Murder in Malmö: The second Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries)

by MacLeod, Torquil

  ‘Ewan,’ she said quietly. ‘Ewan Strachan. That was his name.’

  Axelsson tapped his pencil thoughtfully against his pursed lips. It was a habit that was beginning to irritate Anita.

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Is. That is his name.’

  Axelsson smiled to himself.

  ‘So, how did you discover that Ewan was the real murderer?’

  It sounded just as ridiculous as it did when she told her story to her immediate boss, Chief Inspector Moberg. He couldn’t believe it any more than she could when Strachan had confessed.

  ‘He just told me.’

  ‘Just told you?’ Axelsson asked quizzically.

  ‘Yes.’ Ewan had admitted it as he sat opposite her in a restaurant. He had let slip a piece of information that had made her suddenly realize that he was the guilty party. When she had challenged him he had admitted, without a murmur of protest, to carrying out the crime. And, furthermore, he had also put his hand up to the killing of the girl in Durham who had come between himself and Roslyn twenty-five years earlier. Anita wasn’t sure why she hadn’t mentioned that part of his confession to Moberg. The next few hours had been like a dream. Ewan had meekly allowed her to take him to the polishus, where she had officially charged him with the murder of Malin Lovgren. She was still wearing her one decent evening dress. That had become a running joke among many of her colleagues. As a result, she felt some relief that she had not been allowed to spend much time at police headquarters in the last few months.

  ‘So why do you think he was so compliant?’

  The question gave Anita a jolt. It was one that fortunately Moberg, or in fact, anybody else connected to the case, hadn’t bothered to ask. She didn’t want to reply, but Axelsson’s eyes were fixed steadily upon her. He wanted an answer and he would know if she was lying.

  ‘He… he was in love with me.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said defensively.

  ‘What did you feel about him?’

  She glanced towards the window. The sun still shone, but there was no help in that direction. Since that night she hadn’t even admitted to herself her feelings for Ewan.

  ‘I was falling in love with him. I suppose I…’

  Axelsson made a note on his pad.

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  ‘He’s in prison.’

  ‘That’s not an answer, Anita.’

  No it wasn’t. She didn’t want to confront her feelings. Not in front of this young man. All she wanted to do was get out of his room and run back to Simrishamn and walk along her favourite beach by herself and forget about the police, psychologists and the people who complicated her life.

  ‘Do you still love him?’ he repeated gently.

  Very slowly Anita nodded.

  Axelsson snapped his notebook shut. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

  CHAPTER 4

  The light from the bedroom was momentarily blotted out. Chief Inspector Erik Moberg’s giant frame filled the doorway. He wasn’t much shy of two metres tall, and carried an unhealthy amount of bulk around with him. It was many a year since he’d been able to slip into size 54 trousers. The most disconcerting aspect of his appearance was the strange colour of his dyed hair, which could best be described as nicotine-yellow. Beneath it, all the features of his face were exaggerated by their mass, from the heavy jowls to the increasingly slitting eyes, caused by the collision of drooping eyebrows and puffed-up cheeks. He moved forward into the bathroom and towered above the body. With Moberg inside, the room seemed a lot smaller than it had before. Quite a crowd now, with senior forensic technician, Eva Thulin, bending over the corpse; Inspector Henrik Nordlund examining the shower cubicle, and Inspector Karl Westermark, with a wooden toothpick sticking out of the side of his mouth as a substitute cigarette, leaning casually against the basin. All three had on plastic suits.

  ‘Well?’ Moberg boomed. ‘What the hell happened here?’

  Westermark took the toothpick out of his mouth. ‘He’s called Tommy Ekman. Runs an advertising agency in town. Cleaning lady found him.’

  ‘How did he die?’ This time Moberg addressed Thulin.

  Eva glanced up. ‘Somehow he seems to have been gassed. Or certainly the physical signs point in that direction.’

  Moberg snorted. ‘How do you gas someone in a shower?’

  ‘I have no idea yet,’ said Thulin rising from her haunches.

  ‘OK. Is there a fru Ekman or is he a gay bachelor?’

  ‘There is. And a couple of kids, too.’ Westermark twirled the toothpick round his fingers. His cropped blond hair, piercing blue eyes and lantern-jawed ruggedness gave him the good looks that he assumed no woman could resist. Not many had. ‘They’re in the country at the moment.’

  ‘And the cleaning lady?’

  ‘She’s in the kitchen with a constable,’ explained Nordlund. ‘In a state of shock. Swedish isn’t that good. Bosnian, I think.’

  ‘Bloody typical,’ snarled Westermark.

  Moberg ignored Westermark and shook his head. ‘But gassing?’

  ‘I might be able to tell you once I’ve examined the whole scene,’ said Thulin in some exasperation. ‘So, if you gentlemen would like to leave. Until then, your gas is as good mine.’

  Even Moberg managed to raise a faint smile.

  Anita drove out of the hospital car park. Were the Axelsson sessions doing any good? Only time would tell. What was inescapable was the fact that she would be returning to work tomorrow. It made her feel nervous. How would she be received by her colleagues? Sympathetically? Resentfully? Mockingly?

  Anita turned the car into the stream of traffic. Chief Inspector Erik Moberg would probably treat her with his usual suspicion. He was uncomfortable with a female detective on his team. He didn’t like anyone standing up to him, particularly a woman. And just when she thought she had won him over with her discovery that Mick Roslyn had murdered his wife, it was all blown away by the revelation that Ewan Strachan had been the killer all along. Henrik Nordlund, the oldest member of the team and her unofficial mentor, would provide the sympathy and a shoulder to cry on if necessary. A widower nearing retirement, Nordlund had already taken the time to come round to her apartment in Roskildevägen and talk to her. But her real worry was Karl Westermark. In his late thirties, this coldly handsome man was a danger. She knew that he both loathed her and lusted after her. He had made both emotions perfectly plain. He was ruthless, and she knew he would have exploited her fall from grace whilst she was on leave of absence from the polishus. Westermark had believed Strachan to be guilty all along and felt that she had been protecting the British journalist because he could see – even when she hadn’t initially – that she was falling for him. This had infuriated Westermark because she was one of the few women he had failed to add to his impressive list of conquests. Her pointed rejections of his obvious advances had only increased his hatred of her whilst heightening the sexual tension and desire. It was a volatile combination that would only strain the atmosphere within the team on her return.

  Anita now found herself at a standstill. The traffic was going nowhere. It was unusual to have a jam at this time of day. This was annoying. She only lived across the park, but had taken the car as she wanted to do some shopping at Mobilia after her hospital appointment. Now that she was stuck she just wanted to get back home, put on her running clothes and jog away her worries in Pildammsparken. Living in Malmö meant she hadn’t a quiet space to run or walk along. In the summer too many people came out to enjoy the sun on the city beaches. She had managed to escape during her suspension to Simrishamn, staying with her old school friend Sandra. There she had been able to wander by herself up towards Baskemölla and onto her favourite beach, Lilla Vik. It was her mental sanctuary. Out of season there would be just her on her own, the sand and the Baltic stretching away to the horizon.

  Anita looked around to see if there was another way out. The car was trapped. She smacke
d the steering wheel in frustration. The sun was now beating down and her old Volkswagen was getting decidedly stuffy, despite the open window. Like some of the other drivers, she got out so see what was holding them up. Further along the street she could see a large group of bystanders. She also spotted a couple of uniformed policemen. She slammed the car door shut and walked towards the crowd. On reaching the group she recognised one of the officers, Carl Svanberg. Her attempts to attract his attention were drowned out by the blaring of an ambulance siren. The ambulance wove its way through the traffic until it stopped in the middle of the street.

  ‘Carl.’

  The officer turned and looked at Anita in some surprise. Once he recognized her, was that a smirk he was trying to hide? Or am I being paranoid? thought Anita. ‘What’s up?’

  Svanberg pointed through the throng. ‘Someone’s been knocked over. Probably wasn’t looking when crossing the street.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  For a moment she could see the confusion on his face. Like everyone based at the polishus, he would know her situation and be aware of its aftermath. ‘I thought you—’

  ‘I start tomorrow. Any development on the Rosengård shootings?’ The press had lost interest when it became clear that both immigrant women would survive. She hoped the police attitude hadn’t been the same.

  ‘No.’

  Fortunately, Svanberg was saved by his colleague calling to him. The paramedics were dealing with what Anita could now see was a man lying on the ground. He was soon lost to view and, as she walked back to her car, the ambulance siren started up again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Chief Inspector Moberg stared out of his office window over the canal that encircles the old centre of Malmö. The sun glinted on the calm water. It didn’t reflect his disposition at that moment. He was irritated – and he was hungry. The two weren’t mutually exclusive. It took a lot to satisfy his appetite. He knew he ate and drank too much, but it was more out of habit these days. He had long given up on the idea of diets and controlling his weight. He had always been big. Now he was gross. He realized that colleagues must make comments behind his back, though his temper ensured that no one would dare make derogatory remarks to his face.

  He hadn’t eaten properly because he had been called out to the Ekman case. It had been bedlam since, and he hadn’t had time for even a sandwich. On returning to the polishus he acquainted Dahlbeck, the commissioner of Skåne County Police, with the facts. Then he had had a first briefing session with the team. They were as non-plussed as he had been. A respectable businessman possibly gassed in his own shower. The commissioner thought Moberg had been winding him up at first. By the time he appreciated the fact that the crime was for rea,l he had made it clear that they were only to state that Ekman had been found dead at his apartment and that the police were looking into the circumstances. He didn’t want the press to have a field day with such a potentially gruesome story until the case was further down the line.

  After making brief, initial enquiries, there was certainly no obvious motive for the murder. What was clear was that it was meticulously planned. The shower must have been tampered with somehow. Then there was the gas. He had come across accidental gassing before, usually in workplaces where toxic fumes had escaped. Suicides, too. But in all his years of policing he had never come across a murder like this one. For it must be murder. Otherwise, it was a very strange suicide. It was beyond him. That was why he was waiting for an initial report from Eva Thulin when she got back from the forensic lab at nearby Lund. But before that happened, he hoped the food he had ordered from China Box on the corner of Värnhemstorget would arrive. Then he would be in a more receptive mood to take on board whatever bizarre information Thulin had for him.

  Anita slumped down in front of the television. She knew she should be out in the park opposite her ground-floor Roskildevägen apartment, yet she was unsettled. She was wearing her running gear and she rested the TV remote on her bare thigh. It was unseasonally warm outside and the apartment was clammy. So why was she idly flicking through the channels on the TV? She knew that it was worry about tomorrow morning and her reception at the polishus. Her attention was brought back to the telly when she heard an English voice. It was not uncommon on Swedish television, as many of the programmes were British or American imports that had Swedish subtitles. Many younger Swedes were virtually fluent in English through watching non-dubbed telly. Anita’s was even better because she had spent two years in the north east of England as a child when her father was working as a designer at the Electrolux factory at Spennymoor in County Durham. Then, a few years ago, she had been on secondment to the Metropolitan Police in London. What had caught her attention was the accent of the speaker. He was well-spoken, but had a definite trace of a north-eastern accent. Educated Geordie. He was obviously a cleric, judging by his dress. Maybe about sixty, he was tall with wispy grey hair. It was the thin lips that Anita found herself focusing on. Only when she started to listen to what he said did she become incensed.

  “Just look at the historical evidence. It certainly suggests that six million Jews weren’t deliberately gassed in the gas chambers. In fact, I think that Fred Leuchter has proved beyond doubt that there were no gas chambers at all in the concentration camps. Extermination was not a deliberate policy by Adolf Hitler, and I doubt whether more than about three hundred and fifty thousand Jews died during that time.”

  As he carried on in the same vein Anita shouted at the screen and then violently turned off the television before throwing the remote angrily onto the sofa. She went for a run.

  ‘All I can say is that it might have been some sort of crystals or pellets that had been placed in the drain. There are no traces of anything in the shower head. My guess is that the hot water started off the process, but what probably did for Ekman was when he turned the water off. The crystals probably reacted with the air to create a lethal gas. Certainly a preliminary look at the body suggests hydrogen cyanide poisoning. The extractor fan would have helped the poisoning process because it speeded up the circulation of the gas. It would have been a quick but agonising death.’

  Moberg turned away from Eva Thulin and glanced at Nordlund. ‘If it was that simple I could have got rid of my first two wives without being taken to the cleaners.’

  ‘So, the murderer just lifted the drain cover and placed these crystals or whatever inside?’

  Thulin nodded in answer to Nordlund’s question. ‘The beauty of it all is that the evidence was flushed away by the shower water. I’ve got my people scrabbling around the drains to find traces, but they may be long gone.’

  ‘The wife was away. No sign of a break-in, yet someone got in,’ mused Moberg. ‘That’s very convenient. She’s got an automatic alibi. She plants the crystals and buggers off to the country while her husband dies horribly. She’s in the clear.’

  ‘That’s assuming that the wife wasn’t the intended victim.’

  Moberg looked at Nordlund. ‘That’s a point. The killer might not have known that she was going away. Do we know exactly when she left for the country?’

  ‘According to the cleaner it was the morning of the day before,’ said Nordlund.

  Moberg looked at Thulin. ‘OK.’ This was a dismissal. She left the room.

  Moberg picked up the empty box of noodles on his desk and dropped it unceremoniously into the plastic bin. He eased his massive frame out of his chair and heaved himself over to the window.

  ‘So, where does this leave us, Henrik?’

  Nordlund paused before speaking. Unlike Moberg and the equally bullish Westermark, Henrik Nordlund was a quiet man of few words. But when he spoke he was usually worth listening to. That’s why Moberg showed the older detective the respect he withheld from most of his colleagues. Nordlund was nearing retirement, but still believed in what he did, despite the general sense of disillusionment that surrounded him at work. His grey pallor and permanently sad expression had more to do with becoming a premature widower than
the rigours of the job.

  ‘It was carefully planned. It could be fru Ekman, who was out of town at the time, and she could have set it up before she left. Or it was someone who knew that she was out of town. Or else fru Ekman was the intended victim. But whoever it was seems to have had access to the apartment and presumably knew they wouldn’t be disturbed while setting the whole thing up.’

  Moberg stared out of the window. There were a few pedalos on the canal. When the weather was good people took to the water. He couldn’t understand why they did, as it looked too much like hard work.

  ‘We need to check if there were any visitors to the apartment yesterday. Workmen, delivery people. And I want to speak to the grieving widow. When’s she due back?’

  ‘Late afternoon.’ Nordlund paused. ‘It’ll be interesting to see what Westermark comes up with after his visit to the advertising agency. Some of his colleagues might have known his movements or those of his wife.’

  Moberg pursed his large lips. ‘We need to build up a picture of Tommy Ekman. A cut-throat business like advertising must throw up some tensions, business rivalries, that sort of thing. And what did he get up to out of work? I’ll bet he played around. They always do. If his wife knew, she’d have a motive. If she didn’t, then someone else will have one. Jealous husband. These things usually boil down to sex.’

  ‘What about the MO?’

  Moberg turned around. ‘It’s a good way of murdering someone without having to be there. I think our killer is clever, but I don’t think we need read anything more into it.’ Nordlund shrugged thoughtfully. ‘Come on, Henrik, let’s brief the rest of the team and then we’ll have a word with the widow.’

  As they were about to leave the office, Nordlund said. ‘Anita’s back tomorrow.’

  Moberg sighed heavily. ‘I know.’