Marked For Life
“Oh really? Yes, well, that of course. The newspapers wrote that we were bad at accommodating the flow of asylum seekers. But it’s hard to know exactly how many will come. You just have to make an educated guess, a projection. And a projection is only that, after all.”
Lena took a deep breath.
“Three weeks ago we received a large group of asylum seekers from Somalia and that meant work both before and after regular hours. Hans didn’t want to risk more exposure in the local papers. He took the criticism seriously.”
“Did he have any enemies?” said Henrik.
“No, not as far as I know. But you always feel a bit vulnerable in this job. There are a lot of emotions, a lot of people behave threateningly when they’re not allowed to stay on here in Sweden. So if you think of it like that, then there are potentially a lot of enemies. That’s why we have a security firm that always patrols here,” said Lena. ‘But I don’t think Hans felt he had specific enemies.”
“Even evenings and nights?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been threatened?”
“No, not personally. But the Board always has to think about security. Once a man poured gasoline over himself and ran into reception and threatened to set himself on fire if he didn’t get a residence permit. They can be completely mad, those people. Yes, there’s all sorts.”
Henrik leaned back in the chair and glanced at Mia. She moved on to the next question.
“Is it possible to talk to the person from security who was here on Sunday?”
“This past Sunday? When he...”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Lena picked up the phone, punched in a number and waited. Shortly after, the security firm promised to immediately send a Jens Cavenius who had worked all Sunday.
“So do you know if Hans had felt especially threatened in any way?” said Henrik.
“No,” said Lena.
“No strange letters or phone calls?”
“Not that I saw, and I open all the mail... No, I haven’t seen anything.”
“Do you know if he had any contact with a child?”
“No. Not specifically. Why do you ask that?”
Henrik declined to answer.
“When he was here, late evenings and Sundays, do you know what he did?”
“I don’t know exactly, but he was busy with paperwork and reviewed lots of documents. He didn’t like the computer at all and wanted to use it as little as possible so I had to print out all documents and reports for him.”
“Were you usually here with him when he was working?” said Mia and pointed at Lena with her pen.
“No, not on Sundays. He wanted to be by himself, alone, that was why he liked working evenings and weekends. Nobody was here to disturb him.”
Mia nodded and wrote in her notepad.
“You said that certain persons can behave threateningly. Do you have a list of the names of all the asylum seekers that we can take with us?” said Henrik.
“Yes. Of course. For this year, or further back?”
“This year’s list would suffice to start with.”
Lena went into the database on her computer and ordered a printout. Her laser printer came to life and started delivering page after page with names in alphabetical order. Lena picked them up as they came out. After twenty pages, a warning lamp started to flash.
“Oh, how annoying, it’s always going wrong,” she said, and turned red in the face. She opened the paper tray which—to her surprise—was not empty.
“Oh, what’s the matter now?” She pushed the tray back in. The printer made a noise but again the red lamp indicated that something was wrong.
“Apparatuses are best when they work properly, aren’t they?” she said in an irritated voice.
Henrik and Mia just sat there in silence.
Lena opened the tray, saw that there was still some paper left and closed it again, this time with a bang. The printer started up, but no pages came out.
“Oh, why are you being so difficult!” Lena hit the start button with her fist and that got the printer to work. Embarrassed, she ran her fingers through her hair until all the pages printed out. Just then, the phone rang and in a short conversation the receptionist informed Lena that Jens Cavenius had arrived.
* * *
Jens Cavenius stood leaning against a pillar in reception. The nineteen-year-old looked as though he had just woken up. His eyes were red, and his hair was flattened on one side and untidy on the other. He was wearing a lined jean jacket and white Converse sneakers. When he caught sight of Henrik and Mia, he approached and stretched out his arm to shake hands.
“Shall we sit down?” Henrik asked.
He gestured toward a sofa and armchairs to the right of reception, which was surrounded by two-meter-high plastic Yucca palms. Some Arabic brochures were in a display on the white coffee table.
Jens flopped onto the sofa, leaned forward and despite his red-shot eyes, looked expectantly at Henrik and Mia. They sat down opposite him.
“You worked here on Sunday?” Henrik said.
“Yeah, sure,” said Jens and clapped the palms of his hands together.
“Was Hans Juhlén here then?”
“Yep. I chatted a bit with him. He was the boss, like.”
“What time was it then?”
“Perhaps around half past six.”
Henrik looked at Mia and saw that she was prepared to take over the questioning. With a nod he let her do so.
“What did you talk about?” she said.
“Well, it was more like we said hello to each other. You could say,” said Jens.
“Okay?” said Mia.
“Or nodded, I nodded to him when I went past his office.”
“There was nobody else here then?”
“No, no way. On Sundays it’s just dead here, like.”
“When you went past Hans Juhlén’s office, did you see what he was doing then?”
“No. But I could hear him using the computer keyboard. You know, you’ve got to have good hearing to be a security guard, so you can notice sound that might be weird or something. And my night vision is pretty good too. I was the best in the test in fact, in the selection. Not bad, eh?”
Mia was hardly impressed by Jens’s senses. She raised her eyebrows to indicate ridicule and turned toward Henrik, whose gaze had fastened on one of the Yucca palms.
When she saw that Henrik appeared to be lost in thought, she thumped him on the arm.
“Hans Juhlén’s computer?” she said.
“Yes?” said Henrik.
“He seems to have used it quite a lot.”
“Yes, all the time,” said Jens and clapped his hands.
“Then I think we should take it with us,” said Henrik.
“So do I,” said Mia.
CHAPTER EIGHT
POLICE OFFICER GABRIEL MELLQVIST was shivering. It was cold. His shoes were leaking and the cold rain trickled down from his cap onto his neck. He didn’t know where his colleague Hanna Hultman was. Last he saw her, she was standing outside house number 36 ringing the doorbell. Together they had gone door-knocking at about twenty detached houses this morning. None of the residents had made any observations that were of any importance to the investigation. And not a single strange man or woman had been glimpsed. On the other hand, most people weren’t even at home on Sunday. They had been at their summer cottages, on golf courses, at horse-jumping competitions and God knows what. A mother had seen a little girl go by, probably it was a playmate who was going home for the evening, and Gabriel wondered why she had even bothered to mention it to him.
He swore to himself and looked at his watch. His mouth was dry, and he was tired and thirsty. They were clear signals that his blood sugar was too low. Even so, he went off to the next house which was behind a high stone wall.
Door-to-door canvassing was not his favorite occupation. Especially not in the rain. But the order had come from the very top of the criminal department and that meant it was best to do as he was told.
The gates were closed. Locked. Gabriel looked around. From here he could hardly see Östanvägen 204 where the murder had been committed. He pressed the intercom next to the gate and waited for an answer. Pressed again and added a “Hello!” this time. Gave the locked gates a bit of a push and they rattled. Where the hell was Hannah now? She couldn’t be seen anywhere on the street. She couldn’t have gone down one of the parallel streets. No, not without telling him first. She’d never do that. He sighed, took a step back and walked straight into a puddle. He felt how the cold water was sucked up by the sock in his right shoe. Oh great! Really great!
He looked up at the house again. Still saw no sign of life. He wanted most of all to give up and go off to the nearest lunch place and just get some grub. But then he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something that moved. He screwed his eyes up a little in an effort to see what it was. A security camera! He pressed the intercom, shouted a few times to elicit an answer and managed in his enthusiasm to suppress the sensation of dizziness that gradually crept up on him.
* * *
Forty minutes and ninety-eight kronor later, Henrik Levin had eaten his fill. The Thai buffet had consisted of far too many tasty dishes. Mia Bolander had accompanied him, but chosen something lighter, a salad.
Henrik regretted his choice of lunch when he got back in the car again. He felt heavy and drowsy and let Mia drive to the police station.
“Next time can you remind me that I must have salad too,” he said.
Mia laughed.
“Please?”
“I’m not your bloody mother! But all right, then. Does Emma want you to lose weight or what?”
“Do you think I’m fat, then?”
“Not your face.”
“Thanks.”
“She won’t let you fuck her, is that it?”
“What?”
“I mean, you seem to want to go easy on the carbs, which means you want to lose weight. I read online that the biggest motivation for men to lose weight is that they want to have more sex.”
“I was just talking about a salad. I just want to eat salad next time. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you think I’m fat?”
“No. You’re not fat. You only weigh eighty kilos, Henrik.”
“Eighty-three.”
“Sorry, eighty-bloody-three kilos, then. You’re a pudding, right! Why would you want to weigh any less?”
Mia winked provocatively.
Henrik remained silent and kept his real reason for wanting to eat lighter to himself.
Mia didn’t need to know that seven weeks earlier he had embarked on a low-carb diet. He was also aiming to get more exercise on weekdays. But it was hard to keep to his new lifestyle choices, especially when Thai food tastes so much better with rice. After work it was simpler: home, eat, play, bath time, tuck into bed, TV, sleep. His time with his five-and six-year-old kids when he got home was pretty much routine. Admittedly, he hadn’t actually asked his wife, Emma, if he could spend an hour, once or twice a week, at the gym. Hopefully she would say yes. But deep inside Henrik was afraid of what answer he would get. A firm no.
His wife already resented his spending too little time with the family.
But he felt that if he were in better shape, they would have better and more frequent sex. To him it was a win-win situation.
But those few times he had asked Emma for permission just to play football with the local club on a Saturday, he was turned down. The weekends were for the family, she said, and they should be out in the garden, visiting the zoo park, going to the cinema or just spending family time together. She felt she and Henrik needed to nurture their relationship by spending more time cuddling together.
Henrik didn’t particularly like cuddling. He liked having sex. To him, sex was the greatest proof that you loved your partner, he thought. It didn’t matter when or where you did it. Just that you did it. That wasn’t what Emma thought. For her, it had to be pleasurable and relaxing, and you needed lots of time and the right setting. Their bed still remained her preference and then only when the children weren’t awake. Since Felix, who was afraid of ghosts, insisted on going to sleep every night between them in bed, their opportunities for sex were few.
Henrik had to settle for the hope that things would get better. This past month he had felt more desire. And Emma had gone along with it too. Once, at any rate. Exactly four weeks ago.
Henrik smothered a bit of heartburn. The next time it would be only salad.
* * *
When Henrik and Mia entered the conference room they were met by the news that police officer Gabriel Mellqvist had fainted while knocking on doors in Lindö. He had been found by an elderly lady who had heard her doorbell ring a number of times. But since she was confined to a wheelchair, she couldn’t hurry to the door. When she finally opened it, she saw the policeman lying on the ground.
“Luckily Hanna Hultman had come to his aid and in Gabriel’s pocket found a glucose syringe that she jabbed into his thigh,” said Gunnar. “That was the bad news. The good news is that we’ve found a security camera outside the lady’s house. It is directed toward the street—it’s positioned here.”
Gunnar put an X on the map of the residential area that was hanging beside the time line posted on the wall.
The whole team was in the room. All except Jana, which pleased Mia.
“In the best case, the events from Sunday will still be on a server somewhere. I want you, Ola, to check that straightaway.”
“Now?” said Ola Söderström.
“Yes, now.”
He got up.
“Hang on,” said Henrik. “I think you’ve got some more to do. We’ve confiscated Hans Juhlén’s computer and need to go through it.”
“Did the interview with Lena Wikström lead to anything?”
“She doesn’t share Kerstin Juhlén’s picture of Hans. According to Kerstin, Hans always worked on his computer. According to his secretary, Lena, he never did. I think it’s a little odd that they would have such different impressions.”
Ola, Gunnar and Anneli Lindgren agreed.
“Lena also didn’t think that Hans Juhlén was as stressed as his wife claimed,” said Henrik.
“But that’s only what she says. I believe he was bloody worried. I would be too if there had been a lot of shit thrown at me in the newspapers and threatening notes too,” said Mia.
“Exactly,” said Ola.
“Lena said that there was always a security aspect concerning asylum seekers who weren’t granted asylum. So we’ve asked for a list of all the people who have sought asylum so far this year,” said Henrik.
“Fine, anything else?” said Gunnar.
“No,” said Henrik. Going door-to-door hadn’t produced much, except for the potential security footage.
“No witnesses?” said Mia.
“No. Not a one,” said Gunnar.
“It’s just bloody crazy. Didn’t anybody see anything?” said Mia. “So we’ve got fuck-all to go on.”
“For the time being we have no witnesses. Zero. Nada. So we’ll have to hope that the security camera will give us something. Ola, check if we can get hold of the images right away,” Gunnar said and turned to Ola. “Then you can go through Hans’s computer. I’ll see if the call logs from the provider are ready. If not, I’ll phone and pester them till they are. Anneli, you go back to the crime scene and see if you can find anything new. Anything at all would do in the present situation.”
CHAPTER NINE
AT FIRST THE girl had cried hysterically. But now she felt calm. She had never felt like this before. Everything happened as if in slow motion.
She sat with her now heavy head bent over her thighs, her arms hanging limply from her sides, almost numb now. The engine in the van in which they were traveling growled weakly. Her thighs were stinging. She had wet herself when her captors had gripped her hard and pushed a needle into her arm.
Now she looked slowly up toward her left upper arm at the little red mark. It was really tiny. She giggled. Really tiny. Teeny weeny. The syringe was also really tiny.
The van jerked and the asphalt turned into gravel. The girl leaned her head back and tried to balance its weight so that she wouldn’t bang herself against the van’s hard interior. Or against somebody else. They were sitting tightly packed, all seven. Danilo, who was next to her, had cried too. The girl had never seen him cry before, only smile. The girl liked his smile and always smiled back at him. But now he couldn’t smile. The silvery bit of tape was stuck hard over his mouth, and he breathed in what air he could through his dilated nostrils.
A woman sat opposite them. She looked angry. Terribly, terribly angry. Grrrr. The girl laughed to herself. Then she sank down again with her head against her thighs. She was tired and most of all wanted to sleep in her own bed with the doll that she had once found at a bus stop. The doll with only one arm and one leg. But it was the finest doll the girl had ever seen. The doll had dark curly hair and a pink dress. She missed her doll dreadfully. The doll was still back there with Mama and Papa. She would fetch her later, when she came back to the container.
Then everything would be all right again.
And they would go back.
Home.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SECURITY CAMERA film had just arrived by messenger from the security firm. Ola Söderström opened the package and quickly inserted the little hard disk into his computer. He immediately started looking through the images, which gave a good overview of Östanvägen. Unfortunately the rotating camera lens didn’t reach all the way to Hans Juhlén’s house. Judging by the angle, the camera must have been about two meters above the ground, perhaps three, and provided an adequate coverage so that you could register everything on the street. The quality was good and Ola was pleased with the sharpness. He fast-forwarded past Sunday morning. A woman with a dog walked by, a white Lexus left the street and then the woman with the dog came back again.
When the clock counter showed 17:30, he slowed down the speed. The empty street looked cold and windy. The overcast weather made it hard to detect any movements and the street lighting was of poor quality.
Ola was wondering whether it was possible to adjust the brightness so that he could see the scene more clearly, when he suddenly caught sight of a boy.
He froze the image. The counter showed 18:14.
Then he let the recording continue. The boy cut across the street quickly and then vanished out of view.
Ola reversed the disk and looked at the sequence again. The boy was wearing a dark hooded sweater that hid his face well. He walked with his head down and both hands stuck inside the big pocket on his stomach.
Ola sighed. He rubbed his hand over his face and up through his hair. Just a child on his way somewhere. He let the footage continue and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head.
When the counter showed 20:00, he still hadn’t seen anything. No movement. Not a single person. Not a car had passed during those two hours. Only the boy. At that moment, Ola realized what he had seen. Only the boy.
He got up so fast from the chair that it fell backward onto the floor with a crash.
* * *
“You seem to be in a good mood.”
Gunnar gave a start when he heard Anneli Lindgren’s voice. She stood in the doorway with her arms folded over her chest. Her hair was tied back in a tight ponytail that accentuated her clear blue eyes and high cheekbones.
“Yes, I’ve just been promised the call logs,” he said. “It helped when I made a fuss.”
“Well now, is that all it takes to put you in a good mood?” said Anneli.
“Yes, it is, I can tell you. Shouldn’t you be on your way?” Gunnar said.
“Yes, but I’m waiting for some support. It’s a big house to work through. I can’t get through it all on my own.”
“I thought you liked working alone.”
“Sometimes, sure. But you tire of it after a while. Then it’s nice to have company by your side,” Anneli said and tilted her head.
“But you don’t have to go through everything again. Just take what’s of interest.”
“Well, that’s obvious. What do you take me for, huh?” Anneli straightened her head and put her hand on her waist.
“And talking about going through things,” said Gunnar, “I’ve been tidying in the storage room and found some stuff that belongs to you.”
“You’ve been tidying the storage room?”
“Yes. What of it?” Gunnar said and shrugged his shoulders. “I needed to get rid of some junk and I found a large cardboard box with ornaments in it. Perhaps you’d like them back?”
“I can fetch them later in the week.”
“No, better if I bring the box to work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see if those lists have arrived as promised.”
Anneli was just about to leave the room when she almost bumped right into a stressed Ola Söderström in the doorway.
“What is it?” said Gunnar.
“I think I’ve found something. Come and see!”
Gunnar got up from his desk and followed his colleague Ola into the computer room.
Ola, twenty years his junior, was tall and thin with a pointed nose. He was dressed in jeans, a red checked shirt and, like every other day of the year, a cap. Regardless of the temperature on the thermometer, be it minus or plus thirty degrees Celsius, he had his cap on. Sometimes it was red, sometimes white. Sometimes striped, sometimes with a check pattern. Today it was black.
Gunnar had told Ola many times that he should avoid wearing headgear during working hours, but he finally gave up because his irritating hat was trivial compared with Ola’s skill with computers.
“Look at this.” Ola pressed some keys and the recorded tape started to play. Gunnar saw the little boy on the film.
“He turns up at exactly 18:14,” said Ola. “He cuts across the street and seems to be on his way up toward Östanvägen, toward Hans Juhlén’s house.”
Gunnar observed the boy’s movements. Stiff. Almost mechanical.
“Play it again,” he said when the boy disappeared from view.
Ola did as he was told.
“Freeze it there!” said Gunnar and moved closer to the screen. “Can you zoom in?”
Ola pressed some keys and the boy came closer.
“He’s got his hands in that hoodie pocket. But the pocket is bulging too much. He must have something else in there,” said Gunnar.
“Anneli did find the handprints from a child,” said Ola. “Could it be this boy?”
“How old?” said Gunnar.
Ola looked at the figure. Although he was dressed in a large hooded sweatshirt, you could still make out the size of his body under it. But it was his height that decided the matter.
“I’d guess eight, perhaps nine,” said Ola.
“Do you know who’s got a child of that age?”
“No.”
“Hans Juhlén’s half brother.”
“Shit.”
“Zoom in closer.”
Ola zoomed in another step.
Gunnar put his face right up to the screen so he could examine the bulging pocket better.
“Now I know what he’s got in his pocket.”
“What?”
“A gun.”
* * *
Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander were driving from Norrköping toward Finspång. They sat in silence, deep in their own thoughts as they passed a road sign that told them they had five kilometers to go.
Henrik pulled over to the side of the road so he could look up the address he wanted on the GPS navigator. The digital map showed that they had 150 meters to go to their final destination, and the navigator’s voice told him to keep driving straight ahead at the next roundabout. Henrik followed the directions and approached the given address, which was in the Dunderbacken district.
Mia pointed to an empty parking space next to a recycling station that was overflowing with discarded paper and packages. Somebody had put an old radio in front of the green bins.
“So this is where he lives, the half brother,” said Mia. She got out of the car, stretched and yawned out loud. Henrik got out and slammed the car door on his side.