There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as we drove from the flat to Police Headquarters on Kungsholmen. Lucy was driving while I sat and looked at the images from the security camera. Wolfgang had burned them onto no fewer than three CDs. So that there was no chance of them vanishing, as he put it. He had also promised not to mention the copies to the police unless he was asked a direct question about them.
The images weren’t in perfect focus, which worried me at first. I hadn’t had time to look through them in Wolfgang’s flat, and had merely given him the times I was interested in. Barely three hours had passed since I parked the car in the garage. Impatiently I fast-forwarded through the jerky footage. One neighbour drove out of the garage, another one drove in. Then nothing happened for a long time. Until the garage door opened once more and a car I didn’t recognise drove in.
‘Bloody hell,’ I whispered, leaning over the laptop.
The car was a Toyota, a model I didn’t recognise. It stopped in the middle of the garage between the two rows of parking spaces. Two people leapt out of the Toyota and ran round it. Everything happened so quickly I was sure I’d miss something if I blinked. In less than a minute they’d opened the boot of their car, helped each other to lift out a limp body, and dumped it in my Porsche. I watched with astonishment as they opened the boot. It opened easily.
‘How’s that possible?’ I said out loud to myself.
Before they closed it, I saw the taller of the two figures do something, close to the lock on the boot of the Porsche. Then they slammed it down, got into their own car and drove off.
I shook my head and rewound the recording.
‘Do you recognise anyone?’ Lucy said impatiently.
I didn’t. But I was pretty sure that one of them was male and the other female. The woman had short hair, whereas the man’s was a bit longer. Lucy braked at a red light and looked at the screen of the laptop.
‘Wigs,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘They’re wearing wigs. Can’t you see, his is crooked.’
It really was, although I hadn’t noticed. But what I had spotted – to my great relief – was that you could see, despite the relatively poor quality of the recording, that the man wasn’t dark-skinned like me. In spite of his stupid wig and large glasses, you could see his skin was as fair as Lucy’s.
‘He doesn’t look like me,’ I said.
‘No, definitely not.’
I glanced at Lucy, then at the woman in the film. There were several similarities between them. My stomach clenched once more. I wasn’t looking because I seriously believed that Lucy was involved, I told myself. I was just looking to reassure myself that no one else could think that.
‘Does she look like me?’ Lucy said.
Her voice was hollow. A car blew its horn at us. The traffic light had changed to green. Lucy released the clutch too quickly and the car stalled.
‘Shit.’
She started the engine again and put her foot down.
The woman in the film was holding Elias by his ankles as they carried him from one car to the other. At one point she looked straight at the camera. I froze the image and zoomed in. No, she didn’t look like Lucy. Above all, she was much stronger. Lucy would never be able to help carry a body the size of Elias’s.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, stroking her arm. ‘You’re not in this recording. Anyone could see that.’
I studied the woman’s face intently. If only there was some way to improve the sharpness. And if she hadn’t been wearing that ridiculous wig that gave her a low fringe.
‘Is it Rakel?’ Lucy said.
‘That’s what I can’t see,’ I said.
It was extremely irritating. The woman could be anyone. At best, I’d describe the portrait on the screen as a half-decent photofit picture. I pressed play again and brought the figures on the screen back to life. I watched the woman from behind as she went and sat in the car. And then I knew.
‘It’s her,’ I said. ‘It’s Rakel.’
‘How can you tell?’ Lucy said.
I didn’t really want to answer that question. I just recognised her backside and way of walking. Even though the film was jerky, I was quite certain. The woman in the recording walked exactly the same way I remembered Rakel walking. That, and the fact that Elias’s body had been found in Rakel’s house told me all I needed to know. The question was: who was the man? And what was the connection between them?
‘So, here we are again,’ Didrik said.
‘Yes, here we are again,’ I said.
‘Last time, when we were asking about the murder of journalist Fredrik Ohlander, it turned out that your car had been in the garage for repair all night,’ Staffan Ericsson said. ‘Which was very practical, because we were able to dismiss you from our inquiries.’
I was starting to get annoyed just at the sound of his nasal voice. There were traces of some indefinable liquid on the table between us. Coffee or tea, perhaps. Not blood.
‘Are you listening?’ his colleague asked sharply.
I looked up.
‘Absolutely. It’s hard not to be captivated by everything you say.’
Lucy snorted but managed to stop herself laughing. When it came down to it, there was very little cause for laughter.
‘After Belle’s grandparents died, I’m willing to concede that we started to rethink things,’ Didrik said. ‘Perhaps you were the victim of a conspiracy after all. We’ve had trouble finding forensic evidence connecting you and your car to the earlier murders. But the fact that a dead body has just turned up in your Porsche puts things in a rather different light, wouldn’t you say?’
I tilted my head to one side.
‘But there was a witness,’ I said.
Tension came and went so quickly across Didrik’s face that at first I thought I was mistaken.
‘What witness?’ he said sharply.
‘A witness to Jenny’s murder. That should have made up for the absence of forensic evidence, surely?’
Didrik gave me a long stare. I smiled wryly. If he hadn’t realised it before, he knew now. That I was aware of what a lousy false witness they had. But he wouldn’t dare ask how I came by that information.
‘For the time being we’re focusing on this murder, not any of the others,’ Didrik’s colleague said.
‘Quite,’ Didrik said. ‘We’re prepared to accept the fact that you didn’t have the body in the boot of your car when you drove away from the garage. We’ve also checked your satnav and according to it you drove straight home, like you said. But, as we mentioned before, that doesn’t tell us much. So now we’d like to know what you did after you parked the Porsche in the garage.’
I drummed my fingers silently on the tabletop. I wasn’t remotely inclined to sell out Nadja at Mio’s preschool. I didn’t actually want to say a word about what I’d been doing. But I could always string them along a bit.
‘I went to check out a new preschool for Belle.’
‘Really? How nice. And where is it?’ Didrik said.
He was smiling, but the look in his eyes was wary.
‘In Flemingsberg. It’s called the Enchanted Garden.’
His smile died.
‘Like hell you were there checking out a new preschool for Belle.’
‘Of course I was. A friend told me it was supposed to be really good. Go out there yourself and ask the staff. I’m sure they’ll remember me.’
Didrik drank from the cup of coffee in front of him. No one had asked Lucy and me if we’d like any.
‘Martin, what are you up to?’ he said.
‘I’m trying to get my normal life back.’
That was the truest thing I’d said to Didrik in weeks.
Didrik shook his head slowly.
‘After everything that’s happened,’ he said. ‘You’re still not giving up. What the hell is driving you?’
There was no way I could answer that. Lucifer’s curse was hanging like an axe above my family. I had sworn not to reveal anything else to the police, so I didn’t. The fact that I was subsequently called in for questioning was hardly something I could be held responsible for.
‘I think there’s a fairly simple answer to the problem of the dead body in the boot of the car,’ Lucy said after a few moments of silence.
Didrik raised his eyebrows.
‘Really?’
Lucy looked at me uncertainly.
‘Isn’t there?’
I nodded in agreement.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Because there’s a camera in the garage. But perhaps you already knew that?’
It was Didrik’s turn to nod.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Our colleagues discovered it a few minutes after we left. They called to tell us the good news while we were in the car.’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Well, then,’ I said.
‘Well, then, what?’
‘Seeing as I know I didn’t put the body in my car, I can only assume that the camera recording proves that. And shows someone else doing it.’
More silence.
‘That might well have been the case,’ Didrik said. ‘If . . .’
His colleague’s mobile phone rang and he left the room. I fixed my eyes on Didrik with my pulse rushing through my body.
‘If what?’
‘If only the recording hadn’t been faulty. Well, not the recording. The camera’s broken.’
I used to play chess as a child. I like to imagine that I might have become quite good at it if I’d bothered to carry on. I’m a good strategist; I don’t find it hard to work out in advance which move is best. But on this occasion I felt uncertain. Both Lucy and I knew that the camera had been working perfectly well. Lucy had a copy of the recording on a CD in her handbag. We had hidden the other copies in safe places. Didrik was playing for very high stakes if he knew he was lying about the state of the camera.
I would have to talk to Wolfgang when I got home. I needed to know who had gone to his flat and asked about the camera. Assuming anyone had. They could just as easily have broken the camera in situ when they knew they weren’t being watched. And then told the others it had been broken all along.
Lucy’s left hand moved towards her handbag. I quickly took hold of her arm, rather too hard. She looked up in surprise. I chose not to meet her gaze. It was important that she didn’t pull the recording out. Not yet.
‘You look like you’re thinking of saying something important,’ Didrik said.
For the first time he sounded uncertain.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was just surprised to hear that the camera was broken.’
‘Yes, it’s a shame,’ Didrik said. ‘Do you happen to know who looks after it?’
He said it almost in passing, but I realised the question was important. Even more important was what it told me. They hadn’t found Wolfgang.
I turned cold with fear. The bodies were piling up. I didn’t know who I could trust, nor who would be allowed to live and who must die. But I knew I wanted to save Wolfgang if I possibly could.
I got to my feet so quickly that my chair fell backwards.
‘Unless there’s anything else, I’m going to leave now,’ I said.
Didrik and I gauged each other’s strength across the table. If he decided to charge me now, Lucy could produce the recording from the garage. If not, I was planning to walk out.
Didrik’s face was dark and inscrutable.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ I said.
Lucy stood up and followed me out.
‘What now?’ she said when we were standing in the street.
‘Now we go home and save Wolfgang’s life,’ I said.