Daniella Richards is making notes on a chart when Erik walks in. As he greets her, he notices the tense lines around her mouth, the muted stress in her movements.
“Have some coffee,” she says.
“Do we have time?” asks Erik.
“I’ve got the bleed in the liver under control,” she replies.
A man of about forty-five, dressed in jeans and a black jacket, is thumping the coffee machine. He has tousled blond hair, and his lips are serious, clamped firmly together. Erik thinks maybe this is Daniella’s husband, Magnus. He has never met him; he has only seen a photograph in her office.
“Is that your husband?” he asks, waving his hand in the direction of the man.
“What?” She looks both amused and surprised.
“I thought maybe Magnus had come with you.”
“No,” she says, with a laugh.
“I don’t believe you,” teases Erik, starting to walk toward the man. “I’m going to ask him.”
Daniella’s mobile phone rings and, still laughing, she flips it open, saying, “Stop it, Erik,” before answering, “Daniella Richards.” She listens but hears nothing. “Hello?” She waits a few seconds, then shrugs. “Aloha!” she says ironically and flips the phone shut.
Erik has walked over to the blond man. The coffee machine is whirring and hissing. “Have some coffee,” says the man, trying to hand Erik a mug.
“No, thanks.”
The man smiles, revealing small dimples in his cheeks, and takes a sip himself. “Delicious,” he says, trying once again to force a mug on Erik.
“I don’t want any.”
The man takes another sip, studying Erik. “Could I borrow your phone?” he asks suddenly. “If that’s okay. I left mine in the car.”
“And now you want to borrow mine?” Erik asks stiffly.
The blond man nods and looks at him with pale eyes as grey as polished granite.
“You can borrow mine again,” says Daniella, who has come up behind Erik.
He takes the phone, looks at it, then glances up at her. “I promise you’ll get it back,” he says.
“You’re the only one who’s using it anyway,” she jokes.
He laughs and moves away.
“He
“Well, a girl can dream,” she says with a smile, glancing back at the lanky fellow.
Suddenly she looks very tired. She’s been rubbing her eyes; a smudge of silver-grey eyeliner smears her cheek.
“Shall I have a look at the patient?” asks Erik.
“Please.” She nods.
“As I’m here anyway,” he hastens to add.
“Erik, I really do want your opinion, I’m not at all sure about this one.”
Chapter 2
Daniella Richards opens the heavy door and he follows her into a warm recovery room leading off the operating theatre. A slender boy is lying on the bed. Despite his injuries, he has an attractive face. Two nurses work to dress his wounds: there are hundreds of them, cuts and stab wounds all over his body, on the soles of his feet, on his chest and stomach, on the back of his neck, on the top of his scalp, on his face.
His pulse is weak but very rapid, his lips are as grey as aluminium, he is sweating, and his eyes are tightly closed. His nose looks as if it is broken. Beneath the skin, a bleed is spreading like a dark cloud from his throat and down over his chest.
Daniella begins to run through the different stages in the boy’s treatment so far but is silenced by a sudden knock at the door. It’s the blond man again; he waves to them through the glass pane.
“Fine,” says Erik. “If he isn’t Magnus, who the hell is that guy?”
Daniella takes his arm and guides him from the recovery room. The blond man has returned to his post by the hissing coffee machine.
“A large cappuccino,” he says to Erik. “You might need one before you meet the officer who was first on the scene.”
Only now does Erik realize that the blond man is the detective who woke him up less than an hour ago. His drawl was not as noticeable on the telephone, or maybe Erik was just too sleepy to register it.
“Why would I want to meet him?”
“So you’ll understand why I need to question- ”
Joona Linna falls silent as Daniella’s mobile starts to ring. He takes it out of his pocket and glances at the display, ignoring her outstretched hand.
“It’s probably for him anyway,” mutters Daniella.
“Yes,” Joona is saying. “No, I want him here… OK, but I don’t give a damn about that.” The detective is smiling as he listens to his colleague’s objections. “Although I
The person on the other end is yelling.
“I’m doing this my way,” Joona says calmly, and ends the conversation. He hands the phone back to Daniella with a silent nod of thanks. “I have to question this patient,” he explains, in a serious tone.
“I’m sorry,” says Erik. “My assessment is the same as Dr. Richards’.”
“When will he be able to talk to me?” asks Joona.
“Not while he’s in shock.”
“I knew you’d say that,” says Joona quietly.
“The situation is still extremely critical,” explains Daniella. “His pleural sack is damaged, the small intestine, the liver, and- ”
A policeman wearing a dirty uniform comes in, his expression uneasy. Joona waves, walks over, and shakes his hand. He says something in a low voice, and the police officer wipes his mouth and glances apprehensively at the doctors.
“I know you probably don’t want to talk about this right now,” says Joona. “But it could be very useful for the doctors to know the circumstances.”
“Well,” says the police officer, clearing his throat feebly, “we hear on the radio that a caretaker’s found a dead man in the toilet at the playing field in Tumba. Our patrol car ’s already on Huddingevagen, so all we need to do is turn and head up towards the lake. We figured it was an overdose, you know? Jan, my partner, he goes inside while I talk to the caretaker. Turns out to be something else altogether. Jan comes out of the locker room; his face is completely white. He doesn’t even want me to go in there. So much blood, he says three times, and then he just sits down on the steps…”
The police officer falls silent, sits in a chair, and stares straight ahead.
“Can you go on?” asks Joona.
“Yes… The ambulance shows up, the dead man is identified, and it’s my responsibility to inform the next of kin. We’re a bit short-staffed, so I have to go alone. My boss says she doesn’t want to let Jan go out in this state; you can understand why.”
Erik glances at the clock.
“You have time to listen to this,” says Joona.
The police officer goes on, his eyes lowered. “The deceased is a teacher at the high school in Tumba, and he lives in that development up by the ridge. I rang the bell three or four times, but nobody answered. I don’t know what made me do it, but I went around the whole block and shone my torch through a window at the back of the
