by Viveca Sten
“They’ll be back tomorrow,” she had reassured him when he asked her to call them right away.
The eyes, he remembered the hard eyes that met his as the door flew open.
“Does Jeanette know about the break-in?” he’d asked. “Jeanette Thiels, my neighbor. Or is she still away?”
The nurse had looked at him with a sympathetic expression.
“She’s dead, Bertil.”
“What?”
“It was on the news; she was found a few days ago, on an island in the archipelago. They think she was murdered.”
Bertil had been lost for words. The nurse had adjusted his covers and encouraged him to drink a little more.
“I think you should rest now. I can see it’s upset you.”
Bertil hadn’t managed to ask any questions before she disappeared.
He closed his eyes; he was exhausted. It was hard to believe that Jeanette was dead—murdered! It was all too much.
Could the break-in be connected to her death in some way? The thought made him open his eyes. He had to speak to the police tomorrow, give them a description of his attacker so they could investigate.
How would Anne-Marie take it? She might not even know that Jeanette was dead. They were very close, even though they argued occasionally, as neighbors do. He remembered how they had clashed at the last meeting of the residents’ association; Anne-Marie was determined to build a balcony above Jeanette’s living room.
Oh well, he thought. She’ll have to deal with the new owners when the apartment is sold.
Bertil turned his head; a strip of light from the corridor suddenly appeared, then vanished. Had someone opened the door?
“Nurse?” he said, peering at the shadow that had materialized at the far end of the room. He fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table, but his hands found nothing but air. “Nurse?” His voice sounded rough and hoarse, unused; he didn’t recognize it. He tried to sit up, but he was still too weak.
“Could I have some water?” he said to the nurse. “I’m thirsty.”
Why didn’t she answer? He narrowed his eyes so that he could see better, but everything was blurred. The silent figure was coming closer; why didn’t she say something? She seemed to be dressed in darker clothes than the usual white uniform the other nurses wore. Was she off duty?
She—or was it a he?—also had a cap pulled down over her or his forehead, above a pair of dark glasses.
Sunglasses at night—what was going on?
The nurse leaned forward and pulled out one of the pillows from beneath Bertil’s head. She was looming over him now.
“What are you doing?” Bertil croaked, groping for the call button.
The unknown person disappeared from his field of vision; all he could see was the white pillow, far too close.
Firm pressure on his nose and mouth; he couldn’t breathe.
His lungs screamed with pain as he tried to struggle. He scratched feebly at two strong arms, to no avail.
“Help me!” he wanted to yell, but nothing came out.
What’s happening?
I don’t want to die.
CHAPTER 51
Monday
He had been carrying Elin around for almost an hour. Thomas glanced at the clock on the living room wall: it was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and the only light came from the TV, which was turned on but with the sound muted.
“It’s OK, sweetheart,” he told his daughter reassuringly; she was panting with fury. But at least she’d stopped yelling and was whimpering instead, which usually meant she would fall asleep before too long. He hoped so.
She was teething, hence the broken nights.
“Do you want some more?” He put the teat of the bottle in her mouth, and she gave a little suck before snatching her head away.
“I guess not,” Thomas murmured, transferring her to the other arm. He felt her diaper; it was dry, so that wasn’t the problem.
“Shall we go and sit down for a while?” he whispered, heading for the armchair. Were her eyes growing heavy? Or just his own?
The alarm clock would ring in four hours; the morning meeting was due to start at seven thirty. He had gotten just over an hour’s sleep before Elin woke up crying. How could he ever have thought he was tired before he had a baby?
Pernilla was dead to the world behind the closed bedroom door. They tried to take turns as best they could; there was no point in both of them being worn out in the morning. Pernilla had been up for the past couple of nights.
As he rocked his daughter gently, his thoughts turned to the visit to Michael Thiels. The man’s changeable moods bothered him. One minute he was Alice’s thoughtful, caring father, the next a bitter, angry ex-husband.
There had been no mistaking the fury on Michael’s face when the question of the custody battle came up, and it was obvious that he’d had to use every ounce of self-control to keep it in check. And yet he had refused to say anything more about the dispute, however hard Thomas and Margit pushed him.
Had he been angry enough to want to harm his ex-wife?
Elin whimpered quietly in his arms; she had dropped off at last. However, Thomas stayed where he was; if he put her in her crib too soon, she might wake up and the whole thing would start again. Better to wait a few minutes.
How had Jeanette ingested the poison? Both Michael and Anne-Marie Hansen, Jeanette’s neighbor, had a coffee machine in their kitchen. Was it possible that one of them had mixed the crushed paternoster beans with her coffee?
It seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t quite let go of the idea.
Jeanette must have been duped into consuming the beans somehow, possibly because they’d been ground up. But not very thoroughly, given that Sachsen had found traces in her gut.
There had been two empty coffee cups on the table in Jeanette’s kitchen. If the poison was in the coffee, how had the perpetrator avoided drinking it himself?
He must check with Nilsson in the morning, find out if the traces had been sent off to the lab.
He tried to find a more comfortable position. Elin sighed softly and opened her mouth, displaying her very first front tooth.
Poisoning. With today’s advanced analysis techniques, it was difficult to avoid detection. Virtually all known poisons—cyanide, strychnine, arsenic—were easily traced during an autopsy. Nor was it straightforward to get ahold of that kind of thing. The most accessible substances were those found in nature—poisonous berries and fungi.
Or paternoster beans.
How come the killer had known that the seeds of these beans were toxic? Thomas himself had had no idea; he’d never even heard of the beans until Sachsen told him about them.
How did a person even come into contact with paternoster beans? Maybe they should be looking for someone among Jeanette’s acquaintances who was a botanist, or worked in a garden? A chemist, perhaps?
Elin’s eyes were closed now. Her tiny palms were open, the fingers gently curving inward. That wonderful baby smell.
Cautiously he got to his feet; his right arm, which had been supporting Elin’s head, had gone completely numb.
She didn’t stir when he laid her in her crib; Thomas hoped she would sleep through the rest of the night.
His thoughts returned to Jeanette’s murder. They must be able to draw some conclusions from the method. Most killers chose other means—a gun or a knife, brutal violence. They needed to understand how a poisoner operated, what characterized their personality.
What about Mats Larsson from the National Crime Unit’s Perpetrator Profiling Group? They’d worked together more than once; he should be able to help them.
CHAPTER 52
Thomas closed the door of the meeting room and nodded to Staffan Nilsson and the additional staff who’d been brought in, including Adrian Karlsson, a colleague who’d assisted with the homicide investigation in the summer.
Thomas sat down on the only empty chair, next to Margit.
The Old Man coughed. “Shal
l we get started?” Two unopened packages of carrot sticks lay on the table in front of him.
Margit summarized Sachsen’s findings from the autopsy.
“So Jeanette Thiels was actually dying when she was murdered,” she concluded. “Her ex-husband claims he knew nothing about her illness, nor did their daughter.”
“The question is, who else was unaware of her condition?” the Old Man said dryly. “Murdering people who are already dying isn’t exactly the norm.”
“I was thinking of contacting Mats Larsson later today,” Thomas said. “He might be able to give us a few tips on the profile of a poisoner.”
“Good idea—he’s helped us out in the past,” the Old Man agreed, tapping his pen on the table. “We don’t know how she ingested the poison, do we?”
“No,” Margit said, “but we’re assuming she consumed the beans without realizing it. It can’t be suicide—she was trying to get custody of her daughter.”
Thomas decided not to mention his idea about the coffee machines; it seemed too far-fetched in the cold light of day.
“There are indications in her apartment that she met up with someone before she left for Sandhamn,” he said instead. “If we could find out who that was . . .”
Staffan Nilsson cleared his throat.
“There were dirty dishes and scraps of food in her kitchen, which we’re sending off for analysis. It would be helpful if the lab could prioritize our request, run the tests as soon as possible.”
The Old Man turned to Adrian Karlsson.
“I’d like you to drive over with the samples when we’re done here; otherwise we won’t get the results until next week, which means we’ll lose too much time.”
Good, Thomas thought. The lab was in Linköping; if they followed normal procedure, the samples probably wouldn’t even arrive until the new year. The sooner the better.
The Old Man went on: “Staffan, I suggest you call the lab and explain the situation, tell them they’ll have the material by lunchtime today. I’m happy to wait until tomorrow for the results, so that gives them twenty-four hours.”
He opened one of the packages and crunched on a carrot stick; he almost managed to look as if he was enjoying it.
“These paternoster beans,” he said to Kalle. “Can you dig up some more information?”
Kalle nodded.
“What about Jeanette’s calls? Aram, did you go through her cell phone record?”
Aram raised his hands in an apologetic gesture.
“Sorry, the tech guys were off for the holiday, but they’re back today. We’ll take a look at it this morning.”
“Marvelous,” the Old Man said. “So her computer’s missing, and we haven’t even checked out her phone yet.”
There was a knock on the door, and the receptionist came in.
“Sorry,” she said. “Urgent message for you.” She handed the Old Man a note; he frowned as he read it.
“It’s from St. Göran’s Hospital,” he said. “Bertil Ahlgren, Jeanette’s neighbor, is dead.”
Margit was the first to react. “But we were there only yesterday afternoon. He was sleeping, but it sounded as if he was expected to make a full recovery.”
“What happened?” Thomas asked.
“It doesn’t say—you’d better find out,” the Old Man said.
“I don’t like this,” Margit muttered.
Thomas scratched the back of his neck. The nurse had said that Bertil was improving. Now he was dead. Wasn’t that a little too convenient? They’d carried out door-to-door inquiries in the apartment block, but nobody had noticed anyone visiting Jeanette on Christmas Eve.
Maybe Bertil had seen or heard someone.
“We ought to ask Sachsen to take a look at him,” he said.
“Fine, go ahead,” the Old Man said impatiently. “Margit, where were we? You went back to the ex-husband and the daughter?”
“We saw Michael Thiels again yesterday. He’s coping on the surface, but he’s extremely bitter. He and Jeanette were involved in a custody battle over Alice.”
She flicked through her notebook.
“He has an alibi for the Christmas holiday, but not for the time when we believe Jeanette was poisoned. He claims he was with Alice, but we haven’t been able to confirm that with her yet.”
“Erik, what do we know about his background?” the Old Man demanded. Erik opened his own notebook without looking up. There was still something disconsolate about his movements. He seemed even more worn out than before, and his hair hadn’t been styled with his usual gel. Thomas had forgotten to ask him if everything was OK; he should stop by Erik’s office after the meeting, have a word.
“Michael Thiels grew up in Stockholm and studied at Berghs School of Communication,” Erik began. “Before he married Jeanette, he had an on-off relationship with a woman named Annelie Sjöström. She works as a parliamentary secretary, but back then she was a singer in a band, and Michael played guitar. They worked in various clubs around the city.”
“Sounds wonderful,” the Old Man snapped. “But didn’t you come up with any dirt? There’s usually something.”
“I ran a records check, and it turns out he was arrested for assault.”
And he’s telling us this now? Thomas thought. He and Margit should have been armed with this information when they went over to Vaxholm to interview Michael Thiels. Yet another sign that Erik wasn’t himself.
“What did he do?” Thomas asked.
“It’s an old conviction; he got into a fight in a bar when the band was playing. The other guy wound up with a black eye and a broken rib. Thiels was fined and given a supervision order, because it was his first offense.”
“How old was he?”
“Let’s see . . .” Erik searched through his notes. “Thirty-one.”
So on one occasion Michael had been angry enough to attack another person, and the injuries he inflicted had landed him in court.
But that was over twenty years ago.
A lifetime.
“Anything else?” Margit said.
“Not really—a couple of speeding tickets. He lost his license for a few months eight years ago; he was doing eighty in a fifty zone. That’s all.”
The Old Man looked straight at Thomas and Margit.
“You’ve met the guy twice. Should we be looking at him as a suspect?”
“It’s too early to say, but it’s also too early to rule him out,” Margit said.
Thomas took a deep breath.
“We’ve got two lines of inquiry,” he said. “Apart from the custody battle, we know that Jeanette’s apartment was searched. Her computer is missing. If she was working on an investigative piece, maybe she got too close.”
“Too close to what?” the Old Man said.
If I knew the answer to that, I would have said so, Thomas thought irritably. He realized the lack of sleep was making its presence felt.
He restricted himself to a simple “I don’t know.”
The Old Man turned back to Margit. “Did you get ahold of the newspaper editor Jeanette worked for?”
Thomas knew what she was going to say; she’d given him a quick summary of the conversation in the car on the way in.
“Yes, I spoke to Charlie Karlbom. He called me back last night, but apparently Jeanette wasn’t doing anything for the paper this fall.”
“Was he sure?”
“Absolutely. She hasn’t written anything for them since the summer; her last article came out in June, before Midsummer.”
“According to both her ex-husband and her neighbor, she was traveling all through the fall, working on an investigation,” Thomas said. “She even missed her daughter’s birthday.”
It didn’t make sense. Morocco. Bosnia. The passport they’d found in her apartment also showed that she’d been in Afghanistan. Not exactly vacation destinations, and probably not ideal for someone with serious health problems.
“So what the hell was she doing?” the Old Man said. “Sure
ly it wasn’t some kind of extended break?”
Margit ignored his comment and went on: “I asked Karlbom if Jeanette could have been working on a major project for another paper, but he didn’t think so, because she’s been contracted to his paper for the last few years. However, she told him in August that she was intending to take the autumn off; she wouldn’t be accepting any new assignments until after Christmas at the earliest.”
“She didn’t tell him what she was going to do instead?” Karin asked.
“No. Karlbom said she was very evasive; she wouldn’t give him a straight answer, but he did get the impression that she had a definite plan, a project of her own. She wasn’t just taking a break.”
“So what the hell was she doing?” The Old Man was running out of patience.
“I also asked about threats against Jeanette,” Margit continued. “It seems they increased significantly last year after she wrote a series of major articles about refugees in Sweden. The paper received a large number of unpleasant letters and emails. Most were addressed to the editor, and the paper’s head of security contacted the city police, so the report was registered under his name rather than Jeanette’s. She had a confidential telephone number and address, but apparently she did receive some letters at home; unfortunately it’s not that difficult to find out where someone lives.”
“I’ve got them here,” Aram said, pointing to a pile of papers. “Karin found them. They don’t make for pleasant reading; they cover just about every permutation of physical violence, including rape.”
“Did anyone follow up on the report?” Kalle asked.
“There wasn’t much they could do,” Margit said. “It was impossible to trace the senders. No fingerprints; some were made up of cut-out letters—the usual.”
“What about the emails?”
“You know what it’s like—it’s not enough to track down the IP addresses, you have to be able to prove who was actually sitting at the computer. They’ve promised to forward the messages that were sent to the paper, but I don’t know how long that will take. According to the editor, it didn’t seem to bother Jeanette; she had a thick skin and didn’t scare easily.”
