Dark Secrets (9 page)

“What’s the name of that guy over there?” She nodded toward Haraldsson, and Torkel looked over his shoulder, even though he knew perfectly well who Ursula meant.

“Haraldsson. He was in charge of the investigation until we got here.”

“I know. He told me at least three times on the way over here. What’s he like?”

“He needs to work on the first impression he makes, but I think he’s… okay.”

Ursula turned toward Haraldsson.

“Could you come over here for a moment?”

Haraldsson ducked under the tape and limped over to Ursula and Torkel.

“Have you dredged the pond?” Ursula asked.

Haraldsson nodded. “Twice. Nothing.”

Ursula nodded. She hadn’t expected a murder weapon. Not here. She turned away and gazed around the area once more. Everything fit.

“Go on,” said Torkel, who knew from past experience that Ursula could see a great deal more than the sodden forest bog in front of them.

“He didn’t die here. According to the preliminary autopsy report, the stab wounds were so deep that there were marks on the skin left
by the handle of the knife. That indicates that the body was lying on a hard, unyielding surface. If you stab someone who’s lying in water, the body will sink down, away from you.” Ursula gestured toward her feet. “If we assume it was even more wet and muddy last weekend, it would have been almost impossible to thrust the knife in right up to the handle. In the softer parts of the body, anyway.”

Torkel looked at her with admiration. Even though they had worked together for many years, he was still impressed by her knowledge and her ability to draw conclusions. He thanked his lucky stars that she had sought him out just a few days after he had been put in charge of Riksmord. She had simply been standing there one morning, seventeen years ago. Waiting for him outside his office. She hadn’t booked an appointment with him, but said it would take five minutes maximum. He had let her in.

She was working at SKL, the national forensic laboratory; she had begun her career as a police officer, but before long she had begun to specialize in crime-scene investigation, and subsequently in technical evidence and forensics. That was how she had ended up in Linköping. At SKL. Not that she wasn’t happy there, she had explained in her five minutes, except she missed the hunt. That was how she had put it.
The hunt.
It was all very well standing in a lab wearing a white coat, securing DNA evidence and test-firing weapons, but it was an entirely different matter to be able to analyze evidence on the spot, then to track down the suspect as part of a team before arresting him or her. That gave her a kick and a sense of satisfaction a matching DNA sample could never provide. Could Torkel understand that? He could. Ursula had nodded.
There you go.
She had looked at her watch. Four minutes and forty-eight seconds. She had spent the last twelve seconds giving him her number and leaving the room.

Torkel had asked around and no one had anything but praise for Ursula, although what finally made him make a swift decision was the head of SKL, who virtually threatened him with physical retribution if he so much as looked in Ursula’s direction. Torkel did more than that: he gave her the job that same afternoon.

“So the body was just dumped here.”

“Probably. If we assume that the murderer chose this spot, that he knew the pond, then he has local knowledge and would have parked his car as close as possible. Up there.”

She pointed to a hill some thirty yards away, perhaps seven feet high and quite steep. As if responding to an invisible signal, they set off, Haraldsson limping along behind.

“How are things with Mikael?”

Ursula gave a start and glanced at Torkel.

“Fine, why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s only a few days since you got home. He didn’t get to keep you there for long.”

“It’s the job. He understands. He’s used to it.”

“Good.”

“Besides, he’s going to some trade fair in Malmö.”

They had reached the hill. Ursula looked back at the pond. The perpetrator should have made his way down somewhere around here. The three of them began to examine the incline. After a minute or two Ursula stopped. Took a step back. Looked at either side for comparison purposes, sat down to get the view from the side. But she was certain. The vegetation was slightly flattened. A lot of it had sprung back up, but there were signs that something had been dragged along. She crouched down. A couple of branches had been snapped off a spindly shrub, and on the whitish yellow broken surface there was a discoloration that could be blood. Ursula took a small evidence bag out of her case, carefully snipped off the branch, and put it in the bag.

“I think I’ve found the spot where he came down. Could you two continue on up?”

Torkel waved to Haraldsson, and they moved to the top of the hill. When they reached the narrow dirt path, Torkel looked around. Their own cars were parked a short distance away.

“Where does this go?”

“Down into town—this is the way we came.”

“And in the other direction?”

“It twists and turns a bit, but after a while you come out on the main road.”

Torkel looked down the slope, where Ursula was crawling around on all fours, eagerly turning over every single leaf. If that was where the body had been dragged down, it was possible it had been hauled out of the trunk or back door of a car just above. There was no reason for the murderer not to take the shortest route, so to speak. The dirt path was compacted and hard, with no chance of tire marks. Torkel looked over at the cars they had arrived in. They had been parked to one side so that they wouldn’t take up as much room on the narrow path. Was it possible…?

He went and stood exactly above the narrow area in which Ursula was working.
If the trunk was here
… Torkel pictured the car parked in front of him. That would mean that any tire tracks would be a yard or so farther on. He moved carefully into the ditch. He was pleased to find that it was considerably softer underfoot than the track itself, but it wasn’t as muddy as down in the valley. He began gently moving undergrowth and branches to one side and got a result almost immediately.

Deep tire tracks.

Torkel smiled.

This was getting off to a good start.

“You haven’t changed your mind?”

The woman asking the question placed a cup of steaming hot tea on the table and pulled out the chair opposite Vanja, who shook her head.

“No, thanks, it’s fine.” The woman sat down and started stirring her drink. Breakfast was laid out on the table. Milk and plain yogurt stood beside boxes of muesli and oats. A basket made of woven birch bark contained slices of soft whole-wheat bread and two kinds of crispbread. Butter, cheese, ham, sliced pickles, and a packet of spreadable liver pâté completed the array. The table contrasted sharply with the rest of the
kitchen, which looked as if it had come out of a catalog. Not exactly the latest trends, but the cleanliness was exceptional. No dishes by the sink, no crumbs on the counters, empty and clean. The black stovetop was spotless, as were the doors of the cabinets. Vanja could swear that if she got up and ran her finger over the herb and spice rack above, she wouldn’t find the slightest film of grease. Judging by what little Vanja had seen, the zero tolerance approach to mess applied to the rest of the house as well.

There was, however, one item that stood out. Vanja tried but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the object adorning the wall behind the woman drinking tea. It was a large-framed picture made of beads that depicted Jesus with his arms outstretched, his white robe hanging down. A golden yellow halo blazed around his head, and the black-bearded face with its intense bright blue eyes was looking upward at an angle. Above his head the words “I am the Truth, the Way and the Light” were picked out in red beads. The woman opposite Vanja followed her gaze.

“Lisa made that when she had chicken pox. She was eleven. She had a bit of help, of course.”

“It’s lovely,” said Vanja.
And slightly scary
, she added to herself. The woman, who had introduced herself as Ann-Charlotte when she opened the door and let Vanja in, nodded contentedly at the praise and took a small sip of her tea. She put down the cup.

“Yes, she’s very talented, is our Lisa. There are more than five thousand beads in that picture! Isn’t that fantastic?”

Ann-Charlotte reached for a crispbread and began to butter it. Vanja couldn’t help wondering how they knew that. Had they counted the beads? She was about to ask when Ann-Charlotte replaced the butter knife and looked at her, her brow furrowed with concern.

“It’s terrible, what’s happened. To Roger. We prayed for him the whole week he was missing.”

And much good it did
, thought Vanja, making noises that she hoped indicated agreement and sympathy, while at the same time casting a
slightly exaggerated glance at the clock. A gesture that Ann-Charlotte seemed to understand.

“I’m sure Lisa will be down at any moment. If we’d known you were coming, then…” Ann-Charlotte spread her hands apologetically.

“It’s fine. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak to her.”

“No problem. Anything we can do to help. How’s his mother? Lena, isn’t it? She must be absolutely devastated.”

“I haven’t met her,” said Vanja, “but I’m sure you’re right. Was Roger her only child?”

Ann-Charlotte nodded and suddenly looked even more worried, as if most of the world’s troubles had just landed on her shoulders.

“They haven’t had an easy time of it. Things have been a bit difficult financially for a while, as I understand it, and then there was all that trouble at Roger’s previous school. Although things seemed to be working out for him recently. And then this happens.”

“What kind of trouble at his previous school?” Vanja said.

“He was bullied,” she heard from the doorway.

Both Vanja and Ann-Charlotte turned. Lisa was standing there. Her straight hair hung down over her shoulders, still wet but neatly brushed, the bangs swept up with a plain clip. She was dressed in a white shirt buttoned right to the top, with a plain knit vest over it. Around her neck she wore a gold cross, with the chain looped over one side of her collar. Her skirt ended just above the knee, and she wore opaque tights. Vanja thought of the girl in some seventies TV series that had been repeated when she was little. Not least because of the girl’s serious, slightly sullen expression. She got up and held out her hand to the girl, who came into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the end of the table.

“Hello, Lisa—my name is Vanja Lithner. I’m a police officer.”

“I’ve already spoken to the police,” replied Lisa as she took Vanja’s outstretched hand, squeezed it briefly, and bent her knees in a small curtsey. Then she sat down. Ann-Charlotte got up and fetched a teacup from one of the cupboards.

“I know,” Vanja went on, “but I work in a different department, and I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind speaking to me as well, even if I ask the same questions.”

Lisa shrugged her shoulders and reached for the box of muesli. She shook a considerable pile into the bowl in front of her.

“When you say Roger was bullied at his previous school, do you know who was bullying him?”

Lisa shrugged her shoulders again.

“Everybody, I think. He didn’t have any friends there, anyway. He didn’t really like talking about it. He was just glad he’d left there and come to our school instead.” Lisa reached for the yogurt and covered the muesli with a thick layer. Ann-Charlotte placed a cup of tea in front of her daughter.

“Roger was a wonderful boy. Calm. Sensitive. Mature for his age. I just can’t understand how anyone could…” Ann-Charlotte didn’t finish the sentence. She sat down again. Vanja opened her notebook and jotted down “previous school—bullying.” Then she turned to Lisa, who was shoveling a spoonful of yogurt and muesli into her mouth.

“If we could just go back to the Friday when he went missing. Can you tell me what you did—if anything in particular happened when Roger was here—everything you can remember, however ordinary or insignificant it might seem.”

Lisa took her time; she finished chewing and swallowed before answering Vanja, her gaze steady.

“I’ve already done that. With the other police officer.”

“Yes, but as I said, I need to hear it as well. What time did he get here?”

“Sometime after five. Half past, maybe.” Lisa looked to her mother for help.

“Closer to half past,” Ann-Charlotte supplied. “Erik and I had to be somewhere at six, and we were just on our way out when Roger arrived.” Vanja nodded and made a note.

“And what did you do while he was here?”

“We were in my room. We did a bit of homework that had to be in on Monday, then we made some tea and watched
Let’s Dance
. He left shortly before ten.”

“Did he say where he was going then?”

Lisa shrugged her shoulders once more.

“Home, he said. He wanted to know who got voted off the show, and they don’t tell you until after the news and the ads.”

“And who did get voted off?”

Vanja saw the spoon pause on its way to Lisa’s mouth with another load of yogurt and muesli. Not for long. It was almost imperceptible, but still: the hesitation was there. Vanja had been only making small talk, a way of breaking the atmosphere of an interrogation. But the question had taken Lisa by surprise, Vanja was sure of it. Lisa carried on eating.