He saved the document and shut off the laptop, which he picked up as he got to his feet. ‘I’m going to my office to write up the official version now. If you think of anything else, feel free to knock on my door.’

Hanna simply nodded. After he left she just sat there. Her hands holding the coffee cup were still shaking.

Calle took a stroll through the town. Back in Stockholm he usually worked out at the gym at least five times a week, but here he had to settle for taking walks to work off the calories. He picked up his pace to get the fat burning. Looking fit was important to him. He had no time for people who didn’t take care of their bodies. It was a true pleasure to look at himself in the mirror and admire his toned abdomen, the way his biceps tensed when he flexed his arms, and the muscular build of his torso. When he was out on the town at Stureplan he always unbuttoned his shirt nonchalantly as he approached the clubs. The chicks loved it. They couldn’t stop sticking their hands inside his shirt to feel his chest, raking their nails over his buff physique.

Sometimes he wondered how his life would have been with no money. How it would be to live like Uffe or Mehmet, sitting in some dingy flat in the suburbs, barely managing to make ends meet. Uffe had bragged about the break-ins and the other stuff he’d been into, but Calle could hardly keep from laughing when he heard how little money those petty crimes had brought in. Hell, he got more than that in pocket money from his father every week.

And yet nothing seemed to fill the emptiness in his heart. In recent years he had constantly been searching for something that would finally fill that hole. More champagne, more partying, more chicks, more powder up his nose, more of everything. Always more of everything, as if there was no limit to how much money he could burn through. He didn’t earn any himself. All his money came from his father. And he kept thinking that now . . . now it would finally have to stop. But the money kept coming in. His father paid one bill after another. He bought him the flat in Östermalm without quibbling, and he paid off that girl who cooked up the story about being raped – totally out of thin air, of course, since she had actually come home with him and Ludde, and there was no doubt about the intention. His pockets were constantly being refilled. And there didn’t seem to be any conditions. Calle knew why. His father could never say no because his guilty conscience forced him to keep paying. He kept pouring kronor into the hole in Calle’s chest, but the money just disappeared without taking up any space.

Each of them was trying to replace with money what he had lost. His father by giving it away, Calle by spending it.

As the memories flooded over him, the pain in his chest grew worse. Calle walked faster, urging himself forward, trying to force the images back. But it was impossible to escape the memories. The only thing that could deaden them was a mixture of champagne and cocaine. Lacking those, he had to live with his past. He started to run.

Gösta sighed. Each year it got harder to stay motivated. Going to work in the morning depleted all the energy he had; trying to get anything done was almost impossible. He could spend days worrying about the simplest task. He didn’t understand how things had got this way. It had crept up on him since Majbritt died, the loneliness eating away at him from inside, depriving him of the pleasure he’d once taken in his work. He’d never been a high flier, he was the first to admit that, but he’d done what he was supposed to do and sometimes even felt a small sense of satisfaction. But what was the point of it all? He had no children to leave anything to; their only child, a son, had died only a few days old. Nobody to come home to in the evening, no one to spend the weekends with. His only pleasure was playing golf. These days it was more of an obsession than a hobby. He’d have liked to play twenty-four hours a day. But it didn’t pay the rent, and he had to keep working at least until he could collect his pension. He was counting the days.

Gösta sat down and stared at his computer. For security reasons they weren’t allowed an Internet connection. Instead he had to check the name that belonged to the address by picking up the phone and ringing directory assistance. After a brief conversation he had tracked down the owner of the summer house to which the rubbish bin belonged. It was a meaningless task from the beginning. His scepticism was confirmed when he got the telephone number to the owner’s home address in Göteborg. It was obvious that they had nothing to do with the murder. It was simply their bad luck that the killer had picked their bin to dispose of the girl.

His thoughts wandered further to the murdered girl. His lack of initiative had nothing to do with a lack of sympathy. He felt for the victims and their next of kin, and he was grateful that at least he hadn’t had to see the girl. Martin was still a little pale when he ran into him in the corridor.

Gösta had seen more than his share of dead bodies, and even after forty years on the job he could still remember every single one. The majority were accident victims and suicides; murder was the exception. But every death had etched a furrow in his memory, and he could recall images that were as clear as photographs. He’d had to inform many people of the death of their loved ones, resulting in plenty of tears, despair, shock, and horror. Maybe that was why he was so despondent now; each death, with all the attendant pain and unhappiness had added a few more drops of misery to the glass of life, until now there was no more room. That was no excuse, but it was a possible explanation.

With a sigh he picked up the phone to ring the owners of the house and inform them that a dead body had been found in their rubbish bin. He punched in the number. Might as well get it over with.

‘What’s this all about?’ Uffe looked tired and irritated as he sat in the interview room.

Patrik took his time answering. Before saying anything both he and Martin put their papers carefully in order. They were sitting across from Uffe at a rickety table. Other than four chairs, it was the only furniture in the room. Uffe didn’t look particularly nervous, Patrik noticed, but he had learned over the years that the way an interview subject looked on the outside did not necessarily reflect the way he or she felt inside. He cleared his throat, folded his hands on top of the stack of papers and leaned forward.

‘I hear there was some trouble last night.’ Patrik studied Uffe’s reaction closely. All he got was a sneer. Uffe leaned back nonchalantly in his chair. He gave a little laugh.

‘Oh yeah, that. Yeah, he was pretty rough, when I come to think of it.’ He nodded at Martin. ‘Maybe somebody ought to think about filing a complaint about police brutality.’ He laughed again, and Patrik felt his anger rising.

‘Well,’ he said calmly, ‘we received a report from my colleague here and from the other officer on site. Now I want to hear your version.’

‘My version.’ Uffe stretched out his legs, until he was almost reclining in the chair. It didn’t look very comfortable. ‘My version is that there was an argument. A drunken argument. That’s all. So what?’ His eyes narrowed and Patrik could see his alcohol-besotted brain working frantically.

‘We’re the ones asking the questions, not you,’ Patrik said sharply. ‘At ten o’clock last night two of our officers saw you attack one of the female cast members, Lillemor Persson.’

‘Barbie, you mean,’ Uffe interrupted with a laugh. ‘Lillemor . . .Jesus, that’s funny.’

Patrik had to check an impulse to give the youth in front of him a hard slap. Martin noticed what was happening, so he took over and gave Patrik a moment to collect himself.

‘We witnessed how you were shoving and hitting Lillemor. What was it that started the fight?’


Перейти на страницу:
Изменить размер шрифта: