Box 21

by Anders Roslund

  Sven Sundkvist put the things he had found into his briefcase.

  Then he reached up to the top shelf and took down a video with a label on the back in Cyrillic script.

  She had run after him, across the courtyard, through the hallway and out on to Högalid Street. He stopped there, barefoot and tearful. She loved him and hugged him close and carried him home in her arms, saying his name over and over again. He was Jonathan, her nephew, and what she felt for him must surely be what you feel for your own child.

  Lisa Öhrström stroked his hair; she had to go soon. It was late and dark, as dark as it could be a few weeks before midsummer; darkness was gently edging into what had been daylight until now. She kissed his cheek. Sanna had already gone to bed. Ylva was there and she met her sister’s eyes before closing the door behind her.

  There were so few of them left. Their father was gone, and now Hilding. She had seen it coming, of course, and now there it was, the enveloping loneliness.

  She decided to walk. She had been there before and knew the way, across Väster Bridge, along Norr Mälarstrand, then through side streets to the City Police building. It would take half an hour or so, not long on a summer’s night. She knew that he usually worked late, he had said so, and he was that sort, one of those who didn’t have anything else. He would sit hunched over the investigation that had to be completed, just as the week before there had been an investigation to complete and next week would bring another one to serve as a reason for not leaving the office.

  She phoned to tell him that she was coming. He replied quickly, sounded as if he was expecting her, possibly even certain that she would come.

  He met her at the main entrance and led the way along a dark, stale-smelling corridor, his uneven steps slapping and resounding against the walls. Christ, how grim it was. How strange that anyone should choose to work in surroundings like these. She looked at him from behind, broad and overweight, a bald patch on the back of his head, his limping, slightly bent body. How odd that he should seem strong, but he did; at least in this shabby place he radiated the kind of strength that gives a sense of security, the result of having made a choice. Which was what he had done, he had actually chosen to work in this place.

  Ewert Grens ushered her into his office and offered her a seat in his visitor’s chair. She looked around and thought it a bleak room. The only things with a personality setting them apart from the dull, mass-produced office furniture were an ancient monster of a ghetto-blaster and a sofa, ugly and sagging, which she felt sure he often slept on.

  ‘Coffee?’

  He didn’t really mean it, but knew that he should ask.

  ‘No thank you. I’m not here to drink coffee.’

  ‘I guessed not. Anyway.’

  He raised a plastic cup half full of what looked like black coffee from a machine and drank the lot.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised. To see me.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. But I am pleased.’

  Lisa Öhrström realised that what had come over her, what was tugging at her mind, was tiredness. She had been so tense. Now she relaxed as much as she dared to and the recent past weighed heavily on her.

  ‘I don’t want to see any more of your photographs. I don’t want any more images of people I don’t know and never want to know thrust in my face. I’ve had enough. I’ll testify. I will identify Lang as the man who came to see my brother yesterday.’

  Lisa Öhrström put her elbows on the desk, leaning forward with her chin on her clasped hands. So very tired. Home soon.

  ‘But there’s one thing I want you to know. It wasn’t only the threats that made me hold back. Quite a long time ago I decided that I would never again allow Hilding and his addiction to influence how I lived. This last year, I haven’t been there for him any more, but it didn’t make any difference. I still couldn’t escape him. Now that he’s dead, he still drains me of strength, perhaps more than ever. So I might as well testify.’

  Ewert Grens tried to keep the smile from his face. This was it, obviously.

  Anni, this is it.

  Closure.

  ‘Nobody is blaming you.’

  ‘I don’t need your pity.’

  ‘Your choice, but that’s how it is. Nobody blames you because you didn’t know what to do.’

  Grens went over to root among his audiotapes, found what he wanted and put it into the player. Siw Malmkvist. She was sure it would be.

  ‘One thing more. Who threatened you?’

  Siw Malmkvist. She had just taken the hardest decision in her life and he was listening to Siw Malmkvist.

  ‘That’s not important. I will stand witness. But on one condition.’

  Lisa Öhrström stayed where she was, chin resting on her hands. She was leaning forward, getting closer to him.

  ‘My nephew and niece. I want them to have protection.’

  ‘They already have protection.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They have been under protection ever since the identity parade. I know, for instance, that you went to see them today. One of the kids ran outside without his shoes on. And they will continue to be protected, of course.’

  Fatigue paralysed her. She yawned without even trying to hide it.

  ‘I must get home now.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to drive you. In a plain car.’

  ‘Please, to Högalid Street. To Jonathan and Sanna. They’ll be asleep.’

  ‘I suggest that we step up the level of protection and put someone inside the flat as well. Do you agree?’

  Evening had really come.

  Darkness. Silence, as if the whole big building were empty.

  She looked at the policeman and his tape recorder; he was humming along, knew the jolly tune and the meaningless text by heart.

  He sang under his breath and she felt sorry for him.

  FRIDAY 7 JUNE

  He had never liked the dark.

  Winter darkness that lasted for an eternity had been part of his childhood in Kiruna, well to the north of the Arctic Circle, and police college in Stockholm had meant a series of night shifts, but he couldn’t resign himself to the dark, couldn’t get used to it. To him, the dark would never be beautiful.

  He was standing in the sitting room, looking out through the window at the dense forest. The June night lay as deep under the trees as summer darkness ever can be. Sven Sundkvist had got home a little after ten o’clock with the video in his briefcase. First he had gone to see the sleeping Jonas, kissed the boy’s forehead and stood for a while listening to his quiet breathing. Anita had been in the kitchen doing a crossword. He managed to squeeze in next to her on the chair, and after an hour or so, only three squares in three different corners were empty. Typical, just a few letters short of posting the completed crossword to the local paper in the hope of winning one of three Premium Bonds.

  Afterwards they made love. She had undressed him first and then herself; she wanted him to sit on the kitchen chair and she settled in his lap, their naked bodies so close, needing each other.

  He had waited until she had gone to sleep. It was after midnight when he got out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. He carried his briefcase into the sitting room.

  He thought it better to be alone when he watched the video.

  Alone with the overwhelming feeling of unease.

  What Anita and Jonas didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

  The dark outside. Staring into it he could just make out some of the trees.

  He checked his watch. Ten past one. He had spent an hour looking at nothing in particular. He couldn’t put it off any more.

  She had told Ejder about two videotapes.

  She had made a copy. Just in case. Someone might wipe one of the tapes, or record on top of her film, or simply try to lose the whole thing and replace it with an empty cassette.

  Sven Sundkvist could not be sure that what he was watching was identical to the recording on the other tape.

  He assumed that
it was.

  They look nervous, the way people do when they are not used to staring at the single eye that preserves what it looks at for posterity.

  Grajauskas speaks first.

  Two sentences. She turns to Sljusareva, who translates.

  ‘This is my reason. This is my story.’

  Grajauskas speaks again, two sentences, with her eyes fixed on her friend.

  Her face has a serious expression. She nods and again Sjusareva turns to the camera and translates.

  ‘When you hear this, I hope that the man I am going to talk about is dead. I hope that he has felt my shame.’

  They speak very distinctly, careful to enunciate every word in both Russian and Swedish.

  He leaned forward and stopped the tape.

  He didn’t want to go on.

  What he felt was no longer unease or dread, rather an overwhelming anger of a kind he only rarely had to confront. No more doubt. He had hoped, as everyone always does. But now he knew, he knew that Ewert had manipulated the tape and had a motive for doing it.

  Sven Sundkvist got up, went into the kitchen and put on the coffee machine, a strong brew to help him think. It would be a long night.

  The crossword was still lying on the kitchen table. He moved it to make room for a sheet from Jonas’s drawing pad, picked up one of the boy’s marker pens, a purple one, and drew lines, haphazard at first, on the white surface.

  A man.

  An older man. Massive torso, not much hair, piercing eyes.

  Ewert.

  He smiled at himself when he realised. He had in fact drawn Ewert in purple marker ink.

  He knew why, of course. A long night was staring him in the face.

  He had known Ewert for nearly ten years. To begin with he had been ordered about and shouted at – they all had – but at some point he had suddenly become aware of something like friendship with his difficult boss and had become one of the few who were addressed normally, men whom Ewert invited into his office and confided in, as much as he ever did. Later Sven had come to know Ewert Grens well enough to realise how little he understood him. He had never been to Ewert’s flat, and you couldn’t really know people whose homes you’d never seen. On the other hand, Ewert had been here, for supper or just for a cup of coffee, and had sat at this very table flanked by Anita and Jonas.

  Sven had invited Ewert to his home, a place where he could be himself. Ewert had never reciprocated.

  He looked at the drawing and started to fill in the purple man’s jacket and shoes with more purple. He knew nothing about the private person. He knew the policeman, DSI Grens, who was first in the office every morning, long before everyone else, played Siw Malmkvist songs with the volume turned up, worked all day and all night, often stayed overnight in his office to carry on with an unfinished investigation when dawn broke. He was the best policeman Sven had ever encountered, incapable of making simple errors and always prepared to pursue every case to its conclusion, regardless of consequences. To him, the investigation alone mattered, to the exclusion of everything else.

  But now he didn’t know any longer.

  He drank the rest of the coffee in his cup and refilled it. He needed more.

  Another marker pen, a screaming shade of green this time. He used it for making notes in the space next to the purple man.

  Ejder sees the video in LG’s carrier bag.

  Krantz finds it at the scene, notes that it has been used. He records two sets of probably female fingerprints. One set is LG’s.

  Krantz hands it to EG in the mortuary. EG takes charge of it, but does not record anywhere, i.e., not with the duty staff or the forensic boys.

  SS finds a video in EG’s office. The tape is blank.

  In the interview, Ejder states that LG told him that a copy of the video is deposited in a Central Station storage locker.

  SS gets access to the locker, brings the tape home. SS creeps around the house at night, watches the video and can confirm that it is not blank.

  He stopped making notes. He could have added, SS is too soft to carry on watching it, but instead he just sat and looked at the ink version of Ewert. What have you done? I know that you deleted evidence, and I know why. He scrunched up the paper and threw it across the table towards the sink. Then he tried to solve the crossword, testing one letter after another in the three empty squares, but gave up after a quarter of an hour.

  He wandered back to the sitting room.

  The videotape demanded attention.

  He could have not collected it. Or not brought it home.

  Now he has no choice. He has to watch it.

  Lydia Grajauskas again. The camera slips out of focus, a few seconds pass and then the cameraman signals to carry on.

  She looks at her friend, waiting for her to translate. Sljusareva strokes Lydia’s cheek before she turns to the camera.

  ‘When I met Bengt Nordwall in Klaipeda, he said it was good job and very well paid.’

  Sven Sundkvist stopped the tape and fled into the kitchen again. He peered into the fridge, drank some milk straight from the carton and closed the door quietly. Mustn’t wake Anita.

  He had not put it into words, but this was exactly what he had feared.

  A different truth.

  When the truth changes, lies emerge. A lie can only be dealt with when it is known to be a lie.

  He went back into the sitting room and settled on the sofa.

  He had just started to be part of Bengt Nordwall’s big lie.

  He was convinced that Ewert had watched this very film and realised the same as he had. Ewert had watched and then wiped it, to protect his friend. Now Sven faced the same dilemma. Bengt Nordwall’s lie had become Ewert’s. If he himself did nothing, he too would have to live with it. He could do the same as Ewert: look away to protect a friend’s reputation.

  He started the video again and fast-forwarded it to find out how long the film was. Twenty minutes. He checked the time. Half past two. If he started from the beginning and watched the whole of Lydia Grajauskas’s story, he would be finished before three. Then he could tiptoe into the bedroom, leave a note on the pillow explaining that he had a night job, get dressed and take the car into town. The drive took only twenty minutes.

  It was nearly four o’clock when he opened his office door. Morning had already arrived, bringing light from somewhere out at sea, from the east, light that had followed him along the deserted stretch of motorway between Gustavsberg and central Stockholm.

  He got himself more coffee, not so much to stay awake – his mind was alive with ideas, and sleep was simply not an option – but because he hoped the coffee would help him to sharpen up and get a grip before the buzzing in his head took over and crystallised into its own conclusions, the way thoughts do at night.

  He cleared his desk by piling papers and photographs and folders on the floor. When he sat down at the bare desktop, the wooden surface seemed new to him. He had probably never seen it like this, not for years anyway; he had worked here for five or six years.

  He took a ball of paper from his pocket. It was the drawing of Ewert, rescued from the kitchen sink. He flattened it out in the middle of the desk. Now he knew that the purple man had gone beyond the point of no return and tampered with evidence, in order to protect his own interests, to protect a lie that wasn’t his.

  Absently retracing the outline of the man he had drawn, Sven Sundkvist felt an impotent rage. He had no idea what to do with this knowledge.

  Lars Ĺgestam did what he usually did when he couldn’t sleep. He dressed in his suit and black shoes, put only the minimum in his briefcase and left his house to walk into work with the dawn – three hours through Stockholm’s western suburbs.

  It had been an odd conversation, hard to follow too. As a rule he didn’t have problems understanding but this time Ewert Grens, a man he both admired and pitied, had insisted that on the one hand the police had no notion of Lydia Grajauskas’s motive for knocking out her guard, taking five hostages and killing a policeman befor
e shooting herself, but that, on the other hand, her best friend Alena Sljusareva knew nothing that had any bearing on the case and could therefore be left to her own devices back home in Lithuania.

  Sleep had been impossible.

  At the time, he had decided to trust Grens after all.

  Now, in the light of the rising sun, he walked with purpose. He had already phoned Söder Hospital to say he wanted to visit the mortuary once more.

  He didn’t knock. Nothing odd about that, Ewert Grens never knocked.

  Sven started and looked at the door.

  ‘Ewert?’

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re early, Sven. What’s up?’

  Sven blushed, aware of how obvious it was. He stared down at his desktop, embarrassed and exposed. There he was, staring at his purple version of Ewert.

  ‘I don’t know. It seemed a good idea.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s just gone five in the morning. Normally there isn’t another soul around at this time.’

  Grens made a move to step into the room. Sven Sundkvist glanced nervously at his drawing and covered it with his hand.

  ‘Come on, son. What’s on your mind?’

  Sven was not much good at lying, especially not to people he liked.

  ‘Nothing special. There’s just such a lot to do at the moment.’

  He was suffocating. Must be as red as a beetroot.

  ‘Ewert, you know how it is. Söder Hospital, all that. The media are on our backs. And you’d rather give all that a miss. But we need some kind of basic story for the press office.’

  No more of this, I can’t handle it, he thought, looking down at the desktop.

  Ewert Grens took a step forward, stood still for a moment, then backed out, talking as he went.

  ‘Good. I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Sven. And I’m pleased you’re dealing with the hacks.’

  Söder Hospital was a huge lump of a building, usually ugly, but now in the early sunlight it was almost beautiful, coated in a pale red glow that cast its reflection on gleaming windows and roofs. It was nearly six o’clock when Lars Ĺgestam walked through the main hall, which was barely awake.