Anders Roslund - Box 21 aka The Vault

A hallway, then the room where they had been found on the floor. Their outlines in white chalk were close. Her body so near his. Their blood mingling. He had died with her. She had died with him. Еgestam felt certain it had been deliberate, this final resting place of theirs, side by side.

It was silent down there. He looked around the room. Death terrified him; he didn’t even wear a watch any more as it just measured time. And yet here he was in a mortuary, alone, trying to understand what had happened.

The tape recorder. He placed it in the middle of the floor.

He wanted to listen to them talking.

He wanted to be part of it, afterwards, as he always did.

‘Ewert.’

‘Receiving.’

‘The hostage in the corridor is dead. No visible blood, so I can’t make out where she shot him. But the smell is odd, strong. Harsh.’

Bengt Nordwall’s voice. Steady, at least it sounded steady. Lars Еgestam had never met him and never heard his voice before.

He was trying to get to know a dead man.

‘Ewert, it is all one fucking big con. She hasn’t shot anyone. All the hostages are still here. All four of them are alive. They’ve just walked out. She has got about three hundred grams of Semtex round the doors, but she can’t detonate it.’

He noticed the man’s fear. Nordwall continued to observe and describe what he was seeing, but the tone of his voice had changed, as if he had understood something which the listeners upstairs had not and which Еgestam, a late listener, was trying to grasp now.

‘You are naked.’

‘That’s how you wanted it.’

‘How does that feel? What is it like to be here, in a mortuary, standing naked in front of a woman with a gun?’

‘I have done what you asked me to do.’

‘You feel humiliated, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘All alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Afraid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kneel.’

Not even two days had passed. The recorded voices were alive still, even the Russian interpreter’s version. Every word was distinct. They were speaking in a closed room. She had made up her mind, Lars Еgestam was certain of that. She had decided from the start what would happen. She was to die there. He was to die there.

She would humiliate him and afterwards they would both cease to breathe.

For all eternity they would lie together on a mortuary floor.

Еgestam didn’t move from where Nordwall had stood, wondering if he had known that he had only a few seconds left, a fraction of a moment, and then nothing.

Ewert Grens couldn’t concentrate.

He hadn’t slept at all and told himself that he should’ve kipped down on the office sofa. There was too much on his mind that needed attention, stuff that had to be mulled over and over, interminably. Sleeping at home was not an option.

He had promised to have lunch with Lena, who wanted to carry on talking about Bengt. He said no at first, he didn’t want to. He missed his old friend, of course he did, but he was also aware that the man he missed was someone other than the Bengt Nordwall he had learnt more about recently.

If only I had known then what I know now.

Did you think about her? Did you ever? And when you came home, did the two of you make love? I mean, afterwards?

I’m doing this for Lena.

You are not alive .

When she had asked him again later, he agreed to have lunch with her.

Lena ate nothing, only played with the food on her plate and drank mineral water, two whole bottles. She had been weeping, mostly for the children, she said, it is so hard for them and they don’t understand, and if I don’t understand either, Ewert, how can I explain to them?

Afterwards he was glad that he had been with her. She needed him, needed to say the same things so many times that they gradually sank in and she could begin to understand.

He didn’t have the courage to grieve properly.

It felt right to watch somebody else doing it.

Lars Еgestam listened to the tape over and over again. He had stood in the middle of the room listening, and then sat with his back to the wall just like the hostages. He had lain down one last time where Bengt Nordwall had been, protected his genitals with his hands, and stared at the ceiling. He was aware of the white chalk outline, drawn around a body larger than his own. He listened to the whole exchange between Bengt Nordwall and Ewert, and was now convinced that Nordwall, who had ended his life just where he himself was lying now, had known exactly who Lydia Grajauskas was, and that they somehow belonged together, which was what Grens had sensed or maybe even knew and why for some reason he was prepared to throw away a whole life in the police force in order to protect the truth.

By the time he was ready to leave, Еgestam had spent two full hours in the mortuary. Suddenly he was panicking about death, had to get away, needed to eat breakfast in a large cafй packed with people who were noisy and hungry and alive.

‘I had this area cordoned off.’

Lars hadn’t heard him come in: Nils Krantz, a technician from Forensics. They had met, but didn’t know each other.

‘I’m sorry, I had to get in. I was looking for some answers.’

‘You’re trampling all over the crime scene.’

‘I am the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.’

‘I know, but to be frank I don’t give a damn who you are. You stick to the marker lines like everyone else. I’m responsible for any evidence here that’s worth having a look at.’

Еgestam sighed loudly, suggesting that he wouldn’t waste time arguing about trivia. He turned away, picked up his tape recorder and his notebook, put them in his bag. Time for breakfast.

‘You’re in a hurry.’

‘You gave me the impression I was to get off site as quickly as possible.’

Nils Krantz shrugged, started studying the remains of explosive round the door frame to the store and suddenly spoke in a loud voice.

‘Thought you might be interested to hear that the test results are in.’

‘What test results?’

‘From the other investigation, the one involving Lang. We did a body scan.’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘We went over every square inch. No trace of Oldйus anywhere on his body.’

Lars Еgestam had been on his way out, but stopped when Krantz raised his voice. Now he felt empty, couldn’t muster the energy to move.

‘There you go.’

He stood still, looking glumly at Krantz, who carried on prodding the area round the door frame with his gloved hands. Finally he managed to pull himself together enough to pick up his briefcase and start off towards what had once been the door. He was just about to step through the hole in the wall when Krantz called after him again.

‘Wait.’

‘What is it now?’

‘Lang’s clothes, we did them too, of course. And the shoes. There it was. Traces of blood and DNA – Oldйus’s blood and DNA.’

After lunch, Ewert Grens had left Lena alone in the restaurant. She told him that she wanted to sit for a bit longer, ordered a third bottle of mineral water and hugged him. He had started walking towards Homicide when he changed his mind and took the slightly longer route via the police cells.

He couldn’t resist it.

It wouldn’t be enough to have a reliable doctor identifying him from photographs, even if she insisted with one hundred per cent certainty that he was the killer. If that same killer managed to threaten and frighten the witness once more, neatly timed for the identity parade, so that no identification was made after all, then the law said that he could go free to kill again.

This time was different. This time it would be enough.