Meet me in Malmö: The first Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries)

by MacLeod, Torquil

  Anita picked up another piece of paper, which contained long lists of numbers. ‘We’ve got a record of all the calls that came in and out of Malin Lovgren’s apartment, including on the night she was murdered.’ She pointed to the last figure on the page. ‘The last call she had came in at 10.49. It lasted nearly four minutes. The strange thing is that it was from your mobile.’

  She could see Ewan was stunned by this snippet of information. She had known the number was his because she had been able to double-check it on her own mobile. She hadn’t mentioned that to Moberg either.

  The man who had been so relaxed last night was obviously fighting to regain his composure. ‘Ok, I did.’

  ‘And why didn’t you mention this when you were asked originally?’

  ‘I don’t know. Didn’t seem that important.’

  Westermark let out a snort of derision.

  ‘I would have thought it was very important.’ He squirmed under her gaze. It was not a gratifying sight. ‘Why did you call her?’

  ‘I …erm…I wanted to make sure everything was still on for the next day. I’ve interviewed a lot of luvvies and they’re not the most reliable species.’ His flip remark didn’t elicit a response. Neither knew what “luvvies” were.

  ‘And you spoke to Malin?’ He nodded. ‘What did you discuss?’

  ‘Arrangements. She said that everything was fine. And that Mick—’

  ‘That Mick was still in Stockholm.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you knew she was alone,’ Westermark butted in.

  ‘Big deal,’ Ewan countered off-handedly.

  ‘And you didn’t arrange to go round and see her for a nightcap?’ said Anita, taking the interrogation back into her hands.

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  Anita put the telephone list back in the file. ‘When I saw you at your hotel you said that you only drank tea at night.’ Westermark turned quizzically to Anita. ‘Malin was about to make two cups of tea moments before she was killed.’ Anita didn’t ask for an answer and let the implied suggestion hang in the air. ‘You say that at the time of the murder you were asleep?’

  Ewan shifted in his seat. ‘Trying to, anyway.’

  ‘So you have no alibi.’ This was Westermark.

  ‘I assume I’d have been seen by the receptionist if I had tried to sneak out.’ The hostility between Ewan and Westermark crackled.

  ‘You can get out at the side and the back of this hotel. I have checked,’ Westermark added with a smug grin.

  ‘This is all so fantastic, it’s…it’s unbelievable.’ Ewan was now appealing to Anita. ‘A phone call. A cup of tea. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘The next day,’ Anita continued. ‘Can you go through what you did on the Tuesday morning?’

  Ewan sighed theatrically and moved his backside’s position again. ‘I didn’t fancy breakfast at the hotel, so I went out to that modern shopping centre. Triangle or whatever. I had a coffee,’ he said with exaggerated emphasis. ‘Spent a bit of time there and then went back to the hotel to get ready. Have a piss and brush up. I headed off to Mick’s apartment.’

  ‘You were knowing the way?’ asked Westermark.

  ‘I can read a map,’ came Ewan’s sarcastic reply. ‘Shall I go on?’ Anita nodded. ‘I was there in time. I pressed the buzzer a few times, but there was no reply. I was getting annoyed because it occurred to me that Mick might have forgotten I was coming.’

  ‘You knew that Malin would be there. You had already talked to her.’

  ‘That’s right. It was all a bit weird. When a young woman came out I managed to get in. By the time I’d staggered up four flights of stairs it was eight minutes past eleven.’ Staring at Westermark. ‘I checked my watch.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go up in the lift?’ asked Anita.

  ‘I get claustrophobia.’

  ‘Or was it to be seen?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Carry on, please.’

  Ewan’s puzzled expression changed as he thought carefully before filling in the details up to the point where he was holding the body and Mick and the photographer came in.

  ‘Why did you touch the body?’ asked Westermark. ‘Strange, no?’

  ‘I don’t know why. I think at first it was to see if she was ok. And when she obviously wasn’t, it was as though she needed comforting. People don’t always do rational things when faced with totally unexpected situations.’

  ‘Inspector Westermark has a suspicious mind. He thinks you were being very clever.’ They had talked through all the possibilities and scenarios – Moberg, Westermark and herself – when she had come in at half-past five that morning. ‘He thinks that you killed Malin the night before and used the opportunity the next morning to cover her body with your prints and fibres, so there would be a natural explanation for them being there.’

  Ewan had regained his compsure. ‘Well, you can tell Inspector Westermark that he’s an even bigger fucking idiot than he looks.’

  Westermark was out of his seat in a flash and made a grab across the table at Ewan. Ewan had anticipated such a move and lurched back in his chair, evading the policeman’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Karl!’ Anita shouted.

  Westermark checked himself and angily sat down. Ewan lips creased into a hint of a smile. A victory of sorts.

  Anita waited for a simmering calm to descend. ‘The kitchen?’

  ‘What about the kitchen?’

  ‘Did you go into it?’

  ‘Erm…yes, I did. After Mick hit me. I needed to spray water on my face. I didn’t know where the bathroom was.’

  ‘That puzzles me.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Roslyn attacking you. He saw you bending over his wife. He couldn’t have known she was dead in that first moment. Did he think you were molesting her? But he must have known it was you because he had invited you there in the first place. Did he assume you were…?’

  ‘I have no idea. He just lost it for second.’

  Anita said ruminatively, ‘I wonder whether he attacked you, not because of Malin, but because it was you.’

  ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me, Inpsector Sundström.’ She had no idea what Ewan was making of this turn of events, but he was playing the game and not giving away the fact that they had been in danger of becoming friends, or even something more, only yesterday. Westermark fidgeted and she was aware that he was growing impatient. She knew where he wanted her to go next.

  ‘You know how Malin Lovgren was killed?’

  Ewan nodded his head up and down slowly. ‘I know she was strangled. That’s what the papers say and, remember, I did see the body at very close hand. Unless she had died of a heart attack, there couldn’t have been any other way.’

  ‘Malin was grabbed from behind. She was caught in what is called a chokehold. The airway was blocked at the front of the neck. She was throttled.’ Anita paused. ‘But you know all about that. Inspector Westermark has been investigating your police record.’

  ‘Northumbria Police were helping me very much.’ Westermark smiled, his lips curling maliciously. ‘They say you tried to kill a man.’

  ‘But I didn’t kill him.’

  Anita opened up the file again. ‘December 20th, 2004.’

  ‘I was drunk. It was another journalist.’

  ‘And the circumstances?’

  ‘It was a Christmas get-together. He was winding me up.’

  ‘What is “winding up”?’ Westermark queried.

  ‘Taking the piss. Ollie was making fun of me. We had worked together on the sports desk and, when I moved over to Novo News, he thought it was a pathetic come-down. Sports reporters like to think they’re a bit harder than the rest of the hacks. He was mocking me for covering crappy craft fairs and vacuous social events. He was right, actually, but I didn’t want to hear that at the time. Not after a lot of drink.’

  ‘So you lost your temper,’ Anita suggested.

  ‘He just pushed me too far and I s
napped.’

  Anita made a play of studying the file again. ‘According to the report, you grabbed an Oliver Turner round the neck. A chokehold, in fact.’ Ewan contemplated the table. He said nothing. ‘The same as Malin Lovgren.’

  Ewan raised his eyes. ‘I didn’t kill her. And I didn’t kill Ollie either. He dropped the charges. I got a bollocking from the management, but wasn’t given the bullet.’

  Anita closed the file again. ‘Why round the neck? Why did you grab Oliver Turner round the neck?’

  ‘I don’t know. Heat of the moment. Just instinctive. It’s better than punching someone. You might get punched back. Ollie’s quite a big bugger.’

  ‘When I asked you before, you said you hadn’t done any military service. But have you done any sort of combat training? Or martial arts?’

  Ewan licked his dry lips. ‘Is this going to incriminate me?’

  ‘You need to tell the truth.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes. At university. In my first year I did judo.’ Anita and Westermark swapped glances. ‘I joined up with Mick. We thought it would be a laugh. It wasn’t actually, because he was far better than I was. He kept throwing me all over the place.’ Anita stared at Ewan. He couldn’t read her thoughts. Westermark was smiling smugly to himself. ‘These things don’t prove I killed the woman. Why should I? I haven’t got a motive? More to the point, you can’t find one.’

  ‘That’s all for the moment,’ said Anita leaning over to turn off the tape.

  ‘I can go?’

  ‘No,’ smirked Westermark, as he eased himself off his chair. ‘You will be our guest,’ he mocked. ‘Now I’m going to be examining your computer. What secrets are you are keeping there?’ He left the room. Anita hung back.

  ‘Anita. Honest to God, I didn’t kill her. You’ve got to believe me.’

  Anita was having difficulty keeping it official. ‘We can keep you here for the moment, while we carry out further investigations.’

  ‘This can’t be happening to me.’

  ‘You can have a lawyer present. Shall I arrange one for you?

  His laughter was hoarse. ‘I don’t trust them. My brother’s one!’‘Ewan, I advise you to get one.’

  ‘No. I’m not guilty. Getting a lawyer smacks of desperation. I’ll get out of this because I’m innocent.’

  ‘It is your decision. But I will inform the British consul in Malmö.’

  A young policeman came into the room to escort Ewan to the cells.

  ‘Can I make a phone call? I had better ring my editor. Now he really has a story.’

  Anita nodded to the policeman. ‘Telefon.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Ewan sounded grateful. ‘Anita. Do you think I’m guilty?

  She didn’t give an answer. She hadn’t got one.

  Anita took off her glasses and squinted at the mirror. The ladies’ washroom was empty. She was thankful that she didn’t have to pretend to pass the time of day with one of her colleagues. Was it because she had begun to warm to Ewan Strachan that she was finding it difficult to believe that he could have cold-bloodedly murdered Malin Lovgren? He had a temper, which she had witnessed flashes of at their first meeting in the apartment and now in the interrogation room. But the slaying hadn’t been carried out by someone who had lost control. The opposite, in fact. There had been nothing frenzied about it. Ewan’s attack on his fellow journalist had been caused by a combustible combination of drink and derision. A moment of macho madness. Malin’s death appeared more calculated, which brought her back to Nordlund’s investigations in Stockholm. Ewan had the means – his judo experience would have equipped him for such a murderous manoeuvre. Yet the clinical nature of the act, and the lack of forensic evidence, apart from the obvious, suggested a professional hand at work. Only Mednick’s intervention had muddied the waters and distracted them from finding the real killer.

  Anita doused her face in cold water. It was bracing, without banishing the tiredness she felt. She had hardly slept before dragging herself out in the pitch dark to get to the polishus for half five. She slowly dabbed her face with a paper towel before slipping her glasses back on. She wondered how Ewan would be feeling. Shocked? Bitter? Bewildered? If he was innocent, then he would hardly forgive her for arresting him. Strangely, that made her feel sad. But she must remain professional. She fished a brush out of her black hole of a bag and ran it through her hair. All they had was circumstantial evidence against Ewan. He was right, they had no motive. And he certainly couldn’t have planned it. It was only at Roslyn’s suggestion that he was in Malmö in the first place. So why had he he lied about the call to Malin? There was no obvious reason to keep it quiet.

  Was Ewan their man? Their fledgling personal relationship complicated matters and only succeeded in kick-starting her natural instinct to worry. It was inextricably linked to the self-doubt which had haunted her throughout life. She could only grudgingly admire the total self-belief of colleagues like Moberg and Westermark, who took it for granted that they were right, even when they were proved wrong. Anita’s self-doubt both helped and hindered her in the job. It acted as an internal check on her assumptions on the one hand, while becoming a corrosive force that undermined her thoughts and actions on the other. Whether that helped to make her a decent cop, she wasn’t sure. She certainly didn’t fall into the maverick, Miss Marple or menopausal boozer categories that most female detectives found themselves pigeon-holed in in popular crime fiction and on TV shows.

  She put the brush away and stared at the mirror. The person looking back wore a confused expression. She frowned, but it didn’t make her appear any more decisive. She wondered whether Westermark’s trawl through Ewan’s computer would throw up any new clues. Though she felt the urge to flop into bed and try and catch up on some sleep, she knew she had to do something positive. She would go back and see Mick Roslyn. Now the woman in the mirror looked like someone who had made up her mind. She was going to find out once and for all what it was that Ewan and Roslyn had been unwilling to tell her. What had gone wrong in Durham?

  CHAPTER 28

  Distraction. That’s what he had read. Deep breathing was also meant to help. It didn’t. His mouth was dry, his palms sticky. He felt nauseous and his heart was thumping and the panic attack was almost upon him. The moment the cell door had slammed shut, all his claustrophobic fears began to run amok. This small room with its barred window, wooden bed, table clinging to the blank walls - and smell of oppression - was the nearest he had come to hell on earth. He wanted to scream for someone to let him out. He would go mad if he had to remain in here for more than a few minutes.

  Distraction techniques. Think of something positive the article had advised. Something that had brought you pleasure or happiness. A birthday celebration, a moment of personal triumph or picturing a loved one. He had given up on the first, there had been precious few of the second, and the third only kept producing Anita. Her laughing face from last night. The image grew stronger. The shimmer of light on her glasses giving way to the delight in her eyes. His breathing became more controlled. Why was he thinking of her when she was the one who had put him in this hellhole? Had she been suspicious of him all along? Was she so calculating that she could impassively spend an evening drinking with him when she thought him capable of murder?

  Or was it that shit Westermark who was behind all this? There weren’t many people he loathed at first sight, but the weaselly Westermark hit his hatred spot instantly. Ewan cursed himself. His instinct had been to get out of Sweden as soon as he knew the police had finished their initial inquiries and he was no longer needed. He had ignored it and had let himself be seduced into staying so he could be near Anita.

  How could all of this have happened? It was the classic nightmare of the little man caught up in the big situation. Whom could he turn to? Brian had been no bloody use. After congratulating him on the two murder pieces, Brian’s excitement hadn’t allowed Ewan to get a word in edgeways until he bellowed down the phone,’ ‘They’ve fucking arrested me!�
�

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Murder.’

  A stunned silence followed. Ewan waited for the recriminations, the vilifications and the inevitable sacking.

  ‘That could make an interesting angle.’

  ‘What?’ Ewan choked incredulously.

  ‘Reports right from the epicentre of the case. What it feels like fighting to clear your name, battling for justice.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘You didn’t kill her, did you?’

  ‘Of course I bloody didn’t!’

  ‘There you are. I’ll get things moving this end. I’ll get onto upstairs. They love what we’ve done so far. Put the weight of the group behind it. Massive exposure. Will you be able to send reports out?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know. As soon as they realize they are barking up the wrong tree I’m out of here for ever.’ Ewan had slammed down the phone. Now he was in the cells. Maybe he should let Anita bring in a lawyer. Then again, if he didn’t they might conclude that he really was innocent. Showed he wasn’t hiding behind the law. Or was he just being damned stupid and naïve? At least he still had one card left to play. It was just a matter of picking the right moment to use it.

  ‘Ewan? For real?’ Mick was staring out towards the field at the back. He had been outside the farmhouse when Anita arrived. Wrapped in a thick coat, he was smoking a cigarette. He hadn’t accepted Anita’s invitation to talk inside as he was sick of seeing the walls of what he now regarded as his own prison. ‘He’s in custody?’

  ‘Yes. This morning.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. Are you sure?’

  ‘No.’ Anita could see her breath. Her eyes were watering from the raw chill. It made her realize that she wanted to go home, put a duvet on the sofa and snuggle up under it with her book. ‘We know he called Malin on the night of the murder. He lied about that. He has no alibi for the time of the killing. He could have carried it out because he told us that he did judo at university.’