H01 - The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  Everything indicated that the murderer was a person out for revenge. The question was simply: Why? The first murder, of Hans Vannerberg, seemed more like a crime of passion, even if the planning of the whole thing had been fairly refined. Then the murderer seemed to have warmed up. Lise-Lott Nilsson, based on what he knew, had been drowned without mercy, and Carina Ahonen had been outright tortured before the execution. What could these individuals have done to deserve such punishment? The perpetrator must be a disturbed person who had likely been subjected to serious abuse during childhood. Hans Vannerberg had been a scamp, that much he understood. But were his boyish pranks so serious that someone would have hated him for almost forty years to the point that he—or she, for that matter—finally snapped and then murdered him? The thought was dizzying. That hatred must have been hard to live with. He had heard somewhere that trauma tends to return in memory after ten years. Could the same be true after forty years? Was this possibly the result of some out of control “mid-life crisis”?

  His musings were interrupted again by the shrill ring of the phone. This time it was Torstensson in Katrineholm. Sjöberg recounted his theories, but Torstensson evidently had a hard time believing what he was hearing. He asked the same questions over and over, and seemed to need extra reassurance regarding the credibility of his Stockholm colleague before he gave in. Torstensson then thoroughly described the details of the murder of Lise-Lott Nilsson. Here, too, there were clear fingerprints to go on. The murderer was evidently either inexperienced or unafraid, but presumably both. Lise-Lott Nilsson, just as the media had reported, had been drowned in a tub of water, more precisely, her own footbath. According to Torstensson, there were no visible signs of physical torture, but Sjöberg had a definite feeling that the mental torture that preceded the murder had no doubt been just as painful. The medical examiner’s report did not contain anything that indicated repeated periods underwater, but Sjöberg assumed, based on what had heard so far about the murderer’s methods, that the drowning itself was only the end of a prolonged torment. Perhaps the murderer had been subjected to similar treatment as a child?

  He left his office and went over to Sandén, who was on hold with the municipality of Katrineholm. He had activated a number of municipal employees that had been off for the weekend, who were now in the process of going through old binders. For now, he could do nothing but wait.

  Then Sjöberg went to see Westman, who had just made contact with someone at the National Registration Office. As he entered the room, she put the phone on speaker. The woman on the other end readily promised to help when the time came with searches in the central reference registry, and to produce information herself about the individuals who were currently registered in the Stockholm area. However, she could not do searches in the local registries, but offered to supply a telephone number to personnel at the local tax offices involved. She also suggested that she could contact relevant personnel in Katrineholm and Norrköping, where one might expect to find some of the persons being sought.

  Sjöberg moved on impatiently and knocked on Eriksson’s door, further down the corridor. Eriksson was scrolling through old domestic news on the computer screen and Sjöberg got dizzy trying to follow along.

  “Have you found anything, Einar?” he asked, moving his eyes from the flickering letters to his associate.

  “A little,” Eriksson answered. “I’m waiting for word from police districts all over the country, and in the meantime I’m searching the Internet. I’m printing out everything I find, but I haven’t decided whether any of this is of interest. You can go out and look in the printer if you’re curious.”

  Sjöberg went out to the copy room, somewhat surprised by Einar Eriksson’s sudden frenzy. In the printer were extracts from a dozen newspaper pages, and he stood next to the copy machine and began studying them. His eyes ran over the black-and-white pages which brought a series of tragic human destinies to light: a murder with racist undertones at a sausage stand in Nacka; an apartment disturbance that escalated into a knife fight in Skellefteå; a member of Hells Angels who was beaten to death at a party in Malmö; a jealous ex-boyfriend who strangled a woman in Burträsk; the body of a Polish berry-picker who disappeared in June of 2004 in Ångermanland; a presumed settling of scores in the underworld which resulted in a Serbian father of three being shot to death at a restaurant in central Stockholm; an unidentified body with stab wounds that floated up in a plastic bag in Edsviken; and a nineteen-year-old boy who was knifed to death by a gang of skinheads in a subway car.

  The printer started humming again and Sjöberg picked up the fresh printout. Here it was, the week-old news that had been nagging at the back of his mind: a prostitute and mother of three killed in her apartment in Skärholmen. That a prostitute faces death at a young age was perhaps not that sensational, but it was not her youth he reacted to, but her age. She was forty-four, and now when he read the article again, he found to his dismay that she had been tortured as well before she was murdered.

  He was just about to leave the copy room to go and inform Sandén and Westman about his discovery when it started humming again, this time a fax. He stopped and waited for the machine to finish. Slowly, a full page was printed out—finally he was standing with a complete list of Hans Vannerberg’s preschool classmates in his hand. He rushed into Sandén’s office. As he crossed the threshold, Sandén was just finishing his call with the municipal official in Katrineholm. They called in Westman, and the three police officers crowded around the coveted paper and quickly ascertained that Sjöberg’s fears had been verified. Besides Hans Vannerberg, here too were Carina Ahonen and a Lise-Lott Johansson, whom Sjöberg guessed had later married Nilsson. Another twenty children were on the list, but none of them known by name.

  “A serial killer,” Sandén sighed. “I’ve never seen the like.”

  Sjöberg held up Eriksson’s printout in front of his associates.

  “So what do you say about this? Einar has been productive.”

  “Wonders never cease,” Sandén mumbled, but Sjöberg pretended not to hear him.

  “A prostitute with three children who was found strangled in her apartment in Skärholmen a little over a week ago. She was forty-four years old and had been tortured before she was murdered.”

  “Call Skärholmen right away,” said Sandén.

  “I’ll do that. We’ll let Einar continue with the press a while longer, but the two of you and Jamal will get started on this. I’ll make the call, then I’ll be back.”

  He left the office confident that the important work they had before them would continue at a rapid pace. The question was whether that would be enough. Three, perhaps four, forty-four-year-olds murdered in less than two weeks. Now it was crucial to quickly get out in the field to prevent further bloodshed.

  The police in Skärholmen had also been caught napping by the news. They gave him the name of the murdered woman, Ann-Kristin Widell, and as expected, could confirm that she was born in Katrineholm and also that her name was Andersson before she was married. Then he got a detailed account of the brutal murder. It gave an impression that, if possible, it was even more sadistic than the other three. The woman had been tied to the bed, perhaps raped—that was hard to determine, given the woman’s occupation—and then had hair and even eyebrows cut off, was burned with cigarettes, assaulted vaginally with a scissors, then was finally strangled. Sjöberg knew that it was urgent, very urgent, to find and bring in this maniac.

  Four hours later, with the help of the woman at the registration office in Stockholm, and personnel at local tax offices around the country with whom she put them in contact, they managed to locate all the children in Ingrid Olsson’s preschool class from 1968/’69:

  Eva Andersson, Sibeliusgatan 9, Katrineholm

  Peter Broman, Rönngatan 7B, Katrineholm

  Carina Clifton, Husabyvägen 9, Hägersten

  Urban Edling, Hagelyckegatan 18, Gothenburg

  Susanne Sjöö Edvinsson, Sibyllegatan 4
6, Stockholm

  Staffan Eklund, Lokevägen 57, Täby

  Anette Grip, Vinsarp, Sparreholm

  Carina Ahonen Gustavsson, Stora Vreta, Sigtuna

  Kent Hagberg, Idrottsgatan 9, Katrineholm

  Katarina Hallenius, Lötsjövägen 1A, Sundbyberg

  Lena Hammarstig, Sköna Gertruds Väg 27, Katrineholm

  Stefan Hellqvist, Almstagatan 6, Norrköping

  Gunilla Karlsson, Paal Bergs Vei 23, Oslo

  Thomas Karlsson, Fleminggatan 26, Stockholm

  Jan Larsson, Krönvägen 3, Saltsjö-Boo

  Jukka Mänttäri, Sågmogatan 25, Katrineholm

  Lise-Lott Nilsson, Vallavägen 8, Katrineholm

  Christer Springfeldt, Sunnanvägen 10K, Lund

  Marita Saarelainen, Jägargatan 21A, Katrineholm

  Eva-Lena Savic, Djupsundsgatan 24, Norrköping

  Annika Söderlund, Hagaberg Norrsätter, Katrineholm

  Hans Vannerberg, Trädskolevägen 46, Enskede Gård

  Ann-Kristin Widell, Ekholmsvägen 349, Skärholmen

  Four of the children were now dead, eight were still in their home town of Katrineholm and surroundings, six were in the Stockholm area, two in Norrköping, and the remaining three were registered in Gothenburg, Lund, and Oslo.

  Sjöberg made an agreement with the other districts involved to immediately start working on the Stockholmers with Skärholmen; the Katrineholm police would take care of their six plus the individuals residing in Norrköping; while the Sigtuna police could wait for the time being. Oslo, Lund, and Gothenburg were prioritized down for the present in the investigation. Sjöberg had a strong feeling that they would find the person they were seeking in Stockholm. It was there the first two murders had taken place, and that was where Ingrid Olsson was. This suggested that the murderer was also in Stockholm, even if he could not be sure of that. Given the circumstances, Oslo, Lund, and Gothenburg seemed too far away to be activated right now.

  Because the suspect was considered very dangerous, it was decided that the police would work in pairs when they visited the persons on the list. They were to be armed, as well. Sjöberg took an associate from Skärholmen with him on a home visit in Täby. Sandén and Eriksson headed for Saltsjö-Boo, while Hamad and Westman made their way to Kungsholmen.

  * * *

  It was already Sunday, and tomorrow it would be time again. Time to face reality, time to face solitude. The true solitude, in co-existence with other people. He happened to think about Sofie, a young woman who had started in the mailroom a while ago. She was very overweight, but that did not seem to have any great significance nowadays. When he was growing, up a girl like that would not have had a life worth living, so Thomas instinctively felt sorry for her.

  At noon during her first day at work, she had ended up right behind him in line in the lunch room. After paying for his cabbage pudding, he took his tray and went to sit at his usual spot, at the far end of a table that could seat sixteen people. To his surprise, she showed up immediately, and with a friendly smile asked if she could sit across from him. Naturally, he had no objections to that, but she had barely set her tray down before Britt-Marie—another co-worker—came up and placed a friendly hand on her shoulder and asked if she wouldn’t like to sit with them instead. They, Thomas knew, were a clique of eight or ten people from the mailroom, who usually had lunch together at a table farther away. He had never been asked, and Britt-Marie did not dignify him with even a glance this time either, but he had no difficulty understanding what was going on in Sofie’s mind. Flattered to be asked and curious about her new co-workers, she thanked her for the invitation, took her tray, and followed over to their table. Before she left, she touchingly tilted her head and asked Thomas if he wouldn’t like to join the others, too. He was halfway out of his chair when he changed his mind. “No, I always sit here,” he answered stupidly, whereupon Sofie left him with a slight shrug. Since then they had not so much as exchanged a word. However, he often saw her in lively conversation with other co-workers; conversations that often changed from a normal tone of voice to whispers when he showed up.

  At least at home he had TV, books, and newspapers to keep him company. Above all, the happy voices and laughter on TV that got him out of bed and took him to adventures in the world, and into other people’s living rooms. He loved the family shows, with songs and games and a cheering audience, program hosts cracking jokes, and beautiful performers in glittering costumes. They made him forget his loneliness. They looked him in the eye and spoke right to him. Not many real people did that. They barely seemed to notice what little sense of self he felt he had.

  In a little while a rerun of Class Reunion would start. A well-known person would get to see his old classmates again for the first time in years, and then compete with those classmates against another celebrity and his or her old class. Thomas thought it was fascinating the way the class sat there together, happy and enthusiastic, remembering all the fun they’d had in their school years. Wasn’t it true that in every class there was someone like him? Maybe not. Maybe he was unique in that respect. He would never appear in a program like Class Reunion, and no one would miss him, either. No one would remember that he was even in their class. He remembered all his classmates, all the kids from preschool. He could sit and look at old class photos and, without hesitation, rattle off the first and last names of every one of them. Yet he was sure that no one would recognize him. Strange really, considering that he was the one who stood out, he was the one everyone noticed, who walked the funniest, wore the worst-looking clothes, said the dumbest things, was the worst at soccer, and the weakest one of the boys.

  The program had not started yet, so he watched the three-minute news broadcast. Suddenly, there was someone smiling at him again. A lovely smile on a tan face, framed by a large head of curly, light-blonde hair.

  “Carina Gustavsson,” said the news reporter, “a forty-four-year-old flight attendant, was found on Friday evening murdered in her home outside Sigtuna.”

  “Gustavsson?” Thomas murmured. “Carina Ahonen...”

  “The murder was preceded by a violent assault,” the reporter continued. “According to the police, the victim was tortured. The suspect is still at large, but the investigation team has secured evidence and hopes to arrest the perpetrator within the coming days. The motive for the crime is still not known, but the police admit that the brutality suggests it may be a case of revenge.”

  A segment followed with pictures from the crime scene and an interview with the police department’s spokesperson at the scene.

  A wave of discomfort washed over him, and he suddenly felt completely powerless, almost paralyzed. It felt as though the ground was starting to crack below him. He had to do something, not just sit here and wait. His eyes fluttered aimlessly between the TV and the cold white textured wallpaper behind it. He looked down at his hands and noticed they were shaking. His pulse was pounding in his ears and he felt afraid for the first time for as long as he could remember. If you were already floundering at the bottom of society, there was nothing to fear. All the unhappiness that affected him drowned in the great flood of misery that constituted life itself. But now, now he felt fear taking hold of him—fear and the compulsion to act. That was when he decided it was time to seek out yet another person among the shadows of his past.

  Suddenly the doorbell rang. Startled, he jumped out of bed as if shot from a cannon. Without having time to think it over, he unlocked the door, and before it had opened completely, he regretted it. Who could be looking for him at this time on a Sunday evening? With all certainty, no one he had any desire to talk with, that’s who. But now it was too late. They were standing here, a man and a woman in civilian clothes, waving police identification. How could he have been so stupid?

  “Detective Assistant Petra Westman, Violent Crimes Unit, Hammarby police,” the woman said authoritatively.

  “Detective Assistant Jamal Hamad,” said the man.

  Thomas said nothing.
He just looked at them in shock, unable to make a sound.

  “We’re looking for Thomas Karlsson,” said the woman. “Is that you?”

  Thomas stood quietly a moment and just stared at them.

  “Yes,” he answered at last, but his voice did not hold. It sounded like a hiss.

  He had not used his voice all weekend. Now he had to clear his throat, and as he did, his face turned beet-red.

  “Yes,” he said again, with better control now. “That’s me.”

  Most of all he wanted to sink through the earth, but he stood there, with shaking hands and shifting gaze.

  “May we come in a moment?” the male police officer asked with a serious expression.

  Thomas did not answer, but backed up a few steps as if it was an order. To him, anyone’s words sounded like orders. The two police officers stepped into the little hallway and looked around suspiciously. The woman closed the door behind them.

  “First of all, we would like to know what you were doing on the following days,” said the female police officer.

  She listed a number of dates and times, but Thomas was not able to concentrate on what she was saying. He answered anyway, reflexively, which surprised him.

  “I was at home,” he said, with his eyes directed down toward the brown hall mat. “At home or at work.”

  “Strange how you know that just like that,” said the female police officer. “Wouldn’t it be best to take a look at the calendar before you answer? Excuse me, but it doesn’t give a particularly credible impression when you answer so quickly.”

  “I don’t have a calendar,” said Thomas, ashamed. “On weekdays between six and four I’m either at work, or on my way there or back. Otherwise I’m at home. On weekends I’m always at home.”