Who Watcheth

by Helene Tursten

  “We have to talk about this. And a number of other things. We haven’t even touched on my reason for coming over here . . .”

  Marie spun around and hissed, “You . . . bastard cop!”

  Tears were pouring down her cheeks, and her face was contorted in anger. Irene was surprised Marie’s aggression was directed at her. Then she understood: she had unmasked the secret girlfriend, and Marie was worried that the police would contact Katrin.

  Irene sighed. “Calm down. I’ve been an investigator for many years, and I know how to put two and two together. But I’m not the only one. I’m guessing young Jonathan has done the same thing. Even if he doesn’t understand the implications of whatever he saw yesterday, he knows it’s something that gives him power. Power over Katrin, and you. Sooner or later he’s going to tell his dad what he saw. Things have moved into a new phase for all of you. But that’s got nothing to do with me. I just need to speak to Katrin about what she saw through the window that evening in February.”

  Marie was sobbing, trying to wipe away her tears, and fumbling with a plastic bag at the same time. Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t get it open.

  “Give it to me. I spent almost fifteen years picking up after my dog,” Irene said.

  She took the bag and slipped it over her hand. With a practiced gesture she scooped up what Hanko had produced. There was quite a lot of it—considerably more than Sammie had ever managed back in the day.

  There was a black metal trash can with a lid not far away. Irene went over and dropped the bag inside. When she turned around, Marie hadn’t moved.

  “Come on, let’s go home. Hanko has done what he came out to do,” Irene said.

  Without looking at Irene, Marie started walking. She turned off onto an even narrower path, and after a few yards they were back where they started, not far from Marie’s house. She didn’t say a word.

  As soon as she had opened the door and let Hanko off the leash, she went into the kitchen. Irene closed the front door and followed her. Marie was standing by the sink pouring a tumbler of red wine from a bottle that was already open.

  “I’m not offering you a drink. This is all I’ve got in the house and I need every last drop,” she said grimly.

  “No problem. I’m driving. And I’m working.”

  Irene watched with surprise as Marie took two huge gulps, her face expressionless as if it were water.

  “I don’t often drink, but sometimes . . .” Another gulp. Marie had stopped crying, and some of the tension in her shoulders had begun to ease.

  “Maybe we should go and sit in the living room?” she said. Without waiting for a response she marched out of the kitchen and sank down in an armchair. It almost looked as if her legs had given way, as if they could no longer carry her.

  “You’re right. Jonathan isn’t going to keep his mouth shut. Sooner or later . . .” She fell silent, her hand tightening around the glass of wine, but she didn’t raise it to her lips. Slowly she looked up at Irene, who was still standing.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to cope,” she said quietly.

  She started gulping the wine as if her future well-being depended on how quickly she could knock it back. She’s going to throw up if she carries on like this, Irene thought. I hope I’m gone by then.

  “Only you and Katrin can sort that out,” she said. “I just need to speak to her about her observations that evening. Ask her to contact me as soon as possible, please. You already have my card; here’s another one to give to her.”

  Marie glanced at the card Irene placed on the table but didn’t pick it up.

  “I actually came to talk to you about where we are with regard to the Package Killer,” Irene went on. There was a glimmer of interest in Marie’s eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

  “We’ve made a number of discoveries in Ingela Svensson’s and Elisabeth Lindberg’s apartments that suggest they might have been the victims of a stalker in the period before their deaths.”

  Marie gave a start. “A stalker? But nobody was stalking me before . . . before the attack,” she said, unconsciously touching the scarf around her neck.

  “Are you sure? The guy who was watching through the window? He could have been following you for a while without your knowing. We think this is a guy you wouldn’t necessarily notice, but his behavior might have been a little odd. He might have turned up in different places. Said strange things. Or nothing at all.”

  “I meet thousands of people through my job, each one crazier than the last. No, that’s not true—most of them are okay. But there are plenty of nut jobs out there,” Marie said, making a face. She threw back her head and finished off the wine. She looked in surprise at the empty glass, and started to get to her feet.

  “Sit down!” Irene said sharply.

  Hanko immediately pricked up his ears. He got up and positioned himself between his mistress and the visitor. Did he need to intervene? Apparently not. With a final suspicious look at Irene, he sank back down.

  “You can carry on drinking when I’ve gone, I don’t care. But I need you to keep a reasonably clear head. This could be a matter of life and death.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marie said, her voice less than steady. She couldn’t look Irene in the eye. It was obvious the same thought had haunted her ever since the attack.

  “You survived. The Package Killer may think you saw more than you did. I presume he’s realized we may have made the connection between you and the two homicides. You have to help us catch him before he kills again,” Irene said in a calmer tone of voice.

  “I will. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.” Marie was slurring her words slightly. She must have drunk the tumbler full of wine in less than five minutes, Irene thought.

  “We believe the killer is a strong man aged between twenty and forty. Average height, powerfully built.”

  Marie nodded. “That’s exactly what I told the police in the first place.” Suddenly she gave a start and looked Irene straight in the eye. “He stank!” she said.

  Irene couldn’t remember seeing anything about the perpetrator being smelly in the transcript of Marie’s interview. Was it the wine that had made her remember this detail? It could be important.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was disgusting—an acrid smell. Sweat and . . . kind of unwashed. Urine.”

  As she spoke her face took on a greenish tone. She leapt to her feet and rushed out of the room. She left the door open, and Irene could hear the vomit splashing into the toilet bowl. I guess I didn’t get away in time, Irene thought resignedly. As a hardened homicide investigator she could cope with most unpleasant things, but she had a problem with vomit. Presumably because of the smell.

  She heard Marie rinsing her mouth and spitting several times. When she came back, she was pale but composed.

  “Sorry. I only have myself to blame,” she murmured.

  “Alcohol is never the best way of dealing with a crisis,” Irene said. God, I sound holier-than-thou! she thought to herself.

  “No, but today has been a bit much.” Marie gave a wan smile as she delivered the understatement of the week.

  “Was it so bad, whatever Jonathan saw?”

  “Probably. Yes. It wasn’t full sex, but it was a long, deep kiss . . . you know.”

  “It can’t be explained away?”

  “Not really,” Marie said with a sigh.

  Irene decided to leave it there and go back to the real reason for her visit. She was about to ask her next question when Marie said:

  “I reacted so strongly because . . . because I think I might know who he was. Maybe.”

  “The Package Killer?”

  “The man who attacked me. When you reminded me of the description I gave back in February . . . I suddenly remembered his smell. I’d forgotten about that. Or suppressed
it.”

  She paused and slowly stood up. “I’m just going to fetch a glass of water.”

  She came back and took a few sips. “The smell . . . it made me remember him. I’m responsible for fruit and vegetables at the ICA Maxi store, and I coordinate staff resources. I sort out the shifts, bring in part-time staff when necessary, that kind of thing. So even though I do a lot of admin, I’m often out on the shop floor. There’s a guy who kept coming in toward closing time. Occasionally he would pick up a basket and do a little shopping. I first noticed him when one of the assistants whispered to me that he really stank. She pointed to a well-built guy who was walking up and down the aisles. While we were looking at him he turned his head and stared back at us. We glanced away and kept chatting. I don’t think he realized we were talking about him.”

  Hanko started snoring. Order had been restored, and he could relax.

  “When was this?” Irene asked.

  “In the middle of January. We were taking down the Christmas decorations, so it would have been after the thirteenth.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “Yes. It was the smell that got my attention . . . I was filling up the tomato display when I suddenly became aware of a stench. Like someone who had been living rough for months. When I turned around, the guy Sonja had pointed out was standing right behind me.”

  Irene felt her heart leap with excitement. Marie had been face-to-face with a man who fitted her own description of the perp!

  “He asked me something about rolls . . . That’s it! He asked me if it was possible to freeze sweet bread. Which was a weird question, because we have rolls in the freezer. But I’m used to odd questions from customers, so I said it was fine. He turned on his heel and left. Didn’t say a word. Just walked out.”

  “When was this?” Irene asked again.

  “About a week after I first saw him. And there was another time when he asked me a strange question.”

  Her voice gave way and her hands started shaking. She had to hold the glass with both hands to stop the water spilling over. Irene waited for her to calm down.

  “It was at the beginning of February. I came out of the office to do something—I don’t remember what it was. He suddenly popped up in front of me. Jumped out from behind a shelf. He must have been hiding . . . and there was that stench again . . . He asked me which dish soap I would recommend.”

  “Which dish soap would you recommend? Is that what he said?”

  “That’s exactly what he said. I was taken aback—maybe a little scared, too. He gave me a bad feeling. Negative vibes, you know? This isn’t something I’ve made up in retrospect—I definitely recall the way I felt.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since that occasion at the beginning of February?” Irene asked, just to clarify things.

  “No. I’m pretty sure about that.”

  Irene tried to sound calmer than she felt as she asked the critical question:

  “What did he look like?”

  Once again Marie’s hand fluttered involuntarily up to her scarf before she replied:

  “Just as you described him. Average height, powerfully built . . . or rather kind of stocky. Dark clothes, like work clothes. A baseball cap pulled well down over his forehead. Heavy nylon jacket. His clothes were very dirty.”

  “Any writing on the cap or the jacket?”

  “Not that I remember . . . No, I don’t think so.”

  “Age?”

  “Between thirty and forty.”

  “What did his face look like?”

  Marie closed her eyes and remained silent for a little while. When she opened them, Irene caught a glimpse of something that could be fear.

  “I’m not sure . . . and we were only a couple of feet apart! But it was the cap . . . He had a round face. Rounded cheeks. Stubble. Discolored teeth. His eyes . . . were staring! He didn’t blink. Unusually pale eyes. Grey or blue-grey. It was hard to see, because the cap was pulled down so far.”

  Irene nodded. “I need you to come down to the station with me right away. We’ll go through some photographs, and I’ll introduce you to a guy who produces facial composites using a special software package.”

  “Can I bring Hanko?” Marie asked, her voice trembling.

  “I’ll ask if it’s okay,” Irene promised.

  She called the Unit and explained that she would be coming in with Marie Carlsson and her German shepherd to put together a facial composite of a man who could well be the Package Killer. Then she turned to Marie and said:

  “We don’t need to speak to Katrin just yet. And we can take Hanko with us.”

  A smile of relief flitted across Marie’s face.

  A round, cherubic face below a pulled-down cap, plump lips, blond eyebrows and something of a potato nose. It would have been a jolly face except for the eyes, which were unusually pale and expressionless. The thick neck and the cold eyes removed any hint of childishness from the features that possibly belonged to the Package Killer.

  “He looks like a young Al Capone, but with fair hair,” Irene said.

  “He’s not in our database,” Hannu stated.

  There was no reason to doubt him. If a picture of the blond version of a young Al Capone had been in the police records database, Hannu would have found it. This was a face you wouldn’t forget.

  “Where does he live?” Irene wondered aloud.

  “Set the parameters between the victims’ homes and the Frölunda torg shopping mall. It’s likely he lives somewhere in that area, in the west part of the city,” Hannu said.

  Irene walked over to the map on the wall and did as he said, then she took a step back.

  “All three victims live between three and four kilometers from the mall. Both Marie Carlsson and Ingela Svensson worked there. But Elisabeth Lindberg worked at Sahlgrenska Hospital,” she said.

  “But she did her shopping at the ICA store in the mall,” Hannu pointed out.

  Irene thought for a moment, then turned to Hannu. “Ingela Svensson worked at the florist’s in the mall. It’s very likely that she often did her shopping in the ICA store before she went home to Såggatan. Marie Carlsson works in the ICA store and spoke to this guy on at least two occasions at the beginning of this year. We know that Elisabeth Lindberg shopped there in the hour before she was murdered. The killer could have been inside the store, or he could have been standing outside, checking out the women going in and out.”

  “Mmm. But then you’d think someone would have noticed him,” Hannu said thoughtfully.

  Irene and Hannu were alone in the room. Pictures of Ingela Svensson and Elisabeth Lindberg were up on the wall, next to close-ups of the strangulation marks on Marie Carlsson’s throat and neck. She might have survived, but she would be physically and mentally scarred for life by her encounter with the killer.

  15.

  The facial composite was published in the media, with the caption: a witness saw this man in the vicinity of the place where one of the package killer’s victims was found. It also said that the man was not suspected of homicide, but that he might have seen something important, and that the police would like to speak to him. The usual crowd of nut jobs and confused individuals got in touch. “He’s my brother-in-law. He’s bat-shit crazy! Sixty-two years old and fights like a madman whenever he gets drunk!” “The guy is my next-door neighbor. Those eyes . . . he’s a killer! I’ve put two extra locks on the door!” And so on. The team spent the next few days following up every call, but most of them could be dismissed fairly quickly.

  Eventually they were left with nine individuals who seemed interesting, all living in the western part of the city. The youngest was twenty-one, the oldest forty-two. Irene and Jonny took five of them, Sara and Hannu the other four.

  The first one on Irene and Jonny’s list was the forty-two-year-old, but on closer inspection they were
able to rule him out straightaway. He was a carpenter, and had been working in Norway for the past year and had been there at the time of the attack on Marie Carlsson. He also had a wife and three kids who wanted to spend time with him when he came home at the weekends. The guy didn’t have time to stalk anyone.

  They were able to rule out the second man just as quickly: a twenty-six-year-old who was on an orthopedic ward encased in plaster following a car accident five weeks earlier. He could move his head and his left arm, but not much else.

  The third person on the list was called Ants Hüppe. He was thirty-seven, and taught German and Swedish at a high school in Västra Frölunda. A female colleague had called in. According to her Hüppe was a weird loner who never hung out with the other members of the staff. “And he looks exactly like the picture in the papers!” she had said, delivering the knockout blow.

  Irene managed to get ahold of Ants Hüppe on the phone during recess. He was utterly bewildered when he realized the police wanted to interview him.

  “You can’t come here—everyone will get the wrong idea! I’ll come to you. I finish at twenty to four today—I’ll be straight over,” he said.

  “That’s fine,” Irene said, and ended the call.

  Hüppe didn’t have an accent, but his dialect revealed that he came from Småland or Blekinge, and Irene assumed that at least one of his parents must have foreign antecedents, given his name.

  As soon as she met Ants Hüppe in the waiting room on the ground floor, she had her doubts about his potential as the Package Killer. Admittedly he had round cherubic cheeks, pale eyes and full lips. What he lacked was the strength. Marie Carlsson had mentioned it specifically, and the injuries to the two homicide victims also bore witness to his physical power. This guy’s handshake was as limp and damp as a Wet Wipe. There was something shapeless about him, and there was not a hint of muscle in his doughy body. He was sweating profusely, even though it was quite a cool day. As they traveled up to the fourth floor in the elevator, Irene was aware of a distinct smell of sweat, mixed with deodorant and some male fragrance. Marie had talked about the disgusting stench of her attacker; that didn’t fit with Ants Hüppe. He was casually dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt and a black corduroy jacket. She could see in the mirror that he was somewhat shorter than her. His hands were surprisingly small and feminine. A wide gold ring glinted on the third finger of his left hand, deeply embedded in the flesh.