Missing in Malmö: The third Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) (10 page)

But she had far more on her mind at that moment. Graeme Todd was no longer a missing person. What was still missing was any clue as to what he had got himself involved in.

CHAPTER 16

Moberg hadn’t been happy when Anita woke him up with a phone call at half past three in the morning, but, as she pointed out, he wanted to be kept up to speed on developments, and a dead body with a hand missing was as big a development as they come. He grunted that he would be in at six, and that he wanted to see her, Wallen and Mirza to get a full run down on the case so far. That meant there was no point in Anita going home to try and snatch a little rest. So she made her way to headquarters. That would give her time to phone Hakim and gather her thoughts. They were too jumbled to make any sense of at the moment.

By the time Hakim came in at about half past five, Anita’s brain was no clearer. She had already gone through three coffees, and the bin was full of half-mangled snus.

‘You should have called me,’ Hakim said.

‘There was no point in us both losing our beauty sleep. If it’d been the actual crime scene, that would have been different. But Graeme Todd was washed up on the shore. He was murdered somewhere else.’

‘Have we anything to go on as to where he might have been killed?’ he asked, stifling a yawn.

‘What do you think?’ Anita answered wearily and a little irritably. ‘But that sums up this entire investigation.’

Anita, Wallen and Hakim had to watch Moberg plough his way through his McDonald’s breakfast in the meeting room as they went through the sketchy evidence they had so far. But even he momentarily stopped eating when Anita described Todd’s missing hand. Anita went through Eva Thulin’s speculations – they would have to wait for her preliminary findings – and what they had discovered yesterday, which amounted to Todd’s visits to Malmöhus and the city library, the maps, and his interest in Henning Mankell. The latter might explain why he had got on the train to Ystad that morning. The question was whether he met his fate while he was out of Malmö, or whether he had returned before being killed. What was certain was that he never went back to his hotel.

Moberg didn’t speak until he had nothing left to eat.

‘It’ll be interesting to know how he died. Result of the beating or did he drown?’

No one could answer, so they remained silent.

‘We’ll need to get onto his local British police force and notify them. That’s one for you, Anita. See if he had a criminal record. This smacks of a gangland killing.’

‘What about going to Ystad?’ asked Anita. That still had to be a starting point.

‘Wallen and Mirza can do that. See if he left a trail. Of course, he might have got off at any of the stations along the line if he was meeting someone. But it’s all we’ve got to go on. At least he was alive when he got on that train.’

Moberg slowly eased himself out of his chair.

‘We’ll meet again when you two get back from Ystad.’ He lumbered his way towards the door. ‘And Anita, as well as talking to the British cops, don’t forget to inform the widow.’

She hadn’t.

Normally, in the case of a dead national from another country, Anita would have contacted the deceased’s local police first, who would then have broken the news to the next of kin. But, as she had been dealing directly with Jennifer Todd, it was only right that the news should be passed on by her, rather than a total stranger. This was never a pleasant task. It was always the worst part of the job.

Jennifer Todd had been initially stunned into silence before bursting out with, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ There weren’t any tears, which somehow made it worse. It was as though Jennifer had already accepted the inevitable. Eventually, Anita had managed to explain that the body had been washed up on the shore, and that they were treating it as murder. ‘How on earth can he have been murdered?’ Jennifer had been incredulous. Anita didn’t have the heart to tell her that her husband had had his hand cut off. That would come later when she identified him. Anita said that she would arrange for Jennifer to come to Sweden and, at the end of the conversation, the distraught woman had thanked her for her help. What help? She hadn’t taken Graeme’s disappearance seriously until it was too late. As she put the phone down, she felt a stab of guilt. Could there have been more she could have done? Or was it too late anyway? Eva Thulin might be able to provide an answer.

The train had been updated, thought Wallen as she surveyed the carriage. Skånetrafiken must have invested in some new rolling stock since she last made this journey, about a couple of years before. She had had a night out with Anita and her friends in Simrishamn. A boozy night. She reflected that that was virtually the last time they had been out together. At one time, they had seen quite a lot of each other socially. They’d once even had a holiday on Kos together. Anita was the nearest thing to a friend she had in the force. They were on amicable terms but they had drifted apart. Probably because Anita didn’t like her partner, Rolf. He could be full of himself. And she suspected that Rolf quietly fancied Anita, so maybe it was she who was doing the distancing. She had had too much disappointment where men were concerned.

The train sped through the outskirts of Malmö.

‘How are you getting on with Anita?’

Hakim smiled. ‘Fine.’

‘She’s a good detective.’ Annoyingly, Wallen knew that Anita Sundström had a better record than herself. Wallen felt some resentment – she was just as competent, yet she hadn’t had the same opportunities to shine. But she knew deep down that Anita’s relative success was down to an inner determination that she didn’t possess. Anita could stand up to Moberg, which she had never been able to do.

‘Yes, I’ve learned a lot from her.’

‘You’ll miss her when you move on.’

‘Yeah. I heard last week that I’m going to Gothenburg after Christmas.’

‘Nice city.’

The conversation died. She didn’t know what to say to Hakim. Having no children of her own, she wasn’t comfortable relating to the young any more. That was another thing she envied Anita.

The train slowed down. They had reached Oxie. Wallen picked up a discarded copy of the
Metro
, which she read until they reached Ystad.

‘Detective Sergeant Kevin Ash here,’ said a bright voice at the other end of the phone. Anita had been kept waiting a while after she had first rung the Cumbrian Constabulary headquarters at Penrith to explain the Graeme Todd situation.

‘Inspector Anita Sundström from the Skåne County Police.’

‘And where’s that when it’s at home?’

‘Southern Sweden. Malmo.’ She dropped the umlaut so that it came out as the English pronunciation of the city’s name.

‘Malmo. Now don’t tell me.’ There was a momentary silence at the other end of the line. ‘1979. The European Cup Final. Nottingham Forest beat Malmo with a Trevor Francis goal. Brian Clough’s team. The Swedes had an English manager, though.’ She could hear him purse his lips. ‘No, it’s gone.’

‘Bob Houghton.’

‘Heavens, you’re right!’ Anita recognized the Estuary English in the voice from her time at the Met. She hadn’t expected to hear it in an officer somewhere as far north as Cumbria.

‘Now you’ve established where I’m ringing from, can we talk about Graeme Todd.’

‘Sorry.’ She heard the rustle of paper. ‘I’ve been given a note here. There was a call logged at 9.14am on Friday, October 5th. Jennifer Todd said she thought that her husband had gone missing and that she had already been in contact with the police in Sweden. So, I assume from your call that he’s turned up.’

‘Yes. Unfortunately, dead.’

‘Oh dear! Accident?’

‘No, murder.’

‘Are you sure?’ There was a hint of disbelief in his tone.

‘Someone chopped his hand off.’

She heard a sharp intake of breath. ‘Shit!’

Anita waited for him to take in the information. ‘We dragged him out of the sea early this morning. We don’t yet know where he died.’

‘Does Mrs Todd know?’

‘I’ve just spoken to her.’

‘Do you have any idea who might have killed him?’

‘None at all. He’s what his wife calls an “heir hunter”.’

‘I know the sort of thing.’

‘He came over to Malmö, or Skåne anyway – that’s like your county – to meet someone. According to his wife, he thought he was going to make a lot of money out of the visit.’

‘So there must have been a big inheritance.’

‘No. That wasn’t the case. That’s the strange thing. It was to do with some elderly woman who died in Carlisle a few years ago. Mrs Todd thinks the estate wasn’t worth much at all. But he was secretive about the details, so his wife doesn’t know that much.’

There was a pause. ‘Blimey, your English is good.’

‘I’ve spent time in England,’ Anita said with a hint of annoyance. ‘The point is,’ she continued more forcefully than she meant to, ‘that until we know why he came over here to Sweden, we have virtually nothing to go on. At the moment, we’re trying to trace his movements.’

‘If he’s an accredited probate researcher, presumably he’ll have a file on the case here in Cumbria.’

‘It’s not there. Jennifer Todd had a break-in on Saturday night.’

‘We’ve got no record of a break-in.’

‘That’s because she didn’t think that anything had been taken. But there was no sign of the file, and she’s sure he would have had one. He may have brought it with him, of course, but Mrs Todd reckons that’s unlikely. But if he didn’t...’

‘Then whoever killed Todd has someone over here,’ Ash said, completing the thought process.

‘That’s only speculation.’

‘Will you be coming over?’ Ash asked. There was a hint of enthusiasm in his voice.

‘Probably. The murderer or murderers may be here, but I think we’ll find the answers in England.’

‘Anything we can do this end?’

‘Yes.’ Anita was at her most businesslike. ‘You could check out the break-in. And we need to find out about the woman that’s at the centre of the probate case. She was called Doris Little.’ Anita proceeded to give Detective Sergeant Ash the sketchy details she had gathered from Jennifer Todd.

‘OK, I’ll get onto that, Inspector Sund... Sorry.’

‘Sundström. I’ll be in touch,’ she said and put down the phone.

CHAPTER 17

‘Amazingly, given what his body had been subjected to, Graeme Todd drowned. But he was dead by the time he ended up in the Sound.’

They were in the meeting room – Moberg, Wallen, Hakim, Anita and Eva Thulin. Thulin was running through her preliminary findings. Nordlund and Westermark would be joining the investigation in the next couple of days after tying up the final details of the Segevång attack case. It was after seven. Hakim had been sent out to bring in pizzas and coffees. It promised to be a long evening.

‘The water in the lungs shows that he didn’t die in the sea. Not saltwater. Freshwater, possibly rainwater. So wherever he was murdered, he was dumped later.’

‘That could have been to deflect us from looking in the right place,’ reflected Moberg as he wiped some stray tomato away from his mouth. ‘So the murder could have taken place almost anywhere.’ He shook his head wearily.

‘Time of death?’

Thulin pursed her lips. ‘That’s not easy. I reckon he couldn’t have been in the sea for more than twenty-four hours, given the preserved state of the body. Death probably occurred four days ago. Maybe five.’

‘As he disappeared on the Wednesday, he might have been killed on the Friday or Saturday,’ said Anita pointing to a whiteboard on which she had sketched out a rough calendar, from the day on which Todd had arrived, Monday, October 1st, to today, Wednesday, October 10th, the day he was found. Some days had details of his known movements written in. Most of the days were blank.

‘What about the missing hand?’ asked Moberg.

‘That’s pretty gruesome. It was sawn off.’

Hakim winced.

‘My guess is that they used one of those pruning saws. From the serrated marks left on the body, we might be able to establish the make and manufacturer. But they’re freely available as there are an awful lot of trees in Sweden.’

‘See what you can do. That would give us something.’ Anita knew they would be grateful for any scrap of help.

‘The condition of the body,’ Thulin continued, ‘strongly indicates that the victim had been tortured. Trauma everywhere. He was hit, kicked; you name it. Broken ribs. Then there’s the hand. Though it didn’t kill him, added to the punishment, it must have put him near the edge. Then someone must have held his head under water until...’ She didn’t have to finish.

They took in what Thulin had just told them, as she carefully laid out graphic photographic evidence of the injuries and pointed out each area of forensic interest in sickening detail. Todd’s captors had been brutal. Anita was glad she had eaten her pizza before the pictures appeared. ‘I can’t be certain, but I believe there might be more than one perpetrator.’ With a flourish of her hand, ‘I think it would be too much for one person to take the victim captive, carry out all the beatings and torture, then get him onto a boat and dump the body. This is not a Danish TV crime series.’

The remark produced a few smirks.

‘The question is, what did Graeme Todd know that made his killer or killers go to such lengths?’ Anita picked up a photo of Todd’s handless arm. ‘And another one is, did they get that information out of him before he died?’

‘Surely they must have,’ observed Moberg. ‘Why kill him otherwise?’

‘Maybe they pushed too hard, went too far. He obviously didn’t give up his knowledge without serious encouragement.’

After Thulin left, it was the turn of Wallen and Hakim to report on what they had found out in Ystad. Between them, they had been able to establish that Todd had been in the town on Wednesday, October 3rd. They had three definite sightings. He was recognised getting off the Simrishamn-bound train by one of the station staff. He had been in the Hotel Continental, where he’d asked the receptionist to take a photograph of him with his camera in the foyer. And then he’d visited Fridolfs café. According to one of the staff, he left around half past one. ‘After that, nothing,’ Wallen finished. ‘Fridolfs and the Hotel Continental both feature in the Mankell books, so it fits in with his love of Wallander.’