The Last Lullaby

by Carin Gerhardsen

  ‘Fairy-tale Lane,’ she said. ‘There’s a street in the Tantolunden allotment gardens called Fairy-tale Lane. It’s a stretch, but it’s the best I can come up with right now.’

  ‘Well done, Petra. We’ll follow up on it. And I feel that it’s urgent now. I’ll see about getting armed-response officers there from the national SWAT team and some ambulances. Mikael Rydin may be there and he may be armed. If Einar is there, he’s presumably in bad shape.’

  ‘Understood. Where are you now?’

  ‘Just passing Segeltorp. I’m hurrying.’

  ‘When will you be there?’

  ‘In the best-case scenario I can be at Tantolunden in ten or twelve minutes in this weather. If nothing unforeseen happens. Wait for me.’

  Sjöberg checked his watch.

  ‘I’ll see you there. No sirens, no commotion. If Rydin is there, he must not suspect anything in case he manages to flee. Keep me informed about where you all are.’

  ‘Okay, all systems go,’ said Westman with an audible smile.

  ‘I just hope we’re on the right track,’ said Sjöberg. ‘And if we are, that we get there before it’s too late.’

  Einar Eriksson felt as if he had finished his life’s project. Describing his fate in his own words, putting words to all the emotions and thoughts that had crowded the anthill of his mind, was a marvellous liberation. The frightening man who was Ingegärd’s son had unknowingly done him a service in the midst of all the degradation.

  While he lay there on his side on the cold plank floor he routinely stretched at the rope behind his back. Tug-tug-tug-rest, tug-tug-tug-rest. The rope stiffly resisted. Occasionally he tried to slip one of his hands through the loop while the other held still, but his hand was too big, the loop too small. A trickle of blood from his nose ran into the corner of his mouth, but that did not worry him. Because, with a jubilant joy in his chest, he gave himself the forgiveness he had coveted for over thirty years. Thirty-one dark years of being grief-stricken, of self-pity and bitterness. And now suddenly, with the very declaration of his heavy guilt, it was as if it had been lifted from him. That a few words from his own mouth could grant him consolation!

  It was his hastily made decision to be sincere that had paved the way. To completely and honestly express the unvarnished truth, free from mitigating circumstances and unbalanced self-criticism. That the bloodthirsty butcher who imprisoned him here had had the pleasure of witnessing his oral autobiography did not bother him. This was just about him, not about his self-appointed judge and executioner or anyone else in this world. He had settled accounts with his inner voice and suddenly they understood each other, suddenly they were on speaking terms.

  With this new perspective he looked out of the little window opening by the side of the door and while his hands worked he saw the heavy snowfall outside suddenly stop. A ray of sunlight made its way in through the glass and where it cut through the cold air in the tool shed the specks of dust came alive and danced in the narrow beam of light.

  With an unfamiliar sense of hope and an energy that came from somewhere deep inside the aching shell that was his body, he prised and tugged at his ropes. And finally, as if someone up there took pity on him – or was it in fact he himself who controlled his own fate in the end? – one hand glided through the loop.

  A smile on his lips, he remained lying in the same position for a few minutes, panting after his great exertion. Then he set his free hand on the floor and rose to a sitting position. He fumblingly loosened the knot that had held both his hands together and managed to pull his other hand out of its loop. Greedily he reached for the water bowl and emptied it in one gulp, before giving his stiff fingers a little time to regain their normal mobility. Then he freed his feet from the rope that held them together and also fettered him to the wall behind him.

  Where had his terrifying kidnapper gone to? Had he left him for the day? A kick in the face after that self-revealing story and then it was over? That did not seem likely; he did not recognize the pattern. A single kick was never enough. This man needed much more than that to give vent to all the fury he carried inside him. He must be somewhere in the vicinity. He must be lying in wait nearby to give him false hope that the daily quota of hits and kicks was already fulfilled. But why had he left him so quickly? Was there something in his story that had caught him by surprise, something he had not known about?

  Suddenly it struck him that perhaps Ingegärd’s son had not known who Christer Larsson was at all. His revenge had undoubtedly been aimed only at him. Perhaps it was only now, during the filming, that it had occurred to the murderer that the children he had so cold-bloodedly executed – Tom and Linn – were the children of his own father. That the Larsson children were actually the half-siblings of the children he was avenging, Andreas and Tobias.

  Einar Eriksson pictured the small angelic children alongside their beautiful mother in the bed. Enchanting – if the circumstances had not made everything so inconceivably ugly. For the first time since he was very young he allowed himself to weep. A stream of tears ploughed furrows through the dirt on his cheeks.

  The perpetrator could come back at any moment to continue to take vengeance, to work off the setbacks of his life. Einar Eriksson got up laboriously from the cold, hard plank floor. Now there was no time to lose.

  * * *

  When Sjöberg arrived at their agreed meeting place on the outskirts of the allotment gardens, he was only a couple of minutes behind Westman and the others, who as per his orders were waiting for him among the cars. A group of police from the national SWAT team had already set off to search for the house in question, and one of them, Hägglund, now came back to inform the rest.

  ‘It’s up there,’ she confirmed, to the great relief of Sjöberg and the others. ‘The gate is fastened with a padlock that they’re removing now. Straight ahead is a little house with stairs up to the door, eight steps. The lock has already been forced. Immediately to the right inside the gate is an outbuilding, also locked with a padlock, but we’ll force the door when we go in. And someone is in there, at least two people. In the main building certainly, perhaps in both. There are plenty of tracks in the snow.’

  Sjöberg nodded and divided the assembled police officers into two groups.

  ‘We’ll storm the two buildings at the same time. You take the house, we’ll take the shed. No unnecessary shooting. Our highest priority is to get Einar out alive so he can quickly get medical care. He will presumably be very weak. All communication equipment off. Now let’s go.’

  Suddenly it stopped snowing and immediately a gap in the cloud cover unexpectedly let through the sun’s rays and revealed a patch of clear blue sky. Sjöberg and Sandén were first in line, half running with Hägglund between them. She explained that no one had driven on the little gravel road since it started to snow, but that they had seen the tracks of two people before they themselves walked on the road. Otherwise the entire allotment area seemed totally deserted, as expected at this time of year.

  They moved ahead in silence. Sjöberg turned around a few times to reassure himself that the others were there. They looked absurd, the police from the SWAT team, with their helmets and visors among these idyllic little cottages, surrounded by white snow-covered fences and well-pruned hedges. He was struck by a sense of unreality.

  ‘Are we close?’ he asked Hägglund in a low voice, without revealing the anxiety that was gnawing inside him.

  ‘It’s not far now. The plot is over there to the right. Soon we’ll be at the hedge by the side of the shed.’

  They joined up with the group of police officers who were already on the scene, and Sjöberg slowed his pace. Then, crouching, he slipped along the last stretch of the side wall of the shed to find a suitable gap in the hedge through which he could look into the plot.

  The whole place looked decrepit. The garden had not been taken care of for several years, the gate was rotted and hanging on one hinge. In the little yard sure enough there were a large
number of tracks in the snow. So there were at least two people here, and the unnecessarily sturdy padlock that locked the door to the garden shed suggested that at least one of them was inside the house itself. And sure enough it looked as if the outside door had been broken open. It would not be particularly difficult to get in. And as far as the shed was concerned it would be easier to force the door itself than the lock.

  Sjöberg slipped back to the group.

  ‘Judging by the tracks in the snow Rydin is inside the house,’ he explained. ‘And he is presumably not alone. The door is broken and should just pull open. There is probably just a single room in the house. I’m guessing that there will be loud creaking when we’re going up the steps, so once we’re there it’s quick response. I’m guessing that Einar is still in the shed, which is locked with a big padlock from the outside. I agree that we should try to break down the door. Everyone with drawn weapons, but no shooting unless necessary. We probably won’t need to fire, unless he already knows we are here. Any questions?’

  ‘Should we wait here or back off a little?’ asked one of the paramedics.

  ‘Here is fine, but stay down if there’s any shooting,’ Sjöberg replied. ‘If you’re needed, we’ll let you know.’

  He looked around at the serious faces, but no one seemed to have anything to add.

  ‘Good luck. Now let’s go.’

  Someone from the SWAT team had opened the gate, and one group made their way to the right and positioned themselves outside the tool shed, with a number of heavily armed, helmeted police officers in the lead and Sjöberg and Westman in the rear.

  The other group ran quietly up to the steps leading to the ramshackle little house. Hamad and Sandén, who also kept behind their division of the SWAT team, turned towards Sjöberg and awaited his signal. When Sjöberg’s raised hand cleaved the air like the stroke of an axe, the tense silence was broken and they rushed with drawn pistols and pounding hearts up the stairs and tumbled into the only room of the house.

  At a table next to the wall the sought-after Mikael Rydin was sitting calmly on a wooden chair with a video camera in his hand, in the process of filming something that Sandén couldn’t make out at first. But suddenly someone let out a long, heart-rending scream, which prompted Hamad to swing into action. He rushed over to the corner in front of Rydin and threw himself on his knees. There sat the boy that Sandén had encountered at the police station, staring at them wide-eyed. He did not let out a sound, although blood was streaming from his nose. Next to him another boy was lying in a foetal position. Sandén thought at first that he was unconscious, until it occurred to him that he was the one who had screamed.

  Showing no visible reaction, Rydin let his gaze wander between the police officers from the SWAT team, who all stood prepared to shoot him if need be. Then he closed up the camera’s display with a little click, and turned off the power on the device. While Hamad took care of the terrified boys, Sandén rushed out and summoned the paramedics. Only then did he have an opportunity to make a more or less formal arrest of the apparently unperturbed assailant.

  ‘Mikael Rydin, you are under arrest, suspected of a bloody lot of crimes,’ he said in a louder voice than the situation demanded, now that Hamad had at last got the hysterical boy to be quiet. ‘What those are you’ll find out at the station. Slowly set down the camera and put your hands with your palms upwards in front of you on the table. We will not hesitate to shoot if you put up any resistance.’

  Mikael Rydin impassively did as he was told and one of the armed-response officers walked purposefully up to the table and put handcuffs on him. Another stood behind him next to the wall and together they pulled him to his feet and propelled him out on to the steps. Sandén seized the video camera and put it in his jacket pocket.

  At Sjöberg’s signal two of the policemen from the SWAT team threw themselves against the thin wooden shed door. The door flew into the shed with the police hurtling after it, while the two hinges and padlock stayed behind in the doorframe. Sjöberg was in a hurry to get in, but a number of broad-shouldered police officers stood in front of him in the doorway, blocking the view.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he heard one of them moan from inside and he tried to force his way in, but the wall of backs would not let him through.

  Actually, they seemed to be backing out of the little shed and Sjöberg was forced to take a few steps backwards too. Then an awful stench of faeces and urine struck him and he hoped that was the only reason the policemen in front of him had complained.

  ‘Let me past!’ Sjöberg roared with a fury in his voice he could not really explain.

  A few of the police officers rushed in and up to something that Sjöberg still had not managed to identify. With Westman a step behind him he entered the shed, and the sight that met his eyes confirmed his worst fears. Someone switched on the bare light bulb in the ceiling and they could see an empty dog bowl on the floor and a few short ropes lying among the crumbs of a little dry bread. The floor was approximately six metres square, and was completely covered with human excrement. Attached to the far wall was a solid rope that had been hung over a beam in the ceiling, and on the floor below was an overturned little wooden stool. Above it, with a loop of the rope wrapped around the neck, hung the thin, dirty, bloody and almost unrecognizably battered body that had belonged to Einar Eriksson.

  Three of the police officers from the SWAT team were already in the process of taking him down as Sjöberg rushed up. When they had laid the body carefully on the floor he crouched down by Eriksson’s side and put two fingers against his carotid artery. The body was still warm but he felt no pulse.

  ‘Ambulance!’ he screamed as loud as he was able in his agitation, and Westman rushed out of the shed to meet the paramedics.

  Instinctively Sjöberg started artificial respiration, but the ambulance personnel were there right away and took over the resuscitation attempt. Sjöberg stood up and backed a few steps away from the body on the floor. Petra Westman slipped up to his side. He pulled her to him and put his arm around her, more for his own sake than for hers. They stood there like that for several minutes, watching the increasingly resigned paramedics working at their hopeless task.

  ‘How long has he been dead?’ Sjöberg ventured to ask in a cracked voice, when they finally gave up.

  ‘Not long. A few minutes I should think,’ one of the ambulance personnel replied.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I shouldn’t have made you wait. You should have gone in without me.’

  ‘Conny, without you we wouldn’t even –’

  Sjöberg was not interested in Westman’s excuses. His body felt heavy. His grief squeezed his heart as if it were a rag to be wrung out, grief for a colleague he had never been close to but now wished more than anything to get to know. Everything around him seemed to play out in slow motion. His way of relieving his mind from this great misfortune was to focus on the perpetrator.

  ‘That bastard!’ he interrupted her. ‘Have they arrested him?’

  The words echoed in his head, he felt almost ready to faint.

  ‘They’re taking him over to the cars now,’ replied one of the armed-response officers, who had now taken off his visored helmet and stood with it in his hand.

  He suddenly looked quite human, and Sjöberg noticed that the other police officers did too. They were all standing together as if to attention with their helmets in their hands, watching in silence as the ambulance personnel carefully placed Einar Eriksson on a stretcher, covered him with a blanket and started carrying him out.

  Sjöberg felt that Westman was seeking his gaze, but he was unable to respond and instead followed the ambulance personnel out of the shed. In the doorway stood Sandén and Hamad, who had also witnessed the resuscitation attempt in distress, but Sjöberg had nothing to say to them. In silence he went back to the cars, needing no one’s company.

  Johan Bråsjö was sitting in one of the ambulances being looked after by a paramedic when Sandén climb
ed in and sat down across from him.

  ‘Well done, kid,’ he said in a joyless voice. ‘But you have no idea how lucky you were.’

  ‘Lucky?’ said Johan, looking over at one of the police vans, where a couple of police officers were roughly shoving in the handcuffed man.

  ‘That guy isn’t content just to kick. And we lost a man. That was no pig you heard being mistreated, it was a policeman. But that guy is going to get his punishment, thanks to you.’

  ‘But …’ said Johan, and Sandén saw the tears welling up in his eyes, ‘I should have realized … I should have made a proper police report.’

  ‘I should have listened to what you said. What you did was completely amazing. You should get a medal.’

  Johan lit up, obviously proud to receive the policeman’s praise, and Sandén hoped that the guilt that seemed to be transferred like an epidemic from person to person in this story would leave this young chap untainted.

  ‘Now you should go home. They say you’re okay, both of you. I’ll ask someone to drive you.’

  ‘And you? Can’t you come along?’

  ‘I have to go back to the police station and make sure that guy ends up behind lock and key.’

  After a lacklustre thank you to the SWAT team, Sjöberg went over to his colleagues, who seemed to be waiting for him, all three with their hands shoved deep in their pockets. Because he could not find the words to describe what they all felt, he skipped that and went directly to the practical.

  ‘Petra and Jamal, thanks for your efforts. Take off for the weekend now and go home and rest up.’

  They both looked as if they wanted to say something, but the nod he got in response from Westman was enough for Sjöberg.

  ‘I’ll question Mikael Rydin. Jens, if you want to be there, you’re welcome. Otherwise you can take off for the weekend too.’

  ‘Of course I’m coming,’ said Sandén.