Motive X

by Stefan Ahnhem

Compared to the search area on Söderåsen, this was nothing. That said, the city centre was far from easy to search. The square and the stairs leading up to Kärnan were no problem. Apart from some vegetation and various nooks and crannies, they were relatively open areas; two uniformed officers had been able to clear them in minutes.

  No, it was the other part of the circle, between the Maria Church and Strömgränden, that presented the greatest challenge. It contained everything from hotels, offices and private residences to shops, basements and courtyards.

  No matter what approach they took, it would take hours to search everything. Besides, they couldn’t use all the resources available to them, because more than half of the uniformed officers had been tasked with securing the perimeter so Skanås couldn’t escape. Because they were going to arrest him. She wasn’t worried about that. Her concern was rather what he would have time to do to the girl before they found him.

  According to Molander, the phone hadn’t moved for the past hour. That made it easier to organize the search. But it also meant he’d likely found a place where he could live out his sick perversions. Or, alternatively, he’d just tossed it in a bin somewhere to throw them off his scent and was actually somewhere else entirely.

  ‘As many as you can spare,’ she heard Klippan half-shout into his phone as he came walking towards her across the cobblestones. ‘No, I need them right now.’ He ended the call and turned to Lilja. ‘I have one team searching both hotels and one tackling the H&M and the offices in the Trygg-Hansa building. But it’s going to take time.’

  ‘I figured. How many more are on their way?’

  ‘About ten. I was thinking they could form a third team and take on the smaller properties. But it’s going to be at least thirty minutes before they’re here, and just getting access to all the facilities is going to be a nightmare.’

  ‘Yes, Klippan, I know it looks bleak, but what are we supposed to do?’

  ‘What would you say to just calling him?’

  ‘What would I say to that? I would say I think he’s going to realize we’re on to him and that we have his number, which will make him turn it back off, and right now, I’d say that’s the last thing we want. You?’

  ‘I’m convinced he’s known we’re on to him for a while. All he has to do is open a newspaper. And it will hardly come as a shock that we have his number, since it’s in the phone book. What’s weird is that he’s turned it on again, which suggests he’s not in control of his own actions. Sure, we run the risk of him turning the phone back off or getting rid of it the moment he realizes it’s us. But that should still give us a few valuable seconds of information about where he might be. Besides, we’ll have a chance of persuading him to give up.’

  Lilja nodded, even though she found it hard to tune out all the potential consequences. ‘All right, let’s give it a try.’ There was no time to debate the merits. If they wanted even a slim chance of getting to him before it was too late, they had to take a shot in the dark and cross their fingers. ‘Let’s do it in Ingvar’s lab, so he can record and analyse.’

  Klippan nodded. ‘He’s ready and standing by.’

  So they’d already discussed it behind her back and made the decision. What if she’d said no? Would they just have done it anyway?

  ‘It’s like this,’ explained Molander, who was sitting by the control panel in the van with headphones around his neck and his eyes on one of the screens, which showed a map of the search area. ‘I’ve prepared a number of unregistered numbers in case we have to call—’

  ‘What do you mean, unregistered?’ Lilja broke in. She took a seat on one of the little stools as Klippan pulled the sliding door shut behind her.

  ‘They’re anonymous and can’t be searched. At the same time, though, they turn up like any normal number on the screen, rather than it saying “unknown number”.’ He handed the headset to Lilja. ‘If you’re ready, let’s do this.’

  As soon as she heard the first beep, she cleared her throat to make sure everything was working. When the third ring rang out, she could almost picture Assar Skanås interrupting whatever he was doing and considering whether to pick up his ringing phone or not.

  ‘The number you are calling is not available at the moment. Please try again later.’

  Molander ended the call and turned to the others.

  ‘Shouldn’t we give it another go?’ Klippan said.

  ‘No, we shouldn’t,’ Lilja replied.

  ‘Why not? What if it was on silent and he didn’t get to it in time?’

  ‘I’m actually inclined to agree with Klippan,’ Molander said, nodding to underline how right he was.

  ‘Oh, you are, are you?’ Lilja said, looking for the right argument to prove to them why it was such a bad idea. But before she could find any at all, the phone started ringing. ‘Is that him?’

  Molander nodded and pressed accept.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice on the other end sounded winded and stressed.

  ‘Assar, is that you?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘My name’s Irene Lilja and I’m calling from—’

  ‘Why? What do you want?’

  ‘I just wanted to know how you’re doing and where you are?’

  ‘Not now. No time. We’ll have to talk some other time. Goodbye.’

  ‘No, Assar. Hold on. Can’t you—’

  ‘Everything’s fine. Great. Never better. I think I have to hang up now.’

  ‘The girl, Assar. Do you have her?’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Ester Landgren, the one you picked up at the playground.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a girl.’

  ‘The one with the red hair and the blue tights with horses on them.’

  ‘I told you, I don’t have a girl! I know it’s not allowed.’

  ‘But lying’s not allowed either, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re mean and probably have the wrong number.’

  ‘No, I don’t, and you know exactly what I’m talking about.’

  The line went silent; the only sound was Assar Skanås’s heavy breathing.

  ‘Assar, listen to me when I tell you how it’s going to be.’ She made sure to inject a dramatic pause. ‘If it turns out you’re lying to me about the girl, I’m going to make sure you can’t watch any of your children’s films for the rest of the month. And you can forget about sweets.’

  ‘What, why? She’s mine. The girl belongs to me, just me!’

  ‘Assar, I hear you. But you do understand that you have to let her go, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m not letting her go. Do you hear me? Never ever! I’ve waited longer than anyone and now it’s my turn to do what I want. What I want! The voices said so, so there.’

  ‘But Assar, we—’

  ‘They’re in charge, not you!’

  The call ended.

  71

  ‘I honestly don’t know where to start. This isn’t something I like to talk about, as I’m sure you can understand.’ Karolina Jacobsén, dressed in a knee-length skirt and bone-white blouse, straightened her dark, shoulder-length hair, even though it was already perfect. ‘But Eric’s behaviour around intimacy and sex has never been particularly normal.’

  Fabian had tried to shut down the two computer screens as quickly as he could when Jacobsén’s wife had stormed in to the office. But she had literally torn him away from the keyboard and stared at Molly Wessman being subjected to the cowboy’s rough treatment.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Fabian pulled a tissue from the box he’d found in one of the drawers and handed it to her.

  ‘During the fifteen years Eric and I have been married, we’ve never come close to a functional love life, and we likely never will. We didn’t even conceive Rutger naturally.’ She trailed off and dabbed her eyes with the tissue.

  Several minutes had gone by before she asked him to stop the video and explain who he was and what he was
doing in her husband’s study.

  ‘Sure, we have a lot of other things. Money, friends, a life most people can only dream of. But just when you finally stop thinking about it and accept that things are what they are, you get this thrown in your face.’ She nodded to the black screen.

  ‘I understand this may be difficult to talk about. But as I mentioned, we’re in the middle of a—’

  ‘Fine, but what is he suspected of? Is he even a suspect?’

  ‘The video you just saw wasn’t an ordinary porn film.’

  ‘No? But I don’t understand? What—’

  ‘The couple in it are in fact completely unaware they’re being filmed by a hidden webcam.’

  ‘Okay? And you’re implying Eric put it there?’

  Fabian nodded. ‘And that particular woman died three days ago from poisoning.’

  ‘Wait, hold on a moment. You don’t think Eric might have killed—’ Karolina clapped a hand to her mouth and shook her head. ‘No, you’re wrong. Eric would never. There must be some mistake. Are you listening to me? You’ve made a mistake. You’ve got him mixed up with someone else—’

  ‘Do you recognize this?’ Fabian held up a picture of Molly’s tattoo.

  Karolina looked at it like it was contagious, and her face went from red and puffy to ashen. ‘Oh my God…’

  ‘We found this on the murdered woman, and we suspect that—’

  Karolina interrupted him by undoing her blouse with trembling hands and tears streaming down her face. Then she pulled it down to reveal her left shoulder, which bore a similar tattoo with a line penetrated by an arrow.

  ‘Karolina.’ Fabian tried to catch her eye. ‘I understand that this must be very difficult for you. But I’m afraid I have to—’

  ‘How can I help?’ Karolina looked up and met his eyes. ‘Just tell me how I can help you nail that bastard.’

  ‘If you know where he is or how we can reach—’ Fabian was interrupted by the door opening and Rutger entering, out of breath.

  ‘Mum, we need a snack. We’re super hungry.’

  ‘You’ll have to sort something out yourselves. There’s yoghurt and crunchy, or sandwiches if you prefer.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Can’t you? We’re in the middle of Guitar—’

  ‘No, Mummy’s busy. Now leave, so we can talk.’

  ‘Why? I’m just going to spill and—’

  ‘Rutger!’ Karolina raised a warning finger. ‘You know what Dad’s told you. You’re not even allowed in here.’

  ‘Are you? And what about him! No one but Dad’s allowed—’

  Karolina grabbed his arm roughly. ‘Out. Okay?’ She stood up and pushed him towards the door.

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. You either make a snack or you don’t. I don’t care, so long as you stay out of here. Understood?’ She closed the door behind him and turned to Fabian. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sat back down and tried to collect herself. ‘Unfortunately, I have no idea where he is. He often stays out until the small hours.’

  ‘Maybe you have a phone number for him? The one we have is for a phone he’s left here.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone with more phones than Eric. I have three in my contact list, so you could try them, though I’ve always suspected there are at least a couple more.’ She pulled out her phone, found her husband in her contacts and handed it to Fabian, who immediately forwarded the contact information to Molander.

  ‘I’m sorry if my questions are uncomfortable, but—’

  ‘Please, just ask instead of apologizing all the time. I promise I’ll tell you what I know.’

  ‘Okay.’ Fabian nodded. ‘You said you’ve never had a functional love life. But surely at first you must have. So what happened around the time it ended?’

  Karolina answered with a smile. ‘Right. That’s how it’s supposed to be. All you want to do is go at it, until reality catches up. But that’s not quite how it was for Eric and me.’ She shook her head. ‘We didn’t have sex. Not once. We tried a few times, of course, but he couldn’t quite rise to the occasion, and what we managed definitely can’t be defined as sex.’

  ‘So it wasn’t you who—’

  ‘Quite the reverse. I wanted nothing more and couldn’t work out what was wrong.’

  ‘Did you talk about it?’

  Karolina sighed. ‘I tried to bring it up a few times, but he was evasive and said he didn’t want to force it. At first, I actually thought it was kind of sweet that he wasn’t like everyone else, just trying to get some as quickly as possible without a thought to how I felt. But then one day when I came home earlier than usual, I found him in front of the computer, taking care of himself. It turned out his hard drive was jam-packed with absolutely horrible things he’d bought or downloaded. We’d lived together for six months at that point, and I felt like he’d been cheating on me the entire time. I flew into a rage and pulled the computer out of the wall, cables and all, and threw it off the balcony. We lived on the third floor in Västra Berga, and I hate to think how it could’ve turned out if someone had happened to be walking by on the street.’

  ‘And how did he react to that?’

  ‘He had no choice but to confess and swear that he only loved me. But I put my foot down and forced him to choose between me and the porn.’

  ‘And he agreed.’

  ‘Well, that hard drive was beyond salvaging, and from what I gathered, he’d spent a fortune on those films. Either way, he started seeing a sex therapist in town. I never felt particularly comfortable about him. At the same time, though, I didn’t want to be the problem so I did everything I could to help Eric.’

  ‘And what could you do?’

  ‘That’s what I wondered. It was obviously Eric’s addiction, not mine. But this sex therapist seemed to think I had an important role in the process.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘It was torture. The idea was for us to make incremental progress. So he gave us homework, like for Eric to sit next to me in bed and watch me pleasure myself. I don’t know how I could have agreed to that. But I did. I lay there, writhing and humiliating myself like some cheap tramp so he could get it up and want to come over to me. The problem was that he never did. Instead, he just sat there and watched and sorted himself out.’

  Fabian handed her another tissue.

  ‘I did almost everything he asked me to for over a year before I’d had enough and gave up.’

  ‘Almost? What didn’t you agree to do?’

  Karolina looked him in the eyes. ‘Is it relevant or are you just curious?’

  ‘As I said, I fully understand if you feel uncomfortable. But what I’m looking for is a motive, and I believe it may be found in the turning points, in a pivotal moment that might have triggered him to go from watching porn to placing hidden webcams in other people’s bedrooms.’

  Karolina nodded. ‘He wanted to watch me have sex with someone else. That’s when I said no. He was angry with me, of course, and told me I was ruining his rehab programme. But that was my line in the sand.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’ Karolina shrugged. ‘In the end, I accepted that he just couldn’t do it. I should of course have left him there and then, but instead, we decided to try to have a baby through insemination. Don’t ask me why, but at the time it felt like a solution to our problems.’

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘2001. Rutger was born a year later.’

  That was the same year Jacobsén had quit his permanent job to start his own business. Was it Karolina’s refusal to let him watch her that had triggered his decision? Was that what had made him start installing hidden webcams?

  It sounded improbable. But for Jacobsén, with his background in the security industry and knowledge about the latest surveillance technology, it was definitely possible.

  What he hadn’t found was any logical connection to Columbus. What had made him go from watching to doing? ‘So in all the years you’ve been together, you’ve never had s
ex?’

  ‘We did, once. Though it was more akin to rape. It was after midnight. He was down here as usual, working late. I’m usually asleep by then, but I was in the middle of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I couldn’t put it down. It was several years after it first came out. I don’t normally read crime novels. They’re all the same. Anyway, it was much too late and I’d finally managed to tear myself away and turn the lights off when he came into the room.’ She trailed off and swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t feel like talking, so I pretended to be asleep. That usually works out because I tend to fall asleep within minutes. But this particular night, he came and lay down right next to me, which he normally never does. It was as though it were the first time he’d touched me. Suddenly, his hands were everywhere, on my breasts and in my knickers. I just lay there and thought, finally, it’s happening. He even had an erection. So I turned over and was about to kiss him when my cheek suddenly burned. It was dark and I didn’t understand what was happening at first. Then he hit me a second time and hissed at me never to look at him ever again. Then he ordered me to get on all fours. But I just lay there in some kind of shock and didn’t understand what was happening. So he grabbed my arm and almost yanked it out of the socket. I had no idea he was so strong, and suddenly there I was on all fours, feeling him penetrating me. But not where he was supposed to, so eventually I tore and started bleeding. I could feel it trickling down the insides of my thighs. I asked him to stop, but he just hissed at me to shut up. That I was a dirty bitch who should shut my mouth. That’s exactly what he said, then he carried on until he was done.’

  ‘That was two years ago?’

  ‘Yes, almost exactly, actually. Just a few days before midsummer. How did you know?’

  He could have told her the film in which Wessman received much the same treatment was also two years old and that it might have been her husband’s inspiration. But it would have to wait. ‘And the tattoo. You had that made after the incident?’

  Karolina nodded. ‘My birthday is the week after midsummer and I’ve always wanted a tattoo. I know it’s not really my style, as Eric has never failed to point out whenever I’ve brought it up. But then he suddenly wanted to give me one. He’d designed it himself and told me the line symbolized me and his love for me was represented by the arrow. That I was number one, the first and most important thing in his life. I thought it was his way of apologizing. But that was before I became aware I was just the first in a long line of women.’