The Silent Girl (Sebastian Bergman 4) Page 8

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked as she sat down opposite him.

  ‘Not bad. How about you?’

  ‘Like a baby,’ he lied.

  They chatted about this and that while they ate breakfast. On the way out they met Billy on his way in; he had been to the station to set up ‘the smallest room in the world’, as he called it. He offered them a lift if they could wait ten minutes while he grabbed something to eat, but they declined; they had already decided to walk.

  Had Billy given them a funny look when they said that, or was it just Sebastian’s imagination? Billy was the member of the team he knew least. Admittedly Billy had accepted Sebastian’s presence right from the start – unlike Vanja and Ursula – but they hadn’t grown any closer during Sebastian’s time with Riksmord.

  Billy had had a tough time. He had killed two people – all in the line of duty, of course, but even so.

  Two internal investigations. Completely vindicated both times.

  However, Sebastian found it difficult to believe that Billy was as unaffected as he tried to appear. He wasn’t exactly the strong, silent, hard man. Sebastian had offered his services as a counsellor after the second shooting, but Billy had turned him down.

  As they headed towards Bergebyvägen 22, Sebastian asked Vanja if she had noticed anything odd about Billy.

  ‘No, he’s just the same as always. Why do you ask?’

  Sebastian changed the subject.

  Just the same as always.

  That was what he was afraid of.

  That was what seemed strange, given that Billy had killed two people.

  ★ ★ ★

  Ursula was at St Erik’s eye hospital by nine o’clock in the morning to meet the prosthetics specialist her consultant had recommended, and to try out possible medical aids. The term annoyed her; this was a cosmetic exercise after all, rather than something that would bring about a medical improvement. However, the doctor insisted that a prosthetic eye was preferable to the alternative, which was to stitch up the socket. According to him, an ocular prosthesis, to give it its fancy name, also helped to speed up the patient’s psychological rehabilitation. Apparently he had had positive experiences with patients who, like her, had been vehemently opposed to the idea to begin with. Personally, Ursula thought he was exaggerating her negativity. She had lost an eye, and felt no need to hide that from the world; she had also started to get used to the idea of having her right eye covered. At first she had suffered from terrible headaches, but she didn’t know if that was because of the injury, or because her left eye was having to work twice as hard. Probably a bit of both. Now she only got a headache occasionally, and she was able to read fairly easily, or at least for about an hour and a half before she felt tired. However, her consultant insisted, and in the end Ursula agreed at least to go and see the technician, who turned out to be a young woman named Zeineb. She spent fifteen minutes calmly measuring the volume, width and depth of Ursula’s eye socket, then recommended an acrylic prosthesis. She explained that it would be both resilient and easy to look after. Ursula had no opinion on the material, but surprised herself by staying and chatting rather than taking her leave. There was something about Zeineb’s direct approach that touched her. The consultant had given her a diagnosis, a precise clinical description of the effects of her injuries. Torkel was someone who tried to be there for her, but never dared to mention what was behind the white compress. Zeineb provided her with something different: a liberating, matter-of-fact approach to the situation, almost as if they were two friends chatting about hairstyles or earrings rather than the gaping hole in her face.

  The longer they talked, the more she had to admit that her consultant might have had a point. Perhaps covering the wound with a bandage and assuming that life went on was not enough to find her way back completely. Perhaps that was why the prosthetic was referred to as a medical aid – because it helped people.

  Ursula wasn’t sure if that was true, but she did know that she was already looking forward to seeing Zeineb again in two weeks’ time to start trying out her new eye.

  She felt really happy when she got home, and had lots of energy. Torkel had called her mobile, which she had left at home. No message, but she suspected she knew what he wanted.

  What he always wanted.

  But it no longer bothered her. She actually liked the fact that he didn’t do anything to surprise her.

  Unlike Sebastian Bergman.

  He had visited her once in the hospital. Once. In spite of the fact that she had been shot in his apartment, by his ex-girlfriend. Once.

  Even though she knew he tried to avoid anything that was difficult or painful, she was surprised. Astonished. However, with hindsight she had to admit that she had surprised herself too. She had almost made the same mistake all over again, the mistake she had made all those years ago. She had started to develop feelings for him.

  Last time it had ended when he slept with her sister.

  This time she had nearly died.

  There wouldn’t be a third time, however much he tried; she would make sure of that. But she was the one who had let it happen. She was the one who had opened the door and let him. That was the first thing she had to face up to: there was something about him that she found incredibly attractive. They had a complex relationship; like everything else in life, it wasn’t simply black or white. There were so many things she liked about Sebastian – his intellect, his unconventional way of looking at the world, his ability to find a way out of any problem. But above all, the two of them were so alike. Both equally lonely. Both constantly searching for a love they would destroy in minutes.

  If he had been the one who was badly injured, maybe she would have visited him only once. Further visits would simply have increased the burden, and carrying burdens wasn’t something either she or Sebastian went in for.

  They moved on.

  Ursula sat down at the computer and logged on. There was a lot of material; most of it must have been gathered before Riksmord took over, but she recognised Billy’s hand in the organisation of files and folders.

  Clear, easily accessible.

  She began with Erik Flodin’s preliminary reports from the scene of the crime; they were pretty good. Admittedly she would have liked more wide-angle shots from the house; the photographer had tended to concentrate on close-ups, but on the other hand there were enough to give her a decent overview. She began with the first victim, Karin Carlsten.

  Karin, the mother, with a huge hole in her chest.

  Thirty-nine pictures of Karin alone.

  Six hundred and ninety-five pictures in total, plus the written reports.

  It was going to be a long day.

  It might not be the world’s smallest room, but it certainly wasn’t large. Fourteen square metres. Sixteen, perhaps, Torkel guessed as he arrived with Malin Åkerblad. Six people gathered around the oval table in the centre felt like at least two too many. Torkel introduced Malin to everyone, then reached across for one of the cups of coffee from Statoil. Someone had had the sense to bring in coffee rather than relying on the useless machine in the staffroom. He glanced at the newspapers strewn across the surface of the table; the local morning papers and both national tabloids had the Carlsten family murders on the front page.

  ‘I’ve given Malin a copy of our notes, but we’ll just do a quick verbal run-through,’ Torkel said when he had settled down. He nodded to Billy, who put down his cup and got to his feet. On the wall behind him they could see the results of his early-morning work: a timeline, photographs from the scene, extracts from the interviews with the neighbours, and a map.

  ‘The girl from next door – Cornelia Torsson – came over to the Carlsten house, which is here. It was nine o’clock on Thursday morning. She found the door open, and Karin Carlsten lying dead just inside. She ran straight home, her parents called the police, and the whole family was found shot dead.’

  ‘The preliminary report indicates that they were killed at some po
int during Wednesday morning,’ Vanja added. ‘Probably with a shotgun.’

  Malin merely nodded, as if this confirmed what she already knew.

  ‘The only forensic evidence so far is a shoeprint,’ Billy went on. ‘Size forty-four.’

  ‘And it’s not the father’s?’ Malin asked. Vanja was struck by her deep voice; on the phone she could easily have been mistaken for a man. She caught herself wondering if Sebastian found it sexy; she glanced at him, but there was no reaction. He was resting his chin on the palm of his hand, and appeared to be having a little nap.

  ‘No, he’s a size forty-seven,’ Billy said, returning to his seat. ‘That’s what we’ve got so far.’ He gave a little shrug, as if to apologise for the paucity of the material. Malin nodded again and made a note on the papers in front of her.

  ‘We haven’t got much out of the neighbours we’ve managed to speak to,’ Torkel said, taking over. ‘The Carlstens were well liked, but several people have mentioned that their commitment to environmental issues could sometimes be seen as a little … trying.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘There was a perception that they meddled with things that had nothing to do with them, that they were rather over-zealous. The fact that they were incomers didn’t help, even though it’s twelve years since they moved to Torsby.’

  ‘But no direct threats?’

  ‘Not as far as we can tell,’ Billy replied. ‘Apart from Jan Ceder, but we already know about him.’

  ‘I will be releasing him immediately after this meeting.’ Malin’s statement was so matter-of-fact that she could have been telling them what she’d had for breakfast this morning; the silence that followed suggested that most people thought they must have misheard. Even Sebastian woke up and gave the prosecutor a dubious look. It was left to Torkel to vocalise their concerns.

  ‘You’re going to release him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’d prefer to keep him for a while.’ In his own special way, Torkel managed to make this sound like a humble request and an order at the same time.

  ‘Why?’ Malin had clearly chosen to ignore the order aspect. ‘He has an alibi.’

  ‘He also has a shotgun he’s unable to account for,’ Vanja said, pretending not to notice Torkel’s frown. She knew perfectly well that he always spoke for the team when dealing with outsiders, but releasing Ceder was such an idiotic move that she couldn’t keep quiet.

  ‘It’s been stolen,’ Malin snapped, looking Vanja straight in the eye.

  ‘He says it’s been stolen.’

  ‘You haven’t come up with any evidence to the contrary.’

  Vanja wondered what could possibly be behind such an ill-considered decision. Apart from sheer incompetence, and Malin didn’t give the impression of being incompetent. Which left only one possibility; it wasn’t her place to ask, it would undoubtedly come across as an accusation, and Torkel definitely wouldn’t like it, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Do you know him? Personally, I mean?’ Vanja wondered.

  ‘Are you insinuating that I would act unprofessionally, or do you think everybody knows everybody around here because this isn’t Stockholm?’

  ‘At least in Stockholm we would have been allowed to hold him for ninety-six hours,’ Vanja persisted stubbornly.

  ‘But not here. And to answer your question – no, I do not know Jan Ceder personally. If I did, I wouldn’t be working on this investigation.’

  Malin looked down at her papers again, then turned to Billy.

  ‘Jan Ceder’s shoe size is forty-one. The print you found in the house was size forty-four, is that correct?’

  ‘Forty-three or forty-four,’ he confirmed quietly, well aware that this didn’t exactly improve their case. Malin nodded with satisfaction and glanced at Erik, who was sitting next to Sebastian and hadn’t said a word so far.

  ‘Erik, you know Ceder. Is there any risk that he might abscond?’

  Erik had asked if he could sit in on the meeting, and had been delighted when Torkel said yes; the chance of seeing at close quarters how Riksmord worked was too good to miss. He didn’t really want to upset anyone, but in this situation it was impossible to please both sides, so he cleared his throat and opted for the truth.

  ‘I don’t know him either, but I’d say with his limited resources, and taking everything else into account, the risk of him taking off is minimal.’

  Once again Malin gave that smug little smile which Vanja already loathed. To be honest, there wasn’t much she liked about Malin Åkerblad so far. Nothing, in fact.

  ‘He could destroy evidence,’ Billy spoke up.

  ‘I gave you a search warrant for his home,’ Malin shot back. ‘You’ve had twenty-four hours. If there’s any evidence left to destroy, that means you haven’t done your job.’

  Nobody answered. Malin Åkerblad obviously wasn’t going for Miss Popularity, Torkel thought.

  ‘So tell me what grounds we have to justify depriving him of his freedom at this stage.’ Malin’s gaze swept around the table. No one said a word.

  ‘OK, in that case I shall release him.’

  The fat cop who had picked him up the previous day drove him home. He couldn’t remember her name, and it didn’t really matter. She concentrated on the road, and hadn’t said a word since asking whether he wanted to sit in the front or the back as they walked to the patrol car.

  No, that was wrong.

  She had said ‘Face’ and passed him a newspaper as they waited for the gates to open. He hadn’t understood what she meant until he saw people running towards them from the front of the police station, several of them holding cameras. He could see the flashes long before they were anywhere near the car. He covered his face with the paper, hearing a barrage of questions mixed with the frantic clicking of the cameras as they slowly drove past the reporters. They turned onto the main road, and since then there had been silence inside the car.

  Which suited him perfectly. His father had brought him up to distrust authority in general and the police in particular. Fucking bastards whose sole aim is to make life difficult for ordinary people. Of course what had happened was terrible.

  The murders.

  An entire family.

  Two innocent little boys.

  But there was no way Gustav Ceder’s son was going to sit making small talk with a cop. And a woman cop, to add insult to injury. Jan stole a glance at her. A uniform and a gun. Not exactly feminine. She was probably a lesbian. The TV and the papers kept trying to convince him that girls could play football; lesbians, the lot of them. In the Ceder household men had been raised to be men, and the women knew their place. That was the natural order of things. Biology. If God had meant men and women to be equal, he wouldn’t have made men so superior. But of course you couldn’t say that in this country any more.

  He gazed out of the side window. Where the fields came to an end, the sun was reflected in the deep blue water of Lake Velen, where he often went fishing. Not necessarily legally. He would soon be home; another ten minutes or so. He let his mind wander.

  Everyone he had spoken to over the past twenty-four hours had gone on and on about the missing shotgun. The first two cops, the fat dyke and her boss or whoever he was, had thought it was a strange coincidence, but the two from Stockholm had come straight out and said they didn’t believe him.

  Obviously he wasn’t quite such a good liar as he had thought.

  Another reason to be glad of the silence.

  ★ ★ ★

  Jan Ceder stood outside his house and watched the police car disappear. The dog had started barking as soon as they turned into the drive, and he walked across to the pen. The Norwegian elkhound hurled himself at the chicken wire as Jan approached. Hungry, of course. Jan opened the lid of the sand box he had stolen down in Torsby a few years earlier and took out the bucket of dog food.

  When he had fed the dog and given him clean water, he went indoors, took off his heavy boots and hung up his jacket nex
t to his snowmobile overalls. Then he went into the kitchen. He glanced at the pile of unwashed dishes on his way to the fridge and a cold beer, and decided to ignore it. He opened the bottle, took several swigs, and put it down on the scratched Formica table by the window. The curtains had been untouched since his mother died thirteen years ago.

  He sat down and opened up his laptop. The thin, modern computer didn’t really look as if it belonged in the cramped kitchen; the half-panelled walls, the patterned orange wallpaper and the dark green cupboard doors screamed 1970s.

  Jan checked his emails; he had had an answer from russianbabes.ua. He took another swig of beer, then began to read. There were plenty of fake sites out there, plenty of con artists, but this site had been recommended by a friend, and he knew it was genuine. He had found Nesha there, and now he was in touch with Ludmila from Kiev. They had started corresponding just over two months ago, and now they were discussing the possibility of Ludmila coming over. She was the youngest of four, with three older brothers. She used to work in a paper factory, but had had to leave to look after her mother, who had died six months ago. Now she was unemployed, with nothing to keep her in the Ukraine. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She had run the household for many years even before her mother fell ill, and had looked after her brothers until they left home. She seemed to be made of different stuff from Nesha, who thought the house outside Torsby was too small, too old-fashioned, too far from town, and had constantly badgered him for money. Jan read through Ludmila’s message: a brief summary of what she had been doing since she last wrote, followed by a few lines about how much she was longing to see him, how happy and grateful she was that they were in touch, how she hoped that they could be together very soon.