Trapped, page 20
‘Christer has also spoken to Agnes’s father, Jesper,’ she continued. ‘Guess who all three mention?’
‘Daniel Bargabriel.’
It was a guess, but it was all he had.
‘Well done, Master Mentalist. Granted it’s all circumstantial. Märta and Gunnar said that Tuva didn’t dare talk about him she was so afraid he would hurt her. Jesper claimed that Daniel wanted Agnes’s flat. While he may have said that because he’s a racist—’
‘Daniel fled the cafe for a reason.’
Mina fell silent. He could hear voices in the background. They grew louder and then fainter again. She was obviously at work and no one knew that she was calling him. He waited for her to continue talking. He liked listening to her.
‘So what does your profile tell us?’ she said, once the voices in the background were gone. ‘Is Ruben right? Could it be him?’
He considered what he had seen when he had observed Daniel during their brief visit to Fab Fika. Through the wall of the living room, he could hear Tony Irving saying something about a perfect slow foxtrot. Maria must have turned up the volume even more when he didn’t come back. Doubtless she was going to make him pay for this later, but he would have to cross that bridge when he came to it.
‘When we met Daniel, he showed signs of both nervousness and of hiding something,’ he said. ‘But nothing more than that. It’s possible that he may turn violent if he is pushed harder. But I didn’t see any signs of repressed anger. If there had been, he would have been more sarcastic or cynical, rather than activating his orbicularis oculi—’
‘Orbi-what?’ Mina interjected.
‘He wouldn’t have been smiling with his eyes. And the stress we subjected him to would have led to some form of tic in his hands or face. None of that happened. At the same time, it’s dangerous to generalize from one single encounter. Just because Daniel wasn’t violent with us doesn’t mean that he can’t be in other situations. But I’ve also said that the murderer seems to have two sides. There’s an explosive and violent side, but also one that is calm and capable of planning. It remains to be seen whether Daniel possesses both.’
Mina swore.
‘It sounds like our priority is to bring Daniel in right away,’ she said. ‘Even if he’s innocent of the murders, he may need protection from the supporters of Sweden’s Future. Agnes’s father is a high-ranking member of the party and he is very angry. I doubt he’d risk getting his hands dirty by attacking Daniel himself, but I wouldn’t put it past him to reach out to the party faithful by putting Daniel’s picture on his Facebook page and encouraging them to “do the right thing”. It’s been done before.’
Vincent groaned and did a spin in his chair.
‘Sweden’s Future. God, they’re muppets,’ he said. ‘Are we going to have to deal with them too?’
‘Muppets?’ Mina said. ‘I think you must have been watching a different version to me. But thanks. See you soon.’
She ended the call.
He stayed there for a while with the phone in his hand while gathering the strength to go back to Maria. At least Let’s Dance seemed to be reaching its end – he could hear the presenters summarizing the evening. He looked at the mobile display, trying to make it light up again with Mina’s name. It remained blank. He took a deep breath, opened the door and went back into the living room.
‘I’m sitting right here and can hear everything,’ Maria exclaimed. ‘And you’re having phone sex in the next room. It’s so disgusting! You should be ashamed!’
He looked at his wife. Hundreds of cutting replies whirled around his head, each better formulated than the last. Each worse for their relationship than the last. In the end he said nothing at all.
44
Daniel had waited as long as he could to leave the flat in Märsta, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He needed groceries. Toilet paper. And to be outside for a bit. He studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Instead of sexy stubble he sprouted pathetic wisps of hair that formed an uneven patchwork over his chin, which was why he always tried to ensure he was cleanshaven. His hair hadn’t been washed for a week and was sticking to his head like a greasy helmet. The dye had grown out so that it was brown at the roots. In short, he looked a mess.
It was a good thing Evelyn couldn’t see him – she would have told him he looked like a homeless guy with cancer. She had a way of saying whatever would hit people the hardest at any given moment. He missed her more than ever. But she would probably break up with him on the spot if she saw him now. It wouldn’t surprise him if he smelled bad too.
The question was whether they knew. If the police knew where he was. He had been stupidly careless. And he’d had to lie about Tuva. Well, maybe not straight-up lie, but he obviously hadn’t told them everything. And that could come back to get him. It had been a close-run thing twice now. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes.
Daniel looked in the mirror again. For starters, he needed to put on more than just the T-shirt and pants he’d been wearing day in day out, then he needed to get out of the door. But he couldn’t shake off the sense that the police were waiting to jump him the second he came out of the flat. Then they’d beat him senseless. Or someone would see him and call in a tip about where he was. His face was probably on wanted posters hanging from every single lamppost from the flat as far as the supermarket. And not without cause.
‘Pull yourself together,’ he said out loud.
But it was no good. He was too afraid to go out. And the longer he left it, the more the fear would paralyse him.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror for a third time. Ran his hand over his straggly beard. Scrutinized his stained T-shirt. Maybe he could call Samir, ask him to come by with food and clothes. But Samir would bring a bunch of other problems with him. He’d be over the moon to have somewhere to sell his little bags from. And Josef, who owned the flat, wouldn’t be happy about that. No, Samir was not an option. Daniel hadn’t talked to Evelyn since he’d fled, but she’d dump him if he got mixed up with Samir. And he didn’t want to lose her – nothing was worth that.
Evelyn decided matters.
He couldn’t be the prey any longer – he needed to go on the offensive. And that meant making contact with the police instead of waiting for them to find him. And he had to be so convincing that they would forget him for a long time to come. Forever sounded like a good amount of time. He took down the business card that was stuck to the mirror, fetched his phone and dialled the number.
Someone picked up at the other end but he didn’t quite catch what she said. The maelstrom of his nerves was too loud inside his own head.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You came to my work a while back and wanted to talk. It’s about Tuva. Tuva Bengtsson.’
45
Kvibille 1982
He unfolded the drawing on the barn floor, which had been carefully swept to ensure the drawing didn’t get dirty. It had taken several days to draw, measure, change and redo, but now it was finally ready. He lay down next to the drawing and looked at it in depth, part by part, to check that he hadn’t made any mistakes.
It had been a long time since there had been animals kept in the barn, but it still smelled of cows and manure. Jane thought the smell was completely disgusting and refused to set foot inside the building. But it made him feel safe.
It was his place and no one else’s. He reckoned he had spent more time there with his projects than he had in the real house.
There was a knock on the door and it opened. Jane was standing in the doorway with her hand still on the handle.
‘Can I come in?’ she said.
‘Yes, but I thought you didn’t like being in here,’ he replied, sitting up.
‘I know, but I’ve realized it’s only malodorous molecules. I’m working on re-interpreting them. I read about how you could do that. And I wanted to find out how you were getting on with the number puzzle. I forgot about it before.’
He took the plastic frame with the numbers out of his back pocket, stood up and went over to his sister. He had been trying to beat her challenge for several days.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, handing her the puzzle. ‘It’s as if it … it can’t be done.’
‘Bingo,’ she said. ‘It’s unsolvable.’
He frowned. How could one order of numbers be possible while another wasn’t? It didn’t make sense.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘All the numbers need to be in order except for fourteen and fifteen, which need to swap. If we start with one of the other numbers, what’s the smallest number of moves you can do to have them end up in the same place they started – if you have to make at least one?’
‘Two moves. First one step away – in any direction – and then back again.’
‘Good. An even number of moves. That means that no matter how many moves you make, it always has to end in an even number of moves for a number to return to the same place. Don’t look at me like that – it’s mathematical logic. But how many moves does it require for fourteen to end up in fifteen’s spot?’
‘One,’ he said. ‘Ah! An odd number of moves.’
‘You’ve got it. Nicely done for one so little. It’s always going to take an odd number of moves for fourteen and fifteen to change places. But it takes an even number to keep the others in place. And you can’t make an odd and even number of moves at the same time. So it’s unsolvable.’
He shook his head. He didn’t understand everything she was saying. But somehow it sounded right.
‘I like evens,’ he said. ‘Isn’t there some kind of club for people like you?’
‘You mean extra smart people?’
‘Nope, annoying big sisters.’ Then he slowly added: ‘By the way, you know those molecules you’re training your nose with? You do realize they’re poo molecules, right?’
Jane’s face turned green.
‘Urgh!’ she yelled. ‘God, you’re disgusting!’
She ran out of the barn, while he laughed so hard he bent over double. He laughed even more when he saw her trying to blow her nose on her sleeve in an attempt to flush out whatever invisible contents were in there.
Then he returned to his drawing and brushed away a few pieces of straw that had ended up on it. It wasn’t his first drawing. Along the walls were a number of structures – big and small – and he had built them all. His magic tricks. Some of them worked, others didn’t. Allan, the owner of the timberyard, knew about his passion for construction and was impressed by how good he had got at it. So there were always offcuts, a few planks or a piece of fabric whenever he needed them. And when there weren’t, he improvised with old cereal boxes instead.
The latest drawing, however, was something else. He had invented the illusions lined up against the wall after seeing magicians on TV and trying to work out what they did. He never knew whether he’d guessed right. But the drawing on the floor – it was for real.
With Mum’s help, he’d ordered some books about stage illusions through the library in Kvibille. It had taken over a month for them to arrive. The books had mostly turned out to be biographies, with photographs of sequin-suited magicians in Las Vegas. He had hoped that it would say how they built their illusions, but apparently no one was willing to divulge that. Until he came to Hobby Series 12: Build your own magic! – a title so dull he had almost not bothered ordering it. To his amazement, it featured blueprints for many of the best-known illusions. He couldn’t believe a book like that existed. A book with all the secrets.
It was carelessly done – the instructions consisted of photographed drawings, most of which were presumably American, because the author had changed the measurements from inches to centimetres in the margins next to each photo. But that didn’t make any difference. The book contained the explanation for his favourite illusion: The Substitution Trunk.
Most other illusions that he had seen were based on the magician squeezing their assistant into a box and then doing something with that box. Sawing it in half, setting fire to it, sticking swords through it. Then the assistant would emerge, having changed clothes. He had always found it a bit odd. Magic tricks based on harming someone while they were getting changed. It must be some grown-up thing.
What set The Substitution Trunk apart from other illusions was that the magician and the assistant had to go through the same experience. Both of them were magicians. Both were assistants. The magician became the assistant.
He was able to change places with someone else. Become someone else. That was a better story.
He squinted at the picture in the open book, which was propped on the floor next to the drawing. Two people were smiling and receiving applause. He needed to find an assistant. Jane was out of the question. But with the new measurements he had calculated on the drawing, Mum would easily fit into the box. She was going to be so surprised, so proud of him. He was finally going to do his own magic. He checked the measurements one more time – just to be sure.
It was going to be his best trick ever.
46
‘How did the seventieth go?’
Vincent maintained a light tone of voice. He lived in the hope that she would let it pass. Not that the odds were good. Frankly, if it did happen then today was the day to go out and buy his first-ever lottery scratch card.
You had a one in 250,000 chance of winning one million kronor but the chance of winning something was actually up to one in five. The odds of getting six numbers and a share of the jackpot in the main lottery were 1 in 490,860. And 1 in 50 to win anything at all. It would have to be a scratch card. On the other hand, when you played along with Bingolotto on TV, the probability of getting to play the Super Chance or the Colour Five was around 1 in 166,000. As for any kind of win at all, the probability was 1 in 7.7 tickets, so perhaps he ought to …
‘Vincent! Are you even listening to me?’ Maria hissed, her face flushed red with anger.
He blinked and returned to reality. Maria was always hopping mad after having spent time with her family. Filled with the bitter poison that her siblings and parents insisted on trickling into her ears.
Nevertheless, his heart sank a little when he realized that there would be no scratch card today. On the contrary. It was going to be conflict management, God help him. He got up and refilled Festive Farter with coffee before sitting down opposite her. The sun was casting a golden glow onto the table as if it were rehearsing for the summer.
‘Everyone thought it was very odd that you weren’t at the party,’ said Maria. ‘I explained that you had a performance the same evening, but both Mum and Dad took it very badly.’
‘That’s a pity,’ he said, noting at the same moment from Maria’s body language that this was altogether the wrong answer.
He could read an audience of eight hundred people down to the smallest mood-shift and nuance, and he could play them like an orchestra. But for some reason he was unable to communicate with the human minefield that was his wife. Especially not after those mines had been primed by her parents. And Ulrika.
‘A pity?’
Maria’s voice rose to a falsetto. She was holding her Glitter Pussy mug and he reflected again on how poorly the epithet suited her. There were many terms that better described his wife. Most other words, actually.
‘I didn’t mean …’
He was tapping his foot rhythmically under the table but forced himself to stop. If he seemed nervous, she would only get more annoyed. Sometimes he wondered what exactly she’d seen in him. Why she’d fallen for him. He was completely the wrong type for her. Or to turn it around, maybe she was completely the wrong type for him. How you looked at the situation depended on who had picked who. And which of them had initiated what was regarded as a betrayal of the family of such magnitude that relatives were still licking their wounds.
He told himself that she had been the one who had made the first move. She claimed it had been him. Perhaps the truth was somewhere in the middle. Maria had always been competing with Ulrika, which hadn’t always been an easy task, given Ulrika’s annoying habit of being perfect. Maria was the little sister who never quite got it together. At the same time, perhaps it was Ulrika’s perfection that had drawn him to Maria. It was exhausting trying to live up to Ulrika’s standards. Maria had no standards. At least not in that sense. She was there, in the present. Open. Immediate. Or so he had thought at the time. Only it had turned out that the version of herself that Maria had been showing the world had been some distance from her true self. But by the time he had discovered that, it had already been too late. By then, their betrayal was already public and they were side by side on the battlefield, surrounded by devastation of their own making. And if he was being honest, he probably hadn’t lived up to what she had expected of him either.
However, he staunchly maintained that it had been Maria who had crossed the forbidden boundary. Regardless what Maria might say the chemistry between them had been brewing for months. Looks. Movements. Bodies that happened to brush against each other in passing. They had been at Maria and Ulrika’s parents’ summer house. The others had gone out for a swim. Vincent had stayed behind with the excuse that he needed to work. He had no idea what excuse Maria had given. But it was there in that battered old country kitchen that they’d had sex for the first time. Maria had come up to him. Put her arms around him, kissed him, and then without missing a beat stuck her hand down his shorts and grasped his hard cock. He had picked her up and carried her into the guestroom where he and Ulrika usually stayed when they were visiting. Then he’d been inside her.
They had both known then and there that they were choosing a path where the only possible route was forward. This was a decision that they had resolutely stuck to – to the family’s horror. He had filed for divorce from Ulrika a week later.
