‘It might not just be in Germany that things collapse behind your back when you aren’t there.’
He looks suddenly worried. ‘What do you mean, collapse? Has something happened?’
His reaction isn’t what she was expecting, and her anger dissipates slightly.
‘I don’t know what I meant, I’m just fucking angry and disappointed about being left on my own over another holiday.’
‘I realise that, but there’s not much I can do about it,’ he says, getting up and turning his back on her as he puts the breakfast things in the fridge. He feels a very long way away all of a sudden.
Later, while he’s in the shower, she does something she’s never done before in the ten years they’ve been together.
She goes into the hall and gets his work phone from his jacket pocket. The one he always has on silent when he’s at home and not working. She types in the pass code and clicks through to the list of dialled numbers.
The first four are German numbers, but the fifth has a Stockholm dialling code.
More German numbers. Then the same Stockholm number again.
She scrolls down and the same number reappears at regular intervals. She sees from the dates that he’s been calling someone in the Stockholm region several times a day.
She pulls up the unknown number and calls it, glancing at the bathroom door as she listens to it ring.
A soft woman’s voice answers.
‘Hello, darling! I thought you were going to be busy?’
Sofia ends the call.
She sits down at the kitchen table.
Behind his back? Everything’s collapsing behind my back.
Lasse comes out with a towel wrapped around his waist. He smiles at her and goes into the bedroom to get dressed. When he’s done, she knows he’ll come in and make coffee.
She opens the fridge, takes out the carton of milk and empties it down the sink. Then she crumples up the empty packet and pushes it down into the rubbish bin.
He comes out into the kitchen.
‘If you want coffee you’ll have to go and get some milk. It’s all gone.’
‘OK, I’ll go to the shop and you can make the coffee in the meantime.’
When she hears the front door close she goes out into the hall and sees that he’s gone out without a coat. His jacket is still there.
She takes the mobile phone out again and sees that he’s got two missed calls.
Presumably the unknown woman has called back, but she daren’t look, because then the missed calls will disappear from the screen.
She finds her way to his messages instead, and opens the inbox.
Once she’s read the thirty or so text messages Lasse has exchanged with the unknown woman over the past few months, it feels like she’s just slammed into a wall.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
A PASSAGE OF sighs connects the Stockholm police headquarters with the city courts, through which people under arrest are led to their trials. It meanders through the tunnels belowground, and is said to have been the scene of several suicides.
Karl Lundstr?m was currently in a coma, after he had tried to hang himself in his cell.
Jeanette Kihlberg realised that meant that the question of his guilt might never be cleared up properly.
The evening after the suicide attempt it was on the television news, and several of the usual suspects were lamenting the security failures within the criminal justice system. Even the psychologists got it in the neck for failing to identify that Lundstr?m was a suicide risk.
Jeanette leaned back on her shabby office chair and looked out of the window.
At least she had done all she could.
Now she would have to call Ulrika Wendin and inform her that the situation had changed.
The girl didn’t sound surprised when Jeanette told her what had happened and explained that there wouldn’t be any new trial for as long as Karl Lundstr?m was in a coma.
?hlund and Schwarz had been given the job of finding out if Karl Lundstr?m’s blue Volvo might be the same vehicle that had scraped a tree out in Svartsj?landet, but initial analysis didn’t seem to support that idea.
The colour of the paint didn’t match. Different shades of blue.
Outside the window the afternoon sun was blazing down.
Then the phone rang, with news of another body.
At roughly the same time that Karl Lundstr?m had been knotting a sheet around his neck in Kronoberg Prison, another dead boy had been discovered in an attic on S?dermalm.
Monument – Crime Scene
THERE WASN’T ACTUALLY much to suggest that the boy, who had been found in an attic in the Monument block close to Skanstull, was a victim of the same perpetrator as the earlier bodies.
Two empty holes showed where the eyes had once been, and you could just about make out what had once been his nose and lips. The whole face was covered with large, liquid-filled blisters, and there were only a few tufts of hair left.
The heavy iron door to the attic opened and Ivo Andri? walked in, together with the forensic medical officer, Rydén.
‘Hi, Rydén. Everything’s under control, I hope?’ Jeanette said, then turned towards Ivo Andri?. ‘So you’ve ended up here as well.’
‘Coincidence. Someone else is on holiday and I volunteered.’ Ivo Andri? scratched his head.
At first glance the blisters looked like burn injuries, but since the rest of the body was intact and the clothes showed no traces of either ash or soot, another explanation was most likely.
‘Looks like acid,’ Ivo Andri? said, and Rydén nodded in agreement.
The floor beneath the boy and the walls closest to him showed splash marks, and Rydén took out a swab and pressed it against one of the dried yellow stains. He sniffed the swab and looked thoughtful.
‘Off the top of my head this seems to be hydrochloric acid – fairly strong considering what happened when it hit his face. I wonder if whoever did this realised the risk they were taking? The chances of getting hurt in the process are pretty high.’
Ivo Andri? rubbed his chin. ‘That wall looks new.’ He pointed at the left-hand wall, and went on. ‘Builders often use some sort of acid. I believe they wash down the old brickwork so that the plaster sticks.’
‘That sounds plausible,’ Rydén said.
‘Do we know who he is?’ Jeanette turned to face them.
‘I thought that was your job,’ Rydén replied. ‘Ivo and I are only here to work out how. Not who did it, and definitely not why. But the kid was wearing a bloody weird necklace. We took pictures before we removed it. Not that I know anything about ethnology, but I’m pretty sure it was African.’
Jeanette went over to Schwarz and ?hlund, who were talking at the other end of the attic.