Still Waters (Sandhamn Murders Book 1) (19 page)

C
HAPTER
44

The pressure was intense and increasing all the time. Persson had held several press conferences over the past few days and was doing his best to keep the top brass informed. The press officer was working furiously to deal with all the phone calls so that the investigation could be conducted without interruption, but his constant requests to Persson for updates had fallen on stony ground.

Now Persson was growling as soon as the phone rang.

The cases of the multiple deaths in the middle of summer had shaken all those involved. The number of tourists heading over to Sandhamn had dropped significantly, and the chamber of trade had contacted the local authority and the chief constable. The problem must be solved, and soon.

The Waxholmsbolaget ferries were carrying far fewer passengers than they should be at this time of year.

The leader of the local council in Värmdö had called a press conference of his own to put forward his view of events, which consisted of a hastily cobbled together conspiracy theory touching on Mafia involvement from the Eastern Bloc. Which hadn’t been of any help to the investigation whatsoever. On the contrary, it had served to increase confusion and had given the media even greater opportunity to speculate on a range of theories.

“Remind me not to vote for that idiot next time we have a local election,” Persson had said with ill-concealed disgust. Then he had wadded up the newspaper in which the council leader had been permitted to outline his homespun analysis and hurled it into the trash.

Persson had also been contacted by the chairman of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club, a well-known figure from the world of industry, who had spoken with great authority, demanding to be informed about what was happening and how the investigation was progressing. The chairman had pointed out how important it was for Sandhamn’s reputation as an international center for competitive sailing that the case should be brought to a conclusion without delay. He had spoken about the long tradition of holding competitions based on Sandhamn and of the youth project on Lökholmen, where children from the Stockholm area gathered to attend sailing and confirmation camps. Anxious parents were calling him up, reluctant to let their offspring travel to the island.

“The situation is extremely worrying,” the chairman said. It was vital that the police understood how serious it was and did their utmost to sort things out. The Yacht Club had even discussed the matter at their board meeting that week. They had noted in the minutes that the police must find the guilty party as soon as possible.

Persson did his best not to explode during the conversation. He was dangerously close to losing his temper several times, and his face, which was normally red, could now be described as scarlet. He gritted his teeth and informed the chairman that the police were well aware of the seriousness of the situation. All available resources had been deployed on the case, including an officer with excellent local knowledge. The investigation was being given top priority.

But when the chairman insisted that he be kept informed on a daily basis, Persson almost lost it.

“I am conducting a murder investigation. I am not an information service. You’re not the only person calling and demanding information I don’t have,” he said.

“Now, now, my good man,” the chairman said. “Let’s not get worked up. It’s essential to maintain a good working relationship between the police and the Royal Swedish Yacht Club. We have nothing to gain by losing our temper.”

Persson almost burst.

“As I was saying to my good friend the commissioner the other day,” the chairman carried on, “I have every confidence in the way the police are conducting their investigation, but naturally I wish to be kept informed. In my position, I must be able to follow your work. Surely you understand that?”

Persson’s complexion changed from scarlet to dark purple.

“Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have a breakthrough. I can always be reached through the Yacht Club’s main office. Don’t worry about disturbing me if it’s something important.”

The receiver was nearly crushed in Persson’s viselike grip. With some difficulty he refrained from shouting again and managed something that could have been interpreted as a polite good-bye.

He ended the call and went into the conference room. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the team had gathered for a briefing. His irate expression and aura of rage rang alarm bells as soon as he walked in. Not even Carina—his own daughter—dared to ask what had happened, and most of those who had heard fragments of the telephone conversation reverberating down the corridor realized that if they wanted to save their own skins they would be well advised to keep a low profile.

“If one more fucking idiot asks me how this investigation is going, I swear I’ll punch him,” Persson said.

No one doubted his ability to keep that promise. He sat down on a chair that was already too small; it creaked in protest.

“So, how’s it going? Thomas, status report, please.” It wasn’t a question, merely an order barked from the corner of his mouth.

Thomas looked down at his papers and took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Carina has gone through all the property owners in the part of the island where we think Kicki Berggren was headed. We have two names that could be of interest: Pieter Graaf and Philip Fahlén. Both are summer residents and have names that could to some extent match the name given by the manager of the Mission House. Philip Fahlén’s house is very close to the spot where Krister Berggren’s body was found; Pieter Graaf’s isn’t far from the Mission House, on the way to the beach at Fläskberget. Margit and I will be going over to Sandhamn to interview the two men as soon as possible.”

Persson looked a little less angry; he leaned back in his chair, which wobbled. “Well, at least that’s something to go on,” he said. “What do we know about Kicki Berggren’s other contacts on Sandhamn?”

“Erik will be standing outside the bakery all day today in order to try to find the person she spoke to,” Thomas said.

Persson looked at him impatiently. “How’s it gone so far?”

Thomas looked down at the table. “Nothing useful yet. However, I have spoken again to the girl who was working in the bar the night Kicki Berggren was there.” He flipped through his notebook. “Inger Gunnarsson. She had remembered something after our conversation last week. It seems Kicki had complained of an upset stomach; evidently she asked if they had any kind of antacid behind the bar.”

Margit folded her arms and gazed around the impersonal conference room, where a single wilting Busy Lizzie was the only attempt to make the place look better. Without the view of the blue waters of Nackafjärden through the window, it would have been depressingly bare. “Presumably she was beginning to feel the effects of the poison,” Margit said. “That would fit in with the pathologist’s report. If it was after eight o’clock, she would have started to feel ill. But she had drunk a fair amount of beer, so she might well have attributed the symptoms to something else.”

Persson changed tack. “Have we heard anything about Almhult from the pathologist? Do we know what the cause of death was?”

Thomas picked up a document that had been faxed through that morning. “Cause of death was drowning. There was evidence of a high level of alcohol in the blood. He must have been very drunk when he drowned—paralytic, in fact.”

“Any trace of poison?” Persson looked at Thomas. It was obvious that he was hoping for a negative response.

“No chemical substances whatsoever, at least in the preliminary report. However, they have sent samples to Linköping for analysis, and it’s difficult to be certain until we’ve heard from them.”

“Anything else?”

“Crush injuries.”

“What?”

“Crush injuries to the head and the rest of the body, as if he’d hit something with tremendous force, or as if someone had hit him with a blunt object. He had a number of broken bones, along with severe bruising.”

“Any idea what might have caused all that?” Margit asked, looking at Thomas.

He looked down at his papers again. “The report only describes the injuries; it doesn’t suggest how they might have happened or what caused them.”

Margit raised her eyebrows. “It seems as if our friends in pathology have taken the easy way out this time. I think we should call and ask if they have some kind of theory we could work with.” She leaned back with an expression that made it clear she expected more substance from the medical profession. She was making no attempt to hide her bad mood.

Persson was also unhappy. He sighed and turned to Margit and Thomas. “So what’s the next step?”

“We’ve had a call about Almhult,” Thomas said. “It seems someone saw him on the ferry to Stockholm just over a week ago. We’ll check that out right away. We’ve also put up posters all over Sandhamn, asking anyone who spoke to Kicki Berggren to contact us. That might help.”

He looked at Margit, who nodded.

“We’re also going to look into any possible connections between the house owners and Systemet, anything that might link one of them to Krister Berggren,” Thomas said.

“Right,” said Persson. “As you know, I was intending to take my vacation next week, so if you could solve the case by Saturday, that would be great.” His feeble attempt at humor didn’t go down very well. He stood up and wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief that looked well used.

The meeting was over.

C
HAPTER
45

The woman who opened the door the third time the bell rang had blobs of something that looked like vegetable puree all over her T-shirt. She looked stressed and was clutching a dish towel in one hand. The sound of children screaming emanated from the house.

“Are you the person who called from the police?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder where the piercing screams had turned into something more like a furious roar.

Thomas nodded. “My name is Thomas Andreasson, and this is my colleague, Margit Grankvist. May we come in for a few minutes? We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s OK.”

The roaring continued, and the woman looked even more stressed.

“Come in. I’ve left my daughter on her own in the kitchen, and I need to get back to her.”

She disappeared down a narrow hallway to the right of the entry, and Margit and Thomas followed.

It was a pleasant house, cozy and well cared for, in the middle of Enskede, one of Stockholm’s older suburbs. A typical old-style house with a yellow wooden façade, white eaves, and a small south-facing garden. Thomas counted four apple trees and one plum tree.

A gray cat slid past, uninterested in the visitors.

In the kitchen a very cross little girl was sitting in a high chair, banging her spoon on the table. The remains of something orange were strewn across the floor; it was the same color as the blobs on her mother’s T-shirt.

The hard-pressed mother pushed a strand of hair from her face with the back of her hand. She wiped her hands on the dish towel and extended her right hand. “Malin. Sorry about the mess. My daughter seems to have woken up in something of a temper today. Please, sit down.”

Margit tried to discreetly check whether there was anything orange on the kitchen chair before she sat down.

“You wanted to talk to me about my journey home from Sandhamn?”

Margit nodded. “We heard that you and your family were on the same ferry as the man who was found dead on the island just a few days later,” she said.

“I think so.” A fleeting expression of uncertainty passed over the woman’s face. “There was a man sitting just a few seats away from us who looked exactly like the picture in the paper.”

“Could you describe him?”

Malin thought for a moment; she wiped a blob of carrot puree off the table before she answered. “He was a real mess. Kind of shabby and run-down, you know? He was wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled tight, so I didn’t see him very clearly. But he certainly stank. Sorry. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But he smelled gross—like stale booze or something. That’s why my eldest daughter, Astrid, asked about him. She’s four.”

“Did he do anything in particular during the crossing?”

“Not that I can remember, but I wasn’t really paying attention.” She smiled and pointed to the little girl, who had calmed down and was now clutching her sippy cup. “They keep you busy when they’re that age.”

“Could you tell us if you noticed anything else?”

“I’m sorry. There isn’t really much I can say. He sat there during the whole trip, as far as I can remember. It takes about two hours.”

“So he went all the way into Stockholm? He didn’t get off beforehand?”

“No, we were quite late getting off. It took forever to pack up all our stuff. He got off about the same time; I remember that quite clearly.”

She glanced at her daughter, who was now fully occupied in trying to remove the lid of her sippy cup so she could pour water all over the table.

Thomas thought for a moment. If Jonny Almhult had been sitting there with his hood pulled down, it was hardly surprising that no one from the ferry company remembered him, in spite of the fact that they had shown his photograph and questioned the crews of all the ferries serving Sandhamn.

He bent down and picked up the sippy cup, which the little girl had dropped. She took it and immediately threw it on the floor again, beaming at him.

An entertaining new game.

“And you didn’t see him after that?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She seemed hesitant. “Or did I? I’m not absolutely certain; I might have seen him on Skeppsbron. My husband picked us up in the car, and as we were waiting under the lights outside the Grand Hotel, I thought I saw him walking toward Skeppsbron.” She picked up the cup her daughter had just dropped for the fifth time. “But I can’t swear it was him. I mean, it could have been anybody wearing a gray hoodie.”

Thomas reversed the Volvo out of the little cul-de-sac and drove back the way they had come. Enskede was really charming, with old wooden houses surrounded by a variety of fruit trees. Just the kind of place you would want to live if you had a family.

Children.

Margit broke the silence. “It was well worth coming out here to speak to her, don’t you agree?”

“Absolutely. Now we know Almhult came into town four days before his body was found. But where did he go after he got off the ferry?”

Margit thought for a moment, then opened the glove compartment and started rummaging around.

“What are you looking for?”

“A street map of Stockholm. Every police officer has one in the car, right?”

Thomas laughed.

“Really? Have you got one in your car?”

Margit pretended not to hear and kept on looking.

Thomas glanced at her. “Try the door pocket instead.”

Margit fished out a well-thumbed wad of pages edged in red and held together with a paper clip. “You’ve torn out the map section from the Yellow Pages!” she said, shaking her head.

“Pernilla took the A–Z when we split up. I’m going to buy a new one as soon as I get around to it. Stop complaining. That works perfectly well. What do you want it for?”

Margit didn’t answer. She ran a hand through her short, spiky hair as she studied the index of street names. When she found what she was looking for, she turned to the relevant page and placed her finger on the map. “Stop the car and I’ll show you.”

“What?”

“Stop the car. You can’t drive and look at the same time. You’re a police officer. You have to obey the law.”

Thomas looked at her dubiously, then gave in and pulled over at the nearest bus stop. There was no point in arguing with her.

“What have you come up with?”

“Look at the map.” Margit held out the page that showed the area of Stockholm around Skeppsbron. “If you go straight on from Skeppsbron, where do you end up?”

Thomas thought about it. He pictured the Grand Hotel, the ferries to the archipelago, and Skeppsbron. If you walked across Skeppsbron, where would you end up? “Gamla Stan—the old town? Slussen?”

He shrugged and looked at Margit.

“Keep going. You live in Stockholm, don’t you? Where’s your local knowledge? If you carry on past Slussen and walk along the water, where will you end up?”

“Stadsgården, down at the bottom of Fjällgatan.”

“Exactly. And what will you find there?”

Suddenly it hit him. “The terminal for the ferries to and from Finland!”

“Bingo, Einstein!”

Thomas smiled sheepishly. He ought to have worked that out for himself. Margit was sharp.

“If you’re on the run from the law—or from someone you work for who isn’t too happy with you—and you want to disappear for a while, and aren’t the type to hop on a plane to Brazil, where do you go?”

“To Finland, on the ferry.” Thomas could have kicked himself. It was such a simple explanation.

“And if someone follows you and pushes you overboard as you’re taking a last look at your home on Sandhamn,” Margit went on, “what are you going to look like?”

“Bruised and battered, with broken bones that will be discovered postmortem.”

“Exactly. If you fall from the top deck of a ship that size, it’s like jumping off a tall building. The surface of the water is rock hard when you fall from a real height.”

Thomas nodded.

“And where are you likely to be found?”

“On the beach at Trouville, a few days later.”

“Exactly.”

“We need to speak to the staff at the departure terminal. And we need to see their passenger lists for the crossings between the Sunday when Almhult arrived in Stockholm and the Thursday when he was found.”

“Correct.”

“Presumably we now know how Jonny Almhult lost his life.”

“Correct.”

With a triumphant smile Margit sank back into the warm car seat.

Thomas felt like a schoolboy having his homework corrected.