs prevented Vanja from seeing the expression on her face.

  “What have you got now?”

  “Spanish.”

  “¿Que hay en el bolso?” Lisa looked up at Vanja with total incomprehension. “It means ‘What have you got in your bag?’ ”

  “I know.”

  “I took Spanish in school, and that’s virtually the only thing I can remember.”

  “Right.”

  Vanja fell silent. With that brief “right” Lisa had made it very clear how uninterested she was in Vanja’s pathetic knowledge of Spanish. They had obviously arrived at Lisa’s classroom, because she slowed down and reached for the door. Vanja placed a hand on her arm. Lisa stiffened and looked up at Vanja once more.

  “I know you’re lying,” Vanja said very quietly as she looked the girl in the eye. Lisa stared back, her face completely blank. “I don’t know why, but I’m going to find out. Somehow.”

  Vanja stopped and waited for some kind of response from Lisa. Nothing.

  “So now you know that I know, is there anything you’d like to say?”

  Lisa shook her head. “Such as?”

  “The truth, for example.”

  “I’m supposed to be in Spanish now.” Lisa looked down at Vanja’s hand, still resting on her arm. Vanja removed it.

  “In that case, no doubt I’ll be seeing you again.”

  Vanja set off down the corridor, and Lisa watched her until she disappeared through the glass doors at the end. Slowly Lisa let go of the door handle and moved a few steps away while getting out her cell phone. She quickly keyed in a number. She kept neither the name nor the number of the person she was calling in her address book, and deleted her list of calls every time. She never knew if someone might check her cell. After a few rings the person answered.

  “It’s me.” Lisa glanced down the corridor again. Completely empty. “The police were just here.”

  Lisa rolled her eyes in response to a question from the person at the other end.

  “No, of course I didn’t say anything, but they’re going to find out. One of them has spoken to me twice already. And she’ll be back, I’m sure of it.”

  Lisa, who had managed to appear uninterested throughout the entire conversation with Vanja, now looked anxious. She had been hiding this for such a long time; she had put the truth in a little corner deep inside and buried it. Now she was beginning to realize that there were many powers determined to wrest it from her, and her strength was beginning to fail. The person on the other end of the phone tried to give her courage. Pep her up. Provide her with things to say. She nodded. Felt a bit better. Everything would probably be fine. She quickly ended the call when she heard footsteps in the corridor behind her, pushed back a strand of hair from her bangs that had gotten caught in her eyelashes, suppressed the anxiety, and went into her Spanish lesson. Looking as unconcerned as she could manage.

  Lena Eriksson had spent the morning in the same armchair as yesterday. Now she had started wandering around the apartment. Chain-smoking. A thin blue mist of nicotine and tar filled the small three-roomed flat on the first floor. It was as if she couldn’t stay in one place for very long. For a while she had sat on Roger’s still unmade bed, but she couldn’t bear to see his jeans, the piles of school books, his old video games, the lingering evidence that a sixteen-year-old boy had lived in this room. She tried to find peace in the bathroom, the kitchen, her own bedroom. But everywhere reminded her too strongly of him, so she moved on to the next, and the next. Around and around, like the grieving mother she was.

  But then there was the other thing too, the other thing that made her wander around so restlessly. The voice.

  The little voice deep inside her soul.

  Was it her fault? Was it her fault? She wished she’d never made those stupid phone calls. But she had been angry. She had wanted to hit back. And so it had begun. The money. The calls, the money, the calls. Around and around, just like her wanderings around the apartment. But could it have led to this? She didn’t know; she really didn’t know. And she had no idea how to find out. But she needed to know. She needed to know for sure that she was just a mother who had lost her son, an innocent person who had suffered the most terrible thing of all. Lena lit another cigarette. Today they would have gone shopping. As usual they would have argued about money, clothes, attitude, respect—all those words she knew Roger was so tired of. Lena started to cry. She missed him so much. She dropped to her knees and let the grief and the pain take over. It was cathartic in a way, but behind the tears she could hear the voice again.

  What if it was you?

  “You feel like such a bad parent. Y
ou think you’re doing everything you can, but they just slip away from you.”

  Clara emptied her coffee cup and put it down on the table. She looked at Sebastian, who was sitting opposite her. He nodded in agreement, although he wasn’t really listening. Clara had talked about nothing but her poor relationship with her son, Leonard, since they walked in. Perfectly understandable in view of the morning’s events, but not particularly interesting for anyone other than the person directly involved. Sebastian was considering whether to point out that her use of the word “you” instead of “I” when she talked about herself was a verbal defense mechanism, a way of making her failure more universal, less personal, thus keeping some of the pain at bay. But he realized that such a comment would be perceived as spiteful and would merely reinforce her negative view of him. He didn’t want that.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Not when he still hadn’t decided if he should try to get her into bed. He stuck to the soft approach instead. Calm and collected. Understanding, not judging. He glanced at her breasts; they looked enormously inviting in that yellowish brown pullover.

  “That’s the way it is with children. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Blood ties are no guarantee of a functioning relationship.”

  Sebastian was cringing inside. Hell, that was incisive! Seven years of studying psychology, twenty years of working in the profession, and that was his conclusion, his words of comfort for the woman whose entire life had been turned upside down in just a few hours.

  “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Incredibly, Clara was nodding in agreement, apparently satisfied with his shallow analysis. She even gave him a grateful smile. There was definitely the possibility of sex if he played his cards right. He got up and started to clear the plates and glasses from the table. Clara had already made a start on lunch when he had returned. Leftover potatoes and fried eggs. She had even found a jar of pickled beetroot in the fridge that was still edible. And two low-alcohol beers. Sebastian had eaten with a good appetite, although Clara had mostly picked at her food. The lump in her stomach seemed to be growing by the minute, and she felt slightly nauseated all the time. But it still felt good to sit at a properly laid table. To have someone to talk to.