Instead, just the opposite had happened. After the murderer was caught and the case was closed, she called it off. He was completely taken by surprise. His life fell apart. He was forced to take sick leave for several weeks, and when he recovered enough that he could take a vacation, she never left his thoughts for a moment.
When he came home he wrote her a letter. Quite unexpectedly, she answered, and then they started seeing each other again. They mostly met whenever Johan went to Gotland on a story. Occasionally she managed to get away to meet him in Stockholm. But he could tell that she wasn’t comfortable with all the lying and that she was struggling with terrible feelings of guilt. Finally she asked for a two-month break. October and November. She explained that she needed some distance and time to think.
Suddenly they had no communication at all. No text messages, no e-mails, no phone calls.
But she had relented once. He was on Gotland on assignment and called her up. She happened to be feeling unhappy just then, and weak, so they met. A quick meeting that merely confirmed how strong their feelings were for each other, at least that’s what he thought.
After that, nothing. He had made a couple of awkward attempts, but in vain. She was intractable.
At the same time, he understood. It was difficult for her, since she was married and had young children.
But weeks of restless nights, chain-smoking, and a constant, overwhelming longing for her had taken their toll on him, to put it mildly.
On his way to the subway station, he called Anders Knutas in Visby.
The police superintendent answered at once.
“Knutas.”
“Hi. Johan Berg from Regional News here. How are things?”
“Fine, thanks. And you? It’s been a while.”
“Things are good. I saw an article in the paper about a possible homicide in Grabo. Is it true?”
“We don’t know much at this point.”
“What happened?”
A brief pause. Johan could picture Knutas leaning back in his desk chair, filling his pipe. They’d had a great deal to do with each other when Johan reported on the murders from Gotland and then took an active role in solving the case.
“Last night a man was found dead in a basement on Jungmansgatan, in Grabo.”
“Of course.”
“His injuries were such that we suspect he was murdered.”
“How old was he?”
“Born in 1943.”
“Known by the police?”
“Yes, but not because he had committed any crimes to speak of, although he was quite an inveterate alcoholic. He used to hang out downtown, drinking. A so-called local wino.”
“Does it have to do with a drunken brawl?”
“It seems so.”
“How was he killed?”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“When was the murder committed?”
“He’d been dead for several days. Maybe as long as a week.”
“How could he be dead for so long if he was found in a basement?”
“He was inside a locked room.”
“A basement storage room?”
“You could say that.”
“Who found him?”
“The building superintendent.”
“Had anyone reported him missing?”
“No, but a friend of his contacted the superintendent.”
Knutas was starting to sound impatient.
“I see. Who was it?”
“Listen, I can’t tell you that. I have to go now. You’ll have to make do with what I’ve said, for the time being.”
“Okay. When do you think you might have more to tell me?”
“I have no idea. Bye.”
Johan switched off his cell phone, thinking that the murder didn’t sound like something that Regional News would report on. Probably just an ordinary drunken fight that got out of hand. The story would be relegated to a few lines.
The Stockholm subway system on a Monday morning in November must be one of the most depressing places in the world, thought Johan as he leaned against the window with the black wall of the tunnel whizzing past an arm’s length away.
The car was filled with sallow-faced people, weighed down by worries and the daily grind. No one was talking; the only sounds were the usual clanking and rattling of the subway. A few coughs and some sleepy rustling of giveaway newspapers. People stared at the ceiling, at the ad placards, at the floor, out the window, or at some indefinite point in midair. Everywhere but at each other.
The smell of wet clothing was mixed with perfume, sweat, and the dust burning on the heaters. Jackets were pressed next to coats, scarves next to caps, bodies against bodies, shoes against shoes, faces close to other faces, but without any sort of contact.
How can so many people be gathered in one place without making a sound? thought Johan. There’s something sick about the whole thing.
It was mornings like this that could really make him long to get away.
When he emerged from the subway at Karlaplan he felt liberated. At least here he could breathe. The people around him were marching like tin soldiers toward buses, offices, schools, shops, the welfare center, a lawyer’s office, or wherever they happened to be going.
He set off across the park near the church, Gustav Adolfskyrkan. The kids in the day-care center were outside, playing on the swing set in the biting wind. Their cheeks were as bright as ripe apples.
The huge edifice of TV headquarters loomed in the November fog. He waved hello to the statue of TV star Lennart Hyland before he stepped through the front door.
Up in the newsroom everyone was bustling around. The national morning news program was under way. At the elevators guests were hurrying past, along with anchormen, meteorologists, makeup artists, reporters, and editors-exiting the studios, or going to the bathrooms, or heading for the breakfast table. The row of picture windows offered a view of Gardet, the big park in Ostermalm, swathed in gray fog and swarming with lively dogs from the doggy day care on Grev Magnigatan. Brown, black, and spotted canines galloped around, playing on the big field and unaffected by the fact that it was a dreary Monday in November.
Almost everyone was present for the morning meeting of Regional News: several cameramen, an early- morning editor, reporters, producers, and program planners. It was crowded in the lounge area of the newsroom. After they had discussed the latest broadcast, criticizing some parts and praising others, the editor Max Grenfors presented the day’s roster of news stories. The assignments might very well change during the course of the meeting. Some reporter might have his own idea, or the objections to a story proposal might be so strong that it ended up in the wastebasket, or the discussion might take a new direction and lead to a reworking of all their plans. That’s exactly the way things needed to function in a newsroom, thought Johan, who enjoyed the morning gatherings.
He briefly recounted to the others what he knew about the murder on Gotland. Everyone agreed that it sounded like a drunken fight. Johan was assigned to keep an eye on the situation since he was going to Gotland the next day anyway, to do a report on the controversy regarding a campground that was threatened with closure.
The Regional News editorial offices operated under high-pressure deadlines. Each day they produced a twenty-minute program, basically from scratch. A story that aired for two minutes usually took several hours to film and another two hours to edit. Johan was always nagging his bosses about giving the reporters more time.
He was not in favor of the changes that had been implemented since he had started out as a TV reporter ten
