by Viveca Sten
“Who else is in the picture?” Margit wanted to know.
Kaufman scratched his head.
“Let me think. This is Kihlberg, he was our team leader, and he was a hell of a nice guy.”
“What was his first name?”
“I don’t . . . Back then we never used first names, just number and surnames.” He took a deep breath and let it out through his mouth with a slight hissing sound.
“I was 108. 108 Kaufman.”
Thomas realized that his tone had changed. He was calmer, less like a man on a downward trajectory. It was as if an echo of the military life had crept into his voice, evoking the disciplined young man he must once have been.
Margit pointed to a soldier on the right. “And who’s this?”
“That’s Erneskog,” Kaufman said slowly. “We shared a room on Korsö.”
“Any idea what his first name is?”
Kaufman stubbed out his cigarette and lit yet another. The air in the kitchen was so thick with smoke that Thomas’s throat hurt. He stood up.
“Mind if I open the window?”
Kaufman ignored him. He was frowning with the effort of trying to recall the events of thirty years ago.
“His name is . . . Sven, that’s it. Sven Erneskog, and the guy next to him is . . . Eklund. Stefan Eklund.”
He seemed delighted with this achievement; he looked up at the two officers with triumph in his eyes.
“My brain’s still working!” he said. “I’m not finished yet!”
Thomas jotted down the names.
“What about the last two?” Margit said, nodding in the direction of the soldiers who had yet to be identified.
“Now, what were their names . . .”
A look of despair passed across Kaufman’s unshaven face. His upper lip trembled, and for a second, Thomas thought he might burst into tears. Had he been so deeply affected by talking about old memories? Or had he been struck by the sudden realization of how far he had fallen?
“I don’t remember anymore. They’re gone, just like Kihlberg’s first name. I never thought I’d forget that.”
“Could we borrow this photograph?” Thomas asked. “I promise you’ll get it back, but I’d really like to make a copy.”
Kaufman nodded, and Thomas gently removed it from the album and held it in the palm of his hand. He looked at it again. The late-afternoon sun shone on those muscular bodies. One of the men was holding a beret, the Coastal Ranger’s emblem glinting in the light.
Thirty years ago, Kaufman had been a member of an elite group of soldiers. Now all that remained was a piece of wreckage.
CHAPTER 24
“What a mess,” Thomas said as he turned the key in the ignition.
In spite of their fears, the car had been left untouched. The boys who had been standing around smoking outside the apartment building had disappeared.
“I have a feeling it won’t be long before he drinks himself to death,” he went on as he signaled left.
A light drizzle was falling, and he switched on the windshield wipers. It was almost three o’clock.
“That was upsetting,” Margit said. They had both come across all kinds of human degradation during their years as police officers: addicts who had committed the very worst crimes in their desperate quests for drugs, and victims of abuse who were barely recognizable. They had seen apartments that had been totally trashed, and human remains that had made their stomachs turn.
“You never get used to it,” she went on.
“No, but maybe that’s good,” Thomas said as he changed gears. “You don’t want to lose the ability to feel.”
“I just hope my kids never end up like that.”
It sounded as if Margit had taken the encounter with Kaufman more personally than she usually did; she was very experienced, she rarely lost her cool, and she could handle most situations. However, her two teenage daughters, Anna and Linda, were a constant source of anxiety, and she often talked to Thomas about her fears.
Her job made her all too familiar with what could happen to young girls if they weren’t careful, and as a result she went too far in the opposite direction. Margit was an overprotective mother, which led to frequent arguments about boundaries. The fact that her husband refused to take sides, and simply withdrew when all hell broke loose, merely increased her frustration.
“Linda was drunk when she got home on Saturday,” she said after a while. “She threw up in the flower bed before she came in, then tried to tell me she had an upset stomach.” Margit let out a bark of laughter. “An upset stomach, did she really think I’d buy that?”
“What happened?”
“Eventually she came clean. She and her friends had been competing to see who could take the most tequila shots. Tequila shots! She’s old enough to know better.”
“She’s only seventeen. At that age, you don’t think about consequences; you want to see what you’re capable of. Weren’t you like that at seventeen?”
“I mean, we’ve talked about this kind of thing,” Margit went on as if she hadn’t heard Thomas’s comment. “She knows how dangerous it is for a girl to get so drunk that she can’t take care of herself, for God’s sake!”
She pushed back her hair with an angry gesture.
Thomas reached out and adjusted the fan. The car they were using was an older model, and it was always either too warm or too cold.
“Maybe she learned her lesson, if she was as wasted as you say,” he ventured. “She must have felt like crap the next day. I’m sure it’ll work out; I don’t think Linda would do anything dumb.”
“Let’s hope not.”
Margit stared out of the window. “I just get so worried when she goes out,” she went on. “She’s so small; she wouldn’t be able to fight back if anyone attacked her.”
Linda took after Margit, who was slim and wiry, without an ounce of extra fat on her bones. Both daughters were very pretty, with long blond hair.
Thomas and Margit knew that all it took was for one man to get out of line. Every summer, the police received one complaint after another from girls who’d had too much to drink and had been attacked; these events had the potential to haunt the victims for the rest of their lives. Thomas understood why Margit was so anxious, but there was no point in making her feel worse.
“I’m sure Linda will be a little more careful, at least for a while,” he said, patting her reassuringly on the arm. “If she had a real humdinger of a hangover after too much tequila, she probably won’t want to touch alcohol for quite some time.”
“She definitely won’t be doing that,” Margit said grimly. “She’s grounded for a month.”
CHAPTER 25
Thomas was at his desk, trying to gain an overview of the investigation. He had piles of papers in front of him—interview transcripts, witness statements, and notes—and was starting to go through them.
Erik Blom and Kalle Lidwall had spoken to various people connected to Marcus Nielsen—relatives, former school friends, and other students who lived in the same building. The picture that had emerged was of a young man very similar to most others who were studying at the university.
He had consistently gotten good grades and had been a committed student. “Kind of nerdy,” as one of his classmates had put it. Nielsen often stayed up late playing computer games or surfing the net, and he enjoyed chatting online with people from all over the world.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Someone had said that Marcus was considering working with young people when he finished his course; he had asked about an additional minor in youth psychology. His mother had mentioned that Marcus’s kid brother had been bullied at school; maybe that had sparked his interest.
When asked directly whether Marcus would have given away his laptop or possibly lost it, every single person had said no. The general consensus was that he never went anywhere without it.
Thomas was convinced that part of the answer lay in that missing laptop.
&n
bsp; He took a sip of lukewarm tea and flicked through the next pile, which consisted of interviews with Jan-Erik Fredell’s relatives, friends, and neighbors.
According to Lena Fredell, it was unthinkable that anyone could have wished her husband harm. He had been a PE teacher throughout his adult life, and a very popular one. He had won the “teacher of the year” award at his school several times.
Lena refused to believe that he could have had any enemies, insisting that a random burglar must have attacked her husband. Admittedly, there had been a spate of organized gangs ringing the doorbells of elderly people and trying to rob them in their own homes, but Thomas wasn’t convinced. This homicide seemed too well planned; plus, no money had been taken from the Fredells’ apartment.
If Fredell had been killed because the perp was disappointed at the lack of cash or valuables, then the MO should have been completely different. A fatal blow delivered in a moment of rage, a shot fired in anger—Thomas could have accepted either of those, but drowning a fully dressed man in his own bathtub was something else, and it suggested another motive altogether.
Door-to-door inquiries among the neighbors had produced nothing. Few had been at home on that sunny Saturday; nobody had noticed anything unusual in the stairwell.
As Thomas studied the report, he wondered how long it would have taken the killer to dispatch Jan-Erik Fredell. He picked up the phone and called Sachsen.
“Hi, it’s Thomas Andreasson,” he said when the forensic pathologist answered. “I have a question regarding Jan-Erik Fredell. Have you any idea how long it might have taken?”
“To drown him, you mean?”
“The whole thing.”
Sachsen thought for a moment. “From the moment the killer entered the apartment until Fredell’s lungs filled with water . . .”
Another pause; Thomas waited.
“How long does it take to fill a bathtub?” Sachsen said.
Thomas wasn’t sure; he usually took showers. “I don’t know—fifteen minutes, maybe? No more than twenty.”
“There you go, then. Let’s assume it took fifteen minutes at the most to gain access to the apartment and force Fredell into the bathroom. Add twenty to fill the bath. Push Fredell down; maybe another six or seven minutes, to be on the safe side. Where does that leave us?”
“Thirty-five to forty-five minutes.”
“There were no unidentified fingerprints, so presumably the killer wore gloves; that means he wouldn’t have to waste time wiping anything he’d touched.”
“Carefully planned, in other words.”
“In every way. You’re dealing with a highly efficient killer.”
Thomas thanked him and hung up, then reflected on what he had just heard. So it had taken three-quarters of an hour at the most. A calculating killer had gotten into the apartment, forced Fredell to get into a bathtub full of water with his clothes on, then held him beneath the surface.
Why choose that particular method? There were many easier ways to kill someone.
Thomas got up and began to pace to get his circulation going. In the building opposite, a woman was standing by the open window, sneaking a cigarette instead of going outside, in spite of the fact that smoking was now banned inside offices. Thomas had colleagues who had switched to nicotine gum, muttering crossly that it was inhuman to force people out into the cold when they wanted a smoke. But the woman by the window didn’t seem to care about the ban.
Thomas looked away and continued to ponder.
The killer must have had a gun in order to force Fredell to get into the bath. Therefore, it was also possible that he could have compelled Marcus Nielsen to stage his suicide. He could have made Marcus climb up onto the desk, place the noose around his neck, and take that fatal step into thin air.
The rope had been sent off for analysis; with a bit of luck, there would be fibers or something else to prove that another person had been in the room. Nothing new had emerged from the more detailed autopsy.
Then again, if the perpetrator had been carrying a gun, why hadn’t he simply shot Fredell? He had made no effort to make the death look accidental, so it should have been easy to pull the trigger. If he had used a silencer, no one would have heard a thing.
Once again, Thomas felt he was going around in circles.
He sat down with a clean sheet of paper in front of him, hoping to arrange the facts into some kind of order, but he just sat there, pen in hand.
It was possible that the two deaths were unrelated; there was no clear proof of a link. However, if they were related, another question came to mind: Why did someone want to hide the fact that Nielsen had been murdered, when Fredell’s murder was so obvious?
It didn’t make sense.
Thomas jotted down his thoughts, then went back to Nielsen’s cell phone and checked through the list of contacts one last time, just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. When he had ticked them all off, he brought up the calendar. Once again, he noted Nielsen’s visit to a pharmacy, Apotek Beckasinen in Farsta, on the Thursday before he died.
He flicked through one of the piles of documents and quickly found what he was looking for.
Marcus Nielsen had been in good health before his death and hadn’t been on any medication. Nor did he suffer from any allergies.
So why had he made an appointment to visit a pharmacy in Farsta, far from both his apartment and his parents’ house? If he needed something, surely he would have gone to the nearest place, for example in the Nacka Forum shopping mall, which was five minutes from where he lived.
Time to head over to Farsta.
DIARY: DECEMBER 1976
We are not “punished.” What happens must never be referred to as punishment. Our commanding officers issue “rewards.”
Rewards.
We are rewarded with nonstop push-ups and endless repetitions of the rangers’ rest position. We run around the yard when the temperature is below freezing or do frog jumps in the pouring rain.
I didn’t know my body could hurt so much. My feet are the worst. Sometimes I don’t even want to acknowledge my feet. The pain transforms them into enemies; when they refuse to obey me, they become symbols of the fact that my own body is working against me.
Every morning they are swollen, reminding me of what awaits me during the course of the day.
“You’re worth no more than dogs,” the sergeant says to us. “You must be trained to obey orders.”
But dogs are treated better than we are. Dogs are given praise and encouragement to help them learn a certain pattern of behavior, not unrelenting physical punishment.
Kaufman lost his gas mask yesterday. He knew what to expect.
A reward, a special reward.
He searched all over the place, in ever-increasing circles, until he ended up standing at his locker, close to tears as he went through the contents for at least the tenth time. He was like a terrified child who has misplaced a new toy. He was so scared he didn’t know what to do with himself.
The only thing he knew for sure was that the sergeant would come up with something particularly unpleasant as his reward.
The sergeant smiled when Kaufman eventually stammered out what had happened. It was almost as if he felt sorry for him. Then he pointed to the yard.
“Two circuits of frog jumps, on your knuckles.”
The color drained from Kaufman’s face.
His knuckles and the backs of his hands were already red-raw from countless push-ups on the gravel.
Every time the sores began to heal, it happened again.
“Can’t I do something else? Anything at all—please, Sergeant!”
He was on the verge of tears.
The sergeant rocked back and forth on his heels as he considered Kaufman’s request. He seemed bewildered.
“So . . . you’re refusing to obey a direct order? Have I got that right?”
Kaufman shook his head.
He is one of the fittest members of the group, a former elite swi
mmer who usually holds out longer than most of us during the exercises. Not one of the smartest guys, but a good comrade. He does as he is told, without question.
Despite his broad back and muscular shoulders, at that moment he looked like a child afraid of being beaten as he begged for a little understanding.
“In that case, you’d better get started.”
Kaufman did as he was told.
We stood there motionless, watching him frog jump around the yard as the sweat poured down his face. Toward the end, he was making small whimpering noises; he just couldn’t help it.
When he completed the last circuit, he collapsed.
We had to carry him to the sick bay, where he was given a tetanus shot. The doctor said his hands would probably become infected, and the aftereffects could be with him for life.
Right now he is lying two beds away from me, and I can hear him moaning softly in his sleep.
He got his reward.
CHAPTER 26
Wednesday (The Second Week)
The Farsta Centrum really had a face-lift, Thomas thought as he parked the car. The sleepy shopping mall to the south of the city had grown and now offered a wider range of stores.
He slammed the door and waited for Margit to get out on the passenger side. It was twenty to eleven.
Apotek Beckasinen was located at the far end of the mall. There were plenty of people at the counter when they walked in, and Thomas noted that anyone who’d come in to fill their prescription would be fifteenth in line. Several elderly customers were sitting patiently waiting for their turn, while a man in a trench coat was staring angrily at the ticket he had just taken, as if he could speed things up by the sheer force of his irritation.
Thomas went over to a tall woman in a white coat at the information desk. According to her name badge, she was Annika Melin.
She favored him with an impersonal smile, no doubt expecting him to ask about a particular type of medication or where the fluoride tablets could be found. Something in her posture told him that she was used to dozens of questions like that every single day.
