Jeanette shook her head. ‘For God’s sake, Jens, it was seven years ago. She was drunk, and drugged. And besides, there aren’t many similarities with the crimes we’re looking at.’
As she pulled up at an intersection her mobile rang. Who the hell is it now? she thought.
It was ?hlund.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Hammarbyh?jden, heading back into the city,’ Jeanette replied.
‘You might as well turn round. Our newspaper boy, Martin Thelin, lives out in K?rrtorp.’
K?rrtorp – a Suburb
THE FORMER NEWSPAPER deliveryman Martin Thelin looked hung-over when he opened the door wearing a pair of black tracksuit bottoms and an unbuttoned shirt. He was unshaven, his hair was sticking up, and his breath could have brought down an elephant.
‘What do you want?’ Martin Thelin cleared his throat, and Jeanette took a step back, fearing that he was about to throw up.
‘Can we come in?’ Hurtig held up his police ID and gestured inside the flat.
‘OK, but it’s a bit of a mess.’ Martin Thelin shrugged and let them in.
Jeanette was struck by the fact that he seemed so unconcerned by their presence, but reasoned that he had probably been expecting them to find him sooner or later.
The apartment stank of spilled beer and rubbish, and Jeanette tried to remember to breathe through her mouth. Thelin showed them into the living room, sat down in the only armchair, and gestured to Jeanette and Hurtig to sit on the sofa.
‘Is it OK if I open a window?’ Jeanette looked around, and when the badly hung-over man nodded, she went and opened one of the windows wide before settling down next to Hurtig.
‘Tell us what happened at Thorildsplan.’ Jeanette took out her notebook. ‘Yes, we know you were there.’
‘Take your time,’ Hurtig said. ‘We want you to be as detailed as possible.’
Martin Thelin rocked back and forth, and Jeanette realised he was searching his drink-sodden, fragmented memory.
‘Well, I wasn’t on top form that morning,’ he began, reaching for a packet of cigarettes and shaking one out. ‘I’d been drinking all the previous evening, and a good part of the night, so …’
‘But you still went to work?’ Jeanette made a note in her pad.
‘That’s right. And when I was finished I stopped outside the metro station to have a piss, and that’s when I saw the bag.’
Even though he had been half drunk, his account was detailed and without any gaps. He had gone into the bushes to the left of the station, pissed and then discovered the black bin bag. He had opened it, and been shocked by what he found.
Confused, he had backed away onto the path, grabbed the pram he used to carry his papers, and quickly headed off through the park towards R?lambsv?gen.
When he reached the DN Tower he called the police.
That was all.
He hadn’t seen anything else.
Hurtig was looking at him intently. ‘Really, we ought to pull you in for not getting in touch with us. But if you come to the station and leave a saliva sample, we might be able to overlook that.’
‘Saliva sample?’
‘Yes, so we can exclude your DNA from the investigation,’ Jeanette explained. ‘After all, your urine was on the plastic bag.’
The plastic
RUSTLED WHENEVER THE other boy moved in his sleep. He had been asleep for a long time. Gao had counted almost twelve hours, since he had worked out that the clock he could hear faintly in the distance struck once every hour.
Then the clock struck again, and he wondered if it was a church.
He thought in words, even though he didn’t want to.
Maria, he thought. Peter, James, Magdalena.
Gao Lian. From Wuhan.
He heard the other boy waking up.
The darkness made the sounds the other boy was making louder. The sobbing, the rattle when he pulled at the chain, the groaning, and the plaintive, unfamiliar words.
Gao had no chains. He was free to do what he liked with the other boy. Perhaps she’d come back if he did something to the boy? He was longing for her, and didn’t understand why she didn’t come.
He noticed that the other boy kept feeling around in the darkness, as if he were searching for something. And sometimes he called out in his odd language. Chto, chto, chto, it sounded like.
He wanted the boy to go away. He hated him, and his presence in the room made Gao feel alone.
Eventually she came.
He had been in the dark so long that the light streaming in hurt his eyes. The other boy screamed and cried and kicked out. Then, when he saw Gao in the light, he calmed down a bit, and stared at him aggressively. Perhaps the boy was just jealous because Gao didn’t have to wear chains?
The fair woman stepped into the room and went up to Gao with a bowl in her hands. She put the steaming soup on the floor, then kissed him on the forehead and ran her hand through his hair, and he was reminded of how much he liked it when she touched him.
After a while she returned with another bowl that she gave to the other boy. He began to eat greedily, but Gao waited until she had shut the door and it was dark again. He didn’t want her to see how hungry he was.
Just an hour later she came into the room. She was carrying a bag over her shoulder, and in her hand she had a black object that looked like a big beetle.
The ceiling had lit up with bright flashes when the other boy died. Gao no longer felt alone; he could move freely in the room and didn’t have to hide from the other boy. She came in to see him more often now, and that was good as well.
But there was one thing he didn’t like.
His feet had started to ache. His nails had grown long and had curled down and inward, and he was having trouble walking without it hurting.
One night when he was sleeping she came in without him noticing. When he woke up his hands were tied behind his back and his feet were bound. She was sitting astride him and he could see the shadow of her back.
He understood at once what she wanted to do. Only one person had done it before, and that had been at the children’s home outside Wuhan where he had grown up. On more than one occasion the old man with the scar had chased him down the corridors. He always got caught in the end, and then the old man took out his knife. He had held Gao’s feet so hard he started to cry, and as he took out his knife from the little wooden sheath he would laugh through his toothless smile.
It wasn’t good that she, whom he liked so much, was doing this to him.
Afterwards she loosened the ropes and gave him something to eat and drink. He refused to touch the food, and when she got tired of stroking his forehead and left, he lay awake for a long time thinking about what she had done.
Right then he hated her, and no longer wanted to be there. Why did she hurt him when he had so clearly shown that he didn’t want it? She hadn’t done that before, and it didn’t feel good.
But a bit later, when she came in again and he realised she had been crying, he could feel that his feet no longer hurt, and they weren’t bleeding either, like they always did when the old man had cut them.
Then he spoke to her for the first time.
‘Gao,’ he said. ‘Gao Lian.’
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House