Two Soldiers Read online

  The sleeves of the cut-up shirt moved more as the heat gradually drove out the moisture, as though they were banging against the glass, wanting to get out.

  “When?”

  “When I’m finished!”

  Krantz, who had spent his days with a black bag on his knees on some floor looking for something that no one else saw, was a calm and methodical man who had chosen to be just that, one piece of the puzzle at a time. But he was agitated when he left the room that had now become too small.

  “He won’t confess, Nils.”

  Ewert Grens had chosen to live as the opposite, in constant movement, restlessness, impulses that often conflicted, and he chased after his colleague, who was about to disappear.

  “He won’t answer any of the questions, none. We have to link him to it with evidence, piece by piece. I want to know that it’s him!”

  “This evening.”

  They were back in the lab with the overflowing tables.

  “Nils . . . I want something before this evening!”

  When a calm and methodical man who lives for one piece of the puzzle at a time finally breaks, it is often an uncontrolled eruption of anger that flies in every direction. A face that was now flaming red turned, arms slicing the air, sweeping two microscopes onto the floor.

  “Don’t you ever shout at me again!”

  The forensic scientist had seen the microscopes falling but didn’t even bother to check the equipment he otherwise protected with his life. He took a step forward and stopped, his face only centimeters from the person who was hounding him. They had worked together for so long. They were made of the same stuff. They had lived through what would be over in a couple of years now, when someone else would sit in their offices and never ask who had sat there before. All this time and they had never stood so close, they could feel each other’s breath, they needed to keep their distance.

  “Four hours ago I was in a trauma room in the Karolinska hospital.”

  Nils Krantz wasn’t shouting. Not yet. He would be shortly. He thought at first that he had, but then heard that that wasn’t the case, he just wasn’t used to it, to raising his voice.

  “Three hours ago I was in the autopsy room at Solna coroner’s office.”

  It was louder, no doubt about it, but not loud enough, his cheeks were burning, it should have been louder.

  “Two hours ago I was in a car covered in blood.”

  Now he was shouting, he could feel it, his chest opened up, the anger pressed its way up and out.

  “And only minutes ago I was in a fiber room so I could tape and dry clothes! I’m going as fast as I can! Is there anything else you can get worked up about that you won’t be able to change?”

  Ewert Grens looked at someone standing close, shouting. He’d never seen Nils Krantz like this before.

  And it was just as tangible when he now lowered his voice.

  “I repeat . . . why the damn rush, Ewert? Do you even know yourself?”

  Grens had an uneasy feeling in his chest. It was all those words that came so hard and fast. He had no idea what he’d done and after a while he backed away from the face that was doing exactly what he normally did.

  “I . . .”

  Nils Krantz bent down and picked up the microscopes—they appeared to be whole. The voice behind him, Grens’s voice, was quiet.

  “. . . I’m not really sure why, but . . . I’m sorry.”

  He put them down on the long table, in the same place that they always stood.

  “It’s just . . . it’s as if . . .”

  “What?”

  “As if it’s my fault.”

  Sven Sundkvist had been sitting waiting in the car outside Kungsholmsgatan for twenty minutes when Ewert Grens waved at one of the security guards, who opened the rotating glass door from where he was sitting in the office, came out and up the steps, and then got into the passenger seat.

  “That took a while.”

  “Krantz.”

  “Krantz, what?”

  “He seemed to be a bit stressed, you know, off balance.”

  Polhemsgatan, Fleminggatan, and Sven was just about to turn right into Sankt Eriksgatan when Grens knocked on the window.

  “Left. And then stop outside Thelins.”

  Late afternoon in Stockholm, on a main traffic artery. Sven sighed and double-parked.

  “I forgot my money. Can you come in and pay for me?”

  The sweet, yeasty smell of buns and peppercakes as they walked in and up to the counter, displaying cakes and laden open sandwiches behind the glass.

  “I want ten more.”

  Ewert Grens turned the plate with almond slices and the young girl behind the counter smiled as though she recognized him.

  “More?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the ones from yesterday?”

  “They’re still in the box. Have to have enough for everyone, you know, on a day like today.”

  Now he smiled too. And gave no further explanation, even though it was obvious that Sven wondered what he meant.

  An investigation that was putting him under more pressure and stress than any other he’d encountered.

  Almond slices and a smile that was almost disconcerting.

  Sven Sundkvist put three hundred-kronor notes down on the counter and waited for the change and a boss he would never understand.

  ———

  Fifteen minutes later he parked yet again outside Solna coroner’s office. And stopped yet again on the threshold of the autopsy room, whereas Ewert Grens marched forward to the table and the body that was lying there.

  “Stick by me.”

  Ewert had never demanded an explanation, never tried to marginalize or undermine, he had understood and often of his own accord sent Sven off to do an interview or phone someone, anything that was away from the death he was trying to avoid.

  “This is important. This time you have to follow.”

  “Important?”

  “Important for me.”

  Sven stepped farther into the room that had a naked body on a table in the middle. No explanation. But no more questions either. It was as if Ewert didn’t want to see this death either.

  Ludvig Errfors had heard his footsteps and pulled a green sheet over the young woman who was lying so still.

  “You can take it off.”

  The forensic pathologist waited until he had eye contact with Grens and then nodded toward Sven.

  “But . . .”

  “Today he’s going to look.”

  Sven couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a body so close; he had long since forgotten how it felt when someone who was no longer alive looked at him. Ewert wasn’t forcing him to do it to be horrible, the boss he had come to know wasn’t like that. There was a reason, he just didn’t know what it was, that was all.

  He chose her face. Her eyes. For a long time he just looked at them, but after a while couldn’t bear any more demanding looks and therefore chose instead the cut on the white skin of her shaved head, by the ear, focused on the open wound that disappeared around her neck. Just that.

  “Why?”

  Sven Sundkvist was talking to Ewert Grens but didn’t take his eyes off the cut—nowhere else, just there.

  “Why, Ewert?”

  If it’s his DNA, fingerprints, blood, fibers. If the time of death corresponds.

  “Because I said.”

  If it’s him. If it’s my fault.

  “It’s important. For me.”

  “Brother?”

  Grens had been carrying a brown briefcase. He opened it and produced a CD player from one of the side pockets.

  “This was recorded last night. In the car where we found her body this morning.”

  He placed it between the two naked feet, touched them with the back of his hands.

  “I want to know exactly when she died.”

  The forensic pathologist listened to the young voices from the lower end of the table, his face visibly moved. />
  “I can’t fix an exact time.”

  Clear sounds from inside a moving car.

  Then another sound.

  “Errfors?”

  “Yes?”

  “The exact time.”

  Something banging against metal, and yet a muffled, almost imperceptible sound.

  Errfors looked at the large detective superintendent, then at the shiny machine close to the bare skin, then at the clock on the wall that pointed to small lines and not numbers.

  “It’s now . . . eleven thirty, you agree?”

  The sound again. And again.

  “Brother, stop!”

  One of his hands on her cheek, lifting her eyelid with his thumb and index finger.

  A thin syringe in the other.

  The pupil was so empty, even when he plunged the injection in and emptied the contents of the plastic tube.

  “Atropine, tropicamide, acetylcholine . . . when we die, the eyes sometime continue to live, to open and close, and . . . there, did you see that? Now we know that she died sometime between five thirty yesterday morning and six thirty this morning.”

  Ewert Grens leaned closer to an eye that could no longer see, but had almost winked at him.

  05:30 yesterday.

  “A twenty-five-hour interval.”

  You were still at Aspsås prison then.

  “Not good enough. I want a more exact time.”

  The sound of a car door opening.

  Ludvig Errfors reached up to one of the metal shelves that caught the light on the white wall, lifted down a small bag and opened it.

  A hammer.

  He hit her right arm with it, high up and quite hard.

  “Nothing.”

  He looked at Grens and Sundkvist.

  “You agree?”

  “With what?”

  “You saw nothing.”

  “No.”

  He hit again, twice, in the middle of her upper arm.

  “The bicep muscle. If there had been a reaction—a fast-wave movement that stops and freezes in two bumps—it would be less than thirteen hours. But it didn’t. So we know that it must be more than thirteen hours ago.”

  “Right.”

  “So we can reduce the interval. Now we know that she died yesterday between five thirty in the morning and ten thirty in the evening.”

  Grens grabbed the metal hammer, felt it, it was riffled and cold.

  “Not good enough.”

  The sound of quick footsteps.

  “This side.”

  The white coat moved around the body and the dark patches on the torso had spiky edges that seemed to reach out toward each other.

  “She was lying on her left side in the car trunk and when the blood stops pumping . . . livor mortis, fully spread, and that reduces our interval as well. Now we know that she died yesterday sometime between eleven thirty in the morning and ten thirty at night.”

  11:30.

  You were still somewhere in the prison corridors then.

  “Not good enough.”

  The sound of a lock opening, maybe a car trunk.

  Her left arm was hanging partially extended from her naked body, she had been bound, tape around her wrists, and when Ludvig Errfors applied full pressure and pressed it to the table, there was a loud, snapping sound.

  “Maximum rigor mortis. Muscle fibers that have contracted and stiffened reduces the interval by a further four hours. She died yesterday sometime between three thirty and ten thirty p.m.”

  15:30.

  You were sitting locked in your cell then. You’d had your tools made and delivered then. You had started to cut through the metal bars then.

  “Still not good enough.”

  A sharp sound.

  “Take it easy, brother, for fuck’s sake!”

  A square plastic box on a trolley with small wheels that squeaked when a white coat sleeve pulled it closer, two blue cables from the middle of it got slowly shorter as the forensic pathologist first slid them over and then under one of her eyes.

  “The iris sphincter responds to electricity, fifty hertz, fifty volts . . . there, you see, the whole eyelid contracts.”

  The gray face, the black lips. Sven Sundkvist couldn’t take any more.

  This time she really had winked at him.

  “That closes the interval by another four hours. She died between seven thirty and ten thirty yesterday evening.”

  19:30.

  The final image. STORBODA, CAMERA 1. The car moved off down the drive, suddenly stopped.

  You leaned out then.

  You held the automatic in your hand then and shot at the camera and high gate.

  “Not good enough.”

  A choked, gurgling noise.

  “Leon, Jesus, take it fucking easy, we . . .”

  “Then I’ll have to ask you to turn around.”

  Sven Sundkvist was already looking the other way. Ewert Grens looked at the bare feet, the white legs, the blotchy body.

  “Turn around, Ewert. For her sake.”

  They concentrated on the light-colored wall, on the metal containers and metal instruments lined up on metal shelves.

  “I’m measuring the body temperature in her rectum. How far it has sunk will of course depend on how warm it was in the car and now how warm it is in this room. Some people prefer computers. I still use Henssge’s equation and . . . yes, we can lose another hour. Time of death . . . sometime between seven thirty and nine thirty p.m.”

  It was you. It was me.

  “Still not exact enough.”

  Sven suddenly turned around again, the woman lying there, he looked at her again.

  “Ewert?”

  “It’s important. For me.”

  A dull sound.

  Then footsteps, then a car door shutting, then an engine starting.

  Another square plastic box, this one looked more like a microwave oven.

  “After this, I can’t do any more.”

  Ludvig Errfors got the box and put it on the table right up to her skin and then immediately syringed the eye that has so recently winked.

  He withdrew the needle until the barrel was full.

  “Vitreous fluid.”

  And then emptied it into a test tube that was positioned in the middle of the plastic box.

  “The longer she’s been dead, the more potassium there is.”

  A small window in the middle of the box, chemical symbols, electronic lines, numbers, and commas.

  “Around zero point nineteen millimoles per liter an hour.”

  “I see.”

  “So I can reduce the time interval a little more.”

  “Well?”

  “Sometime between seven thirty and eight p.m.”

  Ewert Grens looked at the lines and numbers that were the amount of potassium in a dead person’s eye.

  “Are you absolutely certain about that?”

  “I’m not absolutely certain of anything. But I would witness to it in court.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’ll be quiet now.”

  The voices at her feet had finished speaking and the detective superintendent looked for the button at one end of the machine that would stop the CD and cut off the loud rushing noise.

  “The time when he stops talking is exactly nineteen fifty-four twenty-two.”

  Ludvig Errfors waited while Grens’s hands stowed away the plastic disc in his briefcase again.

  He was obviously deeply affected.

  “We do autopsies on around thirteen hundred people a year. Full autopsies. Seven specialists and a staff doctor—and I’m convinced that none of us have ever listened to a murder while it was happening.”

  An accurate time of death.

  Grens suddenly started to move, eyes that knew no peace, Sven and Errfors recalled the bloody knuckles and looked at each other in relief when he disappeared toward the exit.

  “What is it you’re not telling us, Ewert?” />
  Sven had followed him into an office and stared at the person who had collapsed onto one of Errfors’s chairs.

  “I’ve already said. You don’t need to know.”

  “Last night you smashed a window when you broke into an apartment, unarmed, inhabited by several young men who are classified as highly dangerous. You forced your way into the trauma room and declared a woman dead. You’ve annoyed Pereira. You’re harassing Krantz and Errfors.”

  The detective superintendent looked up and Sven nodded.

  “Yes, they’ve all spoken to me.”

  Ewert Grens stared at his colleague in indignation and then swapped the chair for a coffee machine that didn’t have coffee but could provide hot chocolate. He tasted it and poured it into the trash can.

  “And now . . . you’re moved by a dead person. I’ve never seen it affect you before. Except . . . yes . . . well.”

  “You said it.”

  “I want to know.”

  Grens pursed his lips, as if to make it absolutely clear that he had no intention of answering.

  “Ewert, I know . . . I can feel . . . something’s not right.”

  “You can feel it? In the same way that Hermansson thinks that something’s up?”

  That indignant expression again when he turned toward a young woman who no longer existed. Ludvig Errfors was still standing by her head, perhaps he had realized that it was best that the conversation was only between Grens and Sundkvist, perhaps he just didn’t want to leave her alone. He had removed all the instruments that had together measured the time of her demise and the immobile body somehow looked smaller, as if she had started to die for the second time.

  “We know that she had a sock in her mouth and her mouth was taped.”

  The forensic pathologist put a gentle hand on her cheek.

  “What we just listened to . . . they stopped the car, and someone pulled off the tape.”

  A sharp sound.

  “Pushed the sock farther in.”

  A choked, gurgling noise.

  “And then closed the trunk again.”

  A dull sound.

  “It was at that moment she choked. Six minutes later she was medically dead.”

  He had not thought about visiting her again that day, or that week. But when the car turned out of the parking lot at Solna coroner’s office, it was as if it steered itself toward Solna kyrkväg and Norra cemetery and then chose to stop in front of Gate 1.