Suddenly, Karin received a hard blow to her chin and she staggered backwards. Malin turned around and limped back towards the front door. She had now hit her mother. Some part of her registered how sick this was, but she could not quite get her head round the thought. She had not had any choice. The bitch had tried to restrain her, to imprison her with her bloody nagging. She had to get out and away from the nagging bitch and her shitty life. If only she were dead. Malin tried to think, but the pain in her head cut like a knife. She stopped and pressed her hands against her forehead.
“Can’t you just shut your mouth?” screamed Malin. “Leave me alone!”
Malin threw open the front door and was just about to start descending the stairs when Karin grabbed her jacket.
“You’re not going anywhere!” roared Karin, so that it echoed around the stairwell. She had to get the damned kid inside, to put an end to all of this now.
The echo of Karin’s voice mingled with the barking from Mrs Ekblom’s chihuahua. She tried to drag Malin through the flat door, but Malin resisted. She had a grip on the handrail and held on with all the strength she could muster.
Karin grabbed hold of Malin’s hair. She pulled so hard that a big hank of hair came loose. Malin screamed with the pain. She quickly spun around to break free from her mother’s hold on her jacket and briefly lost her grip on the handrail. In her determination to prevent Malin’s escape, Karin then hit Malin full in the face with the flat of her hand.
The blow came as a complete surprise. Instinctively, Malin covered her face, and lost her balance, falling uncontrollably backwards while desperately reaching for the handrail. A dull thud sounded when her head met the rock-hard edge of the step.
It was suddenly quiet in the stairwell. The echoes quickly died away.
The dog stopped barking behind the door.
A weak gasp escaped from the girl. Her body twitched a few times before lying completely still.
WALTER WAS JUST leaving for the evening when David Lilja came into the office. He sat down in Walter’s shabby visitor’s chair and placed his hands behind his neck. Walter looked at Lilja with some surprise, as he normally never stayed after five o’clock. Lilja was probably the person in the police station who was most eager to go home and who strictly adhered to office hours. On the other hand, he had no objections when Walter worked until midnight.
“I heard that it went well with the pimp’s alibi,” Lilja began, “and that the rookie from RSU also handled herself well.”
“Yes, she’s at home getting her beauty sleep so that she can come and play tomorrow as well.”
“Do you two get along? From what I’ve seen, she’s quite determined and very forward. That’s not exactly the perfect match for you.”
“She has perhaps a little too much confidence for her own good. But a few cold showers should bring her feet back down to earth,” Walter said.
“And naturally you will see that it happens,” said Lilja. “The first thing a person loses in your company is self-confidence.”
Walter smiled a crooked grin.
“I don’t want to get any complaints from Hildebrandt at RSU,” Lilja clarified. “We’ll have a lot of use for RSU in the future.”
“Why would you get complaints?” asked Walter.
Lilja looked at Walter in disbelief. “In any case, it seems as if you two managed to run circles around the girlfriend. The prosecutor is very satisfied with your work.”
“There’ll be no problems there,” answered Walter. “She was just as brainless as one would expect of an addict with that habit – no more, no less. If the court accepts her as a credible witness, then we might as well scrap the entire justice system.”
Lilja nodded approvingly and watched Walter as he stood up from his chair.
“Anything else?” Walter asked as he reached for his jacket.
“What do you mean?” asked Lilja.
“Well, you didn’t come here just to ask about the alibi and to gossip about the rookie. It’s almost eleven,” said Walter, checking the clock above the office door.
Lilja’s face hardened. “We have a fifteen-year-old girl who has been in an accident,” he began and then paused for effect.
“I see,” said Walter, disinterested, as he put on his jacket.
“It’s the same situation as always,” sighed Lilja. “Lack of resources, lack of manpower, lack of everything.” He shrugged.
“Well, that sounds familiar,” conceded Walter. “Are we talking overtime now?”
“As you know, Cederberg and Jonsson are assisting our colleagues from the Skåne district for a few weeks,” Lilja continued, pretending not to hear Walter’s last question. “It’s a terrible mess down there in Landskrona. Many believe that it’s becoming a lawless region. They’re taking part in a murder investigation with connections to Stockholm, but the investigation is being led by officers on the scene. Forensics is not formally involved yet, but may be. If that happens, I’ll pull Cederberg and Jonsson back home immediately.”
“Let them stay down there permanently,” Walter suggested and went towards the door. “You could never have made me go down to that Skåne dung heap. Not even if you asked me nicely.”
Lilja remained sitting in the chair.
“Forensics is already en route to the scene of the accident,” he said, switching back to the original subject. “You can call Swedberg and get the address from him. The duty shift is already busy with other tasks, so I would appreciate it if you could see your way to at least start the crime scene investigation in order that the shift can take over, once they are finished with the knife victim in Fittja.”
“Do I have a choice?” asked Walter.
“One always has a choice,” answered Lilja, standing up from his chair. “Or were you planning to take a hot bath with candlelight when you get home?”
“Better than that,” lied Walter. “In fact, I have a new bed and a date waiting for me in it.”
Lilja raised an eyebrow.
WHEN WALTER ARRIVED, the forensic technicians had already started the technical part of the crime scene investigation. He left the car on the pavement a short distance from the building, because the street was full of parked cars. There were no parking spaces nowadays, not even in the suburbs. He swore because there was little room when he opened the car door and happened to hit a lamppost that someone had coincidentally placed at that exact spot. He noticed a small dent on the taxpayer’s Volvo V70 and then continued at a slow pace towards the entrance, where ambulance crew and uniformed police officers were standing around. Only now did his thoughts begin to focus on what was waiting for him. His years as a detective had made him callous and accustomed to most things that had to do with death. Only morticians and forensic technicians were truly comfortable with it. Walter had been obliged to learn how the sweet smell from a corpse whose “best-before” date had expired could attack the nostrils. And how to scoop the remains of a human body with a soup ladle from a grinder at the coffee factory. Such things no longer bothered him. There was, however, something he could never get used to – the occasions when humanity revealed its worst and most primitive behaviour. And this was when children got hurt. Every time this happened, he questioned his choice of profession.
That a rational adult could take the life of a defenceless child never ceased to horrify him. That children died as a result of accidents on almost a daily basis was understandable. That was part of the risk of living, one could say. But that a child could be murdered in cold blood, he could not understand. Every time, he hoped to avoid having to see the corpse of a child when he came to a crime scene, but this time he had the misfortune of knowing what was going to happen.
A small group of curious bystanders had gathered at a distance and was trying to get a glimpse of what was going on in the stairwell. The police tape effectively cordoned off the area around the entrance. The technicians had also managed to erect tent walls inside the door entrance so that they could work undisturbed.
Walter showed his police badge to a uniformed police officer. The officer nodded and held up the plastic tape so that Walter could bend stiffly under it.
“What have we got here, then?” said Walter to no one in particular, as he entered the stairwell and donned the mandatory blue overalls and face mask. He searched for some of the cough drops that he had in his chest pocket while looking around him.
Swedberg, who was standing in conversation with some colleagues who were all wearing blue plastic overalls, turned around. He gave Walter a glance that then moved to the body on the stairs. The body was of medium height and was wrapped in a yellow ambulance blanket. Blood had coagulated on the floor under the body and someone had left a footprint in the red stain.
Walter squatted beside the body and pulled on the latex gloves that he always had with him. He carefully lifted the blanket to confirm what he already knew. A girl of around fifteen, sixteen years, just as Lilja had warned him.
She was pale and lifeless. Her eyes were closed and she looked peaceful, lying there. She was, however, just an empty shell, an object as lifeless as the clothes on her body. This morning, she had awoken to the last day of her all-too-short life, and Walter wondered what she had been thinking in the last minutes before Death took her. For a brief second, he wished he could trade places with her. He felt a pain in his chest and took a deep breath. Always the same powerless feeling, always the same bloody spasm in his lower chest.
He began by examining the girl’s head, lifting it up gently so that he could see the fracture at the back of the skull.
Swedberg crouched beside Walter. “Too damned tragic, eh?” he said in a quiet voice, scrutinizing the girl.
“What have you found out?” asked Walter flatly.
“For starters, this is what she had on her,” said Swedberg and held up a transparent forensic sample bag.
Walter scanned the contents of the bag: a small plaster figure in the shape of a winged skeleton.
“Mobile phone?” asked Walter.
“Not on her, in any case,” answered Swedberg.
“Anything else?”
“Malin Sjöstrand, fifteen years old,” answered Swedberg. “Cause of death: blunt-force trauma to the back of the head, probably from the fall on the stairs. We are taking her in for a post-mortem, if you have no objections.”
Walter nodded. He stood up and went up the stairs to the uniformed police officers.
“Who’s in the flat?” he asked a police officer.
“Ambulance crew and a female officer,” answered the police officer tersely.
Walter entered the flat and went through a narrow hallway into a living room. A middle-aged woman sat curled up with her knees against her chin in one corner of the sofa. Her face was almost as pale as the girl on the stairway. Her gaze was blank and her mascara had left black streaks down her cheeks. Beside her sat a woman police officer. Two male paramedics were crouched over the woman and attempting to get a reaction from her. Walter summoned the police officer with a wave. “Is that the mother?” he whispered.
“Yes,” replied the police officer. “Karin Sjöstrand, mother to Malin Sjöstrand; she’s the one who …”
“Have you discovered anything else?” he interrupted.
“No, nothing. She’s currently in a state of shock, according to the paramedics. They want to take her in, but she refuses to leave the sofa.”
“I see,” nodded Walter. He sat down beside the curled-up woman, who didn’t take any notice of his presence.
“My name is Walter Gröhn and I’m a detective from the County CID,” he said, in as gentle a voice as he could muster. Tenderness was not his strongest suit.
The ambulancemen noted with interest how Walter tried to connect with the woman.
“Are you the girl’s mother?” continued Walter.
No reaction from the woman.
One of the ambulancemen, an older man with a fretful face, explained why she was not answering.
“She’s paralyzed with shock,” he said, almost whispering. “We want to get her to A&E as quickly as possible.” The second paramedic nodded in agreement.
Walter stood up from the sofa and went out into the stairwell. He wanted to be sure that the girl was on the way to the post-mortem and not still lying on the stairs.
“Get some rags and wipe the blood off the stairs, if you please,” he ordered the policeman who had been standing by the door earlier.
The policeman turned around, confused.
“Rags?” he said as he stared at Walter.
“Rags, you know, also known as floor rags,” explained Walter.
“We don’t have any rags with us,” the policeman said, apologetically.
“Then you’ll have to improvise,” suggested Walter. “Go and buy some at the nearest petrol station.”
The policeman continued to look confused.
An elderly woman with weepy, bloodshot eyes and a wrinkled face suddenly opened the next door. In one hand, she held a floor mop. Beside her, on the hallway floor, there stood an empty plastic bucket.
“You can take water from my bathroom,” she began, in a shaky voice. “I don’t have the strength to do it myself, you see. My legs don’t carry me so well nowadays.” She held out the floor mop with a shaking hand.
Walter scrutinized the hunchbacked old lady, who must have been at least eighty years old. Her blue-silver hair was flattened at the back. It looked as if she had just got out of bed.
“That’s very kind of you,” thanked Walter. “My colleague in the uniform down there will take care of it. And in return, maybe he can offer to clean your flat since he is already cleaning up.” Walter grinned at the lady who smiled back, somewhat uncomfortably.
“Thank you, but I already have a cleaning lady,” she said.
The policeman did not appear to be in the least amused as he took a firm grip of the floor mop and bucket and went into the lady’s flat.
Walter re-entered the flat. The paramedics had, as gently as possible, tried to get the shocked woman to lie down on the stretcher. They had failed and instead were discussing other options when Walter came in.
He crouched down in front of the woman and stretched out his hand.
“Come on, Karin. We’re going to see Malin,” he said and smiled sympathetically at her. Karin lowered her eyes from the wall and looked at Walter. An antique Mora grandfather clock struck with slow, sleepy chimes.
“Are we?” she asked, with the bewilderment of a child.
“Yes, we are,” Walter smiled. “She’s lying at the hospital waiting for you. It’s best that we hurry up.”
Walter took Karin’s hand while he nodded to the ambulance crew to prepare the stretcher. She hesitated for a moment. Then she stood up slowly with Walter’s hand firmly in hers. He led her to the stretcher and felt her grip his hand even harder.
“Promise that I’ll get to see her?” Her voice was fragile, and she looked into Walter’s eyes with a tired, feverish gaze.
“I promise,” Walter answered and freed his hand from her grip.
The younger of the paramedics approached Walter after they had loaded Karin into the ambulance.
“I don’t understand why you lied,” he said, and stared at Walter questioningly.
Walter raised his eyes to the clear, starry night sky. Condensation steamed out of his mouth as he breathed. The pain in his chest had subsided and he could breathe freely again.
“She’ll see her again,” he said, without taking his eye from the Big Dipper. “I never said under what circumstances.”
The paramedic scrutinized Walter thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then he got into the ambulance, shaking his head.
SOME JOURNALISTS HAD merged with the group of bystanders outside the barriers. Walter stiffly crept under the plastic tape that separated the tragedy from the everyday world. When he straightened up, he found himself standing in front of the worst news jackal of them all.
“Jörgen Blad, from the newspaper Kvä
llspressen,” said the short, corpulent reporter, while thrusting a minivoice recorder under Walter’s nose. Small, chipolata-like fingers gripped the voice recorder, in which he hoped he would win an exlusive from Walter. He held the voice recorder so close that Walter could smell the taco spices on the reporter’s hand. Presumably, he had been sitting in some Tex-Mex bar, stuffing himself with a load of greasy enchiladas. Walter hated Mexican food. It was always over-spiced and as greasy as the hair of a high-priced lawyer from the Östermalm district. Since he had a previously unfinished bone to pick with Blad, he decided to keep the process as short as possible.
“Oh, I can always recognize you,” Walter began and pushed the voice recorder to one side. “My eyesight is not that bad yet.”
“What can you say about the deceased?” insisted Jörgen and thrust the voice recorder forwards again.
“That she’s dead,” Walter said and started to go towards his car.
“Who’s the person in question and how did she die?” Jörgen continued and followed Walter.
“Too early to make a statement,” Walter answered abruptly.
“About what?” Jörgen asked. “About who she is or how she died?”
“That, you will have to guess,” Walter said and opened the door. “You people at Kvällspressen are usually quite adept at making up a story.” He slammed the car door shut.
And so the time for the first retribution had arrived.
Finally, he was being rewarded for his relentless work. It had been a difficult task, and he had been obliged to use accomplices, but they were everywhere, the unscrupulous who would sell themselves for a fistful of cash with no qualms. Everything had been carefully planned: the burglary, the planted evidence, and then the girl who became his instrument. She would be the first step on his road to recovery. Another failure was not an option. This war had no victors. All were doomed to defeat. All that remained was to ease his suffering.
The woman would suffer as he had suffered. She had kindly allowed herself to be touched by his vengeance and she would now have to live with the agony of having killed her own child. She would be made accountable and tortured by her own uncertainty, where the questions would eat away at her like maggots on a corpse.
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