She read the name again. And again. And again.
Thanatos.
The god of death.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
GUNNAR ?HRN WAS browsing the internet edition of the local papers. He leaned his head back while he looked at the sports pages. He always read the sports before the news. Always the financial pages before politics. And always the arts pages before the auto section. Blogs and family pages—he never touched those.
During the month since he and Anneli had separated most recently, Gunnar established his own routines that suited him perfectly. He got up at half past six, ate breakfast and drove into the police station. He was often home by six in the evening and would eat something, then go into town and do his errands if his son was not with him. By eight o’clock he was home again and would read or be on his computer until midnight. If the weather was decent, he might consider going out for an hour’s walk, but not often. Anneli had always insisted he needed to get more exercise and when they lived together she would drag him off on a walk. On his own, he could decide himself how fast he would walk, and he preferred a leisurely pace.
Gunnar left the sports pages and clicked his way to the local news, where he read about a fifteen-year-old trumpeter who had been awarded a music scholarship of two thousand kronor. The boy wore braces on his teeth and reminded him of his son, Adam.
Two days a week Adam would come for dinner, if his sports schedule allowed. They would go out for pizza and sometimes a movie. Gunnar had thought about volunteering to be an assistant coach for his son’s team, but he had already missed the single pre-season training session. Maybe next time, he thought as he saw the picture of himself appear on the computer screen. The photograph had been taken at the morning press conference.
After the boy had been found dead, a horde of print, TV and radio journalists had besieged the press conference and they had been forced to move to a bigger space. The largest conference room in the police building had to be opened and that too became overcrowded. The air was filled with the buzz of voices and radio equipment being tested. Gunnar ?hrn and the county police commissioner, Carin Radler, had first welcomed everybody and then turned it over to the press officer, Sara Arvidsson. She had described the murder of Hans Juhlén but played down the murder of the boy. She had also made a point of informing them that Kerstin Juhlén had been released from custody but that she was still helping them with their inquiries. It had been one hell of a press meeting. Short, intense but necessary, according to Carin Radler. It was always better to gather the press and feed them some tidbits than let them speculate wildly because of a lack of information.
Sara Arvidsson answered most of the journalists with a brisk “No comment!” She hadn’t said much at all about the investigation, which was now in its fourth day and had aroused considerable attention.
Gunnar opened another news website and saw a photo of himself. In profile. On a third site you could only see half his body. Instead the photographer had focused on Sara.
“Good thing,” he muttered and closed his computer. He didn’t like being at press conferences while an investigation was still going on. There was always a risk that somebody would reveal more than necessary. Investigative journalists also had a knack of asking trick questions and making false claims that were later transformed into absolute truths by other writers who didn’t restrict themselves to reliable sources. And it wasn’t nice to always have to repeat “No comment,” but it was necessary. Especially in this case.
Gunnar sincerely hoped that the letters and numbers that Ola S?derstr?m had shown him that morning would lead to something.
The team would be meeting again at twelve o’clock. He looked at the silver watch on his wrist. Half an hour to go. He decided to grab some lunch from the cafeteria beforehand.
*
Jana’s hands shook as she unlocked the door.
Once she was inside her apartment, she kicked off her shoes and sank down on the floor with her back to the door. She remained sitting like that a while. Getting her breath back.
Everything that had happened was like a fog. She had made her apologies and said she had an urgent meeting with a client, then she left the forensics center as fast as possible. She could hardly remember how she got home. Her driving must have been careless because on one occasion she had only just avoided crashing into another driver, who had been traveling below the speed limit. She couldn’t remember even where she had parked, nor how she had made her way upstairs.
Now she slowly got up, tripped over the threshold of the bathroom and stopped herself from falling by catching hold of the washbasin. Her entire body was trembling as she looked for her pocket mirror in the bathroom cupboard. Irritated when she couldn’t immediately locate it, she knocked all the contents of one drawer onto the floor. A bottle of perfume smashed, and its sweet scent ran out over the floor tiles. She pulled out another drawer and rummaged carelessly among all the things inside, but still no mirror.
Jana stopped for a moment to think. Her handbag! It was in her handbag. She went back into the hall and opened the wardrobe. There, in the corner of her dark blue purse, lay the round pocket mirror.
She took it out and hurried back into the bathroom. Then she stood in front of the wall mirror and hesitated. Her heart was thumping, her body trembling. With shaking hands she pulled her hair to one side, angled the little mirror toward her neck and held her breath.
She didn’t dare look. She shut her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them again, she saw the reflected letters.
K-E-R.
KER.
*
“The god of death,” said Mia.
“What?” said Henrik.
“Thanatos means god of death.”
Mia zoomed in on the text displayed by the digital encyclopedia.
They had left Link?ping and were on their way back to Norrk?ping in a hurry. The meeting with Bj?rn Ahlmann had gone on longer than expected and now they would be hard-pressed to get to the update briefing at noon.
Mia was reading aloud from the passenger seat.
“Now listen to this. Thanatos is a god of death in Greek mythology. He was extremely fast and strong. If you saw Thanatos with a torch pointing downwards, it meant that somebody would die. But if the torch was pointing upwards, that was a sign that there was still hope.”
“Do you believe in all that?” said Henrik.
“No, but what the hell, the kid had the name on his neck. That must mean something.”
“Or perhaps it was just what he was called.”
“Or wasn’t.”
“He can’t have carved it himself, at any rate. That’s for certain.”
“Perhaps with the help of a mirror.”
“No, it’s impossible to get the letters so straight.”
“But who would write a god’s name on a child’s neck?”
“Don’t know.”
“Some crazy bastard.”
“Or friend. Perhaps he belongs to a gang?”
Mia deleted the name and entered a new word in the search engine.
Henrik signaled to change lanes.
A traffic sign showed that they only had ten kilometers to the exit to Norrk?ping South. Mia was absorbed online and Henrik’s thoughts wandered initially to the dead boy and then to Jana Berzelius. During the autopsy she had suddenly made her excuses and quickly left. She was always the one who stayed longest and who asked extra questions or even challenged Bj?rn Ahlmann’s conclusions. Today she hadn’t asked a single question during the examination of the boy’s body.