Eighteen Below

by Stefan Ahnhem

  The man looked at the picture and shook his head. “I’m sorry, but that’s not me.”

  “You deny being at the bank yesterday and executing Mattias Ryborn right before the eyes of my boss?”

  “Yes, of course. That sounds horrific. Who would do such a thing?”

  “Okay.” Fabian sighed audibly, although he was rather impressed by the man’s talent for acting. “If you’re innocent as you claim, why did you try to get away when I was clearly trying to stop you?”

  “I wasn’t trying to get away.”

  “You were running.”

  “My parking spot was expired, and they can be pretty zealous about that at Åhléns. Once I was only three minutes late and I got a ticket that took me nine whole lawnmower-blade sharpenings to pay off. After taxes, of course, but still.”

  “So that’s why you tried to run me over?”

  The man chuckled. “Oh no, you’ll have to forgive me for that. I just panicked. I haven’t had my licence for very long, and it was like I just froze up when you pointed your gun at me.

  I’m sorry, it was really dumb, and I want you to know I will gladly accept my punishment.”

  There was no denying that the man was convincing, and at such close range he did look different from the way he had inside the bank. It wasn’t just the clothes and the long hair; his face was different, too.

  “Do you have kids?”

  “Not that I know of.” The man laughed.

  “What were you doing in a store full of children’s clothes and toys?”

  “My next-door neighbour has kids, and their little Oliver will be four on Sunday.”

  “But you didn’t buy anything.”

  “Have you seen those prices?” The man shook his head and offered another smile. “I honestly don’t understand who can afford to pay them. Sharpening lawnmower blades won’t do it, anyway.”

  “Why do you keep grinning? You’ve been arrested under strong suspicion of committing three murders, forgery of documents, and theft. Anyone else would be nervous.”

  “I know, and it might be stupid, but I actually think this is kind of exciting. Like, getting to see and experience this from the inside instead of just on TV like usual. I can tell you straight off the bat, it’s not the same at all. It’s like night and day, if you ask me. But I suppose you know that already.” The man laughed, then fell silent.

  Fabian wondered how to move forward. He had so many questions. Questions that were still unasked, and which ought to be impossible to answer without confessing in the same breath. But the man in front of him was dancing between the landmines like it was the easiest thing in the world.

  He was lying, that’s all there was to it. With a smile on his lips, he was lying to their faces. The problem was, he was good at it.

  So good that Fabian wondered how they would ever prove it.

  59

  A melody. Dunja had never heard it before, and she didn’t like it. In fact, she hated it so much that she wanted nothing more than for it to go away. Plus her neck hurt and she could hear the roar of traffic in the distance. Or, wait, was it really that distant? No, it was nearby. Close enough to hear individual cars go by. Something crawled over her face. Larger than an ant, but smaller than a mouse. Maybe a spider or a beetle. She wanted to open her eyes to see where she was, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  The highway. She had watched those criminals shove a homeless man in a shopping cart into traffic. There were four of them wearing happy yellow smiley masks, just as Sannie Lemke had described. And they’d laughed like they were at an amusement park with no lines.

  Somehow she’d managed to cross the road and chase them. She’d ordered them to stop, shouting that she was a police officer. They fled into the trees, heading for the highway entrance ramp, but she was quick and almost grabbed one of them. That was when the blow hit her. Something struck her in the back of the head out of nowhere. Or maybe it was a kick; she wasn’t sure.

  At least whatever had been crawling on her face was gone. So she opened her eyes, but she still couldn’t see anything. Only when she started to move did she understand why. She was on her stomach, her face pressed into the grass. She sat up and felt her neck crying out for a massage and a heating pad.

  She looked at the highway, where cars were creeping past the scene of the accident. She couldn’t see any police cars, which meant she hadn’t been unconscious for more than a few minutes. On the other hand, her colleagues in Helsingør were far from the fastest horses in the barn. She couldn’t see the truck that had run over the shopping cart, either. Had it driven off? She’d heard that truck drivers sometimes hit badgers and deer without even noticing. But a shopping cart with a person inside?

  The sound of distant sirens prompted her to get up at last and make her way down to the highway. At the same time, she heard that annoying melody again. Oh right, her phone.

  “Dunja, is that you?” It was Magnus. “What happened? Where are you? I’ve been calling.”

  “Magnus, it’s okay. I’m fine. I don’t have time to explain. Did you get the car unstuck?”

  “Yes, but —”

  “Good. Drive to the other side of the highway and to the southbound entrance ramp. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Hold on, what’s go —”

  She ended the call and continued down the slope. The sirens were louder now, and once she reached the shoulder she could see the flashing lights approaching in the darkness. They would arrive in a minute or so and start blocking off the scene. Even if Søren Ussing and Bettina Jensen weren’t coming, there was no way in hell she’d let anyone see her there.

  She beckoned a car over to the shoulder — it was an older Renault — and signalled for the old man behind the wheel to get out. He shook his head. She gave a sharp rap on the window, but nothing. Only when she yanked the door open and ordered him out of the vehicle with her police badge in front of his face did he turn to her.

  “I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent, I was just driving and —”

  “No one said you did anything.” Dunja glanced at the approaching emergency lights. “But I want you to do something for me now. Step out of the car, get out your warning triangle, and place it in the road. Right now.”

  The man nodded and began to take off his seatbelt as Dunja stopped another car, this one in the other lane. The communication went much more smoothly this time, and when traffic was finally standing still she made her way to the shopping cart, which was overturned on the median about twenty metres away, totally mangled.

  Parts of the man’s lower body were still in it, caught in the crumpled metal grid like it was a giant mousetrap. If it weren’t for the internal organs hanging out of the severed torso, Dunja might have mistaken it for a dressed-up mannequin.

  The remaining body parts were scattered far and wide. A detached foot here. Something that looked like an ear there. As if a lion had torn the body to pieces. The head was in the grass, still attached to the disfigured upper body. Except for the deep scrapes on the right side, the bearded, slightly ageing face was surprisingly unmarked. Nearby, a few metres away, lay the lighter he’d been playing with in the abandoned building on Stengade.

  Another few metres away, she found a severed arm. It was so flattened that it looked like someone had steamrollered it into the asphalt. The hand, however, was more or less intact and was holding tight, almost convulsively, to something that flashed in the flickering blue light.

  She crouched down and gently wiggled the shiny silver object from the hand, and held it up to the light as she heard distant voices and the characteristic beep of her colleagues’ radios.

  Her first thought was that she must have misread.

  Her second was that it was just an unfortunate coincidence.

  Her third scared her so much that she did everything she could to force it out of her min
d.

  60

  Tuvesson had splashed out on an extra-large tray of cinnamon buns, Danishes, and Cliff’s favourite chocolate croissants, as well as excellent coffee from Café Bar Skåne. But a grave mood hung over the conference room like a rain-soaked tent. It still hadn’t quite sunk in that Hugo Elvin would never again join them in his specially adjusted chair.

  “Anyone know when the funeral is?” Lilja said.

  Tuvesson shook her head. “I’m still trying to get hold of his sister, who lives in Switzerland; apparently she’s his only next of kin.”

  “I wouldn’t count on reaching her,” Molander said. “They broke off contact around the time their parents’ estate was divided up. From what he told me, Hugo let her take everything so he could have as little to do with her as possible.”

  Tuvesson sighed. “I promise I’ll let you know as soon as I hear more.”

  “You were probably closest to him, you know.” Cliff turned to Molander, who nodded and shrugged. “Did you know about his…identity?”

  “I definitely had my suspicions, although it wasn’t something he advertised. But I had no idea that he was considering surgery…” Molander sighed and shook his head. “No, I honestly had no idea about that.”

  Silence took over, and Fabian filled it by trying to reconcile the mental image of Elvin hanging from the ceiling with the colleague he had gotten to know over the past two years.

  “Okay, listen, this isn’t easy for anyone,” Tuvesson said at last. “It probably would have been better for us to take the rest of the week off, but that’s just not possible. We have a suspect in custody, but the investigation is far from over. When Högsell arrives, which could be at any moment, I want you to put all your feelings and thoughts about Elvin aside so you can focus on what we have ahead of us. Okay?”

  Fabian nodded and saw the others doing the same. Tuvesson was right. No matter how difficult, they had no choice but to postpone their grief. Cliff took a chocolate croissant, his eyes on Elvin’s empty chair, and passed the tray along just as the door opened and chief prosecutor Stina Högsell walked in, her eyes moving immediately to the sumptuous pile of pastries.

  Like Fabian, she had likely decided to keep her hands off the calories, considering how much she’d struggled with her weight in recent years. Rumour had it that she’d lost over forty kilos and had the loose skin surgically removed. In any case, she looked at least ten years younger and these days dressed in a new style, wearing clothes that emphasized her shape, rather than the concealing layers of fabric that had once been her trademark.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said, even though everyone was still busy handing out napkins and helping themselves to a pastry. “I have to bring charges by noon this Friday. To do that, I need conclusive evidence. Evidence we don’t have yet, so you have fifty-two hours, starting now, to put things in order. If you can’t do that, I’ll have no choice but to release the suspect.”

  That must be what he was counting on, Fabian thought. That was why he’d sat there lying his ass off with a smug smile on his face.

  “Hold on a minute, you lost me there,” Cliff said, about to take a bite of his croissant. “I thought all we needed was a fake signature to snare him and make an arrest. He also executed a banker in front of several witnesses.”

  “That’s true. And if you had apprehended him inside the bank as planned, instead of on the roof of Åhléns, this would all look very different.”

  Cliff sighed and prepared to argue the point.

  “Cliff, she’s right,” Fabian said. “Right now he’s flat out denying everything, and no matter how certain we are that he was the man in the bank, we have no way to prove it.”

  “But, Astrid, you saw him. You were right there when he —”

  “Yes, but it was an urgent situation,” Tuvesson said. “And he looked completely different.”

  “But you wouldn’t have any trouble picking him out —”

  “Hey, listen,” Högsell interrupted. “You’ll have to forgive me, but the earth won’t stop spinning just so you can finish talking. Several of you saw him, but your witness statements aren’t much help. What we need is an outsider of some sort. Someone who hasn’t seen the witness since he was taken into custody, someone who can point him out in a lineup. Set that up, and then we can talk.”

  “What if there isn’t one?” Lilja asked.

  “Then we’ll have to get by on technical evidence: fingerprints, hair, and the like. Evidence that links him to one of the victims or their homes, and in the best case even to the bank.”

  “What if there isn’t —” Cliff began, but Högsell was quick to interrupt.

  “If all else fails, we’ll go with circumstantial. But as you all know, that’s an extremely risky path, and the tiniest gap could sink the whole ship. I don’t want to take up any more of your time, but I’ll be around my office more or less 24/7 until Friday. Okay?”

  The others nodded, and Högsell took her coffee and left the room.

  “Great, let’s get started.” Tuvesson stood up. “As you just heard, our priorities are clear. Witnesses, technical evidence, and circumstantial evidence.” She wrote them on the whiteboard, side by side, like headings. “In the best-case scenario, it will only take one of them to bring charges. But if you ask me, it’s just as likely that any decision will be based on all evidence taken together and we’ll need everything we can dig up. I suggest we work on all three fronts in tandem.”

  The others nodded.

  “Let’s start with potential witnesses. What we’re after is someone who might have met the suspect while he was claiming to be either Peter Brise or Chris Dawn.”

  “We have the real estate agent who sold Brise’s flat, and the banker at the Söder office,” Fabian said.

  “Right. Rickard Jansson,” Tuvesson said. “Let’s bring them in and see if they can’t pick our guy out of a lineup.” She wrote down the names. “What’s the real estate agent’s name?”

  “Johan Holmgren,” Fabian said. “I can contact him.”

  “Then we have Chris Dawn’s wife and kids,” Lilja said.

  “Do we have any idea where they might be?”

  “According to Instagram, she and the kids were in Crete last weekend. Since then there’s been nothing.”

  “Okay, start by contacting the airline right away.”

  Lilja nodded and left the conference room.

  “Ingvar, you haven’t said anything. I hope you have something to bring to the table.” Tuvesson circled the heading Technical evidence on the whiteboard.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t,” Molander said. “To be fair, we’re not totally finished with the bank, but thus far we haven’t found anything concrete.”

  “What about the roof?” Cliff said. “Have you been up there and had a look around?”

  Molander didn’t dignify this with a response; just a tired look.

  “I mean, he had to have done something with the clothes and wig when he changed.”

  “That’s true. But he didn’t leave them on the roof.”

  “Speaking of, have we checked for an alternate route from the roof of the bank to the store where he came out?” Fabian asked, finally giving in to his sweet tooth and reaching for a Danish.

  Molander nodded. “Basically, all you have to do is climb down to the neighbouring roof and go across to the furthest skylight, which leads right to the stairwell that also houses the staff entrance to Gömstället, or whatever that store is called.”

  “So he could just as easily have changed clothes there as up on the roof,” Tuvesson said. “We’ll have to question the staff — and, Ingvar, you get a guy to begin searching that store right away.”

  “Any particular guy you had in mind?” Molander sipped his coffee. “Because my three are already full up with the bank, and we haven’t even started on Chris Dawn’s ho
use.”

  “I spoke with Malmö, and they’ve agreed to loan us two men and a K9. And while we’re on the topic of Dawn, a search of his house is top priority, starting now.”

  Molander nodded.

  “There’s one more thing before we’re done.” Tuvesson turned to Cliff. “What did you manage to find out about Rolf Stensäter?” She pointed at a new photograph of the suspect. “Is he in deep freeze somewhere too? Does he even exist?”

  “That’s a good question,” Cliff said. “I was planning to take a look as soon as we’re finished here. All I can say for the moment is that I haven’t managed to find anything that doesn’t match what he said during the interrogation with Fabian. Home, neighbours, job, when he got his licence — it all appears to be accurate. I printed out some pictures I found online, and I was thinking you could get them analyzed when you have a minute.” He took three printouts from a folder and handed them over to Molander.

  One showed the suspect in front of the white Škoda, and the two others depicted him in the process of sharpening lawnmower blades.

  “We don’t need a computer to know that’s him.” Molander handed the photos back.

  “So you’re saying that he really is who he claims to be?” Tuvesson asked.

  “Either that, or he’s filled the Internet with new pictures of himself.”

  “But…” Tuvesson gave a heavy sigh. “Okay, he is extremely well-prepared. That much I can agree on. But surely there are limits to what he can do. How deep into every tiny detail can he go? Right?”

  The question hung in the air, unanswered. With every passing second of silence the answer became clearer. If there was anything the suspect didn’t seem to have, it was a limit. He likely hadn’t known that they were on his trail, waiting for him at the bank. And yet he’d had such a detailed escape plan that it had almost looked like it was going to work.

  The silence was broken by the door opening as Lilja stopped halfway into the room. “I just got off the phone with Norwegian Airlines. Jeanette Dawn and her two boys, Sune and Viktor, were supposed to have landed at Kastrup on Sunday.”