Читать книгу Marked For Life - Emelie Schepp - Страница 15

CHAPTER TEN

THE SECURITY CAMERA film had just arrived by messenger from the security firm. Ola Söderström opened the package and quickly inserted the little hard disk into his computer. He immediately started looking through the images, which gave a good overview of Östanvägen. Unfortunately the rotating camera lens didn’t reach all the way to Hans Juhlén’s house. Judging by the angle, the camera must have been about two meters above the ground, perhaps three, and provided an adequate coverage so that you could register everything on the street. The quality was good and Ola was pleased with the sharpness. He fast-forwarded past Sunday morning. A woman with a dog walked by, a white Lexus left the street and then the woman with the dog came back again.

When the clock counter showed 17:30, he slowed down the speed. The empty street looked cold and windy. The overcast weather made it hard to detect any movements and the street lighting was of poor quality.

Ola was wondering whether it was possible to adjust the brightness so that he could see the scene more clearly, when he suddenly caught sight of a boy.

He froze the image. The counter showed 18:14.

Then he let the recording continue. The boy cut across the street quickly and then vanished out of view.

Ola reversed the disk and looked at the sequence again. The boy was wearing a dark hooded sweater that hid his face well. He walked with his head down and both hands stuck inside the big pocket on his stomach.

Ola sighed. He rubbed his hand over his face and up through his hair. Just a child on his way somewhere. He let the footage continue and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head.

When the counter showed 20:00, he still hadn’t seen anything. No movement. Not a single person. Not a car had passed during those two hours. Only the boy. At that moment, Ola realized what he had seen. Only the boy.

He got up so fast from the chair that it fell backward onto the floor with a crash.

* * *

“You seem to be in a good mood.”

Gunnar gave a start when he heard Anneli Lindgren’s voice. She stood in the doorway with her arms folded over her chest. Her hair was tied back in a tight ponytail that accentuated her clear blue eyes and high cheekbones.

“Yes, I’ve just been promised the call logs,” he said. “It helped when I made a fuss.”

“Well now, is that all it takes to put you in a good mood?” said Anneli.

“Yes, it is, I can tell you. Shouldn’t you be on your way?” Gunnar said.

“Yes, but I’m waiting for some support. It’s a big house to work through. I can’t get through it all on my own.”

“I thought you liked working alone.”

“Sometimes, sure. But you tire of it after a while. Then it’s nice to have company by your side,” Anneli said and tilted her head.

“But you don’t have to go through everything again. Just take what’s of interest.”

“Well, that’s obvious. What do you take me for, huh?” Anneli straightened her head and put her hand on her waist.

“And talking about going through things,” said Gunnar, “I’ve been tidying in the storage room and found some stuff that belongs to you.”

“You’ve been tidying the storage room?”

“Yes. What of it?” Gunnar said and shrugged his shoulders. “I needed to get rid of some junk and I found a large cardboard box with ornaments in it. Perhaps you’d like them back?”

“I can fetch them later in the week.”

“No, better if I bring the box to work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see if those lists have arrived as promised.”

Anneli was just about to leave the room when she almost bumped right into a stressed Ola Söderström in the doorway.

“What is it?” said Gunnar.

“I think I’ve found something. Come and see!”

Gunnar got up from his desk and followed his colleague Ola into the computer room.

Ola, twenty years his junior, was tall and thin with a pointed nose. He was dressed in jeans, a red checked shirt and, like every other day of the year, a cap. Regardless of the temperature on the thermometer, be it minus or plus thirty degrees Celsius, he had his cap on. Sometimes it was red, sometimes white. Sometimes striped, sometimes with a check pattern. Today it was black.

Gunnar had told Ola many times that he should avoid wearing headgear during working hours, but he finally gave up because his irritating hat was trivial compared with Ola’s skill with computers.

“Look at this.” Ola pressed some keys and the recorded tape started to play. Gunnar saw the little boy on the film.

“He turns up at exactly 18:14,” said Ola. “He cuts across the street and seems to be on his way up toward Östanvägen, toward Hans Juhlén’s house.”

Gunnar observed the boy’s movements. Stiff. Almost mechanical.

“Play it again,” he said when the boy disappeared from view.

Ola did as he was told.

“Freeze it there!” said Gunnar and moved closer to the screen. “Can you zoom in?”

Ola pressed some keys and the boy came closer.

“He’s got his hands in that hoodie pocket. But the pocket is bulging too much. He must have something else in there,” said Gunnar.

“Anneli did find the handprints from a child,” said Ola. “Could it be this boy?”

“How old?” said Gunnar.

Ola looked at the figure. Although he was dressed in a large hooded sweatshirt, you could still make out the size of his body under it. But it was his height that decided the matter.

“I’d guess eight, perhaps nine,” said Ola.

“Do you know who’s got a child of that age?”

“No.”

“Hans Juhlén’s half brother.”

“Shit.”

“Zoom in closer.”

Ola zoomed in another step.

Gunnar put his face right up to the screen so he could examine the bulging pocket better.

“Now I know what he’s got in his pocket.”

“What?”

“A gun.”

* * *

Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander were driving from Norrköping toward Finspång. They sat in silence, deep in their own thoughts as they passed a road sign that told them they had five kilometers to go.

Henrik pulled over to the side of the road so he could look up the address he wanted on the GPS navigator. The digital map showed that they had 150 meters to go to their final destination, and the navigator’s voice told him to keep driving straight ahead at the next roundabout. Henrik followed the directions and approached the given address, which was in the Dunderbacken district.

Mia pointed to an empty parking space next to a recycling station that was overflowing with discarded paper and packages. Somebody had put an old radio in front of the green bins.

“So this is where he lives, the half brother,” said Mia. She got out of the car, stretched and yawned out loud. Henrik got out and slammed the car door on his side.

A few people were standing and talking to each other in the grassy area between the low-rise apartment buildings. Nearby a couple of children played with a bucket and spade in a sand pit next to a set of swings. The chilly April weather had made their cheeks rosy. A man, presumably the father, sat on a bench next to them, fully occupied with his cell phone. A woman in an ankle-long winter coat was approaching them on the sidewalk with shopping bags in each hand. She stopped and said hello to a long-haired man who was unlocking a yellow Monark bicycle in a bike stand.

Henrik and Mia walked across the grass and looked for the right building number. They entered number thirty-four. A thinly-dressed man was standing in the entrance hall; he took a few steps to one side and walked back and forth, more or less as if he were impatiently waiting for somebody.

Mia glanced quickly at the list of residents next to the elevator and read the name for the third floor. Lars Johansson. Then they walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell.

Lars opened immediately. He was only wearing underpants and a pale football jersey adorned with the Norrköping team’s emblem. He was unshaven and had dark rings under his eyes. While he massaged his neck, he looked with surprise at the two police officers standing in front of him.

“Are you Lars Johansson?” Henrik asked.

“Yes, what’s this about?” said Lars.

Henrik introduced himself and Mia and showed his warrant to enter.

“And I was thinking that you came from one of those rags or something. Journalists have been running around here the last few days. But come in, damn it, come in! I haven’t cleaned recently so keep your shoes on. Have a seat in the living room, I’ll just go put some trousers on. I must go for a pee too. Are you willing to wait?”

As Lars backed away toward the bathroom, Henrik looked at Mia, who couldn’t help shaking her head when they followed him down the apartment’s hallway.

The bathroom was straight ahead and they could see Lars in it, picking out a pair of gray cotton trousers from the laundry basket. Then he closed the door and locked it.

“Shall we?” said Henrik and gestured politely toward Mia. She nodded and took a few steps more.

The kitchen lay to the left, and they could see it littered with piles of dirty plates and pizza cartons. A tied-up bag of rubbish sat in the sink. The bedroom that was across from the kitchen was rather small and contained a single unmade bed. The Venetian blinds were closed and Lego pieces of various sizes cluttered the floor. To the left of the bathroom lay the living room.

Henrik hesitated as to whether he should sit down on the brown leather sofa. A duvet in one corner made him realize that the sofa doubled as a bed. It smelled stuffy.

A flushing sound could be heard and Lars came into the living room wearing trousers that were five centimeters too short.

“Sit down. I’ll just...” Lars pushed the pillow and the duvet onto the apricot-colored linoleum on the floor.

“There now, take a seat. Coffee?”

Henrik and Mia declined and sat down on the sofa, which made a hissing sound under their weight. The smell of sweat was pervasive and made Henrik feel a little queasy. Lars sat down on a green plastic stool and pulled his trousers up another two centimeters.

“Lars,” Henrik began.

“No, call me Lasse. Everyone does.”

“Okay, Lasse. First and foremost, our condolences.”

“For my brother, yeah, that was bloody awful, that.”

“Did it upset you?”

“No, not really. You know, we weren’t exactly best buds, him and me. We were only half brothers, on our mum’s side. But just because you’re related doesn’t mean that you spend lots of time together. It doesn’t necessarily mean you even like each other, for that matter.”

“Didn’t you get on?”

“Yeah, or perhaps, hell, I don’t know.”

Lasse thought about it for a second or two. He lifted up one leg a little, scratched his crotch area and in doing so exposed a hole that was the size of a large coin. Then he started telling about his relationship with his brother. How it wasn’t really good. That they actually hadn’t had any contact at all this past year. And it was because of his own gambling. But he didn’t gamble now. For his son’s sake.

“I could always borrow money from my brother when things were really bad. He didn’t want Simon to go without food. It’s tough living on welfare and, you know, you’ve got to pay the rent and so on.”

Lasse rubbed the palm of his hand against his right eye, then went on: “But then something strange happened. My brother became stingy, claimed that he didn’t have any money. I thought that was bloody nonsense. If you live in Lindö then you’ve got money.”

“Did you ever find out what happened?” said Henrik.

“No, just that he said he couldn’t lend me anything more. That his old lady had put a stop to it. I had promised to pay him back, even though it wouldn’t be for a while, but I promised anyway. But I didn’t get any more money. He was an idiot. A stingy idiot. He could have done without a pricey steak dinner one evening and given me a hundred kronor, you might think. Couldn’t he? I would have, if I were him, that is.”

Lasse thumped his chest.

“Did you argue with him about money?”

“Never.”

“So you’ve never threatened your half brother or exchanged harsh words, anything like that?”

“The odd curse word, perhaps, but I would never have threatened him.”

“You have a son, right?” Mia went on.

“Yes, Simon.” Lasse held out a framed photo of a smiling boy with freckles.

“Mind you, he’s only five in that photo. Now he’s eight.”

“Have you got a better picture of him, a recent one?” said Henrik.

“I’ll have a look.”

Lasse reached toward a white cupboard with glass doors and pulled out a little box that was full of a jumble of stuff.

Sheets of paper, batteries and electric cables all tangled together. There was also a smoke detector, a headless plastic dinosaur and some sweet wrappers. And a glove too.

“I don’t know if I’ve got a decent recent one. The photos they take at school are so hellishly expensive. They charge four hundred kronor for twenty pictures. Who can order those? Bloody daylight robbery.”

Lasse let the sheets of paper fall onto the floor so he could get a better look at the contents of the box.

“No, I haven’t got a good one. But come to think of it, in my cell I might have one there.”

Lasse disappeared into the kitchen and came back with an old-fashioned flip phone in his hand. He remained standing on the floor and pressed the buttons.

Henrik noticed that the arrow button was missing and that Lasse had to use his little finger to browse through the picture folder.

“Here,” said Lasse, and held the cell toward Henrik, who took it and looked at the photo on the screen.

A low-res image showed a relatively tall and still freckled boy. Reddish cheeks. Friendly eyes.

Henrik complimented Lasse on his son’s good looks, then told him to send the picture via MMS to him. Within a minute he had saved it in his image archive.

“Is Simon at school?” said Henrik when he put his telephone back in his pocket.

“Yes, he is,” said Lasse and sat down on the stool again.

“When does he come home?”

“He’s with his mum this week.”

“Was he with you last Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you between five and seven in the evening?”

Lasse rubbed his hands up and down his shins.

“Simon played his videogames.”

“So you were both here, at home?”

He rubbed again.

“No. Only Simon.”

“Where were you then?”

“Er...an early poker evening, you know, just down the block. You’ve got to join in when your mates ask you. But this was the last time. Absolutely the last time. Because, you see, I don’t gamble. Not any longer.”