Two folders were lying on his desk when John returned to the police station. One was the medical examiner’s report and the other was from his colleagues in white jumpsuits who had gone over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb.
He began with the forensic report and leafed through it to the section about the fingerprints on the balustrade outside Löfbergs. It made for anticlimactic reading. The prints were so indistinct that Karlstad had been obliged to send them to the National Forensic Centre in Linköping for further analysis. In layman’s terms, this meant that John would have to wait until the next day before he knew whether the killer was in the database or not.
The report otherwise contained just one major headline. The presumed murder weapon had been found in the form of a bloody chisel which had also been couriered to the experts in Linköping.
Forensics had been unable to locate Stella Bjelke’s cell phone. But according to the operator, a Samsung Galaxy registered in her name had been at the coffee roastery on the night of the murder and just before a quarter to eleven it had dropped off the network.
John felt his own phone buzzing in his inside jacket pocket and he set aside the stack of papers before he picked up.
“Hi. It’s Nicole.”
Her voice sounded fragile and he made an effort not to sound stressed. Billy’s daughter was only eight years old and still very vulnerable following her father’s death. She had been admitted as an inpatient by the child psychologist when he had paid her a visit and given her the number to his work cell. However, the little girl had no idea that they were related. To Nicole, he was just a cop who cared a little bit extra. Under that guise, he had also been applying pressure to social services to find a foster family. And two weeks ago his niece had moved in with a childless farming couple in Snaversrud outside of Karlstad.
“Hi there. How you getting on with all the pigs and cows?” he said.
“Hmm, so-so,” she said. “It smells disgusting here.”
He pictured the hovel at Hammarö that she and Billy had lived in and reflected that the smell could surely be no worse than it had been there.
“When are you coming here?” she said.
John tried to ward off the guilty conscience that the frail voice summoned. He didn’t want to cause the girl any unnecessary suffering. That was why he hadn’t visited the farm at Snaversrud. The plan had always been that he would leave Karlstad sooner or later, and it would be stupid to let Nicole get more attached to him than she already had.
“Soon, I hope,” he said. “There’s just so much going on at work right now. How’s your grandmother? Have you spoken to her?”
“Yes, on the phone. But it’s hard to hear what she says because she talks funny.”
John thought about his mother in the old people’s home. The news of Billy’s death had pretty much finished her off, literally. She’d had another stroke and had to go to the central hospital for emergency treatment.
They had last met at Billy’s funeral. John had remained in the background to avoid divulging his identity to the other mourners, but he still managed to exchange a few words with her outside the church. His mother had been crying in her wheelchair and hadn’t been able to stop talking about Billy. He had been such a source of joy to her in life. Her eldest son in the USA had been a different story, she confided in John, seemingly not understanding that it was actually him she was speaking to.
Nicole hadn’t been up to attending the funeral and that was probably for the best. Otherwise his mother would only have mixed her up with some other kid.
“How are you doing at your new school?” said John. “Have you made any friends?”
His niece rattled off some names and told him about a girl who’d taught her how to floss. John had no idea what that meant, but it was good to hear her talking about things he imagined girls of that age were interested in. At the same time, the thought that he’d never see her again rested heavy on him. Nicole had carved out a bigger spot in his heart than he was willing to admit.
Before they hung up, the uncertainty returned to the girl’s voice and she tried to push him for a promise that he would visit. John thought he managed to end the call without promising anything, but sensed that his niece might have perceived things differently.
He didn’t want to think about how she’d react the day the number for his work cell no longer worked. When he left her and the country for good. But by then, he would no longer be as important to Nicole. Her foster parents would gradually grow into their roles and shoulder the responsibility.
John had made his own inquiries into Mr. and Mrs. Redin, the farming couple. They had no previous criminal records and had also said they were open to adopting the girl if they were happy with one another. The farm in Snaversrud came with around 300 acres of forest. If Nicole inherited that then John supposed that she’d never have to worry about money.
John put his cell back in his jacket pocket. Twilight was well advanced and he really needed to head back to the Empire State to plan his meeting with Trevor, having invited him round the next night. Despite his preconceptions, there was no way the Swedish police would be sticking to regular office hours during a murder inquiry. At least not in the early days. He would have to wait until Ruben had gone for the day, and that would be a while yet.
John sighed in annoyance and reached for the folder from the medical examiner. If he had to stay then he might as well make himself useful.
According to the report, the cause of death was repeated slashes to the throat, and there were no indications that the body had been moved postmortem. The victim was estimated to have died between 21:00 and 23:00 on Thursday evening, which agreed with the timecodes from the CCTV footage outside Löfbergs. The corrosion to the face had been caused by nitric acid—probably by the perpetrator throwing it in Stella Bjelke’s face.
The report was written in cracklingly dry Swedish and it took John a good half-hour slog to make his way through it. When he was finally done, he pulled open the top drawer under his desk. There was the sketchpad he had brought with him in his suitcase from Baltimore. He opened it and let his hand stroke the thick paper.
His method of summarizing the key points of an investigation on just one sheet was something he had started during his spell with Homicide in New York. His colleagues had mocked him and swapped the name sign on his desk for one with Picasso on it. But before long, those investigators with broader outlooks had recognized the benefits of his investigation sketches. The freedom to use methods of expression other than words and the limited space forced the distillation of thoughts.
The metal pencil case was in the next drawer, and he selected a medium pencil. It worked for drawing most things, and was ideal since John still hadn’t decided how to tackle his tableau of the murder of Stella Bjelke.
He put pencil to paper and allowed his intuition to take control. That was what his mother had taught him to do. Alongside drinking box wine, painting had been her great passion. As a child, John had often sat beside her in the kitchen with his own sketchpad on his lap.
Without him really knowing how, a black heart began to emerge in the middle of the page. A symbol for love in darkness. For Black Tantra and the unknown man or woman that Stella Bjelke had agreed to meet.
Then he drew a taxi with the Löfbergs roastery in the background and next to that the killer’s battered old Volvo. On the hood, he wrote +27 mins to illustrate that it had arrived about half an hour later.
Next up was the internal crime scene. Stella Bjelke took the form of a dashed outline on the floor, while two objects were drawn in rich detail: the bottle of nitric acid and the bloody chisel.
John could taste lead in his mouth. Chewing on the pencil was a bad habit he had picked up when he needed to take a break to think.
The investigation sketch was contradictory.
The bottle told the tale of a consummate killer luring their victim to the roastery with the intent to harm her. Nobody wandered around with corrosive acid in their pocket on the off chance . . .
But the chisel was different. It was blunt and a tricky murder weapon. It was something grasped by the killer on impulse. If the plan from the very start had been to cut Stella Bjelke’s throat, why hadn’t he brought a knife?
John’s train of thought was interrupted by a knock on the door. It sounded unobtrusive, but it turned out to represent a breakthrough in the case. The officer from the video suite was there, clutching a new smoothie.
“I’ve found the Volvo’s plates,” he said.
Half an hour later, a liaison center had been set up in the tactical room at the police station. The camera that had supplied the jackpot was on a traffic circle at Våxnäs and had taken a clear picture of the Volvo’s rear plate.
John had sent the officer home to rest his eyes—the guy had performed heroics in front of his screens. Now the operational, police-based machinery was stepping in. The task force was already on their way to an address in the Kronoparken neighborhood. The operation lead had a camera on his helmet streaming live footage to the large TV on the wall. Right now it was showing the van weaving between red rear lights while heading east-bound on the E18 highway. The last of the daylight was seeping away, but the camera was kitted out for night vision and was delivering surprisingly high-quality footage.
Ruben nodded to John to indicate that he could begin his briefing. They were sitting next to each other with the speakerphone between them on the table.
“Okay, can everyone in the van hear me?” John said.
“We can hear you,” the leader of the task force confirmed.
“Good. The suspect is Birger Falk, born 1965. He owns the Volvo with plates FUK 833 which was seen at the crime scene last night. We’ve pulled his passport photo and confirmed that it matches the man seen outside the police station on CCTV.”
“Should we expect resistance?” crackled a voice from the speaker.
“Hard to tell,” John said. “He’s got three convictions on his rap sheet. Two related to the possession and sale of narcotics. The third is for drunk driving.”
“No violent crimes?”
“No, no violent crimes. Until now.”
“Any ties to other criminals?”
“Not so far as we know. We don’t have anything in our surveillance notes from the last four years.”
“Does he live alone in the apartment?”
“Yes, there’s no one else registered at that address.”
John saw the van, which was in the inside lane, take the exit for Kroppkärr. It slowed down and after a few minutes the first residential buildings appeared on the screen. The task force leader ordered the driver to pull over to the side of the road.
“We’re about two hundred meters from the address. The building has stairs leading to external galleries and doors that go straight into the apartments.”
“So there’s no need to gain entry to the stairwell?”
“No.”
John realized this was not the first time the task force was paying a visit to Kronoparken. He was beginning to get a grip on which neighborhoods in Karlstad were considered safe and which ones had a bad reputation. Blocks near the university definitely belonged in the latter category.
Ruben leaned toward the speakerphone.
“Are there any civilians nearby?”
“A truck is delivering stock to the grocery store, but otherwise no one right now.”
“Okay, then you have a green light from us,” Ruben said. “You’re running the show as of now.”
“Understood,” said the task force leader. “We’ll wait for the delivery to finish and then go.”
John pushed his chair out and stood up. On the line, he could hear the officers checking their equipment. There were clicks from moving parts of weapons and the sound of Kevlar vests being strapped to chests.
The truck pulled away from the loading bay and drove off. Shortly after, the task force leader gave the order. The camera on his helmet bounced as the van accelerated, driving over a speed bump. Before long, it stopped outside the right building and the police climbed the stairs to the external gallery. There were the sounds of leather boots, automatic carbines against thighs, and heavy breathing crackling through the speaker.
Then the camera stopped jumping around and John realized that they had reached the right door. After a quick look back to check that his colleagues were ready, the task force leader rang the bell. There was a brief period of silence before he repeated this procedure. When nothing happened, he thumped his hand on the door.
“Open up. This is the police.”
John saw him on the screen waving a colleague carrying a tool to the front. The door was no match for a picklock and after just a couple of seconds they were in.
The task force leader took point again and on his command the officers burst into the apartment. It was hard to fully keep up with the sequence of events since they only had footage from one camera. But soon different voices were yelling that rooms were secure. It was all over in less than a minute.
The camera flickered when the task force leader removed it from his helmet, turning the lens to face him.
“Sorry, boys. The place is empty.”
“Fuck’s sake,” John muttered. He felt the adrenaline coursing through him even though he’d been following the raid remotely.
“Put the apartment back the way it was and await an unmarked car,” Ruben said. “We’ll put eyes on the address. Stay out of sight but nearby. I want you back there in less than a minute if the bastard shows up.”
The man gave a thumbs‑up to the camera and then cut the connection. The TV went black and the police emblem began to aimlessly float around the display.
“I’ll put out the word that we’re looking for him,” Ruben said, getting up. “What about family? Does he have any close relatives?”
“The wife’s been dead for years, but he has a grown‑up daughter who lives here in town,” said John. “I’ll contact her and ask whether she knows where Dad is.”
Ruben nodded.
“Good. Do that. But be careful. We don’t want her setting off alarm bells. Just tell her we want a chat with him . . .”
“. . . to help with our inquiries,” John interjected.
It was an expression he’d heard his colleagues use and he’d added it to his own repertoire.
Ruben patted him on the back.
“It won’t be long before you pass the Swedish police vocabulary test,” he said, leaving the room.
John stayed where he was and dialed the daughter’s phone number. She picked up after two rings. After an initially confusing start to the call in which the line dropped out and the woman didn’t fully understand who he was, coverage improved.
“Why do you want to know where Dad is?” she said.
John thought about the convictions on his record. This was presumably not the first time the police had called her to ask questions.
“He needs to help us with our inquiries,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
Well, what did it mean, John thought to himself. It was one thing saying it, and quite another explaining its meaning.
“That we need to get in touch with him, basically,” he said, hoping to avoid any follow‑up questions. “Do you know where he is?”
“No idea.”
“Maybe he’s at work?” John suggested.
“He doesn’t have a job.”
“And there’s no friend or female acquaintance that he usually visits?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“When did you last see your father?”
There was silence on the line while she thought about this.
“I don’t quite remember. It’s been days.”
“Do you have a phone number I can reach him on?”
“No, sorry.”
“He must have a cell phone,” said John.
“Yes, but he changes his SIM card so often that I’ve stopped keeping track of the numbers. He usually comes by a couple of times a week and I don’t need to see him more often than that.”
John ended the call and let out a deep sigh. The Sweden he knew was a bureaucrats’ paradise. A country where the state knew everything there was to know about everyone. With one exception: anonymous SIM cards. The fact that these were still allowed here was weirder than maypoles at midsummer and singing about small frogs while doing a dance.