Dark Secrets Read online

“Did Roger mention anything that might have been worrying him during the course of the evening?”

  “No.”

  “No phone calls? No texts he didn’t want to talk about, or that he got upset about?”

  “No.”

  “He wasn’t behaving differently, didn’t seem to find it difficult to concentrate, nothing like that?”

  “No.”

  “And he didn’t say he was going to see anyone else when he left you at… about ten o’clock, was that what you said?”

  Lisa gazed at Vanja. Who was she trying to trip up? She knew perfectly well that Lisa had said Roger left at ten. She was testing her. To see if she would contradict herself. But there was no chance of that. Lisa was well rehearsed.

  “Yes, he left at ten and, no, he said he was going home to see who had been knocked out.” Lisa reached for the bread basket and took a slice of whole-wheat. Ann-Charlotte chipped in again.

  “But she’s already told you all this. I don’t understand why she has to answer the same questions over and over again. Don’t you believe her?” Ann-Charlotte sounded almost hurt. As if the very idea that her little girl might tell a lie was deeply shocking. Vanja looked at Lisa; it might be shocking to her mother, but she knew Lisa was hiding something. Something had happened that evening. Something Lisa had no intention of telling her. Not with her mother there, at any rate. Lisa cut herself some cheese and placed the slices on the piece of bread with slow, almost exaggerated movements, glancing at Vanja from time to time. She would have to be careful. This one was considerably sharper than the police officer she had spoken to in the school cafeteria. She had to stick to the story she’d practiced. Keep repeating the times. She wouldn’t remember the details of the evening, if they asked her. Nothing special had happened.

  Roger arrived.

  Homework.

  Tea.

  TV.

  Roger left.

  After all, they wouldn’t expect her to remember every single detail of any other ordinary, boring Friday evening either. Besides which, she was in shock. Her boyfriend was dead. If she’d only been better at crying, she would have squeezed out a few tears right now. Made her mother put a stop to the conversation.

  “Of course I believe her,” Vanja said calmly, “but Lisa was the last person we know of who saw Roger that evening. We need to get all the details right.” Vanja pushed her chair back. “But that’s enough for now. You need to get to school and to work.”

  “I don’t work. Apart from a few hours a week in the community. But that’s voluntary.”

  A housewife. That explained the impeccable home. At least as far as the cleaning was concerned.

  Vanja took out her card and pushed it across to Lisa. She kept her finger on it for long enough to force Lisa to look up and meet her gaze.

  “Give me a call if you think of anything you haven’t mentioned about that Friday.” Vanja shifted her focus to Ann-Charlotte. “I’ll see myself out. Leave you to your breakfast.”

  Vanja left the house and drove back to the station. On the way she thought about the dead boy and was struck by a realization that made her feel slightly sad and uncomfortable at the same time.

  So far she hadn’t met anyone who seemed particularly upset or sorry that Roger was dead.

  Fredrik thought it would take ten minutes. Maximum. In, tell the police, out. He had known Roger was missing, of course. Everybody had been talking about it at school. In fact, people had never talked about Roger at Runebergs School as much as they had done last week. Never paid him that much attention. And yesterday, after they found him: an emergency counseling service had immediately been put in place, and people who hadn’t given a shit about Roger during the short time he had been a pupil there had excused themselves from lessons, weeping copiously, and had sat in groups holding hands and sharing happy memories in subdued voices.

  Fredrik hadn’t known Roger and wasn’t exactly grieving for him. They had passed each other in the corridors—familiar faces, no more. Fredrik could honestly say he hadn’t given Roger a thought since he’d left Runebergs in the autumn. But now the local TV station had turned up, and some of the girls who wouldn’t even have spoken to Roger if he’d been the last boy on earth had lit candles and laid flowers by one of the goalposts on the soccer field outside the school.

  Perhaps that was a nice thing to do? Perhaps it was a sign that empathy and human kindness still existed? Perhaps Fredrik was just being cynical when he saw only falseness and people exploiting a tragic incident to draw attention to themselves. Taking the chance to fill some indefinable vacuum.

  To experience a sense of solidarity.

  To experience something.

  He remembered the images they had seen in Social Studies from the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in Stockholm when Anna Lindh was murdered. Mountains of flowers. Fredrik recalled that he had wondered even then. Where did it come from, this need to mourn people we don’t know? People we haven’t even met? It obviously existed. Perhaps there was something wrong with Fredrik because he was unable to feel and share this collective grief?

  But he read the papers. After all, it was a contemporary of his, an acquaintance, whose heart had been cut out. The police wanted to hear from anyone who had seen Roger after he disappeared on Friday evening. While Roger was simply missing, Fredrik hadn’t seen the point in going to the police, because he had actually seen Roger before he went missing, but now they had said that any sightings on that Friday, both before and after his disappearance, were of interest. Fredrik cycled down to the police station before school, pushed open the doors, and thought it probably wouldn’t take very long.

  He told the uniformed woman behind the desk that he wanted to speak to someone about Roger Eriksson, but before she had time to pick up the phone a plainclothes officer carrying a cup of coffee limped up to him and told him to come through.

  That was—Fredrik glanced at the clock on the wall—twenty minutes ago. He had told the limping detective what he had come to say, certain things he had gone over twice, the place itself three times, and the third time he had to mark it on a map. But now the detective seemed satisfied. He closed his notebook and looked at Fredrik.

  “Thank you very much for coming in. Could you wait here for a little while?” Fredrik nodded and the man limped away.

  Fredrik settled down and looked at the open-plan office where a dozen or so officers were sitting at desks, separated from one another by movable screens decorated here and there with children’s drawings, family photos, takeaway menus, and more work-related documents. The sound was a muted blend of the tapping of keyboards, conversations, ringing telephones, and the hum of the copy machine. Fredrik wondered how anyone could get anything done in an environment like this, in spite of the fact that he always did his homework with his iPod earphones firmly in place. How could you sit across from someone who was talking on the telephone and not listen in?

  The detective was limping toward a door, but before he got there a woman came over to him. A blond woman in a suit. It seemed to Fredrik that the limping detective slumped wearily as the woman approached.

  “Who’s that?” Hanser said, nodding toward the boy who was sitting watching them. Haraldsson followed her gaze, even though he knew perfectly well whom she meant.

  “His name is Fredrik Hammar, and he has some information about Roger Eriksson.” Haraldsson held up his notebook as if to emphasize that it was all in there. Hanser did her best to remain calm.

  “If it’s about Roger Eriksson, why isn’t Riksmord interviewing him?”

  “I was passing the desk when he came in and thought it a good idea to speak to him first. To see if what he had to say was of any relevance. There’s no point in Torkel wasting his time on things that don’t contribute to the investigation.”

  Hanser took a deep breath. She could imagine it must be difficult to give up the responsibility for a case. However you wrapped up the circumstances, at the end of the day it indicated a lack of confidence i
n him. The fact that she was the person who had made the decision didn’t make things any less sensitive. Haraldsson had applied for her job, she knew that. You didn’t need any great psychological insight to work out what he thought of her. Everything he did, all the time, radiated aversion and hostility. Perhaps she should be glad Haraldsson was sticking to this case with lunatic stubbornness. Praise his obvious dedication. His genuine commitment. Or maybe he just hadn’t grasped that he was no longer an active part of the investigation. Hanser tended toward the latter view.

  “Deciding what is relevant or otherwise in this investigation is no longer your job.” Haraldsson nodded in a way that indicated he was simply waiting for her to finish the sentence so that he could correct her. And, indeed, she had barely started to make her next point before he interrupted.

  “I know they’re responsible, but they did say very clearly that they wanted to work in association with me.”

  Hanser cursed Torkel’s diplomacy. Now she would have to play the bad guy. Not that it would change anything in their relationship, but even so.

  “Thomas, Riksmord has taken over the investigation, which means that you are no longer a part of it, not in any way. Unless they expressly ask you to do something.”

  There, it had been said. Again.

  Haraldsson stared at her coldly. He knew what she was up to. Since she had found it necessary to call in Riksmord straightaway, with her nonexistent routine and her lack of leadership, naturally she didn’t want any of her staff working with them. They had to solve the case on their own. Prove to her superiors that she had made the right decision. That the Västerås police just didn’t have the ability.

  “We can take that up with Torkel. He expressly said that I was to work in association with them. What’s more, the boy has some extremely interesting information that I was just about to pass on to them. I mean, I’d prefer it if we could get on with trying to solve the case, but of course if you’d rather stand here discussing the chain of command, perhaps we should do that instead. It’s entirely up to you.”

  So this was how he intended to play it, making her out to be a desk jockey while he was the good police officer, interested only in the case and in solving it unselfishly. Hanser now realized that Haraldsson might be a more dangerous opponent that she had previously suspected.

  She stepped aside. Haraldsson gave a triumphant smile and limped off, shouting in as familiar a tone as he could muster: “Billy, have you got a minute?”

  Vanja opened her notebook. She had just apologized for asking Fredrik to repeat everything he had already said. She was annoyed. Vanja wanted to be the first to interview witnesses and anyone else who was involved. There was a risk that they might unconsciously become careless the second time. That they would leave out information because they thought they’d already said it. That they might have assessed the information and decided it wasn’t interesting. It struck her that this was the second time the person she was talking to in this investigation had lost a bit of their edge because they had already told Haraldsson everything. Two out of two. There wouldn’t be a third, she promised herself. She rested her pen on the paper.

  “So you saw Roger Eriksson?”

  “Yes, last Friday.”

  “And you’re sure it was him?”

  “Yes, we were at Vikinga School at the same time. And then he went to Runebergs at the beginning of last term.”

  “Were you in the same class?”

  “No, I’m a year older.”

  “And where did you see Roger?”

  “It’s called Gustavsborgsgatan, by the parking lot at the high school. I don’t know if you know where that is?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Billy made a note. When Vanja said “we” in these situations she meant him. It would be added to the map.

  “Which direction was he going in?”

  “He was heading into town. I mean, I don’t know what direction that is or anything.”

  “We’ll find that out too.”

  Billy made another note.

  “What time on Friday did you see him?”

  “Just after nine.”

  Vanja stopped dead for the first time during the interview. She looked at Fredrik with a hint of skepticism. Had she misunderstood something? She looked down at her notes again.

  “Nine o’clock in the evening?”

  “Just after.”

  “And this was last Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure of that? And the time?”

  “Yes, I finished training at half past eight and I was on my way into town. We were going to the movies, and I remember looking at my watch and seeing that I had twenty-five minutes. The movie started at nine thirty.”

  Vanja didn’t speak. Billy knew why. He had just finished the timeline for Roger’s disappearance on the whiteboard in their office. Roger had left his girlfriend at 10:00 p.m. According to that same girlfriend, he hadn’t left her room—let alone her house—all evening. So what was he doing on this Gustavsborgsgatan an hour earlier? Vanja was thinking exactly the same thing. So Lisa had been lying, just as she had thought. The young man sitting in front of Vanja seemed very reliable. Mature, in spite of the fact that he was comparatively young. Nothing in his behavior suggested that he was here for the attention, for the thrill, or because he was a compulsive liar.

  “Okay, so you saw Roger. Why did you notice him? There must have been plenty of people out and about at nine o’clock on a Friday evening?”

  “I noticed him because he was walking along on his own, and there was this moped circling around and around him, kind of having a go at him, if you know what I mean.”

  Vanja and Billy both leaned forward. The time issue was important, but so far the information they had received had concerned only the victim’s movements the evening before he went missing. Now all of a sudden there was someone else in the frame. Someone who was messing with Roger. This was getting good. Vanja swore to herself once again, cursing the fact that she was getting the second bite at this.

  “A moped?” Billy took over from Vanja. She didn’t just let him do it, she actively welcomed it.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you remember anything about it? The color, for example?”

  “Well, yes, but I know—”

  “What color was it?” Billy interrupted him. This was his field.

  “Red, but I know—”

  “Do you know what make it might have been?” Billy broke in again, eager to piece the puzzle together. “Do you know what type of moped it was? Can you remember if it had license plates?”

  “Yes—I mean, no, I don’t remember.” Fredrik turned to Vanja. “But I know whose it is—I mean, I know who was riding it. Leo Lundin.” Vanja and Billy looked at each other. Vanja got up eagerly.

  “Wait here, I need to go and fetch my boss.”

  Chapter Seven

  THE MAN who was not a murderer was proud of himself. Even though he shouldn’t have been. The emotional reports, the school in mourning, and the frequent press conferences with grim-faced police officers told a different story. Tragic, dark, and sorrowful. But he couldn’t help it. However hard he tried, he couldn’t avoid ending up in the company of that self-affirming feeling. He alone felt like this. No one would ever understand.

  However close they were.

  Whatever they said.

  His pride was uplifting and liberating, almost joyous. He had acted powerfully. Like a real man. Protected what had to be protected. He had not given way, had not failed when it really mattered. The strong, sweet smell of blood and internal organs had penetrated deep into his senses, and his whole body had fought against the rising nausea. But he had carried on. The knife in his hand had not trembled. His legs had not let him down when he moved the body. He had performed at the very peak of his ability in a situation in which most people would not be able to cope. Or would never encounter. This was what he was proud of.

  Yesterday he had been
so tense that he had found it difficult to sit still. He had gone for a long walk lasting several hours. Through the town that was talking about just one thing: his secret. After a while he passed the police station. His instinct was to turn back when he saw the familiar building. He had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t considered where he was going, but since he was there he realized he might as well walk past. He was just someone out for a stroll, someone who happened to be passing. The men and women inside would suspect nothing. Wouldn’t know that the person they were looking for was so close. He kept on going. Eyes front. In spite of everything he dared not glance in through the big windows. A patrol car emerged from the garage and braked. He nodded to the uniformed officers in the car as if he knew them. Which he did, of course. They were his opponents. He was the man they were looking for, even though they didn’t know it. There was something incredibly exciting and satisfying about being in possession of that knowledge, holding the truth in his hand. The truth they were so frantically seeking. He stopped and allowed the patrol car to pass in front of him. He could permit his opponents that courtesy.

  He knew where this strength came from. Not from God. God gave guidance and consolation. His father gave him the strength. His father, who had challenged him, tempered him, and made him understand what was required. It had been anything but easy. Somehow the secret he now held as an adult reminded him of the secret he had carried as a child. No one had been able to understand that either.

  However close they were.

  Whatever they said.

  Once, when he had been feeling sad and weak, he had told a blond school nurse who smelled of flowers. There was uproar. Chaos. The school and social services intervened. Talked, telephoned, visited. Educational psychologists and social workers. His mother wept and he, the young boy, suddenly knew what he was about to lose. Everything. Because he had been weak. Because he hadn’t had the strength to keep quiet. He knew his father loved him. It was just that he was the kind of man who showed his love through discipline and order. A man who would rather put across his message with his fists, his belt, and the carpet beater than with words. A man who was preparing his boy with obedience. Getting him ready for reality. Where it was necessary to be strong.