by Lars Kepler
There’s a nameplate on the apartment door next to the lift. Nilsson. Joona knocks and waits. Finally, he hears footsteps from inside. A plump woman of around sixty opens the door a crack and looks out.
“Well?”
“Hello, I’m Joona Linna, a detective inspector, and I—”
“But I told you before, I didn’t see his face.”
“Have the police already visited you? I didn’t know that.”
She opens the door wider and two cats hop down from the telephone table to disappear deeper in the apartment.
“He was wearing a Dracula mask,” the woman says impatiently, as if she’s said this a number of times before.
“Who?”
“Who?” the woman repeats, muttering, and goes inside her apartment.
After some time she returns with a yellowed newspaper clipping.
Joona takes a look at the twenty-year-old article describing a flasher who wore a Dracula mask and who groped women living in the Södermalm district.
“He wasn’t wearing a stitch down there—”
“But this is not—”
“Not that I was looking, of course,” she continued. “But I’ve already talked to you about this over and over again.”
Joona looks at her and smiles. “I actually intended to ask you about something completely different.”
The woman’s eyes widen. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“I was wondering if you know your neighbour, Penelope Fernandez, who—”
“She’s like a grandchild to me,” the woman says. “So sweet, so kind, so pleasant—”
She stops herself short. “Is she dead?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because the police only come over to ask unpleasant questions,” she replies.
“Did you notice any unusual visitors during the last couple of days?”
“Just because I’m old, doesn’t mean I pry into other people’s business.”
“No, I mean, perhaps you might have noticed something.”
“I have not.”
“Has anything else unusual happened lately?”
“Absolutely not. That girl is hardworking and dutiful.”
Joona thanks her for her time saying he might come back with a question some other time. Then he moves aside so the woman can shut the door.
There are not many more apartments on the fourth floor. He begins to climb the stairs. Halfway up, he finds a child sitting on the steps. It looks like a boy of about eight years old. His hair is short and he’s wearing jeans and a worn Helly Hansen sweater. He has a bag with a bottle of Ramlösa mineral water. Its label is almost worn completely away. He also has half of a French roll.
Joona pauses in front of the child, who is looking at him in a shy way.
“Hello there,” Joona says. “What’s your name?”
“Mia.”
“My name’s Joona.”
Mia is a girl. Joona notices she has dirt on her chin and around her tiny neck.
“Do you carry a gun?” she asks.
“Why do you ask?”
“You told Ella that you were from the police.”
“That’s right. I’m a detective inspector.”
“So you have a gun?”
“Yes, I do,” Joona says. “Would you like to shoot it off?”
The girl looks at him astonished.
“You’re joking.”
“Yes, I’m joking,” Joona says with a smile.
The child laughs.
“Why are you sitting on the staircase?” he asks.
“I like it. You can hear stuff.”
Joona sits down next to the child.
“What kind of stuff have you heard?” he asks calmly.
“Right now I just heard you were from the police and I heard Ella lying to you.”
“What was she lying about?”
“That she likes Penelope,” Mia says.
“She doesn’t like Penelope?”
“She sticks cat poop through Penelope’s letter box.”
“Why would she do something like that?”
“I dunno.” The girl shrugs her shoulders and fiddles with the bag on her lap.
“Do you like Penelope?”
“She says hi to me.”
“But you don’t know her?”
“Not really.”
Joona looks around. “Do you live in the stairwell?”
The girl gives a slight smile back. “No, I live on the second floor with my mum.”
“But you like to hang out on the stairs.”
Mia shrugs. “Most of the time.”
“Do you sleep here sometimes?”
The girl picks at the label on the bottle. “Sometimes.”
“Last Friday,” Joona says slowly. “Early in the morning, Penelope left home. She took a taxi.”
“No luck,” the girl says quickly. “She missed Björn by, like, a second. He got here right after she left. I told him that she just left.”
“What did he say?”
“No big deal, he said. He was just going to pick something up.”
“Pick something up?”
Mia nods.
“Sometimes he lets me borrow his phone so I can play games on it. But he was in a hurry. He just went inside and came right back out. Then he locked the door and ran down the stairs.”
“Did you see what he picked up?”
“No.”
“What happened after that?”
“Nothing. I went to school. Quarter to nine.”
“And after school, in the evening. Did anything happen then?”
Mia shrugged. “Mum was gone so I was inside and I ate some macaroni cheese and watched TV.”
“What about yesterday?”
“Mum was gone again so I was home.”
“So you didn’t see anyone coming or going?”
“No.”
Joona takes out one of his business cards and writes a telephone number.
“Look at this,” he tells Mia. “Here are two good telephone numbers. One is my own number.”
He points at the number on the card, which is also imprinted with the police insignia.
“Call me if you need help or if someone is doing something mean to you. And the other number is the Child Hotline. See, I’ve written it down: 0200-230-230. You can call them whenever you want and talk about anything you want.”
“Okay,” Mia whispers as she takes the card.
“Don’t throw that card away, now, the minute I turn my back,” Joona says. “Keep it, because even if you don’t want to call someone now, you might want to later on.”
“When he came out, Björn had his hand on his stomach,” Mia said. She demonstrated.
“Like he had a tummy ache?”
“Yeah. Just like he had a tummy ache.”
26
a palm
Joona knocks on the other doors, but all he finds out is that Penelope was a quiet and somewhat shy neighbour who took part in the annual cleaning days as well as the yearly meetings, but not much else. Once he’s done, he slowly climbs the stairs back to the fourth floor.
The door to Penelope’s apartment is open. A Säpo technician has just dismantled the lock from the outer door and bagged the bolt in plastic.
Joona goes in but stays in the background to watch the forensic investigators work. He’s always enjoyed hanging around to see how systematically they photograph everything, collect evidence, rigorously note every aspect of what they find. It’s ironic how the investigation itself will destroy the crime scene, contaminating layer by layer, even as it progresses. No piece of evidence or a key to reconstructing what has happened must be lost.
Joona lets his gaze wander over Penelope Fernandez’s tidy apartment. Why had Björn Almskog come here? He had arrived the minute Penelope left. Joona could almost picture him hiding outside the entrance to the building waiting for her to leave.
Perhaps it was a coincidence, but maybe he did not want to
run into her.
Björn had hurried in, met the child sitting on the stairs with no time to speak to her, explaining he just had to pick something up, and had only stayed a few minutes.
Perhaps Björn did pick up something, just as he told the little girl. Perhaps he’d forgotten the key to the boat or something else that fit in a pocket.
Perhaps he left something behind instead. Perhaps he only had to take a look at something or make sure of a piece of information or write down a telephone number.
Joona walks into the kitchen and looks around.
“Have you checked the fridge?” he asks.
A young man with a goatee looks up, surprised, at Joona.
“Are you hungry?” he asks in a strong Dalarna accent.
“It’s a good place to hide something,” Joona replies drily.
“We haven’t gotten to it yet,” the investigator says.
Joona returns to the living room. He notes that Saga is still off in a corner of the room talking on her phone. Tommy Kofoed is placing a strip of tape with picked-up fibres onto OH film. He looks up.
“Finding anything unexpected?” Joona asks.
“Besides a shoe print on the wall?”
“Nothing else?”
“The important stuff is at the lab in Linköping.”
“Can we get their results in a week?”
“If we give them enough hell, sure,” Tommy says, shrugging. “Right now I’m going to look at the cut from the knife blade and make a mould of the edge.”
“Don’t bother,” Joona says.
“So you were able to see the blade? Was it carbon steel?”
“No, the blade was a lighter colour. Perhaps sintered tungsten carbide. Some people prefer it. But, actually, nothing’s going to really help.”
“What won’t help?”
“This entire crime scene investigation,” Joona says. “We won’t find DNA or fingerprints. Nothing will lead to the suspect.”
“So what should we do?”
“I believe the killer came for something here. And I believe he was interrupted before he could find it.”
“So maybe it’s still here?”
“Entirely possible,” Joona replies.
“But you have no idea what it could be.”
“It fits inside a book.”
Joona’s granite eyes meet Kofoed’s brown ones. Göran Stone from Säpo is photographing the bathroom door, the edges of the door, the frame, and the hinges. Then he sits down on the floor to photograph the bathroom’s white ceiling. Joona reaches to open the living-room door, about to ask Göran to take a photo of the magazines in the living room, when the flash goes off. The brightness startles him. Things go black for a second. Four white points prick the darkness and then a light blue iridescent palm print emerges. Then they’re gone. Joona looks around, unable to determine where they’d been.
“Göran!” Joona calls loudly, his voice penetrating through the thick glass door. “Take another picture right there!”
Everyone freezes in the apartment. The man by the outer door shoots Joona a curious look. The tech guy with a Dalarna accent sticks his head into the hallway from the kitchen. Tommy Kofoed takes off his face mask and scratches his neck. Göran Stone is still sitting on the floor, now looking very interested.
“Like you did just now,” Joona says. “Take a photo of the ceiling.”
Göran shrugs and lifts his camera to take another photo of the bathroom ceiling. There’s a flash, and Joona’s pupils shrink in protest. Tears come to his eyes. He closes them and still sees a black triangle. He realises that it is a glass pane in the door transformed into a negative image.
The middle of the square shows four white spots and next to them floats a light blue palm print.
He knew that’s what he’d seen.
Joona blinks and walks close to the door. The remains of four pieces of tape form a square, and right next to it is the palm print.
Tommy Kofoed steps up next to him.
“A handprint,” he says.
“Can you lift it?” Joona asks.
“Göran,” Kofoed says. “We need a picture of this.”
Göran gets up and is humming as he stands by the door, camera ready. He peers at the handprint.
“Yes, somebody was here and wasn’t too clean either,” he says contentedly as he takes four pictures.
Then Göran moves aside and waits as Tommy Kofoed treats the palm print with cyanoacrylate to bind the salt and moisture. Then he uses Basic Yellow 40.
Göran waits a moment and then takes two more pictures.
“Now we got you!” Kofoed whispers to the print as he carefully lifts it with a stiff sheet of plastic.
“Can you check it out right away?” Joona asks.
Tommy Kofoed carries the print to the kitchen. Joona remains behind to inspect the pieces of tape left on the glass pane. Caught under one is the torn corner of a piece of paper. Whoever left the palm print had no time to be careful but just ripped the paper free.
Joona takes a closer look at the ripped corner. It’s not normal paper, he realises immediately. It’s shiny paper—the kind photographs are printed on.
A special photograph had been taped up here to be looked at over and over. Then someone was in such a hurry, they couldn’t take the time to be careful but just ran up to the door, leaned on the glass with one hand, and ripped the photo off with the other.
“Björn,” Joona says.
Björn came here to get this photograph. He wasn’t holding his stomach because he had a stomachache but because he was hiding a photograph underneath his jacket.
Joona turns his head to the side so he can study the palm print in the reflection. He can barely make out the thin lines of the palm.
The papillary lines of a human’s palm or fingers will never change or grow old and are totally individual. Compared to DNA, even the fingerprints of identical twins differ.
Quick steps come stamping up behind him.
“Stop whatever you’re doing right now, damn it!” Saga Bauer snarls. “This is my investigation! You’re not even fucking supposed to be here!”
“I only want to—”
“Shut the fuck up, Joona Linna!” she shouts. “I was on the phone with Petter Näslund! There’s nothing for you to do here and you don’t even have permission to be here!”
“I know. I’ll leave soon,” he says soothingly as he turns his gaze back to the glass pane.
“Damn it, Joona!” she says, but curiosity has taken over a bit and her voice is calmer. “You can’t just come in here and start messing with pieces of tape!”
“There was a photograph taped to the glass,” he answers, unperturbed. “Someone has pulled it off. Leaned over to steady himself with his hand while he pulled off this photograph.”
She still looks at him with irritation, and Joona notices a white scar that cuts straight through her left eyebrow.
“I am perfectly capable of running this investigation,” she reiterates with clenched teeth.
“Chances are the print came from Björn Almskog,” Joona replies as he starts towards the kitchen.
“Wrong direction, Joona.”
He ignores her and walks right in.
“This is my investigation!” she yells futilely at his back.
The technicians have set up a work station in the middle of the room. Two chairs, a table with a computer on it, a scanner, and a printer. Tommy Kofoed is standing behind Göran Stone, who is connecting his camera to the computer. They’ve entered the palm print and are doing the initial fingerprint comparison.
Saga comes in right behind Joona.
“What do you see?” Joona asks them, not paying attention to Saga.
“Don’t you speak to him!” Saga says quickly.
Tommy Kofoed looks up. “Don’t be ridiculous, Saga,” he says. “Sorry, this isn’t our guy. This is from the boyfriend, Almskog.”
“Lucky he’s already in the suspect register,” Göran Stone say
s.
“What do you have on him?” Joona asks.
“Rioting and harming an officer,” Göran replies.
“The worst kind of criminal,” Tommy jokes. “He probably took part in a demonstration.”
“You think that’s funny,” Göran growls. “Not everyone on the force finds left-wing shenanigans and sabotage amusing.”
“Speak for yourself,” Kofoed replies.
“The search-and-rescue effort speaks for itself,” Göran says with a grin.
“What’s that all about?” Joona asks. “I haven’t been able to follow the operation—what’s happened?”
27
the extremists
When Joona Linna slams open the office door, Carlos Eliasson, head of CID, jumps and dumps too much fish food into the aquarium.
“Why is there no ground search?” Joona demands harshly. “There are two lives at stake and we don’t have any boats out looking?”
“The maritime police make their own decisions, as you well know,” Carlos replies coolly. “They’ve covered the area by helicopter and have decided that the two are either dead or they don’t want to be found … neither of which demands an all-out rush to search further.”
“They have something the killer wants to get his hands on and I actually believe—”
“It’s useless to guess, Joona. We don’t know what happened. Säpo happens to believe these two young people have gone underground and by now could be on a train to Amsterdam—”
“Cut it out,” Joona says forcefully. “You can’t listen to Säpo when—”
“It’s their case.”
“Why? Why is it their case? Björn Almskog has no criminal record at all unless it’s become a felony to disturb the peace! These accusations mean absolutely nothing! Nothing at all!”
“I was talking to Verner Zandén and he’s already told me that Fernandez has some connections to left-wing extremist groups.”
“That may be so, but I’m absolutely certain there’s more going on here. This murder is about something else entirely.”
“Of course! Of course you’re absolutely certain!” Carlos yells back.
“I can’t put my finger on it yet, but the killer I met in Penelope’s apartment was a real pro and not some kind of—”
“Säpo believes that Penelope and Björn were planning some kind of sabotage.”
