Ingvar sat down and started fiddling with the tiny forks with coloured handles. ‘I’ll take the blue and you can have the red. Sound okay to you?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said on her way back with the jacket potatoes.
‘Wow, this is some stroll down memory lane. Remember when we were in France on that skiing holiday? Wasn’t that the very first time we had fondue?’
‘It was, but I’ve updated the recipe a little – more red wine and less oil – so if it weren’t for the potatoes, it would be proper GI food.’
‘I know it’s only Monday, but this kind of dinner practically requires a glass of wine, don’t you think?’
‘So long as we don’t make it a habit,’ she said with a smile and sat down across from him. ‘It’s a slippery slope.’
Ingvar chuckled and got up. ‘That almost sounds like we should go for a whole bottle instead.’ He winked at her and left the room.
Gertrud pinched her arm to keep herself from being too swept up by the jovial mood.
‘How about a Marchesi Antinori from Tuscany?’ Molander held out the bottle like a waiter. ‘It’s what you would call a medium-bodied wine with hints of cherry, plum and herbs. It’s aromatic and flavoursome and has a long aftertaste with notes of wood.’
‘I’m sure that’ll do just fine.’ She tasted the little splash he poured into her glass. ‘Mm, delicious.’
Molander filled their glasses and they proceeded to spear meat on their forks.
‘How was work today?’ Gertrud lowered her fork into the hot broth and started a new one with mushrooms, plum tomatoes and tiny onions.
‘It was all right. A bit too busy at the moment.’
‘So it seems. How many cases do you actually have now?’
‘A thousand, it feels like. And they’re not straightforward ones either. But then on the other hand, who ever said straightforward things are better?’
‘Indeed, you usually like a challenge.’
‘Believe me, any one of those cases would have been plenty.’ Ingvar lifted out one of his forks to check if the meat was done.
‘And Fabian? Is he still on leave, or—’
‘No, no, he’s back and leading one of the investigations, though I have to say his efforts seem a bit half-hearted.’
‘Oh, how so?’
‘Well, you know, he’s unfocused and his mind seems to be elsewhere.’ Ingvar cut an x in a jacket potato and pushed the sides in to make it open. ‘But I suppose it’s no wonder, considering what his family’s been through.’
‘Right, God, what a nightmare.’ She lifted out both her forks and slid the meat and vegetables on to her plate. ‘It must’ve been awful. And his daughter, what’s her name again?’
‘Matilda.’
‘Right. How is she doing? Is she okay?’
Ingvar nodded as he followed Gertrud’s example and harvested his forks. ‘As far as I understand, she’s going to make a complete recovery.’
‘Thank goodness.’ She dipped one of the pieces of beef in the chilli mayonnaise and started chewing. But just like all the questions she could no longer ignore, not to mention the anxiety at what the answers might be, the sinewy piece of meat was impossible to swallow down, as though it were made of rubber. The silence grew too long; eventually she had to force the beef down whole with the aid of a large gulp of wine. ‘So which case is Fabian in charge of, then?’
Ingvar put his glass down and studied her with eyes that penetrated her skin and not only read her mind but gauged her blood pressure, breathing and stress level. No one could see right through people like Ingvar or was better at knowing exactly which buttons to push to get them where he wanted.
It was her question, of course. When she thought about it, it was completely uncalled for; if Ingvar hadn’t been suspicious up until that point, he certainly was now.
‘Gertrud, do you even know what cases we’re working on?’
‘I know a bit.’ She took another sip of wine. ‘It’s all over the papers, you know.’ Right now, she would take anything that could help calm her nerves. ‘There’s that terrible business with the immigrant boy in the washing machine, and then the man who was stabbed to death right in front of people at ICA Maxi, just like that. I mean, Lord, what’s the world coming to?’ She was babbling again.
‘You’re not the only one asking that question.’ Ingvar fell silent and studied her so intently with his damn X-ray vision she didn’t know what to do with herself. Every movement felt unnatural, and the pain in her lower back was screaming ever more loudly to be stretched out. But she couldn’t start doing back exercises in the middle of dinner.
‘Are you not going to eat?’
Right, eat. How could she have forgotten about that? ‘I just wanted to let my potato cool down a bit.’ Like Ingvar, she opened her potato like a flower and placed a lump of garlic butter in the opening.
‘Cool down? Isn’t the point for the butter to melt?’ Molander popped a piece of chicken into his mouth. ‘Fine, since you’re so eager to know, Fabian’s working on an investigation we haven’t let the media in on yet.’
‘Oh really, what is it?’
‘Damned if I know. At the moment, all we’re really sure of is that the victim, a woman, died from something as unusual as ricin poisoning. And both her bedroom and bathroom were under surveillance.’
‘Surveillance? By whom? Who would do something like that?’
‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to find out.’
‘And how is that other investigation going?’
‘What investigation?’
‘You know, the one into the murder of Inga Dahlberg.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ingvar put down the glass he’d just been about to drink from. ‘As you’re very well aware, that case has been closed for years.’
‘Oh right, of course.’ She shrugged and focused on swallowing another piece of meat. ‘I was just thinking it might have been reopened. Those things do happen, after all. I mean, you find new clues and leads, which in turn—’
‘Gertrud, I see what you mean.’
‘But I guess not, then.’ She was babbling again.
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Okay then, great, now I know.’
‘Yes, now you know.’
They resumed eating, and the silence grew so intense the sound of every little bite, every sip she and Ingvar took was amplified as though there were microphones inside their mouths. He was cross and didn’t want to talk about it. But she couldn’t stop. Not when she’d made it this far.
‘Imagine, though, how good it would feel if we could have some closure,’ she said and lowered a new fork with only chicken on it into the pot. ‘What that would mean for Reidar. Such an awful business. Yes, I know he has a new woman and all, but still. Just to know who it was and let justice run its course. Not to mention you and your colleagues. You worked so incredibly hard back then. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but you’re forgetting something very important.’ Ingvar put a mushroom in his mouth.
‘And what would that be?’
‘That we solved it.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not following. What do you mean, solved it?’
‘The case. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but we actually did identify the killer and we arrested him. His name was Benny Willumsen, he was from Denmark but lived in Malmö – on Konsultgatan 29, if memory serves. He’s passed away since, sadly.’
‘But? So you mean the man you had to—’
‘Release. Exactly.’ Ingvar downed the last of his wine and topped himself up. ‘The problem was that he had an alibi the court considered strong enough.’ He shook his head and had another sip of wine. ‘So unfortunately, Reidar’s never going to get justice.’
‘But it couldn’t have been him, then. If he had an alibi, I mean.’
Molander laughed. ‘Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, being able to present an alibi is hardly the same thing as bei
ng innocent.’
‘Hold on a minute. If you have an—’
‘Sweetheart, listen to me.’ Ingvar leaned forward over the table. ‘If you’re well prepared and know how to go about it, fabricating an alibi’s not that difficult. I would almost claim it’s in fact rather easy.’
‘But Ingvar, you don’t mean to say that—’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean to say,’ he broke in and topped up her glass as well. ‘You’d be surprised to learn how little it takes for a court of law to swallow a fake alibi. Believe me. I know what I’m talking about.’
He raised his glass, and she followed his lead, toasted and drank, terrified he would be able to tell from looking at her that she was finally, after all these years, starting to come to grips with what had really happened that weekend in Berlin.
61
After covering his hair with a stocking, he pulled on the grey curly wig and adjusted it in front of the mirror until it was perfect. He immediately looked completely different. It was strange to think, really, how much of a person’s personality was in their hair. Just a few strands, which when they fell out could rob most men of their confidence.
He was already wearing tights, fake breasts and his belted pale blue dress. He’d even put on base make-up: a light face cream and even lighter powder.
Yet despite all that, he’d still looked like a confused transvestite or possibly someone on their way to a costume party. It was only when he put on the wig that everything started to fall into place, and once the pale sun hat was on properly, too, along with the earrings and pearl necklace, his transformation was complete.
The dice had said old lady, but now, studying his reflection in the mirror, he had to change that to sweet little old lady.
Just two days ago, the dice’s decision had made him blow a gasket. No matter how he’d turned it over in his mind, he’d been unable to think of it as anything but deeply unfair.
Sure, he’d rolled an X, and the side mission had been crystal clear. But still. After all his hard work and achievements, it felt like a big slap in the face, whose only purpose was to show him he shouldn’t get too big for his boots.
But on reflection, he had, despite everything, concluded it was exactly what he’d needed. A slap in the face and a reminder that he had to stay humble. That he was nothing but a passenger who would never get anywhere near steering the ship.
Besides, the dice had been proved right yet again. Having designated a side mission that had seemed virtually impossible to complete, especially given that he had only two days to prepare, he could now, with only a few hours left, honestly say the whole thing had come off a lot better than he would have dared to hope.
The fact was, he’d been so fabulously lucky that a lot of people would have insisted he must have been blessed somehow, and if he’d been a believer, he would probably have agreed. Practically everything had simply fallen into place, and the only things left to do were to pack his backpack, touch up his powder and put on his beige coat and pale blue pumps.
After that, it was out of his hands.
62
Fabian didn’t know how many times he’d studied the black-and-white pictures of Inga Dahlberg climbing out of Molander’s car that summer night. He hadn’t just scrutinized them through a loupe; he’d scanned them, too, using such high resolution he’d almost maxed out the space on his hard drive.
When he went through the files again, zooming in on various details, it was like looking at his own reflection. There was nothing new. No surprises. He knew who the woman was, why she was there, who she’d met and who’d taken the pictures. Even so, he was convinced there was something there he’d missed. Some small detail he’d overlooked.
It was growing light outside the basement window, even though it was only just gone half four in the morning. Two more days, then it would turn and start getting darker. It was the middle of summer and the days were at their longest, and yet he felt melancholic about it being downhill from here.
But that wasn’t the only reason he’d lain sleepless for hours and finally got up and trudged back down to the basement. His thoughts had revolved around Molander. Now that he’d found an opening in his Berlin alibi, there wasn’t much doubt left.
The problem was that despite all the hours he’d put in, he still didn’t have a shred of concrete evidence. None of the many things he’d uncovered and concluded came even close to being able to hold up in court.
He’d managed to fill in some of the gaps, true, and he’d collected enough material to make a strong circumstantial case. But no matter how strong it was, what he had was in no way tantamount to concrete proof.
It was like the Berlin alibi. He could show that there was a reasonable possibility Molander had in fact not been in the German capital when Inga Dahlberg was murdered. But as long as Gertrud insisted she’d been with him the whole weekend, he had nothing.
Hugo Elvin must have, though.
There could be only one reason Molander would have risked going so far as to off his colleague: that Elvin had found something incriminating enough to constitute a real threat. The question was where he’d hidden his evidence. Certainly not in his desk drawer, anyway.
Every time he’d gone through its contents, he’d been forced to conclude that all the clues, pictures and notes belonged to the category strong suspicion. Even so, he’d decided to go over it all again.
He put the pictures of Inga Dahlberg aside and took out Elvin’s diaries, flipping through them one page at a time, reading his brief and sometimes cryptic notes again. But they held nothing he hadn’t already looked into.
Finally, he took out the key ring with the seven keys marked with different-coloured cloth tape that divided them into groups. One of the three green ones, which all had handwritten question marks on the tape, had opened the locker at the Celluloid photography club that had belonged to Gertrud’s father, Einar Stenson. The other two were, indeed, still question marks. The same was true of the two white ones, one of which had a fish on its tape marker while the other had a code: 759583.
Maybe it wasn’t a code at all, but a phone number. He tried calling it with the local area code, but was greeted by an error message informing him the number didn’t exist. He got the same result when he tried the Malmö, Landskrona, Göteborg and Stockholm area codes, after which he put the white keys aside and focused his attention on the two blue ones, the ones he’d given the least thought.
The larger of the two was also marked with numbers. This time four of them: 0388. The key was a normal pin tumbler key and the four numbers were likely an entry code to a building or some such. The question was, which building?
The smaller one was more noteworthy. The head was asymmetrical, oval in part. It almost looked like a cranium in profile. He took out his magnifying glass to get a closer look at the details. There was no doubt it was old. Scratches, dirt and oil covered the surface. Nothing strange about that. What was strange were the small white dots, which under his magnifying glass looked like tiny crystals.
When he gingerly touched one of them with the tip of his index finger, it skittered down on to the table like gravel. Maybe he should have let Hillevi Stubbs run an analysis of whatever substance it was, but instead he ran his own by gathering them up with his index finger and placing them on the tip of his tongue.
As expected, they tasted salty.
He couldn’t say if it was the peculiar shape of the key’s head or the salt that gave him the idea. Probably a combination of the two. Either way, he took the key off the ring and started removing the tape, which after so many years left sticky glue marks in its wake.
But once the head was reasonably clean and he could see the Neiman logo in which the first N continued to form a kind of roof over the rest of the letters, he was sure.
The key was an ignition key, probably for an old Volvo Penta, one of Sweden’s by far most common inboard motors.
Two years had passed since he’d left Stockholm for Helsingbor
g and started working with Hugo Elvin. Two years of lunches, coffee breaks and long sit-downs. Not once had Elvin mentioned anything about owning a boat. Nor had Molander, for that matter, if it turned out to be his. On the other hand, both men had turned out to harbour so many secrets, he’d long since stopped feeling surprised.
63
She couldn’t place him, yet she felt she recognized the man in sunglasses who was sitting on the bench next to a backpack, smiling, wearing a beige jacket and trousers that were hiked up a smidge too high. What if it was that paedophile the police were after? No, he wouldn’t dare to be out in broad daylight like this, with people all around him. Like the lady who was sitting down next to him, forcing him to put his backpack on his lap. No, it was probably just something about him that told her she should keep an eye on him and stay vigilant.
Victor and Samuel were the ones closest to him and, as usual, they were fighting about who was going to pedal the tricycle and whose turn it was to push. Sonja and Niki were there, too, shrieking as Ruben chased them. Right now, it was the most fun either one of them had ever had, but she would bet her great-grandmother’s wedding ring on one of them bursting into tears in less than a minute.
They were one man short, and there was almost nothing worse. What’s more, if she knew Josefin right, she wouldn’t bother to show up at work again until the end of the week. Fever and achy all over, probably the flu, she’d groaned on the answering machine that morning. How stupid did she think they were? As if they didn’t know she’d got lucky with some pathetic Tinder hook-up and was now far too hungover to work.
To be honest, it was beyond her how Josefin of all people could have such an easy time finding men who were willing to give her a ride. She, on the other hand, had tried everything after her divorce, from spending hours making a dating profile to placing a classic personal ad in the local paper. She’d even gone down to Dickens and got trashed enough to brave the dance floor.
Motive X Page 32
