Dark Secrets (58 page)

The answer could be there.

If he truly wanted to know what it was.

As he stood there he realized that there had actually been some positive aspects to everything that had happened. There were the letters and the immense possibility they opened up, and the case itself, working with Riksmord, had given him energy. There had been something else to occupy his days instead of the self-reproach and angst that had been his companions for far too long. Those feelings hadn’t gone away, of course—the dream was still there every night and the scent of Sabine still woke him every morning—but the strength of his loss no longer crippled him. He had been able to touch the possibility of a different life. This was both frightening and tempting at the same time. There was something safe and secure about the life he had known for so long. However negative it might be, there was comfort in the routine. It was
an affiliation that he had somehow chosen himself, and which appealed to his innermost being.

The conviction that he didn’t deserve happiness.

That he was damned.

He had known it ever since he was a child. It was as if the tsunami had merely confirmed it, in fact.

He turned to look at Clara’s house. She had come out onto the steps and was standing there, staring at him. He ignored her. Perhaps he was at a critical moment in his life, after all. Something had definitely happened. He hadn’t been with a woman since Beatrice. Hadn’t even given it a thought. That had to mean something. He glanced at his watch: 7:20. The agent ought to be here now. They were supposed to meet at seven to get the contract signed so that he could catch the eight thirty train to Stockholm. That was the plan. So why wasn’t he here?

Sebastian marched crossly into the house and switched on the kitchen light. Called Peter Nylander, the agent, who apologized when he answered after a couple of rings; he was still busy with a viewing and wouldn’t be able to come over until first thing tomorrow morning at the earliest.

Typical.

Another night in this fucking house.

So much for that critical moment in his life.

Torkel had taken off his jacket and shoes and collapsed on the soft hotel bed, exhausted. He had switched on the television, only to switch it off again when he saw the footage from the press conference. It wasn’t just that he hated looking at himself; the whole case was bothering him. He closed his eyes and tried to rest for a while, but it was impossible. He couldn’t escape the feeling of unease. The circumstantial evidence was strong, he had to admit that; after all, he was the one who had put it all together, but the irrefutable forensic evidence was missing. The evidence that would make him absolutely certain they were right.

He was most concerned about the lack of any traces of blood. Builder’s plastic or no builder’s plastic, blood was a difficult substance for a perpetrator to get rid of completely. An organic fluid so full of trace elements that only a microscopic amount was needed to leave evidence. Roger had bled profusely. And yet there were no traces of blood in the Volvo. Ursula felt the same, he knew. She had spent a couple of frustrating hours on the car after the meeting but had found nothing. If he knew her as well as he thought he did, she would still be there, going over it again. Missing the notebook at Ragnar Groth’s house had been more than enough; she wasn’t going to let anything go now until she had triple-checked it. But there had been no stopping Hanser, or even slowing her down, and she had managed to get the chief superintendent on her side. Torkel and Hanser had met him half an hour before the press conference, called by Hanser.

Torkel had begged for more time; surely one more day wouldn’t make any difference? But he soon realized that the two people in front of him wanted to win now. As he frantically tried to persuade them to take a more cautious line it became clear that they were politicians rather than police officers. For them it was important to get the case cleared up so that they could move on in their careers without blotting their copybook. For him, the resolution was more than that. It was the truth. It was what the victims deserved, not something linked to his own career. In the end they had overruled him. He could have fought harder, he knew that, but he was tired, worn out, and he too just wanted to leave this case behind him. Not very good reasons, but that was the reality of the situation.

The decision wasn’t his to make, in any case. It was the chief superintendent’s. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to make the best of things. It was something you got used to in an organization like the police service. Otherwise you could end up like Sebastian, an impossible oddball whom nobody wanted to work with anymore. Torkel reached for the remote control again, hoping the news was over, but before he had time to switch on the television there was a tentative knock on the door. He
got up and opened it to find Ursula standing there. She looked tired too.

“Have you found something?”

She shook her head.

“The car shows zero as far as blood proteins and even albumen is concerned. It’s just not there.”

Torkel nodded. They stood there for a while; neither of them seemed to know what to say next.

“So we’re going home tomorrow, then?” she said eventually.

“I guess so. Hanser is going to want to bring the case to a conclusion herself, and we’re here at her request.” Ursula nodded to show she understood and turned to leave. Torkel stopped her.

“Did you just come to tell me about the car?”

“Not really.” She looked at him. “But that will have to do, I think. I don’t really know what else to say.”

“Sebastian’s gone, anyway.”

Ursula nodded.

“But everything else is a mess.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that.”

“I don’t think you’re the only one to blame, somehow.”

She looked at him. Took a step toward him and touched his hand.

“But I thought you knew me. I really did.”

“I think I do now.”

“No, I’ll have to make things even clearer in future.”

Torkel laughed out loud.

“I think you made things perfectly clear. May I be so bold as to invite you in?”

“You could try.” She smiled at him and walked into the room. He locked the door behind her. She hung her bag and jacket on the back of the chair and went for a shower. Torkel took off his shirt and tidied the bed. That was how she liked it. First she took a shower, then it was his turn. Then he slid into bed beside her. That was the routine, that was the way she wanted it. Her rules.

Only at work.

Never on home turf.

No plans for the future.

And, thought Torkel, she must have his unswerving loyalty.

That was something he needed to add to the list.

S
EBASTIAN WAS
finding it difficult to get to sleep. There was too much whirling around in his head. Too much had happened. At first he thought it was the Stockholm address that was haunting him, preventing him from winding down. Perhaps that wasn’t so surprising; how could he sleep with such an incomprehensible opportunity or risk ahead of him? But it wasn’t just the address. There was something else, something other than the possible consequences of a letter from the past. Another image. Much more current, much clearer. The image of a boy walking toward his death across a soccer field. A boy he couldn’t get a handle on. Hadn’t been able to from the start. That was the problem, he thought. He and the others had begun to focus on the periphery too quickly, rather than the center. Axel Johansson, Ragnar Groth, Frank Clevén. It was logical. They were looking for a killer.

They had, however, forgotten the victim. Sebastian had a feeling that was where they had started to lose the coherence of the whole picture. Roger Eriksson. The young boy at the heart of the tragedy was still a mystery.

Sebastian got up and went into the kitchen. There were some bottles of mineral water in the fridge. He opened one and sat down at the kitchen table. He grabbed his bag and took out some paper, a pen, and the material he still had relating to the investigation. Files and papers he should have handed in. He’d forgotten he still had them, and he
wasn’t the type to return a few photocopies. He never had been. On the contrary, he preferred to have as much material as possible at hand, precisely for occasions such as this. He had always worked this way when he’d been on the job long ago, and he was glad he hadn’t lost the habit of filling his bag. Unfortunately there wasn’t much on Roger, apart from some documents they had taken from the two schools he had attended. Sebastian put them to one side, opened up his pad, picked up his pen, and began to think methodically. At the top he wrote:

Sebastian tore off the page and put it right at the top of the table. He liked to work with key words on single sheets of paper; they helped his thoughts to flow smoothly. It was a matter of getting a feeling for the parts of the skeleton to which he had access, so that he could see how it might be possible to turn and twist them, to build on them. He carried on:

Roger’s limited circle of friends was one of the problems for the police. He had too few companions, too few who knew anything about him. Lisa had only pretended to be his girlfriend, and even his childhood friend Johan had been slipping away from him. Roger was a lonely person. Lonely people were always the most difficult to come to grips with.

With Peter Westin, who was dead. Probably to have someone to talk to. Which emphasized the point about how lonely Roger was even more strongly. Perhaps he also had something he needed to work through and talk about.

Selling booze and that whole business with Axel Johansson had turned out to be a distraction. But Roger was a boy prepared to go quite a long way for money. Money he needed in order to fit in. Particularly in his new school environment, the “posh” confines of Palmlövska High.

The amoral attitude toward money seemed to be a family trait. The blackmail scenario, however, still seemed credible. Lena knew something about Ragnar Groth, and he had been willing to pay to keep it quiet. It had to be something that could damage the reputation of the school, because that was what he had lived for. Roger was the only link between Lena and Groth that Sebastian knew about. This led him to:

He quickly crossed it out.

It was this proposition that had bothered him the most when it came to the circumstantial evidence. It was the type of thinking that could become too dominant and could end up influencing an entire investigation. Now he wanted to be able to move freely instead, not to lock himself into a particular point of view; to look at all the connections and contexts without overloading them with significance. The solution often lay in the minor details. He knew that, so instead he wrote:

That line was too weak as well. It was based on a feeling Lisa had, something Vanja had picked up on and pushed. A feeling he shared. But it could just as easily have been their subjective interpretation of the word “secret.” If a person was hiding something, it probably had
something to do with sex. Was there anything else to suggest that they were right, apart from a feeling? Yes, there was, in fact. He wrote down the next heading:

That was what Johan had said to Vanja and him when they had spoken to him at the campsite. Perhaps it was more important than Sebastian had first thought. According to Johan, that was the reason he and Roger had drifted apart. It indicated an interest in sex on Roger’s part that was so great that Johan had found it difficult to deal with. But who was Roger having sex with? Not Lisa. So who?

This also bothered Sebastian. Roger’s final conversation. When he had tried to get hold of Johan at home that Friday evening without success, why hadn’t he tried Johan’s cell? For a while they had worked on the assumption that he hadn’t had time, but now they had traced his final walk via the CCTV cameras, there was no longer anything to suggest that this was the case. On the contrary, Roger was walking through the town for quite a long time after the phone call to Johan’s house, before he got in the car. So he had time. The most credible alternative was that his reason for calling Johan wasn’t all that important. Perhaps leaving a message was enough. Perhaps.

Sebastian went and got another bottle of water out of the fridge. Was there anything he’d forgotten? Quite a lot, no doubt. He was starting to feel tired, frustrated at how difficult it was to get a handle on Roger. He knew he was missing something. He started flicking through the school documents, the yearbook, Roger’s most recent reports. He found nothing apart from the fact that Roger’s work had improved. Particularly in Beatrice’s subjects. She seemed to be a good teacher. That was just about all he could find.