The Treacherous Net

by Helene Tursten

  “But . . . you can’t expose your niece to the danger of . . .”

  Åsa interrupted her with a laugh. “That’s not my niece, that’s our secret weapon.”

  A very young girl was looking shyly into the camera, an uncertain smile playing on her lips. Her long black hair was parted in the center, framing her delicate features. Her almond-shaped eyes were free of makeup.

  “How old is she?” Irene asked.

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Twenty-six? No way!”

  “I’ve known her since she was a baby,” Åsa replied patiently.

  “And she knows everything?”

  “Everything she needs to know. And she’s happy to help.”

  Irene gazed at the photograph of the pretty teenage girl. Who wasn’t a teenager at all. Åsa filled in the background on the girl and her family.

  The Björkman family had three daughters, Li, An and My. The oldest daughter Li was a familiar face in Göteborg; she was a journalist and a regional news reporter on TV4. An, the middle daughter, had been Åsa’s best friend since they were kids. She was four years younger than Li, and worked as a nurse at the Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital. Both girls came from Korea.

  The girl in the picture was My, the youngest. She had been adopted from Thailand, and was a dancer specializing in musical theater. She had trained in London and had worked there for a few years. She had just returned to Göteborg, and in a few weeks she would be moving to Copenhagen to appear in a production of Cats. Although she was a rising star when it came to the international musical scene, her face wasn’t known in Sweden.

  “The best thing is that My is less than one and a half meters tall—147 centimeters! She’s tiny. She often plays the role of a child or a teenage girl. Plus she’s a top level competitor in kickboxing. She’s won several prizes at straw weight.”

  “Straw weight? How much do you have to weigh for that class?”

  “Next to nothing!”

  Åsa was positively shining with enthusiasm, and Irene had to admit that My could definitely play a fifteen-year-old if necessary.

  “So how far have you and X-man got?” she wondered, her expression serious.

  “You mean has he asked me for sexy pictures? Do bears crap in the woods? Of course! I imagine he can’t believe his luck in finding such a naïve, easy target. I’ve only sent him a fairly innocent topless shot of My . . . I mean Ann.”

  “Topless! But . . .”

  “It’s a still. She has her hands cupped over her breasts and looks pretty upset. Ann is supposed to be shy, remember. When I joined the site I said I was fifteen and I’d only just moved to Göteborg from Jönköping. I was about to start ninth grade—well, I’ve already started because the schools went back last week. But when we first started chatting I didn’t know anyone, and I was very lonely. Plus I’m adopted so I look different, which can make things difficult. Shy, lonely and desperate to make contact just about sums Ann up.”

  “And that hooked Mr. Groomer.”

  “I can’t tell you how many dirty old men were tempted by little Ann! Some of them get straight down to business, telling me how much they’ll pay for a blow job, a few hundred for nude pictures, a thousand for full sex and so on.”

  Åsa grimaced in disgust.

  “I’m just thinking about my daughters, how worried I used to be when they were teenagers, hanging out with friends at night, going to parties, music festivals . . . but the Internet is even more dangerous for kids, no matter what time of the day it is,” Irene said.

  “Absolutely.”

  Irene thought for a moment, then said, “We have a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have to inform the boss.”

  “She’ll say no. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because it comes from us,” Åsa stated baldly.

  She looked worried.

  “But we have another boss. A male boss,” Irene said with a cunning smile.

  Åsa also broke into a smile when she realized what Irene meant.

  Four detectives were sitting in DCI Tommy Persson’s office. At Irene’s request, none of the other officers in the department had been called to the meeting, which meant that Efva Thylqvist was not present either. Tommy had listened in silence as Åsa explained how she had managed to contact Mr. Groomer. When she started talking about My Björkman, Irene could see that Tommy was finding it difficult to keep his opinions to himself. However, he succeeded in controlling himself until she had finished.

  “Absolutely not! We can’t use a civilian as bait!” he said firmly.

  At that point the fourth person in the room cleared his throat, indicating that he had something to say.

  “We’ve mapped all communication and checked the times of bus and train departures. He’s chatting online on the X2000 route between Göteborg and Malmö. He takes the seven o’clock train down to Malmö and comes back on the one that leaves at five in the afternoon. On a few occasions he chatted to Alexandra in the morning, but mostly we’re looking at evenings between five and eight. On Sunday evening the train leaves an hour later, so then he chats until nine. Never on Mondays or Tuesdays, very rarely on Wednesdays. Mainly Thursdays, sometimes Fridays, often on the weekends,” Jens reported.

  “Is there any kind of pattern when it comes to the weekends?” Tommy asked, showing an interest in spite of himself. Obviously he wanted to catch the killer just as much as the others did, even if he didn’t agree with their methods.

  “Nope. He doesn’t chat every weekend; usually it’s every other, but it can be two in a row.”

  “Can we trace him?”

  “That’s tricky. He buys a card with a single-use code. It doesn’t allow for pauses or interruptions. One hour costs around seventy kronor, two hours ninety.”

  Jens realized the others had no idea what he was talking about. Patiently he explained. “You buy a card in the restaurant car; there’s a code on it that you use to log in.”

  “And is this card only valid during that particular journey?” Irene asked.

  “No, you can use it on a second journey.”

  “Seems kind of expensive,” Åsa said.

  Jens gave a wry smile. “He’s clever. The chances of us finding him are very small. I think he uses this method only with the girls he’s intending to kill.”

  “You mean he separates his contacts? Decides right from the start who’s going to be his next victim?” Åsa exclaimed.

  “He can easily sit at home surfing the net on his own computer. He could be in touch with hundreds, maybe thousands of girls. It’s not against the law to contact teenagers online.”

  “He’s got it all worked out. He uses a stolen computer and publicly available broadband to chat to the girls he’s picked out. Which makes him almost impossible to track down,” Tommy said, thinking out loud.

  He considered the situation for a moment, then eventually he said, “So what’s the plan?”

  Irene quickly ran through what she and Åsa had worked out. The idea was for Åsa to carry on chatting for a while longer before suggesting a meeting.

  “It would have to be somewhere with plenty of people around—a café, for example. Our decoy will be My Björkman, pretending to be fifteen-year-old Ann. The customers around her will be plainclothes police officers,” Irene explained.

  “I can get into Åsa’s nephew’s computer, which means we can sit here chatting to this guy,” Jens offered.

  “Does that mean I can carry on using the computer?” Åsa asked.

  “Sure. You won’t even know I’m there.”

  There had been no difficulty in getting a hold of Oscar Leutnerwall; he was in the phone book. Both Andersson and Fryxender had been surprised to find him there. The name listed above was Astrid Leutnerwall, with the same address on one of the streets above Näckrosdammen, but a different
telephone number.

  According to the information they had found, Oscar Valentin Leutnerwall was born on December 15, 1915. He was the son of a lawyer, Valentin Leutnerwall, and his wife, Siri, née Adelskiöld. The couple also had a daughter, Astrid, and a son who had died of meningitis at the age of only two.

  Oscar had pursued a career within the Swedish diplomatic service, and in 1939 he was appointed to a post as attaché with the Foreign Office. From October 1941 and for most of the Second World War, he served in Moscow. After the war he spent a few years at the Swedish embassy in London before returning to Sweden to work in the Foreign Office in Stockholm. He had spent the last ten years of his professional life as Sweden’s ambassador in London.

  “He retired twenty-five years ago!” Fryxender exclaimed, sounding impressed.

  “Personally I’ll be glad if I make it to the first of November,” Andersson muttered.

  “He worked until he was sixty-eight,” Fryxender said, looking down at the sheet of paper giving Oscar Leutnerwall’s personal details and list of awards.

  “His cousin didn’t.”

  “No. He retired at sixty-two.”

  Fryxender picked up the other sheaf of papers on his desk.

  Carl-Johan Henric Adelskiöld was born on October 23, 1917. Fryxender had also managed to confirm his initial assumption that Carl-Johan’s and Oscar’s mothers were sisters. Carl-Johan had been an only child. He had followed in his cousin’s footsteps and read law at Uppsala. He completed his studies quickly and started work at the Foreign Office in 1941. Around Christmastime he was sent to join Oscar in Moscow, where he remained until the end of the war in 1945. He returned to Sweden, then served in various embassies and legations around the world. A gifted linguist, Carl-Johan had spent the last five years of his professional life as Sweden’s chargé d’affaires in Berlin. When he retired in 1980, he moved back to his hometown of Göteborg and into one of the apartments in the building on Korsvägen, which he had inherited from his parents several years earlier.

  “The cousins have quite a few things in common,” Fryxender said, placing the two sets of papers neatly beside each other on his desk.

  “You mean they both worked for the Foreign Office?”

  “Yes, let’s start there. They both went to the Foreign Office straight after university. They were both sent to Moscow. They were both there during the war. Do you know who else was in Moscow in 1940 and ’41?”

  Andersson thought for a moment before he came up with the obvious answer.

  “Stig Wennerström.”

  “Bravo! He was air attaché.”

  “What does that entail?”

  “I’ve no idea. It’s a military title. But that’s not important. The interesting thing is that the cousins and Wennerström were in Moscow at the same time.”

  “So the point of contact between them is Moscow.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But where does Elof Persson come into all this? He was in Stockholm,” Andersson pointed out.

  Fryxender wasn’t about to be put off by his colleague’s objection.

  “I’ve checked with SÄPO and the Foreign Office. Wennerström, Oscar and Carl-Johan were in Stockholm on September sixteenth, 1941!”

  “Are you trying to tell me that Wennerström shot Elof Persson?” Andersson asked dryly.

  Fryxender ignored his sarcastic tone.

  “Maybe. Or it could have been one of the cousins. All three of them were still alive at the time when Mats Persson was murdered. Even while Wennerström was in Russia there were reports that he was suspected of engaging in intelligence activities for a foreign power, as it was called back then—spying for the Germans, to put it simply. His behavior was causing concern; he was asking questions about things that had nothing to do with him. His mail and telephone calls were monitored in 1943, but there was never any proof, and the surveillance was canceled. They didn’t catch him until twenty years later. I’m wondering whether Elof Persson might have gotten wind of something. Seen something. Perhaps the cousins were involved in some way.”

  Andersson needed time to digest all this information about Stig Wennerström, the spy.

  “Did either of the cousins actually know him in September 1941?” he asked.

  Fryxender looked noticeably less pleased with himself when he realized where Andersson was heading.

  “Hardly. He was older, and a high-ranking officer in the air force,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “In which case there is no connection between the cousins and Wennerström at the time of Elof’s murder.”

  “Well, no, but the cousins . . .”

  “. . . hadn’t even been to Russia! One of them had just finished university, for Christ’s sake, and the other one was still at the Foreign Office. The only thing we know for sure is that all three of them were in Stockholm in September. That’s the only point of contact. But we have no evidence to suggest that Elof Persson and the cousins ever had anything to do with one another. Or that Persson met Wennerström. Or that the cousins met Wennerström.”

  Fryxender’s enthusiasm had vanished. He frowned and thought for a moment. “In that case we need to look for something that proves the link. We need to find whatever Mats Persson found. We need to find those books,” he said eventually.

  “And we have to speak to Oscar Leutnerwall, if that’s even possible. The guy is over ninety.”

  “Mmm. Actually, the cousins had more elements in common. Neither of them ever went on to have a family of their own, perhaps because they moved around so much when they were young. And they both came back to their hometown when they retired.”

  “They stuck together.”

  “Although they can’t have seen that much of each other during their professional lives. They never served in the same country at the same time, apart from those early years in Moscow.”

  Andersson didn’t even attempt to suppress a sigh. Moscow. The war. Spies. Murder. Sixty-seven years ago. He sighed again.

  Andersson still wasn’t sure whether it was Oscar Leutnerwall himself he had spoken to on the phone. If so, he definitely wasn’t some gaga old man. The lively voice on the other end of the line could have belonged to a guy half his age.

  They were in the car on the way to Nedre Johanneberg to speak to Oscar. They could have walked from police HQ, but wind and rain had swept in across the city, and Andersson’s asthma was making its presence felt. It was the first sign of the approaching fall. At least when the cold, wet winter arrived at the beginning of November he would be able to deal with his asthma in peace. November 1 was the date he could begin to call himself a pensioner. He was facing the prospect with mixed feelings.

  “Hang on in there! We’re getting reinforcements on October first,” Fryxender had said several times. Two new investigators would provide a much-needed boost for the Cold Cases Unit. It was a pity that he would only have the opportunity to work with his new colleagues for a month, but at the same time Andersson felt as if he had served his time with the Göteborg police. During November and December he was planning on taking things easy, maybe doing a little work on the house. Between Christmas and New Year he and his wife, Elvy, were traveling to Thailand, which he was really looking forward to. He had never been to Asia. Following their summer vacation in Bohuslän, Elvy hadn’t gone back to work but had decided to retire. She still missed her job in the cake shop sometimes, in spite of the fact that she had worked there for thirty-seven years. Or perhaps that was why. She missed the contact with her colleagues and with the customers. That was what worried Andersson. What if he found he wanted to come back to work?

  “I’ve spoken to someone at the library. They can’t check whether a particular book disappeared or was returned twenty-five years ago; it’s impossible. The data is saved for a maximum of three years,” Fryxender informed him, jerking him out of his reverie.

 
“Three years? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Because we didn’t find the books in the aperture with Mats Persson’s body. The gun was there, and so were his clothes and his wallet. It just occurred to me: What if the killer took the books back to the library?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To get rid of them.”

  It actually sounded pretty logical, Andersson thought. All you had to do was place the books discreetly on the returns desk and slip away.

  As usual it was difficult to find a parking spot in Nedre Johanneberg. After driving around the area for a while Andersson eventually found a space on Lennart Torstenssonsgata. The rain lashed their faces as they struggled along into a strong headwind. All the wet leaves torn down from the imposing trees made the sidewalks treacherous.

  They were heading for an apartment block on the slope leading down to the pond known as Näckrosdammen and the park beyond. Some of the plumpest ducks in Göteborg live in the slimy waters of the pond; in the summer its surface is completely covered with pink and white water lilies. During the late spring and summer, students and other residents of the city often sunbathe on the huge lawns between the pond and the university library.

  Today the park was deserted, and there were worrying creaking noises from overhead as the wind tugged at the old trees. Andersson and Fryxender hurried down the hill toward Oscar Leutnerwall’s apartment.

  Impressive buildings entrenched behind high brick walls lined both sides of the street. Shiny metal plaques by the gates revealed which companies conducted their business behind the walls, although often there was only an uninformative name or a set of initials. A couple of the buildings housed free schools. Even if the interiors were buzzing with the activity of modern life, their showy façades stood as a monument to a bygone age.

  Andersson thought back to his own upbringing in Masthugget, in a “governor’s house” so typical of the city of Göteborg. A family of four had lived in a one-bedroom apartment, with an outdoor toilet in the yard. They had no running hot water. The building burned down the year Andersson started school; no one was hurt, so no one was sorry to see the dump disappear. The family relocated to a house on Fjärde Långgatan, where they had two bedrooms and a kitchen, hot and cold running water, and their very own toilet with a hand basin. Andersson remembered his mother weeping with joy when they moved in.