The Crow Girl (98 page)

‘Can you make the picture sharp enough to see the registration numbers?’ she asks, turning to Kevin.

‘I get you,’ he says, leaning over the mixing desk and zooming in on the cars, then making the image crystal clear by quickly pressing a few buttons.

‘And now you’d like me to find out who owns the cars?’ he says.

‘Have you got time?’ Jeanette asks, smiling at him.

‘Only because you’re a friend of Mikkelsen’s,’ he says. ‘Just don’t let it become a habit.’

He winks at her, writes down the registration numbers and goes back to his room.

From the corner of her eye she sees Hurtig looking at her from one side.

‘Impressed?’ she asks as she removes the video cassette and inserts the CD.

‘Very,’ he replies. ‘So what are we watching next?’

‘Films from Hannah Östlund’s computer.’ She leans back and steels herself for what’s about to come. ‘Let’s see if it is even worse, as he implied.’

‘Is that even possible?’ Hurtig mutters as a small room appears on the screen. The soundtrack of the film is full of tinny hissing.

Jeanette thinks it looks like a shed. In the background are a wheelbarrow and some buckets, rakes and other garden equipment.

‘This looks like it was filmed from a television,’ Hurtig says. ‘You can tell by the flickering and the sound quality. The original was probably an old VHS.’

The picture lurches for a few moments as whoever’s holding the camera seems to lose their balance.

Then a face appears, hidden behind a home-made mask that’s supposed to be a pig. The snout is made out of what looks like a plastic mug. The camera pulls back to reveal more people. They’re all wearing capes and similar pig masks. Now three girls are visible as well, on their knees behind a large plate with something unidentifiable on it.

‘That must be Hannah and Jessica,’ Hurtig says, pointing at the screen.

Jeanette nods, recognising the girls from the photograph in the school yearbook.

She realises that this must be what Annette Lundström had talked about. The initiation ritual that got out of hand and led to Hannah and Jessica leaving the school.

‘And the one next to them must be Victoria Bergman,’ Jeanette says, looking at the thin, fair-haired girl with bright blue eyes. It seems to her that Victoria is smiling. But it isn’t an amused smile, more mocking. It’s almost as if she’s in on it, Jeanette thinks. That Victoria knows what’s going to happen. There’s also something vaguely familiar about her that she can’t put her finger on, but she soon has other things to think about.

One of the masked girls takes a step forward and starts speaking.

‘Welcome to Sigtuna College for the Humanities,’ she says, as someone empties a bucket over Hannah, Jessica and Victoria. The soaked girls spit, cough and hiss.

Hurtig shakes his head. ‘Bloody upper-class brats,’ he mutters.

They watch the rest of the film in shared silence.

The final sequence shows Victoria leaning forward and starting to eat the contents of the plate in front of them. When one of the girls in the background takes off her mask and throws up, Jeanette recognises her as well. The young woman puts her mask on again, but the few seconds were enough.

‘Annette Lundström,’ Jeanette declares.

‘Shit, yes …’

‘How did your meeting with her go?’ Jeanette asks.

‘Kind of OK,’ he says, and clears his throat. ‘Some useful information, I think. But we can deal with that later.’

As they start to watch the next film she soon understands what Kevin meant about Hannah Östlund’s films having some sort of philosophy.

The scene they’re watching appears to be taking place in a pigpen at a farm. There’s hay on the ground, which is dark with mud, or possibly something else. Shit, Jeanette thinks with disgust, pig shit. A row of people walk into the shot; they’re all fully dressed and they sit down in a row around the pigpen, and she recognises all of them.

From the left, Per-Ola Silfverberg, then his wife, Charlotte, holding a small child, and Jeanette presumes that must be their foster-daughter, Madeleine. Then Hannah Östlund, Jessica Friberg and lastly Fredrika Grünewald. And at the edge of the picture is a man’s profile.

It feels like all Jeanette has seen in the past few hours are images from her own nightmares about the cases she’s been investigating recently. All the key players are there, pretty much everyone who’s involved, and for a moment she is seized by a sense of unreality, as if she were actually in a nightmare, and she feels compelled to sneak a look at Hurtig.

OK, she thinks. He’s in the nightmare as well, and is just as dumbstruck as I am.

When two naked boys step into the picture – or, rather, are shoved in by someone hidden behind the camera – the nightmare is complete.

Itkul and Karakul, she thinks, even though she knows they can’t be the brothers from Kazakhstan because they hadn’t been born when this film was recorded. Besides, these boys are clearly of East Asian origins.

They start to fight, first feebly and warily, then more intensely, and when one of them manages to get hold of the other one’s hair, the second boy is furious and flails around wildly. But it doesn’t help. A powerful blow to the head floors him.

Then the other boy sits on top of him and starts punching him.

Jeanette is feeling sick and freezes the picture. Organised dogfights, she thinks. Had Ivo been right from the very start?

‘Christ,’ she says to Hurtig with a sigh. ‘Is he beating the other boy to death?’

Hurtig looks at her intently, but says nothing.

She fast-forwards instead, which makes is slightly easier to bear the abuse that follows.

After a couple of minutes she punches the stop button and returns to normal speed again. To her relief she sees that the boy on the ground is still alive; his chest is moving up and down as he breathes. The other boy gets up and stands in the middle of the filthy floor of the pen. Then he walks towards the camera, and just before he disappears out of view he gives it a quick smile. She quickly rewinds a few frames, and freezes the image once more, in the middle of the boy’s smile.

‘Do you see that?’ she says.

‘I see it,’ Hurtig replies quietly. ‘He’s proud.’

She lets the film run again, but nothing more happens apart from the child in Charlotte Silfverberg’s lap starting to wriggle, and just as she starts to comfort the child the film stops.

Philosophy, Jeanette thinks. Just as with the film from Sigtuna College, the sexual elements are incomprehensible to her, and she wonders if this is really all about sexuality.

Who could get turned on by this?

‘Can you manage any more?’ she asks Hurtig.

‘To be honest … I don’t know.’ He looks tired and demoralised.

They’re interrupted by a quick knock at the door, and Kevin comes in with some sheets of paper in his hand. ‘How are you getting on?’ he asks. ‘Have you seen the film on the farm?’

‘Yes,’ Jeanette replies, then falls silent because she doesn’t know what she can say about what she’s just watched.

‘The rest of the material on Östlund’s computer is more obvious child pornography,’ Kevin says, and Jeanette decides instantly that those films will have to wait. That’s a case for National Crime. She’s got what she needed. Evidence of the sect’s existence, and that Ulrika Wendin’s story was true. Maybe she’ll also be able to find out who was sitting in the corner during the rape.

‘Would you be able to help me compare this profile with the man in the hotel room?’ she asks, rewinding the film to the part where the man in profile is visible.

‘Sure.’ With a few quick movements Kevin brings up the two sequences alongside each other on the screen. There’s no doubt that it’s the same man.

‘How did you do with the registration numbers?’ She can hear how agitated her voice sounds.

He nods. ‘Printouts from the vehicle registry from the time when the recording was made.’

Jeanette looks at the list of names to whom the cars were registered. She’s aware that it might contain innocent people who just happened to be staying the night at the hotel where the recording was made. But when she sees the names beside the various registration numbers, she realises that she’s looking at a list of the men who raped Ulrika Wendin. A list of names as guilty as the row of spectators in the film they just watched of the pigpen at the farm.

The names on the list are all followed by dates of birth and ID numbers:

BENGT BERGMAN

KARL LUNDSTRÖM

ANDERS WIKSTRÖM

CARSTEN MÖLLER

VIGGO DÜRER

Just as Jeanette opens her mouth to read the list out to Hurtig, her mobile phone starts to vibrate in her inside pocket.

JENS HURTIG CAN
tell from Jeanette’s terse responses and facial expression that Ivo Andrić had something very important to say.

‘The same person that dumped the boy in Norra Hammarbyhamnen was in Ulrika Wendin’s flat,’ Jeanette says, putting her mobile back in her inside pocket. ‘The fingerprints from the tape match some that Ivo found on Ulrika’s fridge. And it’s probably someone who’s been treated for cancer.’

‘Cancer?’ Hurtig says. ‘How does that work?’

‘Chemotherapeutic drugs, cell poisons, can have side effects in the form of anaemia, hair loss or depleted bone marrow, for instance, but certain drugs can also lead to inflammation of the soles of the feet and palms of the hands, as well as the toes and fingers. The side effects can lead to bleeding and the loss of skin from the fingers, and that’s what Ivo thinks happened in this case.’

‘OK. So he suspects that the person who tied the bag over the boy has been treated for cancer. How sure is he?’

‘Ivo’s compared pictures of the side effects with our prints, and he says he’s ninety per cent sure, maybe ninety-five.’

‘That’s a lot to take in all at once,’ Hurtig says. ‘National alert for Ulrika Wendin, then?’

Jeanette nods. The look on her washed-out face gives Hurtig a lump in his stomach, because he can see that she likes the girl.

He turns his head to study the printout in Jeanette’s hand. ‘So, those are the men who were at the hotel when Ulrika Wendin was raped,’ he says. ‘Bengt Bergman, Karl Lundström, and …’ He leans closer to get a better look. ‘Viggo Dürer?’

‘That bastard keeps popping up. He’s been at the edge of the picture the whole time, and now literally in those depraved films.’

‘And he’s dead, along with Bergman and Lundström. What about the other names, then? Anyone we know? Anders Wikström and Carsten Möller?’

‘Don’t you remember? Karl Lundström mentioned an Anders Wikström who had a cottage in Ånge. When he was first questioned, the bastard said that one of the films he had on his computer had been filmed there.’

Hurtig remembers now. Someone named Anders Wikström had cropped up early on in the investigation into Karl Lundström. But the only Wikström they had found in Ånge had been a senile old man who had been written off immediately.

‘But that line of inquiry was dismissed by Mikkelsen,’ he points out.

‘Yes, it was.’ Jeanette looks thoughtful. ‘But Anders Wikström exists, and now we’ve got his ID number.’

‘And Carsten Möller?’

‘No idea.’ She gets her mobile out again, taps in a number and puts the phone to her ear. ‘Åhlund? Put out a national alert for Ulrika Wendin at once, then I’d like you to check something for me. No, two things, actually …’ Hurtig hears her repeat the names and ID numbers of Anders Wikström and Carsten Möller.

Jeanette is as terse with Åhlund as she had been with Ivo Andrić. Hurtig watches as she quickly makes notes on the printout containing the names of the men who raped Ulrika Wendin and the registration numbers of their cars. A few minutes pass with Jeanette issuing curt orders, and Hurtig realises that Åhlund is working hard at the other end of the line.

Jeanette looks completely exhausted as she ends the call. But Hurtig reflects that this is nothing to worry about, seeing as she works best when they’re under pressure. ‘What did Åhlund say?’ He glances at the printout and sees that Jeanette has written the word ‘surgeon’.

‘Carsten Möller used to be a paediatric doctor before he moved to Cambodia. The trail ends there. And Anders Wikström doesn’t own a cottage in Ånge. But on the other hand he was reported missing in Thailand six months ago.’

‘So at least there is an Anders Wikström,’ Hurtig says. ‘Lundström was a bit confused, wasn’t he? Maybe he got them muddled up? Anders Wikström was in the film, whereas someone else might own a cottage in Ånge. That could be it …’

Jeanette agrees, and Hurtig looks around the room. I hate them, he thinks, all the bastards who do things that mean a room like this has to exist.

‘So,’ Jeanette says, ‘how did your talk with Annette Lundström go?’

He thinks about the film of the girls at Sigtuna College. It hadn’t looked like Annette Lundström was enjoying her role as a bully. She had been sick.

‘Annette’s deep in psychosis,’ he says. ‘But she did confirm most of what Sofia Zetterlund told you, and I think there’s a pattern in what she said, even though she isn’t well. She wants to go to Polcirkeln, and she reeled off a list of the people who would be there …’ He pauses to get his notepad out. ‘P-O, Charlotte and Madeleine Silfverberg, Karl and Linnea Lundström, Gert Berglind, Fredrika Grünewald and Viggo Dürer.’

Jeanette looks at him. ‘God, I’m so sick of all those names.’

She stands and begins to gather up the films. ‘I just want to get out of here.’

Hurtig adds that Annette Lundström had repeated what she had previously said about Dürer being involved in adoptions.

‘He had foreign children at the farm in Struer and up in Polcirkeln.’

‘Shit.’ Jeanette sighs. ‘Polcirkeln …’

‘I know the geography up there pretty well,’ Hurtig says, ‘and it won’t take long for our colleagues in the Norrbotten force to go door-to-door in Polcirkeln. I mean, it’s just a few houses.’

On the way down to the car Jeanette’s phone rings again. She looks at the screen. ‘Forensics,’ she says as she answers.