Who Watcheth

by Helene Tursten

  “Good idea. I’m off to Landvetter to pick up Tobias Lindberg; his plane lands in an hour or so,” Irene said.

  Before she left she made a final attempt to find Elisabeth’s purse, but it definitely wasn’t in the apartment. It ought to contain her diary, wallet, keys and other useful information. They had found her cell phone charging on top of the chest of drawers in the bedroom.

  Bearing in mind how empty the refrigerator was, Irene wondered if Elisabeth had gone shopping but failed to return to the apartment. She hadn’t been due to start work until ten. Perhaps she had gone to the store earlier in the evening and come home in the dark. Since it had been pouring rain, it was unlikely that there had been anyone around to see if something had happened in the parking lot.

  “We need to check out which of the cars in the parking lot is hers. Her purse and wallet are missing. I think she’d been shopping when he took her,” Irene said.

  “I’ll find out what car she drove,” Hannu replied.

  Irene recognized Tobias Lindberg from the photographs in his mother’s apartment. He looked pale and strained as he emerged into the arrivals hall. Irene felt sorry for him. In the car she explained that Ellen Ström had identified his mother’s body, and he broke down in tears. When Irene asked where he wanted to go, he replied firmly that he would like to go straight to the mortuary to see her. Irene called and asked if it was okay to come in so late, and the security guard said they could come whenever they liked. For the second time that day, Irene headed for the forensic pathology unit.

  It was late by the time she set off for home. Darkness had fallen, but at least it had stopped raining. Tobias was staying with a friend on Linnégatan until the police had finished going through his mother’s apartment. Irene had given him a ride to his friend’s place, and they had agreed that she would meet him there the following day, so they could talk in peace. Right now he was too upset, and she was too tired.

  On the way she stopped by the apartment in Guldheden. She had meant to do it over the weekend but hadn’t had time because she had been called in to replace Jonny. After her mother’s death almost a year ago, they had sublet the place, but now their excellent tenant had moved to Stockholm. Irene and Krister didn’t know whether to look for another tenant or not; the housing association had made it clear that they weren’t very keen on sublets. They had seriously discussed the possibility of moving into the apartment themselves—selling their house and relocating into the city. Why not? The twins no longer lived at home, and Sammie was dead. They had also talked about getting another dog but had agreed that it wasn’t fair on the animal; it would have to spend far too much time alone. But sometimes Irene thought the house seemed empty and soulless without the sound of claws clicking on the floor. It was difficult for two people who worked too hard to fill a house with life and warmth. It would be much easier with two reception rooms and a bedroom. Another advantage was that they would need only one car since they could both cycle to work, or share a ride. And the rent was low; their living costs would drop by a couple thousand a month. The only thing that made them hesitate was that they would lose their little garden. Neither of them was what you would call a keen gardener, but they did enjoy pottering around, planting baskets and containers and flower beds. They did have the cottage outside Sunne, of course, but that had two disadvantages: it was in the middle of the forest with no possibility of a garden, and it was in Värmland. Driving a few hundred kilometers every time you wanted to feel grass beneath your feet was impractical, to say the least.

  Irene put her key in the lock and opened the door of the apartment where she had spent the first eighteen years of her life. She switched on the light in the little hallway and went into the bathroom. She followed her normal routine, flushing the toilet and rinsing the sink. Then she went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. The water came gushing out, clearing the system. Some of Gerd’s furniture was still there, but their young tenant had taken everything that belonged to her. The place felt empty and desolate.

  Was Gerd still here? Irene was surprised by the thought that suddenly popped into her head. Maybe it wasn’t so strange. Her mother had lived here for forty-five years, after all. If Gerd was going to be anywhere, it was here.

  Right now it felt perfectly natural for Irene to try to contact her. She switched off the overhead light and sat down in the middle of the floor in the empty bedroom. Through jiujitsu she had learned how to put herself into a meditative state; she closed her eyes and sought Mokuso. Slowly she sank down into meditation.

  A cool touch on her forehead. Like a feather-light caress. A serenity that filled her from deep inside and spread throughout her body. Warmth. Security. She was a little girl again. Mommy was there, like a whisper in the room. A familiar scent of lavender soap and talcum powder. That gentle breath of wind on her forehead again.

  Slowly the sense of Gerd’s presence faded away. The scent of lavender disappeared. With an enormous effort of will Irene tried to hold onto the awareness of her mother by screwing her eyes more tightly shut, but eventually she was conscious of nothing but the faint smell of dust hovering in the air. When she opened her eyes she saw the familiar bedroom, illuminated by the glow of the street lamps. Until now Irene hadn’t acknowledged just how much she missed her mother. The brief encounter brought consolation, but it also felt somehow final. Gerd had not stayed, and somewhere deep down Irene knew that she wouldn’t be coming back. At least she had managed to leave a sense of solace with her only child, in the midst of the grief.

  Irene’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her cell phone. Last year Jenny had changed her old ringtone, “La Marseillaise,” to Duffy’s hit song “Mercy.” Apart from the fact that she was still finding it difficult to realize that it was her phone, she quite liked it. It definitely felt more youthful than the French national anthem.

  It was Krister, telling her he would be several hours late. One of the chefs was still off sick, so he’d had to take over his shift. And he was already feeling the strain, Irene thought anxiously.

  •••

  By the time she pulled into the parking lot, the warm, positive feeling from the apartment had returned. Krister’s space was empty, as expected. It had started drizzling again, but according to the forecast they were in for a period of warmer weather. However, it would be at least twenty-four hours before things changed. He who waits for something good never waits in vain, Irene thought. That had been one of her mother’s favorite expressions. She had been a positive, optimistic person. Perhaps I should try to develop that aspect of my own character, Irene thought with a burst of self-criticism.

  She automatically stuck her hand in the mailbox to see if there was any mail. She screamed as her fingertips touched something soft and sticky. She quickly withdrew her hand and held it up to the light. Blood. It looked as if she had blood on her fingers. She bent down and wiped it off on the grass, but her hand still felt sticky, and she rushed into the house to wash it. The water in the sink turned red; it was definitely blood. She scrubbed frantically with a nailbrush and rinsed her fingers over and over again. Then she went into the laundry room and dug out the big flashlight. She switched it on and went back out into the darkness. Cautiously she lifted the lid of the mailbox and shone the beam inside.

  Behind the half-closed eyelids, the green irises glinted in the light. Blood covered the crushed skull like a dark, congealed beret. That was what Irene had dipped her fingers in.

  There was a dead cat in the mailbox.

  “So you caught the copycat!” Jonny chortled.

  No one else around the table even smiled, for which Irene was grateful. She wasn’t in the mood for bad jokes.

  The dead cat was lying in the middle of the table, encased in several plastic bags.

  Irene had kept it in the shed overnight. Superintendent Efva Thylqvist contemplated the cadaver with distaste and said, “Why the hell have you brought
a dead cat in here? We don’t have the capacity to conduct an investigation.”

  Irene remained calm as she went through the incidents that had affected her family over the past few days.

  “So a garden seat was moved, some flowers were destroyed, someone was looking in through your kitchen window—and now this dead cat in your mailbox. Where are you going with this? Do you feel like you’re under threat? Or do you think it’s got something to do with the case?” Thylqvist said.

  Before Irene had time to respond, the superintendent pursed her lips and continued, “It sounds to me like the kind of thing boys get up to. Kids in the neighborhood messing around.”

  She turned to Jonny.

  “Where are we with the investigation at the moment?”

  Once again Jonny had to admit that he wasn’t fully up to speed. Both Irene and Hannu had worked late the previous evening, so they hadn’t had time to catch up. Instead Hannu began to report back on what they had found out so far; he also told them that he had managed to locate Elisabeth Lindberg’s car after getting the make and registration number from the licensing authority.

  It had been found in the parking lot with two bags from the ICA Maxi store in the trunk. It was a little Golf, so the bags were visible through the rear window. Forensics had opened the lock and examined the bags, which contained food and household items. Judging by the date on the items from the deli counter, it was clear Elisabeth had bought them the day she was killed.

  “The refrigerator was almost empty. Her purse was missing, so we thought she’d gone to do some shopping before she went to work. It was Irene’s idea,” Hannu said, nodding in the direction of his colleague.

  Thylqvist didn’t appear to have heard the final comment. “Contact the store and see if we can find Lindberg in any of the images from their CCTV cameras to confirm the time she was there.”

  The superintendent looked pensive. No one broke the silence.

  “It’s beginning to look as if we’re dealing with a serial killer here. We need to catch him before he kills again. Go back to that guy in Borås. Check our records to see who’s on the loose. Talk to the woman who found the first victim and the paperboy who found the second. They might have remembered something that didn’t register at the time. And talk to Elisabeth Lindberg’s son again.”

  Her cell phone beeped. She pressed a few buttons and got to her feet. “I have to go. Report back to Tommy if anything interesting comes up.”

  With those words she left the room. In the silence that followed, Sara Persson cleared her throat and said, “I have a theory.”

  “What about?” Jonny said with an encouraging smile.

  “The envelope: two Ey. twenty point five. It’s kind of scrawled; I think it should say this.” She got up and went over to the whiteboard, picked up a pen and wrote neatly:

  2 Ex. 20:5.

  “Of course. Why didn’t we realize? That makes all the difference in the world,” Jonny said, rolling his eyes.

  “Actually, it does. Exodus, chapter twenty, verse five. According to the new translation of the Bible it says: ‘For I am the Lord your God. I am a jealous God, and I shall visit the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations when I am hated, but I will show goodness to thousands when you love Me and keep My commandments,’ ” Sara replied calmly.

  She was reading from a piece of paper tucked inside her notebook. Irene could see that it was an extract from a longer text, probably a computer printout.

  “You’re kidding me,” Jonny said without conviction.

  Irene was pretty sure that Sara had come up with the correct interpretation of the short message.

  “How did you work it out?” Tommy asked.

  A faint blush crept up Sara’s cheeks. “I called in at the lab on my way here, just to see if Matti had found out anything else. He showed me the envelope. It took a while, but then it occurred to me that it could be a Bible quotation. I did go to confirmation classes, after all . . . So I Googled it, and that’s what I found.”

  Called in at the lab . . . Perhaps Sara wasn’t entirely immune to their new technician. However, Irene had to admit it was clever of her to make the connection. It hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  “We didn’t find an envelope at Ingela Svensson’s apartment, just the photograph,” Irene pointed out.

  “She probably threw it away, along with the flower—we didn’t find that either,” Tommy said. “We know that the garbage cans on Såggatan were emptied at lunchtime on Tuesday, so no doubt they’re at the dump somewhere. She didn’t receive the photograph until a few days later. As far as Elisabeth Lindberg is concerned, everything was left at the same time, possibly because the killer didn’t want to run the risk of being seen outside his victim’s front door on two occasions. But Ingela’s envelope could have had the same thing written on it—or something similar.”

  “So what does this mean for the case? Should we be looking for an avenger from way back when?” Jonny wondered sarcastically.

  “The sins of the fathers are visited on the children . . . Perhaps we should check out Ingela Svensson’s and Elisabeth Lindberg’s parents . . . see if they had anything in common,” Tommy went on, ignoring Jonny’s tone.

  “This is about Ingela and Elisabeth. Not their parents,” Hannu stated firmly.

  Irene was inclined to agree with him. The attack to which both women had been subjected felt far too personal to be nothing more than revenge for something their fathers might have done. But of course they had to look into it. The consequences would be devastating if this turned out to be the clue that led them to the killer, and they had ignored it.

  It took a few hours of intensive digging in every possible archive and database before they were able to exclude the possibility that there was something in the background of both victims’ parents that could lie behind the homicides. Ingela’s family came from Göteborg and northern Halland, while Elisabeth’s relatives on both sides were from the area around Jönköping and Huskvarna. Both families had stayed put—apart from the odd emigrant to America at the beginning of the last century—and there wasn’t the slightest indication that any of them had had any contact whatsoever, or had been in the same place even. Nor was there any evidence that the two women had ever met.

  “There isn’t a single point of contact.” Irene sighed.

  “The killer,” Hannu said.

  As usual, sensible Hannu had placed the focus exactly where it needed to be. Irene straightened up in her chair and looked at her colleagues.

  “Okay. What do we know about him?”

  “He photographs his victims through the windows of their apartment,” Hannu began.

  “Does he follow them for a period of time before he attacks?” Irene asked.

  “Possibly. If he’s a stalker, then definitely.” Sara spoke up before anyone else had time to answer.

  “What the hell do you know about stalkers?” Jonny sneered, raising an eyebrow.

  Sara blushed, but refused to be cowed. “I’ve done some reading on the subject. And I was involved in a case that—”

  “If we find anything to suggest we’re dealing with a stalker, we’ll get back to you, kiddo,” said Superintendent Thylqvist as she walked in. She turned to Jonny. “Anything new?”

  He quickly went over what they had found out during the course of the day, which to be honest wasn’t a great deal.

  Efva Thylqvist interrupted him. “The first body was found on Saturday. You haven’t gotten very far with that either. Let’s see some action, otherwise we’ll have another package wrapped in plastic to deal with.”

  She could have put it more elegantly, but the message was clear: the chief wasn’t happy. Presumably somebody higher up was on her case. Nobody pointed out that she was the one who had decided that only two inspectors from the Violent Crimes Unit should investigate the m
urder of Ingela Svensson. There were certain things you didn’t mention to your boss if you wanted to maintain a positive atmosphere. At least the atmosphere was positive as long as Thylqvist wasn’t around, Irene thought.

  The intercom in the middle of the pale birch-wood table crackled into life: “Call for DI Huss. Is she there?” a female voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Lars Holmberg wants to speak to you; shall I put him through to your office?”

  “Please,” Irene said, getting to her feet.

  DI Lars Holmberg was one of the officers involved in the door-to-door inquiries in Kobbegården. Had they found out something interesting? Irene felt her pulse rate increase with anticipation.

  “Hi, Irene. We’ve found a witness who says she saw a man and a woman hugging in the parking lot outside Elisabeth Lindberg’s apartment at around eight-thirty on the evening in question,” Holmberg said, getting straight down to business.

  “Hugging?”

  “That’s what she thought they were doing at the time, but she’s been in London, so she didn’t know her neighbor had been murdered. She was out of town yesterday. She only heard about Lindberg today, and then she made the connection with what she saw in the parking lot on Monday, and contacted us. Would you like to speak to her?”

  “Absolutely. I’m seeing Elisabeth’s son in less than an hour; do you know if this witness will be at home later?”

  “Yes—she’s a freelance journalist. She said she’d be working from home for a few days.”

  “Tell her I’ll be there shortly after three,” Irene said.

  At last, a witness. But “hugging in the parking lot” sounded weird. Was there a man in the picture after all, a relationship they had missed? The only way to find the answer was to keep working on the case, with an open mind.

  8.

  Tobias Lindberg looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink all night. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face sunken, with a greyish pallor. His dark hair was greasy and uncombed. His gangly body was sprawled on a sofa that his friend had probably found in some secondhand store. The only decent piece of furniture was a long bookcase packed with rows of CDs and DVDs. Illegal downloads, Irene assumed. A large skull and crossbones flag hung on the wall above an array of computers, screens and other IT equipment.