“Not a word to anyone about the investigation. Even within the police there are many eyes and ears. Even here at the squad. If you come up with anything, it’s important that I be the first to find out about it.”
“Sure.”
Hopefully I wouldn’t have any problems with him. But I didn’t like the way he looked at me. The kind of analyzing gaze you might get from a psychologist or therapist. Scrutinizing. As if the person was trying to take your whole personality into their mind. I went into the restroom, sat down on the toilet seat, and rested my head in my hands. Even though I closed my eyes and sat completely still, everything was spinning.
I needed to focus on the third and final robbery. If not for the fact that Nina would now be involved and get a share, I would have chosen to stop after two. It now wasn’t possible. There wouldn’t be enough money. But one more robbery felt like a gigantic mountain to climb. A mountain where boulders and mud slides had already started rolling down toward me. How would I have the energy to finish? I sat with my elbows against my knees. Rubbed both palms against my forehead while I repeated the words in my head.
Pull yourself together, Leona.
Pull yourself together.
SEVENTY
I tried to get up from the chair in the guest room but I had to sit down again. What could not happen had happened. I stared at the screen in front of me. Didn’t see. Didn’t hear. I was completely disconnected from my senses. Maybe time could be turned back if I just sat completely still.
I wished I could back up. Only a few miserable minutes. That would have changed everything. I would have played it differently then. Not been so dead certain. Refrained from betting everything. Not gone all in.
I was now observing my life from the outside. Certain incidents felt as if they were in slow motion. Others whirled past in high speed. Arrhythmic. The cellar, computer intrusion, the girl, Malta, uniform, Ronni, murderer, the storm drain, money, prison, realtors, hospital, politicians — all in one big mess.
I took hold of the desk with both hands. The room was spinning. I closed my eyes but it continued to whirl. I needed to get to the bathroom. Managed to get up into a standing position but my stomach ached and nausea washed over me. Fumbling with my hands against doorframes, walls, and furniture, I made my way to the bathroom. Even though the room was whirling I managed to get the entire contents of my stomach into the toilet, and then remained on my knees in front of the toilet bowl. I couldn’t reach the flush handle and when I happened to look down into the toilet I vomited again from what I saw. With my last bit of strength I managed to flush two times in a row. The second time there was hardly any water but the contents passed down into the sewer. I collapsed on the bathroom floor, thinking back over the minutes that had passed. A single move had gone wrong. That was all it took. One move, to change my existence from being controllable to being chaos.
I had fallen asleep at eight o’clock, right after I put the children to bed. I had woken up at one o’clock, got up, and had then played poker for three hours.
The money I borrowed from my parents was meant to be the solution. The plan to double it had perhaps been too optimistic, but in any event I should have been able to up the total considerably. The tournament had gone well, for a long time. So long that I had to tell myself not to get overly confident and start taking risks. I hadn’t taken any risks, either. Or so I thought. Still, what could not happen had happened.
I was at the bottom.
Ground zero.
I had lost that much. A total of several hundred thousand kroner. The amount was staggering. My last thought was of Benjamin, before I fell asleep on the bathroom floor.
SEVENTY-ONE
The days had started to blend together. It was now the third time within an hour I had looked at my phone to see what day it was. Monday, October 21. I was sincerely surprised and worried at my own reaction to everything that had happened. I could no longer control my senses. Now I was standing in the break room staring straight ahead. Sat down and had just started chatting with a colleague when Claes stormed into the room.
“Listen up, everyone!” said Claes. “They’ve just brought in a person for questioning about the murder of the journalist Christer Skoog, who was knifed to death in his home last week. Hold on to your seats. It’s Nina Wallin, the prosecutor. She’s in interrogation right now. They seem to think she’s involved in the murder.”
The murmur in the break room disappeared. Everyone was staring at Claes.
“What?” I said, standing up.
“I know. It’s hard to imagine. I have no idea how she could have anything to do with it.”
“That’s just crazy!” I said.
That was enough. I couldn’t overreact. I saw in the corner of my eye that Sören was observing me.
“I realize that this must come as a shock to you, Leona. You’ll be assigned another prosecutor for the girl robberies but for the time being she remains as preliminary investigation leader. We will presumably know more when the interview with her is done later this afternoon. Until then, I want you to freeze the case. No more investigative measures until preliminary investigation leadership on the case is clear to us.”
I got up and went toward my office.
“Leona!”
Sören came after me with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Isn’t there something strange about all this?”
“That’s the least you could say about it. Nina, of all people. I guess you can’t trust anyone.”
Sören walked with me to my office. I stopped outside the door. I had no desire to let him come in and start analyzing my reactions.
“There is something very strange about the whole thing. I have a strong feeling that Nina doesn’t have anything to do with it,” said Sören, looking at me.
I shook my head.
“It’s hard to understand. But sometimes you have to accept that anyone at all can be a criminal, even the one you least suspect.”
Sören looked right at me and nodded slowly.
“Hmmm…The one you least suspect.”
SEVENTY-TWO
Daddy was the only person Olivia had seen for several days. The quiet lady almost never came over and when she did Olivia was always in the bedroom. That was the way Daddy wanted it.
This was the last time, he had promised. After that she would get to go home. But how would she manage? Daddy was still giving her pills so that her foot would not hurt as much. Her head had gotten better by itself. Most of the small scrapes too. But she was so tired all the time.
She had to be strong, Daddy said. If she was good she would get good food afterward, he had promised. Waffles, her favorite. He said that every time, but there still hadn’t been any.
He didn’t want her to go out, either. Only he got to go out. He would leave her alone in the apartment for hours, sometimes the whole night and the whole next day. Then she got to eat a container of food that he had put in the fridge. She just had to put it in the microwave, turn the knob to two, and then wait till the food was ready. Sometimes he forgot to buy food. Or else there was only one container, which was supposed to last a whole day. Then she would be hungry for a long time. Sometimes she didn’t dare say that she was hungry.
When he was home she was only allowed to stay in the bedroom, but when he was gone she sneaked out into the living room and watched TV. She tried to call home to Mommy once, but the number didn’t work. It only beeped strangely on the line.
Daddy opened the door to the bedroom. Looked at Olivia and handed her a chocolate biscuit. Olivia took it slowly while she tried to decipher Daddy’s mood. Sometimes she didn’t know whether he was just joking with her. Whether he would laugh and say that it wasn’t for her at all. But he didn’t do that. He let go of the chocolate biscuit. Olivia picked it up quickly and took a bite. Small pieces of chocolate fell down on the covers. She put her hand on them so that Daddy wouldn’t see. She took another big bite.
“Soon you’ll get to go hom
e to Mommy,” he said and went out.
Olivia had been longing so much for Mommy but now she was mostly tired. She closed her eyes. Let the taste of chocolate spread in her mouth while she slowly fell asleep.
SEVENTY-THREE
The letters flowed together. The sleeping pills I had to take almost every night to get any rest stayed in my system and made me drowsy. I sat at the desk in the office and tried to focus on reading through a few witness interviews that Minna and Sam had held. My thoughts were carried away after every line I read. I moved my eyes to the beginning of the paragraph for a third time when the door flew open. Nina stormed in and slammed the door behind her. I stared at her. I didn’t know if I had started hallucinating. Had she been released already? She threw her handbag down on the floor and threw out her arms.
“What the hell, Leona! Are you really out of your mind?”
“Shhh. Let’s go somewhere else and talk.”
I could hardly breathe. Nina had apparently realized I was trying to frame her. The question was why she had been released. I got up to take her out to one of the conference rooms.
“We’re staying here. I don’t have time to run around and I have no damned desire to dance to your fucking tune any longer.”
“Nina, calm down. Have a seat.”
I pointed at the visitor’s chair next to the door and quickly pulled the curtain facing the corridor.
“How the hell could you do this to me?” said Nina. “Didn’t you realize I’d know it was you?”
“How did you arrive at that conclusion?” I said, sitting on the office chair.
I didn’t try to deny it. There was no point. But I wanted to know how she had found out it was me.
“The police who questioned me said they found my DNA on the couch at Christer’s house.”
So that was where the strands of hair had ended up. If they had been on the knife as intended, Nina would not likely be in front of me now.
“I had to explain that I knew Christer and that it wasn’t strange that my DNA was there because I had been at his house, which isn’t true.”
“No, because the two of you evidently always meet at your place,” I said.
Nina stared at me in surprise.
“Perhaps you should have thought a little further before you went behind my back,” I continued.
She didn’t answer. Presumably she was playing dumb to gain time.
“Knock it off, Nina,” I said. “You lied right to my face that you were at home with your sick mother when really you were at home in your apartment making plans with Christer. I saw you.”
Nina stood silently. She took off her coat and hung it over the visitor’s chair.
“Listen carefully now, Leona. Christer and I were in contact because he was doing everything he could to get a prosecutor to reopen the Hooker Affair. He said he had confidence in me after our conversation about your involvement in the girl robberies. He called and threatened to release information about you if I didn’t help him. I didn’t want to be seen with him in public again so I said that he had to come to my place if we were going to talk. That was all. I was doing everything to calm him down and get him to lie low.”
I didn’t say anything. I was skeptical of her explanation. Why hadn’t she told me this?
“When you called he had just arrived. I couldn’t let you come up, couldn’t even say that it was you calling. He didn’t know that we were cooperating. Besides, he hated you. Probably me too. He maintained that we didn’t care that politicians exploited women and said that everyone in the legal system has each other’s back.”
“What could have been so important that you invited him to your place?”
“He said that he had gotten hold of a recording from the prostitute. A recording that could convict the finance minister. It seemed undeniably interesting.”
“But why the hell didn’t you call me afterward?”
“I didn’t know it was such a big deal to you that we had met. I did say to you that I would take care of him. Didn’t think any more about it. Of course I had no idea that you planned to go to his house and kill him. That’s completely sick!”
“I had no choice, Nina,” I said. “Christer called me and said that the two of you together were going to put me in prison.”
Nina was silent. It seemed she’d just realized the way in which everything connected.
“Seriously, Leona, do you think I would put myself in that situation? Collaborate with a journalist I don’t even know? It would be the same as turning both you and me over to the police.”
I studied Nina carefully. Of course it would be incredibly stupid of her to do that, but stranger things had happened in my world. You couldn’t trust anyone. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t speak either.
I realized that there was a possibility she was telling the truth.
But I didn’t want to think that.
Couldn’t think that.
I could see that my deficient capacity to feel emotions had helped me to commit murder. But could I come to terms with the knowledge that I had murdered for no reason?
“When you lied to me on the phone like that and Christer had said right before that the two of you were going to put me in prison…what was I supposed to think?”
“This is incomprehensible, Leona. You tried to put me in jail for a murder you committed yourself. You killed Christer. It’s insane!”
“Quiet! Don’t you know that this is a police station?”
Now I was getting tired of Nina’s harping. We had to accept what had happened and own up to the fact we were both involved in it.
Nina became quieter. She said in a subdued voice, “Yeah, thanks. It’s easy to forget where I am now that I know what certain police officers are capable of…”
She was interrupted by three knocks on the door. We looked quickly at each other. Nina was sitting with her back to the door and didn’t turn around to see who it was. Instead, she put her hand to her forehead and shook her head as though, after all this, it might be the devil himself.
The handle was pressed down and Sören Möller stuck his head in.
“Am I disturbing you?” he said, looking cheerfully at me.
He had a talent for showing up when you least wanted him.
“Uh, yes, actually,” I said.
He looked at Nina.
“Nina Wallin?”
With warmth in his eyes he took a few steps toward Nina and extended his hand.
“Nice to meet you. Sören Möller. I’m helping Leona with the case.”
Nina slowly took his hand and stared at him without saying a word.
“I heard that you’d been arrested; it’s very good that you’re free again,” he said. “I said to Leona that I didn’t believe for a second that you had anything to do with that murder. How did you prove that you were innocent?”
“Sören, it’s a little inconvenient right now,” I said. “Was it something important?”
“No, no, we can discuss it later.”
After a strange look at both of us he left the office and closed the door behind him. Nina looked sharply at me.
“Who the hell was that? Not a cop, right?”
“I know, he’s shady. He’s a medium the agency has brought in to help out with the investigation.”
“Why the hell haven’t you told me about this? He sounded like he knew something.”
“It was what I was about to tell you when you lied that you weren’t at home.”
She became quiet. We both sat silently. I had a pounding headache. I went over to the bookshelf and searched for an aspirin. These days I usually had a bottle handy.
“What the hell has happened to you, Leona? Don’t you even understand what you’ve done?”
I sat down on the office chair again. My head was bursting. It felt like I wasn’t getting any air. I reached for a glass of water that was sitting by the computer screen. My hand was shaking so much that the water splashed onto the desk. I took hold with bot
h hands and managed to set the glass down without damaging the keyboard.
“Jesus, Leona,” said Nina.
A doctor probably would have pointed out that I had signs of exhaustion. My body had taken a beating by being up at night and gambling, taking pills to be able to sleep, getting up after a couple of hours with sleeping pills in my bloodstream, and spending the rest of the day wandering around in a kind of surreal haze. Suddenly I realized how tired I was. I felt tears start to well up. They couldn’t be stopped. Since I had killed Christer I had lost control over my body. I began to cry so hard that I shook. Presumably from exhaustion, I didn’t know. Between sobs I tried to talk.
“I’m losing my grip, Nina. I…can’t take…any more. I haven’t…slept…a wink. It’s horrible…what I’ve done.”
Maybe it was horrible, I don’t know. Nina apparently thought so. But I was crying for other reasons. From fatigue, from exhaustion. Nina slowly came up to me. She stood awhile and simply looked at me. Then she crouched down and placed one hand on my knee.
“You’re not alone, Leona. I’m just as involved.”
I didn’t speak. I sobbed while Nina continued.
“This whole mess is too awful. What you’ve done is crazy. Christer was perhaps an idiot but he didn’t deserve to die. I wish you had brought it up with me first before you got the idea that…Then I could have explained…”
Nina seemed sincerely sorry. I couldn’t manage to speak. I tried to calm myself by taking a few more gulps of water.
“I understand that I’m involved in this. I should’ve told you about Christer but I thought I had him under control.”
I nodded.
“When this is over, when the money is divided, we’ll never talk about this again,” I said.
“I think I have some good news among all the misery,” said Nina. “I think we can make use of that recording from the prostitute in the Hooker Affair that Christer told me about.”
I took a tissue out of my bag and blew my nose. Nina continued.
Leona Page 29
