Chapter 125
When Grip’s face appears on the screen, Hanna, Daniel, and Raffe are gathered in the conference room. Anton has been given strict orders to stay at home for a week, or at least until after the weekend.
“Well done, you two.” Grip is smiling at Hanna and Daniel. “Excellent work yesterday, both in solving the case and rescuing that woman when she fell through the ice.”
Hanna finds it hard to return her boss’s smile. It was a great relief when they managed to save Karin Carlsson, but the last few days have taken their toll. The tragic truth is hard to deal with, even for experienced officers.
“Who wants to start?” Grip asks, taking off her glasses.
Daniel waves a hand at Hanna. She looks at him. Then they start talking at the same time, and Hanna bursts out laughing, in spite of how low she was feeling a moment ago. Sometimes you have to laugh, even if you’re at work and in the middle of a serious investigation.
It makes the weight on her chest ease a little.
“We have a confession from Karin Carlsson,” Hanna begins. For such a complex case it became almost unbelievably simple once they understood who the perpetrator was.
Something of an anticlimax, really.
Hanna is still slightly bewildered by the speedy resolution. She had thought the investigation might drag on for months, and that they might never identify the killer. Who could have imagined that a woman of almost seventy was capable of murder?
“So why did she do it?” Grip asks. On the screen they can see that she is sitting in a conference room in ?stersund, along with Carina and two other colleagues. “What was her motive for killing Filippa? They’d never even met, had they?”
“She describes it as a moment of madness,” Daniel replies. “She wanted to punish Filippa for her behavior toward Karin’s husband earlier that evening.”
“What a tragic explanation,” Grip says. “A young woman is dead just because she treated an older man disrespectfully.”
Carina clears her throat. She is sitting opposite Grip, wearing a traditional Norwegian sweater that Hanna has seen before. It must be a favorite.
“Her defense lawyer is bound to claim that she wasn’t in her right mind when she committed this crime,” Carina says. “We’re looking at a psychiatric assessment, if you ask me.”
She is probably right, but Hanna is not in a position to judge whether that will be enough to explain away Karin’s extraordinary actions. This case is already verging on the incomprehensible.
“And the husband?” Grip says.
Raffe dealt with ?ke while Daniel and Hanna were interviewing Karin. ?ke denies all knowledge of what had gone on, and Karin backs him up.
“He insists he had no idea what Karin had done. He says he was asleep all night and didn’t notice when she left the house,” Raffe reports back.
“And Karin is adamant that her husband knew nothing,” Daniel adds. “She is taking all the blame.”
Even when they pushed her, Karin kept repeating that ?ke didn’t know about her involvement in Filippa’s death. She was the sole perpetrator.
It is impossible to ascertain whether she is lying for his sake, or telling the truth. For the moment they have to accept her version, especially as they have no forensic evidence linking ?ke to the crime.
“Anyway, I’m very pleased that the case can be regarded as cleared up from our point of view—even though there’s still a lot of work to do before our dear prosecutor will be satisfied.” Grip winks at Daniel, and Hanna gets the feeling that she too was annoyed the other day when the two men clashed.
Although she gave nothing away at the time.
No doubt their boss is experienced enough not to show her displeasure openly in a situation like that, but Hanna appreciates the fact that she too dislikes callow prosecutors who try to teach the police how to do their job.
Grip pushes up the sleeves of her dark-blue sweater, which she is wearing over a smart white shirt. “So how are the young people doing?”
“They’re going home this evening,” Hanna replies. “Apart from Pontus—he’s still in custody.”
“The prosecutor is going to approve his arrest,” Grip tells them. “I spoke to him just before this meeting.”
This is hardly a surprise. Arson is a serious crime, and of course they have forensic evidence because Pontus was captured by the security cameras. And obviously he will be charged with assaulting a police officer.
Not to mention the attack on Emil.
“How is Anton, by the way?” Carina asks. “Has anyone spoken to him today?”
Hanna is thinking of going to see him this afternoon. She wants to know how he’s feeling, and no doubt he will be interested to hear how the case has been resolved.
But first she is heading for Sadeln. The four friends need to know that Filippa’s murderer has been found.