27
“Bloody hell, I’ll never get used to breaking the news of a death,” said Ruben, reclining in his office chair. “But now it’s done, and I think she took it well, given the circumstances.”
The woman whose receding back John had glimpsed in the corridor was Birger Falk’s daughter. He remembered the deep-frozen face in the trunk of the Volvo and hoped the medical examiner had been able to do something with it before she saw her father in the mortuary.
The police station was still a hive of activity even though it was almost eight o’clock in the evening. Ever since John had set the ball rolling, county CID had been working with an efficiency that would have impressed even his former colleagues in the NYPD.
The Sig Sauer from the glove compartment had already been sent to Linköping and it had been test-fired. The results were just as conclusive as he had hoped. NFC had determined with the highest possible degree of certainty that the bullets that had killed the man at Bergvik had been fired from the pistol in question. Analysis of the fingerprints on the butt were also unambiguous. The hand that had held it belonged to Birger Falk.
As for the serial number, John had done a good job with the angle grinder. It was impossible to trace the gun, which meant there was no obvious connection to the police force. After reading the report from Forensics, Ruben had announced the cancellation of the drive to test-fire every gun on the force.
That had been a couple of hours ago. He no longer looked as satisfied, and John sensed that this was about more than just a lingering sense of unease after his conversation with the daughter.
“We need to talk about how we’re going to manage this work. The chief commissioner wants us to merge the Löfbergs investigation with the Bergvik shooting, and thinks we should bring in outside help to find Birger Falk’s murderer. From Rikskrim—sorry, National Crime as they call themselves these days.”
His boss moved restlessly behind his desk, squashed as ever between the top brass and the foot soldiers in county CID.
“It goes without saying that this isn’t because there’s a lack of trust in our own personnel. It’s just that National Crime has more experience with similar cases, so it would be stupid not to exploit that.”
“In other words, we’re off the case?” said John, who was seated in the annoyingly low visitor’s armchair.
“No, you definitely shouldn’t take it that way. The chief commissioner—and I,” he added, “are picturing a joint investigation. The best of both worlds.”
“But Stockholm is calling the shots?”
“Yes, if you insist on putting it like that. National Crime’s man will be here to lead the investigation as of tomorrow. Well, woman, as it happens.”
John raised his eyebrows.
“So they’ve already decided who it’s going to be?”
“Yes, she’s on the train already and I’ve sent uniform down to the station to give her a lift here as soon as she arrives,” said Ruben, looking sly. “Does the name Mona Ejdewik sound familiar?”
It did, and familiar was a gross understatement when it came to describing their relationship. Mona Ejdewik had been tasked by the FBI with overseeing John’s witness protection program while in Sweden. They had worked together on the investigation that had ended in Billy’s tragic death. Their partnership had been characterized by mutual respect until the point when John was forced to lie to her. After that, their relationship had been professionally chilly on the few occasions they had spoken.
Mona was approaching sixty, but still worked harder than most cops John had encountered on either side of the Atlantic. Her approach, combining analytical skills with intuition, had made an impression on him, and he wasn’t easily impressed.
John silently sighed. Ordinarily, these were qualities he appreciated in a colleague. But not this time. He was perfectly capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of Ruben and the other investigators in county CID, but Mona would pose a challenge.
“And what about my role?” said John. “What will I be doing?”
Ruben smiled.
“You’ll be our liaison and her right-hand man. The dynamic duo—reunited!”
At around half past nine that evening, Mona Ejdewik opened the door to the conference room at county CID. She was wearing a double-breasted coat with slim-cut black jeans and a pair of boots so sturdy they would have been at home on the task force’s armored truck.
Ruben leapt out of his seat and almost appeared to stand at attention. John was struck once again by the natural authority that Mona radiated with every movement she made—from her handshake with his boss to the way she placed her shoulder bag at the head of the table. The leader’s seat, the chair for whoever was in command.
John stood up and greeted her too. If Mona was hesitant about working with him again then it wasn’t perceptible. She smiled briefly and said it was good to see him.
Once the cordialities were out of the way and Ruben had asked for the second time whether she wanted coffee, John went over to the large whiteboard. He had spent much of the afternoon constructing the web of truths, half-truths and downright lies that he intended to present to both members of his audience.
“If it’s okay with you, Mona, I thought I’d start with the murder of Stella Bjelke. As I see it, that’s the start of our chain of events.”
He attached a photo of the dead woman to the board.
“According to the medical examiner, her throat was pierced repeatedly with a chisel and she died shortly afterward from her injuries. She was found by some contractors early on Friday morning at the Löfbergs coffee roastery.”
John took a new photograph from his folder.
“We examined the surrounding area and found a CCTV camera. The footage shows Stella Bjelke accessing the building late on Thursday evening. Half an hour later, this man arrives on the scene and enters via the same door.”
He pinned up the blurry still showing a figure on the steps outside the roastery.
“On his way out, he touches this balustrade with his hand.”
John pointed to the photo.
“We examined it and found a bloody handprint. The blood was from the victim and the print belonged to Birger Falk, born 1965, who lived in a rough neighborhood here in town, called Kronoparken.”
“He was the one found dead today, right? In his own car,” Mona interjected.
John nodded.
“I’ll get to that, but first I want to talk about the other murder. The shooting on the roof of the shopping mall.”
Mona leafed through the papers she’d removed from her bag and laid out on the table.
“Ruben emailed the files to me, but I’m afraid I didn’t get through the lot. I always feel sick on the X2000.”
“X2000?” John repeated.
“Yes, that’s what it’s called. The train.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, before continuing. “The alarm at Bergvik—that’s the name of the mall—was triggered at around ten o’clock last night. Security, who were first on the scene, thought it was a break-in, but when they entered the building, they found a man on the floor. He’d been shot twice and fallen into the mall through a glass cupola on the roof.”
Mona consulted her papers again.
“Stanislaw Panufnik. A Polish hitman working for a Nigerian drug cartel.”
“Yes,” said John, also putting a photo of him up on the board. “Or German, depending on how you look at it. He’d been a resident of Hamburg for many years.”
Mona knew that John was part of the witness protection program because he’d been an FBI agent. On the other hand, she knew nothing about the operation in Baltimore or that it was a Nigerian drug dealer he’d sent down. John was grateful for that now, because otherwise she would have drawn a line straight from the incident at Bergvik to her duplicitous partner.
“Are you absolutely sure of his identity?” she said.
“Yes, we are,” said Ruben. “I was in contact with the Germans. The man’s fingerprints are in the Europol database and the passport photo matches.”
“As for the bullets from the mall, NFC ran an analysis on them,” John said. “They came from a Sig Sauer P226.”
“The police service weapon of choice,” said Mona.
“Quite,” said Ruben. “Which was hardly the best news. But then we found the gun in Birger Falk’s car and there was another twist in the investigation.”
“And how exactly did that happen?” said Mona.
“We had been looking for the vehicle, a white Volvo 240, for a couple of days and a man called the switchboard this morning. He said he’d seen a car matching that description in a copse of trees on Hammarö.”
“Stella Bjelke was my investigation, so I went out to take a look,” said John, resuming his account. “When I found the body in the trunk, I requested a full examination of the crime scene. Forensics found the gun in the glove compartment and made sure it was immediately dispatched to be test-fired and analyzed.”
“I’ve just read the report from NFC—a good job with such a short turnaround,” said Mona. “Birger Falk’s body seems to be terra incognita on our map, however. What do we know about it?”
John felt a tremor in his stomach. This was where the terrain became trickier, and he had to be careful with his footing.
“The autopsy report won’t be done until tomorrow, but I’ve spoken to the medical examiner,” he said. “The body was unfortunately frozen through, which stops the biological process of decay. In other words, he won’t be able to give us a time of death.”
Mona looked skeptically at John.
“Not even a rough estimate?”
“No—if I understood correctly, all he can say with any certainty is that the body has been kept very chilled, defined as being between –12 and –18 degrees Celsius, for at least ten hours. That’s how long it takes to completely freeze a body.”
“What sort of time window does that give us?” said Mona.
“We know Birger Falk was alive at ten o’clock yesterday evening when he fired those shots at the shopping mall,” said John. “And that he was dead at eleven this morning when I opened the trunk.”
Mona didn’t question the information, instead writing it down on a notepad beside the stack of documents on the table.
“So, if we add a minimum of ten hours’ freezing time to the equation, that means he must have been put in the trunk no later than one o’clock this morning,” she said. “That’s our window. He died between 22:00 and 01:00 last night.”
John was pleased that it was Mona who had drawn that conclusion rather than him. This was what he needed to do to guide the investigation in his preferred direction. Plant the seeds, let them germinate, but never force them into bloom.
He thought about the weather over the last few weeks. On more than one occasion, he had cursed the freezing temperatures in Sweden, but right now he was thanking his lucky stars for this bitterly cold winter. The truth was that John had no idea when Birger Falk had been murdered. But there was clearly a risk that it had happened before the shooting at Bergvik.
The heavy snowfall during the night and that morning also suited him. It had buried the Volvo’s tire tracks, which would make it difficult to determine exactly when it had ended up in the trees.
“What does the medical examiner have to say about the cause of death?” said Mona, looking up from her notes.
“The body needs to thaw before he can offer a definitive view. But probably the stab wound to the throat, which caused him to bleed out.”
“So, the same MO he used to kill Stella Bjelke,” said Mona.
“Yes, but according to the medical examiner, the wound was cleaner.”
“Not a chisel then?”
“No, probably a sharp knife or something similar.”
Mona made another note and leaned back in her chair. She looked at the three pictures on the board, then at John, and then back to the victims again.
“What’s this all about? Really? I’m struggling to see the connection.”
John crossed his arms.
“The forensic evidence . . .”
“Yes,” Mona interrupted. “I know what the forensic evidence says. But what about the rest of it? Motive. The people. They’ve got to be connected somehow.”
She went over to John by the whiteboard and made a sweeping gesture toward the faces on it.
“Here’s a woman running a successful dating service, a bum living in a deprived area, and a hitman for the Nigerian mafia. What do they have in common?”
“Presumably the same thing that usually unites people from different social classes,” said John. “Drugs.”
“Expand,” said Mona.
John cleared his throat. This was going to be just as difficult as he’d suspected.
“Birger Falk has two convictions for possession and the sale of narcotics. One possible scenario is that he was selling his wares to Stella Bjelke.”
“Do you have anything to support the idea of her being a drug user, or are you just guessing?”
“Right now, it’s just a hypothesis,” he said, looking to Ruben.
John had hoped that his boss would back him up, but so far he seemed to have settled for listening.
“Okay,” said Mona. “Let’s say I accept your reasoning. Why did he kill Stella Bjelke with a chisel late at night on a construction site?”
“I think the time and place support the idea that it’s related to drugs,” said John. “Perhaps she’d started buying from another dealer. Or maybe Falk was threatening to go public about her using. Stella Bjelke was a well-known individual and often featured in the media.”
“And during that row, he lost his temper and cut her throat.”
“Yes, the chisel as a weapon indicates that it was an impulsive act.”
Mona pointed to the photo of Stella Bjelke—the one taken while she lay on the cement floor of the roastery.
“Then how do you explain this?”
Her finger was pointing at the acid burns on the woman’s face.
“People rarely wander around with acid on their person,” she added.
John looked to Ruben again and tried to urge him to join the discussion by way of a silent pause.
“It is somewhat contradictory, I’ll grant you that,” his boss said eventually.
“Definitely. There’s a lot here we don’t yet fully understand,” said John. “Which is only to be expected at the beginning of an investigation.”
Mona nodded—at least they seemed to agree about that.
“Then there’s this man,” she said, moving her finger to Stanislaw Panufnik. “How does he fit in?”
“The drug connection is more obvious there,” said John. “Narcotics are the biggest source of income for the Nigerian mob, alongside financial fraud.”
“Fine, but what was a Polish-German hitman doing in Karlstad?”
“According to the cops in Hamburg, Panufnik is suspected of carrying out hits on behalf of the Nigerians on several occasions. Perhaps he was here on assignment.”
“To do what, exactly?”
“Liquidate Birger Falk.”
Mona raised her eyebrows.
“Small fry on the street. Do you seriously think he was that important to an international drug cartel?”
“Perhaps he did something that was off-limits and the hitman was sent here to make an example of him,” said John.
“And you’re saying he failed in his assignment? Because it wasn’t Birger Falk who got shot on the roof.”
“Exactly. Falk must have realized he was in the shit and gotten hold of the Sig Sauer, unless he already owned it.”
“So, the bum from Karlstad prevailed over the professional contract killer.”
“Well, it would seem that way,” said John, feeling as though the conference room floor beneath him was undulating.
Mona’s questions made the scenario he had so painstakingly constructed seem more far-fetched than was feasible. At the same time, he reminded himself, she didn’t have to believe his explanation. All he needed to do was ensure that she didn’t question the forensic evidence. Because if she accepted that, then the whole investigation would hit the buffers and it would be closed.
“I assume you’ve got an answer for how Birger Falk ended up in the trunk of his own car too,” she said.
John ignored the sarcasm.
“Stanislaw Panufnik probably wasn’t working alone. He may have had an accomplice who finished the job for him. There are indications this may be true.”
“What are you thinking of?” said Mona.
“The CCTV footage from the shopping mall shows that three people climbed up onto the roof: Birger Falk, Stanislaw Panufnik, and an unknown third man.”
“Yes, but out of that trio it’s surely only the victim that has been identified—at least if I understood the written summary correctly.”
“That was written before we found the weapon connecting Birger Falk to the scene,” said John.
“Sorry, perhaps I’m not being clear: are these individuals’ faces visible at any point in the footage?”
“No, but it’s still highly likely that Falk is one of the men on the roof, right?”
“The gun would suggest that,” Mona acknowledged. “But there was something else that caught my eye while going through Panufnik’s autopsy on the train.”
She couldn’t have felt that sick, John thought to himself. This woman had consumed an impressive volume of information and processed it on the trip from Stockholm.
“You’re referring to the skin under his fingernails,” he said, looking to head her off.
His mouth was dry as John thought how little it would take to turn him into the prime suspect in the investigation. A Q-tip brushed inside his cheek. A strand of DNA on the end, inserted into a plastic container.
“Yes.” She nodded. “If that sample had matched Birger Falk’s, then I would have been more convinced, but the result was an unknown individual.”
“And what conclusion do you draw from that?” said John, trying to break the dynamic in this conversation, where he was the one launching theories that Mona immediately shot down.
“Nothing, really. Perhaps he just scratched the back of a good friend.”
“Is that the kind of thing German hitmen do?” said John, to lighten the mood.
“Maybe he was in a bar brawl—if you think that fits better.”
Mona smiled at him for the first time since they’d greeted each other. John forced down his shoulders, which had almost reached his ears. He wasn’t the accused here and he needed to stop acting like he was.
Ruben finally spoke up.
“As of today, you’re in charge of the joint investigation, Mona. How do you think we should proceed?”
She sighed audibly and returned to her seat at the end of the table.
“You know what? I think I will have that coffee now.”
Ruben poured a cup and passed it to her. John joined them at the table and asked his boss to fill his mug too. A much-needed påtår, as they called it. That was what they called a refill. At first, he hadn’t understood it, but now he used it with the same practiced tone as everyone else in the police station.
“To be perfectly candid, I don’t understand why my boss sent me here,” said Mona.
“No?” said Ruben. “It’s a complex case with international ties.”
“I agree,” she said. “But Stella Bjelke’s murderer is dead, so he can’t be prosecuted. Stanislaw Panufnik too. The only person we can bring to justice is whoever killed Birger Falk—and if he’s a professional hitman then I consider our chances of finding him to be vanishingly small. He’s probably already left the country.”
John concealed his relief with his coffee mug. What he was hearing sounded almost too good to be true. It was as if Mona was reading from a script he had written for her.
“Do you know what my colleagues and I usually call cases like this?” she said.
Ruben shook his head, caught by surprise by Mona’s honesty.
“A shit sandwich. The only reason you’ve brought us in is to have someone to blame when the investigation gets shelved. I get it. But what I don’t get is that my boss is letting himself be deceived.”
“That’s not true,” Ruben protested, although without any real fervor in his voice.
Just like John, he presumably realized that Mona might very well be right. It had been the chief commissioner who had demanded that National Crime be brought in, and after decades on the force he knew how to play politics with the best of them.
“We don’t need to go into any further depth on that,” she said, raising her coffee cup in a gesture of reconciliation. “I should think the penny will drop in Stockholm before long, and then I’ll be back home on the next train. Until then I might as well make myself useful. Have you asked the Germans about possible accomplices involved with Stanislaw Panufnik?”
Ruben nodded.
“Yes, and they supplied us with around a dozen names of career criminals that are close to the Nigerians. We’ve flagged their passports in the system and are examining passenger lists from the airlines and ferry companies.”
“Good,” said Mona. “As you can tell, I’m not entirely convinced by the theory that narcotics are the reason for these three deaths. I want us to widen our horizons and dig deeper.”
“What does that involve, more tangibly?” said John.
“We’re going to concentrate on the first murder.”
“I’m not sure I’m with you. You said it yourself: Birger Falk is dead and can’t be prosecuted.”
“It may sound backward,” said Mona. “But to find the connection between all these people, we need to start with what triggered the chain of events—that’s the murder of Stella Bjelke. Then we might find some clarity around why Birger Falk shot the hitman and who then killed him.”
John had more objections on the tip of his tongue, but he kept them to himself. He didn’t want to seem intractable.
“If drugs aren’t the motive, what could it be instead?” he said, striving for open body language.
No crossed arms or eyebrows pointing straight to the bridge of the nose.
“I don’t know, but there’s one interesting line of inquiry to pursue,” said Mona. “According to the file, Stella Bjelke’s sister, Alicia, mentioned that Stella had agreed to meet someone the night she was killed. I don’t think it was ever established who that was?”
“That’s right. When Birger Falk was identified as the killer, I chose not to investigate that any further. In my view, the date had nothing to do with the murder.”
“I understand,” Mona said, although it didn’t seem that way. “But I’d still like to speak to Alicia again—preferably first thing in the morning. We could also ask her whether her sister used drugs. I’m not ruling out narcotics as the motive—I just don’t want us to commit to it yet.”
“Sure thing,” said John.
Mona drank her coffee and set the cup down on the table.
“Has Stella Bjelke’s apartment been properly searched?” she said.
“No, we didn’t consider it necessary,” said John, realizing he was once again assuming a defensive position.
“Then I think we should do that,” Mona interjected.
“No problem, I’ll speak to Forensics,” said Ruben, yawning.
John took the opportunity to rub his eyes even though he was wide awake. Mona read her colleagues’ body language and stood up.
“I suggest we stop for tonight,” she said, looking at John. “Pick me up tomorrow at eight? I’m staying at the Elite by Stora torget.”
He nodded—and wished that it was any other detective in the world who would be waiting for him outside the hotel.