The Swedish Girl

by Alex Gray

  ‘Does this mystery man have a second name?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, aye, Anders Andersson. Dead easy one to remember, eh? Oh and the other guy, the weedy chap? His name’s Brian Hastie.’

  ‘Right, thanks, James,’ Kirsty said slowly, fumbling with her free hand to find the key in her coat pocket.

  ‘Not a problem, Kirsty Wilson.’ There was a pause as Kirsty listened, waiting for him to say more, hoping that he would.

  ‘Any chance of meeting up some time?’ he asked, and Kirsty grinned, liking the wee hesitation in his voice.

  ‘Aye, sure, just not at weekends though, cos I work. But I’m usually free on Thursdays,’ she said.

  ‘Great. Can I come up for you then? Take you out for a drink somewhere?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. That would be great,’ she said. ‘I’ll text you the address, okay? Got to go now, bye.’

  Kirsty pulled the door open, trying not to let out a whoop of excitement. A date with a nice-looking fellow! She pulled off her duffel coat and hung it on the back of her bedroom door, heart thudding unreasonably.

  ‘But what the heck is all this about a mysterious Swede?’ she said aloud.

  And, biting her lip, Kirsty knew the first person she needed to speak to about this was Detective Superintendent Lorimer.

  Lorimer stood at the front of the muster room, leaning his tall frame against a table. It was the end of the day and the officers gathered for the meeting were all looking towards DI Grant who was fixing a new photograph onto the wall behind her. He would listen to her report first, before sharing what Kirsty had told him.

  ‘There,’ she said, turning with a glint of triumph in her eyes. ‘Lesley Crawford as she is now.’

  ‘Jesus!’ someone said as they all regarded the blown-up photograph of the injured woman.

  ‘Aye, grim,’ someone else remarked.

  ‘Well she’s lucky to be alive,’ Jo said, standing to one side to let them all compare the two images of the young woman; the smiling blonde on the left and, next to it, the puffy face full of bruises and stitches, head swathed in white gauze bandages, no sign of the blond tresses that had been clipped off for emergency surgery.

  ‘I’m just back from the hospital,’ Jo told them. ‘She remembers her assailant quite well, as it happens. Even though she was guttered and it was dark. She can’t give us much about his height, only that he seemed taller than she was. But he was white, about twenty-five to thirty, probably dark haired, though he was wearing a hoodie.’

  ‘Narrows it down a bit,’ someone offered, getting a general guffaw from the room.

  ‘She says she can remember what his face was like,’ Jo went on, glaring at the offending officer. ‘So we’ve got our artist going up to see her tomorrow morning. Soonest we could manage,’ she said, looking at Lorimer. ‘And the hospital insisted she had to have a rest tonight.

  ‘So, lads and lasses, you can expect every front page in the country to carry it as soon as the artist and our victim come up with a decent image.

  ‘Meantime, we need to ask questions of the different hospitals and clinics to see if any of their patients have been signing themselves out in the past few weeks.’

  ‘Why’s that, ma’am?’ a voice asked.

  ‘Professor Brightman reckons that the profile of this man fits someone who has come off medication suddenly.’

  ‘Schizophrenic?’

  ‘Could be. “A sudden cessation of medication can result in dramatic behavioural changes”,’ said Jo, reading from a paper she held in her hand.

  Lorimer hid a smile behind his hand. He could imagine the psychologist’s serious tone as he spoke to the detective inspector.

  ‘Ordinarily, patient files are completely off limits,’ Jo went on, ‘but information about someone who has been taking medication or having treatment then disappearing into the night can be given to us by the medics.’

  ‘And Brightman reckons it’s a nutter?’ one of the officers asked.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Jo asked sarcastically. ‘Two separate attacks on defenceless women with the same MO?’

  ‘Or three if you count Eva Magnusson,’ someone whispered behind their hand out of Jo Grant’s hearing. Lorimer had shared his suspicions with them that the Swedish girl’s death was part of this pattern. Rumour had it that he was angling for her murder to be investigated again in the light of the current cases and that DI Grant was less than happy about her case being stripped apart.

  ‘But maybe it’s just a druggie mugging them for what he can get?’ another voice piped up.

  ‘Fiona Travers had her wallet taken, and her iPod,’ Jo agreed, ‘but nothing of Lesley Crawford’s was missing. So we can’t assume that was the motive.’

  ‘Maybe the thug heard the church officer and scarpered?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Jo said, and Lorimer could hear the first signs of exasperation in her voice.

  ‘Thanks for that, Detective Inspector Grant. And I’m sure we’re all relieved that this young woman is not only fit enough to give us information about her attacker but that she appears to be heading for a full recovery, even though that photograph might suggest otherwise,’ Lorimer said, stepping forward to stand beside Jo.

  ‘May I have a word?’ he added quietly.

  ‘Sure,’ she nodded, scooping up the papers on the table before addressing the men and women in the room once again.

  ‘There’s a man out there targeting a particular type of young woman. And we want to get him before he does any more damage,’ she said, trying to force herself to sound enthusiastic when she knew they were all as bone weary as herself. ‘So, let’s concentrate on finding him, okay? See you all tomorrow,’

  Lorimer held the door open, watching his detective inspector as she headed towards him. Jo pushed one hand through her short dark hair and he could see that the woman was trying to stifle a yawn. She had been working for fourteen hours straight, Lorimer knew, and was at that stage of tiredness when most of her inner resources had been used up. Would his news pile even more fatigue onto those sagging shoulders? Or had his detective inspector now come to terms with the possibility that someone other than Colin Young was guilty of Eva Magnusson’s death? As Jo walked through the open doorway, he looked back at the before and after photographs of Lesley Crawford, a reminder to them all of just why they did this job. Sometimes it was a thankless task and the long winter days seemed to sap what little energy they had, but a result in this case would renew their strength, giving them the impetus that every police officer needed to deal with whatever fate threw at them.

  ‘Brian Hastie and Anders Andersson. Names mean anything to you?’

  Lorimer could see the frown between the woman’s eyebrows. But she hadn’t shaken her head.

  ‘Hastie, yes,’ Jo replied at last. ‘The party the Magnusson girl was at.’ Her expression cleared suddenly. ‘It was at his flat. At least, the flat he shared with another two boys. Why?’

  Lorimer told her.

  ‘And what was it they called him?’

  ‘“Her puppy”,’ Lorimer said.

  ‘Some kind of stalker?’

  Lorimer shrugged. ‘Could be. On the other hand, perhaps he was simply a lad with a crush on an exceptionally pretty girl.’

  ‘We took statements from all the students at that party,’ Jo told him. ‘Hastie’s will be among that file.’

  ‘And what about the Swedish boy?’

  ‘Never heard of him. Didn’t appear anywhere on our radar.’ She frowned.

  ‘You didn’t check the student database? According to this Strathclyde student he was a friend of Eva’s from home.’

  Jo shook her head, eyebrows raised. ‘That name didn’t come up on the list Strathclyde gave us. Sorry, he’s as much a mystery to us as he seems to have been to her flatmates. Did you speak to the boys or is this just Kirsty’s version of things?’ she asked, not disguising the acerbic tone in her voice.

  Lorimer nodded. ‘None of the flatmates has heard of this Swe
dish boy. And I’m guessing that Dirk McGregor just wants to keep his head down and hope this all goes away.’

  Jo Grant raised her eyebrows. Lorimer had already told her how the Strathclyde lecturer had been adamant that he didn’t want his wife knowing about his affair with the Swedish girl.

  ‘Someone must have known about this Andersson lad,’ Lorimer went on. ‘And I think I might just make a call to Mr Magnusson, see if he can throw any light on it. And there’s something else, Jo, something that Kirsty let slip.’

  Jo looked at him sharply, hearing the intensity of his tone.

  ‘It was when we were discussing how often Eva’s father visited Glasgow. She made this throwaway remark about how Henrik Magnusson could afford to come back as often as he liked seeing he had his own private jet.’

  ‘We didn’t know that, did we?’ Jo said slowly. ‘There was never any mention about that, was there?’

  ‘No.’ Lorimer’s jaw tightened. ‘Look, I know this whole case has given you a real headache but is there any chance the team can look into Magnusson’s movements around the time of his daughter’s death? Check the logs at Glasgow airport, for instance? Okay?’

  The DI sighed volubly. ‘Right, sir. Anything else?’

  ‘No. You go home and get a decent night’s kip, Jo. You’ll need it before you face the press tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks, sir, goodnight.’ Jo stood up and he watched her as she left his room, a woman on the edge of exhaustion. How many times had he been there himself? Too many, a little voice replied. Maggie would be waiting for him, something good cooked for his evening meal, he thought. What was Jo Grant going home to? A microwaved dinner or a takeaway?

  He glanced at the clock to see that it was now approaching seven-thirty. Magnusson could have left his own office by now. One telephone call, that was all, Lorimer told himself, then he too would step out into the winter night and head for home.

  ‘Mr Magnusson, Detective Superintendent Lorimer, Strathclyde Police.’

  ‘Y-es?’ A single word, but the voice on the other end of the line sounded anxious.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you, sir, but it has come to our attention that a Swedish student called Anders Andersson was at the University of Strathclyde and we’d like to contact him.’

  There was no disguising the intake of breath from Magnusson. ‘Who did you say?’ he muttered at last.

  ‘Anders Andersson.’

  The pause that followed was just a shade too long for Lorimer’s liking before the Swedish man replied. ‘Sorry, don’t know him. Should I?’ Then, before Lorimer could reply, Magnusson added, ‘Line’s breaking up, sorry, can you hear me?’ Then there was a click and the continuous loud hum of a disconnected call.

  Lorimer put down the phone, staring at the instrument as if it could tell him something. There had been no trace of static or anything else, he thought. The man had deliberately made that up and cut the connection. For a moment he wondered about redialling the number but decided against it. Still staring at the phone, Lorimer shook his head. He was experienced enough to know when someone was lying. And he was sure that Henrik Magnusson had lied about not knowing the mysterious Anders Andersson.

  ‘But why would he do that?’ Maggie asked, settling herself into the seat opposite her husband.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Lorimer replied, spooning the second helping of chicken broth into his mouth. He paused, spoon in mid-air. ‘If Eva was trying to keep the lad a secret from her father then she wouldn’t have told her flatmates about him either, would she?’

  ‘She didn’t want Daddy knowing her boyfriend had followed her to Scotland.’

  ‘Something like that, maybe.’

  ‘You think this Swedish boy’s the real murderer?’

  Lorimer laughed. ‘Whoa! You’ve been watching too many crime dramas on the television!’

  ‘Well, that’s the sort of thing that makes you think, isn’t it?’ Maggie persisted. ‘Stranger in town, secret lover…’

  ‘Yet he wasn’t a stranger to the other students at Strathclyde, was he?’ Lorimer mused, tilting his plate and scooping up the last of Maggie’s delicious soup. ‘And according to that Geordie lad Kirsty’s been speaking to they were merely pals, not lovers at all.’

  ‘And he wasn’t at the student party?’

  Lorimer shook his head. ‘No. There were some of Eva’s class there, and other pals of Hastie’s flatmates. Plus the three lads from Merryfield Avenue. But no Anders Andersson. We’ve got a full list of names, addresses and the particular courses the students were on.’

  ‘You know what, though,’ Maggie said thoughtfully. ‘If this lad was an old friend from back home, Eva would have had his mobile number, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Nothing on it according to the records. It’s one of the first things that’s checked,’ Lorimer replied.

  Maggie chuckled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have to think like a teenage girl sometimes to get inside their heads,’ she said. ‘I wonder if Eva had the same scheme going as Daisy Taylor?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of my third years,’ Maggie explained. ‘Inventive wee besom when it comes down to breaking the rules, is our Daisy. Thought she had cracked the no-mobile-phones-on-school- premises policy till I found her sim card taped inside her Macbeth folder. Wee rascal had her phone going red hot at lunchtimes till then. Charged her classmates sweetly to use it, as well!’

  Lorimer stroked his chin thoughtfully. Just how thorough had the scene of crime officers been in scouring Eva’s room? And was this just the sort of tiny thing he had wanted Kirsty to find? A spare sim card to keep in contact with Anders Andersson while avoiding her father’s eagle eye might answer a lot of questions.

  ‘Here you are, Sir.’ The cheery-faced lady handed Lorimer the plastic bag containing Eva Magnusson’s phone.

  ‘Just sign here, please,’ she continued, handing him a clipboard with a sheet of paper attached. There were already several names and signatures appended for this particular production: it was an essential procedure that every person examining an object taken from a crime scene had to sign his name and give the date on which the object was removed from the store. Failure to do this could have disastrous results. One careless omission from the chain might bring the weight of a defence lawyer crashing down on an unsuspecting officer, the accusation of tampering with evidence throwing an entire trial into disarray.

  It took just a few minutes to find what he was looking for. No Anders Andersson. He scrolled up and down, looking to see if there were any other names that might give a clue about the girl’s activities, noting any that did not tally against the list of friends from the Hastie boy’s party. And texts? What messages might she have kept stored in this phone? Lorimer’s gloved fingers moved across the tiny screen, seeking something that could give him a clue. He pursed his lips as he stared at the message boxes. They were empty. Had she been a fastidious girl, clearing every message that had been read? Or, he thought, had she been afraid to keep any messages lest her secrets be discovered? And was there a missing sim card somewhere in the Anniesland flat?

  One way or another, Lorimer had the feeling that they needed to find this young man, wherever he was. And, as he re-signed the paper on the clipboard, another name came to mind – one that might just offer some explanations about both Brian Hastie and Anders Andersson.

  Strathclyde University was situated to the east of George Square, a conglomeration of buildings that stretched from the old red sandstone of Royal College almost as far as the Royal Infirmary. Livingstone Tower was a rude finger of concrete and glass pointing skywards and, as he craned his neck to watch the clouds scudding past, Lorimer had the momentary sensation that the entire block was shifting sideways through space. He looked down at his watch, blinking to stop the whirling feeling in his head. It was just after ten o’clock, a perfect time to catch the lecturer before he set off for his next class at eleven.

  Dirk McGregor’s office was near the top of
the building. Lorimer squeezed into the lift beside a gaggle of girls who were all clutching laptop bags and chattering away, quite ignoring the tall stranger by their side. Had Eva ever stood here, joining in the gossip? Of course, she must have used this lift countless times, but somehow Lorimer imagined Eva Magnusson keeping a little aloof from the other students, watching them as if from the outside. Once again that face flashed into his mind, the dead girl like a sleeping angel. She had seemed perfect in death but now he was beginning to know the flawed reality so much better, this other Eva whose life had been full of secrets.

  The lift doors pinged open and he followed the crowd out into the landing. A sign with room numbers was fixed to the wall and he made his way along a corridor, losing the noisy girls as they turned into a lecture theatre.

  ‘Come in,’ a voice called and Lorimer opened the door.

  Dirk McGregor stood up suddenly. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Nice to see you too, Mr McGregor,’ Lorimer replied smoothly. ‘Mind if I sit down? Your office said that I might find you here between classes.’

  McGregor’s face paled. ‘You told my office…?’

  ‘That I needed to speak to you concerning some of your students,’ Lorimer said, taking a seat opposite the lecturer who had sunk back into his own chair as though winded.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘Two students on the same course as Eva Magnusson,’ Lorimer continued, ignoring the man’s discomfiture. ‘Brian Hastie and Anders Andersson. Neither one of them seems to have come back this term. Thought you might know why.’

  ‘Is that all?’ McGregor leaned back, hands behind his head. ‘Come in all this way just for that? No wonder our tax bill’s so bloody high when a senior officer spends time on such trivial details,’ he declared, his handsome face twisted into a sneer.

  Lorimer’s own expression remained completely impassive, the years of practice interviewing cocksure thugs paying off at times like this. ‘The two students,’ he said again. ‘Can you tell me why they have not returned to the university?’