Emelie Schepp - Marked For Life

Henrik felt a shiver down his spine and wondered how Lena could concentrate in such chaos.

“That’s that.” Lena ended the call and got up. “Welcome.”

She shook hands with Henrik and Mia, asked them to sit down on the worn visitors’ chairs next to her desk and immediately started speaking.

“It’s dreadful what happened. I still can’t understand it. It’s simply terrible. So terrible. Everybody’s wondering who would do such a thing. I’m answering calls about Hans’s murder all the time now. He was murdered, wasn’t he? Usch, yes, it’s simply too terrible, I must say.”

Lena started to pick at her peeling nail polish. It was hard to say how old she was. Henrik guessed fifty-five plus. She had short dark hair and was wearing a light lilac blouse and earrings in a matching color. She almost gave an impression of elegance and affluence. If it hadn’t been for the flaking nail polish, of course.

Mia took out her pen and notepad.

“I understand you’ve worked with Hans Juhlén for many years, is that correct?” she said.

“Yes, more than twenty,” said Lena.

“Kerstin Juhlén said it was almost twenty.”

“Unfortunately she doesn’t really keep track of her husband. No, it’s actually twenty-two. But I haven’t been his assistant all that time. I had another chief first, but he retired many years ago and handed over to Hans. Hans was in charge of the accounts department before this position. We met frequently during that time since I assisted the previous chief.”

“According to Kerstin, Hans was somewhat stressed recently, would you agree as to that?” Henrik said.

“Stressed? No, I would hardly say that.”

“She was referring to the recent criticism that had been directed toward the department.”

“Oh really? Yes, well, that of course. The newspapers wrote that we were bad at accommodating the flow of asylum seekers. But it’s hard to know exactly how many will come. You just have to make an educated guess, a projection. And a projection is only that, after all.”

Lena took a deep breath.

“Three weeks ago we received a large group of asylum seekers from Somalia and that meant work both before and after regular hours. Hans didn’t want to risk more exposure in the local papers. He took the criticism seriously.”

“Did he have any enemies?” said Henrik.

“No, not as far as I know. But you always feel a bit vulnerable in this job. There are a lot of emotions, a lot of people behave threateningly when they’re not allowed to stay on here in Sweden. So if you think of it like that, then there are potentially a lot of enemies. That’s why we have a security firm that always patrols here,” said Lena. ‘But I don’t think Hans felt he had specific enemies.”

“Even evenings and nights?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been threatened?”

“No, not personally. But the Board always has to think about security. Once a man poured gasoline over himself and ran into reception and threatened to set himself on fire if he didn’t get a residence permit. They can be completely mad, those people. Yes, there’s all sorts.”

Henrik leaned back in the chair and glanced at Mia. She moved on to the next question.

“Is it possible to talk to the person from security who was here on Sunday?”

“This past Sunday? When he...”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Lena picked up the phone, punched in a number and waited. Shortly after, the security firm promised to immediately send a Jens Cavenius who had worked all Sunday.

“So do you know if Hans had felt especially threatened in any way?” said Henrik.

“No,” said Lena.

“No strange letters or phone calls?”

“Not that I saw, and I open all the mail... No, I haven’t seen anything.”

“Do you know if he had any contact with a child?”

“No. Not specifically. Why do you ask that?”

Henrik declined to answer.

“When he was here, late evenings and Sundays, do you know what he did?”

“I don’t know exactly, but he was busy with paperwork and reviewed lots of documents. He didn’t like the computer at all and wanted to use it as little as possible so I had to print out all documents and reports for him.”

“Were you usually here with him when he was working?” said Mia and pointed at Lena with her pen.

“No, not on Sundays. He wanted to be by himself, alone, that was why he liked working evenings and weekends. Nobody was here to disturb him.”

Mia nodded and wrote in her notepad.

“You said that certain persons can behave threateningly. Do you have a list of the names of all the asylum seekers that we can take with us?” said Henrik.

“Yes. Of course. For this year, or further back?”

“This year’s list would suffice to start with.”

Lena went into the database on her computer and ordered a printout. Her laser printer came to life and started delivering page after page with names in alphabetical order. Lena picked them up as they came out. After twenty pages, a warning lamp started to flash.

“Oh, how annoying, it’s always going wrong,” she said, and turned red in the face. She opened the paper tray which—to her surprise—was not empty.

“Oh, what’s the matter now?” She pushed the tray back in. The printer made a noise but again the red lamp indicated that something was wrong.

“Apparatuses are best when they work properly, aren’t they?” she said in an irritated voice.

Henrik and Mia just sat there in silence.

Lena opened the tray, saw that there was still some paper left and closed it again, this time with a bang. The printer started up, but no pages came out.

“Oh, why are you being so difficult!” Lena hit the start button with her fist and that got the printer to work. Embarrassed, she ran her fingers through her hair until all the pages printed out. Just then, the phone rang and in a short conversation the receptionist informed Lena that Jens Cavenius had arrived.

* * *

Jens Cavenius stood leaning against a pillar in reception. The nineteen-year-old looked as though he had just woken up. His eyes were red, and his hair was flattened on one side and untidy on the other. He was wearing a lined jean jacket and white Converse sneakers. When he caught sight of Henrik and Mia, he approached and stretched out his arm to shake hands.

“Shall we sit down?” Henrik asked.

He gestured toward a sofa and armchairs to the right of reception, which was surrounded by two-meter-high plastic Yucca palms. Some Arabic brochures were in a display on the white coffee table.

Jens flopped onto the sofa, leaned forward and despite his red-shot eyes, looked expectantly at Henrik and Mia. They sat down opposite him.

“You worked here on Sunday?” Henrik said.

“Yeah, sure,” said Jens and clapped the palms of his hands together.

“Was Hans Juhlén here then?”

“Yep. I chatted a bit with him. He was the boss, like.”

“What time was it then?”

“Perhaps around half past six.”

Henrik looked at Mia and saw that she was prepared to take over the questioning. With a nod he let her do so.

“What did you talk about?” she said.

“Well, it was more like we said hello to each other. You could say,” said Jens.

“Okay?” said Mia.

“Or nodded, I nodded to him when I went past his office.”

“There was nobody else here then?”

“No, no way. On Sundays it’s just dead here, like.”

“When you went past Hans Juhlén’s office, did you see what he was doing then?”

“No. But I could hear him using the computer keyboard. You know, you’ve got to have good hearing to be a security guard, so you can notice sound that might be weird or something. And my night vision is pretty good too. I was the best in the test in fact, in the selection. Not bad, eh?”