THE FAMILY’S REACTION to the news of Irene’s weekend trip to the Canaries could best be described as a resigned acceptance. They were used to the fact that she often had to work overtime, including weekends when she should have been free. Krister had struggled to hide his disappointment. He had a long weekend off work every five weeks, and he had been looking forward to a trip to the cottage in Värmland to go skiing and snowboarding. However, his mood lightened when Katarina said firmly that they ought to go anyway. Felipe could take Irene’s place. Before Felipe met Katarina he had never been anywhere near a ski slope, but they had been up to Ski Sunne several times the previous winter. Thanks to his training as a dancer his balance was good, and he had quickly learned to master the snowboard. These days he was an enthusiastic practitioner.
Irene couldn’t help the fleeting thought that passed through her mind: she was dispensable within her family. Resolutely she pushed the foolish thought aside. She was being replaced by Felipe purely because of her work.
“TWO DAYS! I don’t begrudge you a single hour!”
Tommy smiled as he spoke, but the little sigh that escaped him gave away the truth. He would have loved to doze off on a plane flying south to the sun on Friday morning. The discussions with their Spanish colleagues could be dealt with that afternoon, leaving Saturday free to spend by the pool. Irene was thinking along much the same lines.
Jonny merely glared at her, then said, “You’re going? Haven’t those poor Spaniards got enough problems already?” He wasn’t smiling as he spoke.
They were all in the conference room waiting for Hannu. He had called on his cell from a traffic jam outside Lerum. One section of the freeway was flooded, and the traffic had been diverted along a series of smaller roads. He was going to be at least thirty minutes late.
Irene had finished her reports and scanned all the relevant pictures into her laptop. To be on the safe side she had also made hard copies of everything, just in case the technology let her down. That had happened all too often in the past.
When Hannu arrived he seemed perfectly normal at first glance. He sat down opposite Irene, which gave her the opportunity to take a closer look at him. His ash-blond hair had been cut fairly recently, and he was wearing jeans and a sweater as always. But when Irene happened to meet his gaze, she felt very uneasy. The blue eyes were bloodshot and did not reflect his usual serenity. Had he been crying? He certainly didn’t look as if he’d slept much. Irene had never noticed any lines on his face before, but now they were clearly visible in the harsh fluorescent light. Admittedly that particular light didn’t flatter anyone, but Hannu looked unusually worn out and whey-faced.
Irene got to her feet and said, “I’ll get you a coffee. I need a top-off anyway.”
Hannu nodded gratefully at her.
“Coffee: Irene’s universal panacea,” Tommy said, smiling warmly at Hannu.
He, too, had realized that something wasn’t right. They had worked with Hannu for many years now, and they knew him well by this stage. Or at least as well as Hannu allowed any of his colleagues to get to know him. Something was definitely wrong. Did it have to do with Birgitta? Irene felt a vague anxiety begin to churn away in her stomach as she hurried off to the coffee machine. She realized how worried she was when she couldn’t remember whether or not Hannu took milk. Everyone in the department knew how everyone else liked their coffee. She took a chance and pressed the MILK button.
“Thanks. I don’t mind it with milk.”
Hannu gave her a wan smile. Damn! It was Birgitta who usually took milk. Irene offered to swap with him, but he refused.
“I’ll top it off with black in a minute,” he said.
He took a deep swig of his coffee, unconsciously pulling a face before putting the cup down.
“First of all I need to tell you that Birgitta … that we … lost the baby last night,” he said, his voice trembling.
Nobody knew what to say. The room went very quiet. Superintendent Andersson cleared his throat and made a few uncoordinated movements with his mouth as if he was working up to saying something, but no audible sounds emerged.
It was Hannu himself who went on. “Birgitta isn’t feeling too bad, under the circumstances, but her blood pressure is still high. She won’t be back at work until it comes down.”
Blood pressure still high? Irene couldn’t remember Birgitta mentioning high blood pressure. On the contrary, she had seemed so happy and full of confidence. The only consolation was that the pregnancy hadn’t been very far along; Irene assumed that would make it slightly easier for Birgitta to recover, both physically and mentally. And no doubt she and Hannu would soon have a new sibling for little Timo.
Hannu knocked back the remaining contents of his coffee cup in one gulp. “I picked up the autopsy report on Torleif Sandberg yesterday,” he said.
He was speaking in his usual calm tone, and his colleagues immediately relaxed. That half-strangled voice with its underlying black despair had made them uneasy. Grief is difficult to handle if it comes too close. It’s always easier if a professional distance can be maintained.
“The skull was shattered. Death was instantaneous. Extensive injuries to the rest of the body. The aorta was severed and he bled to death very quickly. Professor Stridner sees nothing unusual in the injuries; they are exactly as she would have expected. However, she did make a number of other discoveries.”
He glanced up from the document he had placed in front of him on the table. When no one showed any sign of wanting to speak, he looked down again and continued. “She pointed out that he was wearing very insubstantial clothing, given that the temperature was minus fifteen when he went out for a run. Nothing on his head. No mittens or gloves. No thermal pants. Ordinary sneakers and short sports socks. Short-sleeved T-shirt and underpants and an ordinary track suit. Admittedly it was a lined police-issue tracksuit in cotton poplin, but people usually wear those when it’s several degrees above freezing. They’re not particularly warm.”
No gloves. It was the image from the scene of the accident that had flickered through Irene’s subconscious: the severed hand lying on the pavement, with no glove or mitten on it.
“So he was dressed for a run in a temperature of five degrees above zero or higher,” Fredrik concluded.
“Exactly. Stridner thought that was worth noting, particularly as he was showing signs of damage due to frostbite in several parts of his body: fingers, toes, cheeks, nose, ears and chin. According to Stridner, he must have been out in the cold for at least an hour in order to have sustained such extensive damage.”
“Frostbite? So why the hell wasn’t he dressed properly? Torleif has been going out running in all weather for at least forty years!” Andersson was clearly finding it difficult to control his indignation.
“He was an outstanding member of the police orienteering team for many years. He had lots of prizes in his cabinet,” Irene said.
“How do you know that?” Andersson said suspiciously.
Since Andersson wasn’t supposed to know about the unofficial visit she and Hannu had made to Torleif’s apartment, she said glibly, “Stefan mentioned it. His adoptive son.”
“I know who he is,” the superintendent snapped. He still found it difficult to deal with the thought that Torleif had lied to his face about being the boy’s father. Perhaps Torleif had been too embarrassed to tell his colleagues he was marrying a woman who was carrying another man’s child. But then it was never easy to understand what motivated other people. That was something Irene had learned during her years as a police officer.
“Why would someone who obviously knew better go out in such cold weather dressed like that? And why did he run so far? He must have gone a long way if he was out for at least an hour. And why did he go out so late at night? I mean, it was pitch dark,” Tommy said, rattling out a barrage of both questions and answers.
“Could he have been a bit gaga?” Jonny suggested.
“Possibly, but there’s nothing to indicate that,” Hannu replied.
Irene thought about the clean, tidy apartment. The décor might have been dull and old-fashioned, but everything had been in perfect order. Spotless. It hadn’t looked as if a person with dementia had been living there. Torleif Sandberg had been sixty-four years old when he died, and she knew that it was relatively rare for dementia to strike at such an early age. Although she had wondered about herself occasionally. Only last week she had put the milk away in the microwave; she had found it there the following morning. She had simply poured it down the sink without telling anyone else in the family. But it had given her pause.
“Could it be connected to the stolen car?” Fredrik said.
“In what way?” Andersson said.
Fredrik thought for a moment before outlining his theory. “If he happened to look out the window and saw someone stealing his car, perhaps he rushed outside in what he happened to be wearing. He probably wouldn’t have given a thought to how cold it was. By the time he got outside, the thief had already started the car and was driving off. Torleif ran after him—Irene says he was fast. And then … what happened next? Maybe he got lost?” Fredrik looked around, hoping to find support among his colleagues.
“Lost? I hardly think so,” Andersson said. “He’d lived in the area for at least twenty-five years, and went running around there virtually every day.”
“And he couldn’t have seen the car being stolen. His apartment doesn’t have a window overlooking the street where it was parked,” Hannu pointed out.
Irene was thinking the same thing. The entrance to Torleif’s apartment was at the far side of the building, while his car had been parked at the opposite end. There was no chance that he could have seen the car from his windows.
“So then why was he outside dressed like that when it was so cold?” Tommy repeated.
It was difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why Torleif had been out in the cold for at least an hour. No experienced runner exposes himself to the dangers of temperatures well below freezing. The risk of damage to muscles and tendons increases significantly in the cold, particularly for older people, which is why runners usually prefer to wear too much rather than too little. It’s easier to remove an item of clothing if you get too hot than to try to run faster when you start to stiffen up.
“What about the toxicology?” Irene asked.
“No trace of narcotics or pharmaceutical drugs,” Hannu confirmed.
“That would have been all we needed,” Andersson muttered to himself. He was drumming his fingers on the table, looking pensive. “Tommy, can you give us a summary of where we are in the investigation? We might come up with something while we’re listening to you,” he said eventually.
“Okay. So to begin with we have Torleif, who—according to the witnesses waiting at the tram stop—comes running along at high speed past the entrance of the TV studios. Without showing any sign of slowing down or looking around, he runs straight out into Delsjövägen. At that point a BMW comes racing up the road, driven by a car thief with his pal sitting next to him in the passenger seat. The stolen car is being followed by a patrol car at a distance of approximately 150 meters. The cops see the stolen car hit someone; the body is thrown up in the air. They stop and call an ambulance. The witnesses see the BMW, with a shattered windshield, turn onto Töpelsgatan and disappear up the hill. When—”
Andersson waved his hands and interrupted Tommy. “Stop! We know exactly what happened after Torleif was run down. The problem is that we have no idea what happened before! Why the hell was he out running in the dark and the cold? The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.”
Everyone in the room agreed with him. No one had a decent theory—not after Fredrik’s had gone down in flames.
“The question is whether we need to look into why he was out running. Maybe he’d just misjudged how far he was going to go. Or maybe he just took out the trash, then spotted something and set off,” Tommy said.
“He was on his way home,” Irene pointed out quietly.
“What? How the hell do you know that?” Andersson demanded.
“He was running straight across Delsjövägen, toward Anders Zornsgatan where he lived. Which means it’s likely that he ran across the street in the opposite direction earlier in the evening. Where had he been in the period in between? Did he spend an hour running along marked tracks? Or was he indoors somewhere? If so, where?”
“Perhaps he was in a car,” Fredrik suggested.
“Possibly. There’s a big parking lot outside the TV studios,” Irene said.
“The frostbite damage,” Hannu reminded her.
“That proves he was outdoors,” Tommy said. “Not in a car. And even if he was only going to the parking lot at the TV studios, surely he would have put on a jacket at least. It’s still a few hundred meters from his apartment, and it really was freezing.”
“Perhaps he ran there,” Fredrik tried again.
“Or maybe he was running around looking for his missing car,” Jonny said.
“This is getting us nowhere. And the important thing isn’t whatever the hell Torleif was doing before he was run down. The important thing is to catch the bastards who killed him!” Andersson said.
Irene and Hannu exchanged a glance. They both knew the superintendent was right. There was no point in channeling their limited resources into something that wasn’t relevant to the investigation. But at the same time they were both experienced officers, and they were intrigued by all the odd, unexpected details that had begun to emerge as they looked into Torleif Sandberg’s life and death.
Everyone jumped as the intercom suddenly crackled into life. “Hello! Are you there?” came Svante Malm’s voice.
Tommy, who was sitting nearest, leaned over and pressed the button. “Yes, we’re here,” he answered cheerfully.
“Good. I’ve just run a check on the fingerprints we found in Torleif Sandberg’s car. They were in our records, and they belong to two guys named Niklas Ström and Björn Kjellgren. Their ID numbers are—”
“Thanks, Svante. We’ve already got their details,” Tommy managed to say with some difficulty.
“Okay, I’ll be in touch if I find anything else.”
When the connection was broken you could have heard a pin drop in the room. They sat there motionless, hardly even blinking. Some of their heads were full of thoughts, buzzing around like a swarm of bees, while others’ brains had stopped working completely.
“What the hell does this mean?” Jonny said eventually.
“I have no idea. This can’t be right,” Tommy said in confusion.
“Jesper and I have been working our asses off trying to find the bastards who had absconded from various institutions,” Jonny said. “There were a few to choose from at the beginning; we’ve gradually been able to eliminate them from our inquiries, one by one. Which only leaves Billy and Niklas. But we’ve been looking for them as the suspects who stole the BMW that ran down and killed Muesli. And now it turns out that they stole his car! How the hell is that possible?” His frustration was obvious, and it was shared by everyone in the room.
“It does seem pretty unlikely,” Tommy agreed.
“Unlikely! It’s fucking impossible!” the superintendent exploded. His face was a worrying shade of bright red.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance it could be a mistake?” Irene said.
“More like a bad joke,” Tommy said wearily.
“So Billy’s hooked up with the gay rapist! Maybe little Billy is similarly inclined. I bet he likes it rough.” Jonny grinned. He was obviously recovering from the initial shock, and was well on the way to being his usual self again.
“It’s slightly surprising, but then again, perhaps not. They were both in Gräskärr. According to the staff they didn’t have much close contact, but they must have had some. They took off within twenty-four hours of each other, Niklas first and then Billy. Everybody assumed that Billy had been inspired by Niklas’s escape; nobody thought they’d planned it together,” Irene said. She was the one who had collated the information about the absconders at an early stage of the investigation. It felt like a long time ago.
“There’s no point in sitting here speculating! Get out there and find the little bastards!” Andersson snapped.
He got to his feet, indicating that the meeting was over. Irene noticed that he hadn’t taken a cookie out of the open packet lying on the table. She was starting to get seriously worried about him.
Hannu came over to Irene and stood beside her. He waited until they were alone in the room.
“Could you help me with something?” he said quietly.
His facial expression was now completely under control. It must have taken an enormous toll on him to reveal his grief over the tragedy that had befallen his family, and in front of all his colleagues, too. Irene knew he wouldn’t say any more unless she asked. If then.
“Of course. What do you want me to do?”
“You seemed to get on well with Stefan Sandberg. I got the impression that he trusted you. He told you a lot more than he needed to.”
Irene nodded.
“Could you give him a call and tell him that the car has been found?”
“He doesn’t know yet?” Irene exclaimed.
“No. Nobody thought about it yesterday.”
Irene opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. She knew better than anyone that they were overwhelmed with work. A stolen car wasn’t exactly a high priority, at least not until inexplicable connections started popping up. The two boys who they suspected of having run down and killed Torleif turned out instead to be the ones who had stolen his car. Admittedly this had happened just a few hundred meters from the spot where Torleif had died, but there was still no rhyme or reason to it. Why were they even in the area? How could they have got hold of Torleif’s car keys? Did they know it was his car when they stole it?
“Tell Stefan Sandberg about the fingerprints. Ask him if he can think of any possible connection between Torleif and the two boys,” Hannu went on.
“Where are you going with this?” She realized there must be a point to his questions.
“Niklas Ström is gay. We don’t know anything about Billy Kjellgren’s inclinations, but he ran away with Niklas. I’m just wondering whether Torleif might have been gay. Niklas and Billy could have lured Torleif out to his car, perhaps by promising him sex. Torleif could have been threatened and managed to get out of the car. Obviously his instinct was to run straight home. They could have been some distance away, which would explain the frostbite damage. That would also explain why we haven’t found his car keys, just the spare keys that he had in the apartment. Niklas and Billy hung onto the keys and the car.”
Irene realized she was sitting staring at Hannu. That was probably the longest single speech she had ever heard from him. And his theory was absolutely credible. It would explain the link between the two boys, Torleif and his car.
“That’s an excellent theory! So you want me to try and find out if Stefan knows whether Torleif was gay?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get on it right away.”
Irene went straight to her office. Hannu had definitely come up with a theory where no one else had been able to. Of course, the big question still remained: Who had killed Torleif?
STEFAN SANDBERG ANSWERED his cell when she called. He said he would be going home to Umeå that afternoon. He had managed to sort out most things, and wouldn’t be coming back until the funeral. He didn’t show much interest when she told him that the stolen car had been found.
“Outside Olofstorp? Does that mean the thieves are there?” he asked.
“Not necessarily. The car had run out of gas. They might have had another car nearby. At any rate they didn’t steal another car in the area, at least not as far as we know,” Irene said.
She wondered feverishly how she could introduce the subject of Torleif’s sexual inclinations. There wasn’t a natural segue in the conversation, so she decided the best thing was to go straight to the point. Stefan was a doctor, after all.
“There is one thing that’s puzzling us. Forensics found the fingerprints of the two car thieves. They’re on our records, so we know who they are.”
“But surely that’s a good thing? What’s the problem?”
“The problem is the link between Torleif and these two guys. We can’t work out how the whole thing hangs together, which is why I have to ask you a very delicate question.” Irene paused, wondering how to phrase her query.
“What do you mean, delicate?” She could hear that Stefan was a little wary.
“At least one of the two guys was homosexual. Do you happen to know whether Torleif might have been gay?” She had decided it was best to be frank.
There was such a long silence that Irene began to think Stefan wasn’t going to answer.
To her relief he spoke at last. “I’m just trying to think … Mom never said anything to suggest that. If he was gay, then he probably hid it from her. Or perhaps he didn’t acknowledge that side of himself until after the divorce.”
Irene couldn’t help feeling a pang of disappointment.
“I guess the problem is I didn’t know Torleif well. I have virtually no memories from my first four years, when I lived with him and Mom here in Göteborg. Are you sure he had a connection with the guys who took his car?”
“They had the keys,” Irene informed him.
“In that case they must have gotten a hold of them somehow. It’s very strange. But I have come across another mystery,” Stefan said.
“A mystery? Sounds interesting.”
“It is. I had a meeting with Torleif’s personal banking adviser yesterday afternoon. There’s a lot of stuff to sort out with the bank after someone dies. I discovered that Torleif had only eighty-three thousand kronor in his account. That was all.”
“That’s not too bad, is it?”
Irene thought about her own account. She would have been delighted if Torleif’s money had found its way there by some miracle.
“No, it’s a reasonable amount. But Torleif has always lived so … carefully. I expected there to be more money. And his adviser told me exactly what Torleif had done with it all. He showed me the paperwork. Torleif had just bought a house in Thailand!”
Irene was astonished. “Thailand?” she repeated.
“Yes. A big house that cost eight hundred thousand kronor. Apparently it’s a luxury villa, and it would cost many times that amount in Sweden. It’s got a pool and everything.”
“Did you have any idea that he was planning to move to Thailand?”
“No, but I know he’s been there. He told me the last time I saw him, three years ago. He said he treated himself to a good car and one trip abroad each year, and the previous year he’d been to Thailand.”
“Unbelievable!”
Possibly not the most inspired comment, Irene thought, but it expressed exactly how she was feeling right now.
“You could say that. Now I’m stuck with a house in Thailand, which is an unexpected problem. Speaking of problems, did you find Torleif’s cell after he’d been hit?”
“No. He didn’t have a cell with him—just the keys to his apartment. And there was a flashlight lying next to him,” Irene said.
“That’s odd. A bill has just arrived for a brand new contract with Telenor and a new Nokia. I’ve searched the whole apartment, but there’s no sign of his cell.”
Did this have any relevance to the investigation into Torleif’s death?
“I’ll check with forensics, see if they’ve found a Nokia in the car,” she said.
“Good. I need to contact Telenor and cancel the contract; they might want the phone back. I don’t really know what their policy is in the case of a sudden death.”
“I have no idea,” Irene answered honestly.
“You have my cell number if you need to contact me once I’m back home,” Stefan said.
Irene was suddenly struck by a thought. “I’ve got your number, but was Torleif’s number on the paperwork from Telenor?”
“Absolutely. Both his number and pin code, along with the cell phone’s ID number. It’s all here.”
He gave Irene the details and she jotted them down.
When she had finished talking to Stefan, she called Svante Malm on his direct line. He wasn’t available because he was out on a job. Irene sent him an email, asking if they had found a Nokia in Torleif Sandberg’s car. She also included all the numbers Stefan had given her.
Then she picked up her laptop and her bag containing all the case notes, and said goodbye to her colleagues. Following a barrage of jokes and good wishes with varying degrees of sincerity, she left the department and pressed the elevator button. She was going straight home to pack.