Jeanette is aware that someone has paid half a million kronor into Annette Lundstr?m’s bank account, and she suspects it could well be a bribe, even if they haven’t been able to trace where the money came from. Sofia had also told her that Ulrika Wendin had plenty of cash, and implied that Dürer might be behind it. And in the letter Karl Lundstr?m wrote to his daughter, Linnea, the lawyer is mentioned as a potential paedophile, something also suggested by the pictures Linnea drew as a child.
Klara Sj? – Public Prosecution Authority
PROSECUTOR KENNETH VON Kwist isn’t feeling well.
His stomach ulcer is one thing; his anxiety that everything is about to go to hell another.
The secret to quickly regaining your self-control is Diazepam Desitin.
The discomfort of having to take the medicine rectally is outweighed by the strong sense of calm that spreads soon afterwards, and he says a silent prayer of gratitude to his private doctor who at short notice had provided him with a generous prescription of the drug. And he’s also been told to take a glass of whisky three times a day to enhance its calming effects.
The anxiety he feels has nothing to do with Hannah ?stlund or Jessica Friberg.
It has its foundations in the feeling that everything is starting to slip utterly beyond his control. He leans back in his chair to think things through one more time.
He knows that Viggo Dürer organised bribes for Annette Lundstr?m and Ulrika Wendin, although he’s perfectly aware that it had originally been his idea.
Obviously that isn’t good, and under no circumstances must it become known.
One possibility might be to try to butter up Jeanette Kihlberg a bit more, to portray himself in a better light. It’s just that at the moment he has no more information to give her, apart from the things that absolutely mustn’t come to her attention.
If he were to reveal what he knows about Viggo Dürer, Karl Lundstr?m, Bengt Bergman and former police commissioner Gert Berglind, he would inevitably be dragged down as well.
He would quite literally be crushed. Humiliated and thrown out of his profession. Unemployed and exposed.
Whenever he had done favours for Dürer, Berglind or Lundstr?m, the rewards came quickly, usually in the form of money, but occasionally in other ways. On the most recent occasion that he got rid of some compromising documents for Dürer, he was advised to rearrange his investment portfolio, and just a few days later the banking crisis hit and his old shares would have been worthless. Then there were all the racing tips he’d received over the years. He begins to count on his fingers before he gives up and realises that he has been part of a system of reward that is more comprehensive, and probably stretches further up the corridors of power, than he could have imagined.
The Diazepam Desitin tranquilliser he’s taken makes Kenneth von Kwist calm, and he can think more rationally, but it gives him no ideas about how to solve his dilemma. So he decides to procrastinate for a bit longer, waiting to see what happens, and using the time to stay on good terms with everyone involved, particularly Jeanette Kihlberg.
It’s a passive, compliant position, but it’s unsustainable. It isn’t possible to sit on two chairs at the same time.
Nowhere
WHEN ULRIKA WENDIN wakes up at first she can’t feel anything, then a wave of pain breaks over her. Her face is throbbing, her nose aches and she has the taste of blood in her mouth.
It’s pitch black, and she has no idea where she is.
The last thing she remembers is the stench of the fat separator in the cellar. The man who chased her through the woods must have knocked her out somehow.
She curses herself for having taken the money. She’s blown the fifty thousand in less than a week.
Maybe someone thought she was still talking, in spite of the money. But going to the police hadn’t led anywhere. No one had believed her.
Why the hell am I lying here? she thinks.
Her face feels stiff and her mouth tight. She’s lying on her back, naked, and she can’t move because her hands have been taped together behind her back.
On both sides of her there are coarse wooden walls, and when she tries to get up she is blocked by a pair of iron bars running above her knees and chest.
What she had initially thought was dried, stiffened blood on her face turns out to be a piece of tape fastened across her mouth. She’s lying in something damp, and assumes she must have wet herself.
I’ve been buried alive, she thinks. The air is dry and stiflingly warm, and it smells like a root cellar.
Panic hits her, and she starts to hyperventilate. She doesn’t know where her scream comes from, but she knows it’s there even if she doesn’t hear it.
Breathe through your nose. Calm down. You can handle this, she thinks. You’ve taken care of yourself almost your whole life without ever needing anyone’s help.
Five years ago, when she had just turned sixteen, she had found her mother’s lifeless body on the kitchen floor, and since then she’s been alone. She’s never turned to social services when she’s been short of money – she’d rather steal food – and she’s kept up with the rent thanks to Mum’s meagre life insurance. She’s never been a burden to anyone.
She doesn’t know who her dad is; her mum took that secret with her to heaven. If that’s where you end up if you’ve used alcohol and pills to slowly but deliberately drink yourself into an early grave before you’ve even reached forty.
Her mum hadn’t been mean, just unhappy, and Ulrika knows that unhappy people are capable of doing things that might seem mean.
Real evil is something else entirely.
Grandma won’t start to worry for a week or so, she thinks. They aren’t usually in touch more often than that.
Her breathing is getting slower and her thoughts more rational.
Maybe that psychologist, Sofia Zetterlund, will miss her? Ulrika regrets calling to cancel all her appointments.
What about Jeanette Kihlberg? Maybe, but probably not.
Her heartbeat returns to normal and, even if it’s still hard to breathe, she’s regained command of her senses. Temporarily, at least.
Her eyes have got used to the darkness, and she knows she isn’t blind. The shadows around her are different shades of grey, and above her she can make out the shape of what looks like a boiler, connected to a mass of pipes.
The wall rumbles at regular intervals. There’s a metallic screech, a bang, and then it’s quiet for a few seconds before the rumbling starts up again.
Her first idea is that it’s the sound of a lift.
A boiler and pipes … a lift?
So where is she?
She turns her head, trying to find any source of light.
Only when she forces her head backwards, so far that it feels like her arteries and throat are going to burst through her neck, does she catch a glimpse of something.
Behind her she can see a narrow strip of light reflected faintly off a wall.
Sj?fartshotellet – S?dermalm