Yet another glorious morning that in no way reflects my state of mind. Because sunshine does not necessarily make for a sunny personality, a sunny disposition, or a sunny outlook.
Still I decide to make the best of the day and put on my pink shirt and the grey suit. With it I don a magenta silk handkerchief that I carefully fold into my breast pocket. I top it all off with a few drops of Aqua di Parma on my neck, take a few steps back and contemplate the large strawberry blond man who is looking out at me from the mirror.
Afsaneh looks at me and smiles.
‘You are so handsome,’ she says and lingers on the last word, as if she is tasting it.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘You don’t look too shabby yourself.’
Afsaneh is wearing a bright yellow fitted dress in shiny cotton chintz. She is radiant in it, but then she would have been in a dirty T-shirt too.
She is beautiful in everything, but I’m not such a fool that I don’t realise that my love for her is what makes me think that.
We leave the apartment together.
The parade along Karlavägen lies almost abandoned in the quivering summer heat. The air around us is filled with some kind of downy seeds. They stick to everything: our hair, our mouths, the soles of our shoes. They lie in droves along the kerb. Like snow.
Summer snow.
We stop for a moment on the pavement outside our front door. Afsaneh laughs and plucks a few seeds off my face. Then we give each other a quick kiss – like any couple in love – before we each disappear in different directions.
I know it would be closer for Afsaneh to walk with me to Karlaplan, but she can’t handle passing the spot where Nadja fell and thus chooses to make a detour.
As for me I tend to hurry up when I pass that place, sometimes I cross the street so as not to have to step on those specific stones, on that tarmac, on that cursed pavement, that threw itself at my defenceless child.
I inhale deeply and try not to think of Nadja. I think of that yellow dress, of how it fluttered around Afsaneh’s slender calves when she turned away from me and walked off. About how the wind lifted the hair from her shoulders and the ease in her step.
Are her friends on the internet what’s making her feel that much better? Is that where she is getting the support I haven’t been able to give?
I don’t know.
*
I spend the morning going through the old notes from the preliminary investigation for the assault and gross violation of privacy that Olle Berg, aka ‘Bullen’, was found guilty of, both in the magistrates’ court and in the courts of appeal.
The image of an impulsive and misogynistic person emerges – a man who in many aspects is so immature that one would do better to call him a boy.
Among the documents I find a statement from a psychologist who has examined Berg. The psychologist also IQ-tested him and concluded that he has an intelligence quota of about seventy-five.
That means that he is considered to be above the line for what would formally be considered an intellectual disability, but not by much.
Olle Berg was simply not very well-equipped in the head.
Right after lunch I go to the coffee maker as usual to collect my government-financed hopelessly watery coffee.
As I approach I see Letit and Malin standing close together next to the grey metal beast. They gesticulate eagerly. When they see me they both start walking towards me at the same time.
‘We need to talk,’ Malin says.
‘May I have some coffee first?’ I ask.
‘What kind of monsters do you think we are?’ Letit grunts.
I get coffee and we sit down in the conference room.
‘I’m listening,’ I say.
‘Yesterday you asked me to check with our colleagues south of the city to see if they have any information about Olle Berg, or his girlfriend and her son,’ Letit says.
‘And now, today, a colleague with the police in Haninge got in touch,’ Malin fills in. ‘A trainee, Anna Andersson, received a report of a missing person this morning.’
‘The trainee thinks the missing person works for the family in Stuvskär,’ Letit says and leans toward me. ‘She is on her way over here so that we can talk to her.’
‘And,’ Malin says as she inhales, ‘both Victor Carlgren and Johannes Ahonen have made calls to unregistered prepaid phones.’
‘Have they called the same number?’ I ask.
Malin shakes her head.
‘No, but through the operator we could link both prepaid cards to the same IMEI number. So it belongs to an iPhone that has been used for all the calls. Both the phone and the prepaid cards were bought in a shop in Haninge Centrum, although at different points in time. The calls were also made from there. The colleagues in Haninge are going to check to see if there is video surveillance in the shop and if the person who made the calls has been caught on camera.’
‘Stuvskär,’ I say. ‘That’s close to Haninge Centrum, isn’t it?’
‘It’s probably twenty-odd miles,’ Letit murmurs.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Malin, ‘but I don’t know Stockholm that well – what kind of place is Stuvskär?’
I think about it for a few seconds.
‘It’s like Ormberg only the other way around. Just as small. An old fishing village that has become completely gentrified. There are mostly summer houses for rich people from Stockholm. Almost nobody lives there year-round.’
‘OK,’ Malin says. ‘Then let’s talk to the trainee.’
‘There’s just one problem,’ Letit says. ‘The woman who wanted to make the report disappeared before the trainee could take her information.’
*
Anna Andersson is muscular and as obviously pregnant as Malin. Her mousy-blonde hair falls in soft curls around her cute, slightly too made-up face.
‘So she just took off?’ Malin asks making a note in her pad.
Anna squirms.
‘We had a rowdy guy in the corridor outside. A frequent flyer. I went out to help my colleagues and when I got back she was gone.’
‘Any idea why she disappeared?’ Malin asks and looks genuinely confused.
Anna’s cheeks turn pink and she looks at the floor.
‘Well . . . I told her that since Samuel, her son that is, had only been missing for a few hours it would probably be a while before we . . . uhm . . . took any concrete action.’
‘So you scared her off?’ Letit asks, jutting out his bearded jaw.
Anna, who looks terrified, doesn’t answer.
‘He’s joking,’ Malin smooths things over, but Letit isn’t smiling. He is looking straight at the trainee while slowly chewing on a toothpick.
‘Oh,’ Anna says, but still looks like she is about to wet herself any second.
‘So, exactly what did she tell you before she disappeared?’ I ask.
Anna pulls out her notepad and flips through it until she finds a few sloppy notes she’s jotted down.
‘That she was supposed to meet her eighteen-year-old son, Samuel, at Stuvskär at ten o’clock the night before, but he never showed up. That he was working with a family that had a brain-damaged son, somewhere in the vicinity of Stuvskär. The mum was named Rachel and the son Jonas. And the mum had a boyfriend too. A writer named Olle or something like that. I wrote it all down as soon as I realised she’d left.’
‘Nothing else?’ I ask.
Anna’s gaze wanders up toward the ceiling, as if she is searching her memory.
‘No. Actually, yes. One more thing. She said that her son had disappeared once before, but come back. Honestly, she seemed pretty confused. Besides it was Midsummer’s Day, so I figured the guy was probably sleeping it off somewhere. So I—’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Letit says and inspects the chewed-up toothpick. ‘I don’t know what you’re reading at the police academy these days – gender power dynamics? Diversity policy? Foundational values? Regardless, some good old-fashioned common sense wouldn’t hurt.’
Anna doesn’t say anything but looks, if possible, even more wounded.
Letit lets his gaze wander between Anna and Malin.
‘And maybe some counselling on contraceptives too,’ he mumbles and spits a small wood splinter from the toothpick into his hand.
I clear my throat.
‘And you said she left something behind?’ I ask.
The trainee, who looks like she is about to start to cry at any moment, nods and presents a piece of paper, inserted into a transparent plastic pocket.
It looks like a poem of some kind.
Instinctively all three of us lean over the table and read it in silence.
‘What the hell is this?’ Letit mumbles.
I look at the poem again.
For some reason the last stanza gives me the chills. I read it out loud because I feel like I need to hear it.
I cried myself a sea of tears
and lay down to die
on the soft tuft of grief
But the lion emerged anew
and in his giant maw he held
an untarnished dove
‘What in the hell are we supposed do with this?’ Letit growls. ‘Send it on to the poetry unit? Try to find a forensic lyricist? Or should we ask the clowns in communications to help us?’
‘Read this handwritten text underneath,’ the trainee with the red cheeks says.
And we read:
Can we meet at the petrol station at 10 p.m., some really weird shit happened, so I had to fix some stuff. Love, S.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘There can’t be that many people named Rachel in the area who also have a disabled son named Jonas?’
Malin nods and stands up.
‘And this poem,’ I continue. ‘Can you check where it comes from?’
‘I will look into that,’ says Malin, who has stopped in the doorway. ‘What are our thoughts on this Samuel guy – is he in danger?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly. ‘But we need to get hold of him bloody fast.’
None of us say anything. We don’t need to.
Then I look down, read the poem again.
and in his giant maw he held
an untarnished dove
‘I think we should visit our friend in Ormberg,’ I say.
‘Ormberg?’ Letit says.
‘Hanne Lagerlind-Schön lives there,’ Malin says quietly.
‘The witch?’ Letit snorts.
‘Call her whatever you like,’ I say. ‘Without her we would never have solved the murders in Ormberg. She is special, I don’t think I have ever met a person with that ability to get into the minds of criminals. I actually understand why they call her the Witch, because she is by far the best profiler I have ever come across.’
I pause, adding: ‘Or at least she was before.’
Letit wrinkles his eyebrows and strokes his large nose with his pointer finger and his thumb.
‘Before what?’ he asks.
‘Before she developed dementia,’ Malin says quietly.