Easy, Nadja Högberg thought, bringing up Seppo Laurén’s file. His closest relative was Ritwa Laurén, forty-nine, who had spent the last two months in the hospital after a stroke. Father unknown, Nadja read.
Could it really be that easy? Nadja Högberg thought.
Probably, she thought, as she brought up Ritwa Laurén’s passport photograph on her screen five minutes later. She had been forty-two when the photograph was taken. Blond, beautiful, a shy smile in half-profile, didn’t look a day over thirty-five when she had the picture taken seven years after that for her new passport.
She had lived in the same apartment on Hasselstigen for almost twenty-nine years. She had moved in with her three-month-old son before she was twenty. By then her twenty-years-older neighbor Karl Danielsson had already lived there for five years. Never trust coincidence, Nadja Högberg thought.
Almost four months ago, on Friday, February 8, ‘SL’ had received twenty thousand kronor from Karl Danielsson. The day before, Thursday, February 7, Seppo Laurén’s mother, Ritwa, had been found unconscious in the toilet at work, and had been taken to A&E at the Karolinska Hospital, and within two hours was being operated on in the hospital’s neurosurgical department. One month later she had been transferred to a rehabilitation center. No longer unconscious, but not really much more than that.
Five minutes later Nadja Högberg was digging through the pile of receipts that forensics had found in Danielsson’s flat. One of them was a receipt for a computer and various accessories and programs, as well as six different computer games, in total 19,875 kronor. They had all been bought from a computer store in the Solna shopping center, paid for in cash on February 8.
Father unknown, Nadja Högberg thought. Men are pigs, she thought. Some men, at least, Dr. Nadjesta Ivanova corrected herself, and this time it had only taken her an hour to find one of them.
She had spent the rest of the day on other matters. Mainly looking for a good place for someone to hide ten years’ worth of accounting files. No safe-deposit box this time, Nadja thought, since there ought to be several boxes worth of documents. He had hired storage space somewhere. Not too close, but not too far away either. Danielsson seemed to be both a practical and a lazy man, the sort who organized things to make life easy for himself. Taxi distance, she thought, and started typing at her computer.
Just before five o’clock Annika Carlsson and Lars Alm had burst into her office, breathless. New and previously unknown information had emerged over the course of the afternoon from an interview with Seppo Laurén. Troubling information.
‘I’m listening,’ Nadja Högberg said, leaning back and folding her hands over her little round stomach. I wonder where the hell he is? she thought, since she hadn’t seen any sign of Bäckström since that morning.
‘He admits that he had previously hit Danielsson. Evidently because he thought Danielsson was responsible for his mother ending up in the hospital. His relationship with Danielsson was also very different to what we previously thought. We can forget the idea that he just used to run little errands for Danielsson. Apparently Danielsson used to pay the rent on their apartment and gave the kid money for food. And much more besides. This reeks of revenge, if you ask me,’ Alm concluded.
‘And he gave him a computer that must have cost a fair few thousand,’ Carlsson added.
‘Perhaps that isn’t so surprising when you consider that he was Seppo’s dad,’ Nadja said.
‘Sorry?’ Annika Carlsson said.
‘What the hell are you saying?’ Alm said.
‘I suggest we do the following,’ Nadja said, raising her hands to stop them. ‘Annika, you go and get a sample from Seppo, and we’ll soon get this business of paternity sorted out. After all, we’ve got Danielsson’s DNA already. Laurén’s will probably take the usual fortnight before the National Forensics Lab get back to us, but I promise to explain how it all fits together as soon as the sample’s done.
‘Then you and Lars can go to his apartment and pick up the hard drive from his computer,’ she went on.
‘What do you want that for?’ Alm asked, looking at her curiously.
‘If I remember correctly, he said in one of your interviews with him that he spent all evening and all night playing computer games,’ Nadja Högberg said. Idiots, suddenly I’m leading a murder investigation even though I’m only an ordinary civilian employee, she thought.
One and a half hours later it was done. First Nadja had told them what she’d found out from her computer about Karl Danielsson and Ritwa and Seppo Laurén. Once she was finished Alm and Carlsson had exchanged a look, then they looked at Nadja and finally they nodded to her. Reluctantly.
‘But why did he deny being the father for all those years?’ Annika Carlsson wondered.
‘To avoid having to pay child care,’ Nadja said. ‘That way Karl Danielsson saved himself several hundred thousand kronor.’
‘But why didn’t he even tell his own son? It’s quite clear that Seppo hasn’t got a clue that Danielsson is his dad,’ Alm said.
‘Maybe he was ashamed of him. He probably wasn’t good enough for a man like Karl Danielsson,’ Nadja concluded. Some men are pigs, she thought.
Then all three of them had gone to Alm’s office. And there sat Seppo Laurén, entertaining himself with Felicia Pettersson, drinking Coca-Cola and apparently having a whale of a time.
Nadja had connected his hard drive and together they had worked out what he was doing from the afternoon of Wednesday, May 14, until the morning of Thursday, May 15. Seppo had been sitting at his computer from quarter past six on Wednesday evening until quarter past six on Thursday morning. At three in the morning he had taken a short break of eight minutes. Otherwise he had been playing nonstop for twelve hours in a row.
‘I got a bit hungry then,’ Seppo said. ‘I took a break for a sandwich and a glass of milk.’
‘What did you do afterward? When you stopped playing on the computer, I mean?’ Alm said, evidently refusing to give up even though Nadja had already given him several warning glances.
‘I fell asleep,’ Seppo said, looking at Alm in surprise. ‘Why, what would you have done?’
49.
Bäckström had started Friday by going to see his boss, Anna Holt, and asking for reinforcements. Suddenly he had a double murder on his hands, the same strength team as before, and that had been inadequate from the outset.
‘I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström,’ Holt said, starting to sound more and more like her old boss Lars Martin Johansson. ‘The problem is that I haven’t got anyone I can give you. Right now we’re on our knees out here.’
‘Toivonen’s got thirty men to investigate a robbery with two fatalities. I’ve got five to take care of two murders. You have peculiar priorities in this station,’ Bäckström said, smiling amiably. That gave you something to chew on, you scrawny little nightmare, he thought.
‘I’m the one who decided the prioritization,’ Holt said. ‘So I’m going to stand by it. If any information comes to light that suggests that the people behind the robbery also killed Danielsson and Akofeli, I’ll be transferring you and your colleagues to Toivonen’s investigation.’
‘I’m not sure that would be wise,’ Bäckström said. Not just scrawny, he thought.
‘Why not?’
‘I find it hard to believe that the Ibrahim brothers would kill the man who helped them hide their money. And I find it even harder to believe that Danielsson tried to rip them off. He may have been a pisshead but he doesn’t seem to have had suicidal tendencies. But do you know what I find hardest of all?’