Box 21

by Anders Roslund

  The air felt milder now. The effect of all that rain seemed to be wearing off and summer was making another attempt. The wind had died down and he felt the sun warming him. Weather: he had never got his head round it.

  Back in his office he started his music machine and Siw’s voice came through the tinny mono speaker. Together they sang: ‘Lyckans ost’, (1968), original English version ‘Hello Mary Lou’.

  Ewert opened the folder on the investigation into the Jochum Lang case. He knew the photos would be there.

  He studied them, one at a time. Their subject was a dead person on a floor and the quality was not great. The photographs were grainy and so poorly lit the outlines had become almost blurred. Krantz and his boys were good technicians, no question, but none of them could handle a camera. He sighed, picked three halfway decent ones and put them in an envelope.

  Two telephone calls to round off the morning.

  First he rang a stressed Lisa Öhrström, who answered from somewhere in the hospital. He told her briskly that he and DI Sundkvist would come to see her soon in order to show her some more pictures. She protested, saying that she had quite enough to do without spending her time on more photos of broken body parts. Ewert replied that he looked forward to seeing her and hung up.

  His next call was to Ĺgestam, who was in his office at the State Prosecution Service. Ewert told the prosecutor that he had someone who was prepared to witness against Jochum Lang in connection with the Oldéus incident, a hospital doctor called Lisa Öhrström, who had unhesitatingly identified Lang as the perpetrator. Ĺgestam was unprepared for this and asked for further information, but Ewert interrupted him with a reassurance that there would be more to come, conclusive evidence clinching both the current cases by tomorrow morning, when they were due to meet.

  She was still singing her heart out, was old Siw. He tuned in and sang along, moving about the room with a bounce in his step. ‘Mamma är lik sin mamma’, (1968), original English version ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’.

  Not many passers-by noticed the car that had stopped in front of the door to number 3 Völund Street. It was a modest car, driven decorously. The driver was a middle-aged man, who climbed out and opened the rear door for two girls, teenagers of about sixteen or seventeen. They were both pretty and seemed curious about their surroundings.

  Could be a father with his daughters.

  The girls looked up at the building with its rows of identical windows, as if they hadn’t seen it before. Presumably they didn’t live there, so maybe they were visiting somebody.

  The driver locked the car and walked ahead to open the door. Just as he pulled at the door handle, he turned and said something which made one of the girls give a little scream and burst into tears. The other one, who seemed the stronger, put an arm round her, patted her cheek and tried to make her come with them.

  In the lobby, the man kept talking and the anxious girl kept crying.

  Any native observer would have found their language strange-sounding and incomprehensible, which meant that even if the older man had said something to the effect that they owed him now and that was why he was going to break them in and screw them until they bled, nobody would have understood it.

  Sven left the meeting room with the empty videotape in his hand. He stopped for a coffee, added plenty of milk because he needed nourishment but had to be careful. Now that he had become angry, his stomach was in constant protest.

  That video was a blank. He was convinced Grajauskas hadn’t intended it, she had planned everything so meticulously and had stage-managed every aspect of her last hours. He knew that her tape had a purpose.

  He phoned Krantz again from his office. The technician, still in the Regering Street flat, answered at once, preoccupied and cross.

  ‘What’s up with the damn tape now?’

  ‘All I want to know is – was it new?’

  ‘New?’

  ‘Had it been used?’

  ‘Yes, it had been used.’

  ‘And how do we know that?’

  ‘I can’t speak for you lot, but I know because when I checked there was dust inside. Another thing I know is that the safety tab had been broken off. Which is what you do if you want to make sure the recorded stuff won’t be wiped.’

  Sven inspected the video under the desk lamp. It was so new it shone, not one grain of dust in sight. The safety tab was intact. He spoke again.

  ‘Krantz, I’m coming to see you.’

  ‘Later, I don’t have time now.’

  ‘I want you to look at this videotape again. Krantz, it’s important. Something’s not right.’

  Lars Ĺgestam didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Grens had announced that he was going to provide conclusive data about the deaths of both Lydia Grajauskas and Bengt Nordwall – as well as Hilding Oldéus – and about Alena Sljusareva and Jochum Lang; about two simultaneous catastrophes linked by time and place. Almost a year had passed since he last worked with Ewert Grens. That too had been a strange business, a trial of a father who had shot his daughter’s killer. At the time, Ĺgestam had been the youngest prosecutor in the state service, keen to land a major case and was then almost crushed when the big one landed in his lap. He had been picked to be in charge of the interrogation, which formally meant that he outranked DSI Grens, a man he had heard much about and admired from a distance and whom he now would work with and against.

  They were meant to work together, but their collaboration had been a disaster.

  Grens seemed to have decided from the outset that mutuality simply wasn’t on his agenda and, collaboration or not, he couldn’t be bothered even to be civil.

  Now Ĺgestam had a choice, and he decided to laugh, which was the easier option. Fate would have it that he was to work with Grens again, on not one, but two investigations in connection with the events at Söder Hospital. And the argument was – this was when he laughed rather than cried – that they had worked together the last time Grens had a big case; the powers-that-be had kept an eye on it and noticed that the teamwork gave good results.

  Teamwork? My ass.

  Ĺgestam’s thin body shook as he laughed. He pulled off his jacket, sat back with his shiny black shoes on the desk, tugged at his nicely cut blond hair and laughed until tears came to his eyes at the thought of Grens, the teammate from hell.

  The sky above Regering Street should have been summer blue. Sven stared at it and it stared back, grey and dull and mean-looking. Soon it would rain again. He had been standing there for a while. He knew that he should get back to the office, but was uncertain whether he could take any more. Back in the office he would have to continue the work he had started, work that was pushing him to the breaking point.

  Nils Krantz, stressed and irritable at being interrupted in the middle of a crime scene examination, had glanced at the videotape for a few seconds, no more, then he handed it back, saying that this was not the tape he had found and analysed in the mortuary. Sven knew that already, but hadn’t been able to stop hoping that he was wrong, as one does when all is not as it should be.

  Still, now he knew for certain. Or, rather, he knew nothing whatsoever.

  The Ewert Grens he knew and looked up to wouldn’t dream of interfering with evidence.

  The Ewert Grens he knew was an awkward bastard, but a straight and honest bastard.

  What he had done now was different, something else altogether.

  The dull sky was still glaring down at him when his mobile rang. Ewert. Sven sighed, uncertain if he could deal with him now. No, he couldn’t. Not yet.

  He listened to the voice message instead. They were going to drive over to Söder Hospital and show Lisa Öhrström a few more of Ewert’s photographs. Sven was to wait where he was; Ewert would pick him up soon.

  It was difficult to look at Ewert, and Sven avoided all eye contact with his boss. He would do it later, he knew that, when the time was right, but not now. He settled gratefully in the passenger seat, where he could keep his gaze fixed on the anonymous car a few metres ahead in the slow-m
oving rush-hour mess on Skepp Bridge and up the slope up towards Slussen and Södermalm.

  He wondered about the woman they were going to see. He was still feeling upset about the failure of the identity parade. Öhrström’s reneging on her previous statement had turned the whole thing into a fiasco. Members of her family had been threatened and he understood how terrified she was, but there had been something else as well, something more than fear. She was also riddled with shame, the shame he had tried to explain to Ewert earlier. This had become obvious during their first interview, when she had told him that she grieved over the loss of her little brother but was disgusted with Hilding for being an addict and angry with him for indirectly being the cause of his own death.

  She hadn’t been able to prevent it and that was what made her feel ashamed and gave her another reason, in addition to the threats, for not recognising Lang behind that one-way window. Sven felt sure that she was one of those people who agonised about being inadequate, always tried to help, but never felt they had done enough. Hilding was probably the reason she had chosen to study medicine; she was family and therefore believed that she had to save and help and save and help.

  And now he was dead, despite all her help.

  She might never be rid of her shame now. She would have to live with it for ever.

  When they walked into the ward, she was sitting in the ward sister’s glazed cubicle. Her face was pale; the look in her eyes was weary. Grief and fear and hatred can each corrode your strength; together they consume your whole life. She didn’t greet them when they stepped inside the glass box, only looked at them and radiated something close to loathing.

  Ewert ignored her manner – or possibly didn’t notice it – he just reminded her briefly of their previous conversation. She didn’t seem to care. It wasn’t easy to read whether her indifference was pretence, or whether she simply couldn’t bear to listen to what he was saying.

  Ewert asked her to turn around. He had brought more photos.

  It took some time before she stopped studying something on the wall, before she looked at the black-and-white photograph on the table in front of her.

  ‘What do you see here?’

  ‘I still have no idea what you’re trying to prove with this game.’

  ‘I’m just curious. What do you see?’

  She stared at Grens for a while, then she turned her head.

  She glanced at the photo, noting that it was printed on unusual, slightly rough paper.

  ‘I see a fractured elbow. Left arm.’

  ‘Thirty thousand kronor.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Remember the pictures I faxed to you? I’m sure you do. Three broken fingers; that is, one thumb at five thousand and two fingers at a thousand each. I told you that Lang operates with fixed charges, and also that he usually signs off a job by breaking a few fingers. Then I said that the poor sod had owed seven thousand kronor. That wasn’t quite true. In fact he had been in debt to the tune of thirty-seven thousand. It meant the elbow had to go as well. Losing an arm is worth thirty thousand, you see.’

  Sven was sitting a little to one side, behind Ewert. He felt bad, ashamed. Ewert, you’re trampling all over her, he thought. I know what you want and I agree we need her as a witness, but not this, you’re going too far.

  ‘I have another picture. What would you say this is?’

  The photograph showed a naked man on a stretcher. The whole body was in the frame and the picture had been taken from the side, in poor light as before, but it was easy to see what it was all about.

  ‘You seem to have nothing to say. Let me help. This is a dead man. The arm you have been looking at is part of his body. Look! There are the fingers. You see, I told another fib. This guy didn’t just owe thirty-seven thousand kronor, his debt amounted to one hundred and thirty-seven thousand. Lang charges one hundred thousand for a killing. This man’s bad debt has been cleared. He has paid. One hundred and thirty-seven thousand in all.’

  Lisa Öhrström clenched her jaw. She didn’t speak, didn’t move, pressed her lips tightly together to stop herself from screaming. Sven watched her, then looked at Ewert. You’re getting there. You’re close. But, Ewert, your tactics are out of order. You are hurting her and will soon do it again. I’ll put up with it, despite feeling ashamed, ashamed of you, ashamed because of what you’re doing, though I have to accept that you’re the most skilful operator I’ve ever met in the force. You need her to testify and you will make her do it. But what about the other investigation? I should be helping you here, should be happy that you’ll soon have her where you want her, but, Ewert, Ewert, how are you dealing with the Grajauskas case? What underhand tricks are you playing? I’ve just been to see Krantz, which is why I can’t concentrate on what is going on here, can’t even bear to look you in the eye. Which is also why I’d like to lie down on this table and shout until you listen. Krantz told me what I already knew. There’s another videotape, another video, Ewert!

  Ewert sat back and waited for Öhrström to cave in. Let her take her time.

  ‘Come to think of it, I’ve got another set of pictures for you here.’

  Lisa whispered. Her voice was too weak. ‘You make your point very clearly.’

  ‘Good. Excellent. You’ll find the new set even more interesting.’

  ‘I don’t want to see them. And . . . there’s something I don’t understand. If what you tell me is true, if this is what Lang does and the sums you mentioned are his fixed charges, as you say, why hasn’t he been locked away long ago?’

  ‘Why? You should know. You have been threatened, haven’t you? You know all you need to know about how Lang operates.’

  That man who had come to the ward kitchen and had got hold of her photos of Sanna and Jonathan. She felt it again, the ache in her chest, the trembling that wouldn’t stop.

  Ewert put another envelope on the table, opened it and pulled out the first photograph. A different hand. Five fractures this time. You didn’t need to be a qualified doctor to see that all the fingers had been crushed.

  She was silent. He didn’t taunt her, only placed another picture next to the hand. A cracked kneecap, very clear too.

  ‘It’s a little like a jigsaw, isn’t it? A knee here, a hand there. It’s fair to assume they belong together. They do, but this time the motive had nothing to do with money. This time it was respect.’

  Ewert held both pictures in front of her face.

  ‘This time the message was that you must never spike Yugoslav amphetamine with prison-issue washing powder.’

  Still holding the two images in front of her face, Ewert took a third one from the envelope and held it even closer.

  It had been taken by someone standing in a staircase, a few steps up, positioning the camera at head-height and pointing the lens at a recently dead man. An overturned wheelchair lay next to him. The blood that had flowed from the man’s head had formed a pool around him.

  She realised what the picture was and quickly turned her head away. She was crying.

  ‘And that is what this guy had done. He had messed around with a big dealer’s product. His name, by the way, was Hilding Oldéus.’

  Sven had made up his mind during the car journey back from the hospital. He would keep a low profile for now and say nothing; he would not leave the police building until he had located the videotape.

  Back at his desk, he picked up the pile of transcribed interrogations from the floor and started to leaf through them. He knew he had seen it somewhere.

  He would read all of them again. Slowly. It was in there and he mustn’t miss it.

  It didn’t take long, just about a quarter of an hour.

  He had started with the statement made by the female medical student. The interview session had been brief, presumably she was weak and in shock. It would be a while before she had digested it all. Next he read the older man’s statement. The interview with Dr Ejder had taken longer and been more like a conversation. Ejder had controlled his fear by using his logic. As long as he was rational, he could avoid getting ove
r-emotional. Sven had come across the need to suppress fear many times before and noted different ways of keeping panic at bay. Ejder’s self-control and intellectual approach also made him an exceptional witness. He was one of those people who spoke in images detailed enough to make the listener feel that they had been there. In this case, sitting at Ejder’s side, tied up and powerless, on the mortuary floor.

  Somewhere in the middle of this statement Sven found what he had been looking for. The doctor had been questioned about the plastic carrier bag where Lydia had kept her weapons. Suddenly, he described a videotape.

  Sven followed the lines with his finger, reading one word at a time.

  Ejder had seen the black tape when Lydia Grajauskas had pushed the sides of the bag down to take out the Semtex. It was at an early stage, when Ejder thought he should try to talk to her, win her confidence. At least it might help to calm the others. He had asked about the video, and after first refusing to answer, she had then decided to explain in her limited English.

  She had said that the video was truth. He had asked her which truth, but she simply repeated the word. Truth. Truth. Truth. She had been silent while she concentrated on shaping the plastic dough, then she turned to him again.

  Two tapes.

  In box station train.

  Twenty-one.

  She had demonstrated the number by showing him first two fingers, then one.

  Twenty-one.

  Gustaf Ejder insisted that he recalled every single word, in the right order. She had said very little, with such effort, that it was easy to remember.

  The truth. Two tapes. In box station train. Twenty-one. Sven read the passage once more. In a railway station. In box 21.

  He was convinced now. There was another video in storage locker number twenty-one, almost certainly at the Central Station.

  That tape would also have the safety tab removed and the video would contain images, not just a flickering greyness.

  He put the pile of documents back on the floor and got up. He would be there soon.