“Thank you very much. We may be in touch with you again,” Henrik said, standing up.
The meeting was just about to begin.
* * *
She listened to the chairs scraping against the floor. While Henrik, Mia, Ola and Anneli took their places around the table, Jana looked out the window toward the horizon at the blue sky.
“Everyone here?” Gunnar said, getting multiple nods in response. He closed the door and sat in his chair.
“Well, then,” he said. “Henrik, go ahead.”
“Recently,” Henrik said, “we’ve found out that Katarina Vinston and Philip Engström were in contact via cell phone before she was murdered. They were coworkers but, as it seems, also friends outside of work. We’ve been trying to contact Philip all day, but he’s missing. No one knows where he is, neither his wife nor his colleagues. We’ve contacted patrol, and they’re keeping their eye out for him right now.”
“But why would he be hiding?” Ola said. “Any theories?”
“It’s damn mystifying, I agree,” Mia said. “His boss seems overly pleased with him. She called him professional and engaged, but she also said that he used drugs...”
“He takes pills,” Henrik filled in.
“So he’s addicted to some sort of medication?” Gunnar said.
“It seems that way,” Mia said. “His boss happened upon him taking them a long time ago, anyway.”
“Yes,” Henrik said, “and Philip’s paramedic colleague Sandra Gustafsson says he’s still using some sort of drug.”
Mia gave him a wondering look. “When did you talk to her?”
“I’ll get back to that,” Henrik said.
“But why are we focusing on this particular paramedic?” Jana said.
“Mainly because he’s avoiding us,” Henrik said. “He’s also the last person who talked to Katarina, as far as we know. We found footprints outside Katarina’s house, prints from a pair of Nikes in size nine and a half. Then we found the same type of shoes at Philip’s house. We’re having them analyzed now and hope that can go quickly. Also Katarina’s neighbor saw an Audi A5, blue metallic paint, outside Katarina’s house the same day she was murdered. Philip owns that exact same make, model and color of car.”
Jana leaned back, thinking.
“But if Katarina and Philip had a romantic relationship, is it so strange that his footprints or his car would be seen at her house?” she said.
“That’s true,” Henrik said. “But then why would the footprint be in the flower bed right under a window? And what was he doing at her house the same day as she was murdered?”
“And what about the wedding ring?” Mia said. “Did he take it off when he was going to murder her or when they were going to roll around between the sheets?”
“If we believe their coworkers, they were nothing more than friends,” Henrik clarified.
“But friends can also fuck,” Mia said. “And friends can also fight. Maybe Katarina wanted him to get divorced, and so that Lina wouldn’t find out he’d been unfaithful, he murdered Katarina?”
“By cutting her tongue out?” Henrik said skeptically.
“I’m just trying to find a fucking motive,” Mia said.
“That’s right,” Gunnar said. “We’re asking questions in the wrong order. We’ve been talking about who and how, but not why.”
“Okay, okay,” Henrik said, “but just before this meeting, I talked with Sandra, and what really confirms my suspicions about Philip is that he actually knew all three victims, including Shirin and Johan Rehn.”
“I knew it!” Mia exclaimed.
“According to Sandra, all four of them worked together, but I’m still not sure where that was.”
Mia suddenly looked a little confused.
“But how does she know that? Isn’t it a little suspicious that he’d tell her he knew all three victims? If he’s guilty, wouldn’t it be smarter to stay quiet about something like that?”
“And to follow up on what Gunnar just said, what would his motive be?” Jana said.
“I’m wondering about that, too,” Henrik said. “And is it probable in general that Philip went to the victims’ homes, murdered them, and then arrived in an ambulance and tried to save their lives?”
“Maybe that’s a part of the plan,” Mia said.
“If we could just get a hold of him, so much would become clearer,” Henrik said. “But Sandra also said that Philip has been acting strange lately, that he’s been stressed out, angry, has had a hard time focusing. She said he even fell asleep during a call and possibly contributed to the death of a woman having a heart attack a little less than a week ago.”
“What?”
Jana looked up.
“Philip Engström fell asleep during a call to Lindö, which caused a delay in the ambulance getting to an older woman in time who apparently had had a heart attack death...”
“To Lindö?” Jana said. “When exactly did this happen? On Wednesday?”
Henrik looked down at his papers.
“Hmm,” he said. “Yes, it was Wednesday.”
Jana felt her body tremble.
“How do you know that he fell asleep?” she said.
“The colleague Sandra told me, as I said.”
“So it was just the two of them in the ambulance?”
“Yes.”
Jana looked out through the window again. The cloud had disappeared; only the blue sky remained.
“Do you have Sandra’s number?” she asked quietly. “I’d like to have a word with her.”
“I can call her again if there’s anything you have questions about.”
“I’d rather call myself.”
Henrik clicked through to the number on his cell phone and wrote it down on a piece of paper.
“Here,” he said.
“Thanks,” Jana said.
“Okay,” she heard Gunnar say, “so Philip Engström seems to be unstable. But it still doesn’t clarify why he would have murdered and mutilated three people.”
“And clearly caused a fourth person’s death,” Mia said. “I’ll be damned if this thing isn’t just exploding...”
“Undeniably,” Gunnar said. “I’m so eager to bring this guy in and hear what he has to say. Who is he, really? Do we have any info on him?”
Silence fell around the table.
“He works as a paramedic...” Mia began.
“I know that already,” Gunnar said. “But for how long? What did he do before that? What do we know about him besides where he works?”
“Let’s see here,” Henrik said, flipping through some papers. “He’s worked in ambulance services for five years.”
“And what did he do before that?”
Silence fell again. Jana let her gaze wander from the window to the people around the table.
“So we know nothing about him,” Gunnar said. “How can we then assume that he has anything to do with the murders?”
“Have you been sitting there asleep? How can we not suspect him?” Mia said.
“I’m not saying that you’re wrong,” Gunnar said, “but we can’t have such tunnel vision. Can you imagine that Philip might be innocent?”
“It is possible that he’s innocent,” Henrik said, nodding. “But if we think about the murder weapons that have been used—scalpel and Gigli saw—these are tools that appear in the health-care sector, tools that Philip would have access to, from what I understand.”
Ola held his finger in the air.
“And sorry to be saying this,” he interjected, “but tools like these can also be ordered online. One click and you’ve got a multipack of scalpels in your mailbox.”
“I just mean that for Philip, these aren’t unfamiliar tools,” Henrik said.
“But his motive, then?” Gunnar said.
Henrik shrugged his shoulders.
“We have to find him,” Gunnar said, standing up. “Then we’ll be able to stop all this damn speculation. I want to know who Philip is and what, if this is truly the case, could have made him murder three people. There must be an explanation. So it’s best that we get back to work.”
He turned toward the map.
“So how do we find him?”
“Maybe we could track his cell phone?” Henrik asked.
All eyes turned to Ola.
“That shouldn’t be much of a problem,” he said. “If he has a contract and not a prepaid phone, that is.”
“Good,” Gunnar said. “You have one hour.”
* * *
“Hi, my name is Jana Berzelius and I’m a prosecutor. I’d like to ask you some questions.”
Jana had left the police station, taking out her cell phone, and called Sandra Gustafsson. She looked around, making sure nobody listened to her talking.
“But I’ve already talked to the police,” Sandra said.
“That’s great,” Jana said. “Then I only have a few follow-up questions.”
“Okay, but it has to be quick because I’m at work.”
“On Wednesday of last week, you and your colleague Philip Engström traveled to a house in Lindö. You’d received a call that a woman was having a heart attack.”
“That might well be. I don’t remember all of our calls.”
“You don’t know?”
“Well, when I think about it, I think I know what you’re talking about.”
“Good. Then could you tell me what you usually do for a heart attack?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“What is the protocol for a heart attack? What are your instructions?”
Sandra cleared her throat.
“Well, after you’ve established that it’s a heart attack, it’s important to open the clogged artery to get the blood and oxygen supply going again. The part of the heart that doesn’t receive oxygen becomes more and more seriously impacted the longer it takes for the clot to dissolve. The faster we can restore blood flow to the troubled heart muscle, the less injury there will be from the heart attack.”
“So it’s very important to get to the hospital as quickly as possible?”
“Yes,” Sandra said. “It’s important. But it’s not only the time that’s crucial; there are also other factors that play a role...”
“Like what, the condition of the medical staff?”
Sandra was silent for a brief moment.
“Now I really don’t understand. We do everything we can to save lives.”
“But this woman died?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Every year, around thirty-one thousand people in Sweden have heart attacks, and nine thousand of them die.”
“Why was this woman one of the nine thousand?”
“I can’t answer that,” Sandra said.
“You were in the ambulance.”
“I was driving the ambulance. Philip Engström was the paramedic in charge of taking care of the patient.”
“But don’t both of you have responsibility?”
“Yes, and I assure you that we always, always put the patient’s needs first. I just don’t understand what this has to do with the murders. Is Philip suspected of something?”
“Should he be?”
“I’m asking you.”
Jana took a deep breath.
“At a meeting at the police station today, it was revealed that Philip Engström fell asleep during this call...”
“Yes, and I talked to Henrik Levin about that.”
“And you also said that it was because of him falling asleep that the woman died.”
Sandra cleared her throat again.
“It is true that there was an unfortunate delay on that call, and we were late getting back to the ER. But these things happen. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it affected the patient’s outcome.”
“These things happen? That you fall asleep on a call?”
“If you have any more questions, you’re welcome to call my boss, Eva Holmgren. She can surely help you find out if anything went wrong, and in that case, what.”
“Thank you,” Jana said, hanging up.
She needed time to think. Rethink. It felt like Sandra didn’t want to or couldn’t answer what actually happened in the ambulance. Did Engström have the answer Jana needed?
Jana put her phone in her pocket and began to walk. The afternoon sun was strong. But instead of turning her face toward its warmth, she turned her gaze away and wondered how she was going to get a hold of him.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS QUIET in the department. Henrik Levin sat on his chair and drummed his fingers against the keyboard while he waited for his computer to wake up.
In the light of the flickering screen, he tried to make sense of the facts and his conflicting thoughts about paramedic Philip Engström. It had been relatively easy to map his merits. There were hardly any of them.
Born on April 1, 1978, the only child of physician Charles Engström and teacher Rita Engström. Grew up in Vadstena and completed a three-year specialized high school program in biology. After graduating, he lived in Poland for a few years, but it wasn’t until a number of years later, in the city of Uppsala, that he passed his exams in the specialist nursing program with a focus on ambulance services. He then moved to Norrköping and began working as a paramedic. Married Lina Engström three years ago. Both registered as owning the single-story home in Skarphagen.
Two telephone numbers were listed for Philip’s parents. Henrik chose the first, but when he got voice mail, he immediately dialed the second. He heard a man’s voice after the second ring.
“Engström.”
“My name is Henrik Levin, and I’m an inspector with the police.”
Silence.
“I’d like to talk to you about your son, Philip.”
It was still silent on the other end. It sounded like a gasp for breath and a phlegmatic cough resulting from innumerable cigarettes.
“Who did you say you were?”
“Henrik Levin. I’m an inspector with the police...”
He paused, waiting through another coughing fit.
“...and I need to ask a few questions about Philip.”
“Over the phone?”
“I can come to you if you’d like.”
“Here? No, there’ve already been so many police officers around here looking for him. If we’re going to meet in person it had damn well better be worth the trouble. What do you want?”
“Talking about your son isn’t worth the trouble, if I understand you correctly?”
“I’ve already talked about my son to these officers, and I think you should tell me what this conversation is really about before I lose my voice completely.”
“Have you seen Philip lately?”
“No, we don’t see him these days.”
He heard the man clearing his throat.
“Is there a reason for that?”
“Of course there is,” said the man on the other end.
“And that reason is?” Henrik asked.
“That reason is...that Philip made a choice some years ago.”
“Okay.”
“Yes, he changed then.”
Henrik looked down at his lap, scratching his chin.
“Did something in particular happen?” he asked.
“He just changed, simply speaking.”
“In what way?”
“In every way. He developed mental problems, went through a change in personality. And we lost him; we lost our son.”
“Has he been treated for it?”
“Helped for what? Do you mean he is sick?”
Henrik switched his cell phone to his other hand.
“Sick?” the man said and coughed again. His voice was hardly audible now. “A person must be sick to abandon a promising career.”
“Did he abandon a promising career? In what way?”
“A career as a surgeon. Only an idiot throws away that sort of education, that’s what I think. But I shouldn’t have told him that. I have regretted it so many times. I even asked him to forgive me, but he hasn’t said a word to me since then.”
“So Philip was a doctor?”
“Yes, he was a doctor. Educated in Poland. He didn’t have the grades that were required to study in Sweden.”
“But why didn’t he continue as a doctor?”
“That, my dear friend, is a question that I’ve asked myself many times. And I think I will never get the answer to it. At least not from Philip. Now I have to end this long-winded drivel. My voice is going.”
Henrik thanked him for the help, laid his cell phone on the desk and looked at the computer screen, which had gone to sleep.
This new information just seemed to complicate everything. What had made Philip Engström quit being a doctor? Something important, something decisive must have happened that made him change his direction in life.
But what?
* * *
“Are you still there?” he said, pressing the phone harder to his ear. He changed position, sitting with his back up against the birch. Philip Engström’s legs were freezing so badly that they were almost numb. How could that be? It wasn’t particularly cold out.
He wanted to run farther and find a new hiding place—he could now see the flashing blue lights between the trees.
“Yes,” he heard Lina say. “I’m here.”
He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. A part of his brain said that he should stay, sit there and continue talking, but another part of him told him to escape. But it was a hopeless struggle against time, because every breath he took brought him relentlessly closer to the end. By continuing to flee he only delayed the inevitable; in the end, he would still be forced to turn himself in.
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