Trapped, page 49
‘Theatre, Theme-parks, Traffic?’ her little brother said with a frown.
‘Mora at least has two out of three,’ she said. ‘And when you’re not already from Mora you can board at the school. Ylva’s dad has helped me with all the details, all Mum has to do is sign a document to consent to me living there.’
Her little brother’s eyes filled with tears. Bloody Mum forcing her to do this. She’d really hoped Mum would have plucked up the courage to tell him before she got home. Her little brother wasn’t good at processing change – he needed to be prepared a long way in advance.
‘In how many years’ time are you moving?’ he whispered.
‘Not years. Now. I’m only home for four days. Then I’m going again.’
‘But Jane, you can’t!’
He flung his arms around her neck.
‘A triangle can’t only have one edge,’ he cried against her cheek. ‘Then it’s just a line. Then it falls over. I don’t want to fall over, Jane. Please, please. I don’t want to fall over.’
She pushed him away and looked into his eyes.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The triangle,’ he sobbed. ‘You. Me. Mum. It can’t just be me. You’re older, you know how to get by, but I … I … I promise to follow all the rituals exactly. Exactly. I’ve been practising so much. Please don’t go.’
The knot in her stomach that she’d had when she’d called home almost two weeks ago returned. She’d been worried something was wrong at home. Then she’d convinced herself that there was nothing to worry about. But something was wrong. More than that, something was dangerously wrong. Her little brother was scaring her.
‘Where’s Mum?’ she said, carefully loosening his grip.
He pointed towards the kitchen counter without looking at her. The whole counter was covered in carefully cut triangular sandwiches. Hundreds of them. Perfectly toasted.
‘Those are Mum’s sandwiches,’ she said. ‘Where’s Mum?’
She was starting to get really scared. The sinking feeling in her stomach had become a black hole.
‘On the counter,’ he said. ‘Do you remember? “We are what we do” – like she always said. And I’ve done it so many times. And exactly. Every time. So she’d be there.’
It felt like insects were crawling on the back of her neck. She stood up and backed away from her little brother, who was still looking at the floor.
‘Mum?’ she shouted into the hallway without getting a reply.
She ran upstairs in a panic and opened the doors to all the bedrooms. Mum wasn’t in any of them.
She ran back downstairs towards the front door. Her little brother was still in the kitchen, crying. She ought to stop, to hug him, to say everything was fine, but there was no time. And everything wasn’t fine.
She had to know.
It was dusk outside. They only had electric lighting on the porch and outside the barn. The darkness was lightened up by the stars which had begun to appear – enough that she could see the big lawn standing out in relief as a field of shadows. But it appeared to be empty. No Mum.
The woods at the far side of the grass were forbiddingly black – she couldn’t go into them until it got light.
‘Mum!’
She shouted again. Maybe Mum was at Allan’s. She liked hanging out at his place. Perhaps she had forgotten that it was today her daughter was due home. But why didn’t her little brother say so if that were the case? And why was the phone off the hook?
What were they playing at?
In the worst case, her mother had had a panic attack and was lying somewhere out there in the darkness, unable to get up by herself. She might need help. Of course her little brother would be frightened if Mum had had an attack. He was obviously in shock. That explained his behaviour. After all, he wasn’t that old.
She ran to the barn. In the light outside she stopped and took a deep breath. Something smelled. A sweet and … suffocating smell. Last summer her brother had eaten his packed lunch in the barn and left some of the food to slowly cook in the summer heat. The stench had been disgusting by the time they found the food. The smell reminded her of that. But this was worse.
Much worse.
She opened the barn door and immediately put her hand to her nose and mouth. The stench made her eyes tear up. It smelled of urine and sweat and decay and death. The light only reached a short distance inside – most of the building was in darkness.
She blinked away the tears and realized that the darkness was moving.
And it was making sounds.
What she had thought were shadows were actually flies in a huge, concentrated mass. Thousands of fat bluebottles buzzing in agitation as they flew and clambered over each other. The swarm was bigger than she was. Acidic bile filled her mouth. She had to get out of there before she threw up. She lunged for the barn door just as part of the cloud of flies thinned slightly, allowing her to see the contours of what was attracting them
It was a box.
A blue box with a big padlock and stars painted on it.
115
Hail was beating against the tarpaulin above her head. She had suggested they meet at TAK – the outdoor restaurant on the roof of the Gallerian shopping mall. There was something about being that high up. The air was always easier to breathe. It was as if the dirt stayed down below.
But they had only just got their noodles served in takeaway boxes when the hail came. They hurried under the tarpaulin covering the kitchen and bar area of the restaurant, together with the other patrons. The white pellets poured down with the fury of someone who had been kept waiting far too long. She shivered and looked at her bare arms. They were covered in goosebumps from the cold. She almost wished Vincent would offer her his jacket, but she knew he wouldn’t do that. Especially not now that things were so tense between them. She hadn’t exactly sided with him during the meeting at police headquarters. She had been too shocked at what he had revealed.
‘Vincent, I’ve got to know,’ she said.
He stopped looking at the hail shower in fascination and turned towards her.
‘I’m only going to ask this once,’ she continued. ‘But you’ve got to be honest. Do you have anything whatsoever to do with this? You don’t have to say what, just … well, do you?’
She could see how wounded he was by her words. The otherwise upright posture slumped and the spark in his eyes disappeared. But she had to know. Once and for all. He turned away from her and was silent for a long time. Then he took a step forward into the hail. Away from her.
‘If I did,’ he said, ‘do you think I would have said yes to joining the investigation? Or do you think I would in fact have run in the opposite direction as quickly as I could when I met you that first evening in Gävle? Of course I don’t have anything to do with it.’
The hail caught in his blond hair and on his shoulders where it melted and began to trickle down his back.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I had to ask.’
He turned around and looked her in the eyes.
‘Did you?’ he said. ‘Did you really? I thought we knew each other better than that. I thought that we … that we …’
She nodded to him to continue, but the mentalist fell silent. She went into the hail and stood next to him. No one had ever died from a little frozen water. They surveyed the wet rooftops together. Without realizing what she was doing until it was too late, she entwined her hand with his. Bloody hell. She hadn’t meant to. She held her breath while awaiting his reaction, but he didn’t withdraw. Instead, his hand squeezed hers.
‘That we understood each other,’ she said, finishing his sentence.
He nodded quietly.
Then he squinted into the hail and suddenly jumped.
‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘For one moment I thought I could see Anna over there.’
She looked in the same direction but it was hard to see the other patrons clearly through the hail.
‘It wasn’t her,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Now I’m apparently hallucinating my stalkers. Wonderful.’
The hail stopped as quickly as it had begun. The patrons began to tentatively emerge from beneath the tarpaulin and they let go of each other.
‘And what about now, then?’ she said, looking at the water-damaged noodle tub in her other hand. ‘Do you want to run in the opposite direction now?’
He found a bin where they could throw away the remains of their lunch. Then he retrieved a bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket and handed it to her. His gaze was still wounded.
‘I’ll run where you tell me to,’ he said. ‘I thought you knew that.’
116
‘According to Vincent’s theory, we have a date when the next murder is likely to take place. And since the other murders occurred in Stockholm, we have reason to believe it will happen here.’
Ruben looked at Julia sceptically when she stopped.
‘How many times do I have to say that we should bring Vincent in? Stick him in the cells as a material suspect – then all we have to do is wait a few weeks until the twenty-second. He may have accomplices we’re not aware of – have you asked him about that? Have you asked him whether he knew Rask? We still don’t know anything. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. And the only person who knows anything, you don’t want to question. Is it just me who can see what’s happening? How much more evidence do you need?’
Mina glowered at him. Her own feeling of hopelessness in this situation wasn’t improved by Ruben’s attitude.
She felt overwhelmed. Somewhere out there was a person, alive, occupied with their daily activities, friends, work, convinced that life ahead of them ran into the infinite horizon. Happily ignorant that it would all be over in a few weeks if she and her colleagues didn’t manage to stop it. And the worst of it was, Ruben might be right.
But she knew Vincent. He was brilliant, but he took ten minutes to tie his shoelaces to make sure it was right. And she had his word that he was innocent.
Vincent had at least understood the gravity of the suspicions directed at him. He had cancelled all his other engagements for the rest of the month and promised not to leave town. And he was no longer part of the investigation.
Julia continued calmly.
It was one of the things Mina really appreciated about her boss. She kept her cool in all situations. Even when Ruben was behaving like an arse.
‘I’ve spoken personally to the chief of police and been promised extra resources on the twenty-second of September,’ Julia said. ‘We don’t know where, you’re right about that. But to date the victims have been found in a certain type of location in Stockholm. They’ve been well-known public locations rather than randomly chosen backstreets.’
Peder raised his hand and Julia nodded.
‘It’s been different places each time,’ he said. ‘So perhaps we can take a chance and rule out those places that have already been used? I mean, we don’t bother using resources to watch Gröna Lund, the park outside the China Theatre or Partihallarna?’
‘Good thinking, and I think you’re right. It’s obviously a risk, we may be wrong, but I think it’s worth taking that risk. We won’t watch those locations. But what places does that leave us with that are very Stockholm-specific? Known sites?’
She held up the pen to start writing their suggestions on the whiteboard.
‘The Kaknäs Tower, the mushroom on Stureplan, the park at Humlegården,’ Mina said.
Julia made notes in her barely legible handwriting.
‘Sergel’s Square, the palace,’ Ruben said without enthusiasm.
‘Junibacken, Djurgården, the Vasa Museum,’ Peder added as Julia continued to write them down.
‘Hornstull,’ said Peder.
Ruben snorted.
‘Hornstull? On Södermalm?’
He said ‘Södermalm’ like it was a dirty word.
‘Horns … tull,’ Julia vocalized as she wrote it on the board.
‘Why are we not supposed to give a toss about Söder?’ said Peder.
‘Well, who the hell gives a fuck about Söder? And Hornstull? What’s there?’ Ruben said.
‘Oi, class, pull yourselves together,’ Julia said severely.
Mina rolled her eyes. Ruben was such a snob. Which was the height of irony, because she happened to know he’d been born and raised in the sticks in Rimbo, and not in Stockholm’s leafy Vasastan as he liked to make out.
‘The Royal Dramatic Theatre,’ Christer said, nodding to himself. ‘I’ve got a strong feeling about the theatre. If I were a murderer, I would definitely have left a body on the steps there. Very impactful.’
‘We don’t know whether impact is what the murderer is going for, or whether there’s some kind of personal connection to these places.’
‘Or whether the places are part of some kind of code,’ Mina interjected.
Ruben sighed.
‘Fuck me, that’s enough,’ he said. ‘Vincent showed us a hidden message. One that he had put there himself. But not everything is a cipher or morse code or hidden message. Let’s do some good old-fashioned police work instead of wasting our time on a load of hocus pocus.’
‘The Royal Dramatic Theatre.’ Julia added it to the board, taking a step back.
‘The problem is,’ said Mina, ‘the places where we found the victims were secondary crime scenes. The actual murders took place somewhere else. I agree that this surveillance will increase the chances of finding the murderers. But only after the murder takes place. We still have a murder to prevent.’
‘And we’re going to do that with every means we have at our disposal,’ said Julia. ‘But this is at least a start. I’ll get to work on allocating resources, set up a rota and so on, and if you think of any more places we should assign officers to, then note them on the list here on the board. I’m also going to ask Sara Temeric in Analysis to initiate more active monitoring of the mobile network from now on. Of course, we’ll also have a greater police presence on the streets of the city. And all ideas on what we can do before this list comes into play will be gratefully accepted.’
‘Needle in a haystack, like I said,’ Ruben muttered. ‘And the needle is called Vincent Walder.’
Julia turned around and stared angrily at him.
‘Your attitude is not helping! Aside from your brilliant suggestion that we take Vincent into custody, what else would you have us do? Sit there twiddling our thumbs waiting for the phone to ring?’
‘We could interview his old teachers and classmates,’ Ruben muttered. ‘And that Jessica woman, Robert’s mother, was one of his playmates. Why don’t we talk to her again?’
‘Because Vincent isn’t a material suspect!’ Julia screeched. ‘There’s nothing tangible tying him to the murders. What is it that you don’t understand about that?’
Ruben’s cheeks went red and he avoided her eyes.
Mina wished she’d brought popcorn. Seeing Ruben being told off was one of her favourite pastimes.
‘Perhaps you could assign Ruben to oversee the surveillance on Södermalm?’ Christer said, and Peder stifled a chortle.
‘Bunch of jokers,’ Ruben muttered.
He quickly exited the room the moment others stood up. Mina lingered for a moment, looking at the board and the list that was only going to grow. Ruben was right about one thing. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
117
For the first time in ages no one in the family was at home. Aston was at school, Benjamin had a lecture on campus in Kista, Rebecka was seeing a friend and Maria was at yoga. Which was just as well. That meant they didn’t have to see the police car parked on the opposite side of the street with a view of the house and the driveway. He wasn’t a suspect – not officially – but when Ruben had insisted, he had agreed to be watched anyway. After all, this was the day he had told them the next murder was going to take place. The twenty-second of September. If nothing else, it might prove his innocence when at the end of the day he hadn’t actually murdered anyone – no doubt to Ruben’s great disappointment.
Ruben could have opted for an unmarked car. Vincent guessed that was the norm when carrying out surveillance. But no, Ruben wanted to be visible. Damn it, it even looked like the white police car with its blue and yellow livery had just been washed. Ruben must have been so disappointed when he discovered that Vincent didn’t have any neighbours. Vincent waved to him through the kitchen window. When Ruben turned away, Vincent gave him the middle finger instead.
The fact that no one else was at home meant that he had the whole house to himself. He could watch porn on Benjamin’s computer, finish building Aston’s Lego models, bake cookies for Rebecka or dance around the living room naked without anyone caring. Or not. Well, not that last one. Dancing naked was more Maria’s thing. Not in reality, of course, but she probably wished it was.
He got out the album Telekon by Gary Numan and put it on the record player in the living room. The first time he had heard music that wasn’t for children when he had been little, it had been songs by Gary Numan, Kim Wilde and other artists from the British New Wave scene. They had just started playing them on Swedish radio. When, as a five-year-old, he had heard the song ‘I Die: You Die’ for the first time, he’d had nightmares all night. It was comprised of sounds that came from no instrument he knew of. Notes and harmonies that were anything other than sweet and familiar. At first it had scared him. Then it had fascinated him. His absolute certainty about what music was, based on the extensive life experience of being a five-year-old, had turned out to be completely wrong. And if that was the case with music, then what else might it apply to? The world was completely different to what he had thought. Everything was possible. And there was no safety net.
Even now, whenever he heard that music it put him in the same state of mind. And right now, that was exactly what he needed. He needed to think outside the box. Because even if he was going to disappoint Ruben by not committing a murder today, someone was going to do it. Someones, he corrected himself. He didn’t believe for one moment that Rask had been one of the murderers. And he doubted Anna was involved either.
