“This is the worst January I can remember,” one of the technicians muttered as he passed Willén. “Either that or it’s the longest fucking November ever.”
Willén had to agree.
The search for Viggo continued. A fresh contingent of Home Guard soldiers was brought in, and the exhausted dog teams were replaced after working for twelve hours in the appalling weather. A helicopter with a thermal-imaging camera had been deployed, but to no avail.
The firefighters were faced with an inferno when they arrived on the scene. The entire structure was already alight, flames crackling against the dark sky. Sparks swirled in the strong wind, and there was a considerable risk that the fire could spread to the nearby house. The burning building looked like a large barn, but they could see several vehicles both inside and outside. An acetylene tank had already exploded, and they had no idea if there were more. All they could do was try to contain the blaze.
Within minutes an Audi A3 came racing up the hill. It screeched to a halt in the yard, and the driver, a middle-aged woman, got out. She ran over to the firefighters with surprising speed.
“Where are Olof and Kristoffer?” she shouted.
It was hard to make out what she’d said over the roar of the flames. The incident commander went over to her, mainly to stop her from getting too close. When he realized she was related to the owner of the property, he drew her to one side.
“Who lives in the house?” he asked.
“My brother, Olof, and his son, Kristoffer,” the woman said between coughs. “Where are they?”
“Do you know if they’re home?”
After a fresh bout of coughing, she said, “They should be. Both of them.” Her voice was hoarse and her eyes filled with tears.
“So why haven’t they come out? We assumed no one was home because no one came to meet us when we got here. We’ve got our hands full with the blaze, so we haven’t had time to knock on the door yet,” the commander said, turning toward the house.
The woman gave him a sharp glance, her lips compressed into a thin line. She spun around on her heel. “I have keys.”
Without waiting for a response, the woman ran toward Breidablick’s impressive double front door. She could see it was ajar; the light from a lamp in the hallway window was seeping out through the narrow gap. With the commander close behind, she ran up the steps and yanked the door open. She pressed the switch just inside and remained standing on the threshold for a few seconds. The commander looked over her shoulder at the macabre scene now illuminated by the ceiling light.
On the floor about three feet from the door lay a badly injured teenage boy. There was a significant amount of blood on the floor, and he appeared to be unconscious. At first the commander feared they were too late, and he was already dead. The woman quickly moved forward and knelt down beside the boy, checking his throat for a pulse. It was clear that she’d done it before.
“Call an ambulance!” she said.
At the touch of her fingers, the boy grunted.
“It’s okay, Kristoffer. It’s me,” the woman said gently.
Untroubled by the blood, she began to check him over, while at the same time stroking his uninjured right cheek with one hand. The left side of his face was a bloody mess. His body jerked when she touched his right arm and hand.
“His right wrist and ulna—the bone in the forearm—are fractured. His left cheekbone is shattered, and there may be some damage to the eye. Injuries to the sternum. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
The commander passed on this information to the Regional Crime Center. At first, the person who’d taken the call about the fire outside Strömstad at 10:55 thought it must be some kind of hoax, but when the incident commander contacted them to say that he needed an ambulance, his request was immediately implemented. So during one weekend, a police officer was murdered, a six-year-old went missing, and now there was a major fire with at least one person badly beaten. What the hell was going on in Strömstad? That was what everyone at the Regional Crime Center was wondering.
Without looking up from the injured boy, the woman said, “Can you try to find Olof? He’s probably asleep on the sofa, or in his bed. Drunk.”
The bitterness was clear. The commander trudged off in his heavy boots and began to search the big house, but he couldn’t find the boy’s father anywhere. He returned to the hallway and the woman who was still kneeling beside her nephew, desperately trying to communicate with him.
“Kristoffer! Kristoffer! Where’s Dad? Do you know where he is?”
The boy’s only visible eye began to twitch. He raised his uninjured left arm and pointed at the window with a trembling hand. Outside the fire was still raging. The glow of the flames danced over the walls in the hallway, making the gulls in the driftwood picture look as if they were moving their wings.
On Wednesday morning sleet fell over Gothenburg. It was the kind of morning when you just want to stay in a nice warm bed and carry on sleeping. To tell the truth, Inspector Irene Huss didn’t like any mornings. If it were up to her, the working day would begin at noon at the earliest. Actually, after lunch—even better. She had no objection to working late into the evening or at night. That was the way her daily rhythm had always been.
In my next life I’m going to open a nightclub, she thought as she contemplated the coffee machine. That was her usual retort when her colleagues commented on the fact that she was half-asleep in the mornings. She needed two mugs of black coffee during morning prayer, which was what they had taken to calling the daily briefing sessions. As usual Irene was the last to arrive in the conference room.
The others were already seated, and Chief Inspector Tommy Persson was ready and waiting in front of the whiteboard. His laptop was open on the table, suggesting that he would be showing pictures or diagrams. Please don’t let me nod off, Irene prayed as she sat down next to the newest member of the team. Although she wasn’t really new. Embla Nyström had spent a few months working with the Violent Crimes Unit a year or so ago before moving to VGM, or Västra Götaland County Bureau of Investigation’s Mobile Unit, to give it its full title. After the major reorganization within the police service, VGM had been disbanded and the three members of the team redeployed.
Irene was pleased that Embla had returned, this time in a permanent post. She was young and energetic and gave a real boost to the somewhat aging department. Even the resident hunk, Fredrik Stridh, was approaching forty and was a settled father of two these days.
With her lustrous dark red hair and toned body, Embla had more than a hint of glamour about her, but she was down to earth, impulsive and full of ideas, physically strong, and very smart. An excellent cop, to put it simply. Recently Irene had noticed a gravitas about her that hadn’t been there before, but that was hardly surprising given what she’d gone through the previous fall. She’d almost died, for God’s sake! Embla was only a few years older than Irene’s twin girls; maybe that was why they got along so well. However, this was no mother-daughter relationship. They had a mutual respect for each other, and the chemistry between them just worked.
“Hi. Mmm—I don’t drink coffee, but it smells wonderful. I kind of inhale the caffeine,” Embla whispered.
“Inhale? I’d prefer an intravenous drip.”
They laughed quietly; Irene’s coffee consumption was a standing joke between them. They pulled themselves together and focused on the chief inspector. Embla felt guilty when she realized he was looking straight at her. Had her whispering and laughing disturbed him?
“Embla, you need to call Roger Willén, the acting area chief superintendent in Trollhättan,” he informed her.
Embla was surprised. Admittedly Willén had spoken to her a few times after the events of last year, but once he was sure she’d fully recovered from her injuries, he hadn’t contacted her again. What did he want? He seemed to have acquired a fancy new title since they�
��d last met. Something told her he’d be really pleased about that.
“Is it urgent?” she asked.
“Yes—he said you have his number.”
True—she hadn’t deleted it from her contact list. Irene raised an eyebrow when their eyes met, but Embla could only shake her head and shrug. She had no idea what it was about.
“I’ve been given permission to reassemble VGM on a temporary basis. Fyrbodal is in an impossible position, and we need help. I’d like you to come up to Strömstad as soon as possible—you need to be here by three-thirty at the latest,” the chief superintendent informed her.
It took a few seconds before Embla was able to speak. Obviously she was aware of what had gone on in Strömstad recently.
“Is this about the missing children? And the murder of Viktor Jansson?”
“Yes. Plus a couple of other things.”
Other things? Surely that was more than enough?
“Have you spoken to Göran and Hampus?” she asked.
“Yes. They’ve also been released from their normal duties. Göran will be contacting you and Hampus.” He paused, but before Embla had the chance to say anything, he added, “It will be good to meet up again, but the circumstances could have been better. See you later. Goodbye.”
“Bye . . .”
But he’d already hung up.
Superintendent Göran Krantz had returned to his former role in the technical department. These days it was under the supervision of the National Forensics Center, but the seven regions worked independently to a large extent. As Göran was something of a computer genius he had a number of special tasks within the department. In order to keep up to date with developments, he was sometimes involved in practical assignments out in the field and also worked in the different laboratories.
When the call came from Willén asking him to take charge of VGM once more, his heart gave a little leap of joy, much to his surprise. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the freedom of those days. As soon as he’d finished speaking to Willén, he contacted Hampus Stahre, who was lead interrogator with the narcotics unit. After a whole raft of objections from Hampus’s chief, he was given permission to return to VGM.
All three were surprised, but full of anticipation. The idea that the team would get back together, if only for a short time, was more than any of them could have imagined or hoped for.
First they had to go home and pack. They also had to check the car before they set off. This was pure routine, something they always did when they were called to help out in an investigation in the Västra Götaland region. Their specially equipped Volvo XC90 was still in the garage at Police HQ; the new management hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. Other issues took higher priority. Or maybe they’d just forgotten about it, as Hampus said.
Just before three o’clock Embla parked the black Volvo in the square outside the police station in Strömstad. When they rang the bell, Roger Willén himself came to open the door.
He must have been at the window waiting for us, Embla thought.
They all shook hands, and Willén greeted them warmly.
“Good to see you. There’s a meeting at four. All the units involved in the various investigations will be there. They’ll brief you, then you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions. There are so many of us we had to borrow a room over at the town hall,” he told them.
There was a spring in his step as he led the way upstairs and showed them into Sven-Ove Berglund’s office. The inspector wasn’t there; he’d called in sick that morning. Willén assumed Berglund had fallen victim to the flu epidemic that was raging in Strömstad just like in the rest of the country.
Kicki on reception organized coffee and cookies for the team from Gothenburg. All three of them had eaten lunch before setting off, but they weren’t about to refuse a snack. Except for Embla, of course, who according to Hampus always had to make a fuss with her herbal tea. As usual she had brought her own tea bags, so all she asked for was some hot water. She never ate cakes or cookies. Embla trained hard and was very conscious of what she consumed. Unfortunately Göran didn’t have the same restrictive attitude to sweet things.
Embla was wearing light boots with a low heel, tight jeans, and a steel-blue polo shirt, the same color as her eyes. During last year’s investigation Willén had mostly seen her in hunting gear: thick trousers, heavy boots, gray sweater, and body warmer. Today’s outfit was definitely sexier, but he thought it best to keep his opinion to himself.
Over coffee—and herbal tea—Willén gave a rough outline of what had gone on in the town over the past six weeks, before summarizing the situation: “So we’re talking about two missing children, a fatal stabbing, arson with a presumed fatality as a result, a serious assault, and the murder of a police officer. All at once. It’s too much!”
He glanced at the clock and got to his feet.
“Time to go.”
The meeting was held in a conference room with plenty of space for the thirty or so officers who had gathered there. They were seated on comfortable chairs facing a podium. From the walls, the luminaries of the town through the ages gazed down at them from dark oil paintings in heavy gilded frames.
Acting Chief Superintendent Roger Willén welcomed everyone and introduced the three members of the VGM team, who were then given an in-depth account of each investigation by their respective colleagues.
Since the Oslo police had taken over the stabbing of Robert Halvorsen, they touched on the events of New Year’s Eve only briefly. The general consensus was that the homicide had nothing to do with the other crimes but was due to some kind of feud between Norwegian gangs in the capital. There was an ongoing investigation into an extensive narcotics ring that involved both the murder victim and a number of the partygoers.
Seventeen-year-old Kristoffer Sjöberg was still in rough shape. The contusions all over his body indicated that he had received several vicious kicks, one of which had ruptured his spleen. During the night doctors had carried out emergency surgery to remove the damaged organ. The operation seemed to have gone well, but the boy’s general condition was still poor. He had also suffered a concussion, and there was some swelling of the brain, but at least there was no evidence of a hemorrhage. He would remain in an induced coma for a while. Willén couldn’t hide his irritation as he passed on this detail, and Embla could understand why: you can’t interview a person in a coma.
The fire investigation team announced that they had established that the blaze at Breidablick had been started deliberately. They had found traces of an accelerant among the debris. An hour or so earlier, Olof Sjöberg’s charred body had been recovered. He had been lying on a sofa in a room that had apparently been used as an office. His sister, Eva Sjöberg, had said he would probably be there. Without mincing her words, she had described the office as the “booze room.” When he was in a bad way, he would shut himself in there and drink for several days. “There was a toilet and a refrigerator—that’s all he needed,” she’d said.
The fire department had been alerted on Sunday evening when the automatic alarm in the workshop went off. The only witnesses who had called the emergency number were an elderly couple visiting friends in Strömstad. They had been on their way home to Hällestrand when they saw the flames up at Breidablick, clearly visible against the dark sky. The man had been in touch again a few hours ago because he’d suddenly remembered something. Just before the turn off for Mällby they had met a pretty big car speeding toward Strömstad. He had no idea what kind of car it was—maybe a station wagon? When asked if it could be an SUV, he’d said he didn’t really know what an SUV was.
As far as the timing went, the encounter could well fit in with the assault and the arson attack. Willén allocated two officers to follow up this lead; they would start by checking the CCTV cameras at the train station and ferry terminal. There wasn’t much traffic in S
trömstad on a Sunday evening in January, particularly between 10:40 and 11:00.
The mood darkened when they moved on to the murder of Viktor Jansson. He had been born and raised in Strömstad, completed his training at the police academy in Stockholm, then served in the capital for a few years. The opportunity to return home had come along two years ago. For the first few months, Viktor and his fiancée, Jessica, had rented an apartment in town, but after a while they had found the house in Skee. Viktor was a cheerful, sporty guy. He played indoor bandy, went running on a regular basis, and did strength-training workouts at the gym. He ran all year round and had been on one of his usual circuits on Saturday. Darkness was no obstacle; he simply wore a headlamp.
Jessica had gone down to Gothenburg to visit a cousin who’d just had a baby. She’d arrived back in Skee shortly after five o’clock Saturday afternoon and had been surprised that Viktor wasn’t home. She wasn’t really worried; she just assumed he was getting in some extra training. When the doorbell rang later and she opened it to find two police officers standing there, she knew right away that something had happened. She was still in deep shock.
The preliminary report from the autopsy gave blunt force trauma to the back of the head as the cause of death. Several brutal blows had been delivered using a heavy object, and the whole of the back of the skull was more or less crushed. The wound would be analyzed in more detail, but the initial view was that the weapon had been rounded, like some sort of cudgel. A considerable amount of force had been used. The weapon had not been found at the site, which was also the scene of Viktor Jansson’s murder. The killer had attacked him from behind, then pushed him into the water-filled ditch. The medical examiner didn’t believe he’d drowned; the injury to his head was so severe that he was probably already dead by the time his face ended up underwater.
Winter Grave Page 8
