“There he is,” said Pia Vannerberg in a cracking voice. “That’s Hans, there’s no doubt.”
“Did Hans ever live in Katrineholm?” asked Sjöberg.
“He was born there. I know he lived there a while, but not how long. He moved so much as a child. You’ll have to ask Gun.”
“I thought I did,” Sjöberg said cryptically, “but there must have been a misunderstanding.”
He got up and extended his hand.
“Thanks, Pia. You’ve been a great help. I apologize for disturbing you like this.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Pia Vannerberg with a limp handshake, without getting up from the couch.
He picked up the pictures, put them back in the envelope and stuffed it in his jacket pocket, and left the Vannerberg family.
On the platform at the subway station, the wind was so strong that he had to take shelter behind a wall. The trains did not run very often on Saturdays, and it would be more than ten minutes before the next one came. Sjöberg stood with his hands in his pockets, stamping his feet on the platform to stay warm. He wondered about all the misunderstandings about the little village in Södermanland, Österåker, and cursed his own narrow-mindedness. Ingrid Olsson had already said when they met, right after she found the body of Hans Vannerberg on her kitchen floor, that she had lived in Österåker before she moved to Enskede. He had assumed it was the Österåker outside Stockholm she was referring to and gave it no further thought. Sloppy. Then he remembered how the dialogue with Gun Vannerberg the previous afternoon had developed.
“Did you ever live in Österåker?” he asked.
“No, we only lived in cities,” Gun Vannerberg answered.
“You said you had lived in Hallsberg. That’s no city.”
“It’s a lot bigger than Österåker,” she answered, and from her perspective, she was quite right.
He had assumed she didn’t know what she was talking about, but of course, she did.
“So, did you live anywhere else in the Stockholm area?” Sjöberg had continued.
“Did we live anywhere in the Stockholm area?” she answered and Sjöberg thought it was a pure “Who’s on first?” conversation.
It had been too, but he was the one responsible for the blunders.
He took out his cell phone and called Gun Vannerberg again. This time she answered.
“Excuse me for calling and disturbing you like this on a Saturday morning,” Sjöberg said politely. “Did I wake you?”
“Yes, you did, actually,” Gun Vannerberg replied sleepily. “I worked last night.”
“I only want to know whether you and Hans lived in Katrineholm at any time. Did you?”
“You’re really doing your research, aren’t you? Yes, we lived in Katrineholm. Actually, for a pretty long time. I grew up in Katrineholm and lived there until Hans was about to start school. Then we moved to Kumla.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I thought I listed off a whole bunch of places where we lived.”
“You never mentioned Katrineholm.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does.”
There was silence for a moment, before Gun Vannerberg started speaking again.
“I think we talked about how we had moved here and there. We never moved to Katrineholm, only away from there. I guess it was obvious to me somehow that we had lived there, because I’d always lived there.”
“I understand. So Hans went to preschool in Katrineholm?”
“I guess so. Yes, now I remember, he did. Green Hill, Sunny Hill... it was some “hill” name.”
“Forest Hill?”
“That sounds right.”
“Do you remember his teacher?”
“No, I don’t know if I ever met her.”
“Ingrid Olsson?”
“That sounds familiar. No, I don’t know, I...”
“Do you remember anyone else from that preschool, any other children?”
“No, not a chance. That was so long ago. It was Hans who went to preschool, not me.”
“Just one last question: Do you recall that I asked whether you had lived in Österåker?”
“Sure, it was just yesterday you asked that.”
“Then you were thinking of the Österåker outside Katrineholm, I assume?”
“Yes, of course. Are there others?”
“There must be places called Österåker scattered all over this country. Now I won’t bother you any more. Thanks.”
Sjöberg was struck by an almost irresistible longing to call one of his colleagues and talk about his discovery, but calmed down and made the assessment that it could just as well wait until tomorrow. It was Saturday. Everyone had worked hard the past few weeks and needed their weekend rest. With respect to Sandén, who normally would be the first one he would call, he still felt somewhat bitter as a result of the cool reception to his now confirmed theory regarding the connection between Hans Vannerberg and Ingrid Olsson. And he was in no particular rush to call the prosecutor, Rosén, who was really the one to whom he should first report progress in the investigation.
On Sunday he would have a conversation with Ingrid Olsson no matter what, once she was back from her cruise. He decided to let the whole thing rest for the time being. Now he would take the weekend off, or at least one day, and devote the rest of Saturday to his family.
* * *
Petra Westman had had a hard time falling asleep on Friday night. The conversation with the prosecutor in the afternoon made her anxious. Until two o’clock in the morning, she lay in the dark repeatedly going over her awkward situation, tossing and turning without falling asleep. At last she felt hungry, which also kept her from sleeping. She went out to the kitchen, had two sandwiches and a glass of milk. She felt full, but not sleepy. Then she laid down and read until four-thirty, when she finally dropped off.
She did not wake up until lunchtime, and only because the phone rang.
“Did I wake you?”
“No,” said Petra, still half asleep.
She looked at the clock on the nightstand: quarter past twelve. She tried to shake life into her body. Perk up now, Petra. This was the call she had been waiting for all week: Håkan Carlberg was calling from Linköping.
“Am I calling at a bad time?”
“Yes, you did actually. No, it's not a bad time, but you did wake me up.”
He laughed.
“I didn’t fall asleep until four thirty,” Petra excused herself. “The prosecutor plans to give me a warning because I’ve been doing unauthorized searches in the police computer registers. I have to spend the weekend on a written report of what I’ve done and why.”
“Then perhaps I have something that can relieve the pain,” said Håkan Carlberg.
Petra sat up in bed and was suddenly wide-awake.
“You had alcohol in your blood, but it was so little you could have driven a car when the sample was taken.”
“I don’t think that would have gone too well,” said Petra.
“No, I don’t think so either. You had so much flunitrazepam in your system it would have knocked out a two-hundred pound man.”
“Are you serious? What is that?”
“Rohypnol—the date-rape drug. How much do you weigh?”
“About 130 pounds.”
”As I thought. You must have gotten approximately six half-milligram tablets in you, and the normal dose for insomnia would be one such tablet to start with. I must say I’m impressed that you woke up already after four hours. And that you were so lucid.”
“Lucid,” Petra sneered. “I could hardly stand up.”
“Iron will and good physique,” said Håkan with admiration. “You must still have been seriously affected when we saw each other.”
“And the fingerprints?”
“There were two different sets of prints, one on each bottle. But there was no match for either of them. The one set was yours in all certainty, so that’s not so
strange. But as I said—no hits.”
“I know he hasn’t been convicted. So he must not have left any traces behind at a crime scene before,” Petra sighed.
“Relieve the pain,” she thought. I’m not going to Rosén on Monday and tell him that I’m on the trail of a rapist; a senior physician who presumably has raped many women, but who does not leave any traces behind and who has never been indicted.
“Not in the form of fingerprints,” said Håkan Carlberg.
“What do you mean?”
”I did a DNA test on one of those condoms.”
“And?”
“And found your DNA on the outside, and his DNA on the inside.”
As expected. But she heard in his voice that he had something in his back pocket.
“His DNA has been found at two crime scenes before. A woman who was raped in Malmö in 1997, and one in Gothenburg in 2002.”
“Bingo,” said Petra. “You have no idea how grateful I am.”
“Just make sure you put this character away. I am in Your Majesty’s Secret Service until you ask me to appear.”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
THIS TIME SJöBERG REMEMBERED to take his scarf before he left home. Which he was grateful for now, as he sat in the biting wind in the grandstand to watch a gang of eight-year-old boys try to kick a ball into the goal on the artificial turf at the Hammarby sports field. His scarf was the wrong color, however, which he realized when he saw the other parents and spectators.
Simon Sjöberg had been playing soccer with Hammarby at Kanalplan all fall, until practice sessions moved into the Eriksdal school gym a few weeks ago. This friendly match, against a five-man team from Marieberg, was being played outside, however, due to the nice weather. Sjöberg drew the conclusion that “nice weather” in a soccer context had no connection to temperature and wind strength, but only concerned the color of the sky.
Beside him he had his two daughters, Sara and Maja, who, completely uninterested in the soccer match, each sat tapping on a Nintendo DS. Åsa was at the Eriksdal pool with the twins, which Sjöberg would have preferred to sitting here freezing.
His interest in soccer was limited to Sweden’s matches in the major championships, but as far as he could tell, none of the boys on the field were future stars. On the other hand, they were rather cute as they ran and chased the ball with dead-serious expressions, shouting soccer style, “Shimmy, shimmy!”, “Check to the ball!”, and “Man on!” Sjöberg applauded when anyone did anything surprising with the ball, whether it was a home player or someone from the opposing team.
Play flowed back and forth across the shortened field, and it took a long time before one of the Marieberg players, with a little luck, finally managed to push the ball past Hammarby’s goalie. Sjöberg had to admit that he did not feel any great disappointment, but instead sat politely and clapped when a man in a suit below him suddenly leapt up and rushed down to the goal line.
“Now it’s time to take out that little bastard!” he screamed at the astonished home-team coach, who Sjöberg knew was the father of one of the boys on the team. “Take out that little red-haired piece of shit, he can’t cut it!”
The “little red-haired piece of shit” was one of Simon’s classmates who Sjöberg didn’t particularly know, but from what he had seen the boy, who was playing right back, was doing no better or worse than the other boys on the field. The coach, an unathletic type in street clothes who was volunteering his time, stood speechless, and looked in terror at the furious soccer dad. Sjöberg noted that the woman accompanying the man also stood up, but she stayed in the stands, furiously gesticulating. It took a few seconds for him to react, but when he met Simon’s perplexed look from down on the field, a calm came over him that he had not felt in a very long time.
He stood up and resolutely took the few steps down to the field, with an air of authority that he did not recognize in himself. The stands were completely quiet and the match being played on the neighboring field had also stopped. With all the weight he could muster he placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and got him to turn toward him. They were the same height, but Sjöberg felt considerably taller at this moment, as he spit out the words in his face in a controlled voice.
“What kind of example is this? You are disgracing yourself and the sport before all these kids and their parents! A grown man, picking on a little boy. To me you are a cowardly wretch.”
Then he led the speechless man back to the stands and pushed him down on the place where he had just been sitting.
“And sit down, you too,” he said in a disdainful tone to the woman, who now looked like she wanted to sink into the ground.
When he turned his eyes toward the soccer field, he now saw that the red-haired boy had started crying. In one of the proudest moments of his life he then witnessed how his eight-year-old son went over to the object of the interlude and put his arm around his shoulders. The other boys in the team followed his example, and after the coach on the opposite team whispered something in the ear of one of his players, the Marieberg boys also went up and consoled him.
Sjöberg returned to his place in the stands to supportive applause from the spectators, but avoided meeting their eyes. Instead he continued to appreciatively observe over his shoulder the ring of children on the field. But it was as if an ice-cold hand took hold of his heart when his eyes suddenly fell on the little boy standing alone in the home team’s goal.
Conny Sjöberg was pondering this incident when, later that afternoon, clad in an apron, he was in the kitchen peeling potatoes. He was preparing dinner with the children when Sandén phoned and asked if they could go out for a beer.
“Go to the pub?” said Sjöberg with surprise. “I thought your in-laws were coming to visit.”
Just as he said that he remembered the conversation from the hospital cafeteria the previous day, and a feeling of discomfort passed over him.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed, looking sheepishly over at Åsa who was doing a puzzle with the little boys at the kitchen table.
She looked up at him with a look that could kill.
“The answer to your question under any circumstances is no,” said Sjöberg grimly.
“Oh, boy,” said Sandén maliciously. “Are you in the doghouse again? See you. I hope.”
Sjöberg hung up. He had completely forgotten about the damn Christmas dinner. For a moment he considered calling to cancel, but that was inconceivable. He was the one who organized the whole thing; he was the biggest advocate of team-building, as it was called these days. True, he had opposed having this Christmas dinner on a Saturday for one thing, and in November for another, but that’s what happens when you get too late a start. And he had delegated responsibility to Hamad, so the only thing to do was bite the bullet.
“We have our Christmas dinner tonight,” Sjöberg said dejectedly to his wife. “I completely forgot about it.”
“With significant others, I presume,” said Åsa in a sarcastic tone.
“You know the budget doesn’t allow for that.”
“Well, my office is having their Christmas dinner tonight, too. So I guess you’ll have to try to get a babysitter.”
“Don’t be silly, Åsa. Even I understand that this is really stupid and ruins Saturday evening and all that, but what am I supposed to do? I’m the boss, damn it.”
“You’ve been working today, you’ll be working tomorrow. You can’t be gone the whole week and then work all weekend and go to a company party on Saturday night. And just count on the fact that I’ll take care of everything! I have a job to do, too. And a life to live.”
“I know that full well,” said Sjöberg. “I do my part. It just gets this way sometimes, you know that. Sometimes it’s the other way around. When you have a lot to do at work and it’s not as stressful for me, then I do the ground service.”
“I see, and how often does that happen? My job is always stressful. I’m a teacher, damn it.”
The children looked at their pare
nts in dismay. Now Mom was swearing too—that was a bad sign.
“Run out and stare at the TV or something,” said Sjöberg with an irritated wave of his hand to the three older children. “Mom and I have to talk.”
The children slinked away and Sjöberg closed the door after them. They continued the quarrel in a hiss.
“What if I was the one who decided at five o’clock on Saturday afternoon that I was going out with my friends? Huh? What would you have said then?”
Åsa’s eyes were flashing lighting bolts now and Sjöberg felt that he was also starting to get really angry.
“Then I would have said, ‘How nice! You need to socialize with your friends in peace and quiet, without obligations. Have a nice evening!’ I guess that’s the natural thing to say,” he answered in a patronizing tone that made Åsa boil over.
“You can say that, because it never happens!”
“In that case, it’s your own fault.”
“No, it’s your fault! I have no opportunities to go out with friends because you’re never home and I have to be here to take care of the children. And the cleaning and the cooking and everything else, too.”
“I think I’m the one who has an apron on right now. And you’re sitting at the kitchen table with a drink in your hand.”
Sjöberg took a big gulp of his beer while Åsa went on.
“Should I be grateful because I get out of cooking one night a week? I haven’t had the impression that you’re especially grateful for the other six nights.”
“How hard is it to boil macaroni and heat up frozen hash in the microwave?”
He knew he was being unfair now, and that his condescending attitude drove Åsa up the wall, but what was he supposed to do? She was cursing and swearing and he had to go to the damn Christmas dinner.
Åsa got up and pointedly left the kitchen to sit in the TV room with the older children. Christoffer and Jonathan heedlessly knocked all the puzzle pieces onto the floor before they toddled off after her. Sjöberg had hoped that the older children would come back and help him with dinner, but they didn’t. He picked up the puzzle from the floor and set the kitchen table for six. Then he went to the bedroom and changed to a pair of nice-looking jeans, a clean shirt, and a new sport coat he had not worn before. He told himself it would annoy Åsa even more that he was wearing it when she was not along.
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