Marked For Life

“There was the problem with improper behavior too,” she said.

She quickly described how there had been assaults and thefts at the asylum accommodation center. Because of the stress of their situation, often arguments broke out among the new arrivals. The staff that had been temporarily hired to run the center found it hard to keep order.

“Which we know about,” said Henrik.

“Oh yes, of course,” said Kerstin and straightened her back again.

“Many of them were in poor mental condition, and Hans tried to do everything he could to make their stay as comfortable as possible. But it was difficult. Several nights in a row somebody set off the fire alarm. People got scared and Hans had no alternative but to hire more staff to keep an eye on the center. My husband was personally very committed, I can tell you that, and he put his very soul into his work.”

Henrik leaned back and studied Kerstin. She didn’t look quite as miserable now. Something had gradually come over her, perhaps a pride in her husband’s work—perhaps a sort of relief.

“Hans spent a lot of time at the office. There were late evenings, and every Sunday he left home after lunch and didn’t come back until dinnertime. It was hard to know exactly what time he would get home, what time to have dinner ready, so he always used to buy a pizza instead. Just like yesterday. As usual.”

Kerstin Juhlén hid her face in her hands as she shook her head. The anguish and the misery of it all had immediately come back.

“You have the right to take a break,” said Peter Ramstedt as he carefully put a hand on her shoulder.

Jana studied his touch. She knew this lawyer had a reputation of being strongly attracted to women and rarely hesitated to physically console his clients. If he got the chance, he was open to do more than that.

Kerstin raised her shoulder slightly in discomfort, which evidently made the solicitor realize that he should remove his hand. Peter pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her. Kerstin gratefully accepted, and she blew her nose in it audibly.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s all right,” said Henrik. “So if I’ve understood you correctly, your husband had a difficult job.”

“No, I mean...yes, but I don’t know. I can’t really say exactly... I think...it would be best if you were to speak with my husband’s secretary.”

Henrik wrinkled his brow. “Why is that?”

“It would just be for the best,” she whispered.

Henrik sighed and leaned forward over the table.

“What’s his secretary’s name, then?”

“Lena Wikström. She has been his assistant for almost twenty years.”

“Of course we’ll speak with her.”

Kerstin’s shoulders sank and she clasped her hands.

“May I ask,” said Henrik, “if you and your husband were close?”

“How do you mean? Of course we were close.”

“You didn’t have a disagreement about anything? Argue a lot?”

“What are you getting at, Chief Inspector?” interjected Peter, leaning across the table.

“I just want to be sure we get the full picture for this investigation,” said Henrik.

“No, we rarely argued,” Kerstin answered slowly.

“Apart from you, who else was close to him?”

“His parents have been dead a long time, unfortunately. Cancer, both of them. He didn’t have any real friends, so you could say that our social life was rather limited. But we liked it like that.”

“Sister? Brother?”

“He has a half brother who lives in Finspång. But they haven’t had much contact with each other in recent years. They are very different.”

“In what way?”

“They just are.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lars Johansson. Everyone calls him Lasse.”

Mia Bolander had been sitting with her arms crossed, just listening. Now she asked straight out, “Why don’t you have children?”

Kerstin was surprised by the question and hastily pulled her legs back under her chair. So hastily that one shoe came off.

Henrik turned around and looked at Mia. He was irritated, but she was pleased that she’d asked. Kerstin bent down and groaned as she stretched to reach her shoe under the table. Then she sat up straight again and put her hands on the table, one atop the other.

“We never had children,” she said briefly.

“Why not?” said Mia. “Couldn’t you conceive or what?”

“I think we could have. But it just sort of never happened. And we accepted that.”

Henrik cleared his throat and started talking to prevent Mia from asking more questions along this line.

“Okay. You didn’t mix with many people, you said?”

“No, we really didn’t.”

“When did you last have visitors?”

“That was a long while ago. Hans was working all the time...”

“No other visitors to the house? Repairmen, for example?”

“Around Christmas a man knocked on the door selling lottery tickets, but otherwise there haven’t been...”

“What did he look like?”

Kerstin stared at Henrik, surprised by the question.

“Tall, blond as I remember. He seemed nice, presentable. But I didn’t buy any tickets from him.”

“Did he have any children with him?”

“No. No, he didn’t. He was alone.”

“Do you know anybody with children?”

“Well, yes, of course. Hans’s half brother. He has an eight-year-old son.”

“Has he been to your house recently?”

Kerstin stared at Henrik again.

“I don’t really follow your question...but, no, he hasn’t been in our house for ages.”

Jana Berzelius drew a ring around the half brother’s name on her notepad. Lars Johansson.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this to your husband?” she said.

Kerstin squirmed a little, looked out of the window and answered, “No.”

“Did your husband have any enemies?” said Henrik.

Kerstin looked down at the table and took a deep breath.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Nobody he was angry with or had argued with or who was angry with him?”

Kerstin didn’t seem to hear the question.

“Kerstin?”

“What?”

“Nobody who was angry with him?”

She shook her head no so violently that the loose skin under her chin wobbled.

“Strange,” said Henrik as he laid out copies of the threatening letters on the table in front of her. “Because as you know, we found these at your house.”

“What are they?”

“The letters from your closet. We are hoping you will tell us about them.”

“But I don’t know what they are. I’ve never seen them before.”

“They seem to be some sort of threats. That means your husband must have had at least one enemy, if not more.”

“But, no...”

Kerstin shook her head again.

“We are very anxious to find out more about who sent these—and why.”

“I have no idea.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, I’ve told you I’ve never seen them before.”

Click-click could be heard from Peter Ramstedt’s pen.

“As my client has said twice, she does not recognize these papers. Would you be so kind and note that now for the record? Then you don’t have to waste time repeating the same question.”

“Mr. Ramstedt, you are surely well aware as to how an interview is carried out. Without extended questioning, we won’t get the information we need,” said Henrik.

“Then be so kind as to stick to relevant questions. My client has clearly stated that she has not seen these papers previously.”

Peter looked straight at Henrik. CLICK-CLICK.

“So you don’t know if your husband felt threatened in any way?” Henrik continued.

“No.”

“No strange phone calls?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think or don’t know?”

“No, no calls.”

“You don’t know anybody who wanted to warn him? Or get revenge?”

“No. But the nature of his work of course made him rather vulnerable.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well...my husband thought that the decision process for asylum was difficult. He never liked having to turn away any asylum seekers, even though he wasn’t personally responsible for having to tell them himself. He knew how desperate many were when they didn’t get asylum here. But not everyone qualified. And no one has threatened him. Or has sought revenge, if that is the question.”

Henrik wondered whether Kerstin was telling the truth. Hans Juhlén could admittedly have kept the threatening letters hidden away from her. But it did nevertheless seem unlikely that he never during all his years in the job felt frightened of somebody nor talked with his wife about it.

* * *

“There must have been a relatively serious threat against Juhlén,” Henrik said to Jana when the interview was concluded. They both left the interrogation room with slow steps.

“Yes,” she answered briefly.

“What do you think about the wife?”

Jana remained standing in the corridor while Henrik closed the door. “There are no signs of violence in the house,” she said.

“Perhaps because the murder was well planned.”

“So you think she’s guilty?”

“The spouse is always guilty, right?” Henrik smiled.

“Yes, almost always. But at the moment no evidence links her to the murder.”

“She seemed nervous,” he added.

“That isn’t enough.”

“I know. But it feels as if she isn’t telling the truth.”

“And she probably isn’t, or at least not completely, but to arrest her I’m going to need more than that. If she doesn’t start talking or we can’t get any technical evidence, I’ll have to let her go. You’ve got three days.”

Henrik ran his fingers through his hair.

“And the secretary?” he said.

“Check out what she knows. I want you to visit her as soon as you can, but definitely by tomorrow. Unfortunately I have four cases which I have to pay attention to, and so I am not free to go with you. But I trust you.”

“Of course. Mia and I will talk with her.”

Jana said goodbye and walked past the other interrogation rooms.

As a public prosecutor, she regularly visited the place. She was on emergency duty a certain number of weekends and nights every year—it went with the job. A rotating duty schedule was posted, whose main purpose was to ensure that a prosecutor was available for urgent decisions such as whether somebody should be detained. A prosecutor could keep somebody in detention up to three days without introducing charges. After that, a court hearing was necessary. On a number of occasions, sometimes late at night, Jana had been called in and, in a rush, had to make a decision about an arrest.

Today all the cells in the center were full. She looked up toward the ceiling and thanked a higher power that she wasn’t on call the coming weekend. At the same time, she remembered that she would be on standby duty the weekend after that. She slowed her pace as she walked down the corridor, then stopped to sit and pull her calendar out. She turned the pages ahead to April 28. Nothing was noted there. Perhaps it was Sunday, April 29? Nothing there either. She turned a few more pages and caught sight of the entry for the first of May. A public holiday. ON CALL. And that was the day she had agreed to have dinner with her mother and father. She felt immediate stress. She couldn’t possibly be on call that same day. How had she not seen that? Of course, it was not absolutely necessary to be at her parents’ for dinner, but she didn’t want to disappoint her father by not coming over at all.

I’ll have to swap days with somebody, she thought, as she put her calendar back in her briefcase. She got up and continued walking, wondering with whom she’d be able to swap days. Most likely Per Åström. Per was both a successful public prosecutor and a popular social worker. She respected him as a colleague. During the five years they had known each other, a friendship of sorts had grown up between them.

Per was thirty-three years old and in good shape. He played tennis on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He had blond hair, a little dimple in his chin and eyes that were different colors. He smelled of aftershave. Sometimes he tended to go on a bit, but otherwise a nice guy. Only that; nothing more.

Jana hoped that Per would swap with her. Otherwise she would resort to bribing him with wine. But red or white? She weighed the two choices in time with the sound of her heels on the floor. Red or white. Red or white.

She contemplated taking the stairs down to the garage but chose the elevator instead. When she saw that the defense lawyer Peter Ramstedt was waiting there too, she immediately regretted her decision. She stood back from him at a safe distance.

“Ah, it’s you, Jana,” said Peter when he noted her presence. He rocked back and forth on the soles of his shoes.

“I heard that you had gone to review the autopsy and see the victim’s body at the medical examiner’s.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“One hears a thing or two.”

Peter gave a slight smirk and exposed his whitened teeth.

“So you like corpses?”

“Not particularly. I’m just trying to lead an investigation.”

“I’ve been a lawyer for ten years and I’ve never heard of a prosecutor going to an autopsy.”

“Perhaps that says more about other prosecutors than about me?”

“Don’t you like your colleagues?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Isn’t it simpler in your position to let the police do the legwork?”

“I am not interested in what is simple.”

“You know, as a prosecutor you can complicate an investigation.”

“In what way?”

“By calling attention to yourself.”

Hearing those words, Jana Berzelius decided to take the stairs down to the garage anyway. For every step she cursed Peter Ramstedt.

CHAPTER SIX

THE ROCKING HAD STOPPED. They were traveling silently, shut inside the dark container.

“Are we there?” said the girl.

Her mama didn’t answer her. Nor her papa. They seemed tense. Her mother told her to sit up. The girl did as she was told. The others also began to move. There was a feeling of unease. Several others were coughing and the girl felt the warm, stuffy air as it sought its way down into her lungs. Even her papa made a wheezing sound.

“Are we there now?” she said again. “Mama? Mama!”

“Quiet!” said Papa. “You must be completely quiet.”

The girl became grumpy and pushed her knees up toward her chin.

Suddenly the floor shuddered under her. She fell to one side and stretched out an arm to brace herself. Her mother got hold of her and held her close. It was silent a long, long time. Then the container was lifted up.

They all hung on tight in the cramped space. The girl gripped her mama’s waist. But even so, she hit her head when the container landed hard on the ground. At last they were in their new country. In their new life.

Mama got up and pulled her daughter up too. The girl looked at Danilo, who was still sitting with his back to the wall. His eyes were wide open, and just like all the others he was trying to hear sounds outside. It was hard to hear anything through the walls but if you really concentrated then you could perhaps distinguish weak voices. Yes, there were people talking outside. The girl looked at her papa and he smiled at her. That smile was the last thing she saw before the container was opened and daylight poured in.

Outside the container stood three men. They had something in their hands, something big and silvery. The girl had seen such things before, in red plastic that sprayed water.

One man started to shout at the others. Something weird was on his face, an enormous scar. She couldn’t help but stare at it.

The man with the scar came into the container and waved the silvery thing. He was shouting all the time. The girl didn’t understand what he said. Neither did her parents. Nobody understood his words.

The man went up to Ester and pulled at her sweater. She was scared. Ester’s mama was also frightened and didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. The man pulled Ester and held her in a firm grip around her neck as he backed away, all the time with the silvery thing pointed at Ester’s mama and papa. They didn’t dare do anything; they stood there completely still.

The girl felt somebody take a firm hold of her arm. It was Papa, who quickly pushed her in behind his legs. Her mama spread out her skirt to cover the girl even more.

The girl stood as still as she possibly could. Behind the skirt she couldn’t see what was happening. But she could hear. Hear how the grown-ups started to shout. They were shouting no, no, NO! And then she heard Danilo’s desperate voice.

“Mama,” he shouted. “Mama!”

The girl put her hands over her ears so that she wouldn’t have to hear the other children’s crying and shrieking. The voices of the grown-ups were worse. They were crying and shrieking too, but they were much louder. The girl pressed her hands even harder against her ears. But then after a while, all became silent.

The girl took her hands away and listened. She tried to look out between her papa’s legs, but when she moved he pressed her hard against the wall. It hurt.

The girl heard steps approach and felt her papa press her harder and harder against the steel wall. She could hardly breathe. Just as she was about to open her mouth to complain, she heard a popping sound and her papa fell down on his face on the floor. He lay there unmoving in front of her. When she looked up, the man with the scar was standing in front of her. He smiled.

Her mama threw herself forward and held on to her as best she could. The man just looked at them, then shouted something again and Mama shouted back.

“You don’t touch her!” she screamed.

Then he hit her with the silver thing he had in his hand.

The girl felt how her mama’s hands slipped down her tummy and legs until she lay on the floor with staring eyes. She didn’t blink, just stared.

“Mama!”

She felt a hand on her upper arm as the man yanked her up. He held her arm tightly, pushing her ahead of him out of the container.

And as she left she heard the dreadful sound when they fired the silver things. They didn’t have water in them. Water didn’t sound like that. They shot something hard, and they shot straight into the dark.

Straight at Mama and Papa.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tuesday, April 17

JANA BERZELIUS WOKE up at five in the morning. She had had the same dream again; it never left her in peace. She sat up and wiped the sweat off her brow. Her mouth was dry from what she imagined was her shrieking. She straightened out her cramped fingers. Her fingernails had dug into the palms of her hands.

She had experienced the same dream for as long as she could remember. It was always the same images. It irritated her that she didn’t understand what the dream meant. She had turned, twisted and analyzed all the symbols each time she fell victim to it. But that was no help.

Her pillow lay on the floor. Had she thrown it there? Presumably, as it was a long way from the bed.

She picked up the pillow and put it back against the headboard, then pulled the duvet back over herself. When she had lain there restless under the warm duvet for twenty more minutes, she realized it was pointless to try to fall back to sleep. So she got up, showered, dressed and ate a bowl of muesli.

With a mug of coffee in her hand, she looked out the window at the unsteady weather. Even though they were already halfway through April, winter still made itself felt. One day it was a cold rain, and the next it was snowing with a temperature of close to freezing. From her flat in Knäppingsborg, Jana had a view of the river and the Louis de Geer Hall. From her living room she could also see the people who visited the quaint shopping area. Knäppingsborg had recently been renovated, but the urban planners on the council had managed to retain the genuine feel of the place.

Jana had always wanted a flat with high ceilings, and when the first plans were approved for renovating the old buildings in the area, her father had put his name down to invest in a housing-association apartment for his then newly graduated daughter. As luck would have it, or thanks to a few phone calls, Karl Berzelius was given the opportunity to choose first. Of course she chose the apartment that was forty square meters larger than the others, with a total floor area of 196 square meters.

Jana massaged her neck. Her scar always became irritated by the cold weather. She had bought a cream at the pharmacy that the pharmacist assistant said was the latest on the market, but she hadn’t noticed any improvement.

Jana draped her long hair over her right shoulder, exposing her neck. With a careful touch, she gently rubbed the cream into the carved letters. Then she covered her neck with her hair again.

She took a dark blue jacket out of her closet and put it on. Over that she buttoned up her beige Armani coat.

At half past eight she left the flat, walked to her car and drove in the smattering rain to the courthouse. She was thinking about the first case of the day, which concerned domestic violence. The proceedings would start at nine. Her fourth criminal case, the last for the day, probably wouldn’t finish until half past five at the earliest.

It would be a long day, she knew that.

* * *

It was just after 9:00 a.m. when Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander entered the Migration Board offices. They checked in at reception and were given a temporary key card.

Lena Wikström, the secretary, was in the middle of a telephone conversation when they stepped into her outer office on the second floor. She held up her finger to signal that she would be with them in a few moments.

From Lena’s office you could see straight into what had been Hans Juhlén’s. Henrik noted that Hans’s office looked tidy. The surface of the wide desk was uncluttered, with just a computer and a pile of folders next to it. Lena Wikström’s space was quite the opposite. Papers were strewn everywhere, on the desk, on top of file folders, underneath ring binders, in trays, on the floor, in the paper-recycling box and in the wastebasket. Nothing appeared organized. Documents lay all around.

Henrik felt a shiver down his spine and wondered how Lena could concentrate in such chaos.

“That’s that.” Lena ended the call and got up. “Welcome.”

She shook hands with Henrik and Mia, asked them to sit down on the worn visitors’ chairs next to her desk and immediately started speaking.

“It’s dreadful what happened. I still can’t understand it. It’s simply terrible. So terrible. Everybody’s wondering who would do such a thing. I’m answering calls about Hans’s murder all the time now. He was murdered, wasn’t he? Usch, yes, it’s simply too terrible, I must say.”

Lena started to pick at her peeling nail polish. It was hard to say how old she was. Henrik guessed fifty-five plus. She had short dark hair and was wearing a light lilac blouse and earrings in a matching color. She almost gave an impression of elegance and affluence. If it hadn’t been for the flaking nail polish, of course.

Mia took out her pen and notepad.

“I understand you’ve worked with Hans Juhlén for many years, is that correct?” she said.

“Yes, more than twenty,” said Lena.

“Kerstin Juhlén said it was almost twenty.”

“Unfortunately she doesn’t really keep track of her husband. No, it’s actually twenty-two. But I haven’t been his assistant all that time. I had another chief first, but he retired many years ago and handed over to Hans. Hans was in charge of the accounts department before this position. We met frequently during that time since I assisted the previous chief.”

“According to Kerstin, Hans was somewhat stressed recently, would you agree as to that?” Henrik said.

“Stressed? No, I would hardly say that.”

“She was referring to the recent criticism that had been directed toward the department.”