Chapter 19
“Cozy,” said Siri.
“Nope,” said Gerd. “I wouldn’t go that far. But this one here’s my office. You can do whatever you want with the adjoining room. It’s been empty ever since I ended up on my own here.”
Siri’s office was a cubbyhole with plain furniture, and it smelled like someone had forgotten to empty the coffeepot there. She opened a window, then returned to Gerd and searched her notepad for a blank page.
“So, what do you think of your office?”
“Well.” She sat down. “I’m sure I’ll do just fine there with a few plants in the window.”
Gerd laughed. “Okay then. Shall we begin?”
There was a dull buzz in Siri’s fingertips, as though everything she touched had a current of electricity.
She had never been part of a homicide investigation before, and she had only followed a few of them at a distance, since they were—thank God—rare in this county.
Maybe that was where all this energy had come from, a first-time experience, the fear of missing some crucial bit of information.
The physical evidence was painfully thin. They had Mikael’s body, of course, and an autopsy was scheduled for the next day. They had the blood on the steering wheel and the footprints in the snow, leading away from the car toward the Erikssons’ place and back again.
Possibly a witness, who, in the best-case scenario, would come forward on their own.
“But if that was going to happen, they would have been in touch by now,” Siri said.
Gerd nodded grimly.
That was all, and it meant that for the time being they had to rely on interviews with people who had known Mikael. And that seemed to be practically everyone. Some interviews had been conducted by Halmstad, the formal home of the investigation, but most had been performed by either Gerd or Siri.
They’d been at it all day, and this was their first chance to review their notes. It was past midnight by the time they were done, and Siri’s hands were shaking from too much caffeine.
She looked at her notepad and read: The Soderstroms. Erikssons. Grenbergs, Perssons, Lindells, B?cks. It was hard to make sense of it, remember who was who. During the day, she had noted:
Karl-Henrik and Lillemor Soderstrom: large farm. rich by comparison. two sons, Mikael 18 and Filip 16. both boys at party.
Bengt and Inga-Lill Lindell: former blue-collar, trying to get family farm off ground not far from scene. neighbors of Soderstroms. one son, Jakob 18, argued with Mikael at party.
Siri had been a little cautious with Jakob Lindell.
Instead of visiting him at home she had spoken to him on the phone, an information-gathering interview.
If suspicion against him increased, they would bring him to the station instead.
That was how she had dealt with teenagers in other cases, and it was often a successful tactic.
It was easier to lie over the phone, and if they were lying they were in a bad way.
But when she spoke with Jakob, he described the party, the argument, and the ensuing scuffle in a simple and straightforward manner.
He, too, was distraught to hear about Mikael’s death.
He sounded genuine, and Siri had begun to doubt her initial suspicions.
“Yoo-hoo,” said Gerd. “Did you fall asleep?”
“I’m thinking.”
“What about?”
“Do you know them? Sander Eriksson and Killian Persson?”
“It’s more like I know their parents. But sure, I know of them. Two local eighteen-year-olds, one much brighter than the other. Practically joined at the hip since they were little. What about them?”
Siri gazed at her notes.
Erik and Eva Eriksson: blue-collar, live quite a ways from the scene, up on the hill. one son, Sander 18, at the party. scratches on arms. lying
Linda and Sten Persson: poverty, divorced. one child, Killian 18, who lives in a shack on the property. best friends with Sander. serious injury to nose. hiding something.
“I’m pretty sure they haven’t told me the whole story.”
“About what?”
“About what they got up to after the party. Sander Eriksson has scratch marks on his hands and arms. Like he had run through the forest. And those prints we saw in the snow. In the front hall at Sander’s house I saw three pairs of shoes that belonged to him.
Athletic shoes—Nikes, I think—sturdy boots, and a pair of Converse.
Black ones, as I recall. And in Killian Persson’s cabin, there were a pair of athletic shoes in a much larger size.
That would match the print in the snow up there.
Killian also has quite the gash over the bridge of his nose, and quite the shiner too.
He claims he fell down on his way home, but how do you fall on your nose?
The blood on the wheel of the Volvo is likely from the driver being injured in the crash.
What’s more, the two of them told me identical stories.
And then there’s the Volvo. It belongs to Madeleine Grenberg, who reported it stolen.
We don’t know exactly when it was taken, but I’d be willing to bet it was around the same time when Eriksson and Persson were in the vicinity. ”
“Which was what time?”
“They left the party around one.”
Gerd made a face and stretched. “I’m too old for this, being out in the cold all day, oof. But that’s a good start. Well done. Anything else?”
Siri’s cheeks were warm as she turned the page of her notepad and read Madeleine Grenberg. Notes: husband deceased. trouble making ends meet. works on Soderstroms’ farm, lives in a house on the property. one daughter, Felicia 18, who knows the others but wasn’t at the party. car stolen by sp?
Gerd glanced at Siri’s notes.
“ ‘SP’?”
“Just an abbreviation for suspect.”
“Is that the kind of stuff they teach you at the academy nowadays?”
“Among other things.”
“Madeleine and Felicia do indeed live in a house on the property, just as you note. But that property is huge,” she corrected, “so it might not be the way you’re picturing it—the houses aren’t exactly right next door. Have you been there?”
“It got to be too late, I wanted to be considerate. Thought I’d start with that first thing tomorrow.”
Gerd nodded in understanding. “And what about you?”
Siri raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
“Yeah, how’s your living situation?”
Siri gave a curt laugh and tidied a stack of papers.
“Fantastic,” she said.
“No husband or anything?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no.”
In the winter of 1999, all she had in her apartment was furniture.
Everything else would have to come later, if at all.
Lots of people she’d graduated with a decade ago had children now; they had bought houses and gotten married.
Sometimes, when Siri thought about it or ran into one of them in town, pushing a stroller or carrying bags of groceries, she felt a pang of envy in her chest, but that happened less and less often these days.
“How about you?” Siri asked.
Gerd shook her head.
“Just the memories,” she said. “Shall we move on?”
Just the memories. Siri wondered what was hiding behind those words, but she didn’t ask.
“That blood on the wheel,” Gerd said. “A blood sample from Killian Persson would be just the ticket. That would nail it down.”
“We can’t get one, though.”
They would need a warrant from the prosecutor, and there wasn’t sufficient evidence. Killian Persson was eighteen. Of legal age, sure, but barely.
“Yet,” Gerd said. “We can’t get one yet.”
Instead they turned to the crime scene techs’ photographs from the house where the party had taken place. These photos had been taken just a few hours ago. Today’s technology meant that everything moved at astonishing speeds.
Unfortunately for the investigators, Pierre B?ck, host of the party, had cleaned up before passing out on the floor.
He’d hung up what had fallen down and fixed what had broken, or at least he had tried his best. He’d gotten the big wall clock in the hall going again just before he fell asleep, but all he could do for the framed picture that had crashed down during Mikael and Jakob’s scuffle was to piece it back together with duct tape, and Pierre was still pretty smashed when he did it, so the results were worse than they otherwise might have been.
When Saturday rolled around, his parents woke him up close to lunchtime.
They had just returned from Friday’s fiftieth-birthday celebration and wondered what on earth was going on in the village, with all these cops and journalists all over the place.
A few hours later, a tech was meticulously documenting every nook and cranny of their home while Siri and Gerd interviewed the parents.
“I was thinking,” Siri said. “The telephone line at the B?cks’ place.”
“What about it?”
“The tech asked if we had checked on it. Have we? To see if any calls were made during the party?”
“We haven’t had time,” Gerd said, without looking up from her notes. “You can put a request in tomorrow.”
“We need to track down those cameras too. I know there were disposable cameras around.”
It took about half an hour to walk from the party house to Skavboke.
Mikael had been there, and so had his brother, Filip; Jakob; Sander; Killian; and about two dozen others.
Filip had taken off first, in the company of Elina Jonsson.
Elina was in Filip’s class; she lived nearby and he claimed he had spent a few hours with her.
Gerd had called the girl, who immediately corroborated this information.
Mikael went on his way soon after, and Jakob left soon after that. Then a few more people took off, with Sander and Killian among the last to go. All of them, except for Filip of course, claimed to have gone straight home and to bed, just like after any other party.
Which really left only two alternatives.
“Either our guy wasn’t at the party…” Gerd said.
“Or someone is lying,” Siri said, her eyes going to Sander’s and Killian’s names in her notepad.
Gerd didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Maybe there’s a third option as well, but I hope not.”
“What’s that?”
Gerd suddenly looked exhausted. “They’re all lying.”