H01 - The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  “Maybe not,” I answer.

  “Let go of me!” she says angrily.

  “Then remember,” I say, pressing my fingers hard against her neck. “Remember what you did to my neck.”

  I try to get her to remember, I tell her, but she just stares back stupidly. Then I throw her down on the floor into a kneeling position—keeping a firm grip on her neck—and force her head into the water basin. I hold her under the water’s surface a little while and she flounders with her arms and feet, without letting go of the cigarette between her index and middle finger. When I finally let her up again, she's livened up. She snorts and blinks to get the water out of her eyes and to see me clearly.

  “What do you want from me?” she moans at last, when her breathing has recovered somewhat.

  “I want you to remember,” I say, still grasping her neck. “Remember, understand, and ask for forgiveness.”

  “But I don't remember! I can't help--”

  “You have to remember,” I interrupt, “you have to remember how you tortured me for days on end. You have to understand that you can't abuse a person the way you and your friends did, without leaving marks. Lasting impressions, incurable wounds. Don't you understand that? Don't you understand that it could be your child lying out there in the mud, with a beat-up face and clothes in rags? How would that feel?”

  “That...that would feel horrible,” she whimpers, and tears well up in her eyes, run down and mix with the streams of water on her cheeks.

  “So why did you do it?”

  “I don't even know if I did!” she cries desperately. “We were just kids, I can't believe...”

  I am getting tired of her talk and her bad memory, so I press her down under the water again—longer now. I see the cigarette burning down to her fingers, and she finally lets it go when it burns her. When I decide to let her up again, she is completely done in and can no longer hold her body up, so I have to release my grip on her neck and lift her head by the hair. I throw her head back and forth and she coughs and puffs for several minutes, not able to get a word out. During that time I tell her about crushed dreams, about a childhood without sunlight, about a life in loneliness, and a naked, withered soul. When she regains her ability to speak, she hisses out a “forgive me.” I don't believe her, but that doesn't matter; she's going to die anyway.

  “Your suffering is too short,” I say. “Mine has lasted for thirty-eight years. But my arms are getting tired. Bye-bye, Lise-Lott.”

  For the last time I press her head down into the foot bath, but she has already given up. She struggles involuntarily a little while and then becomes quiet. I leave her where she is, on her knees, bent over the water basin, but can't resist putting the burned-out cigarette back between her fingers before I get up.

  On the TV they are arguing and someone rushes out of a room and slams a door. I leave calmly and carefully close the door on Lise-Lott.

  TUESDAY

  AS USUAL, PETRA WESTMAN TACKLED her assigned work with energy, but for once, she didn’t take on any new initiatives of her own. Instead, she devoted the down time between specific tasks to digging for information regarding a certain Peder Fryhk.

  Peder Fryhk was fifty-three years old and originally from Hudiksvall. He qualified for college with high scores in 1972, then did his military service as a commando at KA1 on Rindö in 1972-1973. In 1973, he started his medical training at the university in Lund and got married. In 1974, a daughter was born, but for the years between 1975 and 1980 information was lacking. His wife and child were in Hudiksvall during this period, where both were still registered today. In 1980, he showed up again, resumed his studies in the fall and got a divorce. In 1984, he received his medical degree, after which he worked at various hospitals in the Stockholm area and now as a senior anesthesiologist at Karolinska.

  A colleague at the economic crimes unit helped her gather information on Fryhk’s financial dealings. There were no irregularities here. He was single with a good income and living expenses to match. Nothing strange. Petra confirmed with a search in the register that he had no criminal record. Searches in ISP—the police department’s internal registry of descriptions—produced nothing. Nor was there any information to be found in ASP—another of the police department’s internal registries, where you could search individual names among comments entered in connection with crimes. He seemed to have a blemish-free past.

  In a telephone call to Doctors Without Borders, Petra found out that the organization had only done work in Lebanon during 1975. Peder Fryhk was twenty-two years old then and had finished two years of pre-medical studies. So he could not have worked as a doctor in Lebanon in 1975. He was not found on any of their lists. At the very least, she had caught him in a lie.

  But how could she go further? Under no circumstances did she want Fryhk to find out about her investigations. For that reason she could not contact his mother, who was still alive, his neighbors, colleagues, or employer. Nor did she dare contact his daughter. But the ex-wife seemed like a fairly sure card. He had left her and his newborn daughter for a five-year stay abroad and then divorced her as soon as he came home. Presumably she did not speak with him very often, if at all.

  After repeated attempts to get in contact with the ex-wife, she managed to reach her at work late one evening. She was an operating room nurse at Hudiksvall Hospital.

  “I’m looking for Peder Fryhk,” Petra lied.

  There was total silence in the receiver and she hoped this was a good sign.

  “Hello?”

  “I haven't had contact with him for years. You’ll have to look elsewhere. Who’s asking?”

  Petra had deliberately avoided introducing herself. After careful consideration, she decided not to lie about her identity to this woman. Conversely, she had considered ending the conversation at this point—without introducing herself—if the answer had been different.

  “My name is Westman and I’m a police officer,” said Petra. “He appears in an investigation I'm working on.”

  “Then you know you won’t come in contact with him through me,” said the woman, whose name was Mona Friberg.

  She obviously had her head on straight.

  “Actually you’re the one I wanted to talk with,” Petra admitted, quickly trying to regain control of the conversation. “When did you last speak with him?”

  “In 1980,” the woman replied curtly.

  “In connection with the divorce?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you’ve had no contact with him whatsoever since then?”

  “As I said.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “Not her either, as far as I know.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Mona Friberg hesitated a few seconds with the answer.

  “His involvement with his daughter has been non-existent. Neither she nor I have the slightest interest in having any contact.”

  “Please forgive me if I seem a bit forward,” Petra said, “but why did you marry him in the first place?”

  She was aware that she had now given the woman a reason to end the conversation, but something told her she would not.

  “The classic. I got pregnant.”

  “And he took his responsibility?”

  After a moment’s hesitation she replied, “On the surface. In reality, we never saw each other for the most part. He moved to Lund and then he went abroad and was gone for several years.”

  “And when he came home he asked for a divorce?”

  “Yes. Without seeing me. I haven’t seen him in person since 1975.”

  Mona Friberg’s voice revealed no bitterness. She gave factual, brief answers to the questions she was asked. Nonetheless, Petra seemed to detect some ambiguity in her way of relating to it all. What she was saying was anything but flattering to Fryhk, yet she had her guard up. While the conversation was going on, Petra could not put her finger on it, but afterwards she decided that Mona Friberg was holding back part of the truth a
bout Peder Fryhk.

  “Has he paid child support?” asked Petra, even though she already knew the answer.

  “No, and I never asked for any either. My finances are good.”

  “That might also be interpreted as you having strong reasons not to want to have anything to do with Peder Fryhk,” Petra attempted.

  “I prefer to be independent,” replied Mona Friberg without so much as a quiver in her voice revealing that it might be some other way.

  “Have you any idea where he was during that stay abroad between 1975 and 1980?” Petra inquired.

  “No. And no one else either, that I know of.”

  “What is he like as a person?” Petra ventured to ask.

  “Intelligent and goal-oriented. Selfish. Extroverted.”

  In the midst of the positive judgments she had slipped in a negative one. She supplied facts and appeared to be completely objective. But what was it she wasn’t saying? She said extroverted, not pleasant. And goal-oriented, was that necessarily positive? No, not when it was followed by selfish. Petra did not have time to complete the thought.

  “Interested in war,” said Mona Friberg. “Extremely interested in war. I must get back to work now.”

  That ended the conversation.

  WEDNESDAY EVENING

  THE MOOD IN THE INVESTIGATION group was subdued. It was already Wednesday and nothing new had turned up that might lead them forward. The fingerprints from the chair in Ingrid Olsson's kitchen had been run against the register of known criminals, without success. They did not belong to anyone else who figured in the investigation either. Nothing new had come up in the later questioning of Vannerberg's family and business partner.

  The medical examiner Zetterström's report was complete, but contained no information that led anywhere. The death occurred between four o'clock and eight o'clock on Monday evening, which is what they had assumed all along. The cause of death was also as expected: cerebral hemorrhage caused by force with a blunt instrument against the head and face.

  Questioning neighbors in the area produced the following information: Lennart Josefsson, living in a house across from Olsson's, saw two men pass by outside his window at a short interval about the time of the murder. Due to the darkness he could not provide a description, but he could not rule out that Vannerberg had been one of them. A family on another street had a break-in in their garage during summer vacation. Several families in the area had been visited by a female Polish picture-seller during the month of November. Several times an older couple had noticed an unknown woman with a “Swedish appearance” walking on Åkerbärsvägen. Some of the neighbors had noticed a male jogger in a light-blue sweat suit passing by on the street. He proved to be a resident of Olvonbacken, a cross-street to Åkerbärsvägen. A male bicyclist in his thirties or forties, presumably drunk, had been seen wobbling around on the streets the Saturday evening before the murder. Finally, nine families in the area had been visited by a shady-looking twenty-something with a Swedish appearance selling toilet paper with the emblem of the local tennis club. Three individuals in the immediate neighborhood had witnessed Ingrid Olsson being picked up by ambulance after she broke her hip.

  The investigation group was working along several lines, but agreed on the main hypothesis that Hans Vannerberg, intending to visit the new family at Åkerbärsvägen number 13, left home on Monday evening and by mistake ended up at number 31, where he met his slayer, who had followed him there for reasons so far unknown.

  The prosecutor, the long-limbed Hadar Rosén, was starting to get impatient and proposed that they investigate whether there were any similar cases in Stockholm or elsewhere. Einar Eriksson had researched this and found no direct parallels anywhere, in terms of the murder method or crime scene. After all, most homicides were the result of either family tragedies or drunkenness.

  When Sjöberg went home that evening, it was pouring rain and, as usual, he had no umbrella. If he brought an umbrella with him to work, he left it there and didn't need it until he got home, but if he left the umbrella at home it rained just as he was leaving work. He made a quick decision and took a detour a few blocks in the opposite direction past a store that sold handbags, hoping they would have umbrellas, which proved to be the case. This didn't help, however, for the store had just closed and he had to patiently trudge back those three blocks.

  On the way home, he passed a stationery store, which he entered without really knowing why. He had a definite sense that there was something he needed in there and came out a little later with a pencil case for each of the girls, wrapped in holiday paper, and a feeling of dissatisfaction at not being able to think of what it was he really should have bought.

  Finally at home, he was showered with sympathy over his soaked appearance and when he laid down on the couch to keep the children company in front of the TV, it suddenly occurred to him what his errand in the stationery store had really been. Christoffer and Jonathan had teamed up and managed to throw fifty or so magazines on the floor, of which at least three were completely in shreds.

  When the four youngest children were in bed, and Simon was sitting in front of the computer playing games, Sjöberg sat down at the kitchen table to eat the warmed-up leftovers of the children's dinner. Åsa had eaten with them earlier in the evening, but she kept him company anyway. She asked about the murder investigation and, between bites of hot dog, he recounted the developments of the last few days.

  “One thing strikes me,” said Åsa. “They seemed to have a good relationship, the Vannerbergs, didn't they?”

  “Seems like it,” answered Sjöberg.

  “More or less like you and me?”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  “Two reasonable people who talk to each other?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Say you have an appointment this evening and have to go out. Suppose you have to question a witness. Then you'd say to me, ‘I have to leave for awhile and question a witness,’ wouldn't you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You wouldn't say you were going to question a suspect. Later on I wouldn't recall that you said ‘a suspect,’ although you actually said ‘a witness’.”

  “I think you're on to something.”

  “Besides—and I'm not sure about this—I don't think you'd come home first to be with the family, and then ‘have to’ leave and meet someone you hadn't set up a meeting with. Vannerberg could have gone there first, straight from work.”

  “Maybe they weren't home until after six, maybe he knew that.”

  “Then check that out. If that was the case, he should have called first, because he really wasn't just passing by. Maybe they weren't at home.”

  “But they were.”

  “He couldn't know that, because he hadn't called and asked.”

  “You're right. And that puts us--”

  “That puts us in a situation where Vannerberg was lured to a deserted house by someone who planned to murder him there,” Åsa interrupted.

  “Someone with the knowledge that Ingrid Olsson wasn't home,” Sjöberg filled in. “Someone who either wanted to get at her, too, or simply chose her house because it stood empty.”

  “So, someone with a connection to both Ingrid Olsson and Hans Vannerberg. Find that connection and the mystery is solved,” Åsa declared contentedly, putting her hands behind her neck.

  “You’re damn right about that,” said Sjöberg with a concentrated expression. “I'll go call that buyer.”

  He got up from the table and left the dirty dish behind for his proudly humming wife.

  He started by calling Petra Westman, who had been in contact with the buyer previously. She was still at work and, with some surprise, gave him the telephone number for the family at Åkerbärsvägen 13.

  “I'll tell you tomorrow if this gives any results,” Sjöberg said mysteriously, thanking Westman for her help and ending the call.

  Then he called the buyers, and the husband answered. He was the one who'd had contac
t with the brokerage firm regarding the complaints about the seller.

  “Excuse me for calling so late. This is Conny Sjöberg, chief inspector with the Violent Crimes Unit, Hammarby police department. I'm leading the investigation regarding the murder of Hans Vannerberg.”

  “No problem. How can I help you?” the man asked readily.

  “I wonder if you ever spoke with Hans Vannerberg in person.”

  “No, I didn't. I only talked with Molin.”

  “Did you ever talk with Molin about suitable times for Vannerberg to come over and look at those things you were unhappy about?” asked Sjöberg.

  “I said that any time was fine. My wife is home with the children.”

  “Wouldn't it have been appropriate for Vannerberg to have called first? Perhaps your wife isn't home all day?”

  “Sure, of course that would have been reasonable. If only he hadn't just been passing by…”

  “Thanks very much,” said Sjöberg, “and I beg your pardon once again.”

  Åsa smiled triumphantly at him. He hugged her and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

  “Where would I be without you, darling?” he laughed. “Now it's time for Simon to go to bed, I think.”

  Åsa was reading a book and Sjöberg watched the TV news distractedly, while his brain worked over what might give the investigation a new direction. He decided to contact Ingrid Olsson tomorrow and go through the house himself. In pursuit of something—but he didn't quite know what. Hopefully he would recognize it if he saw it, but by no means did he feel sure of that.

  The reporter went on and on about Hamas, suicide bombings in Iraq, and the poisoning of the Russian ex-spy Litvinenko, but Sjöberg was having a hard time concentrating on the news. One story, though, caught his interest. Some uniformed policemen conversing with one another were shown on the screen while the TV anchor summarized the event: