The Department of Sensitive Crimes

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “So Bim was making it up?”

  “That’s what I thought initially,” said Signe. “I thought that maybe he had dumped her and she came up with this story as a sort of face-saving excuse. But then I noticed that if I mentioned him—which I did from time to time—she became really jumpy. It was as if she was hiding something. I became suspicious. And then something happened that made me really worried.”

  They waited. Somewhere in a neighbouring street, an ambulance siren wailed.

  “Bim’s mother has a car that she lends to Bim from time to time. Bim even calls it her car, but it’s really her mother’s. Linnea and I were going somewhere with Bim in her car—to a party that somebody was holding out of town. Anyway, when we were at the party I discovered that I had left a sweater in the car and so I borrowed the keys from Bim, and said I’d go and fetch it.

  “When I got to the car I remembered that Bim had put some stuff in the boot of the car, and I thought my sweater might be there. So I unlocked the boot and found it. But I also found something else. There was a small shovel, with some dirt on it. And something else besides.”

  The room was now in complete silence.

  “It was a cloth—an ordinary white cloth about so big—and there was dried blood on it. Not much, but definitely blood. It was tucked in behind the shovel. And that was when I started to put two and two together. I wondered whether Bim had...well, you know, got rid of Sixten.”

  Anna cleared her throat. “I’m not sure whether such a conclusion would be entirely justified,” she said.

  “Maybe not. But then there was something else—something Bim had said that made me think. I only remembered it later, but it really stuck in my mind.”

  “And that was...?” asked Anna.

  “Something Bim had said to me a few weeks back, before she and Sixten broke up. We had been talking about boys who two-timed, and I said that I could understand why a boy might on occasion have two girlfriends. Not that I was justifying it, of course, but I said that we had to be tolerant. And then she said, quite strongly as it happened, ‘If I discovered a boy was cheating on me, I’d be tempted to kill him—I really would.’ Those were her actual words.”

  “Did you say anything to her about all this?” asked Ulf.

  Signe shook her head. “No. I was confused, and I suppose I was also a bit frightened. If she had actually killed Sixten, then she could kill me too. You never know.”

  Anna reassured her that she thought that extremely unlikely. “You mustn’t jump to conclusions,” she counselled. “People disappear for all sorts of reasons. They go away. Then they come back. It happens all the time.”

  Signe was not convinced. “But why would she lie about his going to the North Pole?” she asked. “And why was there blood on that bit of cloth?”

  Ulf intervened. “Those are things that we can look into,” he said. “You’ve done the right thing by bringing this to our attention.”

  Signe said that she felt bad about it. “She’s a friend. And here I am accusing her of getting rid of somebody...”

  “You haven’t accused anybody of anything,” said Anna soothingly. “You had some perfectly legitimate doubts, and you have done the right thing by bringing them to the attention of the police. If everybody were as conscientious about that as you’ve been, the crime rate would go right down.”

  “Exactly,” said Carl. “You have no reason to reproach yourself. No reason at all.”

  Signe relaxed. “I feel so stupid,” she said. “Imagining things.”

  “You’re not stupid,” said Anna. “And now, could you show us that photograph of Sixten?”

  Signe slipped a piece of paper across the table. “I’ve printed it on ordinary paper. I can send you a file, if you like. You might be able to sharpen it—you know, increase the definition.”

  “Erik can do that,” said Carl.

  They looked at the photograph.

  “A nice-looking young man,” said Anna.

  “Who are the others in the background?” asked Ulf.

  Signe had no idea. “His friends, perhaps. Passers-by.”

  “And that’s Bim with him?” asked Carl.

  Signe nodded. “That’s her.”

  Anna slipped the piece of paper into the folder she was carrying. “Could you give us Bim’s address, please? And her phone number.”

  Signe looked worried. “You’re going to talk to her?”

  Anna explained that they would have to do this. “It will be our starting point,” she said. “There may be a perfectly good explanation. We need to see if she can throw light on it.”

  “But you won’t mention me, will you?” Signe pleaded. “Not by name.” She looked anxious; her eyes were searching out Anna’s, for reassurance.

  “We shall not mention you,” said Anna calmly. “You have my word.”

  * * *

  —

  When Ulf returned to his flat that evening, Martin was with Mrs. Högfors. He gave silent thanks, as he often did, for this arrangement, made possible because Mrs. Högfors was always in. Ulf had never known her to go anywhere, although she did reveal that four years ago she had, in fact, gone to Copenhagen, but had returned the same day, as she said that it had not agreed with her. There had also been a trip to Stockholm to visit a cousin, but that, she said, had not been a success either.

  “I take the view,” she once said to Ulf, “that if you live in Malmö, then that is the place you are intended to be. Högfors”—she always referred to her late husband by his surname—“said the same thing too.”

  “So Mr. Högfors never went anywhere either?” said Ulf.

  The widow shook her head. “He was a man of the very broadest outlook, but he never believed in going anywhere. He had a very sensitive stomach, you know, and that is always a disincentive to travel. If you have a sensitive stomach, it is undoubtedly best to remain at home.”

  Ulf had glanced at the picture of Högfors on the table in Mrs. Högfors’ living room. A cheerful-looking, well-built man, not visibly suffering from the consequences of a sensitive stomach, stared out of the framed photograph. He was wearing, Ulf noticed, a nautical cap.

  “He sailed?” asked Ulf, gesturing towards the photograph.

  “No,” said Mrs. Högfors. “But he was a great supporter of the navy. Högfors was very distrustful of the Russians—he always was, even as a small boy, I believe. He said that Sweden needed her navy to constrain the Russians. And he was right, in my view. The Russians are everywhere, Mr. Varg—everywhere. Not just in Russia, where you might expect to find Russians, but all over the place in their submarines and what-not.”

  In spite of her disinclination to travel, Mrs. Högfors was an eager reader, and was perfectly happy to read about exotic places that she would never visit. Rather to Ulf’s surprise, she also read books on popular science, although she was undiscriminating as to their date of publication. This meant that she would sometimes talk about what she described as exciting new possibilities well after those possibilities had been translated into reality. Thus she had excitedly told Ulf that she had read a book predicting that one day man would undoubtedly set foot on the moon.

  “It’s hard to believe,” she said, “but apparently there’s a good chance of it happening. I was just reading about it.”

  Ulf had replied that he thought it was just possible that this had already occurred.

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Varg,” she said. “I was reading that it’s still at the planning stage.”

  The book had been produced to show him—a tattered-looking volume, discharged after long service in the local library, that she had picked up from a church bazaar. From the biographical note on the back cover, Ulf ascertained that the author had been born in 1897.

  That evening, Ulf found Mrs. Högfors looking concerned.

  “Martin is
not quite himself today,” she said. “Normally he’s so excited to see you, but look at him now.”

  Martin lay on a rug under Mrs. Högfors’s dining table. She was right—it was unlike him to be indifferent to the presence of his owner.

  Ulf bent down to pat the dog. Martin opened an eye, half-heartedly wagged his tail several times, then closed his eye again.

  “Did he eat, Mrs. Högfors?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I gave him some of those dog biscuits he likes so much. He polished them off. And his nose is wet, you’ll see.”

  “That’s a good sign?”

  “Oh, yes. If an animal’s nose is wet, then there’s nothing too seriously amiss. It’s when their noses are dry that you have to start worrying.”

  “He could be tired,” suggested Ulf.

  That, she agreed, was a possibility, but she thought it was more in his mind. “I think he might be depressed.”

  “Do dogs get depressed?”

  Mrs. Högfors nodded. “Yes, I understand they do, Mr. Varg. Högfors once told me about a dog that apparently committed suicide.”

  Ulf smiled. “Surely not, Mrs. Högfors.”

  She assured him it was true. The dog had belonged to a Lutheran bishop who was largely indifferent to it. “He was a very unhappy man, that bishop,” she said. “Rather like that bishop in Fanny och Alexander—you know that film they’ve just made. Mr. Bergman, I think.”

  “I think it was made some time ago, Mrs. Högfors.”

  “Was it? Oh well, I must get to the cinema more often. Anyway, that bishop was a very buttoned-up man, was he not? I can imagine that his dog can’t have had much fun. Anyway, this dog—the dog that belonged to the other bishop—was very much down in the dumps. Apparently, he swallowed a considerable overdose of some pills he sniffed out in the bathroom, and that was that. The vet couldn’t do much for him, I’m afraid.”

  Ulf raised an eyebrow. “Somewhat unlikely, surely, Mrs. Högfors. Couldn’t it have been an accident? Dogs eat all sorts of things.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was deliberate.”

  “Well, I’m sure Martin won’t be that bad. Shall we see how he is over the next day or so, and if he doesn’t perk up I’ll take him to the vet.”

  Martin returned with Ulf to his flat, where the dog had a small meal, which was not eaten with any great enthusiasm, but was nonetheless finished. Then he slept, while Ulf made his own dinner and went over in his mind the rather odd interview with that young woman, Signe Magnusson. Something was worrying Ulf, gnawing away at him, as troublesome details so often do. There was something that did not quite add up in the story that Signe had told them. It was hard, if not impossible, to put one’s finger on it; perhaps it was more a case of intuition. As a detective one became used to the promptings of the nose, and this, he thought, might be a case where such promptings should be heeded. But what was it? He thought about what Signe had said, but also, more importantly perhaps, about how she had looked when she said it. Did she dislike her friend Bim? Was there envy in the background? Envy had a particular smell, Ulf thought. It was very subtle, but you could always identify it when it was present. The smell of envy.

  Chapter Seven

  A DEAD DOG FLOATS

  There were two tasks written into Ulf’s diary for the following day. The first of these was to attend the trial of Hampus Johansson on charges of assault. The second was to interview Bim in Interview Room 2. Anna had the same commitments entered in her diary. She, like Ulf, was not looking forward to the first of these, while she awaited the second with curiosity mixed with anticipation. That sort of inquiry—the investigation of a crime that might or might not have taken place—was exactly the sort of case that had drawn her to volunteer for the Department of Sensitive Crimes in the first place. And she liked working with Ulf, of course—everyone did. They enjoyed his sense of humour and his occasional unpredictability. That unpredictability, of course, was itself unpredictable, which added to his colleagues’ enjoyment of it.

  It was not mandatory for investigating officers to attend the trials of those whom they had arrested, and many did not. In cases, though, when they had met the victims personally, they were encouraged to attend as a show of solidarity. From the victim’s point of view, seeing the agent of the perpetrator’s fall present in court marked a conclusion to the whole drama. It was also reassuring that the police were there at the time of the dispensing of justice. This sent a signal to the accused that any attempt at intimidation or recrimination would be resisted and punished. The trial of Hampus Johansson was different, though, as both officers felt considerable sympathy for the accused, even to the extent of wishing that it had been possible to let him off with a summary penalty order. Ulf had raised that possibility with his friend Lars, the prosecutor, but had been told that this was impossible where a weapon was used or where the injury inflicted had been a serious one.

  “The back of the knee is potentially very vulnerable,” said Lars. “You can’t ignore that sort of thing.”

  “I wasn’t proposing to ignore it,” said Ulf. “I was merely suggesting that—”

  Lars did not let him finish. “The decision’s been taken, Ulf. Sorry. Johansson is going to court. I’ll speed it up, if you like, so that we can get it over with, but it’s going to happen.”

  Ulf realised that Anna shared his feelings about the trial as they travelled together in his ancient Saab to the new District Court building in Flundran.

  “I’m not looking forward to this,” she said. “That poor man...”

  “Victim or perpetrator?” asked Ulf. “Who’s poor? Hampus or Malte?”

  “I was thinking of Hampus,” said Anna.

  Ulf laughed. “So was I,” he said. “But do you know something? I think it’s odd that here we are—agents of the state’s vengeance—sympathising with the lawbreaker. Isn’t there something strange about that?”

  “Everybody loses when a crime takes place. The perpetrator is diminished as much as anybody else.”

  Ulf thought about this. He could see the direction of Anna’s argument, but it made him feel uncomfortable. “But don’t we need righteous indignation?” he asked. “Don’t we need legitimate anger?”

  “Perhaps. But the wrongdoer is still human. He’s still in a mess—one of his own creation, sure, but he’s still wrecked his own life.”

  Ulf agreed. “Yes, he has. But I suppose we should try to keep the moral contours clear. We need to remember that there’s right and there’s wrong, and that some people are on one side and others are on the other.”

  “I know that,” said Anna. “All I’m saying is that when you see somebody like Hampus standing in the dock, and you think about how he got there, then you surely feel some sympathy.”

  Ulf sighed. “I know, I know. And to tell you the truth, I tried to get this case diverted out of the system. I spoke to the prosecutor about dealing with it as a summary penalty matter. He said no.”

  “Your friend? Your friend...what’s his name?”

  “Lars. Lars Patriksson.”

  Anna thought for a moment. “You and he go back a bit, don’t you?”

  Ulf had known Lars since they were both seven. “We were Spårarscouts together. And we ended up as Roverscouts. All the way through. And at university.”

  Anna found it hard to imagine Ulf as a scout. “I can’t quite see it,” she said. “Young detective with young prosecuting lawyer in your cute little green uniforms. Sweet, but hard to imagine.”

  “You didn’t serve?” asked Ulf in mock indignation.

  Anna shook her head. “I was a member of a cookery circle. Can you believe it? My mother thought it was appropriate for girls to join something called the Swedish Girls’ Cookery Union. Ridiculous.”

  “Parents can be so old-fashioned,” said Ulf.

  “Mind you,” said Anna
, “we had terrific fun. We went to cookery camp where we cooked all day.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes. There was nothing else to do. It was in the country, in a sort of large farmhouse. There was a lake nearby, and we were allowed to swim, but nobody did because on the first day somebody found a dead dog floating on the surface and nobody wanted to go there afterwards. So we just cooked.” She paused. “Did you go to camp?”

  “Of course. Regularly. We did things in the forests.”

  Anna looked out of the window. “You know, when I was a girl I always suspected that boys were having more fun. I had an idea that they went off into the forests and did things that we didn’t do. And that idea never went away, to tell you the truth.”

  “You still think it?”

  Anna turned back to look at Ulf. “Sometimes. Men can be evasive, you know. They like to give women the impression that there are things they do which are...well, men’s business.”

  “And women don’t do that? There isn’t any women’s business?”

  Anna said that there was, but it was transacted quite discreetly. “Women are less showy than men,” she said. “They do their women’s things more discreetly.”

  “I’d love to know what these women’s things are,” said Ulf.

  “Wouldn’t you just,” said Anna, with a smile. “But you’ll never find out.”

  * * *

  —

  Ulf and Anna were seated in Court No. 2 when Hampus came in, accompanied by Blomquist. The policeman spotted them first and waved; then Hampus did too, and exchanged a few words with Blomquist. Then the two of them walked over to speak to the detectives. The judge had yet to enter, and the court was empty, apart from one or two officials and a bored-looking court reporter from the evening paper.

  “I thought I’d come with Hampus,” said Blomquist. “Just to see him through the whole process. After all, it happened on my patch.”

  Ulf looked at Hampus. The dance instructor’s face was pale and drawn. Ulf saw that his hands were shaking, and that he had clasped them together to still them.