Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
“No,” said Maria. She stood up. “Now…”
“Of course, forgive me,” said Sara. “That will do. We’ll have to continue later.”
Sara showed her police badge to the receptionist, a young, dark-haired woman in a burgundy-red jacket, and asked for the room number.
“Room number fourteen. It’s at the far end to the left.”
She pointed in the direction that the officer had just gone with Henrik and Ellen.
When they came to the corridor, the policeman was already sitting outside the hotel room door. He raised a hand to show that he saw them. Sara didn’t actually need to accompany her any farther, but went to the room with Maria anyway. Before they parted she turned to Sara.
“If Ellen and I hadn’t gone swimming, what would have happened then, do you think? Would Malin and Axel still be alive, or would we be dead, too?”
It was late before Fredrik could drive back to Visby and from there farther south. It was only a few hours before dawn when he entered the house. Everyone was asleep. No one heard him.
He locked the door and turned in toward the hall, remained standing, and looked at the jackets on the hooks to the right, shoes in a row below. No blood here, no dead bodies, just an ordinary hall.
He took a few steps forward and looked into the kitchen. No dead boy in front of the stove. Only their ordinary kitchen with a carelessly cleaned counter and kitchen table cluttered with magazines, papers, and boring mail that no one bothered to open.
Henrik Kjellander’s kitchen had also been an ordinary kitchen until a few hours ago.
Fredrik went slowly up the stairs. The evening’s events were hard to shake off. What he had seen in Kalbjerga combined two cases that he had a hard time coming to terms with. Violence against children and unprovoked violence that affected regular people. However unusual it was, it had a capacity to make everyday life fragile and unreliable.
He stopped by Simon’s door. It was closed. He hesitated a moment, but then pushed down the handle and opened the door enough to be able to stick his head in. One of the hinges creaked. Simon mumbled something and moved in his sleep. He was tall, hardly seemed to fit in the bed where he was outstretched, would soon be taller than Fredrik.
The years with small children had seemed endless when they were going on. Now they were over. Many times he had longed for that, thought it would be a liberation. Be spared the endless minding and driving around, be spared slushy overalls, spilled-on clothes, sudden angry outbursts, and relentless refusal to perform the simplest little chores. Now he was no longer so certain.
He slowly closed the door and slipped in to Ninni.
“Hi, is that you?” she mumbled barely audibly in the darkness.
“Hi, how’s it going?” he whispered.
He waited for an answer, but realized that she had already fallen back asleep. A little disappointed, he undressed. As soon as he crawled down into the bed beside her, he felt that he did not need to lie there sleepless after all.
It was six thirty in the morning. Henrik looked out over the harbor terminal. The Destination Gotland ferry was docked at the pier. The upper half of the side of the white vessel was lit up by the morning sun, the lower half in shadow from the cliff. The first cars had already started lining up in the many rows. Several rolled up to the gray-and-apricot check-in booths where three sleepy young people had just sat down in front of their computers.
Henrik saw police officers stopping the cars and looking in through the windows, searching for a blond woman in a white car who yesterday evening had killed …
He stopped the thought, tried to send it off in a different direction, tried to just see what was in front of his nose. But it was hard considering what was going on outside the hotel windows. They must not have thought about that when they decided to put them right there.
He turned his back toward the windows. Looked at Ellen, who was still lying in bed under the light blue cover. She was sleeping. Miraculously enough. Looking at Ellen both helped and made everything worse. She was still there, Ellen was still there, he thought. That was life, everything was not over. That was big, actually. Then he thought about her pain, her loss.
Henrik closed his eyes and sat down on one of the chairs that belonged to the gray-brown sofa group. The room was large. A white-stained door led to another room where Maria was sleeping. Or lying awake and staring. It was quiet anyway in there. A kind of suite in all its simplicity. Something that suggested that they would be there awhile. Family room, it said in the folder on the desk. A family room for half a family. A police officer standing guard outside the door.
The room was decorated in white and blue. There were the kinds of things that are usually found in hotel rooms, plus a small kitchenette in one corner. Above the bed hung a framed color photograph of windblown pines on one of the island’s beaches. All of it far away, seen through a thin curtain that only existed in his head. He had slept a couple of hours after taking a sleeping pill.
Henrik ran his hands over the chair’s upholstery. He did not know who he was right now. What would he be without the sleeping pill and the sedative they had given him? He was given three tablets in a small bottle. To take as needed. Who would he be? Exactly what would he feel? It was as if there were different floors inside him and right now he was moving on one of the middle levels, without the possibility of seeing down to the ground floor. At the same time something told him that it wasn’t possible to live there. The air was poisonous, impossible to breathe.
He looked out at the sky, which was light gray. Perhaps because it was early in the morning. Perhaps because it was cloudy. Perhaps because that was how he saw the world. He could not decide which. Or was there actually a real curtain hanging in front of the windows? He wanted to get up and feel, but remained seated.
Saturday morning. Fredrik did not feel completely present. His eyes were cloudy and the back of his head heavy as lead.
He was not the only one who was tired. It was noticeable from their movements as they sat down. But there was also an eagerness to get going, to make progress. Sara jabbed at her notepad with the back of her pen, and Ove rubbed his face with both palms, like a delayed morning washup. Gustav was sitting leaned over the table and conversing in a low voice with Leif Knutsson, who was sitting two seats away.
At eight o’clock sharp, Göran started to go through the state of the investigation, standing in front by the whiteboard. His eyes looked uncommonly dark, more black than blue.
“Henrik Kjellander’s information has been checked with the witnesses and times for connection with cell phone masts, and everything he said checks out, so we can remove him. He drove home from a photo shoot down at Sudret by way of Visby. There he dropped three people off at the airport about six thirty, which all three have confirmed. It also tallies with information from Gotland Air’s check-in. Henrik then took the seven thirty ferry from Fårösund. SOS Alarm took his call at seven fifty-seven, so we can expect that he was parking his car in Kalbjerga a few minutes before that.”
Göran wrote down the set times on the whiteboard, which so far was blank, except for two portraits, one of Malin Andersson and one of her son, Axel.
“The closest neighbor, Ann-Katrin Wedin, says that she saw two individuals bicycle past dressed in bathrobes, an adult and a child, sometime between six twenty-five and six thirty. She was sure of the time because she usually turns on the TV when she comes home from work. She leaves it on in the background with
Evening Magazine
on TV4. When the local news starts at six thirty she sits down and watches. And the two in bathrobes had bicycled past a minute or two before the news started. The witness thought she recognized the child as Ellen Andersson but was unsure when she didn’t recognize the grown woman as Malin Andersson. We can probably assume that it was Maria and Ellen she saw. Neither Ann-Katrin Wedin nor her husband Bengt made any other observations of individuals or vehicles during the evening.”
Göran wrote these times down, too, and then browsed in his papers while his eyebrows glided higher and higher up on his forehead.
“I know that we’ve questioned the ferry personnel, they usually keep good track of the Fårö residents, but it doesn’t seem as though we’ve got that information.”
There was a throat clearing from Leif Knutsson, who was sitting all the way over by the opposite short wall.
“I was the one who questioned him,” he said with his arms crossed over his uniform shirt.
“Okay, then you can inform us,” said Göran.
“Olle Holt navigated the ferry yesterday. He went on at fifteen hundred hours and was still on duty when we ordered the stop. He was a little difficult, but finally spit out the Fårö people he thought had left the island between the seven ten trip and the stop. I’m sure he keeps track of every car, but you know how they are up there.”
There was silent nodding around the table. The Fårö residents were not known for cooperating with the police. There were even rumors going around that ferry personnel called and warned people when there was a police car on deck. Fredrik doubted if that rumor applied any longer, but it had certainly been true at one time.
“This concerns three ferries on which the perpetrator could have left Fårö,” continued Knutsson. “Besides Fårö residents, Olle Holt remembered a little red sports car, a Mazda, a smaller white car with some kind of streamer in the rear window. He was a little uncertain there. It could have been some kind of detail on the car. And finally two older Volvo station wagons about which he did not remember any details. Then, of course, there could have been more that he forgot.”
“Thanks, then we’ll get that into the system, too,” said Göran. “Holt couldn’t say which trip the white car was on board?”
“No, unfortunately,” said Knutsson.
“Too bad they don’t record on the surveillance cameras,” said Ove.
“Exactly,” said Göran and looked at Fredrik. “How did it go with the surveillance cameras in Uppsala? Did we have any luck there?”
He concluded with a little grimace that suggested that he did not count on any positive news.
“No,” said Fredrik. “We were too late. The information no longer exists. I’ve asked the Uppsala police to check whether there might be any other cameras on the road between the station and the library, but it’s probably the same thing there.”
Göran hummed disappointedly and turned to Eva Karlén, who sat closest to his right.
“What do we have from the crime scene?”
Eva adjusted the band that held her hair together at her neck, even though it wasn’t necessary.
“The shoe print from the hall seems to hold. Most likely it comes from the perpetrator, but I want to have someone else double-check. It’s from the front half of the shoe. Unfortunately it has glided in step so it’s not possible to determine the size exactly, but about size seven or eight. I’ll try to find out what kind of shoe. Unfortunately, the wad of hair Malin had in her hand lacked roots, but I’ve sent it to the forensics lab for shampoo profile and hopefully mitochondrial DNA.”
Eva continued to report on findings and observations in the hall at the house in Kalbjerga. She seemed to have everything in her head, didn’t even need to glance at the papers.
“There are no traces of dragging in the blood around the bodies, which for one thing indicates that the victims had been unconscious or in any event incapable of moving once they landed on the floor, and for another that the perpetrator did not try to move or turn over the bodies.”
“Is it possible to say anything more about the perpetrator based on the injuries?” asked Göran. “Height, for example?”
Eva shook her head and shut her eyes briefly.
“No. It’s much too messy. It’s not possible to see that sort of thing now. The medical examiner will certainly be able to, but not until the bodies have been cleaned of blood. He should have been here now, by the way, but there’s an airline strike.”
“Good timing,” said Sara.
“Yes, I know,” said Eva, rolling her eyes.
“One thing I don’t get is why Malin Andersson even opens the door,” Gustav broke in. “I mean with everything that’s happened, the alarm they installed … Shouldn’t she have been more watchful?”
“A conceivable explanation is that she knew the perpetrator,” said Göran.
“The perpetrator may have her own key,” said Fredrik.
The others turned inquiringly toward him.
“If we imagine that it is the same person who is behind everything that has happened so far, the damage, the threats, and that someone lured Ellen away from the school, then the perpetrator has had access to keys during the time she rented the house and was able to make copies.”
“They installed an alarm, but didn’t change the locks? Yes, of course it can be that way,” said Sara, making a face.
“In any event, the lock is not manipulated in any way,” said Eva. “Either the perpetrator got in with a key or else Malin opened the door.”
“Or forgot to lock,” Ove added.
Everyone in the room looked at him.
“I know, not likely, but we can’t rule it out.”
Göran pointed at the times he had written on the whiteboard.
“The perpetrator struck some time between six twenty-five and seven fifty-five. If we weigh in the doctor’s assessment it’s most probable that the murders occurred closer to six twenty-five. Assuming that the time is not random, the perpetrator must have waited for a moment when Malin would be alone in the house. She or he presumably enters the house shortly after Maria and Ellen have taken off down to the beach. In other words, the perpetrator must have kept herself hidden somewhere where she or he could observe the house.”
“From the south you have a good view of the house from a long distance,” Eva pointed out. “She could have parked behind the pile of timber down by the mailboxes, for example. From there you can see the front door and the parking area without being seen yourself.”