Deep Harbour, page 5
She had always been able to talk freely with Eilert in the past, but now it felt like she was tiptoeing around him, walking on eggshells. He was the one who had led the investigation into Lina’s disappearance in the nineties, who had interrogated the teenage boy suspected of having killed her. Eira had sat through hours and hours’ worth of footage, and had watched them pile pressure on the boy until he finally cracked and confessed.
You remember, Olof. We know you remember.
‘Do you have any milk?’ she asked.
As she helped him fill the thermos with coffee, taking out the flatbread, butter and cheese, she told Eilert what little they knew about the man whose bones they were busy unloading onto his veranda.
‘So have you got any theories on how he died?’
‘Looks like a shot to the top of his neck,’ said Eira.
‘Christ. And the timeframe? Even the foggiest idea when it might’ve happened?’
‘Not yet, and considering how overworked they are at the lab it’ll probably be a while before we know any more.’
On the other side of the patio doors, Shirin had spread a plastic sheet over the recently oiled deck. They watched her movements as she picked up and studied the parts of a foot, a leg.
‘We think the body might have been deliberately sunk,’ Eira said after a moment. ‘But that’s not something we’ve released yet.’
‘Oof,’ said Eilert. ‘Not your average drunken brawl, in other words – especially not with the shot from behind. Are we talking about an execution here?’
He glanced over to her when she failed to reply.
‘You don’t think you need to worry about me keeping quiet, do you?’
‘No, of course not.’
Eira heard his heavy breathing behind her as she opened the patio doors, caught a slight whiff of whisky that followed her out.
Shirin was in the process of uncovering the anchor. Cast iron and rust, probably the most common model of admiralty anchor. She carefully picked away the remaining sediment from the ring where the chain should have been attached.
‘If the body was tied to the anchor somehow, then the rope or line could easily have come loose over time,’ she said, straightening up to take the coffee.
He was dead when he entered the water, thought Eira. Shot from behind. He wouldn’t have felt himself being dragged down.
‘With the caveat that I’m not exactly an expert on nautical antiques,’ Shirin continued, ‘I’d guess this anchor is last century, possibly even older. That doesn’t necessarily mean much, of course; it could have ended up in the water at any point.’
Eira let Eilert take over, asking questions about the man’s teeth, the spot where he had been found, the sediment at that depth. It didn’t matter how much experience she now had, how much progress she had made, she was and always would be a novice in his presence. She also liked seeing him step back into his former role.
‘So, either no one missed the bloke or he never bothered going to the dentist?’
That bullish laugh, all the jokes she had heard before.
Eilert started talking to Shirin about the latest advances in DNA technology, which he now followed from a distance, but still with great interest. About how remarkable it was that genealogists had managed to solve a random double murder by tracking down the killer through relatives as far back as the eighteenth century – not to mention that it was now possible to produce a picture of a person’s face using only their DNA, a process developed in the U.S.
‘I read that the police down south somewhere tried to identify a murder victim that way, but how sure can they really be?’
‘I’m guessing it’ll be a while before it’s admissible as evidence,’ Shirin agreed. ‘And we’ll still need the Americans’ help. People think that just because the technology exists, we should be all over it, but the cost isn’t the only issue. It has to hold up to scrutiny, too.’
She grabbed the last of the bags containing the bones just as the rain began pattering on the tin roof overhead.
‘Christ, I miss this sometimes,’ said Eilert.
Spring didn’t seem to have reached Strinne yet, and there were patches of snow still dotted about the property. As Eira got out of the car, she realised that it wasn’t snow at all. It was foam.
Was he seriously washing his old bangers?
The red Cadillac was definitely gleaming in the fading evening light, a well-tended Eldorado. Unlike the other rust buckets, it actually looked roadworthy.
She found Ricken out back, sitting with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a small fire in the barbecue to stave off the chill.
‘I can throw some food on if you’re hungry?’
‘No, don’t worry.’
‘Sit down.’
Eira was still wearing her bulky anorak, less because of the weather than because it hid her growing belly. For a moment or two, the setting sun made the river look like it was ablaze; the thick clouds from earlier had blown away.
Spring. A constant back and forth.
‘Who’ve you locked up today, then?’ Ricken asked, flashing her his irresistible smile.
‘No one,’ said Eira. ‘But there’s still time.’
‘Anyone you want me to squeal on?’ He held out a beer, but she shook her head; wouldn’t be sleeping over, not this time. She sat down on a rickety camping chair, and he draped the blanket over her legs. It couldn’t be much more than six or seven degrees, but he had to be outside, free.
‘I was just passing by,’ she said. ‘I’m not on duty.’
‘You’re a cop,’ he said. ‘Are you ever off duty? Aren’t you all cops through and through, loyal to the powers that be?’
‘Come off it, I don’t have the energy.’ Eira looked down at the book lying beside him, in last year’s muddy, trampled grass. The Prince by Machiavelli, a dog-eared paperback. She had never read any of the books Ricken read, not even when she was young and dizzy and in love.
‘Don’t think you get away with it just because you’re good,’ he continued. ‘Even the good have to become a tool of the powers they serve, otherwise you’re a traitor, which you don’t want to be because your privilege and prosperity depend on your loyalty to the power.’
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ said Eira.
‘Hey, don’t get upset, I mean in general terms. Power takes over our lives unless we actively shut it out. They’ve been keeping an eye on us up here ever since the king decided to have a sheriff of Ångermanland, and after that it was the Security Service and their secret spies in the IB. The names might change, but they’re basically the same. And these days that’s all they need,’ said Ricken, pointing to the phone she was spinning round in her hand. He must have noticed that she was nervous. ‘They don’t need to send anyone out to watch over us now, we do it all ourselves.’
Eira let him babble away as she searched for the right words. She had already tested them all out in her head, tried different ways of saying it.
There weren’t many things that scared her, but this … Getting the words out.
How he might respond.
Just like the last time, when she was seventeen, when Ricken broke up with her and her period failed to arrive in the weeks that followed.
What was it he used to say back then, when they were younger?
That it was wrong to bring a child into this world. He wanted a different kind of life; he wanted freedom, not the shackles of a relationship. He didn’t want to have power over anyone else.
Eira had dealt with it in secret back then; only her best friend knew. And Kerstin, of course, though she had probably forgotten about it by now. Her mother hadn’t questioned or judged her – on the contrary. She had trusted that Eira’s decision was the right one, that life had different plans for her.
We didn’t have that option, you know. When I was your age.
Eira couldn’t bring herself to look at Ricken as she said it.
‘I’m pregnant.’
She sensed rather than heard him shudder, a bit like a deer when it smells danger. Ears pricked and skin quivering, followed by a rapid dash into the bushes. Gone, taking cover. That reaction.
‘You don’t have to be involved,’ she continued before he had time to catch his breath. ‘I’m not even sure it’s yours.’
‘A baby?’ He gripped her hand, forcing her to look at him. That smile, the twinkle in his eye. She was so damn defenceless when it came to his laugh. ‘Am I going to be a dad?’ Ricken leapt up from the stray car seat where he had been sitting, taking a ridiculous leap onto the grass. ‘Are you serious? Are you sure? Can I see?’
Eira tried to stop him from pulling her up from the chair, had no choice but to let him open her anorak and put a hand on her stomach.
‘Shit, you’re really showing. I can feel it. Is she kicking?’
‘What makes you think it’s a she?’
‘Because she’s going to be just like you.’
What else could she do but laugh?
‘So, who’s the other guy?’ Ricken continued once he was sitting down again. ‘Do I know him?’
He didn’t sound angry, but then again why would he? They had never talked about being exclusive; this thing between them was nothing like that, nothing that could be called a relationship. It was sporadic, whenever Eira felt like coming over. Ricken never called her.
‘A colleague,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to know. Like I said, I can do this on my own.’
He was holding her with both hands now, his face serious, trying to force her to look him in the eye.
‘I don’t give a shit about genes and all that crap,’ he said. ‘We’ll do this together either way, you hear me? You know how it is, you know me. I’m not the best at living with people. I never thought I’d have a kid.’
Her voice betrayed her, as though she was still seventeen.
‘I didn’t think you wanted to,’ she managed to stutter.
‘You never asked.’
Eira got up.
‘I’ve got to go.’
He followed her back to the car, gave her a long hug and ruffled her hair. There was nothing that made her feel both so little and so secure, though she knew this wasn’t a place of safety.
As Eira drove away, cold from sitting outside, she felt a flicker of that old fear of being trapped. She slowed down as she approached the sharp bends in the road, known locally as the death curves after a nasty accident there in the sixties. It happened the day after Sweden switched over to driving on the right, when the driver in the approaching car forgot. Several young people had died.
The rockface rose sharply at one side of the road. Growing up, her life had been shaped by the desire to get away, a fear of getting stuck, of losing sight of the alternatives. She remembered her mother’s voice in the distant past: don’t forget you can do whatever you want to do, but be careful not to get stuck with someone just because he wants you.
And yet there had been moments when she had longed for that baby. Not to be a mother at the age of seventeen, but a confusing dream that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to get him to stick around.
Rabble was curled up at the foot of the bed, smelling softly of damp fur and bad breath. Allan had got into the habit of bringing him over in the evenings. He hadn’t said anything, but Eira knew it was because she was pregnant, because of a belief that a woman shouldn’t be left alone in that condition, at least not at night. A quiet gesture of consideration that didn’t require any thanks or fuss, but which also ignored what she wanted. Not having a dog in her bed, for example. A dog that leapt up without warning and whose nose tickled the backs of her knees.
She had tried to get to sleep, she really had, but Lina Stavred just kept swirling through her head whenever she closed her eyes.
Eira was now sitting up with her laptop instead. No lights, just the pale moonlight and the bright glare of the screen. She had held off long enough.
It wasn’t against the law for her to access investigations in other regions, but all logins were registered and would be visible to anyone who went to the effort of checking. Still, Eira just couldn’t resist.
At first glance, the case looked like a drunken brawl.
Grubby, and of no real interest.
November last year.
A fifty-two-year-old man, the middle manager at a telecoms company, had been found dead at his home in Täby on the outskirts of Stockholm. Stabbed to death. Bottles and mess everywhere, alcohol in his system. There were no witnesses, but several neighbours reported that a woman seemed to have been living there for a while. No one knew her – they didn’t even know her name – but the National Forensic Centre had found a hit for her fingerprints.
Matching a young woman who had been declared dead, whose body had never been found.
Lina Stavred.
The preliminary investigation into her disappearance contained various pieces of evidence, which meant that the police in Stockholm had been able to confirm the match using DNA.
Eira spent a long time studying the images of the forty-two-year-old woman her colleagues in the capital had managed to dig up from the dead man’s online presence. Her eyes were as pale and blue as ever, like a river in the morning once the ice melts in spring. Eira thought she could see the same coldness in them, a hint of danger, but perhaps that was just because she knew too much. Lina the adult was much plumper than she had been as a teen, her longish hair dyed dark and with no discernible style.
No one would recognise her as Lina Stavred if they bumped into her on the street.
The alert the Stockholm police put out had been internal, which made sense. No one could be sure whether the woman was the perpetrator or simply another victim who had fled the scene. For all they knew she could be lying dead somewhere too. They had chosen to share the latest images of Lina with the public, but they had withheld her name, presumably because they knew that a media circus wouldn’t help their case. Stockholm had also reached out to the police in Finland for help finding her parents. Lina’s father was still alive, but unresponsive following a severe stroke.
It had been five months since Eira heard about the case, in December, just after GG woke up from his nightmare out by Högbonden lighthouse, and it had been eating away at her ever since. No, that probably wasn’t the right word. Haunting her? Terrorising her at night, sometimes, to the extent that she had to get up and log in to this damn investigation where nothing ever seemed to happen.
Back in December, when GG first told her about the match, Eira had spoken to the Stockholm police, told them she had more information, that Lina Stavred had a tattoo on her left arm.
That she had probably killed before.
A transcription of that conversation was right there on the screen in front of her, and it felt so strange to read her own words.
LG: How long have you known that Lina Stavred is alive?
ES: I found out during an investigation three years ago.
LG: How?
ES: I came across some suspicious posts on Facebook, among other things, and then I followed that line of enquiry to Stockholm. I think I might have met her there, in a café, but I didn’t realise it at the time. She was calling herself Simone; she could have had various names over the years.
LG: And you never reported any of this?
ES: We had no proof it was definitely Lina, and even if it was it’s not exactly a crime to be alive. There just wasn’t enough to justify reopening the case.
LG: And you believe that before she disappeared in the nineties, she killed someone. A man by the name of …
ES: Kenneth Isaksson.
Eira could just picture the young police assistant, hear his warm voice. Linus Gustafsson, who had been sent north to take her statement. She remembered him scrolling on his iPad, utterly clueless.
LG: A crime your brother confessed to and was later convicted of?
ES: Magnus did that to protect Lina. He felt guilty, but that doesn’t mean he—
LG: According to Magnus Sjödin, Lina Stavred wasn’t even there.
ES: She was. I know she was.
LG: We’ve spoken to your brother. He maintains his version of events.
(Pause)
Seeing it written in black and white, there was no escaping just how weak it was. They had no evidence, only what Magnus had told Eira late one evening while they were alone, and never again. By that point he had already confessed to manslaughter, and there had been nothing she could do about it.
Or had there?
If she had refused to be drawn into his warped logic and studied the whole thing with her police officer’s hat on, if she hadn’t fallen for his threats of confessing to even worse crimes, could she have prevented the death of a man in Täby three years later?
Whatever the answer, her information didn’t seem to have made any difference to the investigation. Eira logged out, assuming that no one would notice if she accessed the files every single day; they were far too busy with all the shootings down there.
When they arrest Lina, she thought, the whole thing will come crashing down. Loyalty won’t protect her this time. A prosecutor in Stockholm will take over the case, and facts will be the only things that matter, not half-truths and old lies.
Eira curled up with one hand on the sleeping dog, the warmth of another living creature. He really did smell terrible.
‘And how’s it going with our murder victim from the river?’
They had already dealt with the most pressing issues when Silje Andersson turned to Eira during the morning briefing.
‘Are we any closer to putting a date on it yet? Any idea who he is?’
Silje had taken over as team leader when GG stepped back. Eira had always felt a certain admiration for her slightly older colleague. She was cool and analytical, with a background in psychology and all sorts of other academic disciplines. Last time they were out in the field together, they had got drunk one evening, shared certain confidences, though that felt extremely distant now. Eira wasn’t sure whether it was Silje who had sought out that distance or whether she had done it herself; it just seemed to have happened.
You remember, Olof. We know you remember.
‘Do you have any milk?’ she asked.
As she helped him fill the thermos with coffee, taking out the flatbread, butter and cheese, she told Eilert what little they knew about the man whose bones they were busy unloading onto his veranda.
‘So have you got any theories on how he died?’
‘Looks like a shot to the top of his neck,’ said Eira.
‘Christ. And the timeframe? Even the foggiest idea when it might’ve happened?’
‘Not yet, and considering how overworked they are at the lab it’ll probably be a while before we know any more.’
On the other side of the patio doors, Shirin had spread a plastic sheet over the recently oiled deck. They watched her movements as she picked up and studied the parts of a foot, a leg.
‘We think the body might have been deliberately sunk,’ Eira said after a moment. ‘But that’s not something we’ve released yet.’
‘Oof,’ said Eilert. ‘Not your average drunken brawl, in other words – especially not with the shot from behind. Are we talking about an execution here?’
He glanced over to her when she failed to reply.
‘You don’t think you need to worry about me keeping quiet, do you?’
‘No, of course not.’
Eira heard his heavy breathing behind her as she opened the patio doors, caught a slight whiff of whisky that followed her out.
Shirin was in the process of uncovering the anchor. Cast iron and rust, probably the most common model of admiralty anchor. She carefully picked away the remaining sediment from the ring where the chain should have been attached.
‘If the body was tied to the anchor somehow, then the rope or line could easily have come loose over time,’ she said, straightening up to take the coffee.
He was dead when he entered the water, thought Eira. Shot from behind. He wouldn’t have felt himself being dragged down.
‘With the caveat that I’m not exactly an expert on nautical antiques,’ Shirin continued, ‘I’d guess this anchor is last century, possibly even older. That doesn’t necessarily mean much, of course; it could have ended up in the water at any point.’
Eira let Eilert take over, asking questions about the man’s teeth, the spot where he had been found, the sediment at that depth. It didn’t matter how much experience she now had, how much progress she had made, she was and always would be a novice in his presence. She also liked seeing him step back into his former role.
‘So, either no one missed the bloke or he never bothered going to the dentist?’
That bullish laugh, all the jokes she had heard before.
Eilert started talking to Shirin about the latest advances in DNA technology, which he now followed from a distance, but still with great interest. About how remarkable it was that genealogists had managed to solve a random double murder by tracking down the killer through relatives as far back as the eighteenth century – not to mention that it was now possible to produce a picture of a person’s face using only their DNA, a process developed in the U.S.
‘I read that the police down south somewhere tried to identify a murder victim that way, but how sure can they really be?’
‘I’m guessing it’ll be a while before it’s admissible as evidence,’ Shirin agreed. ‘And we’ll still need the Americans’ help. People think that just because the technology exists, we should be all over it, but the cost isn’t the only issue. It has to hold up to scrutiny, too.’
She grabbed the last of the bags containing the bones just as the rain began pattering on the tin roof overhead.
‘Christ, I miss this sometimes,’ said Eilert.
Spring didn’t seem to have reached Strinne yet, and there were patches of snow still dotted about the property. As Eira got out of the car, she realised that it wasn’t snow at all. It was foam.
Was he seriously washing his old bangers?
The red Cadillac was definitely gleaming in the fading evening light, a well-tended Eldorado. Unlike the other rust buckets, it actually looked roadworthy.
She found Ricken out back, sitting with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a small fire in the barbecue to stave off the chill.
‘I can throw some food on if you’re hungry?’
‘No, don’t worry.’
‘Sit down.’
Eira was still wearing her bulky anorak, less because of the weather than because it hid her growing belly. For a moment or two, the setting sun made the river look like it was ablaze; the thick clouds from earlier had blown away.
Spring. A constant back and forth.
‘Who’ve you locked up today, then?’ Ricken asked, flashing her his irresistible smile.
‘No one,’ said Eira. ‘But there’s still time.’
‘Anyone you want me to squeal on?’ He held out a beer, but she shook her head; wouldn’t be sleeping over, not this time. She sat down on a rickety camping chair, and he draped the blanket over her legs. It couldn’t be much more than six or seven degrees, but he had to be outside, free.
‘I was just passing by,’ she said. ‘I’m not on duty.’
‘You’re a cop,’ he said. ‘Are you ever off duty? Aren’t you all cops through and through, loyal to the powers that be?’
‘Come off it, I don’t have the energy.’ Eira looked down at the book lying beside him, in last year’s muddy, trampled grass. The Prince by Machiavelli, a dog-eared paperback. She had never read any of the books Ricken read, not even when she was young and dizzy and in love.
‘Don’t think you get away with it just because you’re good,’ he continued. ‘Even the good have to become a tool of the powers they serve, otherwise you’re a traitor, which you don’t want to be because your privilege and prosperity depend on your loyalty to the power.’
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ said Eira.
‘Hey, don’t get upset, I mean in general terms. Power takes over our lives unless we actively shut it out. They’ve been keeping an eye on us up here ever since the king decided to have a sheriff of Ångermanland, and after that it was the Security Service and their secret spies in the IB. The names might change, but they’re basically the same. And these days that’s all they need,’ said Ricken, pointing to the phone she was spinning round in her hand. He must have noticed that she was nervous. ‘They don’t need to send anyone out to watch over us now, we do it all ourselves.’
Eira let him babble away as she searched for the right words. She had already tested them all out in her head, tried different ways of saying it.
There weren’t many things that scared her, but this … Getting the words out.
How he might respond.
Just like the last time, when she was seventeen, when Ricken broke up with her and her period failed to arrive in the weeks that followed.
What was it he used to say back then, when they were younger?
That it was wrong to bring a child into this world. He wanted a different kind of life; he wanted freedom, not the shackles of a relationship. He didn’t want to have power over anyone else.
Eira had dealt with it in secret back then; only her best friend knew. And Kerstin, of course, though she had probably forgotten about it by now. Her mother hadn’t questioned or judged her – on the contrary. She had trusted that Eira’s decision was the right one, that life had different plans for her.
We didn’t have that option, you know. When I was your age.
Eira couldn’t bring herself to look at Ricken as she said it.
‘I’m pregnant.’
She sensed rather than heard him shudder, a bit like a deer when it smells danger. Ears pricked and skin quivering, followed by a rapid dash into the bushes. Gone, taking cover. That reaction.
‘You don’t have to be involved,’ she continued before he had time to catch his breath. ‘I’m not even sure it’s yours.’
‘A baby?’ He gripped her hand, forcing her to look at him. That smile, the twinkle in his eye. She was so damn defenceless when it came to his laugh. ‘Am I going to be a dad?’ Ricken leapt up from the stray car seat where he had been sitting, taking a ridiculous leap onto the grass. ‘Are you serious? Are you sure? Can I see?’
Eira tried to stop him from pulling her up from the chair, had no choice but to let him open her anorak and put a hand on her stomach.
‘Shit, you’re really showing. I can feel it. Is she kicking?’
‘What makes you think it’s a she?’
‘Because she’s going to be just like you.’
What else could she do but laugh?
‘So, who’s the other guy?’ Ricken continued once he was sitting down again. ‘Do I know him?’
He didn’t sound angry, but then again why would he? They had never talked about being exclusive; this thing between them was nothing like that, nothing that could be called a relationship. It was sporadic, whenever Eira felt like coming over. Ricken never called her.
‘A colleague,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to know. Like I said, I can do this on my own.’
He was holding her with both hands now, his face serious, trying to force her to look him in the eye.
‘I don’t give a shit about genes and all that crap,’ he said. ‘We’ll do this together either way, you hear me? You know how it is, you know me. I’m not the best at living with people. I never thought I’d have a kid.’
Her voice betrayed her, as though she was still seventeen.
‘I didn’t think you wanted to,’ she managed to stutter.
‘You never asked.’
Eira got up.
‘I’ve got to go.’
He followed her back to the car, gave her a long hug and ruffled her hair. There was nothing that made her feel both so little and so secure, though she knew this wasn’t a place of safety.
As Eira drove away, cold from sitting outside, she felt a flicker of that old fear of being trapped. She slowed down as she approached the sharp bends in the road, known locally as the death curves after a nasty accident there in the sixties. It happened the day after Sweden switched over to driving on the right, when the driver in the approaching car forgot. Several young people had died.
The rockface rose sharply at one side of the road. Growing up, her life had been shaped by the desire to get away, a fear of getting stuck, of losing sight of the alternatives. She remembered her mother’s voice in the distant past: don’t forget you can do whatever you want to do, but be careful not to get stuck with someone just because he wants you.
And yet there had been moments when she had longed for that baby. Not to be a mother at the age of seventeen, but a confusing dream that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to get him to stick around.
Rabble was curled up at the foot of the bed, smelling softly of damp fur and bad breath. Allan had got into the habit of bringing him over in the evenings. He hadn’t said anything, but Eira knew it was because she was pregnant, because of a belief that a woman shouldn’t be left alone in that condition, at least not at night. A quiet gesture of consideration that didn’t require any thanks or fuss, but which also ignored what she wanted. Not having a dog in her bed, for example. A dog that leapt up without warning and whose nose tickled the backs of her knees.
She had tried to get to sleep, she really had, but Lina Stavred just kept swirling through her head whenever she closed her eyes.
Eira was now sitting up with her laptop instead. No lights, just the pale moonlight and the bright glare of the screen. She had held off long enough.
It wasn’t against the law for her to access investigations in other regions, but all logins were registered and would be visible to anyone who went to the effort of checking. Still, Eira just couldn’t resist.
At first glance, the case looked like a drunken brawl.
Grubby, and of no real interest.
November last year.
A fifty-two-year-old man, the middle manager at a telecoms company, had been found dead at his home in Täby on the outskirts of Stockholm. Stabbed to death. Bottles and mess everywhere, alcohol in his system. There were no witnesses, but several neighbours reported that a woman seemed to have been living there for a while. No one knew her – they didn’t even know her name – but the National Forensic Centre had found a hit for her fingerprints.
Matching a young woman who had been declared dead, whose body had never been found.
Lina Stavred.
The preliminary investigation into her disappearance contained various pieces of evidence, which meant that the police in Stockholm had been able to confirm the match using DNA.
Eira spent a long time studying the images of the forty-two-year-old woman her colleagues in the capital had managed to dig up from the dead man’s online presence. Her eyes were as pale and blue as ever, like a river in the morning once the ice melts in spring. Eira thought she could see the same coldness in them, a hint of danger, but perhaps that was just because she knew too much. Lina the adult was much plumper than she had been as a teen, her longish hair dyed dark and with no discernible style.
No one would recognise her as Lina Stavred if they bumped into her on the street.
The alert the Stockholm police put out had been internal, which made sense. No one could be sure whether the woman was the perpetrator or simply another victim who had fled the scene. For all they knew she could be lying dead somewhere too. They had chosen to share the latest images of Lina with the public, but they had withheld her name, presumably because they knew that a media circus wouldn’t help their case. Stockholm had also reached out to the police in Finland for help finding her parents. Lina’s father was still alive, but unresponsive following a severe stroke.
It had been five months since Eira heard about the case, in December, just after GG woke up from his nightmare out by Högbonden lighthouse, and it had been eating away at her ever since. No, that probably wasn’t the right word. Haunting her? Terrorising her at night, sometimes, to the extent that she had to get up and log in to this damn investigation where nothing ever seemed to happen.
Back in December, when GG first told her about the match, Eira had spoken to the Stockholm police, told them she had more information, that Lina Stavred had a tattoo on her left arm.
That she had probably killed before.
A transcription of that conversation was right there on the screen in front of her, and it felt so strange to read her own words.
LG: How long have you known that Lina Stavred is alive?
ES: I found out during an investigation three years ago.
LG: How?
ES: I came across some suspicious posts on Facebook, among other things, and then I followed that line of enquiry to Stockholm. I think I might have met her there, in a café, but I didn’t realise it at the time. She was calling herself Simone; she could have had various names over the years.
LG: And you never reported any of this?
ES: We had no proof it was definitely Lina, and even if it was it’s not exactly a crime to be alive. There just wasn’t enough to justify reopening the case.
LG: And you believe that before she disappeared in the nineties, she killed someone. A man by the name of …
ES: Kenneth Isaksson.
Eira could just picture the young police assistant, hear his warm voice. Linus Gustafsson, who had been sent north to take her statement. She remembered him scrolling on his iPad, utterly clueless.
LG: A crime your brother confessed to and was later convicted of?
ES: Magnus did that to protect Lina. He felt guilty, but that doesn’t mean he—
LG: According to Magnus Sjödin, Lina Stavred wasn’t even there.
ES: She was. I know she was.
LG: We’ve spoken to your brother. He maintains his version of events.
(Pause)
Seeing it written in black and white, there was no escaping just how weak it was. They had no evidence, only what Magnus had told Eira late one evening while they were alone, and never again. By that point he had already confessed to manslaughter, and there had been nothing she could do about it.
Or had there?
If she had refused to be drawn into his warped logic and studied the whole thing with her police officer’s hat on, if she hadn’t fallen for his threats of confessing to even worse crimes, could she have prevented the death of a man in Täby three years later?
Whatever the answer, her information didn’t seem to have made any difference to the investigation. Eira logged out, assuming that no one would notice if she accessed the files every single day; they were far too busy with all the shootings down there.
When they arrest Lina, she thought, the whole thing will come crashing down. Loyalty won’t protect her this time. A prosecutor in Stockholm will take over the case, and facts will be the only things that matter, not half-truths and old lies.
Eira curled up with one hand on the sleeping dog, the warmth of another living creature. He really did smell terrible.
‘And how’s it going with our murder victim from the river?’
They had already dealt with the most pressing issues when Silje Andersson turned to Eira during the morning briefing.
‘Are we any closer to putting a date on it yet? Any idea who he is?’
Silje had taken over as team leader when GG stepped back. Eira had always felt a certain admiration for her slightly older colleague. She was cool and analytical, with a background in psychology and all sorts of other academic disciplines. Last time they were out in the field together, they had got drunk one evening, shared certain confidences, though that felt extremely distant now. Eira wasn’t sure whether it was Silje who had sought out that distance or whether she had done it herself; it just seemed to have happened.
