Not because this great step was on the verge of being taken, but because he was the one taking the initiative. Because he got there first.
She was quite relieved when lunch was over and they went their separate ways.
When she’d left ?ke she had called Johan and they’d agreed to have an evening in front of the television watching films and football at home in Enskede. A match on television could hardly compete with seeing a Premier League derby live, but Johan had actually sounded happy when she made the suggestion. She glances at her watch. She really mustn’t make him wait for her this time.
‘You seem a bit distracted,’ Hurtig says. ‘I asked how lunch was.’
Jeanette is woken from her thoughts. ‘Oh, we mainly talked about practical matters. About the divorce and so on.’
They’re driving past the Thorildsplan station and Jeanette spares a thought for the first dead boy. That feels so long ago. As if years have passed since the mummified corpse was found in the bushes just twenty metres away from them.
‘By the way …’ Jeanette says as they pull out onto the Essinge motorway, heading south. ‘I’ve got some sad news for you. Linnea Lundstr?m is dead. Suicide. She hanged herself at home.’
They say nothing more during the drive, and as they pull into the car park outside Ulrika Wendin’s apartment Hurtig breaks the silence. ‘My sister hanged herself as well. Ten years ago. She was only nineteen.’
Jeanette doesn’t know what to say. What is there to say?
‘I …’ She’s reminded once again of how little she knows about her colleague.
‘It’s OK,’ he says, and his forced smile is gone now. ‘It’s shit, but you learn to live with it. We did what we could. It’s been worse for Mum and Dad.’
‘I … I’m really sorry. I had no idea. Do you want to talk about it?’
He shakes his head. ‘To be honest … no.’
She nods. ‘OK. But just say if you do. I’m here.’
A short, slim woman is standing smoking beside the door, looking around as if she’s waiting for someone.
They walk up to the waiting woman, who, quite rightly, turns out to be Ulrika Wendin’s grandmother. She’s got bleached blonde hair and introduces herself as Kickan.
They go through the front door and up the stairs. Outside the door to the apartment the woman pulls out a key ring and Jeanette remembers the last time she was here.
She had talked to Ulrika about the rape Karl Lundstr?m subjected her to, and the memory fills her with sadness. If there’s any kind of poetic justice, things will turn out OK for the girl in the end. But Jeanette has her doubts.
Kickan Wendin puts the key in the lock, turns it twice to the left and opens the door.
In Hannah ?stlund’s home in Fagerstrand the stench had come from two dead dogs.
The smell here is, if possible, even worse.
‘What’s happened?’ Kickan Wendin looks anxiously at Hurtig, then Jeanette, and makes a move to step inside the hall, but Jeanette stops her.
‘It’s probably best if we wait outside,’ she says as she gestures to Hurtig to go in and take a look around.
The woman looks shaken. ‘But what’s that terrible smell?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ Jeanette says as she watches Hurtig go through the apartment. A minute later he comes back out to them.
‘Empty,’ he says, holding out his hands. ‘Ulrika isn’t here, and the smell is just rubbish. Old prawn shells.’
Jeanette breathes out. Only prawn shells, she thinks, then puts her arm on the woman’s shoulder and turns her round. ‘Let’s go outside for a chat. Follow me.’
‘I’ll take another look around,’ Hurtig says, and Jeanette nods in response.
Once they’re outside Jeanette suggests going to sit in the car. ‘There’s a Thermos of coffee, if you’d like some.’
Kickan shakes her head. ‘My break’s almost over, and I have to get back to work.’
They sit down on a bench and Jeanette asks her about Ulrika, but it turns out that the woman doesn’t have any real insight into her granddaughter’s life. She doesn’t actually know anything of significance, and from the little she does say Jeanette concludes that she doesn’t even know that Ulrika was raped.
As Kickan Wendin turns and starts to walk away, Jeanette gets into the driver’s seat, lights a cigarette and waits for Hurtig to come out.
‘Traces of blood in the hall.’ Hurtig hits the roof of the car with his hand and Jeanette jumps.
‘Blood?’
‘Yes, so I thought it best to call Ivo.’
‘Did you check that it was really blood? Was there much?’
‘Just a few spots. Dried stains on the floor just inside the door, but it’s definitely blood.’
Klara Sj? – Public Prosecution Authority
VON KWIST,’ THE prosecutor says warily when Jeanette Kihlberg calls him for a second time in just a few hours. The pressure at the top of his stomach gets worse as she tells him that Ulrika Wendin is believed to have gone missing, and when he hangs up he feels sick.
Fucking hell, he thinks, getting up from his desk and going over to the drinks cabinet.
While the ice machine is rattling he gets out a bottle of smoky malt whisky and pours himself a large glass.
If Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist had been a creative person, his swearing would have been more varied than bloody, fucking and hell. But he isn’t that sort of person. ‘Fucking hell,’ he repeats, therefore, and downs the whisky in one gulp.
The whisky is hardly going to help his stomach ulcer, but down it goes, and he feels the alcohol hit the acid reflux somewhere around chest height.
When Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg called him that morning, in the heat of the moment he thought it best to do as she asked. Now, after the second conversation, he realises that in a worst-case scenario, Ulrika Wendin’s life might be in danger, and he quietly admits to himself that even though he can hardly be accused of being a particularly conscientious person, he does have his limits.
Goddamn kid, he thinks. You should have taken the money and run. And kept quiet.
Now things might come to a very bad conclusion.
The prosecutor shudders and remembers something that happened about fifteen years before, when he was invited to visit the former police commissioner Gert Berglind’s summer cottage out in the archipelago, on M?ja.
Viggo Dürer had been there with another man, a Ukrainian who had some sort of murky connection to the lawyer, and who couldn’t speak a word of Swedish.
They had sat in the kitchen, and Dürer and Berglind had fallen out about something. Berglind had become noisy and upset, while Dürer sat there without speaking for a long time, before turning to the Ukrainian and saying something quietly in Russian. While Berglind had carried on ranting angrily, the Ukrainian had left the kitchen and gone to the hutch where the police chief kept his prizewinning rabbits.