by Viveca Sten
Margit sighed and put the car in first gear.
“Another Christmas holiday messed up,” she muttered, pulling in by the fence to key in the security code for the gate, which slowly swung open to let them through.
There was a thick layer of slush on the road; a narrow strip of the highway had been plowed, but there wasn’t enough room for two cars to pass.
“How did it go over on Sandhamn?” Margit asked. “Did you find out anything interesting?”
“I spoke to Elza Santos, the cleaner who found her; she’s from Brazil, and she’s worked at the Sailors Hotel for three years. She was on her way to the apartments by the pool to clean them. She’d stopped to rest for a moment when she noticed something in the snow. At first she didn’t realize it was a person; she thought it might be a duffel bag, something like that. Fortunately she brushed away some of the snow to reveal the upper body, then she went back to reception, and they called the police.”
Thomas reached into his pocket for his notebook and flipped it open.
“Santos says she’d never seen the victim before. I’ve got her address and phone number, so we can speak to her later if need be.”
They were driving across the high arch of the Djurö bridge; beneath them, water and ice had merged into a gray, indistinguishable mass. Snowflakes were falling steadily, but at least it wasn’t windy. According to the information on the dashboard, the temperature was minus thirteen.
“Forensics have gone through the apartment,” Thomas continued. “We’ll see if we get anything from the fingerprints, but you know what it’s like in a hotel: people come and go all the time. Dozens of guests have probably stayed there over the past few months.”
“Who came over?” Margit asked, keeping her eyes on the road. “Was it Staffan Nilsson?”
They were on the winding road past Fågelbro; there were no streetlights here. They didn’t start until the other side of Wermdö golf club.
“No, it was a girl called Sandra Ahlin. I haven’t met her before; I’m guessing she was on call because she’s new.”
He gave a wry smile and checked his watch: quarter to three. He hadn’t eaten since he left Harö.
“Murdering a journalist,” Margit said quietly. “Pretty unusual in Sweden.”
CHAPTER 20
Thomas stuffed the last bite of two hastily purchased hot dogs into his mouth as he walked into the conference room at Nacka police station. White Advent stars hung in the windows, but the corridors had a desolate feel about them, as if the walls somehow knew that everyone should be at home on a day like today.
The Old Man was already sitting at the head of the table, flanked by his younger colleague, Detective Inspector Kalle Lidwall, and Karin Ek, administrative assistant. There was nothing in Karin’s demeanor to suggest that she resented having to bring her Christmas break to an abrupt end and leave her husband and three teenage boys to their own devices. In fact, a large plate of Lucia buns, giving off a wonderful aroma of saffron and raisins, suggested that she’d decided to bring the festive atmosphere with her.
Next to Karin was Aram Gorgis, and Thomas nodded to his colleague, who had joined the team at the end of the summer. He was around thirty-five years old, with dark hair and a hint of stubble. He was casually dressed in a rust-colored sweater.
“How’s things?” Thomas said, taking the seat opposite Aram.
“Fine,” Aram replied, adjusting his rimless glasses. He had a slight accent—Norrköping mixed with Assyrian. “Thanks for last week, by the way.”
“You’re welcome—thanks for coming.”
A few days before Christmas, Aram and his wife, Sonja, had been to dinner with Thomas and Pernilla. Like Thomas, Aram played a lot of handball in his spare time, and they had been to a couple of matches together during the fall.
“Coffee?” Karin said, pushing a cup in Thomas’s direction. He didn’t like coffee from the machine, but Karin was pouring from a thermos, and it smelled freshly brewed. Had she brought that from home, too?
Erik Blom arrived, his eyes no more than narrow slits. His face looked puffy, as if he’d only just woken up, even though it was almost four o’clock. Margit looked him up and down.
“How are you?”
Erik shrugged and sat down.
The Old Man reached for a bun, but withdrew his hand. The effort this cost him was unmistakable.
Thomas knew that his latest health check had resulted in a serious warning. If the superintendent didn’t get a grip on his weight and blood pressure, he was unlikely to last much beyond his impending sixtieth birthday. His flushed face told its own story, as did the belly spilling over the waistband of his pants.
He contemplated the Lucia buns with a gloomy expression, then looked around at everyone.
“Thanks for coming in at such short notice. Obviously we’re treating this case as a priority.”
He made a noise deep in his throat, something between a sigh and a weary cough.
“The press office is already getting calls. A well-known journalist dies under mysterious circumstances on Sandhamn, of all places. Plus, of course, there’s not much news around Christmastime; I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate.”
Thomas silently agreed. As Margit had said, the media were going to go crazy.
“Margit, could you start us off with the background?” the Old Man said. “Then Thomas can take over, as he was at the scene.”
Margit put down her coffee cup, which was already empty.
“Kalle and I have been carrying out searches on Jeanette Thiels,” she began. “As many as we could in the time available. She was fifty-three years old and lived in Stockholm, in an apartment on Fredmansgatan in the Söder district, near Mariatorget. She’d been working as a freelance journalist for many years, mostly for Expressen, but also for the morning papers.”
“Didn’t she write books, too?” Karin asked. “I think I saw her talking about it on daytime TV. She seemed very forthright—kind of bossy, in fact.”
“And?”
Margit folded her arms and leaned back. She hadn’t bothered tidying her short, red-streaked hair after pulling off her hat.
Karin didn’t know what to say.
“Sorry, I . . . ,” she mumbled, busying herself with the thermos.
“That’s correct, she also wrote books,” Margit went on. “She actually published several titles, and was even awarded a prize for an exposé on the situation of prisoners of war in the Balkans.”
“Family?” the Old Man said. “Was she married?”
“Divorced, quite some time ago, but she had a daughter, Alice, who was born in 1995.”
The same year as Nora’s son Adam, Thomas realized. A teenager, but only just.
“Do we know where her daughter is?” Karin said.
“Presumably with her father. He lives in Vaxholm and has sole custody.”
Karin frowned. “They don’t have joint custody?”
Margit picked up a sheet of paper from the pile of printouts in front of her, some marked with pink or yellow Post-it notes.
“The ex-husband is Michael Thiels, and as I said, he has sole custody. He’s fifty-two and works in product development for Ericsson in Kista.”
“We need to inform them of Jeanette’s death as soon as possible,” the Old Man said.
Thomas nodded and exchanged a glance with Margit. “We’ll go over there as soon as we’re done here.”
Giving someone that kind of news two days after Christmas Eve went against the grain. For Alice Thiels, Christmas would forevermore be associated with the death of her mother.
For a moment he pictured Elin, her delight as she gazed at her presents, more excited about the shiny wrapping paper than the contents.
Margit went on: “I’ve spoken to forensics about the autopsy, and it sounds as if Sachsen will be able to do it pretty soon. He hasn’t gone away for Christmas.”
“So when will we know what we’re dealing with?” the Old Man pressed her.
“I think it’ll be a few days before we hear anything.”
Thomas looked over at the photographs that had already been put up on the wall. There was a portrait of Jeanette, significantly better than the stiff image on her driver’s license. This one was more like a publicity shot; she was facing the camera with her arms folded and a serious expression, the epitome of the intense, committed reporter. Her thick hair, peppered with gray, was cut in a neat bob, and she wore a slender chain around her neck. It must have been breezy when the picture was taken, because her bangs had blown up slightly.
There were also photographs from the crime scene, taken from various angles. The technician responsible had done a good job, bringing out both contrasts and shadows in spite of the fact that the light had been facing him when the sun emerged from behind the cloud cover.
Pale skin against white snow.
This time Jeanette’s eyes were closed, her ashen face so stiff that it resembled a mask made of wax.
The Old Man got up and went over to the whiteboard. He picked up a pen and wrote, HOMICIDE?
“If I’ve understood correctly, it wasn’t possible to establish at the scene whether she’d actually been murdered,” he said, turning to Thomas.
“No, but the apartment definitely looked like a crime scene. Someone had searched through all her possessions; the place was a complete mess.”
Thomas pointed to a close-up of Jeanette’s face. A dark shadow could be seen beneath her chin, and something black was stuck to her lower lip.
“According to Sandra Ahlin, she threw up before she died. A bout of severe vomiting, she called it.”
“Is that linked to her death?” the Old Man wondered. “What did Ahlin think?”
“She didn’t know—we’ll have to wait for the autopsy. At the moment we’re not sure whether the victim froze to death, or whether she died of other causes and was left in the snow. We don’t even know whether she died where she was found or elsewhere. There were no obvious signs of injury on the body.”
“What time of day did she die?” Aram asked.
“Hard to say, because of the cold, but she was more or less covered in snow, and it stopped snowing during the early hours of Christmas Day.”
“So she could have been lying there for twenty-four hours,” Aram said, helping himself to another of Karin’s Lucia buns.
The Old Man couldn’t suppress an envious sigh.
“Yes,” Thomas said. “She checked in at the Sailors Hotel at around four o’clock on December 24. She’d booked a table for dinner, but no one seems to have seen her after four, which gives us a time frame of just over forty hours. It’s not much to go on.”
The Old Man took a green apple out of his pocket and stared at it with distaste before taking a bite.
“One more thing,” Thomas went on. “We didn’t find a laptop in her room, which seems strange to me. I’d imagine that a journalist would always have her computer with her, even if it is Christmas.”
“She could have left it at home,” Margit pointed out. “We can’t rule that out, not yet anyway.”
“Follow up on that,” the Old Man said. “What about her cell phone?”
“We found it in her pocket.”
“That’s something at least. We need to check her incoming and outgoing calls as soon as possible. Aram, can you take care of that?”
Aram nodded and made a note on his pad. The skin beneath his dark eyes had a bluish tinge; Thomas recognized the signs of a lack of sleep. Aram had a young child, just as he did.
“Was Jeanette alone?” the Old Man asked. “She didn’t have company?”
Thomas shook his head. “She was staying in the one of the apartments, but it was booked as single occupancy. Apparently she’d called earlier that day to ask if they had any vacancies.”
“Sounds as if it wasn’t exactly planned in advance,” Margit said. “Why would someone go to Sandhamn on Christmas Eve?”
“Maybe she didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Erik suggested, his voice subdued; his usual energy was missing.
“We need to check whether she had some kind of connection to Sandhamn, or whether she just happened to be there when she died,” the Old Man said, still clutching the apple. A few drops of fruit juice glimmered at the corners of his mouth.
“The Sailors Hotel is sending over a list of everyone who stayed there during Christmas,” Kalle said. “They promised to get it done as quickly as possible, so we should have it by tomorrow at the latest.”
“Most people were due to check out today,” Thomas said. “I asked before I left. There’re hardly any bookings over the next few days, then it fills up again for New Year’s.”
“It’s going to take a while to go through all the guests—we must be talking hundreds,” Margit said. “Not to mention the staff.”
Everyone knew the drill. As soon as the list arrived, the names were checked against all existing databases. Those deemed of no interest were filtered out, and the rest became the subject of additional scrutiny. Every guest would be contacted and interviewed using a standardized questionnaire; their answers would then be entered into a database and analyzed.
But that would take at least a week, maybe more.
“I can do that,” Erik said, sitting up a little straighter. “I can also do the background checks on the family if Karin helps out.”
Karin gave him a warm smile. He was her favorite, and she made no attempt to hide it.
“No problem.”
“In that case I’ll take the hotel staff,” Kalle offered, as quietly as always.
The Old Man’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at the display and frowned.
“See if you can hurry Sachsen along,” he said to Thomas and Margit. “The sooner we know the cause of death, the better.”
He started gathering up his papers.
“Time to call the press office,” he said with an air of resignation.
CHAPTER 21
“It looks like something out of a fairy tale,” Margit said as they drove along the narrow street leading to Michael and Alice Thiels’ home in Vaxholm.
The old wooden house in front of them was painted in a soft, blue-gray color with white eaves and leaded windows. A small turret rose up from one gable end, with an uninterrupted view overlooking the sea. Perhaps the original owner had wanted a place from which he could keep an eye on his surroundings, Thomas thought.
Inside the picket fence, sprawling lilac branches formed a low hedge, framing the garden. In front of the old-fashioned glass veranda stood a beautifully lit Christmas tree, and someone had perched a red Santa hat at the top.
“It’s lovely,” he agreed, glancing toward Vaxholm Fortress, which lay diagonally opposite the Thiels’ house. It reminded him of an old feudal castle with its thick gray walls and imposing stone towers. More Disney than military defense, though. Was that what had inspired the little turret? It must provide a fantastic opportunity to watch the comings and goings at the fortress across the water.
Margit parked the car and they got out. There were lights showing in several windows, so someone was definitely home.
Thomas knew the area well; he had often docked in Vaxholm during his years with the maritime police. It was the largest hub for traffic around the northern and central archipelago, with a steady stream of ferries making use of the harbor.
The man who opened the door was in his stocking feet, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. He was holding a cell phone, and as he opened the door he asked the person on the other end to hang on.
He looked inquiringly at the two police officers, and before he could say anything, Thomas held out his hand.
“Thomas Andreasson, Nacka police. This is my colleague, Margit Grankvist. Are you Michael Thiels?”
A brief nod.
“Could we come in for a moment?”
Something glimmered in Michael Thiels’s eyes. He spoke quickly into the phone, then slipped it into his back pocket.
“Please.”
&
nbsp; They stepped into the veranda and hung up their coats. On the floor lay a laptop bag, next to several pairs of girls’ shoes, no more than size three or four. Their host nodded toward the door leading into the house.
“We can go and sit in the living room. No need to take off your shoes.”
He turned and led the way into a large room with a pale leather couch facing the windows overlooking the sea. A Christmas tree decorated with bulbs in every possible color stood in one corner, and in the other there was a tall, bright-red poinsettia.
“Take a seat,” Michael said, gesturing toward the sofa.
“It’s about your ex-wife,” Margit began.
“Jeanette?”
Michael sat down in an armchair, his eyes fixed on Margit.
“I’m afraid she was found dead on Sandhamn, in the harbor area in front of the Sailors Hotel. Someone passing by discovered her body this morning. We think she passed away yesterday, but we’ll know more once we have the autopsy results.”
“You mean she froze to death?” Michael frowned as he struggled to understand.
Thomas knew from experience that it was essential to be clear, to reiterate the information. It often took several repetitions before the truth sank in.
“Jeanette is dead,” he said. “However, we can’t be sure of the cause of death at this stage; we don’t know whether she froze to death or not. However, certain indications lead us to suspect we’re dealing with a crime.”
“A crime?”
It sounded as if the words lay on Michael’s tongue like a lump of something deeply unpleasant, something that tasted nasty and had to be spat out.
“As my colleague said, we’re not certain that Jeanette died of natural causes,” Margit said. “Which is why we’d like to ask you a few questions. My apologies, but it really can’t wait.”
There was music playing in the background; Thomas had been so focused on Jeanette’s ex-husband that he’d only just noticed it. Now he recognized the voice: Etta James, the American soul singer.
A book lay open on the coffee table next to an almost empty glass of red wine.