A Nearly Normal Family(37)

“How did things end up for this Job?” she asked softly.

“It was a happy ending. God gave him ten new children.”

I forced a smile and Ulrika kissed me.

“We have to stick together now, honey,” she said. “You and Stella and me. We have to stick together.”

I had the strong sensation that she too was hiding something from me. Even my wife.





34


Blomberg called on Monday. Could we come in to his office that afternoon? He had news for us.

“I suppose there’s no such thing as good news in this situation,” I said to Ulrika.

I held her hand tight on the short walk from the parking lot to Klostergatan.

Maybe Ulrika was right. We should leave Lund. I’ve always liked Stockholm; it could be our sanctuary.

But of course we couldn’t just leave Stella in Lund. As long as she was jailed, we would stay here. I would not compromise on that.

We turned the corner onto Klostergatan and stopped outside the front door. I caught a faint whiff of alcohol as I kissed Ulrika. In the elevator on the way up to Blomberg’s office, she took a compact and lip gloss from her purse and spiffed herself up in the mirror.

“Have a seat,” Blomberg said; for once he was wearing an ordinary T-shirt. It was unusual to see him so dressed down. It was almost embarrassing. As if he were naked.

“I told him about your job offer,” Ulrika said.

Blomberg smiled at me. I found it unpleasant that he and Ulrika had discussions when I wasn’t around.

“You said you found something new,” I said.

“So I did,” said Blomberg, sitting down across from us with his legs spread. “As I mentioned, Chris Olsen has quite the lengthy résumé. But I also found some things that a person would tend not to include in a résumé.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“This dude was involved with some fairly shady deals—we’re talking real monkey business here.” Blomberg nodded and looked pleased with himself. “I told you about the Poles with the pizzeria, right? Turns out Olsen also had a big outfit that depended on cheap labor from Romania. People he housed in some goddamn barn in the countryside while they worked like dogs to fix up properties for Olsen’s firm.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“People like Olsen buy up ramshackle buildings and flip them for ridiculous sums.”

“But what does this have to do with the murder?” I asked.

Blomberg gave a huge smile.

“Well, it seems some of the Romanians were grumpy about the conditions and claimed that Olsen was trying to cheat them out of dough. Some of their compatriots we chatted with were convinced that they were the ones who killed Olsen.”

“What? Do the police know?”

“I’ve informed Agnes Thelin, but Jansdotter is the one leading the preliminary investigation.”

“Agnes Thelin.” I snorted.

Ulrika looked at me in surprise.

“We’re still checking up on the Poles as well,” said Blomberg. “We’ve got two names to have a closer look at.”

It seemed so anticlimactic. Was that all? I didn’t put much stock in Blomberg’s private investigations. It’s the job of the police to investigate homicides.

“When can we see Stella?” I asked.

Blomberg’s neck turned red.

“I want you to know that I tried. I truly have done everything in my power, but that fucking Jansdotter refuses to let you see Stella.”

“This is a complete miscarriage of justice. Should we contact the evening papers? Or maybe that investigation show would do an episode?”

Blomberg shook his head.

“It’s way too early for anything like that. Until there’s been a conviction, they won’t be interested.”

“You have to talk to Amina Be?i?,” I said. “I’m sure she’s hiding something.”

Blomberg fingered his necklace.

“Hmm, I don’t know…,” said Ulrika.

I assumed she was afraid that this would upset Dino and Alexandra.

“I’ve tried,” said Blomberg. “The police questioned her as well, but it doesn’t seem she knows anything of importance.”

“She does,” I said.

Ulrika elbowed me in the side.

“This is Amina we’re talking about. Why would she lie?”

“I know she’s lying!”

But I couldn’t say more, since Ulrika must not find out that I had spoken with Amina. She would never understand—she would only be furious, sure that I had crossed a line.

“It’s still the case that Olsen’s ex-partner, Linda Lokind, is the most interesting for our purposes,” said Blomberg. “It turns out that Lokind has a history of anxiety and depression. She first sought psychiatric treatment as a teenager and since then she’s been bouncing from clinic to clinic more or less continuously.”

This didn’t exactly surprise me. Linda Lokind was a young woman with a damaged self-image. She reminded me in many ways of other women I’d met who were victims of domestic abuse. I knew Linda had lied to me, but I was uncertain of the extent. Could her entire story of Chris Olsen’s violence really have been fabricated? A terrible way of getting revenge on her cheating former boyfriend? I doubted that Linda Lokind was capable of doing something like that. But that meant she had to be hiding something else.