“I could always borrow money from my brother when things were really bad. He didn’t want Simon to go without food. It’s tough living on welfare and, you know, you’ve got to pay the rent and so on.”
Lasse rubbed the palm of his hand against his right eye, then went on: “But then something strange happened. My brother became stingy, claimed that he didn’t have any money. I thought that was bloody nonsense. If you live in Lind? then you’ve got money.”
“Did you ever find out what happened?” said Henrik.
“No, just that he said he couldn’t lend me anything more. That his old lady had put a stop to it. I had promised to pay him back, even though it wouldn’t be for a while, but I promised anyway. But I didn’t get any more money. He was an idiot. A stingy idiot. He could have done without a pricey steak dinner one evening and given me a hundred kronor, you might think. Couldn’t he? I would have, if I were him, that is.”
Lasse thumped his chest.
“Did you argue with him about money?”
“Never.”
“So you’ve never threatened your half brother or exchanged harsh words, anything like that?”
“The odd curse word, perhaps, but I would never have threatened him.”
“You have a son, right?” Mia went on.
“Yes, Simon.” Lasse held out a framed photo of a smiling boy with freckles.
“Mind you, he’s only five in that photo. Now he’s eight.”
“Have you got a better picture of him, a recent one?” said Henrik.
“I’ll have a look.”
Lasse reached toward a white cupboard with glass doors and pulled out a little box that was full of a jumble of stuff.
Sheets of paper, batteries and electric cables all tangled together. There was also a smoke detector, a headless plastic dinosaur and some sweet wrappers. And a glove too.
“I don’t know if I’ve got a decent recent one. The photos they take at school are so hellishly expensive. They charge four hundred kronor for twenty pictures. Who can order those? Bloody daylight robbery.”
Lasse let the sheets of paper fall onto the floor so he could get a better look at the contents of the box.
“No, I haven’t got a good one. But come to think of it, in my cell I might have one there.”
Lasse disappeared into the kitchen and came back with an old-fashioned flip phone in his hand. He remained standing on the floor and pressed the buttons.
Henrik noticed that the arrow button was missing and that Lasse had to use his little finger to browse through the picture folder.
“Here,” said Lasse, and held the cell toward Henrik, who took it and looked at the photo on the screen.
A low-res image showed a relatively tall and still freckled boy. Reddish cheeks. Friendly eyes.
Henrik complimented Lasse on his son’s good looks, then told him to send the picture via MMS to him. Within a minute he had saved it in his image archive.
“Is Simon at school?” said Henrik when he put his telephone back in his pocket.
“Yes, he is,” said Lasse and sat down on the stool again.
“When does he come home?”
“He’s with his mum this week.”
“Was he with you last Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Where were you between five and seven in the evening?”
Lasse rubbed his hands up and down his shins.
“Simon played his videogames.”
“So you were both here, at home?”
He rubbed again.
“No. Only Simon.”
“Where were you then?”
“Er...an early poker evening, you know, just down the block. You’ve got to join in when your mates ask you. But this was the last time. Absolutely the last time. Because, you see, I don’t gamble. Not any longer.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
THE MAN WITH the scar paced back and forth. He glared at them with a wild look in his eyes, as they stood there in a row, barefoot on the stone floor. The windows were covered but in one or two places a sliver of light shone in between the wall planks.
The girl’s lips and cheeks ached from the glue of the silver tape they had slapped across her mouth. She had had difficulty breathing through her nose when they were in the van. Then, later, when they were pushed into the little boat, she had felt sick and been forced to swallow the vomit which had risen in her throat. The woman had ripped the tape off when they finally got to the big room, or hall, or whatever this place was.
The girl looked around without moving her head. Big beams supported the ceiling and she could see many spiders’ webs. Was it a stable? No. It was much bigger than that. There were no rugs and no mattress to sleep on. It couldn’t be someone’s house. At least it didn’t look like one, except for the stone floor. The girl had a stone floor at home too. But there the stones were always warm. Here, they were icy cold.
The girl shuddered but immediately straightened up again. She tried to stand up as straight as she could. Danilo, too, had pushed out his chest and raised his chin. But not Ester. She just cried. She held her hands in front of her face and refused to stop.
The man went up to Ester and said something in a loud voice. She didn’t understand what he said. Nor did any of the other children. So Ester cried even louder. Then the man raised his hand and hit her so hard that she fell down backward. He waved to the other two grown-ups who stood by the wall. They got hold of Ester’s arms and legs and carried her out. That was the last time she saw Ester.
The man walked slowly toward her, stopped, then leaned forward until his face was only a couple of centimeters away from hers. With eyes cold as ice, he said something in Swedish which she later would never forget.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “Never cry anymore. Never ever.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
MIA BOLANDER SAT with the others in the conference room for the last briefing of the day. They were going over a number of question marks in the murder investigation of Hans Juhlén. The most important surrounded the boy whose picture was now displayed on the large screen.
Gunnar ?hrn had given high priority to the as-yet unnamed boy. He was either directly connected to the murder, or he was a key witness in the investigation. Regardless, he had to be found. That meant even more door-to-door canvassing to ask if anybody could identify the boy.
Mia was pleased that she had left that sort of drudgery when she was promoted. Questioning neighbors wasn’t a challenge in the slightest. Absolutely nothing was exciting about it.
She was the first to help herself to the biggest cinnamon bun on the dish in the middle of the conference table. She was a competitive person, and could thank her elder brothers for that. In her childhood, everything had been about being first. Her brothers, who were five and six years older than she, had fought over who could do the most press-ups, who could race to the corner first and who could stay awake the longest. Mia struggled to impress her brothers, but they never let her win. Not even in something as silly as her memory.
So it had become natural for Mia to compete about virtually everything and this instinct had never waned. Since she had also been gifted with a decidedly volatile temperament, many of her classmates at school let her have her own way. Even in junior secondary school she had on several occasions been sent home for getting into fights with older pupils.
In her fifth year at the school, she had hit a classmate so hard that she drew blood. She could still remember the boy, her own age with a wide nose. He used to tease her and throw gravel at her during the PE lessons. He was also the only pupil who could run the 100 meter dash faster than she. He hadn’t gone unpunished. After a lesson one day, Mia had kicked him so hard on his shin, he had to go to the school nurse and then on to the hospital to deal with a crack in his bone. That in turn had almost gotten her suspended, but she claimed it was an accident. The incident was noted on her school record by the headmaster, but Mia couldn’t care less. She had run the fastest at the next PE lesson. That was all that mattered.