Back in his office he started his music machine and Siw’s voice came through the tinny mono speaker. Together they sang: ‘Lyckans ost’, (1968), original English version ‘Hello Mary Lou’.
Ewert opened the folder on the investigation into the Jochum Lang case. He knew the photos would be there.
He studied them, one at a time. Their subject was a dead person on a floor and the quality was not great. The photographs were grainy and so poorly lit the outlines had become almost blurred. Krantz and his boys were good technicians, no question, but none of them could handle a camera. He sighed, picked three halfway decent ones and put them in an envelope.
Two telephone calls to round off the morning.
First he rang a stressed Lisa Öhrström, who answered from somewhere in the hospital. He told her briskly that he and DI Sundkvist would come to see her soon in order to show her some more pictures. She protested, saying that she had quite enough to do without spending her time on more photos of broken body parts. Ewert replied that he looked forward to seeing her and hung up.
His next call was to Еgestam, who was in his office at the State Prosecution Service. Ewert told the prosecutor that he had someone who was prepared to witness against Jochum Lang in connection with the Oldйus incident, a hospital doctor called Lisa Öhrström, who had unhesitatingly identified Lang as the perpetrator. Еgestam was unprepared for this and asked for further information, but Ewert interrupted him with a reassurance that there would be more to come, conclusive evidence clinching both the current cases by tomorrow morning, when they were due to meet.
She was still singing her heart out, was old Siw. He tuned in and sang along, moving about the room with a bounce in his step. ‘Mamma дr lik sin mamma’, (1968), original English version ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’.
Not many passers-by noticed the car that had stopped in front of the door to number 3 Völund Street. It was a modest car, driven decorously. The driver was a middle-aged man, who climbed out and opened the rear door for two girls, teenagers of about sixteen or seventeen. They were both pretty and seemed curious about their surroundings.
Could be a father with his daughters.
The girls looked up at the building with its rows of identical windows, as if they hadn’t seen it before. Presumably they didn’t live there, so maybe they were visiting somebody.
The driver locked the car and walked ahead to open the door. Just as he pulled at the door handle, he turned and said something which made one of the girls give a little scream and burst into tears. The other one, who seemed the stronger, put an arm round her, patted her cheek and tried to make her come with them.
In the lobby, the man kept talking and the anxious girl kept crying.
Any native observer would have found their language strange-sounding and incomprehensible, which meant that even if the older man had said something to the effect that they owed him now and that was why he was going to break them in and screw them until they bled, nobody would have understood it.
Sven left the meeting room with the empty videotape in his hand. He stopped for a coffee, added plenty of milk because he needed nourishment but had to be careful. Now that he had become angry, his stomach was in constant protest.
That video was a blank. He was convinced Grajauskas hadn’t intended it, she had planned everything so meticulously and had stage-managed every aspect of her last hours. He knew that her tape had a purpose.
He phoned Krantz again from his office. The technician, still in the Regering Street flat, answered at once, preoccupied and cross.
‘What’s up with the damn tape now?’
‘All I want to know is – was it new?’
‘New?’
‘Had it been used?’
‘Yes, it had been used.’
‘And how do we know that?’
‘I can’t speak for you lot, but I know because when I checked there was dust inside. Another thing I know is that the safety tab had been broken off. Which is what you do if you want to make sure the recorded stuff won’t be wiped.’
Sven inspected the video under the desk lamp. It was so new it shone, not one grain of dust in sight. The safety tab was intact. He spoke again.
‘Krantz, I’m coming to see you.’
‘Later, I don’t have time now.’
‘I want you to look at this videotape again. Krantz, it’s important. Something’s not right.’
Lars Еgestam didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Grens had announced that he was going to provide conclusive data about the deaths of both Lydia Grajauskas and Bengt Nordwall – as well as Hilding Oldйus – and about Alena Sljusareva and Jochum Lang; about two simultaneous catastrophes linked by time and place. Almost a year had passed since he last worked with Ewert Grens. That too had been a strange business, a trial of a father who had shot his daughter’s killer. At the time, Еgestam had been the youngest prosecutor in the state service, keen to land a major case and was then almost crushed when the big one landed in his lap. He had been picked to be in charge of the interrogation, which formally meant that he outranked DSI Grens, a man he had heard much about and admired from a distance and whom he now would work with and against.
They were meant to work together, but their collaboration had been a disaster.
Grens seemed to have decided from the outset that mutuality simply wasn’t on his agenda and, collaboration or not, he couldn’t be bothered even to be civil.
Now Еgestam had a choice, and he decided to laugh, which was the easier option. Fate would have it that he was to work with Grens again, on not one, but two investigations in connection with the events at Söder Hospital. And the argument was – this was when he laughed rather than cried – that they had worked together the last time Grens had a big case; the powers-that-be had kept an eye on it and noticed that the teamwork gave good results.
Teamwork? My ass.
Еgestam’s thin body shook as he laughed. He pulled off his jacket, sat back with his shiny black shoes on the desk, tugged at his nicely cut blond hair and laughed until tears came to his eyes at the thought of Grens, the teammate from hell.
The sky above Regering Street should have been summer blue. Sven stared at it and it stared back, grey and dull and mean-looking. Soon it would rain again. He had been standing there for a while. He knew that he should get back to the office, but was uncertain whether he could take any more. Back in the office he would have to continue the work he had started, work that was pushing him to the breaking point.
Nils Krantz, stressed and irritable at being interrupted in the middle of a crime scene examination, had glanced at the videotape for a few seconds, no more, then he handed it back, saying that this was not the tape he had found and analysed in the mortuary. Sven knew that already, but hadn’t been able to stop hoping that he was wrong, as one does when all is not as it should be.
Still, now he knew for certain. Or, rather, he knew nothing whatsoever.
The Ewert Grens he knew and looked up to wouldn’t dream of interfering with evidence.
The Ewert Grens he knew was an awkward bastard, but a straight and honest bastard.
What he had done now was different, something else altogether.
The dull sky was still glaring down at him when his mobile rang. Ewert. Sven sighed, uncertain if he could deal with him now. No, he couldn’t. Not yet.
He listened to the voice message instead. They were going to drive over to Söder Hospital and show Lisa Öhrström a few more of Ewert’s photographs. Sven was to wait where he was; Ewert would pick him up soon.
It was difficult to look at Ewert, and Sven avoided all eye contact with his boss. He would do it later, he knew that, when the time was right, but not now. He settled gratefully in the passenger seat, where he could keep his gaze fixed on the anonymous car a few metres ahead in the slow-moving rush-hour mess on Skepp Bridge and up the slope up towards Slussen and Södermalm.