Without a Trace (28 page)

Kristine Lerberg nodded. ‘Oh, yes, especially Isak. He’s very talented.’

‘Could I see some of his drawings?’

The woman looked at her. ‘What for?’

‘Unless you don’t keep them?’

Kristine stood up. ‘Of course I do,’ she said, and marched out of the kitchen. Nina followed her into the dark corridor leading to the bedrooms.

The room on the far left was furnished with a bunk-bed and a cot. There was a red-painted child-sized table and chairs in the middle of the floor, and beneath the window an old desk with a chest of drawers and a laminated top.

‘What do you want to see? Isak’s latest drawings?’

‘And his crayons as well, if I could,’ Nina said.

Kristine went over to the desk and pulled out the top drawer. She took out a box of crayons and a small sheaf of drawings and laid them on the desktop.

Nina picked up the box: Winsor & Newton Oil Bars, fifty millilitres. ‘Did you buy these crayons, or did Nora?’

Kristine looked at the cot. ‘I did.’

Nina put the box back and picked up the top drawing. It was a picture of three children and a little angel. Kristine moved to stand beside Nina and smiled. ‘He’s got a wonderful imagination – he talks the whole time while he’s drawing. That’s him and his brother and sister and their guardian angel.’

She reached for another drawing. ‘This is me,’ she said, pointing to a cheerful figure in a dress and high heels.

‘The guardian angel,’ Nina said, looking at the first picture again. ‘Who’s that?’

Kristine’s smile widened. ‘Isak’s faith is very strong and clear, even though he’s so young. He has an angel who looks after him, his brother and sister. He says she watches over them when they sleep.’

‘Does he ever take his drawings home?’

The woman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He’s so desperate for his mother’s approval that he’s always taking little presents home for her.’

Nina smiled cautiously. ‘Thanks for letting me take up your time again.’ She indicated the picture in her hand. ‘May I keep this?’

When she got back to the car she did a quick Google search for Winsor & Newton Oil Bars on her mobile phone. Then she cast a last glance at the brown brick house. She could see Kristine Lerberg moving about behind the kitchen curtains. Nina started the engine and drove off.

She had reached the motorway back to Stockholm when her mobile rang. She put her ear-piece in and answered. It was Commissioner Q. ‘How’s it all going out in the real world?’ he asked.

Nina kept both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. ‘The child’s drawing that was found on the victim in Kråkträsken could have been produced in Kristine Lerberg’s home,’ she said. ‘The crayons might well match. She bought them some very high-quality oil-based ones, the same as Forensics identified from the drawing found at the crime scene. They cost seven hundred kronor online for a box of twelve …’

‘Wow,’ Q said. ‘Have you got a sample we can analyse?’

Yes, she had.

‘Anything else?’ Q asked.

‘Nora fooled her sister-in-law into thinking she’s been having monthly treatment for her thyroid at Södermalm Hospital.’

‘Fooled?’

‘There’s no such treatment. There’s something called a TRH stimulation test, which is indirectly to do with the thyroid, but it’s not a treatment as such, and certainly isn’t administered regularly … Nora had one of these “treatments” last Friday.’

‘When we know she flew to Zürich for the day,’ Q said. ‘Very interesting. While I’ve got you on the phone, there’s something else I’d like you to do. You know Annika Bengtzon from the
Evening Post
, don’t you?’

Nina clutched the wheel more tightly. Yes, she did.

‘I’d like you to call her,’ Q said. ‘She’s got some interesting information about a twenty-year-old case that might be worth taking a closer look at.’

Nina felt a cold shiver run up her spine. What had she done wrong? Why was she being taken off the Lerberg case? Disappointment rose into her throat and she had to cough. Oh, well, she wasn’t in charge of the way their work was allocated.

‘Who should I hand over the Lerberg case to?’ she asked curtly.

The head of Criminal Intelligence chuckled. ‘Nina,’ he said, ‘don’t be so negative. You’re not being taken off the case. You have my permission to divulge information about the preliminary investigation to Bengtzon. She may be a hack, but she knows how to keep her mouth shut. Use your own judgement, tell her what you have to about the Lerberg case.’

Then he hung up.

As Thomas looked at the weather website, anxiety rose inside him. Just in time for the weekend the weather was going to change: the rain was going to stop, and it would be sunny, twenty degrees. Everyone in the city would be out in the streets and parks, turning their faces to the sun, smiling at each other and swinging their bare arms, without gloves.

He couldn’t wear his hook without sleeves. How could he sit on a rug in the park with a long-sleeved top on (he couldn’t button shirts with one hand, so had to wear T-shirts under his jacket) when everyone else had theirs off?

He’d have to sit indoors until September, when the cold and rain set in again, hiding himself and his mutilated body away from the light and warmth, away from all the hypocrites and morons.

Mind you, it did get cold in the evenings, properly cold, even in July and August. It would be okay to wear a sports jacket then. And a sweater.

He clicked away from the site and stared at the background to his desktop, drowning in its blue until his vision clouded and he realized he was crying. There was no point in trying to resist – he had learned that. It was better to let the pain pass through him until it dissolved.

He hadn’t gone back to work after that meeting at National Crime. He’d felt exhausted, having those women staring at him. The blonde bombshell and the model with chestnut-brown hair. He had noticed the brunette staring at his hook – they hadn’t been expecting that.

He wiped away the tears with his right hand. His hook lay useless in his lap.

Slowly he got up from the computer and went into the kitchen, his shabby, poorly laid-out kitchen. Once the pain had passed, it left a vacuum that slowly filled with gnawing irritation. It was lucky he never did any cooking – it would have been impossible in this dump. When he had lived here with Annika, she had attempted to cook her basic kindergarten recipes on the gas stove in the evenings, and they had tasted pretty much as expected. He particularly remembered the mango chicken – God, the crap he’d had to stomach for the sake of domestic harmony over the years. These days he bought delicacies that were either already cooked or could be heated in the microwave. That was one of the great advantages of being in charge of his own life: the quality of cuisine had gone up by about a thousand per cent in the past six months.

He opened the fridge. Serrano ham, strawberries, vendace caviar, prawn salad – the very finest food. But he wasn’t very hungry – he could easily wait a while for dinner.

He went back to his computer and refreshed the weather website. No cold front had appeared during his excursion to the kitchen, and the weekend was still predicted to be warm and sunny.

He went onto the
Evening Post
’s website. He usually avoided it, didn’t want to risk coming across Annika when he wasn’t expecting it, but it was okay as long as he was prepared. Sometimes he even watched her dreadful video reports. She’d aged since she’d left him, all wrinkled and hollow-eyed.

At least she wasn’t the lead item on the website today, which was something. Instead the editor-in-chief was deemed the most important story of the day.

Anders Schyman had written a long, rambling piece in which he dismissed the accusations online. He was using the paper to promote his own personal cause, with page after page of pointless documents that were supposed to provide proof of his innocence.

Irritating. Men in positions of power never took responsibility for their actions. Whenever someone yanked their trousers down they just stood there whining and complaining. Curious, he moved on to the Light of Truth to see how the blogger had responded to the attack. It was a hotbed of activity. So far that day the Light of Truth had published forty-eight new posts, with references and links to various media, and a torrent of comments was pouring in. He (or, rather, Gregorius) read a few of the comments posted by other readers, and gave them his approval by awarding them five stars, to show his active appreciation.

Then he looked at his own comment from two days ago:

Gregorius:

Anders Schyman is a hypocrite!

No one had given him any stars. Not a single one. No one had left a comment.

Bile rose in his throat.

Schyman and Annika and all the other powerful, influential people in society were seen and heard all over the place while he was completely ignored. He rubbed his nose to stop it running.

Then he went back to the most recent post on the Light of Truth and wrote a short, incisive comment inspired by the blogger’s argument:

Gregorius:

Anders Schyman should be fucked up the arse with a baseball bat. Hope the splinters form a bleeding wreath around his anus.

The comment appeared on the site at once. He felt his breathing speed up, and his anxiety melted away as his scalp began to itch.

Was it too much? Too childish? Was ‘anus’ the right word in this sort of context? Should he have said ‘arsehole’ instead?

After just ten seconds his contribution to the debate flashed.

Five stars.

His breathing got even faster.

There was a ping, a response to his comment:

hahaha, way to go man! U butfuck him real good

Okay, ‘butt-fuck’ was spelled wrong, but the feeling was undeniable.

He was starting to get hard.

Annika was standing in a carriage on the Underground, squashed between a hundred-and-fifty-kilo woman and a teenage immigrant when her mobile rang. She apologized and dragged her phone out, accidentally hitting an elderly man’s head with her elbow. He glared at her as she managed to answer.

‘Yes, hello, this is Nina Hoffman,’ the woman at the other end said.

A flash of warm clarity shot through Annika and her senses sharpened. ‘Hello,’ she said, into the face of the young immigrant. He tried to turn away to avoid her breath.

‘I’ve been asked by Commissioner Q, the head of the Criminal Intelligence Unit at National Crime, to get in touch with you.’

Annika couldn’t help noting that Nina didn’t sound overenthusiastic about having to talk to her. ‘Now isn’t a good time,’ she said, trying to turn away from the young man.

The carriage lurched. All the passengers were pushed towards the corner where Annika was standing, and the hundred-and-fifty-kilo woman trod on her foot.

‘Is there somewhere we could meet for a quiet chat?’ Nina Hoffman asked.

Annika tried to pull her foot free as she held the phone away from her ear. She managed a glance at her watch. She was already late. ‘I’ve got to cook dinner,’ she said. ‘You’d be very welcome to come to the flat.’

Nina Hoffman hesitated. ‘I’d rather …’

Annika freed her foot. ‘Södermannagatan 40B,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour.’

She waited until Nina Hoffman said, ‘OK,’ before clicking to end the call. Carefully she moved her foot and wiggled her toes. Nothing felt broken.

She liked Nina. There was something brittle and tragic about her, but she was rock-solid inside.

She found herself staring at a teenage girl squashed against the door at the end of the carriage. She was clutching a rucksack out of which stuck the arm or leg of a cuddly toy. Her eyes kept flitting between the people around her. She didn’t seem to have an adult with her. Maybe she was on her way home from school to one of her parents – one had left the other and taken a flat, or a new partner, some distance from her school. Now here she was, like a sardine in a tin, shunted from one place to the other for her parents to fulfil their vision of A Perfect Life: love, passion, freedom, recognition, security …

Who did she think she was kidding?

Annika looked away from her. Her own children were shaking and rattling in a carriage just like this one because of her life choices. She had denied them a stable upbringing with two parents, a proper home, and now Jimmy wanted to move to Norrköping. He hadn’t said so in as many words – he had actually said remarkably little about the invitation to take charge of the Prison and Probation Service but she knew he wanted to accept. What would that mean for her? She couldn’t move to Norrköping with the children: she and Thomas shared custody and he’d never agree to let them move to another city (the fact that he often shirked his parental responsibilities had no impact on his need to exert control), so where did that leave her?

The huge woman trod on her foot again.

‘Ow!’ Annika said loudly.

The woman, who was already sweaty and red-faced, turned an even deeper shade of puce. ‘Sorry,’ she said, looking down and lifting her foot slightly.

Annika took a deep breath. Her family circumstances were hardly the fault of this poor woman. She would end up alone in Jimmy’s apartment (no,
her and Jimmy’s apartment
), without the children every other week, and without Jimmy every week. Maybe they’d see each other at weekends – Jimmy could come up to Stockholm or she could go down to Norrköping. It wasn’t that far, after all, a hundred and seventy kilometres, maybe, almost commuting distance, and Serena would be there all the time, with her cold, dark eyes and stiff body.

The train braked and she almost fell on top of the poor old man whose head she had hit. The doors opened onto Medborgarplatsen station and people tumbled out. She went with the flow even though the next station, Skanstull, was actually closer to home, but she was desperate for fresh air.