Frozen Moment (51 page)

    At
the sight of her work she felt a temporary sense of calm spread through her
body. The scream faded away. Her arm was slowly coming back to life, giving her
pins and needles. She buried her nose in Maya's shabby white leather jacket. In
some places the red lining had split and started to fray, so she decided to
mend it. With slow movements she lifted down the hanger and pressed the jacket
against her chest. She had no breathing problems now; she had found her project
for the day.

    Just
as she was about to close the door, she saw it. She pushed aside the clothes to
expose what she had glimpsed behind them.

    The
wall was covered in pictures, from the floor almost all the way up to the
ceiling. She hadn't seen the collage for many years. It was battered at the
edges, and had obviously been rolled up for some time.

    Solveig
ran her hand over the rough surface. She knew exactly how old the collage was.
Maya had been eleven when she found a bag full of monthly magazines that
someone had put out with the rubbish. Not the kind Solveig sometimes read, the
cheaper ones, but thick glossy women's magazines with names like
Clic
and
Elle,
filled with reports on the latest fashions from Paris and
interviews with film stars, artists and designers.

    Maya
had sat there for weeks with her nose buried in the magazines, reverently
examining them as if they contained some kind of secret code. She had chosen
pictures of slender women with pale skin and dark eyes, dressed in black and
leaning against ancient trees; perfume adverts consisting of naked bodies in
artistic poses; black men with bare torsos and gleaming white teeth with gold
fillings; men in women's clothes; women in men's suits.
Women
with cheekbones to die for.
She had snipped and glued for months before
the collage was finally pronounced complete: an explosion of faces and bodies
and colours. She had painted straight on to the pictures with pastel colours,
capriciously altering them. She had stuck many pictures on top of one another
with thick layers of fabric glue, then torn away strips of the faces and bodies
before the glue dried so that the picture underneath was partly exposed: a pair
of eyes with a piercing gaze.
A breast.
A foot in the sand.
A snake.

    Solveig
had not been pleased when Maya put up the collage in her room. She didn't
appreciate the many pairs of eyes that seemed to be staring at her wherever she
went. She knew this was because all the models had been looking straight into
the camera when they were photographed. And that's why it didn't help when she
pressed herself right against the wall next to the collage to avoid their
scorn: they were still looking her straight in the eye. She also thought it was
a little advanced for an eleven-year-old, all that bare skin.

    
She
said so to Maya.
What's the matter with you? There's plenty of time for you
to break your heart over all that kind of thing.

    Sebastian
must have secretly kept it all these years and put it up during the night. He
had chosen to contribute his treasure to the memory room. A lump of gratitude
formed in her throat, and she had to clear it several times so that she
wouldn't start crying. This was an acknowledgement on Sebastian's part.
A small step along the road to reconciliation.

    She
padded across the floor and pushed open the door to his room.

    That
same afternoon, as Solveig was putting the finishing touches to the memory
room,
she
knocked on the door. Solveig, who for a long time had found it
difficult to distinguish clearly between daydream and reality, thought at first
that the tall woman in the long black coat was a product of her imagination.
She simply didn't match the shabby stairwell, with her red-painted lips and the
broad-brimmed hat that concealed a choppy, boyish haircut.

    'At
first I thought you were some kind of artist,' Solveig said much later, and she
meant it. Not that she thought the woman was particularly attractive - quite
the opposite. According to the ideals with which she had grown up, girls were
supposed to be sweet and slender and as transparent as elves. There was nothing
elfin about this woman, with her wide full mouth and strong square jawline.

    She
had introduced herself as a friend of Maya, stepping inside with total
confidence as if she already knew that she would be moving in. As if it didn't
even occur to her that anyone would refuse.

    In
the hallway Solveig quickly became aware of the smell emanating from the
woman's body, a faint but unmistakable aroma of cinnamon and woodsmoke. The
woman unbuttoned her coat to take it off, and Solveig was enveloped in the
sweet warmth that had been held within the fabric. It was almost intoxicating.
She felt something that could be confused with a fleeting erotic attraction,
swayed slightly and took a step back.

    The
stranger stopped dead, as if she had just become aware of the unexpected effect
she was having on Solveig.

    'Don't
be frightened,' she said quietly. 'I just want to talk about Maya. I know
something's happened to her, and I think I'll go under if I can't talk to
someone about her.'

    Solveig
grasped the woman's hand as a person in distress grasps the hand of their
saviour, and led her into the dressing room without saying a word. Afterwards
Solveig would regard her as being sent from heaven.

    2007

    Tell
wanted to hit
himself
on the head with something hard,
and would have done so if he had thought it would do any good.

    How
had he managed to lead a murder enquiry along such a narrow track that they had
missed the simplest thing of all? If he hadn't illegally entered the home of
one of the witnesses involved in the investigation, a witness he had also slept
with and then neglected, since he was just as scared of her as he was of his
boss, he would have let the team carry on digging deeper and deeper without
realising that they were digging in completely the wrong place.

    His
confidence was at rock bottom. It took an enormous effort for him to go back to
the station to start trying to put things right, to win back just a fraction of
the time his thoughtlessness had cost them.

    Karlberg
was at the end of the corridor talking to a woman wearing a blue suit, and as
Tell drew closer he could see that it was Maria Waltz. A couple of metres away
stood two gangling creatures both wearing sullen looks as if they had the word
'teenager' stamped on their foreheads. Although what else could you expect?
Their father had just been murdered and they had been brought in for
questioning. Tell only hoped that Karlberg had had the presence of mind to
formulate a plausible and inoffensive reason for the interview. If Maria Waltz
had not been making such angry gestures he would no doubt have had the same
confidence in his colleague as always, but her attitude made him wonder if
Karlberg might have gone in too hard.

    'They've
only just lost their father…' he heard Lars Waltz's ex-wife say angrily, but
she fell silent as Tell walked past and went over to her sons. Their
expressions became even
more blank
, if that was
possible, as he placed one hand on the shoulder of the older boy. At least he
looked as if he were the older. The brothers were very alike, both in beige
chinos and tight-fitting checked shirts.

    Tell
introduced
himself
and quietly expressed his
condolences. The boy pushed his hair behind his ear. More than anything he
seemed confused at being spoken to as an adult.

    'It
was a mistake to bring you here today,' said Tell, speaking loudly enough for
Maria Waltz to hear. 'You can go home.'

    Karlberg
was dumbfounded. Tell left without any further explanation. As he headed
towards his office he could hear his colleague saying something lame about the
police being in touch when they knew more or if they needed the boys' help.
Dragging her bewildered sons behind her, Maria Waltz marched out of the station.

    The
sound of Karlberg's boots drew closer, and he appeared in the doorway.

    'What
the hell was all that about? I thought you told me to bring them in?'

    'I
did. But now I've changed my mind.'

    He
slammed a bundle of A4 sheets on the desk and ripped them demonstratively in
half in front of an increasingly bewildered Karlberg.

    'Are
you intending to explain, or are you just going to carry on ripping up paper?
We do have a shredder, in case you didn't know.'

    Tell
realised he might be trying Karlberg's patience a little too far.

    'Bring
the rest of the team to the conference room. I'll be there when I've gathered
my thoughts.'

    Ten
minutes later they were all waiting there. Since they had been forced to drop
whatever they were doing without any explanation, they were both irritated and
curious in equal measure. Tell couldn't resist making a Poirot entrance.
Several people rolled their eyes at one another.

    'I've
gathered you all together because earlier today an idea struck me. I was -
well, the how or why doesn't matter, but anyway it struck me that… I
think
we've been on the wrong track. No, not the wrong track, but we've been thinking
about the wrong person all the way through this investigation. And it's not all
that strange. We focused on one of the victims and his background and those
around him. But we've been digging in the wrong bloody place. That's why we
kept getting stuck or finding yet another dead end.'

    He
looked triumphantly at the team but realised he was facing utter confusion.

    'I
may be wrong, but I think Lars Waltz was murdered by mistake. I also think
there may be a link to a case that's already closed, but I'm not sure enough
about that to say any more at this stage. I suspect the plan was to murder Lise-Lott's
first husband, Thomas Edell. For some reason the murderer didn't know he was
already dead, so instead he murdered the man he found in the car workshop…'

    He
waved his hand meaningfully in the air, and ended up pointing at Beckman.

    'THOMAS
EDELL-VEHICLE REPAIRS AND SCRAPYARD,' she supplied.
'The
sign.'

    
'Exactly, in the belief that he was in fact Thomas Edell.'

    A
thoughtful silence descended over the room. Tell could feel his confidence
returning.

    'Why
do I think this? Well, as you know, we've searched high and low for a link
between the first and second victims. We've asked Lise- Lott if her husband
Lars Waltz knew an Olof Bart, but not if her ex-husband Thomas Edell knew an
Olof Pilgren. Are you with me? From '83 to '86 Olof Bart had a supervisor
linked to his temporary accommodation. This was Thorbjorn Persson, who
remembers that Olof had a friend called Thomas. I also talked to Lise-Lott on
my way in, and she confirms that her ex-husband used to hang out with someone
called Pilen - which could easily be Pilgren.'

    Gonzales'
eyebrows were firmly knitted in a scowl, but after a short silence Karlberg
allowed himself to nod in agreement.

    'OK,
Tell
, even if it does seem a bit off the wall. If we
buy into the idea that the murderer was after Edell, we're still left with one
important question - why?
Motive and perpetrator.
We're no further forward even if you are right. And if you hate somebody enough
to want to kill them, it surely suggests some kind of obsession. Isn't it likely
then that you'd be keeping an eye on the person, at least enough to know if
they've been dead for… how long?
Seven, eight years?'

    'Yes,'
Tell conceded, 'that's true. You're thinking it could be some kind of revenge
attack on these two men.'

    'Yes.
Are you thinking along a different line?'

    'It's
a little difficult for the rest of us to come up with something when the
information you're giving us is so vague,' Beckman interjected.

    Tell
seemed lost in thought. He nodded and stared at the door as if he were longing
to escape from the room. He opened his mouth but closed it a second later
without answering Karlberg's question. Suddenly he felt as if the looks his
colleagues were giving him were much too challenging. He had things to do: he
had to see Seja before he tackled anything else. He now regretted not staying
in the house to wait for her. The sudden urge to act had misled him.

    'What
are you talking about, Tell?' came Bärneflod's irritated voice. He had sat in
the corner in silence until now.' "The how or why doesn't matter…"
Fuck that! Are we all in the same boat, or are you paddling your own fucking
canoe here? Conducting a little enquiry of your own on the side? I mean, what
the hell is going on here? Are you trying to solve the case all on your own?
How the fuck can we work if we're not a team?'