Exposed (43 page)

Patricia nodded. ‘It was like watching her slowly being brainwashed,’ she said. ‘He made Josie unsure of herself, made her think she wouldn’t be able to handle her course. She was a useless, fat whore, and no one apart from him would ever love her. Josie cried more and more, until in the end she seemed to be in tears almost the whole time. She didn’t dare leave him, he’d promised he would kill her if she ever tried.’

‘Did he rape her?’ Annika asked. ‘Sexual violence is very common. Some men get excited if the woman is terrified … What is it?’

Patricia had covered her ears with her hands, screwing her eyes shut and clenching her jaw. She burst into a fit of tears.

‘Patricia, whatever’s the matter?’

Annika took the young woman in her arms and gently rocked her. Her tears fell as hard as the rain outside, an uncontrollable torrent, forced out by unbearable pressure.

‘That was worst of all,’ Patricia whispered when she had finally cried herself dry. ‘When he used to rape her. Her screaming was so awful.’

Annika still felt sick with tiredness when the alarm clock started ringing. She turned it off with a groan. Her legs ached, heavy as lead. The rain was still beating against the tin window ledge, an abstract rhythm that rose and fell in strength.

She settled into the sofa in the living room and made two phone-calls. She was in luck. Both the men she was calling were in. She arranged to meet the first in an hour’s time, and the second one the next day. Then she crept into bed again and fought against sleep for half an hour. When she finally got up she felt even more tired. She smelled of sweat, sharp and pungent, but she didn’t have the energy to shower. She rolled some deodorant under her arms and put on a thick sweater.

He had already arrived, and was sitting at a table by the window, staring out at the rain. In front of him were a cup of coffee and a glass of water.

‘So do you recognize me?’ Annika said, holding out her hand.

The man stood up and gave her a crooked smile.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘After all, we’ve bumped into each other before, quite literally.’

Annika blushed. They shook hands and sat down.

‘So exactly what is it you want?’ Q asked.

‘Studio Six uses double-entry bookkeeping, and Joachim has a second set of books to fool the tax office. The real books, the ones with the actual takings in them, are only brought to the club very occasionally.’

Annika drank the detective’s water in a single go. Q raised his eyebrows.

‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t really thirsty.’

‘The books are there now, until Saturday.’

‘And how do you know that?’ the detective asked quietly.

‘I’ve taken a job as the croupier there. I’m not a journalist any more. I’ve resigned my job and left the union. The girls at the club are paid cash in hand. No tax, no national insurance.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Patricia. She has no responsibility for, or influence over, the finances, but she enters the figures from the bar. And I saw it for myself this morning.’

The detective got up and went over to the counter. He got another cup of coffee and two glasses of water and brought them back to the table.

‘You look like you could do with some caffeine,’ he said.

Annika took a sip. The coffee was lukewarm.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Q wondered.

She didn’t reply.

‘Do you see what you’re doing?’ he said.

She drank some water.

‘What?’

‘You’re cooperating with the police,’ he said. ‘I thought doing something like that was beneath your dignity.’

‘I don’t have to worry about protecting my sources any more,’ Annika said curtly. ‘I’m no longer a representative of the mass media, so I can say what I like to the police.’

He looked at her in amusement. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But leopards don’t change their spots so easily. If I know you at all, somewhere inside your head you’re thinking how to turn this conversation into an article.’

She jerked. ‘Bullshit. You don’t know me at all.’

‘Yes I do. I know the journalist in you.’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Bullshit,’ he countered. ‘She’s just wounded and tired. She’s taking a rest, and will be back in the fight soon enough.’

‘Never,’ she said.

‘So you’re going to be a croupier at shitty dives for the rest of your life? What a shame.’

‘I thought you said I was a real nuisance?’

He grinned. ‘Well, you are, you’re worse that a spot on the arse. And that’s good, we need that. We need to feel we’re alive.’

She was looking at him suspiciously.

‘You’re winding me up,’ she said.

He sighed. ‘Well, maybe just a little,’ he said.

‘You can get him on the bookkeeping,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s in there, but there ought to be enough to shut down the club. I’m committing a crime as well, by the way, using the roulette table for illegal gambling. Joachim seems to think that’s okay.’

‘You’ll get caught,’ Q said, ‘sooner or later.’

‘I was thinking of going again tonight, then no more after that. I earned eight thousand kronor last night. One more night will see me through until I can get unemployment benefit.’

‘That’s what everyone says,’ Q told her.

Annika fell silent. She could feel her shame burning on her face. She realized he was right as she stared down at her hands.

‘Well, I’ve said enough,’ she said. ‘Now I just want to listen.’

The detective got up and came back with a cheese sandwich.

‘This is absolutely off the record,’ he said. ‘If you ever write about it I’ll see you roasted slowly over hot coals.’

‘ “Unlawful threat”,’ Annika said.

He smiled quickly, then was serious again.

‘You were right,’ he said. ‘We do regard the murder of Josefin Liljeberg as finished, at least as a police matter.’

‘So why haven’t you arrested him?’ Annika said, a little too loudly.

Q leaned over the marble tabletop.

‘Don’t you think we would if we could?’ he said quietly. ‘Joachim’s got a watertight alibi. Six men swear he was at a smart bar, the Sture Company, until five o’clock, then he went home with the other lads in a hired limousine for a private party. They all give the same story.’

‘Maybe, but they’re lying!’ Annika said.

The detective took a bite of his sandwich.

‘Of course they are,’ he said, swallowing. ‘The problem is proving that they’re lying. One of the waiters at the Sture Company confirms that Joachim was there, but he can’t say exactly when. And he can’t tell us what time he left either. The limousine driver confirms that he drove a group of drunk young men from Stureplan to Birkastan, and Joachim has the receipt. The driver can neither confirm nor deny that Joachim was in the car because he couldn’t see who was right at the back. Either way, Joachim certainly wasn’t at the front, and he didn’t pay. The girl who owns the flat on Rörstrandsgatan says Joachim fell asleep on her sofa sometime after six o’clock. She’s probably telling the truth.’

‘Joachim was at the club just before five,’ Annika said
eagerly. ‘He was having a fight with Josefin, Patricia heard them.’

Q sighed. ‘Yes, we know. It’s Patricia’s word against the seven blokes. And if this case were ever to get to court and we somehow managed to break their story, we’d have to charge all of them with perjury. And that would be pretty impossible.’

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Annika drank the last of her cold coffee. The detective finished his sandwich.

‘One of them might talk,’ Annika said.

‘Sure,’ Q said. ‘The problem is that most of them were too drunk to remember anything at all. They’ve had the story served up to them as the truth, so now they probably actually believe it. I should think maybe one, or at most two of them, actually know that they’re lying. They’re Joachim’s best friends. And they’ve both suddenly got a lot of money to splash around. They’re not going to squeal.’

Annika felt tired, almost ill.

‘So what really happened?’ she asked in a flat voice.

‘Exactly what you think,’ Q said. ‘He strangled her in the cemetery.’

‘And raped her?’

‘No, not there, and not then. We found traces of sperm inside her, and the DNA test proved it was Joachim’s. They’d probably had sex within the past few hours, and it was still there.’

Annika shut her eyes and searched her memory.

‘But you said it was a sexually motivated killing to start with,’ she said. ‘You said there were traces of sexual violence.’

The detective rubbed his forehead.

‘That was mostly old injuries,’ he said. ‘Mostly to the opening of the anus. He used to rape her anally.’

Annika felt like she was going to be sick.

‘Bloody hell …’ she said.

They sat in silence again.

‘What about the other woman who was murdered in Kronoberg Park?’ Annika suddenly asked. ‘Eva – that was her name. That was never cleared up, was it?’

Q sighed. ‘That’s right, but the same thing applies there. We regard the case as closed. It was her former husband. We picked him up two or three years later, but had to let him go. We never got him convicted. He’s dead now.’

‘So is Joachim going to get away with it?’ Annika said.

Q was putting his jacket on.

‘Not if your information is correct,’ he said. ‘There isn’t time to organize a raid tonight, but we’ll be going in tomorrow. Make sure you’re not there.’

He stood up, and stopped by her chair.

‘There’s one thing we’re still wondering about,’ he said.

‘What?’ Annika said.

‘How she got the injury to her hand.’

Annika sat slouched on her chair as he left the café.

Time dragged by in the club. Patricia looked at Annika in concern.

‘You look really knackered. Are you coming down with something?’

‘I think I might be,’ she said. ‘I’m freezing, and I feel sick.’

They sat down on the wooden bench in the changing room, and the harsh lighting made the blisters on Annika’s feet shine bright red.

‘How much money have you taken tonight?’ Patricia said.

Annika felt like crying.

‘Not enough,’ she said, staring down at her sky-blue bikini.

She was having more and more difficulty suppressing the urge to throw up. It was Friday, and there were even more girls wandering around the club completely naked. They were sitting on the men’s laps, grinding their crotches against ironed creases and silk ties. They enticed the men into private rooms and smothered them in massage lotion: big bottles from the chemist, cheap and unperfumed.

‘It has to be unperfumed,’ Patricia had explained. ‘They have to go home to their wives afterwards.’

Annika was nervous and worried. What if she’d got everything wrong?

She didn’t dare ask Patricia anything else about the bookkeeping, and Patricia didn’t bring it up again. What if the police came tonight after all? What if Joachim had already moved the books?

She brushed her hair from her face with trembling hands.

‘Would you like a sandwich? Or some coffee?’ Patricia asked anxiously.

Annika forced herself to smile. ‘No thanks, I’ll be fine in a minute or two.’

Joachim was sitting in the office next door. Thank goodness she had been busy with clients when he arrived.

How does someone end up like that? she thought. What has to be wrong with you to make you kill the person you love? How could you kill another person and then just carry on with your life as though nothing had happened?

‘I’d better get out there again,’ Patricia said. ‘Coming?’

Annika leaned over and put fresh plasters on her blisters.

‘Sure,’ she said.

The music was louder now. Two girls were up on stage. One was writhing around the pole, thrusting against it and licking it, and the other had pulled a man out of the audience. He was smearing shaving foam over the girl’s breasts, and she was moaning, head thrown back, in a semblance of ecstasy.

Annika followed Patricia behind the bar and poured herself a Coke.

‘Don’t you get fed up, having to look at that all night long?’ Annika whispered in Patricia’s ear.

‘Another bottle of champagne on the bald one’s bill,’ one of the naked girls said to Patricia, who turned away to mark it up.

Annika went out, back to her table. She shivered, it was cold out there.

Sanna wasn’t there. She settled onto the bar stool she had dragged behind the roulette table.

‘How’s business?’

Joachim was standing in the door of the office, smiling, arms folded.

Annika leaped to the floor at once.

‘Okay, but not as good as last night.’

He came over to the table without letting his smile drop, and without looking away from her.

‘I think you’ve got a great future ahead of you here,’ he said, coming round the table to stand beside her.

Annika licked her lips and tried to smile.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and fluttered her eyelashes.

‘So how come you ended up here?’ he said, his voice a touch cooler.