to keep his office, at least for the time being.
Wallin was still talking. He was halfway through a lengthy description of how bodies decompose in water. Something about bottom-feeders eating the dead bodies.
Stenberg couldn’t help thinking of Sophie, of how her beautiful, slender body was lying in a coffin deep below the ground. Skin and tissue slowly turning to wax. If the worms hadn’t gotten there first.
He felt suddenly nauseous. He stood up abruptly and went over to one of the windows. The smoke from the steamers by the City Hall was drifting on the breeze above Riddarfjärden.
Just a few meters outside his window a seagull hung in the air, almost motionless. It stared at him with empty, dead eyes.
* * *
When Oscar Wallin closed the door of his office his watch struck the handle with an alarmingly loud noise. It had been a Christmas present to himself, a Patek Philippe, exactly the same as the one Jesper Stenberg wore. Before he sat down behind his desk he anxiously checked to make sure the diamond-polished glass wasn’t damaged. His mother had commented on the watch when they had dinner recently. A gift, he had told her, for professional accomplishments. “From the minister?” she had asked, but her tone revealed that she already knew the answer. He had managed to avoid the trap.
Six years ago he helped organize an apartment on Gärdet for her, just a stone’s throw from his own. He moved her out of the dull suburb where his father had exiled them to a three-room apartment, ninety square meters with a view of the city center. He’d had to pull a lot of strings to get it, but obviously the apartment wasn’t the same thing as a grand villa, which it hadn’t taken her many minutes to point out.
All through the years when he was growing up she had waited. Every evening she had forced him to dress for dinner. “Your father will call soon, you’ll see, and you must promise to be a good boy this time.”
The fact that the professor had replaced her with a woman fifteen years her junior, and that the villa was now inhabited by his new family, appeared to make little difference. She had gone on waiting, hoping, and nothing he did could possibly replace what had been taken from her.
As a teenager, he had sometimes gone back to their old home, creeping through the garden gate and standing there in the darkness, looking in through the big windows. The home where he was no longer welcome. The perfect family he wasn’t part of. Dad, mom, daughter, son. Even a golden retriever that didn’t have the sense to bark on the occasions it found him out there in the garden. It just licked his hand and waved its tail stupidly, as if it expected him to play with it.
He still looked up his father’s family from time to time. His half brother and half sister had gone to fancy schools, had traveled the world and studied abroad. Unlike him, they had no student debt and hadn’t had to do part-time work and evening courses with sweaty cheese sandwiches and thermos-flask coffee. Even so, they were no more than drones. Idiots with no ambition to achieve anything, to make a lasting impression.
He had always known that he was different. That he was destined to achieve things. Great things. In that way he and Jesper Stenberg were pretty similar. They weren’t content merely to exist, but knew they were meant for something more than just an ordinary life. They set ambitious goals and did whatever it took to achieve them. Not long ago Jesper had been his role model. A man he regarded as his mentor. Now everything had changed. He hadn’t understood that Stenberg had appointed Eva Swensk as national police chief in order to gain support within the party. Instead he felt let down, overlooked, just as he had as a teenager. And he had been stupid and clumsy enough to try to force Jesper to change his mind. And since then their friendship had soured badly.
All Wallin had wanted to do was prove the extent of his loyalty. That he was the right man to keep Stenberg’s secrets, and that he could do so even better as national police chief. But Stenberg had misunderstood his intentions and stripped almost everything he had built up away from him. His privileged access, his staff, all the power that made his colleagues fear him. The same colleagues who used to beg and plead for a five-minute meeting now kept their distance from him or openly mocked him.
His relationship with the minister of justice had been seriously damaged; he couldn’t deny that, even if he was doing his best to improve things. In a number of discreet ways he was trying to get Stenberg to realize that his secrets were still in safe hands and that he could be trusted. Evidently that tactic had failed, judging by the conversation they had just had.
But he still had his job in the Ministry of Justice. That meant he still had a chance. He looked up at the framed quote from Robert Kennedy on his wall:
Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
He had failed. That was all there was to it. But he wasn’t beaten yet. One way or another he would make his way back to the top. He would climb higher than anyone could imagine. His colleagues and everyone else who had underestimated him over the years would have cause to think again. He had licked his wounds long enough, playing the role of obedient lapdog. It was high time for a new strategy.
He pulled a business card out of the top drawer of his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed the direct number written on the back.
A male voice answered on the second ring. A short, confident bark.
“John Thorning.”
“Hello, this is Detective Superintendent Oscar Wallin. I was wondering if you had time for that meeting we talked about.”
Superintendent Pärson’s office was twice the size of Julia’s. But it felt smaller. Possibly because of the physical bulk of the room’s occupant, or the stacks of documents covering practically every available surface. Or simply because of the distinct smell of sweat that seemed to force out all the oxygen.
“That isn’t David Sarac.” Pärson tapped the photofit picture with the yellow nail of his index finger.
“How can you be so—”
Pärson interrupted Julia by holding up one fleshy hand.
“To begin with, unlike certain other people in this room, I’ve been a police officer long enough to know that photofit pictures can never be trusted. I must have seen hundreds over the years, and when we eventually get our hands on the culprits, they never match.”
“But this one’s different,” Amante said. “This isn’t based upon witness statements but X-rays and measurements of the skull—”
“Which you bribed your way to get ahold of out at the Forensic Medicine Unit,” Pärson interrupted again. “I must say, that part of your little presentation is of particular interest to me. That’s a fair number of notations in your record already, Amante. Misconduct and two cases of bribery. Not bad for your first week.”
Pärson grinned and leaned back.
“Don’t worry. You meant well, and besides, I’ve got an arrangement with your stepfather. But keep your nose clean from now on, is that understood? There are limits to the amount of protection I can give you.”
Amante moved his head in a way that could be interpreted as a half nod.
“But
