Chapter 124
It is six o’clock in the evening before Daniel and Hanna can begin questioning Karin Carlsson.
Daniel has just sat down in the interview room. The entire afternoon was spent getting Karin examined by a doctor, and dealing with the formalities. At last they are able to hold an initial interrogation before Karin is taken to ?stersund.
Daniel has no doubt that the idiotic prosecutor will agree to Karin’s arrest. The Carlsson family house was searched a few hours ago, and they found Filippa’s clothes, which Karin had hidden in a shed in the yard.
The evidence speaks for itself.
Karin looks exhausted and haggard as she enters the room, wearing sweatpants and a pullover that is too big for her.
“We need to talk to you about the murder of Filippa Smeds?s,” Hanna begins once the tape is running.
Karin’s eyes are filled with despair.
“Tell us about the night Filippa died. You lied when you said you’d seen someone outside the Lowengrens’ house, didn’t you?”
Karin lets out a little gasp. “Yes, I did.”
“What is your involvement in Filippa’s death?” Daniel asks.
“It’s all my fault.” Karin hides her head in her hands, rocks back and forth on her chair. In the background the heater is humming away as usual. “But I didn’t mean to kill her. It just . . . it all went wrong.” Her voice is shaky.
Daniel is taken aback. Did he hear correctly? Has Karin just confessed to murdering Filippa?
Maybe it’s the shock after almost drowning that has made her blurt out the truth. Or maybe she feels a strong need to ease her conscience.
“So in other words it was you who killed her?” he says, to avoid any misunderstandings.
He looks at her closely, and suddenly realizes why they mistook her for Pontus or William on the security camera footage.
She is tall and slim, she must be around five foot eight.
In a black, bulky jacket it wouldn’t be hard to mix her up with one of the boys.
Karin nods.
“You need to answer out loud for the tape,” Hanna says.
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that?” Daniel asks.
“I wanted to . . . teach her a lesson.”
Something sad yet defiant flits across her face.
She keeps chewing at a finger, so intensely that it begins to bleed.
Daniel can see that the cuticle is ragged and torn.
When they were sitting in her kitchen she seemed calm and composed, but now they have a different person in front of them, a woman at breaking point.
“I saw the whole performance on Saturday,” she continues in a shrill tone.
“When ?ke went over to ask them to turn down the music. The panorama window in their living room faces our kitchen. I saw him go in and try to talk some sense into them, but instead of listening, they behaved arrogantly, disrespectfully. That girl flaunted her naked breasts at him! She even tried to touch him between his legs, for God’s sake!
” Karin’s eyes are burning, as if the scene is playing out in her mind.
“She humiliated my husband in front of her friends. They were all laughing at him!”
Daniel is still having difficulty understanding what went on. “So what happened later that night? When Filippa died?”
It looks as if Karin can barely hold up her head; her chin is drooping toward her chest. Maybe the shame is catching up with her.
She is a murderer, whether she is prepared to admit it or not.
“Karin?” Hanna prompts her.
Reluctantly Karin continues her story.
“When I woke up during the night and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I saw someone lying in the snow in front of the house next door. I was worried because it was so cold; I pulled on a jacket and went out to see if they were okay.”
“What happened then?”
Karin wraps both arms around her upper body. She suddenly looks very small, perched on the edge of the hard wooden chair.
“When I got closer I could see it was the same girl who had behaved so indecently toward ?ke earlier on. I was furious, I lost control.”
“You killed her?”
“It happened so fast, I barely knew what I was doing . . .” Karin rubs her forehead, her breathing is shallow.
“I just bent over. I kind of covered her body and pressed her face down into the snow. I never intended for her to die; I just wanted to teach her a lesson. I pressed harder. But then . . .” Her expression is agonized. “Then she wasn’t breathing anymore.”
Hanna gazes at her in silence. “So what did you do next?”
“I panicked. When I realized she was dead, I mean. That was why I took off her clothes. I thought it would look as if she’d woken up in the middle of the night and staggered out into the snow and died by accident.
Because she was drunk . . .” She breaks off, looks pleadingly at the two detectives.
“No one else is involved, especially not my husband. ?ke doesn’t know anything about this; he has no idea what I’ve done. ”
Daniel finds this difficult to believe.
He still remembers ?ke’s angry outburst, the unexpected aggression. ?ke is currently being questioned by Raffe and another colleague who has been brought in, but right now he must focus on Karin’s account.
“Why did you lie to us about the events of Saturday night? You made up a whole tale about what you’d witnessed.”
Karin’s eyes are darting all over the place.
“I thought it would divert any possible suspicions. If I said I’d seen someone carrying something heavy during the night, you’d think one of her friends was to blame for everything.
” She presses her palms to her cheeks, shakes her head.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve felt really guilty about that, letting you accuse an innocent person.
But I was desperate by that stage . . .” Her voice cracks; she is drowning in self-reproach.
“It was a terrible thing to do, I know that.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and they spill over, run down her cheeks, and drip from her chin, but she makes no attempt to wipe them away.
Her age shows clearly now in her lined, ashen face. Her sorrow and regret fill the room. She looks down at the table.
“I wish I was the one who died instead of that poor girl,” she whispers.