Friday Afternoon
So once again the ground had parted under his feet. Once again his life had been smashed to pieces, but this time someone had done it intentionally. He had not even made it out of the car before the unknown man stepped out of the darkness and pressed a rag to his face. Of what happened then – from the attack in the car park outside his building until he woke up in the tool shed – he remembered nothing. When he did wake, he had felt mostly surprise. The pain was manageable and the cold was not hard to endure. He was alone in the darkness and did not know where he was or why. He remembered that he had been yawning in the car on his way home from Solberga, that he had stopped at a rest area and drunk a cup of lukewarm coffee from the Thermos to keep himself from falling asleep behind the wheel. But had he lost control of the car? This was no forest glade by the side of the road, much less a hospital. Tied tightly around his head and across his mouth was a strip of cloth, apparently for the purpose of muffling the sounds from his throat. He was indoors, and bound hand and foot. Even if the temperature was almost the same as outside, he was under a roof, and on a hard, splintery wood floor; he could feel that with his hands.
For a long time he lay and pondered, trying to understand what had happened. Several of his teeth were missing, and his body ached. Who wanted to injure him? Had he put up any resistance? If this was a question of a regular kidnapping, they had the wrong person. He had no money, knew no one who could or would want to ransom him. It must be a misunderstanding. He squirmed; his position was starting to get uncomfortable. He rolled over on to his other side and noted that the keys in his pocket were missing. He’d had both the car keys and the keys to the apartment in there, but now they were gone. For some reason he did not have any shoes on either, but he had been allowed to keep his jacket.
Then the memories of the attack came back. He had not managed to see the face of his assailant before he blacked out. Judging by his movements and clothes it had been a man, but what age he did not know, nor whether he was a Swede or a foreigner. He was not kept in a state of uncertainty for very long, however. He heard a key being put in a lock outside and soon he had company in the little shed, but not in the way he had expected. He heard the door shut and suddenly it was light in the room. At first he could see only the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, but then the terrifying figure appeared above him. The man looked down at him for a few seconds without saying anything. Then his lips parted in a joyless smile. Without a word, he started to kick him, in the stomach, ribcage, face. There was nothing he could do to defend himself. With his hands and feet bound he could not even curl up sufficiently to protect his head. All he could do was scream and he did that until his voice broke. But the muffled sound that penetrated through the gag did not carry far and the strange man who was assaulting him in a fury and with inexhaustible energy took no notice. It seemed an age before he lost consciousness. And he was not sure that the brutal assault had ceased even then.
He started at the familiar sound of the key being turned in the padlock. Now a new round of kicks and blows, scorn and degradation was in store. He made no effort to change position when the big man’s silhouette showed in the doorway. Nothing could change what was to come and he intended to take his punishment with dignity, without defending himself. But at the sight of his kidnapper he automatically started stretching the rope behind his back. With tiny, tiny movements he tried to get the stiff rope to stretch a little. He must have done it ten thousand times at this point.
‘Now we’ll have a film showing,’ said the man in a smooth but threatening voice. ‘And then I thought we should film you a little. You’re starting to look weak, Einar. We have to film you before this is over.’
With his functioning eye Einar met his gaze, without turning away. He was no longer afraid of him, had nothing to fear. The man stepped up to where he lay on the floor and put his hands under Einar’s arms. Then he dragged him to the far end of the shed and sat him up against the wall. Then he sat beside him and took a small video camera from his jacket pocket. Deftly he opened the display and turned on the power.
‘This will make a nice change, right?’ the man said softly. ‘I thought that maybe you don’t believe me, so I brought visual evidence with me. Look closely now, and we’ll see if this is familiar.’
Einar was finding it difficult to breathe. He sensed the worst; he had already been informed in graphic detail about what had happened in the apartment on Trålgränd, but he had not allowed himself to believe that it was true. Despite the cold in the shed, the sweat poured down his face. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths; he did not want to faint now, had to force himself to see the devastation he was the cause of.
The film began. With his good eye he saw Kate, a vision of loveliness, lying on the bed beside her children. Little Linn was between her mother and her brother, apparently sleeping with her thumb in her mouth, and Tom lay next to her in his Spider-Man pyjamas; he too seemed to be sleeping peacefully. But then Einar noticed the blood, the massive pools of blood around them. The camera approached them slowly, zooming in on their upper bodies until finally the whole screen was occupied by Kate’s lifeless face and slit throat. Einar swallowed again and again, he wanted to vomit, faint, cease to exist, but he forced himself to keep looking. The camera wandered over to little Linn. Blood was still running from the gaping wound across her throat, in fine streams down along what remained of her neck. Then Tom. His head was barely attached to his slender body.
He could control himself no longer, his whole body was in revolt. Convulsing violently, he vomited, sweating and shivering at the same time. Then everything went black.
Not knowing whether he had been unconscious for seconds or hours, he became aware of the kicks and blows.
‘Don’t go to sleep now, you wretch. You’re going to have plenty of time to rest.’
When he opened his eye the man was standing astride his legs with the video camera in his hand, kicking him in the stomach and ribcage. With every kick Einar’s head struck the wall. The buzzing sound from the camera told him that his suffering was being recorded.
‘Tell me now how you killed my brothers.’
Einar moaned feebly.
‘I know your voice is gone, but it’s okay to whisper. Look into the camera.’
The man crouched down, holding the camera near his face. Einar took a deep breath and with his functioning eye looked right into the lens of the video camera. Then, for the first time in his life, he told the whole story of how one lovely May day long ago he had been planting flowers with his beloved wife on the balcony, how the doorbell had rung, and everything that had happened after that. He spoke straight from the heart, with no evasions or embellishments, omitting no details from that fateful day. Caring nothing about the baleful man behind the camera, he opened wide the door to what was inside him and told only for himself what he had never expressed before. In a hoarse whisper, he described smells and feelings, smiles and caresses. With his broken vocal cords he described all the words, the screams and the great guilt, the guilt that had bounced back and forth between people but which at the same time had settled like a scaffold over them all.
Einar Eriksson then described the day an angel had come to him, an angel in the guise of a lost Filipino woman with two small children who gratefully accepted his help and attentions, and thereby lightened his heavy burden a little. Nor did he shrink away from the new guilt that had been placed on his shoulders, the selfishness that had driven him into the lives of these poor people and the consequence of his actions: the punishment he was now serving.
While he told his tale, the man crouched in front of him and documented his life story with his quietly buzzing camera. When he eventually stood up and in silence gave him a final well-aimed kick in his already mangled face, Einar Eriksson received it with a newfound joy and a feeling of liberation that he had not experienced since the time before the terrible accident so many years ago.
When the man angrily slammed the door and left him bleeding on the floor of the tool shed again, Einar watched him go with a smile.
* * *
After another visit to inspectors Edin and Möller at the police station in Arboga, to scan and email the two photographs of Mikael Rydin to Sandén, Sjöberg got in the car to return to Stockholm. After a few minutes it started snowing. It had been above freezing in the morning, but now the display on the dashboard showed just below zero. With a sigh he said to himself – for the umpteenth time this year – that spring really seemed to be long overdue. He worked his way gradually along the side roads to the motorway, but when he got there he had to drive much slower than he had hoped as a result of the snowfall.
He took his phone from the breast pocket of his shirt and entered Sandén’s number.
‘Did you see the email I sent you a while ago?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m completely occupied with trying to hunt down Mikael Rydin,’ Sandén answered drily.
‘All the more reason to check your email. I attached a couple of pictures of him. Thought that might make it easier. Are you at the office?’
‘Just back in the building.’
‘One photo is three years old. I included it as a curiosity. The other photo was taken recently. When you compare the two pictures it becomes rather obvious what this chap has been up to the past few years.’
‘Has he had a sex-change operation?’
‘He’s been taking steroids,’ Sjöberg answered, not allowing himself this time to laugh at Sandén’s joke. ‘From nothing to tattooed muscleman in three years. It doesn’t happen that quickly without illegal supplements.’
‘Oh hell. What did you get out of Ingegärd Rydin?’
‘Christer Larsson is his father. Something that neither of them is aware of. Like her ex-husband, she struggled to produce the right parental feeling – the maternal in her case. The kid apparently had to mostly take care of himself. She considers him helpful and loyal. From her description I would more likely define him as a young man who is desperately seeking affirmation of his mother’s love. Three years ago she was diagnosed with COPD, and it occurred to her that her days were numbered. Only then did she tell him about his brothers and the accident. He became very agitated and forced her to show him pictures of them. He also saw old photos of Einar. Those pictures are gone now. She said herself that he must have taken them.’
‘Which consequently makes you even more convinced that Mikael Rydin is our man?’ Sandén said thoughtfully.
‘Anabolic steroids have known side effects, such as mood swings and uncontrolled outbursts of rage,’ Sjöberg continued stubbornly. ‘If you want to feel numb and immortal as well, you can enhance that with a little Rohypnol, which you buy from the same pusher. Jens, I’m quite sure of this. Einar is not having a good time right now. If he’s alive.’
There was total silence on the other end. Sjöberg felt that now for the first time he had enough meat on the bones to convince Sandén of Einar’s innocence.
‘Jens?’
Still no response.
‘Are you there, Jens?’
After a few more seconds of silence Sandén finally spoke.
‘I give up, Conny.’
His tone of voice was now completely different from the sarcastic, bantering tone that normally characterized his happy-go-lucky personality.
‘Not a day too soon.’
‘And I know how he managed to sniff out Einar.’
Sjöberg noticed that Eriksson had now suddenly become Einar to Sandén. Evidently he finally saw the significance of his disappearance.
‘I’m sitting at the computer now, Conny. Mikael Rydin works as a cleaner at the Larsson children’s preschool. I saw him when I was there to deliver the news of the deaths.’
‘I’ll be damned …’
Sjöberg was so astonished at this new discovery that he interrupted himself in the middle of overtaking another car and moved back to the inside lane again.
‘It may have been a moment’s impulse,’ Sandén said excitedly. ‘Perhaps it’s not the case at all that Rydin has chased after Einar for three years like an avenging angel. Perhaps he just happened to catch sight of him with the Larsson children at the preschool. Pumped up with dubious substances he was struck by fury and a sudden longing to pay back that apparently happy father of two children.’
‘But after that everything was probably carefully planned,’ Sjöberg developed his colleague’s line of reasoning. ‘He followed Einar, found out where he lived, charted his habits and struck at a suitable moment. What could be better revenge than taking away from Einar the two small children he cared about most in this world?’
‘There we also have the explanation for the emotional coldness in the murders,’ Sandén interjected. ‘He bore no grudge against Catherine Larsson and her children. The whole thing was aimed at Einar, the poor sod. As you said, Conny. What do we do now?’
‘Find him,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Inform Westman and Hamad and find him. Now.’
* * *
In the absence of any other ideas and after careful consideration Hamad sat in front of his computer and tried to summon the energy to look at the damned film one more time. The door to the corridor was closed and he sat weaving the flash drive between his fingers, unable to bring himself to put it into the port. Right now that was the best he could come up with: look at the film again and try to draw some new conclusions from it. He really did not want to see Petra that way, but he worked hard to convince himself that it was not her, that that drugged woman in a rape situation was not the real Petra. The Petra Westman he knew was strong and stubborn, impossible to bully and would never let herself be exploited.
Like in the boxing room, he thought, smiling to himself. Perhaps it was not the most beautiful side of herself she had shown there, but it was genuine. And she had acted based on what she believed was just. Not right, but just. The image came to him of Petra in the corner, how from his position on the mat he had seen her at a slight angle from below, physically fit and good-looking with a cruelly triumphant smile on her lips. Extras like statues all around: the heavy Holgersson leaning over him with a helping hand outstretched, the referee Malmberg hanging over Petra, Brandt in the doorway flourishing his mobile. Even the sounds stayed with him: a kind of ominous silence that was broken so brusquely by the ringtone from a phone; Malmberg’s voice when he answered. And then the draught as Petra passed him, completely unmoved. He preferred seeing her that way.
He sighed and, gathering his strength, put the flash drive in the USB port and navigated through the folders until he found the clip of Petra. He decided to turn on the sound, which hitherto he had always turned off, and let the sequence play.
The video camera must be a recent model – the image was high quality, even if the content wasn’t. There was a wealth of detail, despite the semi-darkness of the bedroom. The interior was unfamiliar, the male body unfamiliar – well, would he recognize a man’s body even if he had seen it before? It didn’t matter however; that was not what he was looking for. But nothing he saw or heard told him anything about the person behind the camera. No shadows, no clothes tossed anywhere, no one sneezing or coughing. There was plenty of sound, but no voices.
After two minutes and fifty-eight seconds it was over. The video camera emitted two tones that announced that would have to be enough and was turned off.
At that moment Sandén came barging into his office without warning and put him to work. Hamad was only just able to bring up a different image on to the screen before Sandén was leaning over the desk.
* * *
As the new image of Einar Eriksson began to appear to Sandén, an unfamiliar sense of loyalty to his colleague grew stronger. It produced adrenaline, which in turn resulted in determination. And it was contagious: Westman and Hamad were also finally convinced by the arguments Sjöberg had lined up.
In Sjöberg’s absence Sandén had taken command and he was a man of extremes. True, Sjöberg had flatly refused to sanction breaking into Mikael Rydin’s home, but that was this morning. During their latest conversation he had clearly stated that the most important thing was to find Rydin, and as soon as possible. In consultation with his two assistants, Sandén decided they should go into the student room after all.
Westman stayed behind at the station and continued the hunt for people who might conceivably have some idea where Rydin was. Sandén and Hamad made their way back to the student housing high-rise on Öregrundsgatan at Gärdet. Rydin’s student room was more like a small apartment, roughly twenty-five metres square with a bathroom and a galley kitchen. That every apartment had its own kitchen made it easier for the two policemen to get in unnoticed. No one had been out in the corridor, and Sandén had picked Rydin’s lock in less than thirty seconds.
The bathroom was simple: shower, toilet, sink and a cabinet containing a basic assortment of toiletries. It was reasonably clean, as was the kitchen. No luxury here either: just a chair, a table and an easily tended potted plant that looked like some kind of fairy-tale tree in the window. The most conspicuous thing was a poster on the wall depicting the Swedish national football team circa 1994, and on the kitchen table an empty ice-cream tub which was now full of bottles and blister packs of pills. Vitamins and other healthy things, according to the labels.
In the main room a bed and a desk competed for space with a bookshelf and stereo deck. He had gone to the expense of a flat-screen TV, DVD player and a stereo with a pair of rather good-sized speakers, but they could be considered among the necessities of life these days. Hamad sat down at the desk and turned on Rydin’s laptop, while Sandén went through the CDs, DVDs and books on the shelf, without finding anything of interest. If you did not think that rap music, violent films and action thrillers automatically led to acts of violence. Or legal textbooks, for that matter. In the corner by the foot of the bed was a guitar, and on the wall was an old Kiss poster that must surely have come from his teenage room in Arboga.
Hamad found a few documents on the computer, but they were exclusively study-related texts of an older vintage. He went through various email folders – inbox, saved, sent and trash – without finding anything remarkable. Judging by the Internet history, it was mostly tabloids that interested Rydin, as well as various sports sites that mainly seemed to deal with martial arts and strength sports. The Google history pointed in that direction too. Though he didn’t seem to be particularly interested in photography, he had saved a hundred or so photos on the computer, and Hamad reviewed each and every one of them in the hope that he might come across something significant.
Sandén continued working his way towards the bed and was about to trip over a pair of dumbbells when he caught sight of a mobile phone charging on the floor under the bed. It could mean that Rydin was nearby and likely to show up at any minute, which might create problems for them. On the other hand it could mean simply that the phone had been out of power when he was about to leave the apartment. Sandén chose to assume the latter, and when he picked up the phone it turned out to be on. He browsed through the lists of incoming, outgoing and missed calls and carefully noted all the numbers. He did the same with the text messages. Then he went through Rydin’s contacts, of which there were only a few, but found nothing that stuck out. The calendar was not used, and there were no interesting notes stored in the phone either. However, Rydin did appear to use it as a camera occasionally, because a dozen or so photos were stored in the phone.
Sandén glanced over towards Hamad at the computer and noted that he too was devoting himself to photos.
‘Are you finding anything?’ Sandén asked.
‘Don’t think so. He doesn’t take that many pictures. A few Ibiza pictures from last summer are probably the most interesting. Christmas at home with Mum. Drinking party with his workout buddies.’
‘The Ugly Duckling, do you know what that is?’ Sandén asked.
‘A fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Aren’t you done with the bookshelf yet?’
‘It sounds like a preschool or something,’ Sandén said thoughtfully.
‘Maybe a café,’ said Hamad. ‘Think someone said that.’
‘So you’ve heard of it?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It was something that was mentioned in passing the other day.’
‘By who?’
‘Don’t remember. It was someone at work, I think. What about it? What are you doing?’
‘I found a picture on the phone of a sign with that on it.’
‘Let me see.’
Sandén gave him the phone.
‘It’s hanging on a gate,’ Hamad thought out loud. ‘It looks as if it could be an open-air café actually.’
He browsed further among the pictures.
‘Doors. Windows. He could have snapped these pictures when he was planning the kidnapping. To improve security. The locks, I mean.’
Suddenly the tension in the room rose, both of them felt it. It was a straw. But perhaps they were on the trail of something.
‘Are you finished with the computer?’ asked Sandén.
‘As good as.’
‘Let’s go. Make sure everything looks like it did when we came, then let’s get out of here. We have to call Petra.’
Hamad turned off the computer; Sandén set the phone back on the floor, made a quick tour of the apartment, checked that the lights were off and listened for sounds in the corridor. It was silent. They quietly opened the door and slipped out.
As soon as they were out on the street Hamad called Westman and asked her to search for The Ugly Duckling on the Internet. A task they realized could be impeded by the fact that, while she was still on the line, she got 45,000 hits with her first search. They filled her in on their café and preschool theories and then texted her the list of numbers from Rydin’s phone. Einar Eriksson’s absence felt tangible. In more than one way.
‘You don’t miss the cow until the barn is empty,’ Sandén summarized the situation.
* * *
When they came back from their outing, the after-school teachers had set out juice and popcorn in the cosy corner. The children who were left at school on Friday afternoon would get to watch a film before they left for the weekend. The two couches, like the armchairs, were occupied by other third-graders, so Johan and Max were lying on their stomachs next to each other on the floor, each with a pillow under their elbows, waiting for the movie to start. To compensate, they had a bowl of popcorn of their own in front of them. Johan reached his hand into the bowl to grab a fistful of Friday treats when Ivan suddenly appeared in the doorway. He had not been seen for a while, so Johan thought he had gone home. But now here he was, gesturing to Johan that he should come.
Ivan pulled him out into the corridor, eagerly whispering about borrowing something from the woodworking class. At first Johan did not understand what he was talking about, much less when Ivan pulled out what seemed to be a rolled-up towel from his gym bag. But when Ivan revealed the giant pliers inside the towel the pieces started to fall into place.
‘It’s a bolt cutter,’ said Ivan secretively.
Johan already had his suspicions about what Ivan intended they should use it for, and the thought appealed to him in a way but at the same time not at all. Rescuing the pig was one thing, but by breaking apart a lock … ? He was quite certain that was illegal. And to top it off, it was that nasty guitar man’s lock. Besides, he suspected that Ivan thought the break-in itself was more interesting than releasing the pig.
‘I went to the police anyway,’ he said in a lame attempt to get Ivan to give up his criminal plans.
‘I see, so the pig has been rescued by now?’
Johan shrugged his shoulders.
‘Admit that they didn’t care,’ said Ivan with conviction.
‘Yes, they did … Or … Ah, they did and they didn’t.’
He did not want to reveal the thoughts that were going through his mind. That there had not been a real police report because he had not dared say who he was. That he had been afraid of what his mum and dad would say if they found out what he had been up to.
‘Then we’ll do it ourselves. Come on now, Johan, what’s the problem? Do you have to ask Mummy for permission first?’
Ivan was apparently a mind reader.
‘Probably,’ Johan answered with a crooked smile.
And so there he was again. In the clutches of Ivan, whom he barely even liked. He went back into the classroom and told the teacher he was going home. Which was okay if, like him, you had a note from your parents to say that you were allowed to walk home by yourself. Shit.
When they got outside it was dark and gloomy and it had started to snow. Perhaps this adventure would have felt less scary if it had been a sunny spring day. Johan had misgivings, but he did not dare back out, did not want to appear cowardly in front of Ivan, who despite the concealed bolt cutter under his jacket was walking along with light, self-confident steps and presumably felt like a bank robber or something, like he was really cool.
‘So what will we do with the pig?’ Johan asked. ‘We can’t rescue it and then just let it freeze to death or be run over, can we?’
Ivan had already thought about that and replied that they could call the cops and give an anonymous tip-off that a crazy pig was running loose on the streets and was dangerous.
‘And that bloke. What if he kills us?’
Ivan delivered a smile straight out of an American action flick and patted his jacket.
‘He won’t do that,’ he said, dead certain as always.
So they tramped on through the slushy snow, over towards Tantolunden, Johan feeling increasingly uneasy with a lump in his stomach. He felt no enthusiasm for smashing someone’s head with a bolt cutter, animal tormentor or not.
* * *
The snow meant that the trip home took longer than he had hoped, but Sjöberg continued driving after the call with Sandén feeling greatly relieved. Finally he had his team on his side, finally they were all striving in the same direction. They were no longer in a state of ignorance either about who had committed the murders. Now it was only a matter of time before they would arrest the killer. On the other hand, concern for Einar was gnawing at him. They must assume that he was still alive and they must find him quickly. For that reason he felt frustrated when he ground to a halt in a queue of cars at the King’s Curve. He felt convinced however that Sandén’s, Hamad’s and Westman’s work would sooner or later result in something substantial, and so he called the police commissioner and asked him to put the national SWAT team on alert. Then he could only keep his fingers crossed that the team would be available. He stretched in his seat, longing to get out of the car and shake the stiffness out of his joints.
From Einar and the dead children in his wake Sjöberg’s thoughts wandered against his will to the tragic death of his own sister. He felt an urgent need to confront his mother as soon as possible with his new discoveries. No, ‘confront’ was the wrong word. He would tell her that he had met his paternal grandmother, that he knew the whole story and that he admired his mother for the strength she had shown over all these years. But he would also force her to tell him everything, from beginning to end. I have a right to my own history, thought Sjöberg. Just as Ingegärd Rydin thought her son had. In the end you have to know the truth about your background, but he would express his reaction differently from Mikael Rydin.
What would this weekend look like? If the hunt for Mikael Rydin and the search for Einar were over in the near future, he would take the opportunity to visit his mother. Åsa would not be happy about it, but she would understand. She would also be eager to know the truth about the Sjöberg family. He should have phoned her. She was probably dying of curiosity about his visit to his grandmother that morning. He ought to call her now, but it was the wrong moment. She taught until late on Friday afternoons and then she would be in a hurry to pick up the kids from preschool and after-school care.
He yawned. He was tired as hell after a quiet night at the hotel without noisy kids to wake him. But if it wasn’t one thing it was another. He’d had a hard time falling asleep after the call from Jenny. That little nutcase, thought Sjöberg, smiling to himself. Calls in the middle of the night after lying sleepless in bed for hours. She could just as well have waited a couple more hours so that he could sleep. But Jenny was Jenny, and it was probably just as well that everyone was different. She was a newfound supporter of animal rights. Someone should be.
The pig’s rights in society. The pig’s right to potatoes. Where did that come from? He shook his head, stepped lightly on the accelerator and moved forward another few metres. Sjöberg happened to think of a children’s song he used to listen to when he was little, The Old Man in the Box. A song by Gullan Bornemark about a little pig. A breath of nostalgia wafted past him, and he started singing to himself: ‘Hurry up, little piglet, hurry up, little piglet. Small potatoes you will get, small potatoes you will get.’ Yes, perhaps pigs ate potatoes. ‘Potato pigs,’ Sjöberg mumbled to himself as the phone started vibrating in his pocket.
It was Sandén calling from the metro. He and Hamad were on their way back to the station and he gave an account of their activities on Öregrundsgatan.
‘You’re absolutely sure you didn’t leave any traces? And no one saw you go in, I hope?’
‘Don’t worry. The Ugly Duckling – do you know what that is?’
‘A fairy tale by –’
‘Hans Christian Andersen, I know. But Rydin had a picture of a sign with that name on his mobile. It was on a gate. We’re thinking cafés or preschools; do you have any better ideas?’
‘What type of gate is it?’
‘Classic, white, even though the paint has flaked. A good old-fashioned gate, in short.’
‘Then perhaps it’s sitting outside a good old-fashioned house?’ Sjöberg suggested.
‘Wait a minute. Looks like Hamad just thought of something here.’
Sjöberg waited; the traffic was moving a little faster now. Was it starting to free up? Sandén came back on the phone.
‘He says that Lotten or Jenny mentioned that café. Or whatever it is. The Ugly Duckling. He’s calling reception now.’
‘I’ll hang on. Jenny, yes. She called me last night.’
‘Last night?’
‘Three-thirty in the morning,’ said Sjöberg with a sigh. ‘She couldn’t sleep. It was something about a pig. And you clearly hadn’t been much help.’
‘Oh, that. They were both babbling on at the same time, her and Lotten, and I really didn’t have time. Or the energy. But now Hamad is saying something … Wait a moment.’
That children’s song lingered. ‘Small potatoes you shall get, you shall get.’ Potatoes, thought Sjöberg. Pigs. Police, police, potato pig, like the children’s chant. A pig that rolls in its own shit, Jenny had said. It could mean anything at all. Anyone at all. Pig was a term of abuse. A pig could be a dirty person, perhaps a person forced to answer the call of nature where they sat or were lying. Police, police, potato pig. What if it wasn’t a pig this was about but a cop? Could it be the mistreatment of a policeman the boy that Jenny talked about had witnessed? Sjöberg stiffened in the driver’s seat and then Sandén was back in his ear.
‘Lotten says that it refers to a summer house or something like that. According to the boy, it’s the address of the place where the pig is being held prisoner. Where exactly it was she and Jenny didn’t have time to find out. He disappeared as fast as your pay packet when they started asking him for personal information.’
‘This is no pig,’ said Sjöberg, convinced now. ‘Jenny was talking about potatoes. A potato pig, Jens. It’s Einar this is about.’
‘Agreed.’
Sandén was talking faster now. In the starting blocks, raring to do something. The question was simply what.
‘And Petra is not finding anything about The Ugly Duckling on the net,’ he continued. ‘So it’s not an address. It must be the name of the house itself. A summer cabin perhaps.’
‘How old was that boy?’
‘The girls guess about eight to ten years old.’
‘Then it’s unlikely that he would have made his way out to the countryside on his own,’ Sjöberg stated. ‘The shack is not that far away. Within walking distance or close to public transport. I’m guessing a house or an allotment garden.’
‘So how the hell do we move ahead?’
‘Keep calling Rydin’s contacts,’ said Sjöberg, suddenly struck by a far-fetched thought. ‘But first I suggest you call Barbro.’
‘Barbro?’
‘If it concerns an allotment garden, there is one person who has seen more of those than anyone else. Barbro Dahlström.’
Their paths had crossed about six months earlier, in connection with the discovery of an infant in a serious condition and a dead woman in Vitaberg Park. Barbro Dahlström was seventy-two years old and if anyone put a face to the expression ‘an everyday hero’, it was her.
‘Of course! I’ll track her down.’ Sandén ended the call.
Only a short time ago Sjöberg had considered pulling off somewhere and buying himself a sausage, but now circumstances had changed. With his pulse rate considerably higher, he decided to step on it all the way to Stockholm. He turned on the siren, rolled down the side window and put the flashing light on the roof of the car.
* * *
They sneaked the last stretch up to The Ugly Duckling, crouching behind the hedge. The padlock on the gate was in place, but the gate was old and hanging on one hinge.
‘Idiot,’ whispered Ivan. ‘What good is that padlock? A dwarf could climb over that little gate. Or kick it apart,’ he added, while trying to do just that.
But Johan took hold of his arm.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. ‘Do you want us to get caught before we’ve even started?’
‘Does it look like there’s a lot of people here?’ Ivan countered, unconcerned.
‘You don’t know that. Maybe he’s inside there,’ Johan replied, nodding towards the shed.
‘Do you see the padlock on the door? It’s locked, so he isn’t in there,’ Ivan answered with a snort. ‘And the lights are off in the house itself. Come on now.’
He set his foot on a crossbar and easily swung himself over the gate and down into the snow on the other side. Johan stayed where he was for a moment and listened for sounds, but heard none so he too climbed over. Ivan sneaked up to the door of the outbuilding, pulled out the bundle he had been carrying under his jacket and dropped it on to the path with a thud. Johan listened again and looked worriedly around, but there was not a soul to be seen and only a faint hum from the traffic somewhere in the distance could be heard. While Ivan took the bolt cutter from the towel, Johan put his ear to the door, but he could hear nothing from inside.
Ivan started working on the lock, which was hard to cut through, even though the tool was made for the job. It required a certain amount of arm strength, and Johan was about to lend a hand when he suddenly had a mental image of how the yard had looked when they arrived. He interrupted himself mid-motion and looked down at the snow between them. Footprints, that was what he thought. How stupid could you be? With his eyes he followed a set of clear footprints, large ones, in the snow, leading from the shed to the house itself, but only in one direction. So someone had come to the shed before it started snowing – which must have been a couple of hours ago – and then left during the snowfall. And that person was without a doubt now inside the house. He glanced towards the door and noted that it seemed to have been forced open. His heart started beating very fast.
‘You’ve got to stop, Ivan! He’s inside the house. Check out the footprints.’
Ivan stopped and looked over towards the house.
‘Damn! Do you think he’s noticed us?’
‘Maybe not, but we’ve got to get out of here. Quick!’
Johan got up suddenly and started to run in the direction of the gate. Right then the door of the house opened and the guitar man threw himself down the steps and came rushing towards him. Johan took hold of the gate with both hands and jumped up, and he was still straddled over it in an excruciatingly uncomfortable way when the man took hold of his arm, tore him down from the gate and dragged him over towards the tool shed. During all this Ivan stood as if frozen, with big eyes, and the cursed bolt cutters in his hand, witnessing the scene that was playing out before him. He dropped the tool, whereupon his hands with outstretched fingers went up level with his ears.
‘It’s cool,’ he said pitifully, and that was the only thing said during the whole surprising attack.
Johan saw with dismay how a terrifying set of tattooed biceps seemed about to burst out of the guitar man’s T-shirt, as with a blank face he dragged the two boys up the stairs and into the house.
‘What do you say?’ he said, after throwing them down into a sitting position in a dusty corner of the only room in the cottage. ‘Who should I get rid of first, the two of you or the fellow over there?’
‘We won’t say anything to anyone,’ said Ivan, trying to sound convincing. ‘We’ll just forget about that damned pig.’
‘Yes, exactly. You’re probably here to steal the garden hose?’
‘We promise not to say anything,’ Johan repeated, embarrassingly close to tears now. ‘Please, just let us go; we’ll never come back again.’
‘I bet you won’t. But there’s plenty of room for all three of you.’
He smiled in a strange way, not looking the least bit happy. And then he started kicking.
* * *
With Sjöberg, Sandén, Hamad and above all Eriksson gone, Petra Westman was fully occupied going through all of Mikael Rydin’s contacts at a furious pace. Long, tedious explanations about what she wanted, embedded in plausible lies about why, were interspersed with unanswered calls to Barbro Dahlström’s home phone. Unfortunately she did not have a mobile. And no one that Westman got hold of knew whether Rydin might have access to a house somewhere. Or knew where he was or what plans he had for the immediate future.
The screen still showed, as if to mock her, her most recent failed search. She had searched countless words in combination with The Ugly Duckling: restaurants, cafés, preschools, playgrounds, allotment gardens, libraries, theatres and on and on, but with no pay-off. While she sat and waited out Barbro Dahlström’s customary five rings she considered the possibility of calling all the sign makers in the region, but a search on Eniro came up with 228 hits so that was impractical in the short term. Besides, according to Hamad they were looking for an old gate and therefore presumably also an old sign.
Instead she came up with the idea of searching for other fairy-tale titles in combination with businesses she had already tried, in case all the buildings in the neighbourhood were named after fairy tales. This too was without success however. Suddenly it struck her that the basic idea was not so dumb after all. If The Ugly Duckling was in an area where all the houses have fairy-tale names, the street itself ought to have a name that reflects that. After a number of searches, some more wildly imaginative than others, in Eniro’s maps she struck gold. She entered Sjöberg’s number.
‘Fairy-tale Lane,’ she said. ‘There’s a street in the Tantolunden allotment gardens called Fairy-tale Lane. It’s a stretch, but it’s the best I can come up with right now.’
‘Well done, Petra. We’ll follow up on it. And I feel that it’s urgent now. I’ll see about getting armed-response officers there from the national SWAT team and some ambulances. Mikael Rydin may be there and he may be armed. If Einar is there, he’s presumably in bad shape.’
‘Understood. Where are you now?’
‘Just passing Segeltorp. I’m hurrying.’
‘When will you be there?’
‘In the best-case scenario I can be at Tantolunden in ten or twelve minutes in this weather. If nothing unforeseen happens. Wait for me.’
Sjöberg checked his watch.
‘I’ll see you there. No sirens, no commotion. If Rydin is there, he must not suspect anything in case he manages to flee. Keep me informed about where you all are.’
‘Okay, all systems go,’ said Westman with an audible smile.
‘I just hope we’re on the right track,’ said Sjöberg. ‘And if we are, that we get there before it’s too late.’
Einar Eriksson felt as if he had finished his life’s project. Describing his fate in his own words, putting words to all the emotions and thoughts that had crowded the anthill of his mind, was a marvellous liberation. The frightening man who was Ingegärd’s son had unknowingly done him a service in the midst of all the degradation.
While he lay there on his side on the cold plank floor he routinely stretched at the rope behind his back. Tug-tug-tug-rest, tug-tug-tug-rest. The rope stiffly resisted. Occasionally he tried to slip one of his hands through the loop while the other held still, but his hand was too big, the loop too small. A trickle of blood from his nose ran into the corner of his mouth, but that did not worry him. Because, with a jubilant joy in his chest, he gave himself the forgiveness he had coveted for over thirty years. Thirty-one dark years of being grief-stricken, of self-pity and bitterness. And now suddenly, with the very declaration of his heavy guilt, it was as if it had been lifted from him. That a few words from his own mouth could grant him consolation!
It was his hastily made decision to be sincere that had paved the way. To completely and honestly express the unvarnished truth, free from mitigating circumstances and unbalanced self-criticism. That the bloodthirsty butcher who imprisoned him here had had the pleasure of witnessing his oral autobiography did not bother him. This was just about him, not about his self-appointed judge and executioner or anyone else in this world. He had settled accounts with his inner voice and suddenly they understood each other, suddenly they were on speaking terms.
With this new perspective he looked out of the little window opening by the side of the door and while his hands worked he saw the heavy snowfall outside suddenly stop. A ray of sunlight made its way in through the glass and where it cut through the cold air in the tool shed the specks of dust came alive and danced in the narrow beam of light.
With an unfamiliar sense of hope and an energy that came from somewhere deep inside the aching shell that was his body, he prised and tugged at his ropes. And finally, as if someone up there took pity on him – or was it in fact he himself who controlled his own fate in the end? – one hand glided through the loop.
A smile on his lips, he remained lying in the same position for a few minutes, panting after his great exertion. Then he set his free hand on the floor and rose to a sitting position. He fumblingly loosened the knot that had held both his hands together and managed to pull his other hand out of its loop. Greedily he reached for the water bowl and emptied it in one gulp, before giving his stiff fingers a little time to regain their normal mobility. Then he freed his feet from the rope that held them together and also fettered him to the wall behind him.
Where had his terrifying kidnapper gone to? Had he left him for the day? A kick in the face after that self-revealing story and then it was over? That did not seem likely; he did not recognize the pattern. A single kick was never enough. This man needed much more than that to give vent to all the fury he carried inside him. He must be somewhere in the vicinity. He must be lying in wait nearby to give him false hope that the daily quota of hits and kicks was already fulfilled. But why had he left him so quickly? Was there something in his story that had caught him by surprise, something he had not known about?
Suddenly it struck him that perhaps Ingegärd’s son had not known who Christer Larsson was at all. His revenge had undoubtedly been aimed only at him. Perhaps it was only now, during the filming, that it had occurred to the murderer that the children he had so cold-bloodedly executed – Tom and Linn – were the children of his own father. That the Larsson children were actually the half-siblings of the children he was avenging, Andreas and Tobias.
Einar Eriksson pictured the small angelic children alongside their beautiful mother in the bed. Enchanting – if the circumstances had not made everything so inconceivably ugly. For the first time since he was very young he allowed himself to weep. A stream of tears ploughed furrows through the dirt on his cheeks.
The perpetrator could come back at any moment to continue to take vengeance, to work off the setbacks of his life. Einar Eriksson got up laboriously from the cold, hard plank floor. Now there was no time to lose.
* * *
When Sjöberg arrived at their agreed meeting place on the outskirts of the allotment gardens, he was only a couple of minutes behind Westman and the others, who as per his orders were waiting for him among the cars. A group of police from the national SWAT team had already set off to search for the house in question, and one of them, Hägglund, now came back to inform the rest.
‘It’s up there,’ she confirmed, to the great relief of Sjöberg and the others. ‘The gate is fastened with a padlock that they’re removing now. Straight ahead is a little house with stairs up to the door, eight steps. The lock has already been forced. Immediately to the right inside the gate is an outbuilding, also locked with a padlock, but we’ll force the door when we go in. And someone is in there, at least two people. In the main building certainly, perhaps in both. There are plenty of tracks in the snow.’
Sjöberg nodded and divided the assembled police officers into two groups.
‘We’ll storm the two buildings at the same time. You take the house, we’ll take the shed. No unnecessary shooting. Our highest priority is to get Einar out alive so he can quickly get medical care. He will presumably be very weak. All communication equipment off. Now let’s go.’
Suddenly it stopped snowing and immediately a gap in the cloud cover unexpectedly let through the sun’s rays and revealed a patch of clear blue sky. Sjöberg and Sandén were first in line, half running with Hägglund between them. She explained that no one had driven on the little gravel road since it started to snow, but that they had seen the tracks of two people before they themselves walked on the road. Otherwise the entire allotment area seemed totally deserted, as expected at this time of year.
They moved ahead in silence. Sjöberg turned around a few times to reassure himself that the others were there. They looked absurd, the police from the SWAT team, with their helmets and visors among these idyllic little cottages, surrounded by white snow-covered fences and well-pruned hedges. He was struck by a sense of unreality.
‘Are we close?’ he asked Hägglund in a low voice, without revealing the anxiety that was gnawing inside him.
‘It’s not far now. The plot is over there to the right. Soon we’ll be at the hedge by the side of the shed.’
They joined up with the group of police officers who were already on the scene, and Sjöberg slowed his pace. Then, crouching, he slipped along the last stretch of the side wall of the shed to find a suitable gap in the hedge through which he could look into the plot.
The whole place looked decrepit. The garden had not been taken care of for several years, the gate was rotted and hanging on one hinge. In the little yard sure enough there were a large number of tracks in the snow. So there were at least two people here, and the unnecessarily sturdy padlock that locked the door to the garden shed suggested that at least one of them was inside the house itself. And sure enough it looked as if the outside door had been broken open. It would not be particularly difficult to get in. And as far as the shed was concerned it would be easier to force the door itself than the lock.
Sjöberg slipped back to the group.
‘Judging by the tracks in the snow Rydin is inside the house,’ he explained. ‘And he is presumably not alone. The door is broken and should just pull open. There is probably just a single room in the house. I’m guessing that there will be loud creaking when we’re going up the steps, so once we’re there it’s quick response. I’m guessing that Einar is still in the shed, which is locked with a big padlock from the outside. I agree that we should try to break down the door. Everyone with drawn weapons, but no shooting unless necessary. We probably won’t need to fire, unless he already knows we are here. Any questions?’
‘Should we wait here or back off a little?’ asked one of the paramedics.
‘Here is fine, but stay down if there’s any shooting,’ Sjöberg replied. ‘If you’re needed, we’ll let you know.’
He looked around at the serious faces, but no one seemed to have anything to add.
‘Good luck. Now let’s go.’
Someone from the SWAT team had opened the gate, and one group made their way to the right and positioned themselves outside the tool shed, with a number of heavily armed, helmeted police officers in the lead and Sjöberg and Westman in the rear.
The other group ran quietly up to the steps leading to the ramshackle little house. Hamad and Sandén, who also kept behind their division of the SWAT team, turned towards Sjöberg and awaited his signal. When Sjöberg’s raised hand cleaved the air like the stroke of an axe, the tense silence was broken and they rushed with drawn pistols and pounding hearts up the stairs and tumbled into the only room of the house.
At a table next to the wall the sought-after Mikael Rydin was sitting calmly on a wooden chair with a video camera in his hand, in the process of filming something that Sandén couldn’t make out at first. But suddenly someone let out a long, heart-rending scream, which prompted Hamad to swing into action. He rushed over to the corner in front of Rydin and threw himself on his knees. There sat the boy that Sandén had encountered at the police station, staring at them wide-eyed. He did not let out a sound, although blood was streaming from his nose. Next to him another boy was lying in a foetal position. Sandén thought at first that he was unconscious, until it occurred to him that he was the one who had screamed.
Showing no visible reaction, Rydin let his gaze wander between the police officers from the SWAT team, who all stood prepared to shoot him if need be. Then he closed up the camera’s display with a little click, and turned off the power on the device. While Hamad took care of the terrified boys, Sandén rushed out and summoned the paramedics. Only then did he have an opportunity to make a more or less formal arrest of the apparently unperturbed assailant.
‘Mikael Rydin, you are under arrest, suspected of a bloody lot of crimes,’ he said in a louder voice than the situation demanded, now that Hamad had at last got the hysterical boy to be quiet. ‘What those are you’ll find out at the station. Slowly set down the camera and put your hands with your palms upwards in front of you on the table. We will not hesitate to shoot if you put up any resistance.’
Mikael Rydin impassively did as he was told and one of the armed-response officers walked purposefully up to the table and put handcuffs on him. Another stood behind him next to the wall and together they pulled him to his feet and propelled him out on to the steps. Sandén seized the video camera and put it in his jacket pocket.
At Sjöberg’s signal two of the policemen from the SWAT team threw themselves against the thin wooden shed door. The door flew into the shed with the police hurtling after it, while the two hinges and padlock stayed behind in the doorframe. Sjöberg was in a hurry to get in, but a number of broad-shouldered police officers stood in front of him in the doorway, blocking the view.
‘Oh my God,’ he heard one of them moan from inside and he tried to force his way in, but the wall of backs would not let him through.
Actually, they seemed to be backing out of the little shed and Sjöberg was forced to take a few steps backwards too. Then an awful stench of faeces and urine struck him and he hoped that was the only reason the policemen in front of him had complained.
‘Let me past!’ Sjöberg roared with a fury in his voice he could not really explain.
A few of the police officers rushed in and up to something that Sjöberg still had not managed to identify. With Westman a step behind him he entered the shed, and the sight that met his eyes confirmed his worst fears. Someone switched on the bare light bulb in the ceiling and they could see an empty dog bowl on the floor and a few short ropes lying among the crumbs of a little dry bread. The floor was approximately six metres square, and was completely covered with human excrement. Attached to the far wall was a solid rope that had been hung over a beam in the ceiling, and on the floor below was an overturned little wooden stool. Above it, with a loop of the rope wrapped around the neck, hung the thin, dirty, bloody and almost unrecognizably battered body that had belonged to Einar Eriksson.
Three of the police officers from the SWAT team were already in the process of taking him down as Sjöberg rushed up. When they had laid the body carefully on the floor he crouched down by Eriksson’s side and put two fingers against his carotid artery. The body was still warm but he felt no pulse.
‘Ambulance!’ he screamed as loud as he was able in his agitation, and Westman rushed out of the shed to meet the paramedics.
Instinctively Sjöberg started artificial respiration, but the ambulance personnel were there right away and took over the resuscitation attempt. Sjöberg stood up and backed a few steps away from the body on the floor. Petra Westman slipped up to his side. He pulled her to him and put his arm around her, more for his own sake than for hers. They stood there like that for several minutes, watching the increasingly resigned paramedics working at their hopeless task.
‘How long has he been dead?’ Sjöberg ventured to ask in a cracked voice, when they finally gave up.
‘Not long. A few minutes I should think,’ one of the ambulance personnel replied.
‘It’s my fault,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I shouldn’t have made you wait. You should have gone in without me.’
‘Conny, without you we wouldn’t even –’
Sjöberg was not interested in Westman’s excuses. His body felt heavy. His grief squeezed his heart as if it were a rag to be wrung out, grief for a colleague he had never been close to but now wished more than anything to get to know. Everything around him seemed to play out in slow motion. His way of relieving his mind from this great misfortune was to focus on the perpetrator.
‘That bastard!’ he interrupted her. ‘Have they arrested him?’
The words echoed in his head, he felt almost ready to faint.
‘They’re taking him over to the cars now,’ replied one of the armed-response officers, who had now taken off his visored helmet and stood with it in his hand.
He suddenly looked quite human, and Sjöberg noticed that the other police officers did too. They were all standing together as if to attention with their helmets in their hands, watching in silence as the ambulance personnel carefully placed Einar Eriksson on a stretcher, covered him with a blanket and started carrying him out.
Sjöberg felt that Westman was seeking his gaze, but he was unable to respond and instead followed the ambulance personnel out of the shed. In the doorway stood Sandén and Hamad, who had also witnessed the resuscitation attempt in distress, but Sjöberg had nothing to say to them. In silence he went back to the cars, needing no one’s company.
Johan Bråsjö was sitting in one of the ambulances being looked after by a paramedic when Sandén climbed in and sat down across from him.
‘Well done, kid,’ he said in a joyless voice. ‘But you have no idea how lucky you were.’
‘Lucky?’ said Johan, looking over at one of the police vans, where a couple of police officers were roughly shoving in the handcuffed man.
‘That guy isn’t content just to kick. And we lost a man. That was no pig you heard being mistreated, it was a policeman. But that guy is going to get his punishment, thanks to you.’
‘But …’ said Johan, and Sandén saw the tears welling up in his eyes, ‘I should have realized … I should have made a proper police report.’
‘I should have listened to what you said. What you did was completely amazing. You should get a medal.’
Johan lit up, obviously proud to receive the policeman’s praise, and Sandén hoped that the guilt that seemed to be transferred like an epidemic from person to person in this story would leave this young chap untainted.
‘Now you should go home. They say you’re okay, both of you. I’ll ask someone to drive you.’
‘And you? Can’t you come along?’
‘I have to go back to the police station and make sure that guy ends up behind lock and key.’
After a lacklustre thank you to the SWAT team, Sjöberg went over to his colleagues, who seemed to be waiting for him, all three with their hands shoved deep in their pockets. Because he could not find the words to describe what they all felt, he skipped that and went directly to the practical.
‘Petra and Jamal, thanks for your efforts. Take off for the weekend now and go home and rest up.’
They both looked as if they wanted to say something, but the nod he got in response from Westman was enough for Sjöberg.
‘I’ll question Mikael Rydin. Jens, if you want to be there, you’re welcome. Otherwise you can take off for the weekend too.’
‘Of course I’m coming,’ said Sandén.
‘I’ll call Hadar and describe the situation, and inform Kaj Zetterström about the autopsy and Bella about the crime scene investigation. Your reports can wait until Monday. Have a nice weekend.’
The gathering of cars and people dispersed. The Tantolunden allotment garden area was once again empty and deserted. The only evidence of the drama that had just played out in the little idyll was the tracks in the snow, but soon they too would be gone. After its late entrance, the sun had already disappeared behind the small cottages and darkness fell quickly.