Elvin nodded and held out the basket so Astrid could take it.
“Anyway, I pull out onto the highway, and after a few hundred metres there’s a bang and the side mirror flies every which way.”
“Peter Brise?” Cliff asked, and Astrid nodded.
“But I didn’t know that then. I don’t know what any of you would have done in that situation, but I chased him down and tried to stop him. Unfortunately my Corolla wasn’t much competition for his BMW, so when he finally turned down toward Hamntorget I ran into one of those over-designed fountains and rolled my car.”
“I wouldn’t call that thing a fountain.” Elvin shook his head.
“I don’t know what to call it. Anyway, I get out of the car and I see the BMW going over the edge of the quay into the water. Totally surreal. I run over and start to disperse the crowd, and then a uniform comes up and orders me to blow. I was at a total loss, and I just stood there like a big question mark. It wasn’t like I had anything to hide. Not at all. And still, I refused. But please don’t ask me why, because I have no idea.” She threw up her hands. “So he reported me, although Bokander promised he’d see what he could do. But enough about that.” She clapped her hands together. “What did I miss?”
And with that, the silence was back again, as if someone had pulled out a fuse, and everyone did their best to avoid Astrid’s gaze.
“Can anyone explain to me how I should interpret this?” she went on, still trying to make eye contact with someone — anyone. “Either I missed something, or you don’t believe that I —”
“They’re worried about you,” Elvin interrupted, meeting her eyes.
“But you’re not?”
“Should I be?”
“Like I just said, I’ve been having kind of a rough time. But I can assure you all I’m in full control of the situation. So if we could just turn the conversation to why we’re really here —”
“Unfortunately, we don’t share that view.” This time it was Cliff who looked up and made eye contact with her.
“Oh no? And what do you want me to do about that?” Astrid threw up her hands. “It’s not like I don’t know how the rumours fly in these hallways, but —”
“Astrid,” Fabian interrupted, standing up so he would be at her eye level. “We’re facing an investigation that might be the most difficult one since —”
“Well, what the hell is the problem? I’ve been here since five. And yes, I am a little late, because I was in a meeting with —”
“The problem is, we never know if you’ll show up or if you’ll be gone for the rest of the week! You were off sick, but then you suddenly decided to drive over, and on the way you got caught up in a dangerous pursuit that ended in a fatality.” This was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to Astrid, and she was obviously just as surprised as he was.
“Let’s take one thing at a time,” she said, forced calm in her voice. “For one thing, it’s not a sure thing that this ‘dangerous pursuit’ ended in a fatality. Yes, I’ve talked to Braids.” She held up the autopsy report and placed it on the table. “And from what I understand, there are signs that Brise had been dead for a long time. For another, if it does turn out that Braids is wrong and it really was Brise behind the wheel, the toxicology report shows that he had quite a lot of alcohol in his blood. In other words, he was the drunk driver, not me.” She allowed her gaze to settle on each of them in turn. “So if we’re finished with this, maybe we can ditch the tabloid-level crap and get to work instead?”
“Okay.” Fabian nodded, although he was still convinced she was lying. She was right about one thing, though; they were there to work, not to dwell on their personal problems. “So you already know that Braids contacted me yesterday and told me about Brise —”
“Who had been frozen for two months. Yes, like I said, we talked this morning.”
“Great, then maybe you have an explanation,” Cliff said, leaning back in his chair. “Because we can’t seem to make any sense of it. Why, for example, would someone freeze his body and then dump it in the harbour in front of a bunch of police officers? And how could this someone become invisible to all those witnesses?”
“You make it sound like it was part of the plan for there to be witnesses,” Astrid said.
“Well, otherwise why would you choose to drive over the edge of the quay in the middle of Norra Hamnen?”
“And what makes you assume it was a choice? It’s not like whoever was at the wheel expected I would start to pursue the car. If it weren’t for me, maybe it would have gone somewhere entirely different. And that reminds me, how’s it going with the car?” Astrid turned to Molander.
“It’s being salvaged right now and it should be on its way here soon.”
“When do you think you can begin the examination?”
“As soon as the fans dry it out, which is likely to take tomorrow and most of the weekend.”
“Okay. Hopefully that will help us sort out some of the many questions.” Astrid turned to Lilja. “I saw you wrote down an Ylva Fridén in the calendar — her husband is missing?”
“Yes, but I can squeeze it in at lunchtime so it doesn’t take any time away from —”
“It’s fine. As soon as you’re done, you can join Cliff and Hugo, who will be mapping out Peter Brise’s life.” She turned to them. “We’re talking his company, his private life, family, interests, friends — everything down to the bank he used. Someone must have noticed if he’d been missing for two months. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he the guy who made Killer Slugs?”
Cliff and the others nodded.
“Fabian, you can take care of these.” She held up a keyring and tossed it to him in a long arc across the room.
“What are these to?”
“No idea. Braids found them in his jacket. I’d start with his apartment on Trädgårdsgatan.”
Fabian could only capitulate in the face of Astrid’s leadership. She had come in stumbling at the finish line, but had already lapped them several times. The fact was, it had been ages since he’d seen her this sharp. Maybe this was just the type of investigation she needed to give up the bottle.
“Great, so everyone knows what they’ll be doing?” Without waiting for a response, Astrid gulped down the last of her coffee and headed for the door.
“I’m sorry, but are we really finished here?” Cliff threw up his arms. “I don’t want to be a nag, but if Brise really was dead, as Braids claims, and someone else was driving the car, you or one of the other witnesses ought to have seen —”
“Oh, right…” Astrid turned to look at the others. “I completely forgot.”
“What?”
She held up her phone. “Believe it or not, I actually managed to take a short video yesterday; I put it on the server.”
“Now you tell us.” Molander used the remote to start up the projector on the ceiling and made his way to Astrid’s video clip with the help of the wireless keyboard and mouse on the table. “Here it is.”
The shaky video showed everything from the dashboard and the trash in the passenger seat to Astrid’s legs and the broken side mirror, which had been tossed on the floor. The image moved quickly, and the camera wasn’t the only thing shaking — the whole interior was vibrating as if the car was being pushed to its limits.
“No sound?”
“I must have hit the mute button or something,” Astrid said as the red BMW entered the frame dangerously close to the Corolla’s hood. But that’s not where everyone was looking — all eyes were on the driver’s seat of the BMW, and the shaved head that stuck up over the headrest.
A few seconds later, the picture froze, signalling the video was over.
Fabian gave a sigh of relief now that he could see there’d been a living person behind the wheel after all.
“Well, if you ask me, that looks li
ke Brise behind the wheel.” Cliff nodded at the frozen image, which Molander was already in the process of manipulating.
“Or it’s just someone else with a shaved head and the same horn-rimmed glasses,” Fabian said, finishing his coffee.
“You mean someone dressed up as Brise?” Lilja looked at him like he’d just claimed flying saucers were real.
“I’m just saying that the only thing we can be sure of right now is that someone who looks like Peter Brise was driving that car.”
“Listen up, my friends, I might have just found the answer.” Molander rewound the clip frame by frame. “Look at this.” He zoomed in on the grainy image, which showed the driver diagonally from behind, in half profile. “See this dark thing that extends a little up onto his throat?” He lit up his laser pen and aimed it at the driver’s neck, where, sure enough, the group could discern a dark object.
“Isn’t that just his seatbelt?” Astrid took a step forward to get a better look.
“No, that’s down here.” Molander indicated it with the laser.
“It looks like a scarf,” said Lilja.
“Yes, it could be,” said Molander. “But my guess is it’s a wetsuit.”
“A wetsuit?”
“Exactly. He probably has flippers, a diving mask, and oxygen in the back seat. If so, he could have exited the car underwater and vanished along the bottom of the harbour.”
“Are you serious?”
Molander nodded.
“What about Peter Brise?” Cliff said. “Where was he?”
“In the trunk, would be my guess. That’s where I would have put him, anyway. Once underwater, it would be no problem to take him out and put him in the front seat.”
Silence gripped the room once more. Certainly, some of their questions had been answered. If Molander’s theory checked out, it meant that Brise had been murdered. But if that was the case, who was the killer? What was the point of all the meticulous preparation that must have been performed after his death? And the question that overshadowed all the rest: Why hadn’t anyone reported him missing if he’d been dead for two whole months?
Fabian’s phone vibrated in his pocket. It was his daily reminder that Theodor was on break and it was time for a call. If only to exchange a few words, no matter how difficult it was to speak them. It was a promise he’d made to himself, and he hadn’t broken it since the summer of 2010.
This would be the first time.
10
Ib Sveistrup leaned back in his old, creaky desk chair at the Helsingør police station as he gazed through his dirty reading glasses at a printout showing the bloody woman from the pedestrian mall. “Yes, she sure does look a fright with all that blood. Where did you get this photo, by the way?”
“YouTube,” Dunja said. She was sitting across from her boss and could tell he was struggling to recall what YouTube might be.
“Oh, yes. Sure, of course. Well, there you go. All this new technology, it’s incredible. But I’ll never get rid of this.” He put down the image and held up his old Nokia 5140. “It has everything you could need and a little more. Text messaging, an alarm, a calendar. Everything you could imagine. Plus it never breaks and the battery lasts almost a week.”
Dunja had mourned the loss of the latter within twenty-four hours of exchanging her faithful old Nokia for an iPhone. But that wasn’t what she had come to talk about. “So what do we do next?” She looked him in the eye, although she knew he disliked it.
“What do we do next? Well, you and Magnus had the morning shift, so as soon as you’re finished with your statements you should be able to go…”
“I mean with the investigation. What do we do about that?”
“Oh right, you’re thinking of the weapons she took. Well, it certainly was a stroke of bad luck. I’m sure you’ll understand that I have no choice but to make an official report, and then of course your statements will —”
“Obviously we’re going to write statements. I’m thinking of what happened to her. Where did all that blood come from?” Dunja tapped her finger on the image of the woman in the bloody T-shirt. “It wasn’t hers, she was unharmed. But clearly something happened, right?”
“Yes, I suppose we have to assume it did. But that’s something for the investigation team to handle, and naturally I’ll make sure that they see this.” He held up the picture.
“The investigation team? As in Søren Ussing and Bettina Jensen?”
“Yes, who else would I —”
“Ib…” Dunja couldn’t help but sigh. “I’m fully aware that this is your responsibility and your decision. But if I may say something —”
“Dunja…” Sveistrup took off his glasses, tilted his head to the side, and put on his warmest smile. It was a smile Dunja usually liked. Unlike so many other men on the force, Ib Sveistrup was a warm and friendly person. But at that particular moment, his smile annoyed her so much that her scalp began to itch. All she could see in him was extreme indulgence. As if he were the patient parent of a whiny kid begging for candy. “I understand why you feel so personally involved,” he went on, nodding as if to further emphasize his assertion. “After all, it’s your weapon that’s on the loose.”
“Sure, but that’s not the only problem. You know as well as I do that they lack experience with this sort of investigation. I’m worried that something truly serious has happened and —”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?”
“No, absolutely not. This isn’t a break-in at an ice cream shop down on Brostræde. And I’m sorry to have to say it, but —”
“Dunja, that’s enough. If worse comes to worst, you and Magnus could be placed on involuntary leave because of what’s happened. So no, you will not be part of this investigation, just because you —”
“I don’t want to be part of it. I want to lead it.”
Sveistrup’s smile vanished; now he looked more like the tired parent of a screaming child on the floor in front of the candy shelf. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. And I said so even back when I first hired you. Do you remember that? When you were blacklisted all over Copenhagen and no one on the force wanted to touch you with a ten-foot pole?”
Dunja realized she should have known this was where the conversation would end up. Like a chronic pain that would follow her for the rest of her life, she had grown used to the way the rumours of how she had forged her former boss Kim Sleizner’s signature could bubble up to the surface at any time. Apparently it didn’t matter that nearly two years had passed.
It wasn’t that she regretted what she’d done. Not in the least. She had fully expected that Sleizner would fire her as soon as he got the chance. Never mind that she had helped the Swedish police solve one of their toughest homicide investigations in recent memory. There had been only one thing on Sleizner’s mind.
Revenge.
But somehow Dunja had assumed it would be over once he kicked her out of the unit. That he would consider her dismissal degrading enough, that it would be enough for him, and that their paths would never cross again. But in hindsight, she realized how naive she had been. As if that sleazeball Sleizner would be satisfied with just firing her; that was only the beginning of his plans.
In some ways, Dunja was impressed by how good he was at it. How his kilometre-long mould spores managed to infiltrate and perforate the entire police organization, allowing him to exert his power and influence without even the slightest consequence.
For eighteen months she had looked for work at every police station within and beyond Copenhagen. Jobs she was perfectly qualified for. But each time, she was met with vague excuses — each position had already been filled or eliminated.
She had to search all the way up to Station Nord in Helsingør to get hired. Of course, it wasn’t an investigative position; she’d had to go back to wearing a uniform. But it was better than nothing.
“It’s Sleizner, isn’t it?” she said at last, well aware that she was on thin ice.
“What?”
“Kim fucking Sleizner. Is he the one behind this?”
Sveistrup snorted. “You know exactly what I think of that man. He might have the loudest bark of all those mongrels down in Copenhagen, but his leash doesn’t reach all the way up here.”
“So what the hell is this all about? Beyond you wanting to go home to your wife and whiskey.”
His fist struck the table, overturning his cup of coffee; its contents flowed over the bloody woman in the picture. “You do not get to come in here and tell me what I do and do not want. You know exactly what the deal is.”
Dunja had crossed a line, and Sveistrup had every right to be furious.
“Ib, I know I was hired as a street cop and my job is to go out and be visible in my lovely uniform —”
But what was done was done.
“Great! Then how about you make sure to do that. Your next shift is tomorrow morning. So if you’re going to have time to check out a replacement weapon before then, I suggest you write your statement as soon as possible.”
Now all she could do was finish what she’d started, no matter what Ib, Magnus, or anyone else thought.
11
When her boyfriend Hampus had asked if she would ever consider a boob job, Irene Lilja’s first reaction was to burst out laughing. Immediately afterward, she flew into a rage, yelling at him for being so cheap and white-trash. For Irene, this was just more proof of how inequality between the sexes encouraged women to appease men.
The whole thing had spiralled into a huge fight, which was followed by a week of silence.
But now that she was sitting across from Ylva Fridén at Olsons Skafferi on Mariagatan, Irene couldn’t stop looking at the breasts that formed the cleavage across from her, trying to figure out if they had been enhanced. They were some of the nicest ones she’d ever seen.
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