H01 - The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  “But then say so, you joker. So you haven’t seen Olofsson today?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to try to figure out where she’s gone. How’s it going for you?”

  “Nothing new under the sun. No one I’ve talked with recognizes Vannerberg. Many people recognize Olsson, but no one knows her.”

  “Have you had a chance to talk with the paramedics?” Sjöberg asked.

  “Sure. The ones who picked up the old lady remember her, but no one showed any noticeable reaction to Vannerberg’s massacred face. I can imagine they’ve seen worse.”

  “How long will you be here, do you think?”

  “Rest of the day, I’d say. The personnel come and go here all the time and I thought I’d try to talk to as many as possible before I leave. And then I’ll call it a day.”

  “Are you doing anything in particular over the weekend?” asked Sjöberg.

  “The in-laws are coming for a visit, so it can’t get much worse than that,” Sandén answered with a forced look of distress.

  Sjöberg knew that Sandén got along very well with his in-laws. He had met them several times himself and knew that they were nice people.

  “I was thinking maybe you all could come over for a bite to eat tomorrow evening, but we’ll have to do it another time,” said Sjöberg. “We’re going to Åsa’s brother and sister-in-law’s tonight, so there’s sure to be a hangover tomorrow.”

  “Hello there. Have you forgotten the company party?”

  “The company party? Damn it, it’s the Christmas dinner tomorrow.”

  “Raw liver and lamb testicles.”

  Sjöberg got up with an amused expression and raised his hand in farewell.

  “Good luck.”

  “Get well soon,” Sandén answered, returning to his sports pages and half-eaten pastry.

  The first three people he made contact with in Margit Olofsson’s department had no idea where she was. The fourth was a short man who appeared to have passed retirement age long ago. Sjöberg wondered what in the name of God he was doing there. He had never previously encountered a male nurse that age. But the man was well informed. Margit Olofsson had taken her family—and Ingrid Olsson—on a Finland cruise and was not expected back at work until Monday morning. Olofsson and the nurse appeared to be very familiar, and the old man reported that the trip had been planned long ago—for the grandchildren’s sake—and that Olofsson let Ingrid Olsson go along, rather than leave her alone in a strange house. Sjöberg was not happy about this news, but thanked the man for his help. Then he took the elevator down to the cafeteria and bought a bottle of mineral water and a ciabatta with Brie and salami, which he consumed in the car on his way back to the police station.

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  AS SJöBERG PASSED LOTTEN on the way to his office, he asked her to re-direct his and Westman’s calls to his extension. Neither Telia nor Gun Vannerberg had been in touch that morning, and he wondered whether Gun Vannerberg might have gone on a Finland cruise, too. It struck him that from Malmö, you were more likely to go to Germany or Poland, or even England. He had never thought of that before—that Finland cruises were not a Swedish phenomenon, but more of a local thing for those living near Stockholm.

  He sat down at his desk, picked up the phone and dialed Westman’s cell phone number. She answered almost at once, and Sjöberg asked her who she had talked with at Telia about the requested calls. She gave him the details he needed, and he explained that in his many years of experience in similar matters, it was best to be persistent if you wanted to get anything done. Petra Westman laughed irreverently at her impatient superior and wished him good luck. He wished her the same and called the person at Telia. This turned out to be a young woman with a Gothenburg accent, who swore she had the information right in front of her and was at that very moment in the process of faxing it over to the police. He traded his authoritative detective inspector voice for a gentler, more humane variation, apologized for the inconvenience he had no doubt caused, and thanked her. Then he went out to the copy room and waited until the fax machine started humming and the longed-for papers were spit out of the machine one by one.

  The lists of phone numbers and accounts were long, and Sjöberg was astonished at how many calls were made to a normal family during a three-week period. Not to mention the cell phone and business phone. They seemed to be in constant use for days on end, and there were only incoming calls on the pile of papers before him. He started scanning through the lists to see if any of the names came up frequently, but soon gave up. Instead, he called the woman at Telia back and asked whether they could possibly help him by sorting the accounts on the lists, so that he could get a better overview of how many times each subscriber called each number during that time period. She had no way of doing that and Sjöberg then phoned a computer-savvy acquaintance at the National Bureau and asked the same question. He was no help either, so Sjöberg simply had to tackle the monumental task on his own.

  After staring at the meaningless numbers and names a while longer, he decided to devote the rest of the day to going through the incoming calls on the business line with Jorma Molin. He called him and Molin dutifully promised to help, as best he could. Sjöberg felt a sting of bad conscience at further burdening Vannerberg’s poor business partner, who had been left alone with the company and his own sorrow over his departed friend. He got on the subway anyway and went over there.

  The office on Kungsholmen was the same, but Molin looked considerably more worn out than the last time they met. They dispensed with pleasantries and immediately tackled the Herculean task of systematically going through the subscribers who had called the office during the weeks of interest, one by one. They could remove many calls immediately from the list, while the great majority seemed irrelevant, but to be on the safe side, were put in parenthesis. Four hours later, when they had gone through all the lines on the detailed printouts, almost a hundred calls still remained that were unknown to Molin.

  It was now six o’clock and time for Molin to close up shop for the day and for Sjöberg to hurry home to change before the evening’s dinner with his brother and sister-in-law. Sjöberg left Jorma Molin at the little office with a shudder. Partly because yesterday’s winter weather had reverted to howling autumn winds and ice-cold rain, and partly out of sympathy for Molin, who was a pitiful creature with his hair on end, big, sorrowful, brown eyes and a quiet voice that sounded weak and toneless.

  Just as he was about to step on the escalator that would lead him down into the subway system, his cell phone rang. To avoid dropping the connection if he went down into the underworld, he stopped and stood next to some staggering winos who were begging under the roof outside the Västermalm shopping arcade. It was Gun Vannerberg finally calling back.

  “Yes, I happened to think about your frequent moves during Hans’ childhood,” said Sjöberg. “I just wanted to ask, did you ever live in Österåker?”

  “No, we only lived in cities,” Gun Vannerberg answered. “You know, in my business...”

  “I thought you said you lived in Hallsberg.”

  “Yes, we did for awhile.”

  “But that’s no city.”

  “Oh, yes, you bet it is.”

  “No, not really. Believe me. But that’s of no significance...”

  The female voice in the receiver interrupted him.

  “It’s a lot bigger than Österåker.”

  Sjöberg had no desire to bicker about that, too, so he asked instead, “So, did you live anywhere else in the Stockholm area?”

  “Did we live anywhere in the Stockholm area? No, actually we didn’t,” Gun Vannerberg replied. “We never got that far north. As long as Hans was living with me, we kept to Östergötland, Närke, and then Södermanland of course, but never the Stockholm area.”

  One of the intoxicated men nudged him and yelled in his face, and Gun Vannerberg sounded so sure of herself that Sjöberg could think of no other questio
ns to ask. Instead, he quickly ended the call and fled the field in disappointment, down into the subway.

  * * *

  Hamad and Westman were on Åkerbärsvägen in Enskede, dividing up the remaining addresses in the door-knocking operation between them. They stood close together under Hamad’s umbrella. Westman’s was back at the office. The rain pattered against the taut nylon and the sound made it seem heavier than it really was. There was a call on Westman’s cell and with frozen fingers she pulled the vibrating apparatus out of her jeans pocket.

  “Westman,” she answered curtly.

  “Where are you?” asked an angry voice on the other end.

  “At work,” Westman answered uncertainly.

  In the racket under the umbrella she could not tell who it was.

  “Who is asking?”

  “Rosén. Where are you?”

  “In Enskede. We’re knocking on doors...”

  “I want to speak with you. When will you be back?”

  The prosecutor sounded really irritated and she felt herself shrinking as she stood under the umbrella with the phone against her ear.

  “I won’t be able to come in later today, but--”

  “Then we’ll have to do it over the phone.”

  Hamad was studying her curiously and she turned her back to him, but remained under the umbrella.

  “What are you up to really?” Hadar Rosén almost roared into her ear. “I’m getting information that you are improperly putting the economic crime unit to work and running amok in the registries. ISPs and ASPs and conducting unauthorized searches in the crime registry.”

  She was prepared for problems of this type, but she imagined they would come from Sjöberg, not Rosén. She knew how to handle Sjöberg, but a hopping mad, almost six-foot-six prosecutor was worse than she had imagined.

  “I can explain,” Westman attempted, feeling Hamad’s eyes on her neck.

  “Yes, you’d better come up with a really good explanation. I don’t want to hear about any personal vendettas in my district.”

  “This is no vendetta,” she stammered, but realized at the same moment that apparently that’s exactly what it was.

  “I can issue you a warning about this.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Westman, pulling herself together. “He figures on the fringes of the investigation and I’ve got certain indications that not everything is as it should be. My searches confirm that.”

  “I see,” the prosecutor retorted with ice in his voice. “No convictions, no overdue payments, no conspicuous business deals, no hits in the ASP. The guy has a spotless past, damn it. And since when is Mälarhöjden on the outskirts of Enskede?”

  “You know very well what I--”

  “Perhaps you think I have no insight into what you’re doing, but you think wrong.”

  Rosén spit the words out into her ear and she knew that what he was saying was right.

  “I’ve read everything that’s been written in this investigation. I own this investigation, Westman. And I have not read a word about Mälarhöjden or any suspicions that some doctor at KS is supposed to be running around killing people with kitchen chairs.”

  “On Monday--” Westman began.

  “On Monday at 9:00 you will be in my office. And then I want a written account in hand.”

  “In hand...” Westman echoed as the prosecutor ended the call.

  She sighed heavily and put the phone away before she turned toward her associate with a guilty smile.

  “What was that all about?” Hamad asked. “Did Sjöberg go off his rocker?”

  “I wish. No, it was Rosén.”

  “What?” Hamad exclaimed with sincere surprise. “Have you fallen into disfavor with the prosecutor’s office? What are you up to, really? A vendetta?”

  “We’ll discuss it some other time.”

  “Hey, come on!”

  Westman simply shook her head with a look of resignation in her eyes, and they resumed the work they were there to carry out.

  * * *

  “Speech is silver, silence is...what?”

  She sat whispering the words, barely audible even to herself.

  “Two letters...must be a chemical notation...”

  Chemistry had never been her strong suit. No school subject, besides gymnastics, had really been her strong suit, but she had done well in life anyway. She sipped her wine, cut off a six-inch piece of cucumber, and set it on the cutting board. Possibly inspired by the crossword, she cut some horizontal slits across the light-green surface and then a couple vertical ones, after which the cucumber separated into a dozen thin rods that fell onto the cutting board. Using the knife, she gathered them together and placed them in the salad bowl, after which she took another sip of red wine and attacked a different corner of the crossword.

  Cooking and housework, in general, were not occupations she greatly appreciated. Ironically, that was just how she spent most of her time these days. After two years of community college with mediocre grades, she moved to Stockholm in search of adventure. Without education or any work experience, she soon got a job at a trendy bar near Stureplan. She had her appearance and her open, somewhat provocative, manner to thank for that, and she made no secret of it.

  On the nights when she was not working, she made the rounds of Stockholm’s nightlife and had no problem finding plenty of friends and admirers. It was not long, as she stood behind the bar mixing exotic drinks and pouring beer, before she was headhunted, as she liked to call it. An intoxicated, good-looking and very prosperous attorney offered her a job as a secretary at his office. There was no reason to hesitate. He paid well and she devoted her days to uncomplicated paperwork, making coffee, and other small services he wanted done. On weekday evenings they went to expensive restaurants and slept together, and on weekends—which he mostly spent with his wife and children—she moonlighted at the popular bar and continued to entertain her male acquaintances from other branches of society. It was the booming eighties and Stockholm was swinging.

  By and by, however, even Stockholm started to seem boring and she decided to try her wings (so to speak) in the even more glamorous occupation of airline stewardess. Her lack of education was no obstacle here either, and now she had some work experience, besides. She got a job at SAS and travelled the world. Troublesome passengers and many hours of hard toil in cramped airplane aisles were compensated for by amazing parties, beautiful people, and one stormy relationship after another in a never-ending flood of champagne and piña coladas.

  Finally she met her Prince Charming, the SAS pilot Jonas who, with his dark, almost raven-black hair, and his clear blue eyes, was the handsomest man she had ever met. From a constantly swarming cohort of female admirers he chose her, and she was just as quick to dismiss her own pining cavaliers and wannabes for his sake.

  After a grand wedding with almost two hundred guests, it suddenly turned out that there was an estate outside Sigtuna, which had been in the family for generations, where he thought they should live. Jonas was going to realize his dream: fly on weekdays, and ride and hunt small game in his free time. She was expected to quit her job as a flight attendant and stay at home on the estate, taking care of the household, the horses, the dogs, and the children. In the honeymoon phase of their relationship, she had no major objections to this, which she now deeply regretted. There had been no children and life in the country was lonely and boring. She, who was used to the good things in life—magnificent parties and a large circle of friends—now found herself almost fifteen years later sitting childless and alone on their estate, which still felt foreign to her. Jonas was seldom at home, which naturally did not improve the odds of having children.

  Despite her disappointment at the abrupt, unexpected change in life, she kept up her usual good spirits. Her body was still like a twenty-year-old’s—perhaps she could thank childlessness for that. Her blonde, naturally curly hair had retained its luster, and her face showed a conspicuous absence of wrinkles. She also knew that
her husband still adored her, even if her own feelings had cooled considerably. She could leave when she wanted, and maybe she would someday.

  Katrina and the Waves were booming from the CD player in the living room, which made Carina suddenly feel joyful. The song recalled many pleasant memories and she could not sit still when she heard it. She emptied the wine glass in one gulp and refilled it while she sang along with the refrain, “I’m walking on sunshine, oh oh, and it makes me feel good...”

  She got up and danced over to the stove, put on a pair of oven mitts, and opened the oven to remove the moose steak. Hot steam welled up from the oven and she squinted and turned her face away until it dissipated. With both hands firmly gripping the pan, she lifted the aromatic piece of meat onto the counter, filled a small stainless steel measuring cup with gravy, and poured it over the meat a few times before she placed it back in the oven.

  The wine was going to her head and her cheeks felt warm and rosy. She went over to the kitchen window and looked through the steady rain into the darkness, out over the horse meadow and toward the illuminated road to look for the bus that would hopefully be bringing Jonas. Admittedly he hadn’t called, so the plane was probably delayed, but sometimes he surprised her. After peering for several minutes she saw the bus arrive and stop a moment, then drive on and disappear beyond the curve. In the weak illumination at the bus stop she could see a solitary figure come hurrying across the road, enter their little lane, and be swallowed up by the shadows among the trees. Happy that the past week’s solitude was now finally over, she went back to the stove and turned on the burner under the potatoes, after which she sat down at the table again, took a sip of wine, and continued her fruitless attempt to solve the impossible crossword.

  DIARY OF A MURDERER, NOVEMBER 2006, FRIDAY