by Mark, David
His eyes swept from the macabre details to the second board, to the polaroid mug shots, each with a label pinned underneath. Conrad Baron looked at the camera with eyes caught in a blink, making him look like he was half asleep. Ashley Jayaraman sat just looking straight ahead. Justin Swift was smiling, Daniel Hanson had his mouth open, his words frozen in the moment and Ulrika Strömberg sat with her head slightly to the side looking at Vikland in a way she never looked whenever men were in her vicinity: openly, honestly, without the mask of felinity.
It struck him then, the numbers: four men and a woman, against four women and a man of the dead. The last board was mostly empty. In the centre of it was an enlarged photograph taken by the team that had searched Thomas Denisen’s car. It was a detailed colored photograph of the painting.
The Hangman of the Gallows. Where did the name come from? he wondered.
Almquist moved to stand directly in front of it, studying it, taking in every detail, every application of a brush. It struck him then, that here was something, an artifact that at some other place, in some other time had been the focus of someone’s passion. This figure hanging from a tree, head forced down, arms behind him, tied somewhere above his head, ending in flames spreading up the tree.
He turned from the board to look down at Elin. She was reading a report. He noticed the way she glanced across at Oskar Lindgren and followed the direction of interest, eyes resting on pressed trousers, upwards, taking in that characteristic tidy hair; always so, right, annoyingly correct in that side parting. Feeling annoyed for some reason, Almquist walked to the photographs again. He rested his fingertip on the polaroid of Ashley Jayaraman. ‘He looks the type.’
‘He’s the type all right.’ Elin said, looking up with a bemused expression he always found so... wonderful. ‘But so far, his story checks out.’ She wore a look of disappointment.
Almquist had to smile. ‘Anything on the boot-print?’
She shook her head. ‘I just spoke with Ashley’s Danish parole officer though. He recommended him for the field work he mentioned, oddly enough.’ She looked across at Oskar, drawing him into the conversation. ‘He also confirmed that he’s a bit of a sad case. Violence in prison, applied for parole three times before being released, for unpredictable behavior; you know the type.’
‘Someone could have been leaning on him?’
Vikland gave him a look that said, oh come on. ‘He’s bad, Hasse.’
‘A standard hiking boot?’ Lindgren said, looking at the photo of the print.
Vikland leaned back placing the report she had been reading on the table, then stood up and walked over to a copy of the cast made in plaster. ‘Hardly standard; a man with small feet, or a woman with large feet,’ She replied.
‘What size did the girl have?’ Almquist asked.
‘A lot smaller than these.’
‘She could have worn large boots?’
‘She could have.’ She turned aside, trying to hide her irritation. ‘You could call forensics when they get to work and breath down their necks.’ She picked up a photocopy, placing it on the table, pointing to a picture. ‘You know, they used to make sacrifices at the place where we discovered the body? Trollkyrka the locals call it. Trolls Church Hill. Why would anyone go there to leave a painting in their car? Now he thought about it, the choice of location for any exchange was curious, with the length of the trails to consider, the difficult rocky terrain; just the sheer isolation. Why would Thomas Denisen go there? If it was an exchange, then he would have taken it with him.
‘We know nothing about who painted the painting.’
He’d been thinking about that; they had to know more. ‘I know as much about painting as you do about fashion,’ he winked at Elin. ‘I think I’m fashionable,’ he turned to Lindgren, ‘don’t you Oskar?’
Lindgren didn’t respond, taking another sip of his coffee. Finally, he managed a small smile.
‘As far as Ulrika is concerned,’ Almquist added, ‘her story checks out, she works in Stockholm; freelance journalist.’ He turned back to shots of lakes and moss-covered rock. ‘And she has these,’ he said, wondering why any freelance would choose such a miserable time of the year to make a photo shoot. ‘Ulrika says she was researching the old legends of Tiveden.’ He looked at her photos. ‘Anything else on the site?’
Vikland shrugged, ‘Quite a place, Tiveden. An old site of some significance, a sacred place where people would gather to offer sacrifice. Old Viking customs seem to have continued here longer than anywhere else. That in itself is interesting.’ She leaned over to look at her report. ‘Tiveden was dedicated to the god Tiw. It could be relevant...’ she turned to look towards the enlargement of the painting on the third board. ‘The warrior would make sacrifice and engrave upon his sword the rune of Tiwaz, calling for him twice, as prayer and runic spell.’
Almquist nodded thoughtfully. ‘We could do with an expert.’
‘Such practices continued until after the middle ages,’ Vikland continued, eyes flicking back to the report. ‘According to the Museum at Skara, something happened there, at Trollkyrka.’
‘What something?’ Lindgren said, sitting up.
‘Something connected with the church.’ She looked back at Almquist. ‘Sacrifices, against Christians?’
‘And you think that is connected with another killing?’ Lindgren said.
‘I don’t know. It’s a possibility.’
Lindgren nodded, looking up at the photographs of the victims on the first board. ‘Did you know about these?’
Vikland regarded each picture. She looked at him with a look that told him she felt uneasy. And who could blame her?
‘I never saw them before.’
How could he tell her he hadn’t shown them to her before, because they disturbed the shit out of him? But not as much as it disturbed him to know a group had arrived here from Denmark, only weeks after he’d contacted the Danish Police.
Almquist was disappointed: A post-mortem hadn’t revealed any suspicious cause of death. Denisen had fallen; his spine had snapped at the base and shattered the neck, bones in his arms and one leg broken with multiple traumas. His jaw had been broken and his shoulder dislocated. It was the nature of the mutilation that caught his attention: The eyes had been removed without cutting into the surrounding skin; the nails driven upwards through the soles of the feet had punctured neatly. The remaining question was, had he fallen or was he pushed? And was he dead upon the time of the mutilations? Or alive?
With heavy mind, Almquist turned to the forensics report. It offered little information he didn’t already know or could guess at. No fingerprints. No fibers. Nothing. He leaned forwards and removed the old black and white photographs from the first crime scene; they still shocked him.
They had a boot-print.
He pondered, rubbing his beard absently, eyes and mind in more distant places. He took off his glasses and closing his eyes, massaged them with his fingers. When he opened them all was blurred, indistinct. Like this case. He raised his hand and settled his chin between his thumb and forefinger, just thinking, thoughts migrating to days of handwritten notes, lots of them. Almquist replaced his glasses and moving his chair back, reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk and opened it. Inside was a black expandable black cardboard file, full and fat like a pregnant mind. He removed it, placing it on his desk. He chewed the side of his cheek and placing a hand in his pocket, removed his key, unlocking the central thin drawer under the middle of the desk. Inside was a spiral-bound notebook, the corners battered. He removed it and opened it, flicking from page to page. The Kron investigation. The coroner had ruled death by suicide. What had lead him to such lengths?
Could Kron and the painting be connected?
He closed the book. He sat, pondering some more, then placed it inside the expandable folder ignoring the glimpses of old documents and photographs, putting it all back inside the bottom drawer. He kicked it shut, sliding the central drawer back into place withou
t bothering to lock it. He closed the notebook, standing up, leaving his office to walk into the large uncluttered space that was the ops room. Oskar busy at his desk in the office to his right.
He approached the boards, studying the row of pictures, the five staying at the homestead. Next to them were five photographs of Denisen’s body, arranged one on top of the other. The first showed a detail of the eyes. He studied for a moment the congealed gore around the eye sockets, daring himself to imagine them being gouged out with a spoon. The next was a detail of the feet. Common six inch square carpenter’s nails hit with an implement, hard enough to break through bone, penetrating above the top of the foot. The remaining three showed the body from the head, and from each side.
And yet.
He stared at the photograph of Denisen, a close-up of a shattered jawline. He tuned into the details, concentrating. Outside in the corridor the sound of a vacuum cleaner. From the back offices the clatter of a needle printer ripping off the text from someone’s screen. Footsteps, light.
His attention switched from the photographs to the large glass windows. They overlooked the green lawn of the garden on the far side of the building away from the car park, a soft light playing across still green grass. It wouldn’t stay green for much longer. The snow was coming... something caught his attention.
From where he was standing, the glass of Oskar’s computer with black screen reflected the light from his desk lamp, so he could see the front of Oskar’s shirt and tie. Except, he was looking down, head bent forwards. In that moment Almquist noted Oskar was reading a report. In a blue file holder.
They didn’t use blue files any more.
Almquist walked across the ops room to enter the office area. Oskar looked around at the sound of Almquist’s footsteps, then quickly and efficiently, he slipped the folder over his knees under the desk. Almquist opened his mouth to ask, sucking in air instead of confronting him with an odd question. Oskar hadn’t quite been quick enough, Almquist’s eyes helped by the best lenses money could buy, eyes as sharp as a hawk. On the front of the report he had glimpsed a motif, one he knew well. It could have been any document. Except, he had seen the logo on the front of a report in a blue folder.
The old files used on the Draugr investigations were blue.
Almquist closed his mouth. He had been to archives looking through the same files this morning. Oskar couldn’t have access to the files, he didn’t have the authorization. Unless...
He dismissed the thought, realizing the situation was ridiculous and refrained from asking. He was being paranoid, looking down at light blue working shirt, short, tidy hair, shaved short at the sides, to the papers in front of him and nodded.
Oskar looked up, reciprocating the nod. ‘We’ve finished going through the call list on the victim’s mobile device.’
‘Anything?’
Lindgren shrugged. ‘A lot of calls from Denmark, mostly local. We’re still following up on it. Nothing of any significance; there was a call to Amsterdam we’re checking out.’
‘Anything else?’
Lindgren looked back, head turning in the direction of Elin Vikland as she entered her office in a hurry. ‘I’ll let Elin fill you in.’
He remembered something that had always lain there, dormant, ready for his attention. Something not even archives had access to.
Oskar pulled a report over and started reading.
He hadn’t looked at his old notes in over five years.
Could Oskar be involved in sending someone information?
The question seared itself into his mind as Almquist picked up the file pictures. They were from the first murder investigation, taken from a stack of blue files retrieved from archives earlier this morning and piled on his office desk.
Oskar hadn’t been in the department long. He tried to concentrate. The files concerned a woman who had been about the same age as himself, a local figure. The first draugr killing, the only case he had never worked himself; the one he knew the least about.
Oskar knew the name Hangman.
Her face was wax-like. A mask of death. Where her eyes used to be, the same familiar bloody ooze ran out of empty sockets. He turned to other, older, black and white photos on the board; two dead figures turned to charcoal that had once been people, both of them women, both people he had only known by reputation. The community had never really recovered since their deaths.
Almquist cast his mind back, seeking anything that could be related to Anna and Gustav Kron. He recalled Gustav had been a doctor and had practiced as one, returning from Denmark after the war, with a new Danish bride. Anna. Anna and Gustav were both Danish. Did this go back that long? Anna lived the same life he did; two recluses lying dormant within a changing world. And there they lived for the rest of their non-natural lives. And why would anyone have any connection to Anna, thirteen years after her death? Gustav Kron had committed suicide. They had found his body, half-burned with the blackened remains of a revolver still clasped in his hand. Had he committed suicide?
Or had he been defending themselves?
He opened his bottom sliding desk drawer, retrieving the folding file, releasing the catch, fingers walking to Kron, G, retrieving the clear plastic pocket with the photos. They revealed an old service revolver still clasped in his hand, chest head and shoulders reduced to charcoal. The same revolver that had fired a single bullet entering his left temple, exiting through a large part of his right, taking his life and all of his memories with it. Not that there was much left of his head afterwards.
How convenient. He hadn’t thought about that particular factor of convenience before. Kron couldn’t be positively ID’d. Because his file was not associated with the Draugr killings, he had never made the connection. Troubled, he replaced them, leaning back, placing his hands behind his head.
Had Gustav Kron been involved in something?
Almquist returned his attention to the files from Archives, moving to the next photograph. Color. A six inch nail sticking four inches out of the top of a filthy foot, fragments of dirt-encrusted bone discernible where it ruptured the skin. Missing eyes. Yet, the incisions seemed more clinical, as if performed by the hand of someone experienced in removing the eyes. It was a pattern reproduced in the next three sets of colorful pictures: a woman, mid-forties; a woman, late-twenties then another female, mid-thirties – all of them female. All local; all daughters of honest, god-fearing folk, their names as much a part of the local community as any other. All women, until now; all burned... until now.
Or was he really just being paranoid?
Not when he had made new Danish connections. Something made him think of a picture of Thomas Denisen, an enlargement made from his driving license. He stood up and returned to the ops room, walking to the first of the three boards used to mark connections, a line of red thread secured by drawing pins connected Thomas Denisen to Justin Swift, Ash Jayaraman and a picture of the painting.
The phone rang from his office. He left the ops room to take the call.
It was Elin: ‘I’m at the Regent Hotel in Karlsborg. I called telecoms this morning and requested a run-down on all calls made from Gotfridsgaarden before our arrival. They told me there was nothing of any interest, except for one to the Regent. I just ran a check of guest names.’
‘Karlsborg?’
‘Name of Sebastian Chivers. Hasse, he’s British.’
‘When did he check in?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Get on to him.’
‘He already checked out last night. He could be anywhere by now.’
Silence.
‘Add his name to the list of suspects.’
‘I already have.’
‘Get a description.’
‘Got that too.’
Silence.
‘I thought I would drive by the homestead on the way back...’
Almquist agreed and replaced the receiver and eased the dull ache behind his eyes he hadn’t noticed before. There was no disce
rnible pattern, absolutely none.
Apart from the mutilations.
People had disappeared. SÄPO had conducted ops no-one ever knew about. Old conversations; old organizations existed that shouldn’t... even exist. All the things he didn’t want or need to tell Elin about. How could he tell her he’d been continuing his own secret investigation? Not with his track record. Which was why he kept all his own personal files encrypted and hidden away, why he had reports concerning the killings only he knew about. Leads that had never entered the case files. People even, who still disappeared for no reason. And police reports from Denmark.
All of it compiled over... well, over a longer period of time he even cared to think about. It had been a hobby, in the beginning, a kind of what-if game. Nothing would have happened. No one could have known. Until he made the new discovery.
People who were supposed to be dead.
He wondered if his own inquiries may have been a trigger for something then dismissed the thought, then thought again of his old case notes and the photos of Gustav. He pulled open his bottom drawer and looked down into his expandable file. If Gustav had been defending himself... who? Almquist reached for his telephone book looking for Æsahult, thinking about how much could be at stake. Especially for people who had a lot to lose, more to lose than detectives coming close to retirement.
Chapter 7
A NEW ARRIVAL
But Kon the Young learned runes to use,
Runes everlasting, the runes of life;
Soon could he well the warriors shield,
Dull the sword blade, and still the seas.
Stanza 44, Rigsthula
Ash entered the living room to the awake yet sleepy figure of Ulrika. He admired her bare leg for a moment, noting the curve of her calf, the slight sheen to her skin. The way her lips pouted slightly, as if made for... she stirred. He walked over to the window. It overlooked the smooth black waters of a lake that would have been a perfect place to commit a murder. He glanced across at the outhouse listening to Ulrika’s regular breathing, seeing no one. Somewhere Conrad was stacking wood. Justin was gone, the painting gone with him and Conrad wasn’t very happy about it. And Daniel was out, walking. He needed some air, he had said. That left only him and Ulrika. Alone.