“It’s supposed to be locked up in his childhood home, the house where his mother still lives. He gave me a duplicate key. Said that he wanted it with me if something happened to him. I got a feeling that he had been threatened. It feels like I’m reaching to say that he was threatened by the finance minister, but that was my first thought. We need to get hold of the recording.”
I looked at Nina. It was hardly the right time to question the truthfulness of what she was saying. I was in no shape to do so, anyway.
SEVENTY-FOUR
The next day we drove to Christer Skoog’s mother’s house out in Hässelby. The yellow house looked uninhabited and like it had needed repainting years ago. The yard was overgrown and the car parked there did not seem to have moved for a long time. I wasn’t comfortable with the meeting. Facing the mother whose son I brutally murdered was not exactly on my bucket list, but it had to be done. I pressed the doorbell. A faint sound of steps was heard from inside.
“Yes?”
A skinny woman in her seventies answered. Her gray-streaked hair was tied in a loose knot at the back of her neck. She held her dark-brown cardigan closed over her chest, as if she was cold.
“Inga Skoog?”
I spoke in a gentle, calm voice. She nodded. I showed my badge.
“Leona Lindberg, police. This is my colleague, Nina Wallin. May we come in?”
Inga sighed.
“I thought you were done here.”
Nina and I looked at each other. There was no point explaining to Inga that we weren’t the ones investigating the murder of her son.
“No, we would like to speak with you a little. We knew Christer better than the other police officers you’ve met.”
She nodded and showed us in by backing up a few steps into the hall. I had hoped that she would be more reluctant. Somehow that would have made this easier. We left our shoes in the hall and followed her into the kitchen.
The house reminded me of my parents’. The hall was papered with cream fabric and the kitchen had old-fashioned brown-and-white wallpaper. We remained standing by a wooden bench in the kitchen. My eyes were fixed on the door. It was a door similar to the one in my parents’ house. I stopped breathing. My whole body froze and became heavy. My heart was pounding.
“If you don’t go down on your own you know what will happen, Leona.”
Mother had unlocked the door. Stood next to it. Father was staring at us from the kitchen table. He was drunk. Didn’t seem to be able to focus his gaze properly.
Cold and damp welled up from the cellar. I had tears in my eyes. Mother looked at me but didn’t bat an eyelid.
“I’m not going to say it again.”
She nodded at the stairs. I went closer. Looked down. The stairs were steep. I looked up at Mother again. Pleaded with my eyes. I didn’t want to go down there again. Hated the cellar. I took a step back so as not to lose my balance on the edge. In the corner of my eye I saw Mother cast a glance at Father.
“Mariiita!” he said loudly and firmly.
With a firm hand she gave me a quick shove forward. I lost my balance. Fell headlong.
Down all the steps.
Down onto the ice-cold stone floor.
The sound when the door slammed shut echoed in my head.
“Please sit down. The coffee has been on since that politician was here, but that was only half an hour ago so it’s probably still drinkable.”
Inga pointed toward the table. I came around. Looked at Nina. She didn’t appear to have noticed that my thoughts had been elsewhere.
“What kind of politician was here?” said Nina.
Without answering Inga took off into the hall and went up the stairs to the top floor. We sat down at the round, dark-brown kitchen table. When Inga came back down she was carrying a yearbook, which she set on the tablecloth between us. It was the Trollboda School yearbook. She browsed through the pages of class after class of black-and-white group photographs.
“There he is…” She spoke quietly and pointed at a boy who was standing at the far side with dark hair and bangs. “…my beloved Christer.”
Her voice broke when she said his name. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her cheeks around her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I still can’t comprehend the fact that he’s gone. I’m just waiting for him to step through the front door. At least once a week he comes home…or did.”
She looked down, seemingly ashamed that she’d spoken about her son as though he were still alive. I looked at the boy in the black-and-white photograph. Other than the dark hair I couldn’t recognize Christer.
“He was my only child.”
She spoke quietly. Whispered. I avoided looking at her. Tried not to think about what it would be like to lose your only son.
Inga pointed at another boy in the middle of the photograph.
“And there is Niklas Olander, the minister for finance. He and Christer were in the same class in grade school.”
I looked with surprise at the photograph. I never would have suspected that Christer had a personal connection to the minister for finance. I’d wondered why he hadn’t been more eager to create a scoop with what he knew about the girl robberies. Now I understood that this meant something completely different to Christer. The question was how much Inga knew about that.
“Were they friends in primary school?” I asked.
Inga shook her head.
“Christer was extremely shy as a child. Didn’t have many friends. He didn’t like school, either. I had to struggle every morning to get him there. Sometimes when he cried too much I let him stay home. He missed a lot and had to repeat a grade.”
Inga got the coffeepot.
“He never seemed to like Nino, as he was called back then. I don’t know why. In later years Christer always used to say something sarcastic when he saw the finance minister on TV.”
Inga took hold of Nina’s cup and started pouring.
“Just half a cup, thanks,” said Nina.
“When that business about prostitution came up I said to Christer that he shouldn’t go after Nino so hard.”
“What did he say then?” I asked.
Inga stopped after she had poured coffee in all three cups. She sat down.
“He said that people would finally see Nino’s true colors. I never understood what he meant. Nino was always a well-behaved boy. And then he became finance minister and everything. He can’t have acted that way toward a poor prostitute. I just can’t believe it.”
“Was the minister here today?” said Nina.
“Not him, his secretary. Nice of Nino to ask his secretary to come with flowers.”
Inga got up and poured milk in a little pitcher that she set on the table.
“The secretary wanted to put the flowers in Christer’s old room. He said that the minister had requested that. I said that Christer didn’t have a room here anymore. He has, but I would prefer that no one goes in there. Oh, excuse me, I forgot the cake.”
Inga went up to the counter, then stopped and remained standing quietly with both hands on the kitchen counter and her back to me and Nina. I could see from behind that she was crying. Her body was shaking.
“I simply can’t understand why he was murdered. My dear Christer,” said Inga.
I went up and placed a hand on her shoulder. She leaned her head against me. Embraced me while she sobbed.
“Inga, we’re going to do everything we can to find the murderer,” I heard myself say.
Over Inga’s head Nina’s eyes met mine. Nina slowly shook her head. Inga was sobbing against my shoulder. I felt my blouse getting warm and wet from her tears.
“He had no enemies…”
I stood quietly. Couldn’t move. Wanted to get out of there…
“Of course I understood that his job as a journalist involved risks, but I never believed that something like this would happen.”
I wanted to leave the house. Leave the woman who was crying in my arms, comple
tely desperate because her son was dead.
Murdered.
By me.
Inga looked up at me with her eyes red from crying.
“Excuse me, but it feels so nice to have you police officers here. Christer must have felt just as safe in your presence.”
I couldn’t bear to hear her anymore. Moved a little so she’d understand we could no longer stand in each other’s embrace. Nina came to my rescue.
“Inga, Christer told me that he was in the process of writing a very important article about the politician case. He is supposed to have placed a recording of a phone call in a dresser here at the house. We need to get hold of it.”
“I see.”
She tore a piece of paper towel from the roll and blew her nose before she showed us up to the top floor. She stood quietly a moment before the door. Her eyes closed as if she was gathering strength. Then she unlocked it. The room looked like an ordinary guest room. For some reason I had expected a young boy’s room with posters of pop stars on the walls. Inga seemed to be the kind of lady who wanted to hold on to the past. Next to the bed and nightstand was a dresser.
“He said it would be in a locked case in a drawer in the dresser,” said Nina.
Inga nodded at me to open it. I pulled out the drawer and searched among T-shirts and socks. Nothing. I didn’t have the energy to care that in formal terms this was a house search I was doing. This was an informal meeting. No one would know that we had been there. After I searched in all the drawers without finding anything except clothes I began to think that maybe the case had already been picked up.
“Inga, did the other police officer take anything out of this room?”
Inga had gone over to the window. She shook her head.
“They said they didn’t find anything that could be used in the investigation.”
“Is there any other dresser he might have put the case in?” I continued.
Inga stood quietly a moment and then left the room without a word. I followed her into another bedroom. There was a dresser on either side of the double bed.
“My husband, Christer’s father, always slept on this side. He passed away when Christer was fourteen. Perhaps Christer put it there.”
I followed Inga up to the dresser. In the third drawer was a little black case. I picked it up. Asked Nina to bring the key over. It fit. In the case were a few documents and a USB flash drive. We had what we needed and it was time to leave Inga. We went downstairs to the front door.
“But you haven’t finished your coffee,” said Inga.
I excused myself and explained it was important that we try to get hold of the person who had done this to her son. Nina and I started walking to the car.
“I have my laptop with me; we can listen in the car,” said Nina.
I started the car while Nina turned on the computer.
“He has a password on it, damn, he told me, but…”
Nina fell silent.
“Oh, wait a minute…”
She entered a code without saying it out loud. I noticed that, but let it be. The recording was raspy but you could clearly hear the voice of the finance minister. He was talking with a woman.
“A generous hourly rate if you spread it out over a year, isn’t it?”
“Do you want anything or what?”
The dialogue continued. The minister bargained with the woman so long that finally she agreed to sex, almost for free. The voices were clear and there was no doubt what the whole thing was about, as they spoke openly about anal, oral, and other sexual acts. The recording was a gold mine.
Now we needed to prove that the minister knew about the recording and thereby had a motive to get Christer out of the way. We also needed to check what the minister was doing on the night of the murder.
SEVENTY-FIVE
After ten minutes of persuasion in the doorway, Nina and I were invited into Dina’s friend’s apartment on Nybohovsbacken in Liljeholmen. Dina didn’t seem to have any confidence in the police, or in any authority whatsoever. She looked at Nina and me with contempt in her eyes.
“Which one of you is going to care when I’m assaulted later and raped or murdered? How can I be guaranteed protection?” said Dina.
“Why will you need protection, Dina?” I said.
Dina sighed and shook her head. She turned on the kitchen fan and lit a cigarette.
“Dina, you have to understand, we think we can put the finance minister in prison for murder with your help.”
Dina leaned over and blew out smoke under the fan. I started to wonder if there was some other reason for her reluctance.
“Listen. Christer, with whom you’ve been in contact, has been murdered. We believe that the finance minister got wind that Christer had information about him buying sex that could convict him. For that reason we think he murdered Christer, or had him murdered. As the situation is now, he’s gone free for buying sex and will probably go free for murder too. What you know may be decisive for whether we can put him away. Do you understand? We have no other evidence.”
Dina hardly seemed to listen. She puffed away uninterruptedly.
“We are not after you at all. If you’re guilty of something that is not, how shall I put it, on the right side of the law, we don’t care about that.”
She looked at me. Then at Nina. And back to me.
“You have my word on that, Dina. I’m a woman myself.”
My intimation that, because I was also a woman, I could understand Dina, would presumably not have much sway. I had never understood the point of putting yourself in another person’s shoes, but I could see a number of similarities between me and Dina. In some ways I admired her. She moved at the bottom level of society but was stronger than most people I knew.
Dina put out the cigarette and sat at the kitchen table across from me.
“The finance minister came here and was completely enraged.”
“So he knew where you were?” I said.
Dina fell silent and then said calmly, “It’s not possible to hide from those people.”
I sat down on the kitchen chair. Nodded at Dina to continue.
“He said he’d found out that the journalist, Christer, had not stopped digging into the incident even though the case was closed. He’s upset that I was feeding Christer information and wanted to make sure I kept quiet. I told him to go to hell. Said that I do what I want. Then he threatened me, but I was mad and yelled that I didn’t care if he killed me. When that didn’t work he offered me a large sum of money.”
“When was this?”
Dina searched in her phone.
“It must have been on October 16.”
The same day as the murder. Could that be possible? Nina and I looked at each other.
“He refused to leave until I blew him. Said he took that as a bonus for all the money he’d given me to keep quiet.”
“What time?”
“Around nine or ten o’clock maybe. Then he left in his car.”
“Did he say anything else about Christer?”
“Just that that fucking journalist had ruined his life. When I said that Christer was actually quite nice he got really mad and left.”
“Is there anything that shows that he’s been here in your apartment?”
“Annie came home right when he was on his way out but I don’t think she’s too eager to testify. But I have this…”
Dina started searching in her phone.
“After everything that’s happened I’ve started recording most things on my phone. But I’m not giving out anything else, I’ll just end up in more shit.”
“Dina, Christer was murdered. Do you understand that you may be in danger?”
“I’ve been saying that the whole time, damn it! You’re not listening. The minister probably already knows that you’re here.”
Dina parted the curtain slightly and looked out on the street below.
“Could he somehow know you recorded his conversation?” said Nina.
“Come on now,” I said. “He knew you’d recorded him previously; wouldn’t he guess you’d record him again?”
“No, I said. He took away my phone and held on to it the whole time. That stupid bastard didn’t realize I have two.”
“The recording is extremely important. And Dina, if you testify and tell the court what you just told us, then you won’t have to worry about him anymore. Do yourself a favor and end this now so you don’t have to always be worried.”
Dina stood up. Looked me right in the eyes.
“If you live like I do you’re always worried. When someone needs you, you’re never available. If I get threatened again you’re the first ones I’m going to call and then I’ll be demanding that you help me.”
She opened the phone, took out the SIM card and handed the phone over to me.
SEVENTY-SIX
Back at the office things were messy. A new case must have dropped in while I was gone. My colleagues were frantically moving around in the corridors. I slipped quickly into my office to avoid the risk of getting involved. I closed the door and was just about to take off my jacket.
“Where have you been, Leona?”
I whirled around. In my eagerness to close the door before anyone noticed me, I hadn’t noticed Sören, who was sitting very quietly with a newspaper in his hand in the corner of the room.
“Oh! You scared me.”
“Nerves on tenterhooks, are they?” he said calmly.
I hung up the jacket and went and sat down behind my desk.
“What can I help you with? Have you ‘seen’ something?”
I tried to sound casual but his presence made me very uncomfortable. He got up and went over to my bookshelf. Looked around and picked up the framed photo of Benjamin and Beatrice. Studied it carefully.
“One and three?” he said, still looking at the photo.
“Yes, approximately. Then. Now they’re three and almost five.”
He set down the photo. I didn’t like that he was poking around in my things. He continued walking around the office, studying every corner as if he was searching for something.
Leona Page 30
