The Flood

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Alex followed her into the office. He couldn’t help recoiling when he saw Noah lying on the floor, his head surrounded by a pool of blood.

  ‘We think it was the head injury sustained in the fall that killed him, but of course we’ll have to wait for the postmortem report,’ the young officer told him.

  Only then did Alex notice the blood on the edge of the desk.

  Shit.

  He looked around: chaos. Papers everywhere, a total mess. Two cabinets were open, the shelves empty. This wasn’t like the other crime scenes Alex had visited over the past few days. This time the murderer had been searching for something, determined to find it at all costs.

  ‘Could the killer have been interrupted?’ he asked. ‘The victim might have been out, and caught the perpetrator searching his office when he got back.’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  Alex didn’t know what else to do. He had no idea what he was looking for, nor, if he was honest, why he’d felt the need to come racing over here.

  He mumbled something about having to get back to HQ, and hoped his colleague wouldn’t suddenly come to life and start asking what he was doing there. However, she nodded and smiled, even thanked him. Alex headed for the door, desperate to get out of that claustrophobic office. Someone needed to find out what had happened to Noah, as a matter of urgency. And someone needed to take a fresh look at his brother’s move to Australia.

  Alex paused in the doorway.

  A sheet of white paper was sticking out behind one of the bookshelves.

  His pulse rate increased, for some inexplicable reason.

  The whole room was full of papers and documents – why bother about a single page that had drifted away?

  He didn’t understand the instinctive decisions people made, but without hesitation he bent down and picked it up. In fact there were several sheets, folded in half. His hand shook slightly as he opened them up.

  He began to read as he set off again. His pulse rate dropped. This was clearly a letter someone had written, a final message to a loved one.

  My darling,

  Some months have now passed since we were given the worst possible news . . .

  His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. What the hell was he doing? Couldn’t he leave people in peace with their most private affairs?

  He was about to go back and hand the letter to the female officer – ‘Look what I found’. But then he turned to the last page, read the end of the letter.

  I am actually trying to take responsibility, in spite of all the years that have passed. As an author once said:

  I am putting everything right.

  I’m afraid I can’t do any more.

  I love you more than anything.

  Alex could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

  As an author once said.

  I am putting everything right.

  I’m afraid I can’t do any more.

  But I can, Alex thought. I can.

  Then he read the letter from beginning to end.

  *

  This wasn’t something he could keep to himself – he realised that immediately. He placed it in an evidence bag and took it back to HQ. Not in accordance with the rules, not in accordance with routine, and definitely not in accordance with Berlin’s express orders. For a moment he considered not informing her of what he’d done, but scrapped that idea at once. He couldn’t leave her out of the picture.

  ‘What the hell have you done?’ she yelled. ‘I told you Johansson’s murder was nothing to do with you! Nothing, Alex, nothing! And you went straight over to the crime scene.’

  Alex shrugged, aware that he was acting like a child.

  ‘I found something, and I want to share it with you.’

  He showed her the letter, then he told her about the book they’d found in Malcolm Benke’s living room. When she exploded, he realised he’d made a number of mistakes.

  ‘How could you keep this from me? You are unbelievable!’

  Her voice reverberated inside his skull. He couldn’t bring himself to respond; there was nothing worth saying. They had been planning to tell her about the book, they just wanted more information first. Particularly as she’d said there was no point in going back to Benke’s house. Alex took the opportunity to remind her of this.

  Eventually they agreed to disagree, and concluded that the investigations must take priority.

  ‘No more secrets,’ Berlin said.

  It was a clear warning. Everything out in the open. No stone left unturned.

  As soon as he got in the car, he called Peder.

  Peder who had changed jobs twice in a year. Who had snapped at Alex on the phone, who had almost sounded threatening. Alex just hoped he hadn’t lost his grip again.

  If he has, someone else will have to deal with it.

  Alex had more urgent matters on his mind than a former colleague’s mid-life crisis.

  The phone rang and rang.

  Peder didn’t answer.

  Alex left a brief message telling him what had happened and saying he hoped to hear from him soon. But by nightfall Peder still hadn’t contacted him.

  The meat smelled delicious, and there wasn’t a peep from the neighbours.

  ‘Either they’re out or they can’t be bothered to complain,’ Fredrika said.

  Spencer poured her a glass of red. Wine again. There was no such thing as too much. Not this summer.

  ‘Or maybe they don’t want to quarrel with someone who’s seriously ill,’ he said.

  Fredrika put down her glass, horrified.

  ‘Have you told the neighbours you’re ill?’

  Spencer grinned at her.

  ‘Are you crazy? Of course not. Just kidding – you can deal with all that later.’

  Later. When Spencer no longer existed.

  ‘He had a tumour. He died.’

  ‘No! How awful! It must have been very quick – we didn’t even notice he wasn’t well.’

  ‘Extremely quick. He took his own life at a clinic in Switzerland.’

  Fredrika snorted. Gallows humour must be God’s gift to man.

  ‘Something amusing you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She picked up her glass and took a sip, pushing aside any concerns about whether she ought to be drinking every day. There was a difference between living as if every day was your last, and living with the reality that it actually might be.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d heard before she left work. Noah Johansson was dead. Murdered. She’d been unable to hide her reaction from Alex, and that wasn’t good. She didn’t really want to reveal her relationship with the deceased.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Spencer asked.

  She swallowed several times; should she tell him? On the other hand, there was no point in keeping quiet. Every one of Johansson’s clients would soon realise that he was no longer around. She had no idea of the practicalities involved in changing funeral directors, but someone must know.

  ‘Noah Johansson is dead.’

  Spencer froze in mid movement.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I found out about an hour ago.’

  ‘How? I mean why? I . . .’

  Fredrika took a deep breath.

  ‘He was murdered, Spencer.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  He got to his feet, then sat down again.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ve no idea.’

  ‘So what happens now? To people like us?’

  ‘I don’t know that either, sweetheart.’

  She reached out and stroked his arm. ‘Are you okay?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘This is so macabre. I mean, I didn’t really know the guy, and he didn’t know me, and yet he knew a hell of a lot about me. How I want to die, for example.’

  He took a couple of gulps of his wine.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to find someone else,’ he said.

  And then: ‘Let’s eat.’

/>   *

  Spencer served new potatoes and Bearnaise sauce with the meat.

  ‘You must have left work early to get all this done,’ Fredrika said. Neither of them could bear to talk about the funeral director who’d died; it felt as if he’d abandoned them.

  Spencer grimaced.

  ‘I had a pretty useless meeting this morning, and I didn’t stay around for long after lunch.’

  ‘Good decision. By the way, I need your help with something,’ Fredrika said.

  She went and fetched her work bag – a yellow fabric backpack that the children insisted on calling ‘Mummy’s work bag’. Spencer, however, chose to refer to it as ‘Mummy’s teenage bag’.

  She took out a piece of paper and handed it to Spencer. ‘There you go.’

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A colour photocopy of a book cover.’

  ‘You photocopied a green book cover?’

  ‘If you look down at the bottom, you’ll see the title.’

  Spencer peered closely at the image. ‘Bloody hell.’

  Fredrika was astonished. ‘You know this book?’

  ‘Yes and no. I haven’t read it, but I recognise the title and the author’s name.’

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  Spencer gave a crooked smile. The second smile in one evening.

  If this carries on I might not cry.

  ‘A student I was supervising during the spring term wrote her master’s dissertation on how writers’ views on self-publishing have changed over the last hundred years. Today it’s quite common for authors who can’t get established publishing houses interested in their manuscript to go down another route, but that certainly wasn’t the case a few decades ago. Which is hardly surprising, of course. The advent of the miracle of technology and the internet has made most things possible. However, when Morgan Sander published this book, it was far more unusual.’

  Fredrika waved away a wasp.

  ‘So Morgan Sander published the book himself?’

  ‘Exactly. There could be a thousand reasons why a manuscript is turned down, but it’s usually because the text is of poor quality. Sander’s case was slightly different. The guy could obviously write, but it’s just drivel – it makes no sense. This was the only book he published – towards the end of the 1940s, I think – and when it didn’t attract the acclaim he’d hoped for, he stopped writing. He died a few years later.’

  Fredrika ran a finger around the top of her glass.

  ‘How do you know all this? Why he was rejected and so on?’

  ‘My student visited various publishing houses and asked about authors they’d turned down. Sander had become something of a story; even younger editors knew about him.’

  ‘What’s the book about?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I like the title. I Am Putting Everything Right. A clear statement, no messing around.’

  A cool breeze made Fredrika shiver. The fact that the sun was shining didn’t help; the Swedish summer was as capricious as ever.

  ‘How do you find an author like Morgan Sander?’ she asked.

  Spencer picked up his knife and fork again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean exactly what I say. Who owns his book? And if you don’t have a copy, how do you get hold of it? How many were printed, how accessible is it?’

  Spencer chewed and swallowed.

  ‘My student found it in the Royal Library, down in the depths of the basement. It was Sander himself who donated it, desperate not to be forgotten. Fewer than a hundred copies were printed. I should imagine most of them have been thrown away over the years as people have tidied up their bookshelves. There are probably a few in antiquarian or second-hand bookshops.’

  Fredrika realised they weren’t going to be able to trace the perpetrator that way. He might have stumbled across a copy in his granny’s bookcase, or in a shop in the far north of Norrland. They would never know.

  ‘Why the questions?’

  ‘Sander’s name came up in a case.’

  They ate in silence. Fredrika drank more wine, more water. She couldn’t help finding it disturbing. The police were looking for a killer who seemed to be obsessed with a writer that hardly anyone had heard of.

  Hardly anyone.

  Apart from Spencer.

  INTERVIEW WITH ALEX RECHT

  06-09-2016

  Present: Interrogators one and two (I1 and I2), Detective Chief Inspector Alex Recht (Recht)

  I1:

  It sounds as if the dead were piling up. At some speed.

  Recht:

  That’s exactly what was happening.

  I2:

  It also sounds as if you weren’t exactly on top of things.

  Recht:

  Sorry?

  I2:

  Well, with one person after another dying, you’d expect the police to pull out all the stops. That doesn’t seem to have been the case in the summer.

  Recht:

  You’re wrong. Completely wrong. But it took time for us to work out whether the deaths were connected, and if so, how.

  (silence)

  I1:

  We need to come back to Spencer Lagergren.

  Recht:

  He’s not part of this investigation.

  I2:

  No, but he was one of very few people who’d heard of Sander’s book.

  (silence)

  I2:

  You must answer our questions.

  Recht:

  I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you’d asked a question.

  I1:

  Okay, let me put it like this: did it bother you that Spencer was familiar with both the title and the author?

  Recht:

  There was a perfectly logical explanation, which Fredrika passed on to me.

  I1:

  So you weren’t in the least concerned?

  (silence)

  Recht:

  Not at the time.

  I2:

  But later?

  Recht:

  Later I became very concerned indeed.

  THURSDAY

  The silence was endless. Dan was still refusing to speak to Malin. He simply observed her as she searched and searched. The knives remained missing. And Malin’s panic continued to grow.

  When the early morning sun lit up the bedroom, she was lying there wide awake. What time did the sun rise at this point in the summer? Four o’clock? The only thing she knew for sure was that she had to be on her guard, because otherwise she and the children could die.

  She was watching Dan. He was on his side with his back to her. She didn’t believe he was asleep, and that frightened her. If he was awake too, what thoughts were going around and around in his head? Not the same as the ones stuck in her head, she hoped.

  She was so thirsty, her throat felt constricted, she could hardly breathe. The glass on the bedside table was empty. If she wanted water, she was going to have to get up.

  And give away the fact that I’m awake.

  Malin felt the weariness come creeping in. How long could she manage to stay awake? How many days, how many nights? Sooner or later she would have to sleep. Maybe it wouldn’t make any difference. If Dan came rushing in with a knife, no one would be able to stop him.

  But God knows I’d try.

  Cautiously she slid her legs from under the covers. The house had got hotter and hotter as the weather improved, and she hated it. They couldn’t open the windows. She had gone over and over the same questions: What kind of house was this? How could such a place exist? Why had it been built in the first place?

  With unbreakable windows.

  And impenetrable doors.

  Everything that was needed to make the house a home was there: running water, a bathroom, a fully equipped kitchen. A property like this couldn’t exist in a vacuum. It was sophisticated. It was real.

  Just like the man who’d brought them here, and delivered food supplies at irregular intervals.

  Malin had no rec
ollection of ever having met him before, and Dan had quickly said the same. He didn’t know who the man was, didn’t know why he was punishing them. And yet that was exactly what the man had said when they’d tried to talk to him.

  ‘You,’ he’d said, pointing at Dan. ‘You know why you’re here and how this must end.’

  But Dan had simply shaken his head. He had no idea what the man was talking about, no idea how their stay in the house must end.

  Nor had Malin, but the weeks went by and it felt as if they’d been away for an eternity. She hated it.

  Hated, hated, hated it.

  Once again she looked in Dan’s direction, stared at his back.

  Maybe he did know how this drama must end. Maybe that was why he’d taken the knives.

  Malin forced herself to go through her options. There weren’t many, and none of them were pretty. If she seriously believed – and she did – that Dan was capable of harming her and the children and was prepared to do so, then she had only two strategies to fall back on. Either she did her best to carry on monitoring his every move, or she got in first.

  She shuddered.

  If she chose to get in first, what did that mean? Was she going to have to kill him? Or could she lock him up somewhere while they waited for mercy, waited for help?

  Which was never going to come.

  The man had definitely pointed at Dan, made it clear that they were all being punished because of him. So what would happen if Dan disappeared, if he died? Would the man still want to harm Malin and the children?

  Would we be allowed to go home?

  She closed her eyes for a moment.

  She loathed the man who had forced them to live through this hell.

  She loathed his silence, his anger and his fucking gun.

  But most of all she loathed the power he had.

  Power over life and death. Her life and death.

  It was just after eight, and Alex was already at his desk, exhausted after a sleepless night. He contacted the rest of the team and informed them that there would be a meeting in the Lions’ Den at nine. A few minutes later Fredrika appeared. She didn’t seem as low as the previous day, but nor was she relaxed. There was tension in every line of her body.