Anger Mode (14 page)

“Aside from that.”

Jonna looked at the room from the floor to the ceiling. “No, what would that be?” she said.

“A trained eye can spot it,” Walter said. “Just a small detail.”

Jonna walked around the room and studied the ornaments in detail. When she got to the bookshelf, she stopped.

“This one,” she said and pointed to the small plaster figure. “It really looks out of place here. A little distasteful, actually.”

Walter nodded, satisfied. “That’s not the only reason,” he said. “A similar angel was also found in Malin Sjöstrand’s jacket pocket.”

Jonna raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“In addition, I just got confirmation that Bror Lantz’s wife found a similar figure in her kitchen on the same day that the incident with the taxi occurred.”

Jonna looked at Walter, astonished. “In her kitchen? What does that mean?”

“Since she didn’t buy it herself, and it didn’t fly into her kitchen on its own wings, we can assume that it came to be there by some other means,” Walter answered and gazed out of one of the windows.

“Bror,” Jonna said.

“No, he didn’t recognize the skeleton.”

“Then it’s someone trying to make a statement,” Jonna deduced.

“Yes, unless it’s a new trend to leave small angels of death at people’s homes.”

“Hardly. Of course, it was fashionable to have death skulls for a while, but I find it difficult to see …”

“I thought as much,” Walter cut in, who was as trend-conscious as a monk in a monastery.

“The question is why did Malin Sjöstrand have one in her pocket?” Walter asked himself out loud. “She must have bought it or received it from someone or someone planted it on her. She was drugged; anyone could have easily placed it in her pocket without her knowing about it.”

“But why? What are they trying to say?” Jonna threw up her hands in despair.

“Maybe nothing,” Walter said. “Serial killers have a predilection for rituals of various types; they don’t necessarily have a meaning in themselves. To leave this figure as a calling card could be a similar behaviour.”

Jonna felt a cold shiver. “Serial killer? Do you mean that someone has drugged them all with Drug-X?”

“Anything is possible,” Walter said, “but finding a motive is significantly more difficult.”

“It doesn’t take much to see that there’s an obvious connection between these three deaths,” Jonna smiled slightly.

“Yes, but I’m afraid that there will be more chapters to this story,” Walter sighed.

SVEN-ERIK WAS FORCED to apologize to his future son-in-law even though it was difficult for him. Jörgen had been right about Karin Sjöstrand. The informant had been accurate and Sjöstrand was now officially charged with the manslaughter of her fifteen-year-old daughter. That she was an expert adviser and politically active in the county council administration as well as being a lay juror in Stockholm District Court made the whole story even more interesting, which contradicted Sven-Erik’s earlier view of the issue. He had made a bad judgment call. The tabloids were dominated by the murder of the fifteen-year-old girl, and the mother went under the alias “lay jurywoman”. The story in the daily newspapers took up several pages. Psychologists, ex-jurors and politicians now vied to surpass each other with the most outlandish analyses about the underlying factors behind the incident.

First out was
Aftonposten
in their online edition. It was five-thirty in the evening when the news bombshell exploded. The duty news editor at
Kvällspressen
called Sven-Erik at his home and informed him that he had been tipped off about a really hot news item. Sven-Erik literally coughed up his evening cocktail when he heard what
Aftonposten
had gone to print with. He immediately called Jörgen and ordered him in to the news desk so that the duty editor could go through the material that Sven-Erik had just turned down. He definitely did not want to miss anything that could trump the official version. Jörgen’s source probably had more details than were included in the official press release and that would give
Kvällspressen
a small but important edge over the competition. Jörgen was asked to contact his source again.

To Jörgen’s great disappointment, the informant was not contactable and could not therefore provide him with anything significantly different from the information that the other media now possessed. But he had now received his long-awaited retribution.

Finally, Jörgen would get the recognition he so well deserved at the newspaper. Now he could work like a genuine star reporter without having his cap in hand because of lack of respect. People would listen to him with entirely fresh ears from now on.

C
HAPTER 10

LILJA HAD JUST returned from his disrupted homewards journey and sat slouched behind a pile of paper when Walter and Jonna came into the office. He asked them to wait while he finished annotating one of the documents.

“I have contacted the Chief Prosecutor, Uddestad and SÄPO,” Lilja began, and stood up from his chair, agitated. He went to the window and put his hands behind his back.

“Julén wants to be sure that Lennart Ekwall was not in a state of shock and therefore confessed to the murder of his wife by mistake. This is to be handled in the same fashion as the Bror Lantz case,” he said and turned to face Walter.

Walter flushed.

“Explain that to me,” he said.

“Not right now,” Lilja answered. “By the way, did you find anything of interest at the crime scene?” He looked at Jonna.

Jonna was just about to answer yes to the question when she was interrupted by Walter’s abrupt reply.

“No, we didn’t find anything”.

Jonna corrected herself and looked, surprised, at Walter.

Lilja stared suspiciously at the odd couple on the other side of the desk.

“Shall we interview Ekwall straightaway?” Jonna asked and felt her pulse quicken.

“Yes, it’s just as well. You know the procedure,” Lilja answered as he sat down heavily in the chair again. He had wanted to avoid all the messy internal politics and instead be at home with a cold beer in his hand in front of the TV. Weekend jobs were the worst he could think of, with the exception of visiting his decrepit mother-in-law, who always complained about how poorly the police protected senior citizens against today’s unshaven riff-raff.

“Why didn’t you want me to mention that angel of death?” Jonna asked as they walked down to the detention cells.

“Let’s save that for another time,” Walter answered.

“Yes, but …”

“I thought you were assisting SÄPO with the Sjöstrand investigation full-time?” Walter cut her off harshly.

“That’s what I’m doing now, more or less,” Jonna said and reluctantly dropped the angel of death discussion. Walter seemed to be in a bad mood. She did not know why. “But I’m not the only one from RSU working with SÄPO, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“How many investigations are you actually participating in?”

“Right now, it’s enough with these two.” Jonna laughed nervously.

“That’s one too many, in my opinion,” Walter declared.

“One could say that I’m not exactly setting the pace in either of them, so I do have enough time for both of them, if that’s what you mean.”

“No matter, this investigation will more or less be concluded after this interview,” Walter said. “If Prosecutor Ekwall sticks to his confession, then the duty prosecutor either has to put together charges or look the other way and kill the investigation, as Lilja was implying. I won’t swallow the latter option one more time. I’m definitely an obedient cop, but not blindly obedient.”

“I wouldn’t follow that order either,” Jonna agreed. “The number of investigations being dropped due to lack of evidence is starting to become an epidemic – first Lantz and now maybe Ekwall.”

“Bloody banana republic,” Walter muttered.

“But Julén did nothing for Sjöstrand. She was charged.”

“She was just an ordinary lay juror of the court and definitely not a member of their mutual appreciation society. Or maybe she has the wrong party politics,” Walter smirked.

LENNART EKWALL SAT behind a table in one of the slightly larger interview rooms in the detention cell block. Jonna was first in, closely followed by Walter, who was breathing heavily after their fast pace through the corridors of police headquarters. He was quick to sit in one of the chairs and tried to catch his breath without revealing how unfit he was.

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and large sweat patches spread under his armpits.

Jonna looked at Walter, rather amused.

He tossed the folder labelled with a file number and the name Lennart Ekwall on the table and let it rest under his right hand so that Jonna could not take it. As he expected, she went quickly to the voice recorder and started the interview with the routine declaration of why the interview was taking place and who was present.

This time, Walter had not given her any rules of conduct for the interview, which was why the ever-ambitious Ms de Brugge was eager to start. Ekwall had already admitted to the murder of his wife so, no matter what Jonna did, she could not ruin the investigation with some rookie mistake.

Jonna glanced at the folder, which, unfortunately, was out of her reach. Walter saw in her eyes that she was about to reach for it. He quickly picked it up and started browsing through the pages slowly, humming to himself. Discreetly, she leaned in a little to get a glimpse of the contents, but Walter closed the folder.

“So, Lennart Ekwall, you don’t want a lawyer,” began Walter as he observed the dapper man opposite him. Walter had the folder at a safe distance from a now slightly irritated Jonna.

The man was sitting motionless and did not acknowledge with a single movement that he had heard what Walter said. He had a stylish haircut and his face emanated dignity, but it was as stiff as if it were hewn out of stone. Not even the eyelids over his steel-grey eyes seemed to move.

The man looks like a mannequin
, thought Walter and looked at Jonna, who was seething with irritation. She probably wanted to tear the file from Walter’s hand. He drummed his fingers lightly on the folder before he opened it again.

“From what I can read in the police officer’s report, you have admitted to the police officers who were first on the spot that you took the life of your wife, Lisbeth Ekwall, by hitting her head with a blunt instrument.” Walter took a break while he pulled out his reading glasses from his breast pocket. “The instrument in question was an iron golf club, which has been placed in the hall. Is that statement correct?” Walter looked up from the folder.

“That statement is correct,” confirmed Ekwall dryly, his lips barely moving.

Walter now thought that he resembled a ventriloquist’s dummy or a bronze statue more than a mannequin.

“Excellent, then we can move on,” continued Walter. “You’re apparently a district prosecutor by profession. It’s not stated in the preliminary data I have in this file, but is it accurate?”

“Yes, the detective has got that fact right as well,” said Ekwall.

Jonna could not be quiet anymore. She fidgeted as she listened to Walter leisurely continuing the interview. They would be sitting here for hours at this rate. She jumped in before Walter could ask the next question.

“Why did you kill your wife?”

Walter turned to Jonna. “We’ll get to that later,” he said in a calm voice and was about to continue the interview when the bronze statue cleared his throat.

“I will relate the sequence of events to the Detective Inspector and his assistant, if it’s of any interest,” he suggested and looked from Jonna to Walter.

“Please do,” said Jonna before Walter had time to react. He shot Jonna an annoyed glance.

“I usually get up early in the morning, as I did this morning,” began the District Prosecutor. “To be more precise, six-thirty. I found my wife lying on the sofa, passed out due to alcohol. The previous evening, she had drunk herself into a stupor, as usual. She is, in fact, an alcoholic.”

Walter nodded in agreement, as if he too had an alcoholic wife with all the problems that implied.

“I tried to eat breakfast at seven o’clock before I went out for my usual jog. It takes about thirty minutes and I run along the beach promenade below the house.”

“Tried to eat breakfast?” Walter cut him off curiously.

“Yes, it had a bad taste. It was as if all the food had been spoiled.”

Walter looked thoughtfully at the bronze statue.

“Carry on,” he said, with a wave of his hand.

“When I came home, Lisbeth had woken up and was about to have a breakfast of wine. As usual, I didn’t take any notice of her when she was in that mood and, instead, I went upstairs and took a short sauna and then a shower. After I went downstairs to make some coffee, I found an opened wine bottle standing on the kitchen counter next to a parcel from an unnamed sender.”

“An admirer perhaps?” suggested Jonna.

Walter motioned to Ekwall to continue.

“In less than one hour, my wife had made herself drunk again by draining the entire bottle. A strange feeling of anger came over me. Usually, I would have just shrugged my shoulders, but this time I felt a real rage within me.”

“Anger against your wife?” Walter wondered.

“Yes and no.”

“How so?” Jonna asked.

“Well, I was really angry at everything around me – but especially at Lisbeth. I was seething with rage and I’d had enough of her drinking.” Ekwall paused and shifted his body for the first time.

“Carry on,” Walter said impatiently.

Ekwall drank some water from the glass in front of him. “Suddenly, it was as if I didn’t have control over myself anymore. I had a terrible pain in my head that only seemed to dissipate as I yielded to the rage.”

“Did you hear voices as well?” Jonna interrupted.

Ekwall looked at Jonna for a moment. “The pain in my head was so excruciating that I must have been hallucinating the voices. But to answer your question, yes.”

Jonna nodded and asked him to continue.

“In a furious rage, I went out to the hall and took out a club from my golf bag. I had always intended to use a golf club in self-defence if any burglar got the idea to break in when we were at home.”

“The 4-iron was apparently good for the job,” said Walter.

“Yes, precisely, the 4-club,” continued Ekwall. “With it in my hands and, may I say, in a blind rage, I went into the dining room where I found my wife standing with her back to me. She seemed to be drinking the last of the wine she’d been given as a gift from an unknown admirer.”

“Admirer?” Walter said curiously.

“Yes,” said Jonna. “And the wine was not just any everyday wine.”

“No?” Walter looked even more bemused.

“It was a vintage Montrachet 2004,” she said.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Walter replied casually.

“Maybe that’s because it’s not available as a bag-in-a-box wine,” suggested Jonna, equally casually.

Walter glared irritably at his trainee.

“In fact, that wine costs ten thousand crowns a bottle,” Jonna informed him.

“Please continue,” asked Walter, casting a sour look at Jonna.

“I gripped the golf club with both hands and took aim at her head,” Ekwall continued and demonstrated with his hands. “I swung my hips a little more so that the swing would be powerful.”

“Yes, you certainly succeeded quite well with both hips and swing,” said Walter dryly.

“The club hit her head on the first swing. The rest is history,” Ekwall concluded.

There was silence in the interview room.

Walter glanced over at Jonna who was sitting, seemingly absorbed in thought. Maybe she was thinking of some more witticisms.

“It would seem to have happened that way,” Ekwall finally added and leaned back in his chair. He fixed his eyes on the floor.

“What do you mean by that?” Walter asked.

“For the simple reason that I remember nothing.”

“What do you mean, don’t remember?” Walter said in a stern voice. “You’ve just told us what happened.”

Ekwall shook his head in rebuttal. “After breakfast, I took a jog as I just described. During the time I ran, I began to feel contempt towards Lisbeth and her drinking, something I had never felt before. I have always been understanding and I felt sorry for her. I tried in every possible way to get her to stop the behaviour that was destructive to herself and those around her, but she always fell back into drinking. I don’t remember much more except that I had thought about who had sent the exclusive wine to Lisbeth and if she really had some secret admirer, which I strongly doubted, given the condition she was in. At the end of the jog, it was as if I was in a daze. The anger that had grown within me must have peaked after the shower. I felt that headache and just needed to get the rage out of my body. After that, it all went hazy. When I came to my senses again, I found Lisbeth lifeless on the floor at my feet in the dining room. With the golf club in my hand and the blood coming out of her head, I realized what must have happened. At first, it struck me that it was a bad dream. But the more I recovered my senses, the more clearly I realized that it wasn’t a nightmare. I called the police and told them what had happened.”

“You didn’t have any other option, right?” Walter said sharply.

“I can’t for the life of me understand how I could do something so unforgivable and why I have no recollection of the event.” He gazed down at the floor again.

“Could be due to the shock,” Jonna suggested.

Walter scratched his neck and put the folder on the table so that Jonna could reach it. She seemed to have lost interest in it.