Menace In Malmö

by Torquil Macleod

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But I still won’t have a biscuit.’ She patted her tummy, and then immediately regretted the gesture as it reminded her that it was chubbier than she liked. ‘Just eaten with the family not long ago.’

  ‘So, how can I help?’

  Until now she hadn’t been entirely sure what she was going to talk to him about. It was really on an impulse that she had contacted him. Yet he was the only person that she could talk to who was fully conversant with all the facts of the original investigation. And, yes, there was one nagging question that she did want to pose, though she had no idea how to phrase it without causing offence. She would have to lead up to it.

  ‘The murder weapon has been found.’

  ‘Ah, the skewer from the barbecue.’ It was clear that he remembered the case.

  ‘And the young witness, Kurt Jeppsson, has changed his story.’

  ‘Has he?’ Renmarker sounded intrigued. ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘Might do,’ she said guardedly. ‘Enough to question the guilt of our original chief suspect.’

  ‘Yes. Henrik Nordlund was very keen on that homosexual partner of the deceased. I was horrified to hear about Nordlund’s death, by the way’

  ‘I miss him. But you’re right. We were convinced that it was Linus Svärd who was the perpetrator.’

  ‘If I remember correctly, it was you that leaked your suspicions to the press.’ The sudden ferocity of the accusatory, gimlet stare wasn’t lessened any by the toothiness of the features.

  ‘A misjudgement.’ Anita wasn’t going to offer more of an explanation to the man whom she felt had forced her to take such a course by his own inaction. In fact, his comment riled her. ‘At the time, you wouldn’t let us arrest him.’ It came out more vehemently than she’d expected.

  Renmarker steepled his figures thoughtfully, which temporarily blotted out his teeth. Eventually he spoke: ‘I felt you didn’t have enough evidence. It was all circumstantial. I needed more solid facts, which Nordlund failed to produce.’

  ‘We had enough to arrest him. The whole team agreed on that.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he stated firmly.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ she demanded. ‘It made no sense. Even if we hadn’t found him guilty, at least we could have had a go at him to find out the truth. You stopped that.’

  ‘Inspector, if you’re going to take this high-handed tone with me, you are no longer welcome in my home.’

  Anita stood up. The dog disappeared into the trees. ‘I don’t know what prevented you from helping us back then, but I’m here because the most decent detective I ever worked with is probably going to get his reputation trashed by the scheming woman running this case. Henrik Nordlund spent the last years of his life tortured by the thought that we had failed to bring a killer to justice. And you were responsible. That’s something for your conscience to deal with. I hope you can sleep nights.’

  Anita had run out of steam, but even in her fury she realized the last bit sounded as though it had come straight out of some melodrama. She shook her head and walked towards the house.

  ‘Inspector Sundström!’ she heard Renmarker call. She halted at the back door and swung round to face him. He was now standing up. ‘I deliberately blocked the investigation.’

  CHAPTER 33

  They were in the middle of the lawn. The sun was beating down, and a few wisps of cloud hung lazily in the blue sky. For a moment, the leaves on the trees twitched as a flurry of wind passed through them then sank away. The dog’s games were at an end and it lay snoozing in the shade under the table. In contrast, Anita’s mind was in a whirl. Whatever she had said had had a startling effect on Renmarker. His confidence had melted away as though it had been exposed to the sun for too long.

  ‘There was pressure put on me.’

  ‘Pressure?’ she heard herself repeat, yet she was still struggling with his initial admission of deliberately blocking the investigation.

  ‘Yes.’ His eyes were moist and he flicked at them with his finger. ‘I’ve always felt guilty about what I did.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Who put pressure on you? The commissioner? Or was it political for some reason?’ Her mind was racing through the list of those with a vested interest in burying the case. She couldn’t match any with a logical motive.

  Renmarker scuffed away a rogue blade of grass that had had the presumption to poke its head up above its severely cut neighbours. ‘It was a woman, of course. It was always a woman.’

  ‘A woman put pressure on you? What woman?’

  Still he avoided Anita’s questioning gaze. ‘You don’t understand. I can talk about it now that Anna-Greta has gone. She never knew, and that was the price I had to pay. For keeping it quiet.’

  Anita was becoming exasperated at Remarker’s riddles. ‘Just tell me!’

  He swallowed hard, and she could see his Adam’s apple shimmy up and down his throat. ‘In that summer of 1995, I was having an affair. With someone in my department. I’m embarrassed to admit it wasn’t the first time, but it was definitely the last. I kept it from Anna-Greta, who was a trusting and devoted wife. I took advantage of that. It was easy. Too easy. But it hadn’t gone unnoticed.’ Once more, he dabbed at the corner of his eye with a finger. ‘When the Knäbäckshusen murder came across my desk, I was as keen as anyone to solve it. Then one night, I was working late at the office. That’s not true. I had stayed behind with...’ The name of the woman nearly emerged but was immediately suppressed. ‘I had a call. It was from a journalist from one of the rags. He informed me that he knew all about my affair with one of my staff. If I didn’t put a lid on the case, then the whole world would hear about it, including Anna-Greta. He suggested that I might lose my job as well. That didn’t matter, but I couldn’t bear the thought of Anna-Greta finding out. The betrayal would have been too much for her. I loved her. I miss her so much.’

  His silence gave her time to think. Why would a newspaper put pressure on a public prosecutor to make sure a case never went to court? Then the fog began to clear.

  ‘Was the journalist from a Hagblom paper?’

  ‘Yes. I worked that out pretty quickly. The family wanted it brushed under the carpet.’

  Anita was as puzzled as she was shocked. ‘I can’t understand why. It’s not as though the Hagblom family needed to protect Ivar; he had an alibi. Two actually. His girlfriend and Carina Lindvall.’

  ‘In my darker moments I’ve pondered that one. The only conclusion I can come to is that the Hagblom holiday home was a focal point of the entire investigation. They didn’t want the family name dragged through the mud by rival newspapers. And I suppose they were protecting Ivar in a way. By keeping him out of it, his future wouldn’t be tainted by scandal. He’s done well for himself since. I’ve taken a morbid interest in his career ever since we met.’

  It didn’t sink in at first. ‘Pardon? When did you meet him?’

  ‘At the time of the case.’

  ‘Did Nordlund know?’

  ‘No one knew. We didn’t meet officially. But I let Ivar Hagblom know that the case wouldn’t proceed due to lack of evidence.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Why tell him?’

  ‘I wanted to make sure that word got back to his father so he would call off his hounds and my secret would stay just that. And it did. I finished the affair and remained faithful to Anna-Greta to the end.’

  He wasn’t going to get any compassion from Anita. ‘How did Ivar react? I mean, when you told him.’

  ‘Seemed relieved. But also uncomfortable. I got the impression he didn’t want to be there, and was troubled that I’d been put in an uncompromising position. Someone was pushing him. I assume it was his father. From what I’ve read subsequently, Hagblom senior was an unscrupulous and unpleasant man. I can vouch for the former,’ he said bitterly. The self-pity that had overcome him when talking about his duplicity was gone. ‘I won’t repeat a word of this, Inspector.’ There was steely resolve i
n his voice. ‘Even under oath.’

  Anita felt nothing but contempt for this man who had let them down so badly two decades before. She left without another word being spoken.

  As she manoeuvred her Skoda onto the main road, she reflected that she hadn’t been sure what she would achieve by visiting the ex-prosecutor. Now she’d discovered why the case had disintegrated. Henrik Nordlund would have been horrified if he’d known the truth. The only problem was that the visit had thrown up more questions than answers.

  The hospital was busier than it had been earlier that morning. Visitors, many dragging reluctant children with them, were making their way to the wards, clutching grapes, chocolates and flowers. Anita hadn’t gone straight to the hospital from Renmarker’s place, but had called into her apartment for a refreshing shower after a sticky day, and a contemplative coffee. The old prosecutor had got under her skin, and now she was even more determined to find out who had killed Göran Gösta. Yet she had no idea how to proceed, as Zetterberg was hardly going to willingly let her get involved. She also didn’t know what to do with the information that she had got out of Renmarker. He’d made it clear that he wouldn’t repeat what he’d told her to anyone else, so it was only hearsay and therefore dubious to say the least. Should she tell Zetterberg? That wasn’t a viable option. How could she explain that she just happened to visit the prosecutor on the original case? Zetterberg would probably land her in trouble for interfering and find the information useless anyway if Renmarker was unwilling to corroborate it. So, for the time being, she put it on the backburner as she walked up the stairs to Danny Foster’s room.

  The constable on the door greeted her with a weary smile.

  ‘Shouldn’t there be an extra guard here?’

  ‘Yes. Two officers are supposedly coming down in half an hour to relieve me. Typical that I’ve been stuck in here on such a sunny day,’ he moaned cheerfully.

  ‘There’s still the evening. I’m sure a cold beer will do the trick.’

  ‘Too right.’

  Before Anita pushed the door open: ‘Nothing suspicious?’

  He took out of his breast pocket a folded piece of paper with Mark McNaught’s CCTV image on it. ‘You mean him? No, thankfully.’

  Danny glanced up nervously when Anita entered. He was relieved to see it was her.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘Have they got him yet? McNaught?’

  ‘It’s being sorted.’ She wanted to keep him calm.

  She took a chair and placed it beside his bed.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ She could tell that he thought he was in serious trouble.

  ‘I don’t know yet. You’re not a murderer. I’m convinced of that. You’ve stolen things, but there were mitigating circumstances. I’m sure if you help us as much as you can, everything can be worked out.’

  The reassurance appeared to dampen his agitation. ‘Of course I’ll help.’

  ‘We need to know as much as we can about McNaught and Cassidy. For example, do you know where they come from in the UK?’

  ‘I don’t really. McNaught’s Scottish. I know that from his accent. But I don’t know anything about Scots accents, so I’ve no idea where he comes from up there. Not a nice place if it produced him.’ She could hear the fear in his voice every time he mentioned McNaught.

  ‘But you thought he was ex-Army?’

  ‘We all assumed he was. Seemed like a military type. Always barking orders and threats and that. Could be SAS or the Paras. He certainly acted like one.’

  ‘Paras?’

  ‘Paratroopers.’

  ‘That gives us a start.’ Anita noticed that the box of Aladdin chocolates was still open and there were a few left. Having turned down Renmarker’s home-made biscuits, she was now feeling peckish. She resisted the urge to take one. ‘Tyrone Cassidy. What about him?’

  ‘Irish.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was very friendly when he picked me up. Like a jovial dad, I suppose. I liked him then.’

  ‘But he picked you up outside a job centre in London?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  ‘Enfield. I was dossing down in Enfield. The job centre was on Windmill Road. I got familiar with that. Next to a station. It was on that road that Cassidy found me; the job centre road.’

  Anita was reasonably familiar with London after her year’s secondment with the Met. ‘OK, north London. Do you know where the others were picked up?’

  A thoughtful frown furrowed the young man’s brow. ‘Sorry, could you pour me some water?’

  Anita leant over and poured water from a clear plastic jug into an empty blue plastic cup and handed it to Danny. He took a greedy gulp. ‘Thanks,’ he said, coming up for air. ‘I know Jack was also outside a job centre. I think that was somewhere like Romford. One of the others – Irish lad called Shaun – was living around Essex, too.’

  Anita pondered this. If these young men were typical of the areas that Cassidy did his recruiting, they were all north of the Thames. Maybe that’s where Cassidy was based.

  ‘By the way, do you know where the camp is that you were working from?’

  Danny shook his head hopelessly. ‘All I know is that I ran through a big forest and eventually reached the farm. The camp was in there somewhere.’

  Anita knew they would have to mount a search, though she was pretty confident that they wouldn’t find anybody there now. She was just about to ask Danny another question about Cassidy when she saw him drop the cup and spill what was left of the water over the sheets. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ he gasped.

  Anita’s gaze flipped round to the door and a head vanished from view. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Him!’ Danny screamed. ‘It’s him!’

  Anita rushed to the door and yanked it open. The constable was standing a little way down the corridor talking to a pretty nurse. A bald-headed figure in a flash of blue clothing disappeared through the double doors at the end.

  ‘Who was that?’ Anita yelled at the startled constable.

  ‘Just a doctor,’ he stammered.

  ‘It’s McNaught!’ she shouted angrily. ‘Alert security! Lock the hospital down!’

  A moment later, she was running after McNaught. As she chased the phantom figure, she was disorientated by the circular building’s curving corridors. Her bursts of breath seemed to be synchronized with the sound of her sandals flapping along the shiny linoleum. She glanced off an unmanned trolley and heard the contents rattle and someone shout at her from behind. Two alarmed visitors pressed back against the wall as she hared towards them. She managed to pant: ‘Bald-headed doctor?’ to which one of the visitors pointed in the direction she was heading. She reached some stairs and thought she heard someone running downwards.

  She scudded down the stairwell, just managing to keep her balance. At the bottom, corridors curved in both directions. No one was around to ask if they’d seen her prey. She went to her left and a few strides later, she came across a male nurse standing in the doorway of a room. ‘Seen a bald-headed doctor coming along here?’ she gasped.

  ‘No.’

  ‘She swore and turned and ran back to the bottom of the stairs. The other corridor was empty. Her only hope was that the constable had got security to lock down the hospital, which she knew, when activated, would stop anyone getting into the main building and make it difficult to leave. Colleagues had been called down from the polishus often enough when aggressive patients, many on drugs, got violent. She made her way to the front entrance, where two security guards were standing by the closed glass doors.

  ‘Sorry, you can’t go out,’ said one holding up a burly hand.

  ‘I’m police.’

  ‘Yeah?’ came the sceptical reply. As it hadn’t been an official working day, she’d left her warrant card at home.

  ‘Just trust me, I am. I started the alarm off.’

  ‘And why?’ the guard demanded. He was obviously incensed th
at his leisurely Sunday shift had been disturbed.

  ‘There’s a gunman loose in the building, that’s why!’ She was seething now. Both guards at least had the grace to look worried. ‘Has anybody left the building since the lock down?’

  ‘No,’ said the belligerent one.

  ‘Well, except the doctor,’ put in his colleague. ‘But he had an emergency on at another part of the site.’

  ‘You’re joking! Bald?’ He nodded mutely. ‘And did he speak Swedish?’

  ‘English. I assumed he was one of the foreign doctors.’

  ‘Fantastic!’

  CHAPTER 34

  They had watched as the “doctor”, in regulation loose blue top and trousers, scurried out of the main entrance of Malmö University Hospital. Anita could even see in her mind’s eye the smaller of the guards holding the door open for him and then stopping someone else from entering the building. The door had closed, and McNaught had disappeared from view.

  Anita yawned. She hadn’t had any sleep that night after McNaught had escaped her clutches. If she hadn’t been in the room with Danny Foster, the young man would probably have had a bullet in his head. The officer on Danny’s door was in for an almighty dressing down by someone today.

  Anita sipped her umpteenth coffee. It didn’t do much to sharpen her brain. She’d managed to raise a general alert which, on top of Moberg’s instructions of the previous day, meant that every available officer was dragged out onto the streets in search of McNaught. As she expected, there had been no sign of him. He was a master at melting away. She herself had spent the night at the polishus on the end of a phone, ensuring there were enough officers at the hospital to protect Danny Foster and trying to co-ordinate the search on the ground. At just after one in the morning, she had been called out by a squad car that had seen a bald man acting suspiciously near the Central Station. By the time she got there, the officers had discovered it was a drunk who’d missed his last train. It was that sort of frustrating night.