Frozen Moment (29 page)

    'We
need to make a decision on what we're going to do about talking to the press,'
she had said, among other things.

    Tell
sighed. He'd been waiting for that.

    'The
media already have some idea of what's happened - there was a fairly woolly
piece in
Goteborgsposten
after the Olofstorp murder. The question is
whether it might do us some good to go public with the whole thing, to avoid
media speculation.'

    The
team had gathered in full force in the conference room. Since they were on his
territory, it seemed natural for Tell to take the lead.

    'I
assume you are all familiar with the background of these cases and why we're
here, therefore I have no intention of going through it all again. I also
assume that everyone,' nodding mainly in the direction of the officers from
Borås, 'has had a look at the interview transcripts linked to the Olofstorp
murder, along with the SO CO reports and the forensic pathologist's report.'

    Björkman
and Frisk nodded.

    'I
would therefore suggest that you run through what you've got,
then
we can look at the information and make an initial
comparison.'

    Björkman
tapped the bundle of A4 paper in front of him into a neat rectangle.

    'OK…
let's see. Olof Bart was shot with the same gun as your
victim,
that
has been confirmed. The bullet was found after a detailed
examination of the crime scene, but nothing else. The killer does not appear to
have got out of the vehicle. However, we did learn from the forensic
pathologist's examination that the execution did not go exactly according to
plan, as happened in your case. A mark just above Bart's left ear shows that
the murderer first pressed the barrel of the gun against the victim's skull.
However, the shot was fired from a distance of approximately half a metre. It
seems likely that the perpetrator held on to Bart and pressed the gun to his
head, but Bart managed to tear himself free. The murderer could have shot him
while still sitting in his car.'

    'What's
that all about?' groaned Gonzales. 'Can't he even manage to get out of his car?
Either he's bloody lazy, or he's got some kind of mobility problem.'

    'That
is possible, of course,' said Björkman thoughtfully. 'But it's also possible,
in both
cases, that
the murderer
did
get out of
his car but didn't leave any traces behind. As we know, it poured with rain all
that day.'

    Everyone
around the table nodded gloomily: rain was every officer's worst nightmare when
it came to examining the scene of a crime.

    'Apart
from blood and other material, there are traces of paint on the metal wall that
was rammed. We will probably be able to establish what kind of paint we are
dealing with. There were also tyre tracks. The place was ankle-deep in mud, but
here and there we were able to make a decent cast. I'll come back to that.'

    He
took a deep breath and blew the air out of the corner of his mouth.

    'As
I said, the perpetrator was unlucky, if I can put it like that. The shot was
not fatal, at least not directly. It went through the nose and came out behind
the ear without passing through the brain. Bart would probably have survived,
looking like shit admittedly, if he hadn't died from loss of blood or frozen to
death. However, as you know, the perpetrator decided to be on the safe side and
ran over him as well.'

    Björkman
leafed through his papers again.

    'The
perpetrator drove into the victim on the lawn, pushing him in front of the car
towards the garage. Then the killer put his foot down, pinning Bart against the
wall and… well, any of his internal organs that were still intact were crushed
at that point. The driver then reversed and the victim was pulled, or dragged,
a couple of metres along the grass, where his body was eventually found. We do
have a time frame: our forensic pathologist has estimated death occurred
between four and six in the morning, and according to an interview with a
neighbour, Anette Persson, who evidently suffers from
insomnia,
it was quarter to five when an unknown Jeep rolled down towards Bart's place. I
think we can safely assume that this was our murderer.'

    Sofia
Frisk cleared her throat.

    'The
Berntssons, Bart's other neighbours, were also woken at an early hour by noise
from Olof Bart's place - the roar of a car engine, among other things. Maja
Berntsson assumed he was up early, working, which he often did, but again it
seems likely that what she actually heard was the murder.'

    'Isn't
it a bit strange that she didn't hear anything else - screaming, for example?'
said Karlberg.

    Björkman
shrugged his shoulders. He looked up to check that no one had any further
questions about the cause of death, then took a document out of a red plastic
folder and carried on.

    'As
I said, he was found by two young people, David Jansson and Klara Päivärinta,
who were out for a walk; their dog ran on ahead and started barking. The dog
had evidently been up to the body and… well, I don't know. The boy said its
nose was covered in blood. At first he thought it had been bitten by some
animal.' Björkman shuddered at the unpleasant picture that came into his mind.
'They made the call straight away. The police from Kinna turned up after only a
couple of hours.'

    A
few of his colleagues laughed appreciatively at the aside.

    'Were
they questioned?' asked Tell, temporarily deaf to any kind of in-joke.

    'They
were very shocked, of course, but they were interviewed at the scene and didn't
really have much to say. They hadn't seen or heard anything, but then that's
hardly surprising. It was three or four o'clock in the afternoon when the call
was made.'

    Björkman
started rustling through his papers again, and Frisk took the opportunity to
jump in.

    'Michael
and I spoke to Anette Persson. Apart from telling us the precise time when she
saw the car, she was also able to tell us that it was a Jeep Grand Cherokee,
fairly new-'

    'A
Grand Cherokee, yes,' Tell interrupted.

    Frisk
cleared her throat.

    'Apparently
they used to have
one themselves, that's why she was so
certain
. She was less sure about the colour, but she thought it was
black or blue. Another thing: Sigvard Berntsson remembered that Bart had been
anxious about something just before he was murdered. He'd been talking about
burglar alarms and neighbourhood watch.
As if he had a bad
feeling about something.'

    Björkman
nodded thoughtfully. 'There's one more house that's occupied all year round,
the Transtroms'. They were away on the day itself, but they did say that a
sports car driven by an immigrant had been seen down in the village a week
earlier. They thought it was odd.'

    Björkman's
expression showed exactly what he thought of this, and a couple of his
Gothenburg colleagues shook their heads incredulously.

    'OK,'
said Tell, taking over once again. 'We'll carry on interviewing those who live
in the vicinity. We'll work our way outwards from the scene of the crime.'

    He
stood up and made a note on the whiteboard.

    'So,
we're assuming that we have a murderer in a Grand Cherokee. They can't be all
that common.'

    'Well
no, bearing in mind how much you have to cough up to buy one,' Karlberg agreed.

    'So
our murderer is upper class. A politician or a brat,' said Beckman.

    'Or
a plumber,' Bärneflod added.

    'Focus,'
said Tell. 'The vehicle registration office: all those who own a Grand
Cherokee. Start with black and dark blue. In Gothenburg and Borås to begin
with, then we'll work our way across the country.'

    'What
limits are we setting?' asked Frisk.

    'We
don't know yet,' said Tell.

    Björkman
raised one finger in the air. 'There was one thing I wanted to come back to
with regard to the tyre tracks. It's annoying, to say the least. The
impressions show that the tracks from the two crime scenes were not made by the
same vehicle. Or to be more accurate, they're not from the same wheel.'

    Everyone
sat in silence for a moment, digesting this fact with some confusion.

    'But
according to our technical boys, the tracks were made by a heavy vehicle,
something like a Jeep,' Gonzales protested.

    'Yes.
We know that one tyre manufacturer recognised their specific model from the
impressions we took in Olofstorp,' said Tell. 'Plus we have the exact distance
between the wheels. A Grand Cherokee is a match for our case too.'

    'What
does that mean - it's not the same murderer after all? Did the murderer swap
cars, same model but a different vehicle? Or did he change the tyres?' said
Karlberg.

    'It
is the same murderer - the gun matches,' Beckman broke in.

    'Shit,'
muttered Tell. 'OK, we'll check the vehicle register anyway.'

    He
thought for a moment.

    'We
should also look at car hire companies in the area who have a Grand Cherokee.
Same method: start at the centre and work your way outwards. Check if they have
CCTV cameras; if so, it would be useful to have the tapes.'

    Somewhat
disheartened, Tell found it difficult to summon up enthusiasm for the
investigation, yet they had actually managed to gather far more information
than could reasonably be expected at such an early stage. They had an exact
time; they had the make of the car. Even if the car wasn't the same one in both
murders, they could link one car to one murder through the specific wear and
tear on a tyre, and hopefully they would be able to link the car to the
murderer through the registration office, a car hire firm or witness
statements.
And then the murderer could probably be linked to
both murders, since it could be proved that the same weapon had been used.
He pulled himself together.

    'The
method is the
same,
the murder weapon is the same. We
need to think about common denominators between Lars Waltz and Olof Bart. In
order to do this, we need to map each man's background. We've made a start on
this with Waltz, as you can see from the reports, so we'll tackle Bart in the
same way
The
focus for this task is to try to find
points of similarity between these two men. Can anyone think of anything now,
just off the top of your head?'

    'They're
about the same age,' said Beckman.

    Karlberg
nodded. 'Waltz is two years older.'

    'Grew
up in the same area, perhaps? Went to the same school?'

    Björkman
shook his head.

    'Olof
Bart has only been Olof Bart for about ten years. He changed his surname in
1997. Before that he was called Pilgren. Odd, don't you think? So far we
haven't managed to track down any relatives. His parents are no longer alive.
He's supposed to have an older sister - Susanne Pilgren - but she hasn't had a
fixed address for years. Evidently she's a known user. But when Olof was young
the family lived in Gothenburg, in Angered.'

    He
scratched his head.

    'They
don't seem to have had an easy time of it as kids. The sister was taken into
care by social services, but that's where the trail ends - it's all
confidentiality crap. If we're going to get any information, we need a piece of
paper to wave about.'

    'OK,
Björkman, that's fine,' said Tell. 'Someone needs to look up Bart's social
services file, if it still exists, and check out the family in general: mother,
father, possible foster homes,
care
homes, time in
prison, whatever. Actually, I can do that. I can go through Ostergren if we hit
red tape,' he added to himself.

    'Karlberg,
you go and have a chat with the guy who worked with Bart. And Bärneflod, you
can start setting up the search for the car. Check if there's any transport
company that uses the killer's presumed route, and if there is, find out the
drivers' schedules. Somebody might have seen our man, maybe at a petrol station
or in a lay-by. The same applies to taxi firms that serve the area we're
looking at. I know it was an ungodly hour so I'm sure there weren't many people
about. Talk to the staff at petrol stations and places that serve food along
the road; we know he was driving a dark-coloured Grand Cherokee. He might have
stopped to fill up with petrol or got something to eat. The CCTV cameras could
be of interest there too. As usual we need to work with the resources
available, and we have one or two other cases going on as well. But we do need
to strike while the iron's hot. The police in Angered, and I assume in Kinna
too, are at our disposal within reason. But we should expect to work hard for
the next few days. I'll talk to Ostergren about how many people we can use.'