Dark Secrets (41 page)

“Why were you here this morning? Could it be to do with this?” he asked, looking deep into Vanja’s eyes.

“We don’t know. I needed to know if a particular person had been seeing Peter as a patient.”

“Who?”

“His name is Roger Eriksson. He’s a sixteen-year-old from Palmlövska High.”

Vanja reached for the photo of Roger, but it wasn’t necessary.

“The boy who was murdered?”

“Exactly.”

She handed him the picture anyway, just to be on the safe side. He stared at it and thought long and hard; he wanted to be sure.

“I don’t know. I mean, Peter had a counseling arrangement with the school, so lots of the kids came here. It’s possible.”

“Every other Wednesday at ten o’clock this term? Was he here then?”

Lemmel shook his head.

“I work here only three days a week; I’m at the hospital on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so I don’t know. But we can check Peter’s room. His notebook will be in there.”

“Don’t you have a receptionist?” Sebastian wondered as they walked through the glass doors and along a small corridor.

“No, we can manage things ourselves; it would be an unnecessary expenditure.” Lemmel stopped at the second door on the right and took out his keys. He looked a little surprised when he tried to turn the key and the door suddenly opened.

“That’s odd…”

Sebastian pushed the door right back. Their eyes were met by a scene of utter chaos, with files and papers all over the place. Drawers pulled out. Folders emptied on the floor. Shattered glass. Rolf looked shocked. Vanja quickly pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

“Stay where you are. Sebastian, call Ursula and tell her she’s needed here as soon as possible.”

“I think it might be better if you called her.” Sebastian attempted a smile.

“Tell her what it’s about. She might hate you, but she’s a professional.”

Vanja turned to Lemmel.

“So you haven’t been in here today?”

He shook his head. She started to look around.

“Can you see Peter’s notebook anywhere?”

Lemmel was still in shock and his answer was slow to come.

“No, it’s a big green book with a leather cover.”

Vanja nodded and began hunting carefully among the discarded papers. It was no easy task, because she didn’t want to crash about too much and run the risk of destroying any possible forensic evidence. At the same time she felt it was of the utmost importance to find out if there was a link between Peter Westin and Roger Eriksson. Because if there was, it would mean the investigation had taken an unexpected turn.

After ten minutes Vanja gave up. As far as she could see, there was no notebook in the room. But she couldn’t turn everything upside down and search the whole place. Ursula had called back to say that she would be tied up at Rotevägen for the next few hours, but she had spoken to Hanser, who had promised that the Västerås police would send their best CSI technician. Ursula didn’t like it, but how hard could it be to secure one room? Vanja locked the door with Lemmel’s key and went to have another word with him. He was back on the sofa, talking to someone on the phone. His eyes were full of tears, his tone of voice controlled but full of sorrow. He caught sight of Vanja and tried to pull himself together.

“I have to go, darling. The police want to speak to me again.”

“A technician is on the way. No one is allowed in that room. May I keep your keys?”

He nodded. Vanja looked around.

“Where’s my colleague?”

“He said he was going to check on something.” Vanja sighed and took out her cell, then realized she didn’t have Sebastian’s number. She had never expected to need it.

Sebastian walked into the cafeteria at Palmlövska High. In his days as a pupil there had been no warm and cozy venue resembling a coffee shop on the ground floor. At that time this space had been a study room for those wishing to do extra homework. The walls had not been white with little spotlights. Nor did he recall any black leather armchairs, low tables made of pale wood, or small wall-mounted speakers playing lounge music. As far as he remembered, the walls had been lined with bookshelves and on the floor there had been long tables with hard chairs. Nothing else.

Sebastian had grown tired of playing second fiddle at the psychologists’ practice. He had battled all day to fit in, not to go too far, to be a
team player and all that crap. It hadn’t been particularly difficult—all he’d had to do was drift along and keep his mouth shut in most cases. But it was boring; it was so fucking soul-destroyingly mind-numbingly boring. Even though he had managed to score a few points off Vanja in the car, it hadn’t gone far enough. It was like existing at subsistence level, and Sebastian just didn’t do that.

As he had watched Vanja cautiously moving papers around amid the chaos of Peter Westin’s room, to avoid ruining things for Ursula later, he had decided to fly solo for a while. There was information everywhere. Somebody knew something about everything. It was just a matter of knowing who to ask.

Which was why he was standing here gazing around the cafeteria. He spotted Lisa Hansson sitting a short distance away chatting to her girlfriends, empty latte cups on the table in front of them. He went over. She didn’t exactly look pleased to see him. But there was acceptance in her eyes. That would have to do.

“Hi, Lisa. Can you spare two seconds?”

The other girls looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t wait for a reply.

“I could do with your help.”

When Sebastian walked back into Westin & Lemmel’s psychology practice twenty-two minutes later, he had received confirmation from two sources that Roger Eriksson had been seeing Peter Westin every other Wednesday at ten o’clock. As with all clearly defined groups with strong internal control (and there are fewer groups with a more effective system of keeping a check on one another than teenagers), it would have been impossible for Roger to sneak off to see a counselor without anyone finding out. Lisa had no idea who Roger had been seeing every other Wednesday, but she was familiar with the hierarchies within the school and had proved very helpful in finding someone who did know.
A sophomore girl had seen him, and another girl in Roger’s class confirmed it. They had met in the waiting room on two occasions.

Vanja was on the phone. She looked at Sebastian with a sour expression as he strolled nonchalantly into the room. He smiled at her. He noticed that a technician was dusting the door frame to Westin’s room for fingerprints. He had timed it perfectly. He waited until Vanja finished her conversation.

“How’s it going? Found any forensic evidence?”

“Not yet. Where have you been?”

“Doing a little job. You wanted confirmation that Roger came here every other Wednesday at ten o’clock. He did.”

“Who says?”

Sebastian gave her the names of the two students; he had even written down what they said on a little piece of paper for her. He knew that would annoy her even more.

“Give them a call and check if you like.”

She looked at the piece of paper.

“I will. Later. Right now we’re going back to the station. Billy’s found something.”

Torkel hoped it was something good. He needed progress, something to smile about. In fact, he was ready to settle for something that wasn’t heading straight down the pan. He had just been in a meeting with Hanser. After a polite exchange along the lines of “thank you for dinner” and “it was very nice,” she had told him about Thomas Haraldsson. It didn’t matter how well meaning his efforts had been. The incompetent asshole had probably managed to get their one and only suspect so far to go underground. Which meant that the information they had acquired from the lists of phone calls and the retrieved text messages were now almost worthless. On top of all that, it looked as if Roger’s counselor had been murdered. Well, he was dead, they knew that much. Torkel had
been doing this job for too long to think it was just an unfortunate coincidence.

So now they had a double murderer. It was small consolation that Sebastian didn’t believe the first murder had been planned. The second one definitely was. Westin had presumably died because of something he knew about Roger Eriksson. Torkel swore to himself. Why hadn’t they been quicker? Why hadn’t they got there first? Nothing was going their way in this bloody investigation. It wouldn’t be long before the press made the connection between the deaths; it was just what they needed to keep the story going.

And Ursula was angry with him.

Mikael was on his way.

He pushed open the door of the conference room. Ursula was still at the scene of the crime, but the others were already there. Billy had called them all. Torkel sat down and nodded to Billy to start. The projector on the ceiling hummed into life, so Torkel assumed they would be looking at more CCTV footage. Correct. Roger came ambling in from the right.

“At nine twenty-nine Roger Eriksson was here.” Billy circled a street on the map on the wall. “Just about a mile from Gustavsborgsgatan. As you can see, he crosses the road and disappears. I mean, really disappears.” Billy rewound the video and froze the image just before Roger disappeared behind a parked car.

“He turns into Spränggränd, a cul-de-sac that ends in footpaths leading off in three directions.” Billy pointed at the map with his pen. “I checked every camera to the north and west of Spränggränd. There aren’t many. Roger doesn’t appear on any of them, so I checked to see whether he had turned around and gone back. Nothing. I’ve seen more nondescript streets than any person needs to see in an entire lifetime. This is the last image of Roger Eriksson.”

They all looked at the frozen picture on the wall. Torkel was already in a bad mood and he could feel it dropping by several degrees. Or whatever bad moods dropped by. It was definitely dropping, anyway.

“If we play with the idea that he carried straight on, heading north, what’s up there?” This came from Vanja. Torkel felt grateful that there was still someone on the team who was trying to get as much as possible out of nothing.

“On the other side of the E18 is Vallby, which mostly consists of large areas of apartment complexes.”

“Does he have any connections to that part of town? A classmate who lives there, anything like that?”

Billy shook his head. Sebastian got up and went over to the map.

“What’s this?” He pointed to a large building only twenty yards or so from the end of Spränggränd.

“A motel.”

Sebastian started wandering around the room, speaking in a calm, reasoned tone of voice, as if talking to himself.

“Roger and Lisa had been pretending to have a relationship for some time. Lisa said Roger was also seeing someone else, but she didn’t know who. He was extremely secretive about it.” Sebastian went back to the map and placed his finger on the motel.

“According to Johan, Roger talked about sex a lot. A motel is perfect for that kind of encounter.”

His gaze swept over the other three.

“Yes, I am speaking from experience.” He gave Vanja a meaningful look. “Not of that particular motel, but you and I aren’t finished yet.” Vanja glanced at him wearily. The second sexual innuendo today. One more and she would have him off this investigation before he knew what had hit him. But she said nothing; why warn him? Torkel folded his arms and looked at Sebastian, his expression skeptical.