The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  At a quarter to eleven Sjöberg got a text message from Åsa: ‘Forgive me for losing my temper. Hope you’re having fun at the party. The food was excellent. Love you most in the whole world.’ Sjöberg replied with: ‘It was my fault. I’m a clumsy oaf. Coming home to you soon. xoxo.’ Eriksson announced that it was time for him to go home and Rosén also took the opportunity to excuse himself. Petra got up from the table and mumbled something about going to the toilet, which no one heard. Hamad noted, however, that she left the table just as the prosecutor left for the evening.

  She followed Rosén down the stairs, plucked up her courage and went up to him as he stood in the cloakroom, putting on his overcoat.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you, Hadar,’ she said, trying not to look nervous.

  Einar Eriksson glanced at her quickly, then resumed tying his scarf.

  ‘Now?’ said Rosén, glancing at his watch.

  Whether that was ironic or not, Petra did not know, but she nodded hopefully.

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Eriksson, starting to leave.

  They answered his goodbye and Petra proposed that they sit for a while in the bar, and Rosén agreed.

  ‘This conversation has to stay between us,’ said Petra. ‘You can do what you want with me, but I don’t want you to tell this to anyone.’

  Rosén looked at her suspiciously, and declared that he did not intend to make a decision about that until he had heard what she had to say. Petra was prepared to take that risk, and told the story of what she had been subjected to a week earlier for the second time. Rosén listened attentively without interrupting. After ten minutes, he took off his coat and placed it on his lap. After another five minutes, she was done.

  When Hamad and Bella Hansson came down the steps Petra looked up. Hamad had his hand on Hansson’s shoulder, but nonchalantly removed it when his eyes met Petra’s. He winked at her as they passed, and they left the restaurant without coats.

  ‘This is what I know,’ said Petra to Rosén. ‘This man is not just any old rapist, but a well-functioning member of society who conceals a cunning sex offender behind a prim and proper façade. He rapes women in his own home and when they wake up they believe they’ve had a one-night stand while drunk. This is what I think: he has been raping his whole adult life. I think that his daughter was the result of a rape, but he was so shrewd even then that he concealed it through marriage and, just like that, there’s no evidence. Love does not interest him – violence is his thing. A woman who gives herself to him is uninteresting. It’s the element of violence that gets him going. And what could be a better environment for rape than war? So he becomes a foreign legionnaire. Then he can ravage freely for years without anyone raising an eyebrow. After he tires of military life, he comes home and has to continue some other way. So he refines his methods. He’s a doctor besides, so he has easy access to drugs. Do you understand? He prefers unconscious women to willing ones.’

  ‘And what do you want me to do?’ asked the prosecutor, who up to that point had not said a word.

  ‘For one thing, I want you to overlook my unauthorized computer access. Let that disappear in this murder investigation. Only you and I know about it, and it won’t do any harm.’

  Rosén studied her thoughtfully over his glasses.

  ‘For another, I want you to see to it that Peder Fryhk is arrested.’

  ‘For what? We have no police report and no evidence, because you intend to keep out of it.’

  ‘For a rape in Malmö in 1997, and another in Gothenburg in 2002,’ said Petra.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I had the semen from my rape DNA tested. His DNA matches that of the perpetrator of those rapes.’

  Rosén sat silent, thinking. Through a window, Petra could see Hamad leaning forward in a way that suggested he had his palms against the wall. She concluded that Hansson was standing in between, with her back against the wall.

  ‘But if you don’t file a report, we can’t use the semen from your rape as evidence,’ the prosecutor said. ‘Besides, it’s doubtful we can build a case even if you were to file a report, since you haven’t exactly gone by the book.’

  ‘I don’t intend to file a report, and I’m aware that this DNA test won’t do as evidence. But now we know that he committed these rapes. Arrest him as a person of interest, swab him and then do a DNA comparison, according to the rules.’

  ‘On what grounds could we arrest him?’

  ‘A tip from the general public or whatever you want. Show a picture of him to the victims and let them point him out. You can solve that problem yourself.’

  ‘Why are you so afraid to file a report?’ Rosén asked.

  Petra was forced to think for a moment before she answered.

  ‘I’m a cop. I don’t want to be the subject of an investigation conducted by my colleagues. I don’t want them to know anything about this. Can you understand that?’

  Hadar Rosén nodded meditatively.

  ‘If, for some reason, he was not convicted of these crimes, I might feel threatened,’ Petra continued.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because I’m a police officer, and because he gets arrested right after I’ve been to his home.’

  ‘Does he know you’re a police officer?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I keep my police ID behind the driver’s licence in my wallet. But I’m not sure. He may have found it, if he went through my things thoroughly.’

  ‘You are aware that he will get out again in a few years? Even if he goes to jail.’

  Petra nodded.

  ‘How many years do you think he’ll get?’ she asked.

  ‘The maximum sentence is six years. He’ll be out after –’

  ‘It’s all the same,’ said Petra. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, at least we can keep an eye on him.’

  The prosecutor studied her for a while without speaking. Petra was calmer now that she’d revealed the truth, but she always felt uncomfortable when she found herself under a magnifying glass.

  ‘So, what do you say?’ she asked, unable to conceal her uncertainty.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Rosén answered. ‘God have mercy on you if you’re wrong.’

  ‘And the meeting on Monday –’ Petra began.

  ‘… we’ll have anyway,’ the prosecutor grunted. ‘But you don’t have to turn in a written report, for the time being.’

  A hint of a smile passed over his face.

  Just as the prosecutor was leaving the restaurant Hamad and Hansson came back in again. Petra joined them on the stairs and Hamad placed his hand on her shoulder and asked her to sit with him. While she was away, Sandén and Sjöberg had taken their wineglasses and moved over to the seats left empty by Eriksson and Rosén, so Petra fetched a chair and sat at the corner of the table, between Hamad and Sjöberg. Micke and Lotten were still talking tirelessly about their dogs.

  ‘What did he say?’ Hamad whispered in Petra’s ear.

  ‘Who?’ Petra whispered back.

  ‘Hadar.’

  ‘About what?’ Petra teased.

  ‘About the vendetta.’

  ‘Vendetta?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  His eyes gleamed with curiosity in the soft light.

  ‘He said I could keep my job.’

  ‘But tell me now! Don’t be so damn secretive!’

  He tousled her hair a little and made her feel like a kid.

  ‘You seem to have your hands full anyway,’ Petra replied curtly.

  ‘How many wives can you have over there?’ said Sandén in an audible tone.

  Hamad met his eyes across the table and shook his head. Petra felt a sting of irritation and looked at Sjöberg, who tried to look neutral. Bella Hansson pretended to be interested in how often you have to groom standard poodles.

  ‘Yes, one at home and then two new ones on the hook here tonight,’ Sandén went on.

  ‘Leave it alone!’ Petra
exclaimed. ‘Drop that racist talk. Pretty soon there’ll be something about camels too.’

  Sandén put his hand over his mouth and pretended to be embarrassed, and Sjöberg knew that in fact he was. He gave him a light tap on the arm with a clenched fist.

  ‘If it interests you, I’m getting a divorce,’ Hamad answered, looking seriously at Sandén.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ said Sandén. ‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’

  Petra and Sjöberg looked at Hamad in surprise.

  ‘But Jamal, why didn’t you say anything?’ Petra asked, placing her hand on his arm.

  ‘I guess it’s not the first thing you blurt out when you get to work in the morning.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘It was finalized last weekend. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. Cheers.’

  Petra’s glass was still at her old place, but Sjöberg handed her Hadar Rosén’s half-finished glass so that she too could join in the toast.

  A few minutes later Sandén had managed to get everyone at the table to laugh out loud several times, even Lotten and Micke, who could no longer make themselves heard. With Sandén as conductor, one topic of conversation followed another, and everyone at the table was drawn into the group. The mood was suddenly better than it had been the whole evening, and they did not leave the restaurant until they were politely but firmly asked to. By then, all the other guests had long since departed and it was already half past one.

  Sunday Morning

  Sjöberg discovered, to his disappointment, that the paperboy had failed to show up that morning. He had to be content with yesterday’s Aftonbladet, which he had not had time to read. He sat at the kitchen table trying to read the paper while he ate his own breakfast and helped his twin sons to swallow their little sandwiches and yogurt without too much catastrophe. The other children were sitting in front of the TV watching a rerun of last night’s children’s programme, while Åsa was in the shower. During half a minute of peace, while both boys were chewing their liverwurst sandwiches at the same time and in silence, he was able to skim an article inside the paper, which on the placards had been marketed with the headline ‘Party-Going Friend Brutally Murdered’:

  ‘A forty-four-year-old woman, Carina Ahonen Gustavsson, was found on Friday evening murdered in her home, a remote estate in the Sigtuna area. The woman was discovered at ten o’clock by her husband when he returned from a trip abroad. She had been brutally assaulted and killed with a knife. The time of the crime has not yet been established, and the police have made no statement concerning a possible perpetrator.’

  The majority of the story was taken up, however, by an interview with an old acquaintance and B-list celebrity, who told about her friendship with the murdered woman twenty years earlier.

  Christoffer put an elbow in his bowl and yogurt splashed in all directions. Jonathan laughed encouragingly at his brother, and Sjöberg gave up his attempt to read the newspaper and devoted his attention to the children instead. He felt a nagging worry taking hold in his gut, but had neither time nor energy to figure out what it was that disturbed his otherwise good Sunday mood. He finished breakfast as quickly as he could and went to shave.

  As he was standing in front of the mirror with the razor against his cheek, he noticed that his hand was still not completely steady. Once again he had woken up in the small hours, damp with sweat, heart pounding, and made his way to the bathroom to shake off the horrid dream. Or was it so horrid … ? The dream itself was not terrible per se, but that was how he experienced it. And as it went on, it had become horrid in more ways than one. Since the woman in the window had assumed Margit Olofsson’s form, he had started to doubt his reason. Good Lord, he was living with the world’s most marvellous woman, and nothing could get him to leave Åsa. No woman in the world could compete with her and he loved her with all his heart.

  But yet … the dream now felt almost erotic, and he caught himself again and again feeling a kind of longing for that dream figure. Margit. Olofsson. It was sick. She was quite nice-looking though. She had amazingly beautiful hair, that was undeniable, but she was rather heavy and much older than Åsa. She had grown-up children, even grandchildren. A charming and open manner, of course, but he had barely spoken to her. In terms of appearance, Åsa beat her by several lengths. Yet this woman aroused something inside him that he could not put his finger on. Something enticing and warm, but which still made him shudder with discomfort.

  Hamad was almost euphoric when Sjöberg called and told him about his discovery.

  ‘That’s just what we said!’ he exclaimed. ‘We knew it the whole time! How’d you figure it out?’

  ‘The dialect,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I noticed that Gun Vannerberg had the same accent as a policeman I heard being interviewed on TV the other day. About that murder in Katrineholm, you know. There was a woman who was drowned in a tub of water.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It struck me that Katrineholm was not a city that had been mentioned in the investigation in any way. On the other hand, the name Österåker had come up. I found Katrineholm on a map and there it was – Österåker! A small village, or township or whatever, about twenty miles outside Katrineholm. Ingrid Olsson lived in the small community of Österåker outside Katrineholm, not the Österåker outside Stockholm. Hans Vannerberg had her as a preschool teacher in Katrineholm, and Gun Vannerberg has now confirmed that. The reason she didn’t mention the city before was that she grew up there, so it was not a place she had moved to, but simply from. It fell between the cracks, so to speak. I went to see Pia Vannerberg too. She pointed out Hans on one of the pictures.’

  ‘Oh, hell. Have you talked with Ingrid Olsson about it?’

  ‘No, she’s been on a Finland cruise with Margit Olofsson and her family, so I haven’t been able to reach her. She’s moving back home today, so I thought we could have a chat with her now. If you feel like dragging yourself in, even though it’s Sunday?’

  ‘Of course. It will be a pleasure.’

  His colleague’s youthful enthusiasm was a relief, but Sjöberg could still not quite get rid of an irritating sense of discomfort.

  Yesterday’s fresh breeze had died down, but in return the temporary sunshine had once again disappeared behind a thick mantle of threatening clouds. Sjöberg took a detour to pick up Hamad, outside his apartment in one of the buildings on Ymsenvägen in Årsta, before they made their way to the familiar old wooden house in Gamla Enskede.

  It was Margit Olofsson who opened the door. Sjöberg was quite unprepared for this and reacted with an embarrassed smile that he felt was unbecoming. She greeted them happily and beckoned them in. Sjöberg felt that she could read him like an open book, but convinced himself that he most likely had the mental advantage. He adopted a preoccupied expression and tossed out, as though in passing, some words of praise about her concern for her former patient. Margit Olofsson sparkled back and informed them that Ingrid Olsson herself was upstairs unpacking her bag. The two policemen made their way up the narrow stairway and, to their surprise, found the elderly woman perched on a chair in the bedroom. They saw no sign of a crutch and Sjöberg drew the reassuring conclusion that Ingrid Olsson had been in good hands during her rehabilitation. They did not expect a smile, but she greeted them courteously and got down from the chair when they entered the room. They sat down on her bed and Sjöberg explained that there were a few questions they needed answers to.

  ‘For one thing,’ he said, ‘I wonder whether the Österåker where you told us you lived before you moved here is the Österåker in Södermanland, outside Katrineholm?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘Was there anything unclear about that?’

  ‘No,’ said Sjöberg, a little embarrassed, ‘I guess it was more that, as a Stockholmer, I assumed you came from the Österåker just outside the city. That was careless of me, I admit, but it’s good to get that cleared up at last.’

  ‘Does that have any significance –?’

  Sjöberg int
errupted her with yet another question.

  ‘If I’ve understood things correctly, you worked as a teacher at a preschool in Katrineholm?’

  ‘That’s right. Forest Hill was its name.’

  Sjöberg removed the envelope with photos from his jacket pocket and searched for the picture from 1968/’69.

  ‘Do you recognize anyone in this picture?’ asked Sjöberg.

  Ingrid Olsson took the photo and held it so far from her that her arms were almost straight.

  ‘No. Good Lord, this must be forty years old. Well, I recognize myself naturally, but there is no way I would recognize any of the children.’

  ‘No?’ Sjöberg asked doubtfully.

  ‘No, never.’

  She turned over the picture and confirmed her assumption about the age of the photograph.

  ‘1968. That wasn’t exactly yesterday.’

  Her eyes swept over the black-and-white picture and stopped on one of the children.

  ‘But this girl I actually do remember,’ she corrected herself, pointing at the smiling little girl with light-blonde braids and a neat dress in the upper right-hand corner. ‘I’m quite sure her name was Carina Ahonen.’

  Something clicked for Sjöberg and he tried feverishly to recall where he recognized that name from, but without success.

  ‘A real little jewel,’ Ingrid Olsson continued, and Sjöberg noticed that, for the first time, the old woman was almost showing emotion. ‘She had a very lovely singing voice, I recall, and she was so sweet and nice.’

  ‘No one else?’ Sjöberg coaxed, feeling a vague sense of unease.

  ‘No, no one else.’

  ‘This is Hans Vannerberg,’ said Sjöberg, pointing at the little boy in the middle of the picture. ‘He was the man you found murdered in your kitchen.’

  He watched her face, trying to read her reaction. Hamad too looked at her with tense expectation.