Marked for Life (12 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY

GUNNAR ÖHRN WAS
browsing the internet edition of the local papers. He leaned his head back while he looked at the sports pages. He always read the sports before the news. Always the financial pages before politics. And always the arts pages before the auto section. Blogs and family pages—he never touched those.

During the month since he and Anneli had separated most recently, Gunnar established his own routines that suited him perfectly. He got up at half past six, ate breakfast and drove into the police station. He was often home by six in the evening and would eat something, then go into town and do his errands if his son was not with him. By eight o'clock he was home again and would read or be on his computer until midnight. If the weather was decent, he might consider going out for an hour's walk, but not often. Anneli had always insisted he needed to get more exercise and when they lived together she would drag him off on a walk. On his own, he could decide himself how fast he would walk, and he preferred a leisurely pace.

Gunnar left the sports pages and clicked his way to the local news, where he read about a fifteen-year-old trumpeter who had been awarded a music scholarship of two thousand kronor. The boy wore braces on his teeth and reminded him of his son, Adam.

Two days a week Adam would come for dinner, if his sports schedule allowed. They would go out for pizza and sometimes a movie. Gunnar had thought about volunteering to be an assistant coach for his son's team, but he had already missed the single pre-season training session. Maybe next time, he thought as he saw the picture of himself appear on the computer screen. The photograph had been taken at the morning press conference.

After the boy had been found dead, a horde of print, TV and radio journalists had besieged the press conference and they had been forced to move to a bigger space. The largest conference room in the police building had to be opened and that too became overcrowded. The air was filled with the buzz of voices and radio equipment being tested. Gunnar Öhrn and the county police commissioner, Carin Radler, had first welcomed everybody and then turned it over to the press officer, Sara Arvidsson. She had described the murder of Hans Juhlén but played down the murder of the boy. She had also made a point of informing them that Kerstin Juhlén had been released from custody but that she was still helping them with their inquiries. It had been one hell of a press meeting. Short, intense but necessary, according to Carin Radler. It was always better to gather the press and feed them some tidbits than let them speculate wildly because of a lack of information.

Sara Arvidsson answered most of the journalists with a brisk “No comment!” She hadn't said much at all about the investigation, which was now in its fourth day and had aroused considerable attention.

Gunnar opened another news website and saw a photo of himself. In profile. On a third site you could only see half his body. Instead the photographer had focused on Sara.

“Good thing,” he muttered and closed his computer. He didn't like being at press conferences while an investigation was still going on. There was always a risk that somebody would reveal more than necessary. Investigative journalists also had a knack of asking trick questions and making false claims that were later transformed into absolute truths by other writers who didn't restrict themselves to reliable sources. And it wasn't nice to always have to repeat “No comment,” but it was necessary. Especially in this case.

Gunnar sincerely hoped that the letters and numbers that Ola Söderström had shown him that morning would lead to something.

The team would be meeting again at twelve o'clock. He looked at the silver watch on his wrist. Half an hour to go. He decided to grab some lunch from the cafeteria beforehand.

* * *

Jana's hands shook as she unlocked the door.

Once she was inside her apartment, she kicked off her shoes and sank down on the floor with her back to the door. She remained sitting like that a while. Getting her breath back.

Everything that had happened was like a fog. She had made her apologies and said she had an urgent meeting with a client, then she left the forensics center as fast as possible. She could hardly remember how she got home. Her driving must have been careless because on one occasion she had only just avoided crashing into another driver, who had been traveling below the speed limit. She couldn't remember even where she had parked, nor how she had made her way upstairs.

Now she slowly got up, tripped over the threshold of the bathroom and stopped herself from falling by catching hold of the washbasin. Her entire body was trembling as she looked for her pocket mirror in the bathroom cupboard. Irritated when she couldn't immediately locate it, she knocked all the contents of one drawer onto the floor. A bottle of perfume smashed, and its sweet scent ran out over the floor tiles. She pulled out another drawer and rummaged carelessly among all the things inside, but still no mirror.

Jana stopped for a moment to think. Her handbag! It was in her handbag. She went back into the hall and opened the wardrobe. There, in the corner of her dark blue purse, lay the round pocket mirror.

She took it out and hurried back into the bathroom. Then she stood in front of the wall mirror and hesitated. Her heart was thumping, her body trembling. With shaking hands she pulled her hair to one side, angled the little mirror toward her neck and held her breath.

She didn't dare look. She shut her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them again, she saw the reflected letters.

K-E-R.

KER.

* * *

“The god of death,” said Mia.

“What?” said Henrik.

“
Thanatos
means god of death.”

Mia zoomed in on the text displayed by the digital encyclopedia.

They had left Linköping and were on their way back to Norrköping in a hurry. The meeting with Björn Ahlmann had gone on longer than expected and now they would be hard-pressed to get to the update briefing at noon.

Mia was reading aloud from the passenger seat.

“Now listen to this. Thanatos is a god of death in Greek mythology. He was extremely fast and strong. If you saw Thanatos with a torch pointing downwards, it meant that somebody would die. But if the torch was pointing upwards, that was a sign that there was still hope.”

“Do you believe in all that?” said Henrik.

“No, but what the hell, the kid had the name on his neck. That must mean something.”

“Or perhaps it was just what he was called.”

“Or wasn't.”

“He can't have carved it himself, at any rate. That's for certain.”

“Perhaps with the help of a mirror.”

“No, it's impossible to get the letters so straight.”

“But who would write a god's name on a child's neck?”

“Don't know.”

“Some crazy bastard.”

“Or friend. Perhaps he belongs to a gang?”

Mia deleted the name and entered a new word in the search engine.

Henrik signaled to change lanes.

A traffic sign showed that they only had ten kilometers to the exit to Norrköping South. Mia was absorbed online and Henrik's thoughts wandered initially to the dead boy and then to Jana Berzelius. During the autopsy she had suddenly made her excuses and quickly left. She was always the one who stayed longest and who asked extra questions or even challenged Björn Ahlmann's conclusions. Today she hadn't asked a single question during the examination of the boy's body.

Henrik wrinkled his brow. Of course it had been dreadful to see such a little body on the pathologist's table. Was it when she saw the letters on the boy's neck that her face first turned a bit pale? Or had he imagined it? Why was he questioning her behavior?

He and Mia stepped into the conference room thirty seconds before the meeting was due to start, and Jana was already there with her usual focus. Next to her sat Anneli, all her concentration on the local paper. Ola and Gunnar sat with their heads close together, talking quietly.

Mia flopped down onto her usual chair and stretched out to reach the coffee thermos on the table. Henrik sat down next to Jana.

Gunnar got up from his chair and said, “Okay, everybody. It's time to get to work. We'll start straightaway with Henrik and Mia. You've been to forensics, can you tell us what you know about the boy's injuries?”

Henrik nodded, clasped his hands on the table and leaned forward.

“Björn has confirmed what we already know. The boy was shot from behind and it seems that he was brutally assaulted before, although not sexually, and that he was under the influence of drugs, heroin to be exact.”

“How old was he?” Gunnar asked.

“Around nine or ten, and apparently already an addict—he had sores and infections on his arms.”

“Pitiful.”

“Yes, it's uncommon to find such a young addict,” said Gunnar.

“Once you start, you are hooked, regardless of age. Heroin is an extremely addictive drug,” said Ola.

“But it's uncommon to find such a young addict,” said Gunnar.

“So we think he was at Hans Juhlén's house possibly to steal money for his addiction?” said Mia.

“Well, that's one theory,” said Gunnar. “We must get a better idea of who the boy was, whether he was a member of a gang, a dealer, an addict, who he bought the stuff from, sold to, and so on.”

“We need to reach out to all the heroin addicts and dealers we know.” Gunnar walked up to the window.

“Selling often takes place in deprived areas,” said Mia as she brushed the palm of her hand back and forth across the table.

“But drugs are a problem in all classes of society, aren't they?” said Henrik.

Mia looked over at Jana and smiled.

“Only in rich areas it is better hidden,” said Mia.

“But what would make children sell drugs?” said Henrik.

“Money, of course,” said Mia quickly. “If there were summer jobs for all teenagers, they wouldn't need to push drugs.”

“So you're saying that they start selling drugs because the council doesn't give them summer jobs?” said Jana. That was the first time she opened her mouth at the meeting. She leaned across the table and glared at Mia. “Allow me to smile at that. A job is something you find yourself, it's not something you're given.”

Mia clenched her teeth, and folded her arms over her chest.

That prosecutor could go to hell. “But we're talking about a ten-year-old here, and ten-year-olds don't have summer jobs,” said Henrik.

Mia gave him an irritated look.

“But why would a ten-year-old be involved in drugs? Could he have been forced into it?” said Ola.

“Forced to deal? That's very likely,” said Henrik.

Gunnar pulled his chair out but didn't sit down. “Let's skip the speculation and concentrate on something else. The tire tracks next to the crime scene at Viddviken come from Goodyear. Marathon 8. We don't know for certain whether the tracks are from the white van that the witness had seen. Incidentally, have we got any more on that?”

“Yes, I spoke to Gabriel and according to the witness it seems the vehicle was an Opel,” said Mia.

“Model?”

“He didn't know.”

“Well how did he know that it was an Opel?”

“I suppose he recognized it.”

“But not the model?”

“No, not the model.”

“How big?”

“He described it as a little van.”

“And what is the witness's name?”

“Erik Nordlund.”

“Where does he live?”

“Jansberg. He was doing some forestry work out there and saw the van driving at high speed outside his house. He lives close to Arkösund Road just a couple of kilometers before the turning down to Viddviken.”

“Ask him to come down right away. He must surely know which type of van he saw. Print out pictures of all the Opel models and put them in front of him. We must find that van. Even if it isn't connected with the murder, the driver might have seen something that's important.”

Gunnar walked back and forth in front of the map on the wall, then picked up a red marker and wrote on the whiteboard:
Opel
.

They were still nowhere with this investigation, and it was extremely frustrating. He sat down and tried to pull himself together.

“You said the van was driving fast,” Henrik said to Mia.

“Yes, according to the witness, it was,” said Mia.

“Are there any speed cameras on Arkösund Road?” said Henrik.

“Yep.”

“Perhaps it was caught by the camera?”

“Good point, Henrik. Check with the department of transportation up in Kiruna. They'll be able to tell us if their cameras registered any car that violated the speed limit that evening,” said Gunnar.

Ola raised a finger. “I'll do that,” he said. “But have you abandoned the theory about the boy coming by boat?”

“No, but nobody has seen or heard of a boat in the area at that time. So we'll concentrate on the van first.”

Gunnar nodded to Ola. “Okay, over to you.”

“Right-o.”

Ola pressed a few keys on his keyboard and opened the document with the letters and numbers; he started the projector but the screen showed nothing.

“Now what's wrong?” he said and got up from his chair. “Is it the light or what?”

Ola adjusted his cap and then climbed up onto the conference table to reach the apparatus hanging from the ceiling.

Jana glanced at him as she took short shallow breaths. Ever since she had left home she had been struggling to retain her composure. Her calm was only surface-deep, and she couldn't really control her nerves. Several times she had to remind herself to focus. She stretched out to reach the coffee thermos, which was in front of Mia. Even though her insides felt like one big raw nerve, her movements didn't betray that.