Eighteen Below

by Stefan Ahnhem

  “After that it just got worse. I didn’t want to do it, but he made me. He threatened to tell if I backed out.”

  A few more metres and he would be outside, able to breathe normally. In just a minute he wouldn’t have to listen, and all this would be behind him. And once he had changed schools and seen to it that their paths would never cross again, it would be like it had never happened.

  “For Christ’s sake, say something!”

  Once he had his hand on the door handle, Theodor turned around to ask her never to contact him again. But he didn’t make it that far. The sound of the doorbell came out of nowhere, sounding like the chimes of judgement day.

  “Do you know who it is?” he hissed, although he could see on her face that she was as puzzled as him. “Is it Henrik, here to pick up the phone?” He hurried to the kitchen. “One word that I’m here and I’ll tell my dad everything.”

  Alexandra shook her head and wiped away her tears. “He would never set foot here.” She moved to the intercom on the wall and pressed a button; the screen lit up. “It’s probably just some friend of my mom’s,” she finally said with a shrug, turning to the door to open it.

  “Hold on.” Theodor hurried to the intercom and looked at the screen, where he could see the woman outside ringing the bell.

  He would so dearly have loved to shrug just as Alexandra had, to nod at her that it was fine to answer the door. But he couldn’t. He had met this woman before, though only once, almost two years ago.

  Yet he had no trouble recognizing the Danish policewoman who had saved his life.

  67

  A red arrow led from an enlarged fingerprint on the whiteboard to a picture of a dirty coffeemaker in a kitchen that was just as dirty. Another arrow aimed at a zoomed-in photograph of an old clock-radio next to a bed. The third arrow, which Cliff was drawing as Tuvesson came in with a bunch of pizza boxes in her arms, pointed at a picture of a TV remote tossed on a threadbare easy chair.

  “Astrid, you must have read my mind. Pizza is exactly what I need.” Cliff put down the marker, took the boxes, and began spreading them across the table.

  “I suspected everyone might be getting hungry,” Tuvesson said, passing out drinks, plates, and cups. “How did things go at Rolf Stensäter’s? Did you find anything?”

  “Oh yes. Quite a bit…ooh, kebab pizza. You are a goddamn angel. I swear, if I weren’t already married, I definitely would have proposed to you, especially now that you’re single and all.” He took a slice and began to eat.

  “So what did you find?”

  “Flakes of skin, fingerprints, belongings. So many belongings. And I thought my house had too much furniture. Oh man, this has to be the best pizza I’ve ever eaten.” He took another large bite. “Just don’t say anything to Berit. According to her, I’m on a diet.”

  “Did you find anything we can use as evidence?”

  Cliff shook his head. “As far as I could tell, every single one of the fingerprints matched our guy in custody. But who knows, maybe Molander can find something more.” He shrugged and tore loose another mouthful.

  “What are you saying? That he’s really who he claims to be?”

  “That, or he’s put an awful lot of time and energy into making it look that way. I even went around to some of the neighbours, and all of them confirmed that he was the man in the picture.”

  “And you didn’t see anything to suggest there might be a grave or something similar?”

  “No, and Einstein didn’t either.”

  “Einstein?”

  “Yeah, the dog.” Cliff sighed and shook his head. “Berit made me bring him along because one of the ladies who was coming to her salon today is allergic to animals.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Behind you.”

  Tuvesson turned around, but all she saw was a leather bag next to the wall; it was closed. “You don’t mean to say that you closed him up in that bag?”

  “What? I can’t have him running around marking his territory in here. Besides, I left a gap so he can breathe.”

  “Well, there’s that,” Tuvesson said, deciding to trust him. She had too much else on her mind. Like how she had an identical bag in her car, and she always used it when she went to Systembolaget for liquor, which made her think about the fact she’d been sober since the previous Monday. Considering the past six months, this was something of a feat, and she ought to feel proud. Then again, it was really thanks to her job, and to be perfectly honest all she felt was an intense hope that Högsell would get what she needed and the investigation would be over and done with.

  She turned to Fabian, who had just joined them and was helping himself to some pizza. “How’d it go? Did you get hold of Diana Davidsson?”

  “Yes, that’s everyone.” Fabian poured himself a glass of Ramlösa sparkling water. “But we’ll have to squeeze her in at three thirty, between Rickard Jansson and Jeanette Dawn. That’s the only time she’s available.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. How many foils are we up to now?”

  “Eight, and since he looked different each time, I’ve given body shape priority over clothing and hairstyles.”

  “Great, Högsell will be pleased. She thinks the lineup is our best chance right now.”

  Fabian nodded and went to the wall, where pictures of the grave and the three victims had been hung up.

  “Oh, right, and I just spoke with Braids,” Tuvesson went on. “The man with the beard has been identified as Gunnar Frelin. Single, no kids. And as Molander assumed, the German shepherd was his.” She wrote the name under the picture of the man.

  “Do we have a link to Chris Dawn?”

  “Frelin worked at Soundscape, where Chris Dawn was a customer. They sell and rent studio equipment. According to his colleague he was out on a delivery Saturday, but on Monday he called in sick because he threw out his back. Apparently it’s not the first time. Last time he was out for six weeks, so if we hadn’t found him it would have been some time before he was missed.”

  “What about a car?” Cliff said. “He must have driven there.”

  “It’s parked outside his apartment in Rydebäck, and Molander sent one of his guys over to check for prints.”

  “What about Per Krans?” Fabian pointed at the man with the bloody eye socket. “Did Braids have anything to say about him?”

  “Yes, but only preliminarily. You know how he is. Apparently Krans died of bleeding in the brain.”

  “What kind of bleeding?” Cliff asked, rejoining them with a fresh slice of pizza on his plate.

  “Well, we’re not talking about your usual cerebral hemorrhage; Krans suffered a number of different bleeds caused by some sort of sharp object being inserted in his left eye and destroying almost everything in its path.”

  “A sharp object,” Cliff repeated, as Fabian studied one of the pictures with an enlarged view of the injured eye socket. “What could that be?”

  “That’s the part he’s less clear on.”

  “But I bet you squeezed a guess out of him,” Fabian said.

  Tuvesson nodded. “A corkscrew.”

  “A corkscrew?” Cliff repeated.

  “Yes, or a wine opener; whatever you want to call it. Braids thinks he found traces of cork deep down in one hemisphere of the brain.”

  Fabian could picture it. An oblivious Per Krans rings the doorbell at Peter Brise’s house to put the pressure on and get to the bottom of the financial irregularities at Ka-Ching, only to discover that the man who opens the door is not Brise at all but a doppelgänger — and ends up with a corkscrew in his eye seconds later.

  “He likely didn’t plan that murder,” Tuvesson went on. “He used whatever he could find in Brise’s flat.”

  “Why not just make it easy and use a regular old knife?”

  “He probably didn’t want to leave
any evidence behind,” Fabian said. “It was better to keep the damage internal rather than let it drip all over the floor.”

  Cliff shook his head and put down his plate, although there was still pizza on it.

  “So this is where you are,” Lilja said, entering with her laptop under her arm.

  “Help yourself,” Tuvesson said. “Did you meet with her parents?”

  Lilja nodded and took a piece of pizza.

  “Whose parents?”

  “Soni Wikholm’s. You know, the paper courier we found in the grave,” Tuvesson said, turning to Lilja. “How did it go?”

  “You know,” Lilja said between bites. “I wonder how they ever got approved for adoption. They didn’t seem to care at all that their daughter was dead. They were totally indifferent. They emptied her apartment a year ago just so they wouldn’t have to pay the rent.”

  “She had a brother?”

  “Hao Wikholm. If you ask me, he must have been at least as odd as his sister. Apparently he left his parents the day after he finished school. Since then they have neither seen nor heard from him. All they have left is a moving box down in the basement full of dice and a dog-eared copy of The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. I’ve never seen so many dice. Did you know there are —”

  “But you were there for Soni, not Hao,” Tuvesson interrupted.

  “Right. They actually had three whole boxes she’d left behind, and among other things, I found this.” She held up a digital camera. “And there’s certainly some interesting stuff on it. A series of photographs of Seth Kårheden dead in his bed, for one.” She turned on the projector and hooked up her laptop. “But take a look at this.” The image projected onto the wall had been taken through a window, from the outside, but the only thing visible was a reflection of Soni herself. “At first I thought she was just taking a self-portrait, but then I figured out what had caught her interest.”

  “Can you tell when the picture was taken?” Cliff asked.

  “At 7:16 a.m. on Saturday, November 11, 2010. The day before she disappeared.”

  “So she was on the trail of something.” Tuvesson walked over to study the image at closer range. “But what?”

  “Do you see the open door that leads into the next room?” Lilja asked, zooming in on what had at first looked like just a brighter area.

  “It looks like a bathroom,” Cliff said, squinting so he could see better.

  “Exactly.” Lilja zoomed in closer and it immediately became clear to the others what she had found.

  In the bathroom, straight on, was a free-standing cabinet with a half-open mirrored door. Reflected in the mirror was a bald man in the shower, fully occupied with spreading shaving cream over his gangly, boyish body. There he was, the chameleon with a thousand faces, naked and unmasked, a second frozen in time.

  “Do you have any idea where this might be?” Tuvesson asked.

  “Not yet, but it’s likely that she was passing the house on her paper route, so I was going to contact the Newspaper Carrier Group to find out her route and just drive it, to see if I can find this place. This is what the house looks like, anyway.” She pulled up a picture that showed a charming white house with a white picket fence in the foreground.

  “You don’t need to drive her route,” Cliff said. “I know exactly where that house is. It’s in Viken, down by the water, and it belonged to Johan Halén, the shipowner’s son.”

  “You mean the one who gassed himself in the garage and whose body was found half-frozen?”

  Cliff nodded.

  Hugo Elvin had recognized it even back at the beginning of the investigation — there were obvious parallels between Halén’s death and Peter Brise’s. Even Cliff’s wife Berit had pointed it out at Sonja’s exhibition opening, and he himself had read through the older investigation and was unable to ignore the commonalities. Yet they’d let it slip through the cracks.

  “That means we have another victim.” Tuvesson turned to the others. “Fabian and I have to go to the jail for a lineup. Cliff, I suggest you head to Viken right away and take a look. Irene, see if you can get us a list of anyone reported missing in the last two years.”

  Cliff and Lilja nodded and began to gather their things. Fabian and Tuvesson left the room and walked to the elevator in silence. Fabian was convinced that she was asking herself the same question as him.

  How many more victims had they missed?

  68

  Normally, holding a suspect lineup was like performing a balancing act on a slack tightrope. The witness might have encountered images of the suspect in newspapers or online. There might be too few foils, or they might be wearing the wrong style of clothing or have the wrong look. Questions might be too leading and the witness might give the impression that he or she was uncertain or in other ways unreliable. Every detail represented a potential risk that the entire lineup would be declared unusable.

  Normally.

  This particular lineup was like no other; it was so complex that Fabian could no longer see the big picture. The various witnesses had not only seen two wildly different versions of the suspect, but he had changed his appearance in every conceivable way. Furthermore, they had innocently believed, at the time, that he was who he claimed to be. None of them had seen him as himself — bald, with no wig or specially chosen clothes; the way he looked now, standing there holding the number five sign.

  The lineup hadn’t started on a very good note. The real estate agent, Johan Holmgren, had taken his time, carefully studying each of the people on display. He had even selected their guy at first, but was so unsure of himself that he changed his mind and said he didn’t know. The banker Rickard Jansson had been the exact opposite, going so far as to state that the perpetrator was not in the lineup, that they had apprehended the wrong person.

  But Dina Dee was different. She had known Chris Dawn for a long time, and had managed to FaceTime with him when he wasn’t expecting it. She realized straight away that something wasn’t right.

  “Hey, my man,” she exclaimed, raising her hand for a high five.

  Fabian did his best to slap her hand straight on, but his aim was off.

  “Well, well.” Dee shook her head. “I hope you’re more skilled at catching bad guys than giving high fives.”

  “On that point you can rest easy. He’s already been caught,” Fabian said with a chuckle, helping her through the jail’s security check. “Now it’s up to you to make sure we don’t have to let him go.”

  “Just so you know, Dina Dee never rests easy. Gotta stay on top so you don’t drop.”

  “That’s fine,” Fabian said, showing her down the hall to the viewing room. “How well did you see him? You said something about the image being crap.”

  “Listen, I know what I saw, and it wasn’t Chris, okay?”

  “Okay,” Fabian said. He couldn’t help feeling some hope that things might go their way after all.

  He opened the door into the screened-off witness portion of the room, where Stina Högsell and Tuvesson were waiting.

  “Hi, my name is Astrid Tuvesson. I’m the chief of the criminal investigation department here at the Helsingborg police. And this is chief prosecutor Stina Högsell, who will be present as well.”

  Dee looked at Tuvesson’s outstretched hand as if it were contagious. “I’d prefer to keep talking to this dude, okay?”

  “Sure. No problem.” Tuvesson withdrew her hand. “Would you like a cup of coffee before we start?”

  “I mean, maybe you all have time to hang out and chill, but I have stuff to do and I’m not exactly drowning in free time. Plus coffee is poison, so why would I want to drink it?”

  “Okay,” Tuvesson said. “Let’s get going, then.” She gave Fabian a curt nod and went to stand by Högsell.

  “Please have a seat.” Fabian pulled out the middle of the three chairs in front of the large, d
ark window.

  “Maybe we should lower the chair a little, so you’re level with the window.” Fabian lowered the seat. “Are you comfortable? Does this feel okay?”

  “Do you see a pacifier in here?” Dee pointed at her mouth and he shook his head. “Good. Then maybe you can quit with the pampering and let them in before the next ice age.”

  “Okay,” said Fabian, who was forced to admit to himself that he liked her. She might be a pain, but she didn’t take any shit and seemed to know exactly what she wanted. Which was exactly what it would take if she were to have a chance of succeeding with her music.

  “This is how it will work,” he went on, sitting down next to her. “When I give the signal, nine people will be let into that room. They can neither see nor hear you. Each one will be holding a sign with a number. All you have to do is tell us which number is correct. If you feel uncertain or if you want anyone to take a step forward, just say so. The important thing is that you don’t rush to a decision. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re ready here; they can come in,” Fabian said into a microphone.

  A light came on in the room on the other side of the window. A door opened in the far left-hand corner, and in came a row of men, all thin and gangly and somewhere between thirty and forty. But that was where the similarities ended. Where one was blond, another had dark hair, and a third had a buzz cut but also a beard. Even their clothes were different, ranging from jeans to athletic gear to a suit and tie.

  The suspect had the number five on his sign, and he looked just as calm as he had during the two previous lineups. As if he wasn’t worried at all about the risk of being selected. But he also wasn’t aware of who was studying him from the other side of the one-way glass, and as far as Fabian could tell she was being thorough, looking calmly and methodically at each man.

  Maybe that was why his first reaction was that he must have misheard.

  “Number three.”

  His second reaction was that she must have said the wrong number but meant the right one. “Are you sure?” he said; he had to make an effort to keep his disappointment from showing on his forehead.