Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [89]
Mårtensson did a quick inspection of the apartment and came out after only a few seconds. He radioed to ask for backup from the criminal duty officer. As he finished talking, the ambulance crew arrived. Mårtens son stopped them as they were going in.
“Two victims. As far as I can see, they’re beyond help. Can one of you look in without messing up the crime scene?”
It did not take long to confirm. A paramedic decided that the bodies would not be taken to hospital for resuscitation. They were beyond help. Blomkvist suddenly felt sick to his stomach and turned to Mårtensson.
“I’m going outside. I need some air.”
“Unfortunately I can’t let you go just yet.”
“I’ll just sit on the porch outside the door.”
“May I see your ID, please?”
Blomkvist took out his wallet and put it in Mårtensson’s hand. Then he turned without a word and went outside, where Annika was still waiting with Officer Ohlsson. She sat down next to him.
“Micke, what happened?”
“Two people I liked a lot have been murdered. Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson. It was his manuscript I wanted you to read.”
Annika realized that this was no time to ply him with questions. Instead she put her arm around her brother’s shoulders and hugged him. More police cars arrived. A handful of curious nighttime onlookers had stopped on the pavement across the street. Blomkvist watched them while the police started to set up a cordon. A murder investigation was beginning.
It was past 3:00 a.m. by the time Blomkvist and his sister were allowed to leave the police station. They had spent an hour in Annika’s car outside the apartment building in Enskede, waiting for a duty prosecutor to arrive to initiate the pre-investigative stage. Then, since Blomkvist was a good friend of the two victims and since he was the one who had found them, they were asked to follow along to Kungsholmen to assist the investigation.
There they’d had to wait a long time before they were interviewed by an Inspector Nyberg at the station. She had light blond hair and looked like a teenager.
I’m getting old, Blomkvist thought.
By 2:30 he had drunk so many cups of police canteen coffee that he was sober and feeling unwell. He had to interrupt the interview and run to the toilet, where he was violently sick. He still had the image of Johansson’s face swimming in his head. He drank three cups of water and rinsed his face over and over before returning to the interview. He tried to pull himself together to answer all of Inspector Nyberg’s questions.
“Did Dag Svensson or Mia Johansson have enemies?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Had they received any threats?”
“Not that I know of.”
“How would you describe their relationship?”
“They gave every appearance of loving each other. Dag told me that they were thinking of having a baby after Mia got her doctorate.”
“Did they use drugs?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so, and if they did it would be nothing more than a joint at a party when they had something to celebrate.”
“Why were you visiting them so late at night?”
Blomkvist explained that they were doing last-minute work on a book, without identifying the subject.
“Wasn’t it unusual to call on people so late at night?”
“That was the first time it had ever happened.”
“How did you know them?”
“Through work.”
The questions were relentless as they tried to establish the time frame.
The shots had been heard all over the building. They had been fired less than five seconds apart. The seventy-year-old man in the dressing gown, a retired major from the coastal artillery, as it turned out, was their nearest neighbour. He was watching TV. After the second shot, he went out to the stairwell. He had a hip problem and so getting up from the sofa was a slow process. He estimated that it had taken him thirty seconds to reach the landing. Neither he nor any other neighbour had seen anybody on the stairs.
According to the neighbours, Blomkvist had arrived at the apartment less than two minutes after the second shot was fired.