Box 21

by Anders Roslund

  The way he had forced those images on her, in her face.

  Lisa was beyond hating anyone. Maybe she never had, and maybe she had never loved either; she had just filed hate and love away as two words for the same emotion, assuming that if she couldn’t feel one, she couldn’t feel the other either. But that had changed: she actually hated this policeman. The past twenty-four hours had been so strange; her grief for Hilding that wasn’t really grief and, after that vague threat, her fear for the children that wasn’t really fear. It was as if, at the age of thirty-five, all her feelings had been put under a spotlight; she had to force them all back in, throw away the key, hide behind her shame and not get to know herself. She had had no idea what they looked like, these unknown emotions, so strong and naked and impossible to escape.

  And in the middle of it all that limping policeman had turned up and rubbed her face in it.

  She had seen immediately that the last picture was of Hilding lying dead on the stairs and had got up from her chair, grabbed the photograph, torn it up and thrown the pieces against the glass wall.

  She knew where she was going now, running down the corridor towards the main exit. She had a few more hours to do on her shift. For the first time in her life she couldn’t care less. She ran out on to the tarmac outside, and turned in the direction of Tanto Park, across the railway tracks and through the park, not even aware of the unleashed dogs that pursued her fleeing body, propelled by panic. She carried on running, past the Zinkensdamm housing estate, stopping only when she had crossed Horn Street and could stand in the shade of the huge Högalid Church.

  She wasn’t tired, didn’t register the sweat that trickled down over her forehead and cheeks. She stood for a while to get her breath back before walking down the slope to the house where she stayed as often as she did in her own flat.

  The door to the flat on the fifth floor of number 3 Völund Street had been replaced. The large hole in the panel was no more. There was nothing to show that just a few days earlier the police had broken in to stop an incident of gross physical violence, a naked woman lashed across the back thirty-five times.

  The two girls, still in their teens, stood behind the man who could have been their father while he unlocked the door. When they went into the flat, they saw the electronic locks on the door, but didn’t know what they were. The man closed the door and showed the girls their passports. Then he explained again that the passports had cost him. Therefore they owed him money and would have to work to pay it off. The first customers were due two hours from now.

  The girl who had started to cry downstairs was still crying; she tried to protest, until the man, who until only a few days earlier had been called Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp by two other young women, pressed the muzzle of a gun to her temple. For a brief moment she thought he would shoot.

  He told them to undress. He was going to try them out. From now on it was important that they knew what men liked.

  Lisa was feeling hot after running all the way from the hospital. She had only stopped when she could see Ylva’s house in Högalid Street.

  She hadn’t been thinking straight earlier. She was capable of love, of course she was, not for a man, but for her nephew and niece; she loved them more than she loved herself. She had put off coming here. Normally she’d pop in to see them every day, but she had lacked the strength to walk into the house and tell them that their uncle had died, that he had crashed down a stairwell the day before.

  They adored their Uncle Hilding. To them he wasn’t a hopeless junkie. They had only met the other Hilding, straight out of prison, round-cheeked and easy-going, full of a calm that had always vanished a few days later, when the world around him began to look dangerous, reminding him of the shadows he couldn’t cope with and couldn’t confront. They had never seen that awful junkie. They had never seen the change. He was only there for them for a few days at a time, and then when he changed into something else, he disappeared.

  She had to tell them, though. They must not be informed by having black-and-white police photographs pushed into their faces.

  Lisa held Ylva’s hand in hers. They had hugged each other before going to sit side by side on the sofa. Both were feeling the same way: not quite grief, more a kind of relief that they knew where he was and where he wasn’t. The sisters weren’t certain that they should feel that way, but now that they were together, it seemed easier to accept these impermissible feelings.

  Jonathan and Sanna sat in the two armchairs opposite the sofa. They had sensed that this wasn’t one of Auntie Lisa’s usual visits. Not that she had said anything yet, but as soon as she opened the front door they had started to prepare themselves for what she would say. The way she had pressed down the door handle, said hello, and walked to the small sitting room all made it obvious that this was not just an ordinary visit.

  She didn’t know how to begin. There was no need to worry.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Sanna was twelve, and still in the zone between little girl and young teenager. She looked at the two grown women she trusted implicitly and repeated her question.

  ‘What is it? I know something’s wrong.’

  Lisa leaned towards the children, reaching out to put one hand on Sanna’s knee and the other on Jonathan’s. Such a little boy, her fingertips met easily around his leg.

  ‘You’re right. Something is wrong. It’s to do with your uncle.’

  ‘Hilding has died.’

  Sanna spoke unhesitatingly, as if she had been waiting to say this.

  Lisa’s hands tightened their hold. ‘He died yesterday. In the hospital, on my ward.’

  Jonathan, only six years of life inside his small body, watched as his mum and Auntie Lisa cried. He hadn’t grasped this, not yet.

  ‘Uncle Hilding wasn’t an old person, was he? Was he so old that he had to die?’

  ‘Don’t be so silly. You don’t understand a thing. He killed himself with drugs because he was a junkie.’

  Sanna glared at her little brother, making him the target of the bad thoughts she didn’t want to have any more.

  Lisa’s hand moved to stroke Sanna’s cheek. ‘Don’t think about him like that.’

  ‘But he was.’

  ‘Don’t say these things. What happened was an accident. He died because he lost control of his wheelchair and it fell down the stairs.’

  ‘I don’t care what you say. I know he was a junkie. And I know that’s why he’s dead. You can pretend what you like, because I know anyway.’

  Jonathan listened but didn’t want to know. He got up from his armchair, crying now. His uncle wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be.

  He shouted at his sister. ‘It’s your fault!’

  He ran from the room and all the way downstairs and across the concrete flags on the courtyard, screaming all the way.

  ‘It’s your fault! You’re stupid! It’s your fault, if you say that!’

  The afternoon was fading into evening. Lars Ĺgestam was surprised to see Ewert Grens open his office door without knocking. His looks, his massive body, thinning grey hair, the straight leg that made him limp, none of that had changed.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m here now. And I’ve brought you some information.’

  ‘Information about . . .?’

  ‘The murders. That is, the investigations into the incidents at Söder Hospital, both of them.’

  He didn’t wait for Ĺgestam to offer him a seat, he simply grabbed the nearest chair and carelessly dumped a pile of papers on the floor. Then he sat down opposite the young prosecutor, whom he had mentally consigned to his large category of ‘stuck-up prats’.

  ‘First, Alena Sljusareva. The other woman from Lithuania. She is on her way home now. I have questioned her and she has got nothing to offer us. Didn’t know who Bengt Nordwall was, didn’t know where or how Grajauskas had got hold of arms and explosives. She had never heard of any kidnapping plans. I helped her to catch the ferry to Klaipeda and so forth. She needs her home and we don’t need her.’

&n
bsp; ‘You sent her home?’

  ‘Any objections?’

  ‘You should have informed me first. We should have discussed the entire matter, and if we both agreed that sending her home was reasonable, the final decision would still have been mine.’

  Ewert Grens stared at the young man with distaste. He felt the urge to shout, but refrained. He had just created a lie and presented it to the prosecutor. For once he chose to hide his anger.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘You have sent home a person who could be guilty of a serious gun crime, as well as being an accessory to the potential destruction of property and aggravated taking of hostages.’ Lars Ĺgestam shrugged.

  ‘But if this woman is on board a ferry . . . that’s it. End of story.’

  Grens fought his contempt for the young man on the other side of the desk. He couldn’t explain it properly; he always despised people who used their university education as a reference for life, who hadn’t actually lived, only pretended to experience.

  ‘Right. Next, about Jochum Lang.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Time to lock him up for good.’

  Ĺgestam pointed at the papers which Ewert Grens had dumped on the floor.

  ‘Grens, that pile is interview transcripts, one after the other. No result. He’s stonewalling. I can’t hold him for much longer.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can and you can even inform him that he is a suspect for the murder of Hilding Oldéus. We have a positive identification.’

  ‘Do you indeed? Who?’

  Lars Ĺgestam was slightly built, wore small round glasses and his short hair combed forward in a half-fringe, and, although he had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday, looked more like a little boy than ever as he leaned back in the large leather chair and listened.

  ‘A doctor in the ward where Oldéus was a patient. Woman called Lisa Öhrström. She is Oldéus’s sister.’

  Ĺgestam didn’t reply at first. He pushed his chair back and got up.

  ‘According to a report from your colleague, DI Sundkvist, an identity parade did not have the expected outcome. Not so good. Lang’s lawyer won’t leave me alone, of course. He demands that his client be released instantly, as no one has identified him.’

  ‘Listen to me. You will get your identification. I’ll bring it in tomorrow.’

  The prosecutor sat down again, dragging his chair closer to the desk, and then raised his arms in the air, as people do in films when someone points a gun at them.

  ‘Grens, I give in. Explain what you’re up to, please.’

  ‘You will get your identification tomorrow. No further explanation required.’

  Ĺgestam pondered over what he had just been told.

  He was in charge of two separate investigations into three deaths that had taken place in the space of a few hours in the same building, and in both cases Ewert Grens was the man who reported directly to him. Somehow the stories Grens had just told didn’t ring true. Too simple.

  Sljusareva had been sent home already, Lang had been identified – he should be satisfied that the superintendent running both shows insisted that everything was well in hand.

  But Ĺgestam was not reassured. Something wasn’t right, something just wasn’t right.

  ‘The media are pestering me, you know.’

  ‘Sod them.’

  ‘I’m being asked about Grajauskas’s motive. Why would a young female prostitute want to kill a policeman and then herself? In a closed room, for Christ’s sake, a mortuary? I don’t know. I need answers.’

  ‘We haven’t got the answers. The case is under investigation.’

  ‘In that case we’re back to square one. I simply don’t understand you, Grens. If the motive is still unknown, why let Sljusareva go? A woman who is possibly the only person who might know something.’

  Ewert Grens’s anger welled up, his permanent rage at these interfering prats. He was just about to raise his voice, but his burden, Bengt’s damned lie, stopped him, making him again into someone he was not, someone who looked before he jumped. He had to be cautious, just for once. Instead his voice dropped, almost to a hiss.

  ‘Look Ĺgestam, don’t treat me like you’re interrogating me.’

  ‘I’ve been reading the transcripts of the communications you had with the mortuary before the shooting started.’

  Ĺgestam pretended not to hear the threat in his voice, didn’t look at the large policeman as he searched for the right sheets of paper in the bundle on his desk. He knew where they were, somewhere in the middle. He found what he had been after. He followed a few lines with his finger and read out loud.

  ‘Grens, this is you speaking, or shouting, actually. And I quote: “This is something personal! Bengt, over! Fuck’s sake, Bengt. Stop it! Squad, move in! All clear. Repeat, move in!”’

  Ĺgestam looked up and spread his thin, suit-sleeved arms in a gesture.

  ‘End of quote.’

  The telephone on the desk between them suddenly started to ring. Both men counted the signals, seven in all, before it stopped to make space for their exchange.

  ‘Quote away. You weren’t there, were you? Sure enough, that’s how I felt at the time. That some personal issue was at stake. I still think that, but I don’t know what it was.’

  Lars Ĺgestam looked Grens in the eye for a while before turning to the window and scanning the view of the restless city. You couldn’t get your head round it all, it was too much.

  He hesitated.

  The intrusive sense that something was not right had made him formulate what could be taken as an accusation against this powerful man, and he didn’t want to say it out loud. But he should, he must.

  He turned to face Grens again.

  ‘What you’re telling me is . . . nothing. I don’t know what it is, I can’t put my finger on it, Ewert – I think that’s the first time I’ve called you that, Ewert – but what are you doing? I am aware that you’re investigating the murder of your best friend and understand that it must be hard for you, maybe too hard. I can’t help wondering if it is a good idea. Your grief . . . you’re grieving, I’m sure, it must hurt.’

  Ĺgestam took a deep breath and jumped in.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is . . . do you want to be replaced?’

  Ewert Grens rose quickly.

  ‘You sit here behind your desk with your precious documents, you ambitious little penpusher, but you’d better get this. I was investigating crimes, flesh-and-blood crimes, before your daddy got into your mummy’s knickers. And I’ve not stopped.’

  Grens half turned, pointing at the door.

  ‘Now I’m going off to do exactly that: investigate crimes, that is. Back down there, with the hard men and the whores. Unless there was something else you wanted?’

  Lars Ĺgestam shook his head and watched as the other man left.

  Then he sighed. Detective Superintendent Grens seldom failed. It was well known. He simply didn’t make silly mistakes. That was fact, regardless of what you thought about his social skills or ability to communicate.

  He trusted Ewert Grens.

  He decided to carry on trusting him.

  The evening had patiently dislodged those who spent hours of their lives commuting between their suburban homes and city-centre jobs. Stockholm Central Station was quiet now, preparing for the following morning when the commuters would be back, scurrying from one platform to the next.

  Sven Sundkvist sat on a seat in the main hall, pointlessly staring at the electronic Departures and Arrivals board. Half an hour earlier he had gone in search of the downstairs storage boxes. He knew of them, of course, lock-ups intended as a service for visitors, but mostly used by the homeless and criminals in need of somewhere to stash belongings, drugs, stolen goods, weapons.

  He had located box 21 and then stood in front of it considering what he should do. Would it not be best if he were to forget about having checked the hostages’ statements? No one else would read through them again.

  Then he could go home to Anita and Jonas.


  Nobody would give it another thought.

  Home sweet home. No more of this shit.

  As he hovered, he felt the rage come back, the pains in his stomach; it was more than just a feeling now. He remembered the talk with Krantz earlier and how certain the elderly technician had been. He had recorded the find of a used videotape with a broken safety tab.

  Now, it was nowhere.

  You’re risking thirty-three years of service in the force. I don’t understand you.

  That’s why I’m here, standing in front of a locker door in Stockholm Central Station. I have no idea what I will find, what it was Lydia Grajauskas wanted to tell us, only that it will be something I’d rather not know.

  It had taken him the best part of a quarter of an hour to persuade the woman inside the cramped left-luggage office that he really was a detective inspector with Homicide and needed her help to examine the contents of one of the boxes.

  She had kept shaking her head until he got fed up with arguing and raised his voice to emphasise that it was within his rights to order her to open the locker. When he had added a reminder that it was her duty as a citizen to assist the police, she had reluctantly contacted the station security officer, who held spare keys to the boxes.

  When Sven Sundkvist saw the green uniform in the main station entrance, he went to meet the man. He identified himself and they walked together to the lock-ups.

  In the heavy bunch of keys, number 21 was indistinguishable.

  The door opened easily and the security officer stepped aside to let Sven Sundkvist come closer. Sven peered inside the narrow dark space, divided by two shelves.

  There wasn’t much to see.

  Two dresses in a plastic bag. A photo album with black-and-white studio photographs of relatives wearing their nicest clothes and nervous smiles. A cigar box full of Swedish paper money in one- or five-hundred kronor notes. He counted quickly. Forty thousand kronor.

  The estate of Lydia Grajauskas.

  He held on to the metal door. It struck him that her life had been stored in this box, what little past she still had, as well as her stake in the future, her hope, her escape, her sense of existing somewhere other than in that flat, in a real place.