The Last Lullaby Read online

  Carin Gerhardsen

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  THE LAST LULLABY

  Contents

  March 2008, Late Saturday Night

  Tuesday Morning

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Tuesday Evening

  Wednesday Morning

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Wednesday Evening

  Thursday Morning

  Thursday Afternoon

  Thursday Evening

  Early Friday Morning

  Friday Morning

  Friday Afternoon

  Friday Evening

  Follow Penguin

  THE LAST LULLABY

  Carin Gerhardsen was born in 1962 in Katrineholm, Sweden. Originally a mathematician, she enjoyed a successful career as an IT consultant before turning her hand to writing crime fiction. The Last Lullaby is the third title in the Hammarby series, novels following Detective Inspector Conny Sjöberg and his murder investigation team. Carin now lives in Stockholm with her husband and their two children.

  By the same author

  The Gingerbread House

  Cinderella Girl

  March 2008, Late Saturday Night

  For a moment it sounded like the cawing of a bird, then there was silence. The body was heavy in his arms and in the bathroom mirror he could see how her head fell backwards towards his chest. Leaning back unnaturally, with closed eyes and mouth wide open – she could have fallen asleep like that on the bus. Perhaps the uncomfortable position would make her jerk awake and then she would fall asleep again, wake up, fall asleep, wake up … But no, the gaping cut across her throat and the blood pumping more and more slowly out of it bore witness to something else. This woman would never wake up again.

  He wiped off the blade of the hunting knife on his jeans and set it on the sink. Then, with minimal exertion, he tossed her up into his arms, his right arm under her knees and the left behind her shoulders and neck. He carried the dainty body through the bathroom door and into the bedroom, where he carefully set her down on the double bed beside the two sleeping children. With quiet, deliberate steps he returned to the bathroom to retrieve his weapon. The girl, lying between her mother and her older brother, was disturbed by the movement in the bed, whimpered and started groping for her mouth with her thumb.

  Just as it reached its target he was back with the hunting knife, and without a moment’s hesitation he cut the girl’s slender throat with a single motion. She did not let out a sound; her big brother’s calm breathing was all that could be heard in the room. He himself was hardly breathing at all. He stood quietly for several seconds and watched the blood running out of the little body. Then he quickly made his way around to the other side of the bed and leaned over the soundly sleeping boy, before ending that young life too with a single cut across the throat.

  Tuesday Morning

  At first sight Detective Inspector Conny Sjöberg thought they looked like they were asleep – the little girl enchantingly sweet with her thumb in her mouth, and the boy close beside her, completely relaxed on his back. But the unnatural position of their heads in relation to the bodies quickly undeceived him. And as his eyes grew used to the darkness he could make out the large quantities of blood that had now dried into the sheets and on the three bodies. The slit throats were actually more than he could take, but Sjöberg forced himself to observe the macabre scene for almost a minute before he turned his eyes away. The boy could be about five, like his own Maja, the girl a year or two younger, perhaps the same age as his twin sons. Jens Sandén came to stand beside him, with his back towards the dead bodies. He spoke quietly, leaning forward a little, with his mouth so close to Sjöberg’s ear that he could feel the words against his skin.

  ‘They get to be together anyway.’

  ‘What kind of person could –’

  ‘We have to see it that way,’ Sandén interrupted. ‘Mother and children got to die together.’

  ‘It must have happened quickly,’ Sjöberg mumbled. ‘It looks like the children didn’t even wake up.’

  There was a clatter as Petra Westman managed to get the blind to go up. Grey March light streamed in and the scene was suddenly starkly clear. Sandén glanced towards the bed. Neither of the children was under the covers. Both had pyjamas on; the boy’s were red with a black spiderweb on the trousers and a picture of Spider-Man on the chest, the girl’s light blue with little teddy bears. The woman was dressed in jeans and a white, close-fitting tunic shirt with a vest underneath. Her feet were bare, with transparent polish on the toenails.

  ‘There’s a lot of blood in the bathroom,’ said Sandén, gesturing towards the open door. ‘And on the floor all the way from there and up to the bed.’

  ‘He killed the woman first,’ Sjöberg commented. ‘While the children were sleeping in her bed. Then he carried her body here. I see no signs of a struggle. But why did he kill the children too, if they hadn’t seen anything?’

  ‘Maybe they knew something,’ Sandén mused.

  ‘Crime of passion or a relationship drama perhaps. Is there a man in the family?’

  ‘Well, it says “Larsson” on the door …’

  ‘And they don’t look like their name is Larsson,’ Sjöberg filled in.

  They turned at the same time towards the bed. The black, glistening hair and, despite the lifelessness, beautifully chiselled Asian features on all three of them suggested they had originally come from somewhere very far away.

  ‘Thailand maybe?’ Sandén suggested.

  ‘Maybe so.’

  On the bedside table was an open book of English nursery rhymes:

  What are little boys made of?

  What are little boys made of?

  Snips and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails,

  That’s what little boys are made of.

  What are little girls made of?

  What are little girls made of?

  Sugar and spice, and everything nice,

  That’s what little girls are made of.

  ‘She may have been adopted,’ interjected the thirty-year-old detective assistant Jamal Hamad, who was crouched outside the bathroom studying what might be a print from a shoe on the outer edge of a dried pool of blood.

  He stood up and looked at his superiors.

  ‘There’s a handbag hanging on the coat rack in the hall,’ he continued. ‘Should I take a careful look and see if we can identify the woman, so Einar has something to work with until Bella is finished?’

  Gabriella Hansson and her technicians had not arrived yet, but Sjöberg knew they were on their way. He relied on his instincts and always wanted both himself and his crew to get an impression of the crime scene before the technicians took complete possession of it.

  ‘Do that,’ he answered, without further instructions. He had great confidence in Hamad and did not think he needed to explain to him how to behave at a crime scene. ‘Where is Einar, by the way?’ he asked.

  Sandén shrugged.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Hamad replied, already on his way into the hall.

  Sjöberg stepped cautiously out of the bedroom, careful, despite the protective covers over his shoes, not to set his feet in inappropriate places. He made his way through the hall and into the kitchen, where Westman stood with her back turned towards the window, surveying the kitchen.

  ‘What do you see, Petra?’

  ‘Mainly I see children that have come to grief,’ she said dejectedly. ‘Again.’

  He presumed that she was thinking of the little boy she had found in the bushes about six months ago. Sjöberg’s own thoughts stopped with a girl in a bathtub.

  ‘I see a lonely woman,’ Westman continued. ‘A lost woman, short of money.’

  ‘In a luxury flat in Norra Hammarbyhamnen? The
apartments here cost millions.’

  ‘Yes, I know; it doesn’t add up. But otherwise there is no excess. The fridge and the pantry contain only the bare essentials. Everything here is cheap: clothes, furniture, household utensils, toiletries. Sparsely furnished, you might say. Almost no decorative objects. It doesn’t look finished. You see that too, don’t you, Conny?’

  ‘Why do you think she was lonely?’

  ‘For just that reason. Because it’s so impersonal. She didn’t want to be here. She belonged somewhere else.’

  When the technicians showed up, with Gabriella Hansson in the lead, Sjöberg had left the apartment at Trålgränd 5 and was down in the courtyard.

  ‘Hi, Bella,’ said Sjöberg.

  ‘You look tired.’

  She did not stop but simply reduced her speed as she passed the police officers.

  ‘It’s children. Blood everywhere,’ Sjöberg warned her.

  ‘Accident?’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  She speeded up again and hurried purposefully ahead, slightly bent under the weight of the big bags she was carrying, one in each hand. Sjöberg turned and jogged back to the building entrance, and while he held the door open for her he ventured a cautious appeal.

  ‘We need everything we can get that will tell us something about her. ID documents, addresses, bills –’

  ‘Photographs, receipts, correspondence and so on,’ Hansson filled in. ‘You’ll have it on your desk by four.’

  The medical examiner Kaj Zetterström and one of his associates also managed to slip in before Sjöberg let go of the door behind them and turned his steps towards the Hammarby canal and the footpath that led to the police building a few blocks away. He was in no hurry to catch up with his colleagues, whose backs he glimpsed through the pouring rain a hundred or so metres ahead of him. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts for a while, at least during the four minutes it took him to reach Östgötagatan 100.

  Tuesday Afternoon

  A few hours later Conny Sjöberg, Jens Sandén, Petra Westman, Jamal Hamad and the lanky prosecutor Hadar Rosén – dressed as usual in grey suit, white shirt and tie – were at the table in the blue oval room. Also present at the meeting, to Sjöberg’s surprise, was the deputy police commissioner, Gunnar Malmberg, who wanted to form an impression of how the work would be organized in this sensational case. Malmberg greeted each of them, attempting to smile while keeping his face as sombre as the circumstances demanded, and Sjöberg noted with relief that even Westman seemed relaxed with him here. He could not recall having seen them in the same room since the unpleasant incident several months earlier, when Malmberg, on Commissioner Roland Brandt’s orders, more or less demanded that she resign. This was because of an obscene email that had been sent to Brandt from Westman’s account, and which Sjöberg wished he had never seen. But the whole thing was now apparently forgiven and forgotten on both sides, and that was just as well, for there was no room here for any internal controversies.

  ‘Bella’s not coming, for understandable reasons,’ Sjöberg began. ‘But she has delivered some material anyway that we can work with.’

  He held up a transparent plastic bag containing various papers, a passport and some postcards.

  ‘She’s too damned quick, that woman,’ Sandén observed.

  ‘Yes, and we’re grateful for that.’

  ‘So where’s our friend Mr Eriksson today?’ asked Rosén, looking around with a hint of a smile on his lips.

  ‘He seems to be off today,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Has anyone seen him?’

  ‘Do you think Einar is on holiday?’ Sandén grinned. ‘Skiing trip to Italy perhaps?’

  Hamad let out a quiet laugh. The image of the unapproachable Einar Eriksson, who only reluctantly left his place behind his desk, on a pair of skis was undeniably laughable. Westman smiled at Sandén, but Sjöberg let the comment pass without visible reaction.

  ‘Okay, well, that’s too bad,’ he said. ‘We need him.’

  He stood up and went over to the whiteboard, took a pen from the holder and wrote ‘Catherine Larsson’ at the top, after which he underlined the name.

  ‘Catherine Larsson, formerly Calipayan, thirty-four years old, born in 1973. The children are hers, Tom and Linn Larsson, aged four and two respectively.’

  He read from a handwritten slip of paper and while he spoke wrote the information on the board.

  ‘The apartment where they were found is hers. She is Filipino, a Swedish citizen since 2005, has lived in Sweden since 2001, married to a Christer Larsson, born in 1949, who is listed as the father of both children. He is registered at a different address, so they don’t seem to live together. She was registered at that address until June of 2006, when she moved to Trålgränd 5.’

  ‘How did she support herself?’ asked Rosén.

  ‘She is listed as seeking employment and has been since the children started going to preschool in August 2006. Before she had children she had a short-term job with a cleaning company, which let her go after four months “due to lack of work”. Her first child, Tom, was born a few months later, so one might think that had something to do with it.’

  ‘Did she own the apartment?’

  Sjöberg nodded.

  ‘It seems to be rather expensive housing for an unemployed Filipino woman,’ Rosén pointed out.

  ‘Yes, we’ll have to investigate that, but she is … was actually still married.’

  ‘I would guess that she cleaned for cash in hand,’ Sandén interjected. ‘You can earn a lot of money that way. She may have had money before she came here besides, because it’s not too hard to guess how she supported herself over there.’

  Sjöberg rubbed one eye with his knuckle and let out a slightly dejected sigh.

  ‘Shall we try to proceed a little more objectively,’ he attempted, but the amused gleam in his visible eye did not get past Sandén.

  ‘Someone has to say what we are all thinking,’ he said, pretending hurt feelings. ‘But sure, let’s proceed now by all means to laboriously unearth this already known information.’

  As he spoke Sjöberg noticed a shadow pass over Sandén’s features, his face suddenly turning completely grey. Sjöberg checked himself and tried to make a quick assessment of his colleague’s health – a reflex that had developed since a stroke almost took Sandén’s life last year. It was hard to tell whether Sandén noticed his concern, but almost instantly his customary grin was back in place.

  ‘You and I will take Christer Larsson,’ said Sjöberg as if nothing had happened, pointing directly at his old comrade. ‘Petra and Jamal get to knock on doors,’ he continued. ‘Jens will join in later. I’ll go through the contents of this bag and then I guess I’ll have to play Einar, until he’s back. Any thoughts?’

  His gaze wandered between his colleagues at the table.

  ‘I have a feeling she lived alone with the children, without any man in her life,’ said Westman.

  ‘I have a feeling she had a man,’ said Hamad.

  Westman gave him a sullen glance.

  ‘She was married, damn it,’ said Sandén.

  Sjöberg raised the hand he was the holding the pen with in a deprecatory gesture.

  ‘What do you mean, Petra?’

  ‘You have to assume that the relationship with this Christer Larsson was over, because she had moved out,’ she began. ‘I saw no signs that any man was usually around. No clothes, nothing in the bathroom, and then, as I said to you, Conny, it was so impersonal somehow; there was no soul in the furnishings. It’s just a feeling I have.’

  ‘Two things,’ said Hamad. ‘First, she actually had a double bed.’

  ‘But she might have had that on account of the children,’ Westman said sharply. ‘Perhaps she liked having them with her in the bed.’

  ‘Or perhaps they liked having her with them in the bed,’ Sjöberg interjected, in his mind’s eye an image of himself, Åsa and five children of various ages in their own double bed.

  ‘I
t may also have been for practical reasons,’ Westman continued. ‘She may have brought it with her in the move. The double bed doesn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘Secondly,’ Hamad continued unperturbed, ‘there was a man’s green jumper hanging on the rack in the hall.’

  Sjöberg raised one eyebrow.

  ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer,’ said Westman. ‘Christer Larsson visits them sometimes in all likelihood.’

  ‘The approach,’ said Sjöberg. ‘What does that say to us? Violent, bloody, brutal. Hatred? Revenge? Passion?’

  ‘He was obviously after the children,’ Hamad said. ‘Why else would he have attacked them? They appeared to be asleep.’

  ‘We don’t know if they were,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Zetterström will have to confirm it, but I agree that a great deal argues for that scenario. If the woman was murdered in the bathroom, it seems strange that the children would stay nicely in bed waiting their turn.’

  ‘They may have been murdered first,’ Hamad continued. ‘But it’s not likely that he would do it in that order. She was actually in the bathroom. They may have known each other. Whatever, I think it was the children he was after. Just the children or both the mother and the children.’

  ‘Is it a he?’ asked Sjöberg.

  Everyone around the table nodded.

  ‘This wasn’t done with some little pocket knife, not this,’ said Sandén. ‘It must have been heavy-duty equipment. And the slaughter in the bathroom must have been carried out by a man. Catherine Larsson probably offered some resistance, even though she was not large. A woman would have slashed, I imagine. This is a man’s work. Strong. Single-minded. Ice-cold.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Sjöberg. ‘But why does someone murder two children? Why don’t you air a few more prejudices, Jens, so I don’t have to.’

  ‘Because you’re the father of the children and tired of the whole mess,’ Sandén answered willingly. ‘Or because you wish you’d been the father of the children and are tired of the whole mess.’