Babylon Read online

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m ill. I’ve got a splitting headache.’

  Her voice was no more than a whisper. What was going on inside her head?’

  Beckman moved quickly up the stairs to the door. ‘I’m afraid we do need to come inside, Rebecca,’ she said, leading the woman gently by the arm.

  Tell followed them into the messy hallway. Shoes had been piled up along the walls and outdoor clothes dumped on the nearest piece of furniture. He noticed that a pale-reddish liquid, which might have been red wine, had soaked into the floorboards at the bottom of the stairs. Shards of glass had been brushed over towards the wall and crunched beneath his shoes. A succession of darker red stains led into the kitchen, where Rebecca had been persuaded to sit down at the table.

  Beckman discreetly moved a half-full bottle of wine to one side and looked in the cupboard, where she found a packet of painkillers and a litre of lemonade. Rebecca Nykvist was sitting with her chin pressed to her chest, shaking her head almost imperceptibly.

  ‘I’m so tired . . .’

  Dark-red stains were spreading around her feet.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ Tell said. He went into the bathroom and rummaged in the cupboards for something to wrap around her feet. Rebecca seemed completely at a loss as he bandaged her stiff legs. Tiny shards of glass had lacerated the soles of her feet and she was bleeding profusely. He pulled a thin shard out of her heel.

  ‘I think you need to get this looked at by a professional,’ he said eventually.

  Beckman poured a glass of lemonade. They waited in silence as Rebecca took it and drank.

  ‘So,’ Tell began. ‘We . . .’

  He paused before he had even begun what he had to say. Then he tried again, with fresh determination.

  ‘What is your relationship with Henrik Samuelsson?’

  She looked at him over the rim of her glass, her eyes cloudy.

  ‘Have you found him?’ Her voice was completely expressionless.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘He’s my partner.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Last night.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I . . . I thought he was with another woman, he’d said he was going to do some revision with a friend, and . . . Sorry, I . . .’

  She blinked several times, as if she’d just realised that the police officers in her kitchen must be there for a reason.

  ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news.’ Beckman sought Rebecca’s gaze. ‘We’ve found a murder victim, and we have reason to believe that this man is your partner, Henrik Samuelsson. I’m very sorry.’

  She reached out and grasped Rebecca’s hand firmly. Her eyes were darting all over the kitchen; Tell and Beckman both thought she was about to faint. Then she appeared to pull herself together.

  ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘In an apartment on Linnégatan. We—’

  Rebecca interrupted her with a thoughtful ‘Hmm’, and no longer seemed particularly surprised. The shock was making her act irrationally, Tell thought. She hadn’t asked what her partner was doing in Linnégatan in the middle of the night.

  ‘We’re going to need your help with this,’ he said. ‘As soon as you feel up to it. But first of all I want you to get these cuts looked at. And I’d like someone to come over and stay with you for the next day or so. We can make arrangements for you to see a psychologist or a doctor.’

  He waited a few seconds, then went on: ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but I need to know where you were when your partner was murdered. You can answer now or later, but the sooner the better.’

  Rebecca got to her feet abruptly and went over to the worktop, where she stood with her back to Beckman and Tell. She wiped her eyes and nose with a piece of kitchen paper and twisted her red hair up into a knot.

  ‘I was at home last night.’

  ‘You didn’t leave the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you upset?’

  ‘I rang the friend Henrik was supposed to be revising with. Axel Donner. And I rang a couple of other people on his course.’ Rebecca Nykvist turned her head and surprised Tell by looking him straight in the eye. ‘You can check that, I made the calls from here, round about eleven o’clock. No, I rang Axel later as well.’

  ‘Is there someone we can ask to come over?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I have a friend who’s a nurse. I’d prefer to ring her myself.’

  Tell and Beckman exchanged glances. Rebecca’s demeanour had changed considerably. Neither was particularly keen to leave, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be easily swayed.

  ‘OK,’ Tell said eventually. ‘DS Beckman will be in touch, probably this evening or tomorrow. And of course you can call us when you feel up to talking. We’ll just wait outside for a while until your friend arrives.’

  ‘I’d like to be alone now.’

  They settled down to wait in the car. Tell picked up the phone to ring Seja, weighed down with guilt, but before he had the chance to key in her number, Gonzales called. Henrik Samuelsson had a record: violence against police officers and resisting arrest during an anti-racism demonstration some years ago. Samuelsson had spent the last few years at university, reading a wide range of subjects: literature, religion, social anthropology, history. Rebecca Nykvist worked as an administrator. Gonzales had tried to run a search on her, but had encountered difficulties, he would check with Renée, the team administrator, to see why it was taking such a long time, whether it was just the computer playing up, or . . .

  ‘Thanks,’ Tell interrupted Gonzales’ diatribe just as Nykvist’s friend, after some twenty minutes, clambered over the low garden fence with a horrified expression on her face and went into the house without knocking.

  Tell suspected Rebecca had only called her friend to get rid of them.

  10

  Karlberg blew his nose on the same tissue for the third time. With a feeling of revulsion, he pushed it into an empty sweet packet, which he screwed up and tucked into his pocket.

  He tried to perk himself up a bit before ringing the doorbell; the sign said K. von Dewall in ornate script.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, I’m a police officer. Andreas Karlberg.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘May I come in?’ Karlberg showed his ID. The man was convinced, and pushed the door shut to remove the security chain.

  ‘You can’t be too careful these days.’

  ‘We’re asking people in this building whether they saw or heard anything unusual last night,’ said Karlberg. ‘If I could come in for a few minutes, I’ll explain.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ von Dewall asked again.

  Karlberg was seized with a childish desire to ask the man if his ears were blocked.

  ‘Ann-Marie Karpov, your neighbour, has been murdered.’

  At last the man looked more amenable. ‘Oh my God. I . . . But I didn’t really know her all that well.’

  ‘Perhaps you could answer the question anyway. Did you notice anything unusual last night?’

  ‘I just need to get my head around this first.’ Von Dewall placed a hand over his heart and took several deep breaths.

  ‘Do you need to sit down?’ Karlberg said. ‘Put your head between your knees, maybe?’

  ‘No . . . I was sitting working until two, half-past two in the morning . . . The thing is, I did see someone in the courtyard. A woman. I noticed her because she spent quite a long time shuffling around down there. And it was an odd time. She . . . she seemed to be looking for something. She tried to get in. I think she spotted me at the window, because she moved out of the light. I didn’t give it much thought until I was on my way to bed. I heard something on the stairs. I peeped out, only because it was the middle of the night, and . . . There was someone standing outside Ann-Marie Karpov’s door, kind of . . . lifting up the flap of the letterbox. I thought it was strange, at that time of night.’

  ‘Hang on . . . Was this
the same woman you saw in the courtyard?’

  Von Dewall shook his head frantically. ‘I couldn’t possibly say. This person was standing sort of at an angle with their back to me, almost as if they knew they were being watched, and besides, they were wearing a hood. I mean, it could just as easily have been a man. Then the light on the stairs went out, and nobody switched it on again.’

  ‘Can you give me the exact time? Or a description of the woman you saw downstairs – was she tall, short? What was she wearing? A hooded jacket?’

  ‘Well . . . it was definitely late. Maybe two, half two as I said. I was absorbed in my work. Unfortunately I didn’t notice what she was wearing, but the woman in the courtyard definitely had red curly hair. It was glowing in the lamplight.’

  In the stairwell a while later, Karlberg glanced anxiously at his watch. He was well on the way to being late for the team meeting back at the station. Tell got really annoyed when someone was late. With a headache pounding behind his eyes, he ran down the stairs, across the courtyard and out into the street. He had forgotten to display his police parking permit and found a ticket tucked behind the windscreen wipers. He put it in his pocket and was just about to get in the car when something occurred to him. He went back inside. He went up to the first floor, hoping the residents of the apartment he had chosen weren’t in as he tried peering through the letterbox in the way von Dewall had just described. He bent down, conscious of every movement, trying to push the flap inwards with his knuckle or the side of his index finger while holding the external flap open with his thumb and index finger in order to get the clearest possible view.

  On the way back outside he rang Tell to explain that he would be late, to report on what von Dewall had said and to share his recently gained experience of peering through an old-fashioned letterbox.

  ‘Shouldn’t we get the letterbox dusted for prints?’

  ‘That must have been done already,’ said Tell.

  ‘Yes,’ Karlberg persisted, clamping his mobile between his ear and his shoulder as he pulled out and changed gear, ‘but I’m thinking about the inside. The back of the flap, the bit that opens inwards into the apartment. Maybe we could take a closer look at that.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I’m sure we could.’

  On the way to the station Karlberg went over what he had learnt from that afternoon’s door-to-door enquiries.

  Most of the time, people had neither heard nor seen a thing, something that had ceased to surprise him a long time ago. People tended to be blind and deaf, and disinclined to spy on each other. However this time they had both von Dewall and fru Stenius and, through their fragmentary accounts, a decent picture of events was beginning to emerge. He was pleased with his contribution.

  They had worked out a preliminary allocation of tasks and got the investigation under way. When Tell rang Magnus Johansson after the first team meeting, Johansson was stressed and on his way home.

  Tell explained that he realised the forensic examination of the scene had been completed, but he had just learnt that Karpov’s neighbour had seen someone peering in through the letterbox. They didn’t yet know whether this sighting matched the time of death, but would it be possible . . . preferably straight away . . .

  ‘To check the letterbox for prints?’

  ‘On the inside.’

  ‘I can ring Berggren and ask her to do it.’

  The last fifteen minutes had given them a breakthrough, and if the fingerprints did match someone who already had a record, then they were at least well on the way, if not home and dry. The neighbour who had seen the hooded figure fumbling with the door – Had that person been trying to get in? – didn’t see that same individual going into the flat to commit murder, but it was undeniably suspicious behaviour, peering in through someone’s letterbox in the middle of the night. If nothing else, perhaps the person in the hood could provide some information relevant to the case. Had the red-haired woman – Rebecca – been wearing a jacket with a hood?

  Tell kept on coming back to Rebecca Nykvist. He doodled absent-mindedly on the back of a statement, forming a vague plan in his head before dialling the direct line to Forensics. He got Strömberg’s assistant.

  ‘He’s told me to tell you he won’t know anything until tomorrow. But hang on a minute . . . Hello? He says the cause of death was probably the bullet wounds in both cases. He can’t identify the weapon yet, but he thinks . . .’

  She disappeared again, and Tell could hear Strömberg mumbling in the background.

  ‘. . . no, no, OK. We don’t know the type of weapon yet. But they probably died around midnight, give or take an hour either way.’

  Tell flicked through the notes on the desk in front of him. The first call from Anna-Klara Stenius had come in at 01.58. She said she’d heard the noise coming from Karpov’s apartment at around one o’clock. That would fit. However, according to von Dewall, the hooded figure had been creeping around in the stairwell at two o’clock or half-past two in the morning, although he hadn’t been absolutely sure of the time. Give or take an hour, Strömberg had said, but what else could have caused the noise?

  Outside his office someone switched off a light, and shadows glided across the newly polished floor. Further down the corridor a door opened and closed.

  He leant forward and shut down the computer.

  11

  The woman on the other end of the line had relented after listening to Seja Lundberg’s heart-rending tale. Hadn’t she also once been left in the lurch by a coward whose preferred method of cancelling a much longed-for break was via the answer machine?

  ‘Perhaps you could come and stay some other time, when it suits you better?’

  The woman’s voice was now kind and gentle, perhaps because Seja had managed to inject a faint tremor in her own. But she was upset. More about the way he had done it than the fact that their visit to the archipelago had gone down the pan, and what irritated her most was what the situation said about her. She understood perfectly that Christian had a job to do; she just wished she was more absorbed in her own career so that their relationship was on more of an equal footing.

  ‘I’m just not comfortable being The Girlfriend,’ she said to her friend Hanna when she called her a couple of minutes later. ‘Even if I do like having Christian as my boyfriend.’

  ‘But you’re happy that he has a job, aren’t you?’ Hanna countered. ‘I think you’re making something out of nothing. My blokes are always unemployed and generally useless. I can promise you that’s no picnic either.’

  Seja took the phone into the stable with her. The warm straw stank of urine, and needed mucking out.

  She didn’t want to ring Christian and end up talking to his bloody answerphone.

  As soon as her eyes grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, she spotted a shapeless lump on top of the mousetrap.

  ‘Shit, there’s another one.’

  Hanna made sympathetic noises as Seja picked up the trap between her thumb and forefinger and carried it out into the unforgiving light. Turning her face away she freed the limp, brown body and dropped it into a bank of ferns at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘What the hell are they doing in the stable when it’s so warm outside?’

  ‘They prefer to wallow in a manger of oats rather than searching out titbits for themselves.’

  Seja was distracted by a fir needle that had found its way in between her bare toes. She stood on one leg and dug it out before going back to sit on the bench by the stable wall.

  ‘I suppose it’s just pride, really. I mean, I know he has the kind of job that has to take priority. And precisely because I know he has a job that has to take priority, I always put him first. And that annoys me. If I were busy too, then at least I could get my revenge by cancelling on him sometimes. I hate the feeling of being at his beck and call. And I hate talking about priorities.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not at his beck and call. Anyway, what about going out tonight? By w
ay of consolation, plus you’d be cheering me up as well?’

  ‘What about Markus?’

  ‘I’m a free woman! Markus is at a sleepover tonight.’

  Seja felt much better by the time she hung up, so much so that she rang Christian’s friend Jonas right away to tell him the trip was postponed. But perhaps Jonas and his girlfriend would like to meet up with Seja and Hanna later?

  It was rare for Hanna to have a child-free night and Seja always had to think about night buses or make arrangements for the animals if she stayed away overnight. As a result they usually met at Hanna’s house. After Markus had gone to sleep, they would sit and chat while stuffing themselves with over-salted popcorn. And that was fine. But Seja still liked the opportunity to go into town, particularly as she spent most of her time working and studying at home.

  Järntorget had been regenerated so thoroughly that it was difficult to believe it had ever looked any different, that it hadn’t always been an airy cobbled piazza. Sitting outside the old Customs House was a perfect spot to watch the world go by. The perfect place to see people getting on and off buses and trams, waiting for each other, meeting and parting, hurrying past with sunglasses pushed up on top of their heads and their hands full of shopping, or cutting across the square on their way from Majorna and Masthugget towards Vasastaden and the city centre.

  As soon as the sun had gone down, the air had lost its mildness and they were sitting wrapped in blankets, chatting about the fact that Järntorget used to be a sprawling roundabout before the tunnel was built.

  ‘Here’s to the Göta tunnel,’ said Hanna, clinking her glass against Seja’s. ‘But everybody still used to arrange to meet here, in the days before mobiles. See you in Järntorget, we’d say. I remember we used to eat falafels at Grand Burger. After Solrosen and Gillestugan, but before the terminus.’

  ‘The Red Room? Or that illegal club . . . the French club?’

  They laughed at the memory.

  ‘We’d better stop talking about the past, it’s making me feel ancient,’ said Hanna. ‘These days we’d never cope if we stayed out till five in the morning.’