The Glass Devil: A Detective Inspector Huss Investigation, Vol. 3

by Helen Tursten

  “No. A witness who was out that summer night rowing on the lake heard voices from the church around midnight. He thought it sounded like chanting. A little while later, he saw flames shooting up from the building and supposedly he saw shapes moving around the fire. According to him, they were dancing. The witness was in his seventies and had heart problems, so he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about the fire. Instead, he hurried home and called the fire department. But by the time they got there, the building had practically burned to the ground. Strangely enough, the door had survived, and I saw an upside-down pentagram for the second time.”

  “Drawn on it with hamster blood,” the superintendent added.

  “Yes. Animal sacrifices are common during their rituals. There’s one additional item at the crime scene in the rectory that has Satanic connections: A crucifix is hanging upside-down in the Schytteliuses’ bedroom. Satanists often use upside-down crosses during their black masses. The crucifix may well have hung in the bedroom before the murders, but the killer took the opportunity to turn it around.”

  Irene tried to pull together the items of information they had just received. It wasn’t yet possible to combine them into a pattern. She raised her hand and posed her question when Svante nodded at her: “Do you think it’s plausible that someone would shoot his victims as part of a Satanic rite?”

  Svante shook his head. “No. Rituals using knives are important elements in such murders. Swords are not uncommon. Nor is poison. There are usually different symbols painted or carved on the victims. They’re marked to show that they belong to the devil. Satanists have a strong belief in the power of blood. They drink blood and sacrifice blood. Of course it was bloody at the crime scene yesterday, but nothing points to these deaths being the result of the performance of a Satanic ritual.”

  “Except for the pentagrams and the cross,” said Tommy.

  “Exactly.”

  Svante hid a yawn with his hand. A tap at the door was followed by its opening. Svante’s colleague, Bosse Åhlén, stuck his bald head into the room. He lumbered over to where Svante sat. Irene knew that Åhlén was a few years younger than herself but his early hair loss and chubbiness made him look much older. Otherwise, the most notable thing about Bosse Åhlén was that he had seven kids, the youngest only a few months old. Maybe that was the main reason he looked tired, but the night’s work had left its mark as well.

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He wiped his glasses on his not-so-clean lab coat. When he had returned them to their place on his round potato nose, he started speaking. “Report from the cottage at Norssjön. The victim was shot at close range with a large-caliber weapon. One round in the chest near the heart, and one through the head. He had his jacket and shoes on when he was found. These and his other clothes were in order. A plastic bag from Hemköp, a bag with gym clothes, and a lunch box were lying next to him. Everything points to the victim having been shot just as he stepped through the front door. It opens outward and he fell inward, so the murderer didn’t need to move the body in order to close the door. There are no signs of a struggle. No weapon was found in or around the crime scene. We’re going to make a thorough search of the property today.”

  “Has Ljunggren looked at the computer?” Svante Malm asked.

  “Yes. It’s completely dead, not functional. According to Ljunggren, someone formatted the hard drive using the Pentagon method.”

  “The ‘Pentagon method’? Explain!” Andersson commanded.

  “You can burn, crush with a sledgehammer, or pick apart a computer to try to destroy information on its hard drive. It’s useless, according to Ljunggren. It’s always possible to piece together at least a part of the contents again.”

  “Who the hell is able to do that?” Andersson asked.

  “A few really skilled hackers. Ljunggren says that there’s a company in Norway which is expert at it. Of course, it costs a lot of money, but in some cases it’s worth it. Usually, computers get sent there after a fire.

  “So, basically, it’s very difficult to get rid of information stored on hard drives. According to the Pentagon, which obviously has top-secret material on its computers, there’s only one surefire way: You run a formatting program which actually writes random ones and zeros to the entire drive, replacing the information that was previously there. And you run it several times, just to be sure. That makes it impossible to reconstruct the files. Ordinarily, when you erase or even format a disk, the actual information, the non-random ones and zeros, is still there; what the erasing or formatting does is simply to destroy the ‘map’ to where all the information is located on the disk but it’s still theoretically possible to retrieve that information if you know what you’re doing.”

  “And where does one get their hands on such a formatting program?” Tommy asked.

  “You can buy them in computer stores. You can probably download them from the Internet as well. Anyone who has this software can replace everything on the hard drive with ones and zeros, which again totally destroys all the information that was there; and then just reinstall the system software so the computer will function, but with an otherwise empty hard drive.”

  “How long does it take to erase an entire hard drive?”

  “According to Ljunggren, about one to two hours on average, depending on its capacity.”

  Tommy wrinkled his brow in concentration. Suddenly he brightened up and asked eagerly, “Did you find any kind of disk or CD containing formatting software at the cottage?”

  “No.”

  Tommy turned toward Svante Malm. “Did you find such a disk at the rectory?”

  The technician shook his head.

  “So the murderer must have stayed with his victims for an hour or two, running the formatting program.”

  “Or maybe he had time to run it before the murders. Jacob Schyttelius was shot when he came home in the evening. The murderer could have gotten into the house during the day, and then he would have had plenty of time,” Fredrik Stridh objected.

  “And he may have downloaded the program directly from the Internet rather than carrying it around with him,” Åhlén put in.

  “So all we know is that the murderer effectively destroyed the computers at both crime scenes,” Irene thought out loud.

  “And marked them with the Devil’s face,” Tommy added.

  “The Devil’s . . . !” Andersson exclaimed, irritated. “That is just a dead end. A pastor wouldn’t have anything to do with Satanists!”

  “Don’t say that. The summer church at Norssjön was burned down by Satanists. And Schyttelius had a house by the lake,” said Irene.

  “Do you mean that Schyttelius himself was a Satanist and burned down that church?” Jonny Blom asked.

  “Of course not. I just think it’s strange that the church was located in the vicinity of the Schyttelius family, and that the symbol which had been painted on the church doors was also on the computer monitors.”

  “Except that it was written in hamster blood, not human blood,” the superintendent muttered.

  “The question is whether there is any relationship. According to Svante, pentagrams are commonly drawn during different rituals. It’s possible that the person who drew the pentagrams on the computer screens didn’t know about the symbol on the church door,” Irene continued thinking out loud.

  “I say it’s a dead end! To hell with the computers and the bloody symbols and that crap, and concentrate on the murders!” Andersson exclaimed.

  Irene became worried when she saw how red his face was. She knew how much he hated not having even the smallest definite lead to start with. Here, everything was just a guess. In certain complicated cases like the Schyttelius murders, there were no obvious leads or motives and it gave the investigators the feeling that the murderer was playing games with them. Irene wasn’t sure that that was the case with this investigation. Maybe the murderer was trying to say something? But that was contradicted by the fact that the
murderer had silenced the only witnesses who could have provided any clues: the computers.

  Andersson took a deep breath in order to regain his composure and get his blood pressure under control. “It’s been settled with the police in Borås that we will undertake the investigation of the murders. Most of the parish lies within our jurisdiction, not to mention that it’s a large complicated case. Irene, Tommy, and Fredrik will drive out to Kullahult and question the church personnel and the neighbors. Jonny and Hannu will speak with the people who live in the vicinity of the cottage. It will go faster out at the cottage, and when you are done you can join the others at Kullahult. Canvassing the neighborhood has apparently not given rise to anything concrete yet, but you’ll have to speak with the officers who have been making inquiries.

  “We’ll meet here at the station around five o’clock. Personally, I’m going to speak with the press in an hour. After that, I’m going to contact Georg . . . the principal at the school where Jacob Schyttelius worked. Then it would probably be a good idea to pull out the reports from the Purple Murder and the fire at the church by Norssjön. And I’m going to try and get ahold of Yvonne Stridner.”

  A heavy sigh escaped him with the last sentence. The others nodded in understanding. Professor Yvonne Stridner, the head of Pathology, was not easy to deal with.

  Chapter 5

  THE SLUSHY SNOW FROM the day before had transformed itself into an annoying freezing drizzle. The temperature during the night had risen to seven degrees above zero, Celsius, but it was premature to start feeling giddy about spring warmth. Veils of rainy haze obscured Landvetter Lake and erased the division between air and water. Everything was obscured by a single wet gray mist.

  The unmarked police car turned toward Kullahult. The streets were noticeably empty. It seemed as though everything and everyone huddled indoors because of the tragedy that had befallen the small community. After driving around the church hill, they found a sign reading “Fellowship Hall.” It pointed at a low yellow brick house with a flat roof in the style of buildings from the late 1960s.

  Irene had called the Kullahult Church Association before they left. Deaconess Rut Börjesson had answered. She seemed articulate and efficient, despite the fact that her voice shook with suppressed tears. She promised to gather all the association’s employees in the Fellowship Hall to make things easier for the officers. Irene had informed her that three investigators would arrive, so the questioning would go quickly. She imagined that there could hardly be very many people employed by the church; therefore, she was surprised when they entered the hall and counted ten people waiting.

  A small, thin woman dressed in mourning clothes came forward. Her thin gray hair was cut in a short bob, untouched by dye or a permanent. Her eyes, behind thick glasses, were red-rimmed and tear-filled. The woman stretched out her ice-cold hand to the officers one by one and told them that she was Rut Börjesson, the deaconess. Then she introduced her colleagues.

  First was a tall woman with mahogany-colored hair. She was probably over fifty, but her figure was slender and her face still beautiful. “Well-preserved” was a good adjective for her. Rut Börjesson introduced her as the church accountant, Louise Måårdh.

  “With two ‘å’s.” Louise smiled and held out her cool hand.

  Irene was one hundred and eighty centimeters2 tall in her stocking feet, and Louise Måårdh was almost as tall. She was surprised to meet a woman who could have once been a photographer’s model working as a church accountant in a country parish. This was explained when a dark man in a pastor’s shirt next to her introduced himself as Bengt Måårdh, the assistant rector of Ledkulla parish. Still, Louise Måårdh didn’t look like a clergyman’s wife to her. My assumptions are probably at fault, thought Irene. She’d pictured a round and happy woman who smelled of newly baked rolls, smiling, serving the women in the church sewing circle. Louise Måårdh looked as if she spent her spare time on the golf course rather than in front of an oven.

  The same could have been said for her husband. He was tall and slender, with clean-cut features. His dark hair, just beginning to be streaked with gray, contrasted nicely with his tanned skin. After a glance at Louise’s face, Irene concluded that the Måårdh family had recently been on a ski trip and had had good weather.

  The look in Bengt Måårdh’s brown eyes was sad and serious. He took Irene’s hand in both of his, and for a confused second Irene had the impression that he was planning on extending his condolences to her. Instead, he mumbled a few words about how incomprehensible it was that Mr. and Mrs. Schyttelius were no longer with them. Not to mention their son . . . the assistant rector’s voice broke as he shook his head without letting go of Irene’s hand. She had begun to extract it from his grip when he released it with a mumbled apology.

  Jonas Burman stood next to Bengt Måårdh. They greeted each other briefly. Irene noted that the young assistant rector looked pale but resolute.

  The short, dark-skinned woman at his side was Rosa Marqués. She was not quite middle-aged and spoke very good Swedish, though with a distinct accent. The deaconess explained that she cleaned both the Fellowship Hall and the rectory.

  There was yet another married couple in the room. They looked to be in their sixties and introduced themselves as the church sextons, Siv and Örjan Svensson. They took care of the custodial duties in Kullahult and Ledkulla parishes. He was short and slender; she was also short, but plump. There we have the cinnamon roll maker, Irene thought.

  A man in a checked shirt and carpenter’s pants stepped forward energetically and introduced himself. “Stig Björk, cemetery caretaker,” he said, and smiled. The smile created rays of wrinkles around his blue eyes. His white teeth gleamed in his weather-beaten face. Obviously, he spent a lot of time in the fresh air. There was a trace of gray here and there in his dark hair. Irene estimated his age to be around forty. He must have realized that his smile was inappropriate, because it quickly faded and he peered nervously at the man behind him.

  The latter had been leaning against the wall, but now he stepped into the light. Like Bengt Måårdh, he wore a black shirt with a white pastor’s collar, but over the shirt he wore a short black coat, similar to a blazer. He introduced himself as Assistant Rector Urban Berg of Bäckared.

  His handshake was dry and cool. His entire person radiated self-control verging on stiffness. His gray-speckled blond hair was perfectly combed. A bald spot on the very top of his head was barely perceptible. He and Bengt Måårdh seemed to be about the same age.

  Now there was only one woman left who hadn’t been introduced. She was small and dainty. It was hard to guess her age, probably between twenty-five and thirty-five. Her long blond hair was held in place by a leather headband which showed off her beautiful features. Her large violet-blue eyes were shadowed by long eyelashes. Not the slightest trace of makeup could be seen on her face. She wore a dark-blue linen dress with puffed sleeves, and low black boots. The cemetery caretaker gave her a look, and Irene could see that it was one of admiration. And maybe something else. Even the restrained Urban Berg’s eyes gleamed a bit when he let his gaze sweep over this woman.

  “My name is Eva Möller, and I am the cantor and organist,” she said in a soft, melodic voice.

  Irene had thought that a cantor always was also the church organist, but the way Eva phrased this showed that it wasn’t the case.

  The portly man seated on a loudly creaking chair by the door was Nils Bertilsson, sexton part of the time in Bäckared parish and the other half at Slättared. His worn black suit was tightfitting, and he wiped his forehead and bald spot with a large handkerchief. When he rose to be introduced, Irene saw that he was almost as tall as she was but certainly weighed more than twice as much.

  Irene was assigned to question deaconess Rut Börjesson, the Måårdhs, and the housecleaner, Rosa Marqués.

  “You can use my office,” Louise Måårdh offered.

  She opened a french door which led into a pleasant office space. Two pot
s containing miniature Easter lilies stood on the window sill, framed by sun-yellow curtains. Combined with the bouquet of red tulips on the desk, they evoked a feeling of spring, even though it might as well have been November outside. A framed poster from the Göteborg Theater’s production of Les Misérables hung on the wall.

  Irene decided to start with the deaconess. She asked Rut Börjesson to follow her into the room. The black-clothed woman sat in a comfortable-looking visitor’s chair and gripped the armrests with both hands.

  Irene began with routine questions. She determined that the deaconess was fifty-eight years old, married with no children, and that she had worked in Kullahult parish for seventeen years.

  “Did you work here before Pastor Schyttelius came to this congregation?” Irene asked.

  “Rector. Sten Schyttelius came here as the rector exactly twenty years ago. So he was here three years before me.”

  Irene realized that she had a very poor understanding of the titles bestowed by the Swedish church. Cautiously, she asked, “Was he the boss of the other pastors?”

  “Yes. Ledkulla, Bäckared, and Slättared each have an assistant rector. Because Kullahult is the largest parish with the largest church, the rector has always had the church here.”

  The deaconess answered all questions put to her but she hugged the armrests of her chair so hard that her knuckles turned white. Irene put it down to indignation. She must have known her boss well after having worked with him for so many years. That’s why Irene shifted her inquiry. “I assume you knew Elsa Schyttelius?”

  “Yes. We’ve spent some time together over the years.”

  “What kind of person was she?”

  Uncertainty was visible in the deaconess’s face. “She was very nice . . . reserved. Very pleasant and friendly, when she was well.”

  “So when she was feeling well, she was kind. What kind of illness did she have?”

  “It was unpleasant . . . she suffered from depression. It came and went. Apparently, she had had it since childhood, and the illness worsened after she had her children.”