by Karin Nordin
Kjeld leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. ‘No one’s going to judge you, Linnea. Whatever you have to say could be helpful in finding Louisa’s killer.’
Linnea ran her fingers over the back of her neck where her hair was buzzed short. Kjeld noticed the skin was raw and wondered if this was a nervous tic of hers.
‘The first day I covered for her wasn’t planned. She didn’t show up for work at all. She called me and asked if I could work her shift for her. I asked her why and she said she wasn’t feeling well, but she sounded fine on the phone. I was annoyed because I had plans to play D&D with some friends. We’re running a big campaign right now and—’ She cut herself off and gave Kjeld a critical look. ‘You know, the game, Dungeons & Dragons.’
‘I know what D&D is.’
‘Anyway, I felt bad. Because it’s Louisa. No one ever talked about what happened to her, but we all knew. I didn’t want to seem callous so I said I’d go in for her.’ Linnea looked down and fiddled with the sleeve of her shirt around her wrist. ‘When she called me the second time the next week, I was mad. I thought she was taking advantage of me for being so easy-going the last time. I told her I didn’t believe she was sick. Especially since I knew she’d worked the day before. I said she had to give me a better excuse if she wanted me to cover for her again.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said she’d made some friends. People who were helping her work through some trauma. She said her therapy sessions weren’t working anymore and she felt like her family was suffocating her. This was the only chance she had to feel like her own person.’
‘Did she tell you who these friends were?’
Linnea shook her head. ‘No. But I think one of them came into the library a week later.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because he didn’t look like the kind of person who goes to a library.’ Linnea paused. ‘That sounds bitchy, doesn’t it? What I mean to say is that he came in, asked if Louisa was working, and left without checking out any books.’
‘You said he didn’t look like someone who goes to a library. What does that mean?’
‘He was really – what’s the word for it? Alternative? No, that’s not the right word. He looked like Eminem back in his early days. His hair was bleached blond and shaved close to his head. He had a runic tattoo on his neck like something you’d see in that Vikings television show. And he wore a hooded sweatshirt. No coat. In January.’
‘Did you hear anything he and Louisa talked about? Any names? Any places they were planning to go to?’
‘No. Like I said, I mind my own business. Gossip isn’t my thing.’ Linnea hesitated. ‘But I did see him tape a flyer to one of the lamp-posts in the car park when I was taking out the rubbish.’
‘Which one?’
‘Right outside the entrance. People do that all the time, but they’re not supposed to. The city usually takes them down when they see them. But they do it anyway.’
Kjeld walked out the front entrance of the library towards the car park. A frigid mist coated his face. The air smelled like there might be frost in the forecast. Kjeld shrugged his shoulders against the chill and tucked his hands in his pockets as he made his way to the first of two lamp-posts positioned over the southern side of the car park.
Posted to the pole were a handful of flyers, most of which had either been torn in half or were washed out from the recent rain. The only two flyers that were even remotely legible were one for a missing dog, a Pekingese, and another for what appeared to be some kind of local worship group, but half of the flyer’s information had been smeared by the rain. Kjeld took out his phone and snapped photos of both the flyers. Then he made his way around the back of the library to the grassy shortcut leading up to the bus stop. He scoured the ground for anything that might have been missed by the crime scene technicians who’d been sent to the scene, but he came up empty-handed.
Kjeld walked up the muddy slope of the small hill to the bus stop. A teenage girl sat on the bench beside the timetables, her focus buried so deep in her mobile phone that she didn’t notice him. Down the road he caught a glimpse of the bus slowing into the right lane. Kjeld tried to imagine the scene in the evening, the sky dark, the rain coming down hard. If Louisa had been late getting to the bus stop – if she’d slipped or slowed down – she wouldn’t have had a chance of being seen.
The bus rolled to a stop and the girl climbed aboard without giving Kjeld a glance. The driver shot him an impatient look, but Kjeld waved him off. Then the driver closed the doors and continued down the road.
What had happened to Louisa in those moments between locking up the library and coming into contact with her killer? Could it have been this mysterious friend Linnea mentioned? Or had she been so inattentive of her surroundings that she didn’t notice a stranger sneaking up on her?
Kjeld turned his gaze back down the shortcut. It couldn’t have shaved off more than a minute or two from the normal walking path. And that’s all it took for a young woman’s life to change. Two minutes for a predator to catch their prey.
Chapter 20
‘What’s up, Jonny! I thought you’d quit?’ The bartender stretched over the edge of the counter and held out his fist.
Jonny bumped knuckles with him, eyes darting from side to side to make sure no one was listening in. It was a ridiculous concern. DJ Trix was on the playlist and the club was a pulsing drone of bass. Jonny could barely hear himself think.
‘Yeah, well, maybe I had a change of heart,’ Jonny said, loud enough for the bartender to hear. Then he leaned in closer. ‘You seen Rask around?’
The bartender snatched two empty beer glasses from the counter and dunked them into the soapy sink. ‘He was making the rounds here earlier. Had a new girl with him. Damn, she was hot. Weird, but hot.’
‘When did you last see him?’
The bartender wiped off the counter with a wet rag. ‘About thirty minutes ago. Try the car park out back.’
‘Thanks, man.’
‘No problem. Oh, and don’t buy that glowstick shit off him. That stuff’s lethal. Especially if you’ve been on the wagon.’
Jonny nodded, bumped the bartender’s fist again, and made his way through the employee corridor of the club to the back entrance. True to his word, Rask was outside, leaning up against the exterior wall of the building in front of a small group of clubgoers. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the air was damp and Jonny wished he’d dressed more appropriately for the weather. But there’d only been one thing on his mind when he left the commune.
Relief.
Vidar Rask was a gangly man with a bald head and scraggly brown beard. His eyebrows were wild and took up most of his forehead, doubly accented by the charcoal-coloured eyeshadow that circled both above and below his buggy eyes. He dressed in an oversized tracksuit and seemed to have no shame that he looked one part white trash hustler and two parts hobgoblin. But that didn’t bother Jonny. He wasn’t interested in what Vidar looked like, only what he had.
‘Jonny, my boy!’ Vidar called out, shoving a pair of scantily clad clubgoers to the side so he could make his way to Jonny. He slapped him on the shoulder a little too hard and Jonny winced. ‘Oh, man, I’m sorry. You still got that bum arm? I keep telling people. Cage dancing ain’t for the faint-hearted.’
‘My arm is fine,’ Jonny muttered.
In the background Vidar’s girlfriend, a much younger woman with her head half shaved revealing a brightly coloured Japanese koi fish tattoo on her scalp, her face covered in more piercings than Jonny could count, chewed on a piece of gum with her mouth open. She shot Jonny a bland but slightly suspicious stare that looked cloudy in the yellow light above the back entrance.
‘So, what can I do for you, Jonny boy? I gotta say I’m a little surprised to see you. I thought you’d gotten clean and shacked yourself up with that second coming sect.’ Vidar squeezed Jonny’s shoulder, fingers digging into the meaty spot near his neck.
&nb
sp; ‘They’re not a religious cult,’ Jonny said, surprisingly defensive of the commune. Partially because it was true. They were neither a religious group nor a cult. That was just trash that the media spouted about them in order to fill their quota of bullshit stories. But Jonny thought he might have also been uncharacteristically protective of them because up until he saw Louisa’s photo online they’d really helped him. They’d shown him that it was possible to start anew. And they’d taught him how to get clean.
Now he was standing inches away from his old dealer about to make a really bad decision.
And Vidar knew it.
‘Okay, okay. Don’t get your acolyte robes in a bunch.’ Vidar released Jonny’s shoulder and a sharp-eyed smirk crept over his lips. ‘Tell me then. What is it Uncle Vidar can do for you? You’ve been out of the game for a while so maybe you want to start off with something easy. You want a few joints? I’ll give you one on the house just because you’re an old friend. Or how about some pills to help you sleep at night?’
‘I want something stronger.’
The girl with the koi tattoo glanced up inquisitively, a single brow raised unnaturally high on her forehead.
Vidar stared Jonny directly in the eyes. There was a flash of hesitation in his look, but Jonny couldn’t tell if it was from honest concern for his well-being or if Vidar was simply searching for a sign that he might be setting him up. But Vidar’s pause was fleeting, quickly replaced by a more intense stare. ‘How strong are we talking?’
‘Strong enough to make me forget.’
Chapter 21
Ingrid Nicolescu sucked on her cigarette like a swimmer coming up for air after holding their breath under water for two laps. She didn’t have a naturally stern face, but there were dark circles under her eyes and her jaw was set tight like a vice, which pulled the skin around her lips into a permanent scowl. When she exhaled the smoke filled the small living room of her cheap third-floor apartment in the centre of Biskopsgården, a short drive away from where Andrea’s body had been found. The building was one of many early Eighties prefab constructions, built quickly and affordably to accommodate the growing population of Gothenburg that was pushing the city out into the suburbs. The walls were paper-thin and Esme could hear the upstairs neighbours’ argument as clearly as if she were in the room with them.
Ingrid took another sharp drag and exhaled in Esme’s direction. Esme turned her nose away from the smoke. There were times when her keen sense of smell was more disadvantageous than it was worth.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Esme said. She sat beside Sixten on the small flower-print sofa, her hands placed politely in her lap. The sofa was actually too small for two adult people and Sixten’s thigh kept inadvertently bumping her leg as he tried to find a comfortable position in the lumpy cushions. Esme sat closer to the edge so she could keep her feet firmly planted on the shag carpet. It forced her posture to be unnaturally rigid, but at least it prevented her from sliding towards the centre of the sofa and into Sixten’s lap. Sixten, for his part, didn’t seem to notice the awkwardness of their positions. His gaze was fixed on Ingrid, the not-so-grieving widow.
Ingrid leaned forward from her tattered armchair and flicked the ash from her cigarette into an antique carnival glass bowl. The original colour was pink, but the centre of the dish was stained a rusty orange.
‘I always knew Andrea would get herself killed eventually. Granted, it was supposed to be drugs not—’ Ingrid cut herself off with a deep sigh. Esme saw a glossy shine to her eyes and realised she might have been premature in judging Ingrid. She was holding her grief in, steeling herself in front of strangers. Ingrid coughed, loosening a thick wad of phlegm in her throat that she swallowed back down.
‘Do you have any idea who may have wanted to harm your wife?’ Esme asked.
Ingrid scoffed. ‘Besides me?’ She flicked the ash from her cigarette into the carnival glass. ‘Sorry, that’s not what I meant. It’s just … She couldn’t even put the fucking dishes in the dishwasher, you know? The sink is still full of her mess.’
‘Andrea wasn’t acting oddly or out of the ordinary? Any arguments with colleagues or friends?’ Esme took out her pocket-sized notepad and jotted down a few things in her illegible scrawl.
Ingrid shook her head. ‘Andrea wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the box, if you get my meaning. She was barely keeping that job at the petrol station as it was. The only reason the owner kept her on was because she was willing to work the night shifts. They called it a management position on paper, but all she did was sell cigarettes and clean up the toilets. But it was better than letting her work days. She had a short fuse. Everything pissed her off. And she pissed off everyone else in return.’
Esme paused her note-taking to look directly at Ingrid. ‘What about her drug involvement? Was she still in that?’
‘Dealing, you mean?’ Ingrid shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. Wish she had been. Then maybe I wouldn’t have had to live in this dump.’
‘Did she ever have any dealings near Sunnerviksparken?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe? If there was good business then she might. Andrea would sling just about anything if it meant she could get high herself. She used to do some really stupid shit for a kick. That was a while ago though. Back when things were really bad. When she was on the junk. But she stopped with the hard stuff more than a year ago. Tried to get clean, for what good it did her. What is it they say? Once a junkie, always a junkie.’ Ingrid wiped the back of her hand over her eye, smearing thick clumps of mascara over her cheek.
A sudden pounding of heavy footsteps trampled overhead. Ingrid grabbed the handle of a broom that rested against the nearby wall and stabbed it into the ceiling above her. ‘Shut the fuck up!’
A high-pitched shriek yelled back at her through the ceiling. Sixten flinched. Esme couldn’t understand the erratic exchange of screams from the neighbours above, but it didn’t take much to guess that this was a normal occurrence.
Esme scribbled in her notepad. ‘What about the last few days? Did Andrea go anywhere without telling you?’
Ingrid snorted a laugh. ‘Andrea was always staying out, coming home late. The only time I’d notice is if she’d forget to leave money on the table for the rent. Just because we were married don’t mean we had each other on a short leash. I didn’t care what she got up to as long as she didn’t bring it home with her.’
Esme raised a brow. ‘You think she was seeing someone?’
‘I don’t think it much matters.’ Ingrid paused. ‘But no. She wouldn’t do that. Not after the last time. We’d been arguing, sure, but not over that. She knows I … She knew I would have left her if I caught her messing around with someone else again.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
Ingrid coughed out another puff of smoke, gaze wandering across the room before she answered. ‘Tuesday morning before I went to work. She was supposed to go to a group meeting with her therapist that afternoon. That’s a condition of her parole. I assume she went or I would have gotten a call. And then she worked last night. I know she worked because she called me from the petrol station phone to ask me to save my dinner leftovers for her. She’d eat them when she got home around breakfast time before passing out on the sofa for the rest of the day.’
‘And did she?’ Sixten asked.
‘Did she what?’
‘Eat the leftovers.’
Ingrid stared at him as though he’d just insulted her. Then she flicked another clump of ash in the bowl. ‘No, as a matter of fact she didn’t. I had them for lunch today.’
‘So, as far as you’re aware Andrea didn’t come home after her shift, which started on Tuesday and ended early Wednesday morning,’ Esme said.
‘If she did I didn’t see her.’
‘What about Andrea’s old contacts? Any reason to believe that they might have a grudge against her?’
A brief flash of fear crossed Ingrid’s face. She tried to hide it by drawing another l
ong drag on her cigarette, but her eyes deceived her, quickly breaking contact with both Esme and Sixten to look at the ground. It was always difficult to judge a person’s reaction after receiving tragic news, but despite Ingrid’s almost cruel amount of apathy towards her murdered spouse, Esme sensed that she was more broken up than she let on. And she wondered if Ingrid’s sudden aversion to look them in the eyes was more than just a desire not to show weakness in front of the police.
‘I don’t know,’ Ingrid said. ‘That was all so long ago. And who can say how long someone might hold a grudge? Andrea didn’t get along with a lot of people. And, yeah, she was involved in a pretty rough crowd when we first met. But she wasn’t one of the big fish, you know? She wasn’t worth anything to anyone dead. We argued about stupid shit all the time, but she would have told me if she had dirt on anyone. And if she thought her life was in danger she would have said something. If she wasn’t too high to forget …’
Ingrid’s brows pinched toward the centre of her forehead in the first show of real emotion since Esme and Sixten had walked through the door. She sucked on her cigarette hard, fingers trembling. And when she exhaled it was with an exasperated wheeze.
Esme relaxed her shoulders. She’d been hoping for more. For some clue as to who might have executed Andrea on her way home with seemingly no real motive.
Sixten leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘What do you remember about this rough crowd she was in?’
Ingrid smudged her cigarette into the makeshift ashtray and took another out of the pack on the side table. ‘Not much. It was a long time ago and I was high most of the time back then, too. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with bringing in merchandise from other countries. Romania, probably. Maybe that’s how she got involved? There was a guy back then she dealt with who sometimes stayed over. Couldn’t speak a word of Swedish. But I got the impression he was just a runner. Whatever they were doing, he and Andrea made good money. Enough to buy a high-end TV and computer. She even bought me some new clothes. Anyway, one day it just stopped and Andrea went back to the small-time shit. Then she got caught by an undercover narc and had to do a stint in Högsbo. That’s when she got clean. Well, mostly.’
