Anger Mode

by Stefan Tegenfalk

  “No, we didn’t find anything”.

  Jonna corrected herself and looked, surprised, at Walter.

  Lilja stared suspiciously at the odd couple on the other side of the desk.

  “Shall we interview Ekwall straightaway?” Jonna asked and felt her pulse quicken.

  “Yes, it’s just as well. You know the procedure,” Lilja answered as he sat down heavily in the chair again. He had wanted to avoid all the messy internal politics and instead be at home with a cold beer in his hand in front of the TV. Weekend jobs were the worst he could think of, with the exception of visiting his decrepit mother-in-law, who always complained about how poorly the police protected senior citizens against today’s unshaven riff-raff.

  “Why didn’t you want me to mention that angel of death?” Jonna asked as they walked down to the detention cells.

  “Let’s save that for another time,” Walter answered.

  “Yes, but …”

  “I thought you were assisting SÄPO with the Sjöstrand investigation full-time?” Walter cut her off harshly.

  “That’s what I’m doing now, more or less,” Jonna said and reluctantly dropped the angel of death discussion. Walter seemed to be in a bad mood. She did not know why. “But I’m not the only one from RSU working with SÄPO, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “How many investigations are you actually participating in?”

  “Right now, it’s enough with these two.” Jonna laughed nervously.

  “That’s one too many, in my opinion,” Walter declared.

  “One could say that I’m not exactly setting the pace in either of them, so I do have enough time for both of them, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No matter, this investigation will more or less be concluded after this interview,” Walter said. “If Prosecutor Ekwall sticks to his confession, then the duty prosecutor either has to put together charges or look the other way and kill the investigation, as Lilja was implying. I won’t swallow the latter option one more time. I’m definitely an obedient cop, but not blindly obedient.”

  “I wouldn’t follow that order either,” Jonna agreed. “The number of investigations being dropped due to lack of evidence is starting to become an epidemic – first Lantz and now maybe Ekwall.”

  “Bloody banana republic,” Walter muttered.

  “But Julén did nothing for Sjöstrand. She was charged.”

  “She was just an ordinary lay juror of the court and definitely not a member of their mutual appreciation society. Or maybe she has the wrong party politics,” Walter smirked.

  LENNART EKWALL SAT behind a table in one of the slightly larger interview rooms in the detention cell block. Jonna was first in, closely followed by Walter, who was breathing heavily after their fast pace through the corridors of police headquarters. He was quick to sit in one of the chairs and tried to catch his breath without revealing how unfit he was.

  Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and large sweat patches spread under his armpits.

  Jonna looked at Walter, rather amused.

  He tossed the folder labelled with a file number and the name Lennart Ekwall on the table and let it rest under his right hand so that Jonna could not take it. As he expected, she went quickly to the voice recorder and started the interview with the routine declaration of why the interview was taking place and who was present.

  This time, Walter had not given her any rules of conduct for the interview, which was why the ever-ambitious Ms de Brugge was eager to start. Ekwall had already admitted to the murder of his wife so, no matter what Jonna did, she could not ruin the investigation with some rookie mistake.

  Jonna glanced at the folder, which, unfortunately, was out of her reach. Walter saw in her eyes that she was about to reach for it. He quickly picked it up and started browsing through the pages slowly, humming to himself. Discreetly, she leaned in a little to get a glimpse of the contents, but Walter closed the folder.

  “So, Lennart Ekwall, you don’t want a lawyer,” began Walter as he observed the dapper man opposite him. Walter had the folder at a safe distance from a now slightly irritated Jonna.

  The man was sitting motionless and did not acknowledge with a single movement that he had heard what Walter said. He had a stylish haircut and his face emanated dignity, but it was as stiff as if it were hewn out of stone. Not even the eyelids over his steel-grey eyes seemed to move.

  The man looks like a mannequin, thought Walter and looked at Jonna, who was seething with irritation. She probably wanted to tear the file from Walter’s hand. He drummed his fingers lightly on the folder before he opened it again.

  “From what I can read in the police officer’s report, you have admitted to the police officers who were first on the spot that you took the life of your wife, Lisbeth Ekwall, by hitting her head with a blunt instrument.” Walter took a break while he pulled out his reading glasses from his breast pocket. “The instrument in question was an iron golf club, which has been placed in the hall. Is that statement correct?” Walter looked up from the folder.

  “That statement is correct,” confirmed Ekwall dryly, his lips barely moving.

  Walter now thought that he resembled a ventriloquist’s dummy or a bronze statue more than a mannequin.

  “Excellent, then we can move on,” continued Walter. “You’re apparently a district prosecutor by profession. It’s not stated in the preliminary data I have in this file, but is it accurate?”

  “Yes, the detective has got that fact right as well,” said Ekwall.

  Jonna could not be quiet anymore. She fidgeted as she listened to Walter leisurely continuing the interview. They would be sitting here for hours at this rate. She jumped in before Walter could ask the next question.

  “Why did you kill your wife?”

  Walter turned to Jonna. “We’ll get to that later,” he said in a calm voice and was about to continue the interview when the bronze statue cleared his throat.

  “I will relate the sequence of events to the Detective Inspector and his assistant, if it’s of any interest,” he suggested and looked from Jonna to Walter.

  “Please do,” said Jonna before Walter had time to react. He shot Jonna an annoyed glance.

  “I usually get up early in the morning, as I did this morning,” began the District Prosecutor. “To be more precise, six-thirty. I found my wife lying on the sofa, passed out due to alcohol. The previous evening, she had drunk herself into a stupor, as usual. She is, in fact, an alcoholic.”

  Walter nodded in agreement, as if he too had an alcoholic wife with all the problems that implied.

  “I tried to eat breakfast at seven o’clock before I went out for my usual jog. It takes about thirty minutes and I run along the beach promenade below the house.”

  “Tried to eat breakfast?” Walter cut him off curiously.

  “Yes, it had a bad taste. It was as if all the food had been spoiled.”

  Walter looked thoughtfully at the bronze statue.

  “Carry on,” he said, with a wave of his hand.

  “When I came home, Lisbeth had woken up and was about to have a breakfast of wine. As usual, I didn’t take any notice of her when she was in that mood and, instead, I went upstairs and took a short sauna and then a shower. After I went downstairs to make some coffee, I found an opened wine bottle standing on the kitchen counter next to a parcel from an unnamed sender.”

  “An admirer perhaps?” suggested Jonna.

  Walter motioned to Ekwall to continue.

  “In less than one hour, my wife had made herself drunk again by draining the entire bottle. A strange feeling of anger came over me. Usually, I would have just shrugged my shoulders, but this time I felt a real rage within me.”

  “Anger against your wife?” Walter wondered.

  “Yes and no.”

  “How so?” Jonna asked.

  “Well, I was really angry at everything around me – but especially at Lisbeth. I was seething with rage and I’d had enough of her drinkin
g.” Ekwall paused and shifted his body for the first time.

  “Carry on,” Walter said impatiently.

  Ekwall drank some water from the glass in front of him. “Suddenly, it was as if I didn’t have control over myself anymore. I had a terrible pain in my head that only seemed to dissipate as I yielded to the rage.”

  “Did you hear voices as well?” Jonna interrupted.

  Ekwall looked at Jonna for a moment. “The pain in my head was so excruciating that I must have been hallucinating the voices. But to answer your question, yes.”

  Jonna nodded and asked him to continue.

  “In a furious rage, I went out to the hall and took out a club from my golf bag. I had always intended to use a golf club in self-defence if any burglar got the idea to break in when we were at home.”

  “The 4-iron was apparently good for the job,” said Walter.

  “Yes, precisely, the 4-club,” continued Ekwall. “With it in my hands and, may I say, in a blind rage, I went into the dining room where I found my wife standing with her back to me. She seemed to be drinking the last of the wine she’d been given as a gift from an unknown admirer.”

  “Admirer?” Walter said curiously.

  “Yes,” said Jonna. “And the wine was not just any everyday wine.”

  “No?” Walter looked even more bemused.

  “It was a vintage Montrachet 2004,” she said.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Walter replied casually.

  “Maybe that’s because it’s not available as a bag-in-a-box wine,” suggested Jonna, equally casually.

  Walter glared irritably at his trainee.

  “In fact, that wine costs ten thousand crowns a bottle,” Jonna informed him.

  “Please continue,” asked Walter, casting a sour look at Jonna.

  “I gripped the golf club with both hands and took aim at her head,” Ekwall continued and demonstrated with his hands. “I swung my hips a little more so that the swing would be powerful.”

  “Yes, you certainly succeeded quite well with both hips and swing,” said Walter dryly.

  “The club hit her head on the first swing. The rest is history,” Ekwall concluded.

  There was silence in the interview room.

  Walter glanced over at Jonna who was sitting, seemingly absorbed in thought. Maybe she was thinking of some more witticisms.

  “It would seem to have happened that way,” Ekwall finally added and leaned back in his chair. He fixed his eyes on the floor.

  “What do you mean by that?” Walter asked.

  “For the simple reason that I remember nothing.”

  “What do you mean, don’t remember?” Walter said in a stern voice. “You’ve just told us what happened.”

  Ekwall shook his head in rebuttal. “After breakfast, I took a jog as I just described. During the time I ran, I began to feel contempt towards Lisbeth and her drinking, something I had never felt before. I have always been understanding and I felt sorry for her. I tried in every possible way to get her to stop the behaviour that was destructive to herself and those around her, but she always fell back into drinking. I don’t remember much more except that I had thought about who had sent the exclusive wine to Lisbeth and if she really had some secret admirer, which I strongly doubted, given the condition she was in. At the end of the jog, it was as if I was in a daze. The anger that had grown within me must have peaked after the shower. I felt that headache and just needed to get the rage out of my body. After that, it all went hazy. When I came to my senses again, I found Lisbeth lifeless on the floor at my feet in the dining room. With the golf club in my hand and the blood coming out of her head, I realized what must have happened. At first, it struck me that it was a bad dream. But the more I recovered my senses, the more clearly I realized that it wasn’t a nightmare. I called the police and told them what had happened.”

  “You didn’t have any other option, right?” Walter said sharply.

  “I can’t for the life of me understand how I could do something so unforgivable and why I have no recollection of the event.” He gazed down at the floor again.

  “Could be due to the shock,” Jonna suggested.

  Walter scratched his neck and put the folder on the table so that Jonna could reach it. She seemed to have lost interest in it.

  “If you think you can get away with murder by not remembering anything, then you’re wrong,” explained Jonna.

  Walter winced and stared at Jonna, who had fixed her eyes on the prosecutor.

  “Constable,” Ekwall began, almost bantering. “I’m a district prosecutor and I know how the wheels turn. I don’t intend to get away with anything, if that’s what you think. But I can’t explain my behaviour because I remember nothing of the incident itself.”

  “Not remembering anything seems to be this year’s new trend,” Walter said out loud to himself.

  “Listen carefully,” Ekwall demanded and fixed his dull eyes on Jonna. “I strongly recommend that you get a basic psychiatric evaluation of me to shed some light perhaps on why I was so irrational and brutal.”

  “We can do the full loony test too,” Walter suggested.

  “During my fifty years, I have never so much as touched a hair of any living creature,” Ekwall continued. “My service record with the Prosecutor’s Office, ever since I took a degree in law in my youth, is spotless. I’m putting myself fully and unconditionally at your disposal, and …”

  He broke off and closed his eyes.

  Jonna looked at Walter, who was flicking aimlessly through the file. Further questions did not seem necessary at this time, she thought.

  Walter, who seemed to have reached the same conclusion, closed the folder and gripped it firmly. “I think that may be enough for today,” he finished. “This will enable Ekwall’s colleagues at the Prosecutor’s Office to take over from now on.”

  Jonna nodded in agreement.

  “By the way,” Walter said, as an afterthought, “where did you buy this?” He took out a photograph showing the angel of death and held it up in front of Ekwall.

  “What’s that?” Ekwall asked.

  “Yes, we wondered that too,” said Walter.

  “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Are you sure?” Walter asked.

  “Completely.” Ekwall said nothing more, but just stared at the image before him.

  Jonna was just about to turn off the voice recorder when she stopped herself.

  “One last question,” she said. “Do you have any enemies? Or rather, to rephrase the question, do you know of one or more people, in or outside your profession, who would like to harm you physically or mentally?”

  Walter turned to Jonna.

  “What kind of a question is that?” the District Prosecutor asked.

  “Yes, it may seem a strange question,” Walter agreed. “But nonetheless, it requires an answer.”

  “It’s not only police officers who are subject to threats, if that’s what you believe,” said Ekwall. “Even prosecutors are threatened. But if the question is whether I had any specific threat against me, the answer is no. The last time I received a threat was about two years ago. It was hurled at me by an offender who was being deported and exiled for life. As for whether I get threats outside my profession, the answer is also no. Furthermore, I don’t really see where you are going with this. I’m the lawbreaker here and not the victim.”

  “Obviously,” Jonna said.

  Walter got up from his chair and put the folder under his arm. “We’re finished here, I think,” he said and opened the door.

  Jonna nodded and turned off the voice recorder. She thanked the District Prosecutor for his willingness to co-operate and left the police officer in charge of the interview room.

  “Is it still coincidence?” Jonna said, with a hint of irony in her voice, when they came out into the corridor.

  “You could say that the possibility of that is decreasing rapidly,” Walter said, concerned. “I wonder if there have been
similar acts of violence outside the county?”

  “I can find that out,” said Jonna eagerly.

  “Yes, do that. The question is what the link to Drug-X is in this case,” Walter said.

  “Yes, all the indications are that it is involved,” said Jonna. “I mean, the uncontrolled anger, the inner voices and so on.”

  Walter nodded.

  “But the motive then?” Jonna asked. “What could it be?”

  “The motive, yes,” repeated Walter. “Either random selection or careful planning by someone with great resources.”

  “So SÄPO’s going to take over this case now?”

  “Inevitably,” said Walter. “But so far, Ekwall is still our man.”

  “Why did you withhold the personal file?” Jonna said, changing the subject.

  “Improvisation,” Walter replied cryptically.

  Jonna looked at him, puzzled.

  “It was to teach you something you were not taught at the police academy or by the theoreticians at RSU,” Walter said.

  “You mean you wanted to see how I handled myself without having the information in my hand?”

  Walter smiled and nodded.

  Jonna looked less than amused.

  CHAPTER 11

  DAVID LILJA WAS glued to the telephone when Walter and Jonna entered his office. He waved them towards the chairs around the conference table, indicating that they should be seated. From the speakerphone, a woman’s voice could be heard. Lilja explained that Walter Gröhn and Jonna de Brugge had sat down at the table. He wanted them to participate in the teleconference.

  “Let’s hear what they have to say,” Chief Prosecutor Åsa Julén’s voice rang out.

  Walter nodded at Jonna to take over. As usual, he had little time for Julén.

  “We’ve just questioned District Prosecutor Lennart Ekwall from the Stockholm Prosecutor’s Office, who’s therefore a colleague of yours,” Jonna began.

  “I know who he is,” Julén pointed out. “Carry on.”

  “He has confessed to killing his wife. We already have a signed statement and everything we need. He has also requested that we perform a basic psychiatric evaluation, since he has no idea why he became violent.”