by Karin Nordin
Esme listened carefully as Kjeld told the story. She could see that there was something about the case that bothered him. His eyes refused to focus on her when he spoke, gaze continually falling to the floor. What was that expression in his face? Shame? Regret?
‘We were driving back to the station when we got stuck in traffic on the exchange above the E45.’
Esme nodded. ‘I know where you mean.’
‘Well, Emma jumped out of the patrol car and made a dash across the highway into oncoming traffic. I chased after her, but I wasn’t quick enough. She was hit.’
‘Oh my God,’ Esme muttered under her breath. ‘Right in front of you?’
Kjeld’s mouth twisted into an uncomfortable frown, but he didn’t reply. Esme recognised that look now. Remorse. And uncertainty.
‘But how did she get out of the vehicle? It should have been locked.’
‘It was locked. I don’t know how she got out.’
Esme ran her fingers over the coins in her pocket. The sensation of cold metal against her fingertips focused her thoughts. She tried to put herself in Kjeld’s position. A suspect escaping from the back seat of a patrol car only offered a few explanations. Only three which she could reason: mechanical failure, human error, or malicious intent. The door was broken. Someone forgot to lock it. Or someone purposely made sure it was unlocked.
Two of those possibilities were unfortunate, but not criminal. The other …
‘What happened afterwards?’
‘It was investigated and determined to be an accident. We did manage to put Hermansson away for murder as you saw in the case file, but we couldn’t connect anything to Emma’s father. He fell off the radar not long afterwards. We suspected he might have left the country. Sadly, her mother committed suicide shortly after.’
‘Because of her daughter’s death?’
Kjeld nodded. ‘She drove her car off the Lemmingsgatan bridge and into the river.’
‘Have they reopened the investigation? Is that why SU is asking around about it? Do they suspect foul play in Emma’s death?’
Kjeld shrugged. ‘All I know is that they’re looking into it.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘It is. Because I know you, Kjeld. You wouldn’t make a mistake like that. You’re too careful.’
Chapter 29
Kjeld paced back and forth in front of Alice’s desk, shoes threatening to burn a path in the thin carpet. He stopped at the window and peered out into the street. The rain had stopped and a foggy chill began to ice the corners of the glass where there was a draught. Outside a pedestrian slipped on the pavement, but quickly got up and continued on their way undeterred. Alice had a small space heater beneath her desk that whirred as it rotated, jetting out a small whoosh of heat. It often took the radiators in the older section of the building time to warm up. The electric kettle jiggled on its stand, wheezing when it finally came to a boil, and she poured them both a cup of chamomile tea. Kjeld was embarrassed that he was growing accustomed to the scent and he instantly felt more relaxed.
He stepped away from the window and slumped down on the sofa. Alice placed a mug in front of him, the steam wafting up from the liquid, tea still steeping.
‘I’m stuck. These cases are eluding me. They’ve out-thought me at every turn.’
Alice sat down in her chair and took a small sip of her tea before setting the mug down on the low table in front of her. ‘Have you considered the possibility that they haven’t out-thought you but are simply ahead of you?’
‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
‘Not necessarily. Say, for instance, that you and your friend decide to go on a road trip in separate automobiles, but your friend gets half a day’s head start. It’s not that your friend knows the way any better than you do. It’s just that they’re ahead of you on the journey. And there’s always the possibility that your friend will make a wrong turn or stop to fill up the tank and give you the opportunity to catch up.’
‘If they were really my friend then we would have travelled together,’ Kjeld said blandly.
‘It’s a metaphor.’
‘I know, but I don’t need metaphors. What I need is a profile of the type of person who would re-enact a crime that a gruesome serial killer had planned for their last victim. I need to get in their head so I can figure out what’s motivating them. I need to know why they’re doing this. Then I can stop them from killing anyone else. Because they will do it again. I can feel it.’ Kjeld picked up his mug and took a sip. He’d let the teabag steep too long and it gave the chamomile an almost chalky taste. He took out the bag and set it in the small dish at the centre of the table. ‘Who do you think could be behind this?’
‘I’m not a forensic profiler.’
‘Humour me. If you had to guess based on the events so far. What kind of person would you be looking for?’
Alice crossed her legs. ‘Well, and this is purely speculative, mind you. And you only have one victim, thus far, correct?’
Kjeld nodded. ‘The other case is another problem, but at the moment it’s being deemed unrelated.’
‘In that case, your victim is a woman. That usually indicates a male killer. Her death was incredibly violent which would also play in favour of a man. But if we’re considering the possibility of a serial killer then for men there’s usually a sexual component. Female serial killers are more pragmatic in their motivations.’
‘There’s nothing to indicate a sexual motivation. None that we’ve found so far.’
‘It could be a delayed gratification on the killer’s part. Maybe he waits until after the killing to indulge his sexual cravings.’
Kjeld leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He hadn’t considered the possibility of there being a sexual connection to Louisa’s murder, but that might have been because he hadn’t wanted to see it. Alice had a point, however. There had been a lustful component for Gjur Hägglund when he chose his victims. If this new killer saw Hägglund as a kind of inspiration then he might have a similar design on his victims. And there was a torture aspect to the crimes that couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t a stretch to consider that the motive could have a sexual factor to it.
‘It’s also someone who is familiar with Louisa’s history. They’ve replicated the original crime almost exactly,’ Kjeld said.
‘But the original crime didn’t end with Louisa’s death. Which means the killer believes it should have. Like he’s finishing what someone else started or setting right what went wrong in the past.’
Kjeld’s forehead furrowed in thought. Was it possible that’s what the murderer was doing? Editing a past crime and giving it a new ending? Revising it to match what the original killer had intended?
‘But why Louisa? And why now?’
Alice shrugged. ‘I’m afraid that goes beyond my ability to speculate.’
Kjeld could still speculate, but beyond what Alice had already hypothesised ran into the realm of thinking too far. And, unfortunately, one death wasn’t enough to form a basis for any reliable conclusion. They would need another murder to compare it to. And potential ballistics error aside, Andrea’s case didn’t have the same level of execution and planning to it. Which meant that the only thing connecting the victims was Henny’s mysterious tipster. But that was a flimsy connection at best.
‘I heard SU is looking into your old cases,’ Alice said, cutting through Kjeld’s thoughts.
‘They are.’
‘Is that something you want to talk about?’
Kjeld sat back and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It wasn’t about me. Not really. They’re going through all of Nils’s old cases to make sure he didn’t tamper with evidence. If he’s convicted then every investigation he was involved in will be called into question. They’re trying to get a head start before the trial.’
‘That must be difficult for you. Because they weren’t just his cases. They were yours as well
. If they discover that he falsified evidence or lied on his reports then people might question how you didn’t notice it.’
‘People can think whatever they want. I know I didn’t do anything wrong.’ As much as Kjeld hated to admit it, if Nils had done something illegal in their past cases together then Kjeld simply didn’t catch it. Not because he wasn’t a good detective. Not because he wasn’t smart. But because Nils was better. And Nils was smarter. And because Kjeld had trusted him.
‘Still, it can be difficult going through your old cases and wondering if there was something you missed or something you got wrong. Even if it was accidental.’
Kjeld thought back to the Emma Hassan case. For years he’d racked his mind over that. Had he made a mistake? Had he gotten it wrong? He’d been replaying the event over and over in his thoughts every day since the chief asked him about it. The more he thought about it, the more uncertain he became. But he remembered clearly how he’d felt after it happened. He’d been adamant that he hadn’t made a mistake.
I locked that door. I know I did.
He shook the thought away.
‘I didn’t get anything wrong,’ he said. But in truth he didn’t know if he could trust his memories.
Chapter 30
Lördag | Saturday
Esme stood in front of the whiteboard in the incident room with her arms crossed. She’d been staring at their depressingly sparse collection of evidence for the last hour, trying to find a clue to jump-start their search in either case, but she kept coming up empty. It frustrated her not to be able to see the way the pieces fit together. She had a knack for visualising information in her mind. It wasn’t quite a photographic memory, but it was close. She referred to it as puzzling because it was a lot like spreading out the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, picture side up, and looking for patterns before attempting to fit the pieces together. She was actually quite good at jigsaw puzzles for that exact reason. If she stared at the pieces long enough she could find their proper places with very little effort.
But these cases were confounding her. She’d drawn a line down the centre of the whiteboard. On the left she’d scribbled the information from Louisa’s case in blue dry-erase ink. Close to her family. Last seen by her colleagues at the library. Didn’t make it to the bus. Unaccounted for on at least four work days. Potential relationship with someone from Second Life Wellness Respite. Extreme fire damage to her body. Toxicology had indicated ketamine in her system, but pathology added a caveat that the damage to the tissues from the fire could have masked or distorted the results and therefore the presence of unknown substances couldn’t be ruled out entirely.
On the right side of the board she’d written down the information from Andrea’s case with a green pen. Drug connections. Tense relationship with her wife. Gunshot wound to the head. Last seen on CCTV at the convenience store petrol station where she worked. Possibly still involved in the drug trade. Bullet matched to the gun in the Hedebrant case, but gun was found in evidence room in original bagging. She made a side note on this final point that the firearm was being retested and added three question marks for extra emphasis.
Then she stepped back and looked at all of it from a distance. From the outset they looked like two completely different cases. The only apparent connection between them was the note Esme had written in red at the top of the board: Henny’s Tipster.
Esme picked up the red pen and circled those two words. Then she stepped back again. She twirled the dry-erase marker between her fingers. She ran down the basics in her mind again. Louisa survived a serial killer and was murdered in the exact same manner the original killer had planned for her. She was close to her family, but didn’t tell them about her whereabouts on the four days she skipped work. She may have known someone at the commune, but Brother Björk claimed she’d never been to the commune. Andrea, a former drug dealer, was executed point-blank on a football field. The bullet striations were identical to the bullet that killed another man sixteen years ago, who was also involved in drug trafficking. What was she missing? What didn’t she see?
‘You’re still here?’
Esme glanced over her shoulder to see Sixten in the doorway. He slipped his arms through the sleeves of his jacket as he made his way to the whiteboard. Once he was beside her he stopped and observed the list she’d made.
‘That’s not a lot of information,’ he said.
‘I know.’ Esme returned her gaze to the list, hoping it would suddenly reveal the thread she was looking for.
‘I worked this case once when I was a beat officer. The till at this lingerie store kept getting robbed to the tune of almost twenty thousand kronor in a single week. For a month I kept getting called there because they were certain it was a particular customer who came in regularly because the money always seemed to go missing on days when this woman would come into the shop. I talked to her and she seemed genuinely surprised that anyone thought she would steal from them. But there weren’t any cameras inside the shop and so there was nothing to suggest she’d done anything wrong. Then one day we get a call to this pub that was across the street from the lingerie store saying that one of their regulars had smashed up the place. It was the same woman I’d interviewed at the shop. She’d had one too many drinks and gotten into a brawl with another woman for insulting her. When her purse was knocked over a stack of wrapped five-hundred kronor notes fell out along with three pairs of lace panties. Later we looked at the CCTV footage from the pub and discovered she would always leave the lingerie shop and head directly over to the pub. She was spending all the money on drinks and appetisers.’
Esme furrowed her brow. ‘Is this a morality tale about the danger of spending your stolen fortune in the same place?’
Sixten chuckled. ‘No, it’s a lesson about looking in the right direction. I was so focused on the lingerie shop that I didn’t think about the other places in the area. And if I’d looked across the street I might have realised that the pub had security cameras, which clearly depicted the woman leaving the shop and going directly to the pub.’
‘I don’t think anyone can fault you for being focused on the lingerie.’
Sixten blushed. ‘I’m just saying that sometimes we have tunnel vision and don’t even realise it. Sometimes we get so focused on the who that we forget about the how and the why. And if we start with the how and the why, often times the who is obvious.’
Esme glanced up at Sixten, surprised by the solemn composure on his face. She was so accustomed to him cracking jokes and playing the part of the idolising newbie that she often forgot he’d had a successful career in another department before transferring to their division. With his jaw set and mouth drawn in a neutral state of contemplation, he lost that boyish quality and seemed to age ten years. Serious looked good on Sixten and Esme was embarrassed to catch herself paying such close attention to how handsome his face looked. And how good he smelled.
She looked away quickly, her cheeks warm with chagrin.
Sixten didn’t notice or, if he did, had the good grace not to react. Esme appreciated that.
‘So, how do we know that Louisa might be connected to the commune?’ he asked.
‘Because her colleague told Kjeld she saw her talking to a young man who posted a flyer for the commune outside the library.’
‘And why don’t we know who he is?’
‘Because the library doesn’t have CCTV.’
Sixten crossed his arms over his chest. ‘But the library isn’t the only thing in the area, is it?’
‘Dammit,’ Esme cursed beneath her breath. She turned around and sat down at Axel’s computer, quickly pulling up the surveillance footage from the ATM that sat diagonal to the library. She searched through the files until she found the date that Louisa’s colleague claimed she’d been visited by a young man. The man who posted the flyers on the lamp pole in the car park.
Sixten watched her curiously, but didn’t say anything. Everyone on the team knew never to interrupt Esme when she w
as thinking.
It took her a few minutes to locate the file with the correct date and time, but when she fast-forwarded through the footage she felt a heavy weight fall from her shoulders. A weight that was replaced by an anxious flutter in her belly. A young man matching the description Linnea Thorsen gave Kjeld flashed on the screen. And not only that, it was a face Esme recognised. Not from either of the cases they were investigating, but from one she and Kjeld had four years ago.
Jonny Lindh. The sole accidental survivor of a tragic murder-suicide that had rocked the city as much as the Cellar Sadist case.
It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination for Esme to believe Jonny Lindh might seek out Second Life to help him recover from the gruesome scene they’d found him at. He must have been the man posting the flyers. The one who’d visited Louisa. And, in Esme’s mind, that meant one of two things.
He was connected to the killer.
Or he was next on the list.
Chapter 31
Jonny’s head was pounding as though it had been pressed against a bass speaker for the duration of a rock concert. A wave of nausea surged up from his stomach and he rolled over onto his side to vomit, but nothing came out. Just a gagging heave. There was a sour taste in his mouth, but his lips were dry, dehydrated. He’d never been so thirsty in his life. Fuck whatever it was Vidar had given him. He’d never touch that shit again. Hell, he’d never touch another drug for as long as he lived.
You’ve said that before, the condescending voice of his subconscious reminded him. And he was right. He had said that before. And then he got himself clean and sober for six months. Six months that he pissed away because he saw a picture of a girl in a news article. A girl he barely knew. But an article that scared the shit out of him.
The ground was damp and cold. Wooden planks ran horizontal to his face. It was dark in the room, but a thin glimmer of daybreak shone through the partly drawn curtains. A few feet away from him were the remains of yesterday’s dinner, which he must have heaved in the middle of the night. He couldn’t remember that. But the putrefying pile of vomit explained the rotten taste in his mouth and the woozy sensation in his head.
