Frozen Moment (40 page)

    He
stepped through a rattling beaded curtain.

    'Mum!
You promised to move all the crap from the landing today!'

    A
woman in a long dress
appeared,
her frizzy
chocolate-brown hair like a cloud around her shining face.

    'Michael.'

    She
examined Tell from head to toe without a hint of embarrassment, making him feel
like a ten-year-old visiting a classmate for the first time, although he didn't
think this woman was much older than him.

    'And
you've brought a friend with you.'

    Gonzales
rolled his eyes.

    'This
is my mother, Francesca. This is a colleague, Mum. Christian. He just needs to
pop to the toilet.'

    After
this elegant introduction, Tell felt it was time to take command of the
situation. With his hand outstretched he took a couple of steps towards
Francesca Gonzales, who backed away in horror, pointing at his feet.

    
'Shoes, please.'

    Tell
stopped short.

    'But
I just wanted to pop to the toilet.'

    
'Bathroom there.'
She tapped on a door with a ceramic heart
on it. 'Then dinner.
Been ready since six.'

    'Mum,'
pleaded Gonzales in embarrassment. 'Christian's got other things to do.'

    She
vanished into the kitchen without listening to a word he said.

    'Perhaps
I should… you know.' Tell gestured towards the front door. He couldn't remember
when he'd last visited someone's mother.

    Gonzales
grinned.

    'Do
a runner? You try telling her that.'

    His
mother's generous frame once again filled the kitchen doorway. She wiped the
sweat off her forehead and slapped Gonzales on the backside.

    'Michael,
what is the matter with you? Show your friend round.
Pastel
de choclo
ready in three minutes.'

    Tell
opened his arms in a vague gesture. He was hungry, after all.

    Apart
from Michael and his mother, the Gonzales family consisted of his father Jose -
a skinny taciturn man who smiled and shook his head when Tell spoke to him -
and Eva, who at twenty-four was the oldest girl, and so beautiful that Tell
dropped his fork on his plate when she directed her dark brown eyes at him. She
explained politely that her father wasn't very talkative.

    'Isn't
that right, Dad?'

    Gabriella,
the middle sister, was a typical sulky seventeen-year-old. When she had
finished eating she shut herself in her room and turned the volume on MTV up so
high that Francesca had to hammer on the door and yell at her to turn it down.

    The
youngest was Maria, an eleven-year-old whirlwind whose idol was Elena
Paparizou. When the table was cleared and Tell once again started to mutter
about making a move, she made him sit on the sofa and put on a performance,
miming into a can of hairspray and practising her dance moves.

    Francesca,
who was drying the dishes with Eva, shook her head and said something in
Spanish, but Jose Gonzales just laughed at his youngest daughter's antics, lit
his pipe, and after inhaling the cherry- scented smoke got up and went over to
a dark brown cupboard with a pattern of frosted flowers on its glass door. He
took out a bottle of brandy and poured measures into three red and green glasses.
When he had silently served Tell, his son and himself, he nodded seriously and
knocked back his drink. Then he put the glass to one side and closed his eyes.
After a while he started snoring.

    The
heat spread through Tell's spine. Gonzales picked up the bottle with an
enquiring expression, but Tell shook his head.

    'No,
I've got to get home.' Tell could feel how tired he was. 'It's getting late. We
ought to get some sleep. It was a good day's work.'

    'So
what do you make of it?'

    
'Of what?
The day's work?
We'll
have to see. But there's one thing about this whole case that I really don't
like.'

    'Which
is?'

    
'These two guys.
They were obviously shot by the same
killer, but that's the only thing about them that matches. I mean, we've got
Lars Waltz, a photographer with artistic ambitions.
Divorced
suburbanite with two well-behaved teenage children.
A bitter ex-wife,
that's true, but not bitter enough to kill him.
Grew up in a
normal family, no hint of anything criminal.
Fairly well balanced, has
friends, is popular, has a relationship. And then we have Olof Bart, a complete
oddball.
Troubled childhood, criminal activity from an early
age.
Never had a long-term relationship with a woman,
as far as we know.
Socially inept.
Unbalanced.
Makes a living doing this and
that, not all of which is strictly legal.
Lives alone in the forest;
nobody wants to let on that they know him.'

    'You're
wondering what these two men have in common.'

    
'Exactly.
Why would you go on a killing spree, taking out Mr
Average and then Mr Weirdo, in a very similar way, as if it were some kind of
ritual? I mean, it would have been enough to shoot them, but to run over them
as well?'

    Gonzales
followed Tell into the hallway.

    'We
have to assume that their paths crossed somewhere, however unlikely it seems.'

    Tell
nodded mournfully.

    'And
the worst of it is, the more we look into it, the more unlikely it seems.'

    'We
have to assume that both of them crossed the murderer's path at some point,'
said Gonzales, repeating Tell's words from the previous evening.

    Tell
was fifteen minutes late for morning briefing, and was fully aware of how
annoyed he was whenever anyone else turned up late. His head was aching from
too little sleep. Or perhaps it was the large whiskey he had knocked back just
before he fell into bed, exhausted, at three o'clock in the morning.

    He
poured himself a coffee and glanced at Gonzales. Evidently he was still
enjoying the privilege of youth, the ability to look fresh even when you ought
to resemble a withered apple.

    'I
think we can come back to that point after we've run through the new
information. We'll spend the final part of the meeting thinking about what
fresh conclusions we can draw. I can start with my report on the meeting with
social services.'

    An
agenda was quickly agreed, with Bärneflod volunteering to take notes, which
took Tell by surprise.

    'We've
learned that Bart was placed in a foster home in Olofstorp, with a family
called Jidsten, from the age of eleven to seventeen.'

    'Have
you spoken to them?' asked Beckman.

    
'Only on the phone.
They live up in Jämtland these days.'

    'But
Waltz wasn't living in Olofstorp at that time,' Beckman pointed out. 'When Bart
was a teenager living there, Waltz was in Majorna.'

    'I
know,'
sighed
Tell. 'But perhaps we're getting
closer.'

    'I've
been going after Susanne Pilgren.'

    Bärneflod
leaned over and gave Karlberg a slap on his bare arm.
'Bloody
hell.
Did you get anywhere?'

    
'Very funny.
I have been trying to find her, if I can
rephrase things so that even Bärneflod can understand. She seems to be a
frequent guest at a hostel for homeless women; the place is called Klara. The
supervisor at the mission hostel also knew who she was, but she doesn't go
there as often. She's registered with social services in Hogsbo, but she hasn't
turned up to a meeting with her social worker in over a year. They found her a
place in a boarding house in the eastern part of the town.
Linden's
B B.'

    'A
boarding house?' said Tell suspiciously.

    'That's
what they call it. Apparently, social services pay for a certain number of
places for homeless people at Linden's. And it's not cheap.'

    'OK,'
said Tell. 'But you don't know where she is now?'

    Karlberg
ignored the impatient undertone.

    'No,
but I've asked the staff in all three places to get in touch as soon as they
see her. I can also tell you that she is no longer known to anyone as Susanne
Pilgren, but as Susanne Jensen. She got married ten years ago, and carried on
using her married name even though they got divorced the following year. So
she's registered as Pilgren, but uses the name Jensen.'

    He
shook his head as if she had changed her name purely to make life difficult for
him.

    'We'll
wait to hear from them, then,' said Tell. 'I've had a closer look at the crime
Bart committed when he was sixteen,' he went on. 'Armed robbery, but the pistol
turned out to be a replica. He was alone, but a friend was outside keeping the
engine running. The assistant was too shaken up to remember anything but Bart's
appearance, and they never found out who his accomplice was.'

    'Couldn't
they get it out of him?'

    
'Not a word, apparently.
He seems to have been good at
keeping quiet even then. When it came to sentencing, they took into account the
fact that he had already been done for nicking a car - no, two cars.
His foster-father's car and another one.
Both when he was
fourteen.'

    'So
his foster-father reported him for stealing the car?' said Beckman.

    'Indeed
he did,' said Tell. 'The secure unit, Villa Björkudden, is still there today,
although it has a slightly different brief. These days it specialises in
dealing with young men with schizophrenia or some kind of psychosis. Anyway, a
couple of people who worked there in the old days are still on the staff. One
of them is the supervisor now: Titti Moberg-Stark. She might able to help us
and is going to look in the old registers to see who was there at the same time
as Bart. We might get something out of that.'

    Tell
pushed a route map over to Bärneflod.

    'The
place is outside Uddevalla. They've set aside some time for us tomorrow
morning. I thought you might deal with that, Bärneflod.' He moved on quickly.
'What else have we got?
Beckman?'

    Karin
Beckman cleared her throat. She was hoarse and looked as if a few hours' sleep
would make her feel a lot better.

    'Yes,
what else have we got?' she muttered. She straightened her back and carried on,
her voice stronger. 'I've been going through the list of calls from Lars Waltz
and Lise-Lott Edell's landline, but I didn't get anywhere. Lars also had a
third phone, a mobile. There were very few incoming and outgoing calls on that
over recent weeks. Zachariasson, Lars's childhood friend, came up a few times.'
She shrugged. 'It's hard with such a wide search area.
Hard
to know where to start digging.'

    'Zachariasson's
in the clear, isn't he?' said Tell, turning to Bärneflod.

    'Yes
and no. He has an alibi for the Tuesday evening - he was out with three
colleagues and a former classmate. He went home alone that night, but he
remembered he'd travelled up in the lift with a neighbour. The neighbour
confirmed this. And another neighbour banged on the wall when he was playing
loud music in the living room a couple of hours later. The neighbours'
statements show that he was at home until at least three o'clock in the
morning. Of course he could have gone out first thing-'

    'Yes,
but we know that Waltz was murdered earlier than that. And he doesn't have a
motive,' Tell interrupted. 'We'll concentrate on those who have some kind of
motive.'

    'Reino
Edell,' said Bärneflod. 'He claims he was at home watching TV until half past
nine,
then
he went to bed with the crossword. His wife
confirms that he was home all night, but she did give away the fact that they
have separate bedrooms, so he could easily have crept out. I'm also convinced
that she would lie for him if he told her to.'

    'A
pretty worthless alibi, in other words.'