Dark Secrets (15 page)

Vanja explained as calmly as she could that Lisa was not actually a minor in the eyes of the law and that she was still the last person to see Roger alive—apart from the murderer, she added just to be on the safe side—and all Vanja wanted to do now was to check on certain pieces of information. Moreover, as soon as Lisa had expressed a wish for her father to be present, Vanja had agreed, and so far she had not asked Lisa one single question. Erik looked at Lisa for confirmation, and Lisa nodded. Vanja also offered to accompany Lisa back to class and to explain that she was in no way suspected of any involvement in the murder of Roger Eriksson.

Erik seemed satisfied with this; he calmed down somewhat, and they moved to a clean and tidy common room and sat down on the soft sofas.

Vanja explained that, during the course of the investigation, they had learned from two independent sources that Roger was in town just after nine o’clock on Friday evening, and not at home with Lisa as she had stated. To Vanja’s surprise Erik didn’t even turn to Lisa before commenting on her assertion.

“In that case they’re wrong. Your sources.”

“Both of them?” Vanja couldn’t conceal her surprise.

“Yes. If Lisa says Roger was with her until ten, then that’s where he was. My daughter does not lie.” Erik placed a protective arm around his daughter as if to reinforce his statement.

“But she might have made a mistake about the time—that kind of thing happens,” Vanja ventured, turning her attention to Lisa, who was sitting by her father’s side in silence.

“She says Roger left when the news started on Channel 4. It starts at ten o’clock every evening, unless I’ve been misinformed.”

Vanja gave up and spoke directly to Lisa instead.

“Is there a chance you might have made a mistake about the time Roger left? It’s important that we get everything as accurate as possible so that we can find the person who killed him.”

Lisa pressed a little closer to her father’s arm and shook her head.

“Right, that’s all clear then. If there’s nothing else, I need to get back to work,” said Erik.

Vanja didn’t mention that she’d waited half an hour for the opportunity to ask her question and that she also had a job to do. Probably more important than his. She made one last attempt.

“Both of the people we’ve spoken to are sure about the time, completely independently of each other.”

Erik stared at her, and when he spoke his voice took on a harsher tone. Vanja sensed that he was a man who wasn’t used to being contradicted.

“And so is my daughter. Which means it’s just one person’s word against another, wouldn’t you agree?”

Vanja could get no further. Lisa didn’t say a word, and Erik made it clear to Vanja that he intended to be present at any future interview. Vanja didn’t bother telling him that his presence or otherwise would be up to her and her colleagues, and not him. Instead she waited in silence as Erik got to his feet, hugged his daughter, then kissed her cheek, shook Vanja’s hand, and gave a brief nod before leaving the common room and the building.

Vanja stood gazing after him. It would be great to have a parent who was 100 percent on the side of his child. All too often in her job Vanja encountered the polar opposite. Or, rather, families in which the teenagers seemed to be more or less strangers, and the parents hadn’t a clue what their kids were doing, or with whom. So a father who came rushing over from work, put his arm around his daughter, trusted her, and defended her ought to be a welcome change in Vanja’s world.
Ought to be.
Because she couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that Erik was defending
the image of the perfect family with the well-brought-up daughter who never lied, rather than sticking up for Lisa herself. That avoiding gossip and speculation at any price was more important than getting to the truth about what had happened that Friday night. Vanja turned to Lisa, who was chewing on the nail of her ring finger.

“I’ll walk back to class with you.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I know, but I’ll come anyway.”

Lisa shrugged her shoulders. They walked in silence past rows of lockers, and by the door of the cafeteria they turned right and went up the broad stone staircase to the first floor. Lisa kept her head down, and her bangs prevented Vanja from seeing the expression on her face.

“What have you got now?”

“Spanish.”

“¿Que hay en el bolso?”
Lisa looked up at Vanja with total incomprehension. “It means ‘What have you got in your bag?’ ”

“I know.”

“I took Spanish in school, and that’s virtually the only thing I can remember.”

“Right.”

Vanja fell silent. With that brief “right” Lisa had made it very clear how uninterested she was in Vanja’s pathetic knowledge of Spanish. They had obviously arrived at Lisa’s classroom, because she slowed down and reached for the door. Vanja placed a hand on her arm. Lisa stiffened and looked up at Vanja once more.

“I know you’re lying,” Vanja said very quietly as she looked the girl in the eye. Lisa stared back, her face completely blank. “I don’t know why, but I’m going to find out. Somehow.”

Vanja stopped and waited for some kind of response from Lisa. Nothing.

“So now you know that I know, is there anything you’d like to say?”

Lisa shook her head. “Such as?”

“The truth, for example.”

“I’m supposed to be in Spanish now.” Lisa looked down at Vanja’s hand, still resting on her arm. Vanja removed it.

“In that case, no doubt I’ll be seeing you again.”

Vanja set off down the corridor, and Lisa watched her until she disappeared through the glass doors at the end. Slowly Lisa let go of the door handle and moved a few steps away while getting out her cell phone. She quickly keyed in a number. She kept neither the name nor the number of the person she was calling in her address book, and deleted her list of calls every time. She never knew if someone might check her cell. After a few rings the person answered.

“It’s me.” Lisa glanced down the corridor again. Completely empty. “The police were just here.”

Lisa rolled her eyes in response to a question from the person at the other end.

“No, of course I didn’t say anything, but they’re going to find out. One of them has spoken to me twice already. And she’ll be back, I’m sure of it.”

Lisa, who had managed to appear uninterested throughout the entire conversation with Vanja, now looked anxious. She had been hiding this for such a long time; she had put the truth in a little corner deep inside and buried it. Now she was beginning to realize that there were many powers determined to wrest it from her, and her strength was beginning to fail. The person on the other end of the phone tried to give her courage. Pep her up. Provide her with things to say. She nodded. Felt a bit better. Everything would probably be fine. She quickly ended the call when she heard footsteps in the corridor behind her, pushed back a strand of hair from her bangs that had gotten caught in her eyelashes, suppressed the anxiety, and went into her Spanish lesson. Looking as unconcerned as she could manage.

Lena Eriksson had spent the morning in the same armchair as yesterday. Now she had started wandering around the apartment. Chain-smoking. A thin blue mist of nicotine and tar filled the small
three-roomed flat on the first floor. It was as if she couldn’t stay in one place for very long. For a while she had sat on Roger’s still unmade bed, but she couldn’t bear to see his jeans, the piles of school books, his old video games, the lingering evidence that a sixteen-year-old boy had lived in this room. She tried to find peace in the bathroom, the kitchen, her own bedroom. But everywhere reminded her too strongly of him, so she moved on to the next, and the next. Around and around, like the grieving mother she was.

But then there was the other thing too, the other thing that made her wander around so restlessly. The voice.

The little voice deep inside her soul.

Was it her fault?
Was it her fault?
She wished she’d never made those stupid phone calls. But she had been angry. She had wanted to hit back. And so it had begun. The money. The calls, the money, the calls. Around and around, just like her wanderings around the apartment. But could it have led to this? She didn’t know; she really didn’t know. And she had no idea how to find out. But she needed to know. She needed to know for sure that she was just a mother who had lost her son, an innocent person who had suffered the most terrible thing of all. Lena lit another cigarette. Today they would have gone shopping. As usual they would have argued about money, clothes, attitude, respect—all those words she knew Roger was so tired of. Lena started to cry. She missed him so much. She dropped to her knees and let the grief and the pain take over. It was cathartic in a way, but behind the tears she could hear the voice again.

What if it was you?

“You feel like such a bad parent. You think you’re doing everything you can, but they just slip away from you.”

Clara emptied her coffee cup and put it down on the table. She looked at Sebastian, who was sitting opposite her. He nodded in agreement, although he wasn’t really listening. Clara had talked about nothing
but her poor relationship with her son, Leonard, since they walked in. Perfectly understandable in view of the morning’s events, but not particularly interesting for anyone other than the person directly involved. Sebastian was considering whether to point out that her use of the word “you” instead of “I” when she talked about herself was a verbal defense mechanism, a way of making her failure more universal, less personal, thus keeping some of the pain at bay. But he realized that such a comment would be perceived as spiteful and would merely reinforce her negative view of him. He didn’t want that.

Not yet, anyway.

Not when he still hadn’t decided if he should try to get her into bed. He stuck to the soft approach instead. Calm and collected. Understanding, not judging. He glanced at her breasts; they looked enormously inviting in that yellowish brown pullover.

“That’s the way it is with children. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Blood ties are no guarantee of a functioning relationship.”

Sebastian was cringing inside. Hell, that was incisive! Seven years of studying psychology, twenty years of working in the profession, and that was his conclusion, his words of comfort for the woman whose entire life had been turned upside down in just a few hours.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Incredibly, Clara was nodding in agreement, apparently satisfied with his shallow analysis. She even gave him a grateful smile. There was definitely the possibility of sex if he played his cards right. He got up and started to clear the plates and glasses from the table. Clara had already made a start on lunch when he had returned. Leftover potatoes and fried eggs. She had even found a jar of pickled beetroot in the fridge that was still edible. And two low-alcohol beers. Sebastian had eaten with a good appetite, although Clara had mostly picked at her food. The lump in her stomach seemed to be growing by the minute, and she felt slightly nauseated all the time. But it still felt good to sit at a properly laid table. To have someone to talk to.

To go over things with.

Someone who listened. Who was so wise.

It felt calming. He was quite nice after all, even if he was a bit stand-offish.

She addressed Sebastian’s back as he loaded the dishwasher.

“You didn’t come to visit very often, did you? We moved here in ’99, and I don’t think I’ve seen you here once.” Sebastian didn’t answer immediately. If Clara had discussed him with Esther—as she had indicated in the garden earlier—then she was presumably already familiar with the frequency of his visits to his parents’ house. He straightened up.

“I never came.”

“Why not?”

Sebastian caught himself wondering what explanation his mother had given for his total absence. The question was whether or not she had admitted the real reason for their minimal contact, even to herself.

“We didn’t like each other.”

“Why not?”

“They were idiots. Unfortunately.”

Clara looked at him and decided to drop the subject. True, his parents hadn’t come across as the most entertaining couple in the world, but she thought his mother had started to liven up a bit after his father’s death a few years earlier. She’d become easier to talk to. They’d even had coffee together a few times, and Clara had been really upset the day she realized Esther didn’t have long left.