The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  “A-ha,” said Gustav, “now we know. It might not be enough for a death certificate, but it’s good enough for me.”

  “Of course it’s Anders Traneus,” said Fredrik.

  Eva switched off the flashlight.

  “Yup, it’s as good as absolute certainty. The height fits, I checked with the passport database, and the shoe size matches a pair of jogging shoes lying in the backseat of the car.”

  Fredrik sighed. That means another trip into Visby and a definitive death notification this time.

  “How does it look otherwise?” he asked and looked out over the room.

  “I don’t have much yet, not more than the obvious. Someone went berserk in here. What’s really got my mind in a knot is the difference between the wounds inflicted on the man as opposed to the woman. He’s been completely butchered, but she’s just been hit with a single blow. Deadly, to be sure, but still.”

  “A crime of passion,” said Gustav. “The lover takes out his rage and hate, but when he’s going to go after the wife, his rage peters out after the first blow. Maybe he even starts feeling remorse.”

  “I don’t know about that, I haven’t found any convincing sign of remorse,” said Eva who preferred to stick to what was concrete.

  “Yeah, well, maybe I got a bit carried away there,” Gustav said in his defense.

  “There’s another thing,” said Eva. “It looks as if someone was sneaking around outside the house sometime over the past few days. Granholm has found distinct shoe prints in the flower bed, but I haven’t had a chance to take a closer look at them yet.”

  “Is it true that he’s being offered a full-time position?” Fredrik blurted out without thinking.

  “Yes, starting next January,” Eva answered.

  Per Granholm wasn’t one of Fredrik’s favorite people and he had thought that Per would move away from the island once his temporary contract had come to an end. His antipathy was a little childish, he was aware of that, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Of course it could have been the husband spying on his wife, before he went inside to batter them to death,” suggested Gustav.

  “If those boats out in the hall belong to him then it should be pretty easy to determine,” said Eva. “There can’t be too many people out there clomping around in size forty-sevens.”

  * * *

  GÖRAN SWITCHED ON his cell phone and listened to his messages. It was the first day of a murder investigation and he’d had his phone switched off for half an hour, so he didn’t have to wait to hear the message alert to know that they were there.

  He stood there silently with his cell phone pressed to his ear, then turned toward Sara.

  “It’s not the father,” he said. “The dead man in the house, it’s not the boy’s father.”

  “Do we know who it is then?” asked Sara.

  “An Anders Traneus, apparently he’s Arvid Traneus’s cousin. We have to head back.”

  He was on his way toward the house before he’d finished his sentence. Sara followed after him.

  Ricky looked at them questioningly when he opened the door.

  “I’m afraid it’s us again,” Göran apologized. “Could we go inside and sit down?”

  Ricky followed them into the kitchen with an anxious expression. They sat down. Göran let out a quick cough.

  “The dead man in your parents’ house isn’t your father,” he said.

  Ricky let out a deep sigh. His chest heaved convulsively a few times as if he were about to start laughing, and then calmed down.

  “The dead man is your father’s cousin, Anders Traneus. I’m sorry,” said Göran.

  Ricky didn’t seem to react to the name.

  “I don’t know him,” he said. “I mean I know who he is, but not much more than that.”

  “I’m sorry about this,” said Göran.

  “It’s all right,” said Ricky.

  It sounded as if his mouth was dry. He smacked his lips once and looked at Göran.

  “I realize that we’ve caused you a lot of anxiety, but … well, we didn’t have much choice.”

  Ricky Traneus ran his hand over his eyes as if he was trying to wipe away tears that weren’t there.

  “My God,” he said.

  “I have to trouble you with a few questions,” said Göran.

  Ricky nodded.

  “Your father, do you know where we can get hold of him?”

  “My father?”

  Ricky shook his head.

  “I mean, until a moment ago I had thought he was the one that…”

  “But that turned out not to be the case. The question is where we can find him. Because he is back on Gotland, right?”

  “Yes,” said Ricky slowly, as if he hadn’t quite made the connection.

  “You said that you were supposed to have dinner together tonight?”

  “Yes. That was the plan.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  Ricky shook his head again, but in a completely different way this time, more like someone trying to wake up rather than somebody who doesn’t know what to think.

  “Yes. Sure. Sorry. My father returned from Japan last Monday. He’s been living there for … well, a good three years, I guess, but now he’s moved back for good. So we were all going to have dinner together.”

  “And by all of you, you mean you, your sister, and your parents?”

  Ricky seemed to hesitate.

  “Yes,” he then said. “That’s all of us.”

  “But your father, you have no idea where we can get hold of him? Does he work here on Gotland now?”

  “No … well, he’s a consultant you see. He works from the house when he’s home. I thought he was home.”

  Göran Eide grasped his chin without taking his eyes off Ricky.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Wow! Well, I guess it must have been five months ago, or so.”

  “Five months ago? So you mean you haven’t seen him since he got home?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?”

  “Your parents’ house isn’t that far away from here. It can’t take very long by car. You never thought of popping by?”

  “We spoke on the phone last Monday. He called and said that he was home, we chatted a little, and then he said that he’d see me on Friday,” said Ricky and threw out his hands.

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

  “No.”

  “No idea where he might have gone?”

  Ricky shook his head.

  “It’s strange. He said that he was going to take it easy for a while, stay home, that he didn’t have to work again for the rest of his life, if he didn’t want to.”

  “I see,” said Göran Eide.

  Not so strange if he’d just murdered your mother and his cousin, he thought. But if that thought hadn’t occurred to Ricky Traneus, Göran wasn’t about to ram it down his throat. At least not until he knew for sure that that was the case.

  Göran stood up and the chair hopped backward on its narrow, steel pipe legs. He took out two business cards and handed them to Ricky.

  “Give one to your sister and ask her to call me. We need to speak to her, too. And if it should occur to you where your father might be, please give us a call.”

  Ricky assured them that he would. He and Sara Oskarsson had also stood up and were heading toward the front door.

  “Does she live here on the island, your sister, or…?”

  “On the mainland,” Ricky filled in, “in Stockholm.”

  “So she may, in other words, not have seen your father, either, since he arrived home last Monday?”

  Ricky was slow to answer, as if he didn’t feel that it was up to him to speculate.

  “No, in all likelihood she didn’t,” he said with a little grimace.

  Sara who was leading the way, opened the door. The clear autumn light poured into the dark hall and turned her into a black si
lhouette. Göran got a sudden whiff of tobacco and couldn’t resist taking a deep breath in through his nostrils. It hit him when he least expected it. Maybe he ought to start smoking a pipe. People said it was supposed to be less harmful to your health. No, they’d laugh at him. A detective with a pipe, that was just too ridiculous. Besides which, there was almost nowhere you could smoke anymore. He wasn’t going to stand in the over-ventilated space beneath the stairs at the police station, like one of the prisoners in the pie-shaped holding cells up on the roof.

  He sighed quietly and turned to Ricky.

  “Anders Traneus, your father’s cousin, what was his relationship to your parents like?”

  “No idea. I didn’t think they saw each other socially.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  Ricky shrugged his shoulders.

  “Do you socialize with all your cousins?”

  14.

  Elin’s cell phone rang with a half-stifled ringtone. She had put it in her shoulder bag, which she had kicked in underneath the seat in front of her. She didn’t want to flash it around. There was a good chance some old acquaintance might get on. After rummaging around for a moment, she found it. It was Molly.

  “I’m on the bus now,” she answered to the obligatory question, “should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  Elin groaned into the microphone and whispered:

  “I really don’t feel like doing this. A weekend with Mom and Dad. I’m gonna lose my mind.”

  “How about your brother, can’t you stay with him?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, of course I could. I’d rather stay there, but then Mom would get all disappointed and go on about it endlessly. It’s just as well I get it over and done with, then I’ll be free until Christmas.”

  The bus was driving through the forest now. Tall, dark fir trees on either side. A long strip of cold blue sky above the road.

  Elin had managed to share a cab from the airport to the bus station and gotten away with paying just fifty crowns. She had grabbed hold of a girl who seemed to be around the same age and who was about to climb into a taxi, and the girl had said yes straight off.

  Money. Her father had spoken a lot about money when he’d called. About money, about the future, and about money. Almost like some kind of incantation. Hinted that one day it’ll belong to her and Ricky.

  She didn’t want anything. She felt a twinge of pain in her stomach at the memory and put her foot over the Prada logo on her bag. She didn’t want anything. She wanted to be her own person.

  “Listen, I’ve gotta hang up now,” she said to Molly, “I have to call Ricky and remind him to pick me up.”

  She snapped her cell phone shut, sat there with it in her hand, allowed herself to be rocked for a moment by the slight bounce in the movement of the bus, before she opened it up again and pressed R.

  “Hi, it’s me,” she said when he picked up.

  “Hi.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “All right. Should I come get you?”

  Silence.

  “Yes,” said Elin.

  “Okay.”

  “You sound like one of those computerized voices for blind people on the Internet. What’s the matter?”

  “Nah, nothing. I’m on my way. Something came up, that’s all,” he said.

  He sounded like she’d just woken him up from a deep coma, Elin thought.

  “Were you out partying last night?” she asked.

  The bus pulled over and dropped off two people in Linde. No one got on.

  “Out? Out where?” he said and laughed a little affectedly.

  “In then, how should I know?” said Elin.

  “We’ll talk later, okay?”

  “Okay. Hey, I brought along a Bag-in-Box,” she said in a hushed voice. “Already opened but still, so we can prime ourselves before the dinner. Because you haven’t been to the liquor store have you?”

  “No, I had intended to go, but I didn’t have time.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard something came up,” she teased.

  “I’ll come get you.”

  “Okay, bye for now.”

  * * *

  RICKY SQUEEZED THE cell phone between his hands. He remained sitting on the hall floor where he had sunk down after shutting the door behind the two police detectives. He couldn’t get himself to say it over the phone. He just couldn’t. But he had to tell her. Him. Ricky.

  He tried to see Elin in front of him, how her expression would change once it had sunk in, and it struck him that he had no idea how she would react.

  When should he tell her? As soon as possible of course. It wasn’t something you put off. As soon as she stepped off the bus? No, better in the car, more private. Or maybe he should just wait till they got home? Maybe it would end up being strange in the car, if for example he suddenly had to break it off because something happened on the road that demanded his attention. On the other hand, what could possibly happen on the way from Hemse to Levide?

  Ricky put the cell phone down on the hall floor and let his hands hang down along his sides, and felt a little clod of dirt under the fingernails of his left hand. He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe deeply and rhythmically, crushing the clod of dirt between his fingers.

  * * *

  THE MEDICAL EXAMINER, Irma Silkeberg, put her used instruments into a bag of thick plastic, then backed away a few feet from the two bodies and regarded the mute scene.

  “I think that the woman took the first blow,” she said and pointed at Kristina Traneus’s stiffened remains in front of the sofa.

  Eva, who had stayed in the background to let the medical examiner work in peace, came up to her. Irma Silkeberg turned toward Eva and pulled off her gloves. She stuffed them into the plastic bag together with her instruments, and put the whole thing into her case.

  “I have to analyze the blood in order to be a hundred percent sure, but I’ll venture a conjecture. There’s blood spatter on the woman’s blouse that most likely did not come from her own wound and must have gotten there after she was struck in the chest.”

  “So the assailant hit the woman with a single blow and then went after the man and didn’t stop until he was completely cut to shreds?” said Per Granholm without looking away from the butchered body in the corner.

  “There’s nothing that speaks against that scenario anyway. Then there’s always the possibility that he, or she, first attacked the man, then for some reason broke it off, struck the woman once, and then continued to butcher the man,” said Irma Silkeberg. “Those are the two possible conclusions that we can draw.”

  The madness, thought Eva Karlén, madness or rage, that the one who did this was carrying inside him, must have been horrendous. It must have taken over completely, impelled him, or her as Silkeberg said, not left any other way out. It was hard to imagine, hard also to understand the single blow to the woman. So clean and simple compared with the power and rage, the madness that turned this man into that … It must be the man who was important here, the man who was the focus of all this rage. The woman was just someone who got in the way. Or at least someone who didn’t make the killer’s blood boil to quite the same extent.

  “You think it could just as well have been a woman, as a man?” she asked.

  “Yes. You wouldn’t have to be especially strong to achieve this, but I guess you’d need to be reasonably steady on your feet, and be at least of medium height. So we can start by ruling out any short or feeble people.”

  “How about a crazed, absolutely enraged, feeble person?” Eva suggested.

  “Possibly. But I doubt it,” said Silkeberg and squinted through her glasses. “The murder weapon must have been relatively heavy. At first I thought a large kitchen knife or some kind of a samurai sword, but when I studied the wounds more closely, I noticed that the bone and cartilage, for example, which offer greater resistance, weren’t just ripped apart, but also had been crushed.”

  “So
you think it would more likely have been a…?” Eva prompted.

  Irma Silkeberg gave a slight smile, which probably meant that she didn’t like being rushed.

  “Something sharp, but not razor sharp, and heavy. A sword of some kind, perhaps a machete. Well, I can imagine a whole bunch of potential weapons, but something with a certain amount of weight to it. The man received over thirty wounds, probably all in quick succession. That requires a fair bit of strength and stamina. And the angle of the cuts rule out anyone under five-nine, say five-seven so you’ve got a bit of a safety margin.”

  “Thirty wounds,” Eva repeated.

  “Give or take,” nodded Silkeberg. “Most of them must have been inflicted when the victim was already lying down, but a few of the wounds that were high up, around the neck and head, were inflicted while he was still standing. They must have been the first ones. The blow to the neck was presumably the immediate cause of death, but easily half of the injuries by themselves would have been enough to kill him within a few minutes.”

  15.

  Goddamn him! It was like some kind of disease. He just could not be on time.

  Elin had been waiting at the bus station for ten minutes. Everyone else who had gotten off had quickly been picked up by cars or pedaled off on their own bicycles. For a few minutes, the idling bus had kept her company as it waited for the exact departure time, but once it had rounded the corner of the disused train station, she was all on her own. She stood there and stared at the big white ball with the old OK gasoline logo above the Lantmännen silo for about five minutes before she tired of it and sent off a text message. Told him that he could pick her up at Redners.

  Now she was sitting in the bar with a glass of red wine in front of her, staring out through the window and crossing her fingers that the three squabbling winos who had sought out the darkest corner at the very back next to the emergency exit, wouldn’t have a serious falling-out.

  Her cell phone vibrated loudly against the tabletop.