On second thought, it hadn’t been such a good idea to stuff himself with all these pastries.
He tried to squint a bit as he walked through the living room, and all one thousand four hundred forty-two Santas winked and glittered at him.
Walking out to the door took as long as it had to come in. He had to restrain himself from running around Mrs Petrén as he shuffled behind her toward the front door. She was a feisty old woman, no doubt about it. She was also a reliable witness, and with her testimony it was only a matter of time before they would be able to add another couple of pieces to the puzzle and build a water-tight case against Anders Nilsson. For the time being, it was mostly circumstantial evidence, but it looked as though the murder of Alexandra Wijkner was now solved. Yet he had an uneasy feeling in his stomach, to the extent he could feel anything besides pastry. It was a feeling that the simple solutions were not always the correct ones.
It was magnificent to breathe fresh air, which somewhat relieved the nausea. He was just thanking Mrs Petrén once more and turning to go when she pressed something into his hand before he pulled the door closed. He looked to see what it was. It was a shopping bag from ICA stuffed full of pastries – and a little Santa Claus. He grabbed his stomach and groaned.
‘Well now, Anders, things aren’t looking so good for you.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Oh yeah – is that all you have to say? You’re sitting up to your neck in shit if you haven’t realized that! Have you realized that?’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Bullshit! Don’t you sit there and shovel bullshit right in my face. I know you murdered her, so you might as well confess and save us all some trouble. If you save me trouble, you’ll save yourself trouble. Do you get what I’m talking about?’
Mellberg and Anders were sitting in the only interrogation room at Tanumshede police station, and unlike American cop shows, there was no one-way glass wall through which his colleagues could watch the interrogation. Which suited Mellberg just fine. It was completely against regulations to be alone with a subject under interrogation, but what the hell, as long as he delivered, nobody would care about any stupid regulations. And Anders hadn’t asked for an attorney or anyone else to be present, so why should Mellberg insist?
The room was small and sparsely furnished, with bare walls. The only furniture was a table and two chairs, now occupied by Anders Nilsson and Bertil Mellberg. Anders was leaning back nonchalantly in his chair, with his hands folded in his lap and his long legs stretched out under the table. Mellberg stood leaning halfway over the table with his face as close to Anders’s as he could stand, in view of the suspect’s anything but minty-fresh breath. But it was close enough for tiny drops of saliva to spray in Anders’s face when Mellberg spat out his words. Anders didn’t bother to wipe his face. He chose to pretend that the superintendent was merely an annoying fly, so insignificant that it wasn’t even worth swatting away.
‘Both you and I know that you were the one who murdered Alexandra Wijkner. Tricked her into taking sleeping pills, put her in the bathtub and slit her wrists, and then calmly watched as she bled to death. So why don’t we just make this easy on both of us? You confess and I’ll write it down.’
Mellberg felt very pleased with what he regarded as a powerful start to the interrogation. He sat down on the chair and clasped his hands over his big paunch. He waited. No response from Anders. His head continued to droop forward, his hair concealing any facial expression. A twitch at the corner of Mellberg’s mouth revealed that indifference was not what he considered his preamble deserved. After waiting in silence a bit longer, he slammed his fist on the table to try to rouse Anders out of his torpor. No reaction.
‘What the hell, you fucking drunk! Do you think you can get out of this by sitting there and not saying a word? Then you’ve ended up in the hands of the wrong cop, I can tell you that. You’re going to tell me the truth if we have to sit here all day!’
The sweat stains under Mellberg’s arms were growing larger with each syllable.
‘You were jealous, weren’t you? We found some paintings you did of her, and it’s quite obvious that you were fucking each other. And to dispel any further doubt, we also found your letters to her. Your sickly sweet, pathetic love letters. Jesus, what fucking crap. What did she see in you, anyway? I mean, just look at you. You’re filthy and disgusting and as far from any Don Juan as you could get. The only explanation would have to be that she was some kind of pervert. That she was turned on by filth and revolting old drunks. Did she take on the other winos in Fjällbacka too, or were you the only one she serviced?’
Quick as a weasel Anders was on his feet. He launched himself across the table and had his hands around Mellberg’s neck.
‘You fuck, I’m going to kill you, you cop son of a bitch!’
Mellberg tried in vain to prise off Anders’s hands. His face got redder and redder, and his hair fell out of its nest and hung down over his right ear. From sheer astonishment Anders loosened his grip on Mellberg’s neck, and the superintendent was able to take a deep breath. Anders fell back in his chair and glowered at Mellberg.
Mellberg had to cough and clear his throat to recover his voice. ‘Don’t you ever do that again! Do you hear me, never! Now you’re going to sit still, damn it, or I’ll toss you in a cell and throw away the key, do you hear me?’
Mellberg sat back down on his chair but kept his eyes vigilantly on Anders. There was a hint of fear in Mellberg’s eyes that wasn’t there before. He discovered that his meticulously arranged hairdo had suffered a real blow, and with a practised motion he swung the hair up onto the shiny patch in the middle of his scalp, at the same time as he tried to pretend that nothing had happened.
‘Now, back to business. So you had a sexual relationship with the victim, Alexandra Wijkner?’
Anders muttered something into his lap.
‘Excuse me, what did you say?’ Mellberg leaned forward across the table with his hands clasped in front of him.
‘I said we loved each other!’
The words echoed and bounced off the bare walls. Mellberg gave Anders a contemptuous smile.
‘Okay, so you loved each other. Beauty and the beast loved each other. How touching. So how long did you “love” each other, then?’
Anders mumbled something incomprehensible again, and Mellberg had to ask him to repeat it.
‘Since we were kids.’
‘Oh, I see, okay. But I assume that you weren’t screwing like rabbits since you were five, so let me reformulate that question: how long did you have a sexual relationship? How long was she shagging you on the side? How long did you dance the horizontal tango? Do I have to go on, or have you managed to understand the question?’
Anders glared with hatred at Mellberg but made a great effort to stay calm.
‘I don’t know, off and on over the years. I don’t really know, I didn’t check off the dates on the calendar.’ He picked at some invisible threads on his trousers. ‘She wasn’t here very much back then, so it wasn’t that often. Mostly I just painted her. She was so beautiful.’
‘What happened the night she died? Was it a lovers’ quarrel? Didn’t she want to put out? Or was it the fact that she was knocked up that made you
