Anders Roslund - Box 21 aka The Vault

‘I don’t want to see any more of your photographs. I don’t want any more images of people I don’t know and never want to know thrust in my face. I’ve had enough. I’ll testify. I will identify Lang as the man who came to see my brother yesterday.’

Lisa Öhrström put her elbows on the desk, leaning forward with her chin on her clasped hands. So very tired. Home soon.

‘But there’s one thing I want you to know. It wasn’t only the threats that made me hold back. Quite a long time ago I decided that I would never again allow Hilding and his addiction to influence how I lived. This last year, I haven’t been there for him any more, but it didn’t make any difference. I still couldn’t escape him. Now that he’s dead, he still drains me of strength, perhaps more than ever. So I might as well testify.’

Ewert Grens tried to keep the smile from his face. This was it, obviously.

Anni, this is it .

Closure.

‘Nobody is blaming you.’

‘I don’t need your pity.’

‘Your choice, but that’s how it is. Nobody blames you because you didn’t know what to do.’

Grens went over to root among his audiotapes, found what he wanted and put it into the player. Siw Malmkvist. She was sure it would be.

‘One thing more. Who threatened you?’

Siw Malmkvist. She had just taken the hardest decision in her life and he was listening to Siw Malmkvist.

‘That’s not important. I will stand witness. But on one condition.’

Lisa Öhrström stayed where she was, chin resting on her hands. She was leaning forward, getting closer to him.

‘My nephew and niece. I want them to have protection.’

‘They already have protection.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They have been under protection ever since the identity parade. I know, for instance, that you went to see them today. One of the kids ran outside without his shoes on. And they will continue to be protected, of course.’

Fatigue paralysed her. She yawned without even trying to hide it.

‘I must get home now.’

‘I’ll get someone to drive you. In a plain car.’

‘Please, to Högalid Street. To Jonathan and Sanna. They’ll be asleep.’

‘I suggest that we step up the level of protection and put someone inside the flat as well. Do you agree?’

Evening had really come.

Darkness. Silence, as if the whole big building were empty.

She looked at the policeman and his tape recorder; he was humming along, knew the jolly tune and the meaningless text by heart.

He sang under his breath and she felt sorry for him.

He had never liked the dark.

Winter darkness that lasted for an eternity had been part of his childhood in Kiruna, well to the north of the Arctic Circle, and police college in Stockholm had meant a series of night shifts, but he couldn’t resign himself to the dark, couldn’t get used to it. To him, the dark would never be beautiful.

He was standing in the sitting room, looking out through the window at the dense forest. The June night lay as deep under the trees as summer darkness ever can be. Sven Sundkvist had got home a little after ten o’clock with the video in his briefcase. First he had gone to see the sleeping Jonas, kissed the boy’s forehead and stood for a while listening to his quiet breathing. Anita had been in the kitchen doing a crossword. He managed to squeeze in next to her on the chair, and after an hour or so, only three squares in three different corners were empty. Typical, just a few letters short of posting the completed crossword to the local paper in the hope of winning one of three Premium Bonds.

Afterwards they made love. She had undressed him first and then herself; she wanted him to sit on the kitchen chair and she settled in his lap, their naked bodies so close, needing each other.

He had waited until she had gone to sleep. It was after midnight when he got out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. He carried his briefcase into the sitting room.

He thought it better to be alone when he watched the video.

Alone with the overwhelming feeling of unease.

What Anita and Jonas didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

The dark outside. Staring into it he could just make out some of the trees.

He checked his watch. Ten past one. He had spent an hour looking at nothing in particular. He couldn’t put it off any more.

She had told Ejder about two videotapes.

She had made a copy. Just in case. Someone might wipe one of the tapes, or record on top of her film, or simply try to lose the whole thing and replace it with an empty cassette.

Sven Sundkvist could not be sure that what he was watching was identical to the recording on the other tape.

He assumed that it was.

They look nervous, the way people do when they are not used to staring at the single eye that preserves what it looks at for posterity.

Grajauskas speaks first.

Two sentences. She turns to Sljusareva, who translates.

‘This is my reason. This is my story.’

Grajauskas speaks again, two sentences, with her eyes fixed on her friend.

Her face has a serious expression. She nods and again Sjusareva turns to the camera and translates.

‘When you hear this, I hope that the man I am going to talk about is dead. I hope that he has felt my shame.’

They speak very distinctly, careful to enunciate every word in both Russian and Swedish.

He leaned forward and stopped the tape.

He didn’t want to go on.

What he felt was no longer unease or dread, rather an overwhelming anger of a kind he only rarely had to confront. No more doubt. He had hoped, as everyone always does. But now he knew, he knew that Ewert had manipulated the tape and had a motive for doing it.

Sven Sundkvist got up, went into the kitchen and put on the coffee machine, a strong brew to help him think. It would be a long night.

The crossword was still lying on the kitchen table. He moved it to make room for a sheet from Jonas’s drawing pad, picked up one of the boy’s marker pens, a purple one, and drew lines, haphazard at first, on the white surface.

A man.

An older man. Massive torso, not much hair, piercing eyes.

Ewert.

He smiled at himself when he realised. He had in fact drawn Ewert in purple marker ink.

He knew why, of course. A long night was staring him in the face.

He had known Ewert for nearly ten years. To begin with he had been ordered about and shouted at – they all had – but at some point he had suddenly become aware of something like friendship with his difficult boss and had become one of the few who were addressed normally, men whom Ewert invited into his office and confided in, as much as he ever did. Later Sven had come to know Ewert Grens well enough to realise how little he understood him. He had never been to Ewert’s flat, and you couldn’t really know people whose homes you’d never seen. On the other hand, Ewert had been here, for supper or just for a cup of coffee, and had sat at this very table flanked by Anita and Jonas.

Sven had invited Ewert to his home, a place where he could be himself. Ewert had never reciprocated.

He looked at the drawing and started to fill in the purple man’s jacket and shoes with more purple. He knew nothing about the private person. He knew the policeman, DSI Grens, who was first in the office every morning, long before everyone else, played Siw Malmkvist songs with the volume turned up, worked all day and all night, often stayed overnight in his office to carry on with an unfinished investigation when dawn broke. He was the best policeman Sven had ever encountered, incapable of making simple errors and always prepared to pursue every case to its conclusion, regardless of consequences. To him, the investigation alone mattered, to the exclusion of everything else.