But there was something about the name Torgny Sölmedal that seemed familiar. She knew she’d heard it before.
“What the hell? Did the computer find a match?” Lilja, who had completely forgotten that Molander was asleep on the floor at her feet, nodded mutely. Her thoughts were preoccupied with digging deeper and deeper into her memory until she came up with the connection.
Meanwhile, Molander got up and read the words on the screen out loud: “Torgny Sölmedal. Detained in 2005 for rape...”
“But freed due to lack of evidence. Not to mention, he turned up earlier in the investigation. Claes Mällvik, or Rune Schmeckel, as his name was at the time, operated on his prostate in 2004 and happened to leave two plastic clips behind in, well, you know... They made a pretty big deal of it in the papers and he even had to take a leave of absence from work for a while.”
“Oh right, I remember. It hurts just to think of it.”
*
ASTRID TUVESSON HURRIED THROUGH the pouring rain, phone to her ear, as she helped Lena Olsson into the back seat. “And you’re sure it’s him?”
“As sure as we can be,” Lilja answered. “There’s only one person listed with that name, and he lives at Motalagatan 24 in Husensjö.”
“In Helsingborg?”
“Yes. Molander and I can be there in ten minutes.”
“Not without the SWAT team,” Tuvesson said, trying to wrestle Lena Olsson’s bag into the trunk. “Call Malmö and wait for them.”
“Astrid, come on. We can’t wait for Malmö, it’ll take them over an hour and a half. We have to go now.”
Irene’s right, Tuvesson thought as she yanked the unwieldy suitcase back out and slammed the trunk, but she didn’t want to lose two of her best colleagues to a potential ambush.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Okay, go in alone, but I want you to be careful.” She pushed the wet bag into the passenger seat’s footwell and closed the door. “If you’re at all uncertain, back out, understood?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Irene, I mean it!”
“Okay, okay. By the way, how are things going for you?”
“I just picked up Lena Olsson and Stefan Munthe and I’m on my way to get Lina Pålsson.”
“What about the lonely pilgrim? Has he answered yet?”
“No, I’m planning to try one last time. If he doesn’t answer I’ll just go and ring his doorbell.”
They ended the call. Tuvesson walked around the car as she pulled up Kårheden’s home number. It rang on the other end. She was opening the driver’s side door to get in when someone picked up.
“This is Kårheden,” said a voice on the other end.
“Hello, I didn’t think you would answer. My name is Astrid Tuvesson.” She wondered if she should get in the car or take the call out in the rain. She decided she couldn’t get any wetter anyway.
“Excuse me, but do I know you?”
“I’m sorry; I’m a detective superintedent in Helsingborg.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“Yes, I just got back from a trip to Spain.”
“So we heard. Have you been following the news about what’s been going on while you were gone?”
“No, not at all. Isn’t that the whole point of a vacation? But the billboards at Kastrup were impossible to miss. Is it really true what they say? Is he after the whole class?”
“We don’t know, but unfortunately we have every reason to believe he is.”
“That’s awful. And you don’t have any leads on the killer’s identity?”
“We do, but I can’t discuss the details. I’m calling you because the only way we can offer you protection right now is to bring you to the prison along with your former classmates. How would you feel about me coming to pick you up?”
“Right now?”
“Yes, in about half an hour.”
There was a long sigh.
“It can’t wait until later or the next day? I just got home and I was gone for more than a month.”
“Let me put it this way: we judge your risk to be extremely high, although ultimately it’s your choice. We can’t force anyone to come in.”
Silence filled the other end of the line.
“Okay. I understand.”
Tuvesson hung up, got behind the wheel, and turned the key. A tense, expectant mood had taken over the back seat. Through the rear-view mirror she could see them staring out at the rain with evasive looks.
She knew how they felt.
96
FABIAN HEARD A FAINT buzz and felt his head turning another little bit. He had to be up to ninety degrees, or even slightly past it. Another screen was lighting up his field of vision; it also showed a black-and-white photograph of Torgny Sölmedal. His hair was just as neatly combed and his smile was just as friendly as in the last picture, but this time he was an adult.
He wanted to be seen this way. When it was all over, the pictures would surely be spread throughout the world — and, like Fabian with his head fastened to a dentist’s chair, no one would be able to look away.
But then something happened to the picture. Or was he only imagining it? No, he was sure, something was definitely happening. The space between the eyes narrowed and the nose looked different. The same went for the hair. It had grown darker and longer, and whether he was still looking at Torgny or whether this was someone else, he wasn’t sure. All he knew for certain was that the face before him was transforming.
He heard the buzz and his head turned again. By now his neck was considerably stretched and straining, even if it didn’t really hurt yet. He wondered how many more degrees he would survive, whether his neck would break all at once or if his path to the inescapable end would be peppered with several small catastrophic moments. He had no clue. He didn’t even know which he would prefer. The thought of dying wasn’t as problematic as the thought of surviving.
The face on the screen before him was still changing, and he could now decipher that it looked more and more like his son. He’d taken that picture himself last spring. It had been Theodor’s birthday and the family had celebrated by eating at the Hard Rock Café, where all he could think about was how annoyingly loud the music was.
There was another buzz and, just as it had before, his head turned another little bit. But this time it was different — he could both hear and feel the cracking in his neck.
97
THE RAIN HAD FINALLY stopped, as if someone had turned off a faucet, and now there were mostly just sporadic drops, but the water was still gushing through the gutters in search of a storm drain that hadn’t yet overflowed. Irene Lilja shoved her feet into her boots, walked up to Molander, and helped him with his bulletproof vest. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear that he hadn’t the smallest desire to come along.
I’m a crime scene tech, not some fucking SWAT whore, his eyes said. The closest he ever came to using a weapon was probably when he went fishing. When Irene was finished with Molander, she pulled on her own vest.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They locked the car and each of them took one of Molander’s equipment bags before they walked down Motalagatan, which was deserted. Nothing odd about that, Lilja thought. It was the middle of the night and the past hour’s downpour ought to have kept most night owls inside. They arrived at number twenty-four and discovered a house that looked the same as the rest on the street. What had she expected? A crumbling old mansion with a madman playing out his diabolical fantasies on an organ?
“How are we going to do this?” Molander asked.
Lilja thought about it. Some of the lights were on, but most signs indicated that he wasn’t home. On the other hand, they couldn’t be sure of anything, except that they didn’t have much time.
“The fastest way.” Lilja hurried up the front steps, cautiously felt the locked doorknob, and made room for Molander to open it.
They each disengaged the
safety on their handguns and entered the hallway. The light from the living room spread out across the floor, and they heard the notes of classical music.
“Wagner,” Molander whispered behind her. “It’s Wagner’s The Valkyrie.”
They walked through the hall to the living room. The lights were on and the music was playing loudly. Lilja went to enter the room, but Molander placed a hand on her arm.
“He wants us to go in, look at the lights and listen to the music. He wants to see how many of us there are.”
“Can’t we just turn off the music? It’s stressing me out.”
Molander nodded toward a fuse box and opened it. The fuses were marked with neatly written labels, one for each room of the house. He pulled out the one labelled LIVING ROOM, but the music continued to play. He tried a few of the other fuses, but nothing happened.
“He seems to have bypassed the whole fuse box. I think you’ll just have to deal with the music. It’s actually one of his better works.”
“What if he wants us to stay out of that room and leave this anxious music playing? Maybe there’s something he’s trying to hide with the music. And if there are cameras in there, what’s to say they’re not all over the house?”
Molander walked into the living room, went straight to the stereo, and pressed stop. “Happy now?”
Lilja followed him in and looked around the sparsely furnished room. There was only a leather sofa, a La-Z-Boy, a glass table, and a bookcase, which was empty except for the stereo. Once Molander was finished with the room, and had determined there were no hidden cameras or microphones, they began searching the rest of the house, which had been cleaned out and was mostly empty. Everything was pristine, down to the tiniest detail; Molander couldn’t even find prints in the kitchen or bathroom. The cleanliness was marred only by a small shard of porcelain on the kitchen floor, but the basement and attic were also spotless and empty.
Molander was starting to get impatient; he thought they should go to the other address registered to Sölmedal, where his workshop was located, but Lilja wasn’t ready to leave the house just yet. She had the feeling they’d missed something, but she didn’t know where to look. There was no doubt that the house had been wiped of even the tiniest clue that could help them move forward.
Of course the killer had counted on the fact that they would come and had prepared accordingly. Lilja sat down on the bed while she waited for Molander to finish listening to the bedroom walls with a stethoscope. He had already made it abundantly clear that this was the last thing he would do in the house. She agreed that if he didn’t hear anything suspicious, they would leave.
He turned to her.
“Nothing?” Lilja asked.
Molander shook his head. “Nope. Not even the hum from a ventilation system.”
“So where the fuck is he?”
“Risk or Sölmedal?”
Lilja shrugged. “Both.”
“They could be absolutely anywhere, but let’s investigate Sölmedal’s workshop.”
Lilja nodded. Molander was right: they should go over right away. She stood up and walked over to the wardrobe, which was across from the bed, and opened the door.
“Well, make up your mind,” Molander said as she looked through the boring, beige clothes on their hangers.
“Okay, let’s go to the workshop now. Where is it again?”
“Frejagatan 2. It’s down in the industrial area just north of Råå.”
They left the bedroom and walked through the hall, where The Valkyrie had just started up again. They exchanged a look, left the house, and went back to the car. Lilja felt frustration bubbling up inside her. This was like playing a game of rock-paper-scissors, except that Sölmedal always knew their choice ahead of time. If they threw paper, he threw scissors. He’d surprised them with an unanticipated move every time.
She hadn’t expected him to be at home or his workshop. But all they could do was go there and hope to find something, which he knew of course. They’d thrown rock, and all he had to do was hold out paper, but what was written on it this time? Another address, in someone else’s name? No, that would be too obvious. If he wanted to surprise them, it had to be something else. Something...
Lilja’s thoughts were interrupted as Molander stopped suddenly at the Östhammarsgatan intersection and stared straight at one of the yards.
“What is it?”
Molander didn’t answer; instead, he walked up to the electrical box that was sticking out of the sidewalk.
“Ingvar, what is it? What are you doing?”
“This is where it is.” He bent down and placed his ear against the humming air intake beside the electrical box.
“Could you please be so kind as to tell me what —”
“I’ll be damned if he didn’t run it way over here so that you couldn’t hear anything from the house.” Molander pointed back along the sidewalk, where there was a half-metre-wide strip of new pavement extending all the way back to Sölmedal’s house.
I knew it. I knew it, Lilja thought, staring at Molander, who was already on his way back to the house.
98
LINA PÅLSSON WAS ALREADY waiting at her front door in Norra Hamnen when Tuvesson arrived to pick her up.
“Hi, I’m Astrid. If you crowd in back there, I’ll take care of your bag,” Tuvesson said, opening the trunk.
Lina handed over her suitcase. “I understand that you haven’t caught him yet, given that you’re bringing us all in, but how is the investigation going now that you know who the killer is?”
“I’m sorry, but how did you know about that?” Tuvesson asked. Lina told her about Fabian’s visit that afternoon and how they’d come up with the name of the forgotten student.
Tuvesson didn’t know what to say. Was that why Fabian had been acting so strange? She felt dizzy from the numerous thoughts flying around her head. She quickly realized that she was under far too much stress to calculate the repercussions of Lina’s knowledge, and asked her not to mention it to the others for now.
Twelve minutes later, they pulled into the small gravel drive outside Seth Kårheden’s house. None of the three former classmates had said a word during the journey. She had made a few attempts to poke a hole in the silence, which was taking up all the air in the car like an expanding balloon. She asked if they’d ever had any class reunions and told them about her own class in Malmö — she’d heard that many of her classmates met regularly. All she got were a few dutiful responses. She’d even tried to turn the radio on but soon gave up: the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” didn’t seem particularly appropriate.
Seth Kårheden was waiting for them with a bag between his feet and a low cap that was so faded and worn that it must have accompanied him on his whole pilgrimage. She waved at him and pointed at the empty passenger seat.
It had stopped raining, but she preferred to remain in the car where the heated seat would dry her jeans. Kårheden walked around the car and opened the passenger-side door; as he got in he did the best he could to avoid dirtying Lena Olsson’s bag, which was occupying most of the footwell.
“Hi. You must be Astrid Tuvesson.”
Tuvesson shook his hand, welcoming him, and thought he almost looked better in real life than in the picture they had found online. He was quite handsome, except for that horrid moustache. He turned around toward the people in the back seat. “Wait, don’t tell me. You must be Lena Olsson.”
Lena nodded.
“It’s been years, but I’ll never forget how great you were at hopscotch. No one had a fighting chance.”
Lena started laughing.
Tuvesson’s phone rang and she answered while she was backing out of the driveway. It was Lilja, calling to say that she and Molander had returned to the house after Molander found an air outlet a few houses down the street. Tuvesson didn’t quite understand what this implied, and although she had absolute faith in Molander’s instincts, she very much wanted to understand what they were up to — but she d
idn’t get the chance to ask.
“I have to go,” Lilja’s voice said on the other end. “I think he found something.”
“Be careful,” was all she had time to say before she heard the click in her ear.
“And there’s our class clown, Stefan! How are you? I heard you started your own business in your later years.”
Stefan Munthe nodded and told them about his consulting firm, which helped improve internal communications at various companies.
“Well, I haven’t communicated with a single person in three whole weeks, so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m babbling a bit. I have what you might call some pent-up urges.”
“What about me?” asked Lina Pålsson. “Don’t you recognize me?”
Seth Kårheden turned to Lina and smiled. “I was saving the best for last. Nobody forgets the prettiest girl in the class.”
Lina giggled and Tuvesson smiled with relief. At least their trip to prison wouldn’t seem quite as painful. She braked for a red light on Drottninggatan outside the City Theatre. It was already past two in the morning, and darkness still lay upon the street like a wet blanket; a few stray partiers were searching for a new post-last-call watering hole. She had read all the official reports, but nothing would change her opinion that legally mandated last calls were crimes against humanity and did more harm than good.
The light turned green, allowing her to drive up Hälsovägen and on to Ängelholmsvägen, which was empty aside from a few taxis. She pressed the gas pedal, happy that the traffic lights were on her side.
She and Klippan both arrived with their packed vehicles at the same time. Ragnar Palm came out of the front doors of the jail to greet them. She looked around, but she didn’t see any journalists or curious onlookers. Their timing couldn’t have been better. Now all they had to do was get the classmates inside as quickly as possible.
She stopped behind Klippan’s car and asked everyone to get out, take their luggage, and follow the others inside. They obeyed without protest, but she could see scepticism in their expressions at the tall razor-wire fence and electric gate, which was currently closing behind them; at Ragnar Palm’s grim face, uniform, and weapon.
Victim Without a Face Page 43
