Chapter 38
“Goodness, you’re still here?”
Gerd stood in the doorway, a thick envelope in her hand.
“I had a supervisor during training who could do that,” Siri said.
“Do what?”
“Sneak up on folks without making a sound.”
“I’m not sneaking.” Gerd stepped into the room. “You just weren’t listening. What are you doing here?”
“I’m working. Isn’t that enough?”
“On the night before Christmas Eve?” Gerd looked at the empty chair on the other side of the desk. “Would you like some glogg?”
It wasn’t long before Gerd had set her envelope on the table, pushed the chair back, and crossed one leg over the other with a steaming glass in hand. The scent of the alcohol-free mulled wine spread through the room, spicy and strong. A lull came over them, a pleasant stillness.
“It’s pretty nice out here,” Siri said at last. “The nature, and everything, the houses. They’re small, and old, but lovely.”
“Yes,” said Gerd. “I don’t think I always notice anymore, myself.”
“Are you from here?”
“From ?led,” Gerd said. “You?”
“From town.”
“I mean, originally. Or whatever the word is.”
Siri paused as she drank.
“Indonesia,” she said eventually.
“Can I say that? ‘Originally,’ I mean.”
“You can. But I’m guessing it’s not a question you get very often. And I’ve been in Sweden for almost as much of my life as you have.”
“You know, out here, for us—it’s not easy for people to navigate the right words. Swedish has become a minefield in recent years. Anything can suddenly be wrong. But I didn’t mean any offense, if that’s how you took it.”
Siri didn’t respond. Her eyes on the envelope, she asked instead, “What have you got there?”
“Photographs from the party. There weren’t as many as I thought, actually. Maybe people don’t bring cameras to parties anymore.”
They had, after considerable effort and some help, managed to locate three disposable cameras.
Gerd had shown her badge and had the film developed at Gote Karlsson’s Photos on Viktoriagatan in town, while she enjoyed a schnitzelburger from the station canteen a few blocks away.
When she returned to Gote Karlsson’s Photos, a large stack of photographs was waiting for her in an envelope on the counter.
She thanked Gote, told him to send the bill to the Halmstad police, and took off.
Gerd pulled the photos from the envelope.
“As I expected. The unvarnished truth of a house party. Kids taking pictures of each other chugging drinks. Pissing in the bathtub. Throwing up in the sink, falling down stairs, breaking things. Beer cans, liquor bottles.” She held up a close-up.
“Someone who sneezed and wanted the results documented for posterity before he wiped his face.”
Siri raised an eyebrow. “Is that Filip Soderstrom?”
“It is.” Gerd rolled her eyes. “My God. We sure as hell didn’t act like this when I was a teenager.”
“Of course you did. It’s just that no one had a camera with them to document it.”
Gerd muttered and flipped through the pictures, stopping when she came to another of Filip. “I wonder how he’s doing. He’s always been a little sensitive, you might say.”
Siri looked through the photos several times.
She saw Mikael and Filip, Jakob, Pierre, Sander and Killian, Alice and Isabelle.
Pictures taken early in the evening: a sea of shoes and jackets in the hall.
Beer cans and plastic bottles on a table.
Drinks being mixed in the kitchen; the digital oven clock in the background: 7:47.
These were followed by more chaotic, blurry shots from later, but none of them, as far as Siri could tell, gave any hint of what was to come.
Pictures from upstairs showed Isabelle mixing liquor in some sort of plastic bowl, while the background revealed a picture that had been pulled from the wall and a porcelain bowl that had shattered, likely during Mikael and Jakob’s scuffle.
Pictures from the living room showed that Alice had napped on the couch for a while, and out in the hall you could see Sander and Killian approaching the front door, about to leave.
The clock on the wall read a few minutes before one.
Gerd and Siri added the photographs to the case materials.
“If anything,” Siri said, “I think the pictures seem to corroborate what they’ve told us. What do you think?”
“I’m afraid I agree,” Gerd said glumly, raising her glass. “But cheers to kids telling the truth to the police once in a while. There is hope.”
Siri raised her glass as well. “But someone isn’t. I’ve tried to make up my mind who I believe, whether Jakob or Killian is the liar here.”
They each took a sip of glogg.
“We should be able to find out, we just have to be a little creative.” Gerd looked at the clock on the wall. “I’d like to take a little field trip.”
Siri put down her glass. “Now?”
“Yes siree.”