‘That’s why I’m investigating it.’
Sven hung on while Krantz talked to someone in the room for maybe half a minute.
‘Anything else you want to know?’
‘One more thing. Where is it now? The tape, I mean.’
Krantz gave an exasperated laugh. ‘Don’t you lads ever speak to each other?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ask Grens.’
‘Ewert?’
‘He wanted the tape. I handed it over to him after we had done the prints. You know, down in the mortuary.’
Sven took a deep breath. Pain in his stomach, irritation. And definitely anger.
He got up from his desk, went to Ewert’s office four doors down, and knocked.
He knew that Ewert was interviewing Alena Sljusareva. He tried the door. It wasn’t locked.
He went in and scanned the room. It was an odd feeling. He was there to pick up a scene-of-crime item, but in that instant was an intruder, entering unbidden and without permission. He couldn’t remember ever having been in Ewert’s office alone. Had anybody? He only had to look for a few seconds. He saw the video on the shelf behind Ewert’s desk, beside the old cassette player that filled the room with Siw Malmkvist. The label on the back was in Cyrillic script, which he couldn’t read.
After putting on plastic gloves, he weighed the videotape in his hand, fingered it pointlessly. She had planned every move in detail, never hesitated, had a motive for every step she had taken towards her death. Sven flipped the video over, felt its smooth surface. This tape was not there by chance. There was a reason for it. She had wanted to show them something.
He left, closing the door carefully, and went along to the meeting room. He loaded the tape. He was sitting in the same chair where Ewert had been sitting the night before.
But watching something different. Jonas, his son, used to call such an image the War of the Ants. A tape with a loud rushing noise and no picture, just a white flicker against a grey background.
This was a tape that shouldn’t exist. It was unregistered, had no entry in the official lists, held no filmed images.
That feeling in his stomach that had been unease earlier had now turned to anger, a sudden rage that made him sick.
Alena was safely on board. The ferry had left the port and was negotiating the Stockholm archipelago on her way to the open sea. Her route crossed the Baltic Sea and ended in Klaipeda. Soon Alena would be home and would never look back.
Ewert Grens waited for a taxi that never came. He swore and called back to find out why. The operator apologised, but she had no record of a taxi request for Grens from the ferry terminal to Berg Street. Should she register a request now? Ewert swore again, launched into a litany that included organisations and bureaucrats and clowns, demanded to know the operator’s name and altogether managed to be more offensive than he cared to remember afterwards.
Then finally a cab turned up and he got in.
He suddenly caught a glimpse of the house on the other side of the bay.
He missed her; he longed for her. The feeling was stronger now than it had been for years, and he didn’t want to wait until next Monday morning. He should tell the driver to go across Lidingo Bridge, past the Milles Museum and stop in the car park outside the nursing home. Ewert would run inside and stay with her. Just be there, together.
But she wasn’t there, not the woman he missed and longed for. She hadn’t existed for twenty-five years.
The afternoon traffic was growing heavy and the taxi slowed to a halt more than once. It took half an hour to get to Kronoberg, and by the time he had paid and got out of the car, he had cooled down.
The air felt milder now. The effect of all that rain seemed to be wearing off and summer was making another attempt. The wind had died down and he felt the sun warming him. Weather: he had never got his head round it.
Back in his office he started his music machine and Siw’s voice came through the tinny mono speaker. Together they sang: ‘Lyckans ost’, (1968), original English version ‘Hello Mary Lou’.
Ewert opened the folder on the investigation into the Jochum Lang case. He knew the photos would be there.
He studied them, one at a time. Their subject was a dead person on a floor and the quality was not great. The photographs were grainy and so poorly lit the outlines had become almost blurred. Krantz and his boys were good technicians, no question, but none of them could handle a camera. He sighed, picked three halfway decent ones and put them in an envelope.
Two telephone calls to round off the morning.
First he rang a stressed Lisa Ohrstrom, who answered from somewhere in the hospital. He told her briskly that he and DI Sundkvist would come to see her soon in order to show her some more pictures. She protested, saying that she had quite enough to do without spending her time on more photos of broken body parts. Ewert replied that he looked forward to seeing her and hung up.
His next call was to Еgestam, who was in his office at the State Prosecution Service. Ewert told the prosecutor that he had someone who was prepared to witness against Jochum Lang in connection with the Oldйus incident, a hospital doctor called Lisa Ohrstrom, who had unhesitatingly identified Lang as the perpetrator. Еgestam was unprepared for this and asked for further information, but Ewert interrupted him with a reassurance that there would be more to come, conclusive evidence clinching both the current cases by tomorrow morning, when they were due to meet.
She was still singing her heart out, was old Siw. He tuned in and sang along, moving about the room with a bounce in his step. ‘Mamma дr lik sin mamma’, (1968), original English version ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’.
Not many passers-by noticed the car that had stopped in front of the door to number 3 Volund Street. It was a modest car, driven decorously. The driver was a middle-aged man, who climbed out and opened the rear door for two girls, teenagers of about sixteen or seventeen. They were both pretty and seemed curious about their surroundings.
Could be a father with his daughters.
The girls looked up at the building with its rows of identical windows, as if they hadn’t seen it before. Presumably they didn’t live there, so maybe they were visiting somebody.
The driver locked the car and walked ahead to open the door. Just as he pulled at the door handle, he turned and said something which made one of the girls give a little scream and burst into tears. The other one, who seemed the stronger, put an arm round her, patted her cheek and tried to make her come with them.
In the lobby, the man kept talking and the anxious girl kept crying.
Any native observer would have found their language strange-sounding and incomprehensible, which meant that even if the older man had said something to the effect that they owed him now and that was why he was going to break them in and screw them until they bled, nobody would have understood it.
Sven left the meeting room with the empty videotape in his hand. He stopped for a coffee, added plenty of milk because he needed nourishment but had to be careful. Now that he had become angry, his stomach was in constant protest.
That video was a blank. He was convinced Grajauskas hadn’t intended it, she had planned everything so meticulously and had stage-managed every aspect of her last hours. He knew that her tape had a purpose.
He phoned Krantz again from his office. The technician, still in the Regering Street flat, answered at once, preoccupied and cross.
‘What’s up with the damn tape now?’
‘All I want to know is – was it new?’
