killing. This man’s bad debt has been cleared. He has paid. One hundred and thirty-seven thousand in all.’
Lisa Ohrstrom clenched her jaw. She didn’t speak, didn’t move, pressed her lips tightly together to stop herself from screaming. Sven watched her, then looked at Ewert. You’re getting there. You’re close. But, Ewert, your tactics are out of order. You are hurting her and will soon do it again. I’ll put up with it, despite feeling ashamed, ashamed of you, ashamed because of what you’re doing, though I have to accept that you’re the most skilful operator I’ve ever met in the force. You need her to testify and you will make her do it. But what about the other investigation? I should be helping you here, should be happy that you’ll soon have her where you want her, but, Ewert, Ewert, how are you dealing with the Grajauskas case? What underhand tricks are you playing? I’ve just been to see Krantz, which is why I can’t concentrate on what is going on here, can’t even bear to look you in the eye. Which is also why I’d like to lie down on this table and shout until you listen. Krantz told me what I already knew. There’s another videotape, another video, Ewert!
Ewert sat back and waited for Ohrstrom to cave in. Let her take her time.
‘Come to think of it, I’ve got another set of pictures for you here.’
Lisa whispered. Her voice was too weak. ‘You make your point very clearly.’
‘Good. Excellent. You’ll find the new set even more interesting.’
‘I don’t want to see them. And… there’s something I don’t understand. If what you tell me is true, if this is what Lang does and the sums you mentioned are his fixed charges, as you say, why hasn’t he been locked away long ago?’
‘Why? You should know. You have been threatened, haven’t you? You know all you need to know about how Lang operates.’
That man who had come to the ward kitchen and had got hold of her photos of Sanna and Jonathan. She felt it again, the ache in her chest, the trembling that wouldn’t stop.
Ewert put another envelope on the table, opened it and pulled out the first photograph. A different hand. Five fractures this time. You didn’t need to be a qualified doctor to see that all the fingers had been crushed.
She was silent. He didn’t taunt her, only placed another picture next to the hand. A cracked kneecap, very clear too.
‘It’s a little like a jigsaw, isn’t it? A knee here, a hand there. It’s fair to assume they belong together. They do, but this time the motive had nothing to do with money. This time it was respect.’
Ewert held both pictures in front of her face.
‘This time the message was that you must never spike Yugoslav amphetamine with prison-issue washing powder.’
Still holding the two images in front of her face, Ewert took a third one from the envelope and held it even closer.
It had been taken by someone standing in a staircase, a few steps up, positioning the camera at head-height and pointing the lens at a recently dead man. An overturned wheelchair lay next to him. The blood that had flowed from the man’s head had formed a pool around him.
She realised what the picture was and quickly turned her head away. She was crying.
‘And that is what this guy had done. He had messed around with a big dealer’s product. His name, by the way, was Hilding Oldйus.’
Sven had made up his mind during the car journey back from the hospital. He would keep a low profile for now and say nothing; he would not leave the police building until he had located the videotape.
Back at his desk, he picked up the pile of transcribed interrogations from the floor and started to leaf through them. He knew he had seen it somewhere.
He would read all of them again. Slowly. It was in there and he mustn’t miss it.
It didn’t take long, just about a quarter of an hour.
He had started with the statement made by the female medical student. The interview session had been brief, presumably she was weak and in shock. It would be a while before she had digested it all. Next he read the older man’s statement. The interview with Dr Ejder had taken longer and been more like a conversation. Ejder had controlled his fear by using his logic. As long as he was rational, he could avoid getting over-emotional. Sven had come across the need to suppress fear many times before and noted different ways of keeping panic at bay. Ejder’s self-control and intellectual approach also made him an exceptional witness. He was one of those people who spoke in images detailed enough to make the listener feel that they had been there. In this case, sitting at Ejder’s side, tied up and powerless, on the mortuary floor.
Somewhere in the middle of this statement Sven found what he had been looking for. The doctor had been questioned about the plastic carrier bag where Lydia had kept her weapons. Suddenly, he described a videotape.
Sven followed the lines with his finger, reading one word at a time.
Ejder had seen the black tape when Lydia Grajauskas had pushed the sides of the bag down to take out the Semtex. It was at an early stage, when Ejder thought he should try to talk to her, win her confidence. At least it might help to calm the others. He had asked about the video, and after first refusing to answer, she had then decided to explain in her limited English.
She had said that the video was truth. He had asked her which truth, but she simply repeated the word.
She had demonstrated the number by showing him first two fingers, then one.
Gustaf Ejder insisted that he recalled every single word, in the right order. She had said very little, with such effort, that it was easy to remember.
The truth. Two tapes. In box station train. Twenty-one. Sven read the passage once more. In a railway station. In box 21.
He was convinced now. There was another video in storage locker number twenty-one, almost certainly at the Central Station.
That tape would also have the safety tab removed and the video would contain images, not just a flickering greyness.
He put the pile of documents back on the floor and got up. He would be there soon.
The way he had forced those images on her, in her face.
Lisa was beyond hating anyone. Maybe she never had, and maybe she had never loved either; she had just filed hate and love away as two words for the same emotion, assuming that if she couldn’t feel one, she couldn’t feel the other either. But that had changed: she actually hated this policeman. The past twenty- four hours had been so strange; her grief for Hilding that wasn’t really grief and, after that vague threat, her fear for the children that wasn’t really fear. It was as if, at the age of thirty-five, all her feelings had been put under a spotlight; she had to force them all back in, throw away the key, hide behind her shame and not get to know herself. She had had no idea what they looked like, these unknown emotions, so strong and naked and impossible to escape.
And in the middle of it all that limping policeman had turned up and rubbed her face in it.
She had seen immediately that the last picture was of Hilding lying dead on the stairs and had got up from her chair, grabbed the photograph, torn it up and thrown the pieces against the glass wall.
She knew where she was going now, running down the corridor towards the main exit. She had a few more hours to do on her shift. For the first time in her life she couldn’t care less. She ran out on to the tarmac outside, and turned in the direction of Tanto Park, across the railway tracks and through the park, not even aware of the unleashed dogs that pursued her fleeing body, propelled by panic. She carried on running, past the Zinkensdamm housing estate, stopping only when she had crossed Horn Street and could stand in the shade of the huge Hogalid Church.
She wasn’t tired, didn’t register the sweat that trickled down over her forehead and cheeks. She stood for a while to get her breath back before walking down the slope to the house where she stayed as often as she did in her own flat.
