X Ways to Die

by Stefan Ahnhem

  ‘Was that all he had?’ Klippan asked. ‘That just confirms what we already knew.’

  ‘You’ve seen the body. According to Flätan, the decomposition is so advanced he was unable to perform a number of standard tests. But a severely fractured skull indicates the victim was knocked unconscious before being tied to that contraption and woke up only after it was sealed. There are also clear signs that he tried to get out and fought hard for his life. One of his shoulders had been pulled out of its socket, for example, and some of the straps around his wrists had cut all the way through to the bone. If Flätan is to be believed, it should have been close to three hours before he passed out permanently.’

  ‘A fairly unpleasant way to go, in other words,’ Molander put in.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly. But let’s start with the victim. What do we know about him?’

  ‘At the moment, not much beyond the fact that his name was Evert Jonsson and he worked as a taxi driver in Ängelholm until about a year ago, when he retired,’ Klippan replied. ‘His wife, Rita Jonsson, passed away from breast cancer in 2008.’

  ‘No other relatives?’

  ‘No, he had neither children nor siblings and his parents have been dead for over twenty years.’

  ‘That explains how he went undiscovered for so long.’ Tuvesson walked over to the whiteboard wall, put up a picture of Evert Jonsson and wrote no relatives. ‘And speaking of which. That handwritten message his neighbour received.’

  ‘You mean this?’ Klippan held up an evidence bag containing the envelope from Sydkraft.

  ‘Exactly. What do we have on that?’

  ‘Ingvar has managed to secure some prints that I ran through the database and, would you believe it, we found a match. This is our guy.’

  Klippan passed around a police photograph of the man who had broken into Jonsson’s flat, holding up a sign with his name on it. ‘His name is Leo Hansi and he’s been arrested for burglary more times than he can count, I’d wager.’

  ‘You’re not seriously saying it’s him, though, are you?’ Tuvesson took the evidence bag and studied the handwritten message on the envelope. ‘Why would a simple burglar put someone through something like that and then return several weeks later to put a handwritten message through the neighbour’s letter box?’

  Klippan shrugged. ‘According to him, it was sheer happenstance. The door was unlocked, and he went in.’

  ‘What, you’ve already interviewed him?’

  ‘I figured it was a better use of my time than sitting on my hands. As you know, I’ve finished going through the CCTV footage from Ica.’ Klippan smiled to take the edge off his remark. ‘Regardless, I find it hard to believe it’s him, unless he’s the world’s most talented undiscovered actor. He was still deeply shaken and assured me again and again that he was never breaking in anywhere ever again. He’s starting a new life.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Molander said, shaking his head.

  ‘Did he take anything? From the flat, I mean,’ Tuvesson said.

  ‘According to him, there was nothing of value in it, and from what little I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe him. But maybe Ingvar will spot something missing.’ Klippan shrugged.

  Tuvesson nodded. ‘All right. So the question we now have to ask ourselves is what makes someone want to do this to another human being.’ Next to the picture of Evert Jonsson she put up a picture of his decomposing body in the cocoon. ‘Because hard as it may be to wrap our heads around, there has to have been a motive. If we can just find it, we’ll also find—’

  ‘But what if there isn’t one?’

  Tuvesson and the others turned to Fabian. ‘If there isn’t a what?’

  ‘A motive,’ he said, despite it still being little more than a theory based on a confused dream he’d had. ‘Why does there have to be a motive?’

  ‘Because there always is,’ Klippan said. ‘Behind every action there’s a motive.’

  ‘And if we can find it, we’ll find the perpetrator,’ Tuvesson added.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that old truism a number of times,’ Fabian said. ‘But what if that’s not the case here? Then what do we do?’

  Silence fell.

  ‘Look, I’m not sure I follow,’ Tuvesson said finally. ‘Are you seriously saying there’s no motive?’

  ‘I don’t know. There might be, but I’m not convinced it’s one that’s going to help us move this investigation forward. So I suggest we drop the motive talk for a while.’ Fabian got up and walked over to the whiteboard wall. ‘It seems to me we’ve been so focused on a thousand different motives we can’t see the wood for the trees any more. Take the laundry room murder, for instance, or the poisoning of—’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Klippan broke in. ‘As you are very well aware, we have motives for the murders of both Moonif Ganem and Molly Wessman.’

  ‘We do? How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Fabian, come on, we’ve arrested the perpetrators,’ Tuvesson said. ‘Högsell is preparing charges as we speak.’

  ‘I know, but I’m no longer convinced we have the right people. Take Assar Skanås. He’s a paedophile and clearly into little girls. How does that explain why he’d shove a Syrian boy into a washing machine?’

  ‘He was there, Fabian,’ Molander said. ‘His fingerprints were on the washing machine door.’

  ‘Sure, but fingerprints and motive are two different things. Fingerprints are forensic evidence that could have ended up there some other way. From what I understand, he knew someone in the building. The bloke with all the dolls, right? Maybe he was just there to visit and noticed that the basement door was open and popped down to have a look.’ Fabian shrugged. ‘Same story with Eric Jacobsén. He has confessed to installing hidden cameras in a number of women’s homes. He has also engaged in quite a lot of rough sex. But that’s neither illegal nor a plausible motive for killing Wessman. Especially in view of the fact she was poisoned with ricin. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t hold up.’

  ‘So according to you, we’re back to square one,’ Tuvesson said. ‘With both Moonif Ganem and Molly Wessman.’

  ‘Not entirely.’ Fabian swallowed and chose his words carefully. ‘Because I think everything’s actually connected.’

  ‘What do you mean, everything?’

  ‘All the murders, all our cases from the past few weeks. Everything we’ve been working on.’ Fabian nodded at the cluttered whiteboard wall.

  The others looked, but no one spoke until Tuvesson turned to Klippan and Molander. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure how to put this.’ Klippan sighed. ‘Fabian, sometimes I feel like you just blurt out theories without any substantiation. Don’t get me wrong. I hear what you’re saying, but—’

  ‘I would go so far as to say there’s nothing to suggest a connection as things stand,’ Molander broke in. ‘First of all, the cases are completely different. Take the method, for instance. We have everything from knives and poisoning to a washing machine. And now a hermetically sealed cocoon, to boot. And the same goes for the victims.’

  ‘That’s my thinking, too,’ Tuvesson said. ‘And besides, this is hardly a new notion. We’ve already considered whether everything might be connected, but we haven’t been able to find a common denominator.’

  ‘That’s true, and that’s the point. I think the reason they’re all so different is, in fact, the common denominator.’

  9

  KIM SLEIZNER TOOK a sip of the juice that Laura’s Bakery, a hipster café on Nørrebro in Copenhagen, had dubbed ‘The Health Booster’, which was ironic since it was sweeter than Jolly Cola. He could almost see the damn spare tyre around his waist growing with each sip.

  It had been weeks since he’d weighed in. Lately, the scale, and the hallway mirror, had been no-go zones. But there was no escaping the fact that he had put on weight. Lack of exercise was starting to leave its mark; if he didn’t do something soon, he risked the wobble becoming permanent.

  But it was
going to have to wait. He had other things to see to. Other things that were so much more important he had, for the first time in his life, put himself second. The reason was spelled Dunja. Or Dunja Bitch Cunt Hougaard, to use her full name.

  She’d gone to ground, and she’d done it with such brazen defiance he hadn’t slept for days.

  If she’d just stayed in her hole, burnt by everything he’d put her through. Then he would have felt calm. Then he could have gone for his usual run past the opera house and all the way out to the Refshale peninsula and back. He would even have been able to resume his strength training, his yoga practice and so on.

  But that wasn’t how this was going to go.

  She was after his scalp. He’d sensed it, like the first vague symptoms of flu, of an Ebola virus about to break out. And when he found the message from her in her flat, warning him that she would take him down at any cost, he’d realized she was taking things to the next level. A level where his only option was to utterly annihilate her. Harassing her and rattling her cage wasn’t going to be enough any more. The time for that was long past.

  This time, it was about squeezing her goddam throat until her tongue turned blue and her eyes bulged like ping-pong balls. It was about severing her limbs and cutting her head off. About smashing her maimed body parts with a sledgehammer and throwing whatever was left to some hungry fucking sow.

  But not even after doing that would he be done. He wouldn’t relax until the pig was slaughtered, roasted and on his plate. Only after he had chewed, swallowed and shat her out would he truly be done.

  He just had to find her. And that, despite his extensive network of contacts and the investigative routes open to him as the head of the Copenhagen Homicide Unit, had proved considerably harder than he’d initially thought. The little bitch had apparently planned things out rather carefully.

  He’d already found her once. Granted, only for a few seconds in CCTV footage from a bank in Malmö. But that was enough to stay on her scent.

  That was why he was now installed in the outdoor seating area of a restaurant in central Copenhagen, feet away from her flat on Blågårdsgade 4, trying to blend into this blasted hipster land by sipping his pathetically colourful Health Booster, having swapped his suit and shirt for a pair of jeans, a hoodie and an equally pathetic baseball cap.

  He’d even gone so far as to acquire a bicycle. Even though he despised anything to do with bikes and loathed the people who rode them even more. To him, they were scum, barely worth being lined up and shot at dawn.

  And he wasn’t even waiting for Dunja, but for that cocky elephant Chinaman living in her flat. He claimed his name was Qiang Who, but there hadn’t been a single person by that name in any of the databases, despite searching both ‘Qiang’ and ‘Who’ separately.

  Who the fuck did he think he was? Doctor Who? It was like some fucking joke. Him and his goddam elephant fetish.

  There was nothing to suggest he had any connection with Dunja, but at the moment the Chink was his only lead. For that reason, he’d spent the entire day, save for a few brief minutes, watching the door of his building from various cafés.

  He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his inbox. He’d had another email from Mikael Rønning in the IT department regarding some security update for his phone.

  But he didn’t have time for technological bullshit right now. A few months back, the same department had done work on their email server, which had resulted in it being down for almost two days. The newspapers had written about it and—

  Sleizner stopped himself mid-thought when he realized none other than the pudgy Chinaman himself was stepping out onto the street. With elephant prints on both his baseball cap and his T-shirt, there could be no doubt it was him. He was carrying a backpack and some kind of round, black case.

  Sleizner downed his juice and walked over to his bike, stifling the urge to jump on and give chase. He would be too conspicuous. Besides, the Chinaman hadn’t even made it to his own bike yet; he was just standing there in the middle of the pedestrian street, bent over the small round case as though he was looking for something. Probably a stuffed elephant he couldn’t leave home without.

  But then he suddenly started gliding forward, seemingly hovering a few inches off the ground. What the fuck? He was moving fast, too. Sleizner didn’t understand until the Chinaman whizzed past him with his feet on either side of the black case, which apparently wasn’t a case at all but rather some godforsaken electrical unicycle.

  He’d never seen anything like it, and before he could react, the elephant gook was zooming away from him at a speed that was bound to be illegal in the pedestrian zone. Much too late, he threw himself on his bike and started to pedal after him.

  But the bike turned out to be significantly less effective than a unicycle on the crowded street, and when he finally made it out onto Nørrebrogade, he’d lost sight of the man, only to catch a glimpse of his ugly mug a few seconds later at the back of bus 3A, thundering past on its way into the city.

  Seven intersections later, it had reached Nørreport Station, where it stopped long enough for Sleizner to catch up and pause for a minute. He was panting like a dog trapped in a parked car and desperately needed something to drink. But before long, the bus was indicating to pull out and the Chink had made no move to get off.

  When they reached the Central Station, Sleizner was so exhausted and thirsty he would have given anything for some water. Even another Health Booster would have been gratefully received. But before he could get to the bus, he saw the fat prick get off and get back on his unicycle, which immediately shot off up the wheelchair ramp and disappeared into the station.

  Sleizner hurried after him through the open doors, dragging his bike, and saw the Chinaman hover through the crowd without so much as a drop of sweat on his balls. Sleizner used his bike as a scooter, ignoring the shouting guard and ringing his bell incessantly to give people a chance to jump out of his way.

  Getting down the escalator to the S train was trickier. Where the elephant man could simply pick up his unicycle in one hand and hurry past the queue to the platform, he had no chance of squeezing by with his bike. People refused to step aside, even though he worked the bell and rammed their bloody bags with his front wheel. In the end, he saw no other way than to simply abandon the bike and push through the doors of the southbound S train before it pulled out.

  The Chinaman got off at Sydhavn Station and after walking down the stairs to the pavement, he got back on his bloody unicycle and zoomed off. Sleizner had to run to keep up.

  What if the gook was just toying with him? What if he’d spotted him on Blågårdsgade and was now just making him run in circles like a picador tiring out the bull before the matador went in for the killing blow?

  Sleizner stopped on the central reservation in the middle of Teglholmsgade and looked around. But there was no sign of Dunja. The Chinaman, on the other hand, was gliding on towards the large building straight ahead, and just like that, hope sprung anew.

  The building belonged to the TDC Group, whose president, Stig Paulsen, wasn’t just one of Sleizner’s closest friends, but was also one of the most active members of The Club. If it turned out Qiang Who, or whatever his name was, worked for TDC, he could zip around on his little toy as fast as he pleased. He would still never be able to escape him.

  10

  FABIAN TURNED INTO Kungstorget Square outside Knutpunkten Station in Helsingborg and parked in a bay where a sign warned him the maximum stay was ten minutes. He picked one of the seven anonymous pay-as-you-go SIM cards he’d just purchased and pushed it into his old Nokia, whose functions were restricted to calling, texting and showing the time.

  Then he found Gertrud Molander’s number in his iPhone and dialled it on the Nokia. True, she’d asked him to leave her alone, but he wanted to talk to her and hear her voice to make sure she was okay.

  ‘You’ve reached Gertrud Molander. Unfortunately, I’m not available at the moment, but leave a m
essage after the beep and I’ll get back to you.’

  Why wasn’t she picking up? It would have been understandable if she were in the same room as her husband. But she wasn’t. Far from it. Molander was in the police lab, busy cross-matching all prints, hairs and trace DNA samples from the different crime scenes, and it would likely be late before he was done.

  Her phone could obviously be out of battery or turned down so low she couldn’t hear it. Or maybe she just had better things to do than to stare at her phone all day long.

  He unlocked his iPhone and opened Facebook, where he had a profile, though he’d never posted a status update. He’d created the account mainly so he could have a poke around to see how it worked, and unless he misremembered, Gertrud had sent him a friend request sometime last spring.

  He hadn’t accepted it. He almost never did. Instead, her request had sat unanswered in a growing line of requests from people who, for some unfathomable reason, wanted to stay in touch with him. Some were former colleagues and friends from Stockholm, others childhood friends from Helsingborg and yet others complete strangers.

  He couldn’t explain why, but even though he never shared anything about his life, it felt like he was selling himself and giving out keys to his home whenever he accepted a friend request.

  Gertrud didn’t seem particularly active on social media either, though she did post things from time to time, mostly pictures of food, flowers and cats. But on this particular day, there seemed to have been quite a lot of activity on her wall. Congratulatory messages with pictures of flowers, hearts and champagne bottles had been and were still streaming in from one Facebook friend after another.