Friday Evening

It was almost seven when Sjöberg got home on Friday, wet, miserable and late. Since Thursday morning he had only seen his wife in a sleeping state, and he had not seen the children at all. He did not even have time to take off his wet trousers before he was ordered to put the little boys to bed. The girls rampaged around his legs in their eagerness to tell him about things that had happened during the day, and Jonathan screamed while Sjöberg changed Christoffer’s nappy. The disappointment at the day’s failures disappeared temporarily somewhere in his mind under a compact layer of stress and irritation at the children’s loud voices. Twenty minutes later, when the girls were sitting in front of the DVD player eating popcorn, the twins, full of whole-grain porridge, were babbling in their cots, Simon was sitting in front of his computer and Åsa was in the shower, he finally had time to remove his soaked trousers. Then the doorbell rang and, half-undressed, he had to run over to the entry phone to let the babysitter into the building. The door to the bathroom was locked, so he couldn’t get at his bathrobe and instead had to wriggle unwillingly back into his wet trousers.

The babysitter was the sixteen-year-old half-sister of Simon’s friend Johan, from one building down, who was there every other weekend. Her name was Anna, and she was a reliable girl with a mind of her own. The kids liked her a lot. There was also the added security of knowing there was help available in the neighbouring building if anything were to happen.

This was the first time they were leaving the twins at home with Anna as babysitter, but problems were unlikely, since the boys usually slept through the night. The girls rushed out into the hall when they heard the doorbell, and threw themselves into Anna’s arms when Sjöberg let her in. Then he went back to the bedroom to freshen up and change quickly, before it was time to go down to the street to the pre-arranged taxi. Not until they were buckled in on the backseat and had pointed the taxi driver in the right direction was there time for Sjöberg and his wife to have a moment for each other.

When you saw them next to each other, there was no doubt that Lasse was Åsa’s brother. Both were tall and slender, even if Lasse, who was a few years older than Åsa, had the beginning of a beer belly, which he tried to conceal by means of tunic shirts and loose-fitting sweaters. Both of them were also true blondes and had similar greenish, almost cat-like eyes. Sjöberg’s sister-in-law, Mia, on the other hand, was dark, short and a little plump, with a marvellously contagious laugh. They had no children, and though they loved kids and were the best babysitters you could imagine, Åsa was convinced that they were childless by choice, even if she had never dared to bring up the question with either of them. Sjöberg was more doubtful, but yielded to his wife’s presumed knowledge of her own brother. Lasse was an interior designer, which was definitely not reflected in their own, rather carelessly arranged home, and Mia worked as a manager at an IT company. They travelled a lot and this was Åsa’s main argument that their childlessness was by choice.

Not until Sjöberg sank down in the somewhat worn but comfortable corner couch and took the first gulp of Lasse’s specialty, vodka and Red Bull, did he feel how tired he was. The tension of the past couple of weeks started to release little by little, and the strong drink had an immediate effect. His disappointment at Gun Vannerberg’s negative response about the family’s possible residence in Österåker bubbled up to the surface again and he let out a deep sigh. He could hear the siblings’ voices from the kitchen as Mia sank down next to him on the couch, holding out a small ceramic bowl of mammoth green olives towards him.

‘Why the dejected sigh?’ she asked curiously.

He took an olive and tossed it in his mouth.

‘I’m just exhaling after a long, strenuous week with the dregs of society,’ he answered jokingly, depositing the olive pit in an ashtray that had clearly been swiped from a restaurant in the neighbourhood.

‘Oh boy,’ said Mia. ‘What are you working on now?’

‘A murder in Enskede. A forty-four-year-old estate agent who was beaten to death in an old lady’s kitchen.’

As he spoke, he happened to think of another forty-four-year-old, and remembered that Mia had actually grown up in Katrineholm.

‘By the way, did you hear about that mother of two in Katrineholm?’ he asked. ‘The one who apparently drowned in a tub of water a few days ago?’

‘Yes, I read about that,’ Mia replied. ‘A gruesome story.’

‘Did you know her?’

‘No, I didn’t. She was three or four years younger than me, so we weren’t in high school at the same time. I didn’t even recognize the name. What was it again?’

‘No idea,’ Sjöberg answered, taking another olive.

‘I think my mum said her name was Lise-Lott or something like that. No, I don’t remember anyone by that name. This case you’re working on now, has there been anything in the papers about it?’

‘Yes, quite a bit actually, but that was a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Do you think you’ll catch him?’ Mia asked hopefully.

‘Maybe we will sooner or later, but right now it doesn’t look good.’

‘Then we’ll stop talking about that and entertain ourselves instead. It will ripen over the weekend and then you’ll solve it on Monday!’

‘Let’s drink to that,’ said Sjöberg, taking a substantial gulp from his glass and almost getting an olive pit caught in his throat.

Lasse called from the kitchen that the food was served and they got up from the couch, taking their glasses with them. On the large, round kitchen table a pasta buffet of unusual proportions was set out. There was a bowl of spaghetti alla carbonara, a pan of homemade gnocchi swimming in cream sauce with cheese and diced pork, a saucepan of tagliatelle with pesto smelling of garlic, a pan of homemade lasagne, and another bowl of spaghetti in a sauce made of cream, onion and chicken liver. Alongside this, a large dish with a colourful salad of tomatoes, avocado and mozzarella, and a tub of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Lasse stood behind the groaning table opening several bottles of Italian red wine of varying origins. Sjöberg’s jaw dropped, and all he could manage was a question about whether both of them had lost their jobs, considering the time it must have taken to prepare this, as promised, ‘simple’ Friday dinner.

They sat down around the table and dug into the amazing dishes. Sjöberg ate until he was about to burst; the sound level in the kitchen rose as the levels in the wine bottles sank, and topics of discussion flew thick and fast around the table. After the main courses were finished, a sweet, smooth panna cotta was served, decorated with raspberries and blueberries on a mirror of raspberry coulis. With this they drank a white port wine – and their intoxication grew.

After they had cleared the worst of the dinner debris, they retired to the soft sofas of the living room. While coffee was brewing, Mia took out her favourite game, ‘National Encyclopedia’, and they debated whether they should play individually or in teams. Sjöberg, who was an individualist and hated losing, proposed the former.

‘It’s already eleven,’ said Mia, ‘and we know that you’ll win if we play individually. But if we don’t play in teams, we’ll be sitting here all weekend.’

Something clicked in Sjöberg’s head, and he suddenly sobered up. There it was again, that accent that had haunted him since the story about the murdered woman in Katrineholm on the TV news the other day.

‘Wake-end,’ said Sjöberg quietly, but the others heard it and looked at him in surprise.

It was the policeman from Katrineholm who had talked that way, but who else? It was very close now, it was right there in the back of his mind and wanted to come out. In what context had he heard that, very, very recently?

‘Wake-end,’ he said again, louder this time.

The other three people at the table exchanged glances among themselves, and once again looked curiously at Sjöberg, giggling expectantly. He did not notice them, though; it was so close, so close … He knew it was important. Something in his subconscious told him this was decisively important, he just knew it.

And then suddenly it came to him. He remembered his first conversation with Gun Vannerberg. The grieving, strangely dressed Gun Vannerberg sitting on a chair across from him in his office at the police station and asking to look at the remains of her murdered son.

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

‘Is that so?’ Gun Vannerberg had answered. There it was, what the policeman had said in the TV interview.

‘When did you last see your son?’

‘Last wake-end. He was with his youngest daughter, Moa, and came to see me in Malmö, where I live.’

And where was this sudden insight leading him?

‘What are you up to, darling?’ Åsa interrupted his musings.

‘I’ve got to go to the loo,’ Sjöberg answered, getting up from the couch and quickly leaving the room.

The others shook their heads and laughed, wondering, but returned to the game preparations.

Sjöberg went into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub. So the policeman on the TV news comes from Katrineholm, like his sister-in-law, but Gun Vannerberg comes from there too, he thought. Mia nowadays spoke a smoothed-out variation of the Katrineholm dialect, but Gun Vannerberg’s accent was the same as the policeman’s, he was sure of that. So had Hans Vannerberg lived in Katrineholm? In that case, why had his mother withheld this information from Sjöberg? Sandén would have laughed if he could see him now, but Sjöberg was sure that he was on the trail of something decisive; he felt it intuitively, and this time he relied on his intuition. But where did Ingrid Olsson come into the picture?

He got up and rushed back into the living room. Three pairs of curious eyes were turned on him.

‘I need an atlas,’ he said excitedly.

‘An atlas?’

Lasse looked at him in bewilderment.

‘A map of Sweden, whatever.’

‘I don’t know where our atlas is,’ said Mia. ‘I don’t think –’

‘I’ve got to have one. Now.’

‘Maybe the neighbour has one,’ Lasse suggested.

Mia saw the seriousness in Sjöberg’s eyes and got up purposefully.

‘I’ll go and ask the neighbour,’ she said, walking resolutely out into the hall, putting on a pair of shoes and going out of the door.

‘What is this all about, Conny?’ Lasse asked. ‘You look completely wild.’

‘He’s thought of something,’ Åsa answered in his place. ‘He’s thought of something important that has to do with the murder.’

‘The murder?’

Lasse looked at him with fascination.

‘Are you sitting here drinking and solving murders at the same time?’

‘Yes, I hope so,’ Sjöberg answered with an absentminded smile.

At that moment the door opened again, and Mia trudged in holding The Motorist’s Road Atlas of Sweden. She handed the book to Sjöberg, who immediately started searching in the alphabetical index in the back.

‘What are you looking for?’ Mia asked.

‘Katrineholm,’ answered Sjöberg. ‘I want to see where Katrineholm is …’

‘I could tell you that,’ Mia suggested, but Sjöberg took no notice of the others right now.

He led his index finger along one of the columns and mumbled, ‘Katorp, Katrineberg, Katrineberg, Katrinedal, Katrineholm – there it is, page sixty-two …’

He flipped back to the page in question and studied the map for a minute or two. His eyes ran over the names of lakes, cities, towns and villages. He continued to search purposefully until he found what he was looking for. There it stood, clear and obvious in bold, black letters, right between Katrineholm and Hallsberg: Österåker.

Sjöberg closed the atlas with a thud and looked at his beloved wife with a rather apologetic expression.

‘I’m afraid there’s going to be some work for me this weekend,’ he said ruefully.

But inside he felt a growing exhilaration.