The Key (29 page)

‘Good to meet you, Linnéa,’ she says.

Her voice is deep and authoritative. A police voice. Linnéa immediately feels that this woman won’t believe a word she says.

‘My name is Patricia Tamm and I am a detective inspector.’

‘Hello,’ Linnéa mumbles.

Vanessa sits down next to Linnéa, takes her hand and squeezes it.

Is she the one who had it off with Nicke?
Linnéa thinks.

No
, Vanessa thinks.

Linnéa is almost disappointed. If it had been, she would have been able to dismiss Patricia completely.

Diana sits down on the sofa at Vanessa’s other side.

‘You’re going to do most of the talking, so you might need a drink of water,’ Patricia says. ‘Do you mind if I fetch a glass of water from your kitchen?’

‘Sure,’ Linnéa replies and points.

When Patricia returns, she puts the glass in front of Linnéa, then pulls up a chair and sits down opposite her and begins to explain why she is there. Linnéa nods like an automaton but the roaring of panic in her ears makes it hard to focus on what Patricia is saying. She watches as the DI puts a small tape recorder on the table and presses Record. Then she takes out a notepad and a pencil.

‘This is the first time we’ll question you,’ Patricia explains. ‘If you don’t remember everything, don’t worry about it. And if you want to take a break, just say so.’

Linnéa regrets agreeing to being interviewed in her flat. Diana had told her the police had suggested it because it would save her having to come down to the station. But now she’s afraid that, by talking about it here, her home will become contaminated again.

Linnéa?

Vanessa puts her arm around Linnéa, but it feels so distant, as if even her own body no longer belongs to her. She is locked in by her anxiety.

Linnéa, she has asked you something
.

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ Linnéa feels confused as she looks at Patricia.

‘Please tell us what happened that evening,’ Patricia says calmly.

Tell. Tell them what happened.

She has never told anyone before, not in detail. Not even Vanessa.

Linnéa realises that she will have to tell it all now. Patricia will keep asking about everything they did, every word, every blow.

I don’t want you to hear
, she thinks to Vanessa.
I don’t want you to hear what they did
.

Why not?
Vanessa thinks.

Linnéa doesn’t want to admit that she is ashamed. She knows that it’s common for victims of crimes to feel like this, but she can’t make the feeling go away.

I am not going to leave you alone on that fucking bridge
, Vanessa thinks.

Linnéa’s eyes meet Vanessa’s. So much love in her gaze. Linnéa can’t take it in, not now when she can feel nothing but roaring panic. But she knows that it is there.

‘Start at the beginning,’ Patricia says. ‘What did you do before going home that afternoon?’

‘I was with Minoo,’ Linnéa replies. ‘Minoo Falk Karimi. A friend of mine.’

Patricia makes a note. Linnéa falls silent, doesn’t know how to continue.

‘When did you leave your friend’s home? Do you remember?’

Linnéa tries to answer but it was almost three months ago. She wonders if Minoo knows. It would be so typically Minoo to have kept a record of all the times and dates in one of her notebooks, just in case Linnéa would one day go to the police after all.

‘Did you notice anything or anybody special on your way home?’ Patricia asks.

Linnéa remembers how relieved she had felt. It was the first time she had spoken to someone about her feelings for Vanessa.

‘No, I don’t. But all day, I had this odd feeling that someone was following me. Just when I got to Minoo’s place, I heard a moped.’

It hadn’t come back to her until today when Minoo told them about what she had seen among Kevin’s memories.

Patricia writes something on her notepad.

‘Shall we go on to when you arrived at your house?’ she says.

Linnéa takes a deep breath. Starts by describing the crushed windowpane by the front door to her block of flats. The music. The heavy bass. She feels it now or maybe it’s the beating of her heart that is making her whole body vibrate.

‘I took the lift. I realised that the music was coming from my flat. So I went in.’

She has hit a block.

The seconds tick by. One after the other.

‘Do you remember if the door was locked?’ Patricia asks in the end.

‘It was locked,’ Linnéa says. ‘I was so furious I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have gone inside. I can be so stupid when I’m angry.’

Vanessa squeezes her hand.

‘You weren’t stupid at all,’ Patricia says. ‘None of this is your fault.’

Linnéa bites her lip hard. Tries to believe what Patricia is saying. Tries to hold her tears back.

‘What happened next?’ Patricia asks.

‘I went into the hall … the music … it was so loud. The whole place smelled of drink. Like a party that’s got out of hand. They had … had trashed the entire flat.’

It sounds petty when she says it. So petty, but she had seen her whole life smashed to pieces.

‘Do you have any idea of how they got into your flat?’ Patricia asks.

Linnéa has more than an idea. Erik got the key from Helena, who must have got it from Olivia, who must have had a copy made of Diana’s key during the period when Olivia controlled Diana. But of course she can’t say any of that.

‘The flat is on loan from the social services, so I don’t know who has keys and who doesn’t.’

‘Did you see anyone when you went into the flat?’ Patricia asks.

Erik in the blood-red light of the lamps. The splinters of glass all over his black sweater. The baseball bat in his hands. His thought arriving inside her head.

You fucking cunt
.

‘Erik,’ she says. ‘Erik Forslund. He stood by the window.’

She points.

‘And then the others came in. Robin … Robin Zetterqvist and Kevin Månsson.’

And Rickard. Whom she mustn’t mention. Must remember not to slip up. Patricia’s pencil scratches away.

‘How did they react when they saw you?’

‘They looked surprised. Shocked. Kevin just stood there. Robin pulled down his balaclava. They all had balaclavas but they weren’t covering their faces when I came in.’

‘What did Erik do when he saw you?’

Linnéa bites her lip again. And tastes blood.

You fucking cunt
.

‘He just … looked at me.’

Her voice sounds choked. She has to swallow so that she can carry on speaking.

‘He smiled. And pulled his balaclava down.’

She takes a deep breath. Breathes out slowly. Breathes in again.

‘How did you feel?’ Patricia asks.

‘Frightened,’ Linnéa says, almost sucked back into the remembered emotion, the feeling that time seemed to have stopped, that she couldn’t move. ‘He had a baseball bat in his hands. And I ran …’

She can’t hold her tears back any longer. She presses her free hand against her eyelids and tries to draw strength from Vanessa’s presence. She manages to continue, tries to describe the route she ran. She can almost hear the smack of her boots against tarmac, the breaths tearing at her lungs, her heart beating so fast she fears it will stop pumping.

‘I cried for help,’ she whispers. ‘But no one heard me.’

She can sense how Vanessa is trying to stop herself from crying.

‘Did any of the lads say anything to you while they were chasing you?’ Patricia asks. ‘Can you remember anything?’

Linnéa can’t tell Patricia that she has perfect recall of every thought in their heads. But she nods, because what they shouted after her is also engraved on her mind.

‘Erik shouted, “You fucking cunt”.’

Cold sweat is breaking out over her body. She continues, telling them how she hid under the bridge.

‘I had dropped my bag in the stairwell so I didn’t have my mobile. I thought I’d try to cross the canal … Viktor Ehrenskiöld, who helped me later on, lives in the manor house.’

Patricia makes another note.

‘I went up on the bridge.’

She has hit another block.

Linnéa looks at the windows with their new panes. How she wishes it had been as easy to fix herself. Maybe Minoo can do it? If she asked her, could Minoo take all these memories away?

‘I went up on the bridge,’ she finally says. ‘And then they saw me.’

Caught! She’s so fucking caught! So fucking caught!

‘I told Erik to go to hell. Then … he laughed. And said that this wasn’t the idea from the start, that I wasn’t supposed to come home … he said he thought whores worked all night. But that this was fine, that it was …
better
.’

Linnéa senses a black wave of emotion that comes from Vanessa.

‘Then, what happened?’ Patricia asks.

‘I tried to run away. But Robin grabbed me …’

She can still feel his hands, as if they had never let go of her.

‘He held me. I tried to pull free but he …’ She suddenly laughs; it comes out like a strange snort. ‘Both of them are hockey players. He dragged me along easily. And I realised … exactly how strong they are. What a big difference in strength there was between them and me. I didn’t have a chance.’

She knows that is how it was. Still, she can’t get rid of the thoughts.
I should have done something. I should have been smarter, run faster, screamed more loudly
.

‘Then what did Robin do?’

‘He dragged me along towards Erik. And Erik said I was boring, that he had thought I
liked a good time
. He took hold of my hair, the fringe, and tugged hard … he asked me if I was frightened.’

‘What was your answer?’

Linnéa looks up and meets Patricia’s eyes.

‘I lied. I said I wasn’t.’

She hears Vanessa’s thoughts. They come straight into her.

Fucking bastard
.

‘He pulled my hair again,’ Linnéa says hoarsely. ‘I screamed. And kept saying … “Robin, please let me go.” Lots of times. That was when Erik said that I had … had to … jump in.’

Her lips tremble and she stutters.

‘Or else they would … throw me in.’

The black water below the bridge.

Breathe. She must remember to breathe.

‘Then what did Robin do? When he heard Erik threaten you?’

‘He said … he said something like, “Come on. I mean, seriously” to Erik. And Erik told Robin to be a man, not a wimp … and “you hate this slag as much as I do”.’

Linnéa falls silent and wonders suddenly if Patricia thinks she is lying. Maybe it’s abnormal to remember as much as she does. Would she have sounded more credible if she had pretended to have suppressed it all, so that Patricia would have had to probe more, help her to remember?

‘Would you like to have a break now?’ Patricia asks.

Linnéa shakes her head. She is not sure how much more of this she can take but, above all, she wants this to be finished.

‘Erik threatened you,’ Patricia says. ‘At the time, did you think he meant it?’

‘Yes, I was absolutely sure.’

‘How could you be so sure?’

… I’ll kill you, you fucking slag, you cunt, I’ll fucking kill you …

‘He hates me. This wasn’t the first time … that he and Robin had been after me.’

Patricia nods. Another note on her pad.

‘And what happened next?’

‘He said …’

Breathe.

‘He said … he thought all psychos wanted to kill themselves.’ Her voice sounds so faint. As if it might soon fade away completely. ‘This was my chance to do it, he said.’

Why does it hurt so much to repeat aloud the things he had said?

‘Then he hit me,’ she whispers and points to her thigh. ‘With the baseball bat.’

Not much left to go. Soon over now. Soon she will have told them everything.

‘I screamed. And then Erik grabbed hold of me … he pushed me against the railing and then he said … that they should …’

She closes her eyes. Tries to pretend that the words have nothing to do with her, that the words were directed to someone else.

‘He said that “someone should fuck you first, but we don’t fancy catching Aids”.’

She struggles to catch her breath.

‘Then he gripped …. he … he twisted my arm and it was so bloody painful. I thought he’d carry on twisting forever and that either way it would all end with them killing me. So, I thought that if I jumped I’d have a chance to survive. A small one. And I climbed up on the railing and looked at Robin and said, “Please”, and he said, “Just do it.” And Erik said, “That’s right. Just do it, Linnéa.” And I did. I jumped.’

She has run out of words now. The tears are streaming down her face. She can taste them in her mouth.

‘Why didn’t you inform the police of all this at the time?’ Patricia asks.

‘Surely you can figure that out!’ Vanessa tells her.

‘No one is accusing Linnéa of anything,’ Patricia says calmly. ‘She is making a statement. But I must ask these questions.’

Don’t worry
, Linnéa thinks to Vanessa.
I have to go through with this
.

‘I was afraid of them,’ she says. ‘Besides, I knew that nobody would believe me.’

‘I understand that’s how you felt,’ Patricia nods.

Linnéa looks at her and realises that she means it. Patricia does understand her. The relief she feels is indescribable.

‘What will happen now?’ she asks, reaching for the glass of water and drinking in deep swallows.

‘Happen to Erik and Robin?’

Linnéa nods and wonders if this had been explained to her in the beginning, when she couldn’t listen. If so, Patricia doesn’t let on.

‘They are being held for questioning and a preliminary investigation is under way,’ she says. ‘The prosecutor who is leading the investigation is a man called Hans-Peter Ramström, from the crime prosecution authority in Västerås. He will request that they are arrested. Because the alleged crime is so serious they will almost certainly be kept under lock and key for as long as the preliminary investigation is ongoing.’

‘In other words, they will be rotting in the remand cells in Västerås until the trial,’ Diana tells her. ‘You won’t have to see them until then.’