“It’s a little too far to the right.”
Sonja’s voice brought Fabian back to reality and he adjusted the frame by a few millimetres.
“No, hold on, that’s too far.”
He no more than brushed the frame with one finger before Sonja exclaimed that it was perfect and backed toward the centre of the exhibition space. Once there, she took a deep breath and spun around so slowly that Fabian had time to repeat his prayer several times. This was, as it happened, far from the first time she had taken in the placement and energy of the pieces.
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work.” She threw up her arms in defeat. “The mangrove series doesn’t create enough contrast with the Øresund pictures. I think it’ll be better if they’re on their own in the corner along with the floor sculptures.”
“You mean we have to move everything? Again?” Fabian realized right away how poorly this landed, and wished there were some way to take it back, to replace it with a simple okay, and possibly follow up with a sure, we can do that.
“Right. So what?” said Sonja, in a tone that made it perfectly clear that the positive atmosphere could no longer be salvaged. “Do you have a better idea?”
Of course he had a better idea — the very same idea he’d had the last three times she had forced him to start over from square one. But Fabian had no intention of saying it out loud this time either, even if that was perhaps exactly what he should do. Maybe that was just what she was waiting for.
Fabian had just decided it was sink or swim when his phone came to life in his pocket. He took it out and found that it was Einar Greide in pathology. If he was calling Fabian rather than anyone else on the team, it could mean only one thing.
“Hi, Braids.”
Something had happened. Something out of the ordinary.
“It’s about the victim in the car.”
“You mean the guy who drove off the quay in Norra Hamnen.”
“Yeah, who else?”
“Braids, you’ll have to excuse me, but I’m off today and all I know is what’s been on the news. I’ve hardly even heard of this Brise guy, or whatever his name is.”
“Never heard of Killer Slugs?”
“No. Should I?”
“Mutated Spanish slugs that eat up your pets. What planet are you from?” Braids’s sigh was so loud that it must have reached Sonja, who had taken matters into her own hands and was starting to take down the smaller pieces. “We’re talking about the year’s most downloaded app. And if you ask me, a totally brilliant game. But that’s not what we should be gabbing about. The thing is, Brise’s body arrived here a few hours ago. Or more accurately, it arrived on Arne Gruvesson’s table, and he arrived at the conclusion that it was a run-of-the-mill car crash.”
“Okay. Could you get to the point? I have to get back to —”
“And Arne has done it again.”
“Done what?” Fabian asked, an instant before he realized that he should have known.
“Messed up!” Braids exclaimed with such disdain that Fabian could almost feel the saliva spraying from the phone. “Because I examined the body and it turns out Peter Brise didn’t die today — he died about two months ago.”
“Huh? What do you mean, two months ago? Wasn’t he the one in the car?”
“Oh yes, he was indeed. But he was frozen when the car filled with water.”
“Frozen,” Fabian repeated. “What do you mean, frozen?”
“As in, as cold and hard as my lamb chops out in the storeroom.”
5
At first glance it seemed like a perfectly ordinary day at the peaceful pedestrian mall in the city of Helsingør on the other side of the Sound. The morning sun beamed down, signalling that summer had arrived and vacation season could finally begin. Unsuspecting people strolled on the cobblestones, moving from shop to shop.
But something wasn’t quite right, and although the vast majority had no idea what was going on, a subconscious unease spread down the mall like a cold wind. A child dropped an ice cream and began to shriek. An older woman was convinced a male passerby had stolen her wallet, and hurried after him, calling out. A mother looked for her daughter, who had just vanished from her sight. Although no one could put a finger on why, the mood had transformed.
Only the people outside the Telia shop across from the half-timbered red building could see what was going on with their own eyes. The sight made them instinctively move aside and crowd alongside the buildings. Like a parting sea, a corridor was formed through the pedestrians.
And there she was.
Her T-shirt had once been white but was now covered with dried blood. The same went for her face and hands, and the red extended quite a way up her ulcerous forearms. Her eyes darted from side to side, as if she wanted to make sure that everyone kept their distance as she moved forward.
And that was exactly what they did. A few even fled as far as the side streets, while others pressed up against the walls. A small group began to crack jokes and laugh while looking around for the candid cameras. But there weren’t any.
Whatever was happening, it was real.
6
“Frozen for two months?” Sverker “Cliff” Holm grimaced as if the problem was with the croissant he’d just stuffed in his mouth. “Are you joking?”
“Not if Braids is to be believed.” Fabian stood up and pushed his hips forward in an attempt to ease his lower back pain. Yesterday it had felt like a reasonable price to pay for showing Sonja how willing he was to help her out. But now he wasn’t quite so sure. True, she had eventually been satisfied and had even taken him out for pizza as a thank you, but that was the extent of it.
“Can someone explain this to me? Because I am totally confused.” Cliff reached for the basket of croissants. Hugo Elvin, who was just as rotund as Cliff but two heads shorter, got there first and moved the basket out of reach.
“What if other people want some?”
“Sorry, I thought everyone already had some.” Cliff held up his hands in an apologetic gesture.
“So they have. But no one has had as many as you,” Elvin said, pointedly taking one of the croissants before returning the basket to the table.
“Okay,” Cliff said, trying to shake off the offence. “Where was I?”
“You were totally confused,” Elvin reminded him between bites.
“Right. What I mean is, there’s no way Peter Brise could have been dead. For God’s sake, he was the one driving the car. Or am I completely off track here?”
“I don’t get it either,” said forensic investigator Ingvar Molander, shaking his head. “I have to say, this whole situation is incredibly strange.”
“That’s not like you, Ingvar,” Irene Lilja said as she sat down at the oval conference table and took a folder of notes from her bag. “You’ve always got a clever explanation up your sleeve.”
“Who’s to say it wasn’t someone else behind the wheel?” Fabian asked, gazing out the picture window at the low industrial buildings that made up the northern approach to Helsingborg. An inexplicably ugly introduction to a city that was otherwise so beautiful.
“I’ve been in touch with the divers, and they say he was in the driver’s seat when they found him,” Molander said.
“And what’s more, the quay was full of eyewitnesses who saw the car sink,” Cliff said, sipping his steaming coffee. “And if we believe them and the uniforms who were at the scene, no one swam up to the surface. In other words, it had to be Peter Brise driving the car.”
“So you’re saying that it was just an accident and he was alive as recently as yesterday, when the car hit the water and sank,” Fabian said, realizing that not even he could think of a way to explain what had happened.
“Yes.” Cliff nodded. “And if I’m not mistaken, he had quite a bit of alcohol in his blood. I don’t know what the
rest of you think, but in my book it’s a reasonable explanation.” With a pointed smile at Elvin, he took another croissant. “And if Braids could hear me now, he’d probably tie me up naked to his totem pole and flay me alive.” Cliff met the others’ eyes. “But I really can’t see any other option except to say that for once he’s wrong.” He raised his mug to his mouth and drank.
Silence descended on the conference room. Instead of offering counterarguments and objections as they usually did, the group remained quiet. Not because they agreed, but for just the opposite reason. None of them truly believed that Braids was wrong when he said Peter Brise had been frozen for two months. Not even Cliff. And yet none of them could think of a new angle that might solve the problem.
Fabian was convinced this was because everyone was feeling exactly like him. It was as if Brise’s mysterious fatal journey through the city had roused them all from their cosy beds, and now they were freshly awake — or perhaps still half asleep. Instead of lolling through their duties day after day, they would have to start actually thinking again. They would have to question and analyze, turning each tiny clue over and over in their minds.
This wasn’t another routine case that could be solved between the hours of nine and five. The assembled team could already smell the late nights, bad coffee, and occasional office naps coming on. And it rubbed and scratched at their senses in the exact way that they’d all been sorely missing, even if they didn’t want to admit it.
And then there was the elephant in the room — the one not sitting in Astrid Tuvesson’s chair. The fact that it was empty hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice. Yet none of them had mentioned it, not even in passing. It wasn’t that they didn’t know. They were all aware that she drank, that it had gotten worse after she and Gunnar separated, and that Astrid had begun to take sick leave at odd times.
But instead of talking about it, and maybe even confronting her, they had sidestepped the topic in the hopes the problem would resolve itself. As a result, they had stopped counting on her. If she was around, Astrid led the team as usual. If she wasn’t, they all pitched in to fill the space she left behind.
There was no obvious leader in their group. To be sure, Cliff was the one who was supposed to step in officially, and now and then he did make a half-hearted attempt to take the wheel. But neither he nor anyone else on the team could quite take his leadership seriously.
Up to this point, Astrid’s absences hadn’t led to any major problems at work, largely due to the fact that their investigations had remained fairly elementary. But if Fabian’s intuition turned out to be accurate, the situation would soon become untenable.
Lilja broke the silence. “Before we dive into the Brise case, there’s something on my desk today that can’t wait. It’s no big deal, but since we haven’t exactly been overloaded with work recently, I promised to meet with a woman whose husband has been missing since Monday.”
“Is there any reason to suspect foul play?” Elvin asked.
“That’s what I’m going to try to find out. There’s probably a perfectly rational explanation. Her name is Ylva Fridén and his is Per Krans. None of you happen to know them, do you?”
Elvin and the others shook their heads.
“Okay, the question is how the rest of us should proceed,” said Fabian, who had decided to take control of the meeting. “It’s already quarter past. Anyone know if Tuvesson is on her way in?”
The others exchanged glances, as if they’d been wondering the same thing.
“Then I suggest we get started without her.” Fabian walked over to the whiteboard and erased Cliff’s many stick figures, lists of whose turn it was to bring break-time treats, and the results of the Christmas quiz from five months earlier. “Peter Brise. What do we know about him, aside from the fact that he got stinking rich off that Killer Slugs game?”
“He lived downtown, on Trädgårdsgatan.” Cliff handed Fabian a photograph of Brise. “But his company…what’s it called again?”
“Ka-Ching,” Molander said, shaking his head. “How clever.”
“Right. Apparently it’s in Lund. I know that much.”
“I read somewhere that they quadrupled their number of employees in the last six months, and they reached their annual sales goal back in early February,” Lilja said. “And all they sell is just a tiny app that only costs seven kronor.”
“And it’s extremely boring,” Molander interjected.
“I would say it’s totally addictive. I can’t stop playing it.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to try it,” Cliff said. “Berit has tried to stop a couple of times, but then just a few hours later she’s sitting there again, poking at the screen of her phone until she has blisters on her fingertips.”
“Yeah, and it’s beyond me how that’s supposed to be fun,” said Molander.
“But maybe we can agree that he’s rich as a king,” Elvin said, rolling his eyes.
Fabian inwardly thanked Elvin as he made a dollar sign next to the picture of Brise, who looked more like a venture capitalist than a computer nerd with his white shirt, cleanly shaven head, and horn-rimmed glasses. “Anything else? Did he have a family? Was he married? Siblings and so on?”
“Single, only child, and, if you ask me, gay,” Lilja said.
“How do you know that? Was he open about it?”
“No, but you just have to play his game. There are tons of references. I mean, you should see the pink slugs in Level 33.”
“Exactly,” said Cliff.
“See, there you go. You do play it.” Lilja fired off a grin.
“Now just hold on.” Elvin leaned back in his chair — one of two that was adjusted for his bad back and which, rumour had it, cost the taxpayers a five-figure sum. “Doesn’t this remind anyone of Johan Halén? You know, the guy who gassed himself to death in his garage a few years ago.”
“You mean that shipowner’s son?” Cliff said. “The one who lived down by the harbour in Viken, just a stone’s throw from me? That absolute dream house.”
Elvin nodded.
“What do you think, Ingvar? You were around when I was working on the investigation.”
“Is it that similar?” Molander shrugged. “All I remember was that we never found the hidden sex dungeon he was rumoured to have in his basement.”
“What kind of sex dungeon?” Fabian asked.
“It was probably just a rumour,” Elvin said. “At least, if we’re to believe the expert here, who couldn’t find it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Molander turned to Elvin, looking thoroughly affronted.
“Only that even the best miss something now and then.” Elvin offered Molander a smile. “My point is, like Brise, Halén was wealthy. Plus, he was both an only child and single.”
“Okay, but if Braids is right, Brise didn’t take his own life,” Fabian said.
“Don’t say that,” Cliff said. “Who knows, he could have frozen himself two months ago and driven the car as a ghost.” He chuckled.
“Are you really that convinced he’s wrong?” Lilja said.
“No, I’m not convinced of anything. But…” Cliff sighed. “Okay, I don’t want to be that guy. Let’s assume Braids is right and Brise was murdered over two months ago. I’m sure there are as many motives as there are kronor in his bank account. But why keep him in deep freeze for several weeks, only to dump him in the harbour in front of countless witnesses?”
The question remained unanswered as silence descended over the room once more. This time it was so heavy that it made the humming of the HVAC system sound like the idling engine of a distant semi-trailer.
Like the others around the table, Fabian was occupied with trying to understand the strange sequence of events. The problem felt impossible, like a Rubik’s cube that had its colourful stickers all mixed up.
7
The advisory about the bloody woman in Helsingør had come just as Dunja Hougaard and her colleague Magnus Rawn’s early-morning shift was coming to an end. They were in the car on their way back to the police station at Prøvestensvej 1 after a largely uneventful night.
Dunja had let Magnus remain behind the wheel all shift. Not because he was a better driver; he wasn’t. But anytime she insisted on driving, he became so nervous and anxious that even a lane change made him gasp. So even though their duty area encompassed the northern portion of the Danish island of Zealand and they travelled at least 200 kilometres per shift, Magnus almost always drove.
And as always when the weekend was approaching, Magnus had begun fishing for her plans — and he wasn’t very subtle about it. Was she just going to stay home and veg out in front of the TV, or was she going to meet up with some friends and maybe go out dancing? To avoid hurting his feelings, Dunja steered the conversation elsewhere — something she had gotten really good at in the past six months.
But this time Magnus wasn’t giving up so easily. At the red light just after the Jet station on Kongevejen, he turned to her and asked point blank whether he could take her out to Baron von Dy, an all-you-can-eat fondue restaurant in central Copenhagen. The only thing that cost extra was the drinks.
After a quick moment of deliberation, Dunja decided to take the bull by the horns and explain that she liked him as a colleague, but not in a dating sort of way. That was about as far as she got before the radio crackled to life and hailed all units in the vicinity of the pedestrian mall.
“That was a close one.” Magnus glanced at the clock as he drummed his fingers on the wheel and waited for the light to turn green.
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