Contents
About the Book
About the Authors
Title Page
Introduction
Chapter 114
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Torkel Höglund – Chief Inspector
Ursula Andersson – police forensics expert
Vanja Lithner – investigative police officer
Billy Rosén – investigative police officer
Sebastian Bergman – psychologist and leading criminal profiler
Trolle Hermansson – former Chief Inspector, sacked for using surveillance for personal matters and planting false evidence
Other police
Thomas Haraldsson – ex police, now governor of Lövhaga Prison
As the taxi turned into Tolléns väg just before seven thirty in the evening, Richard Granlund didn’t think his day could get much worse. Four days in Munich and the surrounding area. A sales trip. The Germans worked more or less as usual throughout July. Client meetings from morning till night. Factories, conference rooms and countless cups of coffee. He was tired, but contented. Conveyor belt systems might not be the sexiest things in the world – his work seldom aroused curiosity and was never the most obvious topic of conversation around the dinner table or with friends – but they sold well. The conveyor belts. They sold really well.
The plane from Munich had been due to take off at 9.05 a.m. He would be in Stockholm at twenty past eleven. Call in at the office and let them know how he’d got on. Home around one. Lunch with Katharina, then they would spend the rest of the afternoon in the garden. That was the plan.
Until he’d found out that the flight to Arlanda had been cancelled. He’d joined the queue for Lufthansa customer services and was rebooked on the 13.05 flight instead. Another four hours at Munich International. He wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect. With a resigned sigh he dug out his phone and texted Katharina. She would have to have lunch without him, but hopefully they would still be able to spend a few hours working in the garden. What was the weather like? Perhaps a cocktail on the patio this evening? He could pick up something in the airport now he had plenty of time.
Katharina answered right away. Shame about the delay. She was missing him. The weather in Stockholm was fantastic, so cocktails later sounded like a great idea. Surprise me. Love you.
Richard went to one of the shops that was still advertising duty-free, although he was convinced this was no longer relevant to the vast majority of travellers. He found the shelf of ready-mixed cocktails and picked up a bottle he recognised from the TV ads – Mojito Classic.
On his way to the newsagent’s kiosk he checked his flight on the departures board. Gate 26. He reckoned it would take him about ten minutes to get there.
Richard sat down with a cup of coffee and a sandwich as he leafed through his newly purchased issue of Garden Illustrated. The minutes crawled by. He did a little window shopping, bought another magazine, one about gadgets this time, then went to a different café and drank a bottle of mineral water. After a visit to the toilet, it was time to head for the gate at long last. There he was met by the next surprise. The 13.05 flight was delayed. New boarding time: 13.40. Estimated departure time: 14.00. Richard took out his phone again. Informed Katharina of the latest delay and expressed his frustration with air travel in general and Lufthansa in particular. He found an empty seat and sat down. He didn’t get a reply to his text.
He rang her.
No one answered.
Perhaps she had found someone to have lunch with in town. He put his phone away and closed his eyes. There was no point in getting worked up about the situation; there wasn’t much he could do about it anyway.
At quarter to two the young woman on the desk welcomed them on board and apologised for the delay. When they were settled on the plane and the cabin crew had gone through the routine safety procedures, which no one bothered to listen to, the captain spoke to them. One of the lights on the dashboard was showing a fault. There was probably something wrong with the light itself, but they couldn’t take any chances. A technician was on the way to check it. The captain apologised and asked for their cooperation. The inside of the plane quickly grew warm. Richard could feel his willingness to cooperate and his still relatively good mood seeping away at exactly the same rate as his shirt grew wetter and wetter on his back and under his arms. The captain spoke again. Good news: the error had been rectified. Not such good news: they had now missed their slot, and there were currently nine planes due to take off before them, but as soon as it was their turn, they would begin their flight to Stockholm. He apologised.
They landed at Arlanda at 17.20.
Two hours and ten minutes late.
Or six hours. Depending on your point of view.
On his way to the baggage claim area, Richard rang home again. No reply. He tried Katharina’s mobile. Her voicemail kicked in after five rings. She was probably out in the garden, and couldn’t hear the phone. Richard reached the huge hall containing the luggage carousels. According to the monitor above number 3, the bags from flight LH2416 would be delivered in eight minutes.
It took twelve minutes.
And it was another fifteen minutes before Richard realised that his suitcase wasn’t there.
Another wait in another queue to report the missing case at Lufthansa’s service desk. After handing over his luggage receipt, his address and as good a description as he could manage of his suitcase, Richard emerged into the arrivals hall and went to find a taxi. The heat struck him with a physical force as he walked out through the revolving doors. It really was summer. They would have a lovely evening. He could feel his good humour returning slightly at the thought of Mojitos on the patio in the evening sun. He joined the queue for Taxi Stockholm, Kurir or 020. As they pulled away, the driver informed him that as far as the traffic was concerned, it was hell in Stockholm today. Sheer hell. At that moment he slowed down to just below fifty kilometres per hour as they joined the seemingly endless queue of cars heading south on the E4.
So by the time the taxi finally turned into Tolléns väg, Richard Granlund didn’t think his day could get much worse.
He paid with his credit card and walked up to the house through the fragrant, beautifully tended garden. He put down his briefcase and plastic bag just inside the door.
‘Hello!’
No answer. Richard took off his shoes and went into the kitchen. He glanced out of the window to see if Katharina was in the garden, but there was no sign of her. The kitchen was empty too. No note where it would have been if she’d left him one. Richard took out his phone and checked it. No missed calls or text messages. The house was hot and stuffy; the sun was shining directly on the windows, and Katharina had not lowered the awnings. Richard unlocked the patio door and opened it wide. Then he went upstairs. He would shower and change. He felt dirty and sweaty, right down to his underpants. He pulled off his tie and started to unbutton his shirt as he walked up the stairs, but stopped in mid-movement when he reached the bedroom. Katharina was lying on the bed. That was the first thing he noticed. Then he realised three things in quick succession.
She was lying on her stomach.
She was tied up.
She was dead.
The subway train shuddered as it braked. The mother with the buggy in front of Sebastian Bergman clutched the steel pole a little more tightly and looked around nervously. She had been on tenterhooks ever since she’d got on at St Eriksplan, and in spite of the fact that her grizzling little boy had fallen asleep after only a couple of stops, she seemed unable to relax. It was evident that she didn’t like being in such close proximity to so many strangers. Sebastian could see a number of signs. Constantly moving her feet in order to avoid physical contact with anyone. The slightly moist upper lip. The alert expression, the eyes moving all the time. Sebastian had tried a reassuring smile, but she quickly looked away and continued to scan her surroundings.
Sebastian glanced around the crowded carriage, which had once again stopped with a metallic hiss in the tunnel just beyond Hötorget. After a few moments standing motionless in the darkness, the train slowly began to move and crawled into T-Centralen, the main station in the middle of Stockholm. He didn’t usually travel on the subway, and he never used it during the rush hour or the tourist season. It was too uncomfortable, too chaotic. He just couldn’t get used to humanity en masse, with all its noises and odours. He preferred to walk or take a taxi. Keep his distance from people. Stay on the outside. That was his normal practice. But nothing was normal anymore.
Nothing.
Sebastian leaned against the door at the end of the carriage and peered into the one next door. He could see her through the little pane of glass. The blonde hair, the bent head, reading a newspaper. He realised that he was smiling to himself as he gazed at her.
As always she changed trains at T-Centralen, walking quickly down the stone staircase to the red line. It was easy for him to follow her. As long as he kept his distance, he was hidden by the stream of travellers and by the tourists studying their maps.
When the train pulled in at Gärdet station twelve minutes later, Sebastian waited a few moments before stepping out of the carriage. He had to be more careful here. There were fewer people moving around on the platform; the majority of the passengers had disembarked at the previous station. Sebastian had chosen the carriage in front of her so that she had her back to him when she got off. She was moving fast, and was already halfway to the escalators when he caught sight of her. Gärdet had clearly been the destination of the woman with the buggy, too, and Sebastian chose to remain behind her just in case the person he was following should turn around for any reason. The woman pushed her buggy along at a steady pace behind the people hurrying towards the escalators, presumably in the hope of avoiding a crush up ahead.
As he walked along behind her, Sebastian realised how alike they were. Two people who always found it necessary to keep their distance.
A woman.
Dead.
In her own home.
Under normal circumstances there would be no need to call in the National CID murder squad, known as Riksmord, and Torkel Höglund’s team.
In most cases it was the tragic result of a family quarrel, a custody dispute, a jealous rage, a boozy evening in what turned out to be the wrong company.
Anyone who worked within the police service knew that when a woman was murdered in her own home, the perpetrator was usually to be found among those closest to her, so it was hardly surprising that when she took the emergency call just after seven thirty Stina Kaupin toyed with the idea that she was speaking to the murderer.
‘Emergency, how can I help?’
‘My wife is dead.’
It was difficult to make out the rest of what the man said. His voice was thick with grief and shock. For long periods the silence was so intense that Stina thought he had hung up. Then she heard him trying to get his breathing under control. It was a struggle to get an address out of him; the man just kept repeating that his wife was dead, and that there was a lot of blood. Blood everywhere. Could they come? Please? In her mind’s eye Stina could see a middle-aged man with his hands covered in blood, slowly but surely realising what he had done. Eventually she managed to get an address in Tumba. She asked the caller – and probably murderer – to stay where he was, and not to touch anything in the house. She would send the police and an ambulance to the scene of the crime. She rang off and passed on the message to the Södertörn police in Huddinge, who in turn dispatched a patrol car.
Erik Lindman and Fabian Holst were just finishing off a rather late fast-food dinner when they got the call telling them to head over to Tolléns väg 19.
Ten minutes later they were there. They got out of the patrol car and looked over at the house. Neither of the officers was particularly interested in gardening, but they both realised that someone had spent a considerable amount of time and money creating the idyllic splendour surrounding the yellow wooden house.
When they were halfway up the path, the front door opened. Both men reached instinctively for the holster on their right hip. A man was standing in the doorway, his shirt open, gazing at the uniformed officers with an almost blank expression in his eyes.
‘There’s no need for an ambulance.’
Lindman and Holst exchanged a quick glance. The man in the doorway was obviously in shock. Those in shock acted according to their own rules. They were unpredictable. Illogical. Lindman carried on up the path, while Holst slowed down and kept his hand close to his gun.
‘Richard Granlund?’ Lindman asked as he took the last few steps towards the man, whose gaze was fixed on a point somewhere beyond him.
‘There’s no need for an ambulance,’ the man repeated. ‘The woman I spoke to said she was going to send an ambulance. There’s no need. I forgot to tell her …’
Lindman had reached the man. He took him gently by the arm. The physical contact made the man in the doorway give a start and turn to face him. He looked at Lindman with surprise, as if he were seeing the police officer for the first time and wondered how he could have got so close.
No blood on his hands or his clothes, Lindman noticed.
‘Richard Granlund?’
The man nodded. ‘I got home and she was lying there …’
‘Home from where?’
‘What?’
‘Home from where? Where had you been?’ Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to question a man who was so obviously in a state of shock, but information obtained during initial contact could be compared with what was said during an interview at a later stage.
‘Germany. A business trip. My plane was delayed. Or rather, it was cancelled first of all, then it was delayed, and then I was even later because my luggage …’
The man fell silent. A thought or a realisation seemed to have struck him. He looked at Lindman with a clarity in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
‘Could I have saved her? If I’d been on time, would she still have been alive then?’
All those ‘what-ifs’ were natural when someone died; Lindman had heard them many times. In several cases in which he had been involved, people had died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were crossing the road at the exact moment when a drunken driver came careering along. They were sleeping in the caravan on the very night when the bottled gas started leaking. They were walking over the railway line just as a train came by. Falling power lines, violent men who were high on something or other, cars on the wrong side of the road. Chance, coincidence. Forgotten keys could delay a person for precisely those few seconds that meant he or she wasn’t going to make it across an unmanned level crossing. A cancelled flight could leave a man’s wife alone for long enough to give a murderer the opportunity to strike. All those ‘what-ifs’.
Perfectly normal when someone died.
Impossible to answer.
‘Where is your wife, Richard?’ Lindman asked instead, keeping his voice calm and steady.
The man in the doorway seemed to ponder the question. He was forced to switch from the experiences of his journey home and the possible guilt he had suddenly become aware of to the present moment. To the terrible thing that had happened.
The thing he had been unable to prevent.
Eventually he found his way.
‘Upstairs.’ Richard gestured towards the interior of the house and began to cry. Lindman nodded to his colleague to go upstairs, while he followed the weeping man inside. You could never be sure, you could never make that judgement, but Lindman had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t escorting a murderer into the kitchen, his arm around Granlund’s shoulders.
At the bottom of the stairs Holst drew his service weapon and held it against his leg. If the crushed man his colleague was taking care of was not the murderer, then there was just a chance that he or she might still be in the house. At the top of the stairs he came to a small area equipped with a two-seater sofa, TV and Blu-ray. Dormer window. Shelves along the walls, containing books and films. Four doors. Two open, two closed. From the top of the stairs Holst could see the dead woman’s legs in the bedroom. On the bed. Which meant that Riksmord would have to be informed, he thought as he quickly went into the second room with an open door: a study. Empty. The two closed doors led to a bathroom and a dressing room. Both empty. Holst put away his gun and approached the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway.
A directive from Riksmord had been circulated a week or so earlier. They were to be informed in cases of death which fulfilled certain criteria.
If the victim was found in the bedroom.
If the victim was tied up.
If the victim’s throat had been cut.
The sound of Torkel’s mobile interrupted the last line of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, and he answered as he withdrew into the kitchen, leaving the sound of cheering behind him.
It was Vilma’s birthday party.
Thirteen.
A teenager.
Her birthday was actually the previous Friday, but she had wanted to go out for a meal with her girlfriends and to see a film. Her older, more boring relatives, such as her father, could come on a weekday evening. Torkel and Yvonne had bought their daughter a mobile phone for her birthday. A new one – not her older sister’s cast-off, or an old one of his or Yvonne’s when they got a new one through work. Now she had a brand-new model – with Android, Billy had said when Torkel asked him for help in choosing it. According to Yvonne, Vilma had more or less been sleeping with it since last Friday.
The kitchen table was covered in presents this evening. Vilma’s older sister had bought her mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss and foundation. Vilma had been given her gifts on Friday, but had laid everything out again to show off the total haul. Torkel picked up the mascara, which promised lashes up to ten times longer, as he listened to the information being fed into his ear.
A murder. In Tumba. A woman whose throat had been cut, tied up in the bedroom.
Torkel thought Vilma was far too young to be wearing make-up, but it had been made very clear to him that she was the only one in her year group who didn’t wear make-up, and that the idea of turning up at school next year without it was out of the question. Torkel didn’t put up a great deal of resistance. Times were changing, and he knew he should be grateful that he hadn’t had to engage in this discussion with Vilma two years ago. Some of her friends’ parents had been in that position, and had clearly lost the battle.
All the indications pointed to the fact that this was the third victim.
Torkel ended the call, put down the mascara and went back to the living room.
Vilma was talking to her maternal grandparents. He called her over, and she didn’t look too unhappy at having to break off the conversation with the oldies. She came towards Torkel with an expectant look on her face, as if she thought he’d been out in the kitchen organising some kind of surprise.
‘I have to go, sweetheart.’
‘Is it because of Kristoffer?’
It took Torkel a few seconds even to understand the question. Kristoffer was Yvonne’s new partner. They had got together a few months ago, but Torkel had met him for the first time this evening. He was a high school teacher. Aged about fifty. Divorced with kids. Seemed like a nice bloke. It had never occurred to Torkel that their meeting might be seen as difficult, uncomfortable or in any way a problem. Vilma obviously interpreted the delay in his response as confirmation that she was right.
‘I told her not to invite him,’ she went on, a sullen expression on her face.
Torkel was filled with tenderness for his daughter. She wanted to protect him. Thirteen years old, and she wanted to shield him from heartache. In her world it was obviously an extremely awkward situation. No doubt she wouldn’t have wanted to see her ex-boyfriend together with someone else. If she’d ever had a boyfriend. Torkel wasn’t sure. He gently stroked her cheek.
‘I have to work. It’s got nothing to do with Kristoffer.’
‘Promise?’
‘Absolutely. I would have to leave even if there were just the two of us here. You know how it is.’
Vilma nodded. She had lived with him for long enough.
‘Has someone died?’
‘Yes.’
Torkel had no intention of telling her any more. He had decided long ago that he wasn’t going to try to gain his children’s attention by passing on exciting and grotesque details relating to his work. Vilma knew that. So she didn’t ask any more questions, she simply nodded. Torkel looked at her, his expression serious.
‘I think it’s really good that Mum has met someone.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not? Just because she’s not with me anymore, it doesn’t mean she has to be alone.’
‘Have you met someone?’
Torkel hesitated for a second. Had he? For a long time he had been involved in some kind of relationship with Ursula, his married colleague, but they had never really defined what it actually was. They slept with one another when they were working away. Never in Stockholm. They never had dinner together, they never had those ordinary conversations about their private lives. Sex and talk about work. That was all. And not even that much at the moment. A few months ago, Torkel had brought his former colleague Sebastian Bergman into an investigation, and since then his and Ursula’s relationship had been restricted to nothing more than work. This bothered Torkel, more than he was willing to admit. It wasn’t the fact that everything was so obviously conducted on Ursula’s own terms – he could live with that – but he missed her. More than he would have thought. It annoyed him. And on top of everything else, it seemed as if she had grown closer to her husband Mikael recently. They had even been to Paris for the weekend not long ago.
So had he met someone?
Probably not, and he certainly wasn’t about to explain the complexities of his dealings with Ursula to Vilma, who had only just become a teenager.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t met anyone. And now I really do have to go.’
He gave her a hug. A big one.
‘Happy birthday,’ he whispered. ‘Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ she replied. ‘And my mobile.’ She pressed her freshly glossed lips gently to his cheek.
Torkel still had a smile on his face as he got in the car and set off for Tumba. He called Ursula. She was already on her way.
As he drove, Torkel had caught himself hoping that this would turn out to be something else. Someone else. That there wouldn’t be a link to the other dead women. But as soon as he looked into the bedroom he could see his hopes had been futile.
The nylon stockings. The nightdress. The arrangement.
This was the third victim.
‘From ear to ear’ was an inadequate description of the gaping neck wound. It was, rather, from one side of the spinal column to the other. Like opening a tin and leaving a little bit so that you can bend back the lid. The woman’s head had almost been severed from her body. A considerable amount of strength would have been required to inflict such an injury. There was blood everywhere, high up the walls and all over the floor.
Ursula was already busy taking pictures. She moved around the room carefully, making sure she didn’t step in the blood. She was always first on the scene if possible. She looked up, nodded a greeting and carried on with her photographs. Torkel asked the question, even though he already knew the answer.
‘Same?’
‘Definitely.’
‘I spoke to Lövhaga again on my way over. He’s still in there, exactly where he’s supposed to be.’
‘But we knew that, didn’t we?’
Torkel nodded.
He didn’t like this case, he thought as he stood by the bedroom door looking at the dead woman. He had stood in other doorways looking into other bedrooms, he had seen other women in nightdresses, their hands and feet bound with nylon stockings, raped and with their throats cut. They had found the first one in 1995. Then there had been three more before they managed to catch the murderer in the late spring of ’96.
Hinde was sentenced to life imprisonment in Lövhaga.
He didn’t even appeal.
And he was still in there.
But these new victims were identical copies of Hinde’s. Hands and feet bound in the same way. Excessive violence used to cut the throat. Even the blue tinge in the white nightdresses was the same. This meant that the person they were looking for wasn’t just a serial killer, but also a copycat. Someone who was copying murders from fifteen years ago, for some reason. Torkel looked down at his notebook and turned to Ursula again. She had been involved in the original case in the nineties. Ursula, Sebastian and Trolle Hermansson, who had reluctantly retired since then.
‘The husband said he got a reply to a text message at around nine o’clock this morning, but no reply to a message at one o’clock.’
‘She’s been dead for more than five hours, less than fifteen.’
Torkel knew that Ursula was right. If he had asked she would have pointed out that rigor mortis had not yet reached the legs, that there was no indication of autolysis, that the initial signs of tache noire had begun to appear, and other technical terms relating to forensics which he still hadn’t bothered to learn in spite of all the years he had spent in the police service. If you asked, someone would always explain in plain language.
Ursula wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. It was several degrees warmer up here than downstairs. The July sun had been shining in all day. Flies were buzzing around the room, attracted by the blood and the process of decay, as yet invisible to the human eye.
‘The nightdress?’ Torkel wondered after surveying the bed one last time.
‘What about it?’ Ursula lowered the camera and gazed at the old-fashioned item of clothing.
‘It’s been pulled down.’
‘Could have been the husband. Wanting to cover her up.’
‘I’ll ask him whether he touched her.’
Torkel left his place by the door and returned to the inconsolable husband in the kitchen. He really didn’t like this case at all.
The tall man had slept for a few hours. He had come home and gone straight to bed. That was what he always did. Rituals. The adrenaline had been surging through his body. He didn’t really know what happened, but afterwards it always felt as if he had used up a week’s reserves of energy during the short period of activity. But now he was awake. The alarm clock had gone off. It was time to get to work. Again. He got out of bed. So much still to do. And it was vital that everything was done in the right way. At the right time. In the right order.
Rituals.
Without them there would be nothing but chaos and fear. Rituals created control. Rituals made the bad stuff less bad. The pain less painful. Rituals kept the darkness at bay.
The man linked his Nikon camera to the computer and quickly uploaded the thirty-six pictures.
The first one showed the woman weeping, her arms crossed protectively over her breasts as she stood waiting for him to give her the nightdress to put on. Blood was trickling from one nostril, down to her lower lip. Two drops had splashed her right breast on their way to the floor, leaving red marks like rain on a window pane. She had refused to get undressed at first. Thought her clothes might somehow protect her. Save her.
In the thirty-sixth and final picture she was staring blankly straight into the camera. He had squatted down by the bed and leaned in close, so close that he had felt the warmth of the blood seeping from the gaping wound in her throat. By that time most of the blood had left her body, and had been largely absorbed by the bedclothes and the mattress.
He quickly checked the pictures in between. Nightdress on. The nylon stockings. The knots. Knickers off. Before the act. After the act. The knife and its work.
The fear.
The realisation.
The result.
Everything looked good. He would be able to use all thirty-six. That was the best outcome. In spite of the almost unlimited capacity of the digital camera, he wanted to stick to the confines of an old-fashioned roll of film. Thirty-six pictures. No more. No less.
The ritual.
Billy was kneeling by the front door examining the lock as Torkel walked down the stairs. He turned to his boss.
‘No sign of forced entry as far as I can see. The indications are that he was let in.’
‘The patio door was open when we got here,’ Torkel informed him.
‘The husband opened it when he got home,’ Billy said. ‘According to him, it was locked.’
‘Is he sure about that? He seemed pretty much out of it with shock …’
‘He sounded sure.’
‘I’ll ask him again. Where’s Vanja?’
‘Outside. She just got here.’
‘There’s a computer in the study upstairs. Take it with you and see if you can find anything. Preferably something that links her to the others.’
‘So she’s the third?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Are we bringing anyone in, or …’
Billy left the question hanging in the air. Torkel knew that what he really meant was: Are we bringing in Sebastian Bergman? The same thought had occurred to Torkel, but he had immediately dismissed it. The drawbacks were obvious and significantly outweighed the advantages – but that was before tonight.
Before the third victim.
‘We’ll see.’
‘I mean, bearing in mind who he’s copying …’
‘As I said, we’ll see.’
The tone of voice told Billy it was time to stop asking questions. He nodded and got to his feet. Billy understood Torkel’s frustration. They had no evidence – or, to be more accurate, they had plenty. Footprints, fingerprints, semen and hairs, but in spite of all this they were no closer to making an arrest than twenty-nine days ago when they had found the first woman bound and murdered in the same way. The almost nonchalant way the perpetrator left behind forensic evidence indicated that the person in question knew he wasn’t on any police register. He was far too organised for this to be mere carelessness. Therefore, he had no previous convictions, at least not for any serious crime. But he was willing to take risks. Or forced to do so. Both possibilities were alarming; in all probability, he would strike again.
‘Take Vanja back with you and go through everything again.’
If they could just find a connection between the victims, it would be a great help. They would be able to learn something about the perpetrator and start to close in on him. The worst-case scenario was that the killer was choosing women at random, that he saw someone in town, followed her, noted where she lived, made plans and waited for the right opportunity. If that was how he was selecting his victims, they wouldn’t catch him until he made a mistake. And so far he hadn’t put a foot wrong.
Billy took the stairs in a few rapid strides, glanced into the bedroom where Ursula was still working, and went into the study. Quite small, perhaps six square metres. A desk in one corner, with an office chair. A sheet of Perspex under the chair so that the wheels wouldn’t damage the parquet flooring. A low bench housing a printer, modem, router, papers, files and office supplies. On the wall above the desk there was a long picture frame with space for eight photographs. The victim – Katharina – was alone in one picture, smiling into the camera beneath an apple tree; dark hair, straw hat, white summer dress. Like an advertisement for the Swedish summer. Österlen, perhaps. The husband – Richard – also appeared alone in another photograph, in the prow of a sailboat. Sunglasses, tanned, focused. All the other pictures showed both of them. Close together, arms around each other, smiling. It seemed as if they did a lot of travelling. There was a white sandy beach with palm trees in the background, and Billy was able to identify New York and Kuala Lumpur. No children, evidently.
So at least no one had lost their mother this time.
He stood there for a while, staring at the pictures. Gazing at the couple’s loving smiles. They had their arms around each other in every photograph. Perhaps they always posed for the camera like that. Perhaps it was just a pretence, to show the world how happy they were. But it didn’t look that way; it looked as if they were genuinely in love, standing there wrapped around each other. Somehow Billy couldn’t tear himself away from the images of the man and the woman. There was something about their happiness that affected him intensely. They looked so full of joy. So in love. So alive. Things didn’t usually touch Billy like this. He had no difficulty in maintaining a professional distance between himself and the victims. Obviously he was always affected to a certain extent; he suffered with the relatives, but the sorrow didn’t usually pierce so deeply. He knew exactly why it was different this time. He had just met someone whose happy expression and inviting smile reminded him of the woman in the pictures. It made the tragedy real. He thought about Maya, pulling up the covers and hugging him sleepily this morning. She had tried to get him to stay for just a little bit longer and a little bit longer and a little bit longer, until the whole morning had gone. The image of a smiling Maya fitted perfectly with the romantic photographs in front of him, but not with the grotesquely contorted, bound and raped woman in the room next door. And yet for a second he had seen Maya lying there face down in a huge pool of blood. He turned his head away and closed his eyes. He had never felt this fear before. Never.
And he must never let it happen again. He knew that. He must never let in the violence and the terror and allow it to poison him. It would destroy love. Make him fearful and constantly anxious. The importance of keeping his private life and his work completely separate was crystal clear to him; without that distance he could lose everything. He could hug Maya, hold her tight, but he could never share that feeling. It was too dark and bottomless to be brought into their relationship. He would hold her for a long time when he got home. She would ask him why. He would lie. He didn’t want to reveal the truth to her. Billy turned around, picked up the laptop from the desk and went downstairs to find Vanja.
The tall man gave the computer the order to print out all the pictures, and the printer responded immediately with an efficient hum of activity. As the images emerged on high-gloss paper, he created a new folder for the photographs on screen, copied it, went into the password-protected web page, identified himself as the administrator and uploaded the folder. The web page had the nondescript address fygorh.se, which was actually a random combination of letters that would not appear high up on any list found through a search engine. If a casual browser should somehow end up on the page, they would see only badly laid out text, barely legible against the colourful, moving background. The text, which sporadically changed both colour and font, consisted of extracts from books, government investigations, dissertations, other websites and completely meaningless passages, with no separation or spaces between them. The text was interrupted here and there by strange pictures and drawings, with no discernible purpose. It looked like a digital version of the nonsense sometimes seen on bus shelters or electricity boxes, created by someone who was unable to choose between all the possibilities on offer, and instead had decided to try everything in one place. No one was able to concentrate on the site for very long. He had requested the visitor statistics. Of the seventy-three people who had inexplicably found their way there, the person who had stayed the longest had managed only one minute and twenty-six seconds. Which was just what he wanted. Nobody had bothered to click through to the fifth page, or noticed the little red button right in the middle of a piece about listed buildings in Katrineholm. If you clicked on the button it opened a new page, which demanded your username and password. Beyond this security check was the folder containing the pictures he had just placed there. The folder had the less-than-informative title ‘3’.
The printer had finished its work. He picked up the pictures, leafed through them and counted. All thirty-six were there. He took out a large bulldog clip and attached it to the top of the pictures. He walked across to the other side of the room where a sheet of hardboard had been nailed to the wall, and hooked the bulldog clip onto a nail in the top right-hand corner. Above the nail was the number three, ringed in black ink. He glanced at the topmost pictures below numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’. Women. In their bedrooms. Half-naked. Weeping. Terrified. The bulldog clip on the far left held only thirty-four pictures. He had failed with two of them. Before the act. He had been too eager. Deviated from the ritual. It would never happen again. The second bundle was complete. He picked up the camera again and took a photograph of the board with its macabre display. The first phase had been completed. He put the camera down on the desk, picked up the black sports bag from the floor just inside the door.
Into the kitchen.
The man placed the bag on the kitchen table, unzipped it and removed the packaging from the nylon stockings he had used. Philippe Matignon Noblesse 50 Cammello.
As usual.
As always.
He opened the cupboard under the sink and threw away the packaging. Went back, took out the knife in its plastic bag, removed it and placed it in the sink. He then opened the cupboard under the sink again and threw away the bloodstained plastic bag. He closed the cupboard door and turned on the tap. Warm water cascaded down over the broad blade. The congealed blood began to loosen from the metal, and disappeared down the sink with the water, swirling gently clockwise. He picked up the knife by the handle and turned it over. When no more blood was coming off by itself, he used washing-up liquid and a brush to clean off the rest. Afterwards he dried the weapon carefully before replacing it in the bag. He opened the third drawer from the top in the unit next to the oven and took out a roll of three-litre freezer bags. He tore off one bag, put the roll back, closed the drawer and placed the bag next to the knife. Then he left the kitchen.
Billy found Vanja on the lawn. She was standing with her back to the patio and the big windows. A beautifully mown lawn lay in front of her, ending in two flowerbeds full of colour. Billy didn’t know the names of any plants, and assumed Vanja wasn’t fascinated by the pretty flowers either.
‘How’s it going?’
Vanja gave a start. She hadn’t heard him coming.
‘He didn’t leave a visitor’s card, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Okay …’ Billy took a step backwards.
Vanja realised she had sounded somewhat harsh. Billy’s question might not even have been work-related. He knew her. Knew her well. Knew how much she hated this type of crime. Not because of the blood and the sexual violence. She had seen far worse. But it was a woman.
Dead.
In her own home.
Women shouldn’t end up raped and murdered in their own homes. They were constantly vulnerable anyway, everywhere they went. They really ought to get changed before they walked home from a club or a bar. They should avoid subways, parks and lonely streets. They shouldn’t be listening to their iPod. Their freedom of movement was restricted, their opportunities were limited. They should at least be able to feel at peace in their own homes.
Relaxed.
Safe.
‘I found this,’ Vanja said as she turned and walked back towards the patio. Billy followed her. They stepped up onto the decking and walked past the four wicker chairs and the table with a closed green sun umbrella in the middle, which made Billy think of a seating area outside a restaurant rather than ordinary garden furniture. They went over to two white wooden deck chairs, where they could just imagine the Granlunds enjoying the evening sun over a drink.
‘There.’ Vanja pointed at a window on the left. Billy looked. Inside he could see most of the ground floor; Torkel was sitting chatting to Richard Granlund while the crime-scene team went through the rest of the house, but that couldn’t be what Vanja wanted to show him.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘There,’ she said again, pointing. She was more precise this time, and now he saw what she meant. It was more or less right in front of him: an impression on the window pane. There was an almost rectangular mark measuring a few square centimetres, with a smaller dot below it, flanked by two half-moon shapes. The one on the left curved slightly to the right, the one on the right slightly to the left, like a pair of brackets enclosing the other marks. Billy immediately knew what they were. Someone – probably the murderer – had looked in through the window, with his forehead and nose resting on the glass as he cupped his hands to shut out the light, leaving secretions from his sebaceous glands on the window pane.
‘He’s tall,’ Billy stated, leaning forward. ‘Taller than me.’
‘If he’s the one who did this,’ Vanja nodded towards the marks, ‘then that means he was visible from those houses over there.’ She pointed to the neighbouring houses beyond the flowerbeds. ‘Somebody might have seen him.’
Billy was doubtful. The middle of a weekday in July. The nearby houses looked as if the occupants might be away on holiday. Very few curious souls had gathered on the street or discovered they had important things to do in the garden when the police turned up. This was the kind of area that more or less emptied in the summer. The residents had the time and money to go off to their summer cottages, to go sailing, or even abroad. Had the perpetrator been aware of this? Counted on it?
Probably.
They would knock on doors, of course. Lots of doors. If the murderer had been let in, as Billy believed, it was likely that he had approached the house from the front. Knocking on the patio door was peculiar and frightening, and his chances of getting in would be considerably reduced. In which case he must have walked up the garden path. He would have been in full view there, too. But the same thing had applied in the two previous cases, and it hadn’t helped them at all. No one had seen anything or anyone. No car, no one behaving oddly in the area, no one who had asked the way, been creeping around, cycled past, turned up with a message.
Nothing and no one.
Everything had been perfectly normal in the neighbourhood, with the minor exception that a woman had been brutally murdered.
‘Torkel wants us to head back,’ Billy said. ‘If we’re lucky we’ll find a common denominator this time.’
‘It feels as if we need some luck. He’s picking up the pace.’
Billy nodded. Three weeks had elapsed between the first and second murders, but only eight days between the second and third. Together they set off across the lawn, which almost resembled the green on a golf course; in spite of a long spell of hot, dry weather, there was not a single patch of yellow to be seen. Vanja glanced at her colleague as he loped along beside her in his dark blue hoodie, carrying the laptop in one hand.
‘Sorry if I sounded a bit pissed off before.’
‘It’s cool – I expect you were pissed off.’
Vanja smiled to herself. It was so easy to work with Billy.
The bedroom.
With the bag in his hand the tall man went straight over to the chest of drawers by the window. He placed the bag on the piece of furniture and opened the top drawer. From the right-hand side he picked up a neatly folded nightdress and put it in the bag. From the left-hand side he picked up a pack of Philippe Matignon Noblesse 50 Cammello Light Brown nylon stockings, and put it in the black sports bag. He zipped the bag shut and put it in the drawer between the remaining clothes. It fitted perfectly.
Of course.
He closed the drawer.
Back to the kitchen.
He took a carefully folded paper bag from the cleaning cupboard and opened it as he walked over to the fridge. On the shelf inside the door of the fridge was a soft drink in a glass bottle and a packet of Marie biscuits. The drawer at the bottom of the fridge contained bananas. He took out two and placed them in the paper bag along with the fizzy drink, the biscuits and a bar of chocolate from the top shelf. For the third time he opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and took out a plastic bottle which had once contained chlorine. He was aware of the faint smell of disinfectant as he slipped the bottle into the paper bag, then took it into the hallway and put it down on the floor to the right of the front door.
He turned around and looked back at the apartment. All quiet. For the first time in several hours. The ritual had been carried out. He had finished. But he was also ready.
For the next one.
For number four.
All he had to do now was to wait.
It was a few minutes past midnight when Vanja walked into the room that was never referred to as anything other than ‘the Room’. Six chairs arranged around an oval conference table on a pale green carpet. A control panel for group discussions, video conferencing and the projector on the ceiling above the table, which was bare apart from four glasses and several bottles of mineral water. No glass walls facing the rest of the department, which meant that nobody could see into the Room. On one long wall hung the whiteboard, where Billy made sure that all the information relating to the case they were currently working on was displayed. He was just putting up a picture of Katharina Granlund when Vanja came in, sat down and placed three folders in front of her on the table.
‘What would you have been doing tonight?’
Billy was a little surprised by the question; he had expected her to ask about the case. Whether he had found a connection between the three dead women. Whether any progress had been made. It wasn’t that Vanja had no interest in her colleagues, but she was the most focused police officer Billy knew, and rarely bothered with small talk or brought up personal matters when she was working.