After a lot of pleading from the journalists, Dunja finally told them that she was going to have an initial and incredibly brief meeting with Morten Steenstrup, who had just woken up. She showed her badge to the officer on guard and entered the unit. She didn’t exhale until the door had closed behind her.
“Dunja Hougaard?” asked the attending physician. He looked at her without batting an eye.
She nodded.
“When I say stop, it’s over. Do not keep going. Okay?”
Dunja already disliked him, and she continued along the corridor without answering.
“I hope you acknowledge the massive exception I am making for you. The responsibility for this patient’s life rests with me and no one else,” the doctor went on, taking a left into another corridor. “And I intend to fulfill that responsibility.” He stopped at a door guarded by two uniformed officers, and fixed his eyes on Dunja. “I hope you understand the gravity of this situation and that I can count on you to spare my patient any unnecessary digressions during your questioning.”
“I suggest you open the door before he gets Alzheimer’s.”
*
MORTEN STEENSTRUP WAS AT the far end of the room, looking like anything but a hero. Both of his legs were in casts, there was a brace around his neck, and most of his hair had been shaved off. He was hooked up to an IV and a lot of beeping machines that monitored his vital signs.
His mouth was half open and his eyes were aimed straight up at the ceiling. He didn’t react when Dunja entered the room. She couldn’t help thinking that Morten looked dead, and worried he had passed away the moment before she’d entered the room, which would mean she had missed her chance thanks to the irritating doctor, who had followed her into the room to monitor her visit. She pulled up a chair and sat next to Steenstrup’s bed.
“Hi, Morten. My name is Dunja Hougaard and I work as a detective with the crime squad in Copenhagen.” She waited for a reaction and ignored the doctor, who cleared his throat and indicated her time was counting down by tapping his wrist where a watch would be.
“I only have a few minutes and I don’t want to exhaust you. All I want to know right now is whether this is the man who attacked you.” She took out the wanted picture of Rune Schmeckel and held it in front of Morten’s face, but she didn’t get a reaction.
“Morten. Do you see the man in the picture?”
“Yes,” the police officer replied in a slightly raspy voice.
“Is this the same man who attacked you?”
“No.”
His response came as a total shock. Dunja hadn’t even considered the fact that he might not recognize the perpetrator.
“Are you totally sure? I want you to look at the photo again, very, very carefully.”
“I’m positive it’s not him.”
“I don’t want to put pressure on you right now, so I’ll come back in a few days. Then we can —”
“It’s not him.”
“Okay, Morten. Can you tell me what’s different? Is it the hair, or something else that’s easy to change? Take as much time as you need to think. There’s no point in forcing an answer.”
The doctor cleared his throat and poked at his imaginary watch.
“Everything,” Morten hissed.
“What do you mean, everything? I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
“Everything is different. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
28
THE FRONT PAGES WERE all adorned with the image of Rune Schmeckel.
WANTED!
Fabian Risk tossed back his espresso, ate a spoonful of princess cake, and started looking at various newspapers’ home pages on his phone. He had walked into town, where he’d found a corner seat in Fahlmans Konditori. He could sit inside in peace, while everyone else crowded under the awnings of the sidewalk café.
He’d gone straight up to Tuvesson’s office after the press conference. She wasn’t there, so he’d had to wait, sure that she would want to talk to him and likely remove him from the case. After sitting there for quite a while, he decided to leave the police station and take a walk. He noticed the fresh billboards, and increasingly felt that the whole situation was starting to look more and more like a witch-hunt. His own misconduct was almost as big a story as the killer’s identity. Several of the papers had published pictures of Fabian, and a few had gone so far as to accuse him of the murder. He couldn’t say he was surprised. The press conference had been a total mess, and all the focus had landed on him.
He thought about what he would do if he were removed from the case. Would he go back to his vacation as planned, or keep investigating on his own? He decided on the former, although he knew deep down that he would end up pursuing the latter.
Kvällsposten had devoted the most space to him. They had mapped out his past in an impressively short amount of time thanks to old pictures and interviews with people he used to know. The article reminded Fabian why he sometimes thought the police should recruit journalists: the newspaper had managed to track down an old, retired soccer coach who claimed to have taught Fabian. The man had told Kvällsposten that Fabian hadn’t been a team player, and always tried to take the ball all the way up the field to the goal on his own.
Fabian had no memory of playing soccer for any great length of time. He had never been all that interested in ball games, but he couldn’t deny that he wasn’t a team player. He had always believed that the goal was more important than the way you got there.
IN LOVE WITH THE VICTIM’S WIFE
Aftonbladet’s headline hit him like a fierce lash of the whip. The article claimed that Lina Pålsson had been his high school sweetheart, and questioned whether his love was still alive and could be blamed for the fact that he had lost his good judgement. How could the article possibly know any of that? He’d never told anyone how he’d felt about Lina. Until a few days ago he hadn’t given it a single thought in years.
The newspaper must have been in contact with Lina; it was the only explanation. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever told her about his feelings for her. She had chosen Jörgen, and Fabian had chosen to bury his emotions so deep that no one would ever be able to find them. Unfortunately his feelings were now on public view, beyond his control.
It was a sensational story, and Fabian wasn’t surprised that Aftonbladet had chosen to make such a big deal of it. Could his relationship with Lina have affected his work on the investigation? Was it even possible for him not to be swayed by the fact that the victim had been married to his first love? He took out his phone and dialled Lina’s number, but hung up as soon as he heard the phone ringing. He had no idea what he was going to say.
When he was finished with the newspapers he resumed his walk past the Helsingborg City Theatre and north along the boardwalk. It was windy. Waves reached above the wall and sprayed his face with cool, salty water. He realized how much he’d missed this city.
Fabian climbed up and walked along the wall back home, becoming wetter in the process. It wasn’t until he stepped into the hall and pulled off his damp clothes that he understood how tired he really was. The day, which had started with the news of Glenn’s death, continued with a chaotic press conference, and ended with the papers hanging him out to dry, felt like it had lasted an entire week and it was still only seven in the evening. The house was silent and there were three empty pizza boxes on the counter. They had eaten without him, not that he could blame them. His schedule was unpredictable. He didn’t even know if he was hungry. The princess cake he had just eaten was sitting in his stomach like a ton of bricks, keeping all of his feelings from coming out.
Fabian went upstairs and looked in Matilda’s room. He was surprised at how far she had come in organizing it. Grease, High School Musical, and Dirty Dancing posters were stuck up on the walls and the bookcase was full of books and all the little plastic objects she collected. Her desk was organized with pencil boxes and erasers, just waiting for school to start in August. Her bed was made,
and on the ceiling above it she had made a Pisces, her Zodiac sign, out of glow-in-the-dark stars.
All that was missing was Matilda herself. He looked in his bedroom, but it was empty as well. After changing into dry clothes he knocked on Theodor’s door, but didn’t get a response. He opened the door and saw Theo lying facedown on his bed, hardly moving, a harsh sound emanating from somewhere in the room.
“Theo? Hello? Theo, can you hear me?” he said without raising his voice very much. Theodor showed no signs of life. “Hello?! Theodor?” He walked over to the bed and placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. Theodor turned over, obviously startled, and pulled out one of his earphones. Metallica blared into the room.
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“No.”
Theo shrugged and put the earphone back in. Fabian yanked it out again and did the same with the other one
More angry lyrics poured out of the earphones.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“How should I know?”
Fabian knew the teenage years were supposed to be rough, but he had expected a lot more yelling, slamming doors, and late nights out. This silence was an entirely different beast, and he had no idea how to handle it.
“Hey... how are you doing, really?”
Theodor sighed and paused the music. The words from “Enter Sandman” still rang in Fabian’s ears.
“Do you miss your friends from Stockholm? I understand if that’s what you —”
“What friends?”
“I don’t know. The ones you used to play with?”
Theodor rolled his eyes.
“Or hang out with, or whatever you call it,” Fabian went on, feeling like a blind man on a tightrope. “But you’ll make new friends here. Well, maybe not right here. You’ll have to leave this room and go out and —”
“Are you done?”
Fabian nodded, realizing that he probably would have reacted just as Theodor did to a dad like him. He left the room and couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of relief.
*
HE FOUND SONJA UP in her studio, where she was working on a big new painting with broad, aggressive strokes. He watched her from the doorway, well aware that she disliked people looking at her while she painted, but he loved it; he thought she was most beautiful in these moments — no makeup, splashes of paint on her face, and a complete focus that blocked out all her surroundings.
She had a brush in each hand, a couple of paintbrushes in her hair to hold it up, and she was wearing her overalls, which were covered in so much paint they looked like a piece of artwork. Fabian could see she was wearing the red bra he had given her for Christmas two and a half years ago.
“Hi, honey.”
“Hi,” she replied with a smile, but her eyes said it all. She went back to spreading paint over the canvas.
“May I come in?”
She didn’t answer, so he walked into the room and stood behind her. “It’s great that you’re back to work.”
The painting was unlike anything she had ever done. He appreciated that she had been searching for a new way to express herself, after all those years of working with fish motifs. The fish years had been a successful time, and Sonja’s profits had far exceeded his own salary, no matter how much overtime he worked. Everyone wanted to have her escapist underwater portraits of schools of fish, octopuses, and crabs. It was every artist’s great dream, but it had become a nightmare for Sonja in the end. During her peak, she’d had a waiting list of more than a year. Her customers got to choose the size and colours to match their home decor. Sonja had felt like anything but an artist and eventually found herself hitting a wall.
That had been a little over six months ago, and she had been experimenting since then. For a while it had looked like birds would take over where the fish left off; she’d painted nests, eggs, and flocks in the sky. But what he was looking at today was something completely different: a violent cacophony, each shade redder than the last.
“Please. I’m working.”
“I assume you’ve read the papers.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read.”
“The young girl was my responsibility and my fault.”
“What about Lina Pålsson?”
Fabian had been waiting for that question. He couldn’t blame her for asking. After what had happened with Niva, her trust in him was broken, barely hanging on by a fragile thread.
“Yes, I was in love with her, and yes, I wanted nothing more than for the two of us to be together. But, Sonja, that was in the past, at school. And it never was the two of us, which I’m happy about today.”
Sonja turned and looked him in the eye. Paint was dripping from her brush to the floor. “So she doesn’t mean anything to you now?”
“She’s nothing more than an old classmate whose husband was just brutally murdered.”
“Okay.” Sonja went back to her painting. Fabian stood there, wondering if he should embrace her, when his cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“How are you doing?” It was Irene Lilja.
“Well, you get what you deserve, as my mother would say.” Fabian backed up a few steps to avoid being hit by Sonja’s paint spatters. “But it’s not a great time. Can I call you back?”
“Hold on. Is it really true?” she asked curtly. “The part about Lina Pålsson?”
“Yes.”
Fabian was met with silence on the other end of the phone. He could tell Lilja was thinking the same thing he was — how were his feelings for Lina affecting him during the investigation? He left the studio and walked down the stairs.
“Just so you know, I wasn’t even fully aware of the feelings myself, at first. It’s like I’ve repressed my entire upbringing.” He felt the need to explain himself, to try and make her understand. “That’s why I didn’t say anything...”
“Listen, I think it would be better to bring this up with Tuvesson. I’m sure you have a great explanation.” It was impossible to miss the sarcasm in her voice. “But that’s not why I called. There’s been another death.”
Fabian quickly tried to figure out who it could be. Who had he missed?
“It’s not a member of your class.”
“It’s not? Well, who...”
“Monika Krusenstierna. Your homeroom teacher.”
All Fabian could remember about Monika Krusenstierna was that she always wore knee-length skirts, usually plaid, and she never, ever cracked a smile. She’d taught her classes as if they were just something she had to get through on a schedule. Math problems had to be figured out, maps had to be labelled, and books had to be read out loud, chapter by chapter. Discussion and reflection were out of the question. The more he thought about it, the more his years with Monika Krusenstierna seemed like one long vocabulary quiz.
“The homecare aides found Monika seated in an armchair in her apartment. Apparently it took them some time to realize that she was actually dead, since there were no visible marks on her body.”
“Have they determined the cause of death?”
“Heart failure. Braids just called to give me a preliminary report. Her blood vessels were more plugged up than an old coffeemaker.”
“So it wasn’t murder?”
“No. I just wanted to put it on your radar before it shows up in the papers. We know how they’ll spin it. One juicy detail I thought you would like: she had the latest issue of Kvällsposten open in her lap.”
“To which page?”
“The story where they describe how everything went so wrong.”
Fabian knew exactly which article Lilja was talking about: THE TEACHER WHO TURNED A BLIND EYE? The article described how Claes Mällvik had been systematically bullied by Jörgen and Glenn and how no one had done a thing about it. Even the adults hadn’t bothered to care. The journalist asked why Monika Krusenstierna hadn’t raised the alarm, and suggested that
she must have suspected that all was not right in her class. Fabian pitied her. The accusations in the article would have been terrible to read — and must have indirectly caused her death.
“Thanks for calling.”
“No problem. See you tomorrow, Mr. Lover Boy.”
29
IT WAS FAR TOO late by the time he realized how badly he had underestimated Fabian Risk. The incident in Glenn’s yard had cost him a day and given Risk enough time to find the car in Denmark. He went over the events again and again in his mind, scrutinizing every detail, but he still had no idea how it happened. It was a complete surprise to discover that Risk had removed one of the tires. He was turning out to be a much greater threat than he ever could have expected. He had to admit that deep, deep down, he was impressed.
He had failed to move the car. He’d been forced to give up, to run off and leave it behind. It was now in the hands of the Danish police, which was at least better than if the Swedes had it. The Danes wouldn’t find much of interest. The only question was how long it would remain with them.
He had seriously considered aborting his plan and leaving on the boat that was fuelled up, well stocked, and waiting for him in Råås harbour. But instead he decided to look into changing parts of it. He would be delayed by at least another whole day, which he had to accept. Quitting would be such a monumental defeat that he wasn’t even certain he could live with it.
Risk had only played a small role in the original plan; he was practically just an extra body. However, once he had discovered that Risk was moving back with his family, he had been given a slightly more active role. Things had gotten out of control and now Risk was taking up much more space than he was meant to. Risk needed to be put in his place before the plan derailed entirely. He still didn’t know exactly how he could do it, but he had turned weaknesses into strengths before, and he had no reason to doubt that he would be successful this time too.
Victim Without a Face Page 16
