Anders Knutas 04 - The Killer's Art

by Mari Jungstedt

  ‘It was an elderly man out walking his dog. The dog sniffed it out of the snow. The witness saw Egon Wallin’s name and photo on the driver’s licence, so he had the good sense to drop the wallet on the ground and ring the police. He was also wearing gloves, and he kept them on, because he knew it was important not to leave his own prints. We can thank all the television crime shows for that. Unfortunately there are no fingerprints on the wallet because it was lying around outside so long.’

  ‘So what have you found?’

  ‘Well, there’s one thing that puzzles me.’

  With tweezers Sohlman picked up a scrap of paper from the table. A yellow Post-it note with four numbers scribbled on it.

  ‘A code, apparently,’ said Knutas. ‘Could it be the PIN number for his bank card?’

  ‘It seems a little stupid to keep it in plain view in his wallet along with the card,’ said Sohlman. ‘Of course I know that people do dumb things like that all the time, but I don’t think it fits with Wallin’s personality.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Knutas agreed. ‘It must mean something else. Is there a coded keypad on the door of the gallery? In case someone forgets their key and it’s locked?’

  Sohlman gave him a dubious look.

  ‘Wallin has run that art gallery for twenty-five years. He went there every day. Even if they’d recently changed the code, he would have had it memorized.’

  ‘We need to check out all possible options,’ said Knutas. ‘I’ll put Kihlgård on it. That’ll give him something to think about besides food.’

  Erik Mattson slowly regained consciousness. As if from far away, he could hear a shower running and other sounds that he didn’t recognize. The roar of the traffic outside sounded different. It was louder than outside his own windows on Karlavägen. The air in the room was stale and stuffy, and the bed he was lying on was much softer and lumpier than the exclusive Dux mattress he was used to. His body felt bruised, and his groin ached. His head was pounding.

  He opened his eyes and saw at once that he was in a hotel room. The events of the previous night came back to him, but before he had time to think any further, a big man appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. He dried off his shaved head as he stared at Erik lying on the bed. He was completely naked and without embarrassment dried off his penis, now hanging limply. The muscles bulged on his athletic body. His skin was exceptionally white, and he had almost no hair, not even around his dick. On one arm was a small tattoo shaped like a turtle. It looked ridiculous.

  They had met at one of the city’s more decadent gay clubs, which Erik often frequented on Fridays. All it took was half a drink and a few long looks for the burly man to make his move. He was in a hurry; they had only had a few drinks before he wanted to leave. When Erik explained that he charged a fee, the other man had looked surprised and then left. But it wasn’t long before he was back, asking the price. Apparently the fee was acceptable, because they had left the club together and taken a cab to his hotel. He’d been rough and determined, almost to the point of violence. A few times Erik had felt scared, but the big man never crossed the line. Though he did come close. When he took a break and went out to use the toilet, Erik had quickly downed two of the little yellow pills, to deaden the pain and be able to last the night. His customer showed no sign of being finished; he seemed insatiable.

  Erik felt that this episode had been tougher than usual. Sometimes he enjoyed himself, both sexually and mentally. It was as if he was escaping, as if he took pleasure in the destructive aspect of the whole thing. His life was headed downhill, and there was no other path to take. He might as well just let things happen. The pain sometimes even made him feel more content the next day. And the element of excitement was an added spice that couldn’t be underestimated. Whenever he entered a club, he knew that within a few hours he’d be involved in an extremely intimate scene with another human being. But he had no idea who in that club it would be. Of course there were pleasures in this double life of his, and it also kept him going financially. At the same time it was exhausting, both mentally and physically. Occasionally he would be struck by panic attacks, despair, and an overwhelming sense of emptiness. He quelled those feelings by popping pills and drinking excessively. A momentary escape, of course, but he didn’t see any future for himself. There was no other life for him. He was like a goldfish in a bowl of water, with no chance of ever getting out.

  The man smiled at Erik, bringing him back to the present moment. With a triumphant gesture, he tossed aside the bath towel. One look at his swelling cock made Erik realize that he was still not satisfied.

  All of the officers from the NCP had gone back to Stockholm for the weekend, except for Martin Kihlgård. Sometimes Knutas wondered whether Kihlgård had a life outside of his police work. At any rate, he knew very little about his colleague. Kihlgård never talked about his family, and he didn’t wear a wedding ring, so Knutas assumed he wasn’t married. But he had no idea what his colleague did in his free time, except eat, of course. Even today, when Knutas dropped by the office temporarily assigned to Kihlgård, he found him munching on a baguette with salami and brie. ‘How are things going?’

  ‘Great. I’ve checked up on that mysterious code. I started by asking myself a very simple question.’

  As usual, Kihlgård was talking with food in his mouth. Knutas waited for him to finish chewing.

  ‘You see, I wondered how the killer happened to know that Wallin was going to leave the house again.’

  Knutas shrugged. ‘It’s possible that it was pure chance. Maybe he was tailing Wallin and waited outside his house until the lights were turned off.’

  ‘Or maybe he knew that Wallin was going out to meet somebody!’

  Kihlgård sounded triumphant, as if he’d come up with something new and revolutionary.

  ‘Yes, well, we’ve already discussed that possibility at least a hundred times,’ said Knutas impatiently. He had no intention of standing there, wasting valuable time on such drivel.

  ‘The perp must have known that Wallin was planning to go out later in the evening to meet someone,’ Kihlgård went on, unperturbed. ‘He probably also knew that the person was staying at the Wisby Hotel.’

  ‘At the Wisby?’ Knutas raised his eyebrows. ‘How do you know that the woman he went out to meet was staying there?’

  Kihlgård held out the code that Knutas had copied from the Post-it note earlier in the morning. ‘Why else would he be walking around with the hotel’s night-time code in his wallet?’

  ‘How did you figure that out?’

  ‘First I checked the bank to see if it might be his credit-card PIN number. Then I asked his wife if it was a code for the security alarm at their house. They have lots of valuable stuff, after all. But both were dead ends. So I started thinking about the fact that he was on his way to meet someone, possibly at a hotel. I checked to see which hotels had receptionists on duty at night. It so happens that after the female night manager at the Wisby was murdered, the hotel changed their system. If you arrive at the hotel after midnight and before six in the morning, you have to ring the bell and the receptionist will unlock the door for you. So anybody who doesn’t belong there can’t just come in. But if a hotel guest doesn’t want to call the receptionist, possibly because he or she wants to smuggle someone up to their room…’ Kihlgård winked at Knutas with a you-know-what-I-mean look on his face, ‘… all of the guests are given a code they can use instead of ringing the bell. I checked the hotel code, and it turned out to be a match. For security reasons, they change the number every day, and this was the code that was valid between Saturday the nineteenth and Sunday the twentieth of February.’

  Knutas whistled. ‘Not bad,’ he said with admiration. ‘Very impressive. So now we’ve narrowed it down to the Wisby Hotel. There can’t be many guests to choose from. Brilliant, Martin.’

  He gave his colleague a friendly pat on the back.

  ‘Thank you.’

  They were interrupted by Karin J
acobsson, who poked her head in the door. ‘Lunch, anybody?’

  Kihlgård’s face lit up. ‘That sounds like a splendid idea,’ he said, stuffing the last bit of baguette into his mouth. ‘There’s just one more thing. I compared the list of hotel guests on the night in question to the list of the people invited to the gallery opening.’ ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not a single woman is on both lists. All of the individuals who went to the opening and also stayed at the hotel are men.’

  On Saturday morning Johan woke early. He lay on his side, staring at Emma’s face as he thought about what plans they should make for the wedding. Considering how turbulent their relationship had been up until now, he wanted to comply with Emma’s wishes that they get married soon. He didn’t want to risk having something else happen that might upset their plans.

  He might have to give up his dream of getting married in a church, even though that would be wonderful.

  It was now the end of February, and they would need at least two months to send out the invitations and make the arrangements. Having friends and family members present at the wedding was a minimum requirement. He refused to budge on that issue. But where could they hold the ceremony if not in a church? The instant he asked himself that question, an idea popped into his head – why not at the Roma cloister ruins? And then they could have the party at home. It might get a little crowded, but the house was a spacious 2,000 square feet, and if the guests spread out into all the rooms, it should be manageable. They didn’t have to serve a formal dinner; maybe it would be enough to offer a light snack and champagne, followed, of course, by coffee and wedding cake. And that would obviate the need for seating arrangements and embarrassing speeches. Just laughter and conversation, fun and celebration.

  He got so wrapped up in the whole idea that he got out of bed to find a pen and paper. He wanted to make a list of people to invite, to see if it would even be possible to hold the party at home. Though if they were going to get married outdoors, maybe they should postpone the ceremony until a little later. Wait until May or June, when it was warmer and everything was green and in bloom. Of course, they would have a honeymoon. It shouldn’t be any problem finding someone to baby-sit. It would be best if they could leave Elin at home; either his mother or Emma’s parents, who lived on the island of Fårö, could take care of her. And Sara and Filip could stay with them too.

  Maybe they should go to Paris, he daydreamed. He couldn’t imagine a more romantic city. In the springtime or early summer. That would be perfect.

  He was just about to wake Emma when something occurred to him. Shouldn’t they make their engagement official, now that he had proposed? Should he buy her an engagement ring or should they do it together? He didn’t know how such things were done. He would have to ask somebody. He ran his finger along Emma’s bare back. He had no doubt whatsoever that he loved her deeply, so it really made no difference what sort of wedding they had. The only thing that mattered was that they got married.

  The emptiness that always followed one of those nights washed over him. Erik Mattson had gone home and spent a couple of hours recovering. Later in the afternoon he left his flat and took a bus to the Waldemarsudde Art Museum in the Kungliga Djurgården, the Royal Deer Park.

  He got off at the museum bus stop, which was close to the shore. He walked the last stretch of the way up to what had once been Prince Eugen’s home during the first half of the twentieth century. The painter prince who never became king. He was a great artist and an especially good landscape painter. During his lifetime the prince put together an enormous art collection, which he donated, along with his beautiful villa, to the Swedish nation at his death in 1947.

  The building with its yellow facade was located on a hill and seemed to be rising out of the rock. It stood on the shore at the very end of a peninsula facing the Baltic Sea, which reached all the way to Stockholm on this side. The main building in which the prince had lived was called the castle, although it looked more like a mansion on a small country estate.

  At the moment the museum was showing an exhibition of Swedish art from the early 1900s. Erik went inside and paid the entrance fee. He wasn’t interested in going into the beautiful gallery; instead, he headed for what had once been the prince’s private residence, the castle. There, too, artworks were on display, and hanging in one of the drawing rooms was the painting he was looking for.

  He saw it from far away. The large oil painting took up an entire wall.It was the mood depicted in the painting that attracted him – the colours, the soft and gentle movements, the tragedy and the coquettishness. Reverently he sank down on a bench that had been placed in front of Nils Dardel’s masterpiece, ‘The Dying Dandy’.

  The motif was bewitching, and Erik hardly noticed the other visitors. Contradictory emotions welled up inside him.

  He felt so close to Dardel, as if there were some kind of secret bond between them, a connection not limited by time or space. The fact that they’d never met was of no importance. He understood that they were twin souls. That was something he’d known ever since he saw ‘The Dying Dandy’ for the first time when he was visiting the home of a fellow student many years ago.

  He was seventeen at the time, insecure and searching. The painting seemed to speak directly to him. The pale, handsome dandy was in the centre of the scene and immediately drew the eye of the viewer. The same mystery and enigma hovered over the dandy as over Dardel himself. How young he is, Erik thought as he sat there. So fragile and attractive. Those closed eyes with the thick dark lashes against the pale cheek. The slender body in the semi-reclining position on the floor with his legs apart, almost erotic in the midst of tragedy. The dandy had one hand pressed to his heart, as if it hurt. And judging by the pallor of his face, the life force had already left his body.

  Erik was fascinated by the figure’s appearance: the sensitive face, the elegant clothing, one hand coquettishly stretched out on the floor with the long, slender fingers holding a hand-mirror. What did it mean? Was he fleeing from his own image? Was he weary of his life, his alcoholism and his homosexuality? Was he trying to escape his decadent life, just as Erik wanted to do but didn’t dare?

  Erik’s gaze took in the three loving women surrounding the dandy, their soft figures, their tenderness. One of them was about to place a blanket over the slender, elegant young man, as if putting a piano cover over an exquisite instrument that was no longer played.

  There was another man in the scene as well. Standing in the background, partially turned away from the small group. The young man seemed desperate with grief as he pressed a handkerchief to one eye, like a monocle. There was something theatrical about him, with his dark eyes and red lips. He was also dressed like a dandy in vibrant colours: purple jacket, orange shirt and a red-and-green tie. Erik was positive that the man in the background represented Dardel’s most important lover, Rolf de Maré. Dardel had carried on many homosexual affairs, although he’d had relationships with women at the same time.

  Erik’s eyes moved back to the dandy’s hand over his heart. Was the pain purely physical? Was he killed by a heart attack? Dardel had suffered from heart disease after a serious case of scarlet fever when he was a child, but was it really that simple? Maybe the painting was about a broken heart from a love affair. Did the artist want to show that he was on his way to leaving Rolf de Maré and his own homosexuality behind in order to enter into marriage with a woman? When Dardel painted the work in the summer of 1918 he was secretly engaged to Nita Wallenberg, the daughter of a cabinet minister. Was that why the man in the background was grieving?

  The painting moved him on so many levels; it touched his innermost soul and reflected the tragedy of his own life. If only we could have met, he sometimes thought in despair. If only we had lived in the same era. How he would have loved Dardel. How many times had he wondered what the artist had in mind when he created that painting?

  Maybe he can see me right now, thought Erik, glancing automatically up at the ceiling. Then hi
s eyes returned to the painting.

  The way the three women had gathered around the dying dandy reminded him of Christ’s death, with the dandy as Jesus. Erik thought that the woman placing the blanket over him resembled an angel, with the green palm leaves like wings behind her. Another of the women could have been Mary, with her dress the strong blue traditionally used for her. And the younger girl holding the pillow under his head might symbolize Mary Magdalene with her red hair and red and purple clothing. The man in the background had the features of Christ’s favourite apostle, John. Sure, why not?

  There was no mistaking the sense of tragedy, no matter what it might symbolize. It might have something to do with the war. When Dardel painted the scene, Europe was in the grip of the First World War. Sweden had remained neutral, but Finland had just entered the conflict, which was getting closer to Sweden and having a tremendous impact on the country. Not even in the wealthy salons frequented by Nils Dardel could anyone continue to close their eyes to the horrors being inflicted on people all around them. Maybe the artist wanted to portray the changes taking place in society during that time. The luxuries and amusements of the exclusive salons enjoyed by him and his friends must have begun to seem absurd – the self-absorbed dandy had become conscious of what was happening around him.

  Erik thought that Dardel was an idealist, but a complicated and multilayered man, in many ways a tragic person who wanted to flee from himself. He did so through alcohol, but also through art.

  Exactly like Erik.

  Knutas and Kihlgård spent the rest of Saturday preoccupied with the question of whether Egon Wallin might have been homosexual.

  Knutas had rung Monika Wallin to ask her about the matter, but she rejected the idea. Not because there was any passion between them any more; she simply had a hard time believing that her husband could have been gay. During the many years of their marriage she had never noticed any such tendency in him.