‘Is that what you told her?’
A sigh.
‘No. And I didn’t tell her that her dad was dead. Couldn’t bloody well bring myself to. Not on the phone.’
‘So what did you do, then?’ asked Fredrika, feeling exasperated on Karolina’s behalf.
‘I rang my brother, he’s good at getting things done,’ Måns said in a feeble voice. ‘And asked Karolina to wait. But by the time I rang back, something must have happened, because she wasn’t answering her mobile any longer.’
‘Did she send any emails?’
‘She might have – I don’t check them all that often.’
Fredrika found herself breathing in the same, strained way as Måns.
‘And what about your brother?’ she said, almost whispering, and unaccountably afraid of bursting into tears. ‘What did he do?’
‘He just rang back and told me there wasn’t much he could do, and she’d have to buy a new air ticket home. He advised me not to tell her about Jakob over the phone.’
Sensible, thought Fredrika. Sensible brother.
And she asked one last question.
‘What does your brother do?’
Her follow-up question remained hanging in the air, unsaid. Is he a druggie in rehab, too?
‘You might know him,’ said Måns. ‘He’s a policeman.’
Fredrika had to grin at her own unwarranted prejudice. But the grin froze into a grimace as Måns went on:
‘His name’s Viggo. Viggo Tuvesson.’
Feeling as if he was moving with the same momentum as a goods train on a straight stretch of track, a determined Peder strode the last few metres to the interview room where Sven Ljung was waiting. His CID colleague, Stefan Westin, who was taking the formal lead in the interview, told him the arrest had all gone very quietly. Elsie and Sven were sitting having coffee when the police rang at the door, almost as if they were expecting someone to come and fetch them. Elsie looked tearful as they took her husband out of the flat, but had not protested out loud.
‘She seemed pretty bloody resigned,’ was the way Stefan Westin put it.
Expectations of the impending interview were running high. Peder felt a distinct tightening of his chest as he entered the room and shook Sven Ljung’s hand.
He felt enormous relief that he and not Joar had been entrusted with this interview by Alex. He had to regain some of the ground he had recently lost. He also knew that within the organisation he needed people to have more confidence in him. As things stood, it was too easy to despise him and discount him. Must, must, must do better.
Stefan Westin took charge as they began the interview with Sven Ljung. Having never met Sven before, Peder was struck by how tired and old the man looked. He took a surreptitious glance at his paperwork. According to his notes, Sven was not yet even sixty-five. Still relatively young, in Peder’s eyes. But there was something about the older man. He looked sad and distressed.
As if in mourning, after some heavy, secret loss.
Stefan Westin’s voice broke into his thoughts.
‘You reported your car stolen ten days ago, Sven. Have you any idea who could have taken it?’
Sven said nothing.
Peder raised an eyebrow. He had seen that sort of silence before, during the interview with Tony Svensson. If they had gone and brought in yet another person scared into silence by God knows who, it was going to be a tough and not particularly fruitful interview.
Sven started to talk.
‘No, none at all.’
The room fell silent again.
‘But are you sure it was stolen?’ asked Stefan.
Sven nodded slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you come to discover it was missing?’
‘I needed it on the Friday morning, nearly two weeks ago. And it wasn’t there in the street where I’d left it the day before.’
He suddenly looked much smaller. Deflated.
‘We’ve got compelling evidence that your car was involved in two aggravated robberies of security vans, and a murder, during the time you say it was stolen,’ announced Stefan Westin, and Sven turned pale. ‘Would you like to tell me where you were at the following times?’
Sven had to think about it when he was confronted with the various dates. He said that on each of them he had been at home in the flat with his wife. Just the two of them.
Stefan pretended to be digesting what Sven had just said.
‘Yusuf, do you know him?’ he asked, referring to the man run over at the university.
Sven shook his head.
‘No.’
The chair legs scraped across the floor as Stefan Westin pulled himself up to the table and leant across it.
‘But we know he rang you,’ he said patiently. ‘Several times.’
‘Perhaps he was just somebody you knew and that’s all there is to it?’ Peder prompted when Sven said nothing.
‘That’s right,’ said Stefan. ‘Someone you knew, who just happened to get run over by your car outside the university. I mean, these things do happen, don’t they?’
He looked at Peder and put up his hands.
Then Sven could not hold back his tears.
Silent, rather dignified tears.
Time stood still and Peder scarcely dared to move.
‘I swear I haven’t seen the car since it went missing,’ Sven said finally.
‘We believe you, Sven,’ said Stefan. ‘But we don’t buy your story that you don’t know who took it. We scarcely even buy that it was stolen at all; we think you lent it. More or less voluntarily.’
‘And reported it stolen to rule yourself out as a suspect,’ Peder went on mildly.
A voice and tone that he had previously reserved for his sons. And Jimmy.
The thought of Jimmy hit him like a bolt from the blue. Christ, how many days since they last spoke? Jimmy had been trying to get through, hadn’t he? And Peder hadn’t taken the call, or several calls in fact.
The elderly man on the other side of the table wiped the tears from his cheeks and a resolute look came over him.
‘I truly don’t know who took the car, or what for.’
‘Or you do know, but daren’t tell,’ Stefan said bluntly.
Or don’t want to, thought Peder. Out of loyalty.
‘But you ought to be able to tell us how you knew this Yusuf,’ he said out loud.
Sven considered this.
‘He got my number from some, er, mutual acquaintances. But it was a mistake. I wasn’t the one he wanted.’
Stefan and Peder pricked up their ears. Mutual acquaintances?
‘And what are their names?’
Another hesitation.
‘Jakob Ahlbin.’
His eyes were shifty, but his voice was steady.
He’s lying so well he’s convinced himself, thought Peder.
‘Never on your life,’ said Stefan in such a hard voice that Sven blanched again.
And as Sven continued to sit there in silence, Stefan said quietly:
‘You’ll gain nothing but the odd hour or minute from stalling the interview like this. Wouldn’t it be a relief just to tell us the whole story straight out?’
Sven’s eyes filled up again.
‘It would take a damned long time,’ he said under his breath.
Peder and Stefan leant back ostentatiously in their chairs.
‘We’ve got all the time in the world, Sven.’
It began when Jakob Ahlbin talked of starting to offer refuge to illegal migrants again. Johanna Ahlbin went through the roof and Sven and Jakob fell out badly after Sven suggested he could make a lot of money out of it. Jakob called Sven a selfish fool and Sven retorted by calling Jakob cowardly and self-effacing.
‘I needed money,’ admitted Sven. ‘I always have, at least ever since Måns’ addiction got out of hand. His antisocial habits have cost us vast sums. His stealing and embezzlement have driven us to distraction, but we never had the heart to shut our door to him. Once he even managed to convince himself, and me, that he was getting better and needed some money to start a business. But that all fell apart, of course, and his mother and I didn’t know which way to turn after we lost several hundred thousand.’