A KILLER WHO for no discernible reason selected victims at random by rolling dice. It sounded absurd; he’d never heard of anything like it. But that could very well have been what he’d been doing every time he stopped and shook his hand back and forth at Ica Maxi in Hyllinge. Maybe the whole thing was dictated by chance.
It was still just a theory, but it would explain a lot. Whether it meant getting one step closer to an arrest, however, was far from a given. Even if it helped explain the past murders, it did nothing to help them predict the future.
Perhaps Molander was mathematically skilled enough to mine the available data and analyse how dice might have been used. He was the last person Fabian wanted anything to do with, but with the help of the previous murders and a pinch of luck, he might be able to narrow down the number of possible alternatives and find a pattern that could be applied to the future.
But despite what Molander’s assistants had told Fabian, the police lab was deserted and dark, and there were no signs he might have just missed him. He’d tried to call him three times but had had no answer. Nor was he to be found up in the conference room or in Tuvesson’s office. On the whole, the department seemed surprisingly quiet.
At least the lights were on in Lilja’s office, though that, too, was empty. But the computer was on and the printer on the floor was spitting out document after document.
He went over and picked up one of the printouts, which was apparently from Paygoo prepaid MasterCard and consisted of a long column of purchases made in all kinds of places, from a local Helsingborg swimming pool to lockpick.se.
‘Well now, look what the cat dragged in.’
Fabian turned to see Klippan and Lilja enter, carrying two pizza boxes from Planet Pizza & Grill.
‘Fabian, what are you doing here so late?’ Lilja put down a bottle of Coca-Cola and one of sparkling water on her desk. ‘Shouldn’t you be with your family?’
‘Yes,’ Fabian nodded. ‘And I have been. Did Tuvesson tell you?’
‘Molander,’ Lilja replied.
Of course it was Molander. God knows how he’d found out.
‘It must be horrible,’ Klippan said, shaking his head.
‘It is.’
‘If there’s anything we can do, just say the word.’
‘Thank you, but I’m sure it’ll be all right. Right now, Sonja and Matilda are asleep, so there’s not much I can do at home.’ Fabian looked around. ‘But there seems to be a lot to do here.’
‘You can say that again.’ Lilja pulled out the bottom box and opened it. ‘Did you hear that he lives right next door to my new flat?’
Fabian nodded, grateful that the conversation was moving on. ‘Tuvesson told me. Unbelievable.’
‘Right? I mean, what are the odds?’ Lilja picked up a slice of her pizza marinara, folded it over and started eating, while Klippan helped himself to a slice of kebab pizza and went over to the printer.
‘By the way, do either of you know where Molander is?’
‘Yes.’ Lilja took a sip of water. ‘He’s at Kärngränden, processing Ester Landgren’s room. At least I hope he is, because he promised to tackle Milwokh’s lair as soon as he’s done there.’
‘Then I’m going to have to disappoint you.’
‘Why, are you saying he’s not there?’
Fabian shook his head. ‘I just came from there, and according to his assistants, he left this afternoon and hasn’t been back.’
‘Seriously, what the fuck…’ Lilja sighed. ‘I’m getting really sick of this.’ She took one more bite, put the rest down and pulled out her phone.
‘There’s no point. I’ve already tried several times.’
‘He has to pick up some time,’ she said, putting the phone to her ear.
‘While you wait, I can inform you that it looks like we were right,’ said Klippan, who was standing next to the printer, flipping through the printouts.
‘He used the Paygoo card to buy things?’ Lilja asked.
‘He certainly did. He’s been splurging. There’s everything here, absolutely everything.’
‘Hi, this is Irene. Could you call me back, like, right now? And yes, I’m going to keep calling until you pick up or call me back. So just press that little green symbol and put the phone to your ear.’ Lilja ended the call and grabbed another slice of pizza.
‘And what’s that?’ Fabian nodded to the stack of documents next to the printer.
‘Pretty much everything we could find on Pontus Milwokh,’ Lilja replied, trying Molander again.
Klippan held up the stack of papers. ‘We have everything from his tenancy agreement to his latest purchases. For example, he’s in receipt of full asylum support, which is 6,800 kronor a month. In addition, he gets 3,900 in housing benefits. So his total income is 10,700 a month, which is paid into a Swedbank account, which is in turn linked to a Maestro card. He seems to use that for all his regular purchases, like food, clothes, rent and so on. In other words, nothing out of the ordinary there, apart from one purchase that caught our eye. On Friday 23 September last year, he went to Skånska building supplies north of town.’
‘Isn’t that just a regular DIY shop?’ Fabian said.
‘Surprise, it’s me again,’ Lilja said into her phone. ‘And like I said, I’m going to keep at this until you pick up.’
‘It is, but listen to this,’ Klippan replied. ‘I contacted them to see if they could help me figure out what he bought, and they were very helpful. Among other things, there was quite a bit of insulation, plasterboard, timber, paint and filler, as well as a bunch of screws, hinges, fixings and an electric screwdriver, a circular saw and some other tools.’
‘What did he need all that for in his tiny flat?’
‘Exactly what we asked ourselves. There’s nothing to indicate that he owns any other property, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have access to a small cabin somewhere. The countryside is littered with unused ones. If you ask me, he built some kind of soundproofed box or something like that. Maybe to kidnap someone, what do I know?’ Klippan shrugged.
‘But that’s pure speculation,’ Lilja put in, with her phone still pressed to her ear.
‘True, but I did some calculations on material requirements, and what he bought would easily be enough for a five-by-five-foot box.’
‘Which is pretty cramped, if you ask me. You wouldn’t even be able to stand up. But that wasn’t what we bumped on, it was the price. Wasn’t it?’
‘Right.’ Klippan turned to Fabian. ‘You know what the whole thing cost?’
‘No.’ Fabian shrugged.
‘2,253 kronor.’
‘Okay.’ He realized they’d expected a bigger reaction. He just didn’t know what kind.
‘You’ve never done any DIY, have you! Do you know what the real price would be?’
Fabian shook his head.
‘7,253 kronor. More than three times as much. It turns out he used another card to pay part of it. A so-called Paygoo card from MasterCard, which isn’t only prepaid but also completely anonymous.’
‘So we contacted MasterCard,’ Lilja went on. ‘And apparently the card is linked to an anonymous PayPal account, and guess which one.’
‘Exactly,’ Klippan said, before Fabian had a chance to speak. ‘We’re talking about the same account PetFrame uses. Because that’s his little side hustle where he makes the money he uses for the fun things he wants to buy.’
‘I don’t know about little,’ Lilja said. ‘Over the course of the spring, he averaged forty thousand a month, tax free, which is a lot more than I take home.’
‘But this June, he only made a few thousand. But then, he’s been otherwise engaged,’ Klippan said. ‘Anyway, the Paygoo card has a 5,000-kronor spending limit, which was why he had to use his regular card too. And we’re lucky he did, or we wouldn’t have known he had it.’
‘So what you have there is what he has paid for with his anonymous card.’
‘Right you are.’ Klippan continued scanning the printouts. ‘And from what I can see, most of it’s on here. Like the rental car he picked up from Hertz on Gustav Adolfsgatan on 12 June, the day before the laundry room murder in Bjuv. Or 22 April, when he spent 2,495 kronor at lockpick.se.’
‘And what did he buy?’
‘Given the price, my guess would be a lock pick gun.’ Klippan pulled another printout from the printer. ‘And this is probably the mask he used at Ica Maxi. He bought that last autumn from realfleshmasks.com for 4,867 kronor.’
‘Real Flesh Masks,’ Lilja said, looking appalled. ‘Is that really the name of the shop?’
Klippan nodded. ‘But then, it was very realistic.’
‘And what’s the most recent purchase?’ Fabian asked.
Klippan skimmed the columns. ‘On Wednesday last week, he spent 3,487 kronor at trueswords.com.’
‘True Swords?’ Lilja turned to Klippan. ‘So he bought a sword?’
Klippan looked again and shrugged. ‘Looks that way.’
‘Well, why not?’ Lilja shook her head. ‘If you can use a washing machine, why not a sword? Especially if you want to sneak around playing at being a ninja. What else do you have?’
‘Well, he has gone to the pool almost every day this past week.’
‘Could that be our next scene?’ Fabian asked.
‘It’s not impossible. Or maybe he’s just doing laps. Yesterday and the day before he also visited Helsingborg Boat Rentals and spent first four thousand, and then three and a half thousand. Probably to avoid exceeding the transaction limit.’
‘Okay, I just want to make sure I have this right,’ Lilja said, calling Molander yet again. ‘So, he has purchased a sword and rented a boat while also going to the pool every day.’
Klippan nodded.
‘Anything else? Maybe a clown suit, or why not a nuclear submarine while we’re at it?’
Klippan looked up from the printouts. ‘No, but speaking of which, we should put the pool under surveillance as soon as they open tomorrow.’
‘Of course.’ Lilja nodded as a voice suddenly reached them from the hallway.
‘Give it a bloody rest, will you?’ Molander exclaimed as he entered. ‘Don’t you have better things to do than harassing me?’
‘Yes, many, many things.’ Lilja turned to Molander. ‘That’s the problem. So instead of pretending like you can’t hear your phone, you might consider picking up.’
‘If I answered my phone every time it rang, I’d never get anything done.’
‘And that’s why I’m calling. You promised you were going to process Milwokh’s flat as soon as you were done with Ester Landgren, and from what I’m told, you haven’t even started yet.’
Molander sighed. ‘What do you want me to say? The Landgren flat took longer than I expected, okay?’ He shrugged. ‘Göran and Fredrik are ambitious and pleasant lads, but no one has ever called them speedy. And you know me.’ He looked each of them in the eyes. ‘I feel the same way you do – this case is too important for me to leave a crime scene and just hope the two of them do a good job on their own.’
‘All right, maybe I misunderstood.’
‘Probably.’ Molander gave her a curt smile.
‘Because from what I was told, that’s exactly what you did,’ Lilja replied with an even more curt smile.
Fabian realized too late where this was going. This was not how he wanted it to happen. He was still waiting for Stubbs to tell him they had enough proof to arrest Molander. Once she gave the all-clear, he was going to inform Tuvesson so they could come up with a plan for how to make the arrest together.
‘What?’ Molander turned to Fabian and Klippan and suddenly looked confused. ‘Do you know what she’s talking about?’
‘I suggest we drop this and try to get on with the investigation instead,’ Fabian said. ‘Because it seems he’s rented a—’
‘No, I want to know what the fuck’s going on,’ Lilja broke in. ‘What do you mean, you wouldn’t leave a crime scene? According to Fabian, you left the Landgrens’ flat hours ago.’
It was three against one. Plan or no plan, maybe he should just get it over with.
‘And so my question is, where have you been all day?’ Lilja went on. ‘And what are you so bloody busy doing when you’re not answering your phone?’
Molander turned to Fabian. ‘I’m sorry, but how is it that you—’
‘I went over there.’ Fabian felt his body getting ready. ‘As soon as Sonja and Matilda were asleep, I went to see if you’d found anything of interest. But you weren’t there and according to your assistants you left immediately after you arrived.’
Molander turned to Fabian without speaking.
‘And just like Irene, I tried to call you,’ he went on. ‘Not just once, several times.’
Molander still didn’t say anything, just stood there, breathing heavily through his nostrils. For the first time, he seemed shaken. His face had gone pale and his Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down as, increasingly desperately, he tried to swallow his anxiety.
Maybe Fabian was mistaken. No, he wasn’t. Molander’s eyes were wet, filling with tears; if he didn’t wipe them soon, his tear ducts were going to overflow.
‘Ingvar.’ Klippan walked over and put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. ‘What’s the matter?’
Molander’s bottom lip began to tremble as the first tear trickled down his cheek.
‘Oh my goodness, Ingvar. Tell us.’ Lilja pulled up a chair and helped Molander sit down.
‘I don’t know,’ Molander finally managed to squeeze out, still trying to hold back the tears. ‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Maybe I can help you,’ Fabian said.
‘What? She’s spoken to you?’ Molander looked up at Fabian.
‘Who?’ Fabian didn’t understand.
‘Gertrud. She hasn’t told me anything. After thirty-four years—’
‘Ingvar.’ Klippan squatted down in front of Molander. ‘Tell us what’s happened.’
‘She’s left me.’ Molander burst out sobbing. ‘Gertrud has left me.’
‘What? Hold on. Are you saying Gertrud wants a divorce?’
Molander nodded and pulled out a handkerchief to blow his nose. ‘Yesterday, when I got home from work, the house was empty. I didn’t know what was going on. All her things were gone. Clothes, shoes, everything. Her wardrobe was empty. I tried to call her to ask what it was all about, but she didn’t pick up. Then I found a letter in my workshop. Can you imagine? After thirty-four years of marriage, she leaves me and the only explanation is a cryptic note.’ He shook his head and dried his eyes. ‘So if you’re wondering why I’ve been a bit absent today, it’s because I needed some time to myself to digest it. I thought I was going to be able to work and just carry on like usual, but—’ Molander broke off and shook his head.
Behind him, the door opened to admit Tuvesson, who was in the process of popping a piece of gum into her mouth. ‘So this is where you’re hiding. I’m glad you’re all here, because…’ Tuvesson faltered when she noticed Molander. ‘Ingvar, what—?’
‘Gertrud left him.’ Klippan stood up.
‘What? Really?’
Molander nodded and looked like he was struggling to keep his emotions under control.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Tuvesson bent down and gave him a hug. ‘I went through the same thing a few years ago, as you know, and if you want, I’d be happy to tell you what it was like for me and how much better I feel now.’
Molander attempted a smile and wiped his eyes with the handkerchief.
‘But before I do, I want to ask you to do something,’ Tuvesson went on. ‘And I’m really sorry to do this, but if you think you’re able, I’d like you to put your feelings aside for a while.’
‘Astrid,’ Lilja said. ‘They were married for thirty-four years, and he’s just been—’
‘I know. I’m not deaf. And Ingvar, I completely understand if you can’t handle it, and if so, we’ll find another way. But if you—’
‘Just tell me what’s happened,’ Molander cut her off.
Tuvesson stopped chewing and turned to look at each of them.
‘What has happened is another murder. Another incomprehensible, meaningless murder.’