Frozen Moment (24 page)
Authors: Camilla Ceder
'Am
I a suspect?'
'Just
answer the question. I'm sure you've seen enough detective shows on TV to know
that I have to ask.'
'After
work I went to Göta's Café Bar on Mariaplan, along with three colleagues. After
the others left I stayed on with a friend I met there, until about ten thirty,
then I took a taxi home.'
'Alone?'
'Yes,
alone.'
'And these colleagues and this…
friend
?'
He
emphasised the last word meaningfully. 'Can they confirm they spent the evening
with you?'
'Of course.
I'll give you their phone numbers. And the
friend in question was actually a female friend, an old classmate from
university.' He stood up with an expression of ill-concealed contempt. 'Right,
I'm going to work now - if you want to talk to me again you can bring me in for
questioning.' 'So you're working between Christmas and New Year? Where?' asked
Bärneflod, out of curiosity.
'Sheltered housing.
I'm on the afternoon shift today.'
1995
Her
art tutor squinted into the sun as he packed his Volvo estate.
'Are
you coming back after the summer, Maya?' he asked, lowering his sunglasses from
his forehead.
Maya
nodded.
'In
that case, keep painting until I see you again.'
He
stopped what he was doing.
'You
think I say that to everybody, but I don't.'
Maya
was balancing a piece of yellow mica on her bare foot, somewhat embarrassed.
She'd handed her work in regularly, always leaving it in his pigeonhole in the
staffroom, since she was too shy to hand it to him in person. They were mostly
small quick pencil sketches of people on the move. She had also tried painting
in oils, the result pictures with thick layers of colour, the surface
satisfyingly rough. She liked being able to feel all the other layers beneath
the top one.
Caroline
had posed for her, and would never know what was beneath the surface either.
Maya had begun to take pleasure in that too. But the rapid sketching on her
notepad was what gave her the most energy. Drawings done while she restlessly
waited for something
else,
more focused on the movement
and intentions of other people than on her own portrayal. This gave her the
chance to be surprised by the final result, by what or who emerged from the
melee of apparently insignificant events.
The
tutor's car was the last to leave a cloud of dust behind as it headed for the
bend in the road. The sound of the engine died away, leaving a compact silence.
Maya had longed to be alone with Caroline,
had
thought that some time together would cure the growing
silence between them. Instead she was terrified.
It
was only a couple of days since most of the students had left for the summer,
but the emptiness had already seeped into the walls. Maya was suddenly aware of
how worn the wood panelling was. How the floor was covered with dirty ingrained
marks, how the white paint in the window recesses had begun to flake. The
emptiness was even in the smell of the place: dampness and old chalk.
She
had grown used to the fact that with Caroline fidelity was tested; love was
subject to certain conditions, was portioned out, compared, constant proof
demanded. Even if she could see how destructive it was to turn love into a
power struggle, the form of the relationship was strangely familiar to her. Her
mother had always struggled with the proximity and distance of other people, on
the one hand terrified of being consumed, on the other of being alone. And what
is familiar feels safe.
2006
Tell
felt the pang of a guilty conscience, painfully familiar. Seja hadn't said a
word about him getting dressed up to go to the traditional police Christmas
party, which covered several counties and was held every year in elegant and
not particularly representative venues. This was the police showing its more
generous, more positive side, and everyone's partner was supposed to be dragged
around and introduced to colleagues. Food and drink, too much of both for some
people - there was always someone who went too far, talking out of turn or
kicking over the traces, always someone walking about the next day with their
head down. It was just an ordinary office party, but on a grand scale.
Not
that Seja could reasonably have expected to go along as his date. The times
they had met could still be counted on the fingers of one hand. In spite of
this,
and for the first time in ages - perhaps for the first
time ever - Tell felt the desire to force the issue. He
wanted
her at
this ridiculous party. While he was shaving he fantasised about introducing her
to Ostergren. He wallowed in his martyrdom. She was like his secret mistress,
even though neither of them was married. But this wasn't about taking Seja to a
party; it was about the fact that he was acting contrary to his principles,
that he had lost control, and as a consequence had lied to his employer. It was
about a lack of self- discipline; he should have been able to control himself.
He could have waited to embark on the relationship until they had finished with
Seja and the enquiry had been concluded. Instead he had gone to bed with her
while the investigation was ongoing.
In
addition, for as long as he could remember his relationships with women,
particularly the few he had managed to
prolong,
had
been characterised by constant feelings of guilt. The sense of being inadequate
was usually fed by accusations on the part of the woman that he was emotionally
inaccessible, and the frustration aroused by these accusations made him even
more closed in on himself, leading to a vicious circle which inevitably ended
with the break-up of the relationship.
With
hindsight he could see that in every one of his longer relationships (there had
been three) he had been well aware of his skewed priorities - of his tendency
to bury himself in his work, both mentally and in practical terms, in order to
avoid having to open up and run the risk of becoming vulnerable. And yet,
clearly, he had chosen not to change. Not once had he decided to give the whole
thing a real chance and try to make different choices. Instead he had carried
on doing more of the same, grimly observing the journey towards the demise of
each relationship.
Carina
had called him cold, lacking in empathy. Perhaps he was. But it was more likely
he had simply never regarded himself as a man with a woman by his side.
Managing to get a relationship to work was not part of the image he had of
himself. He had never had any kind of counselling, although perhaps he should
have done. So life just carried on as before, however many people he hurt along
the way.
'I
won't be too late, if you want to wait here. I'll give you the spare key, and
you can push it through the letter box if you go home during the evening.'
She
was leaning against the door jamb, wearing his white shirt.
'I'd
really like you to be here when I get back,' he said honestly, meeting her eyes
in the bathroom mirror as he knotted his tie.
She
slipped her arms around his waist and kissed the spot at the corner of his
mouth where the razor blade had nicked the skin and a narrow strip of dried
blood remained. For a moment she let the tip of her tongue rest just inside the
corner of his mouth, and the heat electrified his body.
'I
want to stay here,' he mumbled, almost twisting his neck out of joint in an
attempt to kiss her.
She
laughed teasingly and skipped away.
'Oh
no, Detective Inspector, you'll be late. You don't want to miss the speeches.
Or the canapés.'
The
assumption that there would be canapés was a serious underestimation of the
level of ambition among the top brass. Instead they were presented with an
ostentatiously expensive three-course dinner. Vidstrom, the commissioner,
tapped ceremoniously on his glass when they were part way through the main
course. As always he started his speech by emphasising that each and every one
of them should regard their invitation as a heartfelt thank you for all their
hard work over the past year. And as in previous years there were a certain number
of stage whispers about pay, security issues and several other much better ways
in which people would have preferred to be rewarded for their efforts; some of
these developed into animated discussions between tables, which eventually had
to be silenced by Vidström's secretary.
Tell
didn't join in the discussion for two reasons: for one thing he thought it
could well be interpreted as presumptuous by some people, since he was on quite
a good salary these days in comparison to many of the other guests. The fact
that he had started with nothing, or almost nothing, and had worked hard to
achieve promotion was of no relevance in this particular context. And secondly,
the fact that he risked his life on a daily basis - some crazed punter did pull
a knife on him from time to time - for a salary that was approximately a third
of the amount a twenty-two-year-old computer programmer earned wasn't something
he wished to take up on this particular evening. As he saw it, it was better to
be thanked with a three-course dinner than not be thanked at all.
After
the last mouthful of dessert had been shovelled down, the partygoers were let
loose to mingle with their brandy glasses and cocktails in another part of the
venue. Coffee cups and dirty plates were whisked into the kitchen by skilfully
invisible youngsters dressed in black and white. That was the end of the
freebies, but they were informed that the bar could provide anything from
extra-strength beer to twelve-year-old single malt whisky.
People
gathered as usual in their normal work groups to carry on talking about the
same topic they had discussed during dinner. For want of a better idea Tell
went and stood by the bar, along with his former colleague Jonas Palmlöf, who
had been replaced in the team by Gonzales. Karlberg, dressed in a suit for
once, was also without female company, and soon came to join them.
Karlberg
looked around the room. The chandeliers above their heads were exceptionally
large and suspended from a vaulted roof adorned with paintings. Tall windows
with recesses wide enough to lie down in were dressed with heavy dark-red
velvet drapes. A silver candelabrum burned in each and every one.
'Gustavsberg Palace.
Who's privileged enough to hang out
here the rest of the time, do you think?'
Palmlöf
wrinkled his nose.
'I
believe it's very popular for parties and conferences. That's why they booked
our work function between Christmas and New Year, when the rest of the country
is on holiday; it was fully booked before Christmas. I don't know
,
I'm not all that keen on the Dracula style. It's all a bit
dusty, somehow.'
'What
are you, a feng shui expert?' A
blonde
in a sparkly
silver dress clinked her sherry glass against Palmlöf's beer glass and smiled.
'Cheers.'
'Cheers.'
He
turned his back on his colleagues.
'I
don't even know what that means, but you look fantastic in that dress, like a
catwalk model.'
Tell
and Karlberg exchanged a meaningful look. Palmlöf was very popular with the
ladies
and never missed an opportunity to take advantage of
the fact. With a teasing wave over his shoulder he allowed the
blonde
to draw him towards a group on the far side of the
room.
'Oh
well, there he goes, I suppose it was only to be expected,' said Karlberg,
taking a large gulp of his Heineken. 'It certainly seems as if girls like his
Casanova act. He just goes for it. I'd never have the nerve. I'd be scared of
being laughed at, or that thing girls do when they roll their eyes at their
friends. I hate that.'
'And
you probably would be laughed at, Andreas. Cheap compliments have to be
delivered in the right way, or else they're just ridiculous. It has to be done
by someone like Palmlöf, who's quite obviously immune to the idea that he might
seem over the top. That's why it works. It would never even occur to him that
he might be on the wrong track.'
Tell
spotted Johan Björkman, a former colleague from his days on patrol, and laughed
at Karlberg's gloomy expression.
