Read Online CELL 8 by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström
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weeks. It was expensive and furnished with the owner’s excessive number of chairs from his own workshop, but living only a short walk from police headquarters in Stockholm, city of apartment waiting lists, made paying out the extra thousands a little easier.
It was still cold when she locked her front door in the block of apartments by the north end of Västerbron and walked through Rålambshovsparken to the walkway along Norr Mälarstrand. Ten minutes of open park and the smell of water before she hit the asphalt again.
She was still caught in the sound that had kept her awake last night.
In the open holding cell with the shaking body on the bunk, who tried to hide himself from the people who were standing near and far away.
His fear had been so potent, you couldn’t escape from it—as if it were contagious and she couldn’t get rid of it.
She breathed in the air that felt almost clean, deep breaths as she looked out over the water, watched a boat pass and disappear into the snow-white trees that lined the Långholm canal. She was starting to get used to the capital. More lunatics, longer traffic jams, and the feeling of having moved here by chance, it was all still there, but with each day that passed it got easier to keep the loneliness at bay. The days were work, the evenings were work, she wanted it to stay that way, until her soul had arrived and moved in too. And she was happy in the old police headquarters at Kronoberg. Grens was who he was, intense and cantankerous, and with eyes that held a sadness, and she was starting to understand Sven better; what she had first thought was shyness was in fact thoughtfulness, he was wise and friendly, her biased view of a faithful husband—she could just picture him with his wife and adopted son at the kitchen table in a terraced house in Gustavsberg.
She was there, kicked the wall to dislodge the snow on her shoes and went in, door to the left, and upstairs to forensics. Nils Krantz, an elderly forensic scientist, the sort who had started out as an ordinary policeman and then got his training in the force, she was sure of it, had promised yesterday to have Schwarz’s passport ready for pickup this morning. He had sighed, as they always did, but had then taken it, gone over to his desk, and started to look through it, without giving her another glance.
Krantz was already there when she opened the door.
Reading glasses on his forehead, hair just as unkempt as always.
She didn’t need to say anything—the passport was lying on the table, ready for pickup. Krantz got up when she came in, pointed at it, and shook his head lightly, smiled that smile that she still couldn’t work out, whether it was friendly or ironic.
“ John Doe .”
She hadn’t heard properly.
“What do you mean?”
“This. An unidentified man. A John Doe. Congratulations.”
EWERT GRENS WASN’T THERE. NO MATTER HOW HARD SHE STARED AT his chair. And Hermansson was in a rush. She didn’t know why, a tension somewhere in the middle of her stomach made her feel hounded, it gnawed at her and irritated her, made her breathing labored. Whether it was her recent conversation with the doctor who had given her an update on the battered Finn Ylikoski’s critical condition, that their work might turn into a murder inquiry at any moment, whether it was Schwarz’s reaction outside the holding cell, the terrified scream, or whether it was this, the false passport in her hand, she didn’t know; all she knew was that she wanted rid of it, that it was stealing her energy so she had to go somewhere else, get away from Grens’s empty office.
She went to Lars Ågestam instead, the public prosecutor who had been given responsibility for the preliminary investigation, to brief him on what Krantz had just told her. Then she went back to Kronoberg and her own office, read the report that had been filed twenty-four hours earlier, then her own reports on the arrest at Nacka and a police search at the same
It was still cold when she locked her front door in the block of apartments by the north end of Västerbron and walked through Rålambshovsparken to the walkway along Norr Mälarstrand. Ten minutes of open park and the smell of water before she hit the asphalt again.
She was still caught in the sound that had kept her awake last night.
In the open holding cell with the shaking body on the bunk, who tried to hide himself from the people who were standing near and far away.
His fear had been so potent, you couldn’t escape from it—as if it were contagious and she couldn’t get rid of it.
She breathed in the air that felt almost clean, deep breaths as she looked out over the water, watched a boat pass and disappear into the snow-white trees that lined the Långholm canal. She was starting to get used to the capital. More lunatics, longer traffic jams, and the feeling of having moved here by chance, it was all still there, but with each day that passed it got easier to keep the loneliness at bay. The days were work, the evenings were work, she wanted it to stay that way, until her soul had arrived and moved in too. And she was happy in the old police headquarters at Kronoberg. Grens was who he was, intense and cantankerous, and with eyes that held a sadness, and she was starting to understand Sven better; what she had first thought was shyness was in fact thoughtfulness, he was wise and friendly, her biased view of a faithful husband—she could just picture him with his wife and adopted son at the kitchen table in a terraced house in Gustavsberg.
She was there, kicked the wall to dislodge the snow on her shoes and went in, door to the left, and upstairs to forensics. Nils Krantz, an elderly forensic scientist, the sort who had started out as an ordinary policeman and then got his training in the force, she was sure of it, had promised yesterday to have Schwarz’s passport ready for pickup this morning. He had sighed, as they always did, but had then taken it, gone over to his desk, and started to look through it, without giving her another glance.
Krantz was already there when she opened the door.
Reading glasses on his forehead, hair just as unkempt as always.
She didn’t need to say anything—the passport was lying on the table, ready for pickup. Krantz got up when she came in, pointed at it, and shook his head lightly, smiled that smile that she still couldn’t work out, whether it was friendly or ironic.
“ John Doe .”
She hadn’t heard properly.
“What do you mean?”
“This. An unidentified man. A John Doe. Congratulations.”
EWERT GRENS WASN’T THERE. NO MATTER HOW HARD SHE STARED AT his chair. And Hermansson was in a rush. She didn’t know why, a tension somewhere in the middle of her stomach made her feel hounded, it gnawed at her and irritated her, made her breathing labored. Whether it was her recent conversation with the doctor who had given her an update on the battered Finn Ylikoski’s critical condition, that their work might turn into a murder inquiry at any moment, whether it was Schwarz’s reaction outside the holding cell, the terrified scream, or whether it was this, the false passport in her hand, she didn’t know; all she knew was that she wanted rid of it, that it was stealing her energy so she had to go somewhere else, get away from Grens’s empty office.
She went to Lars Ågestam instead, the public prosecutor who had been given responsibility for the preliminary investigation, to brief him on what Krantz had just told her. Then she went back to Kronoberg and her own office, read the report that had been filed twenty-four hours earlier, then her own reports on the arrest at Nacka and a police search at the same
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