of corridors, stairs and elevators. Her heels tapped against the concrete floors; then silence, the rattling of keys at every new steel barrier, the bleep of electronic locks and slamming of armoured doors.
Thomas Quick had confessed to more than thirty murders. Six unanimous courts had found him guilty of the murders of eight people. After the last verdict in 2001 he withdrew, announced a ‘time out’, reassumed his old name – Sture Bergwall – and went quiet. In the seven years that followed, a heated debate about whether Quick was a serial killer or a pathological liar had bubbled up at regular intervals. The protagonist’s own thoughts on the matter were unknown to all. Now I was meeting him, face to face.
The care assistant led me into a large, deserted ward with plastic floors so polished that they shone. She took me to a small visiting room.
‘He’s on his way,’ she said.
I felt unexpectedly uneasy.
‘Will you wait outside the room during my visit?’
‘This ward is closed, there are no staff here,’ she answered curtly, then as if she had read my mind she fished out a little device. ‘Would you like an attack alarm?’
I looked at her and the little black device.
Sture Bergwall had been detained here since 1991. He was considered so dangerous that he was only allowed to leave the grounds every six weeks for a drive, on the condition that he was accompanied by six warders. A case of letting the madman see the horizon to keep him from getting even madder, I thought.
Now I had a few seconds to determine whether the situation called for an attack alarm. I couldn’t quite bring myself to reply.
‘There’s also a panic button next door,’ said the care assistant.
I almost had a sense that she was teasing me. She knew just as well as I did that none of Quick’s victims would have been saved by a panic button next door.
My train of thought was cut short by the appearance of Sture Bergwall in the doorway, all six foot two of him, flanked by two care assistants. He was wearing a faded sweatshirt that had once been purple, worn-out jeans and sandals. With a nervous smile he offered me his hand, leaning forward slightly as if not to force me to come too close to him.
I looked at the hand that, according to its owner, had slain at least thirty people.
His handshake was damp.
The care assistants had gone.
I was alone with the cannibal.
THE SÄTER MAN
THE UNSETTLING NEWS was delivered via the media. As usual.
The reporter from Expressen was in a hurry and got straight to the point: ‘There’s a bloke down in Falun who’s confessed to the murder of your son, Johan. Do you have any comment on that?’
Anna-Clara Asplund was standing in the hall – still wearing her coat, with the front door keys in her hand – at the end of her day’s work. She had heard the telephone ringing as she was unlocking the door.
‘I’m in a bit of a hurry,’ the journalist explained. ‘I’m having a hernia operation tomorrow and I have to hand in the article.’
Anna-Clara didn’t understand what he was talking about. But she did have a clear sense that the old wound would once again be torn open. From this day on, Monday, 8 March 1993, she would be forced back into the nightmare.
A forty-two-year-old patient at Säter’s forensic psychiatric clinic had confessed to the murder of her son, the journalist told her. ‘I murdered Johan,’ the man had claimed. Anna-Clara wondered why the police had informed Expressen before contacting her.
Anna-Clara and Björn Asplund descended into hell on 7 November 1980. ‘A completely normal day’, as people like to say. It’s always a normal day when it happens. Anna-Clara made breakfast for her eleven-year-old, Johan, before saying goodbye and rushing off to work. Her son left home at about eight o’clock. He only had a 300-metre walk to school, but Johan never got there. Since that day he had been missing without trace.
On the very first day the police deployed huge resources – helicopter surveillance, thermal cameras and search parties – without finding any sign of the boy.
Johan’s case became one of the great mysteries in Swedish criminal history. The parents took part in endless interviews, documentaries and debates. Again and again they described what it was like to lose their only child, not knowing what had happened to him and having no grave to visit. But to no avail.
Anna-Clara and Björn Asplund had separated when Johan was three years old, but they had a good relationship and supported each other on their long hard road after Johan’s disappearance, helping each other through the hopeless encounters with journalists and the legal establishment.
From the beginning they were both convinced that Johan had been abducted by the man Anna-Clara used to live with. Unrequited love and uncontrollable jealousy were said to be the motives. He had gone off the rails.
The ex-partner said he had been at home on that fateful morning, sleeping in till nine. But eyewitnesses had seen him leaving the house at a quarter past seven. Others had seen his car outside the Asplunds’ house at about eight. His friends and colleagues reported his strange behaviour after Johan’s disappearance. Even his best friend went to the police and told them he was convinced that Anna-Clara’s exboyfriend had snatched Johan.
In the presence of two witnesses, Björn Asplund said to him, ‘You’re nothing but a murderer. You have murdered my son and you will not get away with this. To everyone I meet from now on I will say it was you who murdered Johan.’
That the accused man did not protest, or even try to sue Björn Asplund for slander, was seen by the parents as yet another indication of his guilt. There were circumstantial evidence, witnesses and a motive, but no definite proof.
Four years after Johan’s disappearance, the Asplunds hired a barrister, Pelle Svensson, to bring a private civil case against Anna-Clara’s expartner, an unusual move that also carried with it considerable financial risk if the case was dismissed.
After a sensational trial, the district court found that the accused had indeed abducted Johan. He was sentenced to two years in prison. It was a unique case and a great victory for Anna-Clara and Björn Asplund.
However, their success in the district court was overturned after the defence turned to the court of appeal, which ordered the release of the ex-partner one year later. The Asplunds were instructed to pay their opponent’s legal expenses of 600,000 Swedish crowns, a fee the government later dropped for reasons of ‘clemency’.
Since then, seven years had passed without any sign of Johan. No one was looking for his murderer any more.
But now Anna-Clara stood immobile in the hall with the telephone receiver in one hand and her front door keys in the other. She tried to grasp what the reporter was saying, that the investigation into her son’s murder had been reopened and that a psychiatric patient had confessed to the crime. So no, she could not think of any suitable comment for the newspaper.
Anna-Clara Asplund contacted the police in Sundsvall, who confirmed what
