Stone Coffin

by Kjell Eriksson

  Cederén had traveled frequently to Málaga over the winter and spring. His secretary had noted some twelve trips to that city.

  The company’s offices and factories there had been expanded, and that was where most of the production took place. Perhaps Cederén had had company. Haver did not know exactly what he was looking for, but something could be hidden somewhere among all these names. In particular, he was watching for the name Piñeda, the person who had written the letter. Had he possibly traveled to Sweden to make his case? But so far Haver had not found anything of significance.

  * * *

  Mortensen returned the call after fifteen minutes.

  “I don’t have my cell phone on,” he explained. “People are constantly calling.”

  Isn’t that why you have a cell phone? Lindell thought to herself.

  “I want you to come down to the station immediately,” she said without any polite small talk.

  “Right now?”

  “Yes, now. We have things to talk about.”

  “I see.”

  Mortensen sounded as if he was having trouble getting the words out, but also as if he was gathering himself for some kind of protest.

  “Now,” Lindell repeated.

  She did not have to wait more than twenty minutes before she received a call from reception and was told that she had a visitor. She walked down to get him and escorted him quietly back to her office.

  He had stopped pretending to be baffled, which Lindell appreciated. She hated assertive types who became nervous teenagers with the police.

  “You lied to my face,” she began without introduction.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cederén’s lover. You knew about her existence and you knew where she was.”

  Mortensen looked back at her and she thought she saw a faint smile on his face. Was he mocking her?

  “Yes, I know Gabriella.”

  “She’s dead,” Lindell informed him, though she regretted it immediately.

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I…” he started but immediately faltered. He stared at her as if he thought she was bluffing.

  “You could have saved her life if you had told us where she was.”

  “Did she kill herself?”

  “Tell me why you lied to me. No more shit.”

  “I wanted to protect her,” he said quietly. “She has suffered enough. You may not know everything she’s had to go through.”

  “Instead you contributed to her death,” Lindell said sharply.

  Mortensen looked as if he was reflecting on this statement but offered no rebuttal. He gazed down at his hands, lifted his head for a moment, and met her eyes, but then looked down again at once.

  “She talked to me before she died,” Lindell said.

  His head jerked up with a look of astonishment that was also mixed with something else. Fear, perhaps.

  “What did she say?” Mortensen said hesitantly.

  “That doesn’t matter. She wanted to talk about Cederén.”

  “How did she die?”

  “She was strangled.”

  Mortensen swallowed.

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Not very. I knew that she and Sven-Erik were together. I met her several times. Who did it?”

  “Tell me about their relationship.”

  Mortensen collected himself somewhat and launched into a more or less coherent account of how she and Cederén had met and how he had gradually started to change. Gabriella Mark was the reason for much of this change in his personality, he believed. Cederén started asking different questions, became more distracted, lost his focus on the company mission. He started to question his work, even the fundamental concept behind MedForsk.

  “Was it the animal experimentation?”

  “No, not that. Perhaps a little bit, but we’ve worked with test animals our entire professional careers. Working on animals is necessary in medical research, and we know the role that it plays in advances.”

  “So he was not a militant animal rights supporter?”

  “No, definitely not,” Mortensen said.

  “Then what was it?”

  “I think he was having some kind of life crisis. It must have had something to do with Josefin as well. I think they had grown apart.”

  “That’s often the case when you start something on the side,” Lindell said.

  “I took it as a sign that the relationship wasn’t doing well. That it was with Gabriella was more of a coincidence.”

  “Did Cederén see a future with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Had his purchase of land in the Dominican Republic anything to do with her? Were they going to move there?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. “That purchase is a mystery.”

  Lindell was starting to make peace with the thought that Mortensen had lied to her. He had regained some of the reasonable tone she remembered from their first meeting. Perhaps it was the satisfaction of being able to talk to someone who had known Cederén well that was lightening her mood.

  “When you say that you were protecting Gabriella by not revealing her identity, weren’t you also thinking of the company?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was some attention generated by the deaths of the Cederén family. If the information that he’d had a mistress had gotten out, the story would have become even more sordid.”

  Mortensen appeared to want to wave away the word “sordid.”

  “No, not like that,” he said in a low voice.

  “Who could have wanted to see Gabriella dead?”

  The question hung in the air as the telephone rang. Lindell picked up the receiver but kept her eyes on the man across the table. Haver was on the other end of the line. She asked him to call back later, hung up, and repeated her question. Mortensen appeared to have gathered new strength and launched into a rant about the violence in society.

  “It may have been revenge from someone who was close to Josefin,” he said in closing.

  “Was there anyone close to her who was prepared to kill for her?”

  “What do I know? People seem capable of anything these days.”

  Lindell had to agree, but was less convinced by his theory.

  “You talked to Gabriella for almost an entire hour. What did you talk about?”

  “It was that long? Mostly about Sven-Erik, of course. I was wondering how she was getting on. I knew that she had been through a great deal. I know a number of physicians—if she was in need of any additional assistance, I mean.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she was planting vegetables. I thought that sounded crazy.”

  “And what did you do the night before last, on the twenty-ninth of June?”

  “I was digging a pond,” he said. “I’m working on the garden and have rented a small digger.”

  “You’re doing it yourself?”

  “A small machine like that is like a toy, every boy’s dream.”

  “What time would you say you were out there in the garden?”

  “I probably started around six o’clock and kept going as long as it was light out. You have to get your money’s worth.”

  “You were alone?”

  “The guy who rented it to me came by shortly before six o’clock. He instructed me on how to use it before he left. That was probably around seven. Then I got started.”

  “Did anyone come by?”

  Mortensen thought about it. “No, but the neighbors can probably confirm that I was out there.”

  Lindell stood up suddenly and Mortensen shot back in his chair in reaction to her unexpected action.

  “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry…” he began but was interrupted by Lindell, who thanked him for
his time and held out her hand.

  He grasped it and made a rather awkward motion with his other as if to say: Excuse me, I didn’t know.

  * * *

  Lindell wrote down their exchange in her notepad. She wasn’t sure what to make of Jack Mortensen. A tricky type who was probably used to adapting to new situations. His tone and gestures were a bit too obvious at times, a bit theatrical, but she also knew that some people chose to play a defensive role without having sinister intentions. They just wanted to meet the expectations of others. There was a number of indications that he was this kind of person.

  She called Haver, but now he was no longer in his office. She dialed the number to Cederén’s parents after finally locating the number in the mess on her desk.

  It was his mother who answered. She immediately acknowledged that she had spoken with Gabriella Mark. Mark had presented herself as a friend of Sven-Erik, but she had never heard of her before. Her reason for calling was to extend her condolences and to say that she didn’t believe that Sven-Erik had run over his family.

  “She seemed very sweet,” the mother said. “It sounded like she was crying.”

  She also acknowledged that she had told Gabriella about the gin. She had heard it from another woman police officer.

  “I guess I told her that to comfort her a little,” the mother said.

  Lindell thanked her for her information and was getting ready to end the conversation when the mother stopped her.

  “Who was she?”

  “A friend of the family,” Lindell said.

  * * *

  Mortensen’s words about how it could have been a friend of Josefin who was getting revenge by strangling Gabriella came back to Lindell after she hung up. Could there be such a friend? Mortensen had put Josefin on a pedestal and on several occasions had referred to her as a “fantastic woman.” Perhaps he was Josefin’s friend? Had he been in love with his partner’s wife? Gabriella would most certainly have let him into her house.

  But Lindell dismissed the idea. She saw Mortensen’s fragile hands in her mind and thought of his somewhat fussy emotionality. He was not a man who committed murder. Not with his hands, at least. He could probably be tough enough when it came to business, or at least that was the impression Lindell had from the comments at MedForsk. But he wasn’t a killer.

  She did have to check with the neighbors to verify Mortensen’s claim of digging in the garden. She had also been given the name of the man who had rented out the equipment, Gustavsson.

  Passions, she thought. Our lives are driven by strong emotions. Some don’t make it. Others find love and sometimes happiness. Mortensen’s strongest passion appeared to be his collection of textiles. Or rather, his mother’s collection. Successful businessman that he was, he was still a mama’s boy. That much had been clear.

  * * *

  Lindell dropped Mortensen. She became aware she was hungry, and that realization led her to thoughts of the little life inside her body. How big was it now? She had no idea how an embryo grew. She drew a hand across the top of her pants. She wasn’t showing yet. The only change was that her breasts were somewhat enlarged. Hadn’t Sammy stared a little too long? She stood in front of the small mirror and tried to catch a glimpse of her profile.

  She could have gone down to the kitchen and grabbed something but decided to leave the station and walk quickly toward the center of town. I have to think, she repeated to herself. She felt that she had a small window of opportunity in which to come to a decision about her own life, but then Gabriella’s murder had happened and she was forced to push her personal concerns aside. She did this with a practiced routine but also with a certain half-conscious sense of relief. Now she didn’t have to make up her mind and could instead direct all her attention to her work. She knew of course that she had to deal with this problem. It was literally growing and becoming an ever-increasing threat to her peace of mind.

  It was hot outside and Lindell was sweating after only a couple of minutes. If only I would have a miscarriage, she thought, but regretted it immediately. Maybe this was her only chance to have a child. And maybe this was the way it was supposed to be. Usually she was a rational creature who did not think much about fate, but now her customary ways of coping were collapsing.

  She tried to imagine herself as a single mother, but saw only the problems: having to be home, nursing the baby and changing its diapers, sitting with the other mothers at the volunteer preschool in her neighborhood. She had noticed the flock of mothers and only an occasional father and had always thought it looked deadly boring. When her child got older, there would be the constant stress of getting it to day care, and an ever-present feeling of guilt both at home and at work.

  This was not the way she had imagined being pregnant and having a child. She wanted a husband and a father to share her daily life with. Just think if this had been Edvard’s child! She stopped on the sidewalk, overwhelmed by this thought. She had decided to be with Edvard after the Midsummer holiday, but what was that decision worth now?

  She walked faster and faster. Within a week I have to decide, she thought. How long can you still have an abortion? She had a faint recollection that it was something like twenty weeks. That would be five months. Was that possible? You were big as a house at that point.

  “One week,” she muttered softly to herself as she pushed open the door to the Elaka Måns café.

  * * *

  The only other notable thing that happened during the rest of the day was that Bronkan came by and told them that they had managed to secure a footprint outside Mark’s cottage, about five meters into the woods. It was from a size 42 shoe, made in somewhat marshy terrain.

  From this particular spot, you had a clear view of the house and yard but were shielded from sight by a few ragged spruces. There was elk dung next to the footprint. Haver joked that perhaps these were size 42 hooves, but Bronkan did not seem to appreciate the humor in this. He stared angrily at Haver and Lindell. Lindell knew that they had put a lot of time and labor into this work, so she was quick to congratulate him on his find and thank him for a job well done. Bronkan lit up, but this did not conceal the fatigue in his face.

  Prints had been made and would be added to the as-yet-nonexistent forensic evidence in the Mark case. This wasn’t to say that the footprint had anything to do with the murder. They could only hope that time would yield another piece to the puzzle.

  The interviews with Mark’s limited circle of acquaintances and former colleagues were completed. Most of these had taken place over the phone. In only one case had Berglund gone to a person’s house. This was to interview a retired teacher who had been Gabriella Mark’s neighbor on Geijersgatan and who had maintained sporadic contact with her over the past few years.

  This person, Hedda Ljunggren, a lady of seventy, had more or less functioned as a counselor for Mark after her husband had died.

  The last time they were in touch was in May, and then Mark had seemed very happy and positive.

  “But she was always up and down,” Hedda Ljunggren said. “She could suddenly collapse when everything looked wonderful. She was unstable.”

  Back then, in May, they had gossiped about old neighbors and Mark had naturally talked about her gardening and that she felt happy in her cottage. Ljunggren had had the impression that there was a man in the picture but hadn’t wanted to ask her outright. It was a sensitive topic.

  At the end of the conversation they had for some reason stumbled onto politics. Perhaps it was something that had been in the papers. Mark had spoken of some kind of international relief project. She was frustrated by the fact that so many people in the world were suffering while in Sweden everyone was doing so well. Ljunggren couldn’t remember what organization was behind it or whether it was restricted to a certain country, but she thought it was a project to aid children.

  Mark had sounded enthused and Ljunggren had sensed that this was in part compensation for the fact that she did not have her own childre
n.

  Nothing in the cottage indicated that she had been involved in any kind of project. There were no brochures or receipts or anything else to indicate this kind of engagement.

  Ljunggren’s account gave them the impression of a young woman who had been slowly but surely making her way back to the surface. She had in large part done this by herself, as she had always mistrusted psychiatrists. This pointed to both persistence and strength, qualities that Ljunggren assured them Mark had. In the midst of her grief, Mark had been certain that she would make her way out of her depression and create a new life. The cottage, which Ljunggren had visited several times, had been a first step.

  She was so beautiful when she was happy, Ljunggren had said. She became simply radiant. She had also had a gift of generosity that few possessed. It could be a matter of a few words of appreciation or a bunch of carrots.

  Berglund summarized his impression. He had liked the old teacher, had seen in her a knowledge of people and a consideration that Berglund sometimes wished he saw in many of his younger colleagues. Ljunggren was obviously greatly attached to Mark.

  He found himself missing Gabriella Mark. He wanted her to be alive again. There were too few out there, he thought, who were radiant and gave away carrots.

  He walked into Lindell’s office and told her about his conversation with Hedda Ljunggren. Haver came in while he was still talking and the three of them ended up discussing Mark. They were trying to re-create an image of her.

  “I think she was someone who was much more than a lover to Cederén. She must have been very different from the others that he knew.”

  “She softened Cederén’s sense of duty and exacting demands on himself,” Berglund speculated. “Everyone has commented on this, on how hard Cederén worked, how driven and goal-oriented he was. Life is not simply about producing a birdie and lowering your handicap or winning glory and money. I think she made the ground shake under his feet.”

  Lindell gazed at her older colleague, whose opinions she valued greatly.

  “I know this is cheap psychology,” Berglund said. “But life is often cheap and banal.”