Babylon

by Camilla Ceder

  ‘How’s it going?’

  The woman didn’t respond to his less than successful opening remark. She was far too caught up in what had just happened; she was pale, and swallowed with some effort.

  ‘How are you?’ Ekvall tried again.

  ‘OK.’

  She seemed to relax.

  ‘What were you doing up the hill?’ his colleague asked, less gently.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  It was as though she had forgotten everything that happened before she saw the dead body. That could be the case: a traumatic experience can form a clear division between then and now.

  ‘I was out for a walk, I usually go for a walk in the mornings before work.’

  ‘OK.’ Ekvall nodded, his expression kind. ‘So shall we take a look?’

  The sound of a waterfall grew louder as they approached the brow of the hill: water cascaded down the other side from a pond carved from rough stone blocks. Perhaps it flowed into the duck pond down below, but Ekvall couldn’t work out where the source might be. Nor could he name the rare fir with thick needles that formed the grotto-like enclosure, along with an impressively tall and mature bank of rhododendrons.

  The man was lying face down. The back of his head was a tangled mess above the hood of his jacket. His upper body had slumped forward from a sitting position, his feet firmly planted on the ground.

  ‘Overdose,’ Ekvall’s colleague said confidently, nodding towards the man’s rolled-up sleeve, the needle still inserted just above the wrist.

  ‘How could you be certain he was dead and not just unconscious?’

  Ekvall turned to the nurse, who was holding back; she didn’t look very well.

  ‘I felt his pulse,’ she said quietly, and looked away.

  His colleague nodded with satisfaction: Brave girl.

  ‘Well, there’s not much more to say. Poor sod,’ he said, suitably subdued. ‘Shall we turn him over, just to be on the safe side?’

  They took a firm hold of the dead man to turn him onto his back, but the stiff body tipped over the edge of the bench and almost fell on the ground. They were taken aback by the sight of his face.

  ‘Bloody hell, he’s taken some beating,’ said Ekvall. He keyed a number into his phone and moved away slightly in order to talk.

  The man’s glassy eyes were proof enough, but still Ekvall cupped a hand in front of the battered face to check for any signs of breathing, placed two fingers against the purple throat, then shook his head.

  Shortly afterwards, two more cars pulled up at the bottom of the hill. A man carrying a medical bag got out of one, and a young, dark-skinned man in a red sweater got out of the other.

  Ekvall’s colleague kept talking as they waited for the doctor to confirm the obvious, and for someone to acknowledge that their task was done.

  ‘Violent Crimes will want to look at those strangulation marks.’

  Ekvall nodded. It wasn’t long before the guy in the red sweater came towards them, holding up his ID. Was he from the Violent Crimes squad?

  ‘OK, we’ll take it from here.’

  If he was, they were bloody quick off the mark. Ekvall’s colleague straightened up and went to meet him.

  30

  Gothenburg

  Karin Beckman hadn’t chosen the colour of the walls: they were pale green. Institutional green. The furniture was lined up against the walls any old how. Piles of cardboard boxes in the bedroom overlooking the garden contained her winter clothes and shoes. The only room she had put any effort into was the children’s room. As soon as they had moved in, she had arranged Barbie dolls, cuddly toys and books on the shelves, unpacked the pink night lights and put Disney posters on the walls.

  The living room was dominated by a flashy imitation leather sofa, not her own bright-red corduroy suite, which she had left behind. As soon as she found somewhere permanent to live, she would go and get it. She was the one who’d paid for it, after all.

  As far as she knew, Göran was intending to stay on in the house. He had inherited it when he was young; the mortgage had been paid off, so he had only the day-to-day running costs to contend with. When property prices started to rise, he talked about selling up and buying a place in town to free some capital. But he would probably never get around to it. That house was everything he owned, his security and his lifeline, and he had been extremely protective of it in the marriage settlement. At the time, the terms had seemed fair. With hindsight, and bearing in mind that they had children, Beckman wondered whether she shouldn’t have fought for a better deal.

  She had sold her rented apartment in Guldheden many years ago. As she remembered it, she had given notice in happy times, without a second thought. Julia was growing inside her, and it was obvious that their growing family should live in the terraced house in Fiskebäck. The two-bed apartment she was now renting on Doktor Westrings gata felt cramped and dusty in comparison with Göran’s house. She was no longer close to the harbour, no longer in an area filled with playgrounds, where people were comfortably well off – but not excessively so. Fiskebäck’s little red and blue cubes, with their gardens and rockeries, were the picture of security and family life.

  And now she was sitting in a sub-let, with most of her possessions either in storage or piled in boxes around her. The young girl from whom she was renting was a student in Kalmar, and wouldn’t need the apartment again until the following January. Karin Beckman had no intention of staying that long. This was a very temporary solution. One thing at a time she told herself.

  And Göran hadn’t been in touch except to speak to the children.

  Beckman was ashamed of how jealous she felt when she heard her eldest chatting quietly on the phone, even though she wanted nothing more than for the girls to have a good relationship with their father.

  And it had been her decision to leave. But oh, how she wished she had someone to talk to like that, the unconditional love of another person, someone who didn’t judge or condemn but merely understood.

  Beckman was still worried that she might have made the wrong decision. That she would discover, too late, that that was how just life was: the nagging, the oppressive silences, the frustration at being misunderstood or not understood at all, both parties feeling hurt, the clumsy gestures towards reconciliation, the monotony when tenderness and friction were absent. These days she could hardly remember what she had hoped for from marriage. Perhaps she had imagined something like a parent’s unconditional love, or the perfect echo of a twin soul. How else could she explain the roots of the discontent that had spread as the years went by?

  No, she didn’t want that toxic life back, but she wanted something in its place. Something more than this empty feeling.

  ‘Mum . . .’

  She was interrupted by Sigrid, who was only half-awake, and she realised she had been standing there frozen in mid-movement for some time.

  The child exuded the delicious, familiar smell of sleep and baby soap. Beckman buried her nose in Sigrid’s curls, which were damp from dreams. Her pyjama-clad body was soft and pliable; when the child had just woken up there was none of the stroppiness that normally characterised the age she had reached.

  ‘You’re up early, poppet,’ Beckman murmured into her curls. ‘Are you going to sit with Mummy for a while before you get dressed?’

  Sigrid nodded thoughtfully, playing with her hair, which was still thin. As Beckman poured herself a cup of coffee, the child allowed herself to be picked up and she rubbed the sleep from her eyes with her adorable chubby fists. Then she spotted the mobile on the table and reached for it.

  ‘No, poppet,’ Beckman said. ‘That’s Mummy’s work phone. It’ll break if you play with it.’

  As usual she was amazed at the depth of resolve contained in her daughter’s small body. She moved the phone out of reach, but retribution was as immediate as it was inevitable. Sigrid’s scream made her eardrums quiver.

  ‘I want it, I want it!’

  Beckman took a deep brea
th. She was so tired it was as though a viscous substance were weighing down her veins.

  ‘No, Sigrid! You can’t have it!’

  She tried to settle the child on her knee, keeping the cup of coffee out of reach as well. Beckman had been desperate for coffee, but as its aroma combined with the acrid smell of Sigrid’s overnight nappy, her stomach turned. She pushed the cup to one side.

  ‘You’ll have to get down if you can’t be good.’

  An attempt to remove the heavy nappy was met with a fresh barrage of protest. Sigrid was too old to sleep in a nappy, but every attempt to train her over the past year had failed miserably.

  The kitchen clock showed that it was no longer as early as Beckman had thought. She would need to get Julia up straight away if she was going to get the children to nursery and pre-school in time; breakfast was served at eight o’clock on the dot. Woe betide anyone who was late for pre-school breakfast.

  She went into the children’s bedroom, which had a stale, unhealthy smell. Julia was lying with the pillow over her head.

  ‘Come on now, Julia. We need to get a move on!’

  After another frustrated glance at the clock, Beckman removed the nightdress from the limp body with a moderate amount of force and pulled on jeans and a top, while thanking her lucky stars that she had bathed the child the previous evening. When she was finally dressed, Julia mumbled something unintelligible, turned to face the wall and went back to sleep. Beckman could feel how hot the child was.

  Her little sister was picking cuddly toys off the floor, more than she could carry; she whimpered in frustration when she dropped them.

  One look was enough to make Sigrid scream again and clasp her wet nappy – that was staying on.

  They were going to stay with their daddy at the weekend. Karin Beckman felt relieved, and this reaction bothered her.

  Just as the cloakroom door at pre-school closed, Beckman’s phone rang. As she retrieved it from her bag, she willed herself not to look over at the house she had lived in until just a few weeks ago. One missed call. Shortly afterwards she picked up a voicemail from Bärneflod; his voice immediately dispelled all thoughts of the nursery wet-weather gear that might have been left at Göran’s, and the dark clouds drifting over Fiskebäck.

  ‘It looks as if there’s been a breakthrough with your Danish guy. You’re on your way in, I guess?’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ she informed the voicemail.

  With a sense of liberation, she abandoned her role as a parent.

  31

  Gothenburg

  ‘Höije?’

  ‘He’s in Varberg.’

  ‘What the fuck is he doing in Varberg?’

  ‘He’s at the spa. At some leadership conference.’

  When Beckman flopped into her chair, the inner circle was complete. Höije did not belong to that circle. Since their childish spat over Copenhagen, Tell had decided that it was necessary to cooperate with Höije so that his team could do the job as they saw fit. But Höije was not a sounding board for ideas and he certainly wasn’t a friend.

  Höije was a talker, a man who twisted words. Tell had always had a problem with that kind of man in his personal life and particularly in his job. For him, everything came down to gut feeling. Höije also had an unpleasant way of scrutinising the person he was talking to, as if he would love to crawl under their skin.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ said Tell.

  Beckman rubbed her forehead. As she put on her reading glasses and looked through the material, she began to feel even more tired. Tell suspected that because she had to leave work in time to pick up her children, she felt driven to work furiously between eight and five, unlike some of her colleagues who had the luxury of greater flexibility; he also suspected that she often skipped breaks. He valued her commitment and competence, and made a mental note to tell her that.

  ‘We’ve had a major breakthrough,’ he said. ‘Mads Torsen’s fingerprints were among those found in the hallway of Rebecca Nykvist’s house. Either we’ve been lucky, or else he’s a complete klutz. He presumably put on his gloves in the hallway, but touched the door before that. We didn’t find any other prints from him. We also know where Torsen is right now . . .’

  ‘So why are we sitting here?’

  ‘He’s not likely to make a run for it. He’s lying on Strömberg’s table. Dead.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Strömberg?’ asked Gonzales.

  ‘Yes. Strangulation marks. Internal bleeding and a couple of cracked ribs. But the cause of death was a heroin overdose two to three days ago, and general poor health.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he had any antiques on his person?’

  ‘No antiques on him when he was found, Karlberg. He must have managed to sell the figure before he died, or he could have hidden it, for all I know.’

  ‘I was there.’ Gonzales poured himself a glass of water. ‘It looked as if someone had tried to beat him to death. He must have dragged himself to that bench through sheer willpower.’

  ‘Where was the bench?’ asked Bärneflod.

  ‘In Slottsskogen, hidden in a shrubbery near Plikta.’

  Tell looked at Beckman. ‘So now we know in principle that Torsen broke into Rebecca Nykvist and Henrik Samuelsson’s house. But was he alone?’

  ‘Have we checked the other fingerprints in the house against our records?’

  Tell inhaled loudly. ‘No luck. Did you come up with anything else?’

  ‘I took a couple of witness statements from people who were near the cathedral at the time of the initial attack on Torsen. Not much to go on so far, except that the attacker was dressed in dark clothing, and wasn’t particularly tall or well built. Apart from that . . .’ She went back to her papers. ‘. . . I’m just investigating a twenty-four-hour stay at the hostel in Stigberget, it’s possible we might get something there. I’ll come back to you on that. I’ve also been in touch with Kent in the drugs squad; he’s asking his informers. He has no idea what Torsen might have been doing here, although he did know who Torsen was. I suppose the next logical step is to talk to our colleagues in Copenhagen.’

  ‘And Stena Line too, trains, planes, buses,’ said Tell. ‘He got here somehow. And if he had a friend, maybe that friend has gone home.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a stretch,’ Bärneflod objected. ‘We don’t even know for sure if Torsen had a sidekick. I think it’s best if we speak to the Danes.’

  Tell shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ve already spoken to Copenhagen; an Inspector Dragsted in their drugs squad has been keeping an eye on Torsen for quite some time. He seems to have a better idea of what Torsen’s been up to than the man himself has. Had.’

  He leant back in his chair. ‘Dragsted is due in Malmö tomorrow evening on other police business. I’m meeting him there.’

  Tell’s eyes and nose were itching. ‘Is everybody clear about what they’re doing now?’

  As the group dispersed, he caught Beckman’s eye. ‘Could I have a word before you disappear?’ he asked, attaching a picture of Torsen to the investigation whiteboard.

  ‘No, I haven’t got time right now.’

  He turned around in surprise. She had gone, leaving only the echo of her curt reply.

  Tell had nodded off twice, even though it was a good film. When Seja tickled his neck for the second time, he headed to the bedroom. Once he was in bed, of course he couldn’t get back to sleep. Scenes from A Beautiful Mind spooled through his head, accompanied by the squeaks Seja made as she changed position on the leather sofa.

  He gave up.

  ‘You’re back!’

  Seja moved up to let him lie down beside her, then laid her head on his shoulder. Christian yawned behind his hand, opened his eyes wide and tried to concentrate on John Nash’s dizzying excursions into madness. He took another crisp, but regretted it as soon as the salty grease annihilated the fresh mint taste of toothpaste. He was working out a provisional schedule for the next day when Seja shifted to make room for his head on her knee. H
e had to put his legs up over the arm of the sofa to get comfortable; it really was too small.

  ‘You’re hot – do you have a temperature?’ she asked, gently stroking his forehead.

  Buy a new sofa, was the last thing he thought before his eyes closed. One that was big enough for both of them. He had had the same black leather sofa for twenty years.

  By the morning his temperature had dropped, only to be replaced by a pounding headache that refused to go away, despite eleven hours’ sleep, painkillers and a proper breakfast. A sore throat and the beginnings of a blocked nose didn’t bode well for the afternoon’s trip to Malmö. Tell thought of what the day had in store. He needed to fire off a few emails and make a couple of phone calls, including one to Alexandr Karpov about the photograph Beckman had found in Henrik Samuelsson’s bedside cabinet.

  He could just as easily work from home while he tried to decide if he was fit to go in.

  Seja had left while he was still asleep. He knew she was intending to rise early to pick up her friend Hanna in Masthugget on the way out to Stenared; they were going walking in the forest or something like that. He felt stirrings of disappointment that she hadn’t woken him up before she left, hadn’t even written him a note.

  Tell took his laptop over to the breakfast bar and emailed Renée, telling her that he would probably be in later. Then he opened and closed several messages asking him to contact Rebecca Nykvist. She wanted to know how the investigation was progressing; if they had any more leads. He deleted the lot; he had neither the time nor the energy to ring her. She would only get annoyed when he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer her questions.