‘How did you make him see that?’
‘I rang him and told him to go to hell. And sent a few emails as well.’
Joar and Peder automatically started flicking through the print-outs they had in front of them.
‘Did you say anything else in the emails?’ asked Peder.
‘You’ve got them right in front of you, for fuck’s sake,’ hissed Tony Svensson, his patience suddenly at an end. ‘Why don’t you read them out?’
Joar cleared his throat and read out loud: ‘Things are looking bad for you, Ahlbin. Back off from this shit while you still can.’
‘Did you write that?’
‘Yes,’ replied Tony Svensson. ‘But I don’t fucking well see how anyone could call it a threat.’
‘Wait,’ said Peder gently, ‘there’s more.’
He read out: ‘Pity you can’t stop fucking us about, scumbag vicar. Pity you can’t see that the one in the sorriest state after all this will be you.’
Tony Svensson started to laugh.
‘Still not a real threat.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Joar. The expression ‘‘sorry state’’ isn’t usually used in a positive sense.’
‘But it’s bloody hard to tell, isn’t it?’ said Tony with a wink.
The wink was a step too far for Joar and Peder sensed an instant change to the atmosphere in the room.
‘All right then,’ he said, hoping to take command of the interview for a while. ‘Let’s try something a bit more colourfuclass="underline" ‘You ought to listen to us, vicar. You’ve got the trials of Job ahead of you if you don’t stop your activities right away.’
Tony Svensson said nothing and his face froze.
Then he leant across the table and raised a finger.
‘I fucking well never wrote that,’ he hissed, underlining every syllable.
Peder raised an eyebrow.
‘You didn’t?’ he said, feigning surprise. ‘So you mean someone else suddenly started emailing Jakob Ahlbin from your computer and signing themselves “SP”?’
‘Are you saying that email came from my computer?’ demanded Tony Svensson loudly.
‘Yes,’ said Peder, looking down at his paperwork.
Only to discover that he was wrong. The email he had just quoted was one of the ones that had not come from the suspect’s own computer.
Tony Svensson saw Peder’s expression change and he relaxed, leaning back again.
‘Thought not,’ he said.
‘So you’re claiming someone else was sending emails to Jakob on the same subject? Someone other than you?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m claiming,’ Tony Svensson snapped. ‘I didn’t email the vicar from any computer except the one I’ve got at home.’
‘You mean the one we’ve just brought in?’ Joar corrected him with sarcasm. ‘We’ve just searched your place and taken a few things for examination.’
The man’s dark eyes grew even darker and Peder saw him swallow several times. But he said nothing.
He’s clever, thought Peder. He knows when to leave it.
‘Okay, is there anything else you want?’ Tony said testily. ‘I’m in a hurry now.’
‘But we’re not,’ Joar said firmly. ‘What did you say when you phoned Jakob Ahlbin?’
Tony gave a loud and exaggerated sigh.
‘I left a total of three messages on the old man’s answering machine,’ he said. ‘And they were almost identical to the emails. Which I sent from my own computer and nobody else’s.’
‘Did you have any other kind of contact with Jakob Ahlbin?’ asked Joar.
‘No.’
‘You never went to his flat?’
‘No.’
‘So how come we found your fingerprints on his front door?’ asked Joar.
Peder stiffened. What in hell’s name? He had not seen any report of that.
Tony Svensson seemed to have been caught equally off guard.
‘I went there and rang the doorbell, all right? Banged on the door. But nobody opened it, and I shoved off again.’
‘When was that?’
‘Um,’ said Tony Svensson, and appeared to be thinking. ‘It must’ve been a week ago. Like, last Saturday.’
‘Why?’ asked Joar. ‘If you didn’t feel the need to send any more emails, then…’
‘I was scared I’d judged it wrong,’ Tony Svensson said angrily. ‘I sent the emails to calm the old geezer down, to get him to keep his nose out of our internal affairs. And then it, like, resolved itself, the difference of opinion we had in our group. At least that was the way we saw it. The guy we fell out with – well, we sorted it out between us. But then there was another round of trouble and I was sure the vicar was behind it again. So I went over to his place. But that was the only time.’
Joar nodded slowly.
‘That was the only time?’ he repeated.
‘I swear it,’ said Tony Svensson. ‘And if you tell me you found my fingerprints inside the flat, you’re lying. Because I’ve never been in there.’
Joar sat mute and Peder seethed with fury. How the hell dared Joar go down to an interrogation without giving his colleague all the facts in advance?
Joar looked amused.
‘Can we have the names of all the others who can confirm your version?’ he said.
‘Yep, sure,’ said Tony Svensson, sounding exaggeratedly positive. ‘You can start by asking Ronny Berg.’
Berg. The name Agne Nilsson had already given them.
Tony went on:
‘That’s if he wants to talk to you. Then you can hear what the vicar was demanding in return.’
The last word ricocheted around the interview room. In return?
Just as Peder and Joar went off to interview Tony Svensson, Alex knocked on Fredrika Bergman’s door and asked if she wanted to come with him to see someone.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked when she had gathered up her things.
Alex explained about the scribbled name and telephone number they had found in a locked drawer in Jakob Ahlbin’s desk.
‘I took a chance, you might say,’ he went on. ‘Rang the fellow up, told him what had happened and asked how he knew Jakob Ahlbin. At first he refused to answer, didn’t want anything to do with the police. Then he said Ahlbin had rung him about something; that was how they had come into contact with each other. But he wouldn’t say what about.’
‘He didn’t want to talk on the phone or he didn’t want to talk at all?’
‘He didn’t want to talk at all, but I thought if we went out there unannounced, maybe he’d want to talk after all.’
They took the lift down to the garage. Fredrika thought how tired Alex looked. Tired, and worried, too. In another time, and another workplace, she would have asked him how he was, indicated she’d be happy to listen if he wanted to talk. But just now she could not summon the energy.
They drove across Kungsholmen in silence, took the E4 south to Skärholmen. Alex put the radio on.
‘Have the media been beating a path to your door?’ Fredrika asked, knowing what the answer would be.
‘You can say that again,’ Alex said crossly. ‘And they simply can’t accept that we have no bloody comment to make. We’ve got to raise our game here and at least come up with a line or two to keep the news crews happy, with the evening bulletins coming up.’
Fredrika sat quietly, mulling things over.
‘That’s the thing I can’t make any sense of,’ she said eventually.
‘What?’
‘The idea that Tony Svensson and his mates could get into a flat in the middle of town at five in the afternoon, shoot two people and get away without anyone seeing them, and without leaving a single trace behind them. And on top of all that, get it to look like suicide.’
Alex looked at her.
‘The same thought had occurred to me,’ he said. ‘But I have to admit I’m having more and more trouble convincing myself it was suicide.’
‘Me too,’ Fredrika replied.
‘How the hell could you be so irresponsible?’ demanded Peder as soon as they were back upstairs in the department.