woman who was staying in the garden shed. Did you know she was there?”
Carina looked cross. “I noticed her during Christmas break when I was searching for the drawings. What a disgusting woman! I knew she was living in the shed. I’d forgotten her that night, but I knew who it was when I read the newspaper the next day. Since she’d seen me … I thought it’d be better if she disappeared.”
“She’d seen you enter the hospital. Did you sneak in before or after Linda arrived?” Irene asked cautiously.
“Before. I was waiting for her. She sure looked surprised that last minute of her life.” Again that horrible laugh filled the cell.
Irene let her finish before she asked, “But what had Marianne done to you? How did she threaten your plans?”
A wrinkle appeared between Carina’s brows. “She heard me and Linda. That bitch Linda was carrying a little backpack, and she threw it down the stairs when I … grabbed her.”
“So you were at the top of the stairway right outside the surgical ward?”
“Yes, right against the elevator. I only had to take one step to get to her as soon as she got off.”
Irene shivered. “So unbelievably well thought out. But then Linda threw her backpack down the stairs, and Marianne heard it?”
“Yes, I went down to get that backpack, and I heard Marianne’s key in the ICU door. I’d just made it back up the stairs, but there was no way to get rid of Linda. So when that incredibly stupid night nurse began walking up the stairs and yelling ‘Hello? Linda, is that you?’ I knew that I had to shut her up, too. And so I did.”
“With the rope you used to hang Linda later?”
“It was the only thing I had.”
“And then you carried Linda up inside the door to the attic, then rode the elevator with Marianne’s body down to the basement. How did you get the idea to cut the electricity in the hospital?”
“I needed time. The business with that night nurse took more time than I’d planned. I didn’t want Sverker to go all through the hospital looking for her. Not before I’d … finished.”
“So everything went according to plan in the end.” Irene tried to sound admiring.
Without warning, Carina leaned forward and whacked Irene’s cast. Irene’s cry of pain was not an act.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Carina said contentedly.
Irene decided to whimper a bit before she asked another question. “Why did you go down the main staircase? There was the risk that Siv Persson would see you. And she did.”
A new wrinkle appeared on Carina’s brow when she heard the night nurse’s name. She sat quietly for a while before she said, “As I was about to come down from the attic, I heard Sverker opening the ICU door. I realized he was looking for Marianne, and probably Linda, too, so I walked quickly through the surgical ward and then down the main staircase. And that idiot night nurse did see me, but she looked about to faint from fright. I had counted on that.”
A self-satisfied smile played on the edges of Carina’s mouth. An unnatural gleam came into her eyes as she bent close to Irene, who steeled herself for another blow to her leg. Instead, to her surprise, Carina began to whisper. “I heard Sverker following me. He took care of that confused nurse and left his flashlight with her. Then he walked down the stairs. I was so close to jumping out just to scare him, but I stood in the shadows and watched him as he opened the front door for the police. Then I went down the stairs, through the basement, and then up the back stairs and out the back door.”
Carina’s triumph surrounded her like an aura.
Irene felt a creeping feeling of sheer horror down her back.
Without showing her feelings, she said ingratiatingly, “Just think how you managed to get rid of Linda’s bicycle. Because you did that, we were fooled into thinking she wasn’t still in the hospital.”
“It was easy to ride a bike on the frozen lawn. Still, it was so dark in the park and down by the stream that mostly I had to push it. I shoved the bike under the bridge and took off the nurse’s clothes.”
“Were you wearing different clothes underneath?” Irene made her eyes wide. She was laying it on thick.
“Of course. Tights and a black wool sweater. Though it was cold in the attic, I got pretty sweaty when I was … busy with Linda.”
A short moment of silence.
“So did you park the car behind the grove of spruce trees?” Irene asked.
“Yes. It was just a few meters from the grove to the bridge. No one saw me.”
“You could have frozen to death. It was fifteen below.”
“I had my coat in the trunk.”
Irene realized that that was the moment Carina had made her mistake. She must have thrown Marianne’s flashlight into the trunk without thinking. She was under a lot of stress, after all. Irene decided not to bring up the flashlight. Carina probably didn’t want to hear about any mistakes.
“You were unbelievably thorough at getting rid of all the evidence. I can understand how you saw Siv Persson as a threat. She could have recognized you, of course. But why Anna-Karin Andersson?”
Carina appeared reluctant to answer. Irene realized why. The arson attempt had gone wrong—Anna-Karin hadn’t died. And plans gone wrong were the last thing Carina would want to discuss. Nevertheless, to Irene’s surprise, Carina suddenly started to talk.
“I knew that Anna-Karin and Linda were best friends. Linda said to Sverker that she didn’t even tell her best friend about their relationship, and Sverker had asked who that was. Linda said, ‘Anna-Karin.’ ”
“So you heard all that by listening outside the door?”
“I couldn’t take it for granted that Linda told the truth. She still could have said something to Anna- Karin.”
It was uncanny how intuitive Carina was. Linda actually had told her best friend everything, just a week after that conversation.
“I don’t know how you found your way after you’d sabotaged the electricity,” Irene said.
Carina appeared surprised as she answered. “You got that, didn’t you? You found the flashlight. I’d only remembered it … when you went to our garage.”
“So that was Marianne’s?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And we found a day planner in her pocket. Did you see it?”
“No, but I don’t care about that.”
Marianne had Linda’s day planner in her pocket when she was murdered. Only one thing could have happened—it had fallen from her backpack on its tumble down the stairs, and Carina hadn’t found it when she ran to grab the backpack. But Marianne had found it, opened it, seen that it was Linda’s, and therefore was calling Linda’s name when she walked up the stairs into the hands of her killer.
“You set fire to the garden shed to get rid of the uniform, but also to send us chasing after red herrings. And you wanted to eliminate all traces of Gunnela Hagg.”
Carina looked at Irene with empty eyes. “Her name was Gunnela Hagg?”
“That’s right.”
Carina didn’t answer. She stared at the wall with that cold, scornful smile on her lips. She had sunk back into her own thoughts and didn’t pay any more attention to Irene.
Irene nodded at Fredrik. He stood up from his place by the door and pushed the wheelchair out of the cell.
Once they’d reached the hallway, Fredrik snapped off the tape recorder hidden behind Irene’s back. They wouldn’t be able to use the tape in the courtroom, but it would certainly help the prosecutor prepare her case.
• • •
“ANYBODY WANT TO go to the pub and have a beer with me?”
Kurt Hook stuck his red-haired head through the doorway to Irene and Tommy’s office.
“How about an hour from now? We’re just about through wrapping up our reports on the Lowander Hospital murders,” Tommy said.
Kurt nodded and looked at Irene. “You know where you’ll find me.”
He disappeared down the hallway. Tommy grinned at Irene. “That Hook guy—what a charmer!”
“You got that right!”
