Killer's Island Page 12

  When the movie was over they wandered slowly through town. There was a light rain and the air was rather cool. Erika buttoned her jacket. Anders noticed and put his arm round her.

  “You’re very quiet.” He applied a little extra pressure with his arm over her shoulder. “Want to tell me what it is?”

  She heard the anxiety in his voice. Maybe it was good if he didn’t feel too sure of her. “I’m thinking about work, it’s always like that when you’re in the middle of an investigation.”

  “I suppose you’re thinking about Linn Bogren. Terrible, isn’t it. Did you know she was a patient of mine? I have to respect the privacy of my patients, but this is such a serious crime. Linn consulted me about her insomnia.”

  “Do you feel you can tell me something about it?” It was a relief that he brought it up himself. Really it was Maria he should be talking to, and she’d have to take things over formally.

  “It was difficult getting a handle on Linn. It was like she didn’t want to talk about the real cause of her problems. I guess she thought it was none of my business. She wanted the medicine, and then she wanted to be left in peace.”

  “So what did she say to you?” Erika had to bite her tongue not to mention the signs of her preparing to clear out, once she started looking among Linn’s things – including the clothes in the car. It would have been a relief to be able to discuss it openly.

  “I asked if it was her work. Women working in heath care are an over-represented group when it comes to sleep dysfunction. Stress, shift work, too much coffee and irregular mealtimes all take their toll. But Linn liked her work, she said. It felt meaningful to her; she felt secure with it and up to speed. When I wouldn’t let her off the hook without an explanation, she told me she’d decided to leave her husband. But that wasn’t all… she also said she felt someone was following her, she felt under threat.”

  “In what way?” What Anders had said so far fit well with the image Erika had formed of Linn Bogren.

  “Some gang. When I think about it now I blame myself for not listening more and asking about it. I was short of time, the waiting room was stuffed. I convinced myself that that she was in a life crisis, going through some major changes.”

  “Can you remember anything else?” Erika tried to hide her eagerness. Anders stopped, and thought about it. She could follow his entire thought process in his open face.

  “She ran into some gang while she was on her way home. Some unruly guys. Nothing in particular happened. Later that night she thought she saw a face in her window, and I had a fairly bizarre explanation for that: the neighbor, Harry Molin, is a hypochondriac. He knew she was a nurse and he wanted to ask for some advice in the middle of the night. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but he’s a bit unusual.” Anders couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Harry pressed his face to the window to see if she was in. It would have scared the living daylights out of anyone.”

  Slowly they wandered down Almedalen. Erika had parked outside the library and felt no particular hurry to get there. They hadn’t decided whether to go anywhere else after the movie. “But you got a feeling there was something more to it, right? Linn was holding back about something, something she didn’t think you had any business knowing?”

  “Yes, either that or I’ve just imagined it, built it all up afterwards… once I heard what happened to her. I didn’t ask her anything else about it. I felt that leaving your husband was a good enough reason for insomnia, it seemed a pretty adequate reason for prescribing a few sleeping pills. I don’t know if anything else happened when she bumped into that gang. Maybe they assaulted her indecently in some way? The neighbor might know something more about it, I mean Harry Molin. He lays claim to a lot of my time with the discoveries he makes on the Internet; he keeps me updated about all that. That’s how the role of the doctor is changing. In the old days we were dictators and the patients were grateful and submissive. Now we’ve been reduced to consultants and general peons. He even advised me to try a drug for my smoking cravings. And I went for it.”

  “Maybe it’s not all wrong.” Erika glanced at him, laughing. They’d reached the parking area and nothing was decided yet. “So… what are you doing now?”

  “This.…” He leaned forward and kissed her until she was gasping for breath. “And this.…” His hand glided down over her bottom. He pressed himself against her as he kissed her again.

  “What does that mean? Good night?”

  “Not necessarily. When I can’t smoke I have to try other stimuli. I mean heavy stuff.…” He lifted the hem of her blouse and peered down her cleavage.

  “How do you mean? Do you have a plan?” Erika made no move to stop him. Things were looking up.

  “We could get into the car and drive to some godforsaken place and discuss the political climate, the greenhouse effect, celebrity gossip – or not. We’ll think of something.”

  She laughed and gestured for him to get in. So that’s what he wanted. A bit of heavy petting in the car. Not home to you and not home to me. Was he serious or did he just want to play a little? Nothing wrong with that – on the other hand, definitely better than nothing. Yet not quite what she wanted, either.

  “I want this to be for real.” She felt herself blushing hard. It wasn’t an easy thing to say. “I want us to be for real.”

  “We are. For real.” He laughed at her embarrassment. “I want to get to know you; to know everything about you. But I think it’s good if we take things a bit easy to begin with. I hardly know anything about you. Do you have children, for example?”

  Erika felt the old familiar vertigo coming back. Even though it was a question she’d been expecting, she felt unprepared for it.

  “Two, they’re almost grown up. They live with their father in Motala.… Well, I was very young.”

  He looked at her, as if expecting her to continue. She had to tell the truth. He’d either disappear if she confessed or they’d get closer. They were at a crossroads. Erika was not going to lie to him.

  “I got postpartum depression after giving birth. We separated and he was deemed the more suitable of us. He got custody of the children, sole custody, so I put my energy into my career.” Erika sighed heavily. “He’s not been very encouraging about me seeing them on my own. Not a day goes by without my thinking about them, how they are.… It’s the main sadness of my life.”

  “I’m sorry, sorry for barging in.”

  “I haven’t told so many people about it. But if we’re going to be for real, you have to know.”

  “And now? Do you have any contact with them?”

  “They’re strangers to me. I missed out on so much of the time of their growing up; I wasn’t feeling so great. I never managed to repair it. I’ve tried to reach out to them, talk to them, but it gets forced and difficult and I’ve noticed it makes them suffer. They don’t want to see me. I send money at Christmas and for their birthdays, because I don’t even know what they want. My ex-husband has to do the shopping with them. He’s hardly made things as easy for me as he might have, but I think he’s a good father to them.”

  Erika’s sincerity made Anders open up. “I never stop brooding about my wife Isabel who drowned. After we had Julia she turned into someone quite different. She couldn’t stand seeing me, everything I did was wrong. And she saw danger everywhere, wouldn’t allow any scissors or knives around, and no heights. Everything had to be exactly as she decided – otherwise she got hysterical. Even though I’m a doctor I didn’t understand what was happening. I was too close to the whole thing. If I’d made more of an effort, loved her more, been more accommodating, things would have been fine in the end. But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “That’s how a lot of things end up in life. It never works out the way you think.”

  “And now I’ve met you.… It’s a new chance in life, and it scares the shit out of me.… Can you understand?” Anders squeezed her arm gently and looked out of the window at the windblown pines and the sea, glittering
beyond the trees.

  “I can understand.” The car turned into a little track running into the woods. She turned off the engine and faced him. He moved a little closer and kissed her.

  “Maybe we should take our chance while the hood’s warm?”

  “I have a blanket. The moss looks soft there, under that pine.”

  “You tramp. You’ve been here before, admit it!” he said.

  “Yes, I have. It’s a favorite place of mine, I usually pick mushrooms here.” Erika climbed out of the car and got out the fleece blanket.

  Anders’s cell phone started ringing.

  “Hello, my little love.” Erika heard the anxiety in his voice. “I’ll come home, right away… I promise.… Right away.… Twenty minutes at the most.” He looked resignedly at Erika.

  She smiled bravely at him.

  CHAPTER 18

  MARIA WERN WAS IMMERSED in a report from the medical examiner when she got a call from reception to say she had a visitor. Quickly she packed up her papers and logged out of the computer. Sara Wentzel, a pretty but very thin woman of about thirty, was standing with her face turned to the window. When she heard her name and turned around it was clear that she had been crying. The rims of her big eyes were red; she was squinting. From time to time she blew her nose in a tissue she took from her pocket. She carried her big brown purse like a shield as she made her way across the floor. Maria came to meet her, shook her hand and greeted her. Sara’s handshake was firm but damp.

  “Are you the police who was assaulted? Sorry for asking.”

  “Yes, it was me. It’ll be a while before I look normal again.” Maria attempted a smile. Her swollen lips stretched. They climbed the stairs in silence. Once they’d installed themselves in the interview room and Maria had noted down the necessaries, she asked what sort of relationship Sara and Linn had. The answer was rather fumbling.

  “We were very close.” Her gray eyes met Maria’s. There was something pleading in them, which Maria tried to interpret.

  “As close as one can get?” Intuitively, Maria felt her question was justified.

  “As close as one can get.” It seemed to come as a relief to Sara to be able to talk openly.

  “Was Linn intending to move in with you?”

  “That’s what I was hoping and wishing, more than anything.” Sara smoothed her long fair hair out of her eyes. She swallowed a few times and searched for the right words. “Linn was having a hard time making that decision. I tried to push her to make a decision. It was making her feel so bad, keeping it all from Claes. The longer we drew it out, the harder it was for her to sleep and do her work. I gave her an ultimatum just to put an end to the suffering, more for her sake than mine. I could see how much it was hurting her being unfaithful. She took pills and drank red wine just to get to sleep. It worried me.”

  “What was she going to do?” Maria couldn’t help but be impressed by Sara’s openness. She clearly wanted to cooperate fully.

  “The night she was murdered she told me she was moving in with me. She had made up her mind. But there was a hesitation there, I noticed it. She wasn’t her usual self. I suppose she felt frightened and under pressure. But the decision was hers. I don’t know what she would really have done… if she would have dared go through with it once Claes came home.”

  “She called you that night?” According to the telephone log Maria had ordered, the call lasted from 10:16 to 10:22.

  “Yes, at about ten o’clock. She always called to say good night. I get worried when I don’t hear from her… just want to hear that she’s got home all right. She’d.… God, it’s all so horrible! I can’t understand it; can’t cope with the thought of how scared she must have been.”

  “We don’t think she woke up. Most likely she was killed in her sleep.”

  “She must have taken both sedatives and wine. She wasn’t sober, I could hear that right off when she called.”

  Maria didn’t say anything to corroborate her statement. Whether she’d taken the sleeping pills herself or was sedated by someone else was still open to conjecture. “What did you do after you spoke to Linn?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. It just didn’t work. My whole future was hanging on her decision. I loved her.”

  “Did you stay home the rest of that night? Can someone confirm that?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I got dressed and went down to the sea. After the rain there was a full moon. The wind was blowing in hard and the sea was churning; big breakers coming in. I felt exactly the same inside. I stood there looking at the water, frozen to the bone. It was like I knew… we’d never.…”

  “Did you meet anyone?”

  “No, it was the middle of the night. I just stood there crying and then I went home. I may have dropped off now and then, but basically I never slept properly. My neighbor… she works for you, Erika Lund… may have seen my lights on. I don’t know. I tried to reach Linn on her cell phone in the morning before she left for work. But she didn’t answer. I tried to get her at the hospital, but they said she hadn’t come in; she hadn’t even called in sick. That’s when I figured she must have decided to stay with him. I thought maybe he’d come home earlier than we thought, maybe she’d told him everything. In other words it wouldn’t be a good time to call… I mean if he was already there. If they were in the middle of a crisis maybe she couldn’t cope with going to work. I decided to keep my head down and wait for her to get in touch.”

  “So no one can actually confirm you were at home that night?”

  “No. Surely you don’t think I.…”

  “I don’t think anything. Do you have a car?”

  “No, I don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  “Who do you think killed her?”

  “Claes, of course. He must have found out and flipped out. He’s not usually the type – to fight. He shuts up and plays the martyr.”

  “And if it wasn’t Claes… is there anyone else who wanted to harm her? Anyone you know of, or could imagine?” Claes had shown them his ticket, which indicated that his journey had been paid for. Soon they’d also know if he’d checked in and received his cabin number.

  “No one. Everyone liked Linn. Well, maybe not everyone. There were probably some colleagues who thought she was a bit of a goody-goody. You know, if you’re too willing to work, it makes some people feel useless and lazy. In a workplace with mainly women, everyone has to be as good as each other, no one’s allowed to stand out. It’s hardly a reason for murdering someone, though, is it?”

  “Who knew you were a couple, or soon to be a couple?”

  “Linn told me she thought her boss had his suspicions… he was making insinuations. She said she was going to tell him, because it impacted on her work. A nurse is not allowed to have a relationship with a patient. That’s why she stopped working at the hospital, even though she liked working in pharmaceuticals. She was moonlighting over the summer so we’d have money to travel in the autumn. As long as I could stay healthy over the summer there wouldn’t be a problem. She was going to appeal to his better nature, so he didn’t report her. That’s what she said.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone else?”

  “I told my father. He understood and accepted it. As long as it makes you happy, he said. As long as it makes you happy.… He was worried that we’d run into homophobic people, and that life would become harder for me if we came out.” Maria saw a fit of trembling run through her skinny body. “Of course it’s hard. Dad will have to tell Mom. I can’t tell her myself.”

  Maria quickly glanced through her notes. “Had Linn started moving any of her things to you? A laptop, for instance?”

  Claes was very troubled by the fact that the police had impounded his computer.

  “Nothing. When she came to me she only used to bring a little overnight bag. She never brought her laptop. It was a work computer.”

  “Another question. Did Linn have a favorite flower? Some flower with a symbolic meaning for her? Do you know?”
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br />   Sara looked perplexed. “No, she wasn’t actually so very interested in plants or nature or anything like that. She wasn’t really an outdoors person at all.”

  “Her body was found on Tempelkullen. In the Pavilion, as you know. Does that say anything to you? Was it a place she liked to go? Did it mean anything to her?”

  “Not as far as I know.” Sara wrinkled her face. She couldn’t control herself any more. The words gushed out of her explosively. “You have to catch the person who did this. It’s got to be some perverse, sick pig.”