The Disciple (29 page)

‘I just don’t understand you.’

Torkel and Sebastian walked into Torkel’s office.

‘You’re not the only one.’

Sebastian went and sat down on the sofa, while Torkel perched on the edge of the desk.

‘You fight to come back, and once you’re in, you seem to be doing your level best to get kicked out again.’

‘Are you really thinking of getting rid of me just because I’ve trodden on a few toes?’

‘It’s not about that. Not anymore.’

‘I couldn’t have known that Annette Willén was going to be murdered.’

‘I’m taking a big risk, keeping you in this investigation. You have links to all four victims. Imagine what that’s going to look like to those upstairs.’

‘Since when did you care about that kind of thing?’

Torkel sighed wearily. ‘I’ve always cared about that kind of thing, because that’s what gives my team the freedom to act on their own initiative. I know it doesn’t matter to you, because you always do exactly as you please. But I’m telling you for the last time: sort yourself out.’

Sebastian thought over what he had done, what he had said, how he had acted since he joined the investigation. He quickly reached the conclusion that he had behaved exactly as he always did. He said what he thought, and didn’t tiptoe around pretending to be eternally grateful. But he really didn’t want to be kicked out. He could be close to Vanja if he stayed, but that wasn’t the only reason. It wasn’t even the most important thing anymore. If someone had asked him a couple of days ago what would diminish his interest in Vanja, his obsession with her, he would have said ‘Nothing’. But he would have been wrong. Now something else was at the forefront of his mind, overshadowing everything else – even Vanja. Four women had died because of him.

‘I really will try,’ said Sebastian sincerely. ‘I don’t want to leave.’

Torkel got up and closed the door. Sebastian looked at his colleague with a certain degree of scepticism as he sat down in the armchair opposite. Now what?

‘What’s going on with Billy? He seems to be trying to move up a step or two,’ said Sebastian, hoping the therapy session would be forgotten if he shifted the focus to someone else.

‘You’re changing the subject.’

‘You noticed.’

‘I’m happy to talk about Billy. Some other time.’ Torkel leaned forward and put his hands together as if he were about to start praying. A bad sign, Sebastian thought. A listening stance.

‘What’s happened, Sebastian? You always used to be selfish and unpleasant and self-important, but since you came back . . . It’s as if you’re at war with everything and everybody.’

Torkel fell silent. The question hung in the air. What’s happened? For a second Sebastian wondered what it would be like if he actually told Torkel. About Lily. About Sabine. About a happiness he had never known before or since. About the wave that had taken everything away from him. What harm would it do? It might even give him a bit more room for manoeuvre within the team. Torkel would feel sorry for him, he was sure of it. Genuinely sorry. He would care in a way that nobody else had cared since it happened. Not that Sebastian had given anyone the chance to show they cared, but still.

A Torkel who interpreted everything Sebastian did as a reaction to grief could be very useful.

It was his joker.

His get-out-of-jail-free card.

He had no intention of playing it until it became absolutely necessary, but he knew he had to come up with some kind of answer for Torkel. He knew exactly what to say. He would tell the truth.

‘I feel responsible.’

‘For the murders.’ A statement, not a question.

Sebastian nodded.

‘I can understand that in a way,’ Torkel said. ‘But you’re not to blame for their deaths.’

Sebastian knew that. Logically, he knew that. Emotionally it was a completely different matter. It still felt surprisingly good to talk about it. Perhaps he could have discussed it with Stefan instead, but he wasn’t sure if Stefan was still his therapist after what had happened. Sebastian had called him and actually left an apology on his answering machine, but Stefan hadn’t called back. And that was before Stefan even knew that Annette had been murdered. If Stefan found out that she had been killed because she had spent the night with Sebastian, their relationship would almost certainly be beyond repair. It was probably time to look for someone new to talk to, but until then, Torkel would have to do.

‘The latest one, Annette. I slept with her just to annoy my therapist.’

‘And what were your motives for sleeping with all the rest?’

Sebastian was surprised by the question, and by Torkel’s relaxed attitude. He had been expecting a condemnation. Perhaps more of a gentle rebuke, given the fact that Sebastian was clearly affected by what had happened, but still a condemnation of sorts. Torkel’s moral compass was extremely well calibrated.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not out there looking for Miss Right, are you? All these women have just been some kind of . . . distraction.’ Torkel leaned back in his armchair. ‘You’re a user. You don’t care about the women. Not before, not afterwards.’

Sebastian didn’t even try to deny it. It wasn’t exactly breaking news.

The first three victims, the women from his past, gnawed away at him, but there was a limit to how far you could rewind the tape, how far back in time you could regret your actions. But Annette . . . that was different. She had got under his skin.

‘She had such low self-esteem, Annette. She was desperate for someone to make her feel good about herself. It was so easy . . .’

‘You’ve got a guilty conscience.’ Once again a statement, not a question.

Sebastian had to think about that. It was so long since he’d had a guilty conscience he wasn’t sure what it felt like. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Would you have felt like that if she hadn’t been murdered?’

‘No.’

‘In that case, it doesn’t count.’

Harsh, but true. The exploitation, the conquest didn’t bother him at all. But she had died because he had had a bad day. That was difficult to ignore.

‘Are you in touch with any of the women you’ve been with?’ Torkel took the conversation in a new direction. Moving forward.

‘There are almost forty years between the first and the last. I can’t remember even a fraction of them.’

Torkel caught himself wondering how many partners he had had. Two wives, four or five girlfriends before the first wife. Four, really. A few between his marriages. And then Ursula. Maybe double figures. He didn’t need to make much of an effort to remember all their names. But of course in Sebastian’s case he would have to multiply that by twenty, perhaps thirty. Perhaps even more. Memory lets us down.

‘What I’m trying to say,’ Torkel went on, ‘is that if you do what you can to prevent a repetition, that might help. Both you and us.’ He got up, signalling that the conversation was over. ‘But if you don’t remember them, it can’t be helped.’

Sebastian stayed where he was, gazing into space.

Thinking.

He did remember some of them . . .

Vanja was gazing out over the centre. It could have been anywhere. But it was Hovsjö. One of the thirty-eight regions earmarked by the government in 2009 for ‘additional attention’ in order to ‘combat a sense of exclusion’, Vanja recalled. ‘An investment’ in ‘vulnerable areas’. Which was all a more elegant way of describing a suburb where there were more problems than solutions. Vanja had no idea whether this additional attention had achieved anything, but it certainly didn’t look that way.

Her GPS had guided her to Granövägen. A few metres up ahead it was possible to turn left into Kvarstavägen, which was where the pale blue Ford Focus had been stolen from six months earlier. José Rodriguez was suddenly a lot more interesting.

Vanja had parked, got out of the car and looked up at the brown eight-storey building. Found the right entrance and the right apartment. Rung the bell. No one answered, so she had tried the neighbour opposite on the same floor; Haddad was the name on the letterbox. A woman of about forty-five had opened the door. Vanja showed her ID and asked if the woman had seen José Rodriguez, or knew where Vanja might find him.

‘I should think he’s probably in the square,’ the woman said with hardly any trace of an accent.

‘Does he work there?’ Vanja asked, picturing a lively market like the one in Hötorget in the middle of Stockholm.

The woman in the doorway smiled as if Vanja had said something really funny. ‘No, he doesn’t work.’ Her tone as she uttered those four words made it clear what she thought of her neighbour.

Vanja thanked the woman for the information and set off towards the centre on foot.

A hairdresser’s, a restaurant, a food store, a van selling burgers and the like, a pizzeria, a newspaper kiosk and a clothes shop. All spread out, with an expanse of concrete between them. A real wind tunnel in the autumn and winter, Vanja suspected, but at the moment the sun was beating down, making the square live up to the concept of a stony desert. A few people were sitting on one of the benches in the shade outside the clinic. A skinny Alsatian dog lay panting on the ground and the two beer cans being passed between the men and women on the bench told Vanja this was probably a good place to start looking for Rodriguez. She headed towards the bench. By the time she was about ten metres away, all five occupants had turned their attention to her. The only one who seemed completely uninterested was the dog. Vanja got out the photograph of José Rodriguez as she took the last few steps into the shade beneath the overhanging building.

‘Do you know where I can find this man?’ She held out the picture. There was no point in trying to conceal the purpose of her visit. They had probably sussed out the fact that she was a police officer as soon as she set foot in the square.

‘Why?’ A grey-haired man of indeterminate age who was holding onto the dog’s lead looked up at her after a quick glance at the photograph in her hand.

‘I need to speak to him,’ Vanja replied, sticking to the direct approach.

‘Yes, but does he want to speak to you?’ The grey-haired man again. Both front teeth were missing, so the question came out with a slight lisp. It made him sound almost sweet. It crossed Vanja’s mind that it must be a little difficult to command respect when you sounded like a six-year-old with a deep voice. Perhaps that was why he had the Alsatian. To compensate.

‘I think he can make that decision.’

Obviously not the answer they wanted. As if on command they all went back to what they had been doing before she turned up. It was as if she had ceased to exist. Vanja sighed. She could walk around the square showing people the picture and asking questions until she got lucky, but it was hot, she was tired and she wanted to go home. She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and took out a hundred-kronor note. ‘I just want to know where he is. He’ll never know how I found out.’

‘He usually hangs out down by the holiday camp,’ a skinny, long-haired man in a denim jacket said immediately, reaching for the money with a grubby, shaking hand before the others even had time to exchange a glance to decide whether or not the price was right.

Vanja held the note out of reach. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Down there.’ The long-haired man waved his hand in the direction Vanja had come from. ‘Down by the lake – what’s it called . . . Tomatstigen . . .’

The name of a street. That would have to do. Vanja gave him the money and he quickly stuffed it in his pocket, seemingly oblivious to the disapproving looks from the others.

In the car Vanja entered Tomatstigen into the GPS and saw that it was indeed fairly close by, but if she was going to take the car all the way it would mean a considerable detour.

Instead she drove down into Kvarstavägen, parked as close as possible, then walked through a small copse of trees down to the neighbouring residential area and the holiday camp. The buildings were more like summer cottages than basic chalets. The gardens were well cared for; these were not a collection of tool sheds stuck in a corner. Each house must have measured twenty square metres, with garden furniture, barbecues, hammocks and other comforts to enjoy when the occupants weren’t busy with their plants. Vanja had no desire whatsoever to get closer to nature, at least not in that way. Growing things, weeding, digging, thinning out – none of that was for her. She just about managed to keep her pot plants alive. But a place like this was pretty at this time of year, with flowers and greenery everywhere, and bees buzzing behind every fence.

Vanja crunched along the gravel track leading down towards the lake, scanning the area as she went. This didn’t feel like the kind of place that would tolerate down-and-out drunks wandering around and spoiling the idyll. Had she been conned out of a hundred kronor back in the square? She had reached the edge of the development and decided to go back to the car when she saw them. Several people on and around a bench on the tarmac path running along the edge of the forest. The distinctive bags from the state-owned alcohol monopoly lay on the ground. It was a fairly large group; eight or ten people, perhaps. Two dogs this time. Vanja quickly made her way towards them. As she got nearer she could see that the man and woman closest to her were eating apples, presumably stolen from some handy garden.

She took out the photograph and got straight down to business. ‘I’m looking for José Rodriguez; have any of you seen him?’

‘I’m José Rodriguez.’

Vanja turned to her right and found she had to look down to meet the eye of the man in the picture. She suddenly felt unutterably weary. Weary and furious. This just couldn’t be happening.

‘How long have you been in that thing?’

‘Why?’

‘How long?’

‘I got hit by a car six months ago, maybe a bit longer . . .’

Vanja let out an audible sigh and stood there for a moment to gather her strength before she turned and left.

‘So what did you want?’ the man shouted after her. Vanja merely waved dismissively without looking back, and kept on walking. She took out her phone and tried Torkel on speed dial. Engaged. She ended the call and tried Ursula instead.