The Thin Blue Line

by Christoffer Carlsson

  Tonight, I’m coming home with a feeling that’s close to shame in my chest.

  ‘You’re awake,’ I say. ‘It’s gone eleven.’

  ‘Mm,’ Sam mumbles slowly from under the blanket, stretched out on the sofa. ‘I happened to fall asleep.’ She adjusts the cushion under her head. ‘What were you doing out?’

  The lie comes more easily than it ought to, and there, without thinking about it, I’ve made a decision.

  ‘A late interrogation. It overran.’

  I’d rather not think about it.

  Kit, our two-year-old cat, slinks along the wall and tips his head to one side before pushing himself against my calves.

  ‘But I did buy ice cream.’

  She smiles sleepily and runs a hand through her hair. Her left hand, with four fingers, thanks to Grim. Scarred for life.

  ‘Grab two spoons,’ she says.

  5

  The days that follow are different, but not really. Daily life goes on at a pace I’m starting to get used to, and yet everything has changed.

  I sleep less well than I used to; I’m more distracted. When I’m with Sam, or at work, I avoid having my phone out, despite the chances of him contacting me again so soon after meeting up being pretty small. I don’t know why I’m so sure of that, but I am. He’s not going to contact me. There’s an invisible bond between us now, I can almost feel it in my hands.

  I avoid topics of conversation that might lead to Grim. People at work occasionally ask me about him, and what happened. Whether I’ve heard anything. I don’t want to have to lie — I’ve told so many lies to so many people over the last few years.

  Despite that, I know that I would lie if anyone asked. Grim — or was it me — has driven an invisible wedge between me and Sam. I cannot justify the fact that I’m protecting him, that I’m protecting us. I think he’s the only person who’s ever understood me. We grew up in Salem together. He was almost a mirror image of me. That might be it. He’s the only one who truly knows me. And now we’re sharing a secret once again.

  On the radio, news: fire at a refugee centre last night, no suspects. No end in sight to the war in Syria, in fact an escalation seems more likely. The number of refugees arriving in Sweden from war-torn regions is increasing every week. The situation is acute. ‘The police are under great strain. They have requested extra resources.’

  I’ll remember this, later on. Was it an omen? Possibly.

  The woman in the picture. I can’t stop thinking about her, or Grim. I really don’t know why it’s burrowed its way into my head, whether it’s for Grim’s sake, or whether I’m actually interested in the case. It’s not often you really can’t tell whose behalf you’re acting on.

  Doing a simple search would be calming. That’s the way I try and justify it to myself, but I still hesitate for a long time. On the morning of the third day, I finally do a search on her name.

  It all revolves around a murder, in the early hours of the thirteenth of October 2010, and the collapsed investigation that was put to sleep the following year and remains in hibernation. Straight after New Year, I note, the case is going to be transferred to the Investigations Unit at what used to be the Regional Detective Branch — the cold-case department. In less than two months, the case will no longer be ours.

  Anja Morovi is one of the sharpest shooters in the Stockholm Police, has a Masters in Criminology, and knows how to run a place like Violent Crime. Her office is smaller than you’d expect, but well-furnished and light, and beyond her large window Stockholm is slowly waking into life. She’s sitting behind her desk in a high-backed chair studying something on her screen, which just bleeped.

  ‘Robbery on Barnhusgatan,’ she mutters. ‘Haven’t people got anything better to do?’

  I look down at the coffee cup in my hands. There isn’t much that feels right here.

  She switches off her monitor and turns to face me.

  ‘You wanted a word.’

  ‘Yes …’

  Even now, I hesitate. It’s my one last chance to not do this. To walk out of here and tell myself that everything is as it was.

  ‘Do you remember Angelica Reyes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I saw that the case is being transferred soon.’

  ‘Yes, that should please the stark raving archivists.’

  I hesitate again.

  ‘It’s for the best, I suppose,’ Morovi continues. ‘The last time any of us touched that case was 2011, as I recall. But still.’

  ‘I was thinking maybe I could take it on.’

  ‘You? Haven’t you got anything else to do?’

  ‘I’d be able to give it a week.’

  ‘You weren’t even on that case, were you?’

  ‘Not really, no.’ I squirm on my chair, and sip some coffee. ‘But that could be a good thing.’

  Morovi leans back, folding her arms across her chest.

  ‘This whole department is on its knees from being overworked, we don’t even have time to investigate new cases properly. And you want to look at one that’s five years old?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why? Why Angelica Reyes?’

  ‘It’s unsolved. It’d look good if we solved it, and I’ll have time to have a go. As long as nothing big comes up, in which case you can move me on.’

  Morovi smiles faintly.

  ‘You’re a much worse liar than you think. You can tell me what this is really all about next week.’

  ‘You’re giving me permission, then?’

  ‘You need some help, there’s too much material for one pair of eyes. Take Gabriel. But don’t talk to anyone other than me, officially I’m assigning you one of tonight’s assaults. It would look good if we solved it — I’ll buy that — but I don’t want us to get a reputation for scrabbling around at the very last minute trying to save face. Even if it’s true.’

  Her computer bleeps once more. She rolls her eyes and wakes the screen.

  ‘Assault, in Vanadislunden Park. Jesus, how do they keep it up.’

  I stand up and head for the door.

  ‘Listen, Leo,’ I hear her voice from behind me.

  I turn around.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Be careful. They’re real mazes, unsolved murders.’

  6

  The case files for the Angelica Reyes murder are packed in boxes. They cover an entire wall of the large archive room, and on the outside of each one someone has written the case number in felt-tip. I run my fingers along them as I stand there under the stark fluorescent lights.

  Grim might be trying to trick me. That would be no surprise. In that case, I’m getting dragged into a five-year-old murder with no solution, a maze with no opening.

  I identify the boxes containing the case’s earliest material and load them onto a trolley, which I then wheel off into one of the offices in the archive. It’s the newer type, with glass doors and large windows — more a transparent cube than a room. Since no one is to find out that we’ve started looking at the case, it’s probably best to stay down here, at least to begin with.

  The room is bare, save for a plain table and a few chairs. I pull one out, sit down, and stare at the boxes. The past is coming back, in fragments.

  I have them, these memories of Angelica Reyes, even though I wasn’t really on that case. I found myself on the periphery of it all, doing a few interrogations with the odd witness and checking out an alibi or two. Lots of us ended up having to do stuff like that, and we were all pleased not to be any more involved than that.

  It’s a few minutes to ten in the morning, on Friday the sixth of November. I want to wait for Birck, but something about the boxes is drawing me to them. An impatience all of a sudden, a desire to get to work.

  The perpetrator’s name is in those files, I remember everyone saying, despite them n
ever getting anywhere with it. One out of all those hundreds, possibly thousands, of names belongs to the person who took her life.

  Perhaps Grim’s in there, too? What’s his connection to the Angelica murder? Did they know each other? Probably not — I would’ve found that out by now. Why does he need to know who the murderer was?

  Birck pushes the glass door open.

  ‘Angelica Reyes?’ is the first thing he says. ‘What for? On a Friday and everything.’

  ‘It’s getting handed over soon. Morovi wants it cleared up.’

  ‘She said it was your idea.’

  ‘I want to see it cleared up, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I … I’m a police officer. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘But why the Angelica murder, though?’

  ‘I just told you. It’s going to be transferred soon. Can we get started now?’

  ‘Can’t we do this on Monday?’

  ‘No.’

  That’s how it starts.

  7

  It almost always starts off the same way, with a dead body somewhere, indoors in this case. An unsuspecting patrol is called to the scene, and they get out of the car. A nasty autumn downpour has just begun. They rush over to the entrance, about to make a home visit they will never forget.

  Within a few minutes — that’s all it takes — the phone rings at the Violent Crime Unit, and on the night in question, in the small hours of the thirteenth of October 2010, the man who answers is Chief Inspector Charles Levin — my boss at the time.

  According to the entry log, drawn up and filled in by the first patrol, Levin gets to John Ericssonsgatan 16 at thirty-five minutes after midnight. Another five minutes pass before another officer from Violent Crime, this time a detective inspector, arrives at the scene.

  The fact that Levin was in charge of the case is a real stroke of luck for us. Everything was done properly: the cordon was expansive, the forensic investigation of Angelica Reyes’ home was conducted without delay, and filmed in its entirety, and a team of officers knocked on doors and spoke to potential witnesses in the area. Both desk-bound and field intelligence officers were deployed to scour databases and CCTV footage, a prosecutor was assigned the case immediately, and — most importantly of all — everything was properly documented.

  Birck and I find ourselves five years, almost two thousand days, away from the centre of events. This is a colossal distance for any murder investigation, and yet … getting to grips with the case feels a little like lifting a shroud. Someone has made a tear in the fabric of time and when you put your finger through it, stretch its thin surface, you move close to another world.

  John Ericssonsgatan is a broad, leafy strip of a street on the island of Kungsholmen. It slopes steeply, as though it were trying to pull itself down to the water. Down there, the frontages have been restored, there are bars, bakeries, and balconies. Further up, the buildings are only beautiful from a distance, with ageing, heavy stairwells and lots of grotty, musty old flats. The rents are lower here, and not just because you’re further from the water. Lots of the buildings are home to clients of Social Services.

  It is one such building that is home to Angelica Reyes. Her apartment is on the third floor, a studio and kitchenette, and the front door is open. One officer is standing by the threshold while the other is further in, alongside the bed.

  There she is.

  The stills from the forensic investigation show her on her back with her limbs at incongruous angles. The total number of injuries inflicted by the perpetrator is twenty-three, including the odd hack and scratch marks on her upper arms and legs, as well as countless parrying injuries to her hands. The blows that killed her are four deep stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, with the knife striking her liver, one kidney, and her right lung.

  At that moment, Levin steps into the apartment where Angelica Reyes has lain dead for a little less than an hour, and flipping through the case files I can almost feel it — he and the others gradually realising that they arrived shortly after the moment of death. It’s an intimate scene.

  The film from the crime scene starts a few minutes before one a.m., recorded by one of the technicians. When Birck and I start watching the film, we both do so holding a cup of coffee.

  ‘Weird,’ I say. ‘Feels different.’

  ‘Compared to the stills, you mean?’

  Yes. Still images from a crime scene freeze time. Moving pictures make it unnaturally drawn-out. It feels odd, witnessing a five-year-old reality, like catching a glimpse of someone else’s dream.

  ‘Puncture marks on her arms,’ Levin’s voice says from inside the flat.

  We start in the doorway. The camera’s just been switched on and it wobbles slightly before steadying up. Someone in the background is on the phone; you can hear a female voice reading Angelica Reyes’ date of birth aloud. Somewhere in the flat, it’s not clear where, a radio is playing ‘Be My Baby’ by the Ronettes. You catch a glimpse of the window, a streetlamp beyond it, and the rain pouring down.

  ‘Pretty old, though,’ Levin goes on. ‘I’ll ask the coroner to have a look at the back of her knees, and her groin. She might have quit. Look at this, parrying injuries on her hands and forearms. Lots of them.’

  The hallway is narrow and short, with a hat shelf on one side, complete with hooks for coats and jackets. A jumble of scarves and gloves is piled on top of it, and on the floor beneath it a dirty rug lined with well-worn boots, light-coloured trainers, and three or four pairs of heels, one of which has wooden wedge heels that look pretty heavy.

  Immediately on the right is the bathroom, and at the end of the hall is the only other room. Part of the left-hand wall is given over to the kitchenette: a stovetop and a microwave. The rest of the wall is occupied by a black bookshelf dotted with a few books, photographs, and a wilting pot plant. In the centre of the room is a grey three-piece lounge suite, but no one is paying any attention to it yet. Because opposite, on the right-hand side, is the bed. Angelica Reyes is lying in it, just like in the photographs, but not quite.

  ‘Sorry,’ Levin says from out of shot, moving away from the technician’s camera. ‘Can we turn the radio off?’

  ‘Not yet,’ someone says. ‘We haven’t got that far.’

  There’s a bedside table with a lamp on. There’s also a copy of Vogue magazine, Jens Lapidus’ Easy Money, a packet of Marlboro reds, a lighter, and what looks to be about two thousand kronor in hundred and five-hundred notes.

  The camera films Angelica Reyes’ body. It feels too close, as if you ought to avert your eyes. A phone rings in the background. The coroner arrives. It’s five past one in the morning on the thirteenth of October.

  The only window in the flat overlooks John Ericssonsgatan, and you can almost make out the building opposite, along with a dark, cloudy strip of sky. No moon.

  I note the blood splattered on the bed, the floor, and the victim’s skin. What was Grim’s involvement with this?

  In front of us, lying on the table next to the computer, is some of the introductory material; Birck studies the files, plastic wallets, and reports with a tired look in his eyes, and asks how we’re supposed to get through all this, where we should start.

  I haven’t really got that far.

  ‘We’ll follow the investigation’s original direction, so that we know what they did and didn’t do. When that doesn’t get us anywhere, as we know it won’t, we can go back and see what they missed.’

  Birck nods despondently.

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask.

  ‘Would they have missed anything? Levin was the one in charge then.’

  ‘Otherwise they would’ve found the perpetrator.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘I know what you’re getting at.’ Old secrets. Some of which had caught up with Charles Levin in the end.

  ‘Okay. Good. That’s a
ll I’m asking for.’ A weary chuckle. ‘So, Levin arrives at five past one in the morning on the thirteenth of October. When do they find out who she is?’

  ‘They know as soon as they lay eyes on her. She was known to us.’

  ‘There must be a biography or something in the notes of the preliminary investigation,’ Birck says. ‘Can you dig it out?’

  I get out of my chair and sift through the rest of the first box. Birck hauls a second one onto the table, opens it, and, under a series of binders containing transcripts of interviews with the deceased’s family, just waiting there: the story of Angelica Reyes.

  8

  Who was she? That’s the thing about dead people — they can’t speak for themselves. The story of her life has to be told through bureaucratic records, diary entries, and the testimonies of people whom, one way or another, she knew.

  ‘Born 1986,’ Birck reads from the biography. ‘In Santiago, Chile. Only child. At three, she and her family move to Stockholm, and to one of the tower blocks out in Hallunda. Her dad works as a mechanic, her mother as a cleaner at Huddinge Hospital.’

  Hallunda can be a tough place for a little kid, but Angelica Reyes managed pretty well. She learnt to read and write early; teachers wrote about her projects, her thirst for knowledge, how much she enjoyed school. At junior and middle school, she was a very good pupil. Several of her teachers mentioned how pupils had to switch desks and change neighbours once a month, and from this it became clear she was also very generous.

  ‘Listen to this,’ Birck says, tapping the paper with his fingertip. ‘You could see that whoever happened to be sitting next to Angelica Reyes was bolstered by her. Her peers’ performances improved for as long as they were still alongside Angelica.’

  Birck looks up.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say. ‘And a bit sad.’