Dark Secrets Read online

  “Morning!”

  No reply. Not that he’d expected one. Clara stubbed out her cigarette and, with a last long stare at Sebastian, went back inside. Not good, he thought. But he was too tired to care. He walked up the path to his parents’ house. In less than forty-eight hours he had acquired a house, a possible child, and a job; he had also met a grower and someone who would probably want her revenge. He had been wrong. Things did happen in Västerås after all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE PRACTICE was 650 yards from Palmlövska High in a three-story building, with offices on the ground floor and families living above. Vanja had waited at the station for Sebastian until 8:25 before she got fed up and decided to go to see Peter Westin on her own. She was relieved. Under normal circumstances she usually thought it was better to have two officers present at an interview, however trivial it might be, partly because it was always helpful to have several points of view on any story, and partly because the information could then be shared informally with more members of the team. This meant a reduction in the time spent sitting in lengthy briefings, which Vanja found increasingly tedious. But when it came to Sebastian, things were different. Definitely not boring, but he had the ability to turn most things into a battle. So she hadn’t waited too long for him.

  The sign on the glass door said WESTIN & LEMMEL, with ACCREDITED PSYCHOLOGISTS in smaller letters underneath. Vanja went in. A reassuringly pleasant atmosphere, pale furniture, and better lighting than most traditional doctors’ offices, with small white designer lamps on the coffee table. A lovely sofa to sit on while you were waiting. A glass door led from the waiting room to what Vanja assumed were the examining rooms. She tried it. Locked. She knocked firmly, and after a little while a man in his forties emerged and introduced himself as Rolf Lemmel. Vanja showed her ID and explained why she was there.

  “Peter hasn’t arrived yet, but he shouldn’t be long,” said Rolf, inviting her to sit. Vanja settled down on the sofa and started to glance through the previous day’s Dagens Nyheter, which was lying on the table. The waiting room was quiet and peaceful. After a while a girl of about fifteen came in. She was slightly built and had freshly washed hair. Vanja gave her a friendly smile.

  “Are you here to see Peter Westin?”

  The girl nodded in response.

  Good, that meant he should be here soon.

  “I need a few minutes of your time.” Sebastian realized at once that something had happened. He knew Torkel and his tone of voice very well. Admittedly Sebastian had gone back to sleep for once when the alarm went off and hadn’t arrived at the station until after nine, but this wasn’t about turning up late. This was something more serious.

  “Of course,” Sebastian replied, ambling after Torkel, who marched into one of the three interview rooms on the first floor, waving his hand to hurry Sebastian along. This was serious. Hurrying him along. A private conversation. In a soundproof room. This didn’t bode well. Sebastian slowed down a fraction; as usual he was preparing himself for the worst by pretending to be even more nonchalant. This didn’t impress Torkel.

  “Get a move on, I haven’t got all day.”

  Torkel closed the door and looked Sebastian straight in the eye.

  “The day before you turned up and said you wanted to work with us, you had sex with Leonard Lundin’s mother. Is that true?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “No, it was the night before.”

  “Enough! Are you out of your mind? She was the mother of our chief suspect at the time!”

  “What does that matter? I mean, Leo was innocent.”

  “You didn’t know that at the time!”

  Sebastian smiled at Torkel. Self-assured. Self-important, some might say.

  “I did, actually. I was absolutely certain, as you well know.”

  Torkel shook his head, pacing angrily around the cramped room.

  “It was wrong on every level, and you know it. She’s phoned to tell me about it. Threatened to call the media if I didn’t take appropriate action. You have to be able to keep your dick in your pants, for God’s sake!”

  Sebastian suddenly felt sorry for Torkel. He had brought an unknown troublemaker into the investigation against the will of most of the others. No doubt he had had to defend his decision in many ways—not least to himself. One of his rationales was no doubt the old classic, “Don’t worry, he’s different now, he’s changed.” But the truth is that no one changes. Sebastian knew that. We merely revolve around the same axis, so that the sides of ourselves that we show vary, but the basic foundation is always the same.

  “Absolutely. But when Clara and I ended up in an intimate situation, I wasn’t working with you, was I?” Torkel looked at him. Couldn’t bring himself to respond.

  “Nothing like that will happen again,” Sebastian said as honestly as he could, and added: “I promise.” As if that extra promise could chase away the memory of a naked Beatrice last night. Beatrice Strand, the murder victim’s class teacher. And her son was Roger’s best friend. However you looked at it, it was wrong in every possible way. God, he really was a complete idiot—even he had to admit that.

  Why do I always, always have to test everything to destruction?

  Torkel looked at him, and for a second Sebastian thought he was going to be asked to leave right there and then. That would have been the right decision. But it was a fraction too long before Torkel spoke; he hesitated, for some reason Sebastian was unable to fathom.

  “Are you sure?” he said eventually.

  Sebastian nodded, still wearing his most honest expression.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You don’t have to have sex with every woman you meet,” Torkel went on, his tone slightly softer. Sebastian suddenly worked it out. It was actually quite simple. Torkel liked him. Sebastian decided to make an attempt; he felt as if Torkel deserved it, somehow.

  “I find it difficult to be alone. The nights are the worst.”

  Torkel met his gaze.

  “Let me make one thing clear: there will be no more chances. Now get out of here. I don’t want to set eyes on you for a while.”

  Sebastian nodded and left. Normally he would have felt superior, cocky, and smug. He had tricked his way out of yet another sticky situation. Gotten away with it.

  “You put me in the shit,” he heard Torkel’s voice behind him, “and I don’t like it.” If Sebastian possessed any capacity for regret or a bad conscience, he would experience those feelings now. But perhaps there was a hint of those emotions as he headed for the door. Beatrice was a one-off. He promised himself that.

  The girl with the freshly washed hair had given up after twenty minutes, when Peter Westin still hadn’t turned up. After a while Vanja had taken a stroll around the outside of the building. It wasn’t in her nature to sit still, and she took the opportunity to call her parents. They were just on their way out but still had time to chat. It was just like the good old days. First of all she had a long chat with her mother, then a shorter one with her father. Oddly enough, they never needed as many words to say the same amount. A certain level of ordinariness had already returned to their conversations after the last few months, when everything had revolved around life and death. Vanja realized how much she had missed this normality and laughed when her mother embarked on one of her favorite topics: Vanja’s love life. Or, rather, the absence of it. As always, Vanja brushed her questions aside, but not as brusquely as before.

  Hadn’t she met anyone in Örebro?

  Västerås, and no, she hadn’t time.

  But what about that nice Billy she worked with? She liked him, didn’t she?

  Yes, but it would feel like going to bed with her brother.

  And then of course they were back to Jonathan, the inevitable final destination of her mother’s argument.

  Was she really not going to get in touch with him again? He was so nice!

  A few months earlier Vanja had always adopted a furious defensive stance whenever Jonathan w
as mentioned. The fact that her mother kept on trying to get her to go back to her ex, without any concept of how this diminished Vanja, used to drive her crazy. Now it just felt gloriously normal. She even allowed the nagging and pleading to go on for a while. Her mother seemed surprised when she didn’t encounter the usual counterattack; indeed, she seemed to lose heart after a little while, and concluded with the point Vanja so often used.

  “Oh well, you’re a big girl now. You can make your own decisions.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Her father came on the line shortly after that. He had decided to come up and see her that evening. No excuses. Vanja didn’t even try. She usually made an effort to keep her two worlds apart, but this time she was happy for them to collide. He was catching the 6:20 train, and Vanja promised to pick him up at the station. She ended the call and went back to the psychology practice. She got Peter Westin’s address from his colleague, who was tiring of her by this stage, but Rolf Lemmel did promise that when Peter eventually arrived he’d let him know that the police were looking for him.

  Vanja got in the car. Rotevägen 12. She entered it into the GPS. It would take around half an hour to get there. She had promised to be back at the station by ten for a briefing with the rest of the team. Westin would have to wait.

  Torkel walked into the conference room. The others were already gathered, and Ursula raised an eyebrow at them, following Torkel inside.

  “So what have you done with Sebastian, then?”

  Was Torkel just being oversensitive this morning, or was there a difference between “Where’s Sebastian?” and “What have you done with Sebastian, then?” The latter made it sound as if they were inseparable. Tom and Jerry. Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo. Torkel and Sebastian. “So what have you done with Sebastian, then?” A passive-aggressive way of making it clear to Torkel that Ursula had the impression Sebastian was more important to him than she was. As if he needed any further reminders. If she only knew. Right now Torkel was prepared to sell Sebastian for painful medical experiments. But this morning had been bad enough without starting a row with Ursula as well.

  So he simply answered, “He’s on his way,” pulled out a chair, and sat down. He reached across the table, grabbed the thermos, and poured some coffee into a polystyrene cup. “Has Mikael arrived yet?”

  Neutral tone of voice. Everyday small talk.

  “He’ll be here this afternoon.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Vanja looked up. There was a particular tone between Ursula and Torkel, a tone she couldn’t recall hearing before. A bit like when Mom and Dad didn’t want to give away the fact that they’d been quarreling, when she was little. When they made a huge effort to be polite so that she would think everything was fine. It hadn’t worked then and it didn’t work now. Vanja glanced at Billy; had he picked up on it too? Obviously not. He was absorbed in his laptop.

  Sebastian came in, nodded to the assembled company, and sat down. Vanja stole a glance at Ursula, who gave Sebastian a black look, did the same to Torkel, then fixed her gaze on the table. What was going on here? Torkel took a sip of his coffee.

  “Okay, Billy, would you like to start us off?”

  Billy closed his laptop, picked up a small pile of paper, and got to his feet.

  “I received the list of calls from the telephone operator last night and the lists from SKL this morning, so I’ve put them all together in one document.”

  He went around handing a sheet of paper to each person. Vanja wondered why he didn’t just put them in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves. She didn’t say anything, just looked at the first page of her printout.

  “The first page is outgoing calls. Roger’s last call was on Friday at eight seventeen, to his class teacher’s home number.” Billy wrote up the call on the timeline on the wall. Sebastian looked up from his list.

  “Can you tell if he tried to call anyone after that, but didn’t get an answer?”

  “Yes. That was the last call he made.”

  “What were you thinking?” asked Vanja, turning to Sebastian.

  “He said he wanted to speak to Johan when he called the Strands, didn’t he? But he never tried Johan’s cell.”

  Billy turned to face them and shook his head.

  “Yes. I mean no, he didn’t.”

  “Perhaps something prevented him,” Torkel suggested.

  “A murderer, for example,” said Ursula.

  “Next page,” Billy went on. “Incoming calls. The last is from Lisa just before half past six. Well, you can see that for yourselves.”

  He added that call to the timeline then moved on.

  “Next page. Text messages. First of all we have the messages that were left on the water-damaged phone. There aren’t many; most are to and from Johan, Erik, and Lisa. We already knew that Roger wasn’t all that big on friends, so no surprises there. If you could turn to the last page, you’ll see the incoming texts that were deleted, and those are obviously of interest.”

  Sebastian skimmed the sheet of paper in front of him. He sat up straight. “Obviously of interest” wasn’t even the half of it.

  “Two of them are from a prepaid phone,” Billy went on. “One on the Thursday and one on the Friday, a few hours before he disappeared.”

  Sebastian read the first message.

  THIS HAS TO STOP NOW! FOR EVERYONE’S SAKE!

  And the second.

  PLEASE GET IN TOUCH! IT’S ALL MY FAULT! NOBODY IS BLAMING YOU!

  Sebastian put down the printout and turned to Billy.

  “The technical stuff has never been my strong point; does a prepaid phone mean what I think it means?”

  “If you think it means we have a number but not the name of a subscriber, then yes,” Billy replied as he wrote up the number. “I’ve requested lists of all calls and messages from that phone, so we’ll see where that takes us.”

  Sebastian watched as Vanja unconsciously raised her arm and stuck her index finger in the air while studying the pages in front of her, as if she were putting her hand up in class. For a brief second Sebastian pictured her in school uniform, then immediately dismissed the thought. He had already overstepped enough boundaries in this investigation, and if there was one thing all the years of fleeting relationships had taught him, it was how to recognize more or less instantly when he had a chance and when he didn’t.

  “Were the messages written in upper case, in capital letters, on the phone itself, or is it just on the printout?”

  Billy looked at Vanja with a certain weariness in his expression.

  “I know what upper case means.”

  “Sorry.”

  “They were written exactly as they are there. In upper case.”

  “It’s like shouting.”

  “Or perhaps it’s just that the person who wrote the messages wasn’t all that familiar with texting.”

  “Most people in that category are older.”

  Sebastian read the short messages again and was inclined to agree with Vanja. He didn’t know whether capital letters meant you were shouting or not; however, the choice of words suggested that an adult, an older person, was the sender.

  “So we’ve got no chance of finding out who sent these?” Torkel asked, a hint of resignation in his voice. Billy shook his head.

  “Has anyone tried ringing the number?”

  The room fell silent. Everyone looked at Vanja, who had asked the question, then at one another, and finally at Billy. He leaned over to the phone in the middle of the table, switched it to speakerphone, and keyed in the number. A tense air of expectation filled the room. The number did not ring out. Instead they heard, “The person you are calling is not available. Please try later.”

  Billy switched off the speakerphone. Torkel looked at him, his expression serious.

  “Make sure somebody keeps trying that number.”

  Billy nodded.

  “What are the rest of these?” Ursula gestured to the papers in her han
d.

  Sebastian studied the printout.

  One text: 12 beer + vodka.

  Next: 20 beer + gin. Followed by a smiley face.

  Next: 1 btl red & beer.

  And so on.

  “These are orders.”

  The others looked up.

  “For what?”

  “For what it says.”

  Sebastian turned to Billy.

  “When did he get the last of these messages?”

  “About a month ago.”

  Sebastian met Vanja’s eyes across the table. He could see that she knew where he was going with this, but he said it anyway.

  “That was when Axel Johansson got fired for bootlegging.”

  Vanja got up and looked at Sebastian, who stared down at his papers. He knew where she wanted to go. To the very place where he didn’t want to go.

  Vanja set off toward the house, with Sebastian a few steps behind. At first he had intended to stay in the car, but had quickly realized that would look odd. Not that he really cared whether Vanja thought he was odd or not. No, it was more a case of pure survival instinct. He had decided that he needed to stay with this investigation for a while longer, at least until Billy had managed to track down an address for him. Beatrice Strand thanking him for a wonderful night would definitely throw a wrench in the works. Vanja didn’t even manage to ring the bell before the door opened. It was Beatrice; she had put her hair up and was wearing a simple blouse and a pair of jeans. She looked surprised.

  “Has something happened?”

  “We need a word with Johan,” Vanja began.

  “He’s not here, he and Ulf have gone camping.” Beatrice looked at Sebastian, but didn’t give the slightest indication that they had seen each other just a few hours ago.

  “We know that,” Vanja went on, “but have you any idea where they’ve gone?”