Missing in Malmö: The third Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries)

by MacLeod, Torquil

  Someone was coming out of the apartment block as Anita reached the main door, so she didn’t have to buzz anyone to get in. Inside was a board with the list of residents. Next to Number 15, Greta Jansson’s name was written neatly in biro. Not a professional print job – this was a temporary home. Anita took the lift up to the first floor. She came out onto a featureless corridor and walked the few paces to Number 15. She rang the doorbell first, just in case Greta had returned. When there was no reply, she took out Björn’s key and opened the door. Inside, all was quiet. The traffic in the street outside was muffled by the triple glazing. Straight ahead of her was an open door to the one bedroom. To the left was the living room, to the right the bathroom and round the corner, a very small kitchen.

  Anita started in the living room. The furniture – dining table and chairs, cupboard, sofa and easy chair – was heavy and elaborate. It wasn’t what you’d expect a young, twenty-three-year-old woman to surround herself with. But this was a sub-let – it wouldn’t be hers. There were a few books on the middle shelf of a dark oak bookcase. Anita glanced at them. English authors – Dickens, George Eliot, the Brontës, and Björn’s favourite, Thomas Hardy; some poetry books, both English and Swedish. And a couple of modern novels – judging by the titles, they were for light relief. There were also half a dozen English text books, which presumably were to do with her job. Except for a small pile of CDs – none of the artists’ names meant anything to Anita, though Lasse might be familiar with them – there was very little of Greta in this room. Anita had to stop and remind herself that this wasn’t an investigation. She was already mentally treating it like a crime scene, trying to get into the mind of the occupant. She even found that she had absent-mindedly slipped on the latex gloves which she always carried with her for such occasions. In reality, she was merely doing someone a favour, and the sooner it was sorted out, the sooner she could banish Björn from her life again.

  The bedroom didn’t yield much. There was a large suitcase in the bottom of the wardrobe, still with some clothes in it. Seems the girl wasn’t anticipating a long lease. But everything was neat and tidy, and the bed was made. She pulled back the clean duvet and noted the fresh sheets underneath. It hadn’t been slept on. The pillowcases had been changed, too. Among the things in the drawer of the bedside table was Greta’s iPod so, wherever she had gone, that hadn’t been important enough to take with her. Lasse never left home without his these days. But there was no sign of a handbag or mobile phone, and there was no computer either. Presumably she would have one. In the bathroom, there was a t-shirt and a pair of knickers hanging on a clothes line above the small bath. Again, there was nothing unusual in that. She noted that there was no toothbrush or toothpaste, which pointed to Greta going away.

  The only place where Anita was surprised was the kitchen, which was crammed into the space next to the bathroom. There was just enough room for a table, big enough to seat two people at a push, and it had a window that opened onto Östra Förstadsgatan. There wasn’t much in the way of foodstuff in the overhead cupboards, yet the fridge was well-stocked. Yogurts, milk, cream, three types of cheese, spreadable butter, a couple of pizzas, a packet of mince, a pack of salami, four eggs, a jar of mayonnaise, a couple of jams, some vegetables, the inevitable tube of caviar and a bottle of white wine. She sniffed at the milk – it was off. She looked at the sell-by dates on the products. The cream was old and the yogurts had run out yesterday. If Greta had gone, then it must have been on an impulse. She wouldn’t have bought all this if she’d intended to go away. Anita poured the sour milk down the sink and put the carton into the bin, but not before seeing if there was a shop receipt among the rubbish. There wasn’t. She could tell from the packaging that the items had been bought in the supermarket on the ground floor of the large Entré shopping centre, which had sprung up behind the square a couple of years before. She had used it herself, as it was handy for the polishus.

  As she came back into the living room, she heard a baby crying through the wall. That meant that the neighbour was in. It was worth having a quick word. It took some time before the door was opened and a harassed young mother, clutching a weeping baby in her arm, peered out at her. Her dark hair was randomly scraped back and she still wore the t-shirt and pants she had probably slept in.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, but I just want to ask you about your neighbour, Greta Jansson.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, with one eye on the baby.

  Anita produced her warrant card. ‘Anita Sundström.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’ She made no attempt to ask Anita in.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Wilma.’ She didn’t volunteer a surname.

  Anita smiled at the baby, whose crying was turning into grizzling. ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Nathalie.’ Wilma stroked the baby’s head.

  Despite the obvious stress, Anita could see she was a proud mother.‘Can you remember when you last saw Greta?’

  Nathalie went quiet. Wilma gently rocked the baby in her arms as she thought about an answer. ‘A couple of weeks ago. Yes, she was coming back from the school and I was taking Nathalie out for a walk.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘I did hear voices one night. Just over a week ago. It was late. I was up feeding Nathalie.’

  ‘Did you often hear voices in there?’

  ‘No. Funnily enough, that was the first time I can remember. Sounded like an argument.’

  ‘An argument?’

  ‘Yeah. Raised voices.’

  ‘OK, that’s all.’

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Nothing particularly important.’ Anita took her small writing pad out of her bag and scribbled down her name and number with a pencil. She handed it to Wilma. ‘If you see her, can you give her this?’

  Wilma took the piece of paper.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you... and Nathalie.’

  Anita turned away and was heading for the lift when Wilma called down the corridor. ‘Greta’s dad was here.’

  Anita swivelled round. ‘Her dad?’

  ‘Yes. I gave him our key to the apartment.’

  ‘Your key?’ Anita said in surprise. She knew that Swedes didn’t tend to trust their neighbours with spare keys; family yes, neighbours no.

  Wilma read Anita’s mind. ‘It’s only because we were renting Greta’s apartment before. We moved in here because it’s got two bedrooms, and with a kid on the way... Anyway, we’ve sub-let it to her since August and we’ve always held on to a key.’

  ‘So when did her father call?’

  ‘It would be the Saturday... the one before last. He called to ask if I knew where Greta was. I said I didn’t know, but gave him our key so he could let himself in and wait for her.’

  That seemed to clear up the mystery, thought Anita. She’s gone off home with her father.

  ‘He forgot to give the key back, but I’m sure Greta will return it when she comes back.’

  When Anita got back to her office an hour later, Hakim was on the phone. She had picked up the CCTV footage that covered the station concourse. There were three trains an hour from Kastrup. A visitor to Malmö would alight there first, before heading off into the town. As they knew Todd’s plane had landed at 13.45, Hakim had worked out that the first train he would physically be able to catch, given that he got out of the airport quickly enough, was the 14.26, getting into Malmö Central twenty minutes later. That’s if he really was heading for Malmö in the first place. They decided to look at the footage up until midnight. She would let Hakim do the trawling as he had better eyesight.

  Hakim put the phone down with a resigned air. ‘Nothing there.’ He tapped a piece of paper on his desk. ‘Nothing from the hospital. Drew a blank with health centres, too. I’m ploughing through the hotels. Done all the budget ones, and bed and breakfasts. No luck so far, and now I’m up to the pricier places.’

  ‘Take a break. We’ll have a coffee, then I’ll take over the hotels and you can look through the CCT
V.’

  ‘Oh, yes... another thing. Graeme Todd didn’t leave on any British-bound flights on the 4th, 5th or 6th from Kastrup. Unless he used another name.’

  An hour later, Anita wasn’t having any luck either. ‘How are you getting on?’

  Hakim was staring at his computer screen. ‘I’ve been through it twice, and there’s no sign of him. What about you?’

  Anita glanced down at the list. ‘No. I’m now down to the Radisson, Grand, Hilton, Mayfair, Rica, Duxiana and Renaissance. And they all cost well over a thousand kronor a night. The exchange rate isn’t very good for the British at the moment, so that’s over a hundred pounds. That doesn’t sound like Graeme Todd’s price range if he was supposedly booking into the Hotel Comfort.’

  Hakim tore his gaze away from the screen. ‘Of course, he could have got off the train at Triangeln, and not gone through to Central Station.’

  ‘That’s a point. Because he said he was going to the Comfort, we’ve assumed that he would get off in the centre of town. Well, it’s a sunny day, so get yourself down to Triangeln and look at their CCTV. But you can have your lunch first.’

  Anita sat on the grass in the park and enjoyed the rays of the sun. It even felt unseasonably warm. It might be the last time this year. Not bad for October 8th. She took out her crispbread and salami. This was her first step towards losing some weight. And alcohol only at weekends from now on. As she took a bite, she wondered whether she should ring Björn and tell him what she had found out. Yet she found herself prevaricating. Was it because she didn’t want to speak to him? Or was it that she wasn’t entirely satisfied with her scrutiny of Greta’s apartment? The contents of the fridge still niggled. Then again, if Greta’s father had appeared, it might be that there had been a family emergency that had suddenly called her away. An ill mother?

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  Anita looked up, and standing in front of her was Henrik Nordlund. She broke into a smile. She always enjoyed seeing him. The sunken eyes always gave Nordlund a glum expression, exacerbated by the angular, pale face, and balding pate with a few wisps of grey hair clinging, limpet-like, to the back and sides. Though not a jolly man, he was amiable. He was an excellent detective who still believed in the job he was doing. Unlike most of his colleagues, he had never developed a cynical view of their work, or the world that they were asked to police. He was one of the few people at headquarters about whom no one had a bad word to say. Other than Westermark, of course, who didn’t rate anybody except himself. Nordlund was too cautious and too methodical for the younger detective. Now Nordlund was on the cusp of retirement. Anita would miss him terribly, as he had not only helped guide her career, but had more than once acted as a rock in a stormy sea. She also worried about what he would do with himself. His wife, who had also worked on the force, had died of cancer a few years before, and they had had no children. Without his work, she feared he would be left facing years of loneliness.

  ‘Oh, missing people.’

  ‘May I join you?’ Anita nodded, and he lowered himself onto the ground with some agility. He may have been twenty-odd years older, but he was still lithe. She offered him some of her lunch, which he politely declined. He pulled out a chocolate bar.

  ‘Is this your English person?’ Nordlund asked before taking the first bite. Anita looked on enviously. She had cut out chocolate, too. ‘Yes. We don’t even know if he reached Malmö. Still searching. Mind you, it’s often difficult to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.’

  ‘That’s what you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. He looks like the sort of vain male who’s tired of his present wife and wants to start a new life.’

  ‘You gained that insight from a photograph?’ Nordlund said with some amusement.

  ‘OK,’ she smiled, ‘but he was very secretive about why he was coming here, other than that he was going to make a lot of money. His wife doesn’t know how. Keeping secrets in a marriage shows there’s something wrong.’ She knew from bitter experience.

  ‘Maybe he’s being secretive to protect her from something.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She didn’t really agree, but didn’t want to say so. They munched in silence and enjoyed the sun.

  ‘Graeme Todd’s not the only one.’ She wasn’t going to tell anybody about Greta Jansson, but it just came out.

  Nordlund cocked his head quizzically.

  ‘My ex-husband seems to have misplaced his latest girlfriend.’ Anita went on to explain briefly what had happened; about Greta leaving her job suddenly and her own visit to the apartment in Östra Förstadsgatan. ‘I don’t know why I’m even doing it for him. The sod doesn’t deserve it. All unofficial, of course. Moberg would burst a blood vessel if he knew I was using police time to find Björn’s latest bit of stuff.’

  ‘Well, it sounds as though it must be a family matter with her father turning up.’

  ‘Yes. That’s obviously it.’

  Anita put away the remains of her lunch in her bag and got up. Nordlund followed suit. He saw her hesitate.

  ‘Are you heading back?’ he asked, his thumb pointing in the direction of the polishus.

  She still hovered. Nordlund smiled.

  ‘The school’s just over there. But I wouldn’t be too long.’

  CHAPTER 10

  The school was a large, red-brick building with uniform rows of windows over four floors, which managed to make it slightly less severe. In a street with many elegant blocks, the school didn’t make much of an effort to fit in with its neighbours. Anita went up some steps and entered the foyer through one of the two double glass doors. She sought out someone who could direct her to the English department, and was taken along a seemingly endless corridor by one of the school secretaries. Anita hadn’t made a fuss when she arrived as this was not an official enquiry.

  She was ushered into a classroom. There were rows of empty desks.

  ‘That’s Alex Fraser over there.’ The secretary pulled an apologetic face. ‘He’s British,’ as though that was the only explanation for the tall, young man with the goatee beard and the long, curly black hair swept back in a pony-tail, who was bending over an iPad in the corner of the classroom. It gave Anita a jolt. She recognized him from her occasional visits to The Pickwick pub in the centre of town. It was the haunt of ex-pats. She knew that Fraser was one of the two Britons whom Ewan had briefly befriended on his arrival in Malmö. He was the sort of person who stood out in a crowd.

  Fraser looked up enquiringly as Anita approached. His smile was friendly, but he obviously didn’t know who she was.

  ‘Sorry, are you a parent?’ he said in Swedish. For a moment, a worried frown creased his face as though there might have been a meeting that he’d forgotten about.

  ‘No, I’m here about Greta Jansson,’ she replied in English.

  ‘Ah.’ He fiddled with his iPad distractedly for a moment. ‘Just a second,’ he said, reverting to English. She heard the unmistakable Scottish brogue in his voice. He completed his manoeuvre. ‘That’s it. Tough class this afternoon,’ he added as explanation.

  ‘I’m just here to ask a few questions about Greta.’

  ‘In what capacity?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Sorry. I’m police. Inspector Anita Sundström.’

  He stared at her. Then his expression creased into recognition.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you in The Pickwick?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘And weren’t you the policewoman who was involved in arresting Ewan Strachan?’

  Anita didn’t answer either question. ‘I’m here unofficially. On behalf of a friend of Greta’s.’

  ‘She’s OK, isn’t she?’

  ‘Hopefully. I only want to establish the circumstances around her leaving.’

  Fraser ran a hand over his head. ‘Bit abrupt.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘She gave no indication that she was about to leave on the Friday afternoon. I thought she was enjoying the job. Well, maybe “enjoying” is too str
ong a word. Surviving, more like,’ he grimaced. ‘She only started this term. I know it’s difficult here, but she seemed to be coping.’

  ‘The Friday afternoon?’ Anita prompted.

  ‘Yes. She was quite upbeat. Going to meet a friend from Stockholm, who was down on business. University connection.’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘Pardon? Oh, I see. Female. Can’t remember the name. Might have been Ulla.’

  ‘So how did you know she wasn’t coming back?’

  ‘A call came in on the Monday morning. Said she wasn’t returning. Some family thing, apparently. I suppose it wasn’t a total surprise. This place takes its toll. There’s always a big turnover of staff. This is my second year, and I’m the most senior English teacher in this section.

  Anita gazed around the classroom. The smell. Memories of her own school days in Simrishamn started seeping back. Not entirely happy recollections.

  ‘Do you know who rang in?’

  ‘No. But the secretary who took the call said it was a man. Of course, it left us in the shit and we had get cover quickly. Extra bloody lessons for me, for starters. I thought Greta might have given us some warning.’

  ‘Would she have a computer?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fraser said, pointing to the one he had just been working on. ‘We all get issued with an iPad. Actually, Greta should have handed it back if she was leaving.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that anyone round here will probably notice. Chaos most of the time.’

  ‘Thank you, Alex.’

  ‘Any help?’

  Anita nodded. ‘Seems to fit. Her father turned up that weekend.’