Babylon (41 page)

Tell had tried looking up the case on the Internet. He found a couple of articles from British newspapers and a short interview with Carla Burke, plus a picture of her holding her hand up in front of her face. After four days imprisoned in the cellar, she had been rescued by a workman who was insulating a wall on the ground floor.

The image of Annelie Swerin, on her knees with her hands tied behind her back, came into his mind. He shuddered. If they’d arrived any later, Annelie Swerin could well have been dead.

The next article was about Carla Burke having married the workman who had saved her life.

He shut down the computer and headed straight for bed, without turning on the television.

64

Gothenburg

The following morning, Höije managed to arrange a long overdue chat with Tell. He spelled out their respective areas of responsibility, and where the exact demarcations lay. With the more pressing aspects of the Donner case behind him, Tell could afford to sit back and listen. There was nothing noteworthy or unreasonable in Höije’s words, apart from the fact that he was couching the blindingly obvious in the most pretentious terms possible.

‘We’ll get there in the end,’ Höije concluded. ‘We simply have to ensure that we respect each other’s professional roles. I can tolerate you pushing the boundaries from time to time, if you can tolerate the fact that I’ll have to intervene now and again.’

‘I can indeed.’

‘Good. And we’ll soon be able to put this case behind us.’

‘Yes.’

They were interrupted by a text message from Gonzales, which said that he and Karlberg and a couple of crime scene technicians were at a house in Pennygången in Högsbo. There had been a stabbing and they needed Tell to come over.

Tell remembered that Beckman lived not far away.

He drove towards Majorna with mixed feelings. He didn’t want to think about the blood, about how his colleague had avoided looking him in the eye as if she was ashamed. At the time he hadn’t been able to . . . it would have been impossible to take the time to . . . do what? Go home with her, console her, ask all the right questions. Miscarriage – the word didn’t sit comfortably in his mouth. And he hadn’t even known that Beckman was pregnant.

They didn’t have that kind of relationship. They were colleagues. But something had happened when they had worked together closely the previous year, when their former boss Ann-Christine Östergren had told them she was suffering from an incurable and aggressive form of cancer. Their mutual fear had brought Tell and Beckman closer, and at times they had acted almost like friends.

He usually preferred to mind his own business, as did Beckman; she demanded openness and honesty from those around her, while at the same time shielding her own life from public view, terrified of revealing that she needed anyone.

But he was her boss. It was his duty to make sure she was all right.

Tell found Beckman’s address on a street of interchangeable three-storey apartment blocks. He parked on the street and went inside. The window in the stairwell looked old and draughty. On the second floor he found a piece of paper stuck to a door: K. Beckman.

She answered his knock almost immediately, wearing a blue shirt over a pair of trousers. He felt relieved; stupidly, he had expected to
see her in the bloodstained clothes. He was also relieved that she looked cheery and didn’t seem particularly surprised to see him.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘What have you done to your hands?’

Tell waved his bandaged hand dismissively. ‘I’ll tell you some other time.’

He followed her into a small, lime-green galley kitchen. Before he had the chance to ask about the miscarriage and the fact that she had moved out of her family home after ten years of marriage, she asked him to tell her about the Donner case.

Tell gratefully took the ball and ran with it. ‘He’s definitely our man. He’s babbling away, and a whole load of people can’t wait to interpret what he’s coming out with.’

‘Aren’t you curious?’

‘About what?’

‘Who he is and why he did it?’

‘Not any more, to be perfectly honest. Are you?’

‘I am. I think just
wanting
to understand broken people who do desperate things makes the job easier.’

She was talking quickly, her voice tense. ‘For me, anyway. It protects me against burn-out. It stops me being so cynical.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘No, sorry, I know.’ Beckman fell silent and shook her head, embarrassed, as if she’d been caught out. She changed the subject: ‘And what was the story behind Ann-Marie’s computer? Was there anything on it to explain why Donner took it?’

‘Well, there was a message sent from an anonymous Hotmail address just before the murders, telling her to leave Henrik alone otherwise their affair would become common knowledge.’

They sat in silence for a while. ‘I just meant that now he’s safely behind bars, he can’t cause any more trouble,’ Tell said eventually. ‘There are explanations for everything. Victims become perpetrators and all that jazz. A story behind every crime. But that’s not something we need to worry about.’

‘A violent, verbally abusive father who had some kind of affair. An isolated, rural environment. A small community heavily influenced by old-fashioned values.’

Beckman smiled wanly at his surprise and leant back against the draining board before she went on.

‘His kidnapping of Carla Burke and his breakdown led to short-term psychiatric care. He was eventually deemed to have made a good recovery and fled to Gothenburg, where he met Henrik. Perhaps their relationship was a sexualisation of his desire for his father? Henrik became the father figure who accepted him at last, a father who accepted him as he was and made him feel valued.’

Tell’s bewilderment was obvious. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but how the hell do you know all this?’

She smiled. ‘I had a quick look at Axel’s notebook just before . . . before I had the miscarriage. But mostly I’ve filled in the gaps with my own interpretations. Just for the sake of it.’

‘Feel free to carry on.’

‘When Axel became aware that he was expendable – when Henrik fell in love with Ann-Marie, and was therefore “unfaithful”, just as his father had been – his feelings changed from hero worship to contempt. Axel couldn’t bear the betrayal; it reminded him of how his father had betrayed him. His anger at Henrik became mixed up with suppressed rage towards his father, perhaps Henrik might even have triggered forbidden homosexual impulses, how should I know? At any rate, Henrik had to go. Henrik, and everything else that reminded Donner of his past disappoinments.’

Tell was silent for a moment, then he burst out laughing. ‘You’re good at this stuff, you really are. But what about David Sevic?’

‘Aha.’ Beckman nodded eagerly. ‘I think Axel identified himself with Sevic’s son. According to Annelie, he was totally opposed to infidelity, possibly as a result of his own experience. As far as Annelie is concerned, she was also a rival for Henrik’s attention, and I think Axel believed she had seen through his façade in Istanbul. Plus David almost certainly knew more than was comfortable. He was Annelie’s confidant, after all.’

‘Although I’ve got a feeling that Axel liked Annelie,’ Tell said. ‘He didn’t kill her, even though he had the chance. He imprisoned her, but why? So that he could talk to her. He wanted to explain himself, perhaps he even wanted her for himself. And that’s why he killed Sevic. Is that possible?’

Beckman looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Well . . . I think you’re right in one respect. Axel Donner was a lonely person who’d invested deep emotions in this small group of students. When he was around them,
he became someone. He couldn’t cope with the feeling of being excluded. And he was afraid of change. He wanted things to stay the way they were, but he didn’t know how.’

‘I’m lost for words,’ said Tell.

‘It’s just speculation.’

He shook his head, but then his smile slowly faded and he looked at his shoes.

Beckman knew why he had come, and she also knew he hadn’t a clue what to say.

‘I lost the baby,’ she said softly. ‘I’d just got used to the idea that maybe I was going to have another child, but now it’s gone.’

Tell still didn’t know what to say.

‘But . . . I’m beginning to look at it pragmatically. It was for the best, I think.’

Tell nodded uncertainly and leaned against the stained kitchen table, which wobbled.

‘I’m renting the place furnished,’ she said, pointing at the table. ‘Most of my furniture is still at Göran’s. There’s no point fetching it until I’ve found an apartment, or a house.’ She laughed. ‘So where should I settle? Do I let him keep the bookcase? Questions you don’t really consider when you start wondering whether you have the courage to leave a doomed relationship – or whether you have the courage to stay.’

Tell waited. Beckman had hardly said a word about her marriage, not really, although he had read between the lines and gathered that it had been stormy.

‘By the end, I really wanted him to hit me, just once,’ she said suddenly, waving away Tell’s awkward protests. ‘Yes, Tell, today you’re just going to have to deal with the fact that I can’t do small talk . . . I provoked him to make him lose his temper. If he hit me it would mean a definitive end. I would have won and he would have lost. That would have made it easier to go, but he never did.’

She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand.

‘Recently, I was just trying to get at him in every possible way. Telling him how unhappy he made me, how disappointed I was, how our life was so different from what he’d promised. I wanted to reclaim ten years of my life, and the only way I could do that was if he admitted it had all been his fault.’

‘But you made your mind up in the end?’

‘It’s strange, I don’t remember when . . . But I do have a crystal-clear memory of the moment I decided to live my life with Göran. There’s no point in talking about that now, of course, but I remember exactly what he meant to me and how I . . . I don’t really understand it myself. Perhaps the Göran I thought I knew never existed. Perhaps he existed only in my head. Then suddenly, one day, it just dawned on me. I was fighting tooth and nail to get close to him, pleading and whining, offering compromises, then screaming insults at him. I was trying to get as close as I thought I wanted to be, ought to be with my life partner. Otherwise why would we call it a life partner?’

‘And the more you fought, the more he pulled away, I suppose?’

Suddenly the whole thing seemed embarrassingly obvious to her. ‘Of course. And to make it even more complicated, I think a part of me was also frightened of closeness.’

She ignored Tell’s confusion.

‘This pattern, I mean. On a subconscious level I shared the responsibility for forming it. Because I didn’t have the courage to be close to someone either, to be vulnerable in that way.’

‘But is that what you have to do?’ Tell asked with a hint of panic.

Beckman had long since passed the boundaries of what Tell could relate to, but her words affected him nonetheless.

‘Of course. That’s what real love is. Sooner or later, you have to make that choice, unless you want it to slip through your fingers.’

He looked down at his hands, his expression troubled, and Beckman sighed.

‘I don’t know . . . I just don’t know any more. Maybe I’ve never really known what I wanted, and that’s why I’ve never had the courage to fully commit. To anything.’

‘That’s just not true. You’re one of the most competent police officers I have ever worked with.’

‘I know I’m good at my job.’ Beckman moved over to the window and stood with her back to him. ‘I was in such a panic when I found out I was pregnant. It was a mistake, a one-off with Göran weeks ago. I could see only obstacles and demands, I thought it would be embarrassing; that I would just look pathetic.’

She turned around to face him. A single tear crept down the side of her nose; apart from that she was quite composed.

‘Then everything changed and it all fell into place: me and Göran. Our genes, our history, joined together in this child. I was completely absorbed by that way of thinking, blinded. Do you understand? This sudden change of heart, and then I didn’t get to keep it. I didn’t get to keep the child or the strength that came with it. The wonderful feeling that everything, even the impossible, is possible. That it’s possible to say goodbye to cynicism, to stop sneering when people say things like
love conquers all
. It was real for a little while. This new child. And everything else seemed unimportant.’

She wiped her eyes, then went over to the sink, poured a glass of water and drank it in one.

Tell undid his top button. He wanted to get out of here. He wasn’t used to this sort of talk. He was the wrong man in the wrong place, and he was no use to Beckman. He could see only himself in what she said, himself and Seja and all their problems. Whatever those were.

Beckman’s words simply reflected his own questions. Would the exact moment come when he knew he wanted to spend his life with Seja? Deep down, did he really want to share his life with another person?

He was far from sure about his ability to make such a commitment.

He had been nervous around Seja in the beginning. But, at the same time, he had been afraid; he felt the cowardice that had been his constant companion for such a long time.

Seja was on his mind, but Beckman was standing in front of him; she jumped as if she had felt a sudden stab of pain and placed one hand on the side of her stomach. He got up to help.

‘Shouldn’t you be lying down?’

She held up her hands as a shield, protecting herself from his distracted concern.

‘No, it’s OK. It’s not that painful any more.’

Tell remained standing, his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides.

‘I’m sorry I can’t be more help. I’ve . . . been distracted ever since we brought in Axel Donner, the whole circus. Everything that happened, there was a fire in the apartment, it was all so quick, yet it seemed to
be in slow motion . . . You know how it feels sometimes. It’s as if I’m drifting up in the air and I can’t get back down to earth. I’ve got a sense of unreality that just won’t go away.’