Authors: Liza Marklund
Then she saw the man standing in the doorway.
She felt reality lurch. This was impossible. ‘Ivar Berglund?’ she said.
It was him: those tiny eyes, that compact frame. She had watched him walk into the custody hearing at Stockholm District Court a year ago, and his picture had adorned the front page of the newspaper as recently as that morning. He wasn’t going to be released for the next forty years, yet here he was.
‘Hello, Annika,’ he said. ‘How good of you to come.’
Surprise gave way to fear, making her throat contract. How could he know her name? She took a step back and her heel hit the suitcase.
Ivar Berglund turned round and locked the front door, then put the key into his back pocket. ‘Sit down,’ he said, pointing at one of the wooden chairs.
She remained standing, feeling panic build.
An easy seven, maybe an eight
. ‘What have you done with Birgitta?’
He didn’t answer, and sat on one of the other chairs, looking at her calmly. ‘Are you aware of the Vidsel Test Site?’
His voice was surprisingly warm and melodic.
She stared at him. ‘The missile-testing facility?’
‘It’s called the Vidsel Test Site these days. They test bombs there.’
‘What . . .?’
‘There aren’t many people down here in southern Sweden who know about it. They think Norrbotten is full of Lapps and seagulls.’
She glanced at the window. Could she open it and jump out? No, the old-fashioned double-glazing was still there, screwed into place.
The man watched her. He couldn’t be here. It was impossible. He was going to be extradited to Spain.
‘My family comes from up there,’ Ivar Berglund said.
Annika concentrated on breathing.
‘The place you come from is important. It shapes you,’ Berglund went on. ‘We’d lived there for centuries, but now the land is used to develop weapons of mass destruction. That’s all it’s good for. That’s all
we
’re good for, those of us who come from there. We were raised in the shadow of wholesale slaughter.’
She took a pace back and stepped over the suitcase.
We have iron in our blood.
‘Anyway, are you familiar with Nausta?’ he asked.
Nausta?
Should she be?
‘It’s a village in the forest,’ Ivar Berglund said. ‘Father and Mother were born there. They grew up in the village, but they were moved when the bombs came. Simulated nuclear explosions were carried out there, and after that they weren’t allowed to return. That made Father’s mind a little peculiar.’
He nodded.
‘The village is still there, or parts of it, inside the test area. It’s the size of Blekinge – did you know that?’
She didn’t answer.
‘They measure the effect of explosions on nature and different materials, see how badly the forest is damaged. The Swiss built a big bridge over nothing, simply so they could blow it up. They’ve developed unmanned aircraft there, and advanced drones. More than forty different ones. They’re everywhere now. Iran has them, Pakistan . . . and Tunisia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Venezuela . . .’
‘Where’s Birgitta?’ Annika asked, her mouth dry.
He pursed his lips. ‘In Nausta,’ he said. ‘Or, rather, in the forest outside it.’
Her mobile buzzed in her back pocket. She had reception again. If she could just reach it . . .
Then the implications of what he had said hit her.
‘Birgitta? Has she . . . Why has Birgitta gone . . . there?’
He nodded again. ‘You can get there – it’s cordoned off but there’s no fence. Just warning signs. No one goes there. It’s deserted.’
Black dots started to dance in front of her eyes. Soon the panic attack would hit. ‘Why?’
He folded his hands, a gesture she had seen him make during the custody hearing. ‘I’m a simple person,’ he said. ‘I like justice. That’s my guiding principle. People get what they deserve. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A sister for a brother.’
Annika gasped. She fumbled for support and grabbed one of the chairs, ending up next to the table without its waxed cloth. ‘You’ve abducted her?’
He put his hands on his stomach. ‘A two-week-long trial,’ he said. ‘Like my brother. She was made to answer for her sins, and yours.’
She stared at the man:
his brother
? Arne Berglund. But he had been dead for twenty years.
‘It’s your fault,’ he said, nodding emphatically to underline his words. ‘Because of you, my brother is behind bars. So because of you, your sister had to pay.’
What did he mean? Her coverage of the murders in Nacka last year? Or her articles about Viola Söderland, which put Nina Hoffman on the right track and led to Ivar Berglund’s arrest?
‘Birgitta was very fond of you, but you weren’t a very nice sister. She deserved better.’
She stared at the man. Why was he using the past tense? ‘You’re lying. She’d never have gone anywhere with you.’
His eyes were perfectly calm. ‘Everyone comes with me,’ he said. ‘It’s very easy. Chloroform, if they’re being
difficult. Then water containing a sedative when they come round. They all drink, once they’re thirsty enough.’
She could still breathe.
‘You waited until she was drunk,’ Annika said. ‘You took her when she was at her weakest and most vulnerable. Aren’t you ashamed?’
He folded his hands. ‘Not at all.’
‘You drugged her. In the car, outside Konsum in Malmköping.’
‘We were on our way north and stopped to get some shopping. It’s over a thousand kilometres to Nausta.’
The abandoned village was evidently important. Annika nodded as though she understood. ‘A two-week-long trial, you said. Why?’
‘My brother’s trial is due to last two weeks.’
‘You kept her prisoner here in Hälleforsnäs. Where?’
He nodded towards the north. ‘In a summer cottage not far from here. You were actually supposed to come earlier. To stand witness. But you didn’t answer your messages.’
‘I’ve changed my number,’ Annika said.
He seemed completely normal, an ordinary, unremarkable man in his fifties. She’d never have noticed him in the street.
‘So you’re Ivar Berglund’s brother,’ she said. ‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Yes,’ the man replied. ‘Everyone thinks that. Unless I’m Ivar, and it’s my brother who’s dead.’
She ignored his attempt to confuse her. ‘And where’s Birgitta now?’
‘That’s rather difficult to say,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s best to leave bodies for the animals to deal with. Then they disappear in just a few days.’
Nausea climbed to her throat.
‘The forests are full of old bones,’ he said. ‘No one ever gives them a second glance. But the skull, hands and feet have to be dealt with separately – they’re too recognizable. She’s resting peacefully in a forest glade.’
Annika threw up over the table, a brown sludge of cappuccino from the discount store’s café. The man watched her quietly.
‘It’s a shame you didn’t get in touch sooner. You could have said goodbye. Well, the two of you can share your eternal rest.’
He stood up and went to the suitcase in the corner. It wasn’t locked, and just had the usual catches on it. He opened it, revealing its contents.
It was full of tools. Pliers of various sizes, two large hammers, sharp awls, metal wire, a saw, a long, thin knife and a chisel.
‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked Annika, holding up a chrome-plated pipe, thirty centimetres long, with a red hook at one end.
Instead of waiting for an answer, he took out a round blue capsule, which he attached to one end of the pipe. ‘It’s a bolt gun,’ he said. ‘Also known as a slaughterhouse stun gun. This blue cartridge can handle a large ox. She didn’t suffer. Death is instantaneous.’
She stared at the pipe.
A
slaughterhouse stun gun
. A tool used to kill livestock.
‘It was a miscalculation that you two sisters didn’t get on,’ the man said, polishing the implement.
She glanced at the window again, an old-fashioned mullion window: could she throw herself through it? Or was the wooden frame too strong?
‘Up in Vidsel, people stick together. Being apart causes us pain. We can’t be shut in, we’re born to be free . . .’
There was a noise on the other side of the cottage wall, and Annika started. Footsteps through mud? Ivar Berglund didn’t appear to have heard anything. Had she imagined it?
A moment later there was a knock at the door.
‘Birgitta? Are you in there? Annika?’
It was Steven. Berglund glanced towards the hall with interest.
‘Get out of here!’ Annika yelled, but her voice was so hoarse that it came out as a hiss. ‘Run! Get the police!’
‘Annika? I got your text. Is Birgitta here?’
Ivar Berglund walked towards the door. Fury raged through Annika, like a blue flame, and she screamed so hard her voice cracked: ‘Birgitta’s dead! Get the hell out of here!’
‘Are you okay, Annika?’
Ivar Berglund, or his brother, took the key out of his trouser pocket and opened the door.
‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Come in!’
‘Don’t come in!’ Annika shouted.
Behind Berglund’s head she could see Steven’s worried face.
‘What’s going on?’
‘He’s mad! He’s killed Birgitta!’
Steven stepped into the narrow hall, pushed Berglund aside and looked anxiously at Annika. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘Has he hurt you?’
Annika started to cry. ‘Steven,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Of course I should,’ he said, and turned to Berglund.
Berglund took a step towards them, raised the bolt gun and aimed it at Steven’s neck. For a dazed moment, she was back in the blast furnace. Her cat was flying through the air, its guts unravelling from its split abdomen. The world turned red and she grabbed the rusty iron pipe. No, it wasn’t an iron pipe but a hammer from the old suitcase. Ivar Berglund pressed the murder weapon hard against Steven’s forehead, he screamed, then there was a bang. Berglund had fired. With both hands round the heavy shaft, Annika swung the hammer towards the back of Berglund’s head. Steven sank to the floor in front of her, his eyes open, a round hole in his forehead. Berglund swung round and looked at her, and she hit him hard in the temple with the hammer. The killer’s knees buckled and his eyes rolled back. She raised the hammer again. Flakes of rust scratched her palms. She wanted to hit him and hit him and hit him until all the life ran out of him.
Then you’ll have to live with that.
She stopped herself mid-swing.
Berglund groaned. The cat was dead. There was no way to put his guts back into his body.
She stumbled over to the suitcase and grabbed the wire. Berglund was heavy. He had fallen on to his stomach with his hands at his sides. She bound them together behind his back with the wire, then opened the hatch to the cellar. With sweat dripping into her eyes she dragged him to the hole, pushed his feet over the edge, dropped his legs into the darkness, then shoved his unconscious body into the cellar. She heard him whimper – he had survived the fall. She closed the hatch and sank on to the floor beside Steven.
He was dead. Blood and brain tissue were seeping from the hole in his forehead.
She grabbed hold of his heavy body, and, surrounded by a cloud of tears, pulled him towards her on top of the hatch. She weighed fifty kilos, Steven almost a hundred: no matter how strong Ivar Berglund was, he couldn’t lift one hundred and fifty kilos, with his hands tied behind his back and a fractured skull.
She sat with Steven in her arms, rocking him and sobbing. He hadn’t needed to come in, he could have stayed outside. She sang a lullaby as she stroked his hair.
The light became sharper, the sun broke through the clouds, and a ray of light reflected off the shiny tools and on to the black iron stove.
She sang until she ran out of words and silence swirled around the lonely, sunlit dust.
Then she pulled her mobile phone from her back pocket and called the police.
Thomas sat on the sofa in the living room with a glass of red wine in his hand (the right one, his only one) a few minutes before the interview started.
He didn’t have any interest in watching it, but it had been a hectic day at work and he needed to unwind. Some entertainment from the state-funded television channel was all he could handle.
He took a large sip of wine, a Rioja from 2004, a fine vintage. He was the sort of person who appreciated things like that and, considering his employment situation, he was owed a reward in the middle of the working week. The new government was still more confused than was strictly permissible, and the situation for all the civil servants at Rosenbad was fluid, but that would settle down. People like him, responsible for their own inquiries, quickly found themselves in key positions within the new organization. He had already had two productive meetings with the new minister, the former hairdresser from Norrland, who knew nothing about the law but
knew how to listen to her colleagues and take advantage of their insights.
The opening titles of the interview programme started and he took another large gulp of wine, then put the glass down. He stretched out on the sofa, more than happy to be on his own in the apartment. It was always wonderful when his fiancée was out at the estate and he had the overnight flat to himself.
As per the usual format of the programme, the subject of the interview was shown in her normal working environment: there she was, walking through the newsroom, into a glass room, closing the door behind her. On the wall behind her desk hung an ugly portrait in brightly coloured pastels of an old man.
His pulse-rate increased. He hadn’t seen her for a long time, not since Birgitta’s funeral. Had she put on weight?
‘Annika Halenius, editor-in-chief of the
Evening Post
media group, welcome to the programme.’
The interviewer, a middle-aged woman who was trying to look younger, appeared on the screen and welcomed the viewers, then turned to her guest.
‘Thanks very much,’ his former wife said on screen. She was heavily made up, and someone had actually combed her hair.