“This one is quite bent,” she said and looked up at Walter, who was standing by her side.
Walter said nothing, just nodded, and went farther into what looked like the living room. A big, dark green, U-shaped, English-style leather sofa surrounded a solid-oak table. On the walls hung modern surrealist art in loud colours by artists he had never heard of. His eyes wandered over the objects in the room. Suddenly, he saw something familiar. Troubled, he approached a shelf on the far side of the room and picked up the object. There was no mistaking it. He gazed at the winged skeleton and then took out his mobile phone and dialled a number from memory.
After completing a brief telephone conversation, he continued towards what resembled a dining room. A long, pinewood, dining-room table dominated the cold, white-painted room.
Forensics had rigged up lighting around a body that lay on the floor by the side of the table.
“And here we have Mrs Ekwall,” Walter deduced, standing next to the dead woman with his hands in his trouser pockets.
Stig Jonsered from Forensics stood up. He had been sitting on his knees by the body with a UV scanner, searching the floor for traces of blood.
“See here, Walter,” Jonsered began, “a woman, fifty plus. Cause of death: a blow to the temple. Murder weapon: probably the golf club that’s placed in the hallway. She’s been dead for about six hours.”
Walter bent over the dead woman and looked at her cracked skull.
“That’s a hole in one for Lennart Ekwall,” Walter said, at the same time Jonna came into the room.
“A hole in what?” Jonna asked, interested, and then looked at the dead woman. Her lightly tanned face changed suddenly when she became aware of the mess that had leaked from the head. Walter was also kind enough to explain in detail what she was looking at. Suddenly, Jonna rushed out of the room. Through the window, both Walter and Jonsered could see Jonna stand with her hands against the outside wall and violently throw up the contents of her stomach.
They looked at each other and smiled with pure Schadenfreude.
Walter proceeded to the top floor where he systematically went through table drawers and cupboards, hunting for objects or clues that could be of interest to the investigation. He noticed an extreme level of tidiness associated with all of the man’s things. In particular, the menswear and toiletries were precisely sorted according to method of use. The men’s clothes were immaculately ironed and placed on hangers, whereas the shirts were sorted by colour. The suits were also colour-coded, starting with light suits to the left and dark suits to the right. Even the underwear was folded and neatly sorted according to the colour system.
Ties were hung according to width and shoes according to season, with winter shoes farthest in.
There were two bathroom cabinets. One was neat and clean, like a laboratory. After-shave, deodorant and toothbrushes were lined up with military precision. In the other, there was make-up and perfume, all in disarray, and Walter noticed smears of mascara on the cabinet shelves and traces of sticky fingerprints.
Walter heard steps on the stairs and saw Jonna on her way up the beautiful pinewood staircase. She had pulled herself together and most of the colour had returned to her face.
“You must be hungry after turning your stomach inside out,” Walter said.
“Have you found anything?” she answered tersely and looked around.
Walter could not help but be amused by Jonna’s self-confident demeanour. She obviously had thick skin and there was something about the rock-hard exterior she adopted that appealed to him. And it was not because he felt sorry for her coming from an upper-class family. She needed to prove something. Whether it was to herself or to others was of little importance.
“Messy wife and pedantic husband, to summarize the impressions so far,” Walter said and opened a wardrobe door.
“The odds must be one in ten thousand,” Jonna replied.
“That the wife is messy?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe so. But does it tell us anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“It suggests that he was very neat.”
“Well,” Jonna said, looking at Walter suspiciously, “either he must be a perfectionist or his wife tidied up for him.”
“Maybe so,” Walter said. “But if it was the dead woman down there who took care of his possessions, then she would have taken as much care of her own.”
Walter showed Jonna the unironed women’s clothes.
“Maybe he forced her to,” Jonna suggested.
“Very possibly,” Walter said. “But wouldn’t she also have arranged her own personal things in a similar fashion?”
Jonna pondered for a few seconds. “Maybe that’s why he killed her,” she said and continued, “perhaps she finally refused.”
“Carry on,” Walter said, interested.
“Let’s assume she was messy by nature,” Jonna said. “Finally, she got fed up of taking care of his things. She defied him and Lennart Ekwall lost his temper. He beat her to death because she quite simply refused to continue to clean his clothes. What contradicts such a theory is that he was most definitely not a
moron – at least, not if one looks at where he lives and what this house must cost.”
“Wife-beaters can be found in all social classes,” Walter pointed out.
Jonna looked at Walter pensively. There was somewhat of a discrepancy between his questions and the answers she was giving. He was testing her.
“There could be another explanation too,” she suggested.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Suppose that his wife had some sort of problem. Maybe mental illness or even a drinking problem, considering the wine glass that lay by the body and the time of the murder. It’s not quite normal to start the morning off with wine, unless there was a party that lasted all night, which there were no signs of downstairs.”
“Intriguing. Tell me more,” Walter said.
Jonna bit her lip. “He was a perfectionist. She was an alcoholic. There’s the connection.”
Walter gestured for her to continue.
“He couldn’t tolerate her drinking and making a mess because it disturbed his existence. Many perfectionists have a problem with that.”
“I would also be disturbed,” Walter objected. “And I’m definitely not a perfectionist. But let’s assume a perfectionist has a lower tolerance level.”
“In any case, finally, he could take no more and killed her,” Jonna said.
“Why hadn’t he done it earlier?” Walter wondered. “They have certainly been together for a while.”
“Maybe she gradually became an alcoholic at the same rate that he became more pedantic. Eventually, everything culminated in some form of shouting match that ended in death – a vicious circle.”
“Do you really believe that yourself?” Walter asked sceptically.
Jonna hesitated at first. Did she believe it? Did it sound like a possible and plausible explanation of why Ekwall had murdered his own wife?
“I really do think that it could have happened like that,” Jonna answered in a confident voice. “But we will be finding that out during the interrogation.”
“Yes, we will,” Walter said and bent down under the bed. It was clean except for a pair of slippers – not even a ball of dust. For his own part, he had stopped looking under his own bed. The number of dust balls that constantly multiplied there made him depressed. It was about time to fix the vacuum cleaner before he suffocated from all the bed mites.
Walter stood up quickly, but suddenly lost his balance. The room started to rock and he was forced to steady himself against the bed. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and felt overcome by a cold sweat. His sense of hearing disappeared and the room became blurred.
“Why are you lying on the bed?” he heard Jonna say from the doorway.
Walter opened his eyes. For a brief moment, he did not know where he was or how long he had lain on the bed. The house, D
jursholm, Jonna, the floor upstairs. …
He sat up on the edge of the bed. The dizziness had ceased and he could see clearly again.
“I don’t know,” he answered curtly.
Jonna looked at Walter disbelievingly. “Doesn’t this remind you of what happened when we were at SKL …”
“Have you found anything else?” Walter cut her off.
Jonna gave up and shook her head. “I have to show you something.”
Walter mumbled something in reply and forced himself to stand up. He swayed, but regained his balance while trying to appear unaffected. Jonna looked at Walter apprehensively as he walked across the room. Now it was his turn to be pale-faced. Again.
“What did you want to show me?” Walter asked.
“In here,” she answered and gestured for him to follow her into a small office. She pulled out a desk drawer and showed him a wallet with business cards. Walter opened the zipper of his nylon overalls and fumbled for his glasses from the inner pocket of his well-worn leather jacket.
With his improved vision, he noted the text on the business card. He flipped eagerly through more cards in the holder. They were all identical. Walter put the wallet down and sat down heavily in the office chair that stood next to the desk.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said and looked at Jonna.
Walter took out his mobile phone and punched in Lilja’s number.
“Do you have a moment?” Walter asked as soon as Lilja picked it up.
Lilja was on his way home from the police station and had answered in the car.
“No, not unless it is important.”
“How about a golfing district prosecutor who has bashed in his wife’s skull?” Walter started.
It was quiet at the other end.
“What the hell are you talking about? Are you at Djursholm now?” Lilja asked, irritated, after a few seconds. He was not in the mood for twenty questions with Walter now.
“Yes, we have a district prosecutor who took a swing at his wife’s head,” Walter repeated.
Once again, there was silence on the phone line.
“Damn it, not again,” Lilja groaned. He would be forced to make his way back to the police station to do the paperwork and to inform SÄPO, the County Police Commissioner and God knows who else. No weekly shopping at Co-op or evening cuddles on the sofa today either. It was going to be a long Saturday.
“What shall we do now?” Walter asked, excessively sympathetic when he heard Lilja’s exasperation on the other end.
“Finish off the initial crime scene investigation and then come in and interrogate him as we agreed,” Lilja muttered. “I will contact SÄPO.”
Jonna went down to the kitchen and looked around. She entered a world full of state-of-the-art kitchen appliances: built-in espresso machine; soda stream and ice-maker; heavy, supersized fridge and freezer with built-in LCD screens in the doors. Despite all this, the kitchen looked almost unused. She did not really know what she was looking for, but she systematically went through every space and object. Even the gift packaging for a wine bottle was of the highest quality. “To Lisbeth Ekwall from an admirer,” she read, in stamped aluminium, on the beautiful, cylindrical gift container. It was not only the container that was exclusive. The wine bottle that stood beside it and that had been emptied was no less than a Montrachet 2004.
A French wine at about ten thousand crowns per bottle. That’s not bad at all, Jonna thought. Lisbeth obviously had an admirer who was both a wine connoisseur and wealthy. It must be the wine that she had been drinking before she received the lethal blow. Forensics would surely be able to confirm that.
Just as Walter came into the kitchen, his mobile phone rang.
“Is she absolutely certain?” Walter asked.
Jonna heard a voice confirm Walter’s question.
“What was that about?” Jonna asked curiously, as Walter finished the short and unintelligible conversation.
Walter clumsily extricated a cough drop from the inner pocket of his leather jacket.
“Follow me and I’ll show you something,” he said and went into the living room. “Do you see anything in here that seems out of the ordinary?”
“Everything,” Jonna replied straightaway. “But especially the artwork if I have to choose something specific.”
“Aside from that.”
Jonna looked at the room from the floor to the ceiling. “No, what would that be?” she said.
“A trained eye can spot it,” Walter said. “Just a small detail.”
Jonna walked around the room and studied the ornaments in detail. When she got to the bookshelf, she stopped.
“This one,” she said and pointed to the small plaster figure. “It really looks out of place here. A little distasteful, actually.”
Walter nodded, satisfied. “That’s not the only reason,” he said. “A similar angel was also found in Malin Sjöstrand’s jacket pocket.”
Jonna raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“In addition, I just got confirmation that Bror Lantz’s wife found a similar figure in her kitchen on the same day that the incident with the taxi occurred.”
Jonna looked at Walter, astonished. “In her kitchen? What does that mean?”
“Since she didn’t buy it herself, and it didn’t fly into her kitchen on its own wings, we can assume that it came to be there by some other means,” Walter answered and gazed out of one of the windows.
“Bror,” Jonna said.
“No, he didn’t recognize the skeleton.”
“Then it’s someone trying to make a statement,” Jonna deduced.
“Yes, unless it’s a new trend to leave small angels of death at people’s homes.”
“Hardly. Of course, it was fashionable to have death skulls for a while, but I find it difficult to see …”
“I thought as much,” Walter cut in, who was as trend-conscious as a monk in a monastery.
“The question is why did Malin Sjöstrand have one in her pocket?” Walter asked himself out loud. “She must have bought it or received it from someone or someone planted it on her. She was drugged; anyone could have easily placed it in her pocket without her knowing about it.”
“But why? What are they trying to say?” Jonna threw up her hands in despair.
“Maybe nothing,” Walter said. “Serial killers have a predilection for rituals of various types; they don’t necessarily have a meaning in themselves. To leave this figure as a calling card could be a similar behaviour.”
Jonna felt a cold shiver. “Serial killer? Do you mean that someone has drugged them all with Drug-X?”
“Anything is possible,” Walter said, “but finding a motive is significantly more difficult.”
“It doesn’t take much to see that there’s an obvious connection between these three deaths,” Jonna smiled slightly.
“Yes, but I’m afraid that there will be more chapters to this story,” Walter sighed.
SVEN-ERIK WAS FORCED to apologize to his future son-in-law even though it was difficult for him. Jörgen had been right about Karin Sjöstrand. The informant had been accurate and Sjöstrand was now officially charged with the manslaughter of her fifteen-year-old daughter. That she was an expert adviser and politically active in the county council administration as well as being a lay juror in Stockholm District Court made the whole story even more interesting, which contradicted Sven-Erik’s earlier view of the issue. He had made a bad judgment call. The tabloids were dominated by the murder of the fifteen-year-old girl, and the mother went under the alias “lay jurywoman”. The story in the daily newspapers took up several pages. Psychologists, ex-jurors and politicians now vied to surpass each other with the most outlandish analyses about the underlying factors behind the incident.
First out was Aftonposten in their online edition. It was five-thirty in the evening when the news bombshell exploded. The duty news editor at Kvällspressen called Sven-Erik at his home and informed him that he had been tipped off about a real
ly hot news item. Sven-Erik literally coughed up his evening cocktail when he heard what Aftonposten had gone to print with. He immediately called Jörgen and ordered him in to the news desk so that the duty editor could go through the material that Sven-Erik had just turned down. He definitely did not want to miss anything that could trump the official version. Jörgen’s source probably had more details than were included in the official press release and that would give Kvällspressen a small but important edge over the competition. Jörgen was asked to contact his source again.
To Jörgen’s great disappointment, the informant was not contactable and could not therefore provide him with anything significantly different from the information that the other media now possessed. But he had now received his long-awaited retribution.
Finally, Jörgen would get the recognition he so well deserved at the newspaper. Now he could work like a genuine star reporter without having his cap in hand because of lack of respect. People would listen to him with entirely fresh ears from now on.
CHAPTER 10
LILJA HAD JUST returned from his disrupted homewards journey and sat slouched behind a pile of paper when Walter and Jonna came into the office. He asked them to wait while he finished annotating one of the documents.
“I have contacted the Chief Prosecutor, Uddestad and SÄPO,” Lilja began, and stood up from his chair, agitated. He went to the window and put his hands behind his back.
“Julén wants to be sure that Lennart Ekwall was not in a state of shock and therefore confessed to the murder of his wife by mistake. This is to be handled in the same fashion as the Bror Lantz case,” he said and turned to face Walter.
Walter flushed.
“Explain that to me,” he said.
“Not right now,” Lilja answered. “By the way, did you find anything of interest at the crime scene?” He looked at Jonna.
Jonna was just about to answer yes to the question when she was interrupted by Walter’s abrupt reply.
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