Frozen Moment (60 page)

    The
Suit pressed the palms of his hands against the surface of the table so that
his fingers turned white.

    'Because
it was dismissed as an accident and because there was no proof, because they
said she could just as easily have tripped and hit her head on a sharp stone.
As if she'd suddenly taken leave of her senses and run straight into the forest
and the darkness of her own free will, throwing herself headlong into the snow
to die.
Because the police did such a bloody useless job.'

    Sebastian
could feel their eyes burning against his skin. The roaring had stopped and the
words were hurling themselves mercilessly at his eardrums; it was impossible to
defend
himself
.

    'Because
she ended up in a coma and died, thanks to those three vile men. And so you
dedicated yourself to doing what the police ought to have done: asking
questions, drawing conclusions. Finding out who was behind it all. And once you
knew, you embarked on a campaign of revenge, to avenge your sister. Thomas
Edell, Olof Pilgren, and Sven Molin, isn't that right? But you failed,
Sebastian. You only managed two, and one of those turned out to be the wrong
man.'

    Sebastian
Granith's sparse fringe was plastered against his forehead. Slowly he raised
his head and met Tell's gaze.

    There
was nothing there that Tell could interpret.

    'You
didn't know you'd murdered the wrong man, did you, Sebastian?' Tell was
speaking more quietly. 'You've only just found that out, haven't you?'

    The
air between them was almost too thick to bear.

    'You
thought he was Thomas Edell because it was Thomas Edell's farm and his name was
on the sign and he was married to Lise-Lott Edell. Not so strange, is it? You
shot him in the head and drove over him several times, until he was spread all
over the ground. How could you know he wasn't Thomas Edell? How could you know
that the man you'd just squashed was in fact Lars Waltz, Lise-Lott's new
husband, who'd never been anywhere near your sister?'

    The
uniformed
policeman
came to Tell's rescue before
Sebastian Granith's hands fastened around his throat. He had hurled himself
across the table, just to put a stop to the words pouring out of the
inspector's mouth.

    He
sank back into his chair. 'Just give me five minutes,' he gasped.

    
Tell waved the uniform away with a gesture towards the door.
Drops
of sweat flecked the green-painted floor as Sebastian shook his head.
The sound of his sobbing rose and fell like a guttural song.

    Half
an hour earlier Tell had considered breaking off the interview and continuing
the next day. Now the night was almost over, and Granith's defence was
collapsing.

    'Five
minutes,' Tell agreed eventually.

    For
a decade he had beaten himself up. Ten long years of grovelling before he
finally understood where the blame really lay. As soon as he had gained that
insight, it had been like lifting a dusty veil from his eyes, allowing him to
see clearly for the first time in years. Sometimes it had felt like floating.

    'I
did it. I killed them.'

    Granith
had spent his five minutes sitting with his arm across his face. Now his
expression was again empty, so disturbingly blank that Tell almost thought he
could see his own reflection in it.

    However,
behind the reflective surface, Olof Pilgren continued to die. Over and over
again his skull cracked and his internal organs burst as he was crushed between
the garage wall and the grille of the jeep. It was the only sequence in
Sebastian Granith's memory worth anything. Whatever happened, nobody could take
that away from him. If he concentrated hard enough on the images burned into
his retina, it would help him to get through this.

    'The
only thing I regret is that I didn't get the third one.'

    'You
mean Sven Molin.'

    Tell
leaned back and stole a glance at his watch. As soon as possible, he reminded
himself, he needed to check on how they were getting on with finding Sven
Molin. Presumably he was terrified and hiding in some cottage somewhere. Or he
was somewhere else altogether, blissfully unaware that his life had been in
danger, in which case he would come home eventually. The local constable
watching the house had the job of telling him the danger was over, if he hadn't
done so already.

    Getting
a confession had been easier than Tell had dared hope. The boy was obviously a
nervous wreck, even if he seemed calmer once he started to describe how he had
gone about killing the two men. But that was usually the case with criminals.
Somewhere deep inside the human soul
lay
the hope that
if you confessed your sins, you would be forgiven. He even seemed slightly
excited about his crimes, as if he actually thought he had done something
positive.
A well-intentioned avenger, correctly apportioning
blame.
And in a way there was an element of reason in his particular
brand of twisted logic: a life for a life.
His sister's life.

    From
time to time, although rarely, a murderer succeeded in arousing feelings of
empathy in Tell.

    He
shook off the notion, stood up and pushed his chair neatly under the table. It
was dawn and he intended to go home. Knock back a glass of wine and hope it
would help him to sleep well. It would be the first time for ages.

    When
the telephone woke her she felt as if she had only been asleep for a few
minutes. She had spent the night drifting between the living room and the
kitchen, drinking tea that became more and more insipid and listening to music
that usually calmed her nerves: Rickie Lee Jones, Manu Chao,
Rebecka
Tornqvist. Towards morning she had brewed a large strong espresso which she
drank in small sips, curled up on the sofa.
No point trying any more
,
she had thought, but obviously sleep had been lying in wait, and had crept up
on her when she was least expecting it.

    As
she reached across the low table for the phone, she knocked the dregs of the
cold coffee over her sleeve.

    'Oh
flick. Hello?'

    'Hello?'
There was no mistaking Hanna's gravelly voice. 'What's the matter with you? Got
a hangover?'

    Seja
got up so quickly that everything went black. She flicked ineffectually at the
coffee on her sweater with the back of her hand then wobbled and sat down
again.

    'Hi.
Yes, or rather no. I haven't. But I bloody well feel as if I have. I hardly
slept a wink last night.'

    'I
sympathise.'

    In
the pause that followed from the other end of the line, Seja recognised the
sound of a lighter as Hanna lit up, took a deep drag and cleared her throat.

    'Are
you busy?'

    Seja
laughed.

    
'Not at all.'

    An
asymmetrical brown stain had appeared on the pale green fabric of her sweater.
Between her feet more coffee was soaking into the wooden floor.

    'OK.
I've been thinking about you a lot since we met up. It's been such a long time
since we used to hang out and… All that business with… well, your research, or
whatever you want to call it…'

    Seja
rubbed the palm of her hand over her eyes to try to stave off an incipient
headache.

    'I
know, Hanna. I know it must have seemed strange to you. I didn't mean for you
to get dragged in.'

    'No,
no,' Hanna protested, 'don't start with all that stuff. What I wanted to say
was… well, I know you asked me to trust you and to respect the fact that you
couldn't tell me any more. But it struck me afterwards that Bjorn - you
probably don't remember him, he was a couple of years younger than us. I still
see him from time to time. On a completely platonic basis, that is.'

    'Right,
but who-'

    'His
wife won't let him meet up with female friends, particularly when it's an old
flame, so we've met in secret a few times and had a coffee in town. All
perfectly innocent, as I said.'

    'But
what's he got to do with-'

    'Well,
what I was going to say is that Bjorn is a friend of a guy who was really close
to that girl - the one in the white leather jacket, Tingeling. Her name was
Maya, by the way, the one who disappeared. It's a small world.'

    'Hanna…'

    The
headache definitely had her in its clutches now.

    Hanna
giggled nervously, but immediately became serious again. 'I realise I wasn't
supposed to talk about this with anyone, but it's done now, even if I didn't
know enough to say anything at all, really.'

    'What
did he say, this Bjorn?' Curiosity began to edge out her irritation.

    'He
didn't say anything; it was just that he recognised her alias and remembered
that she used to hang out with John back then - that's the other friend. Bjorn
said John was the last person she was friendly with, so to speak. They were in
the same class, or something. I've got his phone number.'

    'Whose?
John's?'
Seja realised she was holding her breath.

    
'Exactly.
If you're interested.
I
thought you seemed to need to poke about in all this old stuff to find some
kind of closure.'

    'Give
me the number.'

    After
once again fending off Hanna's questions about what she was doing, Seja sat
there with the number in front of her, hastily scribbled in the margin of the
Saturday supplement of
Goteborgsposten.

    Christian
Tell's anger at the fact that she had overstepped the mark was fresh in her
mind. She knew the right thing would be to swallow her pride and go down to the
police station, where he would be sitting in all his self-righteousness. Hand
over the information and go home. Not that she had anything other than the
telephone number of a person who might have known Maya over ten years ago. It
probably meant nothing, in which case she would have humiliated herself
unnecessarily.

    On
the other hand, it would be a good way of showing that she realised she had to
respect his point of view. That she could be trusted. Somewhere in the depths
of her disappointment a hope was beginning to grow, a wish that things would be
good between them. Even if she would have liked him to take the first step and
seek her out. But the telephone remained silent.

    After
making herself a fresh cup of coffee, she sat down at the desk.

    The
folder Tell had found, with the unfinished texts and the blurred pictures of
the body at Thomas Edell's workshop, was neatly inserted between the course
material for her upcoming exam on ethics and journalism. She still hadn't
started her preparation. She switched on her laptop and keyed in her password.

    Saturday's
paper was close enough for her to be able to see the numbers. She picked up the
phone and decided to give it a go. If the conversation yielded anything of
importance, Tell would be the first to know.

    John
Svensson answered after the first ring.

    According
to Tell's watch it was quarter past seven when he left the department, but he
didn't give it any thought. Despite his longing for wine and bed, he had ended
up drinking coffee with Beckman and Karlberg. They also seemed to be harbouring
a subconscious reluctance to go home. Maybe the need to sum up events was
stronger than the need for sleep.

    Whatever
the reason, they often got together after finishing off one of their more
demanding cases. They would rummage in the cupboard and find a forgotten packet
of biscuits, then sit there dunking the biscuits in their coffee as they went
over the various phases of the investigation. Perhaps it was what top
management referred to as debriefing.

    Afterwards
Tell's office had refused to let him go, with its accusing piles of paper and
the flashing light on the answering machine. What should have been half an
hour's tidying to calm his nerves before he went home had got out of
control.
Certain people might accuse him with some
justification of not taking the administrative aspect of his work seriously
enough. However, nobody could say he wasn't effective once he got going.