Lifetime Page 26

  What does it mean, Nina, what the prosecutor said? You know about this sort of thing. Is it bad for Julia? Will she go to prison? How long for? Oh … Where will she be, then? Örebro? Well, that’s not too far. We’ll be able to visit. She’ll be let out for Christmas, won’t she? No? Maybe later on, in a few years’ time?

  And now that journalist had popped up again, with her Think may be.

  She pressed the keys hard as she replied. Don’t agree. Julia guilty. She’s done her parents a lot of harm. What do you want?

  It sounded unpleasant, but she didn’t care.

  She sent it quickly before she had time to change her mind.

  She went to the kitchen for some water, and the reply reached her mobile with a bleep before she had time to put the glass down.

  Have been to Kumla & met Filip Andersson. Interesting. Cd be worth discussing. I’ll be at Sthlm C in 5 mins.

  Discussing?

  Filip Andersson. Think may be.

  That could mean anything at all. It didn’t impose any obligation on her.

  She grabbed the phone. At home. Come over.

  She gathered together some bills from the dining-table and put them on the bookcase, straightened the bedclothes and put some coffee on. Then she sat down on one of the dining chairs, waiting for the water to stop gurgling through the machine.

  She had just set out mugs, milk and sugar when the doorbell rang.

  The journalist looked a mess, as usual. She marched into the flat with her great big bag and thick coat and the words poured out of her. ‘There’s a pattern I didn’t see before, and I probably wouldn’t have believed it if Filip Andersson hadn’t reacted the way he did. He claims he’s innocent, and there are certainly a number of questions surrounding the evidence that convicted him. Either he’s a very good actor, or he really is scared and browbeaten.’

  ‘Please, take a seat,’ Nina said, pulling out a chair for her, using the voice she usually reserved for difficult drunks and cocky boys on mopeds. ‘How do you take your coffee?’

  ‘Black,’ Annika said, perching on the edge of the chair as she fished a little notepad out of her bag. ‘I’ve written down a few things that I can’t make sense of.’

  Nina poured the coffee, glancing at her from the corner of her eye. There was something slightly manic about her, something a bit too intense. She was like a terrier whose jaws had locked shut, unable to let go.

  She could never have been a police officer. She’s not diplomatic enough.

  ‘The sentence is due tomorrow,’ Nina said, sitting down opposite her. ‘It’s a bit late to be presenting evidence that could change things.’

  ‘This isn’t evidence, exactly. It’s more circumstantial assumptions.’

  Nina sighed to herself: circumstantial assumptions. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘And what do they tell us?’

  Annika hesitated. ‘It’s a bit of a long shot,’ she said. ‘The fact is that it’s so awful I don’t quite believe it myself. It’s too cruel, too calculated, but if you were violent and ruthless enough, it’s just about possible.’

  Nina couldn’t think of anything to say, so waited in silence.

  Annika Bengtzon bit her thumbnail as she read her notes. ‘There’s a link between the murders on Sankt Paulsgatan and David’s murder,’ she said. ‘Has that ever occurred to you?’

  Nina waited silently for her to go on.

  ‘All the victims were hit on the head first, the ones in Sankt Paulsgatan with an axe, David with a bullet through the forehead. Then the bodies were mutilated. Thou shalt not steal, off with your hands. Thou shalt not commit adultery, off with your cock. Both cases show very strong symbolic gestures.’

  Nina’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘There are more than four years between these crimes, and apart from the fact that they both took place on Södermalm, there’s no connection between them at all.’

  ‘There are several connections,’ Annika said. ‘You and Julia were present at both crime scenes, for instance.’

  ‘Pure coincidence,’ Nina said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Annika said. ‘But the most important connection is David himself. He knew Filip Andersson – they’d had dealings in the past. According to the gossip in the blogosphere, Filip Andersson had some sort of business on the coast of Spain, and didn’t you say that David and Julia lived down there for a while? Six months, outside Málaga?’

  Nina shifted irritably on her chair. ‘That was to get away from some gang in Stockholm. It was nothing to do with Filip Andersson.’

  Annika leaned over the table. ‘Are you sure? There couldn’t have been another reason? Was he infiltrating Andersson’s gang? Or working for him?’

  Nina didn’t answer.

  ‘How long is it since David and Julia were in Spain? You said Julia looked like a ghost.’

  ‘She’d just got pregnant and was throwing up all the time,’ Nina said.

  ‘So it was just before the murders on Sankt Paulsgatan,’ Annika noted. ‘Julia was in her fourth month that night we spent together.’

  Nina shook her head. ‘There’s nothing to suggest that David ever had any dealings with Filip Andersson. Nothing at all.’

  ‘David became his trustee when he was given his life sentence and, according to Christer Bure, David was the only person who thought Andersson was innocent. They must have known each other before that, and David knew something about the murders that no one else did.’

  Nina couldn’t hide a deep sigh. ‘Sorry to be so blunt,’ she said, ‘but you sound like an over-enthusiastic private detective.’

  ‘There are other common factors,’ Annika went on. ‘There are the murders, the symbolism, and the desire to catch the wrong killer.’

  Nina stood up. ‘Now, hang on a minute,’ she said.

  ‘Sit down,’ Annika said, and the look in her eyes was suddenly pitch-black. Nina did as she was told. ‘If you manage to carry off the challenge of first killing several people, then getting someone else convicted of the crime, you’d have to be astonishingly cunning and calculating. There’s only one thing that I can’t get to fit.’

  ‘What?’ Nina said.

  ‘Julia’s service revolver. David was shot with her gun.’

  Nina could feel herself going pale. A new sort of silence had settled around her and she could feel her hands getting clammy. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, and her voice sounded odd.

  ‘That’s the missing link. I can get everything else to fit, but I can’t find an explanation for the murder weapon.’

  ‘Julia’s gun went missing a year ago,’ Nina said. ‘It was when she was at her worst and it was all very embarrassing. She couldn’t remember what she’d done with it. That’s nothing new. It came out during the trial.’

  Now it was Annika’s turn to go pale. ‘What are you saying?’

  Nina rubbed her hands together in an attempt to warm them. ‘We always have to lock our weapons in at the station when we finish a shift, but Julia sometimes kept hers at home. David had permission and they had a special gun-cabinet in the bedroom.’

  ‘So she used to keep it in more than one place?’

  ‘That’s right. And if a police officer is going to be off-duty for more than thirty days, they have to hand their service weapon in to the weapons store. When it became clear that Julia was going to be off sick for a long time, she was asked to hand in her pistol, and that was when she realized it was missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘It wasn’t in the gun-cabinet at home in Bondegatan. She went to the station and checked if she had left it there, but she hadn’t. She was beside herself, of course, couldn’t work out where it had gone.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She reported the gun missing. She didn’t want to say it had been stolen, she just couldn’t work out where it had gone. An internal inquiry was set up to find out if she was guilty of breaking the law, or of dereliction of duty, or possibly just misconduct, seeing as she had eviden
tly managed to lose her Sig Sauer …’

  ‘Why haven’t I heard any of this before?’

  ‘You can’t have been paying attention. The defence mentioned it during the trial, but nothing much was made of it. I can only assume that it wasn’t in Julia’s interests to reinforce the image of her as a confused and irresponsible person.’

  ‘So what happened in the inquiry into the disappearance of the weapon?’

  ‘It hadn’t reached any conclusion before the murder, but everything pointed to misconduct, which wouldn’t have had any consequences. The lenient findings were mostly for David’s sake, of course. When the gun reappeared the inquiry was dropped, seeing as she had evidently found the weapon or had had it in her possession all along …’

  ‘But she hadn’t,’ Annika Bengtzon said. ‘Someone started planning this murder a very long time ago, and Julia was being set up to take the blame right from the start.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ Nina said. ‘It sounds like a conspiracy theory in the same class as the Roswell landing.’

  But Annika was no longer listening to her. Her gaze had turned inwards and she seemed to be talking out loud to herself rather than to Nina. ‘If Julia is actually innocent, then Alexander really was kidnapped. Which suggests that the true perpetrator is capable of almost anything. Chopping the hands off people who are still alive with an axe, for instance.’

  She looked at Nina again. ‘Could David have been gay, or bisexual?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Nina said. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘The murderer must have had a personal relationship with David. Otherwise he or she would never have blown his cock off.’ Annika nodded to herself. ‘There really was another woman in the flat. Someone who had access to the keys, or could make copies of them, to the front door and the gun-cabinet. It must have been one of his lovers, and she must have been desperate to get revenge for something. She must have known about Björkbacken because she hid Alexander’s things in the marsh there. Talk about the ultimate revenge: shooting the man, getting his wife locked up for the murder, and stealing their child.’

  Nina was sitting as if she’d been turned to stone, unable to think any more. ‘The sentence is due tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘It can be appealed,’ Annika said. ‘Can you help me get in touch with Julia somehow, or at least arrange for me to talk to her? Or maybe write a letter? I’ve called the lawyer a hundred times and left messages at the prison. Can’t you help me?’

  Nina stood up. ‘I’m working tonight, and I’ve got a lot to do.’

  24

  There was a cold, bitter wind as Annika stepped out of the front door. She thought about taking the Underground, but decided to walk. She needed to burn off the disappointment of failure.

  I begged her, like a child. She must think I’m completely mad.

  If Nina won’t see the connections, no one will.

  She pulled on her gloves and started walking towards Slussen, forcing herself to leave the conspiracy theories on the pavement of Södermannagatan.

  But everything could have fitted, especially as Julia’s service pistol had been missing for some time.

  Annika shook herself. She had to pull herself together and get a bit of perspective. It wasn’t up to her to free Julia Lindholm. Even if she was innocent.

  Am I going mad?

  She struggled up Östgötagatan, forcing her legs to move faster in the cold. Her eyes were watering, mainly because of the wind.

  Does anyone know when they’re on the brink of going mad?

  What if she started finding secret codes in the morning papers, like the Nobel Prize-winner in the film A Beautiful Mind? The one who wrote masses of incomprehensible gobbledegook on scraps of paper and thought he was the cleverest man in the world.

  She quickened her pace as she reached Mosebacke Square, skirting round the South Theatre and stopping to look at the view of Stockholm harbour. This was one of her favourite places on the entire planet. If she could live anywhere she liked, she’d buy a flat on Fjällgatan or somewhere up near Ersta Hospital. The view was incredible, all the water and light, with the medieval buildings along Skeppsbron to the left, Skeppsholmen with its museums straight ahead, Djurgården and the amusement park to the right, and Waldemarsudde jutting out into the water in the distance. One of the Vaxholm boats was heading towards the quayside, its lights twinkling in the water. People had been living here for a thousand years, even before Birger Jarl had decided to build the capital of Sweden on these islands at the opening of Lake Mälaren.

  If I can only get hold of the insurance payout. If I’m cleared of all suspicion of arson. Then I shall live here.

  She turned away and hurried home to look up the main online estate agent and find out if there were any flats for sale with a view of the harbour.

  She had just crossed the big junction at Slussen and turned into Västerlånggatan when she felt that she was being watched. The cobblestones of the medieval streets were wet and slippery, and she slid as she glanced back over her shoulder. She stopped and listened, slightly out of breath.

  The street curved to the right ahead of her, deserted. The wind had torn an old poster down, whirling it around her feet. The shops were all shut but the bars were open, and through the steamed-up windows she could discern people eating, drinking and laughing. Nothing. No steps, no voices.

  Am I getting paranoid as well?

  She hoisted her bag on to her shoulder and started walking.

  There it was again, the sound of footsteps. She stopped again and spun round.

  No one.

  She was breathing fast.

  Pull yourself together, for God’s sake!

  She had gone past the Seven Eleven and was just passing the arched opening of Yxsmedsgränd when someone stepped out of the shadows and grabbed her arm. He was wearing a balaclava. His eyes were bright. She went to scream but a second person came up behind her and put a gloved hand over her nose and mouth. The scream ended in a stifled whimper. She opened her mouth, felt a finger slip between her teeth and bit down as hard as she could. There was a muffled curse in her ear, then he hit her over the head. As she fell she was dragged into the alley. It was completely dark in there. She was pulled into a doorway. The wind was howling but her body felt strangely hot. The two men, they had to be men, pushed her up against the wall. She caught a glimpse of a knife in the gloom.

  ‘Don’t poke your nose into things that don’t concern you,’ one said.

  It was a whisper, not a real voice.

  ‘What things?’ she said quietly, staring at the knife. It was pointed at her left eye.

  ‘Leave David in peace. It’s over. No more poking about.’

  She was panting now, panic closing in. She couldn’t reply.

  ‘Got it?’

  Give me some air! I can’t breathe!

  ‘Do you think she’s got it?’ one voice whispered to the other.

  ‘No, I think we’re going to have to make it a bit clearer.’

  She felt them grab her left hand and pull her glove off. The knife vanished from in front of her eye. At last she got some air.

  ‘If anyone asks how you cut yourself, you did it cooking,’ the voice whispered, then the glove covered her mouth again, and she felt a fierce pain through her hand and up her arm into her chest. Her head was thudding with the shock and her knees gave way.

  ‘Stop asking questions about David. And not a word about us. Next time we’ll cut your children instead.’

  They let go of her and she sank on to the cobbles as warm blood pumped out of her wounded index finger.

  At A&E she said she’d cut herself in the kitchen.

  A stressed doctor sewed her together with eight stitches, and told her to be more careful in future. ‘What were you chopping?’

  How could doctors be so young? Younger than the temps at the paper.

  ‘Chopping?’

  ‘Was it chicken? Some other meat? The wound might be infecte
d.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Onions,’ she said.

  ‘If you’re unlucky, you could have lasting damage. Some of the ligaments were cut.’

  He sounded unhappy, as if she were wasting his time with her carelessness.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Make an appointment to see the district nurse in your health centre, and change the dressing every day. She’ll make sure you haven’t got an infection, and will take the stitches out in a week or so.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Annika said.

  She didn’t mention the bump throbbing on the back of her head, and took a taxi that was waiting outside the entrance. She told him to drive to number 30 Västerlånggatan, then leaned back in the seat.

  ‘Is it okay if I drop you off at Kåkbrinken?’ the taxi-driver asked.

  Then I’ll have to walk past Yxsmedsgränd.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want you to drop me off at my door.’

  ‘I can’t. There’s no traffic allowed up there.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  He dropped her at the top of Kåkbrinken and she slammed the door so hard the window shook.

  She was left standing on Västerlånggatan, her heart hammering in her chest, staring at the archway that covered the entrance to Yxsmedsgränd. Her left hand was throbbing and stinging, and she could smell the man’s glove, taste the leather.

  They’re not here now. Whoever they were, they’re not still here. Pull yourself together!

  She put one foot in front of the other and slowly walked down the street, staring hard at the opening of the alley.

  The shadows were deeper there, sucking up all the oxygen and making her gasp for breath. She hugged the plate-glass window of Flodin’s on the other side of the street and made her way past, beyond the alley and towards her building without once letting Yxsmedsgränd out of her sight.

  ‘Annika,’ someone said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  She screamed and spun round, her right arm raised ready to strike.

  ‘Goodness, whatever’s the matter?’