X Ways to Die

by Stefan Ahnhem

  So what did you do? Take to the bottle?

  It usually helps.

  Helps? In this file I have four police reports made by Kerstin, accusing you of assault, and that’s just from the past six months.

  The day before, she’d only been able to work for a few hours before Mona-Jill had grown impatient and reminded her she’d promised to help weed the garden, and then they were supposed to listen to Sommar on the radio together before riding their bikes around Kranke Lake.

  It was only now, well past midnight, when Mona-Jill was at the deepest point of her sleep cycle, that she’d been able to sneak back out to the boat and continue her work.

  Yes, I’m an alcoholic, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not denying it. But I keep it under control.

  You call this under control?

  (Conny is confronted with photographs of his battered wife. Silence.)

  What I mean is that I decide when the bottle gets opened, not the other way around. No one can say otherwise.

  I would actually say these pictures are pretty clear proof you were out of control last night. Wouldn’t you agree?

  (Silence.)

  Yes.

  (Silence.)

  But I didn’t really drink that much. I know that sounds like I’m lying, but it’s true.

  So you’re saying you did this to your wife while you were sober?

  No, I’m saying I got drunk much faster than usual. Properly pissed, if that’s even what it was. I don’t remember. I remember almost nothing. And just so you know, I never black out. It’s odd, actually. As if the booze was… Never mind, I don’t know.

  Öhman’s answer was circled with red felt-tip pen, and the last sentences were underlined too. It was so typical of Elvin to highlight a bunch of stuff without the slightest explanation in the margin.

  What did you drink?

  Explorer. Always Explorer.

  Stubbs looked up from the transcripts and scanned the cabin until she found the evidence bag with the Explorer bottle in one of the boat’s storage compartments, next to the shoebox with the surveillance owls. So Elvin had gone to the crime scene. Even though he hadn’t been working the case, he’d made his way out there and confiscated the bottle.

  It was slightly more than half full, and if it was the only bottle Conny Öhman had drunk from after coming home, it could well be true that he was far from intoxicated enough to black out and have complete amnesia. Elvin must have thought the same thing.

  And if that were the case, it might mean Molander had been there before the night of the murder to spike the spirits. Probably with Xyrem or some other fast-acting GHB compound that caused a powerful, alcohol-like intoxication but would be out of the victim’s system within hours and therefore not show up in a urine sample. The pieces were finally coming together.

  Anything else you want to add?

  No, other than that I don’t see the point of this interview. You’ve clearly already made up your minds it was me.

  Wasn’t it?

  (Silence.)

  Should I take your silence as a confession?

  (Silence.)

  I guess I should.

  Because if you have anything to say to the contrary, this is the time.

  (Silence.)

  I suppose you could check her phone. She always started filming whenever I got a bit upset.

  We already did, and as you say, there’s some incriminating things on there. But unfortunately, nothing from last night. I wasn’t there, obviously, but I can imagine there were reasons she wouldn’t have had the ability to take out her phone and start recording. Or what do you think?

  (Shrugs his shoulders.)

  Why hadn’t they thought of that? Stubbs put the transcript down and pushed her reading glasses up into her hair. Elvin must have had a mobile phone. It should have been in his flat. But there had been no sign of it there, and nowhere else either, as far as she knew.

  Had Molander taken it? And if so, why?

  So far, she’d left the computer alone. Usually, a computer would be one of the last things she tackled at a crime scene. The most important evidence was almost always physical. What’s more, depending on the size of the hard drive, going through one was often so labour-intensive it required several days’ work, especially when you had no idea what you were looking for.

  But this time, she did know when she sat down in front of the computer, booted it up and clicked her way to the DCIM folder. That was where pictures were stored. It didn’t matter if you shoved in an external memory card full of photos or connected a phone via the USB port. That was always where they ended up.

  And there were pictures in it, a seemingly endless number, and one day, she would have time to go through them all one by one. But not today. So she sorted the pictures from newest to oldest and scrolled down to Thursday 5 April. But there were no pictures from that date. Nor from Friday 6 April, the day Molander had conducted his crime scene investigation, according to the case file. Nor from the following weekend.

  But there was a video.

  On Sunday 8 April at 7.17 a.m., Elvin had recorded a video that was four minutes and forty-three seconds long. That was two and a half days after the murder and could have been of practically anything. But it wasn’t.

  She’d only driven past Munka-Ljungby once or twice. She’d certainly never been to Munka Pizzeria. According to the report, Kerstin and Conny Öhman had rented out part of their house to it, and judging from the footage, which was bobbing up and down as if Elvin was holding the phone while walking, that was where he was going.

  He’d probably parked his car some distance away to avoid getting too close to the dark blue Audi whose number plate Elvin was now pointing the phone at. She paused the playback, did a quick search for the registration number and confirmed what she had suspected.

  The Audi belonged to Molander.

  According to the case file, he’d finished the crime scene investigation on Friday the sixth. And yet there he was, a full day later. Granted, there was nothing irregular about a forensic scientist returning for one last once-over before calling in the cleaners. She’d done it herself countless times. But never in her private car and definitely not without informing the lead investigator, in this case Irene Lilja.

  Elvin moved on from Molander’s car and walked across the gravel to the back of the house, where he quietly opened the back door and entered. Since he was still holding the phone in his left hand, the video didn’t show much beyond a dirty green rug, his orthopaedic Ecco shoes and the bottom of his jeans as he made his way into the house.

  But there were plenty of sounds. The creaking floor, the panting breaths and the squeaky door to the living room.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Molander’s voice, and a second later the man himself became visible, standing at the top of a ladder with one hand in the ceiling lampshade. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just happened to be in the neighbourhood and thought I’d have a look.’

  ‘How does anyone just happen to be in Munka-Ljungby at half past seven on a Sunday morning?’ asked Molander, who seemed to slip something into his jacket pocket.

  ‘Believe it or not, I’ve actually been out fishing in Skälder Bay. I even caught a codfish that weighed over six pounds. And you? I thought you were done here two days ago?’

  ‘You know what it’s like. We were in a hurry, and I didn’t want to risk overlooking something.’ Molander hurriedly climbed down the ladder and disappeared from the shot.

  He was clearly tense, acting as though Elvin had burst in and caught him red-handed. But why was he there, and what had he pulled out of the ceiling light?

  ‘No, I suppose that makes sense,’ replied Elvin, now pointing the phone at the floor, which seemed to have been scrubbed clean of blood – so the cleaners had already been by to scrub away any remaining evidence, which made Molander’s visit even stranger. ‘I guess I didn’t realize there were things that needed clearing up.’

 
; ‘Who said anything about clearing things up?’ The phone was turned up and once again showed Molander, but this time from below. ‘There’s nothing to clear up here.’

  ‘So we’re sure that Conny bloke, or whatever his name is, did it?’

  The phone was pointed back down at the floor, where two of Molander’s aluminium cases were sitting open, revealing technical instruments stored in bespoke compartments.

  ‘Of course he did it. There’s never been any doubt about that, as far as I know. Who else could it be? There are no signs of a third person having been present. Her blood was on his hands, clothes and groin. And according to Lilja he’s more or less confessed.’

  ‘Calm down. You don’t have to sell me on it.’

  ‘I’m not trying to. I’m just filling you in on what’s going on.’

  ‘All right then. So everything’s good, in other words.’

  ‘Yes, everything’s good. There’s no need for you to fret.’

  Silence fell and Stubbs heard the sound of the aluminium cases being closed while Elvin continued further into the room and pointed his phone up at the half-empty Explorer bottle on the mantel.

  ‘So, did you find anything?’

  ‘Find? What do you mean, find?’

  ‘In the ceiling light. What else were you doing up there?’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes, that’s a valid question. No, I realized I’d forgotten to check it and as I said, I just wanted to make sure.’

  ‘I suppose we have to hope the cleaners missed it, too.’

  ‘No need to worry. It was almost as dusty as your house up there.’ Molander let out a forced laugh that faltered when Elvin stayed silent. ‘Well, I have to get home. So if you wouldn’t mind making your way out so I can lock the door, that would be great.’

  ‘Are you in a hurry?’

  ‘I guess you could say that. Gertrud will be up in half an hour and she can be foul-tempered if I don’t greet her with coffee and croissants. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘I don’t, actually. But you go on, I’ll lock up.’

  ‘So you’re staying. That makes me curious. May I ask why?’

  ‘No reason, really. Like I said, I just happened to be in the neighbourhood. Do you have a problem with me hanging around?’

  ‘No, why would I? As far as I’m concerned, you can stay as long as you like. Conny Öhman is unlikely to be back anytime soon.’ Molander forced out another laugh. ‘All right, well, I guess I’ll head out, then.’

  ‘Sure, you don’t want to be late. And don’t forget to send my love to Gertrud.’

  Molander picked up his bags and left the room, and the second the front door closed, Elvin aimed his phone at the mantel again. Not at the bottle of vodka this time, but rather at a number of small black plastic objects lined up in a row.

  Stubbs instantly recognized them as surveillance microphones of the exact same model Elvin had used in his owls. So he’d stolen both the idea and the equipment for bugging Molander’s living room from Molander himself.

  It was also worth noting that as soon as Molander opened his cases, he must have realized that, in his haste, he’d left some of his gadgets at the crime scene. He’d probably felt compelled go back, only to realize Elvin had taken both the microphones and the vodka bottle.

  That had probably been all the reason he needed to do away with him.

  29

  SURFACE TENSION WAS still engaged in a silent yet fierce battle with gravity over the tiny droplet of water trembling at the edge of the tap. But as with every droplet that had gone before it, this one’s fate was in no doubt.

  Even so, each time gravity finally prevailed, forcing a droplet to let go of the tap and plunge helplessly towards the mirror-like surface of the water in the bath, it was a unique event.

  Each time, a crater would erupt in slow motion, sending concentric waves rippling out from the epicentre, just an inch or two above the face with the wide-open eyes and the nose in which a tiny air bubble had become trapped in one of the nostrils.

  Yet another victim. Yet another meaningless and completely incomprehensible murder.

  That was Tuvesson’s only thought when she aimed her torch at the body in the overflowing bath. This time, a naked young man as beautiful as he was muscular. A man who had been planning to take his girlfriend out that very night, to celebrate the anniversary of their engagement. But according to her, he never showed up. Half an hour later, she’d found him dead at his home, in the bath.

  What had he done to deserve such a premature ending? What was the point? She shook her head and felt that an ever-bigger part of her was on the verge of giving up and accepting the idea that they may never solve this case.

  At least Molander was both focused and full of energy, despite it being midnight and Gertrud having just left him. He was moving around with his characteristic boyish curiosity, shining his torch along the floor, the ceiling and the walls, seeming to know exactly where to start.

  ‘It’s too early to say for certain, but I think I’ve found the cause of the power outage.’ Molander turned the beam of his torch towards a temporary power cord running diagonally across the ceiling and down one of the walls before disappearing behind the bath.

  Unfortunately, she herself was anything but focused. Her mind didn’t know which way to pull her and her thoughts seemed intent on tangling so badly they were soon going to be impossible to unravel.

  ‘The cord is probably split somewhere behind the bath,’ Molander went on. ‘Because we have the neutral wire at the foot over there and at the head you can see the hot one.’

  Tuvesson nodded and noted that a blue and a brown cable had indeed been stripped and taped to the bath an inch or two below the waterline at either end.

  ‘Would you mind holding this?’ Molander handed her the torch, grabbed a bath brush that was propped against the wall and slowly dipped the wooden handle down the inside of the bath. Then he pushed the body aside as far as he was able and leaned forwards. ‘Just as I thought.’ He turned to Tuvesson. ‘The ground continues all the way to the bottom.’

  ‘So he was electrocuted?’

  ‘It’s one theory, certainly.’ Molander put the scrubbing brush down. ‘But we should wait and see what Flätan has to say. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more allergic to rushing to conclusions than that man.’

  ‘And what’s another theory?’

  ‘That he drowned. Obviously.’

  Obviously. What else would it be? She had to pull herself together before she made a proper fool of herself.

  ‘What’s beyond doubt, however, is that the water level has risen above the cables,’ Molander went on. ‘And though water may be a poor conductor in and of itself, there’s enough dirt and pollutions in it to change that.’

  ‘Enough to be fatal?’ Fine, she’d had a drink. She had. But just a small one, certainly not enough for it to affect her work.

  ‘I’d say it depends.’ Molander made a weighing gesture with his hands.

  ‘But it’s 220 volts, right?’ She was probably just tired and needed to sleep. It was well past midnight, after all.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not the volts that matter, it’s the amperes, and you have to get to at least thirty or forty milliampere for about a minute before the breathing muscles are paralysed and render the victim unconscious.’

  ‘So what you’re really saying is that it’s too soon to say anything at all.’

  Molander nodded. ‘Yes, I’m going to have to conduct a thorough investigation of everything from the current of the cables and the conductivity of the water to any other evidence in the rest of the flat before we can be sure of anything. And then there’s Flätan, who won’t say a peep until he has at the very least had time to open him up and examine his lungs.’

  ‘Fine, but you have to be able to give me some kind of working theory, though, right? I’ll admit the whole things is confusing to me. I mean, if you wanted to kill your victim with an electric shock, wouldn’t it be easier to do it
without water, taping the cables directly onto his body? Or am I mistaken?’

  Molander shook his head. ‘I’ve been asking myself the exact same thing. The only explanation I can see is that this electrical set-up is only part of the explanation.’

  ‘You’re saying there’s something else? What might that be?’

  ‘Another plan. I don’t know.’ Molander shrugged. ‘That’s what my investigation is going to try to find out.’

  ‘Come on. You have a theory. I can tell. You’ve had one since you stepped through that door. Bloody hell, Ingvar, I know you, don’t forget.’

  Molander sighed. ‘Could I at least have an hour before—’

  ‘You can have all the hours you need. But first I want you to tell me what you think happened here. Think. Not know. If, later on, you come across evidence that points in a different direction, we’ll deal with that then.’

  ‘Okay.’ Molander took a deep breath and turned to the bath. ‘First, Milwokh must have overpowered his victim and subdued him somehow.’

  ‘He might have knocked him out or sedated him.’

  ‘Sure, that may well be what he did, and Flätan’s toxicological examination will answer that for us. But either way, that was just to get his clothes off and get him into the bath.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. That he at least got to sleep through his final moments.’

  ‘Hope springs eternal, I suppose. But sadly, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it happened.’ Molander stuck the brush handle back into the bath and pushed the body aside. ‘There are signs that suggest he was awake. Look at this.’

  Tuvesson leaned over and saw a steel wire that ran through a hoop at the bottom of the bath and in under the victim’s back.

  ‘The other end is probably tied around the victim’s wrists, which wouldn’t have been necessary if the victim had been kept unconscious.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been precautionary, in case he woke up?’

  ‘Sure. Unless he was meant to wake up.’ Molander shrugged. ‘Maybe the point was for him to be awake for his own death. If nothing else, the bath makes sense that way.’