The Final Word

by Liza Marklund

  She walked a short distance until she reached a large square, then turned and walked back. The heat had made the tarmac soft under her shoes, but she still felt frozen. Her throat was sore and her hands were shaking. Her panic attack in the psychologist’s armchair was lingering, like a damp fog.

  Her bag weighed heavily on her shoulder and she dropped it on to the pavement. If Robin Bertelsson was at work today, he would have to come out of the building sooner or later. Her plane back to Stockholm didn’t leave until 18.05, so she had time to wait.

  She brushed the hair from her face and concentrated on number 62.

  A group of four middle-aged men, dressed in almost identical jackets, emerged from the door and headed towards her, giving her a chance to study them carefully. None of them was him. One gave her an encouraging wink. She turned away.

  A man and a woman passed her, stopped at the entrance to number 62 and tapped in the entry-code. He looked just about rumpled enough for her to guess that he worked in the advertising agency.

  She looked around. There was a café on the other side of the street. Maybe she should get a cappuccino, but then she’d need a pee and might miss Robin Bertelsson.

  She got her mobile out, no messages.

  The door of number 62 opened and Annika held her mobile in front of her as she watched the doorway from the corner of her eye. A blond man in his mid-thirties, in a long-sleeved T-shirt and camouflage trousers, rushed out and half ran across the pavement. Was he Bertelsson?

  The man turned towards the square, checked quickly for traffic, then crossed the street. Annika’s mouth opened. It was him – it must be. She took a few steps after the man, saw him go into the café, say something to the barista, and they both laughed. The Danes, the happiest people in the world, and among the highest consumers of antidepressants.

  She turned her back on the café and stared into the window of H&M. In the reflection, she saw the man who had to be Robin Bertelsson step out on to the pavement with a large paper cup in his hand. He waited until a taxi had passed, then set off back towards number 62.

  Annika raised her mobile and filmed him as he ran across the street, then walked quickly towards the doorway.

  The man was about to tap in the door-code when Annika caught up with him. ‘Robin?’ she asked, making her voice sound surprised and happy.

  He looked at her in surprise.

  Yes, it was him. No question. She gave him a broad smile. ‘God, Robin, it is you!’ She threw herself forward and wrapped her arms round his neck, pressing her body against his. The man took half a pace back, clearly horrified, and held out his arm to protect his coffee.

  ‘Wow!’ Annika said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  A mass of thoughts were flying round in the man’s eyes, and he tried to smile, but without quite succeeding.

  ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ Annika asked, surprised but not upset.

  She held her arms out. ‘I’m Annika! From the club! On Hantverkargatan! God, it’s so long ago – it must be fifteen years! I was on the roulette table, used to wear a sequined bikini . . .’ She thrust out her breasts and pretended to look seductive.

  A tentative light flickered in the man’s eyes. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘I was getting worried.’

  Annika laughed loudly. Robin Bertelsson still had no idea who she was. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare the life out of you. How are you?’

  He gave her a crooked smile and shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I live here now,’ he said. ‘You know, wife and kids . . .’

  A clear message: don’t expect anything.

  ‘It’s great to see you again!’ Annika said. ‘Are you still in touch with any of the others?’

  He took a step back. ‘Others?’

  ‘From the club. By the way, did you hear about Ludde?’ She pulled a sad face and he looked confused.

  ‘About . . . what?’

  ‘Did you go to the funeral?’

  He brushed his hair back. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘No, I didn’t. I . . .’

  ‘So tragic,’ Annika said, with a sniff. ‘Bastard cancer.’

  He nodded hesitantly. Three women were heading towards the door, and Robin Bertelsson grasped the handle as if he were about to go inside, but Annika stepped in the way. ‘Have you heard anything from Joachim lately?’ she asked.

  Robin Bertelsson looked at her warily. ‘No, it’s been a while.’

  Annika sighed. ‘The last I heard, he was in Croatia,’ she said, ‘working as an estate agent. Can you imagine? It was just after that young girl withdrew her complaint.’

  ‘Well, I’d better be—’ Robin Bertelsson said.

  ‘I think about it sometimes,’ Annika said quietly, moving a step closer to him. ‘The way everyone lied to protect him from the police.’

  Robin Bertelsson stiffened.

  Annika smiled and shrugged. ‘That was a bit of a problem, back at the start, of course,’ she said. ‘Protecting a criminal, that’s the name of the offence, but it passed the statute of limitations a long time ago. Today everyone’s free to say what really happened that night. There’s no risk any more.’ She moved even closer to him. ‘Haven’t you ever thought about the fact that Josefin never got any justice, that Joachim got away with murder, and that it’s the fault of the witnesses, your fault, for giving him an alibi?’

  The man’s face drained of colour. He was clutching the cup hard. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She waved vaguely towards the entry-phone, where the logo of the publishing company shone out from a brass sign. ‘I’m going to write about it,’ she said. ‘About Josefin and everything that happened that night.’

  Robin Bertelsson backed away from her. ‘You can’t drag me into this.’

  ‘You must have thought about it,’ Annika said. ‘You could give her justice. If you contact the police in Stockholm, or the prosecutor, Sanna Andersson, and tell them what really happened . . .’

  Robin Bertelsson turned on his heel and stalked off along the pavement.

  Annika hoisted her bag on to her shoulder and ran after him. ‘Robin,’ she said loudly. ‘Think about it. You can—’ She collided with a large woman who swore at her angrily, but she hurried on and grabbed hold of his sleeve. ‘Robin, wait!’

  He stopped abruptly, spun round, his lips pressed together in a thin line. He tore the lid off the cup of coffee and threw the contents at her. She took a step back but wasn’t quick enough, and the coffee hit her chest and left arm. She lost her breath – it was still very hot. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out, as she felt the coffee run down her fingers and drip on to the pavement.

  Robin Bertelsson headed off into the crowd. For a while she saw his head bobbing between other people’s, but then he was gone.

  Nina stepped out on to the red-painted landing. The lift doors closed behind her with a sigh. Her workplace had its own unique sounds and smells; the sealed building murmured and echoed. Above her was Kronoberg Prison, in all its impenetrable inhumanity; buried in the ground below were the culverts and the large high-security courtroom, used when the smaller one up near the roof wasn’t big enough; between the two sat all the police officers and detectives. Together they formed an integrated whole, an organism that ground criminal acts of violence down to a manageable structure of process and formality, all of it archived in ring-binders.

  She held her pass card up to the magnetic reader and tapped in the code. The lock clicked and the glass doors of the National Crime Unit slid open. On her way to her office she fished her mobile out of her jacket pocket and dialled the duty officer at Regional Crime, but got no answer. She held her breath as she peered into her office, then noted with immense relief that Jesper Wou still hadn’t returned from his trip abroad. She breathed out, took off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. Her T-shirt was wet with sweat across the back.

  She sat down at her desk, drank some mineral water, and thought.

&nb
sp; She began by conducting a basic search on her computer, and logged into the national identity and address database. She searched for anyone with the surname Berglund who was born on 28 May fifty-five years ago.

  One result: Ivar Oskar Berglund, born in the Älvsbyn council district, currently registered as living in Täby.

  No Arne.

  She clenched her jaw, then filled her lungs with air.

  It had to be true. She just needed to find a different way to check. An historical search, same criteria . . .

  The circle on the screen turned. No result.

  She logged out of the database, and let her fingers rest on the keyboard as she thought some more.

  Her unit had access to a large number of different databases, both Swedish and international (all of them not necessarily legal), but she shouldn’t need any of the confidential ones here. Instead she jotted Arne Berglund’s details on a sheet of paper, then took it, with a printout of Ivar Berglund’s record and her pass card, and headed out into the corridor. She went down one floor to the blue landing and the communications centre on the seventh floor. The room was gloomy, lit only by the flicker of computer screens and the indirect daylight from the next room. A number of officers, some in plain clothes, two in uniform, were concentrating hard at their terminals.

  ‘Hello, Nina. Do you need help with something?’ asked a man in plain clothes with a moustache. She couldn’t remember his name.

  She smiled and handed over the sheet of paper with Arne Berglund’s name and place of birth. ‘Is there a way of finding this individual in the registers?’ she asked. ‘He’s fallen out of the main population database. He emigrated in the late eighties or early nineties, and died about twenty years ago.’

  Moustache Man took the sheet of paper and sat down at a terminal. Nina scanned the room in the hope of finding something with the guy’s name on it, but there was nothing. She held her breath as he logged in and conducted the search, as his computer whirred and flashed.

  ‘Are you sure about the date of birth?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘But he’s dead, you say? You know that for certain?’

  ‘He died in a traffic accident in Alpujarras twenty years ago.’

  ‘Alpu-what?’

  ‘The mountains south of Granada, in Andalucía, the southernmost part of Spain.’

  She waited quietly while he logged out of one system and into another. The page loaded.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s no Arne Berglund with those details here.’

  ‘Can you try Ivar Berglund, same birth details, and see if he has any family listed?’

  The computer whirred.

  ‘Yes, here we go. Parents Lars Tore Berglund and Lilly Amy Berglund, died 1975, province twenty-five, council district sixty, parish two.’

  The province of Norrbotten, and the council district and parish of Älvsbyn.

  ‘Is there anything about siblings?’

  Moustache Man shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’d have to check the National Archive.’

  Church records, in other words.

  Moustache Man handed the details back to her. As she took them, he didn’t let go of them straight away. ‘Anything else I can do for you?’

  The corners of her mouth tensed. ‘Thanks very much,’ she said, snatched the sheets of paper and went back the way she had come.

  The province of Norrbotten was covered by the National Archive office in Härnösand. She looked up the number on the internet, called, asked to be put through to their research office, and found herself in a queue. It didn’t take long to get through: people had better things to do on a hot day in June than genealogical research. She introduced herself with her name and title, and explained that she was after the birth details of an Arne Berglund, deceased. They would be in either the register of births and christenings or the book of deaths and funerals covering province 25, council district 60, parish 02.

  The woman at the other end paused before replying, ‘You can’t come and look for yourself?’

  ‘I’m at the National Crime Unit in Stockholm,’ Nina said. ‘I’d really appreciate it if you could help me with this.’

  ‘I’d be happy to. If you fill in the form on our website, we’re usually able to respond to requests for information in about two weeks.’

  ‘This concerns a murder investigation,’ Nina said. ‘The person I need information on is suspected of committing a murder in Nacka last year.’

  ‘Didn’t you say he was deceased?’

  Nina took a deep, silent breath. ‘I’m happy to wait on the line.’

  It took ten minutes. Then the woman returned. ‘I found the register of christenings,’ she said. ‘Arne Johan Berglund was born on the twenty-eighth of May. He’d have been fifty-five years old now. He died on the sixth of February at the age of thirty-five.’

  Nina scribbled the information on the sheet of paper with Ivar’s birth details. ‘Thanks for your help,’ she said, and hung up.

  She went straight to see Johansson and knocked on his door. ‘Have you got a minute?’

  The secretary was hunched over his keyboard and looked up at her mournfully. She walked across to his desk, and concentrated hard on not seeming stressed and pushy. ‘I think I’ve got the answer to that DNA sample from Orminge,’ she said. ‘Ivar Berglund and his brother Arne were identical twins.’

  Johansson looked up. She passed him the birth details – Ivar Oskar Berglund, born 28 May, Arne Johan Berglund, born 28 May, same location and year.

  Johansson studied the information.

  ‘Arne emigrated to Spain just before the Tax Office took over the population register in July 1991,’ she went on, trying to stick to the facts. ‘He was no longer in the main database, and it hasn’t occurred to anyone to check him out specifically.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand,’ Johansson said, handing back the printout.

  Nina sat down on the chair opposite him. ‘That would explain the DNA result from Orminge. The profile is almost identical, but not quite, because our DNA is affected by environmental influences all the way through our lives, by illnesses, diet and substance abuse.’

  ‘Nina,’ Johansson said, ‘it doesn’t explain anything. The man’s been dead for twenty years.’

  Nina tried to relax her shoulders. ‘I know he died in a car crash, but we ought to look into that accident. Which police force conducted the investigation?’

  Johansson sighed. ‘What makes you think they were monozygotic?’

  ‘Mono . . .?’

  ‘Identical.’

  He picked up the printout again, then looked quizzically at Nina. No, it wasn’t clear from the details on the database that they had been identical twins.

  ‘Their sister, Ingela Berglund,’ Nina said. ‘They’re the same. That’s what she said.’

  Johansson looked at her thoughtfully over his glasses. ‘They’re the same?’

  ‘Ingela has problems with social interaction,’ Nina said. ‘Questioning her wasn’t all that straightforward.’

  Johansson opened Ivar Berglund’s file. ‘I think you’re complicating this business of the DNA match,’ he said. ‘It’s as close at it can be, ninety-nine per cent.’

  ‘Could we check the circumstances surrounding that car crash in Spain?’ Nina asked. ‘Just to find out what really happened?’

  The secretary sighed. ‘I’ll look into it, but don’t hold your breath. We should probably be happy if we get a reply before the year is out.’

  Nina stood up and tried to smile.

  ‘A duty officer from Regional Crime tried to get hold of you earlier,’ Johansson said, pressing some chewing tobacco into a little clump. ‘Something to do with the search for a mobile phone?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Nina said, feeling as if she had just been reprimanded. She could be on the wrong track entirely, she was aware of that.

  Maybe she was chasing ghosts.

  The train had passed Ørestad and was approaching T�
�rnby. Annika glanced at her watch. Her flight back to Stockholm left at 18.05. She had four and a half hours. She looked down at her top. The coffee had almost dried, making the fabric hard and stiff. She would have to buy a new T-shirt.

  The conductor was moving slowly through the carriage. Annika strained her ears to listen, and yes, thank God, he was speaking Swedish.

  ‘This train goes all the way to Malmö, doesn’t it?’ she asked, as he checked her ticket.

  ‘It goes all the way to Gothenburg, love,’ he replied.

  Tårnby was a modern station of stone and grey concrete, ice-cold, clean Scandinavian design. She’d never been to Malmö. The paper had its own newsroom there, so violent crimes, riots and fights between football supporters were covered by local reporters. She knew little about the city, and what she did know was restricted to fragments of old headlines and stories that probably weren’t true: Sweden’s Most Dangerous City, the ghetto of Rosengård, the football team that had qualified for the Champions’ League, hostility to immigrants, shut-down shipyards – and, of course, Zlatan Ibrahimovic´.

  Why had Birgitta moved there? No one in their family had any connection to Malmö. Perhaps Steven had friends or contacts there. She could understand them trying to move to Norway – loads of Swedes did that to earn a bit of money – but Malmö?

  She had lived with the vague but straightforward conviction that she knew her sister: she knew when Birgitta had had her first period, what food she hated, how she hummed to herself when she was painting, and what she sounded like when she cried in her sleep.

  Why had she chosen Malmö? What was she doing there? Who had she become?

  The train set off with a jolt.

  Annika got out her mobile, no messages, then discovered that there was Wi-Fi on the train. She opened Birgitta’s Facebook page, which was dominated by photographs of its owner, selfies and pictures in mirrors, Birgitta’s beautiful face and glossy blonde hair; she was almost always smiling, always nicely dressed. Annika lingered over a summer photograph taken on a restaurant terrace, the wind tugging at Birgitta’s long hair. Her eyes were sparkling and she was laughing. Annika scrolled down, and found a number of childhood pictures, including one with herself in it, from the beach at Tallsjön. She and Birgitta were sitting side by side on a blue rug, wrapped in towels, each eating an ice-cream. Birgitta was smiling coquettishly at the camera, Annika was looking away, her face in profile. Dad had taken it.