Was this what he had to look forward to? Fabian wasn’t an alcoholic, but loneliness scared him just as much. He wouldn’t be the first person whose life had gone downhill when nothing seemed to matter anymore. When everyday life was wrapped in a plastic film of tedium, and meaning had been removed from every action. What would happen to him then? Did he have what it took to cope, to survive, or would he become one of them?
Tuvesson’s phone, which had been tossed on the sofa, came to life with the same marimba ringtone he and millions of other people used. It was Cliff. Fabian let it go to voicemail and gently rolled Tuvesson onto her back, away from the vomit, then wiped off her face with paper towels from the roll on the sofa and started walking around opening the rest of the windows. What this place really needed was a deep clean with environmentally harmful agents, but he couldn’t stick around that long. At the same time, he couldn’t just leave her there.
Fabian hung up his jacket, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and started with the bathroom. First a couple of flushes, then toilet cleaner and some elbow grease with the toilet brush until almost everything had come loose. He was clearing the floor of old toothbrushes, pads, and other junk when he heard the marimba tone again. This time, though, it was coming from his own phone.
“Hi, Cliff. Is this urgent, or can I call you back? I’m a little busy.”
“Busy doing what? And where are you?”
“I have something to take care of before I pay a visit to Marianne Wester’s husband and daughter in Höganäs. Did something happen?”
“Have you heard from Tuvesson? I’ve tried to call her a bunch of times and I’m really starting to worry. Maybe someone should go over to her house.”
“That’s not necessary. I already talked to her,” Fabian said.
“What? You did? When?”
“Just now. She just called. She’s in an emergency meeting down in Malmö trying to get us some extra resources, and you know how hard it can be to make that happen.” At least that last part was true.
“Oh?” Cliff went silent; it was almost possible to hear him fighting not to ask more prying questions.
“Listen, we’ll talk later.”
“Hold your horses. Who said I was finished?”
“What is it you don’t understand? She’s in Malmö, and she won’t be back in the office until —”
“It’s not about Two-fer,” Cliff interrupted. “That’s not why I was calling.”
“No?”
“You know that family crest on the ring? I was prepared to go through every coat of arms in existence. You know how many there are in Sweden alone?”
“No,” Fabian said, hooking up his headset so he could keep cleaning.
“Over eight hundred, and don’t ask me the point of having your own special one, because they all look pretty much identical.”
“But you got lucky.” Fabian went into the kitchen, where he started tying up the bulging garbage bags and putting them outside.
“Yes, how did you know? I barely had time to get started before I got a match with the von Gyllenborg family. Have you heard of them?”
“No, should I?” He emptied the dishwasher and began filling it with dirty dishes.
“Most of them live in Stockholm or just outside of it. Apparently they’re old nobility, counts and barons, the whole works. And —”
“Cliff, did you identify the body or not?”
“Cool your jets, I’m getting to that.”
Fabian had forgotten how irritating Cliff could be at a time like this. He felt impatience rising in him even as he tried to focus his attention on mopping the floor.
“The thing is, the von Gyllenborgs seem to have been involved in an awful lot of strange things.”
“Cliff, you don’t have to go through their entire —”
“For Christ’s sake, can you just listen?”
Cliff almost never got angry, and Fabian had never heard him raise his voice against anyone but his own wife. “Sorry,” he said, hoping that this would be sufficient, as he left the kitchen, holding a towel that was steaming with warm water.
“It’s fine. I’m the one who should apologize.” There was a long, heavy sigh on the other end. “I’m just so damn tired of never getting to finish my sentences.”
“I think we’re all a little tired.” Back in the living room, Fabian crouched down and began to clean Tuvesson’s face with the steaming towel. “Go ahead and tell me.”
“So far it’s just a loose theory, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But it won’t surprise me if Braids can confirm it when he’s done with his work. Anyway, on July 11, 2010, Count Bernard von Gyllenborg vanished without a trace. I think the body we found is his.”
“A count?” Fabian lifted Tuvesson by the armpits and headed for the bedroom.
“Yes. He was supposed to spend the weekend at his family’s estate near Järna, south of Stockholm. But according to his brother Aksel von Gyllenborg, who owns half the estate, Bernard never showed up.”
“How did he end up in Halén’s yard? Is there any link between them?”
“Not as far as I can tell yet, but it has to be there somewhere. Anyway, here’s where it gets really interesting, his brother Aksel was found dead on his hunting grounds on October 24, 2010, less than four months after Bernard disappeared. Want to know how he died?”
“Yes,” Fabian said as he gently laid Tuvesson in her bed and tucked her in.
“As I understand it, he lived alone out there, and according to the papers he headed out to hunt on Saturday and never came home. The search began early Sunday morning, and eight hours later they found him. It turned out he’d shot himself in the foot by accident and wasn’t able to get home.”
“A bullet in the foot won’t kill you.”
“No, but the cold will.”
“He froze to death?”
“It was more than five degrees below freezing that night. But my guess is he had been dead a long time already.”
78
Fabian’s former colleague Malin Rehnberg was sitting at her desk in the Kronoberg police station in Stockholm, her phone pressed to her ear and her eyes on the old, yellowed investigation file that lay open in front of her. Just an hour ago, Fabian had had the gall to call and ask for her help. If there was anyone she didn’t want to help, it was Fabian. In fact, she wanted to tell him to go to hell.
Since the traumatic incident almost two years ago, when one of the twins in her womb lost its life in the basement of the Israeli embassy, she had been waiting for him to contact her to talk about what had happened. About why he hadn’t been able to pull the trigger to defend her, Tomas, and Jarmo. About why two of their colleagues were dead and she was a mother of one.
Sure, Fabian had sent an overly lavish bouquet of flowers and dropped by to visit her while she was on maternity leave a few months later. But not to talk about the past. He had come to tell her that he and his family had decided to leave Stockholm and move to Helsingborg. Malin had been floored — she stood there with the tin of coffee in hand, dumbfounded.
But now he could call her, when he needed her help with evidence in his case. Malin had been caught so off guard when she heard his voice, and so happy to hear it, that she forgot all about her anger and agreed to help without giving it a second thought. And now she was sitting there with the phone ringing in her ear, waiting for him to answer, reluctantly dragged into a twenty-year-old cold case.
According to Fabian, it was urgent. No matter that it was Ascension Day — as soon as her partner Anders got back from his major grocery run to Willy’s she had let him take over caring for Thindra and gone to Kronoberg, where she looked up the old case file in the archive. As luck would have it, her new colleague Per Wigsell hadn’t come to work that day, so she was free of his constant annoying questions.
“Hi, Malin, did you f
ind anything?” came Fabian’s voice, and once again all the irritation flowed right out of her. She really had missed him, and even if he wasn’t sitting at the desk across from hers, it was almost like they were working together again.
“I did, actually,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee, which had long since gone cold. “A twenty-year-old investigation into the murder of Henning von Gyllenborg.”
“Who’s that?”
“Bernard and Aksel von Gyllenborg’s father. On May 16, 1992, he was found dead in one of the cottages on his land south of Stockholm. We’re talking flat-out slaughtered. The autopsy report says he was stabbed in the back eighteen times. Someone must have really hated him to do that.”
“Who was in charge of the investigation? Edelman?”
“Yes. But he never brought it to a resolution, and in the end he was forced to close the case.”
“What do you mean, forced?”
“Fabian, I know what you’re thinking. But once upon a time he was a very good investigator. He did solid work, no stone left unturned. I promise you, we’re talking about a thick volume here.”
“Okay,” Fabian said, and she could hear his reluctance. “Is there any link to the murders of the brothers?”
“Not that I’ve found so far. I’ve only had time to skim it. One interesting point is that both sperm and blood were found on the victim’s penis. The sperm was his, but the blood wasn’t.”
“So he had just raped someone?”
“That’s the most logical explanation. Edelman was on that track too; he assumed the underlying motive was revenge.”
“Were there any suspects?”
“Yes, a Vera Meyer who worked as a cook at the estate. She lived in the cottage where he was found, so obviously she was the first one brought in for questioning. But she had an alibi; she’d spent that whole weekend with a friend in Kalmar. Plus it turned out that the blood wasn’t hers.”
“Was she the only one?”
“No, they interrogated at least twenty women in the neighbourhood, and took blood samples, but there was no match. It’s all incredibly strange. Like the killer just went up in smoke.”
“Maybe that’s our parallel.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, exactly. But if there’s anything our killer is good at, it’s going up in smoke. This Vera Meyer, is she still alive?”
“No, she died of breast cancer three years later. But what do you say I have a chat with Edelman? Maybe he’ll have something to add.”
“I’d prefer to keep him out of this. But that cottage, do you have an address, so we can find out who lives there now?”
“Hold on, I’ll check.” Malin paged through the file until she found a page that contained pictures, maps, and an address for the crime scene. “Here it is. Highway 857, just outside of Järna.” She typed the address into the search field of the police registry and the computer brought up a list of everyone who’d lived in the cottage for the past twenty years. “That’s weird,” she said, taking a closer look at the list of matches. “It doesn’t seem like anyone has lived there since Vera Meyer died.”
“It’s been empty for seventeen years?”
“If the registry is accurate, yes.”
Neither of them said anything for almost a minute. It may have been a few years since she and Fabian had worked together, but she knew exactly what Fabian was thinking. He wanted her to visit the cottage, but he wasn’t sure it would be okay to ask her for yet another favour. He was hoping she would suggest it herself.
But Malin wasn’t about to make it that easy for him.
79
Fabian cut the engine and unfastened his seatbelt. He felt relieved. It was the second conversation he’d had with Malin, and she’d remained perfectly calm. She’d even agreed to go out to that cottage and have a look, once he’d found the courage to ask.
He stepped out of the car and gazed up at the Church of the Ascension. Its tall, wide bell tower seemed oversized in comparison to the town of Höganäs. The bells were ringing for services, and he wondered if the church received more visitors on Ascension Day than other holidays, thanks to its name.
He crossed the street, heading for the four-storey apartment building on the corner of Storgatan. One side was red brick, while the front, with its ugly access balconies, was covered in beige siding. Why the housing committee had approved the construction was almost as great a mystery as why the architect had wasted time drawing it.
The nameplate beside the little button at the front door read Christoffer & Marianne Wester. Fabian pictured the woman in jogging gear at the bottom of the grave and sighed. He barely had time to press it before the glass-and-aluminum door buzzed.
“Dad! He’s here,” the daughter called, retreating into the modern apartment with its bright colours, open floor plan, and windows in all directions; as if to emphasize the advantages of living in the ugliest building in the neighbourhood, it was surrounded only by lovely facades.
The father was sitting at the dining table on the far side of the living room, gazing out at the church; he didn’t make the slightest attempt to turn around and say hello. Fabian wasn’t surprised, considering that this man had recently learned his wife would never be coming back. Meanwhile, the daughter, who couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve, emerged from the kitchen with a tray full of coffee, tea, and a freshly baked cake.
“It’s banana cake. Do you like banana cake?”
Fabian nodded, although he couldn’t recall the last time he’d had any. “Is it okay if I sit down?”
“I thought you could sit there.” She nodded at the chair across from her dad and placed the tray on the table. “Coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please,” Fabian said, pulling out the chair. “Can I give you a hand?”
“No, that’s not necessary,” she responded as she began to serve him.
“Clever girl you’ve got there.” Fabian waited for any sort of reaction. But the father continued to ignore him, gazing out the window. “I have two kids, both older, and neither of them can even empty the dishwasher.”
“Today it’s been one year, five months, and three days since you stopped looking for my wife,” the man said without looking away from the oversized church tower.
Fabian nodded, certain that this was true. He was about to say that he had not been involved in the investigation personally when the man continued.
“You said that the search would move into a new phase, with a more effective use of resources, where you would all be more useful behind your desks.”
“That’s possible. But unfortunately I didn’t have anything —”
“Since then, I haven’t heard a single word,” the man cut him off, turning to face him. “Not a single fucking word in eighteen months. That’s what I call an effective use of resources. No one would meet with me or take my calls. You have consistently refused to say anything about how it’s going or what’s happening. You responded to my emails with boilerplate lies claiming you’re still working on the case and are far from giving up hope.”
“I’m very sorry if you felt that the police work was —”
“But now you show up. Now you need my help. And we’re supposed to stand at attention, serve you fancy coffee, and be so fucking grateful.”
“Christoffer, I just have a few simple questions that will help us —”
“Help you what? Find her alive, so she can come home again?” The man waited for an answer Fabian couldn’t give him. “No, I didn’t think so.”
“Dad…”
“Meja, you stay out of this. Fabian, or whatever the hell your name is, I don’t give a shit who killed my wife. I don’t give a shit if you catch him or not. I don’t give a shit what kind of punishment he receives. I don’t give a shit about anything because Marianne is gone.”
Fabian was abo
ut to protest but checked himself. The man was right. There was nothing he or anyone else could do to bring his Marianne back. It was just like Tomas and Jarmo. It didn’t matter how many hours he spent at the shooting range each week, he would never be able to change the fact that they were gone and it was all his fault.
“Christoffer, I understand —”
“You don’t understand a goddamn thing!” He stood up and headed for the hallway; seconds later the apartment door slammed shut.
Fabian didn’t know what to do. He’d been planning to tell him where they’d found Marianne Wester, and ask what happened the day she’d disappeared. Above all, he’d wanted to discuss the suspicion that Johan Halén had been one of her banking clients and what she might have learned that made her such a threat to the perpetrator that both Johan and Marianne’s bodies ended up buried in Johan’s backyard. But all he could do was stand up and say thanks for the coffee.
“You don’t have to go. Not yet,” said the daughter. “He won’t be back for at least an hour, and I’d really like to hear what you have to say.”
“Not without your father, Meja. I’m sorry. You’re too young. But maybe you have another family member who could be present while we speak?”
“I was too young to lose my mother. Not to hear what happened.”
Fabian sat back down. She was right. Who was he to deny her the story?
“So you finally found her?”
“Yes. And unfortunately, your dad is right. She won’t be coming home.”
The girl put down her cup of tea and lowered her gaze. “I figured that out when they called Dad. But he wouldn’t say anything when I asked.”
Part of Fabian wanted to gather her up in his arms, hold her and comfort her. Another part wanted to run out and find her father, grab him, and shake him until he woke up and realized what he was putting his daughter through. Instead, he just sat there.
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