X Ways to Die

by Stefan Ahnhem

  He turned to Klippan, who had clearly read his mind and was already holding out his Swiss army knife, with which Fabian cut a three-inch hole in the plastic.

  Even though the hole was relatively small, the putrid stench hit him with such force he instinctively backed away, trying to avoid the worst of it. But it was too late. In seconds, the air in the room was so thick with the foetid smell, it was a good thing he’d skipped breakfast.

  Klippan had managed to pull on a face mask and tossed him one, too, and although his nostrils still prickled and itched, it did take the edge off.

  At least a couple of dozen white maggots had already crawled out of the hole and dropped onto the floor, where they were now fanning out in search of more food. How they had got into the seemingly hermetically sealed plastic cocoon in the first place was anyone’s guess. Granted, bacteria existed everywhere, but maggots could only appear where flies had laid eggs, and so far they hadn’t seen or heard a single fly, though it was surely only a matter of minutes now before the stench attracted swarms of them.

  He leaned in and peered through the opening in the plastic but couldn’t see much beyond a pair of shins and feet mottled every shade of green, red and purple. In places, the decomposition was so far advanced the skin had turned black. Something greenish brown was growing on the inside of the plastic walls, and a viscous brown mixture of moisture and corpse juice had pooled at the bottom.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Klippan said. ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Pretty much what you might imagine. It’s too soon to tell if this is Evert Jonsson, but it’s certainly someone.’ Fabian stuck the knife into the hole and cut a three-foot horizontal slit, which made a large section of the plastic sheet curl outward, creating a large window into the cocoon.

  Klippan took a step closer, squatted down and studied the body, which was on its back with its arms and neck tied to a thick metal pipe that ran through the cocoon like an axle, connected at each end to what appeared to be bicycle wheels.

  ‘No, this is too much.’ Klippan shook his head. ‘Not another case. Not when we’ve finally managed to wrap up two investigations and were about to focus all our resources on the Ica murder.’

  The parts of the body not covered in maggots were dark and swollen to varying degrees – the eyeballs, for instance, and the tongue, which was too engorged to fit inside the mouth cavity. But the stomach was the worst, so distended it looked like it might burst and release its contents at any moment.

  ‘If you have to kill someone,’ Klippan went on, seemingly unable to stop shaking his head, ‘why not just get it done, like in the old days? Why do they have to make it so sick and bloody elaborate? Like that.’ He pointed to one of the victim’s wrists, where the strap had ripped off most of the skin, revealing parts of the skeleton. ‘Do you get how hard he must have struggled to free himself?’ He sighed. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how we’re going to do this. Another case on our desks will be the end of us. And if you ask me, this looks at least as complicated as the rest of them.’

  Fabian nodded, though he was convinced Klippan couldn’t be more wrong. This wasn’t another case. In all likeliness, it was connected in the same way as all the other cases.

  5

  IRENE LILJA PULLED her juicer out of a removal box and put it on the kitchen counter, next to the dish rack. It was hardly ideal, but it was the only kitchen gadget she used every day, and there was no other free surface close enough to an outlet.

  In a way, it epitomized her retreat from Hampus and their house out in Perstorp. She had no idea how she was supposed to fit all her things into a small one-bed flat in south Helsingborg. Even though she had already unpacked about fifteen boxes, she had at least as many to go.

  But she would make it work, and whatever she couldn’t cram in, she would either get rid of or put in storage until she could afford something bigger. The important thing was to make sure Hampus didn’t get to keep so much as a hair that belonged to her, which is why even the hideous flamingo oven mitts her mother had given her for Christmas were buried somewhere in one of the many piles.

  She was lucky to have had Klippan to help her. If not for him, she wouldn’t have made it. He hadn’t complained once, not even when everything took considerably longer than she’d anticipated. He had just calmly and methodically made sure everything got done and fitted it all in the van and he had even brought his trailer without being asked.

  When the last box had finally been brought up to the flat, she’d offered to take him to Sam’s Bar across the street, and they had ordered steaks with extra Béarnaise sauce and a pint each. Then she’d gone back to her flat to try to get organized, but within half an hour she’d fallen asleep among piles of clothes on the bed.

  She’d slept through the night, not waking up until eight the next morning, surprised Hampus hadn’t once tried to call her since he’d got home from the car racing in Knutstorp. She’d assumed he would reach for his phone the moment he discovered both she and all her things were gone.

  Later on, she realized that was exactly what he’d done, but her phone had run out of battery. The moment it started back up, she could see that he’d called repeatedly throughout the night. Twenty-two times, to be exact. Twenty-two voicemails where he unloaded about how awful she was.

  She had blocked his number now and was going to change to an unlisted one herself as soon as possible. Hampus was out of her life, and she was out of his. She was finally done with worrying about him drinking too much. About the fights and harsh words. She was finally done with grinning and bearing it. She didn’t have to give a toss any more.

  The only real problem with the move was that it had taken her so long to pull the trigger. Even though she’d only been back in town for about twenty-four hours, her years with Hampus were already starting to feel like ancient history. As were her recent experiences with the diehard neo-Nazis who had broken into their home and sprayed swastikas all over the walls.

  It all seemed like a different life, one she would soon remember only dimly. As though it hadn’t been her who burned down their clubhouse and threatened to frame them for all kinds of things if they so much as looked her way ever again.

  For another day or two, she was determined to believe the local police’s feeble explanation that everything pointed to it being the result of internal rivalries in the criminal underworld.

  She carried her toothbrush mug to the bathroom and put it on one of the shelves in the cabinet. It smelled different. Not bad, just different. Moving was always like that. New smells and new sounds to get used to.

  She had signed a two-year contract. That was a long time, considering the flat was on the small side and located in the wrong part of town. The south side had never been her thing. But right now, anything was better than Perstorp, and maybe she would even learn to like her new neighbourhood.

  She didn’t know much about her neighbours, but they were bound to be no different from neighbours anywhere else. An old lady lived next door to her; she had stopped by while she and Klippan were moving things in. She’d seemed nice but was apparently stone deaf when her hearing aid wasn’t on, as Klippan found out when he tried to talk to her.

  On the other side of her lived P. Milwokh. She didn’t know who that was. And yet there was something familiar about the name, which she had reacted to on her very first visit to the building when Molander’s triangulation had located Assar Skanås’s phone somewhere in the vicinity.

  But yesterday, when it turned out Klippan had bumped on the name too, and was equally unable to put his finger on why, she decided to clear up the mystery once and for all. To that end, she had gone over after she woke up that morning and rung the doorbell.

  No one had answered, and since the doorway was blocked on the inside by a thick, dark curtain, peeking through the letter box had proved futile. She’d stood there with her finger on the small button for five whole minutes before finally giving up and going back to her boxes. They were the reason she’d taken a day
off work, after all.

  But now a noise made her change her mind again. The distant sound of a toilet flushing. She could hear it very clearly but had a hard time pinpointing where it was coming from. She couldn’t hear any water rushing through the pipes in the corner, which meant it wasn’t the flat above hers. Also, she seemed to recall Molander telling her sound waves spread downwards more easily than upwards, so she should be able to rule out the flat below hers as well.

  That left only the flat next door.

  The one with P. Milwokh on the door.

  She walked over to the bath and pressed her ear against the white-tiled wall she shared with her unknown neighbour. But the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own pulse.

  It was only when she pulled on the thin chain that opened the white iron ventilation hatch up near the ceiling that all doubt evaporated. Not only could she hear water streaming into a basin next door and a few seconds later the squeak of a tap being turned off, she could even hear the last few drops hit the porcelain, before everything went quiet once more.

  6

  EVEN THOUGH THE Hallberg-Rassy was a relatively large yacht, it nimbly zigzagged out of the Råå Marina, and after leaving the harbour turned into the wind and hoisted its mainsail.

  Shielding his eyes against the sun high above him, Fabian stood on the north pier, about a hundred feet away, watching the boat with intense interest as the crew trimmed the mainsail until it stopped luffing and took over from the engine, almost like magic.

  He’d spotted the beautiful yacht the moment he’d climbed out of the car, and now couldn’t take his eyes off it. He’d met the owners late last night during his search for Hugo Elvin’s boat, and they’d told him they were heading over to Humlebæk on the Danish side as soon as the weather improved and after that they were planning a night sail up to Gothenburg.

  It felt like a sign, and somewhere deep inside he decided he was going to give in to his children and invest in a yacht once things had calmed down.

  He picked up the box that contained the contents of Elvin’s desk drawer and started walking towards his late colleague’s abandoned old wooden boat, which sat alone in its cradle. So far, there was no sign of Hillevi Stubbs, which was remarkable. She was almost never late. On the contrary, she had a habit of arriving long before everyone else. He’d lost count of how often, back when they’d worked together in Stockholm, she’d expressively rolled her eyes at him because the second hand had ticked past their agreed meeting time.

  On the other hand, it was a thirty-minute drive from the police station in Malmö, and she’d made it abundantly clear she had neither the time nor the inclination to come out, and had only agreed to meet because it was him asking.

  Stubbs was far from easy to deal with, but he had no other options. She was efficient and indisputably one of Sweden’s best forensic scientists, and he’d reached a point in his investigation of his colleague, Ingvar Molander, where he could no longer carry on alone.

  He needed someone to run things by, someone from outside the Helsingborg team, if only to make sure he’d met the burden of proof before he laid his cards on the table. Besides, it was beginning to feel increasingly important to ensure the work he’d done wasn’t lost in case something happened to him.

  Not that he was looking over his shoulder every second. But at the same time, there was no getting past the fact that Molander had killed Elvin when he realized his co-worker had been on the verge of blowing the whistle on him.

  With the box under his arm, he climbed the ladder propped against the transom of the boat, only to find the dumpy Stubbs stretched out in the cockpit, lapping up the sun.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, and stepped onto the boat.

  ‘Where else would I be? Late?’ she countered without opening her eyes.

  ‘No, why would you be?’

  ‘That’s almost as incisive a question as “Why am I here?”.’ She opened her eyes and sat up. ‘Yes, I puzzled out that this is Elvin’s old boat,’ she went on before he could get a word in. ‘And I’m fully aware you want me to go over it, just like I did his flat. But why?’

  ‘I think maybe you should just see for yourself.’ Fabian pulled out one of the two blue keys he’d found in Elvin’s desk drawer and walked over to the door leading down into the cabin.

  ‘Now, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m not here to see things. That’s not why I took time off and drove all the way out here. I did it so I could make you understand that you have to let this go. Believe me, nothing in Elvin’s flat suggested his death was anything other than suicide. Aside, of course, from what might generously be termed your far-fetched science-fiction theories.’

  ‘Actually, you’re wrong about that.’ Fabian carefully inserted the key into the lock and turned it. ‘But we’ll get back to that.’

  ‘I feel like you’re not hearing me. There’s nothing to get back to. I have countless shootings to deal with down in Malmö, and unless I’m misinformed, you just found yourselves a new case out in Klippan. And yet, here you are, grieving an old colleague, asking me to examine his boat.’ She threw up her hands. ‘I mean, you do hear how that sounds, right?’

  ‘I certainly do.’ Fabian pushed the double doors apart and disappeared below decks. ‘That’s why we should get started right away. I have a team briefing in an hour and a half.’

  Stubbs heaved a sigh that was no less loud than it was long, before finally climbing down after him. ‘I already knew you were a pain from when we worked together in Stockholm, but my God, you’re like a stubborn two-year…’ She trailed off as she looked around the cramped cabin, where every available surface was littered with stacks of folders, pictures and notebooks, labelled plastic containers and evidence bags, electronics bristling with cables of every colour known to man, a computer flanked by a whole collection of external hard drives, a microscope and various other things. The room was so cluttered it was impossible to move without knocking things over.

  Fabian flicked a switch to turn on a number of small lights that illuminated the whiteboard, which was covered in photographs and notes, and the piles of documents around the computer. It was exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for and he waited silently while Stubbs took it all in. After a few minutes, she finally turned to him.

  ‘All right. Let’s hear it.’ She moved a pile of books from one of the berths and sat down.

  Fabian made room on the table in front of her and took out a series of black-and-white pictures of a woman in a summer dress walking towards and climbing into the passenger seat of a Saab.

  ‘Until the summer of 2007, Molander was having an affair with this woman. Her name was Inga Dahlberg and she was his next-door neighbour. But over a year before the relationship ended, Molander’s father-in-law, Einar Stenson, had become suspicious and gone so far as to follow them and take pictures, which you are looking at.’

  Stubbs studied the pictures while Fabian got out a crime scene report.

  ‘Stenson died on 21 April 2007, in the kitchen of his rural home out by Ringsjöstrand. According to the investigation, the local police concluded that it was a tragic accident. Stenson supposedly slipped on the freshly waxed floor and fell headlong onto the pulled-out dishwasher rack, where a knife had been placed point up in the cutlery basket. But if Elvin and his notes are to be believed, it was no accident, and after looking into it myself, I’m inclined to agree. Four months later, Inga Dahlberg was killed in what became known as the Ven Murder.’

  ‘She was the one screwed to a wooden pallet that floated all the way from the Rå river to Ven?’

  Fabian nodded.

  ‘I seem to remember that someone was convicted for that.’

  ‘You’re thinking of Danish rapist Bennie Willumsen, who was terrorizing the Swedish side of the sound at the time. Apparently, the brutality of the crime was so similar to his MO that once he was finally apprehended, he was charged with the Ven Murder too. The only problem was that Willumsen had an alibi fo
r that day and was therefore cleared of all charges.’

  ‘Fine, so he offs his father-in-law to keep his affair secret, I’m with you on that. But why kill her?’

  Fabian shrugged. ‘Maybe she was sick of sneaking around and threatened to talk unless he left Gertrud.’

  ‘Gertrud. Is that his wife?’

  ‘It is indeed, and at this point you’d think he’d calm down. The problem had been done away with, so to speak. But three years later, in the summer of 2010, he strikes again. I had just moved down here and was in the middle of investigating a case with victims from my old primary-school class.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about that. It must have been horrible.’

  Fabian nodded and paused for a second before pushing on. ‘The thing was that the attempted murder of Ingela Ploghed, who was also one of my old classmates, was different from the rest.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Nothing big, just enough for me to notice. She had been kidnapped and put through a forced hysterectomy to have her uterus removed. In this case, too, the MO matched the other murders fairly well. The only difference was that she was raped before her surgery, which didn’t happen to any of the other victims.’

  ‘And what did the rest of the team think?’

  ‘No one ever agreed with me, and Molander was particularly vocal in his opposition, for obvious reasons. And once the perpetrator had been identified and locked up, the whole thing was forgotten. At least, I thought it had been. As it turns out, though, Hugo Elvin was watching Molander and had started his own investigation, the results of which ultimately got him killed and are now spread around in this cabin.’

  ‘And you think you can back this up with evidence?’

  ‘I assume everything I need can be found here.’ Fabian spread his hands. ‘And I’m hoping you’ll agree to help me go through it.’