Dark Secrets by Michael Hjorth Read Free Book Online Page B

this your fault?
the little voice in her head began to ask. Lena withdrew her hand and took a step back. The headache was relentless.
    “I think I’d like to go now.”
    Hanser nodded. The bald man turned up the sheet as both women headed for the door. Lena took a packet of cigarettes out of her bag.
    “Is there someone you can call? Perhaps you shouldn’t be alone.”
    “But I am. I am alone now.”
    Lena left the room.
    Hanser just stood there.
    Exactly as she had known she would end up doing.

    The conference room in the Västerås police station was the most modern in the building. The pale birch-wood furniture was only a few weeks old. Eight chairs around an oval table. The new wallpaper on three walls was in a discreet, relaxing shade of green, and the fourth wall was a combined whiteboard and screen. In the corner nearest the door the latest technology was linked to a projector on the ceiling. In the middle of the conference table a console controlled everything in the room. As soon as he set foot on the gray fitted carpet Torkel had decided that this would be the team’s base.
    He gathered up the papers in front of him on the varnished surface of the table and emptied his bottle of water. The meeting to review the progress of the investigation so far had gone more or less as he’d expected. There were really only two occasions during Haraldsson’s account when something surprising had come up.
    The first was when they were going through the investigation chronologically. Vanja looked up from her papers and asked, “What did you do on the Sunday?”
    “The investigation got under way in earnest, but led nowhere.”
    The answer came with some speed. Practiced speed. Unconvincing speed. Torkel made a note of it and knew that Vanja had done thesame. She was the closest thing to a human lie detector Torkel had ever encountered. He looked at her with a certain amount of anticipation as she gazed at Haraldsson for a long time, then glanced back at her papers. Haraldsson let out a long breath. They were on the same side, sure, but there was no need for his colleagues to know that there might have been the odd mistake in the initial stages. They had to focus on the future now. He was therefore slightly irritated—and a little worried—when Vanja waved her pen once more. Billy smiled; he was also well aware that Vanja had picked up something in Haraldsson’s voice that didn’t ring true. She had no intention of letting it go. She never did. Billy leaned back in his comfortable chair and folded his arms. This could be fun.
    “When you say ‘got under way,’ ” Vanja went on, her tone somewhat sharper, “what did you actually do? I can’t find any interviews, neither with the mother nor anyone else, no reports from door-to-door inquiries, nobody putting together a timeline from the Friday.” She looked up and stared straight at Haraldsson. “So what exactly did you do?”
    Haraldsson shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. Why the fuck did he have to sit here defending other people’s mistakes?
    “I wasn’t on duty that weekend. I didn’t pick up the case until the Monday.”
    “So what happened on the Sunday?”
    Haraldsson glanced at the two men in the room, as if seeking support for his view that looking backward wasn’t particularly helpful. No support was forthcoming. Both of them were gazing expectantly at him.
    “As I understand it, uniformed officers went to see the mother.”
    “And did what?”
    “Took down information about the boy’s disappearance.”
    “What information? Where is it?”
    Vanja didn’t take her eyes off him. Haraldsson realized they weren’t going to get anywhere until they found out everything that had happened. So he told them. The truth. Afterward there was a different kind of silence in the room. A silence that Haraldsson at least interpretedas the kind that might arise when a group of people is busy digesting what might well be the finest example of incompetence