The Final Word (21 page)

She was a bit late. Ellen had a sore throat and she’d had to wait to see if the paracetamol helped before sending her daughter to school. Not that a few minutes made much difference: Gustaf Holmerud wasn’t likely to be going anywhere. Schyman had warned her that Holmerud would probably be difficult, and arriving a quarter of an hour late was hardly going to change that.

She got out of the car and the wind tugged at her hair. The weather was hot and muggy, carrying with it the
threat of thunder and lightning. She had been to Kumla before, and knew she couldn’t take anything inside with her. All she had was a notepad that fitted her back pocket.

She announced her arrival via the entry-phone, and was welcomed by a female guard. The gate gave an electronic click and she entered the long passageway through no man’s land, a gravel path a hundred metres long, lined with steel fencing, that led to the visitors’ entrance. Her feet scraped the gravel. Another entry-phone. The same guard. This door was extremely heavy, she remembered that, and wondered why. Was there some sort of hidden symbolism at work? She used both hands to open it, which felt oddly reassuring.

The waiting room was empty. A few keys were missing from the white lockers lining the walls so she wasn’t the only visitor that Thursday morning. A third entry-phone, still the same voice.

She waited, not bothering to draw the curtains from the window: she knew what was behind them. White bars and a gravel courtyard. The noticeboard next to the entry-phone contained information about visiting times and how to book the overnight flat.

She brushed her hair from her forehead, struck by life’s absurdities. The fact that she was there just then was partly her own fault, and possibly deservedly so, depending on how you chose to look at it. Last autumn, just after she had returned to the newsroom after her stint as the paper’s correspondent in Washington, she
had compiled a list of all the murders of women that had been committed in Stockholm and its suburbs during the previous six months. There were five, all carried out close to the victims’ homes or workplaces, all with different types of knife. In every case it was the women’s current or previous partners who were suspected of killing them, which meant that the media silence surrounding the deaths was practically impenetrable. (There seemed to be an understanding within the media that murdered wives weren’t real murders, just sordid domestic tragedies, in the same deep-frozen category of news as alcohol-fuelled murders in drug-dens and genocides in Africa.) Naturally, Patrik had dismissed the list as devoid of interest, until Annika uttered the random words that she had regretted so many times since: ‘What if there’s a serial killer on the loose whom everyone has missed?’

And now she was standing there, five convictions for murder later, wondering who she was about to see: a wretched girlfriend-beater, a ruthless serial killer, or the innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice?

‘Please, come through,’ a voice said, from the loudspeaker up by the ceiling.

Annika raised her hand towards the security camera in the corner and walked into the secure airlock. Two guards, a man and a woman, watched her through reinforced glass. She put her notepad on a little plastic tray and it was passed through the scanner. Then she walked through the metal detector into the secure zone. She showed her ID and was allowed to borrow a pen, a
yellow Bic. She wrote her name, and the name of the person she was visiting, signed to state that she understood the conditions of the visit (that she agreed to be searched by two female guards, if necessary, or by a sniffer-dog, and that she consented to being locked into a confined space with the inmate).

‘You’ll be in room number seven,’ the male guard said, as he hung her driver’s licence on a noticeboard behind the desk. ‘Would you like coffee?’

She thanked him, but declined.

They walked down a corridor lined with numbered doors.

‘You’ll have to clean the room afterwards,’ the guard said.

As though she were there to have sex.

She stepped inside it.

‘You can call the security guards using the intercom, and this is the emergency alarm.’

Annika nodded and thanked him again.

The door closed behind her. She stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the foam-rubber mattress on the bed, the chest of drawers containing sheets and blankets, the toilet and shower, the single chair. The only decoration on the walls was a framed poster for an exhibition at Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, by an artist called Johan Wahlström, naïve faces in blue, red and silver. The picture was called
The Waiting Room
, which seemed appropriate.

She sank onto the chair. They were bringing Gustaf
Holmerud from his part of the prison along some underground tunnel. He would have to go through the same security routine as her, plus a bit extra: he’d have to change his shoes (in the past inmates had hollowed out the heels of their trainers and filled them with heroin). When the visit was over and he went back to his cell, he would have to go through the metal detector naked. The security equipment was checked daily, and the routines worked. There were hardly any drugs in the Kumla Bunker, no escapes and very few murders.

She looked at the bars on the window.

People who never saw the horizon ended up with distorted perspective. She’d read that somewhere. Always finding walls in the way, never being able to let your eyes roam free, your perception of distance shrank. It was unnatural: humans had developed on the savannah where the skies were endless.

The door opened and Annika stood up instinctively. Her palms began to sweat.

Gustaf Holmerud was much bigger than she had expected. She had always imagined him as a short man, hunched and evasive, but the few pictures that existed of him outside the courtroom hadn’t done him justice. He practically filled the doorway, tall and thick-set, with long arms and short legs. His hair was wet: he had showered before meeting her.

They shook hands and introduced themselves. His hand was cooler than hers, and the set of his mouth indicated nervous frustration.

‘So Anders Schyman has sent one of his minions,’ he said. ‘Oh, well, such is life.’

The door closed behind them. The lock rattled. Annika hurried to sit on the only chair again, unwilling to sit beside him on the bed.

‘Thanks for letting me interview you,’ she said, resting the Bic pen and her notepad on her lap.

Gustaf Holmerud remained standing. From a statistical point of view, he fulfilled all the criteria for a woman-killer: a native Swede, physically healthy and with no previous convictions, like the majority of ordinary Swedish men. But the majority of the male population didn’t kill their women with kitchen knives because they couldn’t control them.

‘I think you’ve misunderstood your role,’ Gustaf Holmerud said, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘You’re not here to conduct an interview, you’re here to make sure I get out.’

He moved closer to her, so close that their legs almost touched, and leaned his elbows on his knees. His breath struck her in the face. It smelt of coffee.

Annika sat on the chair without moving. She wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated. She looked hard into his eyes, which were watery and red. Perhaps he was on some sort of sedative. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who misunderstands the situation. I’m not your defence lawyer. I’m a journalist, and I’m going to write an article for the
Evening Post
.’

He stared at her with his mouth half open, then moved back and made himself more comfortable on the
mattress. ‘It must be very exciting for you to be here with me,’ he said. ‘This is a real coup for you. You think you’re going to win the national prize for journalism now, don’t you?’ He laughed, a dry little chuckle.

‘You told Anders Schyman that you’re innocent of the crimes you were found guilty of,’ Annika said. ‘You said you wanted to give your side of the story. I’m ready to listen to what you’ve got to say.’

‘Oh, sweetie,’ he said. ‘I make the decisions about who I talk to, and it has to be a proper editor.’

A middle-aged white man, maybe. Someone who’s been on television, preferably one with an aristocratic surname? She held his gaze. ‘You were imagining someone with a bit of authority and experience? Someone who looks like the person you wish you were?’

He looked at her with vacant eyes. ‘Annika Bengtzon,’ he said. ‘Why are you out there, and I’m stuck in here?’

A chill ran through her. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You really did kill someone. I didn’t. You can put that in your paper.’

She felt her throat tighten.

‘
He claims
that my screams are pleasure rather than pain.
That was very pleasant reading.’

He’d read her diary, which had formed part of the preliminary investigation. How had he got hold of it? But, of course, it wasn’t hard: anyone could request a copy from a district court: once the verdict had been pronounced, it was in the public domain. She made an effort not to gasp for air, but her body felt heavy and powerless.

He smiled. ‘There are several of you from the papers who ought to be in here. Your colleague Patrik Nilsson was convicted of imitating a public official, did you know that? He dressed up as a police officer and took witness statements from a crime scene. And Bosse, from the other paper, he’s got problems with the Enforcement Service. His attempts at trading in shares didn’t turn out very well. And Berit Hamrin, the old Communist, she’d be counted as a terrorist, these days.’ He clasped his hands over his stomach, evidently enjoying the situation.

Annika made some notes. ‘It’s clever of you to have done your research,’ she said. ‘That’s how you managed to get convicted of those crimes. You learned what to say when questioned, and how to react when you were taken to the crime scenes.’

He stopped smiling, and pursed his lips. ‘I want some influence over the person I talk to,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but today you’re going to have to make do with me. How come you’ve changed your mind? Why have you retracted your confessions?’

He shoved himself even further back on the bed so that his back was pressed to the wall. His legs stuck straight out and he was wearing a pair of Prison Service plastic sandals.

‘You think you can trick me into talking,’ he said. ‘I want this to be big, not some single shitty little article in one paper. A book, a television programme, and lots of articles for days on end.’

She took a silent breath, then picked up her pen and
notepad. ‘Let’s see if I’ve understood you correctly,’ she said. ‘You want a synchronized media launch on every possible platform. Television, newspapers, social media, radio, too, maybe, and a book. Is that correct?’

He hesitated for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ he said.

She looked at him, his bulging stomach, his slowly drying hair. ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked.

His smile faded. ‘Do what?’

‘Confess to all those murders.’

He pursed his lips and folded his arms.

‘You told Anders Schyman that the police had lured you into confessing,’ Annika said. ‘That the police and doctors made you feel important, and as long as you kept confessing you were given drugs and plenty of attention.’

‘Anders Schyman promised that I could check every word.’

‘He said you could check quotes attributed to you,’ Annika said.

Gustaf Holmerud sat in silence, staring at Johan Wahlström’s picture.

Annika stood up. ‘I’ll convey your demands to my editors,’ she said. ‘Seeing as you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll have to draw my own conclusions about our conversation. Do you want to know what I’m going to say?’

He lit up.

‘That you confessed to a series of crimes you didn’t commit to get attention and stand in the spotlight, but
that now the lamps have gone out, it isn’t so much fun, so you want to get back into the spotlight, this time by claiming to be innocent.’

She tucked her notepad into her back pocket and pressed the intercom.

‘Annika Bengtzon in room seven,’ she told the control room. ‘I’m ready now.’

Gustaf Holmerud shuffled to the edge of the bed and got to his feet, his eyes rather anxious. ‘Are you leaving?’

‘There’s not going to be an interview,’ she said. ‘I’ve got better things to be getting on with.’

‘When will I hear from you again? What’s the next step?’

She heard footsteps in the corridor. ‘You’re not as good at research as you think you are,’ she said. ‘Or else you’re lying. Patrik Nilsson may have been found guilty of wearing a police uniform, but he never took witness statements from a crime scene. The uniform was part of a prank for a men’s magazine when he was a freelancer. He was fined ten days’ wages, which doesn’t really warrant being locked away in the Kumla Bunker.’

The lock rattled and the door swung open.

She shook his hand. ‘I’ll see to it that someone informs you of whatever we decide. Thanks for seeing me.’

She went out of the door, passed through the security zone and waiting room, and returned to her car without a backward glance.

Her failure chafed like a stone in her shoe. She had sent a short text message to Schyman:
No interview today, Holmerud obstructive. Still possible, details this afternoon
. He hadn’t replied. Adam Alsing had finished for the day, so she switched the radio off.

What could she have done differently? Not much, probably. Gustaf Holmerud wasn’t stupid, even if he was half mad. He had managed to get himself convicted of four crimes he hadn’t committed, which demanded considerable perceptiveness and application. He was probably guilty of the fifth: the murder of his former girlfriend.

She was fifteen minutes into her drive back to Stockholm when her mobile rang, a number she didn’t recognize.

‘Good morning,’ a mournful male voice said. ‘My name is Johansson, I’m calling from the National Crime Unit.’

Unconsciously she sat up straighter in the driver’s seat. Was she allowed to talk on the phone while she drove? She felt suddenly uncertain.

‘Am I talking to Annika Bengtzon?’

Yes, he was. She slowed down.