The Final Word

by Liza Marklund

  And now she was standing there, five convictions for murder later, wondering who she was about to see: a wretched girlfriend-beater, a ruthless serial killer, or the innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice?

  ‘Please, come through,’ a voice said, from the loudspeaker up by the ceiling.

  Annika raised her hand towards the security camera in the corner and walked into the secure airlock. Two guards, a man and a woman, watched her through reinforced glass. She put her notepad on a little plastic tray and it was passed through the scanner. Then she walked through the metal detector into the secure zone. She showed her ID and was allowed to borrow a pen, a yellow Bic. She wrote her name, and the name of the person she was visiting, signed to state that she understood the conditions of the visit (that she agreed to be searched by two female guards, if necessary, or by a sniffer-dog, and that she consented to being locked into a confined space with the inmate).

  ‘You’ll be in room number seven,’ the male guard said, as he hung her driver’s licence on a noticeboard behind the desk. ‘Would you like coffee?’

  She thanked him, but declined.

  They walked down a corridor lined with numbered doors.

  ‘You’ll have to clean the room afterwards,’ the guard said.

  As though she were there to have sex.

  She stepped inside it.

  ‘You can call the security guards using the intercom, and this is the emergency alarm.’

  Annika nodded and thanked him again.

  The door closed behind her. She stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the foam-rubber mattress on the bed, the chest of drawers containing sheets and blankets, the toilet and shower, the single chair. The only decoration on the walls was a framed poster for an exhibition at Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, by an artist called Johan Wahlström, naïve faces in blue, red and silver. The picture was called The Waiting Room, which seemed appropriate.

  She sank onto the chair. They were bringing Gustaf Holmerud from his part of the prison along some underground tunnel. He would have to go through the same security routine as her, plus a bit extra: he’d have to change his shoes (in the past inmates had hollowed out the heels of their trainers and filled them with heroin). When the visit was over and he went back to his cell, he would have to go through the metal detector naked. The security equipment was checked daily, and the routines worked. There were hardly any drugs in the Kumla Bunker, no escapes and very few murders.

  She looked at the bars on the window.

  People who never saw the horizon ended up with distorted perspective. She’d read that somewhere. Always finding walls in the way, never being able to let your eyes roam free, your perception of distance shrank. It was unnatural: humans had developed on the savannah where the skies were endless.

  The door opened and Annika stood up instinctively. Her palms began to sweat.

  Gustaf Holmerud was much bigger than she had expected. She had always imagined him as a short man, hunched and evasive, but the few pictures that existed of him outside the courtroom hadn’t done him justice. He practically filled the doorway, tall and thick-set, with long arms and short legs. His hair was wet: he had showered before meeting her.

  They shook hands and introduced themselves. His hand was cooler than hers, and the set of his mouth indicated nervous frustration.

  ‘So Anders Schyman has sent one of his minions,’ he said. ‘Oh, well, such is life.’

  The door closed behind them. The lock rattled. Annika hurried to sit on the only chair again, unwilling to sit beside him on the bed.

  ‘Thanks for letting me interview you,’ she said, resting the Bic pen and her notepad on her lap.

  Gustaf Holmerud remained standing. From a statistical point of view, he fulfilled all the criteria for a woman-killer: a native Swede, physically healthy and with no previous convictions, like the majority of ordinary Swedish men. But the majority of the male population didn’t kill their women with kitchen knives because they couldn’t control them.

  ‘I think you’ve misunderstood your role,’ Gustaf Holmerud said, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘You’re not here to conduct an interview, you’re here to make sure I get out.’

  He moved closer to her, so close that their legs almost touched, and leaned his elbows on his knees. His breath struck her in the face. It smelt of coffee.

  Annika sat on the chair without moving. She wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated. She looked hard into his eyes, which were watery and red. Perhaps he was on some sort of sedative. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who misunderstands the situation. I’m not your defence lawyer. I’m a journalist, and I’m going to write an article for the Evening Post.’

  He stared at her with his mouth half open, then moved back and made himself more comfortable on the mattress. ‘It must be very exciting for you to be here with me,’ he said. ‘This is a real coup for you. You think you’re going to win the national prize for journalism now, don’t you?’ He laughed, a dry little chuckle.

  ‘You told Anders Schyman that you’re innocent of the crimes you were found guilty of,’ Annika said. ‘You said you wanted to give your side of the story. I’m ready to listen to what you’ve got to say.’

  ‘Oh, sweetie,’ he said. ‘I make the decisions about who I talk to, and it has to be a proper editor.’

  A middle-aged white man, maybe. Someone who’s been on television, preferably one with an aristocratic surname? She held his gaze. ‘You were imagining someone with a bit of authority and experience? Someone who looks like the person you wish you were?’

  He looked at her with vacant eyes. ‘Annika Bengtzon,’ he said. ‘Why are you out there, and I’m stuck in here?’

  A chill ran through her. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You really did kill someone. I didn’t. You can put that in your paper.’

  She felt her throat tighten.

  ‘He claims that my screams are pleasure rather than pain. That was very pleasant reading.’

  He’d read her diary, which had formed part of the preliminary investigation. How had he got hold of it? But, of course, it wasn’t hard: anyone could request a copy from a district court: once the verdict had been pronounced, it was in the public domain. She made an effort not to gasp for air, but her body felt heavy and powerless.

  He smiled. ‘There are several of you from the papers who ought to be in here. Your colleague Patrik Nilsson was convicted of imitating a public official, did you know that? He dressed up as a police officer and took witness statements from a crime scene. And Bosse, from the other paper, he’s got problems with the Enforcement Service. His attempts at trading in shares didn’t turn out very well. And Berit Hamrin, the old Communist, she’d be counted as a terrorist, these days.’ He clasped his hands over his stomach, evidently enjoying the situation.

  Annika made some notes. ‘It’s clever of you to have done your research,’ she said. ‘That’s how you managed to get convicted of those crimes. You learned what to say when questioned, and how to react when you were taken to the crime scenes.’

  He stopped smiling, and pursed his lips. ‘I want some influence over the person I talk to,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but today you’re going to have to make do with me. How come you’ve changed your mind? Why have you retracted your confessions?’

  He shoved himself even further back on the bed so that his back was pressed to the wall. His legs stuck straight out and he was wearing a pair of Prison Service plastic sandals.

  ‘You think you can trick me into talking,’ he said. ‘I want this to be big, not some single shitty little article in one paper. A book, a television programme, and lots of articles for days on end.’

  She took a silent breath, then picked up her pen and notepad. ‘Let’s see if I’ve understood you correctly,’ she said. ‘You want a synchronized media launch on every possible platform. Television, newspapers, social media, radio, too, maybe, and a book. Is that correct?’


  He hesitated for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ he said.

  She looked at him, his bulging stomach, his slowly drying hair. ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked.

  His smile faded. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Confess to all those murders.’

  He pursed his lips and folded his arms.

  ‘You told Anders Schyman that the police had lured you into confessing,’ Annika said. ‘That the police and doctors made you feel important, and as long as you kept confessing you were given drugs and plenty of attention.’

  ‘Anders Schyman promised that I could check every word.’

  ‘He said you could check quotes attributed to you,’ Annika said.

  Gustaf Holmerud sat in silence, staring at Johan Wahlström’s picture.

  Annika stood up. ‘I’ll convey your demands to my editors,’ she said. ‘Seeing as you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll have to draw my own conclusions about our conversation. Do you want to know what I’m going to say?’

  He lit up.

  ‘That you confessed to a series of crimes you didn’t commit to get attention and stand in the spotlight, but that now the lamps have gone out, it isn’t so much fun, so you want to get back into the spotlight, this time by claiming to be innocent.’

  She tucked her notepad into her back pocket and pressed the intercom.

  ‘Annika Bengtzon in room seven,’ she told the control room. ‘I’m ready now.’

  Gustaf Holmerud shuffled to the edge of the bed and got to his feet, his eyes rather anxious. ‘Are you leaving?’

  ‘There’s not going to be an interview,’ she said. ‘I’ve got better things to be getting on with.’

  ‘When will I hear from you again? What’s the next step?’

  She heard footsteps in the corridor. ‘You’re not as good at research as you think you are,’ she said. ‘Or else you’re lying. Patrik Nilsson may have been found guilty of wearing a police uniform, but he never took witness statements from a crime scene. The uniform was part of a prank for a men’s magazine when he was a freelancer. He was fined ten days’ wages, which doesn’t really warrant being locked away in the Kumla Bunker.’

  The lock rattled and the door swung open.

  She shook his hand. ‘I’ll see to it that someone informs you of whatever we decide. Thanks for seeing me.’

  She went out of the door, passed through the security zone and waiting room, and returned to her car without a backward glance.

  Her failure chafed like a stone in her shoe. She had sent a short text message to Schyman: No interview today, Holmerud obstructive. Still possible, details this afternoon. He hadn’t replied. Adam Alsing had finished for the day, so she switched the radio off.

  What could she have done differently? Not much, probably. Gustaf Holmerud wasn’t stupid, even if he was half mad. He had managed to get himself convicted of four crimes he hadn’t committed, which demanded considerable perceptiveness and application. He was probably guilty of the fifth: the murder of his former girlfriend.

  She was fifteen minutes into her drive back to Stockholm when her mobile rang, a number she didn’t recognize.

  ‘Good morning,’ a mournful male voice said. ‘My name is Johansson, I’m calling from the National Crime Unit.’

  Unconsciously she sat up straighter in the driver’s seat. Was she allowed to talk on the phone while she drove? She felt suddenly uncertain.

  ‘Am I talking to Annika Bengtzon?’

  Yes, he was. She slowed down.

  ‘My colleague Nina Hoffman has asked me to let you know the results of a trace on a mobile phone.’

  ‘Yes,’ Annika said. ‘My sister’s phone, she’s gone missing.’

  ‘Of course, yes, I can see the report here. Two reports, in fact, one in Stockholm and the other in Malmö.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Annika said, ‘but why isn’t Nina calling?’

  ‘She’s away on official business. It’s a little unorthodox, giving the results in this way, but if I’ve understood correctly, you and Nina have an ongoing collaboration.’

  Well, Annika wasn’t sure she’d put it quite like that, but never mind.

  ‘We’ve looked back over the whole of the past month, from the first of May onwards, it says here. Should I tell you the results now, or would you like me to—’

  ‘Now is fine,’ Annika said.

  ‘Until two weeks ago the pattern was the same. The operator picked up signals from masts mainly located in central Malmö, between Rosengård and Värnhemstorget.’

  She heard the rustle of paper.

  ‘Then, on Sunday, the seventeenth of May, there’s a gap in the signal. The phone is switched off, and the next time it gets switched on is Tuesday, the nineteenth of May – two days later, in other words. On that day two text messages are sent, one to a woman called Linda Torstensson, and one to a Steven Andersson. Was this something you already knew?’

  Annika knew that Birgitta had written to Linda: she had lied about getting a permanent job in another supermarket. Why? She had been her boss’s favourite, so why burn her bridges?

  Because she’d wanted Linda to be upset. She didn’t want Linda to contact her. She wanted to be left alone. As for what Birgitta had written to Steven, only he knew that.

  ‘I can see here that those two texts were sent via a mast in Södermanland, in a place called Hälleforsnäs.’

  Annika braked, and the car behind blew its horn angrily. Tuesday, two weeks ago, Birgitta was in Hälleforsnäs? ‘Is it possible to see where the phones that received the text messages were?’ Annika asked.

  Johansson coughed. ‘They were both in Malmö when the messages were received.’

  For some reason that news calmed her. The technology was cold and definite. Steven had been in Malmö when Birgitta had vanished. At least he wasn’t lying about that.

  ‘The mobile was switched on two more times during the following week, on the twenty-second and the twenty-fifth of May. Three messages were sent, two to Steven Andersson, and one to Annika Bengtzon, to you, all via the same mast.’

  Annika, please get in touch, you’ve got to help me! Birgitta

  ‘One final text was sent to your mobile on Sunday, at four twenty-two a.m., from Luleå.’

  Annika’s brain froze. Annika, help me! ‘Luleå?’

  Annika could see the city in her mind’s eye, snowdrifts against panelled buildings, the heavy pulse of the steelworks, shiny railway tracks on a winter’s night. She had been there several times in connection with Benny Andersson’s murder and the hunt for Red Wolf – dear God, the children had been so young. It had been during those trips to Luleå that Thomas embarked on his affair with Sophia Grenborg.

  ‘Is this any help to you? Does your sister have any connection to these places?’

  ‘We come from Hälleforsnäs,’ Annika said.

  The man let out a sigh. ‘She must have gone for a visit.’

  Annika thanked him for the information and ended the call. She came off at the next junction, turned round and drove back a couple of kilometres. Then she took the road that led to Hälleforsnäs.

  The Dirección General de la Policía in San Sebastián lay on Calle de José María Salaberria, a narrow alley with roadworks on one side and scaffolding on the other. Nina looked up at the brick building, which reminded her of a block of flats in a Stockholm suburb.

  She stepped into the police station, a little unsteady on her feet through lack of sleep. Her Ryanair flight to Biarritz in France had taken off from Skavsta airport at the crack of dawn and she’d tried to get some sleep on board but the seat wouldn’t recline more than a millimetre, and her knees were aching just half an hour into the flight from being pressed up against the seat in front. She had given up and focused instead on how best to present the Ivar Berglund case to her Spanish colleagues.

  The taxi from the airport had taken just under an hour. On the way they had crossed the border between France and Spain, but she hadn’t even noticed.

 
; She asked for Police Commissioner Axier Elorza in Reception, and showed her driving licence, as a civilian. Her status as a police officer was as yet unsanctioned. Europol would be granting authorization later that day, and she didn’t want to pre-empt the decision. She would be permitted to act as an observer rather than an active representative of authority, but that would be enough.

  The receptionist told her to take a seat and wait.

  She sat on a hard wooden bench and looked out of the window. The trial in the high-security court was due to finish tomorrow. There was a risk that Ivar Berglund would be released immediately after the main hearing, but that was unlikely. She had to gain access to the whole of the Spanish investigation into the old case in which the DNA evidence had been secured today, ideally that morning, in order for official procedures to be set in motion and to make sure that Berglund remained in custody.

  ‘Third floor,’ the receptionist said, pointing to a lift.

  Nina got to her feet and made her way up through the building.

  She found the chief of police in a cramped room with a view of the building site on the other side of the street. Axier Elorza was a small, skinny man in plain clothes, with a drooping moustache. He could easily have been one of the old men who fed the pigeons in the square in Alisios where she had grown up. But Nina knew that appearances were deceptive: Commissioner Elorza had tracked down, arrested and eliminated more ETA terrorists than any other Spanish policeman alive today.

  ‘Señorita Hoffman,’ the old man said, his eyes twinkling. ‘It’s an honour.’

  ‘The honour is entirely mine,’ Nina told him. ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’ She was a head taller than him.

  ‘Please, let’s set aside formalities. Do come in!’ He gestured her into his little office, evidently keen to keep her visit as informal as possible, at least at this stage. No conference room, no large delegation to share information. She sat on a chair on the other side of his desk, which was empty, apart from two bottles of carbonated water and two small glasses.

  ‘So, Señorita, tell me why our DNA result from an eighteen-year-old murder is of such interest to the Swedish police,’ he said, twisting the cork stopper off one of the bottles of water with his fist.