Unspoken (17 page)

The sound of the phone ringing woke her. At first she thought it was the landline, but when she picked up the receiver she realized it was her cell phone ringing. She got to her feet and hurried out to the entryway to rummage through her jacket pockets. The phone stopped ringing. Then it started again. It was him.

“I have to see you . . . I have to. Listen here, honey. Couldn’t we meet?”

“Sure,” she said without hesitation. “You can come over here. I’m home alone.”

“I’ll be right over.”

She regretted it the moment she saw him. He reeked of liquor. Spot started barking but soon gave up. The dog wasn’t the menacing type.

She stood awkwardly in the center of the living room, unsure what to do, as he threw himself onto the sofa. Now that she had invited him over, she couldn’t very well ask him to leave, could she?

“Would you like anything?” she asked uncertainly.

“Come here and sit down,” he said, patting the sofa cushion next to him.

From the clock on the wall she saw that it was two in the morning. This whole thing was crazy, but she did as he said.

It took only a second before he was on top of her. He was rough and determined.

When he forced himself into her, she bit herself on the arm to keep from screaming.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23

At the next day’s morning meeting everyone was talking about the discovery of the murder weapon. It was a breakthrough in the investigation, of course. By all accounts, the blotches on the hammer were blood. The hammer had been sent to the Swedish Crime Lab for DNA analysis. But there were no fingerprints.

Most of them had seen on the evening news how the hammer was discovered. Naturally Kihlgård made jokes about the police officers’ comments that were caught on tape, and he drew a good deal of laughter from the others. Knutas was only moderately amused. He was annoyed by the extent of the information presented in the news story. At the same time, he understood that the reporter was just doing his job. It was so typical that Johan should end up right in the thick of things. He had an incredible talent for showing up exactly when things were happening. Everything had gone so fast out there that no one had thought of reining him in before it was too late. Yet, once again Johan had provided new facts that would benefit the investigation, even though the police didn’t know the source of his report about the witness at the harbor. After the case with the serial killer that past summer, Knutas had learned to trust the persistent TV reporter, although Johan could drive him crazy with all the information he managed to dig up. How he did it was a mystery. If he hadn’t become a journalist, he would have made an excellent police detective.

The news program had started off with a long segment about the murder, the latest developments in the investigation, the payments Dahlström had received under the table, and the witness who had seen Dahlström with an unidentified man down at the harbor.

“Why don’t we start with the unreported carpentry work?” said Norrby. “We’ve interviewed four people who hired Dahlström in addition to Mr and Mrs Persson. Two of them are members of the same folklore society as the Perssons. They all said more or less the same thing. Dahlström did a number of minor jobs for them. They paid him for the work, and that was that. Evidently he conducted himself in an exemplary manner, showed up when he was supposed to, and so on. They knew, of course, that he was an alcoholic, but he had been referred to them by friends.”

“So it was through a referral from others that they got in touch with him?” asked Wittberg.

“Yes, and none of them had any complaints about his work. We’re going to keep questioning people.”

“The murder weapon wasn’t the only thing we found yesterday. We also found his camera. Sohlman?”

“It’s a professional camera, a Hasselblad. Dahlström’s fingerprints were found on it, so we’re confident that it did in fact belong to him. There was no film in it, and the lens was broken, so someone had treated it rather roughly.”

“Maybe the murderer took the film,” Jacobsson put in. “The darkroom had been searched, which indicates that the murder possibly had something to do with Dahlström’s photography.”

“
Possibly
. At the same time, we’ve received reports from SCL on the samples that were taken from Dahlström’s apartment and darkroom. SCL have really outdone themselves—we’ve never received such quick results before,” Sohlman murmured to himself as he leafed through the documents. “All the prints from glasses, bottles, and other objects have been analyzed. Many are from Dahlström’s buddies who visited his apartment. But there are also prints that can’t be ascribed to any of them. They may be from the perpetrator.”

“Okay,” said Knutas. “At least we know that much. As if the information about Dahlström’s unreported carpentry work wasn’t enough, Johan Berg has also found a witness claiming to have seen Dahlström with a man down at the harbor last summer. Unfortunately, this witness does not want to talk to the police.”

From his notes he rattled off the description of the man at the harbor.

“They were standing in a narrow passageway between two containers and talking, around five in the morning. The witness recognized Dahlström and knew that this was far away from the places where he usually hung out. What do you think?”

“If there’s one witness, there could be more,” said Wittberg. “When exactly did this happen?”

“We don’t know. Only that it was supposedly in the middle of the summer.”

“Why was the witness down at the harbor so early in the morning?” asked Kihlgård.

“He was there with a girl who was going to take the morning ferry to Nynäshamn.”

“So we’re talking about a younger man. It might be one of Dahlström’s neighbors. Wasn’t there a young guy living in the building?”

“You’re right about that. I think he lives on the floor upstairs.”

Knutas glanced down at his papers.

“His name is Niklas Appelqvist. A student.”

“If the witness, whoever he is, could at least tell us the name of the girl, then we could find out what day she left by looking at the passenger lists of Destination Gotland,” said Jacobsson. “I think they keep the lists for three months.”

“But how are we going to proceed if the witness doesn’t want to talk to the police?” asked Norrby.

“Maybe the reporter would have better luck getting the information out of him than we would,” said Jacobsson. “I think we should first ask Johan Berg for help. Maybe the witness is one of those types who’s extremely hostile toward the police. For some inexplicable reason, those sorts of people do exist,” she added sarcastically.

She turned to Knutas, giving him a big smile.

“So we’re going to have to suck up to the reporter,” she said gleefully. “And you’re so good at that kind of thing, Anders.”

Jacobsson gave him a friendly poke in the side. Kihlgård looked equally amused.

Knutas was annoyed, but he had to admit that she was right. Legally, he couldn’t investigate the young man, but there was nothing to prevent him from asking Johan to find out the name of the girl. So the police were at the mercy of the journalist’s goodwill. And that was a pisser.

Just as Johan entered the editorial offices of Regional News, his cell phone rang. It was Knutas.

“I wonder if you’d be willing to help us with something.”

“What is it?”

“Do you think the witness would remember the name of the girl he was with when he saw Dahlström and another man down at the harbor?”

“I don’t know. It sounded as if she was someone he spent only that one evening with.”

“Could you ask him?”

“Sure. But it’ll have to wait awhile. I just arrived at the newsroom.”

The police wanted his help. How nice. This was a switch from the normal situation when, as a journalist, he had to beg, plead, and cajole to get any information. He would keep Knutas waiting for just a bit.

A pleasantly drowsy Friday mood had settled over the newsroom. Fridays often had a slower pace than usual because half of the evening news program was devoted to a longer story.

Grenfors was sitting alone at the big table in the middle of the room, the so-called news desk. It was the workplace for editors, anchormen, and broadcast producers—all the key people whose job it was to put together the programs, make decisions, and assign the stories. At this time of day the anchormen and producers hadn’t yet put in an appearance. Most of the reporters were sitting at their own desks with phones pressed to their ears. In the morning they did their research and made appointments for interviews. The day often started off at a leisurely pace, which then accelerated and finally reached a crescendo of stress right before the broadcast. That’s when they had to deal with stories that weren’t finished in time, something in a report that had to be changed at the last minute because the editor wasn’t happy with it, computers that crashed, video-editing machines that broke so that certain images couldn’t be transmitted, and all sorts of other problems. Time was short, and they always worked up until the very last second. Everyone was used to that; it was their normal work tempo.

“Hi, there,” Grenfors greeted Johan. “That was a good report yesterday. Great that we’ve got the story now. It feels like it’s going to get bigger. We’ll have to wait and see how it develops. Meanwhile . . . something else has come up.”

The editor shuffled through the documents and newspapers that were heaped in a big, messy pile on the table.

“The police seized a record amount of Rohypnol in Kapellskär this morning. Could you look into it?”

Oh, right, look into it
, thought Johan. That sounded easy enough, but he knew what Grenfors expected. A substantial story that he could use at the top of the broadcast, containing information that was a Regional News exclusive. He had strong doubts that it was a record amount. He had lost count of all the drug busts that had been made over the past year.

“Isn’t National News doing the story?” he asked wearily. He had been hoping to go home early.

“Sure, but you know how they are. They do their report and we do ours. Besides, you have better contacts than all their reporters put together.”

“Okay.”

Johan went back to his desk. Before he got started, he called Niklas Appelqvist in Gråbo.

He answered at once. Yes, he had kept in touch with the girl for a short time. He might still have her last name and phone number somewhere. He recalled only that her first name was Elin and she lived in Uppsala. He promised to call back as soon as possible. Before Johan could pick up the receiver to call the Customs Agency, the phone rang. He heard his mother’s voice.

“Hi, my dear boy. How are you? How was it on Gotland?”

“It was fine.”

“Did you see Emma?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”

He was close to his mother, and by this time she knew almost everything about his complicated relationship with Emma. She listened and offered advice without expecting that he would follow it. She never judged him, and he appreciated that.

Johan’s relationship with his mother had deepened after his father died of cancer almost two years ago now. There were four brothers, but Johan was the oldest, and he was closest to his mother. They had a need for each other. During the past year his mother had needed him more, and they had spent a great deal of time together, talking about his father and how life had changed. Especially for her, of course. She now lived alone in the big house in the suburb of Bromma. He had tried to persuade her to move so that she wouldn’t have to take care of all the practical matters by herself. Her sons did help out quite a bit, but they also had their own lives.

She had now recovered from the worst of her grief. She had even started seeing a man who belonged to the same bowling club. He was a widower, and she seemed to enjoy his company. Whether there was anything romantic going on between them she had never mentioned, and Johan didn’t want to ask. The fact that his mother was seeing this man took a lot of the pressure off because he no longer had to worry as much about her being alone.

Fanny was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the reflection of her face in the window. She was alone. Her mother was at work, as usual. The neighbors across the courtyard had hung up their Advent stars already. In another month it would be Christmas Eve. Yet another Christmas alone with her mother. Other people got together with family and friends to celebrate with Christmas trees and presents. The coziest thing of all must be to sit around a big table and eat Christmas dinner together. A warm apartment, candles, and good company. But she and her mother had only each other. And Spot, of course. They never went to visit relatives. Fanny had begun to realize why. The relatives were afraid that her mother would either get drunk or have one of her outbursts. She was so unpredictable that no one could ever relax when she was around. They never knew what might happen. If someone said or did something that her mother took as a criticism, the rest of the evening would be ruined. That’s why she and her mother were always alone. Not even her maternal grandmother was around anymore; she was senile and lived in a retirement home.

They never bought a real tree for Christmas, either. They just set up a dreary-looking plastic tree on the table, as if they were a couple of old retired people. They usually ate Christmas dinner in front of the TV. Store-bought meatballs, beet salad, and ready-made Jansson’s Temptation, the traditional casserole of herring, potatoes, and onions in a cream sauce. All they had to do was heat it up in the microwave. Her mother would drink aquavit and wine and get more and more tipsy as the evening wore on. There was always some movie on TV that she wanted to see, but before long she would fall asleep on the sofa. Fanny would have to take Spot out for his evening walk. She hated Christmas. The fact that it was also her birthday didn’t make matters any better. She was going to turn fifteen—that meant she was practically grown up. She felt like a child in an adult’s body. She didn’t want to get any older; she had nothing to look forward to. She leaned her head on her hands, inhaling the scent of her newly washed hair. In some strange way she found that comforting. She looked down at the curve of her breasts. They had caused all the problems; her body had ruined everything. If she hadn’t gotten older, this whole thing would never have happened. Her body was a weapon that could be used both against others and against herself.