by Hanna Allen
Hallengren smiled encouragingly. ‘And how are guests notified of their number?’
‘When they check in, we give them their key.’ He lifted a finger, as though to command our attention. ‘For tours we vary the procedure. Rather than have them queue at reception, we leave the key in their door and post a list on the notice board.’
‘In the foyer?’
He swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘What happens to that list?’
‘It’s taken down the following day and kept till the end of the week. Then I give it to the tour guide as a record of who stayed in which room. Some tours issue commemorative certificates.’
‘You still have the list?’
‘I was asked to bring it,’ he said defensively. He drew a sheet from his folder and handed it to Hallengren.
Hallengren scanned it, his face expressionless. ‘Mr Karlsson, when we were called to the Excelsior after the discovery of Wilson Bibby’s body, the manager gave me a list of names and room numbers of the Icehotel’s occupants.’ He held out the computer printout from his own file. ‘As you can see, it does not quite match the list you posted in the foyer.’
Karlsson took the sheet and stared at it, his hands trembling. There was a faint sheen on his forehead.
‘I can’t see –,’ he began.
‘Rooms 15 and 17, Mr Karlsson,’ Hallengren said patiently.
There was a stir of recognition in the man’s eyes. ‘I remember now,’ he said, relief in his voice. ‘Originally, we assigned room 17 to Mr Bibby – Mr Wilson Bibby – and room 15 to Professor Auchinleck. But later that day – ’
‘Which day?’ Hallengren interrupted.
‘Monday, Inspector, the day the tour party arrived.’
Hallengren nodded to him to proceed.
‘On Monday afternoon, Mr Wilson Bibby asked to have his room changed. He explained he was a light sleeper. His room at the Excelsior was above the lounge and he was afraid the noise would keep him awake. So I put him in the room round the corridor, room 15, which is the quietest.’ He paused, blinking rapidly. ‘Room 15 was Professor Auchinleck’s. I saw the Professor later that afternoon and asked if he objected to a room change. He seemed willing to oblige, he didn’t even ask who the guest was. He said he was a sound sleeper, and didn’t mind which room he had. I explained then, as I’d explained to Mr Bibby, that this meant the rooms in the Icehotel would also be swapped. So Professor Auchinleck would be in room 17 in both hotels, and Mr Bibby, in room 15.’
The pieces were falling into place. I glanced at Hallengren but his attention was on Karlsson.
Karlsson took our silence as a signal to continue. ‘I instructed my staff to move the luggage. Fortunately, neither guest had unpacked. And then I logged the change on the computer.’
‘Which is why it showed on the printout,’ said Hallengren.
‘Exactly,’ he beamed. He removed his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief.
‘So how do you explain the discrepancy between the printout and the list in the foyer, Mr Karlsson?’
The smile vanished. He stared at Hallengren. ‘The list?’ he stammered.
‘It seems that you did not make the same change on the notice board.’
He looked from Hallengren to me, then back to Hallengren, a stricken expression on his face. ‘I must confess I did not. But there was no need, because both Professor Auchinleck and Mr Bibby knew where they would be sleeping.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘They will get the wrong certificates from Mr Tullis, of course – ’
I looked away. The only certificates they were getting now were from the coroner.
Hallengren took the sheets. ‘I will have to retain these for my records.’
‘Of course. I understand.’ Sweat was trickling into the man’s eyes. ‘May I go now?’
‘Thank you, Mr Karlsson. You have been most helpful.’
He picked up the folder and almost ran from the room.
Hallengren looked amused. ‘So, Miss Stewart, we have been at cross purposes. Is that the correct phrase – cross purposes?’
‘It’s the correct phrase,’ I replied automatically. My mind was in turmoil. The rooms had been swapped. So, what did it mean?
He picked up the bottle. ‘Let us examine the facts. Shortly after you saw Marcellus Bibby outside the Locker Room, you saw a man come out of room 15. Correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are certain it was room 15? Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you assumed it was Harry, thinking it was his room.’
‘Yes.’
‘You called out to him but he did not reply.’
‘But I know he heard,’ I said emphatically. ‘He paused, then carried on walking. And he didn’t turn round.’
‘Why did you think it was Harry, apart from believing that he came out of Harry’s room?’
‘He was a big man, Harry’s build, and he wore a blue snowsuit. Harry always wore blue. And he had on the same woollen hat.’
He studied my face. ‘If it had been Harry, would he have spoken to you?’
‘Of course,’ I said sadly. ‘Harry wasn’t someone who ignored people. He’d probably have suggested we go for a drink. It puzzled me at the time, but I said nothing to him, specially after your request I keep quiet.’
‘It would explain why your story and his were inconsistent.’ He paced the room. ‘Harry was in room 17, fast asleep as he claimed. And if the man you saw was Marcellus, who had just pushed his father onto the floor, of course he would not turn round when he heard you call Harry’s name.’
I thought back to the day Wilson’s corpse had been discovered. ‘In the morning, there was such a crowd outside the room that I couldn’t see the number plaque. When I saw Wilson’s body, I just assumed it was room 17.’
He looked intently into my eyes. ‘Could you have seen the statue of Pan from where you were?’
I shook my head.
‘Marcellus would have known about the room swap, Miss Stewart. His father would have told him. But Harry did not tell you or your friends. Why was that?’
‘It wouldn’t have been important.’ I played with my glass. ‘Harry was always travelling and living in hotels.’
‘After Bibby’s death, his rooms in both the Excelsior and the Icehotel were sealed.’ He scrutinised the Excelsior’s floor plans, pinned up next to the Icehotel’s. ‘Room 15 in the Excelsior is round the corner from your room so you could not have seen the tapes. And you would not have heard much from room 17, whether occupied or not, because it is across the corridor. There would be nothing in the Excelsior to make you suspect there had been a swap.’
The brandy was doing its work. ‘So Marcellus kills Wilson, and knows I see someone leave his father’s room,’ I said, my words slightly slurred. ‘He hears me call Harry’s name so he knows he hasn’t been identified. So’ – I paused – ‘why kill Harry?’
‘Why would he want to kill Harry?’ He studied the whiteboard, frowning. ‘The answer has nothing to do with the discrepancy between your story and Harry’s. That has now been explained. No, it has to do with the discrepancy between your story and Marcellus’s.’ He looked directly at me. ‘Miss Stewart, after we discovered Wilson Bibby’s death was not accidental, I sent Engqvist to re-interview you, Harry, and Marcellus. We had to explain the differences in your various accounts.’
‘When was this?’
‘Friday afternoon – the afternoon that Harry was murdered.’
‘But I wasn’t interviewed,’ I said slowly.
‘No-one could find you. For that matter, no-one could find Harry. But Marcellus was interviewed.’ He searched through the folders on his desk, and opened a buff-coloured file. ‘We interviewed Marcellus at 3.00pm in the hotel manager’s office, an hour and a half before Harry was murdered. He did not change his story. He persisted in his claim that he did not leave the Excelsior the night that his father was killed.’ He glanced up. ‘Unfortunately, the hotel manager came into the offi
ce as Marcellus was leaving. Before Engqvist could stop him, he announced that he had been unable to find Professor Auchinleck. Marcellus would have heard him.’
‘So he assumed Harry was also going to be questioned?’ I said, my mind racing.
‘Yes, but listen carefully. When we questioned Marcellus, we interrogated him hard about timing and his precise movements. And, for the first time, we told him that there was a witness who was prepared to make a statement putting him outside the Locker Room at the time of his father’s death.’ He lifted a hand to ward off my protest. ‘Do not be alarmed – Engqvist was careful not to say who. It was a tactic that might have forced a confession. It did not. If it had, we would have arrested him there and then. But my point is this: if Marcellus thought that Harry was also about to be questioned, he may have jumped to the conclusion that Harry was the witness.’
‘He thought Harry had been called in to make the statement?’
‘To make it, and to sign it. But, even if he had any doubts, he could not take the risk. He had to find Harry and kill him before he was questioned.’
I stared at Hallengren, finally understanding. ‘It should have been me that was killed. I was the one who saw Marcellus.’
‘You must not think like that, Miss Stewart,’ he said firmly. ‘The fault was ours.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘There was a crowd in the foyer that afternoon. Harry must have slipped past the receptionist. Marcellus fetched an ice-axe, saw Harry enter the Chapel, followed him and killed him. It explains the great risk he took in doing this in broad daylight. He had no choice. He had to move quickly.’
So the large bloody snowsuit abandoned in the Chapel was Marcellus’s. He would have slipped back into the Excelsior in his own clothes, and mingled with the crowd.
‘And this connection that Marcellus made about Harry’s being the witness?’ I said angrily. ‘That didn’t make him an immediate suspect in Harry’s murder? You’ve realised it only now? Why didn’t you arrest him straight after Harry was killed?’
Hallengren spoke calmly. ‘We interviewed everyone in connection with Harry’s murder, Marcellus included. We questioned him for hours. He told us that, after he had left the manager’s office, he went to Kiruna. We tried to break him, but he stuck to his statement.’
I glared at him. ‘And you believed it?’
‘There was no evidence either to refute or corroborate his story.’
Of course Hallengren couldn’t make an arrest without hard evidence. My anger subsided. ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you, Inspector.’ I pressed my fingertips into my eyes. ‘Let me get this straight, then. Even knowing about the room swap, you’ve still no real evidence that it was Marcellus who came out of that room, and not Harry.’
‘I know it was Marcellus. He had just killed his father.’ He reached for the brandy. ‘Anyway, neither you nor Harry fit the profile of a murderer.’
I gasped. ‘You suspected us?’
He looked surprised. ‘At the outset, everyone is a suspect. Your evidence put you and Harry close to the scene of the crime at the time of Bibby’s death. I would be a fool not to consider you suspects.’
And Hallengren was no fool. ‘So when did you decide we weren’t?’ I said.
‘With Harry, it was when he was killed. But we discounted him early on. Harry was no killer.’
‘And me?’ I said, after a pause.
‘You ceased to be a suspect when you fell into the river. You nearly died, Miss Stewart. No-one would endanger their life like that just to throw the police off the scent.’
‘That was yesterday. What about earlier in the week?’
He smiled. ‘We could not find a motive for you to kill Wilson Bibby.’
‘Did you think I could have killed Harry?’ I said warily.
‘You might have had time before you met Miss Hallam. However’ – his eyes travelled slowly down my body – ‘I doubt you have the strength. Whoever killed Harry was strong. We could tell that from the wounds on his body.’
I pictured the scene in the Chapel: Harry, raising his arms, trying desperately to ward off his attacker. And Marcellus, bringing the ice-axe down, again and again and again . . .
Hallengren’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘After you told me about the axeman in the Icehotel, I had Engqvist tail you. He followed you and Miss Hallam to Kiruna.’
‘That was Engqvist?’ I said, astonished.
His voice was hard. ‘You saw him?’
‘I saw someone I thought was following me,’ I said quickly, not wanting to get the man into trouble, ‘but it turned out to be another tourist.’
‘Engqvist should have been well camouflaged,’ he said dryly. ‘He lost you in the evening in the crowd going to the Ice Theatre. When he realised, he called me straightaway. We had to find you quickly. We still had not arrested Marcellus and you might be his next victim. We questioned Karlsson who remembered that you had gone to the church.’
I looked up at him. ‘So how did Marcellus find out where I was?’
‘That we will never know, Miss Stewart. All we have managed to learn of his movements that day is that he had an appointment at the coroner’s office. He must have slipped back to the Excelsior unseen. Perhaps he saw you leave the hotel and followed you.’
I felt a chill in the room. ‘The church tower would have been ideal. Like falling through the ice. An accident.’
‘Marcellus must have left just before we reached the Excelsior. I sent Engqvist to comb the hotel, in case he was there, while I hurried to the church. The rest you know.’ He leant forward and looked into my face, his eyes blazing. ‘But there is something I don’t know.’
The anger in his voice took me by surprise.
‘What in the name of God were you doing up that tower?’ he said. ‘I specifically warned you against being alone at any time. Were you out of your mind?’
‘I wanted to see the aurora,’ I said miserably.
‘The aurora? When there was a killer on the loose?’
I chewed my thumb. ‘I thought the killer was behind bars.’
He ran a hand over his head, staring at the ceiling.
‘So what happens next?’ I said in a small voice.
He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Aaron Vandenberg will stand trial for conspiracy to kidnap. The evidence is clear cut.’
‘And the murders?’
‘Unless we can persuade Vandenberg to admit to murder, or to being an accomplice to murder, the case will remain open. There is not the evidence to bring anyone to trial. Vandenberg’s likely course of action will be to pin the blame on his dead friend, Marcellus.’
‘So that’s it?’ I let out a breath. ‘That’s the end?’
He smiled. ‘Most people imagine that murder cases are solved beyond shadow of a doubt, but that rarely happens. Real murder cases are not like those in films or murder mystery novels. There is always doubt unless you get a confession. And even then, people confess to murders they do not commit. So, perhaps it was the hotel killer from the Maximilian. Or Harry who killed Wilson. Or someone else.’ He finished the brandy. ‘Apart from greed, Miss Stewart, revenge is the strongest motive for murder. But there was no-one with revenge as a possible motive. What will appear in my report is that, on the balance of probabilities, the killer of Wilson Bibby and Harry Auchinleck was Marcellus Bibby, with Aaron Vandenberg as accomplice.’ He was studying me with an expression of mild irony. ‘But, even if we had the evidence, we cannot prosecute the dead.’
‘I suppose not.’
He grew serious, turning the glass in his hand. ‘You have had some terrible experiences, Miss Stewart, the sort of experiences no-one should have in a lifetime, let alone the space of a week.’
I looked away.
He cupped my chin, turning my head to face him. ‘I see the mark of the survivor in your eyes. You will go through bad times in the next few months, but they will not last forever. You will come out on the other side, stronger than you are now.’
I gazed into the deep blu
e of his irises, feeling the warmth of his hand against my skin.
He released me slowly. ‘Now that my investigations are over, I will have your passports with Mr Tullis first thing tomorrow.’
‘Well Liz, for one, will be eternally grateful.’
‘Miss Hallam?’
‘She’s had a particularly bad time of it.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘The idea behind this holiday was that she’d have some kind of respite from her children. Go back refreshed, that sort of thing.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I hope it will not deter her from visiting Sweden again.’
I thought of Liz, chain-smoking, her hands trembling. She might visit Sweden again, but she wouldn’t be coming to Lapland.
He was smiling. ‘And what about you?’
‘I never did try cross-country skiing,’ I said, avoiding the question. ‘And now, I’ve run out of time.’
‘You are definitely leaving tomorrow?’ he said quietly.
‘Our flight’s at midday.’
I thought I saw disappointment in his eyes, but it was probably wishful thinking on my part.
‘Well, Miss Stewart, I must arrange to have you taken back to your hotel.’
He stood up briskly. I staggered to my feet.
‘Tomorrow I fly to Malmö,’ he said. ‘A case in Lund requires my attention. We will not meet again.’ He held out his hand, smiling. ‘Goodbye, Miss Stewart.’
‘Maggie,’ I said, slipping my hand into his. ‘My name is Maggie.’
There was an expression in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. ‘Maggie,’ he said softly. He slid an arm around my waist and drew me towards him.
Chapter 27
Liz’s eyes were wide. ‘No, really? You slept with him?’
It was lunchtime and we were flying home. The tiny plane, still climbing, banked suddenly towards Kiruna. I craned my head and peered out of the window, catching a last glimpse of the Icehotel.
We’d said our goodbyes at the airport. Robyn and Jim were flying with us. Jane was travelling on a later plane, intending to stay in Stockholm to do some research for her article. We exchanged contact details, and I made her promise to send me the final draft of her travel feature. Jonas and Erik were with her, Erik holding her bag. I lifted my eyes to Jonas’s and smiled nervously. He smiled back, an expression of understanding in his eyes.
