He peered behind the blue-and-white police tape that surrounded the door on the far right end of the long row of buildings. Beyond the curtain of rain he could see crime scene techs moving back and forth carrying various tools. He entered and went down the stairs to the storage area-and found a setup surprisingly reminiscent of Wayne Jennings’s secret torture chamber in Kentucky. The cast-iron chair that was welded to the floor appeared to be identical, as did the cement walls and the bare lightbulb.
“How’s it going?” he called to the technicians.
“Pretty good,” one of them called back. “Lots of organic material here. Mostly the victim’s, I expect, but since the perp didn’t have time to clean up after himself, we might get lucky.”
Seen in daylight, Hjelm thought, the premises looked relatively harmless, defused. So this was where the confrontation had taken place, he mused. Lamar Jennings had gotten in with the key made from a clay imprint, stationed himself behind the boxes in the corner, and awaited his father; that seemed the most likely scenario. Wayne Jennings arrived with Eric Lindberger, who was either unconscious or not, placed him in the chair, took out the pincers, and set to work. For Lamar, the sight of the diabolical father he’d thought was dead for fifteen years, performing the very actions that had given rise to the most horrifying of his mental images, was too much; he couldn’t keep his cool and showed himself. Wayne heard him, took out his pistol, and executed him.
So they could hardly call it a confrontation. It was more like a quick elimination, without reflection, as when you kill a mosquito without interrupting your lawn mowing. A fitting end.
Hjelm strode back over to the entrance, under the large, grotesque LinkCoop logo, and spoke with the receptionist, a tanned forty-five-year-old woman who was dressed in overalls because she was also the warehouse’s organizer.
“What kind of warehouse is the one at the far end?” Hjelm asked.
“It’s a resource building,” she said without looking up; apparently she had already said this a few times today. “That means it’s empty. If we get a larger delivery than expected, we have a little extra space. We have a few like that.”
“Is there anyone who often hangs out there?”
“You don’t hang out in a warehouse,” she rebuffed him. “You keep things there.”
He chatted idly with the warehouse workers. None of them knew anything; none understood anything. Break-in, yes, we’ve had those before, but murder-that’s insane.
He grew tired and went home.
Home to police headquarters.
Kerstin Holm didn’t feel up to holding a difficult, demanding conversation, such as one with Benny Lundberg’s parents. Not only was she feeling her jet lag, she had a stressful work week behind her. She wanted to sleep. Instead she was sitting in a small apartment in Bagarmossen at the home of shocked and grieving parents who blamed her personally for their son’s ill fortune.
“The police are falling apart,” said the father, who kept up the resentful facade even as his every word revealed the depth of his sorrow. “If they would fight crime instead of devoting themselves to affirmative action and other shit, our son wouldn’t be lying there like a fucking vegetable that you can only shoot out of mercy. Every other fucking cop is a woman. I’m just an old, fat school janitor, but I would easily be able to get ten cop chicks off me and scram, believe me.”
“I believe you,” said the cop chick, trying to move on.
“Let the men do their thing and the women do theirs, for fuck’s sake.”
“It was a man who assaulted your son, not a woman.”
“Thank God for that!” the father yelled, disconcerted. “A man’s home is his castle. Everything is going downhill.”
“Stop it!” she finally had to bark. “Sit down!”
The large man stared at her, struck speechless in mid-speech, and plopped down like a chastised little mischief-maker.
“I am truly very sorry about your grief,” Holm continued, “but what Benny is going to need is your help to come back, not a mercy shooting.”
“Lasse would never do that,” sniffled the small, shrunken mother. “He’s just so-”
“I know,” Holm interrupted. “It’s okay, just take it easy and try to answer my questions. Benny lived here at home. He had vacation in August. Do you know why he took vacation almost immediately again?”
The father sat there, stiff. The mother trembled but answered, “He was on Crete with some friends from the military in August. He hadn’t planned any more vacation. But he hardly talks to us these days.”
“Didn’t he say anything about why he took more vacation?”
“He had gotten extra vacation time. That was all he said. A bonus.”
“A bonus for what?”
“He didn’t say.”
“How did he seem the last few days?”
“Happy. Happier than he had been for a long time. Like he was expecting something. Like he had won some money at Bingolotto or something.”
“Did he say anything about why?”
“No. Nothing. We didn’t ask, either. I was a little nervous that he was up to some sort of trouble, now that he’d finally gotten a proper job.”
“Had he been in trouble before?”
“No.”
“I’m here to catch his”-she was about to say murderer-“his tormentor, not to put him away. Tell me.”
“Benny was a skinhead, before. Then he went through coastal commando training and became a new person. He tried to become a career officer and applied to the police college, but his grades weren’t good enough. Then he got that security guard job. It was wonderful.”
“Is he in the criminal registry?” she said, cursing her own laziness; she should have found out ahead of time instead of asking the parents. Couldn’t someone who was more familiar with this aspect of the case have taken care of it? Gunnar Nyberg wanted nothing more than to go out into the field, after all. She had just come straight from the United States, after all. Old bastard, she thought, thinking of Hultin.
“A few assault convictions in his teen years,” the mother said, embarrassed. “But just against blackheads.”
God in heaven, thought Kerstin Holm. “Nothing since then?”
“No.”
“Okay. What can you tell me about yesterday?”
“He was pretty tense. Stayed closed up in his room and talked on a phone a lot.”
“You didn’t happen to hear what he was saying?”
“Do you think I eavesdrop on my own son?”
Yes, thought Holm. “No, of course not. But you can just happen to hear things.”
“No, you can’t.”
Not her too, thought Holm, groaning, imagining that she kept most of her groan internal. “I’m sorry. Then what happened?”
“He went out around five. He didn’t say where he was going, but he seemed nervous and keyed up. Like he was going to pick up some Bingolotto winnings or something.”
“Did he say anything that might give some hint as to where he was going or what he was doing?”
“He said one thing: ‘Soon you’ll be able to move out of here, Mom.’ ”
“Have you touched anything in his room?”
“We’ve been at the hospital all night. No, I haven’t touched anything.”
“May I look at it?”
She was shown to the door of what seemed to be a teenage boy’s room. Old, peeling stickers from packs of gum covered the surface.
Once inside the room, she thanked the mother and closed the door in her face. An enormous Swedish flag covered two of the walls; it was creased in the middle, behind the bed. She lifted the fabric and peered behind it. A few banners were hidden there. She couldn’t really see them, but she recognized the black, white, gold, and red stripes; they were probably miniature Nazi flags. She flipped through the CDs. Mostly heavy metal, but also some white power albums. Benny Lundberg hadn’t broken very radically with his skinhead past, that much was certain.