Box 21 aka The Vault

deep under the trees as summer darkness ever can be. Sven Sundkvist had got home a little after ten o’clock with the video in his briefcase. First he had gone to see the sleeping Jonas, kissed the boy’s forehead and stood for a while listening to his quiet breathing. Anita had been in the kitchen doing a crossword. He managed to squeeze in next to her on the chair, and after an hour or so, only three squares in three different corners were empty. Typical, just a few letters short of posting the completed crossword to the local paper in the hope of winning one of three Premium Bonds.

Afterwards they made love. She had undressed him first and then herself; she wanted him to sit on the kitchen chair and she settled in his lap, their naked bodies so close, needing each other.

He had waited until she had gone to sleep. It was after midnight when he got out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. He carried his briefcase into the sitting room.

He thought it better to be alone when he watched the video.

Alone with the overwhelming feeling of unease.

What Anita and Jonas didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

The dark outside. Staring into it he could just make out some of the trees.

He checked his watch. Ten past one. He had spent an hour looking at nothing in particular. He couldn’t put it off any more.

She had told Ejder about two videotapes.

She had made a copy. Just in case. Someone might wipe one of the tapes, or record on top of her film, or simply try to lose the whole thing and replace it with an empty cassette.

Sven Sundkvist could not be sure that what he was watching was identical to the recording on the other tape.

He assumed that it was.

They look nervous, the way people do when they are not used to staring at the single eye that preserves what it looks at for posterity.

Grajauskas speaks first.

Two sentences. She turns to Sljusareva, who translates.

‘This is my reason. This is my story.’

Grajauskas speaks again, two sentences, with her eyes fixed on her friend.

Her face has a serious expression. She nods and again Sjusareva turns to the camera and translates.

‘When you hear this, I hope that the man I am going to talk about is dead. I hope that he has felt my shame.’

They speak very distinctly, careful to enunciate every word in both Russian and Swedish.

He leaned forward and stopped the tape.

He didn’t want to go on.

What he felt was no longer unease or dread, rather an overwhelming anger of a kind he only rarely had to confront. No more doubt. He had hoped, as everyone always does. But now he knew, he knew that Ewert had manipulated the tape and had a motive for doing it.

Sven Sundkvist got up, went into the kitchen and put on the coffee machine, a strong brew to help him think. It would be a long night.

The crossword was still lying on the kitchen table. He moved it to make room for a sheet from Jonas’s drawing pad, picked up one of the boy’s marker pens, a purple one, and drew lines, haphazard at first, on the white surface.

A man.

An older man. Massive torso, not much hair, piercing eyes.

Ewert.

He smiled at himself when he realised. He had in fact drawn Ewert in purple marker ink.

He knew why, of course. A long night was staring him in the face.

He had known Ewert for nearly ten years. To begin with he had been ordered about and shouted at – they all had – but at some point he had suddenly become aware of something like friendship with his difficult boss and had become one of the few who were addressed normally, men whom Ewert invited into his office and confided in, as much as he ever did. Later Sven had come to know Ewert Grens well enough to realise how little he understood him. He had never been to Ewert’s flat, and you couldn’t really know people whose homes you’d never seen. On the other hand, Ewert had been here, for supper or just for a cup of coffee, and had sat at this very table flanked by Anita and Jonas.

Sven had invited Ewert to his home, a place where he could be himself. Ewert had never reciprocated.

He looked at the drawing and started to fill in the purple man’s jacket and shoes with more purple. He knew nothing about the private person. He knew the policeman, DSI Grens, who was first in the office every morning, long before everyone else, played Siw Malmkvist songs with the volume turned up, worked all day and all night, often stayed overnight in his office to carry on with an unfinished investigation when dawn broke. He was the best policeman Sven had ever encountered, incapable of making simple errors and always prepared to pursue every case to its conclusion, regardless of consequences. To him, the investigation alone mattered, to the exclusion of everything else.

But now he didn’t know any longer.

He drank the rest of the coffee in his cup and refilled it. He needed more.

Another marker pen, a screaming shade of green this time. He used it for making notes in the space next to the purple man.

Ejder sees the video in LG’s carrier bag.

Krantz finds it at the scene, notes that it has been used. He records two sets of probably female fingerprints. One set is LG’s.

Krantz hands it to EG in the mortuary. EG takes charge of it, but does not record anywhere, i.e., not with the duty staff or the forensic boys.

SS finds a video in EG’s office. The tape is blank.

In the interview, Ejder states that LG told him that a copy of the video is deposited in a Central Station storage locker.

SS gets access to the locker, brings the tape home. SS creeps around the house at night, watches the video and can confirm that it is not blank.

He stopped making notes. He could have added, SS is too soft to carry on watching it, but instead he just sat and looked at the ink version of Ewert. What have you done? I know that you deleted evidence, and I know why. He scrunched up the paper and threw it across the table towards the sink. Then he tried to solve the crossword, testing one letter after another in the three empty squares, but gave up after a quarter of an hour.

He wandered back to the sitting room.

The videotape demanded attention.

He could have not collected it. Or not brought it home.

Now he has no choice. He has to watch it.

Lydia Grajauskas again. The camera slips out of focus, a few seconds pass and then the cameraman signals to carry on.

She looks at her friend, waiting for her to translate. Sljusareva strokes Lydia’s cheek before she turns to the camera.

‘When I met Bengt Nordwall in Klaipeda, he said it was good job and very well paid.’

Sven Sundkvist stopped the tape and fled into the kitchen again. He peered into the fridge, drank some milk