“How much did you have to drink at the party?”
“I had some beers. Six or seven, maybe.”
“I was wondering, this route you say you took home from the party.” She tapped her pen on the notepad. “It doesn’t sound like you went through the forest. Am I understanding that correctly?”
“No, we didn’t, really. We mostly followed the road and the trails.”
“So you might have walked through the forest as well?”
“Huh?”
“You said youmostlyfollowed the trails.”
“Oh, no. No, we didn’t go through the forest. What happened to Mikael?” Sander asked again.
This time, Siri saw no reason not to tell him.
“He’s in a car about two kilometers from here, beaten to death.”
Sander didn’t move a muscle; his eyes were perfectly blank.
“What?” he whispered.
“What do you think about that?”
“What…what do I think about that? I mean…I think it’s terrible, obviously. Do you know who did it?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Was anyone angry at him?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“Nothing you’ve heard about? At the party, for instance. Was there anyone who wanted to hurt him, anything like that? No arguments or fights or stuff like that?”
“Yeah. No, yeah, there was. The kind of stuff that happens at parties, but nothing serious.”
“But Mikael was involved in this fight?”
“Yes. With Jakob.”
Siri flipped through her notepad. “Jakob Lindell?”
“It was just, they’re having a tough time right now. I know his dad needed to borrow some money from Mikael’s dad once. I don’t know if he got it. Yesterday I heard Mikael, like…oh, I don’t really know. But we were sitting on the couch talking and Mikael brought up something about money. Later there was a fight up there, upstairs. But like I said, nothing serious or anything.”
“Did you see them together at any other point during the evening, Jakob and Mikael?”
All the color had drained from Sander’s face.
“Yeah, sure. A bunch of times.”
“What was the mood between them those times?”
“They were just talking. Or that’s what it looked like. I didn’t hear what they were saying. But look, Jakob is a really nice guy, he’s incredibly laid-back, he would never…”
Siri nodded. “I understand. How about those?”
Sander followed her gaze and looked at his forearms, at the scratches there. He tried to hide them with his hands as though he’d been found out somehow, but then he stopped himself and sat still.
“What about them?” he asked quietly.
