‘Can you put a date on the event you’ve just told us about?’ Alex asked, though he already knew what the answer would be.
‘Midsummer 1992.’
They both nodded, each jotting down a note. The picture was getting clearer, but it was still not in focus.
‘And what happened after that?’ asked Fredrika.
Slightly less weighed down by the burden of all she had to tell, Johanna appeared to relax a little.
‘The Ekerö house was anathema to us after that; none of us liked being there. It wasn’t just Dad’s hiding of fugitives that stopped, it was as if the whole family died. We were never there to celebrate midsummer again; we would just go for the odd week or weekend. Mum and Dad talked about selling it, but in the end they didn’t.’
‘And how was Karolina?’
For the first time in the interview, an angry look came into Johanna’s face.
‘She must have been feeling absolutely awful, as you’d expect, but it was as if she was pretending it hadn’t happened. Before all that, it was actually the other way round: I was the favourite and she was the one who always wanted not to be part of our family. After the rape I took her side, because I didn’t think any good that Dad’s activities did could ever outweigh what happened to her. So you can imagine how astonished I was to find that Karolina seemed to think it was all okay.’
‘You must have been terribly bitter,’ Alex prompted cautiously.
‘Dreadfully. And lonely. Suddenly it was as though it was my fault the family had split apart, mine and not Dad’s or Mum’s. Or Karolina’s, for that matter.’
‘What felt most frustrating?’ Fredrika asked.
‘What I was telling you before,’ Johanna said mutedly. ‘That although Karolina was changed by what happened, and openly admitted to me that she despised the migrants who came to Sweden, she pretended something else to Dad and Mum.’
And not just to them, Fredrika thought to herself, but to family friends and acquaintances as well.
‘So you distanced yourself from the family, so to speak?’
Johanna nodded.
‘Yes, that was the way it went. I couldn’t bear the hypocrisy. And I didn’t miss any of them, either. Not much, anyway. And definitely not after Dad started talking about taking in refugees again, and I was the only one in the family who seemed to mind.’
Fredrika and Alex exchanged looks, unsure how to proceed. Their impression of Karolina had changed radically in the course of less than an hour. But they were still far from through with this, they both knew that.
It was at that point Fredrika registered the tattoo on Johanna’s wrist, almost hidden by her watch. A flower. Or to be more precise, a daisy. Where had that motif featured recently? Then she recalled the dried flower, the sole ornament on one of the bedroom walls.
Johanna tracked Fredrika’s gaze and tried to conceal the tattoo by moving her watch strap. But Fredrika’s curiosity was already aroused.
‘What does the daisy mean?’ she asked bluntly.
‘It’s a reminder.’
Johanna’s voice was thick as she said it, her expression ambiguous.
‘Karolina’s got one, too,’ she added.
‘A reminder of what?’
‘Of our sisterhood.’
A sisterhood so charged that its symbol had to be hidden under a wristwatch, Fredrika reflected.
It was Alex who broke the silence.
‘Johanna, you’ve got to tell us the rest now. You said you were taking five weeks off work to go to Spain, but Karolina’s plans got in the way. What happened?’
As lithely as a ballet dancer, Johanna straightened her back.
‘You want to know why I identified a dead person as my sister although I knew it wasn’t her?’
‘We certainly do.’
‘I can give you a simple answer: because she asked me to.’
‘Who asked you to?’
‘Karolina.’
Another silence.
‘Why?’
Tears came into Johanna’s eyes for the first time in the encounter. Fredrika felt something akin to relief when she saw them.
‘Because she’d got herself into such a hellishly difficult situation that she literally needed to disappear off the face of the earth. That was how she put it, anyway.’
‘Did she give you any more details?’
‘No, but God knows I kept asking her to. Over and over again. But she wouldn’t answer, just said her past was catching up with her and she’d realised what she had to do. She explained her plan, the idea that she’d die without really dying. My job was to ring for an ambulance and then identify that druggie as my sister. And leave the country. So then I went to Spain.’
‘How did you know she was a drug addict, the woman who died in place of your sister?’
‘Karolina told me. And you could tell by the look of her. That she’d put herself through it.’
‘Was she still alive when you got to the flat?’
‘It didn’t look like it, but she must have been. The ambulance crew tried to save her.’
‘That must have scared you stiff.’
Johanna made no reply.
‘Why did you help her with such a spectacular stunt as staging her own death if she wasn’t prepared to tell you why?’ asked Alex.
A faint smile crept across Johanna’s impassive face.
‘The bond between sisters can be stretched to any length without breaking. It never occurred to me she could be referring to that midsummer episode when she said the past was catching up with the family. But once I realised it was, I stayed on longer in Spain.’
Uncertainty made Fredrika grip her pen even harder.
‘How do you mean?’
As if Fredrika had said something completely insane, Johanna leant across the table.
‘But how else could it all fit together? Why else would she have done what she did?’
The line between Alex’s eyebrows deepened to a crater.
‘What is it you think she did?’
‘I think she had Mum and Dad murdered. And now she’s going to come for me, as well. To punish us for not being there when her life was destroyed in the meadow outside our holiday house.’
‘Do you think she needs protection?’ asked Fredrika as the lift doors parted and they emerged into the team corridor.
‘Hard to say,’ muttered Alex. ‘Bloody hard to say.’
‘At least we know now that we were right, you and I,’ Fredrika said, almost gaily.
Alex looked at her.
‘About it all starting in the holiday house at Ekerö, like we said.’
Alex glanced at his watch. Time had flown, as usual. It was well past lunch and Peder would be off to the national CID to take part in the interview of Sven Ljung. From where he stood, Alex shouted to everyone to come to the Den and make it snappy. Nobody dared drag their feet at the sound of his order, though Fredrika headed for the staff room at a semi-jog to grab a sandwich on the way.
Of course, thought Alex. The woman’s about to have a baby, of course she’s got to eat.
‘What have we got, to corroborate her story?’ asked Joar once Alex had filled them in on what Johanna had said.
‘Not much,’ admitted Alex. ‘On the other hand, we haven’t got much to contradict her version, either.’
‘Are we remanding her in custody?’ asked Peder. ‘I mean for obstructing the course of our enquiries, or for her part in Therese Björk’s death, however minor it was?’
Alex sighed.
‘We’re not sure enough of our facts yet,’ he answered. ‘As for the obstruction, she can explain that by saying she was too scared of what her sister might do once she found out her parents had been killed. And as far as the misidentification’s concerned, we haven’t enough to go on as things stand. Johanna couldn’t even tell us how Therese Björk died; she claims Therese was already there when she got to her sister’s flat.’