The Stonecutter (48 page)

What appealed most to Ernst was the brilliant simplicity of his plan. He would bring Morgan in for questioning, get him to confess, and thereby arrest the murderer, demonstrating to Mellberg that he, Ernst, certainly did listen to what a superior said, while Hedström was not only incompetent but also insubordinate. After that he would surely be taken into the chief’s good graces again.

He got up and walked to the door, feeling much more energetic than usual. Now it was up to him to do some high-quality police work. He looked up and down the corridor to make sure that nobody was watching as he slipped out. The coast was clear.

29

Göteborg 1957

Mary felt nothing as she stood there in the pouring rain. Neither hatred nor joy. Only a cold emptiness that filled her whole body, from the outermost layer of skin down to the white bones of her skeleton.

Her mother was sobbing next to her, looking more stylish than usual. The black funeral dress was very becoming. No one could ignore the dramatic effect of her beauty. With a trembling hand she let a single red rose fall onto her husband’s coffin and then threw herself sobbing into Per-Erik’s arms. Just behind him stood his wife, sympathy written all over the plain features of her face, ignorant of how often her husband had slept with the woman whose tears were now wetting his lapels.

Mary watched numbly, wishing she and her mother could have turned to each other for solace. Dismissed once again. Rejected. Doubt descended on her with full force, but she forced herself to push it away. She couldn’t start questioning everything now; if she did, she would go under.

The rain was cold against her cheeks, but her face betrayed no emotion. With stiff legs she walked the few steps up to the hole in the ground and tried to make her fingers hold out the rose in her hand. The monster stirred inside her, coaxing her, making her raise her arm and hold the rose over the shiny black coffin down there in the hole. Then she saw her fingers as if in slow motion let go of the spiny stalk, and with unbearable slowness the flower floated down toward the hard surface. She thought she heard a loud echo when it struck the wood, but no one else seemed to react.

She stood there for what seemed like an eternity before she felt a light touch on her elbow. Per-Erik’s wife smiled gently to her and nodded that it was time to go. Before them walked the rest of the funeral cortège, led by Agnes and Per-Erik. He had his arm around Mother’s shoulders and she was leaning against him.

Mary glanced at the woman next to her and wondered scornfully how she could be so naïve not to see sexual tension surrounding the couple in front of them. Mary was only thirteen, but she could see it as clearly as the falling rain. Well, that stupid woman would soon find out what reality looked like.

Sometimes she felt so much older than thirteen. She regarded the foolishness of humanity with a contempt that far exceeded that of a normal thirteen-year-old, but then she’d had an excellent teacher. Mother had taught her that everyone was only interested in tending to their own desires, and that a girl had to take care of getting what she wanted in life. Nothing should ever stand in the way, Mother had intoned, and Mary had been a splendid student. Now she felt wise and experienced and ready to be given the respect she deserved from Mother. After all, she had proven how far her love reached. Hadn’t she made the ultimate sacrifice for her mother? Now she would get that love back with interest, she knew it. She would never again have to sit in the dark cellar and watch the monster grow.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Per-Erik watching her with concern. She discovered that she had a broad smile on her lips and quickly stifled it. It was important to maintain appearances. That’s what Mother always said. And Mother was always right.

He could hear the sirens in the distance, when they came for him. In the ambulance, Stig wanted to sit up and protest, demand that they turn around and drive him home. But his limbs refused to obey him, and when he tried to speak only a croaking sound came from his lips. Lilian’s worried face hovered above him. ‘Shh, don’t try to talk. Save your energy. We’ll be in Uddevalla soon.’

Reluctantly he gave up any attempt to struggle. He hadn’t the energy. The pain was still there, and now it was worse than ever.

It had happened so fast. In the morning he had felt quite well and had even managed to eat a little. But then the pain level had risen more and more, and finally it became unbearable. When Lilian came upstairs with morning tea, he was no longer able to speak, and she had dropped the tray in fright. Then the whole circus started up. The sirens, the stomping on the stairs, hands that carefully lifted him onto a gurney and loaded him into an ambulance. Followed by this high-speed drive, though he was only vaguely aware of it.

The fear of landing in the hospital was the only thing worse than the pain. He couldn’t escape the vision of his father in the hospital bed, so small and pitiful, so different from the boisterous, happy man who used to lift him up in the air when he was little and affectionately wrestled with him when he was older. Now Stig knew that he was going to die. If he ended up in the hospital, it was only a matter of time.

He wished he could raise his hand to stroke Lilian’s cheek. Such a brief time they’d had together. Sure, they’d had their quarrels and even that low period, when he thought they might even go their separate ways, but they had managed to find their way back to each other. Now she would have to find someone else to grow old with.

He would also miss Charlotte and the children. The child, he corrected himself, and felt a pang in his heart, a pain that was more than physical. It was the only positive thing he could see about what had happened. He was firmly convinced that there was life after death, a better place. Maybe he could meet the girl there and find out what had actually happened.

He felt Lilian’s hand on his cheek. Unconsciousness began to dissolve reality, and he gratefully shut his eyes. It would be pleasant at least to escape from the pain.

The wind whipped at him as he walked toward Morgan’s little cabin. Ernst’s enthusiasm had dissipated somewhat on the way over, but he was excited again now that he had his prey within reach.

An authoritative knock would launch his road to victory, and it was rewarded a few seconds later with the sound of footsteps inside. Morgan’s thin face appeared in the doorway, and in his odd, monotone voice he said, ‘What do you want?’

His direct question took Ernst by surprise, and he had to regroup mentally for a moment before he spoke. ‘You have to come with me to the police station.’

‘Why?’ Morgan asked, and Ernst felt irritation creeping over him. What a bizarre person.

‘Because we need to talk to you about a few things.’

‘You took my computers. I don’t have my computers anymore. You took them,’ Morgan chanted, and Ernst saw an opportunity.

‘Precisely, and that’s why you have to come with me. So we can give you back your computers. We’re finished with them.’ Ernst was pleased with this stroke of genius.

‘Why can’t you bring them here? You took them from here.’

‘Do you want the computers or not?’ Ernst exploded, impatiently.

After a moment of hesitation and some internal deliberation, the prospect of getting his computers back conquered Morgan’s reluctance to venture into uncharted territory.

‘I’ll come along. So that I can pick up my computers.’

‘Fine. Good boy,’ said Ernst, smiling to himself as Morgan went to fetch his jacket.

They sat in silence during the whole trip to the station. Morgan stared out of the window on his side, and Ernst saw no reason to engage in small talk. He was saving his ammunition for the official interview. Then he would no doubt get the idiot to talk.

As they drove to the station, Ernst thought about the one tiny problem that remained. How was he going to get the interrogation subject inside without any of the others noticing? Such a discovery would ruin his whole brilliant plan. Finally he came up with an air-tight idea. When they arrived, he phoned to the reception from his mobile, and in a disguised voice he told Annika that he had a package to deliver to the rear entrance. He waited a few seconds, keeping a tight grip on Morgan, then with his heart in his throat he led the way to the main entrance, hoping that Annika had hurried off to the other end of the station. It worked. She wasn’t in her usual spot. Ernst quickly pulled Morgan past reception and into the nearest interview room. He closed the door behind him and locked it, then permitted himself a little triumphant smile before he invited Morgan to sit down on one of the chairs. Someone had left a window half open to air the place out. It was unhooked and flapping in the breeze. Ernst ignored the noise. He wanted to get started as soon as possible before someone tried to poke their head in here.

‘So-o-o, my friend, here we are.’ Ernst made a big production out of turning on the tape recorder.

Morgan’s eyes had begun to wander, as he realized something wasn’t right.

‘You’re not my friend,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘We don’t know each other, so how could you be my friend? Friends know each other.’ After a moment’s pause he went on. ‘I’m supposed to pick up my computers. That’s why I came here. You said that my computers were ready.’

‘I did say that, yes,’ said Ernst with a sneer. ‘But you see—I lied. And you’re right about one thing: I’m not your friend. Right now I’m your worst enemy.’ A bit dramatic perhaps, but Ernst was cruelly pleased with that line, which he’d picked up from a movie.

‘I don’t want to be here anymore,’ said Morgan and began looking toward the door. ‘I want my computers back and I want to go home.’

‘You can forget about that. It’ll be a long time before you’re going to see your home again.’ Damn, he was good. He really ought to write screenplays. He went on. ‘We found her jacket in your cabin, and we have plenty of other forensic evidence showing you were the one who murdered her.’ Pure lies, the second part, but Morgan didn’t know that. And in this game there were no rules.

‘But I didn’t kill her. Even though I wanted to sometimes,’ he added tonelessly.

Ernst felt his heart leap. This was going better than he’d ever imagined.

‘It’s no use trying to feed me those lies. We have other forensic evidence and we have the jacket, so we don’t really need anything else. But it’s clear, it would be better for you if you told me how you did it. Then maybe you won’t have to do life in prison. You won’t be able to have any computers in there.’

Now he saw for the first time a genuine emotion in the idiot’s face. Good, it looked like panic was starting to set in. He’d be softened up soon. Now, he decided, he’d try a little trick he’d learned from
NYPD Blue
and the other American cop shows, and leave the guy to sweat all alone for a while. If he was given time to think about his situation, he would confess quicker than Ernst could say ‘Andy Sipowicz.’

‘I have to go take a piss. We’ll continue this conversation in a moment.’ He turned his back on Morgan and started toward the door.

Panicked, Morgan was now babbling. ‘I didn’t do it. I can’t sit in prison for the rest of my life. I didn’t kill her. I don’t know how the jacket ended up at my place. She was wearing it when she went into her house. Please, don’t leave me here. Get my mamma, I want to talk to Mamma. Mamma can work all this out, please …’

Ernst quickly shut the door behind him so the idiot’s babble wouldn’t be heard out in the corridor. After a couple of steps, Annika caught sight of him and gave him a suspicious look.

‘What were you doing in there?’

‘Oh, I was just checking something. I thought I left my wallet in one of the interview rooms.’

She didn’t look as though she believed him, but let it go. The next second, she looked out of the window and cried, ‘What in the world?!’

‘What is it?’ said Ernst, feeling a sudden pang of uneasiness in his stomach.

‘A guy just climbed out one of the windows and now he’s running toward the highway.’

‘What the hell?!’ Ernst almost dislocated his shoulder as he slammed against the door, in his haste forgetting that it was always locked.

‘Open the door, for God’s sake!’ he yelled at Annika, and she obeyed in fright. He tore open the second door and dashed out after Morgan. Morgan looked back and ran even faster. In horror Ernst saw a black mini-van approaching, and it was speeding.

‘No-o-o-o!’ he shrieked in panic.

Then came the thud and everything was quiet.

Martin wondered what it was that Charlotte and Niclas had been in such a hurry to talk to Patrik about. He hoped it was something that would allow them to remove Niclas from the list of suspects. The thought that the murderer might be the girl’s own father was too horrendous to contemplate.

He couldn’t get a handle on Niclas. Albin’s medical reports were pretty serious, and Niclas hadn’t managed to convince him that he wasn’t the one who’d inflicted the injuries on the boy. And yet there was something that didn’t fit. Niclas was a complex man, to say the least. He gave the impression of a kind and stable person when you sat eye to eye with him, but he seemed to have made a total mess of his private life. Although Martin had been no angel in his own swinging single days, now that he was living with someone he couldn’t understand how anyone could betray his better half like that. What did Niclas tell Charlotte when he came home after being with Jeanette? How could he make his tone of voice sound natural? How could he look her in the eye after rolling around in bed with his lover only a few hours earlier? Martin simply couldn’t understand it.