'We think he was shot there,' Björkman confirmed. He made a sweeping movement with his arm. 'After that he managed to stagger a short distance, or possibly he fell forward against the garage wall here, where he was run over for the first time.' He pointed at a number of dents in the metal siding. 'You can see where the vehicle rammed into the wall, but Bart's body was roughly here when it was found.' He waved his arm again. 'So he must have been dragged along by the car, or perhaps he got caught on the bumper. Or he crawled, calling on his last reserves of strength, but that's unlikely. It's more likely that he was already dead.'
'Then he was run over one last time,' said Tell, pointing to the area where the ground was most badly torn up.
Björkman nodded.
'That was Nilsson's hypothesis. He's one of our crime scene officers.'
Tell moved as carefully as he could over the cordoned-off area, making sure he didn't destroy any evidence as he checked the whole plot, and ended up squatting in front of the damaged garage wall. He examined the dents closely, and could just about make out a darker shade in the buckled metal.
'Is that paint from the car?'
'Presumably,' replied Björkman. 'And Olof Bart's… well, you know. It's gone for analysis.'
'We didn't find anything from the car apart from the tyre tracks,' said Tell without turning around. 'But I'm sure we'll be able to find out if it was the same one.'
He stood up with a grimace, and both felt and heard his knees crack.
'Anything else? It looks a real mess here, what with the rain and everything.'
Björkman agreed gloomily. 'Yes, it was absolutely pouring down the day before he was found.'
'Who found him?'
'A girl and a boy out for a walk. They thought they'd take a short cut. Their dog had run on ahead and must have picked up the scent…'
They set off slowly back to the car.
'We haven't found anything else,' added Björkman. 'Not so far, anyway. I'll fax everything over to you as it comes in, and you can do the same. Then we'll both get on with-'
'Door-to-door enquiries first and foremost.'
'We'll leave the organisational stuff to our bosses, don't you reckon? If it's the same killer, that is.'
Tell nodded absently. 'Can I borrow an office to go through what you've found out so far?' he asked. 'I just need to gather my thoughts.'
Björkman gave a sigh. 'You can borrow the entire place, Tell. Apart from the duty officer there's unlikely to be anybody there apart from you.'
* * *
Chapter 27
1995
Solveig Granith had downsized from a four-bedroom apartment in Rydboholm to a three-bedroom place in the centre since her daughter had made it perfectly clear she had no intention of returning home. Now she was sitting at her desk pressing her cerise silk pyjamas to her breast as the smoke from a menthol cigarette curled up towards the ceiling. Maya's train was due at the central station at 15.35. Solveig was probably not going to be able to meet her on the platform. Not today.
Earlier, after Maya had moved out but before she changed apartments, Solveig had made a habit of spending some time each day in her daughter's old room. She would just sit there on the edge of the bed for a while, perhaps looking at the posters or smoking a cigarette by the open window.
She was finding it hard to get used to the new place. There was so much less space and nowhere to put anything, but also no trace of a teenage girl - she had had to put Maya's things up in the loft. She had just one drawer in the desk containing a few drawings, a couple of well-thumbed books her daughter had loved as a child, jewellery and clothes she didn't want any more. It was rare for Solveig to unlock the drawer and leaf through the sketch pad, sniff at the dress Maya had worn for the school leavers' celebration. But it did happen. Despite the fact that there were periods when she talked to Maya on the telephone almost every day, she would catch herself thinking of her daughter as someone much loved and much missed. As if she were dead rather than simply living elsewhere.
The first time Maya announced that she was moving out, she was no more than fifteen years old. Of course she'd had neither a place to live nor any income, but she was talking about moving in with an older friend who had just got an apartment in town. The friend had told Maya she could start paying when she got a job; it didn't really matter because social security was paying the rent anyway.
Solveig's whole being had tied itself in a knot. She had wanted to hurl herself at her rebellious child and hold her fast. Instead she had swallowed hard and sat in silence in her bedroom as Maya packed her things. The Winnie the Pooh suitcase left over from childhood was the only one big enough. That night it had stood in the dark hallway, surrounded by the evil which her daughter had drawn down over her skin like a suit of armour to protect herself from Solveig's pain.
She remembered how she got up in the middle of the night before the move. How she had found the key to her daughter's room; it was still in the same place where she had kept it hidden all through Maya's childhood, just in case the door jammed. The old lock was stiff and she was afraid the noise would wake Maya. She stood there for a long time with her ear pressed to the gap between the door and the frame, so close that she could hear her daughter's steady breathing, that characteristic little whistling sound that was due to narrow nasal passages, and a pleasant sense of calm had come over her.
She had tiptoed over to the sofa. Curled up in one corner she allowed the moon to shine in between the slats of the blind, creating diagonal stripes across her turquoise dressing gown. She had experienced a feeling of liberation. The moon disappeared behind the clouds and first of all it became dark, then gradually grew lighter as dawn broke. When she heard the sound of her neighbour's alarm clock through the living-room wall, she crept back to Maya's room and unlocked the door.
Despite the fact that the next day her head was almost exploding with the monotonous noise of her tinnitus, the memory of that moon- drenched night gave Solveig a sense of control that helped her through the few lonely weeks that followed. She had convinced herself that the only reason the girl had left home was because she, her mother, had chosen to release her for a short while, to allow her to try out her fragile wings. She would come back, and Solveig would be there, her arms open wide, ready to console her. She would let Maya know that she knew. She actually did know how terrible the world was out there. Solveig had experienced its cruelty at an early stage. The difference was that she had been completely alone.
Maya would never be alone. Solveig would never let her down, she would always be there for her child. She was as firm in her resolve now as she had been in that midnight hour when her daughter first lay in her arms, smeared with blood from inside Solveig herself. The girl had seized her heart in a grip that brought her warmth and caused her pain in equal measure. For the first time she had experienced fully her value as a human being, a sense of pride in actually being someone in life: being someone's mother, if nothing else. And when the midwife had placed Maya at her breast and Solveig, exhausted after a lengthy labour, had looked down at that little red screwed-up face, the overwhelming love and inexorable demands had broken her. A doctor had to be called to give her such strong tranquillisers that Maya had to be bottle-fed for several days. A couple of years later, when Sebastian came along, Solveig was better prepared.
Sebastian was small consolation for Maya's absence. Not that there was anything wrong with him or their relationship. They were very close. But it was different with a girl, her first-born. She had always been able to see herself in Maya's face. They were so alike. Ever since Maya had lain there in her cradle, everyone had mentioned it: like carbon copies of one another.
After that first time Maya tried moving out - she was back three weeks later, the Winnie the Pooh suitcase crammed with dirty washing - mother and daughter had lived through the trauma over and over again. Each time the agony became a little easier to endure. That was how it was supposed to be, no doubt. Maya spent a few weeks l
iving in some sort of commune, then she fell out with someone and moved back home again. She met a boy with a place of his own and lived with him until the relationship broke up and she came back to Solveig in tears. She always came back, and that was probably what made it possible for Solveig to endure the constant separations. She would grit her teeth and carry on with her life and her son's life while she waited for Maya to turn up on the doorstep once more.
The evening before Maya took the train to the folk high school, they had had one of those quarrels that made the neighbours hammer on the walls. Even if Maya had tried to put right some of her worst remarks in her letters, they were still etched on Solveig's mind. That depth of humiliation could never be erased.
To be honest, the change of apartment had been made not only for practical reasons. It was true that her sickness benefit was quite meagre, but the old apartment wasn't particularly expensive, and she could have afforded to stay there at least until her son was also ready to move out. Instead it was an irrational desire for revenge that had driven Solveig to make the change as quickly as possible. Hurt to the very marrow, she had thought that if the girl found it so unbearable to live with her egocentric, sick, suffocating parasite of a mother - You're like a stinking wet blanket over my face; you stop me from breathing- then Solveig would make sure it was impossible for her to change her mind in the future. And when she came back, full of apologies and with her tail between her legs, it would be too late. She would discover that her mother was a person with feelings and a life of her own. She would see what it was like to have to stand on her own two feet.
The anger gradually cooled and the pain of the harsh words closed in on itself.
But Maya never came back home with her dirty washing. This time she had moved out for good, and when she came to the little three- room apartment with the sofa bed in the living room, it was as a guest of Solveig and Sebastian.
It wasn't too bad. In many ways most things were different after they left Rydboholm for Norrby. The monotonous buzzing in her ears fell silent, at least for a while, and this brought with it the benefit that Solveig could cut down on the sleeping tablets and the other pills she took when she felt she couldn't cope.
Sebastian was at that outgoing age - he was thirteen years old - and was starting to bring friends home. The little hallway was filled with size 10 shoes. The boys played deafening music, which distracted Solveig's attention from her feelings of abandonment. Sebastian was a teenage boy to the very tips of his fingers, in the sense that he avoided her questions and all gestures of affection.
She consoled herself with the thought that at last he was starting to make friends. He had always been so lonely. And even if he no longer had as much time for her, she was still his mother, however much he fought against it. Perhaps the most important person in his life. As an adult he would have the sense - both children would - to appreciate everything she had done for them. All the effort she had made.
'Mum?'
Solveig turned towards the door in slow motion. The adjustment from thinking she was alone to interacting with another person took such a long time. And it seemed to be getting worse as the years went by.
'Mum?'
Sebastian had already assumed That Expression, the one she disliked so much. The one that made her feel small in front of her own child. Judged. As if he thought he was privy to some kind of secret information about his mother. What gave him the right to be worried?
Solveig loathed this false concern. She had encountered it in so many different contexts. As a child in the face of the social worker, in her foster-parents' expression. As an adult in the doctors' rapid movements as they leafed through her notes. Social security, staff at the nursery, the class teacher, the parents of her children's friends, all with their head tilted to one side, when it was really about one thing: condemnation. We're worried about you, Solveig; we're wondering how you manage, which meant,We think you're completely worthless and hopeless. But she'd shown them, hadn't she? That she could manage. She had coped and she was a brilliant mother to her children: loving, committed. Always there, unlike so many of today's parents, who were so focused on their career, so self-centred.
'Mum.'
'What!'
Her tone was sharper than she had intended. I must pull myself together. Her thoughts drifted away so easily these days.
'What do you want?' she asked in a more gentle voice, but the boy's face had already shut down.
'I was just wondering if you'd bought me some cigarettes. You said you were going to, and I've promised Krille he can have some of mine.'
Everything stopped inside her head.
'We can't get them from the Greek any more. He wants to see ID.'
She examined how she felt. Couldn't go out today, no. Not today.
'I'll do it tomorrow. I'll go to the Co-op and buy a box. I need some too. And it'll be cheaper that way,' she decided.
'No! For fuck's sake, you promised! And tomorrow's no good! Tomorrow's too late! I need them for the party!'
'Party? What party?'
He sighed and rolled his eyes and his voice became supercilious.
'I told you - you never remember anything. I told you I was going to Evil tonight, with Krille. His brother's a member, and there's a party.'
'Evil?'
'Evil Riders, a bikers' club. There's a band I want to see. I told you. You just don't get it, you never listen. It's in Frufallan, that's why I told you to get petrol for the moped. Oh, let me guess - you didn't do that either?!'
'You're not going.'
'What are you talking about?'
'You're not going. Your sister's coming today and we're going to have a nice time together. I think she's been looking forward to seeing us. I don't think she's having a very easy time of it at the moment. She's arriving on the train at 15.35, and I said you'd go and meet her. You're staying at home tonight, Sebastian.'
He looked at her with a mixture of contempt and pity.
'Are you stupid, or what? It's too late now, it's all arranged.'
He didn't wait for a reply, just walked into the hallway and yanked his jacket from the hook. The door slammed behind him.
She looked at her hands, carefully examining the ring on her right hand, a broad silver ring with a green stone. The children had given it to her on her thirty-third birthday.
'Besides which, you get bad people at parties like that,' she mumbled. 'Gang members, drunkenness and fighting. No, you're not going. Over my dead body.'
* * *
Chapter 28
2006
It was that name, it triggered a confusion of unwelcome memories Seja didn't know she'd been harbouring. If anything surprised her, it was the fact that the memories hadn't chafed more over the years.
For a moment this very fact made her feel as if she were emotionally cold, and a wave of shame flooded over her at the thought of the article. Shame over those intimate hours with Christian Tell, suddenly tainted by deception. During the lonely nights when she lay half- awake it was established that the guilt was hers; she was guilty, and the jury was unanimous. Yet she carried on writing. She wrote to keep the anxiety in check and because her suppressed shame fuelled her writing.
When she woke up and considered her options in the cold light of day, she decided she couldn't have done anything. She didn't know anything, after all, couldn't put it down to anything other than a teenager's confused guilt over a tragic event. The evening at the bikers' club had probably shape-shifted thousands of times in her head. It was strange, because although it was many years since she had thought about that night, she realised that it had coloured her own transition to adulthood in many ways. Perhaps she hadn't understood that until now.
Christian had called her quarter of an hour before midnight, just as the kids down the hill started letting off fireworks. The living room was in darkness, apart from a faint red glow from the stove. She was relieved to hear his voice.
'I'll be there in ten minutes.'
>
Seja had turned down her only party invitation by pretending she was already going elsewhere. The truth was that a party at which half the guests were strangers and the other half were couples she and Martin used to spend time with was not appealing. She was also fairly sure Martin himself would be there and she didn't feel at all ready to see him.
She went out into the garden to meet Christian. They missed midnight by a quarter of an hour, for which he apologised as he hugged her, out of breath after running across the footbridge in the dark. For a dizzying second Seja dared to hope she could just stay there, with the beat of his agitated heart against her throat.
'I was invited to a party, but I decided not to go,' she said simply, assuaging his guilty conscience at having let her see in the New Year alone, waiting for him. 'It's fine, I promise. We didn't arrange anything definite, after all. But I'm glad you're here.'
He took her by the arm as she tried to move away and gazed at her with a serious expression.
'I've got it wrong so many times in the past, this business of getting a relationship to work. I mean, it's not my strong point. I know we haven't known each other very long, but…'
A tendency to feel guilty is something we have in common. When he fell silent, she didn't encourage him to go on.
She walked ahead of him into the house to switch on the lights. He outlined the reason why he had been working on New Year's Eve.
'A man has been found murdered outside Kinna. It's exactly the same pattern as the man at the car repair workshop. We suspect it's the same killer.'
He carried on talking, still a little nervous but eager, as if he were seeking her approval. Or perhaps he thought she was already involved, in a way.
Frozen Moment Page 17
