It isn’t quite 7:00 a.m. when Joona Linna gets a call from Dr Daniella Richards. She explains that in her opinion Josef is now able to cope with a short interview.
As Joona gets into his car to drive to the hospital, he feels a dull ache in his elbow. He thinks back to the previous evening, how the blue light from the radio cars had swept over the façade of Sorab Ramadani’s apartment block near Tantolunden. The man with the boyish hair had been spitting blood and muttering thickly about his tongue as he was guided into the backseat of the patrol car. Ronny Alfredsson and his partner had been discovered in the shelter down in the basement of the apartment block. They had been threatened with knives and locked in and then the men had driven their patrol car to another building and left it in the visitors’ car park.
Joona had gone back inside, rung Sorab’s doorbell, and, speaking once again through the letter box, told him that his bodyguards had been arrested and that the door to his apartment would be broken down unless he opened it immediately.
After a moment, Sorab had let him in. He was a pale man, wearing his hair in a ponytail. He was anxious, his eyes darting around the room, but he asked Joona to take a seat on the blue leather sofa, offered him a cup of camomile tea, and apologised for his friends.
“I’m sorry about all this, really. I’ve been having some problems lately. Worried about my safety. That’s why I got myself some bodyguards.”
“What makes you worry about your safety?” asked Joona, sipping at the hot tea.
“Someone’s out to get me.” He stood up and peered out the window.
“Who?” asked Joona.
Sorab kept his back to Joona, and said tonelessly that he didn’t want to talk about it. “Do I have to?” he asked. “Don’t I have the right to remain silent?”
“You have the right to remain silent,” admitted Joona.
Sorab shrugged his shoulders. “There you go, then.”
“I might be able to help you if you talk to me,” Joona had ventured. “Has that occurred to you?”
“Thank you very much,” said Sorab, still facing the window.
“Is it Evelyn’s brother who—”
“No.”
“Wasn’t it Josef Ek who came here?”
“He’s not her brother.”
“Not her brother? Who is he, then?”
“How should I know? But he’s not her brother. He’s something else.”
After that, Sorab became cagey and nervous again, giving only the most evasive answers to Joona’s questions. When he left, Joona wondered what Josef had said to Sorab. What had he done? How had he managed to frighten him into revealing where Evelyn was?
Joona parks in front of the neurosurgical unit, walks through the main entrance, takes the lift to the fifth floor, continues through the corridor, greets the policeman on duty, and proceeds into Josef’s room. An attractive woman sits in the chair beside the bed. She looks at Joona with an expression he finds appealing as she rises to introduce herself:
“Lisbet Carlén,” she says. “I’m a social worker. I’ll be Josef’s advocate during the interview.”
“Excellent,” says Joona, shaking her hand.
“Are you leading the interrogation?” she asks with interest.
“Yes. Forgive me. My name is Joona Linna, and I’m from the National CID. We spoke on the telephone.”
At regular intervals there is a loud bubbling noise from the Bülow drainage tube connected to Josef’s punctured pleura. The drain replaces the pressure that is no longer-naturally present, enabling his lung to function.
Lisbet Carlén says quietly that the doctor has explained that Josef must lie absolutely still, because of the risk of new bleeds in the liver.
“I have no intention of putting his health at risk,” says Joona, placing the tape recorder on the table next to Josef’s face.
He gestures inquiringly at the recorder and Lisbet nods. He starts the machine and begins by describing the situation: It is Friday, 11th December, at 8:15 in the morning, and Josef Ek is being questioned to try to elicit information. He then lists the people present in the room.
“Hi,” says Joona.
Josef looks at him with heavy eyes.
“My name is Joona. I’m a detective.”
Josef closes his eyes.
“How are you feeling?”
The social worker looks out the window.
“Can you sleep with that thing bubbling away?” he asks.
Josef nods slowly.
“Do you know why I’m here?”
Josef opens his eyes. Joona waits, observing his face.
“There’s been an accident,” says Josef. “My whole family was in an accident.”
“Hasn’t anybody told you what’s happened?” asks Joona.
“Maybe a little,” he says faintly.
“He refuses to see a psychologist or a counsellor,” says the social worker.
Joona thinks about how different Josef’s voice was under hypnosis. Now it is suddenly fragile, almost non-existent, yet pensive.
“I think you know what’s happened.”
“You don’t have to answer that,” Lisbet Carlén says quickly.
“You’re fifteen years old now,” Joona goes on.
“Yes.”
“What did you do on your birthday?”
“Can’t remember,” says Josef.
“Did you get any presents?”
“I watched TV,” Josef replies.
“Did you go to see Evelyn?” Joona asks in a neutral tone.
“Yes.”
“At her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Was she there?”
“Yes.” Silence. “No, she wasn’t,” says Josef hesitantly, changing his mind.
“Where was she, then?”
“At the cottage,” he replies.
“Is it nice there?”
“Not really … It’s cosy, I guess.”
“Was she happy to see you?”
“Who?”
“Evelyn.” Silence. “Did you take anything with you?”
“A cake.”
“A cake? Was it good?”
He nods.
“Did Evelyn like it?” Joona goes on.
“Only the best for Evelyn,” he says.
“Did she give you a present?”
“No.”
“But maybe she sang to you.”
“She didn’t want to give me my present,” he says, in an injured tone.
“Is that what she said?”
“Yes, she did,” he answers quickly.
“Why?” Silence. “Was she angry with you?” asks Joona.
He nods.
“Was she trying to get you to do something you didn’t want to do?” asks Joona calmly.
“No, she—” Josef whispers the rest.
“I can’t hear you, Josef.”
He continues to whisper, and Joona leans close, trying to hear the words. “That fucking bastard!” Josef yells in his ear.
Joona jumps back and rubs his ear as he walks around the bed. He tries to smile.
Josef’s face is ash-grey. “I’m going to find that fucking hypnotist and bite his throat; I’m going to hunt him down, him and his—”
The social worker moves over to the bed quickly and tries to switch off the tape recorder. “Josef! You have the right to remain silent—”
“Keep out of this,” Joona interrupts.
She looks at him with an agitated expression and says in a trembling voice, “Before the interview began, you should have informed—”
“Wrong. There are no laws governing this kind of interrogation,” says Joona, raising his voice. “He has the right to remain silent, that’s true, but I am not obliged to inform him of that right.”
“In that case, I apologise.”
“No problem,” mumbles Joona, turning back to Josef. “Why are you angry with the hypnotist?”
“I don’t have to answer your questions,” says Josef, attempting to point at the social worker.