She drove home and entered the quiet apartment. Everything felt unreal. Had she really lived here for several years? The refrigerator was empty, the sink was full of dishes, the laundry basket was full, and she was almost surprised that the water still came out of the shower. Something was working. She watched the water whirl down the drain.
She wanted to pour herself a glass of wine and settle herself on the couch but she was out of wine and had decided not to get any more. Not for several months. How long did you have to breastfeed?
* * *
It had been raining heavily in Östhammar, and when Lindell stepped out of the car in the clinic parking lot, she breathed in deeply. The air was very fresh.
With every step she took she felt increasingly tense. She had brought nothing. No chocolate or flowers. She came empty-handed with a single hope: that he would hug her like before.
A staff member came to greet her. She had a name tag that read Maria. Nurse. Lindell explained why she had come and the nurse pointed to a bed at the far end of the corridor.
“We’ve put a cast on,” Maria said with a smile, but Lindell saw that she was tired.
“Will he stay here?”
“No, we send them home as soon as the plaster dries.”
“Is he in pain?”
“He was given painkillers back in Öregrund. I don’t think it’s so bad.”
That’s what you always say, Lindell thought.
“Thanks for the help,” she said, and again had the feeling of gratitude that she often had around hospital workers.
Lindell walked up to the bed. He was sleeping. There was a bruise on his right cheek. Apart from that, he looked fine. The cast was hidden under the blanket. She studied him, the thinning hair, the wrinkles in the tanned face, and the large hand resting on the covers. The large white scar he had from before.
If it hadn’t been for the rise and fall of his chest he could have been dead, so strangely peaceful was this energetic and restless man.
Ann gently stroked his hand. Let us stay here, she thought. Can’t we freeze life right here? Let’s pretend, Edvard. I stand here as your beloved. You are dreaming about me. You wake up and I am here by your side. I love you. I know that now.
When she lifted her gaze from his hand, he had opened his eyes. He looked at her and smiled a crooked, almost shy smile.
“Just look at me,” he said.
He twisted his hand and took hers. Your hands make me defenseless, she thought.
“How are you?”
“Well taken care of,” he said and smiled again.
She nodded. He moved clumsily to the side so that she could sit down on the edge of the bed but Ann went and fetched a chair.
“What happened?”
He told her briefly about his fishing outing. He praised Victor’s courage. Edvard had seen the old man as he must have been thirty or forty years ago, forceful and with an assurance in managing the boat that he himself would never possess. The old man had skillfully maneuvered between the reef and the underwater rocks and tossed the anchor at exactly the right moment. It was as if the sea itself grew calmer.
“It was slippery on the rocks,” Edvard finished.
“It scared me half to death when Viola called. She said that you had gone by the board and I thought you had died.”
Edvard didn’t say anything.
“Why did you set out in such bad weather?”
“It was Victor’s nets.”
“Who cares about some silly old nets?”
She saw that Edvard didn’t want to keep talking about it. He stared straight ahead. The slightly embarrassed but open expression in his face was gone.
“You wanted to test the limits, didn’t you? Isn’t that right?”
“No,” he said, but Lindell heard the hesitation in his voice.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
He had no reaction. He simply turned his head, looked at her, and nodded.
“Did you know?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I love you,” he said quietly and she saw tears in his eyes. “I knew it without a doubt when I lay there in the water. I can’t live so far away from you.”
“It’s not yours,” she said and she didn’t understand where she found the words or the strength.
Lindell saw the doubt and then the pain that drew across his face like a thundercloud. It was as if she had whipped him. Edvard collapsed in front of her eyes. He didn’t want to believe her. For a few seconds he had experienced joy and uttered the words that she had longed for.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
His body became rigid and he closed his eyes. The color in his cheeks had been replaced with a sickly gray pallor.
“Forgive me. I love you.”
He started as if she had given him another blow.
“Go,” he said curtly.
“I love you,” Ann said.
“Just go. Go, for the love of god!”
Lindell staggered off. She cast a last glance at Edvard. He was watching her and their eyes met. It was a desperate hate that she saw. She could walk. He was bedridden and she sensed his emotions. He who always fled when the questions became too many or too difficult, who dove into work when darkness threatened to take over. Now he was laid out, fettered to his own anguish.
She regretted having spilled the truth so baldly. It was as if she had taken advantage of his vulnerability, newly rescued from the sea, exposed not only to the waves of the Baltic but to the swell of emotions. He could interpret it that way.
Their shared life was now over. The trust between them would never be reestablished. Suddenly she was standing at the clinic exit. She had noticed his hesitation when she had asked why he had gone out in such bad weather. Had he intended to take his life? She gazed up at the outside of the building, where the windows gleamed in the slow evening sun. He was capable of it, she was sure of it.
If she had had an abortion, would he have wanted her then? She turned as if to go back through the entrance, run down the corridor, and ask him. Straight out. Not care about her shame or his unspoken questions. She knew that he would never ask who the father of her child was. Would she be able to explain, win back his confidence enough that they could at least try again?
She shook her head. Not Edvard. His melancholy nature put a stop to any such thoughts. Simply the knowledge of her brief affair would lie like a boulder in their path.
Her cell phone rang, and for a moment she thought it was him, but it was Frenke at the call center.
“Hi, Ann, sorry for disturbing you, but I received a call and I thought I recognized the name. Mortensen, does that ring a bell?”
“Yes, of course,” Lindell said quickly.
“His neighbor, who seems to be a nut case, called and complained about Mortensen’s making too much noise.”
“Too much noise?”
“Yes, apparently he’s operating some kind of machinery in his yard and the neighbor thought it was too late. He’s been firing it up a lot lately, he says.”
“I see,” Lindell said.
“I know, I know,” Frenke said, “but since I recognized the name Mortensen, I thought I would let you know. He’s involved in that MedForsk investigation, isn’t he? I asked the neighbor to give you a call tomorrow morning.”
“I appreciate it. Thanks for calling.”
“Have a good one,” Frenke said, feeling a little better after these parting words.
In this abrupt way, Lindell was returned to life without Edvard. She checked her watch. Mortensen is at the end of his rope, she thought. Sits in an interrogation all day and then goes home to dig up his yard at night. What had he said? “You have to get your money’s worth.”
* * *
The way back to Uppsala was long. The brief moment with Edvard had frozen her movements and thoughts. She drove past Börstil and it occurred to her that perhaps it was the last time for a long while that she would drive by the white church. It had alw
ays been a journey marker for her. Once past it, she was in Roslagen. The church for her marked the entrance to Edvard’s kingdom, and she remembered all the times that she drove past it with a tingle of excitement.
Now her insides were tingling from other reasons. Deep inside she despised herself, but she always repressed this feeling. In time her self-disgust would grow even greater. Instead she managed to distract herself so she would feel some relief. It was cowardly, but she swallowed it out of pure self-preservation. She had to keep herself together. She had to solve the case.
Through Gimo she kept to the speed limit for the first time. Skäfthammars church. Next it’ll be Alunda, she thought. Then Stavby and then Rasbo. From the cathedral in Málaga to this parade of country churches in Uppland.
The guilt she felt at hurting another person threatened to overwhelm her, but she forced herself to think of the investigation. What was it that Teresia Wall had said? Granted it had been social conversation, but Lindell could not come up with what it was that had caught her attention. It could have been a single word, but what?
At the exit to Tuna she finally remembered. It was Teresia’s comment about her husband, who worked as a veterinarian at Ultuna. Adrian Mård had a degree in agricultural science and had most likely also gone there. Maybe they had met? Maybe they knew each other? Maybe it was Teresia’s husband who had supplied Mård with the information about the illegal animal experiments?
A lot of maybes, but Lindell had followed her intuition before, and this lead wasn’t any worse than the others. She checked the time. Edvard, what are you doing? A sense of loss and sadness came over her. She fumbled for her phone, which had slid down between the front seats, and dialed Beatrice’s number.
It rang five times before she answered.
“Were you sleeping?”
“No, we’re playing Kubb in the garden,” Beatrice said cheerfully. “I had a feeling that it was you.”
“I had an idea…” Lindell began.
“Teresia Wall,” Beatrice filled in.
“Exactly.”
“I realized when you said that part about the start of the interrogation, when we were chatting to get her to relax a little.”
“Her husband works at Ultuna and most likely got his education there. Adrian Mård did too.”
She didn’t need to say anymore. Beatrice understood.
“Should we bring her in again tomorrow?”
“Can you arrange it?” Lindell asked.
* * *
Karl-Göran Wall had received his degree from Ultuna in 1982, the same year as Adrian Mård. Lindell had uncovered this fact with the help of a cooperative staff member at the university.
Granted, the two men had different specializations, but the probability that they knew each other was still fairly high.
“Do you remember a man by the name of Adrian Mård?” Beatrice asked.
Teresia Wall answered in the negative, but her eyes gave her away.
“Maybe your husband does?” Lindell suggested. “We can call him and ask.”
Teresia pushed out her lower lip in an expression that was hard to read. Perhaps it was anger. She said nothing, and both Lindell and Beatrice knew they were on the right track. Teresia was smart enough to realize that their questions were part of a series. They were weaving a net in which she was gradually becoming snared. Some reacted with relief, others with passivity, and still others with anger when they realized that they were like a fly in a spiderweb. But however hard they struggled, it was in vain. The conclusion was a given.
“Okay,” she conceded, “I know Adrian Mård. What about it?”
“He has shared certain information with us,” Lindell said.
Teresia started to cry, the tears slowly trickling down her cheeks.
Beatrice gave her a tissue. Teresia blew her nose loudly and then started talking. Lindell made sure that the tape recorder was on. Now, De Soto, now we’ve got something for you.
“It was last fall,” Teresia said. “Sven-Erik had been down in Málaga and had come back very upset. He wasn’t like himself at all. He was curt and off-kilter, and the atmosphere was strained. He and Mortensen were fighting more and more. They slammed doors and there was just a bad feeling. Everything had been so good before. The business was going well, we were on top. Everything got turned upside down.”
“What did they fight about?” Beatrice asked.
“We didn’t know. Sofi confronted Mortensen and asked him, but he wouldn’t say. We thought that it was money at first. That’s often why people fall out, but it was something else. I went into Sven-Erik’s office once to get some documents. I couldn’t find them and started to look through the files stacked on his desk.”
She paused for a moment and looked at Lindell.
“I wasn’t snooping,” she said. “It was important to get a copy of the report I was looking for.”
Lindell nodded.
“In the middle of the stack there was a document that caught my eye. It looked like all the others, but at the very bottom Sven-Erik had written ‘Jesus Christ’ in capital letters. Of course I would be curious. And then it said that he recommended against something and that it could cause great suffering. It was those words ‘great suffering’ that had the biggest impact on me.”
“Was he the one who had written this comment?”
“Yes, I recognized the handwriting,” Teresia said. “It was about a clinical trial that was going to be undertaken. We had been running primate trials for a couple of years. Liiv and Södergren had been responsible for them, and they had been moderately successful.”
“Was there any truth to the animal activists’ claims?” Beatrice asked. “They maintain that the animal trials were illegal.”
Teresia hesitated.
“I think they did parallel trials,” she said. “One series was approved. Every trial has to be reviewed. The other was probably not official.”
“Probably? You think that they conducted two series of trials, one of which was illegal?”
Teresia nodded.
“You think this or you know it?”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“Why didn’t you raise any alarms?” Lindell asked.
Teresia Wall took a long time to answer.
“The company’s future was hanging on the Parkinson’s project,” she said finally.
“You knew it, but you kept quiet,” Beatrice said grimly.
“Did Cederén know about it too?”
“Of course. He was the head of research.”
“What was the difference between those trials and the new ones, the ones that Cederén was so upset about?”
Lindell’s question brought Teresia to tears again. She stared down at the floor, her hands folded on her large belly.
“What were the results?” Lindell asked.
“They weren’t so good,” Teresia said. “Something went wrong. The trials were stopped because there were too many side effects.”
“And those trials were conducted in the Dominican Republic?”
Teresia nodded.
“Why there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the controls aren’t as strict.”
Teresia told them how she had first been beset by doubt and then disgust. She had also been afraid and nervous and did not know what to do. Her husband had noticed the change in her. At first he thought it had to do with her pregnancy, but finally she hadn’t been able to keep the information from him anymore. She told him about her discovery.
Together they had then reached out to Adrian Mård, who they had known for fifteen years. They trusted him. They knew that he would be able to get the word out without involving Teresia and her husband.
She assured them that she had not talked to anyone else at the company about the document that she had found. She had been planning to discuss it with Cederén but had not done so in time.
* * *
Lindell left the room and immediately walked over to Ottosson’s office
. He noticed her look of agitation and gazed back at her with concern but was interrupted by Lindell, who told him what Teresia had said.
Ottosson listened without interrupting and sat quietly for a while with a look that Lindell could characterize only as abstracted.
“What pigs,” he said finally.
He stared at her as if he thought that she had come to him with a fictionalized story.
“Can it be true?”
“I am sure that Wall is telling the truth,” Lindell said. “Why would she be making this up?”
Ottosson left the desk and started to walk to and fro across the floor, only to stop, grab the telephone receiver, and dial a number.
“This is Ottosson. Can you come here?”
He listened to the answer before he went on impatiently.
“No, it can’t wait,” he said and hung up.
“Fritzén?” Lindell asked.
Ottosson nodded. A great calm came over her. It was as if Ottosson drained away the anger. She sat heavily in the chair and couldn’t really think straight. Ottosson said something that she didn’t quite catch before he left the room and set off down the corridor.
When he returned, Lindell saw that he had rinsed his face. His hairline and beard were still damp.
“How do we proceed?” he asked in a tired voice and sat back down at the desk.
“We bring in Mortensen,” Lindell said.
She walked back to her room. The exhaustion was starting to get to her as well, but she forced herself to reach out to Adrian Mård. He seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. He did not answer at any of the telephone numbers that he had given her and had not returned any of Lindell’s earlier messages.
She ended up sitting with the phone in her hand. How cruel I was to Edvard, she thought. Barge into his sickroom and let drop that I am carrying someone else’s child. If I had just approached this in a different way, maybe I could have reasoned with him.
Did she love him? She believed she did. She didn’t dare let herself test this fully. Since she was denied the joy of living with him, it didn’t matter in the end. The sense of having thrown away all possibilities of a future with Edvard only stoked her self-disgust. A single night’s thoughtless escapade ruins everything, she thought bitterly. But what do I know about what Edvard might have been up to during the six months that we didn’t see each other? He may have taken the opportunity to spread his wild oats. But if this thought was meant to comfort her, it failed. Her intuition told her that he had not been with anyone else, and anyway, what would it have meant? Nothing. This was about her and Edvard.
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