Wednesday Afternoon

Lisa’s Café was located on Skånegatan, and though it was a little far to walk, it had become their regular place, not just for Sjöberg and his crew but for many of the other officers from the Hammarby police station too. The menu was not extensive, but the bread was home-baked, the atmosphere congenial and the service personal. Lisa herself had the gift of the gab and called all her regulars by name. She had also decorated the walls with their photographs, and Sjöberg, Sandén and Jamal Hamad, who also joined them for lunch, were all pictured on Lisa’s wall.

Over homemade meatball sandwiches and a beetroot salad that far surpassed what you could find in a delicatessen, they bantered lightly about the murder, without really getting anywhere. For Sjöberg this was therapy after an intense morning.

‘I think he was evil,’ said Hamad.

‘No, white-bread was the word,’ said Sandén.

‘He must have done something wrong to get assaulted like that,’ Hamad persisted.

‘The local police who were first on the scene thought he seemed shifty,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Found murdered in Ingrid Olsson’s kitchen.’

‘That’s just what I’m saying. It’s obvious he was evil.’

‘I think it’s Ingrid Olsson who’s shifty, having a corpse in her kitchen,’ said Sandén.

‘Maybe both of them are shifty,’ Sjöberg suggested. ‘No good.’

‘I think they are and were good, both of them,’ said Sandén, ‘although they’ve had bad luck. They got in the way of a lunatic, to put it simply. Someone they had no connection with.’

‘In any case, the wife and children had the worst luck,’ said Hamad. ‘The old lady seemed unperturbed, and Vannerberg is dead. But the family has to live with the sorrow. And anyway, they’re not evil.’

‘Don’t say that. Children can be pretty wicked. Only Jesus thinks that children are good. Personally, I’m of the opinion that children are evil until their parents take it out of them. That’s called upbringing,’ Sandén said with conviction.

‘Well, Vannerberg himself doesn’t seem to have been the world’s best child, according to what his business partner had to say,’ said Sjöberg. ‘But according to what we’ve seen so far, he seems to have been the world’s best grown-up.’

The conversation gradually petered out and Sjöberg went back to the station and his office. A few reporters called, but he was sparing with information. He wanted to wait until he had spoken with the medical examiner, the body was formally identified and the technicians had more concrete facts to present. He phoned Einar Eriksson. True, Eriksson’s office was only three doors down, but he didn’t feel like getting up again.

‘Have you found anything on Vannerberg’s mother yet?’ he asked, without the slightest hope of an affirmative response.

‘No, I’ve been at lunch and just sat down at the computer,’ Eriksson replied as expected.

‘Thought so,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Talk to you later.’

As soon as he put down the receiver the phone rang.

‘Conny, you have a visitor,’ Lotten giggled. ‘A real looker. I’m almost jealous!’

Sjöberg was of the opinion that cheerful co-workers were just what you needed in a job as serious as his was at times, and he never got tired of Lotten’s chirping. She did her work flawlessly and was very organized, so the only thing to do was grin and bear it.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, your mistress maybe. Her name is Gun, and she’s a little tipsy, I think. She’s on her way up.’

He put down the receiver and was about to get up to go out and look for his unexpected visitor when the door opened without warning. In swayed an unlikely creature who made him think immediately of Dame Edna Everage, except this was a genuine biological woman. She was probably in her sixties, with a big, bleached-blonde perm, her face almost theatrically made up, big, golden costume jewellery on her ears and around her neck, and black-and-white snakeskin boots with high heels. Under a gigantic, white imitation-fur coat, a pink sequinned dress was visible, cut halfway up the thigh. He thought he was able to conceal his surprise, and courteously extended his hand to her.

‘Conny Sjöberg,’ he said calmly. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I am Gun Vannerberg, and I want to look at my son,’ the woman answered in a completely normal tone of voice.

He didn’t know what he had expected, presumably a hoarse or shrill voice. He pulled out one of the visitor’s chairs and helped her sit down.

‘I’m extremely sorry about what happened, and you have my sympathy,’ said Sjöberg seriously. ‘I realize that this is very painful for you, Mrs Vannerberg, and we are still not really clear about what actually happened.’

‘I understand,’ said the woman faintly, the tears welling up in her eyes.

Suddenly everything that was comical about her appearance was gone, and in Sjöberg’s eyes she was just a very small, lonely and desperate person in a big, awful world. He wondered whether she had anyone who also saw her that way and could help and console her.

‘I’ll call the medical examiner and check whether we can go over there. Perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee, Mrs Vannerberg?’

He felt that he needed one himself. She nodded silently in response and stared vacantly ahead of her. Sjöberg went out in the corridor and over to the coffee machine. Several faces looked curiously at him, but he shook his head reproachfully, took his coffee cups and went back into his office. He closed the door behind him with one foot.

‘Thanks very much,’ she said quietly, looking intently down into the cup before she took a sip.

‘They would prefer that we not come until after four, but I’ll ask.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Perhaps I could ask a few questions about your son, Mrs Vannerberg, since we’re sitting here anyway?’ he said carefully.

‘That’s fine.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Last weekend. He came to visit me in Malmö, where I live, with his youngest daughter, Moa.’

‘What kind of work do you do?’ Sjöberg asked out of pure curiosity.

‘I work at a club,’ she answered matter-of-factly. ‘That’s why I have this outfit on. These are my work clothes. I didn’t have time to change before I came here. Pia’s mum phoned me on my mobile this morning and I took the next train. I was not completely sober and didn’t think about bringing along my regular clothes.’

Sjöberg wondered to himself what type of clubs they had in Malmö, but he did not ask.

‘What was your relationship like with your son, Mrs Vannerberg?’

‘It was very good. Hans was always so kind to me, and helped me when I needed it. I’m not much to write home about exactly …’

Sjöberg thought guiltily that that’s exactly what she was.

‘He phoned several times every week just to ask how I was doing. They are so nice, all of them.’

‘Who do you mean, Mrs Vannerberg?’

‘Please call me Gun, otherwise I’ll feel embarrassed.’

‘Okay. Who do you mean was nice?’

‘Well, the children, of course, and Pia and her parents. They’re good people, you know, Pia’s family. But it’s like they don’t make a show of it. They talk to me anyway.’

‘What was Hans like as a person?’

‘Kind. Yes, I already said that. Capable. Good in school, he went to college. And had his own company and that, lots of money. He helped me with the bills if I was short. Charming, he could charm anyone. A favourite with the girls.’

‘You moved to Malmö when Hans was starting high school?’

‘Yes. We moved a lot, and I guess Hans got tired of that, so he decided to stay put.’

‘What other places did you live?’

‘There were lots of places. Norrköping, Kumla, Hallsberg, Kungsör, Örebro. Oxelösund.’

‘Why did you move so much?’

‘Men. Jobs.’

‘So, what type of work are we talking about?’ Sjöberg asked indirectly, hoping she would explain just what type of men she was referring to.

‘I used to do hair during the day,’ she answered evasively.

‘And in the evening?’

‘Sometimes I would dance at clubs …’

Sjöberg waited.

‘Okay, I stripped. But I don’t intend to talk about what kind of clubs.’

‘No, you don’t have to. But you worked as a hairdresser during the day and stripped in the evenings. It couldn’t have been easy to take care of a child too?’

‘No, I was not a very good mother. But Hans turned out all right anyway.’

‘Hans never had a father?’

‘No, I don’t know who he was.’

‘You must have been very young –’

‘Eighteen,’ she interrupted. ‘I didn’t plan to get pregnant. But I’ve always been kind to Hans,’ she added convincingly. ‘I’m sure you understand that, otherwise he wouldn’t have cared about me the way he did.’

She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. Sjöberg sighed and reflected for a moment on all the strange human destinies he encountered in his professional life. He thought about his own twin sons, and he wondered how their lives would look today if things had gone differently a year and a half earlier. A female drug addict had been seriously assaulted with a knife in a park. He was responsible for the investigation, and when he had visited her at the hospital after a few days she had been transferred to the obstetrics department – to his, the hospital staff’s and not least her own surprise. A few hours later, not one but two well-formed but very small baby boys were miraculously delivered. She had stayed in the hospital for several weeks and he had visited her and the boys regularly during that time. The twins were in incubators and there they stayed for another three months, even after their mother ran away from the hospital. He had become attached to the tiny boys and continued to go to see them even after her disappearance. When she was later found dead from an overdose of heroin in a public toilet, he had taken Åsa up to the hospital. Even though they already had three children and had had no plans for more, neither of them hesitated. The adoption was completed six months later, but by then the children had long since been ‘theirs’.

‘You don’t know whether Hans in some way might have got into bad company, through you, for example? Excuse me for asking, but I’m sure you understand what I mean,’ Sjöberg said apologetically.

‘No, I never introduced Hans to my … friends. Not in recent years,’ she added guiltily.

‘What was he like as a child?’

‘Oh, he was so cute. He was a real rascal, but he had a lot of friends. I guess he was like most boys, fistfights and mischief, but he had a good heart.’

Sjöberg concluded the conversation and phoned the medical examiner. Kaj Zetterström, who had devoted half the night and all day to the autopsy of Hans Vannerberg, sounded tired, but he was accommodating and said that it was fine to come over. Sjöberg ordered a taxi himself and then escorted Gun Vannerberg down the stairs, through the reception area and out to the turning area on Östgötagatan and the waiting car.

He held his arm under hers during the brief, agonizing encounter with her dead son, but looked away himself. After the papers were signed he left her, with a twinge of guilt, standing alone on the pavement. It was twenty past three and already dark. The temperature was below freezing and a thin layer of snow was starting to settle over the city.