Irene hurried to take over from Fredrik. “You’re really strong. This was the worst fight I’ve ever been in. I told everyone you were the strongest and smartest person I’ve ever come up against. You are in fantastic shape.”
She stopped talking, wondering if she’d spread it on too thick. Perhaps not, because Carina was starting to show the hint of a smile. At least she appeared to be listening. Encouraged, Irene continued. “The cleverest bit was when you decided to dress up in Nurse Tekla’s old uniform from the suitcase. If anyone saw you, they’d think they’d seen the hospital ghost. Very clever.”
To Irene’s surprise, Carina answered. “It went just as I planned. Those superstitious old broads really believed I was the ghost.” There she stopped, but her expression was no longer vague. She looked downright smug.
“What I don’t understand is why Linda had to die, even though she tried to get her claws into your husband.…” Irene started.
Carina’s eyes were bottomless pits of hate as she replied, “I don’t give a damn what she and Sverker were up to in the on-call apartment! It was my hospital and my plan to make it into Göteborg’s best-ever fitness center. All that work I put into the drawings and plans. And then that little piece of shit tries to convince Sverker to get a divorce.”
“Did he say he wanted a divorce?” Irene said, pretending to be outraged.
“I heard them!” Carina stopped and gave Irene a suspicious look, but Irene was ready and made a sympathetic face. Carina was encouraged. She continued, “I was at the door to the on-call apartment and heard them. It was the first weekend after we returned from Thailand. Sverker suddenly had to go to the hospital. I knew what was going on, but I pretended not to. I’ve been through it before. And twelve years ago I was the one doing the same thing. Ha! So I followed them.… I opened the door—and I heard them.…”
Carina pressed her lips together. Her eyes thinned to slits. Softly, she hissed, “I couldn’t allow that. My plans … my hospital … It was her own fault she had to die. She could have kept on with the affair as long as she pleased, but she wanted to get married. That whore! No way could she marry him. I had no money to get the building on my own, so I could only keep it through Sverker. And we are married, after all.” Carina lifted her chin defiantly and looked right at Irene, who nodded her agreement.
Irene phrased her next question carefully. “How did you get into the building? You’d given Sverker the main key, hadn’t you?”
Carina nodded slyly and said in a confidential tone, “I didn’t just find the drawings in Hilding’s suitcase. There was a key chain as well, with the mansion key and the hospital key. They hadn’t ever bothered to change the locks. Of course Hilding had a master key. Sverker had missed that fact completely!”
Carina beamed in triumph, very pleased with herself.
“When Sverker called and said that he had to stay late that night, I knew right away that she was going to be there, and I knew what time, too. Sverker has no imagination. I had hidden the uniform at home already, so I just took it with me in the car and changed in the grove. You should have seen me slipping across the lawn. If anyone had seen me, they’d have had a heart attack.” She broke out in scornful laughter that made the hair on the back of Irene’s neck stand on end.
Suppressing a shudder, Irene said, “God, you were clever. Though someone did see you. The homeless woman who was staying in the garden shed. Did you know she was there?”
Carina looked cross. “I noticed her during Christmas break when I was searching for the drawings. What a disgusting woman! I knew she was living in the shed. I’d forgotten her that night, but I knew who it was when I read the newspaper the next day. Since she’d seen me … I thought it’d be better if she disappeared.”
“She’d seen you enter the hospital. Did you sneak in before or after Linda arrived?” Irene asked cautiously.
“Before. I was waiting for her. She sure looked surprised that last minute of her life.” Again that horrible laugh filled the cell.
Irene let her finish before she asked, “But what had Marianne done to you? How did she threaten your plans?”
A wrinkle appeared between Carina’s brows. “She heard me and Linda. That bitch Linda was carrying a little backpack, and she threw it down the stairs when I … grabbed her.”
“So you were at the top of the stairway right outside the surgical ward?”
“Yes, right against the elevator. I only had to take one step to get to her as soon as she got off.”
Irene shivered. “So unbelievably well thought out. But then Linda threw her backpack down the stairs, and Marianne heard it?”
“Yes, I went down to get that backpack, and I heard Marianne’s key in the ICU door. I’d just made it back up the stairs, but there was no way to get rid of Linda. So when that incredibly stupid night nurse began walking up the stairs and yelling ‘Hello? Linda, is that you?’ I knew that I had to shut her up, too. And so I did.”
“With the rope you used to hang Linda later?”
“It was the only thing I had.”
“And then you carried Linda up inside the door to the attic, then rode the elevator with Marianne’s body down to the basement. How did you get the idea to cut the electricity in the hospital?”
“I needed time. The business with that night nurse took more time than I’d planned. I didn’t want Sverker to go all through the hospital looking for her. Not before I’d … finished.”
“So everything went according to plan in the end.” Irene tried to sound admiring.
Without warning, Carina leaned forward and whacked Irene’s cast. Irene’s cry of pain was not an act.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Carina said contentedly.
Irene decided to whimper a bit before she asked another question. “Why did you go down the main staircase? There was the risk that Siv Persson would see you. And she did.”
A new wrinkle appeared on Carina’s brow when she heard the night nurse’s name. She sat quietly for a while before she said, “As I was about to come down from the attic, I heard Sverker opening the ICU door. I realized he was looking for Marianne, and probably Linda, too, so I walked quickly through the surgical ward and then down the main staircase. And that idiot night nurse did see me, but she looked about to faint from fright. I had counted on that.”
A self-satisfied smile played on the edges of Carina’s mouth. An unnatural gleam came into her eyes as she bent close to Irene, who steeled herself for another blow to her leg. Instead, to her surprise, Carina began to whisper. “I heard Sverker following me. He took care of that confused nurse and left his flashlight with her. Then he walked down the stairs. I was so close to jumping out just to scare him, but I stood in the shadows and watched him as he opened the front door for the police. Then I went down the stairs, through the basement, and then up the back stairs and out the back door.”
Carina’s triumph surrounded her like an aura.
Irene felt a creeping feeling of sheer horror down her back.
Without showing her feelings, she said ingratiatingly, “Just think how you managed to get rid of Linda’s bicycle. Because you did that, we were fooled into thinking she wasn’t still in the hospital.”
“It was easy to ride a bike on the frozen lawn. Still, it was so dark in the park and down by the stream that mostly I had to push it. I shoved the bike under the bridge and took off the nurse’s clothes.”
“Were you wearing different clothes underneath?” Irene made her eyes wide. She was laying it on thick.