by Jon Stenhugg
The Magdalena File
Jon Stenhugg
© Jon Stenhugg 2017
Jon Stenhugg has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
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Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
Part 1
Chapter 1
Leo Hoffberg sipped his coffee and puzzled over the bass voice of the woman sitting in front of him.
The Lutheran minister sitting opposite him stroked a thick, black shock of hair coiffed in a pageboy style. “I’m new to the area, and I’m so interested in your work for the peace movement.”
Leo’s voice seized up before he could reply. He put his cup on the table and brought his hand to his throat, then lost control of his arm and it dropped to his side. He stared with unblinking, wide open eyes as the minister removed his wig, placed it in a plastic bag and put on a pair of rubber gloves. He removed a roll of fibreglass tape from his pocket and bound Leo’s arms behind the back of the kitchen chair, then his legs. The minister tipped the chair and used it as a dolly to drag Leo from the kitchen to the garage.
Leo suspected the Swedish government would respond with something like this. A scare tactic to make him reveal the location of the weapon. He found it odd that their reaction had come so quickly, but it didn’t matter. All he had to do was to keep quiet, wait for them to yield to his demands and within two weeks he’d finally have the power he knew he was entitled to.
His own strained breathing filled Leo’s senses. He stared as his captor took an extension cord from the electric lawn mower. He heard the cord being clipped. One of the leads scratched the skin on his neck, and the question from behind came soon after.
“Where is it?”
Leo opened his mouth with difficulty. The drug in his body slurred his voice, but the meaning was clear. “Fuckou.”
His neck muscles convulsed in a painful jerk just before darkness enveloped his mind. Then the hazy return to consciousness. Leo winced at the sharp pain in his neck when he tried to turn his head.
The figure dressed in black leaned towards his face and repeated the question again in a low, determined voice. “Where is it?”
Leo eyes watered, but he could still see the door leading to the kitchen; he was still in his well-kept garage, just west of Stockholm. The smell of his own burned flesh filled his nostrils. His muscles pulsated with each electric shock, and he tasted the blood oozing from his tongue.
He was certain the torture would soon have to stop. They couldn’t kill him; they needed him to find what he had hidden. He tried to laugh, but it caught in his throat.
The man behind him asked again, this time louder. “Where is it?”
Leo’s throat was dry, and he swallowed twice before he could answer. “Fuck you.”
He smiled and waited for the shock to tear into his mind again. He didn’t have to wait long. A quick muscle spasm in his neck was replaced by swarms of whirling red and green dots of light just before his heart stopped beating.
*
Leo was wrong. It wasn’t his own government reacting to his threatening letter.
The murderer felt for a pulse on Leo’s neck, but got none.
Damn. Screwed up.
He flipped Leo’s chair to the floor and began heart massage. After minutes without success, he turned to the workbench behind him and found the cardboard box his contact had promised would be there. He reached inside to grab the revolver, shaking his head in disbelief that he could have been so stupid, then put two bullets into Leo’s lungs.
The garage suppressed the deafening roar of the shots for anyone outside. He put the gun back into the box, adjusted his clerical collar, refastened the black wig, then made sure he’d left nothing behind. He went back through the kitchen, washed the coffee cups and left the house via the back door. He walked quickly to his car, muttering complaints to himself. Leo’s murderer had now become a man hunted by many people. The least of his worries were the Swedish police.
*
The blood on Leo Hoffberg’s chest had already congealed into two dark red, clotted pools when Sara Markham, Homicide Investigator at Sweden’s National Bureau of Investigation, stood in front of his body. There was a blue blowfly crawling around the stain on Hoffberg’s crotch, drawn to the odour of the fluids escaping from his body as his muscles relaxed.
Sara walked around the chair, taking pictures with her digital camera, careful to include the dusty floor in each view. The smell of gunpowder blended with burned flesh – not her favourite barbeque. There was black gunpowder residue around the entry wounds in Hoffberg’s chest. He’d been shot from close up, a personal act.
Sara noticed an electrical cable was plugged into a socket on the wall. It lay like a long, black snake coiled on the floor, ending with bare leads close to Leo’s body, and there were several white marks on his neck and ears where the leads had been used to give him shocks. She couldn’t see any shell casings, but they might have rolled out of sight under the cabinets and shelves at the end of the garage. The wizards from Forensics would fill her in when they were done. As she took the final shots of the workbench, her cell went off again, and she winced as she saw the caller ID.
“Sara, it’s Mats.”
“Hello, Mats. I’m busy.”
“You’re always busy. I just thought I might take you out to dinner tomorrow evening if you have time. We could repeat the disaster I caused last week.”
“No, last week was the last disaster for us. Please don’t call again.” Sara switched off her phone. When she had time she’d put the budding and very boring doctor’s phone number on a denial list so she wouldn’t have to be bothered with answering his calls, or be reminded of his gruesome and detailed descriptions of life in the county morgue.
Sara’s sex life had been giving her few pleasures lately, and she was beginning to wonder if her lack of success in meeting Mr Right was connected to her job. Her solution so far had been to work even harder, immersing herself in the ugliness of the everyday routines of work.
She went from Hoffberg’s garage back into the kitchen. The police officer from the patrol boat was sitting on a kitchen chair, fidgeting with some of the equipment on his belt.
“What time did you get here?” she asked, and added before he could answer, “You must be starved. Is there a place where we can order pizza or hamburgers near here?”
The officer rose from the chair and took out his pen and notebook. “I’ll take care of it right now. What would you like?”
She let him use her car to drive to the central attraction in Stallarholmen, the grill kiosk; the hub
of this village of sixteen hundred souls.
She stood in the kitchen, waiting for the officer to return with their meals. The forensic team was busy trying to finish with a fatal wife-beating in southern Stockholm and it would be several hours before they could be at the scene.
Sara looked around. A modern house with the latest kitchen appliances, all made of stainless steel. The refrigerator door was cluttered with magnets holding family photographs, notes about choir meetings, and an article clipped from a Stockholm newspaper several years ago about the sinking of the MS Sally. Sara wondered if the victim had lost a loved one when the ferry went down. Like almost everyone in the police force she’d lost a very good friend; for Sara it was a judo instructor, the man who had given her the nickname which had stuck since then: Terrier. She’d been careful not to bite judo instructors to get out of a hold after that.
She walked over to the sink and noted that there were two empty coffee cups lying there; it looked like they’d been washed. She looked out the window above the sink. The lawn was neatly cut, dotted with small floral arrangements that spoke of considerable talent in landscaping. Beyond the lawn and the flowers there was a picture-postcard view of the channel leading from Stallarholmen to Stockholm, Kolsundet, the surface of the lake marred only by a breeze rippling the channel towards Stockholm.
The home was nice, comfortable – the kind of place where you’d expect to find a politician living. Sara wondered if she’d ever be able to live like this. She’d saved for nearly two years to afford the down payment on her own studio apartment in Sundbyberg, just north of Stockholm, and the bank payments on the loan were costing her as much as the condo fee every month, leaving her with just enough for her car payments and a very lean diet.
She heard the sound of a car on the gravel driveway outside, and looked through the other kitchen window to see her Peugeot approaching.
*
They sat in Sara’s car for the fast food supper.
“You can call me Burger,” he said between bites, “Everyone else does.”
He was far older than Sara, and had served enough time in the city to merit moving out to one of the best jobs to be found in the force, a member of the Maritime Police patrol. He was clearly not unhappy to be able to share a meal with her, and she noticed him stealing looks at her breasts. She didn’t think he needed the extra two hamburgers he’d ordered for himself.
“So why were you the one to respond?” She adjusted her jacket to cover her chest.
“I was in the area,” he said. “A guy went missing this afternoon while he was fishing. A helicopter spotted the boat in the centre of Stockholm a few hours ago. I was trying to find him from this end. Was just about to talk to his wife when I got diverted here. He lives just across the channel.”
“What happened to him?” asked Sara.
“Don’t know. Haven’t found him yet. We’ve just got the boat so far. What happened to this guy?”
“So far the only thing we know is he used to be a Member of Parliament. They always get special treatment when something happens to them. Who was here when you arrived? From what I’ve heard, his wife found him.” Sara looked at the rest of her hamburger in distaste and threw it into the paper bag on the floor.
“There wasn’t anyone here except the victim. I was told the wife called it in from a friend’s house nearby.” As he spoke, the officer got a call on his radio. It was from Sven, and he handed the microphone to Sara.
“You’ve turned off your cell phone. Is everything OK?” asked her boss.
“Sorry, Sven. I turned it off to avoid private calls. It is the weekend, you know.”
“Maybe you should get a private cell phone for your private calls, Sara. Turn it on now.”
When she did, he continued, “You’ve obviously met up with the local police officer. How are things progressing?”
“Very preliminary so far,” said Sara. She stepped out of her car to keep the conversation from being overheard. “We’re waiting for the forensic team. The first officer on the scene was on a case nearby, in a patrol boat looking for a man who went missing on the lake earlier today. Will Eskilstuna Homicide be showing up soon?”
“No. The County Police in Eskilstuna were tied up with another murder they got yesterday, so they asked for help. Do what you can for now. The forensic team can’t be there for hours. Secure everything you can before the sun goes down. Use your officer if you have to.”
“I recognised the name of the victim. A real surprise,” said Sara. “I’ve seen him on TV and in the newspapers for years, but to see him murdered like this…I never would have expected it. I guess even a fuzzy environmentalist isn’t immune to murder.”
“Even fuzzy environmentalists can piss someone off. Is the wife back yet?”
“No. She’s at a friend’s house just down the road. I’ll talk to her later. I want to have a look outside the house before it gets dark.”
“Poke around the house too,” said Sven. “With the wife gone it’s a good time to do it. We can’t take anything for granted at this stage. I’ll arrange a place for you to stay out there this evening. Stallarholmen doesn’t have a hotel so it’ll be Mariefred-By-Night for you. Let me speak to the officer.”
Sara opened the car door and handed the phone over to the officer, listening as Sven’s voice harshly told him that he was not to divulge any details of the murder to anyone, and he was not to use his police radio regarding the case for any purpose. All communication would have to be done by cell phone. The lid was on.
Sara walked through the rest of the house while they waited for the forensic team. The house was well maintained, not a magazine out of place. In the bathroom the colour of the shampoo and conditioner bottles matched the tiled walls. There was a matching plastic flower in a white vase on the floor.
Sara’s brunette ponytail was held by a clasp she’d had made, a pair of miniature handcuffs, and she adjusted it before she left the bathroom. The two coffee cups in the sink kept the picture from being perfect. Even the papers clinging to the refrigerator were lined up to some sort of plumb line.
She wondered what someone would think if they came into her own flat right now, and got a mental picture of clothes lying in a heap next to the bed, and a light layer of grime on the kitchen stove which seemed immune to her scrubbing. She got out her digital camera from her backpack to get a picture of the cups. Hopefully there’d be some prints left on them. Looking back towards the garage, she saw that the chair Leo Hoffberg had been sitting on when he’d been killed had come from the kitchen, the drag-marks clearly visible on the kitchen floor. I wonder how strong you have to be to do that?
When Sara got to the bedroom she saw a bed neatly made up and a wardrobe door open, revealing Leo’s clothes. She recognised a brown tweed blazer she’d seen several times when he’d been interviewed on television hanging next to several shirts, all pressed and ready to wear. Leo Hoffberg was well looked after.
Could I ever do that? Be a maid for some guy just because I like what he does to me in the sack? She looked at the shelf above the clothes rack of the walk-in closet, noting a storage box out of place, defying the order surrounding her. She got a picture of it from several angles, but left it in place.
From the bedroom, a door led into a large room with a desk facing a window. Sara looked at the bookshelves lining the walls. There were hundreds of reports stacked neatly on top of each other: environmental papers on one group of shelves; papers on the peace movement on the other.
Leo Hoffberg’s desk was orderly, with small piles of paper aligned to the edge of the desk, each pile designating a function; bank statements, bills to pay, bills stamped paid with a rubber stamp and a date neatly written underneath, a pile of newspaper clippings in chronological order, and a pile of correspondence regarding publication of a research article. The lower desk drawers contained some photos of Leo Hoffberg’s time in Parliament, and the upper drawer had a collection of pens still in their boxes. A glass near the edge o
f the desk seemed to defy the perfect order, and Sara sniffed it. Whisky. No sign of children, no pictures of kids graduating or smiling into the camera in a sports jersey.
Looks like the Hoffbergs got by without kids. Wonder when I’ll get the courage to have one?
Nothing seemed to suggest a motive for the killing, and Sara left to find the patrol boat officer. Burger was retracing his steps from the beach where he’d left his vessel, looking for signs of anyone coming to the house from the lake. He’d found a single set of footprints from the dock up to the house, coming from the expensive speedboat moored to the dock opposite where he’d tied up his patrol boat. It was the beginning of the Scandinavian autumn and the forensic team would still have several hours of sunlight to perform their test-tube magic.
Sara was standing at the back door as he approached, watching as he carefully used the same path he’d made when he first arrived.
“It looks like someone came in from the boat and approached the house from the back,” he said, pointing in an easterly direction. “There’ll be tracks for a dog to follow if you can arrange a team to get up here. I didn’t see any tracks coming back from the house, so these tracks are either the victim’s or the killer’s. Our killer could still be in the vicinity.”
Sara nodded, and said, “I’ll talk to people around here. I might find someone who saw him get here or leave.”
As she spoke, Burger’s police radio squawked, and they heard Sven’s voice calling into the Central Station from his car. “Central, this is 861, please note the suspected homicide near Stallarholmen was a false alarm.”
“861, this is Central. Status noted. End of transmission.”
The Burger looked at Sara in surprise, then said, “Breadcrumbs for the press, I guess.”
Sara nodded, “It won’t help that poor man in the garage, but it’ll give us a little more freedom if we don’t have to dodge reporters the whole time. Is your boat tied up near here?”
