Lifetime

by Liza Marklund

  They split the sweets by colour, green ones for him, pink ones for her, then shared out the white ones.

  He had just fallen asleep when she heard over the police radio that they had located Yvonne Nordin fourteen hundred metres away from the cottage, trying to change a tyre. She had shot at the patrol, which had returned fire.

  An ambulance was called to the scene, but there was no rush.

  Yvonne Nordin had been hit during the exchange of fire and was believed to have died instantly.

  Pp. 6–7

  Evening Post – National Edition

  Saturday, 4 December

  ALEXANDER’S PRISON

  Boy Held Captive for Six Months

  By Patrik Nilsson and Emil Oscarsson

  Evening Post (Garphyttan). Alexander Lindholm, four years old, was forced to spend six months living in a bare cellar two metres below ground.

  Sometimes he was allowed up into the living room to watch television, but only if the shutters on the windows were closed.

  ‘Alexander seemed to be relatively well,’ says Evening Post reporter Annika Bengtzon, who met the boy shortly after his release.

  The cottage lies deep in the forest, many kilometres from any main roads. A barrier stops traffic approaching the house.

  This is where four-year-old Alexander Lindholm was found by Örebro Police yesterday evening.

  ‘We think he’s been kept hidden in this house since he was kidnapped from his home on Södermalm on 3 June,’ a spokesman for Örebro Police said. ‘Evidence inside the house supports this theory.’

  Alexander was forced to live in a potato cellar that could only be reached via a hatch in the kitchen floor.

  ‘We found what must have been his bed down there.’

  Was there any lighting in the cellar?

  ‘Yes, it had been furnished to look like a room, with rag-rugs on the floor and a lamp in the ceiling. There were also some picture-books and comics.’

  There was a television set in the living room of the cottage, and there is evidence to suggest that Alexander was occasionally allowed to watch children’s programmes.

  ‘We found crisp crumbs and a child’s sticky fingerprints on the sofa,’ the police spokesman said.

  The police have not yet released any information about Alexander’s kidnapper, the woman who is also believed to have murdered his father.

  It is clear, however, that the woman planned the kidnapping carefully. Some of the items in the cellar were bought over a year ago, mainly in Gothenburg and Oslo.

  Evening Post reporter Annika Bengtzon was on the scene when Alexander Lindholm was released.

  ‘I don’t want to comment on his physical or mental state, but he could certainly walk and talk.’

  So he seemed to be relatively well?

  ‘Yes.’

  The miraculous discovery of Alexander’s whereabouts raises many questions about the reliability of the Swedish judicial system.

  ‘From a legal point of view, this is an extremely interesting dilemma,’ says professor of criminology Hampus Lagerbäck. ‘Here we have a case in which a person has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of someone who is still alive. It will be interesting to see how the judicial authorities wriggle their way out of this mistake.’

  Saturday, 4 December

  29

  Thomas tossed his dressing-gown on to a chair and crept back into bed beside Sophia. The sound of the cartoon was effectively shut out by the locked bedroom door. Saturday morning was still young and full of possibilities.

  Sophia was asleep. She was lying on her side with one leg pulled up and her back to him. He moved closer to her and put his knee between her thighs. She was moving a little in her sleep. He nibbled her ear lobe. Slowly he slid his hand from her stomach towards her breasts. He was still fascinated by how small they were. He carefully squeezed one nipple and her body stiffened.

  She turned to him. ‘Hello,’ she said, with a smile.

  ‘Hello,’ he whispered, kissing her neck. He let his fingers trace her spine, down to her buttocks, and pulled her to him.

  She wriggled away and sat up. ‘I need a pee …’

  She pulled on her dressing-gown, unlocked the bedroom door and went out to the bathroom.

  He lay down, staring up at the ceiling, feeling his erection subside. She was taking her time. He could never understand what on earth she did in there. Rather sullenly, he grabbed the duvet and wrapped it tightly around himself.

  He’d almost nodded off again when she came back.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, touching his hair, ‘shall we go to the museum today? I haven’t seen Rauschenberg’s Combines yet.’

  He looked up at her and smiled, then took a firm grasp of her waist. ‘Come and lie down,’ he said thickly, tipping her into the bed. ‘Now I’ve got you!’

  She struggled free, annoyed. ‘I’ve just done my hair,’ she said, sitting up again, at arm’s length from him. ‘And I asked if you wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art. You could at least answer.’

  Disappointment turned to frustration and he thumped the pillow, pushing it up against the head of the bed. ‘And all I wanted was a bit of affection,’ he said.

  ‘Affection,’ she echoed. ‘You wanted sex, admit it.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  She looked at him with her pale eyes. They were almost invisible when she wasn’t wearing make-up. ‘You can have affection without sex.’

  ‘Yes, but I like sex.’

  ‘So do I, but …’

  ‘Even though you never come.’ He’d said it without thinking.

  She reacted as if she’d been slapped, jerking and going pale. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  He felt his mouth go dry. ‘It’s not a criticism,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said, sitting quite still.

  ‘I just thought it might be more fun for you if you could have an orgasm as well. Maybe you could help yourself a bit. Or we could see if I …’

  She got up without looking at him. ‘It’s not important to me. Don’t tell me what I should feel. I’ll take responsibility for my own sexuality, and you take responsibility for yours.’

  He clenched his jaw. Me and my big mouth.

  ‘I appreciate that it’s been really tough on you,’ she said. ‘Losing your job must feel very unfair when you’d done your best …’

  He threw back the duvet and reached for his dressing-gown. Saturday morning’s possibilities had all drained away. ‘I haven’t lost my job,’ he said. ‘Where did you get that idea?’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘But you said the inquiry had been suspended.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but my contract runs until October next year. I met Halenius yesterday afternoon. I’m going to be part of an inquiry into cross-border currency transactions.’

  He studied her face. Was that a tiny hint of disappointment?

  She took off her dressing-gown and got up to choose some clothes from her wardrobe. ‘Do they know who leaked it to the press?’ she asked, over her shoulder.

  He let out a deep sigh. ‘It was probably the press secretary. The bosses just seem happy the inquiry’s been dropped. They never wanted to increase the sentencing tariffs, which would have been the inevitable conclusion.’

  ‘So you’re not out of favour, then?’

  If he hadn’t known better, he could have sworn she was disappointed now. ‘I dare say I’ll never work with Per Cramne again,’ he said, ‘but that’s something I’m more than happy to live with.’

  She turned back towards the wardrobe again. ‘Have you seen my new bra? The French one, with the silk cups?’

  He let out another sigh, silent and deep.

  Annika stepped into Detective Inspector Q’s office. Her finger ached: the wound had become infected and the district nurse had given her antibiotics. The splinter of wood in her cheek had been removed but had left a scab covered with a sizeable plaster.

  She sat d
own and met his eyes. He was wearing a seriously washed-out shirt today, but it had probably been yellow once.

  The policeman nodded towards her hand. ‘What have you done to your finger?’

  She looked at him coolly. ‘Some thugs thought I was digging too deep.’

  ‘Have you reported it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So who do you think did it?’ Q asked.

  ‘There are plenty to choose from. Yvonne Nordin’s heavies, or Filip Andersson’s, or possibly Christer Bure’s …’

  Detective Inspector Q sighed. ‘What the hell were you doing, going back up to Lybacka?’

  Annika’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is this a formal interview? Is that why I’m here? In that case I want you to stick to the rules. I want to see it in writing afterwards so I can give my consent.’

  He sighed in irritation, then got up and walked round the desk to shut the door properly. He went and stood by the window with his back to her and his arms folded. ‘You can’t just go off and pay a visit to a suspected murderer entirely alone. Don’t you get that?’

  She looked at his back. ‘I’m almost starting to think you care about me,’ she said.

  ‘I care about reporters on the evening papers,’ he said. ‘Or have done, at least some of them …’ He sounded oddly subdued, then turned and went back to his desk.

  ‘Has Julia been released yet?’ Annika asked.

  ‘The hearing took place at two o’clock this morning,’ he said, sitting down in his chair. ‘She’s at a care home for families now with Alexander. They’ll be there for a while.’

  ‘Will there be a new trial?’

  ‘Yes. Both the prosecutor and her lawyer have put in an application to the Court of Appeal, and during those proceedings Julia will be formally declared innocent. Which will mean that the judicial side of things is all finished.’

  ‘How is Alexander?’

  ‘He’s still got to have a proper medical examination, but evidently he’s performing all the functions a four-year-old should. He walks and talks and knows how to use the toilet and so on. You probably know all that better than me …’

  Annika nodded. She could feel the warmth of the little boy’s body like cotton-wool in her chest. The long wait during the night had calmed her.

  A woman from social services in Stockholm had picked him up from Örebro just after midnight, and the boy had cried and wanted to stay with Annika. She’d promised to visit him and bring more sweets.

  ‘I wonder what happens to a small child when they’re put through something like that,’ Annika wondered to herself. ‘Will he ever be normal?’

  ‘There are a couple of things I want to ask you about,’ Q said, ‘but there’s no real reason to regard this as a formal interview. Yvonne Nordin obviously won’t be charged for David’s murder or for kidnapping Alexander, so we can keep this informal. Did she shoot at you?’

  Annika swallowed and nodded. ‘Four shots. How did she die?’

  ‘One of our marksmen hit her in the chest. There’ll have to be an inquiry, but I can’t imagine that he’ll be reprimanded. The circumstances were difficult, it was dark, the middle of the forest, with all that implies in terms of visibility and complex judgements. And she did actually take aim and fire at the police, which of course she’d already done earlier.’

  Annika looked out of the window. ‘She’d got her bags packed. I wonder where she was going.’

  ‘Mexico,’ Q said. ‘She had the tickets in the car, from Gardermoen, via Madrid. With a fake passport saying that Alexander was a little girl called Maja.’

  ‘So she really was planning to drive through the forest to Norway?’

  ‘That was certainly one option.’

  Q clicked to open something on his computer. Annika picked at her bandage. ‘Do you think we’ll ever find out what really happened?’ she said. ‘With David, or the murders on Sankt Paulsgatan?’

  ‘Seeing as Yvonne Nordin is dead, Filip Andersson has decided to talk,’ Q said. ‘His lawyer has already been in touch this morning to say that they’re applying to have his case heard in the Supreme Court.’

  ‘Do you think he’s got any chance?’

  ‘There were fingerprints in Sankt Paulsgatan that could never be identified before,’ Q said. ‘They were Yvonne’s. But we have to find something else tying her to the murders. A weapon, for instance, or traces of the victims’ DNA in her car, something like that. But the decisive factor will be whether or not Filip Andersson goes through with his decision to talk. He claims it was Yvonne who framed him, that she tipped off the police and left his trousers to be dry-cleaned.’

  Annika looked at Q and tried to understand what he was saying. ‘You don’t waste any time,’ she said. ‘You’ve already spoken to Filip Andersson?’

  ‘He knows far more than we ever realized. There are connections between these people that we never had any idea about before.’

  ‘They ran a company together,’ Annika said. ‘Some investment company.’

  ‘Yes,’ Q said, ‘but their relationship was considerably closer than that. Filip Andersson and Yvonne Nordin were brother and sister. Well, half-brother and half-sister, to be more precise.’

  Annika blinked. ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘Why? Most people have brothers and sisters.’

  ‘Yes, and I knew Filip Andersson had a sister, but not that it was Yvonne Nordin. She used to visit him in Kumla once a month.’

  ‘You’ve got that wrong,’ Q said. ‘Yvonne Nordin, or Andersson as she was before she got married, didn’t get on with her brother. You don’t get someone put away for life unless you’re seriously pissed off with them.’

  ‘His sister visited him regularly. They told me so when I was there.’

  ‘What do you mean, “there”? Have you been to Kumla as well?’

  She squirmed on her chair, and tried to evade the question. ‘Why was she so angry with him?’

  ‘That’s one of the things we’re going to have to find out. But she certainly hasn’t paid any visits to Kumla, I can assure you of that. I suppose he must have another sister. When were you there?’

  ‘Earlier this week. But what about Yvonne’s relationship with David Lindholm, then? Did they have an affair?’

  ‘For several years. They ran the business together and were planning to get married as soon as they’d made enough money – or, at least, that’s what Yvonne thought.’

  ‘And she had an abortion that she never got over?’

  ‘David promised her that they’d have another child as soon as he’d divorced Julia.’

  Annika sat in silence for a few moments. ‘How does Filip know that? If they didn’t get on.’

  Q didn’t answer.

  ‘Well?’ Annika said. ‘How do you know that Yvonne went crazy because she had an abortion?’

  Q rocked back and forth on his chair a few times before replying. ‘Our colleagues in Örebro found a number of things inside the house that pointed in that direction.’

  ‘Like what? Baby clothes?’

  ‘A room.’

  ‘A room?’

  ‘There was a sign saying “Maja’s Room” on the door. All done out in pink, furniture, clothes, toys, all with the price tags still on. We haven’t had time to go through everything yet, but there are letters and diary entries and little things she’d made for the dead child.’

  ‘It wasn’t a child,’ Annika said. ‘It was a foetus, incapable of life. Perhaps it wasn’t the loss of the foetus that sent her mad but the betrayal of being dumped.’ She shook her head at her own thoughts. ‘But if you’ve already chopped three people’s hands off, you were probably pretty mad anyway.’

  ‘If it was actually her who did that,’ Q said.

  They sat in silence again. Annika could see the woman in front of her, her nondescript features, her sad eyes.

  ‘What did she say the first time you spoke to her, when you asked for directions?’ Q asked.

  Annika looked out of the
window. It was snowing again.

  ‘That she’d had the place for a year, that her partner died last Christmas, that she worked for her own company. It all fitted … She seemed so … normal. Pleasant, actually.’

  ‘Niklas Ernesto Zarco Martinez wasn’t her partner. He was a junkie who acted as the stooge in the company. He was lined up to take the rap when they went bankrupt and emptied the company of its assets. He got a syringe full of dodgy gear for Christmas last year.’

  She bit her lip.

  ‘So if Martinez was the stooge, what was David doing there?’

  Q didn’t answer.

  ‘I can understand that he ran the company with Yvonne if they were having an affair, but why was he on the board of those other companies? Do you know?’

  Q laced his fingers together and put his hands behind his head. ‘The man’s dead and it’s not him we’re investigating.’

  ‘I think David Lindholm was extremely crooked, and those companies whose boards he was on, apart from the parachute business, were all fronts for money-laundering or some other criminal shit. He was probably on the board to keep an eye open, a sort of look-out.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ the detective asked.

  Annika looked at the time. ‘I ought to go up to the paper. I still haven’t handed back the car I borrowed yesterday.’

  ‘There’s just one more thing,’ Q said. ‘We’ve had a response from England about a forensic sample we took from the fire and sent for analysis months ago, way back in the summer, actually. I think it might interest you.’

  Annika stiffened, and suddenly it was hard to breathe.

  ‘It was a brick that we found in the ruins of your house. Forensics worked out that it was used to smash the window before the firebombs were thrown in. The Brits have managed to find a fingerprint on it.’

  Her pulse was racing, and her throat was dry as dust.

  ‘And we’ve actually been able to identify it,’ he said. ‘It belonged to an old acquaintance. I assume you remember the Kitten?’

  Annika swallowed and had to cough.

  ‘Her? The hired killer from the Nobel banquet? But … why?’

  ‘We’re regarding the fire in your house as a closed case, from a police point of view. She started it.’