Who Watcheth

by Helene Tursten

  The process of opening up the plastic was a repeat of Saturday night. Matti took samples and placed them in various containers. There were oil stains on the back of this package, too. When Matti spotted them, Irene noticed that his face lit up. Stridner was running out of patience, trying to hurry him along, but he merely smiled at her yet again and carried on with his work, calmly and methodically.

  The difference from Saturday was of course the contents of the package. The body was just as wet as Ingela Svensson’s had been, and it was a woman, but she bore no resemblance to Ingela. There was a long vertical scar running down her belly that looked quite old. She was probably a similar age to the previous victim, and had the same purple-red mark around her neck. The murder had left behind the blue nylon cord this time too, deeply embedded in the soft tissue, with only the ends visible, knotted into loops as before.

  Stridner stepped forward. “I’ll take it from here.” She studied the body closely from top to toe. Then she looked more carefully at certain places, all without touching. Only then did she begin to feel the woman’s stiff limbs.

  “Fully developed rigor mortis. It was pretty cold overnight, around seven degrees. That slows the process down somewhat, but I would say she was killed yesterday evening.”

  “When?” Jonny dared to ask.

  “I have to do a number of tests before I can answer that, but probably not before six. I can’t be any more precise at the moment.”

  “When will we know for sure?” Jonny persisted.

  “When I’ve finished. Perhaps you could leave me in peace to get on with my work. That will speed things up significantly,” Stridner said, glaring at Jonny.

  They had no choice but to leave. The only person who looked reasonably satisfied was Matti. As the door closed behind them he said, “I found oil!”

  “Cool. Call Norsk Hydro,” Jonny said.

  Matti ignored the feeble joke. “It’s probably the same oil we found on the plastic Ingela Svensson’s body was wrapped in, and these marks were on the back, as before.”

  “Did you find anything else on the back of the packaging?” Irene asked.

  “Sure. Gravel and grit from the locations where the bodies were found, but there was something else that didn’t come from there. Swarf—tiny particles of metal. They were in the oil and on the outside of the plastic Ingela was wrapped in, so I knew what to look for. I found the same thing on the plastic and the tape today.”

  “So apart from the usual dust and dirt, there are patches of oil and swarf on the floor in the place where he washes his victims and wraps them up,” Irene said thoughtfully.

  “That’s right. A garage or workshop would be my guess,” Matti said.

  7.

  “Elisabeth Lindberg. Forty-seven years old. Divorced, lives alone. A nurse in the emergency room at Sahlgrenska Hospital. She was supposed to be on a night shift but didn’t turn up. Reported missing by her boss; she’d tried to get hold of her, but without success. Apparently she has a son at college in Umeå. Her boss has a spare key to Lindberg’s apartment; we can pick it up from the ER.”

  Hannu Rauhala finished his report and looked at his colleagues. Irene nodded.

  “Description?” Thylqvist said.

  “Five seven, slim. Short auburn hair, long, thin face. Grey-blue eyes. Scar from a C-section on her stomach.”

  “Sounds like the victim we saw this morning; she had a long scar on the lower part of her belly,” Irene said.

  “There must be lots of women who’ve had a C-section,” Jonny said. “Maybe our little nurse just got tired of the crap weather and took off to Rio with her secret lover.”

  “Nice try, but she sounds a lot like the woman in the churchyard. We’ll check her out,” Irene said.

  Jonny sighed loudly at the thought of having to go out into the rain once again.

  “I can come with you if Jonny takes over here,” Hannu offered.

  All three of them thought that was an excellent idea. Just as Irene and Hannu were about to leave, Matti called to tell them he’d found cat hairs stuck to the tape from the new package. They looked as if they came from the same cat, but he would have to do further tests before he could be sure.

  “It’s obvious—the hairs come from the copycat,” Jonny said with a grin.

  “Where did she live?” Irene asked when they were in the car.

  “Kobbegårdsvägen.”

  “Not very far from where she was found.”

  “Just under a kilometer,” Hannu said.

  “Although Ingela Svensson lived on Såggatan; it’s a little farther from there to the western churchyard . . .”

  She left the sentence hanging in the air, because she wasn’t sure how far it actually was. Hannu didn’t disappoint her.

  “One point two five kilometers from Ingela’s front door to the place where she was found.”

  “As the crow flies?”

  “No—the shortest route by car.”

  “He dumps them in graveyards. Why?”

  “They’re usually deserted at night?”

  “Yes, but could it mean something else?”

  Hannu thought for a little while before asking, “Something religious?”

  Irene couldn’t quite put it into words, but she didn’t believe the killer had chosen to leave his victims in churchyards by chance.

  “It was just something that struck me, but you’re probably right. He knows he’s likely to be undisturbed while he’s getting rid of his victims, so a churchyard is a good choice from his point of view.”

  Irene’s cell phone rang; it was Jonny.

  “I’ve gotten a hold of Elisabeth Lindberg’s passport photo. It’s four years old, but it looks like the lady we have in the mortuary.”

  The hospital corridor and waiting room were a hive of activity, but department supervisor Ellen Ström had closed the door of the room in which they were sitting. It was small and cramped, with two desks, computers and a printer. Irene and Hannu were sitting on stools made of stainless steel; they could feel the cold metal through the seat of their pants.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that we have reason to believe the body we’ve found is that of Elisabeth Lindberg. She was murdered,” Irene began.

  “I hope . . . I hope not. I just can’t believe it—it’s terrible. Could it be someone else?” Ellen Ström said quietly.

  “Unfortunately every indication is that it’s Elisabeth,” Irene replied.

  Ellen nodded and swallowed hard. She had gone very pale, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “How long has she worked here?” Irene went on.

  “The same length of time as me—almost ten years. We’ve been friends since we started training, and we both applied for posts here when we qualified,” Ellen explained, her voice breaking.

  “So you know her well. Could you possibly come with us to identify the body? Her son is traveling down from Umeå, but he won’t be here until this evening. It would be very helpful if we could be certain of the victim’s identity as soon as possible,” Irene said.

  “Of course.”

  Ellen wiped her eyes and tried to pull herself together. She bent down, unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk and took out her purse. She handed Irene a bunch of keys.

  “We have keys to each other’s apartments so that we can water the plants and so on if one of us is away. Elisabeth is from Jönköping and I don’t have any living relatives left in Göteborg, so we’re . . . best friends.” Her voice broke again on the final words.

  “I realize this is very difficult for you, but perhaps we could ask you a couple of questions, just to save time?” Irene said.

  “That’s fine,” Ellen said, sitting up a little straighter. She pressed her lips together in an attempt to hide the fact that they were trembling.

  “Was Elisabeth seeing anyone—did she
have a boyfriend?”

  “No. She’d had enough of men. Her divorce was very messy. Her ex-husband was a director of some huge pharmaceutical company. He earned plenty of money, but he started drinking. He became an alcoholic and lost his job. He went to pieces, and Elisabeth just couldn’t cope. He never accepted the divorce; he persecuted her and Tobias for years. Every time he got drunk he called them up or arrived on the doorstep, either crying or threatening them.”

  Hannu quickly asked, “Did he ever carry out his threats?”

  “Not as far as I know—you’d have to ask Tobias.”

  “Where’s her ex now?”

  “In Högsbo Hospital. He’s in a coma; he got into a drunken brawl last year. He sustained serious trauma to his skull, and they didn’t think he would survive. But he did, and now he’s lying there like a cabbage,” Ellen replied with a grimace.

  It was obvious that she didn’t feel too sorry for Elisabeth’s ex.

  “So there’s no new man in her life?” Irene tried again.

  “Again, not as far as I know. I’m sure she would have told me. We’re such close friends . . .”

  The tears began to pour down Ellen’s cheeks. She wiped them away with her hands. Irene nodded sympathetically to show that she knew how difficult it was for her to talk about her murdered friend. And the dreadful ordeal of identifying the body lay before her.

  •••

  A voice came from behind one of the closed doors in the corridor of the forensic pathology department. A young man in a white coat slipped out of the room. Before the door closed he took a cell phone out of his breast pocket and pressed it to his ear. Irene heard him whisper: “I’m in a forensics class, I can’t come now.” She could also hear Professor Stridner’s dulcet tones: “. . . algor mortis . . . change in . . . a gradual decline until . . . the ambient temperature . . . several hours . . .” Irene had no idea what she was talking about; she was just relieved that Stridner was otherwise occupied. At the same time, she felt a wave of sympathy for the surgeons being educated in the finer points of forensic medicine; it was unlikely to be a restful experience, given what she knew of Professor Stridner.

  She found a technician she already knew and asked him to accompany them to the cold room. He pulled out one of the drawers and showed them the victim’s face. Ellen Ström identified the body as Elisabeth Lindberg.

  The apartment on Kobbegården was in a three-story block with a grey stone façade. The area had been developed in the 1970s, and the mature trees lent warmth and charm. The ground-floor apartments each had a small garden. Elisabeth Lindberg’s place had three rooms, with a large west-facing window and glass patio doors, through which Irene could see a glorious rose bed and blue-painted garden furniture on the terrace. There was a six-foot fence separating her garden from the neighbors’ plot, and a row of flourishing jasmine bushes gave her some privacy from the building opposite.

  The double closet in the hallway contained coats and jackets, some protected by plastic bags. At the bottom were stacks of shoe boxes, neatly marked with a description of the contents: “Black high-heeled pumps” and “White sandals,” Irene read. This is a very tidy woman, she thought as an image of the chaos in her own closet flashed through her mind. On the shelf she saw several purses. She went through them, but none contained a cell phone, wallet or keys. The purse Elisabeth had been using when she was killed obviously wasn’t here. Perhaps she had just slipped whatever she needed into the pockets of her coat; however, something about the orderliness of the apartment told Irene that Elisabeth Lindberg wasn’t the type to stuff things in her pockets.

  The living room was furnished with a modern leather suite grouped around a glass coffee table, a thick brightly colored rug and a large flat-screen TV. In front of the TV was an inviting armchair with a footstool. The bedroom was nothing out of the ordinary: a wide bed with a matching bedside table, a chest of drawers that looked like an antique to Irene’s untrained eye and two matching chairs with embroidered cushions. On top of the chest of drawers was a selection of framed photographs of the same boy at different ages. The latest showed a serious dark-haired young man wearing his student cap. No doubt this was Tobias; there was a certain resemblance to Elisabeth.

  One wall was entirely taken up by closets. Methodically Irene went through them, but she found nothing unusual. One closet contained running clothes and several pairs of running shoes, with a list of results taped to the inside of the door. Elisabeth had done well in the Göteborg half marathon and similar competitions on a number of occasions.

  The kitchen cupboards had shiny white doors; there was an oval table with thin stainless-steel legs, and four Myran chairs. In the pantry she saw an open bottle of red wine, and there were a couple of beers in the refrigerator, plus a plastic box containing what looked like the remains of a chicken casserole. It smelled quite fresh. Otherwise the refrigerator was virtually empty.

  The smaller room was Elisabeth’s study. The walls were covered with overstuffed bookshelves. In every room there were well-tended house plants, and the tiny garden was also pristine; there wasn’t a weed in sight in either of the flower beds, and the postage-stamp-sized lawn had been cut very recently. Large baskets overflowing with flowering plants hung from hooks attached to the underside of the balcony. They were still flourishing in spite of the increasing cold of the past few days. Elisabeth Lindberg had definitely had green fingers. Just like Ingela Svensson.

  “They both lived alone,” Irene mused.

  “Yes. And they both lived on the ground floor.” Hannu was on the same page right away. Presumably he had been thinking along the same lines.

  “Divorced, between forty and fifty years old. Both interested in plants and flowers—in fact, that was Ingela’s job,” Irene said.

  They both pondered in silence for a little while, then Irene said, “They’ve actually got quite a lot in common. My first instinct is to find out whether Elisabeth Lindberg knew Ingela’s new boyfriend in Borås.”

  “I’ll check it out,” Hannu said, nodding in the direction of the computer on the desk in Elisabeth’s study.

  “My second thought is to find out whether Ingela and Elisabeth knew each other. Elisabeth might have bought plants in the store where Ingela worked, for example.”

  Irene found Elisabeth’s address book in one of the desk drawers. Hannu went through her computer, and established that there were no links to any dating websites. The same had applied to Ingela Svensson, and neither of them were on Facebook or other social media platforms.

  There was no indication that Elisabeth had ever had contact with Leif Karlberg, or that the two homicide victims had known each other. Elisabeth’s meticulous accounts on the computer revealed that she had bought most of her plants at Högsbo garden center; she didn’t appear to have visited the florist’s store in the Frölunda torg shopping mall over the past three years, which was how far back her accounts went.

  Her address book contained very few names.

  “She seems to have lived a quiet life,” Hannu said.

  “With not a man in sight. Her only interests seem to have been running and plants. She didn’t have many friends either: Ellen Ström and a dozen or so others. That’s another similarity with Ingela Svensson: she didn’t have a wide circle of acquaintances either.”

  Irene’s gaze fell on a polished-glass letter rack on the desk; it held a number of letters, postcards and notes. She took out the entire bundle and started to go through it. A small envelope with something odd written on it caught her eyes. Someone had scrawled 2 Ey. 20.5 with a thick felt-tip pen.

  When she opened the envelope she saw that it contained a photograph. She shook it out onto the desk. It landed facedown, and she carefully flipped it over.

  Elisabeth was standing next to the leather sofa in the living room, with a coffeepot in her hand. She was smiling down at a visitor who was sitting on the sofa. He was
looking at her and holding up his coffee cup. He looked happy, too; it seemed as if mother and son got along well. It was a nice picture of an ordinary, everyday situation. There was nothing unusual or threatening about it. Except that the photographer had been standing in the little patch of garden outside the living-room window when he or she took the picture.

  They had found a similar photograph of Ingela Svensson, where someone had stood outside and taken the picture through the window. It could hardly be a coincidence.

  Irene studied the image for a little while before she spoke:

  “I think this is a lead. The killer took the picture and wrote something on the envelope—although I can’t really make out what it says. Can you?”

  Hannu shook his head.

  “We need to try to work out what he means . . . two Ey twenty point five . . . I haven’t got a clue what that is,” Irene said.

  Hannu frowned in concentration, then shrugged apologetically.

  “Me neither.”

  Irene suddenly had an idea. She went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink. The trash can was a neat version, hanging on the inside of the door.

  It was lying on top; she didn’t even need to root through the garbage. Elisabeth must have received it in the last couple of days, because the white chrysanthemum still looked pretty fresh.

  “It’s definitely him,” she said.

  Hannu had followed her into the kitchen. “Mmm. Tomorrow I’ll do a search on the computer at work. He might have attacked someone before. Without killing them,” he said.

  It’s a well-known fact as far as investigators are concerned that “he who steals an egg will steal an ox”; the proverb may refer to thieves, but it can apply to most types of criminals. The majority of those convicted of homicide with a sexual motive have had contact with the police in the past, usually for exposure, accessing child pornography or other sex-related online offenses, harassment, rape, attempted rape and so on. There was a good chance that the man they were looking for already had a record.