Snowdrift

by Helene Tursten

  “That’s very kind of you—I’ll pass it on.”

  Olle brightened up when she relayed Harald’s invitation, but one look at his weary face made her wonder if he’d manage to stay awake until lunchtime.

  Superintendent Göran Krantz knocked before entering the cottage. As Embla had expected, he stopped just inside the door and quickly scanned the interior. He nodded to the two officers at the kitchen table.

  “Good morning! So you’re sitting here shedding DNA.” He smiled at them to take the sting out of his words.

  Embla gave Olle Tillman a meaningful glance and whispered loudly, “What did I tell you? We’re in trouble for staying indoors and contaminating the crime scene.”

  Göran put on plastic shoe covers before coming over to join them. Olle got to his feet and held out his hand.

  “Olle Tillman—I’m a detective inspector from Åmål.”

  “Göran Krantz, superintendent with the technical department in Gothenburg. Good to meet you, even if it’s not under the best circumstances.”

  “Yes—this is all pretty overwhelming,” Olle replied with a pale attempt at a smile.

  “Olle came over because there was another murder last night, only two kilometers from here. He and his colleagues are investigating,” Embla explained.

  Any hint of joviality disappeared from Göran’s face.

  “Another murder? And was the victim also shot?” he demanded sharply.

  “No, an eighteen-year-old high school student was stabbed. The local indoor bandy team was having a party, and something went wrong,” Embla said.

  Göran nodded and muttered something.

  He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “My team will be here in about an hour. I’d like to take a look at the scene of the crime, then we can talk.”

  “We won’t be able to do much once the CSIs arrive—I suggest we go over to the guesthouse. Harald has offered to provide lunch,” Embla said.

  Olle’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, glanced at the display, and sighed. “Tillman.”

  He wasn’t on speakerphone, but Embla could hear a male voice speaking sharply on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, but it’s not a suicide. He was murd—”

  Another torrent of words interrupted Olle’s attempt to clarify the situation.

  “I know it’s not my call, but Superintendent Göran Krantz and Detective Inspector Embla Nyström from Gothenburg are also here. They’ve checked out the body and they think we’re looking at homicide.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, because Göran hadn’t yet seen the dead man, but it was clear from Olle’s tone that he was annoyed with his boss. Maybe it was due to tiredness, given how many hours he’d been on duty, but Embla got the feeling that he was pretty sick of Chief Inspector Johnzén, who barked out a brief question.

  “Shot in the head. The CSIs from Gothenburg will be here in—”

  The roar at the other end of the phone made Olle hold it away from his ear.

  “ . . . the fuck has it got to do with them?”

  Both Embla and Göran heard every word. Göran held out his hand, and a smile of pure joy spread across Olle’s face as he passed over the phone.

  “Good morning. Superintendent Göran Krantz from the technical department in Gothenburg. My colleague Detective Inspector Embla Nyström was called to the scene by a relative who rents out this cottage. It was this relative who found the body this morning. DI Nyström immediately realized that the victim had been murdered and called me. I happened to be in Trollhättan and was able to get here quickly.”

  Once again Embla heard a sharp comment. Göran rolled his eyes, but kept his tone perfectly civil as he answered.

  “No, we don’t have too little to do, but the victim is ours. Formal identification has yet to take place, but we’re pretty sure he’s a major criminal from Gothenburg who features in several of our ongoing investigations. That’s why the case falls under our jurisdiction. I believe you have another homicide to deal with.”

  Another irate comment came through the ether. Göran winked at his audience and said pleasantly, “I’ll pass that on.”

  He ended the call and handed the phone back to Olle.

  “Your esteemed boss wants me to tell you, and I quote, to get your ass back there right now.”

  “He could do with signing up for a course on how to treat colleagues,” Olle replied with a sigh.

  “Absolutely. I’m sure there’s a college course worth two hundred points on sense and sensibility that we could enroll him in,” Göran said with a smile. “Okay, time I took a look at our victim. For real, this time.”

  Olle pulled on his cap, headed for the front door, and opened it. A gust of icy wind blew snow all over the rubber doormat.

  “When you and your colleagues are questioning witnesses who were at the Lodge or who came along later, could you ask if they saw a car or a person they didn’t recognize? I’m thinking of our murderer,” Embla said quickly.

  “No problem,” Olle said. He closed the door behind him and stepped out into the whirling snow.

  Göran stood in the bedroom doorway in silence for quite some time, taking in the scene before him. Embla knew from past experience that very little escaped him. She admired him above all for his competence and sharp mind, plus he was an absolute genius when it came to computers. Göran was someone she trusted and respected, which was why she had confided in him just over a week ago.

  Göran returned to the table and sat down. He clasped his hands and looked at her; it was hard to read his expression.

  “You didn’t put a bullet through his brain, did you?” he asked. There was a hint of a smile at one corner of his mouth, but there was an element of seriousness in his eyes.

  “What the . . . Are you crazy?” she exclaimed. “If I were going to kill Milo Stavic I wouldn’t do it here—the sensible option would be to shoot him in Gothenburg. And nobody would find me anywhere near the body, I can promise you that. He’s got plenty of enemies down there, whereas here . . .”

  “He only has one. You.”

  “Obviously not, as he’s lying dead ten meters from where we’re sitting! And I was fast asleep in my bed at Nisse’s all night. Elliot was in the same room—he would have woken up if I’d left.”

  That wasn’t necessarily true; the boy slept like the dead once he’d nodded off.

  Göran leaned back in the chair, which creaked in protest, and waved his hands dismissively. “Calm down—I had to ask. You must admit it’s an odd coincidence for him to be murdered here, when you’re only a few kilometers away.”

  “Okay, I get that.”

  Embla summoned every scrap of self-control to suppress her anger, but at the same time she had to admit that Göran was right—it was weird.

  “We’ve got some time before the CSIs arrive. Remind me about your friend’s disappearance.”

  Embla nodded. Her guts began to writhe around like a nest of snakes; she didn’t want to go back to that terrible night, but she knew she had to confront her demons at some point.

  She began by describing the nightmare that had plagued her for so long. Göran listened attentively, without interrupting.

  “I’ve had this nightmare for fourteen and a half years about what happened when Lollo went missing. I saw three men bending over her at the end of a hallway. The man who grabbed me by the throat and threatened to kill me if I told anyone was Milo Stavic. The other two were probably his brothers, Kador and Luca.”

  Göran nodded. “I hear you scream in the middle of the night sometimes on work trips. In the past you said you’ve had nightmares ever since you were a little girl, and no one knew why—but now you’re telling me they started after your friend disappeared. Exactly how old were you then?”

  “It was the end of August—the last weekend of the summer vacation. My bi
rthday is in July, so I’d just turned fourteen. Lollo was fourteen, too, but she was going to be fifteen in September. She was a year ahead of me in school, but we’d been best friends ever since we used to play in the sandbox.”

  “How did you get to know each other?”

  “We lived in the same apartment building when we were young; our parents socialized. We went to the same school, and we were together almost all the time, except for a few weeks in the summer when I would come up here to stay with Nisse and Ann-Sofi. When she was twelve, her parents split up. Her father had met someone else—she was already pregnant, and he joined her in London. Lollo’s mother was a children’s book illustrator and worked from home. After a year they moved to a smaller apartment in Högsbo, on Axel Dahlström Square. Lollo didn’t want to change schools; she caught the tram to Nordhem. She said she was afraid we’d lose touch, and I felt the same. We saw each other almost every day, and hung out together in our free time. She usually came to our place for dinner, and she often stayed over.”

  “What was she like?”

  Embla thought for a moment. “Lively. Full of ideas. Adventurous. But she could get very low sometimes. Up and down, really.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “I think there were several reasons. It hit her pretty hard when her father ran off. And I eventually realized that her mother was drinking heavily before . . . before Lollo went missing. Afterward she just drank all the time. She couldn’t work, couldn’t do anything. She killed herself a year to the day after Lollo’s disappearance.”

  Embla had to pause to try to get rid of the lump in her throat. Lollo’s mother’s suicide was a big reason she still felt so guilty. She knew she should have acted differently; if only she’d had the courage to tell the truth, the police would have had a better chance of finding Lollo, and her mother might still be alive.

  “I think you said you were going to a disco at Frölunda Kulturhus—what happened?”

  The lump was still there; Embla swallowed several times before she was able to continue.

  “We lied.”

  Göran nodded, his eyes never leaving her face. “Yes, I remember you telling me you’d both lied to your parents. Lollo said she was staying over with you, and vice versa. Did your mom and dad know Lollo’s mother had a drinking problem?”

  “No. I told them Lollo’s mom would be home, but she’d gone to stay with a friend for a couple of days. We were alone.”

  She paused to compose herself before continuing.

  “Lollo opened a box of white wine. I didn’t want to look pathetic, so I joined in. She kept refilling my glass. I wasn’t allowed to drink at all at home. My otherwise oh-so-liberal parents were adamant that none of us touch alcohol until we were eighteen. Needless to say, I was drunk in no time. Lollo decided we should go into town to meet up with the guy she was in love with. She wouldn’t tell me his name because things were ‘a little tricky.’ I was really curious, so I went along with it. The apartment wasn’t far from the tram stop, and we managed to get there somehow. I don’t remember much about the trip.”

  It was so hard to revisit that night, to see the images she’d suppressed forcing their way to the front of her mind. Lollo, tottering along in her white high-heeled sandals. The pale-blue dress fluttering around her friend’s slim, tan thighs. The stench of vomit in the bathroom. The embarrassment of not being able to hold her drink. Feeling sick on the tram. The panic that she might throw up again . . .

  “So you took the tram,” Göran prompted her gently.

  “Yes. When we reached the Avenue Lollo dragged me off and took me to a nightclub somewhere along the boulevard. She just sailed past the long line of people waiting to get in. The doormen said hi; they seemed to recognize her.”

  “So it wasn’t the first time she’d been there.”

  “No, definitely not. The place was packed, and we got separated. I was scared, but then I saw her standing at the bar, talking to a hot guy. Later on I realized that was Luca Stavic. I could understand why she was head over heels in love—he was quite something. I was on my way to join them when a drunk started coming on to me, and I had to fight him off. Unfortunately, I hadn’t started boxing back then!”

  She often thought that if that idiot hadn’t started pawing at her, she’d have reached Lollo and they wouldn’t have been able to take her.

  “So you were held up by the drunk.”

  “Yes. By the time I’d shaken him off, both Lollo and Luca had disappeared. I was even more panic-stricken then, but suddenly I caught a glimpse of her blue dress before it disappeared through a door marked staff only. I managed to fight my way across the room, and my recurring nightmare is all about what happened next.”

  Göran gazed pensively at the snow-covered window. The wind howled down the chimney like a despairing ghost, and Embla shuddered. Her grandmother always used to say, “Someone just walked over my grave” when she felt a shiver run down her spine.

  “And you never told anyone the truth,” Göran said eventually.

  “No, I didn’t dare. Milo had threatened to kill me if I said a word to anyone. I said we’d had an argument on the way into town, and Lollo had gone off on her own to meet some guy. I headed back to the apartment to wait for her; she’d given me a key before we went out, in case we got separated.”

  She broke off; should she reveal the thought that had often occurred to her? She’d promised herself that she’d be totally honest with Göran.

  “Sometimes it seems to me that she already knew I’d need a key. That she already knew she wouldn’t be coming home.”

  “Did she take a bag with her?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a purse?”

  “A tiny shoulder purse. There was just room for her wallet, her key, and her mascara.”

  Göran nodded, narrowing his eyes as he asked, “No one remembered you from the nightclub? No one realized you’d arrived together?”

  “No. I was interviewed more than once, but no one ever questioned what I said. Nobody from the club came forward, so the police never even found out we’d been there. The place was packed; I guess they didn’t notice me or Lollo. And in hindsight I suspect alcohol wasn’t the only substance being consumed.”

  “You mean any possible witnesses wouldn’t want to contact the police because they’d been under the influence of drugs. Given what we know about the activities of the Stavic brothers, I assume all kinds of stuff was readily available.” He fell silent for a moment. “How long had Lollo known Luca Stavic?”

  Embla had often wondered exactly that over the years, so she didn’t need to think about her answer.

  “Six or seven weeks, I’d say. She never mentioned him before I went off to Dalsland to stay with Nisse, but they could have met around midsummer. My dad’s cousin and his family came over from the USA to visit us; one of the kids is about the same age as me, and I had to go on various outings with them. They stayed for ten days. When I met up with Lollo afterward and asked her what she’d been doing, she said she’d hung out with some of her classmates and been partying.”

  “Partying? Did she say where they’d gone?”

  “No, and I didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want her to see how envious I was. Maybe that’s when she met Luca.”

  “So you didn’t see much of her after midsummer?”

  “No. I came up here for five weeks.”

  Göran nodded, then he leaned across the table and said softly, “How did you feel as the days passed and she didn’t come back?”

  This was the hardest thing to talk about. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

  “Of course I was worried, but at the same time I was relieved—I thought I’d gotten away with it. My emotions were so mixed up—shame, guilt, anxiety, relief. I’ve often wished that someone had seen through me, started searching for Lollo right away. But I didn’t dare say anything.�
��

  She pointed to the bedroom.

  “The man in there threatened to kill me if I told anyone, and I believed him. He said he knew my name and where I lived.”

  Göran caught her gaze and held it. “I understand,” he said, “but bearing in mind what we know about him, I’m surprised they didn’t take you, too. Or get rid of you on the spot to make sure you could never talk.”

  That thought had never occurred to Embla, but now she realized Göran was right. The Stavic brothers had taken a huge risk.

  “Now that you mention it . . . why didn’t he make sure I kept quiet?”

  “I have no idea. He’s the only one who knows the answer. There are lots of questions about Milo Stavic that will never be resolved, but I’d really like to know what he was doing up here in the middle of winter.”

  Another memory pushed its way forward in Embla’s mind. “But, Göran, we’ve seen him before!”

  “Have we?”

  “Yes. No. Not here—in Mellerud. Back in the fall, when we were having lunch at that Thai restaurant. During the investigation into the disappearance of Beehn and Cahneborg. During the moose hunt . . .”

  He interrupted her. “Oh, was that him? I remember a big guy, smartly dressed, but above all I remember his car. It was a top-of-the-line Mercedes; I’d never seen anything like it in Sweden.”

  “Exactly—that was Milo.”

  Instinctively they glanced at the open bedroom door, both wondering the same thing: What had Milo been doing in Mellerud, and why was he back here now?

  “That was only four months ago. I’m guessing he was coming from the north and traveling down to Gothenburg,” Göran speculated.

  “Yes, and I’ve just remembered something else. Milo had a gold watch the size of an American cupcake. Harald and Monika noticed a watch like that when he checked in. Did you see it in there?”

  “Not on his wrist or on the nightstand. There’s a pair of reading glasses by the bed, plus an empty spirits bottle and an empty glass. There’s also a charger for an iPhone or iPad.”