The Disciple (2 page)

As he walked along behind her, Sebastian realised how alike they were. Two people who always found it necessary to keep their distance.

A woman.

Dead.

In her own home.

Under normal circumstances there would be no need to call in the National CID murder squad, known as Riksmord, and Torkel Höglund’s team.

In most cases it was the tragic result of a family quarrel, a custody dispute, a jealous rage, a boozy evening in what turned out to be the wrong company.

Anyone who worked within the police service knew that when a woman was murdered in her own home, the perpetrator was usually to be found among those closest to her, so it was hardly surprising that when she took the emergency call just after seven thirty Stina Kaupin toyed with the idea that she was speaking to the murderer.

‘Emergency, how can I help?’

‘My wife is dead.’

It was difficult to make out the rest of what the man said. His voice was thick with grief and shock. For long periods the silence was so intense that Stina thought he had hung up. Then she heard him trying to get his breathing under control. It was a struggle to get an address out of him; the man just kept repeating that his wife was dead, and that there was a lot of blood. Blood everywhere. Could they come? Please? In her mind’s eye Stina could see a middle-aged man with his hands covered in blood, slowly but surely realising what he had done. Eventually she managed to get an address in Tumba. She asked the caller – and probably murderer – to stay where he was, and not to touch anything in the house. She would send the police and an ambulance to the scene of the crime. She rang off and passed on the message to the Södertörn police in Huddinge, who in turn dispatched a patrol car.

Erik Lindman and Fabian Holst were just finishing off a rather late fast-food dinner when they got the call telling them to head over to Tolléns väg 19.

Ten minutes later they were there. They got out of the patrol car and looked over at the house. Neither of the officers was particularly interested in gardening, but they both realised that someone had spent a considerable amount of time and money creating the idyllic splendour surrounding the yellow wooden house.

When they were halfway up the path, the front door opened. Both men reached instinctively for the holster on their right hip. A man was standing in the doorway, his shirt open, gazing at the uniformed officers with an almost blank expression in his eyes.

‘There’s no need for an ambulance.’

Lindman and Holst exchanged a quick glance. The man in the doorway was obviously in shock. Those in shock acted according to their own rules. They were unpredictable. Illogical. Lindman carried on up the path, while Holst slowed down and kept his hand close to his gun.

‘Richard Granlund?’ Lindman asked as he took the last few steps towards the man, whose gaze was fixed on a point somewhere beyond him.

‘There’s no need for an ambulance,’ the man repeated. ‘The woman I spoke to said she was going to send an ambulance. There’s no need. I forgot to tell her . . .’

Lindman had reached the man. He took him gently by the arm. The physical contact made the man in the doorway give a start and turn to face him. He looked at Lindman with surprise, as if he were seeing the police officer for the first time and wondered how he could have got so close.

No blood on his hands or his clothes, Lindman noticed.

‘Richard Granlund?’

The man nodded. ‘I got home and she was lying there . . .’

‘Home from where?’

‘What?’

‘Home from where? Where had you been?’ Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to question a man who was so obviously in a state of shock, but information obtained during initial contact could be compared with what was said during an interview at a later stage.

‘Germany. A business trip. My plane was delayed. Or rather, it was cancelled first of all, then it was delayed, and then I was even later because my luggage . . .’

The man fell silent. A thought or a realisation seemed to have struck him. He looked at Lindman with a clarity in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

‘Could I have saved her? If I’d been on time, would she still have been alive then?’

All those ‘what-ifs’ were natural when someone died; Lindman had heard them many times. In several cases in which he had been involved, people had died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were crossing the road at the exact moment when a drunken driver came careering along. They were sleeping in the caravan on the very night when the bottled gas started leaking. They were walking over the railway line just as a train came by. Falling power lines, violent men who were high on something or other, cars on the wrong side of the road. Chance, coincidence. Forgotten keys could delay a person for precisely those few seconds that meant he or she wasn’t going to make it across an unmanned level crossing. A cancelled flight could leave a man’s wife alone for long enough to give a murderer the opportunity to strike. All those ‘what-ifs’.

Perfectly normal when someone died.

Impossible to answer.

‘Where is your wife, Richard?’ Lindman asked instead, keeping his voice calm and steady.

The man in the doorway seemed to ponder the question. He was forced to switch from the experiences of his journey home and the possible guilt he had suddenly become aware of to the present moment. To the terrible thing that had happened.

The thing he had been unable to prevent.

Eventually he found his way.

‘Upstairs.’ Richard gestured towards the interior of the house and began to cry. Lindman nodded to his colleague to go upstairs, while he followed the weeping man inside. You could never be sure, you could never make that judgement, but Lindman had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t escorting a murderer into the kitchen, his arm around Granlund’s shoulders.

At the bottom of the stairs Holst drew his service weapon and held it against his leg. If the crushed man his colleague was taking care of was not the murderer, then there was just a chance that he or she might still be in the house. At the top of the stairs he came to a small area equipped with a two-seater sofa, TV and Blu-ray.

Dormer window. Shelves along the walls, containing books and films. Four doors. Two open, two closed. From the top of the stairs Holst could see the dead woman’s legs in the bedroom. On the bed. Which meant that Riksmord would have to be informed, he thought as he quickly went into the second room with an open door: a study. Empty. The two closed doors led to a bathroom and a dressing room. Both empty. Holst put away his gun and approached the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway.

A directive from Riksmord had been circulated a week or so earlier. They were to be informed in cases of death which fulfilled certain criteria.

If the victim was found in the bedroom.

If the victim was tied up.

If the victim’s throat had been cut.

The sound of Torkel’s mobile interrupted the last line of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, and he answered as he withdrew into the kitchen, leaving the sound of cheering behind him.

It was Vilma’s birthday party.

Thirteen.

A teenager.

Her birthday was actually the previous Friday, but she had wanted to go out for a meal with her girlfriends and to see a film. Her older, more boring relatives, such as her father, could come on a weekday evening. Torkel and Yvonne had bought their daughter a mobile phone for her birthday. A new one – not her older sister’s cast-off, or an old one of his or Yvonne’s when they got a new one through work. Now she had a brand-new model – with Android, Billy had said when Torkel asked him for help in choosing it. According to Yvonne, Vilma had more or less been sleeping with it since last Friday.

The kitchen table was covered in presents this evening. Vilma’s older sister had bought her mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss and foundation. Vilma had been given her gifts on Friday, but had laid everything out again to show off the total haul. Torkel picked up the mascara, which promised lashes up to ten times longer, as he listened to the information being fed into his ear.

A murder. In Tumba. A woman whose throat had been cut, tied up in the bedroom.

Torkel thought Vilma was far too young to be wearing makeup, but it had been made very clear to him that she was the only one in her year group who didn’t wear make-up, and that the idea of turning up at school next year without it was out of the question. Torkel didn’t put up a great deal of resistance. Times were changing, and he knew he should be grateful that he hadn’t had to engage in this discussion with Vilma two years ago. Some of her friends’ parents had been in that position, and had clearly lost the battle.

All the indications pointed to the fact that this was the third victim.

Torkel ended the call, put down the mascara and went back to the living room.

Vilma was talking to her maternal grandparents. He called her over, and she didn’t look too unhappy at having to break off the conversation with the oldies. She came towards Torkel with an expectant look on her face, as if she thought he’d been out in the kitchen organising some kind of surprise.

‘I have to go, sweetheart.’

‘Is it because of Kristoffer?’

It took Torkel a few seconds even to understand the question. Kristoffer was Yvonne’s new partner. They had got together a few months ago, but Torkel had met him for the first time this evening. He was a high school teacher. Aged about fifty. Divorced with kids. Seemed like a nice bloke. It had never occurred to Torkel that their meeting might be seen as difficult, uncomfortable or in any way a problem. Vilma obviously interpreted the delay in his response as confirmation that she was right.

‘I told her not to invite him,’ she went on, a sullen expression on her face.

Torkel was filled with tenderness for his daughter. She wanted to protect him. Thirteen years old, and she wanted to shield him from heartache. In her world it was obviously an extremely awkward situation. No doubt she wouldn’t have wanted to see her ex-boyfriend together with someone else. If she’d ever had a boyfriend. Torkel wasn’t sure. He gently stroked her cheek.

‘I have to work. It’s got nothing to do with Kristoffer.’

‘Promise?’

‘Absolutely. I would have to leave even if there were just the two of us here. You know how it is.’

Vilma nodded. She had lived with him for long enough.

‘Has someone died?’

‘Yes.’

Torkel had no intention of telling her any more. He had decided long ago that he wasn’t going to try to gain his children’s attention by passing on exciting and grotesque details relating to his work. Vilma knew that. So she didn’t ask any more questions, she simply nodded. Torkel looked at her, his expression serious.

‘I think it’s really good that Mum has met someone.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not? Just because she’s not with me anymore, it doesn’t mean she has to be alone.’

‘Have you met someone?’

Torkel hesitated for a second. Had he? For a long time he had been involved in some kind of relationship with Ursula, his married colleague, but they had never really defined what it actually was. They slept with one another when they were working away. Never in Stockholm. They never had dinner together, they never had those ordinary conversations about their private lives. Sex and talk about work. That was all. And not even that much at the moment. A few months ago, Torkel had brought his former colleague Sebastian Bergman into an investigation, and since then his and Ursula’s relationship had been restricted to nothing more than work. This bothered Torkel, more than he was willing to admit. It wasn’t the fact that everything was so obviously conducted on Ursula’s own terms – he could live with that – but he missed her. More than he would have thought. It annoyed him. And on top of everything else, it seemed as if she had grown closer to her husband Mikael recently. They had even been to Paris for the weekend not long ago.

So had he met someone?

Probably not, and he certainly wasn’t about to explain the complexities of his dealings with Ursula to Vilma, who had only just become a teenager.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t met anyone. And now I really do have to go.’

He gave her a hug. A big one.

‘Happy birthday,’ he whispered. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ she replied. ‘And my mobile.’ She pressed her freshly glossed lips gently to his cheek.

Torkel still had a smile on his face as he got in the car and set off for Tumba. He called Ursula. She was already on her way.