THE RAIN HAD FINALLY stopped, as if someone had turned off a faucet, and now there were mostly just sporadic drops, but the water was still gushing through the gutters in search of a storm drain that hadn’t yet overflowed. Irene Lilja shoved her feet into her boots, walked up to Molander, and helped him with his bulletproof vest. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear that he hadn’t the smallest desire to come along.
I’m a crime scene tech, not some fucking SWAT whore, his eyes said. The closest he ever came to using a weapon was probably when he went fishing. When Irene was finished with Molander, she pulled on her own vest.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They locked the car and each of them took one of Molander’s equipment bags before they walked down Motalagatan, which was deserted. Nothing odd about that, Lilja thought. It was the middle of the night and the past hour’s downpour ought to have kept most night owls inside. They arrived at number twenty-four and discovered a house that looked the same as the rest on the street. What had she expected? A crumbling old mansion with a madman playing out his diabolical fantasies on an organ?
“How are we going to do this?” Molander asked.
Lilja thought about it. Some of the lights were on, but most signs indicated that he wasn’t home. On the other hand, they couldn’t be sure of anything, except that they didn’t have much time.
“The fastest way.” Lilja hurried up the front steps, cautiously felt the locked doorknob, and made room for Molander to open it.
They each disengaged the safety on their handguns and entered the hallway. The light from the living room spread out across the floor, and they heard the notes of classical music.
“Wagner,” Molander whispered behind her. “It’s Wagner’s The Valkyrie.”
They walked through the hall to the living room. The lights were on and the music was playing loudly. Lilja went to enter the room, but Molander placed a hand on her arm.
“He wants us to go in, look at the lights and listen to the music. He wants to see how many of us there are.”
“Can’t we just turn off the music? It’s stressing me out.”
Molander nodded toward a fuse box and opened it. The fuses were marked with neatly written labels, one for each room of the house. He pulled out the one labelled LIVING ROOM, but the music continued to play. He tried a few of the other fuses, but nothing happened.
“He seems to have bypassed the whole fuse box. I think you’ll just have to deal with the music. It’s actually one of his better works.”
“What if he wants us to stay out of that room and leave this anxious music playing? Maybe there’s something he’s trying to hide with the music. And if there are cameras in there, what’s to say they’re not all over the house?”
Molander walked into the living room, went straight to the stereo, and pressed stop. “Happy now?”
Lilja followed him in and looked around the sparsely furnished room. There was only a leather sofa, a La-Z-Boy, a glass table, and a bookcase, which was empty except for the stereo. Once Molander was finished with the room, and had determined there were no hidden cameras or microphones, they began searching the rest of the house, which had been cleaned out and was mostly empty. Everything was pristine, down to the tiniest detail; Molander couldn’t even find prints in the kitchen or bathroom. The cleanliness was marred only by a small shard of porcelain on the kitchen floor, but the basement and attic were also spotless and empty.
Molander was starting to get impatient; he thought they should go to the other address registered to Sölmedal, where his workshop was located, but Lilja wasn’t ready to leave the house just yet. She had the feeling they’d missed something, but she didn’t know where to look. There was no doubt that the house had been wiped of even the tiniest clue that could help them move forward.
Of course the killer had counted on the fact that they would come and had prepared accordingly. Lilja sat down on the bed while she waited for Molander to finish listening to the bedroom walls with a stethoscope. He had already made it abundantly clear that this was the last thing he would do in the house. She agreed that if he didn’t hear anything suspicious, they would leave.
He turned to her.
“Nothing?” Lilja asked.
Molander shook his head. “Nope. Not even the hum from a ventilation system.”
“So where the fuck is he?”
“Risk or Sölmedal?”
Lilja shrugged. “Both.”
“They could be absolutely anywhere, but let’s investigate Sölmedal’s workshop.”
Lilja nodded. Molander was right: they should go over right away. She stood up and walked over to the wardrobe, which was across from the bed, and opened the door.
“Well, make up your mind,” Molander said as she looked through the boring, beige clothes on their hangers.
“Okay, let’s go to the workshop now. Where is it again?”
“Frejagatan 2. It’s down in the industrial area just north of Råå.”
They left the bedroom and walked through the hall, where The Valkyrie had just started up again. They exchanged a look, left the house, and went back to the car. Lilja felt frustration bubbling up inside her. This was like playing a game of rock-paper-scissors, except that Sölmedal always knew their choice ahead of time. If they threw paper, he threw scissors. He’d surprised them with an unanticipated move every time.
She hadn’t expected him to be at home or his workshop. But all they could do was go there and hope to find something, which he knew of course. They’d thrown rock, and all he had to do was hold out paper, but what was written on it this time? Another address, in someone else’s name? No, that would be too obvious. If he wanted to surprise them, it had to be something else. Something...
Lilja’s thoughts were interrupted as Molander stopped suddenly at the Östhammarsgatan intersection and stared straight at one of the yards.
“What is it?”
Molander didn’t answer; instead, he walked up to the electrical box that was sticking out of the sidewalk.
“Ingvar, what is it? What are you doing?”
“This is where it is.” He bent down and placed his ear against the humming air intake beside the electrical box.
“Could you please be so kind as to tell me what —”
“I’ll be damned if he didn’t run it way over here so that you couldn’t hear anything from the house.” Molander pointed back along the sidewalk, where there was a half-metre-wide strip of new pavement extending all the way back to Sölmedal’s house.
I knew it. I knew it, Lilja thought, staring at Molander, who was already on his way back to the house.