The Final Word (8 page)

‘Is there anyone at the National Forensics Lab who has any connection with Berglund? Someone who might want to frame him? Have we checked that?’

He didn’t reply.

‘There are more victims out there,’ Nina said quietly. ‘The perpetrator in Orminge was no novice. He’d done it before. Lerberg, the assault in Solsidan, that was him as well . . .’

Johansson shook his head sadly.

‘The torture methods were identical,’ Nina said. ‘It was the same perpetrator. I think that the first DNA we found, the mitochondrial sample in Djursholm, was Ivar Berglund’s as well. No one’s tampered with the tests. He abducted Viola Söderland, and he tortured Ingemar Lerberg.’

‘The evidence . . .’

‘He’s playing with us,’ Nina said in a low voice. ‘And he wants us to know it.’

She thought about the drawing that the murderer had taken from the Lerberg children’s room and inserted, rolled up, into the rectum of the victim in Orminge.

Tears stood in Johansson’s eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘DNA evidence has been wrong before.’

‘You mean the Phantom of Heilbronn?’ Nina asked.

Johansson blew his nose.

For most of the 1990s and 2000s a female serial killer had made fools of a number of Central European police forces, mostly in south-west Germany but also in France and Austria. Her DNA was found at almost forty separate crime scenes: she committed robberies and killings. She was described by detectives as extremely brutal, probably a drug addict, and usually pretended to be
male. The first DNA sample was found as early as 1993 when an elderly woman had been strangled in her home after a burglary.

In the winter of 2009 the German police devoted almost sixteen thousand hours of overtime to the search for the Phantom of Heilbronn: the investigating team was expanded, they conducted daily DNA analysis, tested seven hundred women, worked through almost three and a half thousand possible leads, and announced a €300,000 reward. All to no avail.

Then, in March 2009, the case had taken a different turn. The French police conducted a DNA test on the charred remains of a male asylum-seeker, and discovered that he was in fact a woman, and not just any woman but the Phantom of Heilbronn. Among her many other crimes, she had murdered a police officer in Heilbronn two years before. At this point it had dawned on the detectives that something was seriously wrong with the DNA evidence.

It turned out that the DNA from the forty different cases had not come from evidence gathered at the different crime scenes but from the cotton-wool swabs used to take the samples. All the swabs had come from the same factory in Eastern Europe.

‘Could there be some other explanation?’ Nina said. ‘Could the sample be right but the match wrong? Could the DNA actually belong to someone else?’

‘That’s a theoretical possibility,’ Johansson said.

‘But who, then? As far as we know, Berglund doesn’t have any sons, does he?’

‘Correct,’ Johansson said. ‘He’s never made any maintenance payments, either officially or unofficially, and he’s never been the subject of any paternity claims. Mind you, that isn’t proof that he doesn’t have a son . . .’

Nina clasped her hands. ‘It still doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘Not for the Orminge case, and not for Djursholm. Even if he had a son, his DNA wouldn’t be such a good match, and mitochondrial DNA is passed down the maternal line.’

They sank into silence as Nina read the report. Both of Ivar Berglund’s parents were dead – they had drowned in the early 1970s. His brother, Arne Berglund, had died in a car crash in the south of Spain twenty years ago.

‘Lots of accidental deaths in that family,’ Johansson said gloomily. ‘And it can hardly be his sister.’ Ivar Berglund’s younger sister, Ingela, lived in a care-home up in Luleå.

Nina stared out of the window at the far side of the room. She could almost feel the heat hitting the glass. ‘Has anyone spoken to her?’

‘She has learning difficulties.’

‘But how bad are they? Do we know what sort of problems she’s got?’

Johansson flicked through the file. ‘It doesn’t say. Presumably our colleagues decided it wouldn’t be useful. Maybe she can’t talk or perhaps they just wanted to spare her. It’s possible she doesn’t even know that her brother has been charged with murder.’

Nina got to her feet. ‘Thanks for letting me take up your time,’ she said. ‘When are you next due to contact our European colleagues about the remaining cases?’

Johansson sighed again.

Nina left the room and saw Commissioner Q, head of the Criminal Intelligence Unit, disappear into his office at the end of the corridor. She hurried after him and knocked on his door. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but have you got a moment?’

Commissioner Q was holding a stained coffee mug. The buttons of his Hawaiian shirt had been done up wrongly. ‘Of course I have, Nina. What can I do for you?’

Q was a very unusual sort of police chief, not just in his unorthodox style of dress and appalling taste in music (he loved the Eurovision Song Contest), but more particularly in his way of thinking, and the lack of presumption with which he approached things he didn’t understand. During the year she had been working for him at National Crime she had come to appreciate his acerbic way of communicating and open leadership style.

‘I’d like to go up to Luleå, to talk to Ivar Berglund’s sister.’

The commissioner sat down behind his chaotic desk and frowned. ‘Isn’t she supposed to be a bit backward? Lives in a home, or something?’

‘Yes,’ Nina said. ‘But she might be able to communicate. I’d like to look into it, anyway.’

Q hesitated. ‘There are probably good reasons why
she’s been left alone, as a matter of respect. How old is she?’

‘In her fifties,’ Nina said.

He scratched his head. ‘A middle-aged woman with learning difficulties? Ask to see her medical records and check what’s wrong with her.’ He reached for a file on his desk, indicating that the conversation was over.

Nina paused in the doorway. ‘There was one other thing, about the murder of Josefin Liljeberg.’

Her boss looked up in surprise. ‘Josefin?’ he said. ‘That was my case, once upon a time, my first when I got to Violent Crime.’

Nina straightened. ‘Annika Bengtzon from the
Evening Post
got in touch yesterday. She’s taking another look at the case and is wondering if she can see the preliminary investigation; unofficially, of course.’

The commissioner drank the rest of his coffee and pulled a face. ‘Why didn’t she call me?’

‘You’re the boss, so you haven’t got a direct line. The prosecutor has let her have the list of witnesses, so it clearly isn’t completely off-limits.’

Q put his mug down with a bang. ‘Have we got the case here?’

‘It’s among the stack of confessions Gustaf Holmerud made.’

The commissioner groaned at the mention of Holmerud’s name. He sat without speaking for a while. ‘I remember Josefin,’ he eventually said. ‘A boiling-hot day, a Saturday. Her boyfriend did it, a nasty piece of work.
His friends gave him an alibi, or we would have got him. It might not do any harm to let Bengtzon go through the file.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Quite the contrary, in fact,’ he went on. ‘If the
Evening Post
stir things up a bit, one or two cockroaches might come to the surface. Give her a copy of the file, and remind her about the confidentiality of sources. She’s not to quote from it.’ He leaned over his bundle of papers.

Nina turned and headed off towards her office.

‘By the way,’ he called after her, ‘you said the right thing in court. That bastard’s guilty – let him sweat it out. He’ll know we’re keeping an eye on him.’

Her boss had read the
Evening Post
. That didn’t improve her mood.

Anders Schyman sat back in his chair. He had adopted a neutral expression, and was trying to stop himself frowning. He could have saved himself the trouble: Albert Wennergren, the chairman of the board, was standing with his back to him, his silly ponytail swaying gently in the breeze from the air-conditioning. He was gazing out at the newsroom on the other side of the glass wall. The staff were busy absorbing news, checking it, questioning and monitoring it, a silent film in colour with no background music.

‘What sort of premises do you think we’ll need after the reorganization?’ Wennergren asked, without turning.

Reorganization?
Reorganization?

Schyman took a deep, soundless breath to stop himself
screaming. ‘I haven’t worked that out yet,’ he said, in a measured tone. ‘First we have to decide how many people will be needed to maintain our digital activities, and for the development of video coverage, as well as our focus on other platforms. We’ll have to compare the cost of moving against scaling back our existing premises and maybe renting out . . .’

Now the chairman turned round, sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs, and propped his elbows on his knees. ‘And take a look at the cost of any emotional response as well,’ he said.

Schyman was unsure what the man had meant.

Wennergren’s gaze was fixed on him. ‘Compromising and dragging the process out, that costs money. A quick strategy, without any compromises, must be cheaper. I’d like to know by how much.’

‘You mean the difference?’ Schyman said. ‘A longer process that shields the staff versus . . .’

‘Once you’ve taken a decision, it’s best to implement it quickly and decisively. That’s the most humane option,’ Wennergren said.

Schyman stared at the chairman of the board. He wasn’t going to be the first to look away. ‘It might be a little tricky to convey the board’s motives,’ he said. ‘Explaining and justifying this dramatic . . . change, after the newspaper has made a profit of around a billion kronor over the past twelve years.’

Wennergren nodded. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘It’s important that we don’t stifle debate, that people feel free to
contribute to the discussion. We’ll simply have to explain that we regard news and social journalism as a fundamental part of our vision of publishing. What’s new about this is that we’ll be where the public wants to find us, and that, of course, will cost a lot in terms of investment. The staff have to understand that.’

Schyman tried to swallow, but his mouth was bone dry. Mustn’t stifle debate. Let people contribute to the discussion. ‘So, in order to secure the publication of serious, considered social journalism, we have to take difficult decisions about our priorities,’ he said, hoping he didn’t sound too ironic.

The chairman of the board nodded excitedly. ‘Exactly! We’re taking this extremely difficult decision because we want to be in control of our own future. We’re seizing the initiative while we still have a chance to do so!’

Schyman made a real effort to sound reasonable. ‘Our competitors aren’t exactly resting on their laurels, as we know.’

Wennergren leaned forward. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I was over in California last month, and met the bosses at Google. They’re not worried about competition but about the consumers. Our behaviour patterns are changing so fast that even they can’t keep up. The world’s biggest search engine! They’re worried about disappearing!’

He stood up and looked out across the newsroom again, the very embodiment of a desire for change. ‘It’s hard to comprehend how much the media industry is
going to change in the next few years, but one thing is certain: the
Evening Post
will be part of it. We’re going to be in the vanguard.’

Schyman couldn’t reply. Twenty years ago there were seven thousand journalists working on daily papers in Sweden. Now there were just two thousand left. In the last year alone almost forty local papers had closed, and more than four hundred journalists had lost their jobs. The shadow hanging over the media was spreading across the country at the same pace and in the same way as neo-Fascist movements. The only roles that were gaining strength within the media were information management and PR consultancy, which existed to steer and influence.

Wennergren gestured towards the newsroom. ‘Isn’t that the woman who looked after Valter when he did his work-placement here last summer?’

Schyman got up and went to stand next to him, his knees aching. ‘They got on pretty well,’ he said.

‘She made a big impression on Valter. He talks about her a lot.’

Bengtzon must have felt their eyes on her, because she turned towards them. Schyman instinctively took a step back and moved away. ‘How’s Valter getting on?’ he asked, as he sat down again.

‘Fine, thanks,’ Wennergren said. ‘He finished his journalism degree a few weeks ago.’

‘It’s a shame there are no jobs for journalists in Sweden,’ Schyman said.

The chairman of the board smiled confidently. ‘Valter’s going to carry on with his academic career, researching media relations and press ethics.’

Schyman nodded. ‘A talented lad.’

Albert Wennergren let out a contented sigh. ‘I was a little sceptical when he said he wanted to do his work-placement here at the
Evening Post
, but this was actually where he worked out what he wanted to do. He had a lot of discussions about press ethics and the foundations of the tabloid press with his supervisor. What was her name? Berntson?’

‘Bengtzon,’ Schyman said. ‘Annika.’

‘I read Valter’s thesis the other evening. I thought it was rather exciting. He makes a distinction between self-important media, like the morning papers and state-funded television, and tabloids like the
Evening Post
. The former are regarded as “smart” and “serious”, which is partly a consequence of what they choose to cover, and how they angle their coverage. They report on the labour market and politics, sport, wars and the economy, all traditional male domains, and they do so in an official-sounding way.’

Schyman knew all of this. Hadn’t he once given a speech on the subject? ‘All media cover wars and politics,’ he said.

‘But their approaches differ. The tabloids focus on the personal and private, on people’s feelings and experiences, which have traditionally been regarded as female territory. And we address the little person on the street,
not the establishment. That’s why the tabloids are so derided – because there’s nothing as provocative as an outspoken woman on the lowest rungs of society . . . I’d like to talk to Annika Berntson,’ Albert Wennergren said. ‘Can you ask her to come in for a few minutes?’