“Dunja!”
“Ib, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for you right now.”
“No time? I order you to come to my office this instant.”
“You order me?” She stopped and turned to him. “Considering that my badge won’t open the door anymore and the bimbo in the lobby asked if I had an appointment, I think it’s safe to say I don’t work here anymore.”
“No, and that’s what I thought we could —”
“Great, then I don’t have to quit.” Dunja took out her service weapon and handed it over along with her police badge. “I expect severance pay equal to a full year’s salary, paid in a lump sum before Friday of next week.”
“Just hold on a second. How do you think that’s —”
“That’s your problem. Alternately, I can get the union involved and prepare a statement to say that this entire investigation has been mishandled under your leadership. That you repeatedly stuck your head in the sand and ignored obvious leads that were present a year ago, only to fire the one person in this building who moved the investigation forward. As the man in charge, you have two lives on your conscience, and that’s just in this one mess. So if I were you, I would put on my helmet and kneepads fast as hell, because it’s going to fucking hurt when you hit bottom.”
“Dunja, let’s not get unnecessarily worked up. Let’s talk through this in —”
“Ib, you can solve this. You have a week.” She held out her hand. “Thanks for my time here. It was…interesting, although it started out better than it ended.” At last Ib took her hand and shook it. “Now, I’d like to know where I can find Søren and Bettina.”
“I think it’s best if we let them work in peace. As you may know, they have quite a bit to deal with, considering the most recent developments.”
“As you may know, I am here on account of the most recent developments.” She turned her back on him and headed for Ussing and Jensen’s office. When she opened the door she was surprised to find that they seemed to be doing actual work. “We need to talk,” she said, and sure enough, she saw their eyes drawn to Sveistrup, who had crowded in behind her like a curious sibling.
“I’m sorry. I tried to stop her, but she —”
“Ib,” Dunja cut him off without turning around. “You and I are finished, so if you want to stay here, be quiet. I don’t have the time or inclination to deal with your nonsense right now.”
“I may not be your boss any longer, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still in charge around here!”
“That’s what I thought too.” She faced Sveistrup, who was so red in the face that it looked like he might burst an aneurysm at any moment. “But now I know better. Don’t forget to say hi to Kim.” She pushed him back out of the room, closed the door, and turned the key in the lock before turning back to the two detectives.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish here.” Ussing gestured at Dunja. “Bettina, what do you say? To me, she looks pretty desperate.”
“That may be,” Dunja said, taking a few steps further into the room as her phone rang. “But now and then, when something is important enough, desperation is all you have left. And I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not out to play games or try to take over your investigation.” She took out her phone and found that for once it wasn’t Magnus harassing her, but Fareed Cherukuri, who likely wanted to find out when he would be starting his new job. She rejected the call, but she could already imagine how he had grabbed the relay baton from Magnus and was planning to stalk her by calling around the clock. Even if she changed to an unlisted number, he would find her and keep calling until she found him a position.
“Okay, so what is our little private eye looking for this time?” Jensen crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“I want to help you do what you’re here for: catch the guilty parties.”
Jensen chuckled. “This coming from the person who helped our principal witness evade the police.”
“I wasn’t helping anyone evade you. Sannie tracked me down because she was too scared to go to the police. And you know…” Dunja approached Jensen. “I understand why. All we’ve done is betray her and her friends.”
“Speak for yourself. Søren and I have been working on this for the past —”
“If you’d dealt with this immediately instead of sitting around twiddling your thumbs, none of this would have happened!”
“Do you know what she’s talking about?” Jensen turned to Ussing, who shook his head.
Dunja went to the archived files, yanked out the drawer marked Ongoing Investigations, took out the folder of random assault cases that had never been solved, and slammed it on the desk in front of Jensen. “All you have to do is read this. You wrote it yourself. If you can’t manage it, I’ll just tell you that they started back in August. So if we could just leave the sandbox for a while and make sure to do the right thing before they strike again.”
“That’s exactly what we were doing before you came storming in,” Ussing said, looking at his watch. “We have a press conference in an hour and a half, so if you’ll excuse us, we have quite a bit of work to do.”
“A press conference? Why? What are you planning to release?”
“Why would we tell —”
“For Christ’s sake! What are you releasing?”
Ussing considered for a moment, but then he nodded at Jensen, who held up a composite sketch. “Here’s the leader.”
“Did Sannie Lemke help create that?”
“Yes. So I guess we haven’t just been twiddling our thumbs after all,” Jensen said, looking smug. “We’re going to put out a general alert, and we expect —”
“That is the last thing you should do,” Dunja interrupted. “The less they know, the better.”
“Well, you’re not the one in charge here — we are,” Ussing said. “And if we’re going to solve this, we need to ask the public for help.”
“The only person you need to ask for help is me.”
Ussing laughed. “I have to admit, I’m impressed. At least you haven’t lost faith in yourself, despite all your failures.”
“Maybe that’s because I’ve already figured out who they are. Unlike you.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. The private eye has outdone herself again.” Ussing clapped. “I’m sure you’ve apprehended them too. If I know you, they’re hog-tied under your bed,” he continued, although he was starting to look more and more unsure of himself.
“Here they are, all four of them.” She presented the printout from the martial arts club. “Their names, personal ID numbers, and addresses are on the back.”
Ussing picked it up and looked at the picture in silence.
“Let me see,” Jensen said, leaning over the desk. “Yeah, look, that guy looks quite a bit like the composite.” She pointed and Ussing nodded.
“I don’t get it,” he finally managed to say. “How did you…” He looked at the back. “Helsingborg?”
“Yes, which is why you have to contact the Swedish police so they can bring them in. Meanwhile I’m going to visit Sannie and prepare her for a lineup.”
“Sannie?” Ussing turned to Jensen and then back to Dunja. “She’s…she’s…not here.”
“Not here? What do you mean? Of course she’s here. Where else would she…” Dunja trailed off and looked back and forth between Ussing and Jensen. “You didn’t let her go?”
“Not exactly. I mean, it wasn’t like we had her under close surveillance.”
“No, why would we?” Jensen added. “She’s no longer under suspicion; she’s just a witness.”
“Anyway, she took off while we were busy with…Well, she just took off.”
“Okay, just so I understand fully,” said Dunja, who felt like breaking something. “First you broadcast her picture and identity far an
d wide. You say she’s your primary witness in the murder of her brother and that she has seen the criminals who just killed another witness by shoving him into highway traffic in a shopping cart. And what do you do? Create a worthless composite sketch and let her go. Do you even have a clue how much danger she’s in?”
“But that’s not what happened,” Jensen said. “We had to hold a meeting, and we expressly asked her to wait in the kitchen. We did, right?”
Ussing nodded. “And we also know where she usually hangs out, so we should be able to find her.”
“Where’s that?”
“In a container at Maskingården on H P Christensens Vej,” Jensen said with a smile.
“Bet you weren’t expecting that,” Ussing called, but Dunja was already gone.
92
Fabian and the rest of the team had spent the past few hours contacting airlines, car rental agencies, Swedish Railways, and Danish State Railways to find out if Sten and Anita Strömberg were in the process of leaving, or had already left, the country. Högsell arranged permission for the banks to flag their credit cards and accounts in case they were used, and Molander’s assistants were examining the visiting room at the jail.
Nothing of interest had turned up so far. All they could do was wait, and try to think up a new strategy for how they might get separate, distinct evidence on each of them, once they were in custody.
Fabian was planning to head home before it got too late and surprise the kids with something fun. Sonja may have left him, but he wasn’t about to lose Theodor and Matilda as well. So this weekend he would let them call the shots. Nothing held back. If they wanted to go to London, then London it was. If they felt like staying home and playing games and watching movies, that was no problem either.
He was just about to stick Anywhere by his old favourite band New Musik into the CD player when his phone buzzed. He toyed with the thought of not answering and turning up the volume instead, but then he saw it was Malin Rehnberg.
“Sorry I didn’t call earlier,” she said as he turned onto Norra Stenbocksgatan. “I had to buy a gym membership and a bunch of expensive exercise gear and get them so sweaty they stink worse than Anders’s underwear after a tough game of badminton. Can you explain to me why nothing can be washed in hot water anymore? No chance this stuff will get clean in just lukewarm like the tag suggests. We’re talking workout clothes. Isn’t that nuts?”
“Sure. But listen, this isn’t a great time. Maybe we can talk —”
“I suggest you pull over and stop the car instead. I’m pretty sure you’ll want to hear this now.”
Fabian followed her advice and stopped in a free parking spot just after he turned left onto Hjälmshultsgatan, while Malin shouted on the other end.
“Anders! I’m getting in the shower!”
“Okay, I’ll get dinner started,” came Anders’s reply.
“No rush! I’m going to wash my hair and put a bunch of masks on it and everything, so it’ll be a while!”
Fabian heard Malin close and lock the bathroom door behind her. “There, now we can talk undisturbed. I managed to identify your killers, and they certainly do seem unique. Their names are Didrik and Nova Meyer. And they’re twins.”
“Twins,” Fabian repeated, and several puzzle pieces fell into place before his eyes. This might explain how they had managed to switch places with each other, and also how their mutual timing could be so perfect. It was as if one always knew what the other was doing, almost telepathically.
“To make a long story short, they are the bastard children of Count Henning von Gyllenborg, whom they appear to have killed after years of sexual and psychological abuse.”
“And then they took revenge on their two brothers, Aksel and Bernard von Gyllenborg,” Fabian said as he realized that he was parked right outside Tågaborg School, which Theodor might walk out of at any moment now.
“Right. I’ll get back to that. Because the interesting thing is that their mom birthed them in secret and raised them totally outside the system.”
“What do you mean, outside the system?” His eyes followed a group of teens and he realized he hadn’t made his daily call to Theodor in over a week.
“They just don’t exist.”
“How so?”
“What don’t you understand? They’re not anywhere in the national registry. They don’t have personal ID numbers. They never went to school, had a job, or paid even one krona in taxes. They just don’t exist.”
“Well, that explains why we haven’t managed to identify them. You said you were going to get back to the brothers.”
“Right, there’s something that doesn’t add up about them. Let’s start with Aksel von Gyllenborg — you know, the one who was found frozen in the woods.” Fabian heard a toilet flush. “Don’t worry, that’s just so Anders won’t wonder what’s going on. Anyway, at first I thought they were out to sell his half of the estate.”
“Who owned the other half?”
“His brother Bernard, who you found in Viken. As far as I can tell, Aksel owned the majority of the grounds and the forest, where he spent his time indulging his passion for hunting. Bernard was more interested in impressing people with fancy dinners, so he kept the manor house. The thing is, in the cases of Johan Halén and Peter Brise, they sold off the assets and drained their accounts. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s not what they did here.” Fabian heard a shower come on.
“What did they do?”
“That’s what I don’t quite understand. Aksel’s half of the estate was sold on September 27, 2010, and shortly after, the money was deposited into the account by the buyers. Fifty-three million, to be exact; we’re not talking peanuts. By the way, aren’t you going to ask how I learned all this?”
“Yeah, sorry. How did you learn all this?”
“Glad you asked. My banker at Sparbanken. What a rock star. I think he spent several hours searching through the archives. Anyway, Aksel von Gyllenborg lived way beyond his means, and it seems he mortgaged his half of the estate all the way up to the ridge pole, which means that the twins didn’t get a single krona from it because almost all of the purchase price went straight to the creditor — the bank.”
“Couldn’t they have bought it themselves?” Fabian asked, thinking that they might finally have managed to trace everything back to where it started. “Maybe that’s what this is all about,” he went on. “Getting revenge on their father, Henning von Gyllenborg, not just by killing him and his two legitimate sons, but by taking over the whole property.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“The buyers. It’s a totally different couple. Sten and Anita Strömberg.”
93
Sannie Lemke had initially felt an enormous sense of relief when she escaped the police station. The fresh evening breeze on her face as she hurried away, coupled with the cloudless sky reaching up into eternity, immediately put her in a better mood. Sure, she was aware that she was much safer with the police, but she couldn’t stand the thought of being cooped up for another night.
It was in the walls. Everything she’d worked so hard to silence had come to life as soon as she smelled that peculiar odour found in jails. All the times they’d brought her in for no reason. All the stuff no one should ever have to experience.
So many times she had asked herself why, when deep down she knew the answer was simple. Because they could. Because they were too bored on a night that was too long. Because she was one of the people for whom the rules didn’t apply. And the police had a free pass when it came to confidentiality. Now she had left all of that behind and she’d already come far enough that their eyes and hands couldn’t reach her.
The problem was, she had nowhere to go. There was no place where she didn’t run the risk
of encountering the others. One of the many people she considered friends and counted on, but who would point in her direction for just seventy-five kroner.
Her only chance was Dunja Hougaard. She could only hope that she wasn’t like everyone else and would follow through on her promise to catch the killers. Until then, she needed to stay hidden, to make herself invisible.
She could hear a car following her. Maybe she was just being paranoid. Maybe it was just lost, or looking for a parking spot. Either way, it was scaring her out of her wits.
So far Sannie had managed to keep from looking over her shoulder. She hadn’t even started running, aware that showing fear would be like offering up her throat. Better to act as normal as possible and keep walking as if she had a goal in mind. As if she really had a life, and it was just around the corner.
Maybe that was what she should do. Cross the forbidden line. Enter the visible world and hide in one of the many fancy houses — they were empty anyway, waiting for their owners to return from Thailand, a luxury apartment in Copenhagen, or a business trip to London. If she could pick the right house, she could probably just stay there until this all blew over.
She would have to be methodical about it, looking for lights on timers and laundry that had been hanging out to dry for way too long. Or a car that was parked in the driveway and collecting dust. It wouldn’t be any trouble to break in. A decently big rock and a window facing the back, that was all she would need.
At last she had a plan. In just a few hours, when evening turned into night, she would be enjoying a warm bath with scented oils, and after that, for the first time in a long time, she would crawl into a bed made with freshly laundered sheets.
The more Sannie thought about it, the stranger it seemed that this idea hadn’t occurred to her earlier. Why had neither she nor anyone else started helping themselves and ignoring the law, which was never meant for them in the first place? Why hadn’t any of them thought of robbing a bank or committing a burglary, instead of just going around begging?
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