Now he was lying there, slumped in a stairwell at her work.
This really was the last time, and just for a moment she felt almost relieved that he wouldn’t bother her any more, until it dawned on her that this was the one feeling she would never learn to live with.
Sven Sundkvist, interview leader (IL): I know that to you Hilding Oldйus was not just another patient. However, I must ask you to answer my questions about him.
Lisa Öhrström (LÖ): I was just going to phone my sister.
IL: Believe me, I do understand that it is hard for you. But you were the only one here. The only eyewitness.
LÖ: I want to speak to my sister’s kids. They adored their uncle. They only saw him when he was just out. He was clean then and nicely dressed. His face had some colour. They’ve never met the man who is lying on the stairs.
IL: I need to know how close you got to the other person. The visitor.
LÖ: I was going to phone just now. Aren’t you listening? I’m trying to explain to you.
IL: How close?
They were sitting on hard wooden chairs in the ward sister’s glass booth. It was located in the middle of the sixth-floor corridor.
Lisa couldn’t stop crying and her dignity was slipping away. She tried hard to hang on to it, but felt her grip on life was weakening.
He was her brother.
She simply couldn’t deal with this any more.
The last few times he had come to her for help she had refused, and all the tears in the world could not wash away that guilt.
Sven Sundkvist paused and watched her. Her white coat looked rumpled; her eyes were half closed. He continued to wait while she blew her nose and pulled her fingers through her long hair. He had met her before. Not her, but people like her. He often had to interview them, the women who stood hovering in the background, supportive souls who always felt guilty and exposed. He thought of them as guiltridden and knew only too well that they could cause trouble. Their capacity for blaming themselves often complicated things, even for an experienced interrogator. They behaved as if they were the culprits and interpreted whatever you said as an accusation; actually, every one of them construed her life as one long accusation. Even when completely innocent, their anxieties obstructed investigations, which had to move on.
LÖ: Was it?
IL: Was it what?
LÖ: My fault?
IL: Look, it’s only natural that you feel guilty. I understand. But I can’t help you. It’s something you have to deal with yourself.
Lisa looked at him, the policeman sitting in front of her with one leg crossed over the other and demanding something from her.
She disliked him.
He seemed nicer, gentler than the older man, but she disliked him all the same. The police had some kind of perennial aura of authority, and this wasn’t a proper interrogation, more like a confrontation, the start of a quarrel she couldn’t bear to take part in.
IL: The man who was here, he was probably the one who killed your brother. How close did you get to him?
LÖ: As close as you and I are now.
IL: In other words, close enough to get a good look at him?
LÖ: Close enough to feel his breath.
She turned, glancing at the glass wall. What an unpleasant place this was. Whoever passed by could see them there, curious eyes disturbing her sense of privacy. She found it hard to concentrate and said she was going to sit with her back to the window.
IL: Can you describe his build?
LÖ: He was frightening.
IL: Height?
LÖ: Much taller than me and I’m quite tall, one metre seventy-five. Maybe like your colleague. Another ten centimetres.
Lisa nodded towards the end of the corridor, where Ewert was standing at the top of the stairwell, next to the medical examiner, staring at the dead body on the floor. Sven automatically turned the same way and mentally measured Ewert.
IL: His face?
LÖ: Strong. Nose, chin, forehead.
IL: And hair?
LÖ: He didn’t have any.
There was a knock at the door. Lisa Öhrström had been sitting with her back to it, so she hadn’t noticed someone approaching and therefore got a fright. A uniformed policeman opened the door and came in. He handed over an envelope and then left.
IL: I’ve got some photos for you to look at. Pictures of different people.
She got up from her chair. No more. Not now. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the brown envelope in the centre of the desktop.
IL: Please sit down.
LÖ: I’ll have to get back to work.
IL: Lisa, look at me. It wasn’t your fault.
Sven rose too, took a step forward and put his arm round the shoulders of the woman who wanted to return to her guilt and grief. He pushed her gently down on the chair, moved two case-note folders aside to make more free space on the desk and emptied out the contents of the brown envelope.
IL: Please, try to identify the visitor, the man whose breath you felt in your face.
LÖ: I suspect you know who he is.
IL: Please, concentrate on the photos.
She picked them over. One at a time, she had a good look, then put them to the side systematically, face down. After some thirty photos of men standing against a white wall, she suddenly had a sensation of something tightening in her chest. It was the same feeling as when she was little and scared of the dark. She had described it then as a jittery, dancing feeling, as if her fear was light and lifted her.
LÖ: That’s him.
IL: Are you certain?
LÖ: Quite certain.
IL: For the record, the witness has identified the visitor as the man in photograph thirty-two.
Sven was silent for a while, uncertain of his reactions. He knew well that grief eats people from inside and that this woman was almost suffocating with sadness, but even so he had forced her to keep her feelings at arm’s length and carry on nonetheless. He had known that she could break down at any moment and had ignored it, because it was his duty.
But now, now she pointed to the person they had wanted her to pick out.
He only hoped she was strong enough.
IL: You have identified a man who is generally thought to be very dangerous. From experience, we know that witnesses who identify him are always subjected to threats.
LÖ: What’s the implication?
IL: That we are considering giving you personal protection.
That was something she did not want to hear. She wanted to undo the whole thing, to go back home, undress and go to bed, sleep until the alarm went, wake up, have breakfast, get dressed and go to work at Söder Hospital.
It wouldn’t happen. Not ever again.
The past would never cease to be, no matter how much she wanted it to.
Sitting there on the hard chair, she tried to cry again, tried to expel a part of whatever it was that was eating her from inside. It didn’t work. Crying, damn it, wasn’t an option. Sometimes, it just isn’t.
She was about to get up again and walk off somewhere else, just away, when the door to the ward sister’s glass booth opened.
Pulled open by someone who didn’t bother to knock, just stepped straight in.
She recognised the older policeman, who had held her hand for a little too long when they met. His face was flushed, his voice loud.
‘Shit! Sven!’
Sven Sundkvist seldom got irritated with his boss, unlike the rest of them. Most of his colleagues disliked Ewert Grens, some even hated him. As for himself, he had decided simply to accept, the good and the bad, to put up or shut up. And so he put up.