The gun swung to aim at the female student.
Lydia screamed at her.
Lock! Lock!
She watched the terrified woman, who tried to make herself as small as possible. They looked quite similar; both were blonde, with a tinge of red in their shoulder-length hair; they were almost the same height and more or less the same age. Not long ago the student had been standing and looking down at Lydia.
Lydia nearly smiled. Now it was the other way around, she thought. Now she is the one lying down. Now I am the one standing up, watching from above.
Lock!
The young woman stared vacantly ahead. She was aware of someone holding a gun to her head, and that someone was screaming. But she couldnt hear anything, she couldnt bear to listen and take it in. She couldnt think about words and what they meant. Not now. Not with a gun to her head.
Last time! Lock!
The older doctor understood. Cautiously, he turned his head to the student, made eye contact and spoke to her softly.
She wants you to tie us up.
The young woman looked at him, but didnt move.
She wants you to tie us up with that string.
His voice was calm. She seemed to listen and met his eyes before turning to look at Lydia with a scared expression.
I dont think shell shoot. Do you understand? If you tie us up she wont shoot.
She nodded, slowly, slowly. Then she repeated the movement towards Lydia, to show that she had understood, and leaned forward to pick up the ball of string. Using the knife that had just made an incision into the abdomen of the cadaver, she cut a length of string, which she wound round her teachers wrists.
Hard! Very hard! You lock hard!
Lydia took another step forward and waved with the gun. She watched until the string had been pulled tight enough to cut into the flesh.
Lock!
The young woman went on, moved round with the knife, tied everybodys wrists together and didnt stop pulling at the string until blood showed at every knot. When she had finished she turned to Lydia. She was breathing heavily and waited until they made eye contact.
Lydia pointed with the gun. The student was to turn round and kneel. Using her weak left hand, Lydia managed to tie the students wrists as hard as she could.
The whole thing had taken six to seven minutes, a little longer than Lydia had planned. True, she hadnt expected five of them. One or two, yes, but not five.
Someone must have found the guard by now, realised that she was missing and probably alerted the police.
She didnt have much time.
She quickly searched the pockets of all five white coats, then the trouser pockets. Everything she found was piled up on the floor: key rings, wallets, loose change, ID cards, plastic gloves, half-empty packets of throat tablets. The doctor had a mobile phone. She tested it and noted that it was almost fully charged.
Five people kneeling in front of her, hands tied behind their backs, cowering before the gun in her hand.
One dead man, partly dissected, on a brightly lit trolley.
She had hostages.
Hostages mean that you can make demands.
She was crying.
It was a long time since he had made her cry. She hated him for it. Lisa Öhrström hated her brother.
The bloody call he had made from the metro station just two days ago, she could still hear his voice in her head, wheedling as usual when he was trying to make her give him money. She had refused, as she had been told to do at the courses for relatives.
Tears, a lump in her throat, her trembling body. She had picked him up so often from care homes and clinics. Every time he had promised it was the last time, he would never touch it again. He had caught her the way only he could do, looked into her eyes and, as time passed, unknowingly sucked her dry, sapped all her strength and wasted bloody years and years of her life.
Now he was lying there, slumped in a stairwell at her work.
This really was the last time, and just for a moment she felt almost relieved that he wouldnt bother her any more, until it dawned on her that this was the one feeling she would never learn to live with.
Sven Sundkvist, interview leader (IL): I know that to you Hilding Oldéus was not just another patient. However, I must ask you to answer my questions about him.
Lisa Öhrström (LÖ): I was just going to phone my sister.
IL: Believe me, I do understand that it is hard for you. But you were the only one here. The only eyewitness.
LÖ: I want to speak to my sisters kids. They adored their uncle. They only saw him when he was just out. He was clean then and nicely dressed. His face had some colour. Theyve never met the man who is lying on the stairs.
IL: I need to know how close you got to the other person. The visitor.
LÖ: I was going to phone just now. Arent you listening? Im trying to explain to you.
IL: How close?
They were sitting on hard wooden chairs in the ward sisters glass booth. It was located in the middle of the sixth-floor corridor.
Lisa couldnt stop crying and her dignity was slipping away. She tried hard to hang on to it, but felt her grip on life was weakening.
He was her brother.
She simply couldnt deal with this any more.
The last few times he had come to her for help she had refused, and all the tears in the world could not wash away that guilt.
Sven Sundkvist paused and watched her. Her white coat looked rumpled; her eyes were half closed. He continued to wait while she blew her nose and pulled her fingers through her long hair. He had met her before. Not her, but people like her. He often had to interview them, the women who stood hovering in the background, supportive souls who always felt guilty and exposed. He thought of them as guiltridden
and knew only too well that they could cause trouble. Their capacity for blaming themselves often complicated things, even for an experienced interrogator. They behaved as if they were the culprits and interpreted whatever you said as an accusation; actually, every one of them construed her life as one long accusation. Even when completely innocent, their anxieties obstructed investigations, which had to move on.
LÖ: Was it?
IL: Was it what?
LÖ: My fault?
IL: Look, its only natural that you feel guilty. I understand. But I cant help you. Its something you have to deal with yourself.
Lisa looked at him, the policeman sitting in front of her with one leg crossed over the other and demanding something from her.
She disliked him.
He seemed nicer, gentler than the older man, but she disliked him all the same. The police had some kind of perennial aura of authority, and this wasnt a proper interrogation, more like a confrontation, the start of a quarrel she couldnt bear to take part in.
IL: The man who was here, he was probably the one who killed your brother. How close did you get to him?
LÖ: As close as you and I are now.
IL: In other words, close enough to get a good look at him?
LÖ: Close enough to feel his breath.
She turned, glancing at the glass wall. What an unpleasant place this was. Whoever passed by could see them there,
curious eyes disturbing her sense of privacy. She found it hard to concentrate and said she was going to sit with her back to the window.
IL: Can you describe his build?
LÖ: He was frightening.
IL: Height?
LÖ: Much taller than me and Im quite tall, one metre seventy-five. Maybe like your colleague. Another ten centimetres.
Lisa nodded towards the end of the corridor, where Ewert was standing at the top of the stairwell, next to the medical examiner, staring at the dead body on the floor. Sven automatically turned the same way and mentally measured Ewert.
IL: His face?
LÖ: Strong. Nose, chin, forehead.
IL: And hair?
LÖ: He didnt have any.
There was a knock at the door. Lisa Öhrström had been sitting with her back to it, so she hadnt noticed someone approaching and therefore got a fright. A uniformed policeman opened the door and came in. He handed over an envelope and then left.
IL: Ive got some photos for you to look at. Pictures of different people.
She got up from her chair. No more. Not now. She didnt want to have anything to do with the brown envelope in the centre of the desktop.
IL: Please sit down.
LÖ: Ill have to get back to work.
IL: Lisa, look at me. It wasnt your fault.
Sven rose too, took a step forward and put his arm round the shoulders of the woman who wanted to return to her guilt and grief. He pushed her gently down on the chair, moved two case-note folders aside to make more free space on the desk and emptied out the contents of the brown envelope.
IL: Please, try to identify the visitor, the man whose breath you felt in your face.
LÖ: I suspect you know who he is.
IL: Please, concentrate on the photos.
She picked them over. One at a time, she had a good look, then put them to the side systematically, face down. After some thirty photos of men standing against a white wall, she suddenly had a sensation of something tightening in her chest. It was the same feeling as when she was little and scared of the dark. She had described it then as a jittery, dancing feeling, as if her fear was light and lifted her.
LÖ: Thats him.
IL: Are you certain?
LÖ: Quite certain.
IL: For the record, the witness has identified the visitor as the man in photograph thirty-two.
Sven was silent for a while, uncertain of his reactions. He knew well that grief eats people from inside and that this woman was almost suffocating with sadness, but even so he had forced her to keep her feelings at arms length and carry on nonetheless. He had known that she could break down at any moment and had ignored it, because it was his duty.
But now, now she pointed to the person they had wanted her to pick out.
He only hoped she was strong enough.
IL: You have identified a man who is generally thought to be very dangerous. From experience, we know that witnesses who identify him are always subjected to threats.
LÖ: Whats the implication?
IL: That we are considering giving you personal protection.
That was something she did not want to hear. She wanted to undo the whole thing, to go back home, undress and go to bed, sleep until the alarm went, wake up, have breakfast, get dressed and go to work at Söder Hospital.
It wouldnt happen. Not ever again.
The past would never cease to be, no matter how much she wanted it to.
Sitting there on the hard chair, she tried to cry again, tried to expel a part of whatever it was that was eating her from inside. It didnt work. Crying, damn it, wasnt an option. Sometimes, it just isnt.
She was about to get up again and walk off somewhere else, just away, when the door to the ward sisters glass booth opened.
Pulled open by someone who didnt bother to knock, just stepped straight in.
She recognised the older policeman, who had held her hand for a little too long when they met. His face was flushed, his voice loud.
Shit! Sven!
Sven Sundkvist seldom got irritated with his boss, unlike the rest of them. Most of his colleagues disliked Ewert Grens, some even hated him. As for himself, he had decided simply to accept, the good and the bad, to put up or shut up. And so he put up.
With one exception.
For the record. The person who has interrupted the interrogation of the witness Lisa Öhrström is Ewert Grens, DSI at the City Police, Stockholm.
Sven, Im sorry. It just . . . its bloody urgent.
Sven leaned over to the tape recorder, switched it off, then gestured at Ewert. OK, talk away.
That woman. You know the one we carried out of the flat in the Atlas district. She was unconscious.
Flogged?
Yes. Shes disappeared.
Disappeared?
Ewert nodded.
She was admitted to one of the surgical wards and was here until very recently. I had a call from Control. Shes not there any more. And shes armed with a handgun. Knocked out the guard assigned to look after her. Shes probably still somewhere in the hospital, ready to shoot.
Why would she do that?
I only know what Ive just told you.
Lisa Öhrström put photograph number 32 back on the table. Then she looked first at one policeman and then the other, and pointed at the ceiling.
Up there.
What?
Up there, next floor. The surgical wards.
Ewert stared at the white ceiling and was on his way out of the room he had just barged into when Sven grabbed his arm.
Stop. Wait. We just got a one hundred per cent clear, unhesitating identification of Jochum Lang.
The large, clumsy man stopped, nodded at Lisa and smiled at his colleague.
Now well see. Wont we, Anni?
What did you say?
Never mind.
Sven stared uncomprehendingly at Ewert and then turned to Lisa, putting his hand lightly on the young doctors shoulder.
Ewert. Dr Öhrström needs to have protection.