Victim Without a Face

by Stefan Ahnhem

  He reached the very corner of Sölmedal’s lot. The house was larger than he had initially thought: there were several additions at the back, and it must have been twice as large as it had been originally. He snuck along the edge of the yard, hidden by the cover of darkness from the rosebushes, until he came to a storage shed. He could make out a lawn mower, a pair of cross-country skis, a few rolled-up rugs, and a pile of dentist’s equipment through a dirty window.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket again. But this time it wasn’t a text — it was a call from Irene Lilja, which meant she had regained consciousness. Tuvesson and the others would soon find out what had happened. He let his voicemail pick up and kept moving along the back of the shed. Once he reached the corner, he judged the distance to the house to be about five metres.

  Five metres across the lawn with no cover.

  His adrenaline was pumping as if he were about to run a hundred-metre sprint. He had no idea what awaited him and his mind was hesitating. But his body had made its decision, and he had no choice but to follow it across the lawn, up to the wall of the house, and around the next corner, where a set of steps led up to a terrace with a few deck chairs. Fabian drew his weapon and cocked it before he went up the stairs.

  By the time he reached the terrace, his heart was beating so loudly that he could hear the blood pumping through his veins. The sound reminded him that he was still alive — that he could still make a difference. He took a few steps toward a sliding glass door; he could see right into the living room because the lights were on. There was a grand piano in the middle of the room. A bookcase that reminded him of the one in his parents’ home took up a whole wall. At the other end of the room was a corner sofa in front of a large flat-screen TV, and...

  He heard a sound — one as unobtrusive as it was life-changing: a barely audible little creak. Anything could have made that sound, except in this particular situation. Fabian whirled around toward the deck chairs.

  “Fashionably late I’ve heard of, but is it fashionable to come sneaking around the back? That’s new.”

  “Where’s my son? I just want him back.” Fabian aimed his pistol at the shadow that was rising from the chair and pulling some type of gun with a silencer on him.

  “I suggest we go inside before the coffee gets cold.”

  “What the hell have you done with my son?”

  “We’ll get to that. Like I said, there are a few other things we have to work out right now, and I’m not the one who slowed us down.” He approached Fabian with his free hand in front of him. “So I suggest we try to keep all of this civilized. Give me your gun. You can have it back when we’re finished.”

  Fabian hesitated; he couldn’t take his eyes off the man in the darkness in front of him. Had he seen him before or was this the first time? Had they really been in the same class, or was that all just a game?

  “Anyway, you don’t want to shoot me before you find out where little Theodor is.”

  He didn’t recognize the man. Or did he? Maybe it was just too dark. It felt like this was the first time they’d met, but at the same time something seemed familiar, like déjà vu.

  He gave up trying to remember, handed his pistol over, and let himself be led into the living room. Wagner’s The Valkyrie was playing in the background. They walked through a few hallways into a kitchen, where a table was set with two mugs, a French press, and a plate of cookies.

  “Have a seat.”

  Fabian forced himself to sit on one of the chairs, although his whole body was screaming at him to attack the man, beat his head against the table, and force him to confess where he had hidden Theodor.

  Torgny Sölmedal sat on the chair across from Fabian, placed his gun in his lap, and began to slowly lower the plunger through the coffee. “I’m sure you’re wondering why.”

  “I’m not wondering anything. All I want is for you to let Theodor go. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “Not that it’s my main motive, but by taking the lives of several of our classmates I have helped make the world just a little bit better, which is a minor, positive side effect we should all rejoice in.” He smiled as he continued to press the grounds to the bottom of the carafe.

  “My son! Where is he?”

  “When I started mapping everyone out, I was pretty much disgusted by how unintelligent they were. You might think I’m exaggerating, but take that car ride with Jörgen, for example. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I swear, an amoeba would have a higher IQ.”

  The plunger finally reached the bottom, and he poured the coffee into the mugs.

  Fabian struggled not to break down as he studied Torgny Sölmedal’s face in the light. He could see why no one had recognized him. His face was so ordinary and anonymous that there was no particular feature to remember him by: his nose, cheeks, mouth, eyes — all of them just looked normal, down to the tiniest detail.

  “Go ahead and look at me: nothing will stand out in your memory. If we passed each other on Kullagatan in a week, you wouldn’t recognize me.”

  Fabian realized that he was probably telling the truth, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t important now. He took out the folder of fingerprints and placed it on the table. His sweaty hands left a number of dark spots on the folder. “Here are your prints. Now I want my son.”

  Torgny Sölmedal didn’t even look at it. “Milk?”

  “Can you explain to me what my children have to do with this?”

  “Milk, or no milk?”

  “Answer me!” Fabian struck the table with his fist and coffee splashed out of the mugs.

  Torgny Sölmedal shot him a look and wiped up the mess with a floral napkin. “I’ll take that as no milk.” He handed the black coffee over to Fabian and took a cookie. “Unfortunately — and I really do mean that — you’ve arrived too late. As I told you all along, I didn’t know how long the oxygen would last, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, and I have to admit that it lasted longer than I expected: forty-six hours and thirty-three minutes isn’t bad for such a cramped space. He gave up at seventeen minutes past ten.” He pushed a tablet across the table; it showed the same image Fabian had seen earlier. The only difference was that Theodor was lying perfectly still now.

  Not even his chest was moving.

  88

  INGVAR MOLANDER WAS SURE that he hadn’t been asleep. He thought he had been lying awake on the cot in the basement — so that he didn’t wake Gertrud — going over and over the events of the past few days in his mind. And yet he had just woken up to the sound of his phone ringing.

  It was Lilja. He didn’t feel like answering. All he wanted to do was pretend that he hadn’t heard it, and keep sleeping. But that would be way too obvious: everyone at the station knew he was a light sleeper and that the tiniest sound would wake him, no matter how tired he was.

  “Molander speaking.”

  “Hi, it’s Irene. Did I wake you?”

  “Let’s hope it’s important.”

  “The fingerprints you found in the Peugeot are gone. Risk took them and he’s probably handed them over to the killer.”

  Molander sat up. “What the hell are you talking about?” he managed, although he had heard her perfectly well.

  “I’ll explain later. The important thing is that the prints are gone and we have to —”

  “Hold on. Was he in the database?”

  “No idea. I didn’t have time to check before they vanished.”

  “But how the hell could they just vanish?!”

  “Like I said, Risk took them, but it doesn’t matter right now. Priority number one is finding more prints as soon as we can.”

  “How the fuck are you planning to do that?” Molander felt a bad mood rolling in like a German invasion, and he had no way of combatting it. Not only had he been woken from a slumber he dearly needed, but they had also managed to lose the prints that were supposed to identify the perpetrator: evidence that their Danish colleague had risked her job to allow him to obtain.r />
  “I was thinking since he obviously got sloppy in the car, he was probably sloppy other times too, right?”

  “Sure, or maybe not. Even if he was, there’s still a small but important question: Where?”

  “At Glenn’s house.”

  “What?”

  “Glenn Granqvist. You know, the second victim.”

  “Yes, of course I know who he is. But why...”

  “Well, Glenn hit the back of his head on the shoe rack and started bleeding, didn’t he?”

  She was right. His memory began to wake up from its cryo-sleep.

  “You were the one who showed me that the perpetrator had used a rag to clean up the blood in the hallway, and that he’d even rinsed and wrung it out so it wouldn’t drip.”

  “Right. So?”

  “Don’t you think he took off his gloves to rinse it and wring it out?”

  Lilja was right. The odds were good that he’d taken off the gloves and accidentally left a print or two in the closet. “Let’s head over right away.”

  89

  HIS CLOTHES WERE STICKY with sweat even though he was shaking from the cold. His blood vessels were constricted, redistributing his blood to only the most vital organs. He was in shock, and his body was acting accordingly. Everything that had seemed so important earlier felt diffuse and fuzzy. All he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry, but he couldn’t — not right now.

  He put his hands on the table as if to stand up, but he changed his mind when he realized that he didn’t have the energy. “Where is he?”

  “Ironic that you’re suddenly asking so many questions about your son.”

  “Ironic?”

  “Yes, that you suddenly seem to care about him. I don’t have kids myself, but I would say that your actions are probably a little late. I assume you’ve read at least parts of his diary. A person can’t help but wonder, ‘Where are his parents?’ I’m sure you would ask the same thing, if you weren’t the parent in question. Wouldn’t you?” Torgny Sölmedal searched his face for an acknowledgement, but Fabian didn’t move a muscle. “Well, we can at least agree that your beloved son was wondering, up until half an hour ago, where his parents were.”

  Fabian wanted to jump on the man across the table and beat his jeering face to a pulp, but he fought against it; he wanted to remain in control at all costs.

  “Instead, let’s talk about why you’re here in the first place. You weren’t even part of the original plan. You lived in Stockholm, and were only going to contribute to the death toll toward the end. Aside from you and Lotta Ting, everyone still lived here in Helsingborg. But then you moved back down. Don’t ask me why, I’ve never understood the point of returning to the scene of the crime. But suddenly you were here and I figured I might as well pull you a little deeper into my plan. To be perfectly honest I wasn’t worried about you at all: you haven’t exactly accomplished an impressive list of achievements. I didn’t consider you an immediate threat, which turned out to be a serious miscalculation — it has been my biggest mistake so far, and it came close to costing me this entire operation. So cheers to you and your, how should I put it, ‘cop instinct.’” He stopped talking for a moment and drank his coffee. “The situation with the car was truly impressive. I’ve been trying to figure out how you managed to find it, but I haven’t succeeded. And don’t tell me, because I’ll think of it eventually. By the way, your coffee’s getting cold.”

  “Let it.”

  “It’s up to you. Your little triumphs forced me to make some changes to the plan and, frankly, it’s so much better now that you’re the crowning glory instead of Monika Krusenstierna. Remember her? Our teacher, who always wore a plaid skirt and looked away the second anything uncomfortable happened? A little bit like you, actually. I bet there have been a number of times when you could tell your son wasn’t doing so well, but just like Monika, you chose to turn your back on him.”

  Fabian couldn’t restrain himself any longer. He flew out of his chair, overturned the table, and threw himself at Torgny Sölmedal, who lost his balance and fell to the ground. Fabian saw his own gun sliding across the floor, managing to stop it with one hand, only to feel his body start to cramp up. A burning pain spread from his abdomen.

  Torgny Sölmedal turned off the Taser and wriggled out of Fabian’s grasp. “Is this what you call civilized?”

  Fabian couldn’t respond — he was on the floor, shaking with spasms. His mind was present, but his motor skills were not. From the corner of his eye he could see Sölmedal picking up the guns and placing them on the counter; he opened one of the kitchen drawers and took out a pair of meat shears, and retrieved a syringe from the refrigerator. Fabian tried to say something, but all he could manage was a weak moan.

  Meanwhile, Sölmedal inserted the shears into Fabian’s shirt collar and cut a large hole in the fabric to expose his neck. Fabian tried to resist, but his body refused to obey him. Sölmedal had no trouble feeling his way to his carotid artery.

  90

  IRENE LILJA DROVE SLOWLY so that she didn’t wake the sleeping neighbourhood, and for once she was first on the scene. She pulled over and stopped: this was probably the first time she’d ever had to wait for Molander. He was always on time and was always a step ahead of the others, ready with a solution.

  But today she was the one who was a step ahead; she had come up with an idea that was so great it couldn’t be put off until the next day. Was that why he was taking so long and making her wait? She toyed with the thought of just going in and gathering the prints, but decided it was too big a risk: Molander might be offended and angry for real. Besides, he had the keys to Glenn’s house.

  She cut the engine and the wipers stopped in the middle of the windshield, which was one of several features of her car that she found annoying. She had developed the habit of switching off the wipers before she turned off the car, but she had forgotten this time. She must be too tired. She didn’t even have the energy to be annoyed.

  Instead, she reclined her seat back a few notches and looked out the window at the rain. It had only started to come down a few minutes ago, and the precipitation was as gentle and badly needed as it was unexpected. The summer had been so hot and cloudless that she had almost forgotten there was such a thing as rain.

  The raindrops landed on the windshield and grew into small irregular pools. Pretty soon it was no longer possible to see out, and the glow of the lone streetlight became distorted, forming a hypnotic blend of reflections and colours. She was sinking deeper and deeper into sleep, trying to figure out how many hours of rest she’d managed in the past week.

  Twelve minutes later, her eyes opened. She looked around, but didn’t see anything other than the rain hammering at the metal of her car so violently that she was worried it would leave marks on the paint. But that wasn’t what had woken her: a few seconds ago she’d thought she heard a loud banging sound. Then she heard it again, right next to her. Someone was standing outside, but the water was distorting her view so much that she couldn’t tell who it was.

  She rolled down the window and saw Molander’s wet face looking back at her.

  “Do you think I’m having fun standing out here waiting for you?”

  “Oh, so now you’re the one who has to wait?” Lilja asked, but Molander was already on his way up to the house. She stepped out into the pouring rain, opened her umbrella, and hurried to catch up with him. “Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”

  Molander grunted as he tried key after key in the lock. “Who the hell marked these damn keys?”

  “Hold on, let me help.” Lilja took over and Molander didn’t hesitate to take the umbrella, holding it in a position that allowed her to experience the wetness of the rain.

  “Here. It’s ‘GG,’ as in Glenn Granqvist,” she said, unlocking the door.

  Molander handed back her umbrella without a word and vanished into the house. As she let the water run off her onto the doormat, Lilja wondered whether he was being efficient or
was just in a bad mood, although it didn’t matter either way.

  When she arrived at the cleaning closet, Molander was already busy dusting the light switch. Despite making every effort to hide it, she could see his barely noticeable smile.

  “You sure were lucky. There are several prints here, both on the faucet and by the switch.”

  “Lucky? You mean ‘right’?” Lilja said, receiving a stony silence in response. “And you’re sure that they’re his and not Glenn’s?”

  He gave her a weary look and took out the print lifters.

  91

  HE WIPED UP THE coffee on the floor. The mug had survived. He just had to wash and dry it along with the other one, and put them in their place in the cabinet. He took one of the cookies and popped it into his mouth. He tossed the rest into the garbage bag and tied it closed. Although he would never return, it seemed important to leave the house clean and tidy. He turned off the refrigerator and freezer, unplugged the toaster and coffeemaker, then turned out the lights and left the kitchen. The other rooms were already prepared. All he had left to do was say goodbye.

  He had lived there for nearly eighteen years. It was a good house, and for the most part he’d enjoyed it very much. But now the house had been sold; it was the end of an era. The new owners would take possession in early October, which would leave plenty of time for the police to finish their examination. He could already picture them presenting all the evidence he’d so carefully planted.

  He turned up the volume of The Valkyrie, which would make a great soundtrack for their arrival, opened the front door and stepped outside. It had started to rain. So far it was still sprinkling gently, but he knew that it was supposed to get worse, so he opened his umbrella, locked the door, and left.