Motive X

by Stefan Ahnhem

  Fabian thanked her for her help and got to his feet. Almost all his questions had been answered. The one remaining unknown was what had made Jacobsén decide to commit murder.

  72

  ‘How are you getting on? Find anything?’ Lilja said, trying to stretch in the cramped space at the back of Molander’s van.

  ‘That depends on what you mean by something,’ Molander replied, studying the screens, which were filled with zoomed-in audio curves, equalizers and audio clips from the recorded conversation. ‘I can’t find any signs of there being a little girl present.’

  ‘What? Are you telling me she’s not there?’

  ‘No, I’m telling you I can’t hear any signs of her still being alive.’

  ‘She might be unconscious or gagged,’ Klippan said.

  ‘Or just in another room,’ Lilja added, and she dropped three lumps of sugar in her tepid coffee before stirring it and knocking it back.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Molander said. ‘Speaking of rooms, I think we can skip anything we’d label a “normal room”, like hotel rooms, offices, shops and residences.’

  ‘Why?’

  Molander sighed. ‘It’s a bit difficult to explain to a novice such as yourself.’

  ‘Maybe you could just tell us what you’ve heard?’

  ‘I don’t know about heard. It’s more about what I haven’t heard, or, to be more precise, what I can hear in the silence. But I obviously have no idea how well-versed you are in the wondrous science of sound waves.’

  ‘True, but I know you’re desperate to draw things out for dramatic effect. Maybe you can hold off on that until some other time, though, since we’re dealing with a six-year-old girl for whom every second probably feels like several hours in hell. So, I’d appreciate it if you—’

  ‘The acoustics of the room,’ Molander cut her off. ‘Or rather, the so-called reverberation time – it’s unusually long. Just listen to this.’

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

  ‘It sounds like he’s in a basement.’ Lilja could tell from the look on Klippan’s face that he was asking himself the same question she was. How could they have missed that?

  ‘Exactly. A basement or some other space with a stone or concrete floor and walls that bounce the sound back instead of absorbing it.’

  ‘I’ll redirect the teams to focus on basement areas.’ Klippan pulled out his radio.

  ‘Hold on,’ Lilja said. ‘What other spaces do we have? It can’t just be basements?’

  ‘I would say there’s two obvious places,’ Molander put in. ‘The Maria Church and Kärnan. They both have hard walls and high ceilings.’

  ‘But he can’t be in the church, can he?’ Klippan interjected. ‘Don’t people come and go there all the time?’

  Molander shrugged. ‘I haven’t been in one since my mother took me to midnight mass. Maybe there are out-of-the-way spaces. Like up on the balcony or behind the organ?’

  ‘Klippan to Team B, over.’

  ‘Team B here, over.’

  ‘What about Kärnan?’ Lilja said. ‘It’s the same thing there, isn’t it? A lot of tourists running up and down the stairs.’

  ‘Not at this time of day.’ Molander glanced at his watch. ‘It’s usually fairly quiet between three and five. The tourists are getting tired and prefer to have a sit-down at a café, and the rest of us mortals are rushing to get things done before we have to race home and pick up the children and make dinner.’

  ‘I want you to abort the search of the hotels right now and focus on the Maria Church,’ Klippan said. ‘Is that clear? Over.’

  ‘It’s clear.’

  ‘Sounds like you go there a lot,’ Lilja said.

  ‘A few times a year, certainly. At least. There’s no better place to reflect on the events of the day than at the top of the tower, gazing out across Helsingborg, Denmark and the sound.’

  ‘I haven’t been there since sixth grade. But I remember there was a person at reception to let us in, and I honestly have a hard time seeing how he would get past—’

  ‘As often as not, that reception desk’s unmanned. I guess they’re in the loo or checking their Facebook or something. What do I know? I’ve snuck in more than once. It’s hardly on me to stand there and wait, just because they can’t be bothered to do their job. Am I right? Or should I feel guilty?’

  Lilja didn’t have time to answer. She’d already leaped out of the van and was hurrying across the cobblestones towards the terraced stairs leading up to Kärnan. There was a lift in the mountain on her left. But she’d tried that once several years ago when she’d been on crutches after crashing her Ducati. It had taken several minutes to arrive and once the doors finally opened, they’d had to wait for more passengers to come along before it began its slow climb.

  So far, none of the search teams had been through Kärnan. The reason for that was that it was at the edge of the search area, and they had erroneously assumed it would be packed with tourists. But in hindsight, it was a simply flabbergasting way of prioritizing. It was on the direct path from the playground where the girl had disappeared, and if there were doors you could close in any of the rooms in the tower, they would in fact be perfect hiding spots.

  When she reached the top of the terraced stairs, she had to stop to catch her breath before she could press on up the hill towards Kärnan, the entrance of which was, to make matters worse, several storeys up and of course, began with yet another steep flight of stairs.

  The lobby itself was, as Molander had suggested, empty of tourists. But he’d been wrong about the reception desk. It was in fact manned by a young girl, who had headphones on and was transfixed by something on her phone.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said on her way to the desk. ‘You don’t happen to have seen a man in his forties with a little girl, by any chance?’ The girl sat motionless as though hypnotized by the phone in her hand. ‘Hello, I’m talking to you!’ The girl only looked up when Lilja leaned across the desk and waved her hand in front of the phone.

  ‘One adult?’

  ‘No, I’m not buying a ticket. I’m from the police, I’m looking for—’

  ‘The first floor is free. If you want to go all the way to the top, it’s fifty kronor.’

  ‘For God’s sake, I don’t want a ticket!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ The girl pulled out one of her earbuds.

  ‘We’re looking for a man of about forty who has a little girl with him. You wouldn’t happen to have let someone like that in today?’

  ‘Um… I don’t really know… Or wait, yes, actually. A man and a little girl. Was he wearing a green top?’

  Lilja hurried up the spiral stone staircase to the first floor, which was empty. As were the second and third. On the fourth floor, the door to the tower was closed, and when she tried it, it turned out to be locked as well.

  It was a heavy wooden door, likely ancient and of significant cultural interest. But it couldn’t be helped. She pulled her gun out of her shoulder holster and was aiming it at the lock when she heard the faint sound of a child crying, echoing down the stairwell behind her.

  This time, she didn’t run; she crept up the stairs as silently as possible. By the time she reached the top, she’d lost count of the number of floors she’d passed.

  She could clearly hear the sound of a crying child through the crack in the door that stood slightly ajar, and before any more seconds of suffering could tick by, she threw open the door to the tower and aimed her gun at the man in the green top who was kneeling down, blowing on his son’s arm in an attempt to console him.

  73

  The woman who stepped through the entrance doors and looked around before moving forward and taking a queueing number bore an undeniable resemblance to Dunja Hougaard. The hair, the clothes and that ghastly bag were just a few of the similarities. If she would just turn around and look up at the CCTV camera so he could see her face…

  Cheap fucking Swedes, thinkin
g they could get away with one lousy camera in a lobby of that size. The angle diagonally from above was nothing but a bad joke.

  At least he could study her gait, though unfortunately it didn’t match Dunja’s at all. While she would somehow glide across the floor and suddenly appear in a different spot, this woman moved with unusually marked, almost militant steps.

  She also looked taller than Dunja, who wasn’t even five foot six. He backed up the tape and paused it when the woman passed the wall-mounted height strip. Despite wearing worn trainers, she reached well into the red field, which indicated a height of around five foot eleven.

  Kim Sleizner felt a pang of disappointment, though he was far from giving up. It didn’t matter how long he’d have to sit here and go through endless CCTV tapes, he wasn’t going to stop until he found her.

  His concern had been completely warranted. She hadn’t taken a long vacation to lick her wounds. She hadn’t moved because she wanted a bigger flat or a fresh start. No, the little piss cunt had deliberately gone off grid with one single goal in her sights.

  Where it hurts the most, she’d written. When he least expected it.

  She’d given him the finger, in writing, lured him straight into her trap and with a taunting laugh showed him she was in charge now.

  The visit to her flat had been utterly humiliating, and it was the last time he was going to allow himself to underestimate her. From here on in, it was on.

  Total war.

  The first step was to find her, which had turned out to be easier said than done. The little bitch had been surprisingly smart, had made sure to cut all ties to her former life. But no one could vanish without a trace. Not even Dunja, short of being burned on the stake like the witch she was.

  If anyone had the means to find her, it was him. His authority was going to come in handy, coupled with his extensive network and the hold he’d made sure to have on some of his contacts.

  The questions he’d spent the greater part of the past twenty-four hours pondering were how she’d managed not to use any of her credit cards, where she was getting her money and, above all, how.

  He’d found the answer to the first question at the Tax Agency. With the help of director Kai Mosedahl, he’d gained access to all her tax information. Since Kai was also a member of the Club, he had as much of an interest as the rest of the group in stopping her once and for all.

  The police in Helsingør had paid her over five hundred thousand kronor in a lump sum. It was a shockingly large sum for a shitty provincial station. But, of course, it must have been that obese doughball Ib Sveistrup, who wasn’t man enough to say no to a woman.

  The money hadn’t been deposited in her usual account with Danske Bank. It hadn’t been paid into a Danish account at all, which explained why he hadn’t discovered it sooner. Instead, the bank’s head of security, his old colleague Ryan Frellesen, had been able to trace the money to an account in one of their Swedish branches on the other side of the sound in Malmö.

  It had been considerably more difficult to get information out of them, but eventually he’d succeeded. It turned out she’d made one withdrawal. No more, no less. One withdrawal, of the entire amount, less than a week earlier.

  That told him two important things.

  First, she had help from the outside. Someone who wasn’t just willing to lend her money, but who was also well-versed in going off grid. Her own skills were nowhere near up to what she was doing right now.

  Secondly, she must have been recorded by the bank’s CCTV cameras, which Frellesen had graciously provided a link to.

  The withdrawal had taken place the Wednesday before at 12.33 at Danske Bank’s branch on Neptunigatan in Malmö; with such an exact time, it shouldn’t have been hard to find her. But apparently, it was.

  Part of the explanation was that in order to take out such a large sum in cash, you couldn’t just stroll into a branch, take a ticket and wait for a free teller. You had to book an appointment several days in advance to give the bank a chance to prepare. The withdrawal itself wouldn’t have taken place at the tills, either, but in one of the meeting rooms at the back; he hadn’t managed to get a link to those cameras.

  There was no information on when she’d entered the bank, so to be on the safe side he’d scrutinized the footage from the entrance camera for two full hours before until one hour after the withdrawal. He’d pressed pause several times, reversed and zoomed in to make sure he hadn’t missed her. But his hours in front of the screen hadn’t turned up shit.

  She hadn’t been let in through a staff entrance either, if the branch manager was to be believed. But maybe he wasn’t the right person to talk to. Sure, there was a rule that said customers could under no circumstances use the staff entrance. But he hadn’t personally served her, so in reality, he had no fucking—

  He realized she could just as easily have been helped by someone unconnected with the bank. He sat back down. Of course that was how it’d been done.

  He woke up his computer and pulled the time marker to fifteen minutes before the withdrawal. The surveillance footage started playing; he once again watched the customers pass in and out of the front doors. This time, it wasn’t the women he studied, but the men. But none of them jumped out at him.

  The time marker passed the time of the withdrawal; he decided to give it another half an hour before giving up. But he never got that far. Just six minutes later, he spotted a man with a backpack, leaving. He was short, didn’t even reach the yellow field on the height indicator.

  He recognized the man, an Indian, from twenty minutes earlier, when he’d entered the bank, without a backpack. Now he just needed to look for the backpack entering, which took him no more than a few minutes.

  It was only when he paused the clip and zoomed in that he realized the woman carrying the backpack through the lobby really was Dunja. No wonder he’d missed her.

  Her heavy boots, worn jeans and camouflage top had been enough to redirect his attention to all the other women. Her hair was shaved now, too; if not for the lipstick and large earrings, he would have taken her for a cancer victim.

  He had his answers, but they were anything but uplifting. What he had somehow sensed and suspected all along had been confirmed, and then some. She not only had money, she was also being helped by some little cunt Indian, and unless the grainy image was misleading, she even looked fitter.

  Even so, he felt excited. He’d managed to find her. Granted, only for a few seconds in CCTV footage. But he was on her trail now, and that was usually all that was needed.

  74

  It was finally happening. Finally, he could feel it growing again. Especially when he squeezed it. When he did that, he could even see the veins swell like fat, writhing worms around it. Another minute and he’d be ready.

  Just like he’d hoped, the little girl had calmed down and stopped her silly attempts at freeing herself, not to mention that screaming that had almost driven him over the edge. The rag in her mouth had muffled it a bit, but not made it any less annoying. No wonder it had taken him so long to recover.

  At home on the sofa, watching his films, it almost never took more than a few minutes. But then, this was real. The little girl wasn’t on TV. She was lying right in front of him, staring wide-eyed. No wonder he was a bit nervous.

  He was pulling out the tube of lubricant when his ears caught a distant sound, like a fire cracker. He turned around but couldn’t see what it was. Maybe it was just those construction workers, still at it. That was probably it. He mustn’t get nervous all over again. Mustn’t think too much. He did that a lot, and it was never good. Never ever.

  He tugged on it a few times and decided it was ready. It was now or never. He gently put his free hand on her. She flinched and started whimpering again behind the tape. Goddamn whimpering. She was probably spoiled about always getting her way.

  But she would like it soon enough. He was sure of it. After all, this was like a gift for her, too. In just a minute or two, she
would be enjoying herself, just like him. And why wouldn’t she? He took her virginity and in exchange, she took his. What could be more beautiful?

  He lubed it up, wiped his hands clean of the gloop and grabbed her hips.

  ‘Let go of her and get down on the ground with your arms and legs out!’

  He turned towards the voice and saw a woman aiming a gun at him.

  ‘I said let go of her and get down on the floor!’

  How had she got there? How had she found him? He didn’t understand. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. No one was going to disturb him now that they were about to have such a lovely time. Afterwards, when he was finished, he was going to give her a taste of his stabby knife.

  Then he heard that bang again, a bit louder but still far away, almost as though it was coming from somewhere else entirely. As though maybe he hadn’t heard it at all. It was only when he saw the blood seeping out of the wound in the side of his stomach that he realized he must’ve been shot. But it didn’t hurt. He almost couldn’t feel it, and he had no problem starting what they’d both been longing for for so long.

  Finally… Finally he was enjoying his reward for waiting a whole lifetime. And how he enjoyed it. Not to mention the little girl. He could feel her wanting him. Wanting him and not being able to get enough.

  Maybe there was another bang. He didn’t really know. But he had another wound now that didn’t hurt, even though he could see the blood pumping out of him, streaming down towards his crotch and making his scrotum all red and sticky.

  But wait… Something wasn’t right. Something was all wrong. He didn’t understand. He wasn’t even inside her. Was that why it had been so easy? Try as he might, he couldn’t see it with all the blood. He couldn’t even feel it.