Not that Beckman was prepared to go along with the myth of the happy whore. There was all the proof in the world that the opposite was true here in this airless narrow hallway. An overwhelming smell of unwashed bodies and stale alcohol. She noticed that no one seemed willing to meet her eye, and at first she thought it must be obvious that she was a police officer, although she couldn't for the life of her work out why. The girl with the bunches said, 'You need to sign in,' just as Beckman was about to introduce herself.
For a moment she didn't know what to say. She felt a childish urge to protest at having been taken for a homeless person, but realised this would be ridiculous, not to mention offensive to those around her. Instead she discreetly showed her ID, as she had planned to do from the start. The tips of the girl's ears went bright red, but she quickly pulled herself together.
'Margareta said you were coming. If you follow me, I'll show you where she is.'
She went ahead of Beckman along a corridor which, judging by its fitted cupboards, had once been a service passageway. The girl was clearly upset by her mistake.
'This is a lovely building,' said Beckman, smoothing things over and breaking the embarrassing silence.
'It used to be two huge apartments, but they were knocked into one. We've made some alterations, but we've tried to keep the old charm.'
We, thought Beckman - she didn't look a day over twenty-five.
'Have you worked here long?'
The girl, who according to her name badge was called Sandra, stopped outside a door. A red light showed that the occupant was engaged.
'I've been here for eighteen months, since I graduated.' She made an apologetic gesture. 'So many people come here, it's impossible to recognise them all. Of course I could see straight away that you're not-'
'It's fine,' Beckman broke in. 'Have you come across Susie - Susanne Pilgren, or Jensen, while you've been here?'
. 'We've got a Susanne Jensen. She comes here one or two nights a week for a while, then she disappears. Then she comes back.'
'What's your impression of her?'
'As a person, you mean? Well… often we don't know much about the women who stay here, it's not our job to find out. That's why they choose this place - they're left in peace and nobody pries. Susie isn't much of a talker anyway: she signs in, goes to bed, then leaves early in the morning. She's never caused any trouble.'
'Is she always on her own? What's she like when she arrives?' asked Beckman.
Behind the closed door they could hear Margareta Skaner's voice increasing in volume, then falling silent, as if she was ending a call after letting the person on the other end of the line know exactly what she thought.
'Yes, she's always on her own. Are you asking if she takes something? Most of the women who stay here are users. Some places won't let them in if they're under the influence, but we don't have that rule. It wouldn't be much help to them - the most vulnerable women would be left to their own devices. So yes, she's often in a bad way, but she doesn't kick off like some of them do. Not here, anyway.'
Beckman nodded. There was still silence on the other side of the door. In spite of the red light she rapped hard with her knuckles and pushed it open.
Margareta Skaner looked up in surprise from her polished desk.
'Excuse me?'
'Karin Beckman from the police. We spoke on the telephone.'
Sandra mumbled something about going back to reception. Margareta Skaner nodded briefly in her direction.
'Of course, it was about Susanne Jensen. You've heard that she's gone off again. Sometimes the women who stay here have a kind of sixth sense when it comes to the guardians of the law. Perhaps I can be of some help?'
Just as Beckman sat down, there was a discreet knock, and Sandra's face reappeared in the doorway.
'Sorry, I just wanted to say that Susie's back. She's in the kitchen.'
'I'm going to be busy in a little while,' Margareta said quickly when she saw that Karin Beckman was getting up. 'Perhaps we could have a chat before you go to see Susanne?'
Beckman hesitated. 'I'll come back to you another day if necessary,' she decided in the end. 'I think it might be best to have a chat with Susanne straight away. As you said, the smell of the police spreads fast.'
Through the glass panel in the upper half of the door Beckman could see that the kitchen was as big as that of a restaurant. The smell of food being cooked on the hob seeped out through the door, along with the aroma of several large dishes of lasagne. A note attached to a piggy bank said that the lasagne cost ten kronor per portion. Three women were already sitting at the table, eating in silence. One of them was reading a newspaper and talking to herself in an agitated way.
'Susie's the one with short hair and the red jumper.'
Sandra took hold of Beckman's arm. 'Do you think you could be a bit… gentle? It's just that one of the good things about this place is that the women feel safe here. I don't think there are many places in town where they feel safe.'
Beckman smiled.
'I promise to be as gentle as I can.'
As soon as she introduced herself, she realised that Susanne Jensen probably didn't even know her brother was dead. She had yanked her arm away when Beckman touched her and asked her to come to another room where they could talk in private. However, Jensen had obviously wanted to avoid a scene and had accompanied Beckman to the room where she would be sleeping later.
It was a small room, furnished only with two bunk beds and a desk, but the white-painted walls and tall windows made it feel pleasant and airy. The beds were made up with starched white sheets. When Beckman saw them she felt an overwhelming desire to lie down on the bottom bunk and just sleep, without a husband or children demanding her attention. Then she was struck by her inability to feel grateful for her privileged existence, in spite of its problems. Exhaustion really did blind you to the important things in life.
Susanne Jensen sat cross-legged on the bed, staring at her socks. She didn't resemble her brother at all. At least she didn't look anything like the photograph of Olof Bart on the whiteboard in the conference room. He was dark and she was fair, although perhaps they shared the same slim build. Susanne Jensen's face was almost transparent and she had purple rings beneath her eyes, as if she'd slept badly her whole life.
'First of all I have to tell you that your brother Olof is dead,' said Beckman quietly. Instinctively, she tried to place her hand on Jensen's knee. Susanne pushed it away, then sat completely motionless, giving no indication whatsoever that she had understood what Beckman had said. 'I'm very sorry.'
For a second Beckman detected the hint of a scornful smile on the face of the woman sitting opposite.
'I imagine you might have had some bad experiences with the police in the past,' she continued, 'and you don't want to talk to me, but I just want to say that anything you choose to tell me could be important in helping us catch the person who killed your brother. I don't know how much contact you had with each other after you were placed in foster homes, but I know almost nothing about Olof s life. Perhaps you could tell me whether he had any enemies, anyone who might have wished him ill.'
She stopped speaking and waited for a reaction. It didn't come.
'Susanne?'
Jensen really did look as if she was frozen: her shoulders were hunched up by her ears, her jaws were clamped together, and her hands were clenched into fists.
Beckman pulled back. She had to respect the fact that this woman did not want to be touched.
'If I sit here for a while, perhaps you'll decide to say something,' she ventured. 'And if you can't think of anything you want to say while I'm here, then maybe you could ring me, or write to me. I'll give you my number. I'd also like you to think about whether you've ever heard the name Lars Waltz mentioned in connection with your brother. But don't worry about that too much. It's just one line of enquiry we're following.'
Karin Beckman sat opposite a silent Susanne Jensen for almost three quarters of an
hour before she got up and stretched her legs as one of them had gone to sleep.
'I'm going now.'
She gently placed her card next to Susanne Jensen. The woman turned her head and met Beckman's eyes briefly before returning her attention to her hands, which were now tightly locked around her shins. She was sitting in a kind of foetal position, and if you screwed up your eyes she looked no more than twelve years old.
Beckman wasn't screwing up her eyes, and she felt as if she was seeing Susanne Jensen more clearly than she could cope with.
'Please get in touch,' she said eventually. 'Even if you don't want to talk about your brother.'
When Beckman went through the entrance hall it was empty, and the ten lines in the signing-in book were full. She felt a weight on her chest as she let herself out on to the cobbled street winding down towards the northern part of town. A narrow strip of blue-grey sky was just visible between the silhouettes of the hundred-year-old stone buildings. At the end of the alleyway the sale signs on Femmanstorg shone out.
* * *
Chapter 43
Ann-Christine Ostergren was standing by the window of her office. Some building work was going on down around Ullevi, but he guessed that was not what was occupying her attention. It struck him that lately he had often seen her like this, deep in her own thoughts. She was twirling a strand of hair between her thumb and index finger and looked more tired than she had ever done.
She only had a couple of years to go before retirement, but this was a fact that few of her subordinates could take seriously. Ostergren as anything other than a police officer, as a pensioner, embroidering cushions in her holiday cottage? It was impossible to visualise. 'You wanted to talk to me,' he said.
She didn't seem in the least surprised when his voice broke the silence.
'Christian, thank you for coming.' She gestured to him to sit down. 'You look like a schoolboy standing outside the head teacher's office.'
Tell smiled stiffly. He felt as if he had lost every scrap of social competence. Perhaps this pretence would end here and now, if the meeting was about the issue he feared. In a way it would be good to get it all over and done with.
He sat down in one of the two easy chairs and crossed his legs. For appearance's sake he had brought with him material concerning the Jeep murders and the arson attacks on which they had been working intensively before the murder in Olofstorp took priority.
When Ostergren didn't say anything, he made a stumbling attempt to update her on the situation, but she waved his efforts away.
She took a packet of cigarettes out of a drawer in her desk, her expression a mixture of a question and pure defiance.
'Absolutely,' said Tell.
Smoking inside the building was strictly forbidden since the smoking rooms had been replaced by the healthier so-called relaxation rooms - although of course the smokers didn't find them relaxing - so the balcony was often a refuge for nicotine addicts hell-bent on breaking the rules.
Ostergren opened the balcony door a little way and pulled her chair closer to the fresh air before taking a drag with immense pleasure.
'I know I shouldn't but it's so bloody difficult to give up!'
Tell nodded. He knew all about that particular scenario. The room quickly filled up with cold air and smoke, and he thought back to the days when he would try desperately to get fresh air into his room when his mother or father knocked on the door.
He looked around discreetly. The office had been the same for as long as he could remember: the only furnishings were the desk, the easy chairs and a small round table, apart from the obligatory wall covered in bookshelves packed with files and books relating to the law. No pot plants, no personal items such as photographs of children or grandchildren. He realised he didn't even know whether Ostergren had children or grandchildren. What she would be going home to in a couple of years.
For some reason he got the idea that she too stayed at work until late in the evening, postponing the moment when she opened the door to an empty apartment which the occupant had tried to make at least habitable, if not cosy, all alone. It struck him with powerful clarity that this was exactly how he perceived his existence since he had made sure that Seja had disappeared out of his life just as quickly as she had come into it. The keenness of her absence was just as intense as his former enjoyment of the single life: the opportunity to do what he wanted whenever he wanted, the option to choose company when he felt like it and to avoid all kinds of forced social contact.
It was possible that he had felt the same way about Carina. When their relationship was still at the stage when the words lay unspoken between them and he was, typically, struggling with his fear of commitment, Carina had waited patiently. He had been in love with her - he couldn't deny that - enough to throw his fears and his cynicism overboard in the end, and to have the courage to go all the way, with an engagement ring and promises of eternal fidelity. And still it hadn't lasted. So what was to say that this relationship wouldn't end the same way, with hurt feelings and bitter accusations?
When Ostergren half-heartedly turned her head towards the open door to blow the smoke outside, he took the chance to look at her properly. She had never seemed so distant before. In fact, he had always appreciated her clarity, her presence, the energy that spread to everyone around her. Today the black polo neck that usually contrasted so elegantly with her pale skin and white hair merely highlighted the greyness of her face and the dark rings beneath her eyes. Her pale blue eyes were red-rimmed and surrounded by a network of deep wrinkles.
Tell suddenly got the strong feeling that what she wanted to tell him had nothing to do with the fact that his love life had briefly coincided with his professional life.Such self-obsession. Why had he never asked Ostergren if she was married? Why had he never even wondered about it?
He was desperate for a cigarette and regretted not bringing his own. On cue, Ostergren pushed the cigarettes over to him. 'Sorry. I was in a world of my own.' She stubbed out the cigarette even though she had smoked only half of it, and pulled a face.
Tell wondered if he ought to stub out the cigarette he had just lit.
'My doctor's name is Björnberg,' she said, leaning back in her chair. 'He's the same age as me, and both my husband and I have been seeing him for years. He said the other day that these things are killing me. Which I knew, of course. Just not that it was so close, or so literal.'
She pointed at the cigarettes.
'The fact that I've changed to these low-tar ones won't make much difference. My first thought was to change to a different doctor.'
She took off her glasses and rubbed the skin below her eyes.
'•Do you understand? He's always given me nothing but good news, so I thought he was a good doctor. I've hardly even had so much as a cold. It's been nice to have a chat in his surgery now and again. My children go to him too, so he always asks how they are. Remembers the grandchildren's names and so on. And then he comes up with this! I was furious.'
Her voice gave way and she cleared her throat.
'I thought you ought to know.'
Slowly Tell grasped what his boss was trying to tell him. Without her glasses Ostergren seemed strangely defenceless, and for a second he thought he could see fear in her eyes. It was so unaccustomed that he was glad he was sitting down. He wanted to say something to ease the situation - ask lots of questions or say there was always hope - but he thought he knew Ostergren well enough to know it was best to remain silent and wait for her to carry on. She would never mention this unless she was certain. He felt he could read between the lines: she knew when it was worth fighting, and when it was time to accept the situation.
She pointed at the glowing cigarette in his hand.
'On the subject of smoking. For the first ten years both my husband and I smoked. Then he gave up, and for the next decade he lectured me in that irritating born-again way only ex-smokers do. For the last twenty years he's just given me a resigned look every time I've gone t
o stand by the extractor fan, with just a little dig every now and again: "You know this will be the death of you one fine day, Anki." God, he's so bloody annoying. And now, on top of everything else, he's right.'
She smiled sadly.
'All the way home from the doctor's I could hear him saying, "I told you so." It was four days before I could bring myself to tell him.'
'And what did he say?' Tell was relieved to be able to shift the focus to someone else's inadequacy.
'He cried and got very angry. With me, for not telling him straight away. And because I'd had the nerve to think he would have a go at me. But above all, I think, because he had spent so much time planning what we would do when we retired at long last. At long last - that's his view, anyway.'
'And what about you?'
She shrugged her shoulders, then shook her head.
'I don't know. In one way it seems ironic. Or obvious. I've never really been able to relate to all the plans Gustav has been making for us: those trips to all the places in the world we've never visited, the interests we were going to develop. All those courses we were going to do, all that time we would suddenly have for one another. You know… Somehow I've always felt… that I wasn't really a part of it all. As if I always knew I wasn't going to get there. As if I were only pretending to be involved in order to avoid upsetting him.'
She got up and closed the balcony door without taking her eyes off Tell.
'As if I owed it to him to pretend, after making him wait all these years. My job always came first, you see. Before him. Before the children. He reached a point many years ago when he realised it wasn't worth shouting and complaining, and since then it has always been about the future. Then we'll have time. Then we'll have peace and quiet. Then we'll have a normal life. And now he finds out that then no longer exists. Only now exists. Then nothing.'
'Is it cancer?' Tell asked quietly.
Ostergren nodded. 'It's very advanced. Björnberg did talk about chemotherapy but was honest enough to admit that the chances of success are minimal.'
Frozen Moment Page 29
