with your plans. We should meet again. Soon. I’ll ask my secretary to call Jeanette.”
They shook hands, and with an effort of will Stenberg managed to squeeze out another smile.
“John’s looking brighter,” Karolina said as they sat back down. “He seems to have put that sorry business with Sophie behind him.”
Something in her voice made Stenberg start. An undertone, a trace so insignificant that he wasn’t even sure that he’d really heard it. He stared at his wife, but she looked exactly the same as usual. She smiled at him. Bright red lipstick, white teeth. For a millisecond he got it into his head that Sophie was sitting on the chair opposite him. Looking at him with her shattered eyes. He shuddered and blinked hard a couple of times to make the image disappear.
“Aren’t you feeling well, Jesper?” his wife asked.
* * *
Julia sat with her lower arms resting on the wheel as she fiddled with her cell phone. Both side windows were wound down to keep the summer heat from turning the car into an oven. Even so, she could feel her blouse sticking to her lower back, and she started the engine and air-conditioning the moment she saw Amante emerge from the Forensic Medicine Unit.
She’d had time to make four calls while he was in there, all with similarly disappointing results. No one could tell her where David Sarac was being treated. Or, to be more accurate, where he had been treated before someone murdered, dismembered, and dumped him in Lake Mälaren. Because she was still convinced that they were right and Pärson was wrong.
“All sorted out?” she said.
“Yes.” Amante sat heavily in the passenger seat and closed the door. “My good friend in there promised to put the head in an empty compartment in cold storage. One of his colleagues will find it within the next few days and call the Security Police. A regrettable mistake, blah, blah, blah …”
“And how much did that cost you, then?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Julia didn’t answer. She just took the hand brake off and let the car roll slowly out of the parking lot. Suppressed an urge to put her foot down and force Amante to grab for the handle above the door.
“Are you planning on telling me what Pärson meant earlier?” Amante said after several minutes’ silence.
“Which bit?” she muttered.
“What he said about your solving rate.”
She glanced at Amante, but nothing in his tone of voice or expression suggested that he was teasing her. The best idea would obviously be to keep quiet. Follow Pärson’s advice, get shot of this mess, and put the whole case behind her.
“I’ve got the best clearance rate when it comes to murder investigations,” she found herself saying instead. She heard the note of pride in her own voice.
“In Violent Crime?”
She shook her head. “In the whole country, actually. Almost all the cases I’ve investigated have ended up solved.”
He turned toward her and she could sense his skepticism.
“We’re talking solved from a police perspective,” she added. “Not necessarily guilty verdicts. In two of the cases the perpetrators are dead. And in two more they’ve fled abroad and can’t be brought to justice because of that. And in one … in one the perpetrator was released on appeal, unfortunately.”
She bit her top lip gently. Thought about saying that the appeal was successful because of an unusually sloppy prosecutor, but decided against it.
“Either way, I’ve concluded all my investigations. Answered all the questions and worked out what happened, who did what and why.”
“I get it. So Pärson’s going to shuffle a few papers to keep this from affecting your statistics.”
“Something like that,” she mumbled.
“Great,” Amante said in a tone that suggested he meant the exact opposite. Silence fell inside the car as he studied her.
Julia pulled up at a red light. She went on staring straight ahead to avoid meeting his gaze. Even so, he seemed to have read her mind.
“You still think Sarac is our victim, don’t you?”
She realized she was biting her lip again and made a mental note to stop doing that.
“I haven’t seen any evidence to prove that he isn’t. The fact that Pärson says Sarac is locked up is one thing, but I know him well enough to assume he hasn’t called to check. If he even knows where to start. I’ve made a few calls myself, but no one seems to know where Sarac is.”
She turned to look at Amante.
“What about you? What do you think?”
“I was actually thinking of asking if you had any plans for the weekend.” He smiled that cryptic little smile again, and for a moment she thought he was going to ask her out.
“Why?” she said, more abruptly than she intended.
“Well, if you’re free, I wondered if you fancy a little trip up north.”
“Where to?”
“Pick me up at one o’clock tomorrow and you’ll find out.”
The car behind them blew its horn and Julia realized the lights had turned green.
A monotonous four-hour drive—that was what Julia’s Saturday afternoon had consisted of so far. Back roads, fir forests, and wildlife fences.
This wasn’t how she had imagined the weekend. She had been planning to work out, finish the book she never seemed to get to the end of, go to the movies, or do one of the other things that got her through weekends when she wasn’t working. Instead she was sitting behind the wheel, glancing at Amante as he watched the GPS bubble on the screen of his smartphone.
“Turn right here.” Amante pointed toward an anonymous-looking side road. “One kilometer of country road, then we’re there.”
“Okay.”
She wondered how he’d found out the address of the nursing home; she’d even asked him about it when she picked him up outside his apartment. But, as usual, all she got in response was that tentative little smile.
About half an hour earlier they had stopped at a gas station to look at the map and see what Amante’s smartphone could tell them about their destination. The satellite picture showed what looked like a manor house with two wings. Surrounding the main building was a large park that stretched all the way down to a small lake. If you zoomed in really close, you could just make out the walls and fences surrounding the entire property. But as they approached the facility, none of that was visible apart from a section
