Last Will (49 page)

“But surely they can’t just kick people out when they know they’re going to be tortured?” Annika said.

“No, they can’t,” Berit said. “According to the same legislation, the government must stop or block the extradition if there is any risk of capital punishment or torture, and instead impose compulsory registration of the suspected terrorist. So he has to report to a police station a certain number of times each week, to prove that he hasn’t got his hands dirty.
This can go on for three years, and then the case has to be referred to court.”

“Much easier just to throw someone out, then,” Annika said.

“Especially if the Americans just happen to be passing,” Berit said.

“Who are we pinning this on?”

Berit tossed the bundle of papers down and took off her glasses.

“In purely formal terms, the Security Police officer out at the airport buggered it up. His name’s Anton Abrahamsson. He relinquished official control to a foreign police authority. That’s the technical error here, but that isn’t the real scandal. How can we just allow a locksmith from Bandhagen to be labeled a terrorist and chucked out without any evidence at all?”

“What is the Security Police officer saying?”

“I haven’t been able to get hold of him,” Berit said. “He’s on paternity leave.”

“How convenient,” Annika said.

“Yes, isn’t it just?” Berit said.

“And what are they saying in the Justice Department?” Annika asked, thinking of Thomas.

“That the minister was only informed about the extradition on January 7. Several weeks later, in other words.”

“Do you believe that?”

Berit sighed.

“It doesn’t really make any difference to Jemal,” she said. “The Foreign Ministry claim that they obtained guarantees that he would be treated fairly. Our ambassador is visiting him once a month and says he’s absolutely fine, whereas Fatima says he’s been deeply scarred by the torture he had to endure.”

“Well, you’ll just have to go and see him,” Annika said.

“I’m going to find out from the embassy this afternoon if I can go with them next time,” Berit said.

Annika grabbed her bag and headed off to the day-shift reporters’ desks, to let Berit get on and to make a few calls herself.

Something happened last Saturday, she was absolutely certain of it.

Something triggered these new Nobel killings—unless she ought to
think of them as Karolinska Institute killings? Maybe these ones were nothing to do with Nobel?

She dialed reception at the Karolinska Institute and asked to speak to Birgitta Larsén.

The phone rang four, five, six times …

Birgitta usually answered on the first ring, so Annika was about to hang up when the phone was picked up at the other end and a voice said hesitantly:

“Hello?”

“Birgitta? Hello, this is Annika Bengtzon from …”

A drawn-out sob interrupted her.

“Birgitta?” Annika said. “How are you? You know about Lars-Henry?”

“It’s the animals,” Birgitta Larsén said, sounding as though she’d been crying for hours.

“The animals?” Annika echoed.

The professor blew her nose loudly and took several panting breaths over the phone.

“All my test animals are dead,” she said in a shaky voice. “Someone killed them last night.”

Annika saw the rows of Plexiglas boxes in front of her eyes, little black and white mice making nests with tissues and rearranging their egg cartons.

“Killed them? How?”

“The mice had their necks wrung, and the rabbits and rats were beaten to death.”

“God,” Annika said. “Who would do something like that?”

“The police suspect one of the animal rights organizations, but I don’t believe that. No one knows where the lab is. There were no signs of a break-in and only my animals were killed, no one else’s. And Lars-Henry, have you heard? It’s so awful!”

“I was the one who found him,” Annika said.

Birgitta blew her nose again.

“Oh, of course you were, they did tell me. Is it true that he was beheaded?”

Annika gulped hard.

“Maybe I could come out and see you?” she said tentatively.

It sounded like Birgitta Larsén was sighing.

“Well, all right. Yes, why don’t you … ?”

Annika hung up and went over to see Spike, dragging her bag with her.

“I’m heading out to the Karolinska Institute,” she said, “then I’ll write it up at home.”

The news editor grunted something without looking up.

“And I was wondering if I was going to get any gas money, seeing as I’m driving around in my own car on work business?” Annika asked.

Spike looked up at her in surprise.

“I haven’t got a clue,” he said.

“So who do I ask?” she said.

He shrugged and reached for a ringing phone.

“You can use a bicycle for all I care,” he said. “Or swim. Hello, Spike here … Fucking hell,
hello
!”

Annika turned away and headed off into the murky gray outside.

Rain was hanging in the air as Annika parked outside the Black Fox, but it didn’t seem to want to fall properly. The wind was tugging at the trees, sharp and with an odd smell of autumn.

Has summer already been and gone? Annika wondered.

She headed over to Birgitta Larsén’s department, Astra’s smart former premises, and was let in by a group of students.

“So, tell me all about it,” Birgitta said, pulling out a chair for her the moment Annika stepped into the bright office with its radioactivity warning tape.

The professor of biophysics had evidently been crying for a while; she was putting on a brave face but her façade seemed very thin.

“Have the police been out here?” Annika asked, settling into the chair. “What did they have to say about the dead animals?”

“I’ve already been questioned,” the professor said. “They’re down in the lab now. So, what happened last night?”

“I drove out to Svensson’s summer cottage in Fågelbrolandet to ask him some questions,” Annika said.

“Ah, I see,” Birgitta Larsén said, putting a packet of cookies on the desk between them. “Why did you do that?”

“I thought something had happened here on Saturday and I wanted to talk to him about it,” Annika said, turning down the offer of a cookie. “Something happened, either at the meeting or during the seminar, or at the buffet afterward, something that triggered Ernst’s murder, and then Lars-Henry’s as well. I’m even more convinced that was the case today.”

“Yes, well,” Birgitta Larsén said, wiping her fingers on her white lab coat, “but I was there the whole time and I didn’t notice anything unusual. What could it have been?”

Something in the woman’s tone of voice was too animated. She was a bit too forced, her eyes too anxious.

“That was what I was hoping to ask you about,” Annika said.

“Oh, I don’t know anything,” she said, staring at her chocolate cookie. Annika followed her instincts and leaned closer to her.

“Birgitta,” Annika said, looking the woman in the eye the way she usually did with Kalle when he was acting up. “There’s something you’re not telling me, something about Caroline, and I think you’re starting to get very scared about the fact that you know it. Ernst is dead, Lars-Henry is dead, and do you know how they died? Someone murdered them, and then they mutilated the bodies. He drove a nine-inch nail through one eye, right into their brains, and then another nail through their throat and into the spinal cord. Same thing with both of them. What does that tell you?”

Annika didn’t look away from the woman, and as she spoke she could see the terror in her eyes grow until they were overflowing with tears.

“Oh my God …” Birgitta Larsén said.

“Now your animals are dead, and what does that say to you, Birgitta? It’s a warning, wouldn’t you say? What is it you know, Birgitta—what’s so important?”

The professor blinked a few times; then her face crumpled and she hid it in her hands and wept.

Annika waited without saying anything until the outburst was over.

“It’s got nothing to do with this,” Birgitta Larsén said once she had calmed down. “It was so long ago and only Carrie and I knew—it only concerns us—we’re the only ones who …”

“What?” Annika said.

Birgitta Larsén sighed heavily and her shoulders slumped.

“I don’t want you to make this public,” she said. “It could destroy Caroline’s reputation and sabotage my own career.”

Her voice sounded different. Deeper, calmer.

“You’re my source,” Annika said. “Your identity is protected by law. I can’t write anything without your express permission.”

Birgitta Larsén nodded, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers.

“This isn’t easy for me,” she said. “I’ve kept quiet about it for twenty years.”

Annika said nothing.

The professor sighed deeply and closed her eyes for a few moments, collecting herself.

“Carrie’s big, international breakthrough came when she developed Hood and Tonegawa’s discovery of the identification of immunoglobulin genes,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “Her research was published in
Science
in October 1986, and that was the article that led to her appointment as professor, and to her joining the Nobel Assembly.”

Annika nodded, she had heard this before.

“The problem was that
Science
didn’t accept her first version of the article,” Birgitta said, her voice suddenly thin and dull. “They wanted her to replicate the results, a common routine control, but Carrie knew they were strong enough.”

“The same thing as with the results of Ernst’s research into MS,” Annika said.

“Exactly,” Birgitta said without looking up. “So why should she spend three months doing something when she was absolutely confident of her results?”

All of a sudden Annika realized what she was being told as she met Birgitta’s eyes.

“Caroline cheated,” Annika said. “She didn’t replicate her findings, and submitted false results instead.”

Birgitta Larsén looked down again and nodded.

“It wasn’t that the research was incomplete or inaccurate. Everything held up. She just skipped the routine control. And she wasn’t the one who fabricated it, I was. During the week in question Carrie was at a conference in Helsinki, so I filled in her test results and sent them off.”

Annika stared at the woman, unable to believe what she was hearing.

If you spent years working on something, why take risks right at the end?

“Why?” she asked.

Birgitta blew her nose.

“There was nothing wrong with the research,” she said. “Carrie knew it was absolutely watertight. The people at
Science
were just being overzealous, and she really wanted to attend that Finnish conference.”

“But someone found out,” Annika said.

Birgitta hesitated, then nodded.

“I don’t know who—Carrie never told me. But she did something that she was extremely ashamed of, to make sure that person never said anything. I don’t know what it was.”

“Someone was blackmailing Caroline,” Annika said. “Someone demanded something in exchange for not speaking out about her fabricating those results.”

Birgitta sighed and nodded again.

“I don’t know when it happened, but the person in question must have gotten in touch again, not long before Carrie died.”

“What makes you think that?” Annika said.

“Last autumn she once said that she ‘wasn’t going to give in to threats anymore. Not again.’ That’s what she said. She had allowed herself to be frightened into doing it once, but she wasn’t going to do it again.”

“When was this?”

“Right after the names of last year’s prize winners, Wiesel and Watson, were announced.”

“Are they gay, by the way?” Annika asked. “And a couple?”

The professor looked up in surprise.

“Of course they are,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”

“Sorry,” Annika said. “I’m getting sidetracked. Then what happened?”

Birgitta Larsén rubbed her forehead with her fingertips.

“This is where it gets complicated,” she said. “Carrie said something very cryptic just a few weeks before she died. ‘Just so you know,’ she said, ‘if anything ever happens to me, it’s all in my archive. I’ve written it all down.’”

“And what did it say?” Annika asked.

“That’s the problem,” Birgitta Larsén said. “I told the police that Carrie felt threatened and that she’d written about it in her archive, but we haven’t found the archive. I’ve looked, the police have looked, her husband Knut has looked, but we haven’t found anything that reveals what she was so afraid of.”

“Have you told the police that Caroline cheated with her big scientific breakthrough?”

The professor’s neck jerked.

“I don’t think there’s any call to use that sort of language,” she said.

“But you haven’t told them?”

“No, I didn’t think it was necessary.”

Annika stared at her. There was something else she didn’t want to reveal.

“Out of all the people who were there on Saturday afternoon, how many of them knew Caroline in the mid-1980s?” Annika asked.

Birgitta Larsén raised her eyebrows a touch and thought for a moment.

“About half, maybe. Why?”

Annika looked at her watch.

“I have to write an article about Lars-Henry Svensson,” she said. “Can I quote you about his death? Is there anything that you’d like to say, as one of his colleagues?”

“He was a real troublemaker,” Birgitta Larsén said. “If he hadn’t gone and died we’d have had to find a way to get rid of him somehow.”

Annika nodded thoughtfully.

“I might not be putting that in the opening paragraph,” she said. “By the way, why did you say that you should have taken more care of him after Caroline’s death?”

Birgitta Larsén stood up.

“Caroline wanted to look after everyone and everything,” she said. “If it wasn’t Alfred Nobel and his memory, it was Lars-Henry Svensson and his career. It could be quite frustrating at times, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”

So where were you yesterday evening? Annika suddenly wondered. And how did you know that Ernst Ericsson was dead? Did Sören Hammarsten really phone you?”