Silenced (8 page)

Peder was staring at Alex.

‘And what am I going to do?’ he asked, trying not to sound as if he was whining.

He failed.

‘You are going to see the head of HR at two o’clock,’ Alex said dully. ‘And if I were you, I wouldn’t be late.’

Peder’s heart leapt with anxiety.

‘Was there anything else?’ said Alex.

Joar hesitated, but then went ahead.

‘We got the feeling the flat wasn’t their proper home,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’ asked Alex.

Joar looked sideways at Peder, but found his colleague was sitting staring at the wall, his face immobile.

‘As I say, it was just a feeling,’ said Joar. ‘But it seemed so impersonal, almost as though the whole place was designed just for entertaining.’

‘We ought to investigate that angle,’ said Alex. ‘Summer cottages and the like won’t necessarily be in the parents’ names; one of the daughters could just as well be the registered owner. Fredrika, can you look into that, too, while you’re at it?’

Then Alex declared the meeting closed.

Peder, full of foreboding, went to see the head of HR, Margareta Berlin, at exactly two o’clock. He could not get Alex’s stern look out of his mind. He had to wait outside her door for a few minutes, before she asked him in.
What the hell was this about?

‘Come in and shut the door,’ said Ms Berlin in her inimitable husky voice, very probably the result of high whisky consumption and lots of shouting at subordinates as she climbed her way to the top.

Peder did as he was told. He had enormous respect for the tall, powerfully built woman behind the desk. She wore her hair cut short, but still looked very feminine. Her large hand waved to indicate he was to take a seat on the other side of the desk.

‘Does the name Anna-Karin Larsson say anything to you?’ she asked, so brusquely that Peder jumped.

He shook his head and swallowed.

‘No,’ he said, embarrassed to find he had to clear his throat.

‘No?’ said Margareta, suddenly less abrasive, though her eyes were still dark with anger. ‘Hm, that’s rather what I thought.’

She paused before going on.

‘But maybe you do know whether you like a croissant with your coffee?’

Peder almost sighed with relief. If this was about nothing worse than that stupid remark, the meeting would soon be behind him. But he still had no idea who Anna-Karin Larsson was.

‘So,’ said Peder, with the lopsided smile he used for disarming women of all ages. ‘If it’s yesterday’s croissant incident you want to talk about, let me start by saying I meant no harm.’

‘Well that’s reassuring, at any rate,’ Margareta said drily.

‘No, I really didn’t,’ he said magnanimously, holding up his hands. ‘If anybody in the staff room took offence at my, er . . . how shall I put it, slightly crude way of expressing myself, I apologise. Of course.’

Margareta observed him across the desk. He stared back stubbornly.

‘Slightly crude?’ she said.

Peder hesitated.

‘Very crude, maybe?’

‘Yes, actually,’ she said, ‘extremely crude, even. And it’s a matter of deep regret that Anna-Karin was confronted with that sort of behaviour in only her third week with us.’

Peder gave a start. Anna-Karin Larsson. Was that her name, the luscious new trainee he’d made such a fool of himself with?

‘I shall go and see her and apologise in person, naturally,’ he said, talking so fast he almost started stuttering. ‘I . . .’

Margareta held up one hand to stop him.

‘Naturally you’ll apologise to her,’ she said forcefully. ‘That’s so self-evident as not to count as any kind of redress here.’

Bollocks. Some third-rate bit of skirt who couldn’t cope with the pressure except by running off to HR at the first opportunity. As if she could read his thoughts, Margareta said: ‘It wasn’t Anna-Karin who told us about this.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ Peder said mistrustfully.

‘No, it was someone else who found your behaviour offensive,’ said Margareta, who was now leaning across the table with a concerned look. ‘How are you, Peder, really?’

The question nonplussed him so much that he could not summon a reply. Margareta shook her head.

‘This has got to stop, Peder,’ she said loud and clear, in the sort of voice normally only used for addressing children. ‘Alex and I have been aware of what you’ve been going through these past eighteen months, and how it’s affected you. But that’s not enough, I’m afraid. To be blunt, you’ve put your foot in it once too often now, and this morning’s croissant episode was the final straw.’

Peder almost started to laugh, and raised his arms in a gesture of appeal.

‘Now hang on . . .’

‘No,’ roared Margareta, bringing the palm of her hand down on the desk with such force that Peder thought he could feel the floor shake. ‘No, I’ve hung on long enough. I wondered whether to intervene when you got drunk at the Christmas party and pinched Elin’s bottom, but I heard the two of you had worked it out between you and assumed you realised you’d gone too far. But clearly you hadn’t.’

You could have heard a pin drop, and Peder felt his objections to her verdict piling up and turning into a shout, which he only kept inside him with a huge effort. This wasn’t fair in any way and Peder was going to bloody well throttle the bastard who’d squealed about the croissants.

‘I’ve booked you a place on a workplace equality course which I think might be an eye-opener for you, Peder,’ she said frankly.

Seeing his reaction, she went on quickly:

‘My decision isn’t negotiable. You attend the course, or I take this problem to a higher level. I also want you to agree to an appointment with a psychologist through the healthcare provider we have a contract with.’

Peder opened his mouth and then closed it again, his face flaming.

‘We as employers cannot accept this sort of conduct, it simply won’t do,’ she said in the same firm tone, pushing a sheet of paper over the desk towards him. ‘The police force is no place for office fornication. Here, these are the dates and times of your appointments.’

For a moment he contemplated refusing to take the sheet of paper and telling her to shove it up her fat arse, and making a run for it. But then he remembered that Alex knew the story and even seemed to be in on the conspiracy. Peder clenched one fist so hard that the knuckles went white, and snatched the paper with the other hand.

‘Was there anything else?’ he said with effort.

Margareta shook her head.

‘Not for now,’ she said. ‘But I shall be keeping a close eye on how you deal with your colleagues from now on. Try to see it as a fresh start, a second chance. Take the opportunity of getting something out of this, especially out of your talk to the psychologist.’

Peder nodded and left the room, convinced he would fucking well kill the woman if he stayed a second longer.

Neither Alex Recht nor Joar Sahlin said a word as they drove the short stretch from HQ in Kungsholmen to Bromma Church where Jakob and Marja Ahlbin had worked. Ragnar Vinterman, the vicar, had promised to meet them at the parish rooms at two thirty.

Alex’s thoughts went to Peder. He knew he had been hard on him at the meeting in the Den, but he did not really know what else he could have done. The croissant episode was as odd as it was unacceptable, and revealed poor judgement in a colleague whose employer had placed a good deal of trust in him. Alex knew well enough that the boy had been having a hard time in his private life over quite a long period. It was only natural for that sort of thing to affect one’s judgement, and if Peder had ever commented on his own conduct in a way that showed he knew he was behaving badly, people might have been more tolerant. But Peder had not. He got himself into awkward situations more and more often, embarrassing his employer in front of other employees.

In front of other
female
employees.

Alex suppressed a sigh. And then there was Peder’s peculiarly lousy sense of timing. The last thing they needed at the moment was any negative publicity, with the special investigation group’s continued existence currently under discussion. It was enough that their only civilian appointment and only female investigator had been forced to go part time by a more than hellish pregnancy which Alex’s bosses had initially construed as symptoms of stress and exhaustion. He had been more than thankful the day Fredrika finally gave in and followed the rules for a proper reduction in hours backed up by a convincing doctor’s note.

Meanwhile, the group had acquired new blood in the shape of Joar. Admittedly only for a limited period, but still. The decision was in itself an indication that the group had not been written off. It had not taken Alex long to appreciate Joar as an exceptionally talented detective. By contrast with both Peder and Fredrika, he also seemed mentally stable. He never flared up like Peder, and never seemed to misconstrue things the way Fredrika tended to. He always stayed calm and his integrity appeared boundless. For the first time in many months, Alex felt as though he had someone he could talk to at work.

‘Mind if I ask about your surname?’ Joar suddenly said. ‘Is it German?’

Alex gave a laugh; it was a question he was often asked.

‘If we go back far enough in our family tree it apparently is,’ he replied. ‘Jewish.’

He glanced sideways at Joar, keen to see if he reacted. He did not.

‘But that was a long time ago,’ Alex added. ‘The men whose surname it was married Christian women, and the Jewish blood ties between mother and child were broken.’

They were approaching the church. Alex parked outside the parish rooms as arranged. A tall, dignified-looking man was on the front steps in his shirtsleeves and dog collar, waiting for them. He was silhouetted like a dark statue against the white building and pale grey sky. Commands respect, was Alex’s assessment before he was even out of the car.

‘Ragnar Vinterman,’ said the clergyman, taking Alex’s hand and then Joar’s.

Alex noted that he could not have been on the steps for long, because his hand was still warm. And large. Alex had never seen such large hands before.

‘Let’s go in,’ said Ragnar Vinterman in a deep voice. ‘Alice, our parish assistant, has provided some refreshments.’

There were coffee cups and a generous plate of buns set out on one of the big tables in the parish rooms. Other than that, the whole place looked deserted, and Alex could feel how chilly the place was even before he took off his coat. Joar kept his on.

‘I’m sorry it’s so cold,’ said Ragnar with a sigh. ‘We’ve been trying to sort out the heating here for years; we almost despair of ever getting it to work. Coffee?’

They accepted the hot drinks gladly.

‘I should probably start by expressing condolences,’ Alex said cautiously as he put down his cup.

Ragnar nodded slowly, head bowed.

‘It’s a huge loss to the parish,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s going to take us a very long time to get over it. The grieving process is going to be hard work for us all.’

The man’s bearing and voice filled Alex with instinctive trust in him. Alex’s daughter would have said that the vicar had the body of a senior athlete.

The vicar ran a hand through his thick, dark brown hair.

‘Here in the church we always follow the saying “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst”, but to do that you need to form a clear view of what the worst conceivable thing would be.’

He stopped abruptly and fiddled with his coffee cup.

‘I fear we who work and worship here had not really done that on this occasion.’

Alex frowned.

‘I don’t think I quite understand.’

‘Everybody here knew about Jakob’s health problems,’ he said, meeting Alex’s gaze. ‘But only a few of us knew how bad things sometimes got for him. Only a handful of colleagues and parishioners knew he had had electric shock treatment several times, for example. When he was in the clinic we would generally say he was at a health resort or away on holiday. He preferred it that way.’

‘Was he afraid of being seen as weak?’ asked Joar.

Ragnar turned his gaze to the younger man.

‘I don’t think so,’ he answered, leaning back in his chair slightly. ‘And he knew, just as we did, that there are so many preconceptions about the condition he suffered from.’

‘We gather he’d been living with it for a long time,’ said Alex, kicking himself for not yet having got hold of Jakob’s doctor.

‘For decades,’ sighed the vicar. ‘Ever since his teens, really. Thank goodness treatment in that area has made such strides as time has gone on. From what I can understand, those early years were pretty ghastly for him. His mother was apparently diagnosed with the same thing.’

‘Is she still with us?’ asked Joar.

‘No,’ said the vicar, and drank some coffee. ‘She took her own life when Jakob was fourteen. That was when he decided to take holy orders.’

Alex gave a shudder. Some problems seemed to pass from generation to generation like a relay baton.

‘What’s your view on what happened yesterday evening?’ he said tentatively, seeking eye contact.

‘You mean do I think Jakob did it? Did he shoot Marja and then himself?’

Alex nodded.

Ragnar swallowed several times, looking past Alex and Joar and out of the window at the snow covering the trees and ground.

‘I’m afraid I think that is exactly what happened.’

As if he had just realised that he was sitting very uncomfortably, he shifted position on his chair and put one knee over the other. His big hands rested on his lap.

The only other sound was that of Joar’s pen at work, adding to the half-page of notes he already had.

‘He was in such a wretched state those last two days,’ Ragnar said, his voice strained. ‘And I regret, yes, I regret with all my heart that I didn’t sound the alarm and at least tell Marja everything.’

‘Such as what?’ asked Alex.

‘About Karolina,’ said Ragnar, leaning forward over the table and resting his face in his hands for a few moments. ‘Little Lina, whose life had gone so far off course.’

Alex registered that Joar had stopped writing.

‘Did you know her well?’ he asked.