She really was kindhearted, damn it, Bertil thought with a sigh.
On his way back down the hall he was stopped by a straight-backed man in his thirties.
“Excuse me,” the man said tersely. “I don’t want to be a bother, but I’m a doctor — well, not here in this facility, but my mother is one of the patients and I heard Katrin died, I heard you’re talking to people who knew her…”
The man placed a hand on Bertil’s shoulder. Bertil turned his head to look at it. The man pulled it back.
“It’s such a tragedy,” he said. He spoke through his nose. “Katrin was sweet. She gave my mother fantastic support. They were close. Did the staff tell you…?”
“Kindhearted,” Bertil mumbled, shaking his head.
How should I know if the staff mentioned your mother? You haven’t even told me her name.
“Anyway.” The man cleared his throat. “Katrin became a good friend to my mother. I suppose when it comes right down to it, my mother shouldn’t even have gotten a spot here. She’s hardly a candidate for rehab. But I pulled some strings, and…” He gave a curt laugh. “What wouldn’t you do, to keep your mother out of the usual three-to-a-room nursing home situation?”
Bertil couldn’t help but sneak a look at his watch. Why couldn’t the people he ran into ever be normal? Normal people must be out there. The sensible, plainspoken ones. Who got to the point without first talking about themselves for half an hour.
Bertil blinked and allowed himself an intense moment of longing for Sara and their shared bed. The bed most of all.
He wanted to get out of there. There was a chance he would have to return to Katrin’s school, question her friends again. And the parents. He was still looking for a boyfriend, and someone must know something. Katrin had set the table for two, and naturally it would have been a boyfriend she invited over when her parents were away on vacation. It was crystal clear.
The doctor droned on. Evidently he had got the idea that Bertil wanted to know how he’d found an opening here for his mother, who had dementia. There was some board he was on, or a committee he was chairman of, a good friend and an acquaintance, another good friend, and the director of the foundation that ran the home.
What did this guy want? To seem important? Or get something off his chest? In that case he should have turned to the hospital therapist. Or the hospital chaplain. Those people were paid to listen. My salary, Bertil thought, is not generous enough for me to have to tolerate this rubbish.
“It may sound strange,” the man said, his eyes fixed on a point beyond Bertil’s shoulder, “that my mother can’t remember her name every day, but she can still make good friends with the staff. But I’m not just saying this. Mom is easily frightened, that’s part of her illness. And of course, you know, they weren’t good friends in the traditional way. It was more that Katrin made Mom feel safe. And some days are better than others. She has small windows of clarity. But they typically blow shut rather quickly. That’s also part of the pattern of her illness.”
Bertil glanced at his watch again. There was no getting rid of his irritation. What was this person going on about now? That Katrin had cared for his mother? Why would I need to know that? His mom was a patient; Katrin had worked here. Wouldn’t it then be par for the course for Katrin to spend time with her now and again? And I don’t give a crap if he’s a doctor. Do I look sick? Do I look like I need a prescription? Because if he doesn’t stop talking soon I’ll probably need something. Something to calm me down.
“Mom really took to her. And when Katrin was here, she had to shoulder much of the responsibility for her. But I don’t want to…”
He sounded firm now, as if Bertil were a dim-witted student who refused to listen.
“I want to make sure you don’t disturb Mom. It would be an incredibly bad idea to question her. She would become very anxious if you went into her room and began talking about death. You have to leave Mom alone. I can assure you that the senior physician here at Stortorp agrees with this assessment. It would not be healthy for her. Definitely not.”
Bertil’s forehead creased. This was only getting stranger. How did this man get it into his head that I’m going to interrogate his mother? A woman with dementia, an old lady, out of all the patients whose bottoms Katrin wiped. It seems extremely unlikely that she would have anything to tell me. Why does this guy think I would be interested in her?
The man cleared his throat again. His arm flew into the air, but he seemed to stop it mid-gesture. Then he looked at his hand. It was as if he didn’t quite know where to put it now that it couldn’t land on Bertil’s shoulder. He lowered his arm again.
“The long and short of it is, there’s no reason to upset my mother. I don’t want her to wander out of her room at night. It’s happened before. For the time being she’s in a period of relative calm and I want it to stay that way. She’s already forgotten who Katrin was. Certainly it comes in waves, what she does and does not remember, but she’s a very unreliable witness.”
Witness? Bertil Lundberg sought the man’s eyes, but they suddenly flickered away. Something flitted over the man’s face. He crossed his arms, then brought them down again and let them hang at his sides. What a strange word to choose.
“Mom can easily become anxious. Over nothing, really. And she misunderstands things.”
Oh, does she, Bertil thought.
“I truly hope,” the man said, softer now, “that you find the monster who committed this heinous crime.”
“I’m sure we will.” Bertil nodded slowly and extended his hand. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”
The man hurried to reciprocate his gesture. Bertil squeezed the man’s broad palm with care.
I’ll be needing your personal identification number as well, he thought, smiling. The man smiled back. Thin lips. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Stig Ahlin is the name,” he said. He cleared his throat twice. “Stig Ahlin.”
4
Only silence awaited her. Her coffee cup was still in the entryway. On the hall table, exactly where she’d left it a little over twenty-four hours earlier. Sophia Weber stared at it, almost in surprise. Well, why shouldn’t it be there? Who would have moved it?
She took it with her to the kitchen and placed it in the sink. There was already a small plate, a butter knife, and a fork in there. The frying pan was on the cold stove, full of water. The grease had solidified into a layer on top and glistened in the light.
Just as she’d left it.
There was no point in using the dishwasher anymore. It took so long to fill it up that the whole apartment started smelling sour before it was time to run it.
She stood there for a moment, rubbing her arms. It was cold and damp — she had left the kitchen window ajar again. The chill crept under her skin. She turned on the hot tap and the water sputtered out. The sink quickly filled with suds.
Suddenly she felt uncertain. What was it she was about to do? The dishes, sure, but then what? She turned off the tap, took a bottle of cleaning spray from the cabinet under the sink, and began to spray all the surfaces in the kitchen. Not because they were dirty, but because it smelled good.
When she was done she went to her bedroom, crawled into the unmade bed, and pulled a bundle of papers from her briefcase. She was representing a young man who had been denied entry into a pub in downtown Stockholm. When the man asked why, the bouncers responded by lifting him up and depositing him in a trash can. Her client claimed he was a victim of racism, that the guards had treated him badly because they didn’t like “people like him.” Sophia wasn’t looking forward to trying to convince the court that this medium-blond Swede of Walloon descent was right. Especially since he had climbed back out of the trash can unharmed and gone back with two empty bottles which he broke against the forehead of one of the two dark-skinned bouncers.
Later, she thou
ght, dropping the file on the floor. The thumb drives from Hans Segerstad were at the bottom of one of the interior compartments. She closed her hand around them. It doesn’t mean I’m going to take this on. I’m just going to read a little, the parts I would want to read anyway.
Sophia turned on her computer, inserted one thumb drive, and began to scroll through the documents. She clicked her way through various situation reports and case notes drawn up by the lead investigator during the first few days after the murder.
The tips that had come in from the public were the usual kind: all over the place, made up and unlikely. Four of the most detailed sightings of a very much alive Katrin even took place after she was found dead.
Katrin had been seen on a beach outside Mölle, at a bar in Gothenburg, at a bus stop in Sundsvall. She and a masked man had purchased cigarettes at a gas station in the vicinity of Karlstad, and along with four female friends she had robbed a bank in downtown Stockholm. An older woman called her local police precinct to report that she had been drinking her afternoon coffee on the balcony when she saw Katrin dragged into a white van, yes, she insisted, it really was a white van. The man yanking at her was wearing a black balaclava, yes, she insisted, it really was a black balaclava. One of Katrin’s classmates, a teenager described in the notes as a “girl with serious social issues, many absences from school, and frequent encounters with both social and legal authorities,” had said Katrin had a number of boyfriends.
Sophia took out her cell phone and opened her notetaking app. “Find out the classmate’s name,” she tried to type. Autocorrect changed “classmate” to “classified.” “Find out the classified name.” She tried to fix it: “Classmate? Interrogate?” Her phone changed it to “Classified? Interrupt?” She added “Boyfriends?” Her phone wrote “Boycott?” It was hopeless. Instead she pulled up her secretary’s number. Then she remembered it was Saturday.
I should take a nap, she thought. Rest a little. I can’t work all the time. I need my rest too. She put her phone aside entirely and closed her eyes. Think about something else. Sleep for a while.
She immediately thought about him.
There was no task that could take her mind off him. Her thoughts were so intense that they became physical. They clawed their way into her flesh and got caught there. She closed her eyes and there he was, standing right next to her. And her body responded as it always had in reality. Her pulse increased, her throat constricted, her palms grew damp. It was like her muscles got the flu. Her thoughts of him were like a thunderstorm. She couldn’t control them.
She swallowed, scratched at her eyes, and pressed her hand to her chest. It hurts so much, she thought. What if I’m having an aneurysm? Does that make your heart hurt?
Just minutes later, she was asleep.
* * *
—
Detective Inspector Adam Sahla was eating breakfast. His wife Norah was in her usual spot at the sink. Her face was almost gray and her hair looked dirty. He wondered if she was getting sick but decided not to ask. She would only take it as an insult. Or a chance to inform him that he didn’t help out enough, always did things wrong, and never lived up to expectations.
Norah had crossed her arms. She hadn’t even made herself coffee. She never did anything for herself as long as the children were still eating. Anyone as sensitive to low blood sugar as Norah was should have food even before getting out of bed. But the worst thing he could do was suggest she should eat, because somehow it was always his fault she didn’t have time, because he sat down to eat while her headache got worse.
“You remember she has a ballet recital today?”
His wife did still talk, in a monotone, about things that had to be done. About things she expected him to do. But she seldom looked at him anymore.
Norah left the sink and retrieved a hairbrush and two hair ties from one of the drawers under the stove. She had a special drawer for items she needed for getting the kids ready each morning. Extra toothbrushes, bandages, their son’s schedule. Adam had no idea what-all she stuck in that drawer. Nor could he understand how it could be so inconceivably difficult to brush the children’s teeth in the bathroom that such a drawer was necessary; it was less than thirty feet from the kitchen to the bathroom. But he seldom bothered to point this out either.
“I’ve already flagged my afternoon for flex time. They know I have to go.”
She didn’t have to say a thing. It was Saturday; Adam already knew what she was thinking, what she was always thinking when he left her with the children, when she thought he should be off duty, should take responsibility. But she wasn’t saying anything, at least. And she wasn’t looking at him. I even remembered to change the batteries in the video camera, he thought.
“Promise you’ll come, Dad? Do you one hundred percent promise?”
Adam bent down to his daughter and swept her up. She was so light, a string bean, and she wound her skinny arms around his neck. He closed his eyes and nuzzled his nose into her collarbone. I’ll be there. And I plan to sit in the very first row of that stuffy auditorium with the camera in front of me like a safety net to save me from free-falling through time.
He had to fix things with Norah. They should be able to find a therapist they could talk to, someone who could help them.
Hopefully, it would get better over Christmas break. He’d given notice that he would be taking two weeks off. With any luck he wouldn’t have to drop by the office more than one afternoon. That would surely help. They could find their way back — it hadn’t always been like this. He swallowed and whispered in his daughter’s ear.
“Of course I’m coming.”
When his daughter was younger, so little she could hardly walk, maybe a year old, she would steal his phone when he came home from work. She always hid it; each day she found a new hiding place. Adam had once found it vibrating, its battery almost drained, in a paper bag full of empty bottles waiting to be returned. Back then she had been convinced it was the telephone that took him away, that made her mom clench her teeth so hard you could see the muscles in her jaw. It was no wonder his daughter tried to do what she could to avoid that.
He’d never known how he was expected to react, not that time either. But they had recently purchased their row house, and Norah was working from home and earning only a fraction of her former salary.
The only other option besides working more to make ends meet would have been to move to another suburb, but no one wanted their children to grow up in those parts of the city. And even though Norah wouldn’t have admitted it, she didn’t either. So why should he feel guilty for making sure they had enough to live well?
But Adam thought it had gotten better since then. They were living in the city again, and he didn’t have to work overtime as often. These days he didn’t come home as late and he wasn’t gone every weekend. Once a week he was the one to pick the kids up at day care. At least, the weeks when nothing unexpected happened. He truly didn’t need to have a guilty conscience anymore.
“Sweetheart.”
Adam cupped his hand around his daughter’s head, stroked the bridge of her nose with his index finger, and looked deep into her eyes without blinking.
“My darling baby. Of course I’m coming. I promise.”
* * *
—
The box of Christmas decorations was in the basement storage area. Along with a rolled-up yoga mat that had gone stiff, a pair of hiking poles, and four pairs of jogging shoes Sophia no longer used.
She would bring the decorations up to the apartment. She was planning to convince Grandpa to come stay with her over Christmas. He could sleep in her bed and she would take the sofa. If he refused, he could take the mobility service back home at night, but at least her place would look nice for Christmas Eve.
I should invite Mom too, she thought before she could stop herself. There was no reason to ask Grandpa; it was a given that
they would be together. But her mother needed those formalities. The polite questions that kept a lid on their many conflicts.
Sophia extended invitations. Her mother said no. The year before she had blamed taxi services. It would be too difficult to come, she’d said. It was impossible to book a taxi on Christmas Eve, not to mention expensive.
As politely as she could, Sophia had said she understood. She hadn’t pointed out that Grandpa had already booked a taxi there and back. This would have been to abandon their agreement. Nor had Sophia offered up her bed. And her mother hadn’t said that she could sleep on the sofa. Or on a mattress on the floor.
They both knew that their lies depended on not questioning each other. But it also required each to leave space for the other to lie. The potential for a theoretical truth had to remain, or else the facade would crack. That was how they got through their relationship.
I’ll call her next week, Sophia thought. Otherwise it will be too far in advance. No one would buy that it’s impossible to get a taxi if you call and order one three weeks before Christmas. I’ll have to apologize for not calling sooner. I can blame work. Say I didn’t have time.
Back up in her apartment she looked at the bed. The photographs and her notes had spilled across the messy bedspread.
I could ask Adam for help, she thought. He could help me with information, with contacts, with asking around. What would it matter? A phone call doesn’t mean anything. I need to be able to talk to him. He’s a good contact to have. Better than most, actually. Or an email. I could email him. It’s not the end of the world. If he was anyone else I would call.
Sophia pressed her palm to her forehead.
Beyond All Reasonable Doubt Page 5
