Lifetime Page 12

  ‘Did he hit her?’ Annika asked.

  Nina shook her head. ‘Never. He wasn’t that stupid. But he threatened her, even when I could hear. Said he’d make her life hell if she didn’t go home at once, things like that. He could be very sweet and loving one minute, hugging and kissing her even in front of other people. The next minute he’d say such cruel, hurtful things that she was practically in tears. He would frighten her, then regret it and ask her forgiveness. Julia isn’t a strong person. She could never stand up to anything like that. And it got even worse when she found out that he had been repeatedly unfaithful …’

  The juicer started up noisily, and Annika shifted, irritated, when the woman with the pushchair wanted to take her child to the toilet. ‘Repeatedly?’ she said.

  Nina waited until the mother had struggled past.

  ‘I don’t really know how to explain in a way you’ll understand,’ she said eventually. ‘David was a notorious womanizer before he met Julia. They still talk about his escapades in the station – well, it’s mainly Christer Bure and his crew who keep the stories alive. Mostly because it shows how popular they themselves were, once upon a time. But when Julia came into the picture all that stopped. At least, the public boasting about his conquests did, and the lads weren’t particularly pleased about that.’

  ‘They’d lost their iconic shagger,’ Annika said.

  ‘Outwardly, at any rate, but only for a while. He must have been having affairs the whole time, but Julia didn’t grasp it until several years later. One of the women called her at home and told her that she was the one he really loved, that Julia should understand that and set him free. That was just after Alexander was born.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Annika said.

  ‘She found a letter to David containing an ultrasound picture of a foetus. “I’ve killed our daughter. Her name was Maja. Now it’s your turn,” it said in the accompanying letter. I thought that would shake her out of it.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘I presume she tried to talk to David, but I don’t know for sure. It wasn’t so easy keeping in touch with her. David’s career was always pretty unconventional. Sometimes he was posted abroad. Once they lived outside Málaga for six months.’

  ‘Málaga?’

  ‘In the south of Spain. The house was in Estepona, just east of Gibraltar. I went down to visit them. Julia looked like a ghost. She said she was fine, but I’m sure she was lying.’

  A gang of teenage boys tumbled into the café, jostling and shouting. The café-latte mothers frowned.

  ‘When Alexander arrived things got really bad,’ Nina went on, ignoring the teenagers. ‘He was born prematurely and Julia got post-natal depression, and it was like she never quite shook it off. When she came back to work she couldn’t handle anything happening to children, abuse, traffic accidents, anything that hurt them. She was signed off sick with nervous exhaustion more than two years ago. She hasn’t worked at all this past year.’

  Annika tried furiously to structure the information she’d been given.

  He’d tormented Julia until she’d become ill.

  He was a notorious womanizer.

  And where do the allegations of misconduct come into the picture?

  ‘If I could just rewind a bit,’ Annika said. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about Julia? What happened to her when she met David?’

  Nina cleared her throat. ‘There was a small gang of us girls who stuck together after we’d graduated from the Police Academy, but Julia pulled away. She changed how she dressed, stopped wearing jeans. We were active in the Social Democratic Youth Movement, but suddenly she started voting for the Moderates. We had a discussion about it that ended with her in tears. To begin with it was just little things like that …’

  Annika waited in silence. ‘And it got worse after Alexander was born?’ she asked, when Nina didn’t go on.

  ‘I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t understand just how badly wrong until the last few weeks before the murder. David was incredibly jealous – I once heard him call her a whore and a slut. He must have locked her in the flat at least seven times. It was like she stopped counting. Once she was shut up for something like a week. Another time he threw her out into the stairwell without any clothes on. She got so cold she had to go to hospital. At A&E she said she’d got lost in the countryside.’

  ‘And you heard about all this quite late?’

  ‘Julia’s been terribly fragile the past couple of years. She was taken in for psychiatric treatment on one occasion. She hasn’t been in touch with me much, but I went to see her when I knew David was working or away travelling. It was on one of those visits that I found she was locked in. It was only then that I understood just how bad things were for her.’

  ‘Why didn’t she report him?’

  Nina actually smiled slightly. ‘You make it sound so simple. I wanted her to, of course, and offered to support her all the way. Maybe that was why she started going through his old files and found the allegations: she was getting ready to leave.’

  ‘And what about the affairs? Did they ever stop?’

  ‘No, quite the opposite. It got worse and worse. David evidently thought they were becoming a nuisance towards the end. He’d asked Julia to forgive him, said he was sorry, but he would say that sort of thing …’

  ‘And what do you think about the allegations of abuse? Did he do it?’

  Nina snorted. ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s strange that two insignificant small-time criminals had exactly the same thing happen to them with exactly the same result.’

  Nina studied her in silence, so Annika went on: ‘They were very badly beaten, and every time they were questioned they said David had done it, and they stuck to their stories right up to the trial, when they suddenly went into reverse. Their stories are also identical on several points – for instance, when David spoke to them and asked their names.’

  Nina looked at the misted-up window. ‘That struck me as well,’ she said quietly. ‘The chances of them both inventing the same lie strike me as fairly slim.’

  Then she looked at Annika. ‘You’re not going to write about any of this, are you?’

  Annika gazed at her weary face. ‘Why did you tell me if you didn’t want it to get out?’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can put it all over the front page, but it has to be Julia’s decision. I don’t know if she’d want it to come out, everything she had to put up with.’ Nina got up and wrestled with her dark-green raincoat. ‘You can use the information if you can get it confirmed elsewhere. But I’d still like you to tell me first.’

  ‘Of course,’ Annika said.

  Nina Hoffman left the café without saying goodbye, and without looking back.

  Annika was left sitting there with her cold coffee.

  Nina hadn’t liked David Lindholm. That much was crystal clear. If what she had said was true, then that was completely understandable. It must be awful to watch your best friend get drawn into a destructive relationship and be unable to do anything about it.

  It must be terrible to have to sit on all that knowledge, then read acres of coverage on what a hero he was.

  Annika gathered her things and went out to the car – she had parked it illegally on Bondegatan, but she hadn’t got a ticket. Which was something.

  She’d just started the engine when her mobile rang. She sighed, hesitated, then fished it out of her bag. She checked the display: it wasn’t a number she recognized. She took the call anyway.

  ‘Annika Bengtzon? It’s Timmo. You tried to call me.’

  Timmo? The man who was beaten up.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Thanks for calling back. Would you like to meet up with me for a chat?’

  ‘About David Lindholm? I’d be happy to. I owe that man everything.’

  Sunday, 6 June

  12

  Nina let the patrol car roll slowly across the Djurgård Bridge. Andersson was sitting beside her, staring
sullenly through the passenger window, his gaze sweeping over the crowd of drenched civilians on their way to the open-air museum at Skansen to celebrate National Day.

  ‘None of these people really give a shit about Sweden,’ he said. ‘They’re only going to try to get on telly and stare at the Royal Family.’

  Nina clenched her teeth. Patience, patience.

  The rain had been tipping down when she had gone to work, and had carried on all the way through her shift. Sometimes it had been raining so hard that she had had no visibility at all. The wind forced her to keep a firm grip on the steering-wheel.

  He won’t survive weather like this. If he’s been outside since Thursday, he must be dead now.

  Nina braked at the junction with Långa gatan. An elderly woman on a bike had been hit by a car; she was sitting on the edge of the pavement holding her left ankle. The driver was in his car, looking simultaneously embarrassed and annoyed. She opened the door but paused before she got out. ‘I wasn’t planning to get soaked on my own,’ she said. ‘You talk to the driver and I’ll take the old dear.’

  ‘God, I could do without a fucking awful day like this,’ Andersson said, and climbed out into the torrential rain.

  He had been in a dreadful mood ever since the handover meeting at six thirty that morning. There had been only six of them plus a senior officer; everyone else had been called in for Special Police Operations, as always on National Day, or the anniversary of the death of Charles XII and other loaded dates.

  ‘So how did this happen, then?’ Nina asked, as she squatted beside the woman, who was wearing a poncho with a hood made of some sort of waterproof material, but the rain had got through anyway and she was soaked to the skin. She was crying.

  ‘My foot hurts,’ she said, pointing at her ankle.

  It was at such an odd angle that Nina knew it was broken. ‘We need to get you to hospital at once,’ she said. ‘That foot needs to be plastered, and we can’t have you sitting here like this. You’ll catch a chill.’

  She radioed Control and asked for an ambulance to the junction of Djurgårdsvägen and Långa gatan.

  ‘He was driving like a maniac,’ the woman said, pointing to the man in the car. ‘I was cycling along, nice and safely, and he comes up and hits me from behind. I mean, it’s not on, is it?’

  Nina put her hand on the woman’s arm and smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of what happened. The main thing now is to get you to a doctor.’

  Andersson came over to her, holding in his hand the breathalyzer that the motorist had just blown into. ‘Looks like someone started celebrating National Day at lunchtime,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll take him in for a proper test,’ Nina said, as she saw the ambulance emerging through the rain.

  Once the woman was being looked after by the paramedics, Andersson put the suspected drunk-driver on the right side of the car’s back seat, then slid his seat so that his prisoner had no room for manoeuvre.

  ‘The old bag was weaving all over the road,’ the driver said. ‘It was impossible not to hit her.’

  I wonder if they’ve found him.

  During the handover meeting that morning, when they were told who was going out and in which cars, they had gone through new missing-person reports as well as ongoing cases. The search for David’s boy was due to start again at six o’clock this morning, but they’re holding off to see if the rain eases …

  ‘If I were you,’ Andersson said, ‘I’d keep seriously fucking quiet until I’d got hold of a good lawyer.’

  Nina glanced at her watch. Their shift ended in an hour and they hadn’t managed to get back to the station all day.

  It took a long while to drive to Torkel Knutssonsgatan on Södermalm. Nina went straight into the garage, then took the drunk-driver to the duty officer, where he was made to blow twice more into a breathalyzer, with the same result: 0.8 parts per thousand.

  ‘That’s not too bad,’ the driver said, relieved.

  ‘You could have killed someone,’ Nina said. ‘That woman’s foot may never be right again. You may well have ruined her life.’

  The man glowered at her.

  ‘I’ll go and write the report,’ she told the officer, Pelle Sisulu, leaving the drunk to his fate.

  Nina felt exhausted, even though it had been a relatively calm shift. She had been close to tears most of the day. It would be good to have a few days off now.

  She quickly filed the report and logged out.

  On her way to the changing room she stopped at the duty officer’s room. The drunk was gone.

  Pelle Sisulu was in his forties, and had worked at the station for as long as she could remember. ‘Anything special to report?’ he wondered.

  Nina shuffled her feet. ‘No, not really, RTAs, a couple of slight injuries, and this drunk-driver … Has anything happened in the search? For Alexander, I mean.’ She had been on the point of saying ‘Julia’s son’.

  Sisulu raised his head.

  He must have been the first black police officer in Sweden.

  ‘They’ve called off the search for today,’ he said. ‘Visibility’s too poor. The helicopter never got up.’ He went back to his computer screen.

  ‘But what about the ground search?’ she said. ‘Surely they could have carried on with that.’

  ‘Evidently some of the local officers from out in the bush are poking about in the mud,’ he said, ‘but we haven’t got anyone there.’

  ‘That’s probably the village squad from Valla,’ she said.

  He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Julia comes from round there. Her dad’s chair of the local business association.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if they found anything.’

  Nina walked to the rear of the station, which was deserted. The corridor to the changing room was dark and gloomy. The ventilation system hummed quietly, stirring up dust from the grey linoleum floor, and she could smell rubbish from the recycling facility next door.

  She unbuttoned her jacket and bulletproof vest, and let out a deep sigh. She could still remember the first time she had been here, how nervous and tense she had felt. During the fourth term of their course she and Julia had done their practical experience here, known as ‘integrated study orientation in the workplace’. Julia had been joyful.

  Just think, this is it for us, our careers. We’re going to have a chance to make a difference …

  That had been almost ten years ago.

  Nina opened the door on the left at the far end of the corridor with her security pass and went into the women’s cramped changing room, making her way through the maze of blue lockers until she came to her own. She dropped her bag on the floor with a thud. Her arms felt heavy as she shrugged off her jacket, took off the belt containing her holster and handcuffs, the extra ammunition and baton, then her bulletproof vest, boots and uniform trousers. She glanced at the clothes: they were muddy, splattered with vomit and snot from one of the accident victims. They needed washing. She sighed.

  Oh, well, she had three days to do it.

  She opened her bag and inspected her helmet, shin-pads, cap, scarf, protective gloves, map and extra set of clothes.

  She showered and washed her hair, then dried herself until her skin glowed, and put on her jeans and a grey sweatshirt. She closed her locker and made a brief attempt to brush her hair, then went to the armoury and locked up her Sig Sauer in the correct place. She should really have done that first. She stood for a moment, looking at the rows of weapons.

  I don’t know, Nina, oh, God, I don’t know. I’m sure I put my pistol in alongside David’s.

  She was heading for the main entrance, with the sense that she was about to be released from captivity, when her mobile rang.

  ‘Nina? It’s Holger.’ Julia’s father.

  She stopped abruptly. ‘Have you found him?’

  ‘No, but I’d like to talk to you. Nina, is there any chance you could come down?’

 
She could hear the rain lashing in the background: he must be standing outside somewhere. ‘Of course,’ she said, her heart racing. ‘I’ve got a few days off now, so I could get the train first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’d rather you came straight away, Nina. We’ve found something.’

  She put her hand out to the brick wall. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What have you found?’

  Someone said something in the background, she couldn’t make out what.

  ‘Holger?’ she said. ‘Where are you? Who else is there? What have you found?’

  Julia’s father came back on the line. ‘There’s four of us, and we’re standing on the marsh at Sågkärret. Do you know where that is?’

  ‘No,’ Nina said.

  ‘Three hundred metres south-east from Björkbacken, you turn off towards Nytorp then take the first left. The road leads straight here. We’ll be waiting for you.’

  ‘Holger,’ Nina said, ‘can’t you tell me what you’ve found?’

  There was a whistling sound on the line from the squalls of rain. Julia’s father’s voice sounded hollow when he replied. ‘We’ll talk when you get here,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to make a fuss in case we’re wrong. It would be best if you took the decision.’

  ‘And it’s not Alexander?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you have to call the police,’ Nina said.

  ‘That’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?’ Holger said. ‘We won’t go anywhere. Drive carefully.’ He ended the call.

  She stood still, her pulse racing.

  She started to run towards the garage – she knew exactly where the keys to the closest car were kept.

  Then she stopped.

  I’m crazy. I can’t just steal a patrol car.

  She stood in the corridor.

  Where can I get hold of a car, any car?

  She rushed back into the station, to the duty officer’s room. ‘Pelle,’ she panted, ‘have you got a car?’

  He looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s your blue Merc in the garage, isn’t it? Can I borrow it? I’ll be back before the end of your shift.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking what you want it for?’ he said, fishing the keys out from his trouser pocket.