Hunting Game

by Helene Tursten

  “Will the frogmen continue searching in the lake?” someone asked.

  “No. They’re done. There was nothing to see.”

  The only finds were rusty old beer cans and Cahneborg’s flashlight, which was in the water below the precipice. But that was not something the police intended to inform the media about.

  “Is there any explanation whatsoever for von Beehn’s disappearance?” one of the journalists shouted from the back row.

  “No.”

  Before the media contingent could fire off more questions, he continued quickly. “Excuse me, but we have to go up in the forest and continue the search. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything.”

  A cascade of questions came from the group. The superintendent pretended not to hear, and quickly made his way toward Embla. He passed her without stopping.

  “Follow me!” he whispered from the corner of his mouth.

  She immediately fell into his wake. They quickly walked toward the police car that was parked with the engine running by the logging road. This time Willén had made sure to requisition a Volvo Cross Country. Courteously he opened the back door for her. When she was in place he crawled in beside her. In the front seat were two colleagues she didn’t recognize. The two young constables introduced themselves as Anette Olsson and Sebastian Jelinik. Sebastian was driving, and he took off the moment Roger Willén closed the door.

  They started the slow, bumpy trip up to the Hunting Castle. The logging road had turned into pure sludge from the rain and heavy traffic. In just two days, considerably more vehicles had used the road than normally did in a year, so trying to secure any tire tracks was pointless. Presumably it would not even have been possible on Saturday, considering the rain. If they were lucky, the media representatives would stay down by the butchering shed because the road was so bad. Embla sneaked a glance at Roger Willén, who sat silently beside her. He really looked tired and worn out.

  “At least it’s not raining anymore,” she said to try to lighten the mood.

  “That’s all we need,” he muttered. With an audible sigh he took off his cap and ran his hand over his shaved head. After rubbing his eyes thoroughly as well he looked at her. “A number of findings have emerged from the autopsy of Cahneborg. He had a fair amount of alcohol in his system, but the most interesting thing is an impression on his back.”

  With some effort he got his phone out of his jacket pocket, found an image and handed the phone to her.

  The photo was sharp and showed Cahneborg’s sturdy back, which shimmered bluish white against the shiny steel of the autopsy table. Right below the left shoulder blade there was a distinct mark: an oblong oval with rounded ends. Given the size of the mark, it could have been inflicted with a rifle butt. A sharp shove in the back as Jan-Eric stood there up by the edge . . .

  And von Beehn’s rifle was missing. Like he was.

  “So you think that Cahneborg got a hard hit with a rifle butt in the back?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

  “Yes. Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  It was important not to jump to the simplest explanation.

  “Sure, but there’s nothing that proves it was Anders von Beehn who was holding the rifle,” she said.

  “Then I can also tell you that the techs have compared the impression on the victim’s back with the backside of the butt on a Carl Gustaf model rifle caliber 30-06. Fits exactly.”

  She didn’t know how to respond to that. No one in her hunting party had such a rifle. On the other hand, she knew that it was not uncommon among von Beehn’s hunting buddies and that it was von Beehn’s favorite gun for moose hunting.

  “That is a strong indication,” she admitted at last.

  “You might say.”

  “But there must be several rifle butts that fit, in terms of size. It wouldn’t have to be from a Carl Gustaf,” she persisted.

  During the rest of the bumpy ride they sat quietly. She thought about the new information she had just received. Could this still be about a murder that was committed without prior intent? Had the two men quarreled outside the house? It was possible. No one would have heard them in the wilderness. If von Beehn really was the murderer, where could he hide? Then she had a thought.

  “Listen, I’ll call our colleagues at VGM. They’re going to drive up here in an hour or so. I’ll ask them to contact Anna. That’s Stig Ekström’s wife. She can let them in so they can search through Dalsnäs to be sure he’s not hiding somewhere on the estate,” she said.

  “Good idea. But how would he have made it all the way there? It’s at least fifty kilometers away.”

  “Well . . . He has a good and loyal manager. It was Stig Ekström who said Cahneborg and von Beehn didn’t want him to come up on Friday. What if they never said that? What if Stig came here on Friday morning and picked up von Beehn, his employer?”

  She could see how Superintendent Willén was racking his tired brain.

  “Why would the manager lie to us?”

  “Because von Beehn told him to. Maybe Stig has been bribed or threatened or something.”

  “Okay. Ask your colleagues to check through all the buildings at Dalsnäs.”

  When she took out her phone she saw there wasn’t any coverage. The call would have to wait until they got to the Hunting Castle.

  “Have you checked von Beehn’s house in town, too?” she asked.

  “Our colleagues in Stockholm have already done that and”—he interrupted himself with a big yawn—“he’s not there. And if he’s left the country, he would have been caught on a surveillance camera somewhere. We’ve already assigned people to that,” he continued, stifling another yawn.

  “Has anyone been in contact with the relatives? I mean both Cahneborg’s and von Beehn’s families.”

  “Oh, yes. Both the current and the ex-wives and their children hung up without saying much. Not to mention cousins, siblings, attorneys, and the devil and his grandmother!”

  “No one has said they know something?”

  “No. But I haven’t spoken with any of them personally. Of course I’ll probably have to if they come here. Which von Beehn’s first wife threatened to do. Number two didn’t seem too worried.”

  “No? Maybe she knows where he is.”

  “Maybe so, yes. But she’s probably not going to show up here because she was on an operating table at a plastic surgeon last Friday. Replacing her silicone implants, according to a report from my colleague who spoke with her.”

  Embla nodded and felt no great surprise. She knew that two years earlier Anders von Beehn had remarried a woman twenty years younger. There had been a fair amount in the newspapers about the divorce from the first wife, who was a well-known opera singer and had not gone quietly.

  Embla was torn out of her thoughts when the car skidded. They had to swerve around a car that was stuck far above the hubcaps in the mud.

  Once at the Hunting Castle they could see that the plucky reporters and photographers had struggled all the way there on foot. They were muddy up to their knees and looked generally stressed. But Willén’s arrival infused them with fresh energy, and as a group they trudged up to the police car. The superintendent got out of the car and said roughly the same things he had communicated to their colleagues outside the shed. Embla slipped out of the car door on the other side and managed to go unnoticed by the reporters. Her hunting clothes meant that she didn’t look like a police officer. She went over toward the precipice, where she knew there was cell phone coverage.

  When she called Hampus Stahre and asked him and Göran to stop by Dalsnäs, at first he groused and thought it sounded unnecessary. But when she told him about the mark from the rifle butt on Cahneborg’s back, he changed his tune.

  Then she called Nisse’s cell phone. It took a few moments before he answered, and when he finally did he sounded uncharacteristically irritated.

  “This is Nisse!”

  “Hi there, dear uncle. I’m up at the Hunting
Castle again. Superintendent Willén commandeered me to go with him. He has requested help from VGM, so I’ve been called back into service. Hampus and Göran are coming later this afternoon. Do you know some place they can stay?”

  After thinking a moment he said, “They can stay at my place, too. I’ll move in with Ingela as long as you need to be here.”

  “So sweet of you!”

  “Think nothing of it. I may need to rest up after all this.”

  As she struggled not to giggle she tried to sound sympathetic. “Are they difficult? The reporters and—”

  “Difficult? They’re out of their minds! A crazy woman forced her way in here and started raving into a microphone: ‘Here are Jan-Eric Cahneborg’s and Anders von Beehn’s grieving hunting comrades who, in the midst of their sorrow, have to soldier on and cut up the moose that their friends shot during the hunt.’”

  “What did you say then?” She could barely keep from laughing.

  “You don’t want to know. But she popped out again, quick as a flash. Maybe it was mostly due to the fact that Sixten happened to drop the pail of offal over her feet.”

  At last she laughed heartily. It was too bad she didn’t have a pail with her up here, too. Poor Willén was still stuck in the media herd. A pail of meat scraps and offal over the reporters surely would have freed him.

  At five o’clock Göran Krantz called and reported that he and Hampus had not found anything at Dalsnäs. There was not the slightest indication that von Beehn had been there over the past few days. His fancy Jaguar was still in the garage and some clothes were hanging in his bedroom that he had left behind for the trip home to Stockholm. Anna Ekström swore that she had not heard a word from him in a week. The last time she’d seen him was when the hunting party drove off to the Hunting Castle. Several persons were able to confirm that Stig had been at home all of Thursday and Friday, as he had helped a neighbor put on a new roof. They had worked from early in the morning until darkness fell on both Thursday and Friday. His alibi was watertight.

  Embla suggested that her colleagues drive straight to Nisse’s farm. They would not make it to the Hunting Castle anyway until it got dark, and there was a great risk that they would get stuck in the mud.

  She called Nisse again and asked whether he and the others needed help with the meat cutting. He assured her that they were as good as done. They had called Peter Hansson and he had dropped his work at once to help them carry. Now the meat was loaded onto the wagon and they were ready to drive home.

  With a feeling of relief she clicked off the call. It was nice that Peter had been able to show up on such short notice; it was certainly good for his relationship with the older men in the hunting party. And now, she reflected, that kind of thing was important to her.

  Several hours after the onset of darkness Superintendent Roger Willén could see that yet another day of fruitless searching was at an end. He and Embla were in the backseat of the Volvo, with constables Olsson and Jelinik in the front. In high spirits Anette Olsson skidded down the muddy road like the worst rally driver. Embla held on as best she could to keep from hitting her head as the car swerved and careened.

  “Hello, Olsson! You’re driving like a fucking car thief!” Willén shouted.

  The constable slowed down and took it a little easier. The passengers in the backseat could release their convulsive hold on the car interior and lean back.

  “Where the hell can von Beehn be?” the superintendent said with a sigh.

  “He’s not anywhere around here. If he were we would have found him,” said Embla.

  “Yes, I believe we would have. By the way, tomorrow I need to see you and your colleagues in the Unit.”

  “We can meet at your office in Trollhättan. How does nine o’clock sound?”

  He gave her a grateful look and a faint attempt at a smile. “Shouldn’t we meet halfway? Mellerud, perhaps?”

  “It’s better if we meet at your office. And we have to decide where to set up the investigation center. It won’t work to have it up here in the woods.”

  “That . . . thanks. That sounds really good. By then I’m sure we’ll have managed to get news from our colleagues, who were going to question von Beehn’s wife and search the house in Djursholm. And maybe the review of the images from all the surveillance cameras at trains stations and airports will have produced some results. Obviously we’ve also checked all reservations for trains, airlines, and boats.”

  “Shouldn’t you put out an international search warrant?”

  “Yes. If he’s taken off he’s certainly not inside our borders still. But my boss wants to wait and see if we produce anything before we get the big apparatus going.”

  The rest of the way to Nisse’s farm they sat and dozed. Judging by Superintendent Willén’s snoring, he was in a deeper slumber.

  VGM’s black Volvo XC90 was already parked on the farmyard outside the house. All the windows except the windshield were tinted so dark that it was impossible to see into the car.

  When Embla opened the door to the house she was met by happy laughter. Nisse and her two colleagues, Superintendent Göran Krantz and Detective Inspector Hampus Stahre, were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking beer. The aroma of a steaming casserole in the kitchen made her realize how hungry she was.

  “Hi! Come on in and sit down!” Nisse called.

  He had met both Hampus and Göran on several occasions and didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable having two policemen at his table.

  “That will be nice! But I have to shower and change clothes. Stink like a beaver,” she said, hurrying up the stairs to her room and the beckoning shower.

  Behind her she heard Hampus ask, “Do beavers smell bad?”

  Well, how would he know? Embla thought, shaking her head. Before he started at VGM his contact with nature mainly consisted of walks in Slottsskogen Park in Gothenburg.

  The chicken casserole was heavenly, with the aroma and taste of garlic, chanterelles, and fresh herbs. It was impossible to resist; Embla went back for seconds. At that point Nisse had already said his goodbyes and driven off. The three colleagues had the house to themselves and while they were eating they discussed the case. Göran Krantz told them he had made contact with Ola Forsnaess’s father in Oslo.

  “He’s old, eighty-nine. But he said something interesting. The same day that Ola went to Dalsnäs to take part in the moose hunt, he got a package. He never got to see it because he left early in the morning. But his father opened his mail a few weeks after the funeral. In the package was a gold watch, a Rolex with diamonds, but it was obviously only fool’s gold and pieces of glass. Street vendors all over Asia sell knockoffs, so the watch was rather uninteresting. But there was a piece of paper with it.”

  Göran raised his beer glass and took a sip before he continued.

  “On the paper it says, ‘I remember. M.’”

  “M? Is there anyone in the hunting party whose name starts with M?” Hampus asked, looking at Embla.

  She shook her head and tried to recall whether anyone in the circle around the hunting party might have a name, or even nickname, starting with M, but she couldn’t think of anyone.

  “Does he still have those things?” she asked instead.

  “Yes! He sent the package to the police station, addressed to me,” said Göran.

  So it was just a matter of waiting to see what the package contained. In the meantime they needed to make a more pressing decision.

  Embla threw out her hands and made a gesture around the room. “Do you think it’s a good idea to set up the investigation center here?”

  Her colleagues exchanged a look and then they both nodded.

  “Anyone who may have seen something or knows something is around here,” Göran said.

  “Then let’s start setting things up pronto,” Hampus decided.

  He and Göran went out to the car and retrieved three large cases, to shore up their resources in Nisse’s house. After an hour or so cables, compu
ters, screens, a modem, a microscope, a spectrometer, and everything else they needed was set up in the room. They were used to getting organized quickly.

  Besides being their boss, Göran Krantz was a trained crime scene technician and a veritable IT genius. If he had a steady supply of coffee and pastries he could sit in front of screens for hours. The three in VGM complemented each other, he liked to say. Hampus was the thoughtful, analytical one in the group. In contrast to their boss he was tall and thin—borderline skinny, in fact. His thick, dark hair had a stylish cut: short on the sides and rather long on top. When he looked at people through his round glasses he could easily pass for a stray academic and not a policeman, which had benefitted him numerous times. People were lulled into security by his harmless appearance.

  As far as Embla’s role in the trio was concerned, the two men usually agreed that she was their pit bull. This was said with tenderness on Göran’s part and teasingly by Hampus. She didn’t care. They were a good team.

  “I wonder what the watch and the note mean. Who is M?” she mused out loud.

  “Perhaps the note and the watch have nothing to do with this case at all. And not with Ola Forsnaess’s death in a car accident either,” Hampus objected.

  The boss cleared his throat several times. That usually meant that he intended to announce something important.

  “I have the investigation from Forsnaess’s fatal accident here. He was driving his brand-new Porsche from Dalsnäs on Sunday evening in the direction of Halden. From there he would continue to Oslo. It was already rather dark but the weather was clear. The temperature was about three or four degrees Celsius and the road was dry. Forsnaess was notorious for driving too fast, and presumably he behaved no differently that evening. He drove off the road right before the border, where there’s a steep descent with a sharp curve. He crashed into a tree, the Porsche was totaled, and he died immediately. The car was equipped with an automatic emergency phone, which made it easy to find the wreck.”