She became serious once again.
'It wasn't my place to have an opinion, of course, but to be honest I didn't think much of that woman, the caretaker I mean. She was… strange in some way. I thought that right from the start. Not just because she had those… tendencies. She…'
Greta Larsson hesitated.
'What is it, fru Larsson?'
'I don't like to pass on gossip, but it's so long ago now, and if you say it's important to your investigation, then…'
'What, fru Larsson? What's important to our investigation?'
'I think she'd been in some kind of mental hospital before she came to the school. You see, I was the permanent secretary to the admissions team and I think there was some feeling that the school ought to take some kind of social responsibility. The charter was formulated mainly during the 6os. I can tell you that opinion was divided as to whether so-called diversity created a positive study environment or not. In my view… well, I don't suppose that's relevant any longer. Anyway, there was a testimonial with her application, from a psychiatrist. Of course I had no reason to read it, so I didn't, but I assume it said it would help her recovery if she could spend some time in a peaceful environment out in the country. I remember it clearly because of course she became an employee of the school later on. We were almost colleagues in a way. It felt a bit… odd. But on the other hand, this business of psychological problems doesn't seem to be such a big thing any more. These days people decide they have mental health problems at the drop of a hat. It's not like in my day, when there were only three categories: those who were as fit as a fiddle, those with aches and pains, and then the lunatics.'
'Do you remember her name?'
'Of course I do! Caroline Selander. I hope you haven't misunderstood me - she might not have done anything wrong - but I don't think I was the only member of staff who felt she was a bit unpleasant. Eventually she resigned and disappeared. That would have been around the time you mentioned - 95, perhaps.'
Gonzales was furiously taking notes.
'Fru Larsson, this is very interesting. I'd like to contact you again, if I may. I'd also like you to think about whether there's anyone else that I could contact, just to supplement the information you've given me.'
'There are a couple of people I could put you in touch with. But I don't think their memories are as good as mine. I was the spider at the centre of the web, you see. I saw and heard most things.'
She laughed again.
'Before we finish, I wonder if you could describe this caretaker to me?'
'Yes, of course. She was tall and powerfully built, a bit masculine if you ask me. Tattooed like a sailor, and not just on her arms. She had a snake crawling up her neck, as black as a leech it was - horrible. Short hair, far too short for a woman, but I suppose that goes with the territory. And she wore quite masculine clothes, even in her spare time. She often wore dungarees. Er… and I think she had a big nose.'
'OK, thank you, fru Larsson. You've been a great help.' He hung up. 'You really have been a great help,' he murmured to himself.
The phone rang, the display showing his home number. He could just picture his mother, smarting from his brusque snub, pressing 'Redial' and waiting to give him an earful.
He let it ring.
* * *
Chapter 62
As a child she had visited her aunt in Borås. Apart from those family gatherings, Seja had set foot in the town only once, when she had gone to see a band she quite liked with an untrustworthy boyfriend and a couple of other boys at a frightening bikers' club.
That was typical of what she did in those days; her teenage years were spent with people she didn't necessarily like, going to parties and pubs where she didn't enjoy herself. Listening to music she sometimes didn't even understand, just because that's what you were supposed to do, then listening to different music in secret. Giving boys what they wanted because she was grateful that they wanted her.
She tried looking at it differently. What an achievement to have finally learned to say no to things you don't really want to do. No thank you to boring parties with tedious self-obsessed people. No thank you to the perpetual competition to see who owned the most, who could be the coolest, who was the most loved.
If she really had achieved that state of mind.
She was forced to concentrate on her driving for a while. Navigating through strange towns wasn't one of her strong points, and when she finally turned into the right street, it was more a matter of luck than good map reading. She put money in the meter for an hour - she shouldn't need any longer than that.
Seja hesitated before getting out of her car, and allowed herself one final moment of reflection.
She knew there had to be a reason why she had stood outside the bikers' club twelve years before, just as the first snowflakes were beginning to fall. Why she had had a funny feeling in her stomach as she watched Maya leave. Why fate had decreed that she should be one of the first people to see the dead body outside Thomas Edell's workshop.
She had no firm plan. Christian had accused her of having a hidden agenda when she embarked on the relationship with him. She felt unsure now. Had she had an agenda that was hidden from herself as well? Was their relationship - the dizzying rush of happiness she had experienced, the intense sense of loss she now felt - yet another sign? Just one of the many signs that had led her to the same decision: she was going to deal with this story and make it comprehensible. And she was going to do that by writing. The only way she could do it was by writing.
Maya had died. Not only because she had been hunted down like a fox, but because no one had come to help her. She could have survived if someone had got there in time, before she lost too much blood.
That's why Seja felt so guilty: because of the disrespect she had shown to Maya. She had been too weak to act on her feelings or to talk to the police about it. The world had shown Maya nothing but contempt by letting the three men who had robbed her of her life remain at liberty. Until now; the murderer had seen to that. The murderer had not been able to tolerate that disrespect. In a way, Seja could understand the person who had taken justice into their own hands. A feeling of envy, irrational and primitive, fuelled the curiosity that had driven her to come here. She was jealous of Maya, who was loved so much that someone had killed in her name. Jealous of the murderer who had chosen to do something with their rage, rather than allowing it to eat away their soul.
She was going to write to get some justice for Maya, thus atoning for some of her guilt. She wanted to write an in-depth crime report. She was a journalist - well, a trainee journalist - but she would write this story from her own perspective, as a participant in the drama. As a member of the cast, albeit with a walk-on role.
She had no idea how to go about it, but in order to portray Maya as she had been in life, she needed to talk to those who had been close to her. She would start with the family, her mother. Then perhaps she could track down Caroline, the woman who had been the love of her life.
John Svensson, the friend of Hanna's friend Bjorn, had known Maya only in passing when they were growing up in Borås. It wasn't until they both ended up at the same school that they had become friends, close friends, or 'as close as Caroline allowed them to be'. That was how he had put it. He had talked for a long time about Maya and Caroline. Their love was quite something, he had said.
Standing outside the door of the apartment, Seja took a deep breath. She could still change her mind. She could call Christian, suppress the bitterness she had felt when they parted and make a fresh attempt to get him to sit down and listen. Instead she knocked on the door. It was opened immediately. The skinny woman must have seen her through the spyhole and been waiting for her to knock. This put Seja on edge straight away, and her apology sounded confused even to her own ears.
She said she wanted to talk about Maya. She had been more of a passing acquaintance than a close friend, but she would like some help in clarifying one or two things that had happene
d.
'I can imagine you must have many questions too. I won't give you false hope - I don't know much - but I… I was thinking of writing something about Maya, about what happened. Because I knew her. And because I thought somebody ought to do it. Anyway… I just wanted to talk a bit. About Maya.'
She stopped. The woman stood there motionless. She might have been listening intently to every word that came from Seja's lips, carefully interpreting the slightest twitch in every muscle of her face, but her gaze seemed fixed on a distant point, as if she was in a world of her own.
'I hope I'm not opening up old wounds, turning up like this,' Seja said hesitantly when she got no reaction. 'May I come in for a while?'
That seemed to penetrate. The woman disappeared into the apartment, obviously expecting Seja to follow her.
Alone in the hallway she slowly undid her boots. She looked around and realised the woman didn't live alone. There were two pairs of men's shoes on a rack, as well as several pairs of women's shoes far too large for her. On the hall stand hung a red coat that would come down to the feet of someone even as tall as Seja.
There was the scent of smoke, and something that reminded her of cut flowers that had gone off - a rotting smell. Suddenly fear hit her like a well-aimed kick to the small of her back. She had just bitterly reproached herself for ignoring an instinctive feeling in her stomach at an important point in her life, and it was impossible to miss the physical signals now, yet she continued into the gloom of the apartment. It was a typical 70s layout, with all the rooms off the central passageway. Since all the doors were closed, the light in the passageway was dim.
Solveig Granith had sat down in an armchair by the window in the living room. The room took the idea of clutter to a new level. After some hesitation, Seja pushed her way through to a two-seat sofa and sat down opposite her. Solveig turned her face to the window, despite the fact that the curtains were closed. They let in only a thin strip of light which fell across her skinny thighs, over Seja's stockinged feet and out across the parquet floor. The shards of a broken ornament lay scattered in the shadow of the armchair.
'You say you knew Maya?' said the woman in a monotone.
'I knew her a bit,' Seja replied. 'We met occasionally, said hi if we bumped into each other. We liked each other. I mean, I liked her and I think she liked me. We were quite similar, I think.'
The woman turned slowly to Seja. Something was beginning to move in those grey-flecked eyes.
'You liked her?' she said. Her lower lip began to quiver uncontrollably as the tears welled up in her eyes.
Oh my God, thought Seja. She's still a wreck after all these years. She hasn't got over her daughter's death. And even if it was only natural not to emerge from such an experience with your life intact, something told Seja that she had an explosive wreck of a person in front of her. All suppressed bitterness and grief. How much hatred could a human body contain, she wondered, without collapsing like a house of cards? Particularly such a frail body; this woman couldn't weigh more than forty kilos.
Suddenly everything fell into place for Seja: This woman was so still, so detached because she was afraid of falling to pieces! There was so much unresolved hatred inside her that she was afraid she'd burst if she opened up the slightest crack and let what was inside her escape. And she knew something. She knew.
Seja now understood the reason for her visit: despite the bad feeling she had, she was going to find out the truth. She could feel the adrenalin pumping through her body as she leaned over and took Solveig Granith's hand.
'Yes, I liked her very much. It was difficult not to like her. She seemed to be an honest person.'
Solveig jerked as Seja touched her, but didn't pull her hand away. She closed her eyes and allowed the tears to pour down her cheeks, soaking her stained sweater.
They sat like that for a while, with only background noise. Music from somewhere in the building. A neighbour throwing a bag of glass bottles down the rubbish chute in the stairwell. The neighbour's door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock.
A while later Solveig Granith dried her tears with her sleeve. Without a word she got to her feet unsteadily and went into the kitchen, where she started clattering about with the coffee machine.
'Is it OK if I record our conversation? I'll just get my tape recorder.'
Seja regretted the words as soon as they came out, afraid that her pushiness might destroy the fragile bridge she had temporarily built between them. But Solveig merely mumbled that it was fine, and yes, she was welcome to make notes too.
In the hallway Seja's jacket lay where she had left it on the arm of a chair, with the recorder in the pocket.
The rotting smell seemed to have grown stronger. She looked around for the source, but found nothing apart from a paper bag pushed underneath a low table in front of the mirror. Dirty clothes protruded from the top of the bag, the edge of a padded jacket, stained brown. With blood? Seja pulled herself together; the woman was a nervous wreck, but she wanted to talk.
She could hear Solveig returning to the living room. As soon as Seja appeared, she started talking. When she talked about Maya, her earlier restraint disappeared, as if the thought of forgetting her daughter was what terrified her, and the only way to guarantee Maya a place in her memory was to keep going over old ground.
Setting the tape running, Seja quickly lost herself in Solveig's story. Sometimes she felt as if Solveig was talking about her, as if she had been watching Seja ever since she was born, although there were few similarities between Seja's own mother and the woman sitting in the armchair opposite.
It was amazing that this woman, who was obviously not of sound mind, had the ability to paint such a detailed and accurate portrait of her daughter. Idealised, certainly, but then that's how we choose to treat the dead. Suddenly Seja had the conviction that Solveig Granith had got to know her daughter after her death, as an attempt to work through her grief.
T heard from… another friend of Maya that she had met someone, someone she lived with for a couple of years before she… passed away. Someone she was really serious about. I thought perhaps you might have met her, that you might be able to tell me something about her. I'm interested in her because…' Seja sighed. 'I'll be honest with you…'
The words just flowed; she was temporarily unable to control them. Her fears went to the back of her mind. She was far too interested in Solveig's reactions.
'I've been talking to someone who went to the same school as Maya. He knew her fairly well, and the woman Maya was with, Caroline Selander, he said she loved Maya so much that she seemed to want to own her.'
Solveig Granith's eyes darted across the room. Seja assumed she wasn't comfortable with the fact that her daughter had had a lesbian relationship - perhaps this knowledge sullied the perfect image. But perhaps there was another reason.
Seja suddenly remembered the long coat hanging in the hallway. She swallowed. There was no going back.
'I was just thinking, if this woman was so important to Maya, and Maya was so important to her, maybe there's a chance I could talk to her?' Then she added apologetically, 'For my story.'
Solveig was now extremely worked up: her eyes had narrowed to slits and she was hugging herself. Seja didn't dare to speculate on the cause of Solveig's sudden agitation.
'Perhaps I'd better go,' she said, trying to sound calm even though her heart was pounding.
'No, stay!' said Solveig sharply. 'I'll ask her.' The thin fingers grasping Seja's wrist were cold and possessed an unexpected strength. 'I'll call her right now.'
'Call her?'
'Of course you can talk to Caroline.'
Solveig Granith's tone of voice had changed: she was speaking gently and reassuringly. My God, she's completely crazy.
Seja didn't dare say no but she really wanted to get out of the apartment. She knew she was too high up to escape through the window. Hopefully the telephone was in the kitchen, so she would be able to sneak into the hallway and gr
ab her shoes when Solveig went to make the call.The bag in the hallway, the jacket. Blood.
But Solveig had no intention of releasing her wrist.
'Come with me and I'll ring her now. You might be able to speak to her yourself. Or at least to arrange a time.'
Seja nodded, her mouth as dry as sandpaper. She had to think clearly. She was taller and younger than this woman, although insanity might make Solveig the stronger one.
The best thing is to keep calm, to keep Solveig Granith calm. Try to talk your way out of the situation.
Like a mother who has lost patience with an obstinate child, Solveig now pushed Seja in front of her, further into the darkness of the apartment.
Seja's mind was whirling. She tried to turn around to make eye contact with Solveig. Her voice became shrill.
'I mean, I've got her name. I can ring her from home. I… it's fine…'
They passed the kitchen, where an old-fashioned telephone sat on the table. Seja was just about to make a serious protest, push past Solveig and run out of the apartment, when she yanked open the door to what seemed to be a dressing room.
Seja had no time to react to the darkness before a sharp knee in the small of her back made her fall forward on to something at once hard and soft. Arrows of pain shot up her spine. She managed to turn her head just enough to see the silhouette of another person, just behind Solveig, blocking the light from the hallway. Then she felt a blow to her head, and everything went black.
Frozen Moment Page 42
