‘New?’
‘Had it been used?’
‘Yes, it had been used.’
‘And how do we know that?’
‘I can’t speak for you lot, but I know because when I checked there was dust inside. Another thing I know is that the safety tab had been broken off. Which is what you do if you want to make sure the recorded stuff won’t be wiped.’
Sven inspected the video under the desk lamp. It was so new it shone, not one grain of dust in sight. The safety tab was intact. He spoke again.
‘Krantz, I’m coming to see you.’
‘Later, I don’t have time now.’
‘I want you to look at this videotape again. Krantz, it’s important. Something’s not right.’
Lars Еgestam didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Grens had announced that he was going to provide conclusive data about the deaths of both Lydia Grajauskas and Bengt Nordwall – as well as Hilding Oldйus – and about Alena Sljusareva and Jochum Lang; about two simultaneous catastrophes linked by time and place. Almost a year had passed since he last worked with Ewert Grens. That too had been a strange business, a trial of a father who had shot his daughter’s killer. At the time, Еgestam had been the youngest prosecutor in the state service, keen to land a major case and was then almost crushed when the big one landed in his lap. He had been picked to be in charge of the interrogation, which formally meant that he outranked DSI Grens, a man he had heard much about and admired from a distance and whom he now would work with and against.
They were meant to work together, but their collaboration had been a disaster.
Grens seemed to have decided from the outset that mutuality simply wasn’t on his agenda and, collaboration or not, he couldn’t be bothered even to be civil.
Now Еgestam had a choice, and he decided to laugh, which was the easier option. Fate would have it that he was to work with Grens again, on not one, but two investigations in connection with the events at Soder Hospital. And the argument was – this was when he laughed rather than cried – that they had worked together the last time Grens had a big case; the powers-that-be had kept an eye on it and noticed that the teamwork gave good results.
Teamwork? My ass.
Еgestam’s thin body shook as he laughed. He pulled off his jacket, sat back with his shiny black shoes on the desk, tugged at his nicely cut blond hair and laughed until tears came to his eyes at the thought of Grens, the teammate from hell.
The sky above Regering Street should have been summer blue. Sven stared at it and it stared back, grey and dull and mean-looking. Soon it would rain again. He had been standing there for a while. He knew that he should get back to the office, but was uncertain whether he could take any more. Back in the office he would have to continue the work he had started, work that was pushing him to the breaking point.
Nils Krantz, stressed and irritable at being interrupted in the middle of a crime scene examination, had glanced at the videotape for a few seconds, no more, then he handed it back, saying that this was not the tape he had found and analysed in the mortuary. Sven knew that already, but hadn’t been able to stop hoping that he was wrong, as one does when all is not as it should be.
Still, now he knew for certain. Or, rather, he knew nothing whatsoever.
The Ewert Grens he knew and looked up to wouldn’t dream of interfering with evidence.
The Ewert Grens he knew was an awkward bastard, but a straight and honest bastard.
What he had done now was different, something else altogether.
The dull sky was still glaring down at him when his mobile rang. Ewert. Sven sighed, uncertain if he could deal with him now. No, he couldn’t. Not yet.
He listened to the voice message instead. They were going to drive over to Soder Hospital and show Lisa Ohrstrom a few more of Ewert’s photographs. Sven was to wait where he was; Ewert would pick him up soon.
It was difficult to look at Ewert, and Sven avoided all eye contact with his boss. He would do it later, he knew that, when the time was right, but not now. He settled gratefully in the passenger seat, where he could keep his gaze fixed on the anonymous car a few metres ahead in the slow-moving rush-hour mess on Skepp Bridge and up the slope up towards Slussen and Sodermalm.
He wondered about the woman they were going to see. He was still feeling upset about the failure of the identity parade. Ohrstrom’s reneging on her previous statement had turned the whole thing into a fiasco. Members of her family had been threatened and he understood how terrified she was, but there had been something else as well, something more than fear. She was also riddled with shame, the shame he had tried to explain to Ewert earlier. This had become obvious during their first interview, when she had told him that she grieved over the loss of her little brother but was disgusted with Hilding for being an addict and angry with him for indirectly being the cause of his own death.
She hadn’t been able to prevent it and that was what made her feel ashamed and gave her another reason, in addition to the threats, for not recognising Lang behind that one-way window. Sven felt sure that she was one of those people who agonised about being inadequate, always tried to help, but never felt they had done enough. Hilding was probably the reason she had chosen to study medicine; she was family and therefore believed that she had to save and help and save and help.
And now he was dead, despite all her help.
She might never be rid of her shame now. She would have to live with it for ever.
When they walked into the ward, she was sitting in the ward sister’s glazed cubicle. Her face was pale; the look in her eyes was weary. Grief and fear and hatred can each corrode your strength; together they consume your whole life. She didn’t greet them when they stepped inside the glass box, only looked at them and radiated something close to loathing.
Ewert ignored her manner – or possibly didn’t notice it – he just reminded her briefly of their previous conversation. She didn’t seem to care. It wasn’t easy to read whether her indifference was pretence, or whether she simply couldn’t bear to listen to what he was saying.
Ewert asked her to turn around. He had brought more photos.
It took some time before she stopped studying something on the wall, before she looked at the black-and-white photograph on the table in front of her.
‘What do you see here?’
‘I still have no idea what you’re trying to prove with this game.’
‘I’m just curious. What do you see?’
She stared at Grens for a while, then she turned her head.
She glanced at the photo, noting that it was printed on unusual, slightly rough paper.
‘I see a fractured elbow. Left arm.’
‘Thirty thousand kronor.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Remember the pictures I faxed to you? I’m sure you do. Three broken fingers; that is, one thumb at five thousand and two fingers at a thousand each. I told you that Lang operates with fixed charges, and also that he usually signs off a job by breaking a few fingers. Then I said that the poor sod had owed seven thousand kronor. That wasn’t quite true. In fact he had been in debt to the tune of thirty-seven thousand. It meant the elbow had to go as well. Losing an arm is worth thirty thousand, you see.’
Sven was sitting a little to one side, behind Ewert. He felt bad, ashamed. Ewert, you’re trampling all over her, he thought. I know what you want and I agree we need her as a witness, but not this, you’re going too far.
‘I have another picture. What would you say this is?’
The photograph showed a naked man on a stretcher. The whole body was in the frame and the picture had been taken from the side, in poor light as before, but it was easy to see what it was all about.
‘You seem to have nothing to say. Let me help. This is a dead man. The arm you have been looking at is part of his body. Look! There are the fingers. You see, I told another fib. This guy didn’t just owe thirty-seven thousand kronor, his debt amounted to one hundred and thirty-seven thousand. Lang charges one hundred thousand for a
