THE CYLINDER OF THE lock had been fitted with a tempered-steel locking mechanism to make break-ins more difficult, and the spring-loaded pins had been treated with extra-hard chrome. This was no average Chubb lock; it provided very high security. In order to open the door, a key had to raise the pins to the correct levels and turn them in a very precise direction. And they didn’t have the key. Instead, the locksmith was using a six-millimetre, water-cooled diamond drill to precisely cut his way in, severing pin after pin, down to a hundredth of a millimetre.
A few minutes later, he was able to pull the bit out of the cylinder, stick a hook in the hole, turn it, and open the door. Fabian and Lilja stepped into a tiny front hall with a big pile of mail, flyers, and magazines on the floor. The July issue of National Geographic, with a chipped skull on the cover and the headline 4-MILLION-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, was on the top of the pile.
The floor plan was open-concept, with the living room on the right and the kitchen to the left. A staircase led to the second floor in front of them. The house was in the older part of Lund and had been built sometime in the 1700s. It had undergone a careful renovation that made it feel new and modern.
Fabian preferred to be alone when he visited the home of a victim — or, in this case, a suspect — for the first time. He wanted to be able to listen to the rooms, not the voice of another person. He didn’t want to miss any clues that could help them move forward. The tiniest little detail might be the very puzzle piece they needed to see the case in its entirety.
Lilja seemed to feel the very same way. Without a word, she disappeared up the stairs to the second floor.
Just as Klippan had pointed out, Fabian knew they lacked concrete evidence that Rune Schmeckel was the killer. Now that he was standing here in the middle of Schmeckel’s living room, he felt something nagging at him... something that didn’t add up. Who was Rune Schmeckel?
The room was sparsely furnished with a pale-brown vintage Newport sofa, and a well-used Bruno Mathsson chair and ottoman over by the window. There was no TV in sight, only a Bang & Olufsen stereo. A few framed black-and-white photographs of rolling countryside and an old city with lots of houses hung on the walls. Fabian thought the photos had probably been taken somewhere in Spain, Italy, or Portugal — he couldn’t tell exactly, but he did know that they definitely hadn’t been taken in Sweden or Denmark. The windowsills were free of flowerpots and he couldn’t see any sign of pets. Aside from a thin layer of dust, the room was clean and tidy, and everything seemed to be in its proper place. Had Schmeckel planned his disappearance, or was he just a neat person who cleaned up before he went on vacation?
Fabian walked over to the stereo on the wall and turned it on. A CD started spinning and soon classical music emanated from the small speakers. Fabian had almost no knowledge of classical music — every time he gave it a chance, he decided it just wasn’t for him, just like golf, hunting, and vintage wines. He found an empty CD case on top of the stereo and established the music was Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. He cautiously sat down in the Bruno Mathsson chair, leaned back, and was struck by a broad, deep sound that couldn’t possibly be coming from the small satellite speakers. He looked around and realized there was a large subwoofer behind the sofa.
Fabian had spent a frightening amount of money on his own stereo equipment throughout the years. He’d even managed to make Sonja burst into tears once when he showed her his new speakers — a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 802 Diamonds. After the fact, he agreed they weren’t the most beautiful boxes ever, but they sounded fantastic.
He put his feet up on the ottoman and closed his eyes. This was just the way classical music should be enjoyed. A comfy chair, a good stereo, and above all: total solitude. As he opened his eyes, Fabian realized how isolated the entire room felt. Schmeckel probably didn’t have any relatives or friends, and spent his free time reading, listening to music, and improving himself.
Fabian rose from the chair and walked to the opposite wall, which was covered by a built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookcase with roughly seven or eight shelves. One section was devoted to CDs — mostly opera and classical, and some jazz — but the majority of the shelves were taken up by books. Schmeckel was obviously a big reader. The literature portion filled two shelves, and the rest were full of non-fiction titles divided into various subcategories such as “Medicine,” “Self-Defence and Martial Arts,” and “Physics and Biology” — all meticulously labelled. Fabian noted a number of titles in the Psychology section: I Don’t Want to Die, I Just Don’t Want to Live; It Wasn’t My Fault: On the Art of Taking Responsibility; Offence and Forgiveness; and Anger Management: The Complete Treatment Guidebook for Practitioners.
When Fabian had first walked into the house, he’d thought Schmeckel was a lonely but somewhat harmonious person, a man who took joy in the good things in life. But the more he scanned the bookshelves, the more he was beginning to form a completely different image, of a person with poor self-esteem, maybe even a victim of bullying.
He pulled out a photo album and opened it. The first few pages were filled with pictures of a trip to some southern European country; then came pictures from a Halloween party at Lund Hospital. In one of the photos, Schmeckel was dressed up as a bloody butcher, chewing on a detached finger made of what looked like marzipan. Fabian doubted it was the sort of picture Schmeckel would want the general public to get a hold of, considering the scandal with the forgotten plastic clips. Fabian flipped through the rest of the album, but there were no more photographs.
The problem with new technology was that no one ever got their photos developed anymore; instead, they were put onto a hard drive. All you usually found these days were albums full of very old photos with handwritten captions.
And then it struck him. As his eyes swept around the room, he realized there was nothing in it that could be from Schmeckel’s childhood or teenage years — no nostalgic records by KISS or The Who or, as in Fabian’s case, Duran Duran. The only albums here were of “grown-up” music, for mature listeners with good taste. The same thing could be said about the bookcase: there was no Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. It was as if Schmeckel’s whole youth had been erased, like it had never existed.
Fabian left the living area and went into the kitchen to have a look around. There was a wine cooler full of French wines sorted by region and year; Rune certainly was a pedant through and through. He opened the stainless-steel refrigerator to see what was inside. The stench came as a total surprise, hitting him right in the gag reflex. He had expected the fridge to be clean and empty, but the opposite was true. Besides rotten vegetables and old milk, there was half a crab on a plate. A crab that looked like it was capable of killing anyone, despite being deceased itself. Based on what Fabian had determined from the other parts of the house, leaving fresh crab to rot in his fridge wasn’t Schmeckel’s style. In other words, he had not planned to be away from home.
Fabian continued searching the kitchen for more clues, uncertain whether the rotting food really meant something or if it was just a false lead, planted intentionally. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the cupboards, pantry, or freezer. He went through the drawers last. The first one contained silverware; the second had various kitchen utensils; and the third was full of the random items people usually don’t know what to do with: pens, erasers, obsolete coins, rubber bands, a roll of tape, an empty notebook, and a few keys, one of which looked like a car key. He picked it up and looked at it. PEUGEOT was engraved on the head.
Fabian had an idea and stuck the key in his pocket.