The Gallows Bird

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘That was undeniably a warning flag, and when the autopsy later indicated some odd circumstances, then . . . well, we finally concluded that the victim had been murdered.’ Patrik could hear how dry and impersonal police language sounded when he had to describe what was actually a tragedy. But it was the language they both knew and whose nuances they understood.

  ‘And what did the autopsy show?’ said Gradenius, his eyes fixed on Patrik. He looked as though he already knew the answer.

  ‘That the victim had a blood alcohol level of point six-one, but a large part of the alcohol was found in her lungs. There were also signs of trauma and bruises around her mouth and inside her throat, and tape residue on the lips. There were also marks around her ankles and wrists, which indicated that the victim had been bound in some manner.’

  ‘I recognize everything you’re telling me,’ said Gradenius, picking up a folder lying on his desk. ‘But how did you find out about me?’

  Patrik laughed. ‘Overzealous documentation, according to one of my colleagues. We were both at the conference in Halmstad a couple of years ago. One of the assignments was to agree on an unsolved case to present in each group. Something that we were puzzled about but didn’t know how to proceed. You presented a case that made me think about our current one. I had saved my notes, so I was able to check that my memory jibed before I rang you.’

  ‘Not bad, I must say. I’m impressed that you would remember. It’s lucky for both of us. That case has bothered me for years, but the investigation came to a dead end. I’ll be happy to give you all the information we have, and maybe we can get yours in return?’

  Patrik nodded his assent and took the stack of papers that Gradenius handed him.

  ‘Can I take these with me?’

  ‘Certainly, they’re just copies. Would you like to go through the information together?’

  ‘I’d like to look through it on my own first. Then I can phone you; I’m sure I’ll have plenty of questions. And I’ll see to it that you get a copy of our material tomorrow.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Gradenius, standing up. ‘It would be good to resolve this matter. The victim’s mother was completely shattered, and is still suffering. She rings me occasionally. I’d like to have something to tell her.’

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ said Patrik. He couldn’t wait to get back and read through the file. He had a feeling that this would mark a turning point. It had to.

  Lars flung himself on the sofa and put his legs up on the coffee table. He’d been so tired lately. That constant, paralysing weariness that overwhelmed him and refused to let go. His headaches had also been more frequent; it was as if one gave birth to the next. The exhaustion and the headaches formed an endless spiral that dragged him down deeper and deeper. He cautiously massaged his temples, relieving the pain a bit. When he felt the pressure of Hanna’s fingers on his, he put his hands in his lap, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Her fingers continued to massage and knead. She knew precisely the place to rub. She’d had a lot of practice lately.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she said softly as she gently moved her fingers back and forth.

  ‘Fine,’ said Lars, noticing how the concern in her voice seeped inside him and settled like an unwelcome irritant. He didn’t want her to worry. He hated it when she worried.

  ‘You don’t look it,’ she said, stroking his forehead. The caress was wonderful, but he couldn’t relax because of all her unspoken questions. Annoyed, he swept away her hands and sat up.

  ‘I feel fine, I said. Just a little tired. It’s probably spring fever.’

  ‘Spring fever,’ said Hanna with a laugh that was both bitter and ironic. ‘Are you blaming springtime now?’ She was still standing behind the sofa.

  ‘Yeah, what the hell else is there to blame it on? Maybe the fact that I’ve been working non-stop lately. Both on the book and trying to keep those fucking idiots over at the community centre on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Such a respectful way to talk about your clients, or patients rather. Do you actually tell them that you think they’re idiots? A good way to facilitate the therapy, I should think.’

  Her voice was sharp, and she clearly intended for him to feel its sting. He didn’t understand why she did that. Why couldn’t she simply leave him alone? Lars reached for the remote and sat back down on the sofa, with his back to Hanna. After surfing through the channels for a while, he stopped on Jeopardy and tested his knowledge against the contestants. He knew all the right responses.

  ‘Do you have to work so much? And with that show?’ she added. Everything she left unsaid charged the air between them.

  ‘I have to do some sort of work,’ Lars replied, wishing that she would shut up. Sometimes he wondered if she understood him at all. Understood all the things he did for her sake. He turned to look at her.

  ‘I’m doing what I have to do, Hanna. Just like always. You know that.’

  Their eyes locked for a second. Then Hanna turned and left. He watched her go. A while later he heard the front door shut.

  On the TV Jeopardy was still spitting out challenges.

  They were all much too easy.

  ‘Well, what do you think of the show so far?’ Uffe cracked open a beer for each of the girls, who giggled as they took them.

  ‘Great,’ said the blonde.

  ‘Yeah, great,’ said the brunette.

  Calle knew he wasn’t in the mood to do this tonight. Uffe had dragged in two of the groupies that hung about outside the community centre, and now he was in the midst of a big charm offensive. As well as he could manage, anyway. Charm wasn’t exactly his strong suit.

  ‘Who do you like best then?’ Uffe put his arm round the blonde girl and moved closer. ‘Me, right?’ He poked her in the side and laughed, receiving a delighted giggle in reply. Encouraged, he continued, ‘Well, it’s not much of a competition. I’m the only real man here.’ He took a swig of beer straight from the bottle and then pointed his beer bottle at Calle.

  ‘Take this guy, for example. One of those typical slick Stureplan dudes, not the sort for a pair of lovelies like you. All they know how to do is whip out their pappa’s credit card.’ The girls giggled again and he went on. ‘Mehmet, on the other hand.’ He pointed to Mehmet who was lying on his bed reading a book. ‘He’s about as far from a slick dude as you can get. A real, genuine working-class greaseball. He’s the guy who knows how to get ahead. But he can’t escape the fact that Swedish flesh is the best.’ He stretched out his arms and then tried to slip his hand under the blonde’s jumper. She instantly caught on to what he was up to, and after an anxious glance at the camera, she shoved his hand away discreetly. Uffe looked displeased for a moment, but quickly recovered. It would take a while for the girls to forget the presence of the camera. But after that it would be clear sailing. His goal with these few weeks on the show was to do a bit of bumping and humping under the covers. Shit, he could become a legend by doing that. He’d got pretty close on the island, if only that lame chick from Jokkmokk had been a little drunker.

  ‘Cool it, Uffe, let’s just take it easy, okay?’ Calle could feel himself getting more and more annoyed.

  ‘What do you mean, take it easy?’ Uffe tried to sneak his hand in again, but got no further this time either. ‘We’re not here to take it easy. And here I thought you were the biggest party animal around! Or are you too good to party anywhere but around Stureplan?’

  Calle looked for support from Mehmet, but he seemed completely engrossed in his fantasy book. Calle felt once more how sick he was of this shit. He didn’t even know why he’d auditioned in the first place. Survivor had been one thing, but this! Locked up with these losers. He demonstratively slipped in his earphones and lay back, listening to music on his iPod. The high volume mercifully drowned out Uffe’s babbling, and he let his thoughts roam free. He was inexorably drawn back in time. The earliest memories first. Images from his childhood, grainy and jerky, as if played on Super-8 film. Himself running strai
ght into his mamma’s arms. The smell of her hair, which was mixed with the fragrance of grass and summertime. The feeling of security as her arms wrapped around him. He also saw his pappa laughing and looking at them with love in his eyes, but he was always on the way out, on the way somewhere else. Never any time to stop and share in their embrace. Never any time for him to smell Mamma’s hair. The scent of Timotej shampoo, which he could still recall so strongly.

  Then the film wound forward until it stopped at an image that was much more distinct. Fully in focus. The image of her feet when he opened the door to her bedroom. He was thirteen. It was many years since he had run into her arms. So much had happened. So much had changed.

  He remembered that he had called out. A bit annoyed. Asked why she didn’t answer him. But when he pushed open the door, he felt the oppressive silence and the first icy sensation in his stomach that something was wrong. Slowly he had approached her. She looked like she was asleep. She was lying on her back, her hair that had been long when he was little was now short. There were lines of weariness and bitterness etched into her face. For a second he thought she really was sleeping. Sleeping deeply. Then he caught sight of the empty pill bottle lying on the floor next to the bed. It had fallen out of her hand when the pills started to work, and she was finally able to flee from the life that she could no longer handle.

  Ever since that day he and his father had lived side by side, in silent hostility. Nothing had ever been said about what happened. Nothing had ever been mentioned about his father’s new woman moving in a week after his mother’s funeral. Nobody had ever confronted the truth about the harsh words that had led to his mother’s final act, the way she’d been tossed aside like an old winter coat.

  Instead, money had done all the talking. Over the years it had grown to an enormous debt, a debt of conscience that seemed to have no end. Calle had accepted the money, he had even demanded it, but without mentioning what they both knew was the reason for all the payments. That day. When the silence had echoed through the house. When he had called out but received no answer.

  The film was winding backwards again. It sucked him back, faster and faster, until the grainy, jerky images were again what he saw in his mind’s eye. In his memory he ran toward his mother’s outstretched arms.

  ‘I’d like to have a meeting at nine o’clock. In Mellberg’s office. Can you let the others know.’

  ‘You look tired; were you out partying last night?’ Annika looked at him over the top of her computer glasses. Patrik smiled, but his smile didn’t reach his weary eyes.

  ‘If only. No, I sat up half the night reading through reports and documents. And that’s why I need to call a meeting.’

  He walked toward his office and looked at his watch. Ten past eight. He was dead tired, and his eyes felt gritty after too much reading and too little sleep. But he had fifty minutes to collect his thoughts; then he would have to tell them about what he’d found.

  Fifty minutes went by much too fast. When he entered Mellberg’s office, the whole team was gathered. He had briefed Mellberg by phone on his way into the station this morning, so the chief knew more or less what Patrik was going to say. The others looked mystified.

  ‘In recent days we’ve put too much emphasis on the investigation of Lillemor Persson’s murder, at the expense of our investigation of the death of Marit Kaspersen.’ Patrik stood next to the flip chart, with his back to Mellberg’s desk, and gazed with a serious expression at his colleagues. No one was missing. Annika had brought pen and paper and was taking notes as usual. Martin sat next to her, his red hair standing on end. His freckles shone against his winter-pale skin, and he waited eagerly for what Patrik had to say. Next to Martin sat Hanna, as cool, calm and collected as they had come to expect from her during the two weeks she’d been working with them. It felt as though she’d been there much longer. Gösta as usual sat slumped in his chair. There was no spark of interest in his eyes; he looked as though he wished he were somewhere else entirely. But that’s how Gösta always looked outside the golf course, Patrik thought in annoyance. Mellberg, on the other hand, had leaned his big body forward as a sign that he was paying close attention. He knew where Patrik was going with this; not even he could ignore the connections that Patrik had uncovered.

  ‘As you know, at first we regarded Marit’s death as an accident. But the forensic examination and autopsy showed that this was not the case. Someone tied her up, forced an object of some kind into her mouth and down her throat, then poured a large quantity of alcohol into her, which by the way was the cause of death. Then the perpetrator, or perpetrators, placed her body in her car and attempted to make the crash look like an accident. We don’t know much more than that. Nor have we made any great effort to look into anything further, since our more . . .' Patrik searched for the right word, ‘media-related investigation has taken up all our energy. Consequently, we’ve allocated our resources in a way which in hindsight I find extremely unfortunate. But it’s no use crying over spilt milk. We’ll simply have to make a greater effort and try to make up for the time we’ve wasted.’

  ‘You did have a tentative lead –’ Martin began.

  Patrik cut him off impatiently. ‘Indeed, I found a possible connection and I followed up on it yesterday.’ He turned round and picked up the stack of papers he had put on Mellberg’s desk.

  ‘I went to Borås yesterday and met with a colleague named Jan Gradenius. We both attended a conference in Halmstad two years ago. At that time he recounted the details of a case in which he’d been involved, where he suspected that the victim had been murdered but there was insufficient evidence to prove it. I was given access to all the information about the case, and . . .’ Patrik paused for effect and looked out over the small gathering, ‘and that case happens to have remarkable similarities to the circumstances leading to Marit Kaspersen’s death. That victim also had an absurd amount of alcohol in his body, including his lungs. And this in spite of the fact that the victim never drank alcohol, according to testimony of his next of kin.’

  ‘Was there the same physical evidence?’ Hanna asked with a frown. ‘Bruises round the mouth, tape residue, et cetera?’

  Here Patrik, frustrated, scratched his head. ‘Unfortunately we don’t have that information. This victim, a thirty-one-year-old man by the name of Rasmus Olsson, was judged at the time to have committed suicide by first guzzling a bottle of vodka and then jumping from a bridge. So the investigation was based on that assumption. And they weren’t as exacting with the evidence as they should have been. But there are photos from the autopsy, and I’ve been allowed to see them. From a layman’s point of view it looked as though there were traces of bruises around the wrists and around the mouth, but I sent the photos to Pedersen for his evaluation. Then I sat up all last night studying the material I was given, and there is no doubt in my mind that some sort of connection exists.’

  ‘So what you’re saying,’ said Gösta in a sceptical tone, ‘is that somebody first murdered this guy in Borås a couple of years ago, and then decided to kill Marit Kaspersen here in Tanumshede. Sounds a bit far-fetched if you ask me. What sort of connection is there between the victims?’

  Patrik understood Gösta’s scepticism, but it still irritated him. He was convinced that there was a link.

  ‘That’s what we have to find out,’ said Patrik. ‘I thought we’d begin by writing down what little we know, then maybe together we can find a way to proceed.’ He took off the cap of a marker and drew a vertical line down the middle of the paper on the flip chart. At the top of one column he wrote ‘Marit’ and on the other he wrote ‘Rasmus’.

  ‘So, what do we know about the victims? Or rather, what do we know about Marit? I’ll fill in the information about Rasmus Olsson’s death because I’m the only one here who’s had access to the information. But I’ll give you copies of everything later.’

  ‘Forty-three years old,’ said Martin. ‘Lived with her partner Kerstin, had a daughter aged fifteen, owne
d her own shop.’

  Patrik wrote down everything Martin said, then turned with the pen in his hand, waiting for more.

  ‘Teetotaller,’ said Gösta, looking alert for a moment.

  Patrik pointed at him emphatically and wrote ‘TEETOTALLER’ on the chart. Then he quickly wrote the corresponding information in Rasmus’s column: Thirty-one, single, no children, worked in a pet shop. Teetotaller.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Mellberg.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Born in Norway, divorced, had a falling-out with her ex-husband, conscientious . . .’ Hanna threw out her hands when she couldn’t come up with more. Patrik wrote down all those points. Marit’s column was getting much longer than Rasmus’s. Patrik added ‘conscientious’ to his column too; he had learned that from the interviews with the man’s next of kin. After thinking for a moment he wrote ‘accident?’ on Marit’s side of the paper, and ‘suicide?’ on Rasmus’s side.

  The silence from the others confirmed that there wasn’t much more to add for the moment.

  ‘We have two apparently very different individuals who were murdered in the same unusual way. They’re different ages, different gender, with different employment, different domestic situations; they don’t seem to have the slightest thing in common except that they both were teetotallers.’

  ‘Teetotallers,’ said Annika. ‘To me that has almost a religious sound to it. From what I understand, Marit was not particularly involved in any type of formal religion; she simply did not drink alcohol.’

  ‘Yes, that’s something we have to find out about Rasmus. Since this is the only common denominator we can find, it’s as good a place to start as any. I thought that Martin and I would drive down to Borås and talk with Rasmus’s mother. Then you, Gösta, can take Hanna and talk with both Marit’s partner and her ex-husband. Find out as much as you can about the part of her life having to do with her sobriety. Was there any particular reason for it? Did she belong to any sort of organization? Anything that could give us a lead to what sort of connection she might have had to a single guy in Borås. Where did she live previously, for example. Did she ever live anywhere in the Borås area?’