H01 - The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  “Anything else of interest?” asked Sjöberg, as he took his notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket and noted the information from the driver’s license.

  “A few credit cards, a business card—he appears to be a real estate agent, pictures of children, YES to organ donation, but it’s probably too late for that I'm afraid. Quite a bit of cash—so not a murder with robbery perhaps. You’ll have the wallet tomorrow.”

  “Good. Thanks,” said Sjöberg.

  The information about the photographs made him depressed. It was bad enough delivering the news of a death, but when there were children involved, he had a hard time holding back his tears. Ingrid Olsson came out of the living room, supported by the nurse.

  “I guess we’ll be leaving now,” said Margit Olofsson to the two police officers. “I’ll make sure that Ingrid has a roof over her head.”

  “That’s considerate of you. We’re sorry about this, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Sjöberg. “We’ll be in touch with both of you.”

  He managed to conceal a slight shudder, but now his mouth felt even drier than before.

  “Just one last question,” he said, directing himself at Ingrid Olsson. “Hans Vannerberg, in his mid-forties, does that sound familiar?”

  “No, not at all,” she answered.

  “Think about it to be on the safe side,” said Sjöberg. “Bye now.”

  “How did she seem?” asked Sandén when the two women were out of the door.

  “She gave a somewhat cool impression. Surprisingly uninterested. But she’s in shock, of course.”

  “She didn’t appear to be a classic nice old lady exactly. She looked sharp somehow. Poor nurse, getting her around her neck. Do you suppose she’s taking the old lady home with her?”

  “Presumably,” answered Sjöberg. “She seemed to be the caretaker type. Now let’s go out and check whether they’ve found anything of interest in the garden.”

  A young police assistant, Petra Westman, approached them as they came out on the stoop.

  “We’ve found a number of footprints,” she said before they could ask. “It’s perfect weather for that sort of thing, so we have some really good impressions.”

  “Male or female?” asked Sandén.

  “I think we have two different pairs of shoes,” Westman replied. “Both of them almost have to be men.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No, not yet.”

  She vanished among the shadows again and Sjöberg looked sorrowfully at Sandén.

  “You’ll have to hold down the fort here while I go to the station and check up on this Vannerberg. He ought to be reported missing. Then I guess I’ll have to contact his family,” he said with a sigh. “Gather the forces for a review at eleven o’clock tomorrow.”

  He leaned down to remove the blue shoe protectors and put them in his jacket pocket. Then he hurried, crouching before the wind, toward the car on the street.

  * * *

  On his way back to the station, he played “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits and took the opportunity to phone Åsa. It was already eleven o’clock, but he assumed she would still be up enjoying the calm after the usual stormy bedtime for five children.

  “Hi, how are things?”

  “Fine. They’re all asleep and I'm sitting here reading. How’s it going?”

  “I’ve looked at a corpse and now I’m on my way back to the station to find out who he was. Then I have to contact his family. It appears that he had children.”

  “Oh boy, poor you. And poor them. And the old lady?”

  “A little absent. In shock, presumably. She had never seen him before and didn’t recognize his name either.”

  “Strange. But she probably had some connection anyway, maybe without her knowing it.”

  “I‘m not so sure.”

  “Yes, but otherwise they could just as well have murdered him out in the woods!”

  “The house was empty for several weeks when the old woman was in the hospital. Someone knew that and lured the guy there to murder him. He was a real estate agent.”

  “But do you really murder someone in a strange person’s house, just because it’s standing empty?”

  Åsa’s viewpoints were always worth taking seriously, but Sjöberg was doubtful in this case. Despite everything, this was the reality: the great majority of murders were simply violent actions, without any complicated psychology, advance planning, or underlying symbolism.

  “Go to bed now,” he said lovingly. “I don’t know if I’ll be home at all tonight. See you.”

  “Bye now, dear, I’ll be thinking of you,” Åsa concluded, and he thanked his lucky stars for this marvelous, positive life partner he was blessed with.

  Then his thoughts brought him back to Hans Vannerberg and he hoped he had no wife and that the children in his wallet were only nieces and nephews.

  The police station was at the end of Östgötagatan by the Hammarby canal, a large, modern office building with glass facades. At this time of night, it was silent and deserted, and not many lights were on inside the transparent walls. He slid his pass card through the reader by the main entrance and entered his code: “POOP”. He had been inspired by his four-year-old Maja’s current primary interest, and every time he entered the code it made him feel happy, while he hoped that no one was peeking over his shoulder.

  His footsteps across the marble floor in the reception area echoed desolately. Lotten, the receptionist, had gone home hours ago to her equally dog-crazy partner and their Afghans. Sjöberg could not keep from smiling at the thought that Lotten’s and Micke the janitor’s dogs actually sent Christmas cards to each other, and birthday cards too. He wondered whether it was dog years or human years that were being celebrated, and decided to ask one of them when he had an opportunity.

  He took the stairs up to the second floor in four big bounds and unlocked his door, which six hours ago he thought he had locked for the night. He threw his jacket over one of the visitor chairs before he sat down at his desk. Then he phoned the duty desk at the National Bureau of Investigation, but changed his mind before the call could be connected. Instead, he started looking for Vannerberg in the phone book and found him with no difficulty. He looked up the address in the street registry and found to his surprise that the street was not far from the crime scene. He decided to call Sandén, who answered almost immediately.

  “Hi, Jens. How’s it going?”

  “No new discoveries so far. The technicians are working away. Hansson thinks he was beaten to death with a kitchen chair, and the discovery site appears to be the scene of the crime, just as we thought.”

  “Listen, the local police who were first on the scene, they don’t happen to still be there, do they?”

  “No, they left while you were talking with Ingrid Olsson.”

  “Maybe they know the victim. I have to check on that to be on the safe side. He may have been reported missing to them.”

  He got their names and called the local police station where they worked. He got a response immediately; one of them was filing his report. Sjöberg stated his business.

  “Yes, the wife was in here this afternoon and reported him missing since yesterday evening, but we haven’t had time to do anything about it. It was already five o’clock when she arrived.”

  “So why didn’t you tell us that? That you already had a missing person with a description like the dead man?”

  “Didn’t think of it. There didn’t seem to be anything shady about him.”

  “About who, do you mean?” Sjöberg asked, irritated.

  “About the man who disappeared, of course. He seemed completely normal, not shady in any way. And the wife, too.”

  “But the corpse was shady, you mean?” Sjöberg hissed.

  “Well, I guess it’s shady getting murdered like that, in the old lady’s house and all...”

  Sjöberg gave up and asked his colleague to fax over the report immediately. He gathe
red himself and thanked the officer for the help anyway, hung up, and went to the copy room where he stood by the fax machine and waited. Finally the damned fax arrived and he read it right away. The date of birth matched, and he had a wife and three children. He worked as a real estate agent and, according to his wife, had disappeared about six o’clock the previous evening to do a home visit with a seller in the neighborhood. He said he would walk there and be back about an hour later, but he never returned.

  Sjöberg looked at the clock and saw that it was past midnight. He considered whether now was a good time to visit the family. The wife was surely beside herself with worry, but decided to wait until early morning. If the family was sleeping, they could continue doing so. He was in great need of a few hours of sleep himself before he had to tackle this difficult task.

  * * *

  He is standing on a lawn wet with dew, looking down at his bare feet. He is looking down although he ought to look up, but something holds him back. His head feels so heavy that he is barely able to raise it. He gathers all his courage and all his strength to turn his face upward, but still he dares not open his eyes. He lets the back of his head rest against his soft neck a while. Finally he opens his eyes.

  There she stands again in the window, the beautiful woman with the dazzling red hair like a sun around her head. She takes a few dance steps and her eyes meet his with a look of surprise. He raises his arms toward her but loses his balance and falls backward.

  Conny Sjöberg sat up in bed with a jolt. He pressed his palms hard against his eyes and felt the sweat running down his back. His whole body was shaking, but he was not crying. He was breathing fast through his nose, but without letting out any sound. He could hardly open his mouth, it was completely dry and he was shivering. He rocked back and forth a few times with his face in his hands before he pulled himself together and went out to the bathroom.

  That dream again, that constantly recurring dream. He gulped down two glasses of water before he dared look at himself in the mirror. His body was still shaking, but his breathing was starting to calm down now. The same meaningless dream, over and over. He did not understand why it bothered him so much.

  What was new this time, however, was that the woman had a familiar face.

  DIARY OF A MURDERER,

  NOVEMBER 2006, TUESDAY

  NEVER HAVE I FELT so exhilarated, so full of energy and desire to live as today, when I’ve committed a murder for the first time. Even I hear how absurd that sounds, like something out of a comedy, but this is nothing to laugh at, the whole thing is really very tragic. Tragic like my shabby life, bounded by loneliness and humiliation, and tragic like my miserable childhood, full of violence, social rejection, and terror. Those children, they took everything from me: my self-esteem, my joy in living, my dreams of the future, and my self-respect. They also took something else from me that everyone else seems to have for life: an album of sunny childhood memories you can dream back to or refer to when you talk with other people. True, I don’t have anyone to talk to now and never have had, but I don’t have any happy childhood memories either. Not a single light in my life-long darkness. When you’re six years old, a time span of six years is actually life-long. Just as life-long as a time span of forty-four years when you’re forty-four.

  I can put words to it. I can formulate the thought that it was the children who took everything away from me, but I can’t do anything about it. I just let it happen, let it overshadow the rest of my life, and became a victim of people’s cruelty. I’ve viewed myself as a victim and lived my life like one. Silent, afraid, and alone. But now that’s over. I don’t feel like a happier person in any way; on the contrary, I feel a kind of gluttony in my own unhappiness and that’s what exhilarates me.

  I had still not decided what I would do when I stepped out into the light of the kitchen lamp. I didn’t intend to hurt him, all I wanted was understanding—some sort of acknowledgment—and an apology. And there he stood, good-looking, prosperous, and beloved, with a slightly surprised but friendly smile on his lips.

  “Oh, excuse me,” he said apologetically. “I rang the doorbell several times and threw sticks at the window. I thought maybe you didn’t hear so well and since we’d decided on this time--”

  “No problem,” I interrupted. I decided to exploit the mental advantage his little realtor transgression had given me to adopt a haughty, somewhat patronizing tone.

  Despite his apologetic attitude and the awkward, for him, situation, he stood there with head held high and obviously undisturbed self-confidence. His charming smile and the roguish gleam in his eye gave him a commanding presence. It wasn’t possible to think badly of such a person. But it was possible to hate him.

  It was enough to travel thirty-seven years back in time and think about the little child lying face down on the asphalt, with a scraped, stinging face in a dirty pool of water. Arms and legs extended like someone being crucified, and held fast by other little kids who, sometimes laughing, sometimes struggling with grim faces, obediently carried out the task you had assigned, from your obvious position as uncrowned king. And there you sat on the small of my back, your legs straddling the sniffling child’s back, as if on a horse, and jubilantly cut strand after strand of hair with a blunt little child’s scissors. Blood and tears—nothing disturbed your undisguised joy.

  It’s not hard to hate a person who in one miserable year managed to destroy a person’s life: mine. It’s easy to hate you as you stand there, eager to be rid of me and—so you thought—my house, to return to your beautiful wife and children, and God forbid that they ever have to experience the horrors you subjected me to on a daily basis. Fate willed that evil incarnate—you, Hans—would grow up to be a happy and harmonious, beloved person, with the capacity to love, while I, the victim of evil, only became a little mite, crawling around in the dirt without anyone noticing and with the capacity only for dark, destructive, hatred.

  He extended his hand and I took it without revealing my distaste.

  “Well, a little guided tour perhaps?” he said politely, but still authoritatively.

  “No, I thought we should sit down and talk a little first,” I answered, indicating a chair at the kitchen table with one hand.

  I had no plans to sit down myself, but he sat down compliantly on the edge of the chair, with his feet crossed under the chair and hands clasped in front of him on the table. I leaned against the kitchen counter with my arms crossed and looked at him scornfully as he turned his face up toward me with a friendly, interested expression. Neither he nor I still had any idea what was about to happen, but I started feeling a certain satisfaction in the situation as it had developed. I was no longer in control of my own actions, there was a higher, stronger power guiding me. Gone was the fear and complaisance—only steely power remained.

  “Yes?” he said, after a few moments of silence.

  “Yes?” I said, like an echo.

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  “We are going to discuss you and me and our relationship and its consequences,” I answered, without recognizing my own voice.

  “Relationship?” he asked, not understanding.

  He looked uncertain now, with his fingertips nervously drumming against each other.

  “Don’t you recognize me?”

  Of course, he didn’t. It’s not easy to recognize someone you haven’t seen since you were a little kid. Unless this someone had set such deep scars in your own psyche that you dream about him at night and devote the greater portion of your waking hours to cursing him and what he did. He shook his head.

  “Should I?”

  “We’re old childhood friends,” I answered dryly. He lit up and exclaimed in relief, “How nice! When--” but I interrupted him.

  “Yes, I’m quite sure you thought it was. You had a lot of fun with me. Do you remember when you were all Indians and I was a cowboy?”

  “No--”

  I interrupted him again.

  “In th
e trash room? I was sitting in the far corner, hiding my head in my hands to keep from going blind when you shot arrows at me. One arrow stuck in my leg—surely you remember that—you tore it out of my leg and you were so happy that you got real blood on your arrow.”

  “I don’t know...” he started.

  “Sure you do. We played every day. We played that I wanted to go home from preschool, but you wouldn’t let me.I Instead you and Ann-Kristin and Lise-Lott and whatever their names were first had to hit me or break something of mine or take my clothes. Once you took my pants so that I had to go home bare-legged in the winter. You must remember that, you all thought it was so funny.”

  I spit the words out in disgust over this man in front of me. He really looked as if he did not understand. Was it possible that he didn’t remember? Could it really be like that, where events that had been of decisive importance for me didn’t mean anything to him? For him they were not even childhood memories. Maybe he didn’t even remember such an ordinary go-home-from-preschool episode the following day. What a mockery his puzzled expression was of my entire failed existence! I was now boiling with rage inside, but I hid it the best I could. I remained standing, apparently calm, with my arms crossed. I continued my lecture.

  “You do remember the spitting contest, though? When you all waited for me outside the gate and then spit on me. Everyone at once. “Ready, set, go!” you said, and then you spit on me, twenty children at one time. The one who made the best hit in the face won, and I’m sure you did, you were so good at it.”

  “You must be--”

  “There now! You’re starting to remember! Do you remember the drowning game in the rain barrel? ‘We’ll count to three and then let you go.’ Down with my head in the barrel, ‘One, two, three,’ and then up. Down again, ‘One, two, three,’ and up. ‘One, two, three,’ up. Do you know how waterboarding affects people?”