Babylon (40 page)

They could clearly see the apartment’s one room and kitchen. Beckman kicked open the bathroom door while Tell headed for the wardrobe. A few clothes, a pile of books and a laptop. Just as they’d expected.

Without putting down his gun, he pulled the laptop out of its case. ‘We’ll take the books and the computer with us. Do you think he’s gone for good?’

‘Maybe.’

Beckman had the feeling Axel Donner wasn’t planning on coming back.

Tell opened up the laptop and let out a whistle. ‘Just as I thought – it’s Karpov’s!’ He groaned. ‘Fuck! It was him all along! How the hell—’

‘Come on,’ Beckman said, trying to remain positive and keep a cool head. ‘We had no reason to suspect him more than anyone else. Right, let’s start thinking. Where’s he gone? If we put out a call, he’s not likely to get very far. And we think he’s lapsed into some form of psychosis, don’t we? He committed the murders on Linnégatan while in full
possession of his senses – you know how peculiar a killer’s reasoning can be – but now he’s lost the plot.’

‘But what about David Sevic? Was that really Donner as well?’

‘I think so. His motive for killing Henrik and Ann-Marie certainly wasn’t rational by normal standards, but for him there was a logic behind it. Presumably they had upset him somehow. But now he doesn’t need a motive, he’s just following the voices in his head. David Sevic got in the way.’

‘It could be linked to his affair with Annelie Swerin.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘We’d better put her apartment block under surveillance.’ Tell asked for a patrol car to be sent to Swerin’s address, while Beckman crouched down and started flicking through Donner’s books. She groaned and half stood up as she felt a stabbing pain in her side.

They were mostly reference books, related to his studies. There was also a battered notebook full of his handwriting.

Beckman tried to interpret the densely written squiggles, concentrating on the names she recognised – Henrik, Ann-Marie, Annelie and David. Annelie was the only one still alive. She read about what Annelie had heard and done and thought and realised in Istanbul.

‘Listen . . .’ She hesitated for a second, her breathing rapid as she keyed in Annelie’s number. There was no answer.

Why was there no answer?

Her lunch came back up into her throat and she gasped for breath as a sharp, ice-cold claw raked at her belly. The fingers holding the notebook whitened.

‘Get some back-up sent over to Kabelgatan. We need to get round to Annelie Swerin’s place as soon as possible. It looks as if things are more serious than we first thought.’ Tell was already in the stairwell and his answer sounded hollow and muffled.

Beckman took a couple of steps before the ice in her pelvis suddenly surged up through her stomach and into her head via her throat; she staggered towards the outside door. Something’s not right, she thought, she wasn’t going to be able to go to Gråberget with Tell. She needed to go home. A weight was pressing down through her belly, and the scarf she had tied around her hips earlier to support her aching stomach began to tighten, slowly at first, like an iron band. Then she felt a sudden jerk. A piece of barbed wire ripped through her womb.
For a couple of seconds she disappeared; when she came back, she was on the floor. The back of her skirt was wet.

It had happened so quickly, she thought illogically. I would have expected it to hurt more. She felt a stabbing pain in her side as she got to her feet, grabbing hold of her gun, which had slipped from her hands and slid across the floor. Blood was trickling between her thighs, a macabre stain against the pale fabric of her skirt.

Her mobile buzzed. Tell was wondering where she was, no doubt; she could hear him shouting impatiently from outside the building.

Beckman didn’t have the strength to protest as he raced inside and caught sight of her, a quizzical expression on his face as he took in her blood-soaked clothes and the smears on the floor.

‘I’m having a miscarriage.’

She still couldn’t look at him as he rang for an ambulance, ignoring her feeble protests about needing to take her car home.

‘David Sevic’s shop is almost opposite Annelie Swerin’s apartment block,’ she said as he helped her out into the street with a clumsy arm around her, his face creased with anxiety.

Tell didn’t reply, he just stared anxiously at the roundabout.

‘The ambulance will be here in two minutes. I’ll wait until then.’

‘No, you go,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

He pulled up at the same time as the patrol car and raised a hand in greeting. It was Marklund, an older officer he knew well, along with a younger colleague he hadn’t worked with before.

The back-up hadn’t arrived.

Once inside the building he stopped them from going up the stairs; he tipped his head back and listened. There wasn’t a sound from the third floor, but the stone walls were probably very effective at shutting the residents in and keeping the world out.

Tell had phoned Annelie since leaving Donner’s apartment, but there was no response, and he didn’t know what that meant.

‘The woman’s name is Annelie,’ he whispered as they crept up the stairs. Marklund was completely focused. ‘The guy we’re after is Axel Donner. About thirty-five, knows how to use a gun. If he’s here, we can assume he’s stark raving mad.’

The younger officer, Nilsson, suddenly looked ill. He was staring at his raised gun instead of looking for a possible threat. He had probably
never had to use his gun before, not for real, away from the safety of the police-training facility.

Tell noticed the spy-hole in Swerin’s door and pressed himself against the wall so that he couldn’t be seen. He nudged the letterbox open and listened. There were faint sounds, but they could have been coming from a television, from another apartment. He thought he could hear a voice, a whimpering . . . muffled. By a gag? He listened again . . . Yes, maybe.

He gently pushed down the handle just to check that it was locked. There was a risk that Annelie Swerin was behind the door along with Axel. Her life might be in danger, even more so if he shouted into the flat. They could wait for back-up, but that would take time. Time they couldn’t necessarily afford.

Tell stepped aside, making room for Marklund.

It probably didn’t take very long to break the lock, but it would be a long time before Nilsson forgot how time ceased to exist both before and after, metamorphosed into just a few trembling seconds or minutes of action. He was pretty new to all this, used to hearing
theoretically
and
hypothetically
. In the real world, you could make a series of decisions that would turn out to be right only with hindsight. Or you could make the wrong decisions, with devastating consequences. An impossibly short space of time, which was also somehow endless, and only these few seconds mattered.

She was kneeling on the floor with her hands tied behind her back, gagged and blindfolded. The apartment was in darkness, with the blinds drawn and blankets covering the windows. One single candle was burning on the windowsill, making the shadows in the room flicker.

Tell became aware of laboured, wheezing breathing. He was at her side in a second, ripping the tape off her face and pulling the wet stocking out of her mouth. She threw up over his hands and a heart-rending sob welled up in her throat. There was only one other room and that must be beyond the kitchen.

‘Take her outside,’ he said to Nilsson, who immediately helped Annelie Swerin to her feet and out onto the stairwell.

Tell turned to Marklund. ‘You take the living room.’

A book lay open on the kitchen table, along with a pile of notes. A
small television was on, the volume low; was that what he had heard from outside? The bedroom door was ajar, but all he could see was a dressing gown that had been dropped just inside, and the corner of a bed.

Tell pulled one of the blankets from the window. He opened the door between the kitchen and living room wide so that he could see in all directions, then kicked open the bedroom door. A bed, a desk, a walk-in wardrobe. He tore the clothes off their hangers and peered into the darkness, groping along the wall for a light switch.

Once he had established that the wardrobe was empty, he lowered his gun for the first time since they had entered the apartment. Axel Donner had left Annelie; had he changed his mind?

Tell walked back into the living room just as the candle flame sucked in a corner of the curtain. He barely had time to react before the flames reached the ceiling.

‘Bloody hell!’

Marklund came to the rescue; he threw a blanket over the fire, then got out of the way as Tell beat the same blanket against the burning curtain, but it wasn’t enough. The acrid smoke made him cough and his hands were smarting as he hurled one of the sofa cushions at the window, smothering the flames. Annelie Swerin came into view on the street below. No doubt she was yelling, but it looked as though she was miming, pointing up at the window. She was alone; he couldn’t see any sign of Nilsson.

She’ll call the fire brigade, thought Tell. He spun around as he heard a thud.

A second later, the door of the linen cupboard at the other end of the room flew open. As if in slow motion, Tell saw Axel Donner grab hold of Marklund, pressing his gun against his neck, and a feeling of unreality swept over him. The last few minutes flashed before his eyes.
How the fuck had he fitted in the cupboard?
Annelie managing not to choke on her own vomit, the fire.

An eternity had passed since they entered the apartment, and yet it was just a few short minutes. And now the barrel of the gun was pressing into the loose skin beneath Marklund’s chin, his face deathly pale and his eyes teary as he wondered if this was how his police career was going to end.

Tell had had the same thought a couple times himself.

‘Drop the gun,’ Donner hissed, his eyes ablaze. ‘Drop it.’

Tell bent down slowly, placed the gun on the floor in front of him and kicked it away. He raised his hands in the air.

‘OK, Axel, I’ve dropped the gun. Now you let go of Christer Marklund.’

He said Marklund’s name in order to make him seem human in Donner’s mind, but they were probably beyond any form of communication by now.

Donner buried the barrel deeper into Marklund’s skin.

‘Move away from the door.’

Tell moved away, hands in the air, and Donner backed towards the hallway using Marklund as a shield. When he reached the landing, he aimed a sharp blow at Marklund’s temple and kicked the back of his knees hard, sending him crashing head-first into the hall mirror. He landed on the floor in a cascade of broken glass. Donner hurled himself down the stairs.

Tell jumped over Marklund and was halfway down the stairs when he heard Donner crash into Nilsson, who was ready and waiting. Nilsson used all his strength to knock the gun out of Donner’s hand and slam him against the wall. Taken by surprise, with Nilsson’s gun pressed against his stomach, Donner was no longer a threat.

Tell just managed to make out the young officer’s trembling words, which would be quoted for years in the department: ‘Not one more step, you fucking scumbag!’

Donner shuddered, leant forward and breathed very close to Nilsson’s face.

The back-up team screeched to a halt outside.

63

Gothenburg

As Tell walked up the stairs to his apartment – the lift was out of order yet again – his shirt sleeves were sticking to the blistered skin on his
hands and wrists, but now a blessed, cooling evening breeze was blowing through the rooms. Tell had opened all the windows wide, and it provided welcome relief.

When he had thrown his stinking clothes in the bin and showered away the worst of the soot, he realised that he had come off lightly from their incursion into Annelie Swerin’s apartment: his skin was red, blistered and sore, but would soon heal. He rummaged in the bathroom cabinet and found an old tube of ointment and a roll of gauze bandage; that would have to do.

Bärneflod had taken over when he left to go home, since Beckman was off sick. That was fine. Donner was in custody and they had his gun, which would match the bullets retrieved from all three victims: Henrik Samuelsson, Ann-Marie Karpov and David Sevic.

Donner hadn’t formally confessed to the murders, but he had been talking about them, and you could tell from how he looked that he had lost all grasp on reality. He might well be sectioned. Tell had already heard the experts’ initial hypotheses, concepts such as
the terrorising and destructive superego. Heightened impulses. Inadequate defence mechanisms. Lack of sublimation. Lack of empathetic ego functions. Inflexible but split superego
.

Those who had known Donner before his illness took over had described him as taciturn and odd. But he was no longer short of something to say. Dropping the façade of normality had opened the floodgates. He kept arguing with himself, veering between self-loathing and illusions of omnipotence. If anyone could bear to listen to him, they might eventually find explanations of sorts for what he had done.

Tell had no intention of listening to him. As soon as incontrovertible proof was on his desk, his job would be done. And yet he couldn’t help being fascinated.

‘Is it possible to understand someone like that?’

He couldn’t ask Beckman, who was usually on hand to answer his questions about the more obscure corners of the human psyche. Tell sat down to go through the material Karlberg had put together.

A number of years ago, during a trip abroad, Axel Donner had had a relationship with a twenty-three-year-old Englishwoman, Carla
Burke. He had been held on suspicion of depriving Burke of her freedom, of making illegal threats, and of actual bodily harm. The fact that he had not been found guilty was largely due to Carla Burke’s own testimony. She had stubbornly insisted that a stranger wearing gloves had broken into her house immediately after Donner had left, and had dragged her down to the cellar. Everything she said contradicted the relatively insubstantial evidence against Donner.

They hadn’t been able to pin anything on him, despite repeated interviews where it was put to Burke that she was protecting her ex-boyfriend because she was afraid of him.