by Viveca Sten
Unfortunately Nora had had no appetite, and had simply pushed her food around. It was as if she was observing the whole thing from a distance, voices reaching her with a couple of seconds’ delay.
After the meal Simon had put on a movie, an American comedy they’d rented before they left town. He was curled up beside her now, totally absorbed by the action on the screen.
Henrik was in the armchair, with Adam sitting on the floor, his back against his father’s legs.
They’d been watching the movie for about half an hour, but Nora had no idea what was going on. Her head was too heavy for her neck to support. The picture jumped and blurred when she tried to focus.
“Mom?”
“What?”
Simon had said something to her, but she hadn’t heard him.
“Can we pause it for a while and make popcorn? Please?”
Adam was also looking hopeful.
“Absolutely.”
The path of least resistance. She could have said that they’d been eating popcorn and chips for days, but she didn’t have the energy.
Henrik placed a hand on her arm.
“Are you OK? You don’t look too good.”
“I don’t feel too good.”
She realized she was sweating and shivering at the same time. Henrik was gazing at her with concern.
“Maybe you should go and lie down? I’ll make sure the boys get to bed after the movie; don’t you worry about a thing.”
She wanted to protest, assure him there was no need, but instead she heard herself saying: “You’re right. I think I need to get some sleep.”
Nora got to her feet, holding onto the wall for support. Fortunately no one noticed; a particularly funny scene had captured everyone’s attention.
“Good night, boys.”
“Would you like me to bring you a cup of tea?” Henrik offered.
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I just need to go to bed; it’s been a tough day.”
“Anything you want to talk about? Anything at work?”
His voice was so kind and sympathetic that Nora’s heart did a somersault. She wanted to turn to him and say: “Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
Once upon a time, it had been natural to fall into Henrik’s arms, share her misery. Whatever happened as far as her job was concerned, she would have been safe and secure. She had her family; there was someone right by her side.
The moment passed.
“It’s OK. As I said, I’ll be fine when I’ve had some sleep.”
She staggered slightly as she walked through the hallway, but managed to keep going.
He cheated on you, she thought woozily. He lied to you, and once he even hit you.
But he’s changed.
She clung to the banister and hauled herself up the stairs.
CHAPTER 75
Aram didn’t move a muscle. He was still surrounded by complete darkness, his pulse racing.
“Both hands behind your back,” the voice hissed.
Was that an American accent? Hard to tell. It wasn’t necessarily Peter Moore who’d crept up on him.
I’m such an idiot, he thought.
The pressure on his throat increased, and Aram complied with the instruction. He felt something being placed around his wrists. He just had time to think, Cable tie, then a hard blow to the back of his legs sent him crashing onto the concrete floor.
Instinctively he tried to twist his body so that he wouldn’t land on his face. Not my nose. His chin made the first contact, and his mouth filled with the taste of blood, which ran down his throat. He couldn’t stop himself from letting out a cough.
A sharp pain in his right shoulder.
His glasses shattered.
Someone knelt down beside him, grabbed the sore shoulder, and turned him over onto his back.
It hurt so much he almost fainted.
His hat was ripped off, and the harsh beam of a flashlight shone straight in his eyes.
“A fucking Arab,” the voice said. “What’s a greasy Arab like you doing poking around in our storage facility?”
The man holding the flashlight was a blurred silhouette, impossible to identify. Aram tried to spit out the blood, explain that he was a cop, not a burglar, but all he managed to produce was a gurgling sound.
His assailant kicked him in the stomach; the pain was so intense that Aram doubled over. Even more blood filled his mouth, bubbling down through his nose and mingling with snot and tears. He whimpered and curled up in the fetal position in an attempt to protect his body from any additional blows.
Once again he attempted to speak, to clarify who he was, but he could barely move his lips.
A vicious kick to his spine.
Someone groaned—was that him?
No one knows I’m here. How could I be so careless?
Through the fog in his brain, Aram heard the voice say, almost cheerfully: “So what are we going to do with our intruder?”
CHAPTER 76
Tuesday
Thomas entered the station through the back door. The elevator was taking an eternity to arrive, so he took the stairs instead, two at a time.
He had tried contacting Aram from the car in order to continue the previous evening’s discussion about Michael Thiels, but had been unable to get ahold of him; the calls had gone straight to voice mail, without even ringing. After a couple of attempts, Thomas gave up; he would have a chat with Aram when he got to work. Hopefully he would be in early, too.
Thomas was sure Thiels was keeping something from them. Once again he thought about the quarrel between Michael and Jeanette that Anne-Marie Hansen had overheard.
He opened the glass door leading to the hallway where the team was based. A quick glance in the direction of Margit’s office revealed that she wasn’t in yet; her door was closed, as was Aram’s. He wanted to speak to Margit about Anne-Marie’s revelation, too.
It was only ten past seven; he couldn’t really expect his colleagues to be here just because Elin had woken him way too early. Pernilla had gone to her, but Elin’s screams had roused Thomas anyway. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep, so he took over and told Pernilla to go back to bed so that at least one of them wouldn’t be hollow eyed all day.
He took off his coat and went over to the machine to make himself a hot drink. The water smelled stale; he recoiled when the steam hit his nostrils, but he couldn’t be bothered to refill the reservoir. He poured himself a cup, added a tea bag, and headed back to his office.
Sachsen had promised to deal with Bertil Ahlgren as soon as possible; the question was how long they would have to wait. They had to know whether Ahlgren had died of natural causes or not—the sooner the better.
Thomas didn’t like the uncertainty; he wanted answers right now. However, there was no point in calling Sachsen; that would merely irritate him.
Instead he logged on to his computer and started reading through the previous day’s reports. He was particularly interested in Kalle’s interviews with the staff at the Sailors Hotel, but the more he read, the more he realized they were of no help at all. No one apart from the receptionist had seen or spoken to Jeanette. It was as if she hadn’t existed until her body was found in the snow; then again, no doubt everyone had been busy with their own duties on Christmas Eve.
It was almost ten to eight now. Strange that Aram hadn’t called back. Thomas tried his number again; it went straight to voice mail. Morning briefing would be starting soon; why was Aram’s phone still turned off?
He caught a glimpse of Margit hurrying past his door, making a beeline for the coffee machine.
The tea bag was still sitting in his cup; he finished off the last of his drink, even though it tasted of tannin.
It would be interesting to hear what Mats Larsson had to say this morning. A psychological profile of the killer could be extremely useful.
CHAPTER 77
They had decided to keep to the core team this morning, as Mats Larsson would be
participating.
Thomas arrived at the same time as Karin and Kalle, who was yawning as he walked in the door. There was no sign of Erik. Good, Thomas thought. He must have stayed home. The Old Man had shared Thomas’s view; the most important thing was for Erik to take the time to care for his sister. They worked with matters of life and death, but sometimes family had to come first.
Margit came up behind him, clutching a cup of coffee. She closed the door, sat down, and looked around.
“Where’s Aram?” she said. “He’s not usually late.”
Thomas was just about to say he’d been trying to reach him when Mats Larsson walked in.
Just like the last time they’d met, Larsson was wearing a brown tweed jacket over a knitted gray vest. His hair was sticking out in all directions, as if he’d suffered a cartoon-style electric shock. He must have just pulled off a woolen hat.
Thomas stood up to shake hands. He was very grateful for Larsson’s assistance; he was a very experienced member of the National Crime Unit’s Profiling Group, and had even spent time with the FBI in order to study their methods. He had also been invaluable during an investigation on Sandhamn a few years earlier, involving the gruesome discovery of a dismembered body.
“Morning,” Thomas said. “How are things? Did you receive the material you needed?”
Larsson nodded. “Aram Gorgis sent it over.”
He looked around the room as if he were trying to spot the sender, then went on: “I’ve gone through everything, and I’ve come up with a couple of theories.”
He found a seat, opened his briefcase, and took out a thick bundle of papers, which he placed on the table.
The Old Man still hadn’t appeared, and it was almost eight fifteen.
“Have you seen the Old Man?” Thomas asked Karin, who shook her head. He turned to Larsson. “Could you give us a rough outline while we wait?”
“It might be best to hang on until everyone’s here.”
Thomas nodded; he didn’t want to push the guy.
“Of course one issue is that we don’t have a confirmed crime scene to go on,” Larsson said anyway.
“Why is that important?” Karin asked.
“Profiling always starts with the crime scene: what it looks like, the level of violence, behavior before and after the event. The problem here is that we don’t have an exact location.”
He was right.
The conclusion that Jeanette had ingested the poison in her own kitchen was based on the forensic pathologist’s estimate of the time that had elapsed between her consumption of the beans and her death. An estimate that in turn was affected by the fact that the body had been lying out in the cold. It was impossible to establish an exact time of death, which meant they couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that she really had been given the poison at home.
They were still working from a hypothesis, but Thomas was convinced that Jeanette’s unidentified visitor on Christmas Eve was a key figure.
Mats Larsson continued his explanation; Karin was listening attentively.
“What we have in this case is the place where the body was found, plus some evidence suggesting that the crime was committed in Jeanette’s apartment. It’s not critical, but what I’m saying is that we don’t know how the perpetrator acted on that occasion.”
“And how does that affect your work?”
“It means I have limited resources to go on when I start to compile the profile. I’m trying to pin down the social and behavioral qualities of an unknown individual, and in this case I have fewer elements to interpret when it comes to building up that profile.”
“I understand,” Karin said. “It’s like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with several pieces missing.”
The sky outside the window was beginning to grow lighter, a colorless dawn with no sign of even the palest winter sun. The clouds merely changed from black to gray.
Margit started drumming her fingers on the table. “Where the hell is everybody? We need to get started.”
The door opened and the Old Man appeared.
“Sorry I’m late, I had to take a call from the press office. The TV news is planning to run a major story on Jeanette Thiels, and they’re pushing us hard.”
He turned to Mats Larsson.
“Good morning. What can you tell us?”
CHAPTER 78
Mats Larsson cleared his throat.
“First of all I have to stress that I’ve had very little time to evaluate the material I received. I can only offer guidance, if that.”
“We understand,” the Old Man said, making an almost comical effort to sound encouraging. “Carry on.”
“Poisoning isn’t particularly common,” Larsson began. “At least not in comparison with knife crime, which accounts for almost fifty percent of all homicides, or guns, which are used in around twenty percent of cases. The number of unrecorded deaths as a result of poisoning is also an issue; there are probably far more than we think.”
We know all that, Thomas thought impatiently. We’re perfectly capable of looking up statistics. Tell us something we don’t know.
Discreetly he checked his phone, in case Aram had sent a text message. It was strange that he hadn’t been in touch if he was sick. The Old Man seemed to be wondering where he was, too.
“As I said, I’ve read through the material, and there are a number of things I’d like to highlight.”
“Like what?” As usual Margit was incapable of keeping quiet.
“The most common incidence of fatal poisoning is when mentally ill parents decide to kill their child, or vice versa, when adult children tire of their sick, elderly parents.”
“But we’re not looking at either of those scenarios here,” the Old Man chipped in.
“Exactly—so this is an interesting deviation from the pattern.”
“What does it tell us about the killer?” Margit demanded. “Man, woman, young, old?”
Larsson took off his glasses and placed them on the table. The tortoiseshell frame was broken at one corner, and a thin strip of silver tape had been wrapped around it as a temporary repair.
“You know I can’t give you a definitive answer,” he said. “It’s only on TV cop shows where you get a complete profile including the perpetrator’s height and shoe size.” He allowed himself a faint smile. “What I will say is that poisoning is a very personal way to commit a murder.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you use a pistol or a rifle, the act of killing takes only a second; all you have to do is pull the trigger. You don’t even need to be close to your victim. But if you choose poison, you’re going to have to have some kind of personal contact with the victim at some point.”
“Sounds logical,” the Old Man said. “So what does that tell us about our perp?”
“Presumably that the killer and the victim knew each other.” Larsson paused and scratched an angry red pimple on his chin. “Admittedly there was a mass poisoning where the victims weren’t known to the killer, but it’s extremely rare.”
“You’re thinking of the Malmö murders?” Kalle said.
Larsson nodded.
“What happened?” Karin asked.
“It was back in the seventies—a male nurse poisoned a number of residents in a care facility for the elderly,” Kalle explained. “He managed to kill off a dozen people, and was also convicted of an additional sixteen counts of attempted homicide. He was one of Sweden’s most notorious mass murderers.”
“How did he do it?”
“He used a highly corrosive detergent, which he mixed with juice. The residents all suffered from dementia, and were incapable of protesting or refusing the drink. Horrible.”
Margit’s eyes had narrowed.
“He was sick in the head,” she said, dismissing the Malmö case with an impatient gesture before turning back to Larsson.
“Can we get back to Jeanette Thiels? There are a number of indications that she knew her killer, as you said. Do yo
u think they knew each other well?”
She was thinking of the two coffee cups on the kitchen table, as was Thomas.
“It’s impossible to say, but yes, probably. From a purely statistical point of view, we’re aware that victim and killer know each other in seventy percent of cases.”
Larsson sat back and crossed his legs. One knee of his corduroy pants was noticeably worn.
“This is a method that requires an extremely high level of meticulous planning, which suggests a closer relationship, although that’s not always the case.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked.
“It’s easier to explain if we look at the statistics. As I said earlier, a knife is used in half of all homicides involving violence. Why?”
Larsson answered his own question.
“Because seventy percent of murders take place in the home, where knives are readily available. It’s a spontaneous act, and requires none of the preparation we’re talking about here.”
“So how is our perp thinking?” Thomas said.
Larsson put on his glasses.
“Opting for poison indicates that the perp wants to avoid discovery.”
“Surely most killers feel the same way,” Kalle commented in a rare burst of gallows humor.
Larsson gave a brief nod.
“Absolutely, but if you shoot someone, it’s obvious that a murder has been committed, and the same applies if you stick a knife in them. As far as Jeanette is concerned, the killer was probably hoping that the cause of death would go undetected—in other words, that no one would realize she’d been murdered.”
Thomas remembered Sachsen’s pride when he found the remains of the paternoster beans in Jeanette’s stomach. If he hadn’t been so meticulous, would they have decided there were no suspicious circumstances? Maybe assumed she’d gotten sick, possibly due to food poisoning, and unfortunately collapsed in the snow, where she froze to death?
In other words, it was important for the killer to conceal the fact that a murder had been committed. Jeanette was dead, silenced; he or she must be trying to hide a secret.
