Dark Secrets (28 page)

Vanja kept her finger on the doorbell. The monotonous ringing penetrated out through the door and into the echoing stairwell where she and Sebastian were standing. But that was the only sound from inside the apartment. Vanja had pushed open the mail slot and listened before she rang the bell the first time.

Not a movement.

Not a sound.

So now Vanja had parked her finger on the button. Sebastian wondered whether he ought to point out that if Axel Johansson was in the apartment, he would probably have opened the door at some point during her first eight onslaughts on the bell. Even if he’d been fast asleep he would have come to the door by now. Fuck, even if he’d been lying in state in there he would have been on his feet by now.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Vanja took her finger off the bell and turned around. A little gray old lady was peering out from behind a half-open door. That really was Sebastian’s first impression: she was gray. It wasn’t just the thin, straight hair. The woman was wearing a gray knitted cardigan, gray velour pants, and thick socks. Thick gray socks. In the middle of the
wrinkled face perched a pair of glasses with colorless frames, which added to the impression of grayness and transparency. She was peering at the intruders with a challenging look in her eyes.
Which were gray, of course
, thought Sebastian.

Vanja introduced herself and Sebastian and explained that they were looking for Axel Johansson; did she have any idea where he might be? Instead of a “yes” or a “no,” the response was an unexpected question.

“What’s he done?”

The little gray neighbor received the standard reply.

“We’d like a chat with him.”

“Just routine,” Sebastian chipped in. Mostly for fun. Nobody said “just routine” in real life, but somehow it fitted the situation. It was as if the little gray lady was expecting it. Vanja gave him a look that made it clear she was not amused. Not that he thought she would be. Vanja turned back to the neighbor, glancing quickly at the name above the mailbox.

“Fru Holmin, do you have any idea where he is?” No, Fru Holmin did not have any idea where he was. She knew he wasn’t at home. He hadn’t been there for more than two days now. She knew that. Not that she kept an eye on what was happening in the apartment complex, on all the comings and goings, but you couldn’t help noticing some things, after all. Like the fact that Axel Johansson had gotten fired a while ago. Or that his girlfriend, who was far too young, had moved out a few days before that. It had been high time; Fru Holmin couldn’t understand what she had ever seen in Axel. Not that he was unpleasant or anything, but he was very odd. Kept himself to himself. Antisocial. Hardly even bothered to say “hello” if you met him on the stairs. The girl, on the other hand, was very chatty. Very pleasant. Everybody in the building thought so. Not that she had been spying on people, but it was easy to hear things in this building, and she was a light sleeper, that was why she knew so much. No other reason.

“Was there a lot of coming and going at Axel’s apartment?”

“A fair amount, yes. Lots of young people—the phone and the doorbell were always going. What’s he done?”

Vanja shook her head and repeated her earlier answer.

“We’d just like a chat with him.”

Vanja smiled, passed over her card, and asked the neighbor to call if she heard Johansson come back. The little gray lady peered at the card bearing the Riksmord logo, and it seemed to help her put two and two together.

“Has this got something to do with that boy who was killed?” There was a spark in the gray eyes as she looked from Vanja to Sebastian for confirmation. “He used to work at the school the boy went to, but perhaps you knew that already?” Vanja was digging for something in her inside pocket.

“Do you know if he’s been here?” Vanja took out a picture of Roger; it was from the last batch of school photos and was the one all the police officers involved were using. She handed it over to the gray lady, who glanced quickly at the picture, then shook her head.

“I don’t know—they all look the same to me, with their baseball caps and hoods and their great big jackets. So I don’t know.”

They thanked her for her help and reminded her to get in touch if Axel turned up.

On the way downstairs Vanja took out her cell and phoned Torkel. She briefly explained the situation and suggested they put out a call for Axel Johansson. Torkel promised to arrange it immediately. As they reached the door leading to the street they almost crashed into a man on his way in. A familiar face. Haraldsson. Vanja’s expression darkened noticeably.

“What are you doing here?”

Haraldsson explained that they were carrying out door-to-door inquiries in the area. Roger Eriksson had been picked up by a CCTV camera on Gustavsborgsgatan, but not on any of the others, which he should have been if he had carried on up the main road. Therefore, he must have turned off somewhere, and this block was in the possible search area. They were trying to find someone who had seen him on that Friday evening.

Knocking on doors. Vanja had the feeling that Haraldsson had finally ended up in the right place. Axel Johansson’s apartment was in the search area. The straw at which they were clutching had become a fraction thicker.

The group sitting around the pale birch-wood table in the conference room looked exhausted. As they reviewed their progress, it was painfully clear that they hadn’t gotten very far. The fact that the e-mail had been sent from Palmlövska High didn’t exactly reduce the number of suspects. Being able to prove that Lisa was lying had simply confirmed suspicions Vanja had harbored, but it got them nowhere. The most important thing that had emerged from the interview with Lisa was that Roger probably hid things from those around him. They were all convinced there was more to discover about his life outside school. And the suggestion that he might have been having a relationship with someone nobody knew about was particularly interesting. Someone he used to see when everybody thought he was with Lisa. They decided some of the team would focus on getting to know Roger better. Who was he really?

“Have we looked at his computer?” Billy wondered.

“He didn’t have one.”

Billy looked at Vanja as if he had misheard.

“He didn’t have a computer?”

“Not according to the list the local cops made when they went to his house.”

“But he was sixteen. Could it have been stolen? Like his watch?”

“He didn’t have a laptop with him on the CCTV footage,” Torkel interjected. Billy shook his head as he tried to imagine the suffering the poor boy must have endured. Imagine not being online. Isolated. Alone.

“He could still have been active on the Internet, of course,” Torkel went on. “On Lisa’s computer, or at a youth center or Internet café. See if you can find him anywhere.” Billy nodded.

“And then there’s Axel Johansson.” Torkel looked around the table, and Billy picked up the ball.

“We got nothing from today’s door-to-door inquiries. Nobody could remember seeing Roger in the area on Friday evening.”

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,” Vanja said quickly.

“It doesn’t mean he
was
there, either,” Billy countered.

“What have we got on Johansson, apart from the fact that he lives in an area where Roger may or may not have been on the Friday when he disappeared?” said Sebastian.

“Roger got him fired from his job at the school,” said Vanja, “and that’s the closest thing we’ve got to a motive so far.”

“He’s been gone for two days,” said Billy. Sebastian felt a stab of impatience. He had been with Vanja all day. Heard exactly the same things as her. He was well aware that there was something that could be interpreted as a motive and that Axel Johansson hadn’t been home for a couple of days.

“Apart from that, I meant.”

There was a brief silence around the table. Billy leafed through his papers, found what he was looking for.

“Axel Malte Johansson. Aged forty-two. Single. Born in Örebro. Has moved around a lot within Sweden. During the past twelve years he’s lived in Umeå, Sollefteå, Gävle, Helsingborg, and Västerås. Came here two years ago. Got the job at Palmlövska. Several payment default notices. No court judgments against him, but he has featured in several investigations into check fraud and forgery. All dropped due to lack of evidence.”

Vanja still felt slightly better. At least he was mentioned in criminal records. That definitely made Axel Johansson more interesting to the investigation. One of the incontrovertible truths about murder inquiries was that it was rarely those who had never committed any kind of offense who committed murder or manslaughter. Usually such extreme crimes were merely the pinnacle of an escalating scale of criminality or violence. The road to perdition was generally lined with other offenses,
and there was almost always some kind of relationship between the murderer and the victim.

Almost always.

Vanja wondered whether she should mention the thought that had occurred to her earlier: that perhaps the murderer hadn’t known Roger at all. That they were just wasting their time putting all this effort into building up a detailed picture of the boy. Perhaps they should be tackling this from a completely different angle. But she kept quiet. She had been involved in solving fourteen murders so far. In every case the perpetrator and the victim had known each other, even if it had been no more than a fleeting acquaintance. It was highly unlikely that a complete stranger had murdered Roger. If this was the case, then the four of them sitting around the table were well aware that this particular murder would almost certainly remain unsolved. The chances of the police tracking down an unknown murderer with no link to his victim were very small, particularly in view of the minimal forensic evidence in this case. The breakthrough in DNA technology in the 1990s was the main reason such cases could be cleared up, but when a body had been lying in water, there were usually no traces of DNA from the perpetrator. The task they faced was not an easy one.

“Are we sure that Axel Johansson is keeping out of the way? I mean, could he have gone away for a few days, visiting an elderly parent or something?” Sebastian’s reasonable contribution didn’t exactly help.

Billy glanced at his papers to check.

“Both his parents are dead.”

“Okay, but perhaps he’s gone to visit somebody who’s still alive?”

“Possibly,” Torkel agreed. “We don’t know where he is.”

“Can’t Ursula go and poke around a bit in his apartment?” Sebastian suppressed a yawn. The air quality in the room had deteriorated quickly. Obviously the air-conditioning system wasn’t as new as everything else.

“We haven’t got enough for a search warrant. Maybe if we’d been able to link Roger to the area, but not as things stand.”

A resigned silence pervaded the room. Billy lifted the gloomy atmosphere; one of his great strengths was his constant ability to look forward, even when the doubts began to pile up.

“I’ve been in touch with SKL. They’ll let us have the existing texts on Roger’s phone, and they’re retrieving those that have been deleted. Plus the lists of calls are on the way from the operator; I’m expecting those this evening.” Billy broke off as Vanja’s phone rang. She looked at the display, apologized, and left the room. Torkel and Billy watched her go. They couldn’t remember Vanja ever prioritizing a private call over the job. It must have been important.

The call from her father had stirred up a lot of feelings, and Vanja left the station to get her head straight. She generally managed to keep her work and her private life far apart, two parallel lines that seldom crossed. But things had become much more difficult over the past six months. Her colleagues hadn’t noticed anything—she was too disciplined for that—but it had taken its toll.

The speculation.

The anxiety.

In the center of her whirling thoughts was the man she loved more than anything in the world: her father, Valdemar. If you push anxiety aside, it always comes back. The more firmly you drive it away, the stronger it is on its return. Lately it had been getting worse; Vanja had started to wake earlier and earlier each morning, and found it impossible to get back to sleep.