The Crow Girl (20 page)

‘OK. What happened after that?’

Ulrika Wendin was still looking down at the table. ‘I was a bit out of control in those days … We got drunk and agreed to meet him, and he picked us up in his car.’

‘Karl Lundström?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. Go on.’

‘We went to a bar somewhere. He paid for all the drinks, and my friend legged it. He was angry at first, but I promised to go with him for half the price …’

Jeanette could see that the girl felt ashamed.

‘I don’t know why …’

Her voice was getting thinner. ‘Everything was so fuzzy, and he led me back to the car. Then there’s a blank. The next time I woke up I was in a hotel room.’

Jeanette guessed she’d been drugged.

‘Do you know which hotel?’

For the first time Ulrika Wendin met Jeanette’s gaze.

‘No.’

To begin with, the girl’s story had been tentative and fragmented, but from now on it became more clear and factual. She explained how she had been forced to have sex with three men while Karl Lundström stood and filmed it. In the end he too had forced himself on her.

‘How did you know it was Karl Lundström?’

‘I didn’t know who he was until I happened to see his picture in the paper.’

‘And that’s when you reported him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were able to identify him in a line-up?’

Ulrika Wendin looked tired. ‘Yes. But he had an alibi.’

‘Is there any chance that you were mistaken?’

There was a flash of contempt in the girl’s eyes.

‘Like fuck is there! It was him.’

Ulrika Wendin sighed and stared blankly down at the table.

Jeanette nodded. ‘I believe you.’

When Jeanette and Hurtig had left the apartment and were walking across the car park, Hurtig opened his mouth for the first time since they had arrived.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

Jeanette unlocked the car and opened the door. ‘That von Kwist is going to have to reopen her case. Anything else would be a dereliction of duty.’

‘And our case?’

‘Pretty doubtful.’ They got in the car, and Jeanette started the engine.

‘Doubtful?’ Hurtig let out a laugh.

Jeanette shook her head. ‘For God’s sake, Jens, it was seven years ago. She was drunk, and drugged. And besides, there aren’t many similarities with the crimes we’re looking at.’

As she pulled up at an intersection her mobile rang. Who the hell is it now? she thought.

It was Åhlund.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Hammarbyhöjden, heading back into the city,’ Jeanette replied.

‘You might as well turn round. Our newspaper boy, Martin Thelin, lives out in Kärrtorp.’

THE FORMER NEWSPAPER
deliveryman Martin Thelin looked hung-over when he opened the door wearing a pair of black tracksuit bottoms and an unbuttoned shirt. He was unshaven, his hair was sticking up, and his breath could have brought down an elephant.

‘What do you want?’ Martin Thelin cleared his throat, and Jeanette took a step back, fearing that he was about to throw up.

‘Can we come in?’ Hurtig held up his police ID and gestured inside the flat.

‘OK, but it’s a bit of a mess.’ Martin Thelin shrugged and let them in.

Jeanette was struck by the fact that he seemed so unconcerned by their presence, but reasoned that he had probably been expecting them to find him sooner or later.

The apartment stank of spilled beer and rubbish, and Jeanette tried to remember to breathe through her mouth. Thelin showed them into the living room, sat down in the only armchair, and gestured to Jeanette and Hurtig to sit on the sofa.

‘Is it OK if I open a window?’ Jeanette looked around, and when the badly hung-over man nodded, she went and opened one of the windows wide before settling down next to Hurtig.

‘Tell us what happened at Thorildsplan.’ Jeanette took out her notebook. ‘Yes, we know you were there.’

‘Take your time,’ Hurtig said. ‘We want you to be as detailed as possible.’

Martin Thelin rocked back and forth, and Jeanette realised he was searching his drink-sodden, fragmented memory.

‘Well, I wasn’t on top form that morning,’ he began, reaching for a packet of cigarettes and shaking one out. ‘I’d been drinking all the previous evening, and a good part of the night, so …’

‘But you still went to work?’ Jeanette made a note in her pad.

‘That’s right. And when I was finished I stopped outside the metro station to have a piss, and that’s when I saw the bag.’

Even though he had been half drunk, his account was detailed and without any gaps. He had gone into the bushes to the left of the station, pissed and then discovered the black bin bag. He had opened it, and been shocked by what he found.

Confused, he had backed away onto the path, grabbed the pram he used to carry his papers, and quickly headed off through the park towards Rålambsvägen.

When he reached the DN Tower he called the police.

That was all.

He hadn’t seen anything else.

Hurtig was looking at him intently. ‘Really, we ought to pull you in for not getting in touch with us. But if you come to the station and leave a saliva sample, we might be able to overlook that.’

‘Saliva sample?’

‘Yes, so we can exclude your DNA from the investigation,’ Jeanette explained. ‘After all, your urine was on the plastic bag.’

RUSTLED WHENEVER THE
other boy moved in his sleep. He had been asleep for a long time. Gao had counted almost twelve hours, since he had worked out that the clock he could hear faintly in the distance struck once every hour.

Then the clock struck again, and he wondered if it was a church.

He thought in words, even though he didn’t want to.

Maria, he thought. Peter, James, Magdalena.

Gao Lian. From Wuhan.

He heard the other boy waking up.

The darkness made the sounds the other boy was making louder. The sobbing, the rattle when he pulled at the chain, the groaning, and the plaintive, unfamiliar words.

Gao had no chains. He was free to do what he liked with the other boy. Perhaps she’d come back if he did something to the boy? He was longing for her, and didn’t understand why she didn’t come.

He noticed that the other boy kept feeling around in the darkness, as if he were searching for something. And sometimes he called out in his odd language.
Chto, chto, chto,
it sounded like.

He wanted the boy to go away. He hated him, and his presence in the room made Gao feel alone.

Eventually she came.

He had been in the dark so long that the light streaming in hurt his eyes. The other boy screamed and cried and kicked out. Then, when he saw Gao in the light, he calmed down a bit, and stared at him aggressively. Perhaps the boy was just jealous because Gao didn’t have to wear chains?

The fair woman stepped into the room and went up to Gao with a bowl in her hands. She put the steaming soup on the floor, then kissed him on the forehead and ran her hand through his hair, and he was reminded of how much he liked it when she touched him.

After a while she returned with another bowl that she gave to the other boy. He began to eat greedily, but Gao waited until she had shut the door and it was dark again. He didn’t want her to see how hungry he was.

Just an hour later she came into the room. She was carrying a bag over her shoulder, and in her hand she had a black object that looked like a big beetle.

The ceiling had lit up with bright flashes when the other boy died. Gao no longer felt alone; he could move freely in the room and didn’t have to hide from the other boy. She came in to see him more often now, and that was good as well.

But there was one thing he didn’t like.

His feet had started to ache. His nails had grown long and had curled down and inward, and he was having trouble walking without it hurting.

One night when he was sleeping she came in without him noticing. When he woke up his hands were tied behind his back and his feet were bound. She was sitting astride him and he could see the shadow of her back.

He understood at once what she wanted to do. Only one person had done it before, and that had been at the children’s home outside Wuhan where he had grown up. On more than one occasion the old man with the scar had chased him down the corridors. He always got caught in the end, and then the old man took out his knife. He had held Gao’s feet so hard he started to cry, and as he took out his knife from the little wooden sheath he would laugh through his toothless smile.

It wasn’t good that she, whom he liked so much, was doing this to him.

Afterwards she loosened the ropes and gave him something to eat and drink. He refused to touch the food, and when she got tired of stroking his forehead and left, he lay awake for a long time thinking about what she had done.

Right then he hated her, and no longer wanted to be there. Why did she hurt him when he had so clearly shown that he didn’t want it? She hadn’t done that before, and it didn’t feel good.

But a bit later, when she came in again and he realised she had been crying, he could feel that his feet no longer hurt, and they weren’t bleeding either, like they always did when the old man had cut them.

Then he spoke to her for the first time.

‘Gao,’ he said. ‘Gao Lian.’

THE SUN HAD
been up for several hours and had dried the morning dew from the lawn.

Jeanette Kihlberg looked out of the kitchen window and realised that it was going to be a hot June day. No wind, and already ripples of heat from the roof tiles on the other side of the road.

The deliveryman with the pram full of newspapers went past at seven exactly.

Martin Thelin, she thought. Just like Jimmie Furugård’s, Thelin’s alibi was difficult to doubt. While Furugård had been on a secret mission in Sudan, Thelin had been in rehab. Six months in Hälsingland. Hurtig had double-checked the record of his absences from the clinic. Martin Thelin wasn’t involved.

It was now half past seven and she was sitting eating breakfast alone at the kitchen table.

Johan was still snoring in bed. Where Åke was she had no idea. He’d gone out with some friend of his the previous evening. He hadn’t come home, and hadn’t answered when she’d called him half an hour before.

How the hell can he go to the pub when we haven’t got any money? she thought.

Out of the five thousand kronor she had got from her dad, she had given two to Åke. My buddies are paying, he had said. Sure. She knew perfectly well how he behaved after a few glasses. Last of the big spenders, rounds for everyone. Åke the generous friend. Their money. No, her money, which she’d borrowed from her dad, and which was also supposed to support Johan.

She and Åke had hardly seen each other for several days, and she reflected on the failed evening out at the cinema and restaurant.

What was the point in trying to resuscitate a relationship that had stagnated? Why struggle to find your way back to something that may no longer even exist?

It would probably be better to move on. Go in different directions.

The thought of splitting up didn’t scare her. It mostly felt like a nuisance.

Uncomfortable, like an uninvited guest.

How different they had become.

The change hadn’t happened overnight, it had slowly crept up on them, and it was impossible to identify when. Five years ago, two years, six months? She couldn’t say.

All she knew was that she missed the way they used to communicate. Even if they had had different opinions on loads of things, they had discussed them, talked, been curious, surprised each other. The dialogue had slowly developed into two silent monologues. Work and finances were their main topics of conversation, and even then they were unable to conduct a proper dialogue, even though it ought to be so easy.

She felt like she was nagging, and that he was irritable and uninterested.

Jeanette drank the last of her coffee and cleared the table. Then she went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and got in the shower.

It was easy to communicate with the girls on the football team. Not always, but often enough for her to miss them if there was too big a gap between games or training sessions.

Ten, fifteen different individuals with different opinions, preferences and backgrounds, making up a community. Obviously they didn’t all get along with one another, but at least you could talk openly to pretty much all of them. Laughing and joking, arguing, it didn’t matter.

Two players who worked together out on the field could become friends even if they were completely different as people.

Yet she didn’t have any close friendships with any of them away from the football pitch. They had all known one another for several years, saw one another at parties, went to the pub together. But she had never asked any of them over.

She knew why. She didn’t have the energy, it was as simple as that. She needed all her energy for work, and knew that as long as she was doing this job, that had to be the priority.

Jeanette got out of the shower, dried herself and began to get dressed. She glanced at the time and realised she was on the verge of being late.

She left the bathroom, nudged the door of Johan’s room open and saw that he was still asleep. Then she went into the kitchen and wrote him a short note.

‘Good morning. Home late tonight. Dinner in the freezer, just heat it up. Have a good day. Love, Mum.’

It was almost eighty-five degrees out in the sun, and she’d much rather have been lying on a beach somewhere with Johan. But she knew it would be a while before she could think about taking a holiday.

HALF AN HOUR
later she was at her desk on Kungsholmen, and had already had a short, depressing run-through with Hurtig, Schwarz and Åhlund.