‘Are you feeling all right? Should we take a break?’
‘No, it’s OK.’
Mikaela gave them a surprised look but didn’t comment.
‘So how did this all start?’ asked Knutas.
‘Mamma got pregnant the first time when she was only fifteen. Long before she met Pappa. It was a brief fling with a guy who just disappeared afterwards. And then she had Mats in 1966. She didn’t want to keep the baby, but she didn’t give him up for adoption. She placed him with a foster family. Mats has had really bad luck and ended up with several different foster families, staying with each of them for only a few years before being forced to move. Because of that, he has never dared get really attached to anyone. His life has been very lonely and rootless. He was forced to keep moving during his whole childhood. And she never cared about him.’
‘Why didn’t she give him up for adoption?’ asked Jacobsson tonelessly.
‘That’s a good question. Maybe her parents advised her not to. I have no idea. But it certainly would have been better for Mats. Then he would have had a real family, someone he could call Mamma and Pappa.’
‘But then he got in touch with you. Did he also contact your brothers?’
‘Yes, all three of us thought it was great. It was like getting an unexpected gift. And Mats is an easy person to like. He’s so warm and sensitive. We talk on the phone several times a month if not more. Before midsummer we had a party here, and Simon’s family came too. It was wonderful. Mamma didn’t know about it. She was travelling abroad.’
‘Do all three of you have a good relationship with Mats?’
‘Yes, I think so. Especially Simon. They’re so alike, and they took to each other right away. They have the most contact. Mats actually lives very close to Simon, in Söder. I think that’s a good thing right now, since Simon is having such a hard time.’
Knutas gave Mikaela a long look.
EMMA JUMPED UP from her chair and ran over to the other table. The older woman was blue in the face. She was gripping her throat with both hands, gasping for air. Her eyes were filled with terror, and her body was shuddering with convulsions. All of a sudden she collapsed and fell to the ground.
‘Help!’ Emma screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘Help! Come here! This woman needs help!’
‘What’s wrong?’ The young waitress appeared, staring at Emma in bewilderment.
‘Call an ambulance! Now!’
The waitress nodded in alarm and ran off.
Emma had vague memories of a first-aid course that all teachers were required to take, but that was aeons ago. The woman didn’t look as if she were breathing, so Emma decided to try CPR. She tilted the woman’s head back and leaned over her. She pinched her nose with one hand and opened her mouth with the other. When she pressed her lips over the woman’s she instantly recoiled at the terrible smell. She couldn’t identify what it was.
Then Emma steeled herself and began blowing into the woman’s mouth.
THE CALL CAME in at 3.27 p.m., and within ten minutes the first police officers were on the scene. By then the medics had already declared the older woman to be dead. The younger woman who had administered CPR had collapsed and was rushed off to the hospital in an ambulance. A large number of officers descended upon the café, including a unit with dogs. The perpetrator had only just left the scene of the crime, so he might still be in the vicinity. Jacobsson and Knutas had gone to Stockholm, and neither of them answered their mobiles, presumably because they were on the plane returning to Visby.
Wittberg and Sohlman arrived a few minutes later. Wittberg brought the police car to a screeching halt in front of the café, and then they both jumped out and ran into the garden. A pale and upset waitress who looked to be no more than twenty was sitting on a chair with a blanket around her shoulders, smoking a cigarette.
‘It’s just awful. She comes here so often. She’s one of our regular customers,’ she said, her voice shaking.
‘The woman who died – what’s her name?’ asked Wittberg, while Sohlman hurried past him to have a look at the victim.
‘Veronika Hammar. She comes here a lot. At least several times a week, sometimes every day, although not lately.’
Wittberg swore. Veronika Hammar.
He sank down on to a chair next to the young girl, pulling a notebook and pen out of his pocket.
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘She came in and ordered a double espresso and a piece of carrot cake. Then she sat down at her usual table.’
The girl pointed to the spot at the end of the garden which was now cordoned off with police tape.
‘That table set for four. Over there near the arbour. She liked sitting there by herself. After a while a man came in and ordered coffee and a bottle of Ramlösa mineral water. When I came out later to clear away some of the dishes I noticed that he was sitting at her table. A few minutes later she asked me for the key to the toilet.’
‘Did you recognize the man?’ asked Wittberg.
‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Tall, stocky but not fat. Muscular. And older. Around forty.’
‘Did he have a moustache or a beard? Was he wearing glasses?’
‘Actually all of the above. And he had really thick hair, kind of tousled-looking.’
‘What colour?’
‘Blond.’
‘What was he wearing?’
‘I don’t really remember. Something blue, I think. A jacket and jeans. Nothing special.’
‘Did he say anything? I mean, did you hear him talking?’
‘No, he didn’t say anything except to place his order.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Well, I don’t really know. She went to the ladies’ and brought back the key. Then she went back to her table. It wasn’t busy so I went out to the kitchen to help the cook who makes the smörgåsbord, and then I got a phone call. Just a few minutes later I heard someone screaming. When I came out, the man was gone, and Veronika was lying on the ground.’
She closed her eyes and shook her head, as if trying to shake off the memory.
‘Oh, it was horrible. A woman who was here by herself shouted at me to call the police. So that’s what I did. I didn’t dare look, but I know that Veronika died almost instantly, even though the other woman was trying to revive her with that mouth-to-mouth method. She kept blowing and blowing, and then she fell over too. The next second the ambulance arrived.’
‘And you don’t know who that woman was? The one trying to help?’
‘No, I’ve never seen her before.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Linn.’
‘Can you stick around for a while? Is that OK?’
‘Sure. That’s fine.’
Wittberg went over to Sohlman, who had squatted down next to the dead woman. The crime tech looked up at his colleague.
‘The same shit as before. Without a doubt. You can smell it.’
‘Bloody hell.’
Someone tapped Wittberg on the shoulder. It was the young waitress.
‘The woman who was hurt and was taken to the hospital? This is her bag.’
She handed Wittberg a handbag, which he opened eagerly. When he took out the wallet with the woman’s ID, he gave a start.
Emma Winarve. Johan Berg’s wife. Emma, who had almost been killed in a drama that had played out on Fårö a few years back.
And now her life was in danger again.
KNUTAS’S MOBILE STARTED ringing the minute he turned it on after they landed in Visby. He and Jacobsson were on their way to baggage reclaim.
It was Wittberg, reporting on the dramatic events of the past hour. Veronika Hammar had been murdered just as they were boarding the plane in Stockholm. Knutas had to sit down. He felt as if the air had been knocked out of him, but he also felt a growing anger. He had tried in vain to persuade the county police commissioner to continue surveillance for Veronika
Hammar, at least till the end of the week. Now it was too late.
He and Jacobsson took a taxi to police headquarters.
A crowd of journalists had gathered outside, but Knutas had no comment. He hurried past, promising them a press conference before the night was over. He realized that would be unavoidable.
The café and surrounding area had been blocked off and the tech guys had gone over everything with a fine-toothed comb. The police had interviewed the neighbours, as well as several witnesses who had seen a man walking away down the street just after the murder was committed.
The investigative team met in the conference room as soon as Knutas and Jacobsson arrived at the station.
Wittberg began by describing the course of events.
‘Linn Blomgren, the young waitress at the café, gave us a very clear account of what happened. Just after three o’clock, Veronika Hammar came in alone. She’s a regular customer at the café, although she hadn’t been there for a while. She seemed tense and exchanged only a few words with the waitress. She ordered coffee and a piece of cake and then sat down at a table at the back of the café’s garden. The table is almost hidden by a lilac bower. A few minutes later the man turned up, bought coffee and a bottle of Ramlösa, and paid in cash. Then he sat down at Veronika Hammar’s table.
‘At that time there were six people in the café – four customers, Linn Blomgren, and a cook who’s in charge of the smörgåsbord in the kitchen. The customers were Veronika Hammar and the unidentified man, an elderly man sitting at a table doing a crossword puzzle, and Emma Winarve. The man with the crossword puzzle left the café first. Which means that Emma was the only witness to the crime. When the murder was committed, the cook was busy in the kitchen and Linn had received a phone call and was still talking when the unidentified man passed by her and disappeared. The next instant she heard someone screaming in the café garden. It was Emma, who had discovered that the woman sitting at the other table had collapsed. Linn called an ambulance.’
‘What a brazen bastard that man is,’ said Smittenberg. ‘To think he had the guts to do something like that.’
‘Ice cold,’ Sohlman agreed. ‘Why does he choose such public places for his murders? Is he the kind of perp who gets off on the risk of being caught?’
‘Very possibly,’ said Knutas. ‘Both of these murders certainly point in that direction. He seems to crave attention. But we’ll come back to that later. First I want to have all the facts on the table. What can you tell us, Erik?’
Sohlman told his colleagues about what had been found at the crime scene.
‘The perp succeeded in what was apparently his goal right from the start. Judging from what we know so far, Veronika Hammar died from cyanide poisoning, just like Viktor Algård. The poison was put in a glass of Ramlösa that stood on the table. She died in a matter of minutes. Emma Winarve, who administered CPR, ingested enough of the cyanide gas to make her lose consciousness. She’s in intensive care, in a serious condition. Veronika Hammar’s body has been taken to the morgue, and I’m hoping to have a medical examiner here by this evening. We’ve been having trouble locating one. The man came into the café just a few minutes after Veronika Hammar. They apparently knew each other. Maybe they had agreed to meet there, or else he was following her. Unfortunately, we had called off the police surveillance. And in this instance, Veronika didn’t have much use for the security alarm we had installed at her home,’ he added sarcastically.
‘There was no real evidence other than the glass and its contents,’ Sohlman went on. ‘No fingerprints on the Ramlösa bottle or on his coffee cup. According the waitress, the man was wearing thin leather gloves, typical driving gloves with little air holes, the kind people used to wear in the sixties, if you’ll recall. The perp sat there for about ten minutes, tops, before he vanished without leaving behind so much as a strand of hair.’
‘Did the waitress talk to him?’ asked Jacobsson.
‘No, he didn’t say a word after paying for his coffee. We do have a good description of the perp, although it sounds as if he was wearing a disguise, so I’m not sure how much the statements from the witnesses can really tell us,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But there’s one thing we do know, at any rate. The killer is a man. The question is: Who is he?’
‘Just a minute,’ said Knutas.
He got up and pulled down the white screen at the front of the room. Jacobsson, who sat closest to the switch, turned off the lights. Knutas used his computer to project an image on the screen. He’d had only a few minutes to tell Wittberg about his theory. No one else knew the identity of the killer they were looking for. The silence in the room was palpable.
A face appeared on the screen. It was a passport photo of a man in his forties. He was blond with dark eyes and an open, pleasant-looking face. It was obvious that he bore a striking resemblance to Veronika Hammar. The man was clean-shaven, and his hair was cut short. He looked like rather a decent person as he mustered a vague smile for the camera. Hardly the image of a double murderer. Knutas clicked to bring up another photo of the same man.
This one had been culled from the police records, taken fifteen years earlier. An unshaven young man with a crew cut and a wild look in his eyes, staring with hostility at the camera. Two very different portraits of the same man.
‘This is the eldest brother, Mats. According to his boss, he’s been in Mallorca for the past two weeks. But that’s not true. The charter company says that Mats never showed up at the airport to check in for his flight. Instead, he’s been shuttling back and forth between Stockholm and Gotland. I think this is the man we’re after.’
The news caused a ripple to pass through the room.
‘So it’s the half-brother. The one who grew up with foster families,’ said Smittenberg with a sigh.
Everyone was staring at the photo on the screen. Knutas told them what Mikaela Hammar had said about Mats Andersson and then added more details.
‘He’s forty-one years old and lives in Södermalm. Veronika gave birth to him at Visby Hospital in 1966. She was only fifteen at the time. Nobody knows who the father is. The birth records list the father as “unknown”. Mats is a bachelor with no children. He works at a silver-plating company in the industrial district of Länne in Haninge.’
‘A silver-plating company? What the hell is that?’ asked Wittberg.
‘They apply the finished surface to metal. And according to the CEO, there’s a specific substance that’s needed for the manufacturing process. Potassium cyanide.’
Knutas paused for effect as his colleagues digested this piece of information.
‘The man has quite a troubled past. He grew up with a whole series of foster families, and has been convicted of assault on numerous occasions. He has also been arrested for receiving stolen goods and for petty theft. But he’s had a clean record for the past ten years. Seems he’s been behaving himself.’
Sohlman looked at his watch.
‘It’s seven fifteen. The murder was committed around three thirty. So where is Mats now?’
‘He hasn’t left Visby, at least not using his own name,’ said Knutas. ‘The boat for Nynäshamn left Visby at four forty-five, and he could have easily made it on board. It arrives in Nynäs at eight o’clock, and we’ve asked to have all the passengers remain on board until the police search the whole ship. It’s going to cause a big ruckus, but that can’t be helped.’
Memories of the previous year’s hunt for a murderer flickered through Knutas’s mind. On that occasion the police had also been forced to delay a Gotland ferryboat, but their search had proved fruitless, even though the killer was actually on board. Knutas cast a surreptitious glance at Karin. A searing pain passed through his body as he remembered what a dilemma he was in. Was he really going to keep her secret?
Then he went on. ‘Our colleagues in Stockholm have been to his flat, but he wasn’t there. They’re also going to see if he might be visiting his brother Simon, since Mats has the most contact with hi
m. And they live just a stone’s throw from each other, on either side of Slussen.
‘The question is: Where has he been staying when he comes to Gotland?’ said Knutas. ‘I’ve asked all the hotels, B and Bs, hostels, cabin rental agencies and campground owners to look through their records. Unfortunately, it’s going to take time before we hear back from all of them.’
‘He has a brother here on Gotland,’ said Jacobsson. ‘Who’s to say he’s not staying with Andreas?’
JOHAN’S MOBILE RANG as he and Pia were on their way to the café where Veronika Hammar was murdered. As soon as Johan took the call, Pia could tell that something was seriously wrong.
The doctor told him that Emma was in intensive care. She had been found at the very café they were on their way to visit. But she was just running some errands, Johan thought in bewilderment.
At that moment they had entered the roundabout at Norrgatt; Pia was driving towards the northern gate in the ring wall.
‘Go to the hospital!’ he shouted, still holding the mobile to his ear. ‘We have to go to the hospital!’
Pia quickly turned the steering wheel the other way, casting a startled look at her colleague.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Emma’s in intensive care. She was at the café when Veronika Hammar was killed, and she tried to save her. Now she’s in a serious condition herself.’ He pounded his fist on the side of the passenger door. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
Pia brought the car to such an abrupt stop at the hospital entrance that the tyres shrieked against the asphalt. As Johan jumped out of the car, she yelled after him: ‘It’ll be OK. She’ll be fine!’
She could hear how hollow her words sounded.
WHEN THE MEETING of the investigative team was over, Knutas sat down at his desk and punched in the phone number for Simon Hammar in Stockholm. No one answered. The phone rang and rang, echoing in his ear. He sighed and went out to the corridor to get himself a cup of coffee from the vending machine. The whole station was buzzing with activity, and a nationwide alert had been issued for Mats Andersson. Knutas speculated what his motive could be. Was he so eager to kill his mother because she’d abandoned him when he was a newborn? If so, why had he decided to do it now, at the age of forty-one?
Inspector Anders Knutas 6 - Dark Angel Page 23
