The dark outside. Staring into it he could just make out some of the trees.
He checked his watch. Ten past one. He had spent an hour looking at nothing in particular. He couldnt put it off any more.
She had told Ejder about two videotapes.
She had made a copy. Just in case. Someone might wipe one of the tapes, or record on top of her film, or simply try to lose the whole thing and replace it with an empty cassette.
Sven Sundkvist could not be sure that what he was watching was identical to the recording on the other tape.
He assumed that it was.
They look nervous, the way people do when they are not used to staring at the single eye that preserves what it looks at for posterity.
Grajauskas speaks first.
Two sentences. She turns to Sljusareva, who translates.
This is my reason. This is my story.
Grajauskas speaks again, two sentences, with her eyes fixed on her friend.
Her face has a serious expression. She nods and again Sjusareva turns to the camera and translates.
When you hear this, I hope that the man I am going to talk about is dead. I hope that he has felt my shame.
They speak very distinctly, careful to enunciate every word in both Russian and Swedish.
He leaned forward and stopped the tape.
He didnt want to go on.
What he felt was no longer unease or dread, rather an overwhelming anger of a kind he only rarely had to confront. No more doubt. He had hoped, as everyone always does. But now he knew, he knew that Ewert had manipulated the tape and had a motive for doing it.
Sven Sundkvist got up, went into the kitchen and put on the coffee machine, a strong brew to help him think. It would be a long night.
The crossword was still lying on the kitchen table. He moved it to make room for a sheet from Jonass drawing pad, picked up one of the boys marker pens, a purple one, and drew lines, haphazard at first, on the white surface.
A man.
An older man. Massive torso, not much hair, piercing eyes.
Ewert.
He smiled at himself when he realised. He had in fact drawn Ewert in purple marker ink.
He knew why, of course. A long night was staring him in the face.
He had known Ewert for nearly ten years. To begin with he had been ordered about and shouted at they all had but at some point he had suddenly become aware of something like friendship with his difficult boss and had become one of the few who were addressed normally, men whom Ewert invited into his office and confided in, as much as he ever did. Later Sven had come to know Ewert Grens well enough to realise how little he understood him. He
had never been to Ewerts flat, and you couldnt really know people whose homes youd never seen. On the other hand, Ewert had been here, for supper or just for a cup of coffee, and had sat at this very table flanked by Anita and Jonas.
Sven had invited Ewert to his home, a place where he could be himself. Ewert had never reciprocated.
He looked at the drawing and started to fill in the purple mans jacket and shoes with more purple. He knew nothing about the private person. He knew the policeman, DSI Grens, who was first in the office every morning, long before everyone else, played Siw Malmkvist songs with the volume turned up, worked all day and all night, often stayed overnight in his office to carry on with an unfinished investigation when dawn broke. He was the best policeman Sven had ever encountered, incapable of making simple errors and always prepared to pursue every case to its conclusion, regardless of consequences. To him, the investigation alone mattered, to the exclusion of everything else.
But now he didnt know any longer.
He drank the rest of the coffee in his cup and refilled it. He needed more.
Another marker pen, a screaming shade of green this time. He used it for making notes in the space next to the purple man.
Ejder sees the video in LGs carrier bag.
Krantz finds it at the scene, notes that it has been used. He records two sets of probably female fingerprints. One set is LGs
.
Krantz hands it to EG in the mortuary. EG takes charge of it, but does not record anywhere, i.e., not with the duty staff or the forensic boys.
SS finds a video in EGs office. The tape is blank.
In the interview, Ejder states that LG told him that a copy of the video is deposited in a Central Station storage locker.
SS gets access to the locker, brings the tape home. SS
creeps around the house at night, watches the video and can confirm that it is not blank
.
He stopped making notes. He could have added,
SS is too soft to carry on watching it
, but instead he just sat and looked at the ink version of Ewert. What have you done? I know that you deleted evidence, and I know why. He scrunched up the paper and threw it across the table towards the sink. Then he tried to solve the crossword, testing one letter after another in the three empty squares, but gave up after a quarter of an hour.
He wandered back to the sitting room.
The videotape demanded attention.
He could have not collected it. Or not brought it home.
Now he has no choice. He has to watch it.
Lydia Grajauskas again. The camera slips out of focus, a few seconds pass and then the cameraman signals to carry on.
She looks at her friend, waiting for her to translate. Sljusareva strokes Lydias cheek before she turns to the camera.
When I met Bengt Nordwall in Klaipeda, he said it was good job and very well paid.
Sven Sundkvist stopped the tape and fled into the kitchen again. He peered into the fridge, drank some milk straight from the carton and closed the door quietly. Mustnt wake Anita.
He had not put it into words, but this was exactly what he had feared.
A different truth.
When the truth changes, lies emerge. A lie can only be dealt with when it is known to be a lie.
He went back into the sitting room and settled on the sofa.
He had just started to be part of Bengt Nordwalls big lie.
He was convinced that Ewert had watched this very film and realised the same as he had. Ewert had watched and then wiped it, to protect his friend. Now Sven faced the same dilemma. Bengt Nordwalls lie had become Ewerts. If he himself did nothing, he too would have to live with it. He could do the same as Ewert: look away to protect a friends reputation.
He started the video again and fast-forwarded it to find out how long the film was. Twenty minutes. He checked the time. Half past two. If he started from the beginning and watched the whole of Lydia Grajauskass story, he would be finished before three. Then he could tiptoe into the bedroom, leave a note on the pillow explaining that he had a night job, get dressed and take the car into town. The drive took only twenty minutes.
It was nearly four oclock when he opened his office door. Morning had already arrived, bringing light from somewhere out at sea, from the east, light that had followed him along the deserted stretch of motorway between Gustavsberg and central Stockholm.
He got himself more coffee, not so much to stay awake his mind was alive with ideas, and sleep was simply not an option but because he hoped the coffee would help him to sharpen up and get a grip before the buzzing in his head took over and crystallised into its own conclusions, the way thoughts do at night.
He cleared his desk by piling papers and photographs and folders on the floor. When he sat down at the bare desktop, the wooden surface seemed new to him. He had probably never seen it like this, not for years anyway; he had worked here for five or six years.
He took a ball of paper from his pocket. It was the drawing of Ewert, rescued from the kitchen sink. He flattened it out in the middle of the desk. Now he knew that the purple man had gone beyond the point of no return and tampered with evidence, in order to protect his own interests, to protect a lie that wasnt his.
Absently retracing the outline of the man he had drawn, Sven Sundkvist felt an impotent rage. He had no idea what to do with this knowledge.
Lars Ĺgestam did what he usually did when he couldnt sleep. He dressed in his suit and black shoes, put only the minimum in his briefcase and left his house to walk into work with the dawn three hours through Stockholms western suburbs.
It had been an odd conversation, hard to follow too. As a rule he didnt have problems understanding but this time Ewert Grens, a man he both admired and pitied, had insisted that on the one hand the police had no notion of Lydia Grajauskass motive for knocking out her guard, taking five hostages and killing a policeman before shooting herself, but that, on the other hand, her best friend Alena Sljusareva knew nothing that had any bearing on the case and could therefore be left to her own devices back home in Lithuania.
Sleep had been impossible.
At the time, he had decided to trust Grens after all.
Now, in the light of the rising sun, he walked with purpose. He had already phoned Söder Hospital to say he wanted to visit the mortuary once more.
He didnt knock. Nothing odd about that, Ewert Grens never knocked.
Sven started and looked at the door.
Ewert?
Bloody hell, youre early, Sven. Whats up?
Sven blushed, aware of how obvious it was. He stared down at his desktop, embarrassed and exposed. There he was, staring at his purple version of Ewert.
I dont know. It seemed a good idea.
For Christs sake, its just gone five in the morning. Normally there isnt another soul around at this time.
Grens made a move to step into the room. Sven Sundkvist
glanced nervously at his drawing and covered it with his hand.
Come on, son. Whats on your mind?
Sven was not much good at lying, especially not to people he liked.
Nothing special. Theres just such a lot to do at the moment.
He was suffocating. Must be as red as a beetroot.
Ewert, you know how it is. Söder Hospital, all that. The media are on our backs. And youd rather give all that a miss. But we need some kind of basic story for the press office.
No more of this, I cant handle it, he thought, looking down at the desktop.
Ewert Grens took a step forward, stood still for a moment, then backed out, talking as he went.
Good. Im sure you know what youre doing, Sven. And Im pleased youre dealing with the hacks.
Söder Hospital was a huge lump of a building, usually ugly, but now in the early sunlight it was almost beautiful, coated in a pale red glow that cast its reflection on gleaming windows and roofs. It was nearly six oclock when Lars Ĺgestam walked through the main hall, which was barely awake.
