Frozen Moment (52 page)

    He
looked around the room seeking agreement but was met by total silence.

    'Could
we try to raise the level a little?' Karlberg tried to mediate, but Tell
couldn't avoid noticing his hesitant expression.

    Beckman
clapped her hands together.

    'We
can't afford to sit here squabbling. Nor can we afford to ignore any possible
leads. As Tell says, we haven't found a motive or any connection between Waltz
and Bart. If we can prove that Edell and Bart's paths crossed, then of course
we need to see where that takes us. And of course Tell will pass on his
thoughts to us as soon as they're clear.'

    Tell
stood up with a grateful look at Beckman, who rewarded him with an ambiguous
grimace.

    'Thank
you. OK, so we change tack. We'll leave Lars Waltz in peace for the time being
and concentrate on Thomas Edell: background, family, friends, job
,…
I assume everybody knows what to drop and what to focus
on. I suggest we regard this as a natural break and use the evening to go home
and think about this new direction. We'll meet back here tomorrow, eight
o'clock sharp.'

    'To
start from the beginning all over again,' added Bärneflod.

    During
the drive to Stenared Tell worked himself into a rage that had more to do with
disappointment than anything else, a feeling that Seja had cheated in order to
gain access to an area which was his alone. And, which was worse, there must
have been a reason. She had failed to pass on to him information she had
somehow acquired, even though she knew better than anyone how he had been
tearing his hair out, trying to fit the pieces of the jigsaw together. That
meant she didn't trust him.

    He
would have been even
more angry
if she had pretended
she didn't know what he was talking about. At least she didn't do
that
₍
didn't shake her head and say she didn't
know what he meant. Instead her reaction was unexpected in a completely
different way: she was absolutely furious that he had gone into her house, that
he had been prying among her things
,.

    'I
can't believe you just walked in! Helped
yourself
!
Opened drawers.

    SWITCHED
ON MY COMPUTER!!! What were you looking for? Are you a detective inspector in
my home as well? Am I a criminal?' Did he make a habit of going to bed with
criminals, she asked him, to gain access to evidence? And he replied, without
really thinking it through, that she didn't know what she was talking about,
that she was bloody hysterical - she
was
actually hysterical, and for a
fraction of a second he thought she was going to slap him.

    Instead
she went and sat down on the armchair by the fire, and put her head in her
hands.

    'You've
searched my house.
You.
You even went through
my underwear drawer. It's fucking sick.'

    
'What's
this
you
? Why do you have to keep saying
you
all the time?' he asked crossly, hating the whining undertone in his
voice.
'As if I were the last person who should be allowed to
see your secrets.'

    'I
just didn't think you'd do that,' she said simply. 'I hoped we were for real.'

    Silence
fell over the room. A bird let out a harsh screech and took off from the top of
a fir tree.

    Tell
felt a great tiredness descend over the whole situation, linked to the vast
tiredness underlying every single quarrel he had ever had with women over the
years. How many times had he said
Stop being so bloody hysterical
? He
didn't know, but he was quite sure his words had never fallen on fertile
ground.

    He
sank down in the armchair opposite Seja and tried to gather his thoughts,
suppressing his natural impulse to get in the car and drive straight back to
work. She had managed to make him feel slightly ashamed of himself, hysterical
or not.

    He
had,
in his manic state, gone through the drawer where she kept her
underwear. Not that the underwear had interested him one iota at the time. At
that moment the folder containing the photograph of Lars Waltz with his brains
blown out had been the only thing on his mind, along with the text in Finnish
and the document on the computer containing the name of Thomas Edell.

    Part
of him understood that she felt violated. But just as he accepted her
indignation was partly justified, he also realised that she had cleverly made
him forget his real reason for coming to see her.

    
He
had been upset,
he
had been kept in the dark, and
he
was still
furious, but he forced himself to calm down, because in spite of everything he
realised he would never be able to get her to talk if he carried on in the same
accusatory tone.

    'Do
you speak Finnish?'

    She
closed her eyes and shook her head as if she couldn't believe her ears.

    'Do
you?' he repeated.

    'Yes,'
she said tersely and louder than necessary. 'My mother was born in Finland.'

    She
refused to look at him, clearly uncomfortable. Tell thought there was just a
chance she was slightly embarrassed over her mendacity after all, and suddenly
he felt sorry for her. He cursed the spontaneous satisfaction he had felt at
her collapsing defences, as if she were the object of an interrogation and not
the woman in whose hair he had buried his face just a few days ago, thinking
This
is it.

    'Was
it so that other people couldn't read it?' he asked, more gently this time. She
shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly.

    'I
always used to write in Finnish when I was little, when I didn't want the other
kids to understand.' She was speaking quietly. 'It was like my own secret
language.'

    He
quelled the impulse to place his hand over hers; she looked so vulnerable, lost
in the secrets of her childhood.

    'Were
you going to tell me?' he asked eventually.

    The
illusion of defencelessness was instantly transformed into irritation once
more. She threw her arms wide open.

    'I
don't even know if there's anything to tell, Christian. I didn't know - I still
don't - if what I know has anything to do with your investigation. I mean it
wasn't Thomas Edell lying there!
It wasn't him!
And that's exactly why I
didn't say anything. How… how can you know if the memories from a difficult
period in your life are true? You must know what I mean? Memory is like a
bloody sieve - you decide for yourself what you want to remember, depending on
your self- image at the time.'

    She
stared at
him,
her shoulders hunched up by her ears,
before she breathed out heavily and lowered them, allowing the images from the
past to come pouring in.

    Over
the next hour darkness fell over the room; they didn't bother switching on the
lights. Once she started talking he found he was holding his breath, as if the
least movement on his part might cause a sudden break in her story, in her
fragile trust. She kept on drifting off the point and he was itching to ask
concrete questions -
Why have you got several enlarged photographs of a
murder victim? How
is this
connected to the fact that
you were first on the scene of the crime and then started a relationship with
the officer leading the investigation? -
but
he
was sensitive enough to realise that too much pressure would just make her
retreat.

    He
buried his fingernails deep in the palms of his hands in order to remain
patient as she attempted to put the pictures in her memory into words and to
formulate the conclusions drawn by her subconscious over the past ten years.

    He
should have contented himself with simply listening. Should have been patient
and actually enjoyed getting to know her, but he couldn't. He was trapped
inside the framework of his job. He couldn't split himself in two, and
evidently neither could Seja. Sometimes the story became incomprehensible.
Sometimes the words were not right, and she had to start again.

    Gradually
a picture began to emerge of two young women, each one at a fork in the road.
Seja was one of them; the other had been a passing acquaintance. Seja talked
about a bitterly cold December night at a bikers' club in the middle of
nowhere. She had met the other woman briefly around midnight. They talked about
travelling back into town together, but Seja decided to stay on. Deep inside she
had had a bad feeling - at least that was how she remembered it now.

    She
stopped as if she were gathering strength.

    Later
there had been talk among her circle of acquaintances that a woman had been
found dead in the forest around the club. It was in the paper. There were
suspicious circumstances, but no one was ever caught. Some people said the
woman had been raped; others that she was drunk and had passed out and hit her
head on a rock. No one knew for sure.

    'I
pretended I wasn't really bothered. I remember saying to the boy who first told
me - it was at a party - that I didn't know the woman who had died out there in
the forest. And it was true. I convinced myself it had nothing to do with me.'

    The
police had contacted a number of people who had been at the club and issued an
appeal for all those who were not on the list supplied

    
by
the organisers to get in touch. Seja had never come
forward.

    
Why
not?
Tell wanted to ask, but she pre-empted him. For the same reason she
hadn't been able to tell him earlier about what she had heard and seen that
night: she just wasn't sure. As long as she wasn't backed into a corner and
forced to give an answer, she could avoid making a decision about her own
reliability, or about the fact that she had done nothing to intervene.

    Before
she knew it the drama was over. The investigation had probably been put to one
side due to lack of evidence, and life went on.

    'I
saw the way he looked at her, his expression. Like a mixture of rage and
desire. I saw him watch her leave. And for some reason I noticed him and his
friends leave just after she did. I noticed that she was on her own, that it
was so bloody dark, and that gang of lads left just after her. I stood there in
the yard for a long time, on my own. I couldn't bring myself to go back
inside.'

    The
tears began to pour down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away.

    'I
know it sounds ridiculous, but I could feel evil in the air, Christian. I
sensed something, but I didn't know what it was or what I could do to prevent
it. So I just stood there, and I remember it started to snow and I was
absolutely frozen. I could hear the band playing upstairs, song after song, and
nobody else came out while I was standing there, nobody apart from those three.
She should have made it up to the main road during that time. Do you understand
what I'm saying?'

    He
nodded. He understood. Tentatively he reached out and wiped the tears from her
cheek. She jerked back as he touched her, gazing at him with her tear-drenched
eyes. He thought she was looking at him with an air of surprise. As if she had
suddenly returned to reality and was wondering what he was doing there, with
part of her life story on his
knee.
It was obvious she
wasn't proud of it.

    'Whatever
happened that night, you couldn't have prevented it,' he said gently. 'Even if
you believe now that you felt something, you have to realise that's just the
way it seems after the event. How
could
you have known? And even if you
had known, what could you have done? You said it yourself - you were seventeen,
eighteen years old, barely an adult. When a crime is committed it isn't unusual
for feelings of guilt to spill over on to people who just happened to be
nearby, but it's wrong. You have nothing to feel guilty about. All the blame
lies with those three men. You did say there were three of them, didn't you?'

    As
he spoke he was feverishly trying to link everything together. Even if he
suspected he knew the answer, he had to ask the questions.

    'That's
just it: I remember everything, down to the last detail. One of them was
furious. He wanted to get going and was moaning at the others to get a move
on.'

    She
let her hands drop to her knees, as she finally told him what had been
torturing her over the past few days.