Stone Coffin Part 6

"Jack is the boss?"

Ronn nodded. "They started the company. Jack is the CEO. They each own half. They had a fight. We could hear them sometimes-it's a small workplace."

"What did they fight about?"

"I don't know. There was just irritation and tension in the air."

Before Lindell wrapped up the conversation she tried to get a better sense of the other employees at MedForsk. Ronn went through each one systematically and explained their position. Lindell was starting to appreciate the at-first-so-frigid woman's thoughtful speech. She measured her words carefully, but Lindell had the impression that she was trying to give as accurate an impression of the company as possible.

In response to a direct question about whether Cederen could have had a relations.h.i.+p with one of the other two female employees, Ronn immediately dismissed the idea.

"Absolutely not," she said sharply. "I know Lena and Tessan very well. Lena for at least ten years-we used to work together at Pharmacia, and Tessan is happily married. She's pregnant and on cloud nine. She and her husband have been trying for several years. Neither one of them is the type to have an affair, and definitely not with Sven-Erik."

"Why not with him?"

"Because he isn't their type."

"What kind of type is he?"

Sofi hesitated again.

"He has a melancholy temperament that can be hard to bear. Most of the time he's pretty cheery, but then he's suddenly just the opposite."

"He seems outgoing, plays golf, that kind of thing."

"He is good at golf. In the winter he sometimes takes golfing trips. I think his putting is a way to escape the pressures of work."

A melancholy temperament. She had studied his face in a staged family photo she had found in the villa. It was one of those pictures that men place on their desks at work. The happy family. He looked extremely contented, his arm around a well-dressed, well-groomed Josefin, his daughter on his lap. Could this man be unfaithful? Yes, most definitely, Lindell thought. Could he mow down his own family? Yes, perhaps, under great pressure and with uncontrolled emotions. Anger, jealousy, and blazing hatred could change almost anyone. Lindell and her colleagues knew this all too well.

She posed the question to Sofi, who dismissed it as absurd.

"Then why has he disappeared?"

"I don't know. He might have witnessed the whole thing and gone into shock."

"Thanks, you've been an enormous help," Lindell said and got up. The woman stopped her with a gesture.

"There's one more thing. I think that Josefin was pregnant."

"Yes, she was. Do you think that someone else could have been the father?"

Sofi made a face that Lindell interpreted as meaning it was impossible.

"How did you know she was pregnant?"

"Josefin told us last week. Jack held a little party; we had had a breakthrough in the lab and we were celebrating. Josefin didn't drink anything. I made some joke about it, and she told me straightaway that she was having a baby."

"Did she seem happy?"

"It's hard to say. She said it without any enthusiasm. You know when you get all bubbly, in between the vomiting, when you can't stop smiling."

Lindell nodded. She thought about the blue book. There Josefin had written down her mixed feelings about the baby. She wanted to have it but frequently found herself arguing for an abortion. She didn't say this straight out, but her doubts were expressed so strongly that the thought must have occurred to her. "What if he leaves me?" she had asked herself a couple of weeks ago, on May 22. The third of June she had noted: "Tonight I'll tell him. We have to make a decision."

A short time later she was dead. Someone had made a decision.

Lindell also talked with Lena Friberg and Teresia Wall before she left MedForsk. It was exactly twenty-four hours since Josefin and Emily had died.

Lindell longed for a chocolate biscuit at the Savoy, but when she had almost reached the cafe, she decided to eat some real food instead and thought of a lunch place that Haver had mentioned.

She drove to the end of Borjegatan and ended up parking far too close to a crosswalk. The place, Brostugan, reminded her a little of the Savoy. The interior had not been updated for a while and imbued her with a feeling of comforting familiarity as soon as she stepped through the door. She heard a construction worker order cabbage rolls and decided she would have the same thing.

She sat down next to the window. A television was on, with the volume turned down. It was tuned to a cooking show with a chef who had an almost tragicomic look. Ann watched his lips and tried to deduce what he was talking about. Definitely not cabbage rolls.

Contrary to her habit in public places of studying the people around her, she hunkered down over her meal with an intensity that surprised her.

When she got her coffee, she summarized her visit, taking out her notepad, jotting down some observations and thinking about what Teresia Wall had told her. The eighth of June, CEO Jack Mortensen and Sven-Erik Cederen had had a spectacular quarrel. Sven-Erik had just returned from Spain. Although he had been unusually tan, he looked worn out-"majorly hung over," as Teresia had put it.

The two men had confronted each other in Jack's office. Their agitated voices could be heard all the way to the kitchen. Teresia had not known what the fight was about. She had asked Jack about it, but he had dismissed her question with irritation and simply muttered something about "Sven's d.a.m.ned doubts about everything." Teresia had a theory that they were fighting about MedForsk going public. The company was entering a phase of significant expansion and needed big money. Maybe Cederen had had misgivings about the shape these plans were taking, because the next day Jack shut himself up in his office and worked feverishly. According to the general consensus-there was a great deal of talk at the company these days-he was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches on the prospectus. A press conference was scheduled for June 16.

The day after the quarrel Cederen had not shown up to work. He had called Lena Friberg about an upcoming meeting with a consultant regarding some technical equipment.

People came and went at the cafe. There was laughter. Clearly there were a lot of regulars because nods were exchanged and short questions about work were met with equally short, sometimes ironic, responses.

Haver is right again, Lindell thought. She would return here. Here there was the life, everyday life, that she needed so desperately. Real people with real jobs, dressed for work with the tools of their trade in their pockets and company logos on their backs and chest pockets. People who had not killed anyone.

But who may hit their wives regularly, she thought disloyally.

Axel Olsson came to answer the door in his bare feet. One big toe was severely deformed and both feet were wet. He was emaciated, with an ascetic face and large hands he did not quite seem to know what to do with.

"Excuse me," he said guiltily, "my wife is resting."

Cederen's father excused himself frequently.

After he had put on some socks and slippers-while he rambled incoherently about foot salts and a visit to his doctor-they went into the living room. People often received her in the kitchen, but Axel Olsson quickly pulled the door to that room shut and with a restrained gesture led Lindell deeper into the apartment.

The air was stale. The furniture had once been pet.i.t bourgeois in that way that Lindell recognized so well. The large chest with inlaid wood in the doors, the coffee table and the vaguely dark red sofa, a bookshelf with a limited number of books and a proliferation of gla.s.s bowls, photos, and souvenirs, a couple of worn armchairs, and a stand with a droopy foxtail fern.

Lindell examined the photos while Olsson apologized. There was the son, the daughter-in-law, and the grandchild, in several editions. A dozen older photographs in brown oval frames that Lindell a.s.sumed were dead relatives took up an entire shelf.

"Is Sven-Erik your only child?"

He nodded.

"I haven't had time to pick up," he said, "but please have a seat."

For his own part, he went and stood by the door to the balcony.

"That's quite all right. I know you have other things to think about right now."

"My wife is feeling poorly."

"You have lost a grandchild and your daughter-in-law. I understand," Lindell said.

Olsson looked confused and picked at the fern, shaking it with an unexpected ferocity that sent a shower of yellow leaves onto the floor.

He and his wife had already been visited by the police the day before and had at that time denied any knowledge of where their son could be.

"Have you heard from Sven-Erik?"

"I don't understand this."

"I know you have been thinking about this ever since you heard the news. Has anything occurred to you about where he might be?"

Olsson closed his eyes. He looked as though he was sedated.

"Sven-Erik hasn't called?"

He opened his eyes, fixed them on her, and said very slowly, "He doesn't call us very often."

Lindell got the feeling that at any moment he could fall asleep standing up.

"He has a lot to do," Olsson added. "We always tell him that he's working himself to death."

Olsson walked up to the closest armchair and placed his hand on its back. He cricked his neck back as if he were going to give a speech.

"He wasn't happy," he said. Realizing he was talking about his son in the past tense, he immediately corrected himself.

"He is unhappy. It's that job of his."

"Was he happy with Josefin?"

Olsson started. It was as if the mention of her name gave him renewed vigor. He moved around the chair and sat down, leaning toward Lindell and looking straight at her for the first time during the conversation.

"She put pressure on him, you understand. She always wanted more. That house, cars, and new clothes. Sven-Erik couldn't say no."

He stopped as quickly as he had begun and looked down.

"Did they fight?"

"Everything had to be the best. Sven-Erik could never disagree. He had to work. She wanted new things. Fight? I don't know. Not that we saw."

Nothing in Josefin Cederen's journal had indicated a difference in att.i.tude between the spouses with regard to lifestyle and money. She had not expressed any objection to her husband's way of life, with the exception of his infidelity.

"Was Sven-Erik faithful to Josefin?"

"Is anyone claiming otherwise? Is it her father? You should know that he never came here for a visit. In the beginning we invited him and Inger, but they never accepted or behaved like normal folk. He was so full of himself. Now I guess he's blaming it all on Sven-Erik."

Olsson sank into a heap, sobbing. "I can't do this."

It was as if he had used up all his power. Lindell just sat and observed him. His hands were pressed together between his knees. The stale air was starting to get to her. She stood up without making a sound. A large photograph of Sven-Erik Cederen in a graduation cap was prominently displayed on the bookshelf.

She wanted to put her hand on Olsson's shoulder, say some comforting words, but she couldn't manage it. It was possible that his son was a murderer, so Lindell couldn't a.s.suage the father's pain, and perhaps she didn't really want to. There was something about his person that made her feel not so much distaste as dislike.

She closed the door behind her and knew that there were countless questions she should have asked, that she should have spoken with the woman who was behind one of the closed doors. Perhaps she was sitting silently in the kitchen? Lindell tried to imagine her: large, heavy, thinning hair with a grown-out perm, full of sorrow mixed with helplessness and perhaps anger. Mostly a wordless grief. "Feeling poorly," her husband had said. Lindell tasted the word. "Poorly."

Once she was out in the fresh air, she called Sammy Nilsson, who could relate that the review of MedForsk's business doc.u.mentation was taking considerable time. The connection to the daughter company in Spain was not completely clear. The two companies pursued many of their activities independently, but the majority of the laboratory work took place in Spain. Most of the doc.u.ments were in English, but many were in Spanish. A translator had been called in. Sven-Erik Cederen was the one who managed the communications in Mlaga since he knew the language.

Beatrice had checked on the insurance. Both Josefin and Emily were insured through Skandia, with Sven-Erik as the beneficiary. The amount was in the millions.

"How are their private finances?"

"Good," Sammy Nilsson said. "There are shares for about half a million, mostly in pharmaceuticals, loans for nine hundred thousand, bank resources for half a million, and as much again in interest-bearing securities."

"Not bad," Lindell said and thought of her own meager a.s.sets. "No acute situation, in other words."

"No, and no significant financial events recently. Just the usual amount of activity-regular deposits and no large withdrawals. We're working on Sven-Erik's credit cards right now. Sixten is looking into that."

"Anything from the house?"

"Nada. No other personal materials."

Lindell heard voices in the background on the other end. A telephone rang and one of her colleagues laughed. Riis mocking someone, most likely, she thought.

"Having fun?"

"Berglund is making a fool of himself. He just won ten thousand on a lottery ticket he found in his car."

"Found?"

"He had forgotten about it," Sammy said. "What about you?"

Lindell talked through her visits.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"Overseas," Sammy said.

"Maybe Spain?"

"I'm betting on the Dominican Republic. We're trying to sort out that house business. The translator is helping us with the papers."

"Sounds good, Sammy. Give my regards to Berglund."