Frozen Moment (61 page)

    He
walked past reception now, finally ending his working day when most people were
just starting. The clock on the wall made him realise his watch must have
stopped at some point the previous evening - at quarter past seven, in fact. Behind
his eyelids felt like gravel, and his longing for bed was no longer theoretical
but physical in the form of spaghetti legs and a total lack of strength in his
arms. Even his briefcase felt heavy, and it had just got heavier. Before he
left the office he had grabbed the top layer of a dangerously high pile of the
case summaries, circulars and memos that constantly poured into his in tray.
Reading them all would have been a full-time job. He now intended to use some
of them as an excuse to stay at home for a day or two.
To
catch up.

    'Christian!'

    Seja
reached him in just a few strides. After hesitating for a fraction of a second,
she reached out one arm and hugged him gently. She smelled faintly of vanilla.
He stiffened and she must have registered it, because she quickly took a step
back.

    'I've
been trying to get in to see you for half an hour. This place is like a
fortress,' she said in an attempt at a joke.

    Neither
of them smiled.

    'It
isn't,' he replied tersely. 'I asked them not to put through any calls and not
to let anyone in. I was busy-'

    'Are
you busy now?' she interrupted him nervously, pulling a strand of hair out of
the loose knot at the back of her head. 'Because if you're not I really need to
talk to you.'

    'Yes,
I am busy.'

    He
watched her winding the strand of hair around her fingers.
A
childish action that suddenly irritated him.
Earlier he had been feeling
tired but satisfied; that feeling had vanished the moment she thoughtlessly
pressed her body against his. The lack of sleep over the past few days made the
anger that had been simmering in the car on the way up to Bengtsfors boil over.

    'I'm
usually busy when I'm at work, oddly enough. And if I'm not busy right now, I'm
bloody exhausted, so I'm going straight home to get some sleep.'

    'I
understand.' She hesitated. 'It's just that I'd really like to talk to you
about-'

    He
lost his last scrap of patience.

    'Listen
to me. I'm absolutely shattered. If you want to see me about something to do
with my job, then ring me during office hours. Right now I'm going home.'

    She
opened her mouth with an expression that suggested she wasn't sure if she'd
heard him correctly.

    'If
I want to see you about… What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And what if I
want to see you about something that isn't to do with your job - what then?'

    She
moved back a couple of steps towards the door, increasing the distance between
them.

    Out
of the corner of his eye Tell saw a colleague raise a hand in greeting, but he
didn't respond. The arm carrying the heavy briefcase was aching, but if he put
it down, that would mean he was giving in to her. He didn't want to give her
any more time.

    'Christian,
I realise you're angry with me, even if I do think you're overreacting. Maybe
you're right to be angry - what do I know? But in any case I think you could
spare me five minutes. You'll be interested in what I have to say.'

    Deep
down inside Tell knew that the woman in front of him had just received both
barrels because of a whole lot of issues for which she was not to blame: the
way he had let Ostergren down, both professionally and personally; his
embarrassing inability to deal with the big questions, with life and death,
with love.
With closeness.
That was the nub of the
matter: she got on his nerves with her demands for intimacy.
Closeness.
Just like every woman he had ever known: they had all suffocated him with their
desire for fusion, sooner or later.

    'I
haven't made any demands of you,' she said quietly, as if she could read his
mind. 'I haven't asked you to commit yourself to a shared future, or to tell me
everything you do and everything you're thinking. And if you're pretending I
have, then you're being unfair. That's why I don't understand why you're so
angry with me for not telling you everything.'

    'There
is
a difference, for fuck's sake.'

    'No.
I'm here now because you wanted me to tell you everything I know. This is to do
with Maya, her last two years. I think what I have to say-'

    'It's
too late now,' he said simply. 'It doesn't matter any more. It's over.'

    'As
I said, I think what I have to say will interest you.'

    'I
find that very difficult to believe.'

    He
enjoyed spitting out the words, despite the fact that disappointment was
instantly etched on her face. By making a big deal of moving the briefcase from
his right hand to his left, he managed to avoid meeting her eyes, although he
knew it was a coward's way out. Her gaze burned into his back as he left.

    
A fleeting image of them holding each other close beneath the
sloping ceiling in the loft brought tears to her eyes, more from humiliation
than sadness.
It was too early to talk about a broken heart - they
hadn't known each other for long enough. Sorrow over what could have been,
perhaps.
Over unfulfilled expectations.

    He
had turned out to be a different person. And she had once again thrown herself
head over heels into something uncertain, and had come out on the other side
more battered than before.
With only herself to rely on once
again.

    She
felt completely alone as she stood there in the middle of the reception area,
the doors opening and closing in the morning rush. She felt as if everyone
walking past was evaluating her and coming to the conclusion that she was
damaged goods, a person who had believed too much.
They were always the most
ridiculous.
Those who came running up, full of
enthusiasm, like a dog with its tongue hanging out as soon as someone called
its name.

    The
receptionist was a middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair caught up in
combs at the sides. She winked and smiled sympathetically. Automatically Seja
tried a polite smile in return, but it ended up as more of a grimace.

    She
welcomed the anger when it came surging up from her belly. She pictured the
inspector once again - because that was what he was: he was his job more than a
man or a person - beneath the sloping ceiling or standing by the fire in her
kitchen, too stressed to sit down.
His back.
The way
it had looked when he had strode down the hill outside her house towards the
footbridge, his briefcase in his hand. How it looked a couple of minutes ago,
when he walked out of the main door of the station.

    
Men
are institutions,
one of her tutors had said. It was during a course in
basic feminism many years ago. She hadn't understood what the phrase meant, and
was too young and insecure to ask. Later she had reconsidered the large dose of
questions and answers surrounding women's issues which she had absorbed during
a period in her life when she was heavily engaged in such matters. Some aspects
had been integrated into her personal viewpoint, some had been rejected.
Nonetheless, from time to time she had pondered what her tutor might have
meant. And for the first time she thought she was on the way to finding the
answer. An institution was a self-evident fact.
Something
that never had to question itself, which took itself extremely seriously.
Detective Inspector Christian Tell.

    She
might have been able to understand his anger at her failure to pass on her
memories of that evening. She could accept that he believed he had the right to
those painful memories. She could even accept that she should have put her
integrity to one side and talked to him earlier instead of carrying out her own
investigation, as he put it.

    On
the basis of this reasoning, she really had taken his disappointment seriously.
She
had
opened up to him in order to try to explain what had been going
on in her head that night.
Over the years since that night.
During the past few days, when she had chosen to wait rather
than talking to him straight away.

    But
he hadn't listened. He'd been far too busy playing the wounded hero struggling
in a headwind.

    There
had been a reason why she had tried to forget the bad feeling she had about
Maya's fate. Now it had floated to the surface, the memory of that night was
demanding her attention. She would never be able to escape its cold fingers touching
her soul, her conscience.

    In
order to find peace, she had to act. She realised that now. And since all her
obligations towards Christian Tell had been wiped out at a stroke, she was free
to act in accordance with her own aims. She had the outline of a crime story on
her computer, a story she had already begun, and the folder lying next to the
massive compendium on ethics and journalism. The exam was in just a few days,
and so far she hadn't opened a single book.

    But,
she thought,
what's the point of being a journalist if you don't write?

    It
was obvious the hunting cabin hadn't been used for a long time. It had been
part of the deal when he bought the farm, but Sven Molin had rarely set foot
inside it. He wasn't all that keen on hunting; he felt the physical exertion
was disproportionate to the financial gain in terms of meat, particularly since
the EU had introduced cheap alternatives to most things. And he had never
enjoyed it much either. The porch floor was rotting, and the front door had
swollen and was jammed shut. The evening he arrived he had nothing with which
to prise it open, no tools apart from the knife on his key ring. It had been
too dark to look for a branch or a sharp stone to lever the door open, but
eventually he found a window that wasn't fastened. He wriggled in and landed on
the floor with a thud. A well-aimed kick from the inside released the door,
after which he stood absolutely still for several minutes.

    Breaking
the silence went against the grain. The cabin was about as far from
civilisation as it was possible to get, and as far as he knew nobody was aware
of it; the farm deed of purchase had only mentioned it in a sub-clause. Even
the traces left by children who had played there - a doll with no legs and some
dried grass in a couple of buckets - looked as if they had been there for many
years.

    He
had slunk through the forest like a hunted animal after loading the pickup and
leaving it parked outside the house as a smokescreen while he crept out the
back way, taking the ignition key to his neighbour's Saab from where he kept
it. He
was
a hunted animal, and if he had managed to suppress this
knowledge while he was surrounded by the bright lights and minutiae of everyday
life, it came home to him now with full force. Someone was after him, and this
someone had presumably found it reasonably easy to track him down, although he
had never made any serious effort to cover his tracks; he had never really
thought it would be necessary.

    
The fact that he had cut his losses and left Olofstorp after the
Accident didn't really have anything to do with any fear of legal
repercussions.
He wasn't even sure a crime had been committed; he
preferred to think of it as nothing more than bad luck. What he had been
running away from was the memories, which grew stronger each time he saw his
two childhood friends, or heard their voices, or was reminded in some other way
of that nightmarish December night outside Borås.

    He
had wanted to get away, and didn't think there was much to keep him in
Olofstorp.
The suffocating concern and trembling anxiety of
his parents.
The pathetic bachelor flat in the
basement of his parents' home, which was nothing more than a boy's bedroom in
disguise.
His boring job in the warehouse.
He
wanted to be his own man, and he wanted a family. And with the mink business
and Lee he had achieved his goal. He had been happy. He was starting to forget
about the Accident, just as he had predicted. It belonged to the misguided kid
he had once been, not to the family man and provider he had become.

    The
morning after the Accident he had thrown up all over the hallway and the steps
down to the basement, shaking and crying like a child. His parents had never
mentioned it until now, when his father had grimly gone through the facts from
which he had drawn his conclusions. He had been perfectly objective, as if none
of it would have been of any significance but for the fact that Lise-Lott
Edell's second husband and Pilen had been murdered within a few days of each
other.