The Savage Altar Read Online Free PDF Page B

in her absence and to post her as wanted by the police straightaway. As for you, there is a crime called obstructing the police in the course of their duty. If you’re convicted you can end up in prison. So now I would like you to tell me where Sanna Strandgård is.”
    For a few seconds there was silence. Then the young woman’s voice could be heard again. She spoke extremely slowly, almost drawling, and she was clearly exercising considerable self-control.
    “I’m afraid there has been a slight misunderstanding. I am not ringing to ask your permission to come in for an interview with Sanna Strandgård at a later stage, but to inform you that she intends to cooperate fully with the police and that an interview cannot take place before this evening at the earliest. Sanna Strandgård and I are not friends. I am a lawyer with Meijer & Ditzinger; I don’t know whether you are familiar with the name up there—”
    “Well, actually, I was born in—”
    “And I’d think twice about making threats,” the woman interrupted von Post’s attempt to pass a comment. “Any attempt to frighten me into telling you where Sanna Strandgård is seems to me to be bordering on professional misconduct, and if you issue her name as wanted by the police without her being an actual suspect, simply because she is waiting to be interviewed until her legal representative can be present, I can guarantee that a notice from the Justice Department will be heading your way.”
    Before von Post could answer, Rebecka Martinsson continued, her tone of voice suddenly friendly.
    “Meijer & Ditzinger doesn’t wish to cause any difficulties. We normally have a very good working relationship with the Prosecution Service; at least that is our experience in the Stockholm area. I hope you will permit me to guarantee that Sanna Strandgård will present herself for an interview as agreed. Let’s say eight o’clock this evening at the police station.”
    She put the phone down.
    “Shit,” exclaimed Carl von Post as he realized that he had trodden in some blood and something sticky; he didn’t want to think about what that might be.
    He rubbed his shoes along the carpet on the way to the door, feeling slightly sick. He’d deal with that stuck-up cow when she turned up tonight. Now, however, it was time to get ready for the press conference. He rubbed his hand over his face. He needed a shave. In three days he would meet the press with just a little stubble, looking for all the world like an exhausted man giving his all in the hunt for a murderer. But today he needed to be clean shaven, hair just a little tousled. They’d love him. They just wouldn’t be able to help themselves.

M åns Wenngren, a lawyer and a partner with Meijer & Ditzinger, sat behind his desk and looked at Rebecka Martinsson with a sour expression. Her whole attitude annoyed him. She didn’t look defensive, with her arms folded over her chest. Instead her arms were hanging straight down by her sides as if she were standing in the ice-cream queue. She had explained the situation and was waiting for an answer. Her expressionless gaze rested on the erotic Japanese woodcut on the wall. A young man, so young that he still had long hair, was kneeling in front of a woman, a prostitute, both with their sexual organs exposed. Other women usually tried to avoid looking at the graphic representation, nearly two hundred years old. Måns Wenngren could often see how their eyes were instinctively drawn to the picture, like curious dogs sniffing the air. But they never sniffed for long. They dropped their eyes straightaway, or forced themselves to look somewhere else in the room.
    “How many days will you be away?” he asked. “You’re entitled to two days off with pay for family circumstances, will that be enough?”
    “No,” replied Rebecka Martinsson. “And it isn’t my family; I’m what you might call an old friend of the family.”
    Something in the way she spoke gave Måns Wenngren