The badger, p.5
The Badger, page 5
8
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER
My parents were like everyone else, seemingly happy with their lives. I use to love reading and nearly always had my nose in a book. It came as no surprise when I got my hands on an old typewriter and began writing mini stories at an early age.
Annika glanced over her shoulder while Tobias closed the door of the meeting room behind her. She noticed him locking it. He never used to do that. Looking through the glass wall towards the open-plan office, she could see the others peering curiously at them.
“Thanks for coming again at such short notice,” he said, sitting down in his usual place.
Annika looked at the pile of newly-printed copies of I am the Badger. The papers were still warm and smelt faintly of toner.
“What’s going on?” asked Rebecka.
Annika put her hand on the pile of manuscripts, looking first at Tobias, then at the others in turn. Last of all she came to Katrin, whose eyes were as round as saucers. She was just about to open her mouth to speak when Tobias cut in.
“I’m going to let Annika explain what’s happened, but first I want to urge everyone here to maintain the highest level of confidentiality. Fredrik Ask is very anxious that none of this information goes beyond this room. Is that clear?”
“But why all the secrecy?” asked Katrin.
Annika felt her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth and swallowed before she began. “This is going to sound a little crazy,” she said. “But I found this manuscript outside the door this morning.”
Rebecka looked rather dubious. “What do you mean, was it just left there?”
“Yes it was. In a pile of dirt.”
“Well, that does seem a little crazy,” said Rebecka, pushing up her glasses with her index finger.
Annika decided to get straight to the point. “Yes it does. But it’s really good. Listen to this.” She opened up a page she had marked with a pink Post-it note and started to read.
“I am the Badger. This is my story. When you’ve heard it, you might see me in a different way, but that doesn’t change anything.”
Annika read a little further before she stopped and looked at the others. They were staring at her, their eyes hardly blinking. Jesper Olsson was steadily clenching his jaws. His thumb was pressing against the pencil he was holding in his clenched fist. Annika cleared her throat. “It’s a thriller and a kind of biography,” she said. “It’s about the Badger.”
“The Badger?” said Katrin, slowly. “The murderer?”
Annika nodded.
“But that is just crazy,” Rebecka said again. “Who wrote it?”
Annika took a deep breath.
“Jan Apelgren,” she said.
There was silence again until Jesper’s pencil snapped with a sharp crack. He swore and left the room, sucking the blood from his thumb.
Annika shrugged. “Though we can’t know for sure. Apelgren’s name is on the cover page, that’s all I know.”
Rebecka shook her head. “It must be someone else. Apelgren is missing. He vanished into thin air, disappeared off the face of the earth. As far as we know, he’s dead.”
Annika held her arms up in a gesture of resignation. “Like you think I don’t know that, he was my author. But that’s just it.”
“What?” said Tobias.
“It’s the style of all things. I know it can’t be him, but the style is his to a tee. Sure, things are out of joint here and there, but wouldn’t it be strange otherwise after all these years?”
Tobias nodded. “I agree. From what little I’ve read, it really does look like Apelgren. It’s almost spooky.”
“But if it is Jan Apelgren, someone will have to resume the search for him,” said Rebecka. “We ought to call the police.”
“No, we’re not calling anyone about this,” said Tobias. “We have to keep this secret until we know what on earth we’re going to do.”
“They were looking for him for weeks when he disappeared,” said Annika. “If he is still alive, might he simply not want to be found?”
Katrin stared at the wall on the other side of the room. “Christ, what if Jan is the Badger? That’s awful.”
There was silence for a second, then they all started talking over each other. Annika said that Jan couldn’t be the Badger, not a chance. Though it might be Jan’s manuscript. Rebecka insisted again that it wasn’t possible. Annika protested it couldn’t be the Badger who had left the manuscript in any case. If it wasn’t Jan Apelgren, maybe it was someone who wasn’t quite right in the head. Tobias tried to get them to keep their voices down so anybody outside wouldn’t hear through the glass wall. Katrin tried to reassure them and convince them to read the manuscript first and wonder about who wrote it later.
In the end, Tobias smashed the palm of his hand on the table. “Quiet!” he said loudly. The bang made Annika jump, but it worked. They were silent. Tobias observed the others closely. “I had a long conversation with Fredrik about this. He says that it’s too controversial. After all, we’re talking about a real killer, one who’s still at large. He wants us to keep a lid on it and concentrate on Stina von Gryning and the celebrity biography.”
Annika felt the colour drain from her face. Was she hearing things correctly? Were they going to refuse to publish the manuscript, even though she was convinced it could save the company? “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve read it, it’s the best thing we’ve received in ages, perhaps ever. Are we just supposed to forget it?”
“I didn’t say we shouldn’t read it,” said Tobias. He raised his eyebrows, a knowing smile spread across his face.
9
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER
I tried to live like my friends did. School, sport and community. But the only thing I really wanted was to be alone with my writing.
“Thank you, Aron,” said Cecilia, shaking his hand. Aron’s handshake was firm but friendly. The calluses earned from his manual labour caught against her hand, but the warmth in his grip was the same as in his eyes. Aron was one of the ground contractors who had been working at Linda Sandström’s property before the crime occurred. They had just concluded their questioning of him, which hadn’t got them anywhere.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Pity I couldn’t help you any further.”
“If you think of something you didn’t remember today, kindly get in touch,” said Cecilia.
Jonas gave him his card. “And I hope you don’t mind us contacting you if we have any further questions.”
“No, not at all. Just give me a call,” said Aron, taking the card. He put on a high-vis yellow jacket covered in reflective stripes and dirt, and slotted a wireless mobile headset to his ear before he disappeared towards the exit.
Cecilia sighed and looked at Jonas. He shrugged. “Nothing, as expected,” she said, angling her phone out of her pocket. “Who’s next?”
They walked slowly towards a different interview room. “Bengt Johansson,” said Jonas, checking his notepad. “He arrived early and is already waiting in the next room.”
Cecilia nodded inattentively as she looked at her telephone. She had four new Tinder notifications. Her finger automatically went to the app but she resisted the urge to open it. She put her phone away again and nodded. “Okay, so we’ve got time for him before coffee.”
She opened the door to the bare interview room. The man at the table turned towards them as they came in. His pale green eyes shifted about under a pair of bushy eyebrows. She sat down opposite and scanned him with her expert police eye. He was short and stocky but fit as a fiddle. A few tattoos were visible on his arms and half of his face was hidden by a shaggy beard. His hair was gathered in a short ponytail which emphasised his thinning temples where his hairline had receded over the years.
Jonas took his hand and introduced himself and Cecilia. She listened to the introduction before finally fixing her icy-blue gaze right into Bengt.
“Do you know why you’re here?” she said.
Bengt looked everywhere apart from at Cecilia. His eyes finally landed on the middle of the table. “No.”
Jonas looked up from his notepad and cleared his throat. “We are investigating a suspected crime which took place in a house where you were working on the drains.”
“I work in many places in this city,” said Bengt, shrugging.
“According to the contracting company, you were taken on as a consultant, not a permanent employee,” said Jonas. “Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why there’s no entry for you in the register of employees?”
Bengt shrugged. “Suppose so. Larger sites do loads of digital ID checks and all that rubbish, but a lot of that stuff’s much slacker on the smaller jobs.”
Cecilia leaned back. “What does a consultant do in your industry?”
This made Bengt’s hackles rise. “Nothing special. They bring me in when the others come across certain problems to do with the frontage.”
“What sort of problems?”
Bengt squirmed on his chair. “It’s quite technical, I don’t know why it matters.”
Cecilia glanced at Jonas. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. It was his way of saying that it really didn’t matter.
“And this house had those problems?” said Cecilia. She interrupted him before he had time to answer. “You don’t have to answer that, by the way. Do you know whose house it was?”
“Not really,” said Bengt. He seemed to relax a little. Cecilia wondered why but decided to let it rest.
“The house belonged to a Linda Sandström,” said Jonas, sliding along a photo of Linda. It was a printed image from her work’s website, before they took her profile down. There had been an uncomfortable amount of search traffic for Linda in the last few days. The rumour that she had become the Badger’s latest victim had gained ground.
Bengt drew the image closer. “Yes, I recognise her. Seemed nice.” His hand trembled as he pushed it aside.
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. “So you talked to her?”
“No. Well, yes. Not much.” Bengt chewed on a fingernail which was lined with black dirt. Cecilia noted his cheeks flushing.
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“No,” said Bengt.
“And you didn’t notice anything strange, anything out of the ordinary? With her, or the house?”
Bengt shook his head. His action was a bit too eager. He was speaking faster now. “The company which hired me called in the morning, saying that the job was cancelled. So I stayed in bed. That’s all I know.”
Cecilia watched Bengt for a long while. He continued to avoid catching her eye by any means possible. She let him stew for a while, then she carried on.
“Do you remember which day it was?”
“It was Monday, last week.”
“The eighth of November?” asked Jonas.
“Yes, if you say so,” Bengt replied. He swung impatiently on his chair. “Sorry, but I don’t understand what you want from me?”
Jonas looked at Cecilia. She leaned across the table. “Bengt, it’s like this. We have reasonable grounds to believe she’s dead.”
Bengt shook his head. He avoided looking at Jonas and Cecilia and peered down to the floor. “I’ve got nothing to do with it.”
“We’re not saying that, but you had been working at the latest crime scene,” said Cecilia. “We’re asking the same questions to everyone who was working there. Did you go inside the house?”
“No. You know, we don’t usually go indoors, we get pretty filthy when we work.”
“Do you know if any of your mates went inside the house? Used the toilet or anything?”
“We have a loo in our hut outside, or we go when we’re at lunch.”
It was the same thing that Aron and the others had said. The same thing they all said. Cecilia sighed. It was leading nowhere this time either.
“Did you see anything that was out of the ordinary?” she said next.
“No. Everything was normal. I promise, all I did was operate the digger. Was completing the pit around the basement so the others could finish off renewing the drains. Though I wasn’t done at the time they cancelled the job.”
“Anything else?” said Jonas.
“No.” Bengt shook his head. He seemed to relax a little more. His eyes weren’t shifting about anymore, even if they still avoided meeting hers.
“Okay,” said Cecilia. “Then we’re finished here.”
10
TUESDAY 16 NOVEMBER
Yet life went by, for me and everyone else. Long story short, I fell in love. Young and inexperienced, utterly head over heels, the way only a seventeen-year-old does.
Martin Granlund swiped his finger across the glass of his tablet as a succession of property listings passed in front of his eyes. Annika was sitting beside him, watching a programme on the telly with couples building dream homes. She had huddled up on the sofa and wrapped a blue blanket around her legs.
“Nothing new,” he said, snapping the case shut across his screen. He stretched and yawned.
Annika shook her head. “Really? Not a single one?”
“Of course there were. But they were all too expensive, too far away. Or they had…” He cut himself off.
“Had what?” she said, looking at him furtively. He didn’t look angry, mostly wary.
“Oh, I don’t know. Too much needing doing up.”
“Basements, wasn’t it?” said Annika curtly, turning her attention to the programme again.
Martin sighed. He was in two minds. They needed to talk. He didn’t know how best to go about it without it causing a rift. In any case, he felt that he had to.
“Hey,” he said carefully. Annika looked at him again. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about the basement in the earlier house.”
Annika nodded, her eyes back on the television. “That’s okay. We’re past all that now, aren’t we?”
Martin sighed inside. The sofa felt uncomfortable but he didn’t want to fidget and show how nervous he was. “Yes, we are,” he said.
“Well then,” said Annika. “No use getting hung up on things.”
“Right.” He waited a few seconds, then continued. “But finding something suitable isn’t easy. So I was thinking maybe we didn’t have to have a house?”
Annika turned around. Her wrinkle puckered into a sharp crease between her eyebrows. “What do you mean? You know how important it is for me that our children get to grow up in a proper house.”
Martin threw his arms up. “But we don’t have any children.”
“I am thirty-six, Martin,” said Annika. “We can’t just wait indefinitely.”
“No, that’s true, but…”
Annika interrupted him. “Because you do want children too, don’t you?”
Martin nodded. “Yes, of course I do. But I’m just wondering if it’s so important we have a house first. I mean, as long as they aren’t running about, mightn’t we just as well have children here?” He spread his arms out wide. The living room, which was in darkness except for the light from the television set and a red table lamp in the window, was quite large. A playpen in the corner by the bookcase would go nicely. The bedroom was large enough for a cot to go where the desk was today. It would work.
She shook her head. “No, don’t you get how much space we’d have to make for stuff? And by that, I don’t just mean a pram, but the bed, the changing table, stocks of nappies and the like.”
“Yes, but we can live with that for a bit while we carry on looking for a suitable house.”
“That’s not okay for me, Martin,” said Annika. “I’ve got to have the space to breathe, I won’t be cooped up in here with a baby.” The television was glinting in her brown eyes. “House first, children later.”
Martin sighed. “I just wanted to be open to alternatives so we don’t let the house situation prevent us doing what we really want. Being happy and having children together.”
“Well, it’s not like I seem to get pregnant just like that,” said Annika.
Martin fell back onto the sofa. Her words struck him right in the chest, smarting like tiny arrows. True enough, she wasn’t pregnant yet despite having stopped taking the pill over a year ago. Back then houses wouldn’t have been as important as they were now. She had even sent him to Sahlgrenska University Hospital to check that there was nothing wrong with him. There wasn’t. Even so, progress on that front was slow. It wasn’t for the want of them regularly trying anymore.
He couldn’t help but be annoyed at her for bringing it up in this way.
“If it’s that important, maybe we should check out IVF?” he said without thinking. He immediately regretted it and gritted his teeth. It wasn’t meant to hurt her.
“No,” she said firmly, and shook her head. “First of all it’s expensive and we need the money for the house. Then it’s very hard on the woman. And it can turn into a negative obsession. I know several people who have split up over it when it didn’t work for them. I don’t want to take that risk.”
“I don’t either. But we have to talk about it, don’t we?” he said. More relationships had failed because of people not wanting to talk about their problems, he thought.
“I don’t want to argue about it,” said Annika. She turned around and crawled closer, moving a little like a cat, searching out his lips with her own. He breathed in her scent, his pulse leaping in his chest.
“Sweetheart,” she whispered between the kisses. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll find a lovely little house soon, then the pressure will ease off. I promise.”
It felt good to have her close. He pulled her beside him and held her. He wanted more but wasn’t up to it now. His emotions were swirling around inside as he held her warm body next to his own. He couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if there were no children once they had purchased a house. Wouldn’t that just make things worse?
