Missing in Malmö: The third Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) (3 page)

Anita clicked off the lamp on her desk. She put on her battered, brown leather jacket, swung her heavy, black handbag over her shoulder and made for the door. Then the phone made her jump. She stared at it and let it ring. She hadn’t the energy to answer it. It was too late. Then weary instinct took over and she picked up the receiver,

‘Anita Sundström.’

‘Klara here.’ It was Klara Wallen, the other woman detective on their team. Anita gave an internal sigh. Klara probably wanted to go out for a drink and discuss her domestic problems. Anita wasn’t in the mood.

‘I’ve got this woman on the line. She’s calling from England,’ Klara explained. ‘I think it’s better if you speak to her because my English isn’t very good.’

Anita had spent two childhood years in northern England, as well as a year on secondment to the Metropolitan Police in London, so anything that came up which involved speaking English, she was expected to handle. That’s how she had ended up meeting Ewan Strachan. Now she reluctantly agreed to take the call. She waited for the woman to be put through.

‘Hello, this is Inspector Anita Sundström speaking,’ she said in her near-perfect accent. ‘How can I help?’

There was panic in the voice at the other end of the line.

‘My husband. He’s gone missing!’

CHAPTER 4

Anita entered her apartment in Roskildevägen at twenty past nine. If it had been a couple of hours earlier, she might have considered a run in Pildammsparken opposite her home. But now she was far too weary. There was no sign of Lasse when she got in. So no food ready. At least he had gone out. Over the last few months, he had either hidden himself away in his bedroom chained to his computer, or been slouched in the living room watching rubbish on the telly.

The first thing she needed was a drink. There was a half-empty bottle of Chilean Shiraz next to the fridge. That would do for now. But what the hell? Tomorrow was Friday, and she had the weekend off. She would go down to the
Systembolag
and get herself a really nice bottle. Maybe two, as Lasse was sure to want some; not that he deserved any. She fished out a glass from the overhead cupboard and plonked it on the kitchen table. She poured out the wine. While it settled, she opened the fridge to see if there was anything to eat. She couldn’t be bothered to cook. The shelves were sparsely stocked. That meant a big food shop, too. She couldn’t rely on Lasse to do it. He was so weighed down with self-pity that he hadn’t even the inclination to push a supermarket trolley. What was she going to do with him? What was she going to eat? There were four meat balls left from a previous meal. There was some beetroot. She could make a sandwich, and a salad to pad it out. But that could wait. She picked up her glass and wandered next door.

In the living room, Anita went over to the window and closed the blinds, which blotted out the tall trees that formed the dense perimeter of the park on the other side of the road. She switched on a lamp and curled up on her IKEA day bed. She didn’t turn on the TV, as she was still mulling over the phone call she had had from England. It had taken a few minutes to calm the woman down. Eventually, Anita gathered that she was called Jennifer Todd and that she was ringing from Cumbria. It was an area that Anita had visited with her parents when they lived in Durham when her father was working at the nearby Electrolux factory. Anita had gradually coaxed some sort of coherent story out of her. Her husband, Graeme, had been on a trip to Sweden and had been due back that day. Jennifer had driven down to pick him up from Manchester Airport. He didn’t emerge from the Easyjet flight from Copenhagen. And he wasn’t answering his mobile phone. She hadn’t spoken to him for three days.

Once Anita had got that information out of the way, she asked what Graeme Todd was doing in Malmö. It was a business trip. What was his business? He was a probate researcher. Jennifer had initially used the phrase “heir hunter”. Anita hadn’t come across that term before. Jennifer’s explanation had been somewhat confusing, due to her agitated state, but it appeared that her husband was going to meet someone who would be the beneficiary of an old lady, a certain Doris Little, who had died without making a will.

Did Jennifer know who it was? No.

Did this person live in Malmö? She didn’t know.

When was the last time she had spoken to him? She said he had phoned her when he had arrived at his hotel on Monday evening. He planned to have two days in Malmö and then fly back today, Thursday. Anita suggested that maybe he had missed his flight and was having trouble with his mobile.

Where was he staying? That was one of Jennifer’s major concerns. Graeme was meant to be staying at the Hotel Comfort. Anita knew it. It was behind the Central Station. It was also where Ewan had stayed on his ill-fated visit. But when Jennifer had rung the hotel, they said that they had never heard of Graeme Todd and he had certainly not stayed there. Even Anita conceded that that was odd.

All Anita had been able to do was to reassure the woman that she would hand over all the information to the Missing Persons Unit. She knew that they wouldn’t actually do anything until Graeme Todd had officially been missing for three days, which meant nothing would happen until after the weekend. Not that she told Jennifer Todd that. It was the last thing the poor woman would want to hear.

Any further thoughts about the absconding Graeme Todd, whom Anita had assumed was probably playing away from home, as the British liked to refer to it, were banished when she heard the front door open and close. Lasse was back. He appeared at the door of the living room. He was tall and angular and, though he had Björn’s looks, he had inherited Anita’s high cheek bones and grey-green eyes. Fortunately, she hadn’t passed on her poor eyesight gene, and he had no need for glasses.

‘Anything to eat?’

‘I was hoping that you’d have something ready for me.’ She couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice. Another argument was brewing. Until he had gone away to university, they had hardly exchanged a cross word. Now it was almost a daily occurrence.

‘I’ll help myself.’

‘Where have you been?’ she called after him.

She heard a muffled ‘Out.’

This was driving her mad. She took a large gulp of wine.

It had been a good morning so far. Not much on, the weekend coming up, and she had a freshly brewed coffee on the desk, which was actually tidy for once. Then Chief Inspector Erik Moberg lumbered into the room. The light through the open doorway disappeared as he filled the space. ‘Where’s the kid?’ he asked, nodding at Hakim’s empty desk.

‘He’s doing something for me,’ Anita lied. Hakim should be catching up on some much-needed sleep. Anita hoped that Moberg was here to thank Hakim and herself for their work on the arson case.

Moberg grunted. He held up a piece of paper in his meat plate of a hand. ‘I hear you had a phone call from England last night.’

‘Yeah. A woman thinks her husband might be missing in Malmö. I’m going to pass it on to Missing Persons, but he’s only been unaccounted for since yesterday afternoon. Probably just missed his plane. He may even have turned up by now, or at least got in touch.’

Moberg pursed his chubby lips. ‘I want you to check it out.’

‘Fine.’

‘If he still hasn’t turned up, I want you and the Arab to look into it.’

Anita bridled at Moberg’s turn of phrase, but she was also exasperated that she was going to be shoved onto some missing persons case.

‘Why us?’

‘Because the commissioner has got wind of it. Malmö has suffered enough bad publicity recently with shootings, race problems and an upturn in crime, without a foreign visitor disappearing as well. The city wants to encourage tourists and business people. This won’t help.’

‘But it’s not what we do normally,’ Anita protested.

‘Well, you shouldn’t speak English so bloody well, should you?’

‘What about the attack on the pensioner in Segevång? I thought you’d want me to help Henrik, now that the arson business is sorted out.’

‘Westermark can help Nordlund when he comes back from holiday on Monday.’

Anita was about to protest further when she saw that Moberg was becoming angry. The warning sign was the reddening of his cheeks.

‘Just do it.’

He turned away like a Baltic ferry manoeuvring out of harbour, and left. Not a mention of the successful arrest of the arsonist. Fucking typical.

CHAPTER 5

‘You’re sure you haven’t seen this man?’

The hotel receptionist screwed up her eyes to show that she really was concentrating. She shook her head again. Anita was showing her a photo that Jennifer Todd had emailed to her. Graeme Todd was a man of about sixty, with dark brown hair, thinning at the front. It was obviously dyed – the colour was uniform. Why did men of a certain age dye their hair? Anita wondered. It made their faces look older, their features more severe. Todd’s eyebrows were thick and his chin had fashionably short stubble. He had a mole close to his right nostril. The eyes were brown and piercing. Not a flicker of a smile. The man staring out from the A4 sheet of paper was confident, and probably a little vain. That was Anita’s interpretation anyway. She could be miles off the mark, though she had learned to make snap judgements about people over the years. Often she had been right.

‘And no one named Todd has checked in in the last few days?’

Again there was an apologetic shake of the head.

Anita was following up the call she had made to the hotel last night. It always paid to double-check. Maybe Todd’s wife had just got the wrong place.

‘Were you full on Monday night?’

‘No,’ the receptionist answered emphatically. ‘We only had half occupancy on Monday. And Tuesday.’

Anita thanked her. She left the hotel and shoved the picture of Graeme Todd into her bag. Maybe he was running away from his wife. Sweden was an excuse to leave and he had gone elsewhere. Her instinct was that he would turn up soon. She had Hakim checking incoming flights to Kastrup Airport. At least that would show that he had made it as far as Copenhagen. Standing on the pavement outside the hotel, she remembered how she had gone to see Ewan Strachan the day after the body of Roslyn’s wife was found. The journalist had been eating his breakfast. It was their second conversation. Now he dominated her thoughts in a way that a lover does. She took out her tin of snus, picked out a little sachet of tobacco and planted it under her top lip. If she couldn’t smoke, this was the next best thing to calm her down. And a visit to Ewan always caused her some anxiety.

Anita was standing outside Malmö Kirseberg prison when her mobile phone burst into life.

‘Anita Sundström.’

‘Hakim here.’

‘Any luck?’

‘Yes. A Graeme Laurence Todd arrived at Kastrup on an Easyjet flight from Manchester last Monday, October 1st. The plane landed at 13.45.’

‘OK. That’s fine. I’ll think we’ll forget about it until Monday. He’ll probably have surfaced by then. Have a good weekend.’

‘Aren’t you coming back?’

‘No. Something’s come up that I need to attend to.’

‘Need any help?’ She wished she could sound so enthusiastic these days.

‘It’s all right, Hakim. This is something I need to do myself.’

Anita tramped along the same corridors each time she visited Ewan Strachan. They always met in the same room. She always used the same excuse. It was “police business”. Ostensibly, she was still trying to find out if he had also killed his student lover, after Mick Roslyn had stolen her from him and then cast her aside. She knew the answer. Ewan had admitted pushing the girl off the cathedral tower in Durham back in his days at the university. She hadn’t mentioned it to the authorities, as he was going to be charged with the murder of Mick Roslyn anyway. That had plagued her conscience and she hadn’t really known why she’d done it until, after a certain amount of drink-fuelled analysis, she had admitted to herself that she wanted him to stay in Sweden. She hadn’t gone to the jail for several months. She knew it would be a futile exercise. She was in love with – and was loved by – a man who would spend the next twenty years of his life in prison. And he deserved to be there, which made her feelings even more contradictory, more confused and more tormented. She had tried to put an end to it by just not going any more. But then she went back. Not that Ewan was aware of this internal conflict between head and heart. She never articulated her feelings toward him. He was just grateful to see her and spend a few minutes in her company, for the visits were always short. Yet she could confide in him about her problems in a way that she had never been able to with Bjorn, and told him things she would never tell another living soul. Not even her few close friends. Ewan would listen, he would understand and he would often quietly advise. Then he would make her laugh. No one else could still make her smile, even when her world was at its most wretched. Yet the whole situation was preposterous – what a paradox! She was a cop. He was a murderer. A double one. And yet she still waited in the sparse, windowless room, with its battered plastic table and three uncomfortable chairs, in a state of nervous anticipation for the man who was publicly
persona non grata
, but who dominated her thoughts.

Ewan didn’t look well. She hadn’t seen him for nearly three months and the change was marked. He was even gaunter than he had been on her last visit. The shaved head didn’t help. The plump cheeks, the red hair and the mischievous, twinkling eyes that had been part of the man that she had surprisingly fallen for were now all gone. Though he did manage a smile, Anita couldn’t disguise her shock at his condition.

‘Christ, do I look that bad?’ This was accompanied by his customary smirk.

‘No. It’s just that you’re so thin. Aren’t you eating properly?’ She had reverted to her maternal default setting.

He played with his hands in a distracted manner. She could sense that there was something wrong.

‘What’s up?’

Ewan glanced up at her. ‘You haven’t been for a while.’ The tone was matter-of-fact and not admonishing. He was changing the subject.

‘Been busy. And now Lasse’s at home all the time, I have my hands full.’