Authors: Camilla Ceder
Tell
smiled to
himself
. There were a lot of similarities
between Gonzales and his younger self: impatient, enthusiastic and hungry for
practical experience. No doubt Gonzales was just going through the first wave
of disappointment that the reality of the job fell short of expectations.
'Did
you get anything from visiting the mother?' asked Gonzales with a nod to
Bärneflod, who took a bite of his bun, shook his head.
'Not much, really.
Apart from the fact
that she's completely crackers.
Pretty unpleasant, if you ask me.
I wouldn't want to bump
into her in a dark alley.'
'OK,
well, I have found something. I've been on the phone to-'
Gonzales
stopped as Tell held up his hand.
'Hang
on. Something else struck me as a bit odd. While we were with the old woman,
this girl turned up. Well, I say girl - she was maybe thirty-five, forty. Said
she was a home help, but both Bengt and I thought there was something that
didn't quite add up, didn't
we
?'
Bärneflod
nodded vigorously. 'If she was a home help, then I'm Donald Duck. Her clothes
were all wrong, and so was her attitude. And she gave the old woman an alibi
for the time of the murder.'
Tell
nodded. 'I'd like to sit down and go through all this in more detail. Is
Beckman around?'
'She
had really short hair and huge earrings and lipstick,' Bärneflod went on. 'She
looked as bold as brass. And she had a horrible great big snake tattooed on her
neck, like some old sailor.'
'She
had a what?!'
Gonzales
banged his knees against the table, gesturing wildly before he managed to
express himself a little more clearly.
Just
as Tell slammed on the brakes in front of the reddish-brown building, after a
slalom drive along the motorway with flashing blue lights, the display on his
mobile lit up, showing Michael Gonzales' number.
Tell
had noticed Gonzales' disappointment when he was told to stay at the station to
find out as much as possible about the woman with the snake tattooed on her
neck, and quickly. It wasn't the knowledge that Bärneflod would be deeply
offended at the merest hint that he should stay at his desk that influenced
Tell's decision. However prejudiced and socially inept he might be, there was
no disputing that Bengt Bärneflod had over thirty years' experience of this
kind of situation. He operated on autopilot these days, apparently unmoved
whatever the circumstances and kept a cool head in situations where experienced
officers lost it. Whether this was because he was too emotionally handicapped
to be affected by other people's crises was unclear, but in the present
situation it was irrelevant. Tell had to admit that even though he could get
heartily sick of his colleague - and God knows it happened often enough - his
presence was always reassuring when difficulties arose.
Of
course this visit to Solveig Granith hardly put them in critical danger. At the
most there were two women in the apartment, however crazy they might be. It was
just that Tell had a bad feeling in his stomach. He also had
an
inkling
that their tactics over the next couple of hours would hold the
key to solving this case.
Gonzales
briefly confirmed the information he had received from Greta Larsson: Selander
had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic on three occasions between the ages
of eighteen and twenty-one. He had requested access to her notes, but they
could take some time.
'Before
that she was in a secure unit for just over a year - until she came of age. She
was under a youth care order.
Sentenced to psychiatric care
by the court at the age of nineteen, for attempted murder.
The person
she tried to kill was Gunnar Selander - her father. That's all I've got for the
moment. Be careful.'
The
quickening of his heart was familiar from his time on patrol.
The sharpened senses and heightened eye for detail.
Tell
noticed that the handle of the rubbish chute on the second floor was loose, and
the door had been left ajar. A faint smell of rotting rubbish filled the
landing. It struck him that since he had become an inspector the number of
strange stairwells he frequented during the working week had dropped
dramatically.
He
groped for his wallet in his inside pocket. The weight of the pistol felt
unfamiliar but gave him a sense of security, as it always did on those rare
occasions when he strapped on his holster. He rang the doorbell, held his ID to
the spyhole and waited.
Not
a sound could be heard from inside the apartment. He turned and looked at
Bärneflod. His hand too was resting on his gun. He nodded.
Tell
pushed down the handle and the door opened silently.
On
the journey they had gone over the layout of the apartment: the hallway was a
narrow passageway with the bathroom straight ahead. The kitchen was furthest
away on the left, with the living room next door. They recognised the smell
immediately: stale smoke, a lack of oxygen and a hint of overripe fruit.
They
found Solveig Granith sitting exactly where they had left her.
She
was staring vacantly in front of her. Her hands were on her bony knees with the
palms turned up. She looked resigned to whatever might happen to her.
Shards
of the broken dove still lay on the floor. Tell lowered his gun and gestured
over his shoulder. Bärneflod began to search the rooms, looking for traces of
Selander, but they already sensed she was no longer in the apartment.
Tell
crouched down near Solveig. 'Where is Caroline Selander?' he asked calmly.
She
gave no indication that she had seen him.
'We
will find her, Solveig. It's just going to take a little longer without your
help. If you protect her, the only person you're hurting is yourself.'
He
moved a little closer. Still crouching, he gathered up the fragments of the
dove and placed them on the coffee table next to Solveig Granith. Her eyes
narrowed and the reddened hands cupped instinctively, as if she wanted to pick
up the shards and protect them.
'You
can't protect her, Solveig.' Tell moved much closer but didn't touch her. 'You
don't have the strength. And besides, she doesn't deserve it. After all, she's
left you here, hasn't she? She didn't bother taking you with her, so why should
you risk anything for her sake?'
For
a while the only thing he could hear was doors opening and closing, the muted
sound of Bärneflod's movements.
She
hasn't even fucking blinked.
Suddenly
Tell saw in Solveig what he had seen in her son. It was just as Bärneflod had
said earlier: they both had the ability to switch off reality when it became unbearable.
'Where
is she, Solveig? You haven't killed anyone, have you?
All
these things that have happened.
None of that
was
you. But until we can talk to Caroline Selander, you're the only one with a
motive and no alibi. So start talking, Solveig, if you know what's good for
you.'
As
he uttered the last sentence he heard a shout from Bärneflod, who appeared a
second later in the doorway, his gun weighing down his right arm. His
expression was grim.
'Come
and take a look at this, boss.'
Tell
dashed into the hallway. The unpleasant feeling in his stomach peaked, and it
dawned on him.
Seja and her irrational feelings of guilt and her bloody
journalistic ambitions.
In the foyer of the police station: of course
she had been trying to tell him something about Caroline Selander. She had
found out something, but he'd been too arrogant and too tired to listen.
Instead he had driven her here.
To this dark, stinking,
disgusting apartment with these two psychotic…
Holding
his mobile to his ear, Bärneflod stepped into the corridor and pointed to the
smaller room from which he had emerged. A bulb on the ceiling shed light on the
grubby brown carpet.
A
woman in her thirties,' he heard Bärneflod's matter-of-fact phone voice. 'No,
no, she's alive. But I think she's received a severe blow to the head… Yes,
that's right. I think she's actually one of the witnesses we interviewed
earlier.'
She
was lying in an odd position, with one arm bent under her body. At first glance
it looked as if her neck were broken. Tell went cold, but then he saw that it
was twisted because she was lying on her hair. There was blood in the doorway
and underneath her.
Presumably
she had been struck on her way into the room,
then
dragged another half-metre so that she wouldn't obstruct the door. Nobody
bothered to put her in a more comfortable position, he thought with helpless
irrationality. The sinews of her neck were stretched taut in a way that made
the whole scene look as if it had been arranged. This vulnerability disturbed
him the most: how long had she been lying with her throat exposed in this
madhouse?
He
sank to his knees and straightened her arm and her head. Her hand twitched as
he touched it.
Bärneflod
had clearly managed to get hold of the inspector at Borås. He let out an
inappropriate whinnying laugh. Tell's anger was channelled into concentrated
rage against Bärneflod, who had merely established that Seja was alive before
settling down for a nice chat with Björkman.
Bärneflod
let out a whistle. 'Yes!'
From
the conversation that followed, Tell gathered that Bärneflod had information
about a vehicle, a camper van registered in Caroline Selander's name.
'Keep
it down, for fuck's sake,' said Tell between gritted teeth. 'And put out a call
for the van straight away.'
'I
know how to do my job, thank you.'
Bärneflod
was still sufficiently buoyed by the breakthrough not to let Tell's mood get
him down.
'We've
got the bitch, Tell!'
Seja's
eyelids flickered as Tell gently laid her head on his knee. There was blood on
his trousers although most of it had coagulated into a sticky mass around the
wound in her head.
'They'll
be here soon,' said Bärneflod, flicking his phone shut. 'Have you seen all
this?' He gestured around the small room, a dressing room which had clearly
served a different purpose.
Only
now did Tell notice the meticulous shrine to Maya Granith. The walls were
covered with photos of her: as a child, naked by a paddling pool in the garden;
as a ten-year-old in shorts, her arms and legs disproportionately long;
fourteen years old, her hair dyed with henna. There were banners carrying
political slogans and clothes Maya must have worn at different ages. Vinyl
records were stacked on a bench along with teenage novels, school yearbooks and
music magazines. Posters of bands like Sisters of Mercy and The Cure. One of
the walls was papered with poems and pages torn out of diaries.
He
moved closer and was able to read her teenage musings.
On a table covered with a lilac cloth stood a dusty bouquet of
dried roses.
A card protruded from the flowers: Congratulations on your
18th birthday, Maya. Above the table hung an enlargement of a black and white
photograph in a gold frame. Tell guessed it was one of the last ever taken of
her. It was a full-length picture, capturing Maya on a flight of wide stone
steps, laughing at the photographer, apparently unprepared but completely
relaxed. Compared with the sullen teenager in the adjacent photo, Maya had
blossomed into a woman. It was a lovely picture. Tell could easily understand
why someone would choose to pray to this particular image.
Bärneflod
appeared beside him.
'Horrible,
isn't it?
A real temple of the dead.'
Just
as the paramedics knocked on the door frame and stepped into the apartment,
Seja opened her eyes.
'Shit,'
she said as she caught sight of Tell.
Without
bothering to explain himself to his colleagues, Tell went in the ambulance with
Seja to the hospital in Borås. She was awake, if somewhat confused, suffering
from what turned out to be a severe concussion. Flashing his ID, Tell managed
to get a doctor's attention remarkably quickly. The wound on Seja's head would
need stitches and probably result in a substantial lump.