Unknown ak-3

by Mari Jungstedt

  Obviously satisfied with his explanation, Kihlgard leaned back and stuck his whole hand in the bag of chips.

  "So you think that her intention is to frighten her husband out of his wits to such a degree that he won't look at another woman from now on?" Jacobsson sounded dubious.

  "It wouldn't be the first time in the history of the world, at any rate. As I see it, she's the only one with an obvious motive."

  "I must admit that I have a hard time seeing why anyone would want to kill Martina Flochten. A jealousy scenario could explain the matter," Knutas agreed. "But why would the wife use such a complicated method?"

  "That may be a red herring," said Kihlgard. "Trying to make the whole thing seem mystical and ritualistic even though that has nothing at all to do with it."

  They turned off at Frojel Church and drove all the way down to the excavation site. They bumped along on the last part of the road. It looked disconcertingly quiet and deserted. The carts were all properly locked, and everything seemed to be closed up for the night. Several pits were covered with plastic.

  "All right, then," said Kihlgard. "He's not here, at any rate."

  Knutas felt his irritation rising. We need to get hold of him, he thought, and quickly.

  "We'll drive over to the college. He might be there."

  He had a horrible premonition that they needed to hurry.

  It was seven in the evening when Staffan Mellgren left Kallbadhuset to drive home. The band had stopped playing, and the young people were on their way out to join the action in Visby's pubs. He had deliberately chosen to keep a low profile, since he recognized several students from the college. They had greeted him with a nod. That was one thing he detested about living on Gotland-the fact that he could never be anonymous anywhere.

  Even though he'd had two strong beers, he got behind the wheel. He drove out of the city as people walked past on their way to the restaurants and evening entertainments. The tourist season was at its peak, Visby was pulsing with life, and it was disappointing to have to leave it all behind and drive home to little Larbro.

  His cell phone was still on the passenger seat, and he saw that he'd received quite a few messages, but he didn't feel like checking to see who they were from. It was probably Susanna, and he didn't have the energy to deal with her nervous carping right now.

  The hens were clucking loudly in the yard when he arrived. Of course, they needed food, too; he'd forgotten to feed them in the morning.

  In the refrigerator he found several old tomatoes that looked anything but fresh. They were good enough for the chickens. On a shelf Susanna had set a plastic ice cream container filled with eggshells, scraps of food, and stale bread.

  He picked up the container and went out to the old barn that was used only as a junkyard and as a garage in the wintertime. At the far end of the barn was the chicken coop. When he opened the door, he was careful where he set his feet so as not to trample to death any of the tiny golden chicks that were peeping around his legs. What a life. He put down the ice cream container with the food scraps and filled a bowl with chicken feed.

  Suddenly he heard the door to the barn slam shut. Cautiously he stood up from his squatting position and set down the feed sack. The hens kept up their clucking, making it impossible for him to hear anything. He slipped over to the doorway and peered into the barn.

  He let his eyes scan the bare walls, covered with flyspecks and cobwebs. The windows were so filthy that the twilight hardly came through at all. The old stalls, which were lined up with walls separating them, hadn't been used in a long time. The door must have slammed shut by itself, he thought. He was just about to go back when he noticed that something was different. The old bathtub, which for years had been upside down among the other rubbish, had been moved and was now right side up.

  Puzzled, he moved closer and saw to his surprise that it was filled to the brim with water, but he never managed to wonder who had been there or what the tub was going to be used for.

  The college was locked, and they had to phone the security guard to come over and let them in. The place was completely deserted; not a soul around on this hot evening in July. They took the stairs up to the floor where Mellgren had his office. The door was locked. The security guard searched through his big bunch of keys to find the right one.

  Mellgren's office was just as deserted as the rest of the rooms they had walked through. The faint scent of aftershave still hovered in his office.

  "It's the kind Mellgren usually wears," said Jacobsson. "I recognize the fragrance."

  Knutas quickly searched the desk but found nothing of interest. A wet towel was draped over the chair.

  "He must have been here recently," said Knutas, "and he took a shower. Why didn't he go home to do that?"

  "Because he was going out on the town, of course," said Kihlgard with a grin. "He was going to make a night of it, now that his wife is out in the country."

  "Unless he had some other purpose in mind," said Knutas. He tried Mellgren's home phone number. Still no answer. He phoned Susanna Mellgren as well, but she hadn't yet heard from her husband.

  "We might as well go and get something to eat," suggested Kihlgard. "I'm starving."

  "Can't you ever think about anything but food?" snapped Knutas. "I'm driving out to Larbro. Are you coming with me, or should I call Wittberg?"

  By the time they arrived at the farm, dusk had set in. Lights were on in all the windows, and a car was parked in the yard. The front door of the house wasn't locked, so they went in. The house was well lit but silent. They peeked into all the rooms, and it didn't take them long to realize that no one was there.

  They went back out to the yard and saw that the barn door stood open. The only sound was the sporadic clucking of the chickens.

  It looked as if the barn hadn't been used in a long time. At the far end a small door was ajar. Light was coming from inside. The three detectives exchanged glances. Surreptitiously they crept closer to the door. The rank smell of urine and ammonia came from what had to be the chicken coop. When they stepped across the threshold, they came face-to-face with a sight that was both unexpected and ghastly.

  From a hook in the ceiling above the hens asleep on their perches hung Staffan Mellgren. He was naked, and someone had made a long cut in his abdomen to make the blood run out, but only a small pool had collected on the floor below. Knutas gasped for breath. In his mind he saw a sudden flash of a similar scene. Martina hanging amid the summer greenery. Youth and evil, a sudden death. Here it was red blood against white feathers.

  It all had to do with contrasts.

  TUESDAY, JULY 27

  Everyone was in attendance at the police meeting the following morning. The murmuring faded away as Knutas, looking solemn, sat down at the head of the table. He started by pouring himself a cup of coffee. To his satisfaction he saw that the coffee was nice and black. He gave Kihlgard a grateful look. He was the only one who brewed the coffee as strong as Knutas liked it. Right now he certainly needed it. He hadn't slept much last night.

  "As you all know, we have another murder on our hands," Knutas began. "Last night, when Karin and Martin and I went out to Mellgren's place to look for him, we found him dead in the chicken coop. There's no question that it's a homicide, and it appears to be the same MO used to kill Martina Flochten. The farm has been cordoned off, and the body will remain there until the ME arrives later today. Fortunately, the rest of the family wasn't home. They're visiting Susanna Mellgren's parents in Ljugarn, and that's where they'll stay for the time being. The Mellgrens have four children, as you know." He fell silent and turned to Sohlman.

  "Without having any specific technical evidence, since none of the tests are ready yet, I still say that all indications are that it's the same perpetrator who murdered Martina," said Sohlman. "The similarities speak very clearly. The marks on the body indicate that Mellgren, just like Martina, was killed before he was hanged with the noose, and the cut in the abdomen was done last of all. Th
en the blood was presumably collected, since very little was found on the floor. The MO has not been made public, so it can't be a copycat crime. Mellgren was also naked when he was found, and his clothes are missing."

  "How was he killed? Was he also drowned?" asked Wittberg.

  "It appears so. There was an old bathtub filled with water inside the barn. The water had splashed over the sides, and we found hair and blood in it. Most likely he drowned there when the perpetrator pushed his head underwater."

  "That means that the killer must be very strong," said Jacobsson. "Mellgren was not a small man."

  "Unless he was drugged first. We don't know that. Or knocked unconscious, but he has no injuries to indicate as much."

  "How long had he been dead when his body was found?" asked Smittenberg.

  "An hour at most. Our colleagues must have been right on the killer's heels."

  "What sort of evidence did you find?"

  "Not much. The most interesting traces are footprints that he left after walking around in the blood. The barn has a bare cement floor, so the prints are quite clear. His shoe size is interesting, too. He was wearing wooden clogs, about a size eight."

  No one spoke for several seconds.

  "So we might also be talking about a woman?" Jacobsson gave Sohlman a look of surprise.

  "Yes. We can't rule it out, at any rate. It's rather unusual for a man to wear such a small shoe, don't you think? I'm only five foot nine, but I wear a size nine shoe."

  "I know a guy who wears a size seven," said Wittberg.

  "What about the wife?" said Kihlgard. "What do you make of Susanna Mellgren? She's quite a big woman, and muscular. She seems very fit. Maybe she would be capable of doing it."

  "But why go to so much trouble?" countered Jacobsson. "Why chop off a horse's head and drain out the blood if really all she wanted to do was kill her husband and his lover?"

  "It could be a very sophisticated way of misleading us," suggested Wittberg.

  "Maybe she wanted to shift suspicion onto someone who might make use of similar methods," suggested Kihlgard.

  "What do we actually know about the Mellgren family? To be honest, I don't think we've looked into their background very thoroughly," said Jacobsson. "Especially not the wife's."

  "No, we didn't consider her especially interesting, and I have a hard time believing that she would be capable of these crimes," said Knutas. "If she was the one who put the horse's head there, why would she call in the police when her husband refused to do so?"

  Jacobsson shrugged her shoulders. "To divert suspicion from herself, of course."

  Knutas directed his next question to Agneta Larsvik. "What do you think about all this?"

  "From what I've heard, there's much to indicate that we're dealing with the same perpetrator, but I'd like to see the victim and the crime scene before I draw any conclusions. The fact that he's naked and his clothes are missing also points in that direction. Presumably the perpetrator keeps the clothes to hold on to the feeling that he gets from killing. A sort of fetish. Just like the blood. But there's one other question that's important to focus on here."

  They all gave their full attention to the forensic psychologist.

  "I wonder why Staffan Mellgren didn't call the police himself about the horse's head. There must be some reason for this. Could it be that he knew or at least suspected who had put the head there? Maybe he thought that he could resolve the situation himself by talking to the person in question."

  "And just who might that be?" Kihlgard tossed out the question without getting any answer.

  Knutas broke the silence.

  "Susanna Mellgren has been summoned for questioning. I'm going to meet with her at ten o'clock. I hope that then we'll be able to clear up a thing or two. Of course her alibi for the night of the murder has to be checked also-as well as for the time of Martina Flochten's death."

  "This means that we have to take a fresh look at the incident of the horse's head at Gunnar Ambjornsson's place," said Kihlgard. "His life could very well be in danger, too. Should we contact him?"

  "At the very least he's going to need protection the minute he gets back home," said Knutas grimly. "We need to go out and meet him at the airport."

  He was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. When he finished the conversation he gave his colleagues a solemn look.

  "Martina's cell phone was found under the porch at the Warfsholm hotel. She must have dropped it on the night of the murder. Her calls have been checked. The last one was a message that was received by her voice mail on the night of the murder at 11:35 p.m. Guess who called her."

  Everyone waited tensely without saying a word.

  "It was Staffan Mellgren."

  The murder of Staffan Mellgren was the lead story on the television newscasts that morning. The police had sent out a press release about the homicide around midnight, and the night editor at Swedish TV's digital round-the-clock station SVT 24 instantly sent a remote van to catch the next ferry, which left at 3:00 a.m. A little less than three hours later, just before six in the morning, the van rolled onto the Visby dock. In situations like this, it was worth gold to have a news service operating twenty-four hours a day.

  The SVT 24 editor had gotten Johan out of bed in the middle of the night. By the time he and Pia met the Stockholm team at the editorial office, Johan had already had the murder confirmed and had been promised an interview with Knutas outside police headquarters. One of the team members who had arrived by van was Robert Wiklander, with whom Johan had worked on Gotland before. Robert worked for the Aktuellt and Rapport broadcasts, and now they were going to collaborate. A cameraman that Johan vaguely knew had come along, too, as well as an editor who installed himself in the office. He would handle things from there during the morning, which they all realized was going to be anything but calm.

  They divided up the work assignments. Pia drove up to the Mellgren farm to take pictures while Johan and Robert took turns reporting for the live newscast, using the cameraman who had come from Stockholm. Whoever was not reporting at the moment spent his time tracking down interview subjects. They got the county police commissioner, the president of the college, and the head of the tourist bureau to come to police headquarters to be interviewed. The entire archaeological community on Gotland was in a state of shock. The excavations at Frojel were halted, and no one thought they would start up again that summer. The students in the course were forbidden to leave the island for the near future. The excavations at Eksta, where archaeologists were in the process of digging up a gravesite from the Bronze Age, were also stopped. Anyone who had even the slightest connection with archaeology on Gotland was affected by what had now become a double homicide.

  The head of the tourist bureau was concerned that this second murder would frighten away the tourists. The media speculated that a serial killer was on the loose on the island-someone who would continue to kill until he was caught. Anders Knutas had called in extra assistance from the NCP in Stockholm. Thirty or so people were now working on the investigation.

  By nine thirty all the morning broadcasts were done, and the editors in Stockholm phoned to praise the reports. In the next breath, they issued new demands. They wanted a piece for the noon show, for all the afternoon programs, and a longer story for the evening newscasts, on both Aktuellt and Rapport, and the segments should preferably be as different as possible.

  Max Grenfors, now back from vacation, wanted to make the Regional News broadcast a priority, of course. That was always a dilemma. Each editor put his own program first, and with so many different newscasts and editors, there was a flood of phone calls. For a reporter, it was easy to feel torn. They agreed that Robert and the Stockholm cameraman would handle the national newscasts while Johan and Pia would concentrate on Regional News. As they gathered material and did interviews over the course of the day, they could always share information with each other. The editor from Stockholm would collate all the material as it came in.
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br />   In the afternoon Johan received an unexpected phone call. It was from his friend Niklas Appelqvist, who was studying archaeology at the college.

  "Did you know that rumors have been circulating that Martina Flochten was Staffan Mellgren's lover?" Niklas asked.

  "Is it true?" Johan retorted.

  "So many different people are talking about it, there must be some truth to it."

  "Do you know anyone who could confirm it?"

  "Maybe. I'll check around. Mellgren was apparently a real Casanova. I heard that he slept with a lot of girls at the college."

  "Is that right? But I can't put pure speculation in my report. I need two independent sources who can confirm this for me. Otherwise it's a no-go."

  "I'll see what I can do. I'll get back to you."

  Susanna Mellgren looked exhausted when she came into Knutas's office that afternoon. She sat down, clasped her hands demurely in her lap, and lowered her gaze, as if she were about to say a prayer.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," Knutas began.

  She nodded faintly.

  "When did you last see your husband?"

  "Sunday evening, when I decided to drive over to stay with my parents."

  "Why did you do that?"

  "I thought the whole business with the horse's head was horrible. I didn't want to put myself or my children in danger."

  "Why did you think it would be dangerous to stay in your house?"

  "It felt as if someone were threatening us. I've been reading about the whole thing, and I saw the report on TV, too-I mean, that story about the decapitated horse, and then…"