The Final Word by Liza Marklund Page A

size. She had found out all she could about the way the business was run, the threats, blackmail, and where Joachim hid his double-accounting records. She didn’t know if the prosecutor was aware of who had phoned in with the tip-off, but she wasn’t about to tell him now.
    ‘He’s been out for ten years,’ Annika said. ‘He’s registered at his parents’ address in Sollentuna. Do you know what he’s doing these days?’
    The prosecutor sighed. ‘I know he was suspected of assaulting a seventeen-year-old girl a year or so after hewas released. She withdrew the allegation. The last I heard was that he was in Croatia, working as an estate agent.’
    ‘Are you prepared to say, here and now, that Joachim killed Josefin? Can I quote you on that?’
    Kjell Lindström put his cup down.
    ‘Those men who hit women,’ he said, ‘they’re not like people think. People are all pretty much the same, even murderers. They aren’t monsters, even if their actions are monstrous.’
    Annika made notes. He was answering her question, even if he wasn’t.
    ‘Most men who are convicted of murdering their wives and partners in Sweden are native Swedes,’ he went on. ‘The majority are sober. More than half have no previous criminal record, not even for traffic offences. Nine out of ten are mentally sound. The critical moment is when the woman says she’s leaving, or when she gets custody of the children. When he loses control of her. When it’s no longer possible to isolate, control, manipulate . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Of all the criminals I’ve come across, those men are the most pathetic. They’re cowardly, arrogant, obsessed with power, and they accept no responsibility. They kill her because she won’t obey them, only to discover that she won’t obey them when she’s dead either. And that’s when they get really confused.’
    Warming to his subject, he leaned forward across the table. ‘There’s an institution outside Mariestad, whichhouses men who have been sentenced to long stretches in prison for violence against people close to them. They are offered treatment to help them control their aggression, but half are impossible to treat. In order for them to be receptive to the treatment, they have to admit their crimes and accept responsibility for what they’ve done. They spend the entire duration of their sentence proclaiming their innocence. He never hit her, and if he did, it was because she deserved it.’
    ‘Maybe they can’t deal with the shame of it,’ Annika said.
    The prosecutor nodded. ‘According to psychologists who’ve studied them, one shared characteristic is that they constantly expect the very worst to happen. They think they won’t survive if they acknowledge what they subjected their victim to. They don’t believe that people around them could cope with the truth, so they reshape reality to suit themselves. All that denial must take a phenomenal amount of effort.’
    ‘One man’s confessed to Josefin’s murder, Gustaf Holmerud. What do you make of that?’
    Lindström pushed his cup away. ‘Attention-seeking individuals confess to crimes that they haven’t committed. It’s a fairly common phenomenon,’ he said. ‘What’s most scandalous in Gustaf Holmerud’s case is that he actually managed to get himself convicted of five.’
    ‘Can I quote you on that?’ Annika said.
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘And you believe that his confessions are baseless? Notjust the five cases that Holmerud was found guilty of, but all the others he’s confessed to as well?’
    ‘There’s one case in which Holmerud was initially a suspect, unless I’ve been misinformed, and it’s possible he might be guilty of that one, but I have no way of judging. But he’s not guilty of Josefin’s murder. I can say that with absolute certainty. We conducted a very thorough investigation into that case, and his name never cropped up once.’
    ‘Can I quote you on that as well?’
    ‘Why not? What are they