Victim Without a Face

by Stefan Ahnhem

  I read about someone who jumped in front of a train. She was the same age as me and they went after her the same way they went after me. Everything she had written in her suicide note reminded me of my life.

  I’ve never told anyone this before, but just so you know, I’ve thought about jumping several times. I’m not brave enough yet. I’m so fucking tired of being afraid. It’s been going on for six months now. I’m afraid to eat in the cafeteria, afraid at recess, afraid of doing something stupid in class, afraid of people who used to be my friends, afraid of going home, afraid of what happens after Christmas break.

  Mom came in my room even though I said I wanted to be alone and asked why I didn’t want to play the keyboard. I didn’t want to answer but she kept pushing. I started to cry. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t and then I told her I didn’t want to go back to school because everyone there is so stupid. She asked if someone was bullying me and I told her that wasn’t it. She said she thought it could be and had met with my teacher to talk about it. The teacher hadn’t noticed anything except that I’ve been more absent-minded and quiet and that my test grades have gone down. I didn’t have anything to say to my mom after that so she left. I can’t believe they went behind my back, talking a lot of shit about me.

  Stupid, shitty school starts again in two weeks. At first I thought about skipping, but decided not to. I’ve made up my mind to do something else. I’ve thought about it so many times and I’m totally sure now. I have nothing to lose. After all, it can’t get any worse.

  Goodnight.

  P. S. I didn’t buy Laban a Christmas present, but he didn’t seem to care. His fur is falling out all over. Maybe it’s all the piss he drank. He’s so goddamn idiotic and ugly and disgusting. I fucking hate him.

  33

  LILJA, MOLANDER, AND KLIPPAN were already sitting in the conference room when Astrid Tuvesson arrived with a tray of fragrant lattes and a bag of croissants. The exhausted faces suddenly smiled, and Klippan started joking about how much weight he was going to gain if they didn’t solve this case soon.

  “I want to start by saying that Fabian Risk has been taken off this case, effective immediately,” Tuvesson informed the team as she handed out the coffees.

  “That’s too bad. I thought he seemed pretty good,” said Klippan.

  “I would have liked nothing more than for him to stay, but it was untenable.”

  “That’s obvious enough,” said Lilja. “He was a member of the class, and we can’t treat him any differently from all the others.”

  “You don’t think he’s a suspect, do you?” Molander asked.

  “I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest he is a suspect, but —”

  “I think we’ll leave it there,” Tuvesson interrupted, staring firmly at Lilja. “Okay?”

  Lilja and the others nodded, and started reviewing the new information. Lilja told everyone that she had contacted all the airlines, but none of them had a record of a passenger by the name of Rune Schmeckel on board in the last few days — or Claes Mällvik, for that matter.

  “There’s no reason he couldn’t have kept driving through Denmark in another car, which would put him far beyond Germany at this point,” Klippan said, reaching for another croissant.

  “We’ve put out an international APB, but for now we’ll work with the theory that he’s still in Sweden. Have you been able to identify everyone in the class yet?”

  “It’s more or less finished, wouldn’t you say, Irene?” Klippan answered.

  “It’s as good as it can be,” said Lilja. “I would have preferred to double-check it against an official class list, but that’s been impossible to track down.”

  “Why? Wasn’t there supposed to be a copy at the city archive?” Tuvesson asked, turning toward Klippan.

  “I’m sure it’s there, but the electronic catalogue for the archives crashed.”

  “What do you mean, crashed?”

  “Do you remember that cyberattack on City Hall back in May that was in the papers quite a bit?”

  “Of course. Weren’t they bombed with emails?” said Lilja.

  “Yes, and probably a ton of viruses and Trojan horses, too. The server containing the city’s archives catalogue conked out, too.”

  “How convenient,” Tuvesson sighed.

  “A little too convenient, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t get it. If class lists also exist in the physical archive, we should be able to go get them,” said Lilja.

  “Without the catalogue, they don’t have the archive number. And without the archive number it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, only harder. They’ve promised to give it a shot, but it will still take weeks — if we’re lucky.”

  Tuvesson didn’t say anything for a moment, and then shook her head. “This is totally pointless.” She turned to Lilja. “How many of the students we’ve identified still live in Skåne?”

  “All of them live here, actually, except for one who lives in Oslo.”

  “However, a lot of them are on vacation abroad right now,” said Klippan.

  “Let’s draw up a list and rank the class in the order we want to contact them. Our priority is to identify if anyone else might be in danger.”

  “Already done. I’ve been in contact with a few of them,” said Lilja.

  “And?”

  “So far everyone has described one another as sparkling, saintly little lights that did nothing but spread love and warmth around them.”

  Klippan laughed and shook his head.

  “Let’s hope Jörgen and Glenn were the only victims,” said Tuvesson, turning to look at Molander. “Are you done combing through Schmeckel’s house?”

  “More or less. Aside from a few fingerprints and stuff, I haven’t found anything of particular interest. I had been hoping to at least find an extra key to his car, but there wasn’t one there.”

  “Maybe he has a place in the country?” Klippan said.

  “Not one that’s listed under his name,” said Lilja.

  “Speaking of country homes,” said Molander, sending around a few copies of the framed black-and-white photos from Schmeckel’s home. “These were photographs we found in Schmeckel’s house. If it’s a country home he owns abroad, it’s not at all a given that it would be registered in Sweden.”

  They looked at the pictures of the hilly landscape and the crowded city.

  “Do you know where the photos were taken?” Klippan asked Molander, who lit up.

  “At first I thought it was Carcassonne. I’ve always wanted to go to that part of France. Not to mention, Carcassonne is one of my very favourite games.”

  The others looked thoroughly confused.

  “Haven’t you ever played Carcassonne?”

  The rest of the team shook their heads.

  “Oh my God, you guys don’t know anything,” Molander said in an exasperated tone.

  “But then you determined that the photo wasn’t taken in Carcassonne?” said Tuvesson.

  “Exactly. I did some analysis and the landscape is definitely Grasse, which is also in the south of France, but more to the east. I’ve been there, actually. Have any of you ever heard of the film Perfume?”

  “Yes,” Klippan said. “Wasn’t that the one with —”

  “I’m sure it was, but perhaps we could discuss it another time?” Tuvesson interrupted. “Instead, let’s try to figure out if he has a vacation home in Grasse. I would also mention another lead that has been brought to my attention.” She held up the key she’d received from Fabian. “I got it from Risk, who told me it unlocks a safe in Glenn’s kitchen.”

  “I’ve already gone through that kitchen and I can assure you there’s no safe,” said Molander.

  “I want you and Irene to take another look anyway, to be on the safe side.” Tuvesson slid the key across the table toward Lilja and turned to Klippan. “How is the McDonald’s trail going?”

  “I’ve contacted all the locations we identified, but so far nobody recognizes
him.”

  “So far?”

  “They work in shifts, so I haven’t met with all of them yet.”

  “Okay. What else do we have? Has anything interesting come in from the public since we released the picture?”

  “Not exactly,” said Klippan.

  “What do you mean, not exactly?”

  “To make a long story short, nothing has come in that would be worth telling the grandkids about.” Klippan glanced at the last croissant.

  “That might be true, but at this moment I would prefer the long version.”

  “Aside from the usual callers, two of his patients have phoned claiming to have spotted him in Farsta, Bollmora, and Grums, just to name a few far-off places. One claimed that Schmeckel surgically inserted a GPS transmitter into his stomach so that Schmeckel could find him if he ever got a taste for human flesh.”

  “Lovely. What did they other patient say?”

  “His story is pretty funny. He claims that Schmeckel raped him while he was unconscious on the operating table.”

  “Did you say funny?” Lilja asked, taking the last croissant right from under his nose.

  “I’m not finished.” Klippan’s eyes followed Lilja’s croissant. “He claims it happened sometime in 1998, a long time ago. When I asked why he didn’t report the incident back then, he replied that he got hemorrhoids after the rape, which he thought were too embarrassing to tell the police about.” Klippan cackled until his whole belly shook.

  Lilja exchanged glances with both Tuvesson and Molander. All three of them tried not to laugh.

  “What made him suddenly want to tell someone?” Tuvesson asked.

  “As far as I could understand, they only just started to let up.”

  “Twenty-two-year-old hemorrhoids?” Lilja asked. When Klippan nodded, she couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer.

  “Hasn’t Linkert Pärsson called?” Molander asked.

  “Link? I was just getting to him. He claims to know exactly where the killer is.”

  “You don’t say,” said Lilja.

  “Did he mention how he’d figured it out?”

  “He sure did, and he has his very own special theory as usual. He believes Claes planned his revenge back in his school days, which he deciphered from reading the graffiti on the school walls. Link thinks we should let him collect and decrypt all the graffiti in all the bathrooms at Fredriksdal School.”

  No one seemed to know what to say. Everyone at the Helsingborg police station knew of sixty-eight-year-old Linkert Pärsson and his long list of acronym disorders. He was nicknamed “Link” or “Pärsson’s Syndrome.” Linkert Pärsson’s greatest dream was to become a detective, but after five failed applications to join the police academy, he’d become a janitor at Fredriksdal School, where he had worked until he was accused of sexual molestation for drilling a peephole into the girls’ shower room. Although the prosecutor had called for jail time, Linkert was only sentenced to a fine and mental health treatment. Almost everyone at the station had an opinion on how good the treatment really was.

  These days, he called himself a detective and had his own printed business cards: LINKERT PÄRSSON — SOLVES THE UNSOLVABLE.

  In the past five years, Tuvesson and her group hadn’t worked on a single case without a theory from Linkert, each more far-fetched and ridiculous than the last. Despite his faults, everyone liked him, and occasionally invited him to share his theories over a cup of coffee.

  But nobody was laughing today. In many ways, this was a typical Link theory — crazy and improbable — yet none of them could quite dismiss it, perhaps because they all felt that anything was possible in this particular case. The idea that the perpetrator might have left clues among graffiti seemed just as plausible as any other.

  “What does he want?” said Tuvesson.

  “The usual. Coffee and a Punsch-roll,” said Klippan.

  “Doesn’t he usually request almond tarts?” Molander asked.

  “That was before he got it into his head that the Feminist Initiative was poisoning them with female sex hormones to bring down the patriarchy.”

  “Shouldn’t they have gone with the Punsch-rolls instead?”

  34

  HE HAD THE WHOLE car to himself when he first boarded the train in Helsingør, but as they approached Copenhagen, more and more passengers got on. By the time they got to Hellerup Station all the seats were full. Most people had headphones in and were flipping through the free newspapers, which had devoted pages to the Danish police’s search for him.

  HERE IS THE SWEDISH KILLER!

  HIS NAME: RUNE SCHMECKEL.

  He grabbed a discarded newspaper and flipped to the articles that described — in great detail — how he had killed Jörgen and Glenn and, most recently, Mette Louise Risgaard. He burst into such loud laughter after reading the two-page story on the continuing conflict between the Danish and Swedish police that the woman beside him looked up curiously.

  He devoted all but the last fifteen minutes of the train ride along the Danish Gold Coast to developing and polishing his new plan. The more he thought about it, the more the pieces seemed to be falling into place. His new idea had come to him the moment Risk opened the door for Lina Pålsson. He couldn’t explain the timing, since the plan had nothing to do with Lina at all. He had been preoccupied with two big and seemingly impossible roadblocks: Monika Krusenstierna’s unexpected heart attack and Fabian’s nerve-racking police work. It wouldn’t be the first time he had found it advantageous to have two problems rather than just one, since it was more a rule than an exception that each could provide the solution to the other.

  He came up out of Østerport Station and was struck by the large, wide streets of Copenhagen. There were three or four lanes in each direction, as well as broad bike paths and sidewalks. Not many streets in Stockholm were this wide, and yet the Swedish city had stolen the title “Capital of Scandinavia” right out from under the Danes’ noses. No wonder those Danish bastards were angry.

  He walked up Dag Hammarskjölds Allé toward Østerbro and saw that almost every single billboard was about the hunt for him, as well as Risk’s love affair. He also learned that he was now wanted internationally. Not bad, not bad at all, he thought, sitting down at a free patio table at Dag H Café.

  *

  HE ATE THE LAST of his chicken salad and emptied his glass of water. The waiter cleared the dishes off his table, and he took the opportunity to order a double espresso. He couldn’t complain. Right now, things were mostly going his way. He looked around the patio and listened. He was on everyone’s lips, and yet nobody recognized him. He might have been satisfied with a few days in the limelight in the past, but not now. He wanted more. When he was finished, no one would ever be able to overlook or forget him again.

  He knocked back his espresso and looked at his watch. It was almost two thirty. According to the GPS, it would take him fifteen minutes to get to the location on foot. He left a generous tip and headed for Rigshospitalet.

  It was time to take another innocent life.

  35

  “AFTER YOU.” INGVAR MOLANDER lifted the police tape and allowed Irene Lilja to walk ahead of him into the front yard of Glenn Granqvist’s house.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think this was where the killer got him.”

  Lilja looked around the narrow hall that led into the house. “Here?”

  Molander nodded. “The perpetrator probably rang the bell and waited for his victim to answer. When he did, our guy knocked him out with a drug —”

  “The same as he did to Jörgen.”

  “Exactly,” Molander said, clearly irritated that she had cut him off. “Anyway, I think he collapsed and hit his head here,” he said, pointing to the sharp corner of a cast-iron shoe rack. “Which would explain the wound on the back of his head.”

  Lilja leaned over but couldn’t see anything but the shoe rack itself.

  “I believe the perpetrator dragged him all the way throu
gh the house, and out the back, which is shielded from view.”

  “If he had a head wound and was dragged through the hall, wouldn’t there be some trace of blood?” Lilja’s eyes scanned the linoleum floor, but she couldn’t see anything that resembled blood.

  “Look here.” Molander crouched down, ran his index finger along the corner of the shoe rack and held a clean fingertip up to Lilja, who was starting to become impatient with the demonstration. Molander ignored her behaviour and touched across another part of the shoe rack. He showed Lilja his fingertip, which was dusty. “See? He cleaned up after himself. There’s a layer of dust everywhere in the house, except some of the hallway.” He pointed along the hall floor, then rose and walked further into the house. Lilja followed.

  “But why spend energy cleaning up a few traces of blood when there’s a ton of it at the scene of the crime?”

  Molander turned to her and smiled.

  “I asked myself the very same thing. The only answer I’ve come up with is that Glenn’s murder did not unfold as planned: the perpetrator hadn’t counted on his victim to fall straight onto a shoe rack and cut his head. And I’m confident this guy would do anything to stick to the plan. It’s interesting though, because finding traces of blood here wouldn’t even give us much of an advantage, but the killer didn’t have time to analyze the consequences, so he cleaned up the blood as quickly as he could.”

  “What did he use to clean up? Have you found that?”

  “I think he used a floor cloth,” Molander said, opening the door to a small cleaning closet under the stairs. “It looks like he even rinsed it and wrung it out afterward.”

  Lilja looked into the closet, which contained a vacuum cleaner, a bucket, a few bottles of cleaning products, and a low, stainless- steel sink. She felt the rag, which was hanging from a hook, and studied the floor directly under it. Sure enough, there was no evidence that it had been wet enough to drip.