SURFACE TENSION WAS still engaged in a silent yet fierce battle with gravity over the tiny droplet of water trembling at the edge of the tap. But as with every droplet that had gone before it, this one’s fate was in no doubt.
Even so, each time gravity finally prevailed, forcing a droplet to let go of the tap and plunge helplessly towards the mirror-like surface of the water in the bath, it was a unique event.
Each time, a crater would erupt in slow motion, sending concentric waves rippling out from the epicentre, just an inch or two above the face with the wide-open eyes and the nose in which a tiny air bubble had become trapped in one of the nostrils.
Yet another victim. Yet another meaningless and completely incomprehensible murder.
That was Tuvesson’s only thought when she aimed her torch at the body in the overflowing bath. This time, a naked young man as beautiful as he was muscular. A man who had been planning to take his girlfriend out that very night, to celebrate the anniversary of their engagement. But according to her, he never showed up. Half an hour later, she’d found him dead at his home, in the bath.
What had he done to deserve such a premature ending? What was the point? She shook her head and felt that an ever-bigger part of her was on the verge of giving up and accepting the idea that they may never solve this case.
At least Molander was both focused and full of energy, despite it being midnight and Gertrud having just left him. He was moving around with his characteristic boyish curiosity, shining his torch along the floor, the ceiling and the walls, seeming to know exactly where to start.
‘It’s too early to say for certain, but I think I’ve found the cause of the power outage.’ Molander turned the beam of his torch towards a temporary power cord running diagonally across the ceiling and down one of the walls before disappearing behind the bath.
Unfortunately, she herself was anything but focused. Her mind didn’t know which way to pull her and her thoughts seemed intent on tangling so badly they were soon going to be impossible to unravel.
‘The cord is probably split somewhere behind the bath,’ Molander went on. ‘Because we have the neutral wire at the foot over there and at the head you can see the hot one.’
Tuvesson nodded and noted that a blue and a brown cable had indeed been stripped and taped to the bath an inch or two below the waterline at either end.
‘Would you mind holding this?’ Molander handed her the torch, grabbed a bath brush that was propped against the wall and slowly dipped the wooden handle down the inside of the bath. Then he pushed the body aside as far as he was able and leaned forwards. ‘Just as I thought.’ He turned to Tuvesson. ‘The ground continues all the way to the bottom.’
‘So he was electrocuted?’
‘It’s one theory, certainly.’ Molander put the scrubbing brush down. ‘But we should wait and see what Flätan has to say. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more allergic to rushing to conclusions than that man.’
‘And what’s another theory?’
‘That he drowned. Obviously.’
Obviously. What else would it be? She had to pull herself together before she made a proper fool of herself.
‘What’s beyond doubt, however, is that the water level has risen above the cables,’ Molander went on. ‘And though water may be a poor conductor in and of itself, there’s enough dirt and pollutions in it to change that.’
‘Enough to be fatal?’ Fine, she’d had a drink. She had. But just a small one, certainly not enough for it to affect her work.
‘I’d say it depends.’ Molander made a weighing gesture with his hands.
‘But it’s 220 volts, right?’ She was probably just tired and needed to sleep. It was well past midnight, after all.
‘Yes, but it’s not the volts that matter, it’s the amperes, and you have to get to at least thirty or forty milliampere for about a minute before the breathing muscles are paralysed and render the victim unconscious.’
‘So what you’re really saying is that it’s too soon to say anything at all.’
Molander nodded. ‘Yes, I’m going to have to conduct a thorough investigation of everything from the current of the cables and the conductivity of the water to any other evidence in the rest of the flat before we can be sure of anything. And then there’s Flätan, who won’t say a peep until he has at the very least had time to open him up and examine his lungs.’
‘Fine, but you have to be able to give me some kind of working theory, though, right? I’ll admit the whole things is confusing to me. I mean, if you wanted to kill your victim with an electric shock, wouldn’t it be easier to do it without water, taping the cables directly onto his body? Or am I mistaken?’
Molander shook his head. ‘I’ve been asking myself the exact same thing. The only explanation I can see is that this electrical set-up is only part of the explanation.’
‘You’re saying there’s something else? What might that be?’
‘Another plan. I don’t know.’ Molander shrugged. ‘That’s what my investigation is going to try to find out.’
‘Come on. You have a theory. I can tell. You’ve had one since you stepped through that door. Bloody hell, Ingvar, I know you, don’t forget.’
Molander sighed. ‘Could I at least have an hour before—’
‘You can have all the hours you need. But first I want you to tell me what you think happened here. Think. Not know. If, later on, you come across evidence that points in a different direction, we’ll deal with that then.’
‘Okay.’ Molander took a deep breath and turned to the bath. ‘First, Milwokh must have overpowered his victim and subdued him somehow.’
‘He might have knocked him out or sedated him.’
‘Sure, that may well be what he did, and Flätan’s toxicological examination will answer that for us. But either way, that was just to get his clothes off and get him into the bath.’
‘Let’s hope so. That he at least got to sleep through his final moments.’
‘Hope springs eternal, I suppose. But sadly, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it happened.’ Molander stuck the brush handle back into the bath and pushed the body aside. ‘There are signs that suggest he was awake. Look at this.’
Tuvesson leaned over and saw a steel wire that ran through a hoop at the bottom of the bath and in under the victim’s back.
‘The other end is probably tied around the victim’s wrists, which wouldn’t have been necessary if the victim had been kept unconscious.’
‘Couldn’t it have been precautionary, in case he woke up?’
‘Sure. Unless he was meant to wake up.’ Molander shrugged. ‘Maybe the point was for him to be awake for his own death. If nothing else, the bath makes sense that way.’
‘I’m not following.’
‘I believe, and I stress the word believe, Milwokh let the victim choose his own death.’
‘And why would he do that? I don’t see the point.’
‘What’s the point of shoving someone into a washing machine?’ Molander shrugged. ‘It would explain the bath, the wire around his wrists and not least, the cables.’
Tuvesson was about to cut in, but was prevented by an exasperated wave.
‘Please, let me finish and stop interrupting.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m just so—’
‘Astrid, I know. We’re all groping in the dark here. That’s why I want to get to work as quickly as possible. So if you want to hear my theory, you’re going to have to listen until I’m done before you smash it to pieces with a thousand objections. Okay?’
Tuvesson nodded.
‘As you can see, the ends of the cables are placed fairly high up, close to the edge of the bath,’ Molander continued. ‘So high, in fact, that Milwokh had to seal the overflow drain to make sure the water didn’t escape.’ He pointed to the overflow, from which some kind of grey putty was sticking out. ‘So my theory is that he sedated his victim, stripped him and tied him to the bottom of the bath. Then he waited until he woke up. Only then did he turn on the tap and start filling the bath. If I had to guess, I would say he didn’t even turn it on fully, just ten or fifteen per cent maybe.’
‘And why would he do that?’
‘Maybe to give the victim enough time to grasp the gravity of the situation. Who knows? Maybe Milwokh sat right there on that stool and explained what was going to happen.’ Molander nodded to a wooden stool by the wall. ‘That the water level was going to rise all the way to the cables, and that it was up to him if he wanted to take his own life by drowning or wait for the water to electrocute him, which would be a considerably more painful way to go.’
‘Is electrocution really that much more painful?’
‘Absolutely. If I had to choose, I’d pick drowning every time. After the initial pain, you don’t feel a thing, just float away in a weightless state. Electrocution is far from pleasant. Depending on the strength of the current, you basically fry from the inside. Muscle, tissue, the internal organs. And it can take a while. Ten, fifteen minutes, if you’re unlucky.’
‘So he either had to drown himself or wait to be fried from the inside?’
Molander nodded. ‘But ask me again when I’m done with the investigation and Flätan has done his thing.’
‘But shouldn’t the fuse have blown the second the circuit closed?’ She finally felt somewhat on the ball. ‘I would have gambled on that if it were me in that bath.’ Tuvesson flicked the light switch but no light came on. ‘The power is clearly out, so the water shouldn’t have been live for more than a second or two.’
‘That’s true.’ Molander nodded, looking thoughtful. ‘On the other hand, the power didn’t just go out in this flat, but rather in the entire building, which would explain…’ He left the room and Tuvesson stayed where she was, unsure of what to do.
She’d made some valid comments, she had. Even pointed out some things Molander hadn’t thought of. But she wasn’t at her best, far from it. She had to fight for every cogent thought, and even so, she mostly felt confused.
But she couldn’t blame it on the alcohol. Strange as it may sound, she had in fact taken control of her drinking.
‘Found it,’ Molander shouted from the hallway.
‘What?’
‘The fuse box.’
‘And? Did you learn anything?’
Like all normal people, she’d managed to find her way back to an equilibrium and now she just had to make sure she didn’t fall off the wagon again.
‘I obviously need to have a closer look at this in the lab, but it looks like you’re right. From what I can see, one of the fuses has been swapped for some sort of home-made device.’
‘All right.’ Tuvesson left the bathroom and let her torch light her way through the hallway to the living room.
But on Sunday, when she’d made her first attempt, she’d ended up overdoing it. There was no denying it. It was what you might call a significant relapse. But then again, she’d been good for a whole month before that, and if that didn’t earn her a relapse, then what did? And maybe it was exactly what she needed to find the equilibrium she was now maintaining.
But there was that one conversation she couldn’t stop thinking about.
‘I’ll go down to the basement and check if it’s the same there. That could possibly explain why the power didn’t go straight away but only after a fifteen-minute delay.’
She had only a vague memory of it. It had been sometime in the middle of the night and she’d been asleep on her kitchen floor after throwing up in the sink in a desperate attempt to make the world stop spinning. She had no memory at all of her phone ringing; suddenly it was just pressed against her ear and there was a male voice on the other end. Soon after, the call had ended and she’d slipped back into the fog.
The next day, which was to say yesterday, she’d assumed the phone call had been a dream; but going through her call log had confirmed that on Monday, between 12.15 a.m. and 12.18 a.m., Fabian Risk had called her no less than three times. The last time, she had apparently picked up, and a twenty-one-second call had ensued.
What the log couldn’t tell her was what they’d talked about. She had no recollection of it. But she had her suspicions and had immediately taken steps.