IL: Can you describe his build?
LO: He was frightening.
IL: Height?
LO: Much taller than me and I’m quite tall, one metre seventy-five. Maybe like your colleague. Another ten centimetres.
Lisa nodded towards the end of the corridor, where Ewert was standing at the top of the stairwell, next to the medical examiner, staring at the dead body on the floor. Sven automatically turned the same way and mentally measured Ewert.
IL: His face?
LO: Strong. Nose, chin, forehead.
IL: And hair?
LO: He didn’t have any.
There was a knock at the door. Lisa Ohrstrom had been sitting with her back to it, so she hadn’t noticed someone approaching and therefore got a fright. A uniformed policeman opened the door and came in. He handed over an envelope and then left.
IL: I’ve got some photos for you to look at. Pictures of different people.
She got up from her chair. No more. Not now. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the brown envelope in the centre of the desktop.
IL: Please sit down.
LO: I’ll have to get back to work.
IL: Lisa, look at me. It wasn’t your fault.
Sven rose too, took a step forward and put his arm round the shoulders of the woman who wanted to return to her guilt and grief. He pushed her gently down on the chair, moved two case-note folders aside to make more free space on the desk and emptied out the contents of the brown envelope.
IL: Please, try to identify the visitor, the man whose breath you felt in your face.
LO: I suspect you know who he is.
IL: Please, concentrate on the photos.
She picked them over. One at a time, she had a good look, then put them to the side systematically, face down. After some thirty photos of men standing against a white wall, she suddenly had a sensation of something tightening in her chest. It was the same feeling as when she was little and scared of the dark. She had described it then as a jittery, dancing feeling, as if her fear was light and lifted her.
LO: That’s him.
IL: Are you certain?
LO: Quite certain.
IL: For the record, the witness has identified the visitor as the man in photograph thirty-two.
Sven was silent for a while, uncertain of his reactions. He knew well that grief eats people from inside and that this woman was almost suffocating with sadness, but even so he had forced her to keep her feelings at arm’s length and carry on nonetheless. He had known that she could break down at any moment and had ignored it, because it was his duty.
But now, now she pointed to the person they had wanted her to pick out.
He only hoped she was strong enough.
IL: You have identified a man who is generally thought to be very dangerous. From experience, we know that witnesses who identify him are always subjected to threats.
LO: What’s the implication?
IL: That we are considering giving you personal protection.
That was something she did not want to hear. She wanted to undo the whole thing, to go back home, undress and go to bed, sleep until the alarm went, wake up, have breakfast, get dressed and go to work at Soder Hospital.
It wouldn’t happen. Not ever again.
The past would never cease to be, no matter how much she wanted it to.
Sitting there on the hard chair, she tried to cry again, tried to expel a part of whatever it was that was eating her from inside. It didn’t work. Crying, damn it, wasn’t an option. Sometimes, it just isn’t.
She was about to get up again and walk off somewhere else, just away, when the door to the ward sister’s glass booth opened.
Pulled open by someone who didn’t bother to knock, just stepped straight in.
She recognised the older policeman, who had held her hand for a little too long when they met. His face was flushed, his voice loud.
‘Shit! Sven!’
Sven Sundkvist seldom got irritated with his boss, unlike the rest of them. Most of his colleagues disliked Ewert Grens, some even hated him. As for himself, he had decided simply to accept, the good and the bad, to put up or shut up. And so he put up.
With one exception.
‘For the record. The person who has interrupted the interrogation of the witness Lisa Ohrstrom is Ewert Grens, DSI at the City Police, Stockholm.’
‘Sven, I’m sorry. It just… it’s bloody urgent.’
Sven leaned over to the tape recorder, switched it off, then gestured at Ewert. OK, talk away.
‘That woman. You know the one we carried out of the flat in the Atlas district. She was unconscious.’
‘Flogged?’
‘Yes. She’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
Ewert nodded.
‘She was admitted to one of the surgical wards and was here until very recently. I had a call from Control. She’s not there any more. And she’s armed with a handgun. Knocked out the guard assigned to look after her. She’s probably still somewhere in the hospital, ready to shoot.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘I only know what I’ve just told you.’
Lisa Ohrstrom put photograph number 32 back on the table. Then she looked first at one policeman and then the other, and pointed at the ceiling.
‘Up there.’
‘What?’
‘Up there, next floor. The surgical wards.’
Ewert stared at the white ceiling and was on his way out of the room he had just barged into when Sven grabbed his arm.
‘Stop. Wait. We just got a one hundred per cent clear, unhesitating identification of Jochum Lang.’
The large, clumsy man stopped, nodded at Lisa and smiled at his colleague.
