The Last Lullaby

by Carin Gerhardsen

  The woman was somewhat older than him, in her early fifties, and very thin. Her bony spine and almost shuffling steps made her seem brittle. Her hair was cut short and its grey tone revealed that once it had been dark. She was dressed in a checked short-sleeved shirt and a pair of trousers that he thought might fit his seven-year-old daughter if you shortened them a bit.

  The apartment seemed to consist of two rooms and after passing the kitchen on one side and a closed door on the other they ended up in the living room. Laboriously she lowered herself into the armchair he presumed she had struggled out of to answer the door. On the table alongside was a remote control, a pile of magazines and a local newspaper that was open. On the other side of the chair stood something that appeared to belong in a hospital rather than a home: a kind of wheeled stand holding what Sjöberg assumed was an oxygen cylinder. A tube led from the cylinder, with a mouthpiece at the end, which Ingegärd Rydin brought up to her face as soon as she sat down.

  ‘COPD,’ she got out between inhalations, in reply to Sjöberg’s unspoken question. She explained, with a shortness of breath he had not noticed during their brief conversation at the front door, ‘I suffer from COPD. Emphysema. This helps me breathe.’

  Wasn’t it the case that oxygen treatment was not prescribed for smokers? Sjöberg looked around curiously for evidence that she smoked, but he saw no ashtrays or cigarettes anywhere in the room. Despite that he sensed that someone had smoked in the apartment not all that long ago. He wondered if it was herself or someone else she was trying to fool, but thought he got the answer to the question in her next sentence.

  ‘They come from social services to look after me a couple of times a day, help me shop and do errands. I’m no longer able to go out.’

  ‘I’m truly sorry,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Can you manage to exchange a few words with me?’

  She nodded at him while she took a few deep breaths through the tube. Sjöberg was grateful that there was no rattling when she breathed, because he felt that would have been hard to endure. He felt sorry for this little person and suddenly in his mind’s eye saw an image of her by the side of the comparatively enormous Christer Larsson. They seemed a mismatched couple, but on the other hand it was almost impossible to imagine what she had looked like in her youth, seeing now her prematurely aged face and the pale-yellow skin of her exposed arms.

  ‘I don’t have long now,’ she said, unprompted. ‘They’ve removed as much as they could of the damaged parts of the lungs. And they say I’m too weak to survive a lung transplant.’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Sjöberg, and then could not think of anything else to say.

  If it’s that bad, surely she can be allowed to indulge in a sneaky puff under the kitchen extractor fan once in a while, he thought. Hopefully she wouldn’t set fire either to herself or to the building. He listened to her breathing for a while with a dismay that he hoped was not outwardly visible.

  Then he suddenly remembered his business, straightened up and went over to the other armchair by the table. Without being asked, he sat down on the edge, as if to show that he did not intend to stay long but that he had legitimate reasons after all for being in her living room.

  ‘Do you have any idea why I’m here?’ he asked hesitantly.

  She shook her head without dislodging her breathing apparatus.

  ‘You were married to a Christer Larsson, is that correct?’ he continued.

  She nodded, her expression revealing nothing about what she was thinking.

  ‘Do you have any contact with him?’

  Now she removed the mouthpiece to answer his question.

  ‘We have not seen each other in more than thirty years.’

  ‘Have you ever spoken over the phone during that time?’

  ‘Not that either.’

  ‘You didn’t divorce as friends?’ Sjöberg attempted.

  ‘Not as enemies either,’ she answered expressionlessly. ‘There has never been any reason for us to maintain contact. It’s no stranger than that.’

  She put the mouthpiece back between her lips and he could see how her breathing at once became a little easier.

  ‘Did you ever experience Christer Larsson being violent?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Please answer my question. I’ll explain later,’ he said authoritatively.

  ‘No,’ she answered simply, through one corner of her mouth.

  It bothered Sjöberg that he could not really judge her reactions when she had that contraption in her mouth.

  ‘Never threatening or aggressive?’

  She shook her head with her eyes steadily fixed on his.

  ‘Did he have problems with alcohol or other drugs?’

  ‘No. He drank like most people do. Nothing that could be considered a problem.’

  ‘Did you know that he remarried?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Does it surprise you?’ he asked.

  She freed herself from the apparatus and answered without visible surprise, ‘As I said, I no longer know him. Why should I be surprised?’

  Sjöberg did not answer her rhetorical question, but instead continued doggedly.

  ‘He got married in 2001 to a woman he met in the Philippines. They had two children together.’

  A wrinkle that could hint at surprise appeared above one eye, but Sjöberg could not decide what he had said to cause this first visible reaction. Presumably the choice of the word ‘had’, he told himself. Suddenly she looked neutral again, but the breathing seemed more laborious without the oxygen.

  ‘Then they separated a few years ago. They didn’t get a divorce, but they lived separate lives.’

  ‘Is Christer dead?’ she asked, again bringing the mouthpiece to her face.

  Sjöberg looked at her for several seconds before he replied.

  ‘No, Christer is alive. But his wife and both children were found murdered in their home a few days ago. Perhaps you read about that in the newspaper or heard about it on the news?’

  She nodded in confirmation with a look, behind the oxygen tube, that Sjöberg interpreted as a little thoughtful but not frightened in any way. It seemed to him that Christer Larsson truly no longer had any place in her life. And why should he have? Thirty years is a very long time, more than half a life in Ingegärd Rydin’s case. Her facial expression suddenly changed.

  ‘You asked whether Christer was violent. So you think he murdered his family?’

  ‘We don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘Not the Christer I knew,’ she answered without taking the tube from her mouth.

  ‘But perhaps Christer Larsson in 2008?’ Sjöberg coaxed.

  She simply shrugged, unwilling to speculate. Sjöberg felt a certain disappointment come over him. He had hoped to get more out of this conversation. Ingegärd Rydin herself he could easily strike from the list of suspects, for in her condition she would not even be capable of beheading a chicken. On the other hand he had to admit to himself that it would have been welcome if she had had something compromising to offer concerning Christer Larsson. But however much he wanted to be able to lead the investigation away from Einar, he could not lose his objectivity; he was quite clear about that.

  ‘He is big and strong,’ Sjöberg attempted anyway. ‘On sick leave for many years for depression.’

  A shadow drew over her face.

  ‘Perhaps he hasn’t got over the divorce?’

  Suddenly she laughed and the tube flew out of her mouth.

  ‘I’m quite sure he has,’ she said, and Sjöberg detected neither irony nor bitterness behind the laugh.

  A little later, getting out of the car and hearing the chirping of the birds, Sjöberg felt that spring was approaching after all. It was overcast, but the sun had found a gap in the cloud cover and shone hopefully both on him and the lifeless ground around him. On winding gravel roads eroded by the long winter he had found his way to the piece of property, Björskogsnäs
4:14, that had turned out to be owned by his mother. He had to walk the last stretch up to the boundary line. There was a narrow road, but it had long been overgrown by bushes and brushwood and there was no way through by car.

  It was a rather large plot, approximately 8,000 square metres according to the title deed, up on a little rise. He had imagined that the undergrowth would change in character when he reached the boundary of the land, and admittedly it did, but not in the way he had imagined. Instead of meadowland he encountered dense thickets, and the only difference between the plot itself and the surrounding forest was in the age of the trees. The road, which nowadays could be considered a game trail, brought him to the part of the land that had once been developed. The ruins of some partly razed outbuildings were still standing, but based on what he could see through what had been small windows the sheds contained nothing besides the timber they had been built of. Among the indigenous trees he managed to make out several ancient apple trees. He couldn’t imagine that they still bore fruit, but immediately found himself standing with his shoe on a rotten old apple that had not yet decayed into the soil.

  Suddenly he was struck by a longing to use this earth. Plant new apple trees, prune the untended thicket and lay out a garden again here. It was his land, or would be his land, and he would not let it deteriorate even more. On the map he had in his hand he saw that there was a lake with a beach only a few hundred metres from the property. On the road he had passed a group of summer houses that appeared to have been constructed some time in the sixties, and there would be playmates for the children in the summer. Why had his mother held this back from him? It could hardly be the case that she did not know about this land of which she herself was listed as owner. He rejected the possibility immediately. Even if it had been his father’s land to start with and she had not lived there herself, she must have had knowledge of its existence.

  He left the outbuildings and the apple trees and walked on. Suddenly he came across the house itself. Or rather, what was left of it, which was not much. Brick foundations with the remnants of a chimney in the middle were all that was left of what had once been the main building. Within the outer walls, as everywhere else, a few young trees and bushes were growing. It was depressing to think that this was the remainder of what had once been someone’s home, perhaps his father’s or grandparents’.

  On a sudden impulse he took the phone out of his pocket and entered his mother’s number.

  ‘It’s Conny. How are you doing?’

  ‘All right. How are all of you doing?’

  Positive as always. He decided to get right to the point.

  ‘I’m standing here on the land. Our land. The land you say you don’t know about. Björskogsnäs 4:14.’

  There was silence at the other end.

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘I hear you,’ she said guardedly.

  ‘It’s nice here, Mother. A nice, big property. It’s up on a hill. You could clear it a little, then there would be a fine view of the area.’

  No response.

  ‘Build a new house where the old one stood. It would be super for the kids, close to the beach down by the lake. Now that we have this land, why shouldn’t we do something with it?’

  He waited for a few seconds, but there was no reaction.

  ‘Why don’t you answer?’

  ‘Because I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said simply.

  ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Mother. I’m just trying to understand; why can’t you help me?’

  ‘You don’t understand a thing.’

  ‘Exactly, that’s just the point. Why are you being so contrary?’

  Sjöberg did not often criticize his mother; he found it pointless. She was basically a negative person, afraid and cowering, but deep down she had a good heart. She was loving to the children, even if she did not often show it with physical contact. They liked her, even though she was slow to smile.

  ‘The way you talk.’

  As usual she dismissed everything that was not strictly mundane as nonsense.

  ‘Did Father live here, Mother? Did Grandma and Grandpa live here? Now you have to answer me.’

  He did not intend to give in so easily this time.

  ‘What do I know, what do I know …’

  Now she was starting the familiar grumbling which got on his nerves. She dismissed his simply formulated, direct question in a silly old person’s way, hid behind the facade of some kind of dementia that she did not suffer from. At that moment he decided he would get to the bottom of this story. He would find out how and why the land had ended up in his mother’s possession and why she did not want to acknowledge it. Genealogy had never interested him particularly, but now he really wanted to know how things stood. It would not be that difficult to discover who had lived on this property and when they had moved away. He was a police officer after all, even if he didn’t know when his grandmother and grandfather had died. That sort of thing had not been talked about during his childhood with his reticent mother. Of his father he had hardly any memories at all.

  ‘Oh, screw that!’ he blurted out. ‘I’ll find out what I want to know anyway.’

  Then he hung up, without the customary polite phrases or promises to visit that could have cheered his old mother up. And sure enough, his conscience overcame him only a few seconds later, while he was still recovering from his little outburst of anger. He would call her later in the day and act like nothing happened, as etiquette demanded in his family, then this episode would be forgotten. But he had no intention this time of abandoning the core issue.

  He made his way back between the trees, in the direction of the car. Before he left the abandoned land and stepped out on what had once been a road he turned around and inspected his property one last time. With newfound enthusiasm Sjöberg resolved not to abandon his clearing and construction plans either.

  As he got back behind the steering wheel, his sights set on Fellingsbro, his mobile rang. It was only eleven, but it was Gabriella Hansson already.

  ‘I presume that the Catherine Larsson case is going well for all of you?’ she opened.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  Sjöberg sensed what was coming and felt ambivalent about it.

  ‘It completely depends on how you look at it,’ he continued, not elaborating on the emotional conflict he found himself in, his hopes of quickly arresting the murderer possibly on a collision course with a colleague’s well-being. ‘Do you have any results to report?’

  ‘Sure. The paternity test is completed. Christer Larsson is the father of the children.’

  It was not without relief that Sjöberg received this news.

  ‘Good, that was expected. What else?’

  ‘The national forensics lab has found strands of hair in both jumpers. They weren’t able to do a regular DNA analysis because no living roots have been found. On the other hand mitochondrial DNA analysis has been done, but without comparison material there are no conclusions to be drawn. Besides the fact that both jumpers have been worn by the same person, of course.’

  Sjöberg registered this information in silence. It hardly came as a surprise that both jumpers were Einar’s.

  ‘The fingerprints on the object Sandén sent over to me an hour or so ago match fingerprints found in Catherine Larsson’s residence. They have been found both on loose and fixed objects, the refrigerator door, for example, so you can safely assume that the person in question has been there.’

  This did not surprise Sjöberg either. That Einar Eriksson visited Catherine Larsson and the children was completely natural, considering how close they were. There was no proof however that he was the one who had taken their lives. On the contrary, it would have been ominous if they had not found Einar’s fingerprints in the apartment, for that might have suggested that he had reason to conceal traces of himself from crime scene technicians, not just from his wife and any other curious people, which apparently had been the case as far as his financ
ial transactions were concerned.

  ‘That’s good,’ Sjöberg said simply. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Then there’s the shoes,’ said Hansson.

  Sjöberg stiffened, hoping with all his heart that the ambitious technician would not deliver unwelcome news.

  ‘A pair of shoes, trainers to be more precise, matched the tracks we found in the apartment and the stairwell. We also found one of the victim’s blood on them.’

  ‘Catherine Larsson’s?’

  ‘Yes. Good or bad?’

  ‘Both. It depends which way you’re leaning.’

  ‘That’s all I have.’

  ‘Thanks, Bella.’

  Despondent, he ended the call and began to brood. He charted the entire course of events and went through it in his head while he drove. Einar had, as on any other Saturday, got up in the morning and taken off in the car to Fellingsbro, on the same road he himself was driving on now. Then he spent the whole day with his sick wife at the nursing home, got in the car again in the evening and drove home. He arrived some time after eleven o’clock, parked the car and went to Catherine Larsson’s. Or to Kate, as he surely called her. Apparently she let him in. A little later he cut her throat in the bathroom, and immediately afterwards did the same to both of her sleeping children. After that he left the apartment at Trålgränd 5, walked back home to Eriksdalsgatan, changed his shoes and fled.

  Einar Eriksson. A police officer with a spotless past. His colleague for many years. A man who never drew attention to himself, admittedly a sullen character, but who never made a fuss. Why in the world would he take the trouble to change his shoes? And then leave the bloody shoes behind in his home, as if to prove to his colleagues that it really was him who had committed the terrible murders? Perhaps he had counted on them not connecting him to Catherine Larsson – and perhaps they never would have either if Hamad had not sniffed that jumper. But even though Einar’s fingerprints were basically everywhere in the apartment, they were missing from the door handle as well as from the tap on the bathroom sink, the only objects it was known with certainty that the murderer had touched with his hands.