The Beige Man

by Helene Tursten

  Irene and Hannu exchanged a glance. They both knew the superintendent was right. There was no point in channeling their limited resources into something that wasn’t relevant to the investigation. But at the same time they were both experienced officers, and they were intrigued by all the odd, unexpected details that had begun to emerge as they looked into Torleif Sandberg’s life and death.

  Everyone jumped as the intercom suddenly crackled into life. “Hello! Are you there?” came Svante Malm’s voice.

  Tommy, who was sitting nearest, leaned over and pressed the button. “Yes, we’re here,” he answered cheerfully.

  “Good. I’ve just run a check on the fingerprints we found in Torleif Sandberg’s car. They were in our records, and they belong to two guys named Niklas Ström and Björn Kjellgren. Their ID numbers are—”

  “Thanks, Svante. We’ve already got their details,” Tommy managed to say with some difficulty.

  “Okay, I’ll be in touch if I find anything else.”

  When the connection was broken you could have heard a pin drop in the room. They sat there motionless, hardly even blinking. Some of their heads were full of thoughts, buzzing around like a swarm of bees, while others’ brains had stopped working completely.

  “What the hell does this mean?” Jonny said eventually.

  “I have no idea. This can’t be right,” Tommy said in confusion.

  “Jesper and I have been working our asses off trying to find the bastards who had absconded from various institutions,” Jonny said. “There were a few to choose from at the beginning; we’ve gradually been able to eliminate them from our inquiries, one by one. Which only leaves Billy and Niklas. But we’ve been looking for them as the suspects who stole the BMW that ran down and killed Muesli. And now it turns out that they stole his car! How the hell is that possible?” His frustration was obvious, and it was shared by everyone in the room.

  “It does seem pretty unlikely,” Tommy agreed.

  “Unlikely! It’s fucking impossible!” the superintendent exploded. His face was a worrying shade of bright red.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance it could be a mistake?” Irene said.

  “More like a bad joke,” Tommy said wearily.

  “So Billy’s hooked up with the gay rapist! Maybe little Billy is similarly inclined. I bet he likes it rough.” Jonny grinned. He was obviously recovering from the initial shock, and was well on the way to being his usual self again.

  “It’s slightly surprising, but then again, perhaps not. They were both in Gräskärr. According to the staff they didn’t have much close contact, but they must have had some. They took off within twenty-four hours of each other, Niklas first and then Billy. Everybody assumed that Billy had been inspired by Niklas’s escape; nobody thought they’d planned it together,” Irene said. She was the one who had collated the information about the absconders at an early stage of the investigation. It felt like a long time ago.

  “There’s no point in sitting here speculating! Get out there and find the little bastards!” Andersson snapped.

  He got to his feet, indicating that the meeting was over. Irene noticed that he hadn’t taken a cookie out of the open packet lying on the table. She was starting to get seriously worried about him.

  Hannu came over to Irene and stood beside her. He waited until they were alone in the room.

  “Could you help me with something?” he said quietly.

  His facial expression was now completely under control. It must have taken an enormous toll on him to reveal his grief over the tragedy that had befallen his family, and in front of all his colleagues, too. Irene knew he wouldn’t say any more unless she asked. If then.

  “Of course. What do you want me to do?”

  “You seemed to get on well with Stefan Sandberg. I got the impression that he trusted you. He told you a lot more than he needed to.”

  Irene nodded.

  “Could you give him a call and tell him that the car has been found?”

  “He doesn’t know yet?” Irene exclaimed.

  “No. Nobody thought about it yesterday.”

  Irene opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. She knew better than anyone that they were overwhelmed with work. A stolen car wasn’t exactly a high priority, at least not until inexplicable connections started popping up. The two boys who they suspected of having run down and killed Torleif turned out instead to be the ones who had stolen his car. Admittedly this had happened just a few hundred meters from the spot where Torleif had died, but there was still no rhyme or reason to it. Why were they even in the area? How could they have got hold of Torleif’s car keys? Did they know it was his car when they stole it?

  “Tell Stefan Sandberg about the fingerprints. Ask him if he can think of any possible connection between Torleif and the two boys,” Hannu went on.

  “Where are you going with this?” She realized there must be a point to his questions.

  “Niklas Ström is gay. We don’t know anything about Billy Kjellgren’s inclinations, but he ran away with Niklas. I’m just wondering whether Torleif might have been gay. Niklas and Billy could have lured Torleif out to his car, perhaps by promising him sex. Torleif could have been threatened and managed to get out of the car. Obviously his instinct was to run straight home. They could have been some distance away, which would explain the frostbite damage. That would also explain why we haven’t found his car keys, just the spare keys that he had in the apartment. Niklas and Billy hung onto the keys and the car.”

  Irene realized she was sitting staring at Hannu. That was probably the longest single speech she had ever heard from him. And his theory was absolutely credible. It would explain the link between the two boys, Torleif and his car.

  “That’s an excellent theory! So you want me to try and find out if Stefan knows whether Torleif was gay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get on it right away.”

  Irene went straight to her office. Hannu had definitely come up with a theory where no one else had been able to. Of course, the big question still remained: Who had killed Torleif?

  STEFAN SANDBERG ANSWERED his cell when she called. He said he would be going home to Umeå that afternoon. He had managed to sort out most things, and wouldn’t be coming back until the funeral. He didn’t show much interest when she told him that the stolen car had been found.

  “Outside Olofstorp? Does that mean the thieves are there?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily. The car had run out of gas. They might have had another car nearby. At any rate they didn’t steal another car in the area, at least not as far as we know,” Irene said.

  She wondered feverishly how she could introduce the subject of Torleif’s sexual inclinations. There wasn’t a natural segue in the conversation, so she decided the best thing was to go straight to the point. Stefan was a doctor, after all.

  “There is one thing that’s puzzling us. Forensics found the fingerprints of the two car thieves. They’re on our records, so we know who they are.”

  “But surely that’s a good thing? What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is the link between Torleif and these two guys. We can’t work out how the whole thing hangs together, which is why I have to ask you a very delicate question.” Irene paused, wondering how to phrase her query.

  “What do you mean, delicate?” She could hear that Stefan was a little wary.

  “At least one of the two guys was homosexual. Do you happen to know whether Torleif might have been gay?” She had decided it was best to be frank.

  There was such a long silence that Irene began to think Stefan wasn’t going to answer.

  To her relief he spoke at last. “I’m just trying to think … Mom never said anything to suggest that. If he was gay, then he probably hid it from her. Or perhaps he didn’t acknowledge that side of himself until after the divorce.”

  Irene couldn’t help feeling a pang of disappointment.

  “I guess the pr
oblem is I didn’t know Torleif well. I have virtually no memories from my first four years, when I lived with him and Mom here in Göteborg. Are you sure he had a connection with the guys who took his car?”

  “They had the keys,” Irene informed him.

  “In that case they must have gotten a hold of them somehow. It’s very strange. But I have come across another mystery,” Stefan said.

  “A mystery? Sounds interesting.”

  “It is. I had a meeting with Torleif’s personal banking adviser yesterday afternoon. There’s a lot of stuff to sort out with the bank after someone dies. I discovered that Torleif had only eighty-three thousand kronor in his account. That was all.”

  “That’s not too bad, is it?”

  Irene thought about her own account. She would have been delighted if Torleif’s money had found its way there by some miracle.

  “No, it’s a reasonable amount. But Torleif has always lived so … carefully. I expected there to be more money. And his adviser told me exactly what Torleif had done with it all. He showed me the paperwork. Torleif had just bought a house in Thailand!”

  Irene was astonished. “Thailand?” she repeated.

  “Yes. A big house that cost eight hundred thousand kronor. Apparently it’s a luxury villa, and it would cost many times that amount in Sweden. It’s got a pool and everything.”

  “Did you have any idea that he was planning to move to Thailand?”

  “No, but I know he’s been there. He told me the last time I saw him, three years ago. He said he treated himself to a good car and one trip abroad each year, and the previous year he’d been to Thailand.”

  “Unbelievable!”

  Possibly not the most inspired comment, Irene thought, but it expressed exactly how she was feeling right now.

  “You could say that. Now I’m stuck with a house in Thailand, which is an unexpected problem. Speaking of problems, did you find Torleif’s cell after he’d been hit?”

  “No. He didn’t have a cell with him—just the keys to his apartment. And there was a flashlight lying next to him,” Irene said.

  “That’s odd. A bill has just arrived for a brand new contract with Telenor and a new Nokia. I’ve searched the whole apartment, but there’s no sign of his cell.”

  Did this have any relevance to the investigation into Torleif’s death?

  “I’ll check with forensics, see if they’ve found a Nokia in the car,” she said.

  “Good. I need to contact Telenor and cancel the contract; they might want the phone back. I don’t really know what their policy is in the case of a sudden death.”

  “I have no idea,” Irene answered honestly.

  “You have my cell number if you need to contact me once I’m back home,” Stefan said.

  Irene was suddenly struck by a thought. “I’ve got your number, but was Torleif’s number on the paperwork from Telenor?”

  “Absolutely. Both his number and pin code, along with the cell phone’s ID number. It’s all here.”

  He gave Irene the details and she jotted them down.

  When she had finished talking to Stefan, she called Svante Malm on his direct line. He wasn’t available because he was out on a job. Irene sent him an email, asking if they had found a Nokia in Torleif Sandberg’s car. She also included all the numbers Stefan had given her.

  Then she picked up her laptop and her bag containing all the case notes, and said goodbye to her colleagues. Following a barrage of jokes and good wishes with varying degrees of sincerity, she left the department and pressed the elevator button. She was going straight home to pack.

  Chapter 15

  IRENE WASN’T PARTICULARLY well traveled. In the past she had had neither the time nor the money to venture far afield. The house she and Krister had bought when the twins were four had always been a heavy financial burden. They had thought it was worth the sacrifice so the girls could grow up close to nature and the sea. In recent years they had treated themselves to two package holidays to Greece, just the two of them. They were planning to go again toward the end of the summer, in exactly six months’ time. They just had to hang on until then.

  To be fair, they had actually traveled overseas last Easter as well. They had gone to London to visit Irene’s colleague, Glen Thomsen, and his lively family. That was when she had found out that Superintendent Andersson’s little romance with Donna, Glen’s Brazilian mother, was over. She had turned out to be a little too fiery for Andersson in the long run. She had found a new man much closer to home, but she and Andersson were still in touch by phone and letter. Glen had brought Irene up to date, while Andersson went around imagining that no one knew about his little fling in London. Irene hadn’t seen any signs of a broken heart.

  Glen and Irene had become good friends a few years earlier during her second work-related overseas trip. The first had been to Copenhagen; Irene still shuddered when she thought about the case of the dismembered bodies. The whole investigation was something she tried to erase from her memory, but she couldn’t do anything about the horrific images that still sometimes haunted her dreams.

  The weekend visit to Tenerife was first and foremost a working trip, and secondly, a break from the bitter cold. King Bore, the god of winter, still hadn’t slackened his grip on Scandinavia, nor was he likely to do so for another month or so. During the night the temperature had started to drop again, and it was now several degrees below freezing. All the meltwater that had caused floods in the west of Sweden during the thaw of the previous twenty-four hours had now frozen once again.

  When the cab picked Irene up just after five, the whole of Göteborg was encased in a carapace of ice. It wasn’t only tiredness that made her unsteady on her feet as she covered the short distance between her front door and the parking lot. The pavement was like glass, and the gritting truck hadn’t been out this early in the morning. She had to take tiny steps to avoid falling over, and sighed with relief when she managed to make it safely and sank into the back seat of her cab. The journey to the airport at Landvetter would be pretty expensive, but the Spaniards could pay. That was her last conscious thought before she fell asleep.

  THERE WAS ONE thing about flying that sometimes made Irene think it wasn’t worth it: the departure times are always so early in the morning. She had very little luggage, just her laptop case and a small rucksack. She was able to take them both on board with her, but she still needed to check in an hour before departure. Which was why she was wandering around the terminal, half-asleep, at twenty past six in the morning. More by instinct than judgment she followed the aroma of coffee and ended up in a café. After three cups of coffee and a fresh minibaguette with egg and anchovies, she began to feel a little more positive about life.

  Gazing into the darkness outside the enormous windows of the terminal building, Irene could see the runway lights and the flashing warning lights of the utility vehicles out on the airfield. There were buses transporting passengers between the terminals and the planes, and small shuttle trucks delivering airline food. Irene decided to buy another baguette to take on board with her.

  She went into a duty-free shop to look for the items on the list the girls had given her. She also bought herself new mascara and a small bottle of SPF 15 sun lotion. She didn’t want to get home looking like a freshly boiled lobster, or she would be getting “sympathetic” comments from her colleagues for weeks.

  As she headed for the checkout to pay, she passed a display labeled THIS MONTH’S SPECIAL OFFERS. Duty free plus a special offer must be really cheap, Irene thought as she stopped to take a closer look. Above all the creams and lotions was a mirror. A quick glance at her face confirmed that she needed all the help she could get. Everything that could possibly droop was drooping: the corners of her mouth, her eyelids, her cheeks. There were lines around her eyes and between her eyebrows. And since when did she have bags under her eyes? She could blame a certain amount on the fact that it was so early in the morning and she wasn’t wearing any makeup, but there w
as no denying it: she was definitely on the wrong side of forty. She discreetly dug her reading glasses out of her rucksack; these days she couldn’t make out small print without them. She started examining the beautifully designed packages, each and every one promising smoother skin, fewer wrinkles and a reduction in ugly pigmentation. She also found the miracle she needed: a tube of eye cream especially for bags and dark circles under the eyes. Perfect! Above the shelf a sign proclaimed: BUY ONE GET ONE FREE. How good was that? Resolutely she picked up two tubes of eye cream, a day cream that promised to make the skin look twenty years younger and the accompanying night cream. Satisfied with her haul, she went to the checkout to pay.

  The assistant asked to see her boarding card, then scanned her purchases.

  “Two thousand nine hundred and forty kronor,” she said.

  Irene’s immediate reaction was that she must have misheard. Almost three thousand kronor for cosmetics? At that very moment her flight was called.

  “This is the final call for Spanair flight three-one-two-one to Tenerife, departing at seven fifteen. Please proceed to gate twelve,” a voice announced brightly over the loudspeaker.

  Irene feebly handed her credit card to the assistant, who yawned without a trace of embarrassment as she asked Irene to enter her pin number. Irene realized there was no time to ask if she could put something back; besides which, she needed the whole lot. The face in the mirror had been in dire need of an emergency extreme makeover.

  IRENE STOWED HER thin poplin coat and knitted cotton cardigan in the overhead locker, then slid her laptop underneath them. The outside pockets of the laptop case contained all the paperwork relating to the investigation. She wanted to be prepared for every eventuality. She checked to make sure that the case and all its pockets were securely closed, then settled down in her seat. She was wearing stretch jeans that could cope with a long journey without getting creased, and a thin woolen polo neck sweater with a short-sleeved top underneath. She had dressed according to the onion principle. On her feet were ordinary deck shoes, with knee-high socks made of the finest wool. When they landed she would take off the socks and go barefoot in her shoes. Before that she would probably have already removed the polo neck. In her rucksack she had packed her toilet bag, her newly acquired rejuvenating creams, clean underwear, a bikini, two T-shirts, a pair of light sandals and a nice pair of shorts. In the outer pocket were her passport, e-ticket and wallet. She would need to withdraw some money at the airport when she arrived, but in spite of the short notice, she thought she had everything under control.