‘Yes?’ the old woman said, looking him up and down with a sceptical air. Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t want to buy anything.’
Fabian let out a small laugh. ‘No need to worry. I’m not here to sell you anything.’
‘You people always are. If it’s not a new well that needs to be drilled, it’s the roof that needs replacing. But I don’t want anything, and it doesn’t matter what kind of tax deductions you try to tempt me with.’ She waved her hand about as though chasing a fly and moved to turn back to her strawberries.
‘I’m terribly sorry, but that’s not at all why I’m here.’
He had thought long and hard about whether to drive out to Ringsjöstrand. The risk of her calling Gertrud afterwards and telling her about his visit was, perhaps, not great. Particularly since Gertrud had told him at one of their dinner parties that she’d lost touch with her mother after her father passed away.
But even so, he couldn’t ignore the fact that his visit inevitably did involve a certain level of risk. If there had been another way of getting a clearer picture of the motive behind Flora’s husband’s death, he would have preferred it.
‘Oh no? Then what’s this about? I’m assuming you’re not here to fix the kitchen drain, which I’ve called Hjalmarsson’s Pipes about at least a hundred times.’
‘I am, actually,’ he heard himself say and instantly noticed a shift in her attitude.
‘I’m sorry, do you work for them or are you having me on?’
‘Neither. But I’d be happy to give it a go.’
‘And how much would that cost? Don’t think I’ll fall for just anything.’
‘A cup of coffee would be nice.’
*
Fabian tightened the clamping ring around the plumbing trap under the sink and ran the tap to make sure there were no leaks. ‘There. That should do it,’ he said as he washed his hands, rolled down his shirt sleeves and went over to the small kitchen table where Flora Stenson was waiting with two cups of coffee and a plate of Finnish sticks.
‘If I’d known it was that easy, I’d have done it myself,’ she said, picking up one of the finger-shaped biscuits. ‘But then you wouldn’t have had a chance to get to your real reason for coming.’ She met his eyes. ‘I may be old. But I’m not stupid. At least not stupid enough to think all you’re after is coffee.’
‘I’m just here to ask some questions.’ He sipped his coffee.
‘Are you a reporter?’
Fabian shook his head. ‘I’m with the police. If you want, I can show you my ID.’
‘You have kind eyes. That’s good enough for me. My husband always said I was too trusting. But what’s the point of anything if we can’t trust one another?’
‘That’s a very good question,’ Fabian said, even though he couldn’t tell her even close to the whole truth. ‘I’m going over some of our old cases, and your husband’s accident five years ago caught my eye.’
‘I suspected as much.’ Flora sighed and shook her head. ‘All the detectives and officers who traipsed in and out here back then wasn’t enough, I guess. Not to mention all the reporters. True, it was a strange, not to say spectacular, accident that did need to be investigated properly. But at the time, I really just wanted to be left alone.’
Fabian nodded and decided to allow himself one Finnish stick.
‘And that wasn’t the end of it. Just a year or so later, another detective came sniffing around here, asking a lot of questions, implying that maybe it hadn’t been an accident after all, though he never said it in so many words. And now here you are, having coffee. You don’t think it was an accident either?’
‘Unfortunately, that’s not something I can comment on at the moment. What do you think?’
‘Nothing. And you know why? Because it doesn’t matter what you or I or anyone else thinks. Einar’s gone and no thinking in the world can bring him back. All right, out with your questions now. I have other things to get on with.’
‘It happened here, in the kitchen, correct?’
Flora nodded.
‘How often do you wax this floor?’
‘Wax?’ She chuckled. ‘That was exactly what the other one asked, and the answer is still that I never waxed this floor once.’
‘And Einar? Might he have?’
‘I’d have been surprised if he had. On the other hand, Einar was a constant surprise. With him, there was always something unexpected around the corner. I think that’s what I loved most about him. Are you married?’
Fabian nodded.
‘Then you know how hard it can be.’
He nodded again.
‘But it really only takes two things to make it work. Trust and secrets. Without both those things, a marriage will either be eroded from within by jealousy and fighting or it will become soul-destroyingly tedious.’
‘And what secrets did Einar keep?’
‘If I’d known, they wouldn’t have been secrets.’ She laughed a little and picked up another biscuit. ‘It’s like Ingvar, my son-in-law, always used to say. What you don’t know won’t hurt you.’
‘Speaking of Ingvar, how were things between him and Einar?’
‘Why would you ask about that?’ Her eyes, the mood, her tone. Everything had changed in an instant.
Fabian shrugged. ‘No reason. I’m just trying to form a better picture of Einar and his closest relationships.’
‘You’re not a very good liar, are you?’ She fixed Fabian levelly. ‘Of all his nearest and dearest, you start with Ingvar.’
‘I’m sorry, that was just happenstance. I didn’t mean anything by—’
‘Happenstance? Are you sure? Because Einar never liked Ingvar. Nor did I, for that matter.’
‘Why not?’
Flora paused before replying, as though she felt a need to weigh her words carefully before letting them out. She was just about to speak when a phone started ringing somewhere in the house. An old phone with a mechanical ringer. ‘Excuse me. Have a refill and some biscuits while you wait.’ She got up and disappeared into an adjoining room.
Fabian seized the opportunity to look around the kitchen and compare it to the pictures in the old investigation. From what he could see, nothing had changed since the accident. It was the same fridge and hob, the same yellow cupboards, and it even looked like the same kitchen towel hanging on its hook. The dishwasher was the same as well, an old avocado-green Husqvarna that looked like it had survived itself several times over.
He opened it. The smell that greeted him begged for someone to run a programme even though it was only half full. Several forks and spoons in the cutlery basket were placed handle down, but the knives were all put in handles up.
Afterwards, he couldn’t recall whether it was that or something else that had triggered his epiphany. And it didn’t matter. What mattered was that now he knew what Hugo Elvin’s notes might have been referring to.
He pulled out both racks and checked to make sure the top one couldn’t be lowered and raised. Then he started searching the drawers until he found what he was looking for.
The kitchen knife.
He checked that the length of the blade and the handle matched the information in the case file. Then he placed it in the cutlery basket point up and pushed both racks back in, and yes, the knife was in fact so tall it blocked the spinning spray arm. It was, in other words, highly unlikely that Einar Stenson would have put the knife in the basket himself.
Was that what Hugo Elvin had realized? That it had actually been Molander who had waxed the floor and placed the knife in the dishwasher? All to make it look like a tragic accident instead of murder. It was far-fetched in a number of ways, but by no means impossible.
The question was why? What had Einar Stenson done to deserve to die? What was the motive for taking the risk inevitably associated with ending the life of another human being? And of a close relative at that.
Einar had evidently never liked his son-in-law, and that feeling had likely been mutua
l. But not liking someone was very far from what could be counted as a motive. There must have been something else. Something that constituted a concrete threat and made Molander feel he had no choice.
‘No, I don’t need your help any more,’ he heard Flora shouting into the telephone. ‘Because someone already came by and fixed it.’
Fabian continued into the hallway.
‘His name’s John and he doesn’t work for Hjalmarsson’s Pipes.’
Framed photographs from various sporting events hung on the walls. He had never taken much of an interest in sports, but the pictures drew him in. They were all black-and-white and taken from a distance, though with impressive sharpness, and showed everything from a young Zlatan Ibrahimović when he was still playing for Malmö FF to Patrik Sjöberg when he cleared the bar at 2.42 and broke the world record at the Stockholm Stadium.
The pictures continued up the stairs, and it was only when he stopped to have a closer look at the iconic picture of Björn Borg on his knees, kissing the Wimbledon trophy, that he realized he was on the first floor.
At the other end of the landing was a balcony door, and to the left a bedroom with a double bed, a bedside table and built-in wardrobes. Immediately to the right was a bathroom with a bath, a toilet and a washbasin all in the same shade of green as the dishwasher.
Next to the bathroom was a room with a big desk on which sat, among other things, a sewing machine and a half-finished quilt. One corner was occupied by a reading chair filled with patterned fabrics; a bookcase that completely covered one of the walls was crammed full of photography books, old photography magazines and a large collection of camera flashes.
On the opposite wall was a breakfront filled with lenses of every conceivable size, from small wide-angle ones to three-feet-long telephoto ones. A collection of tripods jostled for space in front of the wallpapered door of a built-in cupboard.
Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe they were just somewhere else in the house. But the fact was that, so far, he hadn’t come across any camera bodies. A professional photographer of Einar Stenson’s calibre without a single camera body in his studio was much too improbable. He should have owned countless models.
He guessed it was Molander. That he’d got rid of them and that this was where the key to his motive was hidden. On a strip of film or a memory card.
To make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he moved one of the tripods and opened the cupboard door, only to discover it wasn’t a cupboard at all but a staircase to the attic.
The attic was every bit as cluttered and chaotic as you would expect an attic to be after a long life. The ceiling was low; he could only stand upright under the roof ridge.
In the light from a grimy window on the short side of the house, he could see stacked moving boxes and woefully overloaded shelves vying for space between the trusses. Two free-standing cupboards flanked an old brown desk, which in turn was littered with enlargers, processing trays and bottles full of processing chemicals.
He pulled out the top desk drawers and realized he’d found what he was looking for.
24
Irene Lilja’s hands shook so badly she had to hold her coffee cup in both to keep from spilling. Granted, she was tired and exhausted after last night’s events. But that wasn’t why her hands were trembling.
It was pure, unadulterated fury.
The thought of Hampus secretly joining the Sweden Democrats had made her so upset that for the first time in several years, she’d broken out in hives; her arms were itching so badly she wanted to scratch herself bloody. She hadn’t even been able to absorb the fact that Klippan had actually managed to identify the man in the police sketch; she’d had to take a two-hour timeout just to calm down.
She had been moderately successful on that score. Once or twice, she’d come close to driving out to confront Hampus at the roadworks on road 111 outside Laröd where she knew he was working, but in the end she’d managed to restrain herself and had instead written a long email in which she explained why she was leaving him. In a postscript, she’d also advised him – for his own safety – to stay as far away from their home as he could for the coming days, so she could pack up her things.
But she hadn’t sent the email. Just as she was about to press send, she’d realized the best punishment would be to leave him without a word of explanation. To secretly sort out somewhere to live and a new phone number and then suddenly just be gone one day, for good. Since he’d gone behind her back, she could go behind his.
Three rapid knocks on her door interrupted her thoughts. Klippan popped his head in. ‘How about it? Ready to get back to it?’
‘Absolutely.’ She put her cup down. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me how you went about identifying him.’ She held up the picture of the smiling Assar Skanås.
‘Not much to tell. Routine investigative work seasoned with a pinch of luck.’ Klippan closed the door behind him. ‘After a while last night, I realized you must have managed to sneak into that event. So instead of twiddling my thumbs, I used the time to note down the numbers of all the cars and motorbikes outside.’
‘So that’s why you didn’t pick up when I called?’
‘No, that was because of something completely different, and without going into too much detail, I can only say there are better things to get up to when you don’t have access to loo roll.’ He shook his head and sat down across from her in the visitor’s chair. ‘Anyway, once I’d jotted down all the plates there wasn’t much for me to do but to wait for you to come back. But you didn’t. Everyone else came out and drove off, but not you, and in the end I was the only one left. I honestly didn’t know what to do. I tried to call, I don’t know how many times, but I kept being put through to your voicemail. I even went into that barn, but it was completely empty, not a trace of you.’ Klippan shook his head and swallowed.
‘And then what happened?’
‘I drove back here, and when I saw that you were calling from your home phone, I knew you were okay.’
‘But you couldn’t be bothered to pick up or call back.’
‘I was driving. Do you know how dangerous that is? Don’t tempt fate, that call can wait, as I’m always telling Berit.’
‘All right, and then Assar Skanås turned out to be the owner of one of the cars.’
‘Exactly.’ Klippan pulled a Snickers bar from his jacket pocket. ‘It took some time, especially as it was harder than I thought it would be to find pictures good enough to compare with the sketch.’ He unwrapped his chocolate bar and took a bite. ‘After a few hours, all the noses, eyes and jawlines were parading in front of my eyes, even when I closed them. Oh hey, want a bite?’ He held out his half-eaten Snickers bar.
‘No, I’m good, thanks.’
‘Sure?’
Lilja nodded.
‘All right.’ He shoved the rest of the bar into his mouth. ‘Anyway, I finally found him, and what’s even better, he’s the owner of a well-maintained Renault 16. Remember those? I actually had one myself in the eighties. It was green and one of the best cars I’ve ever owned. You know, the engine was located behind the transaxle, and since each wheel had separate torsion bar suspension, you didn’t even have to slow down on turns or care if the road was—’
‘That’s great, but do we have anything else on him?’ Lilja cut him off after concluding that Klippan was feeling more like himself again and should therefore be okay with her directing the conversation. ‘Like an address.’
‘Yes, you were right, he’s registered in Åstorp.’ Klippan consulted his notes. ‘Fjällvägen 29, to be precise.’
‘Is it a house?’
Klippan nodded. ‘It’s in his name. He probably inherited it from his parents since he’s been registered there his entire life.’
‘What does he do for a living?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What do you mean, nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ Klippan repeated. ‘And this is where it gets interesting. You see, he�
��s claiming full disability and doesn’t seem to have worked at all for the past twenty years.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Who knows?’ Klippan shrugged. ‘We’d need access to his medical records, and to get that we’d need to get Högsell on board. And to be honest, I’m not sure we have enough for her to give the go-ahead. But I did find two convictions. One from 1977, when he was fined for sexual assault after going into the girls’ changing rooms at Åstorp Swimming Pool to masturbate.’
Lilja shook her head, even though deep down she was happy that they were finally pulling in the same direction and knew where they were going. ‘And the second one?’
‘It’s from 2007. I don’t know if you remember, but it was in the papers.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He assaulted a clerk in a corner shop. Apparently, he came in with his older brother and bought a scratch card, and when they didn’t win he went berserk and beat her up with the card reader.’
‘And this clerk, was she of foreign extraction?’
Klippan nodded.
‘How would you feel about heading out there together to bring him in?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
25
‘Hello? Excuse me,’ the yoga instructor called out when she noticed Molly Wessman starting to roll up her mat. ‘I don’t recommend leaving in the middle of a session. If you’re not feeling well, it’s better for you to just sit down and focus on your breathing.’
It was 40 degrees in the room and incredibly humid to boot, but that wasn’t why Molly ignored the instructor and kept walking towards the door. She didn’t feel unwell in the slightest. On the contrary, she enjoyed the heat, even though the main reason she had signed up for the Bikram session had been to clear her mind.
Unfortunately, the image of her sleeping face was always there, haunting her, and no matter how hard she tried to focus on her breathing, she was unable to stop thinking about who might have taken it, why, and what might be next. If anything was next?
Motive X Page 13
