Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 1 and 2: The Ice Princess, The Preacher. Camilla Lackberg
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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 so mad? Sure, that must have been it. She was knocked up and you didn’t know whether it was your kid or her husband’s. She probably threatened to make life hell for you too, didn’t she?’
Mellberg felt extremely pleased with himself. He was convinced that Anders was the killer, and if he just pushed hard enough on the right buttons he would undoubtedly get a confession out of him. No doubt about it. Then Göteborg would beg and plead for him to come back to the force. They would probably try to tempt him with a promotion and a higher salary if he kept them on the hook for a while. He rubbed his belly in pleasure and only now noticed that Anders was staring at him wide-eyed. His face was white, empty of all blood. His hands were twitching in spasms. When Anders raised his head and for the first time looked straight at Mellberg, the superintendent saw that his lower lip was quivering and his eyes were full of tears.
‘You’re lying! She couldn’t have been pregnant!’ Snot was dripping from his nose, and Anders wiped it on his sleeve. He gave Mellberg an almost imploring look.
‘What do you mean? Condoms aren’t a hundred per cent safe, you know. She was in her third month, so don’t try to get all dramatic on me. She was knocked up and you know very well how it happened. Whether it was you or her high-class husband who delivered the goods, well, we’ll never know, will we? It’s a man’s curse, I have to tell you. I’ve been close to getting nailed a few times, but no fucking bitch has ever got me to sign any papers.’ Mellberg chuckled.
‘Not that it’s any of your business, but we hadn’t had sex in over four months. Now I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Take me back to my cell, because I don’t intend to say another word.’
Anders gave a big snuffle and the tears kept threatening to spill over. He leaned back in the chair with his arms crossed and glared spitefully from under his mop of hair at Mellberg, who heaved a deep sigh but acquiesced.
‘All right, we’ll continue in a couple of hours. And just so you know – I don’t believe a fucking word of what you’re saying! Go think about that while you sit in your cell. The next time we talk I want a complete confession from you.’
He remained sitting there for a while after Anders was led away to his cell. The stinking drunk hadn’t confessed. Mellberg thought it was utterly incredible. But his trump card was still unplayed and intact. The last time Alexandra Wijkner had been heard alive was at a quarter past seven on Friday, January twenty-second, exactly one week before she was found dead. On that occasion she had talked to her mother on the phone for five minutes and fifty seconds, according to Telia, the phone company. That also matched the time-frame indicated by the medical examiner. Thanks to the neighbour, Dagmar Petrén, he had testimony that Anders Nilsson visited the victim not only on that very evening, just after six-thirty, but that he was also seen going into the house on several occasions during the following week. And by that time Alexandra Wijkner lay dead in the bathtub.
A confession would have made Mellberg’s work considerably easier, but even if Anders turned out to be obstinate, Mellberg felt sure that he would be able to get a conviction. Not only did he have the testimony from Mrs Petrén, but on his desk he also had a report on the search of Alex Wijkner’s house. Most interesting were the data from the scrupulous examination of the bathroom where she was found. Not only had a footprint been found in the coagulated blood on the floor that matched a pair of shoes confiscated in Anders’s flat, but Anders’s fingerprints had also been found on the victim’s body. Not as clear as they would have been on a hard, even surface, but still clear and identifiable.
He hadn’t wanted to use all his options today, but at the next interrogation he would bring out the big guns. And damn if he wouldn’t crack this bastard then.
Pleased with himself, Mellberg spat on his palm and smoothed back his hair with saliva.
The telephone call interrupted her just as she was typing up an account of her conversation with Henrik Wijkner. Annoyed, Erica took her hands off the keyboard and reached for the phone.
‘Yes?’ She sounded more irritated than she had intended.
‘Hello, it’s Patrik. Am I interrupting you?’
Erica sat bolt upright in her chair and regretted that she hadn’t sounded nicer when she answered.
‘No, absolutely not. I’m just sitting here writing, and I was so into what I was doing that I jumped when the phone rang, so I might have sounded a bit … but you’re not bothering me at all, it’s quite all right, I mean …’
She slapped her forehead when she heard herself rambling on like a fourteen-year-old girl on the phone. Time to pull herself together and control those hormones, she thought. This is ridiculous.
‘Well, I’m in Fjällbacka and just thought I’d see if you were at home and whether I could drop by for a while.’
He sounded self-confident, manly, secure and calm, and Erica felt even more idiotic