Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
“He is extremely considerate and positive, but he hasn’t hit on me.”
How do you know that so definitely? thought Fredrik.
“You’ve never had a relationship,” he said.
“Us?”
Janna Drake stared at him with mouth half open. There was no mistaking that she was surprised, almost offended. As if she was exerting herself.
“Yes,” said Fredrik. “You and Henrik.”
“No, not really.”
“Not even a temporary—”
“But now you have to back off. If you think I would start a relationship with one of my clients. That’s just crazy.”
“Not a good idea, perhaps, I agree. But you’re not his psychoanalyst, of course.”
Janna set down the glass with a bang that presumably was louder than she intended. The determined gaze turned to the side and wandered around the room.
There was not much left of the pleasant atmosphere that had started the interview, but that was his task, to ask the uncomfortable questions. Not considerate and positive like Henrik Kjellander, he thought.
“I’m almost done. Just one last question. What were you doing last Friday?”
* * *
Perhaps it was just as simple as Janna Drake had already said on the phone. She did not know Henrik Kjellander as a private person, thought Fredrik as he stepped onto the light rail at Gullmarsplan. He himself could say that he knew some of his colleagues really well, in the sense that he understood more or less how they functioned. At the same time he knew very little about what kind of lives they led. Perhaps he knew that they were married, had children, and liked to play tennis. But not what they brooded about at night.
Janna Drake thought anyway that he was a bastard, and she had an alibi for Friday.
The wheels of the tram creaked against the rail as it took a long ninety-degree curve. The cars wound out from the enclosed track area at the subway station and came out among cars and scattered pedestrians in Hammarby Sjöstad.
It was the first time he had taken the light rail down to the newly constructed residential area. It had not been there when he left Stockholm for Gotland. Not many of the buildings, either.
He got off at Lumaparken, or Luma as the stop had concisely been christened. Both got their name from the dirty-yellow complex between the park and the canal, the old lightbulb factory that had been renovated into apartments. Fredrik remembered that he had skimmed through an interior decorating article about one of the new apartments. A duplex apartment full of expensive furniture.
According to the address Thomas Bark had provided, his studio should be in an industrial building with a brown sheet-metal facade, immediately to the left of the Luma factory. Fredrik found the door and came into a worn stairwell. On the second floor, at the far end of a narrow corridor, was a piece of graph paper taped up with “Thomas Bark” carelessly printed in pencil.
He knocked, heard steps, and soon the door was opened by a man with short reddish-brown hair. He gave Fredrik a pirate smile. One of his front teeth was completely gold.
“Thomas Bark?” Fredrik asked, slightly disconcerted by the eccentric row of teeth.
“Yes, that’s me.”
They shook hands and he was let in.
“Did you just move in?”
Thomas Bark looked at him, perplexed.
“The note on the door.”
“I see, no.” Thomas Bark grinned. “I like keeping a somewhat low profile.”
The steel door closed behind Fredrik with a scraping sound. He followed Thomas Bark into the studio, a long, narrow room with a very high ceiling. The windows were covered by white sheeting, but daylight seeped in through a narrow slit high up where the fabric had come loose. At the far end of the room was a stand with paper backdrops in different colors. Right behind Thomas Bark was a flash tripod with a large tent-like arrangement that Fredrik guessed would reflect light in some way. The tent stood on end with a square white bottom that shone faintly.
Thomas Bark looked around the room.
“I don’t really know … I never have any real meetings here, so I haven’t arranged any good place to sit. But maybe there?”
He nodded toward a couple of office chairs in front of a counter with large computer screens.
“We can stand here,” said Fredrik. “I’ll try to keep this brief. But it would be nice if there was a little more light.”
Thomas Bark’s face was almost entirely in shadow.
“Of course.”
He quickly found a switch and three rows of fluorescent lights started flickering in the ceiling. The darkness was swept away. It almost made his eyes hurt. Fredrik squinted toward Thomas Bark, who was dressed in a black T-shirt and a pair of baggy black pants with large pockets on the outside of the legs. He was approximately the same height as Fredrik and had a pair of round tortoise-shell eyeglasses that matched his hair color.
“Better?” asked Thomas Bark, scratching himself nervously on the neck.
“Yes,” said Fredrik.
“Okay…” said Thomas lingeringly, with a little coughing laugh at the end of the word.
“I was on Hornsgatan and spoke with Henrik’s agent, Janna Drake, just now. She’s your agent, too, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know whether she and Henrik have ever had a relationship?”
Thomas Bark’s eyes widened. He seemed both surprised and a little amused.
“Did you ask Janna about that?”
“Yes, but I got a feeling that I didn’t get a completely honest answer.”
Thomas looked away.
“I can imagine that.”
“Have they?”
“Relationship is saying a lot, but … Uh, it’s guaranteed completely uninteresting to … well, for what happened…”
Thomas Bark picked up a lens from a small table on wheels right behind him. He screwed off the lens cap on one end, viewed the lens, screwed the cap back on again.
“There is nothing that has to do with Henrik Kjellander that is uninteresting for this investigation. It’s that simple.”
Bark laughed drily and shrugged his shoulders.
“Okay, if you say so…”
He set down the lens.
“They had sex on the bar at PA.”
It was Fredrik’s turn to look surprised.
“But it was after closing and it was a really long time ago. They were like twenty-two, or something like that.”
“But so they did have a relationship?”
“No. It was never more than that bar counter.”
“And you’re certain that they haven’t had a relationship later, either?”
“As sure as I can be,” said Thomas. “Both Janna and Henrik stick firmly to not mixing work and personal life. Like I said, this was years before she started the agency. And Henrik has never been involved with assistants or photo models. Not the ones he worked with anyway.”
“But with others?”
“Did I say that?”
Fredrik looked quietly at Thomas Bark. “Perhaps we should sit down anyway?”
Thomas sighed and looked away again self-consciously.
“Exactly what is it you want to know?”
“I want you to answer my questions honestly and frankly. Perhaps you have received confidences from Henrik that you don’t want to breach. I can understand that. But this concerns a murder investigation. You can’t expect the ordinary rules of the game to apply then. Or perhaps you don’t agree with that?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“I think that the person who killed Malin and Axel is someone who is or has been in Henrik’s vicinity in recent years, or possibly someone who in turn is close to that person.”
“Jealousy. You said that last time.”
“Yes.”
Thomas Bark rubbed his chin with his hand.
“So…”
He cleared his throat, stood silently, cleared his throat again.
“Damn…”
“What?” said Fredrik.
“Well, it’s like this,” Thomas Bark began.
He sounded more definite now.
“The only reason I’m telling you this is because the situation is what it is. I doubt that it will help you at all, but…”
“In this situation it is definitely wrong to hold back anything you know,” said Fredrik.
“I found this out in the greatest confidence. I would be grateful if you kept where you got this from to yourself.”
“I can’t promise that.”
Thomas Bark sighed quietly.
“Henrik had a relationship with Maria.”
For a moment the floor rocked under Fredrik. Did he mean Maria Andersson?
“Malin’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“You mean a sexual relationship?”
“Yes,” said Thomas Bark reluctantly.
It almost sounded as if he was the one who was the sinner.
Fredrik thought of the image of the perpetrator. The pink sweatshirt. But they had gotten to the bottom of all that. Maria could not possibly have anything to do with the murders.
“When did this relationship go on?”
“It didn’t last very long. I think it started some time before Malin and Henrik moved to Gotland, a couple of months before, maybe. Then they met now and then for the first six months after they moved, but not that often, as you understand.”
“Who was it who ended it?”
“It was probably a joint decision. You can understand that yourself. It couldn’t be more wrong. But it was something that happened and … well, I guess they couldn’t help it. Maria and Malin were so tight, Maria was always around and I guess something started up between her and Henrik.”
“It sounds as if there were strong emotions involved?”
“Maybe, but it was completely unsustainable. They realized that themselves. They probably got a little distance to it, too, with the move.”
“Did Malin know that they had a relationship?”
“No, I don’t think so. Henrik should have told her. If nothing else I would have noticed something. I mean, there would be consequences if Malin had found out.”
A reasonable assumption that there would have been consequences. But was it so certain that Bark would have noticed something? That depended entirely on when Malin found out. If she even did find out.
It was high time to have another talk with Henrik Kjellander.
It was late in the afternoon when Fredrik was picked up at the airport. He had slept almost all the way from Bromma and felt rested and energetic as he hurried up the stairs to the criminal investigation department.
The door to Göran Eide’s office stood open and he heard Sara’s voice from inside.
“Welcome to Gotland,” Göran greeted him. “What a fucking mess this has become.”
“Yes, you can say that.”
“By the way, have you seen this?”
Göran turned and reached for a copy of
Aftonbladet
that was on top of the bookshelf behind him. He opened to a double spread and set the newspaper on the table.
Under the headline “The Ex-Girlfriend: I Didn’t Kill Them!” was a large color photo of Stina Hansson by the ferry terminal in Fårösund. Fårö could be glimpsed in the background.
Fredrik pulled the newspaper to him. He had left the tabloid unread on the plane in favor of his nap. He quickly skimmed the story. Stina Hansson averred her innocence and told about her relationship to Henrik Kjellander, who in the text was referred to as “the famous fashion photographer.” She was open-handed with personal details and admitted that she had taken it hard when the relationship ended, but explained that it was a long time ago and that she would never have harmed Henrik or his family. She experienced it as incredibly unpleasant to be a suspect, which is why it was important for her to cooperate in the interview. At the same time she claimed to understand that the police had to investigate anyone with a connection to Henrik.
“I don’t get that people go along with that sort of thing,” said Sara.
“She clearly felt a need to be exonerated publicly,” said Fredrik. “That’s understandable.”
“The question is whether it helps,” said Sara.
Göran folded up the newspaper and set it back on the shelf.
“Sara has produced a couple of names from the hotel lists that we think are interesting. I suggest that you confront Henrik Kjellander with them.”
“I see, who are they?” asked Fredrik.
When Göran turned the hotels over to Sara, he thought it was nice to be rid of them. Better a couple of interviews in Stockholm than tedious browsing through reservation lists. But now he got an irritating sense that he had been in the wrong place.
“Sara can brief you on the way,” said Göran. “Show Kjellander the rest of the lists and ask whether there are any other names he recognizes.”
* * *
Henrik Kjellander was at the Wisby Hotel with Malin Andersson’s family. At first he was unwilling to show up for an interview out of consideration for the family, but he had to give in. Fredrik and Sara took a car to the hotel. Sara drove.
“There are two names that recur on the lists and which are possible to link to Henrik,” Sara began as they rolled out of the garage. “One is Agnes Lind, twenty-six-year-old Stockholm resident who was Henrik’s assistant before he moved to Gotland. She was along on all five Copenhagen trips, stays at St. Petri just as many nights as Henrik. She was also in Östersund. On the other hand, not checked in at Lydmar in Stockholm, but that’s not so strange.”
Sara stopped for a red light and looked impatiently up at the traffic signal.
“Was she there as an assistant?”
“Yes, according to the information you got from the agent, she stepped in as assistant on those trips.”
“And the other foreign trips?”
“No, then he evidently hired assistants on site.”
“She’s an assistant, but you think she may be something more?”
“It’s a possibility anyway. If you can stray with your sister-in-law you can probably sleep with your assistant. I don’t believe a word about that Bark’s talk of separating work and personal life.”
“Maybe Bark believed it.”
“Possibly.”
“Okay, the other name,” said Fredrik.
The light turned red at Österväg, but Sara kept going anyway.
“A Marte Astrup from Copenhagen, editor at Danish
Elle
who Henrik worked for on three of the trips. She was checked in at the hotel on all three occasions.”
“But she lives in Copenhagen?”