THE PREVIOUS EVENING, the Swedish Meteorological Office had warned of continuing snowfall. Irene had prepared herself by setting the alarm for half an hour earlier than usual.
It was horrible getting out of her lovely bed and staggering to the bathroom, dizzy with tiredness. However, as she glanced sleepily out of the window, she congratulated herself on her foresight. Another three centimeters of snow had fallen overnight.
Before she left, she tried to persuade Sammie to go outside for a pee. He didn’t even open one eye but made a point of snoring loudly before rolling over onto his back with his paws in the air. If there was one thing he hated, it was cold, wet, early mornings—an opinion his mistress shared completely. Unfortunately, unlike Sammie she had no choice and had to venture out into the gloom.
“BLOND—I MEAN, LINDA Holm was looking for you,” Jonny said when Irene met him in the corridor.
She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes until morning prayer. She headed for the superintendent’s office. Linda Holm was standing by her desk with her back to the door, talking on the phone as she tried to shrug off a warm-looking turquoise cardigan knitted in a thick, fluffy yarn.
She ended the call and managed to extricate her arm from the sleeve. At the same time she spotted Irene in the doorway and said, “Hi. I was wondering if you and Birgitta would like to be there this afternoon when we question Heinz Becker and the girls from the brothel.”
Irene thought about everything she had to do that day, and realized it was a hell of a long list. But she just had to prioritize this. So far Becker was the only lead that might help to establish the girl’s identity.
“Sure. One of them might know who the murdered girl is,” she replied.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Linda nodded toward the computer and said, “Yesterday afternoon I went through all the girls who are currently for sale on the Internet in the Göteborg area. I also checked every town within a radius of one hundred kilometers, and I didn’t find any girls as young as the one lying in the morgue. But as I said, Heinz Becker is in town, and if anyone is capable of smuggling in a really young girl, it’s him. I think it’s a good bet.”
“In that case we’ll definitely sit in on the interviews. I’ll speak to Birgitta.”
“I’ll be in touch when we’re ready.”
“Okay,” Irene said.
Linda nodded just as the phone started to ring again.
Irene set off along the corridor; she had just enough time to stop off at the coffee machine before the morning briefing. As she rounded the corner at speed, she bumped into Svante Malm, CSI technician.
“Oof! Oh, I’m so sorry,” Irene said.
“Damn! You’ve got coffee all over you,” Svante said.
Clumsily he tried to dab at the coffee stain spreading all over the sleeve of Irene’s pale blue top, with the result that it soon covered an even wider area. Irene pushed his hand away and scurried back down the corridor to the bathroom, where she turned the cold water on all the way and stuck her arm under the stream. The water went everywhere, but thanks to the fact that she had reacted so quickly, there was no damage to her skin, although it had been painful. Svante’s freckled face appeared in the doorway.
“Did you scald yourself?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“No, I’m fine. But could you get me a coffee, and I’ll see you in the meeting?” Irene replied, trying to sound convincing.
A relieved smile appeared on Svante’s amiable horse face. “It’s cool. Everyone’s waiting for me. They’ll just have to be patient while I go and fetch coffee. Milk? Sugar?”
“Black. Thanks.”
With a sigh she turned off the faucet and started patting the stain on her arm with some dry paper towels. It was very obvious, but there was nothing she could do about that. The question was whether it would ever come out. Irene felt slightly dejected because the thin woolen sweater was a good brand, and it was the only thing she had managed to buy in the post-Christmas sales. She glanced at her face in the mirror above the hand basin and concluded that she looked exactly the way she felt.
“WE’VE FOUND SEVERAL semen stains on the T-shirt and jacket, and we also found fresh semen in her hair,” Svante Malm said. He paused and looked around the room before continuing. “The semen in her hair matched the stains on the T-shirt. The stains on the jacket are from two other men.”
A deep silence followed this revelation. Birgitta whispered to Irene, “A gang bang.”
Irene turned her head and briefly contemplated the picture on the whiteboard. She couldn’t help shuddering as she looked at the skinny body lying on the cold metal surface of the table. In her mind’s eye she saw three naked men gathering around the table. She felt sick, and pushed the image away.
Death had removed every trace of emotion from the thin face, leaving behind a seal of silence. Who was she? Where had she come from? Who had killed her? How did she end up in the root cellar?
Svante’s voice penetrated her consciousness and interrupted her thoughts. “She was noticeably underdressed, given how cold it was the night she was killed. Her clothes were with her in the root cellar. It looked as if they had been thrown in, because they were on top of the body. She was wearing nothing but a polyester cotton T-shirt, extra small.” Svante clicked the mouse and a picture was projected onto the screen.
An item of clothing for a child, Irene thought. But when she looked more closely, she saw that perhaps this wasn’t the case. The short-sleeved top was pink, with the word SEX in big letters on the front. The neckline was very wide. Given how thin the victim had been, the top would probably have slipped down over at least one shoulder. Definitely a summer top, in Irene’s opinion. She also noticed that it was dirty.
The next picture showed a pair of black skinny jeans. Once again Irene felt a stab of distaste. Children’s jeans. They couldn’t be any bigger than size 130.
“They’ve been taken in,” Svante explained, pointing to the drainpipe legs. He turned back to his audience and went on. “The jeans are brand new. No semen stains.”
Another picture. A pair of black boots, badly scuffed and with worn-down high heels.
“Cheap. Synthetic. Size thirty-five. Although the girl’s feet were smaller; there was balled-up paper shoved into the toes. Probably bought secondhand, according to our expert. That’s Emilia; she says the style is from the late nineties. No socks or tights. Presumably the girl was barefoot inside her boots.”
Everyone in the room knew that Emilia was the new forensic technician at police HQ in Göteborg. She had spent many years working at SKL, the National Forensics Laboratory in Linköping, but had moved to Göteborg with her husband when he got a job at Chalmers University of Technology. She had already made an impact with her knowledge and skill, and her excellent contacts with SKL were a major advantage.
“She wasn’t wearing a bra. Or at least we didn’t find one. She didn’t really need one either. However, we did find a G-string. Nylon.”
The picture showed a few twisted bits of fabric that were supposed to represent a pair of panties.
“We also found a padded jacket, small. Far from new.”
The picture showed a short pink jacket with deep knitted bands around the sleeves and waist. The band around the right sleeve was frayed and worn. The jacket was in desperate need of a wash.
“On the outside of the jacket we found a total of seven semen stains, all on the upper section at the front. This semen comes from two different men, but these stains are older than the ones on the T-shirt. At least a week old.”
Irene felt an irrational sense of relief. The girl hadn’t been dealing with three men at the same time. The killer had probably been alone.
“So you didn’t find anything at all on the jeans?” Birgitta asked.
“No. As I said, they’re brand new. There was a considerable amount of secreted matter in the crotch, but no traces of semen.”
“According to Stridner, the girl had some horrible infection that stank. Presumably the johns wore condoms,” Jonny said.
Svante nodded. “No doubt. But at the same time, I have a feeling that …” He fell silent and clicked through to the next picture, which was also the last. “Her jewelry. Very cheap. Almost the kind of thing kids get when they buy gum from a machine.”
The screen showed a necklace with matching earrings in the form of small plastic flowers, and three rings with colored plastic stones. They probably constituted the girl’s entire assets.
“What were you going to say just now? You said you had a feeling that … what?” Birgitta wondered.
Svante remained silent for a moment before he answered. “Given where we found the stains … I think we’re looking at oral sex here. But she wasn’t suffocated; she was strangled. We should find out more on that point when they’ve done the autopsy.”
“Aren’t we supposed to hear the results this afternoon?” Jonny pointed out.
Superintendent Andersson cleared his throat to indicate that he was about to speak. “I called them yesterday afternoon. The autopsy won’t be finished today, but they have promised us a preliminary report on Monday afternoon. We’ll also have a preliminary report on Torleif then,” he informed them.
“How goddamn difficult can it be to work out what he died of?” Jonny muttered.
Andersson glared at him, but said nothing. Instead he turned back to Svante. “Do we know where the clothes were bought?”
“No. The jacket and boots are probably second hand. Possibly the T-shirt as well. The only thing we can say for sure is that the jeans were bought in Sweden, at JC. They’re actually JC’s own brand, Crocker. That’s coming from Emilia again; her children buy that particular brand.”
The superintendent pointed at Birgitta and said, “Check with every JC store in Göteborg and the surrounding area.”
Irene bit her lower lip to stop herself from objecting. She hadn’t yet had the chance to tell Birgitta that they would be sitting in on the interviews with Heinz Becker and the girls from the brothel.
“Needless to say we have also secured a large number of fibers and particles from her clothes. The only items of interest at the moment are some dark blue nylon fibers, approximately one centimeter in length, which we found on her T-shirt, mostly on the back. She has been lying on something fluffy, perhaps a fleece blanket, or an article of clothing made of fleece.”
Those were Svante’s final words. He closed his laptop and made for the door. As he was passing Irene, he asked, “How’s the arm?”
“Fine,” she reassured him.
It was still sore, but nothing to complain about. He gave her a consoling pat on the damp spot and smiled encouragingly as he left the room. In spite of the fact that it had been a very gentle pat, it had really hurt. She had to make an effort not to snatch her arm away and grimace from the pain.
Irene informed the team about the trafficking unit’s planned raid on the apartment where Heinz Becker had established his temporary brothel. She also took the opportunity to mention Linda Holm’s offer to allow the two female officers from Violent Crimes to sit in on the interviews that afternoon.
“That might be a good idea,” Andersson said. “If nothing else, it could be an angle worth pursuing. But I want you to check out those JC stores first.”
He turned to Hannu. “Any leads on those hoodlums who ran down Torleif?”
“There’s a rumor that Daniel Lindgren was seen in Frölunda Square last Wednesday night. Our colleagues in Frölunda are keeping his mother’s apartment under surveillance. No trace of the other two. We’ve sent out another call for Niklas Ström, Daniel Lindgren and Billy Kjellgren in every district in Västra Götaland, and at the same time we’re looking into a number of other possibilities. Nothing so far,” Hannu replied.
Andersson nodded. “There are five witnesses who saw the BMW driving up Töpelsgatan after it hit Torleif Sandberg. Two of the witnesses are certain there were only two people in the car. We’ve also had two reports of another car being driven somewhat erratically earlier that evening. Both witnesses live on Töpelsgatan. One saw the car from his window; the other was out walking his dog. They are unsure of the exact time, but both say it was around twenty thirty. The man with the dog thinks it was about twenty thirty-five. The car was traveling along Töpelsgatan at high speed. That’s all the witness at the window saw. The dog owner claims that his dog was almost run over because they were about to cross the street. He shook his fist at the car, but it simply disappeared around the bend without slowing down. The witness claims there was a man and a woman in the car. I spoke to him yesterday, and he described the woman as dark haired and dressed in some kind of dark clothing. He didn’t have time to get a closer look at her appearance, but he thought she was an adult rather than a child or a teenager. The man has cropped dark hair, possibly thinning on top, and he was wearing glasses. He was gesticulating and talking to the woman. The witness thought he looked extremely agitated. The car was a dark-colored Volvo S80, probably black or dark blue.”
Andersson paused, frowning as he decided on the next step. “We’ll inform the media that we’re looking for the car,” he said eventually. “It was in the area at around the time the girl was murdered. If nothing else, the people in the car might have seen something.”
An hour before the boys in the stolen BMW had raced up the hill with a broken windshield, the dark Volvo had followed the same route at high speed. Neither the man nor the woman had contacted the police, in spite of the fact that everyone who had been in the area had been asked to do so. The relevant times had been publicized in the press. The couple in the Volvo probably had nothing to do with the murder, but it was still strange they hadn’t come forward. Or perhaps they didn’t want to? Were they involved in the murder after all? Irene considered various possibilities but had to give up in the end.
Fredrik Stridh spoke up. “I’ve had a tip about who our body up at Brudarmossen might be,” he said with an unmistakable hint of triumph in his voice.
“Who?” Andersson asked abruptly.
“I’ve been going through all males over the age of sixty who have gone missing in the Göteborg area during the past twelve months. Most of them have been found, but three are still unaccounted for. We can eliminate one right away because he has only one finger and the thumb on his left hand. Our body has all its digits intact. We can eliminate another because he disappeared in Majorca, and there’s nothing to indicate he returned to Sweden. So that leaves just one possibility.”
He looked down at his notepad and began to read aloud: “Ingvar Olsson, aged seventy-one. Reported missing in December by the property company he rented his apartment from. His last rental payment was made at the end of August, which means he disappeared during September. Olsson was a retired seaman. He lived in a one-room apartment in Kortedala, having been allowed to take over the lease after the death of his brother. There were no other living relatives, so Olsson inherited the whole thing. His brother didn’t own only this apartment; he had also taken over a holiday cottage that used to belong to their parents. And guess where that cottage was?”
“Elementary. Delsjö holiday village,” Birgitta answered at once.
“Exactly! As children the brothers used to run around in Delsjö during their summer vacation. Ingvar must have known the area like the back of his hand.”
“Did he still own the cottage?” Birgitta asked.
“No. He sold it a few years ago. I presume old seamen don’t have a financial cushion worth millions when they come ashore, and he drank pretty heavily. He was picked up several times for public intoxication over the years. And …” Fredrik paused dramatically, keeping his colleagues on tenterhooks for a little while. “When we moved the body, we found a rucksack that he’d been using to support his back. There was a plastic bag inside with the remains of some rotten fruit and a box of moldy sandwiches. On the ground beside him we found an almost empty bottle of Special Schnapps, and an empty bottle that had contained some kind of sleeping pills. Let me see, what were they called?” He broke off to check through his notes. “Mogadon. We don’t know how many he took.”
“Suicide,” Andersson stated.
“It looks that way. Everything points to suicide, but we’ll have to wait for the results of the autopsy before we close down the investigation.”
“Good, let’s do that. In the meantime you can help Irene and Birgitta to check out the JC stores. If you don’t get anywhere today, contact JC headquarters in Göteborg and ask them to send out a message to all their staff. The person who sold those jeans to the girl could be off work today. Jonny and Hannu, carry on looking for the guys who killed Torleif. Tommy and I will take the witnesses from Töpelsgatan on the night of the murder. Some bastard must have seen something that can be linked to the murder. And I’d like to speak to the couple in the Volvo.”
THEY GOT LUCKY with the JC store on Backaplan. The assistant clearly recalled an odd pair who had bought a pair of black Crocker jeans the previous weekend.
“I remember them because she was wearing like a short denim skirt and this really ugly pink padded jacket. Her boots must have been like a hundred years old, and she didn’t have anything on her legs. I thought that was weird because it was like minus ten outside! And then her dad wanted us to take in the pant legs so she could tuck them into her boots. But this was like Saturday, so I said we couldn’t do it right away, and he got real mad,” the youthful voice said on the phone.
“Did he speak Swedish?” Birgitta asked.
“No, English. Like, really badly.”
“And did the girl speak English, too?”
“No, she didn’t say anything. She just like nodded when the old man said something to her.”
“Did you recognize what language he spoke to her?”
“Not really … it kind of sounded like Finnish.”
Estonian sounds very similar to Finnish to someone who doesn’t speak either language. Birgitta was pretty sure she had found the right JC store. She asked the assistant to hang on.
“Irene. I think I’ve got the right store, but I need to go over to the Trafficking Unit to ask Linda Holm if she’s got a photo of Heinz Becker. I also need a picture of the girl, then I’ll go over to Backaplan to question the assistant and see if she recognizes either of them.”
“Fantastic,” Irene said, crossing out the last number she had called, although it would be premature to scrap the list of JC stores, just in case the assistant in Backaplan didn’t recognize Becker or the girl.
“I’ll go and see Linda and you work on a picture of the girl. The sketch we’re releasing to the press should be ready by now,” Irene said.
“If not I’ll have to take the photo from the morgue. She looks peaceful. No injuries to her face,” Birgitta mused.
Not to her face, Irene thought with a shudder.
WHEN IRENE REACHED Linda Holm’s office, the superintendent was once again wrestling with her cardigan. This time she was trying to put it on while talking on the phone.
“Okay. I’m leaving right away.”
She hung up and said hi to Irene, who quickly asked if there was a photo of Heinz Becker they could have. Linda Holm opened the top drawer and passed her an enlarged printout. “There you go. A nice fresh passport photo. Taken three months ago.”
Heinz Becker’s eyes were narrow slits in his fleshy face. His hairline had crept up toward the top of his head, and he had slicked back the thin, greying hair and fastened it in a ponytail. At some point during his life he had broken his nose and failed to get it reset, judging by the fact that his potato nose bent to the right. He looked at least ten years older than he actually was.
“Jesus! Talk about looking like a criminal!”
“Absolutely. Listen, do you want to come with us on the raid? I’m leaving now; we’re going in in just under an hour.”
Irene thought fast. Birgitta could handle the interview with the store assistant; it hardly required two of them. If they could find proof that the girl lying in the morgue had been in the apartment before she died, it would save them a huge amount of time.
“Yes please. Can I bring Fredrik Stridh?”
“Sure, no problem.”
Irene hurried back and gave Birgitta the picture of Heinz Becker, then asked Fredrik if he wanted to accompany her on the raid.
“Definitely,” he said.
His face lit up at the prospect of getting out into the field for a while. Like Irene he loathed paperwork. He radiated a boyish happiness and energy that could easily be misinterpreted as childishness. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Irene had learned to appreciate his good humor and easy manner, and she valued his enthusiasm for his work even more. Fredrik still thought he had the best job in the world. For her part, Irene wasn’t always quite so sure about that.