Stone Coffin Part 2

"You mean this was murder?"

Ryde didn't answer but got out his cell phone. Lindell remained standing where she was. The girl had picked flowers, she thought. She looked over at the gray cloth that covered the little one. The mother had not managed to reach her. How many meters were left? Seven, eight?

A car appeared. Haver flagged it down and Lindell took out her phone.

Three.

An initial meeting and review at the police station took place at shortly after six P.M. A dozen officers from Violent Crimes, a few from Surveillance, and a couple from Forensics were present. Sammy Nilsson led the meeting.

"What do we know? Josefin Cederen, thirty-two years old, living in Vreta. Emily, six years. It was her birthday yesterday. We know that they were on their way to the church where Josefin's mother is buried. They went there every year on this day. Several of the neighbors have confirmed it. Ryde, what did the pathologists say?"

"It was a pa.s.senger car. At least according to the pathologists, that's what the injuries indicate. Death must have been instantaneous, at least for the little girl. She was thrown in the air and must have died at the moment she hit the ground. There were some signs that the mother may have lived on for a short while after the accident."

"Okay," Sammy said, "as you know, the husband, Sven-Erik Cederen, is completely MIA. As is the car, a blue BMW-99 series-with sunroof and all the extras. Haver checked with Novation, where he bought the car. With cash, I might add."

"Where does he work?" Lundin asked.

"MedForsk. It's a company that develops pharmaceuticals. High-level research. A relatively young company, a spin-off from Pharmacia. Sven-Erik Cederen never showed up to work today. MedForsk has some twenty employees and we have talked to all of them. No one has seen him."

"But we know that he left for work as usual," said Norrman, who had been in charge of the door-to-door questioning in Vreta. "He left shortly after eight o'clock. We've talked to about twenty neighbors. The one who lives across the street said a few words to Cederen around seven. Both of them were out to pick up the newspaper."

"And he said he seemed completely normal," Berglund added. "They talked about the usual, weather and wind. According to the neighbor, Cederen was like a clock."

"Where is Lindell?" Beatrice asked.

"With Josefin's father," Ottosson said.

"Does he live in town?"

Ottosson nodded.

"And in Vreta. Josefin Cederen was actually born in that county."

"Apart from that, it's probably mostly moved-in outsider s.h.i.ts," Haver said.

"What do you mean, s.h.i.ts?" Ottosson asked.

"Okay," Sammy said, "we know that he left Uppsala-Nas as usual, but that he never turned up at work. Where did he go?"

"His summer house," Lundin said.

"They don't have one."

"Arlanda," Haver suggested. "He knew that his wife and daughter were going to walk to the church, waited somewhere in the bushes, ran them over, and left the country."

"We've checked," said Sixten Wende. "No Cederen has left via Arlanda."

"A lover," Beatrice said.

"We've put out an APB on him as well as the car. I'm sure we'll at least know where the car has gone within a day. That's no ordinary ride."

Ottosson's certainty stemmed from thirty-five years on the job, of which the last twenty had been in Violent Crimes. Cars had a tendency to turn up. People were trickier.

"He may also have been hit," he went on. "I have trouble imagining that he would first wipe out his family and then disappear."

"People have done worse things," Wende said.

"I know. But to run over your own child, isn't that too much?"

"Maybe he was out of his mind?" Sammy said.

"But the child," Ottosson insisted.

"Beatrice will take on the family's finances, a.s.sets and debts, insurance, the whole thing. I want a complete briefing tomorrow. You can have Sixten on this too," Ottosson said, turning to Beatrice.

When Ann Lindell wasn't present, there was some confusion about who should lead the conversation. Sammy had the psychological advantage, as he worked the most closely with Lindell, but on the other hand, Ottosson was the boss. Ottosson, however, often sat quietly during meetings, completely confident in Lindell's ability to pose the right questions and a.s.sign tasks in a sensible way.

"What's the motive?" Ottosson asked. His role in the meeting could perhaps best be defined as the engine, weighing the arguments, asking lots of questions, forcing his colleagues to sharpen their thoughts.

"Jealousy," Haver said. "Maybe Josefin had found someone else."

"I think she was pregnant," Beatrice said suddenly.

Everyone's gaze turned toward her.

"When Ann and I examined her, I thought I could tell."

"How could you tell?"

"Her belly. b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Especially the b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She just looked pregnant."

"What did Lindell say?"

"She doesn't have kids," Beatrice said.

"That's so f.u.c.ked," Haver said emphatically.

"Well, we'll soon find out what the circ.u.mstances are," Ottosson said and turned to Beatrice.

"Could you see if there's any more information available?"

She got up reluctantly and left the room. At that moment Riis walked in. They met in the doorway without exchanging glances.

Riis had few friends, and everyone else had to think long and hard about whether it was worth it to be friendly to the grumpy detective. Beatrice had been one of the first to abandon any attempt at cultivating a collegial relationship or even collaborating with him. "Riis is a grumpy old man in a transitional age," she would say. "He hates us all."

Riis sat down and everyone waited for what he had to say.

"Well?" Ottosson said finally.

Riis opened his notebook with a sweeping gesture.

"Cederen was a man with vision," he said and looked up. "He wanted to do something with his life. He was successful, not least in terms of material wealth, he is probably unhappy, and he is very dead."

"Dead?"

"Mentally dead," Riis said and sighed.

"Are you jealous of his money?" Haver said calmly.

Riis shot him a quick glance, smiled, and continued.

"He has just bought a house in the Dominican Republic, if anyone knows where that is. It is a country in the sun, and that's where Mr. Cederen wants to go. He does not want to live in Uppsala-Nas. He also plays golf. He came in first in the most recent tournament at Edenhof."

"Get to the point," Ottosson said.

"I think he ran his family over with his car and fled. He wanted to play golf in the Caribbean."

"I'm happy to go there and check it out," Wende said.

Ottosson turned and looked at him as if he were seeing him for the first time.

"Two people have died and all the two of you can do is talk s.h.i.t," Haver said, convinced that Riis was simply counting the three days until he went on vacation. He was more than happy to turn a summer murder over to his colleagues.

"In my opinion," Riis went on, "the Cederens are well-to-do, stable, well-adapted, and social. Neither of them has had any run-ins with the law before. Nothing that we have found in the house so far indicates anything unusual. There was tasteful art on the walls-or what I believe to be fine; it didn't actually depict anything. There were thick carpets, a lot of gla.s.s, and fine magazines. As it should be, in other words."

"The cla.s.sic question: Was there an answering machine?"

Ottosson leaned forward to look squarely at Riis, who was leaning back in his chair.

"No messages," Riis said.

"A calendar? Address book?"

"We haven't found one yet. He must have it."

"What do we know about his work?"

Ottosson was trying to regain control after Riis's harangues.

"There was something," said Riis, ignoring the change of topic. "There were no flowers, not a single potted plant. Can you believe it?"

"Because of allergies, perhaps?"

"Who is allergic to plants?"

An unfamiliar silence broke out, as if everyone were trying to imagine a home without plants.

What a group, Norrman thought. Here we are sweating away, with Ottosson sitting there like Jesus with his beard and mild face. Who is Judas? Who is Peter? Who is Thomas?

"There are thirteen of us at this table," he said, breaking the silence.

They all looked around.

"His work," Ottosson repeated.

"MedForsk is a so-called star performer engaged in very advanced research. Everyone that we have talked to is understandably in shock, but behind the feeling of unreality and anxiety, there was a strong sense of self-confidence, wouldn't you say, Ola?"

Haver nodded.

"Yes, the place breathed success. Like a soccer team that has won enough times to feel basically invincible. Like a unified team headed into the finals, convinced they were going to win. Like an a.s.sumption."

"Just like us," Riis said. "A winning team."

"They're about to go public. What does that mean? Money? There might be a lot at stake. I'm bad at that kind of thing," Sammy said.

"'This happened at an unfortunate time'-one of them let that slip," Haver said.

"Can there be a connection to the company, or is this a family drama, pure and simple?"

Ottosson's question was left hanging.

"Did Josefin Cederen have any connection to the company?"

"There's certainly a lot of questions," said Wende, who had come out of his sh.e.l.l. Earlier he had tended to sit quietly during meetings and to speak only when answering a direct question. Ottosson wanted to hear new voices but was at the same time slightly irritated at Wende's new role. I just miss Ann's voice, he thought, that's all.

"We'll have to work through them one by one, or rather, at the same time," Sammy said. "I think we have a pretty clear idea of our a.s.signed tasks. It's Wednesday today. Molin stays on MedForsk and works his way through Cederen's computer and paper files. Fredriksson is on Vreta. Within a day we should know everything about the Cederen family's finances and private relationships; we should have mapped out all of Sven-Erik Cederen's movements today and at the very least have located the car."

The meeting ended. Ottosson stayed behind, in his seat, studying the forensic team's photographs, turning them over one by one. He muttered something inaudibly. "Can you run over your own child?" he asked himself. The girl would have been starting school in the fall.

When he reached the picture of the edge of the road, with the woman's hand outstretched and the lines that her fingers had etched into the gravel, he imagined her struggle. How she had dragged herself.

Ottosson felt a headache coming on. He felt heavy, not just in his head, but in his entire body. That morning he had felt happy about the beautiful weather, the approaching summer, and the early morning meeting scheduled with Sammy and Lindell. He had just been given the green light to raise their salaries.

Four.

A gull was sitting at the very end of the dock. It appeared to be using the water as a mirror, admiring its whiteness, the faint curve of its beak and the sharp gleam of its eye. Its head turned slightly, as if it heard Edvard's steps or as if it just wanted another angle on its reflection.