Dark Secrets (33 page)

“Hi, sweetheart.” Before he even heard her voice his face broke into a smile. She had that effect on him, his youngest daughter.

“Hi, Dad, what are you doing?”

“I’m having dinner with a colleague. What about you?”

“I’m going to a party at school. Are you here in town?”

“No, I’m still in Västerås. Did you want something?”

“I just wondered if you could pick me up tonight. After the party. We didn’t know if you were back, so Mom said I should call and check.”

“If I’d been at home I’d have been happy to pick you up.”

“It’s cool. Mom will do it. I just thought if you were home…”

“What kind of party is it?”

“Fancy dress.”

“And what are you going as?”

“A teenage thug.”

Torkel had a vague idea what that meant. He wasn’t entirely happy with his twelve-year-old daughter’s choice, but on the other hand he wasn’t there to talk her out of it or to come up with creative alternatives. Besides which, he was confident Yvonne would make sure everything was kept in check. Unlike the split with Monica, his divorce from Yvonne had been good. As good as a divorce could be, that is. Their relationship had been terrible. Both of them had thought so. He had been unfaithful. So had she, he was sure of it. Both of them had wanted out, but with Vilma’s and Elin’s best interests at heart. The fact was that things were better between them now than when they were married.

“Okay. Say hello to Mom and have a good time.”

“Will do. She says hello too. See you when you get back.”

“Definitely. Miss you.”

“Miss you too. Bye, Dad.”

Torkel ended the call and turned to Hanser.

“That was my daughter.”

“So I gathered.”

Torkel slipped his cell back in his inside pocket.

“You have a son, don’t you? How old is he now?”

Hesitation. Although Hanser had gone through this many times over the past six years, whenever her son came up in conversation she always hesitated. At first she had answered honestly, told the truth, but it made people extremely uncomfortable, and after a painful silence or desperate attempt to keep the conversation going, they would find a reason to get away from her. So these days when people asked her if she had children, she usually said no. It was the easiest thing to do, and it was true.

She had no children.

Not anymore.

But Torkel knew that she had been a mother.

“He’s dead. Niklas died six years ago. When he was fourteen.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m so very sorry.”

“No, how could you know?”

Hanser knew what Torkel was thinking. It was what everyone who found out that Niklas had died wanted to know. Fourteen-year-olds don’t just collapse in most cases. Something must have happened. What? What happened, that’s what everyone wanted to know. Torkel was no exception, Hanser was sure of it. But the difference was that he asked.

“How did he die?”

“He was taking a shortcut. Across a train. He got too close to the high-voltage cable.”

“I can’t imagine how you and your husband must have felt. How did you get through it?”

“We didn’t. They say that eighty percent of those who lose a child end up getting a divorce. I wish I could say that I belonged to the other twenty percent, but unfortunately…” Hanser took another gulp of her wine. It was easy to tell Torkel about it. Easier than she had thought.

“I was so angry with him. With Niklas. He was fourteen years old. I don’t know how many times we’d read about kids who had burned
to death on top of trains. Every single time we said they ought to know better. They were teenagers. Some of them almost adults. And Niklas always agreed with me. He knew it was dangerous. Lethal. And he still… I was so angry with him.”

“That’s understandable.”

“I felt like the worst mother in the world. In every way.”

“That’s understandable as well.”

The waiter came over with a plate in each hand. That could have given them an excuse to stop. To concentrate on the food in silence. But they carried on talking as they started to eat, and after a few minutes Torkel realized they would know considerably more about each other when dinner was over than they had before. He smiled to himself. It was nice when that kind of thing happened.

H
ARALDSSON WAS
shivering in his green Toyota outside Axel Johansson’s address, even though he was wearing long johns and a fleece sweater under his padded jacket. He clutched his coffee mug. The first real warmth of spring had begun to filter through during the day, but the evenings and nights were still cold.

Haraldsson felt he had played a large part in the fact that the day had resulted in a call being put out for Johansson. A very large part. His contribution had been absolutely crucial. It was his work in tracing the sender of the e-mail that had led Riksmord to Palmlövska High, and thus to the fired janitor. Torkel Höglund had nodded to him and given him a little smile when he walked past in the afternoon, but that was all. Apart from that, no one had given him the credit he deserved for providing the information that led to a breakthrough in the investigation. He wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. Haraldsson knew he would never get any appreciation for his work. Not from Torkel and his colleagues, at any rate. How would it look if one of the locals solved the case under the very noses of Riksmord?

Before he’d limped home Haraldsson had checked with Hanser to find out if the search for Johansson included twenty-four-hour surveillance on the suspect’s place of residence. It didn’t. The first phase had merely involved a message to all personnel asking them to be extra vigilant during their normal patrols and call-outs. They had contacted friends, neighbors, and relatives and said that they would like to speak
to Axel, but they had been careful to emphasize that he was not suspected of anything at the moment. Whether his home was placed under surveillance was a matter for Riksmord to decide.

Haraldsson made his own decision immediately. It was obvious the man was deliberately staying away. Innocent people didn’t do that, and what Haraldsson did in his free time and where he spent the night was his own affair.

So now he was sitting here.

In his Toyota.

Shivering.

He toyed with the idea of starting the car and driving around for a while just to get some heat going, but then there was always the risk that he would miss Axel Johansson if he came home. Simply sitting there and running the engine for a few minutes was out of the question, partly because the suspect might react to the fact that there was a car chugging away outside his apartment building so late at night and partly because it was permitted to run the engine for only one minute in town. That would be a minor offense, of course, but even so. Rules and laws were there to be obeyed. Besides which, it was completely unjustifiable from an environmental point of view. To warm himself up Haraldsson poured a little more coffee into his cup. Wrapped his hands around it. He should have worn gloves.

He breathed warm air onto his hands and looked at the dressing. Jenny had crept up behind him while he was pouring the coffee from the pot into his thermos, and he had jumped when she slipped her arms around his stomach and quickly slid her hands downward. He had gone into the bathroom to put some lidocaine ointment and a dressing on the small burn on the back of his hand. Jenny had accompanied him, and as he threw the empty packaging into the stainless-steel trash can she had come up behind him again and wondered if he was in a terrible hurry.

They’d done it in the shower. Afterward he’d had to change the sodden dressing and put on fresh ointment. In spite of the quickie in the
shower Jenny had looked disappointed when he’d left. Wondered when he’d be back. Perhaps he’d be home half an hour or so before she had to leave for work in the morning? Hopeful. Haraldsson was doubtful. The plan was to go straight to the station. He would see her tomorrow evening. Kiss-kiss bye-bye.

Haraldsson thought about it as he took a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee. Jenny had been annoyed when he’d left. He knew it. Now he was sitting here feeling annoyed because she was annoyed. He really wanted to… Wrong. He was
going
to solve the murder of Roger Eriksson, but it was as if she had no concept of how important this was to him. Her desire to get pregnant overshadowed everything else in their lives. To a certain extent Haraldsson could understand her. He wanted children too. He longed to be a father, and it grieved him that the process was so difficult. But for Jenny it was an obsession. These days their relationship consisted of nothing but sex. He tried to persuade her that they should go out, to the movies or to a restaurant, but she just said they could watch a DVD and eat at home, then they could “do it” as well. On the few occasions they visited friends they always left early, and neither of them drank anymore. Inviting anyone over was out of the question. The guests might overstay their welcome, preventing Haraldsson and Jenny from getting down to business. He tried to talk about his work, about the problems, first with Hanser and now with Riksmord, but more and more frequently he got the feeling she wasn’t listening. She nodded, made the right noises, answered him—increasingly feeding his own words back to him—and then she wanted to have sex again. It was quite the opposite for the few male colleagues who occasionally spoke about their relationship or marriage; too little sex was the problem there.

Too infrequent.

Too boring.

Haraldsson hadn’t dared mention the situation at home. But he thought about it more and more. What if this continued? When Jenny did get pregnant? Would he turn into one of those people who read
every hyped-up story about every kind of food, and hunted for twenty-four-hour gas stations miles away from home, trying to get a hold of pickles and licorice ice cream? He shook off his thoughts. He had a job to do. That was why he was here. He certainly wasn’t avoiding his wife—was he?

Haraldsson decided to go for a walk to warm up, making sure he could see Axel Johansson’s door the whole time.

Vanja was leaning over her desk and gazing out the window. Most of the view was obscured by the building opposite—a modern glass monstrosity—but at least she could see the night sky and a strip of trees leading down to Lake Mälaren. In front of her were several notepads, a few loose sheets of paper, and a number of black pocket agenda books. They had come from Roger’s desk and were just some of the items Ursula had removed from his room.

An hour earlier Vanja and Billy had eaten a Greek salad down at the Greek restaurant recommended by the girl at reception. The food more than met their expectations, and they both knew they would be back. It was always stupid to take a chance in a small Swedish town. If they found a good place they quickly became regular customers. On the way back she had called the hotel to try to reach her father. Valdemar had sounded happy but tired; the whole day had been something of an emotional roller coaster for him, and the treatment made him drowsy. But for Vanja it was a wonderful conversation. For the first time in ages she didn’t hang up thinking she might lose him. She was bubbling with joy and thought she might as well put her energy to good use. She went back to the station. The truth was that she always worked as hard as she could when they were on a case away from home, but this time the thought of an extra evening shift felt better than it had for a long time. Ursula had finished at six, which both Vanja and Billy had thought was a little odd. Ursula usually worked late, just like the others, and while they were eating they had speculated that perhaps the real reason was
Torkel. However discreet Ursula and Torkel might be, Billy and Vanja had long suspected that they were more than just colleagues.

Vanja started with the loose sheets of paper. Mostly old exams and class tests, a few notes from school. Vanja started to catalog them: exams in one pile, notes in another, various bits and pieces in a third. She ended up with three basic piles, which she then went through again, sorting the contents according to date and subject. Eventually she had twelve piles in front of her and began to go through these with a little more focus on the content. She had learned this method of cataloging material from Ursula. The great advantage was that you quickly gained an overview of the material, and that you looked at the same document several times with an increasing degree of focus. This made it easier to spot patterns or events that didn’t seem to fit, and it improved accuracy. Ursula was good at that kind of thing. Building up systems. Vanja suddenly remembered Sebastian’s comments on the hierarchy within the team. He was right. She and Ursula had an unspoken agreement not to encroach on each other’s areas of expertise. It wasn’t just about respect, but also about a mutual awareness that otherwise it would be easy for them to end up competing, thus challenging each other’s position. Because they did actually compete on where they stood in the chain of command.

And results.

And being the best.

Vanja turned to the rest of the material. The loose papers hadn’t turned up anything, except that Roger was worse at math than Swedish, and that he really needed to work on his English. She picked up the black pocket diaries. They looked as if they were little used and dated from 2007 onward. She picked up the most recent and started from the beginning, in January. Roger hadn’t written very much; it looked as if he had been given a diary for Christmas and had gradually stopped using it. A few birthdays had been entered, some homework, the odd test, and the further she got from January, the fewer entries there were.