The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  She tore loose the foil from the bottle, unscrewed the lid and poured a generous dash. Then she brought the glass to her lips and took a deep gulp of the sweet wine. The strong liquid warmed her chest and clouds of steam came out of her mouth when she exhaled.

  ‘Cheers to us, Miss Ingrid,’ said Katarina. ‘And cheers to all of you, Hans, Ann-Kristin, Lise-Lott and Carina.’

  She turned her eyes to the starless evening sky and raised her glass.

  Monday Evening

  When the lawyer finally arrived, Sjöberg led him determinedly through the corridors to where the man was being held, brought back from jail to the interview room. Two black eyes had begun to appear and his nose was swollen. Sjöberg knew what had happened, but did not comment on it.

  After Sjöberg summarized the situation for the newly hired lawyer, the interview resumed, and this time Sandén and Sjöberg were even more aggressive in their attitude towards the suspect.

  ‘We know you did it,’ Sjöberg opened, his eyes dark with conviction and in a threatening voice that was more likely down to his own worry regarding the results of the fingerprint analysis than to any aversion to the accused.

  ‘We have your footprints in the garden, and in a trial that will probably be enough for a conviction,’ Sandén lied, but the lawyer was alert.

  ‘And the fingerprints?’ he asked. ‘Is the analysis of the fingerprints done?’

  ‘The fingerprints appear to belong to someone else,’ Sjöberg admitted. ‘But we have a witness that confirms that the accused was seen outside Ingrid Olsson’s house together with another man at the time of the murder of Hans Vannerberg. We assume you had an accomplice,’ Sjöberg continued, now speaking directly to Thomas. ‘I know you despised Hans Vannerberg. You hated him with all your heart and you wanted nothing more than for him to die. Do you deny that?’

  Thomas exchanged a hasty glance with the lawyer, who nodded to indicate he should answer the policeman’s questions. He looked Sjöberg right in the eyes and Sjöberg thought, to his surprise, that he seemed completely sincere when he answered.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m capable of such strong feelings. Hans Vannerberg did bad things to me, but I don’t want anyone to die. I want people to see me, but at the same time I do everything not to be seen. No one has seen me since I was a kid, and then they saw me because I was so ugly, so different. I don’t want to be seen that way, so I make myself invisible. I saw Hans Vannerberg, but I didn’t want him to see me. I followed him to see what things are like for a really happy person. I didn’t want to kill Hans Vannerberg. I wanted to be Hans Vannerberg.’

  Sjöberg was astounded by the sudden profusion of words, but Sandén did not let himself be taken by surprise.

  ‘And yet you killed him just the same!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I did not kill him, I just followed him. But there may be others he treated the same way as me, who have maybe turned out different from me.’

  ‘How, for example?’ Sandén continued, in the same aggressive tone.

  Thomas sat quietly for a few moments and then answered thoughtfully. ‘I think if you have a more aggressive disposition and are subjected to the same treatment as I was while you’re growing up, maybe the humiliation is expressed differently when you are an adult from how it is for me.’

  ‘What kind of treatment and humiliation are we talking about here?’ asked Sandén.

  ‘Hans Vannerberg was a bully,’ Thomas answered calmly. ‘He was a mean kid and truly sadistic. What he subjected me to during that year in preschool was pure torture. In his case, it was mostly a matter of physical abuse. He hit me almost every day and encouraged the other kids to do the same. He was tough, strong and good-looking. It was no problem for him to get the other kids to go along with him in just about anything. They tied me up to a lamp-post and threw rocks at me, spat on me and banged my head against the post. They tore my clothes, smeared dog poo on my face, hid my shoes so I had to go home barefoot in the winter, locked me in the caretaker’s room, made fun of me, laughed at me, stole other kids’ things and put them in my pockets, shoved me, tripped me, hit me. And the teacher did nothing. She pretended she didn’t see. If you’re strong, you swallow it and go on through life with your self-confidence intact. If you’re weak, you become lonely and afraid. I think there may also be a third way. You can go beyond what’s normal, beyond what’s healthy, and create a separate image of the world for yourself. An image you don’t share with anyone else.’

  Sjöberg could not help being moved by the strange man’s story. He could picture one of his own children, six-year-old Sara, sitting tied up to a lamp-post with a mob around her. He presumed that he would have taken matters into his own hands and fought back, but what would Sara have done if no one saw and no one knew? Sandén sat silent, and Sjöberg assumed that similar thoughts were going through his mind too.

  ‘And which route did you take, Thomas?’ Sjöberg asked finally.

  ‘Unfortunately, I’m the weak type,’ Thomas answered.

  ‘You don’t give a particularly weak impression when you’re telling us this.’

  ‘I’ve never told anyone this before. Maybe I should have a long time ago, but I’ve never had anyone to talk to. This is my story, and I’ve carried it with me my whole life. It feels good to tell it to someone.’

  Thomas looked at the two policemen and at the lawyer, and suddenly felt embarrassed when he realized that he had exposed himself to strangers. Certainly they looked at him with the same expression as everyone else: contempt. He sensed the colour rise in his face again, and he bowed his head in shame so they wouldn’t see him.

  But Sjöberg saw him. He saw a small, scared and lonely person who, for a few minutes, had cracked open his soul, and he did not intend to let it shut again. He felt both warm and completely ice-cold inside at the same time, and he suddenly recalled that they were supposed to be pursuing a serial killer. What if the blushing man with the injured face sitting before him, his shoulders hunched as a shield against the hard eyes and harsh words surrounding him, was really telling the truth? What if there was another person who had experienced the same terrors as him, suffered the same torments as him, but who had reacted differently? Could it be that something, despite the time that had passed, had brought the same memories to life in two different people with similar experiences from a preschool long ago? The same memories, but different emotions. Could it really be that way?

  Sjöberg felt instinctively that the man was telling the truth. At the same time, experience and the footprints in Ingrid Olsson’s garden spoke volumes. Could this be just a strange coincidence? The fingerprints were undeniably not Thomas Karlsson’s, and it struck him that, in reality, this was what spoke volumes.

  Suddenly something Thomas Karlsson had said several hours earlier popped up in his memory: ‘I was afraid that something would happen to her.’ And what was it Lennart Josefsson, Ingrid Olsson’s neighbour, had said? Something about a strange woman going in the old lady’s gate.

  Sjöberg leaped up from his chair, which fell backwards and landed with a crash on the floor. The three other men stared at him in surprise, but there was no time for explanations now.

  ‘Make sure he’s taken back to the jail, then come up to my office, and do it fast!’

  Sjöberg shouted the order to Sandén as he rushed out of the interview room. Sandén had no time to reflect on the situation – instead he phoned reception and asked Lotten to send a constable to the interview room immediately. The constable was there in less than a minute, and Sandén ordered her to take Thomas Karlsson back to the jail, after which he, too, ran up the stairs to the corridor where his and his immediate associates’ offices were located. There was Sjöberg, handing out instructions to Eriksson and Hamad, and ordering them to take their service pistols along.

  Less than five minutes later the four police officers were in a car on their way across the Skanstull Bridge with the sirens on. Sjöberg had also requested reinforcements, so other cars wer
e en route in the same direction. Hamad was driving the unmarked car, with Sjöberg next to him, and Eriksson and Sandén in the back seat.

  ‘What actually happened during the questioning?’ asked Hamad.

  ‘He said, right from the start, that he was worried about Ingrid Olsson,’ Sjöberg answered doggedly. ‘But we didn’t believe him. Then he consistently denied all the accusations, and even though Lennart Josefsson called to say that he had seen a strange woman go into Ingrid Olsson’s house, we took no action. This may cost us dearly.’

  ‘But it must be him,’ said Hamad. ‘Of course it’s him!’

  ‘It may be, but my gut instinct tells me that Thomas Karlsson is telling the truth. We can’t afford to take any chances anyway, and we should have thought of this before. Now it may be too late.’

  ‘But why is he after Ingrid Olsson?’ Hamad continued, still not really clear about what was going on.

  ‘She,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I think it’s a she. And that Ingrid Olsson has committed a deadly sin.’

  * * *

  Hadar Rosén’s office was within walking distance of the police station, although it was on the other side of the Hammarby canal. Petra Westman drove there, however, intending to head home when the meeting was over.

  Basically, she thought very highly of Rosén. He was an intelligent man who, despite being ultimately responsible for many of the investigations they worked on, never got on his high horse. At their meetings he mostly listened and let Sjöberg pull the strings. In an exceptional case he might have a diverging opinion, but they always came to an agreement in the end. However, he was a man with great authority, which in most other cases did not scare her. But Hadar Rosén, with his tall, always serious appearance, made her feel like a little schoolgirl. Not many people had that effect on Petra Westman, and she did not like it. Especially not now, when her future was in his hands. It was with a strong feeling of unease that she knocked on the prosecutor’s door.

  ‘Yes!’ he grunted from within, and Petra did not know whether that meant she should identify herself or just go in.

  After some hesitation, she chose the latter. He was pecking at his computer without looking up, and Petra convinced herself that the natural thing for her to do in this situation was to sit down in one of the visitor’s chairs and patiently wait until the prosecutor finished what he was doing.

  When at last he caught her eye, his expression revealed nothing. He stood up, came around to her side of the desk and looked down at her for a few moments without saying anything. She had never felt so small in her entire life. Finally, he spoke.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon Peder Fryhk was arrested, on suspicion of the rape of a twenty-three-year-old woman in Malmö in 1997 and a thirty-eight-year-old woman in Gothenburg in 2002.’

  Petra’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘The detention hearing will take place on Wednesday and we’ll be able to raise the degree of suspicion to probable grounds. DNA samples from Fryhk have been compared with those found in connection with the two rapes and shown to match.’

  Petra let out a sigh of relief. The prosecutor continued in the same factual tone of voice.

  ‘Searching Fryhk’s house, the police found a large number of video recordings of other rapes. It has been determined that these rapes took place in his own home.’

  Petra gasped for breath.

  ‘Out of concern for you, I insisted on being allowed to go through the evidence personally before the police. You do not figure in any of these videos. The implications of that you can decide for yourself.’

  Before she could say anything, the mobile in her trouser pocket rang.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said as she stood up from the chair.

  She took out the mobile and looked at the display: ‘Blocked Number.’

  ‘I have to take this, in case it’s Sjöberg.’

  The prosecutor nodded and studied her attentively while the conversation was going on. It was not Sjöberg calling. It was forensic technician Håkan Carlberg.

  ‘I got the idea that, to be on the safe side, I should also do a DNA analysis of the contents of the other condom,’ he said in a tone that was not what she had expected. ‘I’m sorry, Petra, but it was not Peder Fryhk’s. And this time we have no match with DNA from any previous crime.’

  Petra ended the call and met Rosén’s gaze. Whether he had heard what was being said on the other end Petra did not know, but she thought she detected a worried frown. Thoughts were rushing through her mind and she felt completely dizzy.

  Neither of them could say anything before the phone rang again. This time it was Sjöberg, and he ordered Petra Westman to immediately make her way to Åkerbärsvägen 31 in Enskede.

  * * *

  Suddenly she started. Were those sirens she heard somewhere far off? Very, very faint, but still … ? Her reaction was both unnecessary and stupid, she knew, but you could never be too careful. No one knew she was here, no one knew that Ingrid Olsson was being held prisoner in her own home. The phone had not rung all day, and Miss Ingrid seemed to have no relatives or friends, as she had noted during the days she had sneaked around outside the house, studying the old woman and her doings. That discovery had given her the courage to ring the doorbell, the courage to ask Miss Ingrid if she wanted to be her friend. But then it was too late. The old teacher was suddenly gone and everything was turned upside down.

  The house stood empty for weeks before she dared lure Hans there. She had planned to take them in the order she thought they deserved it. Now it turned out that Miss Ingrid was the worst of all. It could be no other way. She had been a grown-up, responsible for all of them, and yet she had stood on the sidelines and watched as the children crushed her, took her childhood from her, her life, everything. Besides, she was now also ignoring Katarina’s cries for help. So Miss Ingrid had been added to the list. She was last, and that was perfect considering the new insight Katarina had. Now she could really draw the whole thing out and make use of all the skills she had acquired in the course of her journey.

  Were the sirens coming closer? Now they definitely fell silent. Maybe she had only imagined them. To be certain, she put the cork back in the bottle and set the glass down on the bench. Then she slipped over to the tall hedge that marked the boundary with the neighbour further down the street. The hedge was dense, but there was a space between the branches close to the ground where she could get through if necessary.

  She hid by the hedge for a good while before she relaxed. She was just about to return to the bench and the bottle of port wine when she thought she heard something. She held her breath for several seconds, on full alert, trying to locate the source of the sound. It was not a car engine and not human voices either – or maybe that’s exactly what it was? Was someone whispering? The sound came closer, and at last she was sure that she was hearing whispering voices and stealthy steps on the asphalt in the street. They were heading in her direction and thoughts buzzed in her mind. What were they doing out there? Did the police know what was going on in the house, and in that case, how in the world had they found out?

  Whatever. They would find out from Ingrid Olsson who she was, but they would never catch her. She would have to leave Miss Ingrid to her fate, but she’d given the old preschool teacher some real food for thought anyway, and that was good enough. Seeing that she had a sizeable head start, Katarina squeezed through the obstinate hedge and out on to the lawn of the neighbouring garden, and was swallowed up by the darkness.

  Hamad’s car, which was first in the group of squad cars headed to Ingrid Olsson’s house in Enskede, turned up on to the pavement after the exit from Nynäsvägen, and stopped with the engine and blue lights on. Within a few minutes the rest had caught up and were rolling into the residential area in convoy. They stopped at the main road through the area, just south of Åkerbärsvägen, and parked in a long row along the curb. The police were getting out of their cars just as Westman arrived in hers. They all gathered in a wide circle around Sjöberg,
who quickly relayed his orders. Then, as a unit, they rushed towards number 31.

  As they approached the neighbouring house, they slowed down to take the final stretch over to the gate as soundlessly as possible. Ingrid Olsson’s garden was silent and deserted. There were lights on in some of the windows, but there was no activity in the house visible from the street. One by one the police officers jumped nimbly over the tall gate and down on to the grass by the side of the gravel path. Sjöberg gave low-voiced commands as the police formed into groups that slipped around to each end of the house to try to see what was going on inside.

  The foundation of the house reached a good bit above the ground, which made it difficult to see in through the windows, but Hamad hoisted Westman up to look in across the living room. She couldn’t see any movement in the room, but suddenly she caught sight of a pair of feet at the far end of the brown three-seater couch. It was impossible to make out to whom they belonged, but she hissed at one of the police officers on his way back from behind the house to report her observation to Sjöberg. At the same moment Hamad caught sight of the half-empty glass and the bottle of port wine on the little bench.

  Nothing else of interest had been seen in the house, except the feet on the couch. Sjöberg stepped up on to the porch and carefully knocked on the door. At the same moment Westman noted from her position outside the living room window that the feet jerked at the unexpected sound, and for a fraction of a second she thought she saw that they were bound together. Then they vanished into the couch again, and now almost nothing could be seen of the still figure. Hamad let go of his colleague. Westman landed with a light thud on the damp grass and ran around the house back to the porch.