by Andy Maslen
‘My name is Annika Ivarsson,’ the journalist said. Her eyes, in which the irises seemed to fade into the whites without a demarcating edge, burnt in her thin face. ‘I grew up in a children’s home here in Umeå. Brömly arranged for something terrible to be done to me on my sixteenth birthday.’
Stella felt a cold chill sweep through her. Was this it? Had Brömly sold a young girl’s virginity to the highest bidder? That, and worse, had happened plenty of times in the UK.
‘Do you know who killed him?’ she asked.
Ivarsson’s voice took on a raw edge. ‘No. But if you need a motive, I suggest you Google “Swedish eugenics”.’
With that, she turned and left Stella staring at her back.
Stella returned to her desk, and launched a browser. She typed in the exact phrase Ivarsson suggested. As the results popped up, she sat back in shock. Page after page of hits. But not about sexual abuse in children’s homes. Forced sterilisation in Sweden from the 1930s until 2012.
This was it. This was the evil project Brömly had written of to his three friends. Including his murderer.
She started with the first article. As she read, her mouth dropped open with shock. She couldn’t believe what she was reading. Drawing on ideas of racial purity originally developed in America, and seized upon with genocidal fervour by the Nazis, the Swedish government had ruthlessly sterilised over 60,000 of its own citizens.
How could this be? Sweden was human rights central. Everyone knew that. Yet from 1934 onwards, the Social Democrats had selected kids in children’s homes, those with behavioural problems, petty criminals, people with learning disabilities, prostitutes, unwed mothers, even children who simply needed a little extra help at school, like a pair of reading glasses. And prevented them from ever having children.
The date that leaped off the screen as Stella read another shame-filled article by a Swedish journalist was the date the programme was finally shut down: 1975. The year Brömly’s unexplained absence from public life in Sweden ended.
Stella sat back in her chair. It all made sense. This wasn’t about child sexual abuse at all. Her cop brain kicked up a gear. They’d speculated that the killer’s motive might be revenge for something that had happened between 1971 and 1976.
Stella saw more of the picture, as if changing the batteries on a flickering torch in a night-time search. Brömly had been involved in the eugenics programme. After the news broke in the mid-nineties, he must have found a way to doctor his past to erase the connection.
Then a quite different thought occurred to Stella. Ivarsson had more or less told her that Brömly himself had taken her to be sterilised. Maybe Ivarsson wasn’t a journalist at all. She hadn’t shown her press card. And it seemed anyone could get into a press conference out here. The Swedes didn’t ask for ID. Probably part of their famed culture of openness. She snorted. Except when it came to forcibly sterilising children, that was.
She felt a surge of disgust. If he hadn’t been dying of cancer, would Brömly have been happy to live out his years in his swanky Mayfair apartment? Free to enjoy his art and play his grand piano? Go to the Swedish church and enjoy beating his friends at bridge at the social club? Never acknowledging, still less atoning, for his involvement in such a barbaric scheme?
First he’d laundered his past, then he’d been trying to launder his soul. Fresh and clean in time to meet his maker.
So she had the motive. And, as she thought back to her encounter with Annika, she wondered if she’d just met the perpetrator. It was a classic tactic of an over-confident murderer. Involving themselves in the police investigation. Even offering help.
Ivarsson looked to be about the same height as the woman in the Kafé Valhalla CCTV footage. But so much of her face had been obscured by the cap and the raincoat, that was all Stella felt confident about.
Parking the thought for now, Stella returned to the central question. Who were the three other Swedes Brömly had written to?
To run a national eugenics programme would have called for a vast administrative apparatus, just like the Nazis erected. They’d have needed record-keepers as well as policymakers, doctors and, for all she knew, police and social workers.
If he was going to expose his former colleagues, that would be plenty of motive for murder. Presumably they’d all forged equally blameless careers since the seventies, and availed themselves of the same reputational deep-clean as Brömly had. They’d all be retired by now, old and comfortable, living out their lives free of suspicion like Nazis in South America.
Well, guess what? Now they weren’t. Stella wasn’t a Nazi-hunter. But she could sniff out evil and she had the scent now. She also had her suspect pool. Ove, Kerstin, Inger. And Annika. Whether it was fear of exposure or revenge for what happened, the roots of Brömly’s murder were now exposed to the light.
Part of her thought it might not be a bad thing if Brömly’s three associates, old as they surely were, died prematurely, as he had. But the police part wanted to bring the killer to justice and close the case.
Back at the station, she briefed Oskar and William on her conversation with Annika, and what she’d discovered about Sweden’s shameful past. It turned out they, like most Swedes, knew all about the scandal but in an effort to face the future had tended to sweep it under the carpet as something that had happened ‘back then’.
William was all for bringing Annika in and, as he put it, ‘getting the information out of her, one way or another’.
Oskar argued against it. He put forward the same argument as Stella had formulated. Annika might stand on her right to silence, and, as a journalist, could probably stir up a ‘whole shitload of trouble for us’.
They agreed, William grudgingly, to leave her alone. ‘For now.’
23
London
Of all the types of evidence Lucian had to deal with, passive data from mobile phones was his least favourite.
Blood and body fluids, hairs, soil samples, footprints, fingerprints, insects, ballistics: all were susceptible to scientific analysis. If the presiding CSI or analyst conducted their analysis with sufficient rigour, the evidence would yield its secrets. But phones were another story. Especially when the owner was deceased.
He’d given up trying to crack the password and had gone for Plan B, contacting the manufacturer to ask them for an access code. Apple was known for being helpful to law enforcement agencies, foreign as well as domestic. Just not for being fast.
Lucian had submitted the relevant forms and accompanying paperwork. He’d proved he was who he said he was, and that he worked for who he said he did. And he’d been waiting for almost a week.
Now, though, he was smiling. That morning, he’d received an email from someone named Yan, who was based in the company’s Legal Department (International). And Yan, bless him, or her, had supplied a sixteen-character access code for Brömly’s phone.
The Legal Department’s IT manager had done something clever to the box in which the code was displayed, which meant the code couldn’t be copied and pasted from the email. Instead, in a move that struck Lucian as ludicrously old fashioned, not to mention open to the worst excesses of Fat Finger Syndrome, he had to retype it.
He checked each four-character group as he entered it, then rechecked the whole thing. Holding his breath, he hit the blue ENTER button on the phone’s screen.
The entire display turned black.
His stomach clenched.
He stared at the screen, willing it to come back to life. He’d reached seven in an internal countdown to some serious swearing, when the display flickered, flashed royal-blue, then popped into life.
He exhaled noisily and went to work.
He opened the messaging app and began scrolling back through Brömly’s texts and instant messages for the past few months. Plenty of conversations, but grouped into very few threads. One with the priest, Malmaeus; one, a group text to what appeared to be members of his bridge club; and one with the secretary of the Sw
edish social club he belonged to.
Deciding to hand over detailed reading to the detectives, he moved on to the emails. And immediately struck gold. The last email Brömly had sent was to a group. Here were the people who his ESDA analysis had only identified by their Christian names. Ove Mattsson. Kerstin Dahl. Inger Hedlund. He noted down the names.
The text of the email, once he’d got it translated, revealed little they hadn’t already worked out.
Dear Ove, Kerstin and Inger,
I am sorry I have fallen out of touch with you all. Please look out for my letter, which will arrive in the next few days.
Cordially,
Tomas
Lucian returned to the Mail app and systematically checked each folder. The drafts folder under Gmail had a ‘1’ beside it. He tapped the arrow, feeling a flicker of excitement. He was not disappointed.
The folder contained a single email. He ran it through Google Translate and also sent it to one of the interpreters Cam had found.
Lucian began reading. The ESDA had revealed the essence of it, but here was the full story. A devoutly religious man nearing the end of his life had decided to wipe the slate clean. He intended to confess some long-buried act he’d come to consider evil. Clearly, Mattsson, Dahl and Hedlund were involved.
The exact nature of their shared evil, he left to Stella to discover. Not so much above his pay grade as not relevant to it. Dozens of officers working multiple cases needed his support, and that of the small team he managed. If he stopped to ponder the whys and wherefores, rather than the whats and whens, of each piece of evidence he analysed, he’d be crushed by the weight of those unanswered requests.
The translation came back from the official interpreter at 6.00 p.m. He emailed Stella the names and attached Brömly’s draft email. He took a wander round the department, checking in with each member of his team. He reached the desk of his latest hire. Anna had joined from the Police Service of Northern Ireland the year before.
She looked up from her computer screen.
‘I was about to come and find you,’ she said. ‘I just got the results back from the hair we recovered from Brömly’s flat.’
She opened an email from NDNAD. The DNA profile came with a note explaining that the donor was
a) male
b) of Nordic extraction
c) NOT Tomas Brömly
Sadly for the investigation, he didn’t show up on the database itself, so had no criminal record in the UK.
No use for now, then, but if Stella – he corrected himself – when Stella had someone in custody, they’d have a reference smile to compare against their DNA. Putting them at the primary crime scene would be a start down the long road to a murder conviction.
24
Umeå
Towards the end of the afternoon, Stella’s phone pinged with an incoming email. She read Lucian’s email, transferred the attachment from her phone to the PC’s hard drive, and opened it on screen.
Dear Ove, Kerstin and Inger,
I am dying. My oncologist informs me I have between three and six months left. Prostate cancer. (I suspect she may have been being optimistic to spare my feelings.)
We talked about getting my affairs in order. I suspect she thought that meant a will and so forth. In truth, my ‘affairs’ have long been tied up: without an heir, everything goes to the Church of Sweden.
But these are merely the material aspects of my life. For some years now, it is the spiritual side of things that has needed not so much tidying up as releasing.
I have reflected on my – our – past and prayed for guidance. (There is a small but very lovely Church of Sweden congregation here in London, shepherded by an excellent minister.)
Will God accept me into his ever-loving embrace with an unclean conscience? I fear not. So, as a good Lutheran, I have decided to make a full confession of my involvement in the Project.
I know you may feel this is a selfish act on my part, as in doing so I may lead people to look for others who were involved. But faced with eternity, I find it is the lesser, by far, of two evils. (And as nothing compared to the evil in which we all participated so eagerly.)
I have some contacts in the media here, most notably the BBC. I intend first to write a full and frank account of my actions between ’71 and ’75 and then explore the possibility of an interview.
With this burden finally lifted from my heart, I know I will be able to face my death, and my maker, with fortitude and, I hope, with grace.
I am sorry that this may not be welcome news. So I leave you with an exhortation. Consult your own conscience!
I am dying, and doing it this year. But we are all old. Even those of us without terminal cancer have the greater part of our lives behind us. Is it not better at least to try to atone for our sins?
‘For on that day shall atonement be brought unto you, to cleanse you; ye shall be cleansed from all your sins before the LORD.’ Leviticus 16:30
Cordially,
Tomas
She sat back. What utter crap. Fear of hell dressed up as piety. She forced herself to reread it, slower this time. She was looking for anything that might point her towards the murderer’s identity. She went to find Oskar.
‘Ove, Kerstin and Inger are Mattsson, Dahl and Hedlund,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got the text of the letter he sent them. I’ll print it out. It might help us fill in some gaps.’
Stella dragged over a chair and sat beside Oskar as he started accessing government databases, entering his police ID then the three names.
Oskar’s initial trawl brought up encouraging numbers. Four men named Ove Mattsson, six women called Inger Hedlund and three women named Kerstin Dahl.
‘Try narrowing it down by age,’ Stella said. ‘They’re all likely to be in their seventies at least.’
Oskar nodded. His fingers tapped out a brief sequence of commands and he hit Return for the second time.
‘Better,’ he said.
They were looking at two, three and two, for Mattsson, Hedlund and Dahl. It would be barely an afternoon’s work to contact all seven, but Stella fancied another throw of the dice.
‘Try putting in Umeå as their city of birth.’
Oskar nodded and typed. He looked at the screen then turned to smile at Stella. The screen showed one each for Mattsson, Hedlund and Dahl.
‘Could you put a profile together for each of them?’ Stella asked.
Later that afternoon, Oskar came over to her desk with some stapled sheets of paper.
‘Background on Mattsson, Hedlund and Dahl. A doctor, lawyer and county governor,’ he said. ‘I also put Johanna onto backgrounding the others on the list. None had the right kind of jobs to be involved in the eugenics business. These are the three you need to talk to.’
She skimmed Mattsson’s file. He’d taken a different path to Brömly: clinical medicine then academia. He was now Professor of Genetics at Umeå University. It fitted with the idea of genetic engineering and eugenics.
She realised her heart was racing. Yes, she was excited by the discovery. But it was also the coffee. How the Swedes drank so much of their high-octane brew without passing out was beyond her. Compared to the liquid speed they drank by the bucketful, the stuff most Met officers swilled down was Valium.
She made a note of his address. On her way out, Oskar looked up from his laptop.
‘Who are you going to see first?’
‘Mattsson. Do you want to come?’
He shook his head. ‘Do you mind if I don’t? I’ve got some stuff to do on other cases. Malin’s pushing me to close a couple. I can access my files remotely from here.’
‘It’s fine. I’m happy to go on my own.’
‘Just bear in mind, your letter of introduction means you can take witness statements, but you can’t arrest anyone,’ he said.
‘I’ll try to remember that.’
He grinned, and the expression changed his mis-assorted features into something more pleasing.
Ma
ttsson lived in a large timber-framed house on the outskirts of the city, amid hundreds of the birch trees that had given Umeå its nickname. To one side of the house stood a separate garage with wide double up-and-over doors. Like a lot of the wooden buildings in Sweden she’d seen, it was painted in the striking shade of plum-red called Falun.
She parked her rented Volvo on the gravel drive to one side of the front door. A stiff breeze had blown up, which kept the temperature cool, despite the sun beating down on the top of Stella’s head from a crystalline-blue sky.
She rang the doorbell. After a minute or so, it swung inwards to reveal an old man. Mattsson looked in good shape for his age, though. He was about five ten. His bearing was erect and though he had a paunch distending the front of his white linen shirt, he had decent muscle mass.
He looked at her with raised eyebrows, as white and bushy as his hair. ‘Ja?’
She fought down an urge to grab him by the shirt front and scream, ‘Why?’ into his open, enquiring face.
Instead, she showed him her Met ID card. ‘Pratar du engleska?’ she asked, pleased with how fast she was picking up Swedish phrases.
He smiled. ‘Yes, I speak English. But thank you for asking.’
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Stella Cole. I’m with the Metropolitan Police. I am working with an Inspector Norgrim of Stockholm Murder Squad.’
‘How can I help you?’
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions in relation to a case I’m working on.’
‘A case? What sort of case?’
‘I’m investigating the murder of a man I believe you knew. Tomas Brömly?’
His face fell. ‘Poor Tomas. I read about it, of course. Come in.’
That was interesting. He hadn’t admitted to receiving the letter.
She followed him down a wide hallway hung with framed photographs to a large kitchen. Mattsson led her into a garden that stretched down to a river. More birch trees swayed in the breeze, framing a long lawn interrupted by clumps of tall plants tipped with flame-orange blossoms.
