The Final Word (12 page)

Blinded by the shimmering water, she remembered that this was where she used to sit and write her diary.

I’m fumbling. The darkness is so immense.

It was thanks to her diary that she was convicted of causing another person’s death rather than manslaughter. The abuse she had described had gone on for several years, almost the entire duration of their relationship. Her descriptions persuaded the judge to agree with her defence lawyer that she had acted in self-defence.

She didn’t need a psychologist to understand why she was still so upset by Josefin’s case. It had happened the same summer that Sven died, and now that she was being forced to think about him again, Josefin was there too, with her silent scream, the teenage girl who never got justice.

Back at the car, she was sweating and a tick was crawling over her lower arm – she flicked it away.

She wound the window down as she drove into Hälleforsnäs and let the wind pull at her hair. The surface of the road was black, freshly laid, and hissed as it stuck to the tyres.

At the turning for the beach at Tallsjön she stared straight ahead. This was where her father had fallen asleep in a snowdrift on his way home. The driver of a snowplough had found him at half past four in the morning, frozen to death.

She refused to look to the right, where he had been found beside the track leading to the lake. She hadn’t swum there since, stopped cycling past with her towel, a swimsuit and a drink.

She turned left. The reclaimed industrial area ahead
shimmered green with plants and trees. The old ironworks spread out on one side. It had kept the town alive for several centuries, but was now transformed into a discount outlet for discontinued clothing ranges from fancy labels. She could hardly object: it had to be a good thing that the site was being used.

She slowed down as she drove up the slope behind the blast furnace. The area where she had grown up was known as Tattarbacken, ‘Gypsy Hill’, but perhaps that name was no longer used. She hoped so. Those blocks of flats deserved a better one –
she
deserved better than to be Annika from Tattarbacken. Didn’t she?

She couldn’t avoid the peculiar feeling that the streets had shrunk, that they were narrower than they had been when she was a child. The roadsides, on the other hand, felt wider, barer. Ragged tufts of grass stuck up from the grit.

She didn’t turn into Odenvägen, but stopped at the side of the road on the next street, just behind the electricity substation. Just ahead of her was number 112, a rust-red, two-storey house from the 1940s, built to house men employed at the works. There were no children playing in the gardens – probably at nursery or a holiday club – and the afternoon was silent and deserted.

The window at the top left had been her room, the one she’d shared with Birgitta. The curtains were closed. They were new – she hadn’t seen them before. During her periods of sobriety her mother liked changing curtains and doing little things to the house. Next she
focused on the kitchen window, one pane open. She thought she could see something moving inside, unless it was just the reflection of the neighbouring pine. The living room and her parents’ bedroom were on the north-facing side of the building.

Without taking her eyes off the kitchen window, she rang the home number. Barbro answered gruffly.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s Annika.’

‘Have you heard from Birgitta?’

She had been drinking.

‘I’ve had two text messages sent to my old phone.’

Her mother’s voice rose: ‘What does she say?’

‘She wanted me to help her with something, but I don’t know what.’

‘Help her? Is she in danger? Why aren’t you
doing
anything?’

It was stuffy inside the car and Annika was finding it hard to breathe. ‘I’ve spoken to the police, and a prosecutor, and neither of them thinks there’s anything to worry about,’ she said.

‘How can they know?’ Barbro sounded beside herself.

‘I’ve filed a formal report about her disappearance and—’

‘Steven reported her missing, and you wouldn’t believe how offhand they were!’

The kitchen window opened wider. Annika ducked instinctively. ‘Did he do that in Malmö?’ she asked.

‘They barely even bothered to write down his details! And they didn’t ask for a description.’

‘Mum,’ Annika said, ‘perhaps Birgitta doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she’s gone off of her own free will. Are you sure Steven’s telling the truth? That he’s never been violent towards her?’

Her mother started crying. The window blew shut.

‘Birgitta would have told me – she tells me everything. Why doesn’t she get in touch?’

Annika’s palm was so sweaty that she had to move the phone to her other hand. She was on the brink of hyperventilating, and forced herself to breathe calmly and slowly. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything, okay? Mum?’

But Barbro had hung up.

He liked travelling by train. His brother did too. Even if the carriages no longer rumbled along the tracks as they had when they were children and travelled between Korsträsk and Storblåliden, he felt comfortable in a way that he never was in cars or planes. The speed lulled him, and he enjoyed the irregular squeal of the rails, the smell of cleaning fluid.

He had placed his case in the rack above his seat. He left it there, out of sight, and didn’t worry about it when he went to the restaurant car for coffee. The canvas was old and stained – years ago they had used it as a table and eaten soft-boiled eggs off it. He remembered the episode as if it was yesterday. They had just been to the dump and were on their way back when they stopped at a layby outside Moskosel to have their picnic lunch.

The carriage leaned as they went round a bend, and he glanced up to reassure himself that the case had not moved. He felt the absence of his brother as a physical ache, and the train could do nothing to alleviate that.

He avoided flying. Not just because of all the cameras, tickets and identity checks (occasionally it was necessary to leave a trail, and then, of course, he took a plane), but because there was something unnatural about leaving the ground. The train was better – you could pay for your ticket in cash at the counter without showing ID – although the best option was an inconspicuous car.

But he preferred train travel. You could use the internet while you journeyed, which was another bonus. He had learned to surf on his smartphones, neither of which could be traced back to him or his brother, so he could roam freely around the net, which he found interesting and occasionally rewarding.

He went on to the website of the
Evening Post
and scrolled down through the pictures and headlines. The news report about his brother’s trial had already been relegated to near the tail-end of things that were happening in the world, and would soon have faded from view. But the drama documentary was still there, glowing on the screen, an intrusive description of their lives and history. He let his finger rest on it, but didn’t click, and selected the news article instead.

Police officer Nina Hoffman had given evidence about the arrest of the alleged murderer. Once again, the mistake they had made was explained: that baffling fragment of
skin in Nacka. How on earth had it happened? And the information about investigations in other countries worried him. So much had changed in recent years and the rules of the game were different: everything was traceable. It was almost unsporting, but such was the way of the world now. He understood that, and his adversaries would have to as well. Why should he alone play by the rules? They couldn’t cause pain and assume that there was no price to pay.

He closed his eyes. The case was secure above his head. Tomorrow he would be there, ready for the next step.

The gentle rocking of the carriage took him back to their trips to Storblåliden with their father, going fishing on the lake, the wooden cabin where they used to sleep. That was where they had discovered the delights of their abilities, when the fish they had caught were lying in the bottom of the rowing-boat, gasping for oxygen, and they would stick the knife into their stomachs and empty them of life and guts.

The sign on the door was made of brass, all four names engraved in black in the same font:

Nina looked at it for a few moments before she rang the bell. There was something solemn about the little metal plaque: it was a declaration as much as a mere
description of who lived there. They had decided it was going to work: you and I, my children and yours.

Serena opened the door. Oh dear – weren’t the children in bed yet? Nina had delayed the visit as long as she could – she could hardly have turned up any later.

‘Hi, Nina,’ Serena said, and gave her a radiant smile. ‘Have you caught any murderers today?’

She had grown tall, almost up to Nina’s shoulder, and was even wearing mascara. Hundreds of tiny plaits cascaded down her back.

‘I tried,’ Nina said, forcing herself to smile. ‘It didn’t go very well.’

Serena laughed and skipped along the corridor that led to the bedrooms.

‘Hi,’ Annika Bengtzon said, coming out into the hall with a tea-towel in her hand. ‘Do you want something to eat? There’s some chicken stew left.’

‘Thanks, I’m fine.’

‘Decaf? From the machine?’

‘That would be great.’

‘Sit yourself down on the sofa. I won’t be long. Jimmy’s doing the kids tonight.’

Nina kicked her shoes off and put them on the rack, then took her briefcase and went into the living room. She heard a tap running in the kitchen, then the characteristic whirr of one of those coffee-machines that swallowed expensive little metal capsules.

She was always relaxed with Annika, partly because of everything they had been through together, the shared
experiences they never spoke about, but also because there was something bruised about Annika that Nina recognized: she shared it.

While she waited she took out the copy of the preliminary investigation into the Josefin Liljeberg case and put it on the coffee-table, a thick folder containing everything from pictures of the crime scene, forensic reports, the medical officer’s statement and details of witnesses to interviews with the two men who had been suspected of the crime: the minister for foreign trade at the time, Christer Lundgren, and Josefin’s boyfriend, Joachim Segerberg.

Annika brought two mugs in and sank on to the sofa. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the bundle of papers. ‘All of it? Really?’

‘Q said you could see it,’ Nina said. ‘It might help the investigation. But source confidentiality applies, so you can’t quote from it.’

‘Wow!’ Annika put the mugs down and grabbed the papers. She flipped through them and stopped at the photographs of the crime scene. They were colour photocopies and the quality wasn’t great.

Nina waited for her to speak.

Eventually Annika said, ‘I was there. I saw her lying there. But I was outside the railings, of course.’

Nina hadn’t thought about that: the police pictures of the crime scene had been taken at a different angle from the media’s.

‘I went up there yesterday,’ Annika went on. ‘It’s
almost a shame that they’ve cleared away the bushes and sorted out the headstones. Some of the magic of the place has gone.’ She closed the folder. ‘Thank you so much. I’ll read it through carefully, but I won’t quote directly.’

They reached for their mugs at the same time.

‘I heard the defence lawyer gave you a hard time yesterday,’ Annika said.

Nina kept a firm grasp on her mug: her failure in court still stung. If Berglund was released, she would never forgive herself. She blew on the drink. She didn’t much like coffee, but it gave her something to do with her hands. ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ she said, and sipped. ‘Exchanges in the high-security courtroom are usually like that. They’re much harsher in tone than other trials.’

Annika’s eyebrows rose, as they did when she didn’t understand something.

‘It’s all to do with the courtroom,’ Nina said. ‘The parties start off in separate rooms and enter the court through different doors. The prosecutors and defence lawyers never meet outside the courtroom.’

‘So they don’t bump into each other at the coffee-machine?’ Annika said, raising her mug.

‘Exactly. They never exchange pleasantries, never talk about the weather. The atmosphere in court can get very fractious.’

‘So, what do you think? Will he be convicted?’

Nina warmed the palm of her hand against the bottom of the mug. ‘If the DNA evidence is accepted, then
he was there. Even if he wasn’t the perpetrator, he helped. But the match isn’t a hundred per cent, although they very rarely are . . .’

Annika looked down at her lap. ‘I need to ask you about something else,’ she said. ‘Birgitta, my sister, didn’t come home from work the day before yesterday. No one knows where she is, and she sent me two text messages asking for help, but I don’t know what with. I’ve spoken to the duty officer at Regional Crime and she’s filed a missing-person report, but is there anything else I can do?’

Nina took two large gulps of coffee, and decided she could leave the rest with a clear conscience. ‘I presume you’ve tried calling her?’

Annika nodded.

‘Could something have happened to her?’

Annika hesitated. ‘Something doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘The texts asking for help were sent on the twenty-fifth and thirty-first of May, but she hadn’t gone missing then. The second was sent just before half past four on Sunday morning, and she disappeared on Sunday evening.’

‘What does her husband say?’

‘He’s reported her missing as well, with the police in Malmö – that’s where they live. He’s really worried.’

‘Most people who go missing turn up again fairly quickly.’

Annika gave her a fleeting smile. ‘I know.’

‘Seven thousand people are reported missing each
year,’ Nina said, ‘and that includes short-term disappearances, teenagers running away from home, asylum-seekers who go off the radar, people snatching their own children . . .’