Lifetime

by Liza Marklund

  All of a sudden she was back there again, in the summer heat, in the abandoned foundry in Hälleforsnäs, the dust whirling through the air and Whiskas’s dead body in her arms. ‘“He shouldn’t have attacked my cat. He really shouldn’t have done anything to Whiskas. Do you understand?”’ Q read out.

  ‘Could I have some water?’ Annika said.

  ‘You acknowledged revenge as your motive on that occasion when you killed someone,’ he said. ‘Now you claim that you had no thoughts of revenge this time?’

  ‘There’s quite a difference between having your cat killed and being left by your husband, isn’t there?’ Annika said.

  Q studied her for several long seconds. ‘Considerably more people commit murder for the second reason,’ he said.

  Annika felt the room lurch. What’s he saying? What’s he doing?

  ‘It was Hopkins,’ Annika said. ‘Hopkins set fire to the house.’

  ‘Hopkins called the fire brigade,’ Q said.

  ‘He must have been feeling guilty.’

  Silence descended.

  ‘What?’ Annika said eventually. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Because we have no witnesses and no forensic evidence, there are no obvious grounds for suspicion and therefore I have no reason to hold you. You’re free to go.’

  Annika sat there staring at him. ‘Free to go?’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t I be free to go? What would have happened to my children if I wasn’t free to go?’

  Q seemed genuinely troubled. ‘There is an ongoing preliminary investigation into arson and possibly also attempted murder, but the prosecutor hasn’t yet made a decision about that. These are crimes that can carry a life sentence. Someone started that fire, and you were there. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Annika almost burst out laughing. ‘Are you mad? Am I a suspect? Am I the only suspect? Are you telling me that I’m officially suspected of committing these crimes? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Not officially, not at the moment. But the fire was started by someone who had a reason to start it. You’re at the top of the list of informal suspects.’

  Annika glanced out of the window. It had started to rain again.

  I’m going to apply for sole custody. I’m going to get them. My children. Not going to be looked after by someone like you. Not one second longer.

  ‘Nothing will happen until the investigating officers have received all the forensic results,’ Q went on. ‘That could take a while, I’m afraid. Then, when we know more, there’ll be three alternatives: either you will be charged or cleared of all charges. Or the case will be dropped through lack of evidence. In this third instance there would still be concerns about you, but not enough to send you for trial.’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ Annika said. ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Do you know?’ Q said, getting up. ‘Almost everyone says that.’

  Part 2

  NOVEMBER

  www.eveningpost.se

  JULIA LINDHOLM CHARGED

  WITH DOUBLE MURDER

  Prosecutor seeks life sentence

  Updated 15 November, 09.54.

  The case of the murder of Police Superintendent David Lindholm is approaching its conclusion.

  Yesterday Lindholm’s wife Julia was charged with two counts of murder and aggravated kidnapping at Stockholm City Court.

  According to Prosecutor Angela Nilsson, Julia Lindholm shot and killed her husband on the morning of 3 June this year. During the days immediately before that, she also kidnapped, murdered and hid the body of their son, Alexander, four.

  The findings of the criminal psychiatrist are partially confidential, but the published sections indicate that Julia Lindholm suffers from a psychiatric disorder. This is not severe enough, however, to suggest that she should be sentenced to a secure hospital.

  ‘Considering the brutality of the crime and the vulnerability of the victims, the only suitable sentence is life imprisonment,’ Angela Nilsson has told eveningpost.se.

  The investigation has been protracted as a result of the psychiatric examination, as well as the amount of work required from the National Forensics Laboratory.

  One source indicated that the investigating officers have been waiting for Julia Lindholm to confess where she hid Alexander’s remains.

  ‘These days it is possible to try someone for murder even if no body has been found,’ says professor of criminology Hampus Lagerbäck to eveningpost.se. ‘The Thomas Quick case proved that.’

  Julia Lindholm’s counsel, lawyer Mats Lennström, questioned the decision to go to trial.

  ‘As far as the murder of Alexander is concerned, there are no witnesses, no explanation as to what happened, no forensic evidence. I will be asking for that charge to be dropped.’

  The court case is due to start next Monday, 22 November, at 10.00 in the high-security courtroom of Stockholm City Courthouse.

  Monday, 15 November

  16

  The rain had turned into biting snow, the first of the winter. The flakes dissolved the moment they hit the tarmac, gathering in grey-brown pools.

  Nina pulled her zip up to her chin and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

  There’ll be a lot of road accidents today if this keeps up.

  She looked at her watch without taking her hand out of her pocket. Her shift wasn’t due to start until four o’clock.

  Plenty of time.

  Her teeth were chattering. It’s only the cold, nothing else.

  Bergsgatan ran uphill all the way from Scheelegatan to Kronoberg Park. The entrance to Police Headquarters lay about halfway up the hill: she shouldn’t have been out of breath already.

  The wind’s against me, and I’m probably a bit tense as well.

  She hadn’t spoken to Julia since the awful meeting in her cell. After she had been officially remanded in custody the restrictions had been watertight, but through Holger she had learned that Julia had spent almost the entire time either in psychiatric care or in the prison’s hospital wing. Not a single visit had been authorized, not for her parents or anyone else.

  ‘Are they trying to make an example of her?’ Holger had asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she had replied. ‘Maybe.’

  But now the restrictions had been lifted because the charges had been laid, the court case was imminent, and the preliminary investigation had been made public. Only the presentence psychiatric evaluation was still confidential, but Nina had seen that, thanks to Holger.

  ‘I’m here to see Julia Lindholm,’ she said in Reception, to the same guard as before. He pursed his lips and disappeared into the back office, leaving her to sweat.

  A female guard, a different one this time, led her through the remote-controlled lifts and shiny corridors to an ordinary visiting room on the sixth floor, right next to the women’s section. There were no windows, just a table, two chairs and a tinfoil ashtray.

  ‘If you wait here, we’ll be back shortly with the prisoner,’ the guard said, closing the door.

  Nina sat down on one of the chairs. The room was cold and felt damp. It smelt of smoke.

  Only cigarette smoke, nothing else.

  Grey-white walls loomed towards her. A low-energy lamp spread a weak, flickering light from the ceiling. She knitted her fingers in her lap.

  Julia has been here for five and a half months. Surely I can handle four minutes.

  The paragraph-seven investigation into Julia’s mental health had proved that she was in a very bad state after the murder. It took an extensive criminal psychiatric investigation to come up with a diagnosis. The examination had been conducted during August by the National Board of Forensic Medicine in Stockholm.

  I wonder how Holger got hold of it. Probably through the lawyer …

  The door opened, and the light from a window further down the corridor turned the figure in the doorway into a faceless shadow.

  Nina stood up.

  Julia came into the room, her eyes moist and her
hair in a ponytail. She looked older, yet simultaneously younger. No make-up, angular shoulders. ‘Nina,’ she said in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Nina looked at the prison officer, who had stopped in the doorway. ‘Thanks very much. I’ll ring when we’ve finished.’

  The woman closed and locked the door.

  ‘Julia,’ Nina said, going over and hugging her friend. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  Julia kept her arms by her sides. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘The preliminary investigation,’ Nina said, taking a step back. ‘It’s been made public so now I can visit you. How are you?’

  Julia turned round, went to the wall by the table and felt the rough surface with her fingertips. ‘This is solid concrete,’ she said. ‘Every room in the prison is a separate concrete module, making each one its own fireproof cell.’ She went on to the next wall, letting her finger trace a crack in the surface. ‘This building’s been here since 1975, but there’s been a prison in Stockholm since 1252. It must have been founded by Birger Jarl, I suppose.’

  She glanced at Nina, then concentrated on the wall again.

  ‘The whole of the Kronoberg block covers 161,000 square metres of space. The latest extension was finished in 2005.’ She turned to Nina. ‘When this is all over, I’m thinking of applying to the College of Architecture. I’m unlikely to go back to being a police officer, after all.’ She smiled fleetingly.

  Nina caught her gaze.

  Yes, she’s in there. The lights are on and she’s at home.

  She smiled back, relieved. ‘Maybe that’s just as well,’ she said. ‘Doing something different.’

  ‘But you’re still there?’ Julia sat down beside the table, picking up the tinfoil ashtray and inspecting its underside.

  ‘Yes,’ Nina said. ‘My shift starts this afternoon, handover at four. There’ll be a lot of single-vehicle RTAs if the weather doesn’t change.’

  ‘Pettersson in charge?’

  ‘Pelle Sisulu,’ Nina said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Julia shrugged. ‘It’ll be so good to get out. The flat’s still there, Dad’s been taking care of the rent …’

  Nina felt a sense of unease creeping back. ‘So you think you’ll be found not guilty?’

  Julia put down the ashtray. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘If there’s one thing we learned at Police Academy, it’s that the criminal justice system works. I understand that they’ve had to keep me locked up while the investigation was being carried out and, to be honest, I think it’s probably just as well, since she hasn’t been caught. Otherwise she’ll just come back and shoot me too.’

  Nina felt her heart sink. ‘You think they’ll let you go home after the trial?’

  Julia blinked her big blue eyes. ‘Where else would I go?’

  Nina pulled her chair closer to the table, leaned forward and took one of Julia’s hands in hers. ‘Julia,’ she said, ‘has your lawyer been to see you? Has he been through the preliminary investigation with you?’

  Julia shook her head, eyes wide.

  What a useless defence counsel! It’s a dereliction of duty for him not to have informed her about the charges.

  ‘The investigation showed that you were suffering from a dissociative identity disorder,’ Nina said. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  Julia was staring at her uncomprehendingly.

  ‘It’s also called multiple personality disorder. It’s a psychiatric condition where a person has two or more separate personalities.’

  ‘Schizophrenia?’ Julia said.

  ‘A split personality,’ Nina said. ‘It’s a form of psychotic condition, in which several different personalities can act independently of each other. It can occur when the mind is trying to deal with a trauma. If necessary, a different personality takes over.’

  ‘That’s not what happened,’ Julia said. ‘It wasn’t me. It was the other woman, the evil one.’

  Nina squeezed Julia’s hand. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘No!’ she said, pulling her hand away. ‘You don’t understand at all. She was there, and she took Alexander away with her.’

  ‘Where do you think she took him?’

  ‘How could I possibly know that? If I knew that, I would have gone and got him!’

  Nina forced herself to sound calm. ‘The blood on the hall floor,’ she said. ‘DNA tests have proved that it was Alexander’s.’

  Julia stood up and stared at her. ‘You don’t believe me?’ she said. ‘You think I hurt Alexander? That I was the one who fired those shots?’

  Nina stood up too.

  ‘I don’t think you should count on being released,’ she said. ‘The evidence is pretty solid. You were there, you were mentally unstable, your service pistol was used as the murder weapon, with your fingerprints on it …’

  Julia turned away and rang the bell to be let out of the visiting room. ‘If I’m so mentally unstable,’ she said, ‘they’ll sentence me to psychiatric care and I’ll be out in a year.’

  ‘I don’t think you can count on that either,’ Nina said. ‘The criminal psychiatric investigation suggests that you committed the crime under a temporary episode of mental confusion, but that you can still be sentenced to prison.’

  Julia gazed at her, her eyes so blue and radiant in the flickering light that Nina felt ashamed.

  ‘I’ll come and see you again,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to distance myself from you, no matter what you’ve done.’

  The door opened and Julia walked off down the corridor without looking back.

  The preliminary investigation was something of an anticlimax.

  Annika, Berit Hamrin and Patrik Nilsson were sitting at the crime desk, each reading a copy of the report, getting more and more frustrated. The newsroom was quiet at this time of the afternoon: people had finally learned that live broadcasts were going on all the time and had stopped shouting across the room at each other as they used to. All the television sets had the sound turned down and you could listen to the radio only through headphones.

  ‘How are we going to divide this up, then?’ Berit asked.

  ‘I can take Q,’ Patrik said quickly.

  Annika hadn’t spoken to the detective since July. In the back of her mind there was always a fear that he would call, or that there’d be a knock at the door and someone would say: ‘You are under formal suspicion …’ She had no idea how the investigation into the fire was going, and she didn’t want to know until it was either dropped or she was cleared.

  ‘Go ahead and call. I’ve got no problem with that,’ Annika said, trying to maintain a neutral expression.

  ‘Why would you have a problem with me talking to Q?’ Patrik wondered.

  ‘It’s a good idea for you to talk to the police,’ Berit said. ‘I can nose around the National Board of Forensic Medicine and see if I can find out anything about the psychiatric examination.’

  ‘I can talk to the defence lawyer and try to get an interview,’ Annika said.

  Patrik snorted. ‘Good luck with that,’ he said, and Annika started to get angry.

  ‘Then we’ve got the victim,’ Berit said. ‘Admittedly, we wrote a lot about David Lindholm back in the summer, but it’s probably time to update things.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Patrik said.

  Annika put her pen down.

  ‘Can I interrupt for a moment?’ All three looked up. Eva-Britt Qvist was looking at them expectantly.

  ‘Our saviour from the newspaper dragon,’ Patrik said. ‘What can we do for you today?’

  ‘There’s a general meeting tomorrow at two o’clock, at the day reporters’ desk. Everyone has to be there. It’s about all our futures.’ She swept on through the newsroom.

  ‘What are we going to do with the trial?’ Berit said, taking off her glasses and looking at her colleagues.

  ‘I’ve got the children,’ Annika said quickly. She had no desire to sit through days of judicial formalities that wouldn
’t give them anything new.

  ‘I can take the expert analysis,’ Patrik said.

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ Berit said, ‘but wasn’t Sjölander going to organize that? What do you say about news updates for the website?’

  Patrik grunted something to the effect that political editors ought to stick to politics.

  ‘If you take the summary of the news for the print edition, I can do the background and fact-boxes,’ Annika said to Berit.

  ‘Are you lot having a coffee morning or what?’ Spike said, dropping a printout on Berit’s desk.

  ‘What’s that?’ Patrik said, snatching it.

  ‘The cop-killer’s free,’ Spike said. ‘Viktor Gabrielsson’s on a plane on his way back to Arlanda. The Foreign Ministry finally managed to get him out. I never thought they would.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Patrik said, standing up, cheeks ablaze. ‘Do we know when he’s due to land?’

  The small-time Swedish gangster Viktor Gabrielsson had been an intermittently recurring story for the past ten years, sentenced on dubious evidence for being an accessory to the murder of a police officer outside New York. He had served eighteen of his fifty-year sentence, but had always fought for the right to serve his sentence in Sweden.

  ‘Goodness, what a lot of cop-killers we’re going to have in tomorrow’s paper,’ Annika said. ‘How on earth are we going to stop them getting mixed up?’

  ‘There’s a hell of a difference,’ Patrik said. ‘One case was in the US, the other in Sweden.’

  ‘The plane took off from Boston five hours ago,’ Spike said.

  ‘Okay, we’ll get going now,’ Patrik said.

  ‘What about the coverage of David Lindholm, then?’ Annika asked.

  ‘You can deal with that, can’t you?’ Patrik said, pulling on his coat as he made hand gestures towards the picture desk across the newsroom.

  Everything was quiet around them when Patrik had gone. Berit and Annika looked at each other.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Berit eventually said. ‘He’s just young and enthusiastic.’

  ‘Really?’ Annika said. ‘He’s a year older than me.’

  Berit laughed. ‘Well, maybe he just seems more childish,’ she said. ‘Do you want to take over the stuff on David?’