The Ninth Grave

by Stefan Ahnhem

  ‘Aren’t we a little sensitive today,’ said Tomas. ‘At least, there’s no doubt that we’ve come to the right place anyway.’ He held up a newspaper, where the eyes of every person on the page had been carefully cut out. ‘Check this out. He’s been at it with a scalpel on every fucking page of this paper.’

  Fabian connected his earphones to his iPod and put on Kashmir’s No Balance Palace, his favourite Danish band, in an attempt to shut out the others and let the apartment speak for itself.

  It was a corner apartment and faced both Blekingegatan and Östgötagatan. A kitchen table stood by a window in the rounded corner furthest away from him. The apartment layout looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He glanced out of the window and then it hit him. The last time he’d seen this view was in the condemned apartment in Östgötagatan where they had found Fischer’s and Grimås’ eyes in the refrigerator. The condemned apartment wasn’t too far from here. It didn’t take a huge leap of imagination to assume that Kremph used one apartment for living in and another for killing his victims. He turned around and noted the old wallpaper and peeling paint hanging down from the ceiling. Kremph’s building was in need of a major renovation. Perhaps that was the reason he was able to rent it.

  He’d filled every shelf and cupboard with various objects. There wasn’t a vacant space in the whole apartment. As soon as he’d stepped into it, Fabian, like the others, had thought it was messier than an over flowing bin room. But now he could see that it actually wasn’t that messy at all. Yes, a number of things had been carelessly tossed on the floor, but most of it was in neat piles, stacked up and categorized with what appeared to be great care. Ossian Kremph was evidently a collector.

  Fabian continued into the innermost room and looked around. It appeared to be used as a study and had an old wooden desk along one wall with a chair in front of it. In contrast to the rest of the apartment the desktop was completely empty.

  He went up and sat down in the office chair, which creaked as he leaned back. The desk had three horizontal drawers directly under the desktop. There were no handles, only gaping keyholes, but they were unlocked, so he was able to nudge them out from below.

  The right-hand drawer contained scissors, a scalpel and a roll of tape. An album filled with clippings of newspaper pictures of Carl-Eric Grimås and Adam Fischer lay in the middle compartment. The pictures, all taken at different times and in various environments, had one thing in common – the eyes were missing, just like in the newspapers that Tomas had found earlier. Fabian was struck by how much personality was found in the eyes, and how, without them, both Grimås and Fischer looked more like zombies than themselves.

  The left-hand drawer also contained pictures, but they weren’t neatly pasted into an album or cut out from newspapers. It looked like Kremph had probably been holding the camera. There were thirty-odd pictures, all of which had been taken at some distance from inside a bus. They showed various passengers reading, conversing with the person beside them, or looking out the window daydreaming. And from what Fabian could tell, none of the subjects was in more than one photo – except one woman who was in every single one.

  A woman with her eyes cut out.

  Was there yet another victim? Was that why Kremph wasn’t home?

  He set the pictures out on the desk to study them more thoroughly, but was interrupted by shrieking voices that drowned out David Bowie’s ‘The Cynic’. He pulled the earplugs out and hurried out to the others, who stood with their guns drawn, shouting at the same time.

  ‘Get down on your stomach!’ yelled Tomas, who stood with his gun in both hands. ‘Down, I said!’

  Fabian almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Ossian Kremph was standing like a statue in the middle of the room with a grocery bag in one hand, among piles of newspapers. It was almost as if he had materialized out of nowhere and he looked just as surprised as the police.

  ‘But, this isn’t right. You can’t just—’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘You damn well better believe we can!’ said Tomas. ‘Get down, dammit!’

  ‘No, this isn’t right. Not right—’

  ‘It’s probably best if you do as we say,’ said Jarmo, who had also drawn his weapon.

  Fabian was surprised at how small and different Kremph looked in real life, compared to the surveillance video of him dressed as a guard with a beard and a considerably bigger waist. Were all his surgical tools hidden under his clothes?

  ‘No… This isn’t good, not good at all.’ Kremph shook his head harder and harder, letting go of the grocery bag and waving his arms. ‘You have to leave now! Get out of here!’

  ‘Shut up and lie down!’ said Tomas.

  ‘Ossian, listen to me now,’ said Malin, with her gun in one hand and ID in the other. ‘We’re police officers and I think you know why we’re here. The best thing you can do is to just stay calm and do exactly as we say.’

  Ossian Kremph relaxed a little and nodded.

  ‘Very good. Now hold your hands above your head and get down slowly on your knees.’

  Kremph held up his hands and made an effort to lower himself. But then, without warning, he turned around and disappeared out towards the hall.

  ‘Stop!’ Tomas and Jarmo shouted at the same time.

  But it was too late – Kremph was already out of the apartment and down the stairs, judging by the echo.

  ‘What the hell are we doing? He’s getting away, dammit!’ Tomas shouted on his way out.

  *

  OSSIAN KREMPH RUSHED OUT of the front door on Blekingegatan and ran as fast as he could towards Götgatan. He knew he was faster than most – he always had been – and whatever happened he didn’t intend to let himself be arrested. Not again. He just needed to get down in the subway to be safe. He had his paths, and could easily disappear right before their eyes – fucking cops.

  How could he have been so naïve? It wasn’t at all like him. And he’d seen them wandering down the street just a few days ago. He’d promised himself to be prepared if they came and rang his doorbell, and yet he walked right into their trap.

  There wasn’t far to go now. He just had to cross Götgatan and then head down into the underworld. He knew exactly how to navigate his way through the subway entry in the most efficient way possible, which meant having to force your way past all the bastards who didn’t know that you should stand on the right side.

  He could hear the shrieking voices of the police behind, ordering him to stop and raise his hands above his head. They could scream all they wanted. He was done obeying orders and playing nice.

  Once he was down on the platform, he jumped quickly on to the tracks, and continued running right into the darkness. He would soon reach his goal: a place they would never find him.

  He’d been lucky. There was no train in the station and all was quiet on the tracks. He heard something behind him that sounded like a car tyre bursting. But there obviously weren’t any cars here. He didn’t even realize what it was until his left leg gave way, making him fall headlong and strike his head on the rails.

  It was the sound that made him come to and recognize what was about to happen. The characteristic track shaking that indicated a train was on its way.

  39

  THIS WAS EXACTLY WHAT her father had warned her about, thought Katja Skov, who had no idea where she was or how she’d ended up here. He had poured hundreds of thousands into various security systems and told her that under no circumstances should she leave the house in Snekkersten unless it was planned in advance with the bodyguards. She hated it. It felt like she was under house arrest, while her friends were all out partying in Copenhagen. The past few years he’d talked about almost nothing other than how softer targets were becoming more common as traditional thefts got harder to pull off.

  But now it was a fact – she was living her father’s worst nightmare.

  She’d been abducted and carried off like a victim in a bad movie that you knew would end happily, except this was no mov
ie.

  She tried to estimate how long she’d been there, but gave up. Considering how much she’d consumed yesterday, her sense of time was the last thing she could rely on. And it was dark, so dark that she couldn’t see a few centimetres in front of her, even though her eyes should have grown accustomed long ago.

  She was definitely confined in a cramped space. She tried to scratch her nose, but there wasn’t enough room. She was wrapped up in something hard, maybe a rug, and could hear a rustling and there was the smell of plastic around her. She certainly ought to be afraid, but she didn’t have the energy to really care. It would surely work out.

  She closed her eyes in an attempt to focus on what had really happened, but it didn’t take long before everything started spinning and a sense of weightlessness took over. She was still high, and if she didn’t come down soon she wouldn’t be able to say which way was up or down.

  She assumed they were trying to scare her and they wanted her to pound and scream as loud as she could. But she didn’t intend to treat them to that. Instead she would stay so quiet and calm that in the end, they would be the ones who were worried. And when they finally came to take her out into the light, she would play dead, just like you should do if you fall down into a bear’s den.

  She couldn’t imagine what their reaction would be when they discovered their plan to make millions was now worthless.

  She thought about the party. It was supposed to be a quiet gathering but it had degenerated into a shameless orgy with people snorting up almost her whole supply and fucking in every corner. But that’s how it almost always went: the most fun and successful parties were the unplanned.

  And when Niels suggested that they should go to Helsingør and make the rounds like real Swedes – actually, it wasn’t Niels but that girl someone had dragged along – she couldn’t say no. Leaving without telling her father or any of the guards made her jump for joy.

  The group consisted of her closest friends and a few more whose names she didn’t know. They’d left the house through the window in the bathroom and managed to get over the wall by using a protruding branch from a tree.

  The taxis had been waiting for them on Strandvejen, and before she knew it they were sitting on the Swedish ferry on their way to Helsingborg. Everyone had agreed they should keep partying and always stay away from the boring old everyday – which was pretty much how she’d been living her life for the past ten years anyway.

  Her father had done everything in his power to get her to calm down and to start taking care of herself. And God knows she’d tried everything, from working at one of his many companies, to therapy, physical activity and medication. But nothing could get rid of the feeling that she had nothing left to lose and that it could all be over at any moment. No matter how you looked at it, she was living on borrowed time, so why shouldn’t she make the most of it? Suck the marrow out of every day as if it were her last – carpe fucking diem.

  Of course, that wasn’t what her father had imagined when she had initially got her diagnosis. He’d started pulling all the strings he could. If it was up to him, she would have had a thriving career and worked at least sixty hours a week. But what was the point? They already had more money than they could ever spend.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand his disappointment, especially in the first few years, but now more than ten years had passed and his disappointment still coloured their whole relationship. He tried to hide it for the most part, but bitterness almost always shone through in his eyes and, reading between the lines of the things he said to her, it seemed that sometimes he regretted having helped her at all.

  She felt a vibration and could hear a motor starting. She couldn’t tell if she had only just started to feel afraid because she realized she was in the trunk of a car or because she was moving. But she was scared now – no, terrified. Only now did it occur to her that this was real and it wasn’t just a bad joke. She suddenly remembered that poor woman she had seen on the news. Karen Neuman – that was it. But hadn’t the police announced that they had caught her murderer? Terror ran through her body like a high-voltage charge. Every one of her muscles tensed as if in spasm and she screamed as loud as she could.

  But the rug made such an effective muffler that she soon gave up. She could feel them start to slowly roll forward. They hit a few bumps, after which the surface smoothed out. They were driving off the ferry, she thought. But into Denmark or into Sweden she didn’t know.

  For the first time in a very long time, she realized how much she had to lose.

  40

  DUNJA TRIED TO SWALLOW the lump in her throat as she looked out over the journalists and photographers taking their seats in front of her. The more crowded it got, the more uncomfortable she felt.

  It didn’t surprise her that there was a lot of interest in the press conference. She’d been familiar with Aksel Neuman ever since he launched his radio programme, Voices in the Night, but he’d only become a national celebrity after his appearance on Let’s Dance and subsequently got his own talk show. But she hadn’t expected the interest to be so great that they’d have to move the press conference to the big hall so they could fit them all in. They were still streaming in, though, and it was unlikely they would have enough room for everyone.

  If it had been up to her, she would have been with the operation at Benny Willumsen’s apartment in Malmö instead. But Sleizner insisted that she sit beside him and emphasized how important it was for her career that she be seen by the media every now and then and didn’t just work behind the scenes. Considering how well things have worked out for him, even though he never did any real police work, he certainly knew what he was talking about, she thought, feeling the sweat starting to bead on her upper lip.

  It was the dress’s fault. It was much too warm, made of some material that didn’t breathe and left her feeling like a stuffed sausage. Carsten had given it to her as a Christmas present last year, but it was two sizes too small, which was the case whenever he gave her clothes. She was sure she’d lost over five pounds since then, but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

  She looked at Sleizner, who smiled at her, while taking out a handkerchief to dab at his upper lip. She’d hoped her own sweat wasn’t visible and was afraid that her make-up would be ruined if she tried to wipe it off. The cursed drops of sweat that persisted in making awkward appearances, she swore to herself, dabbing as carefully as she could with her handkerchief.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Sleizner, and she gave him the most convincing smile she could. But evidently that wasn’t persuasive enough, because he leaned towards her, placed his hand on her thigh and whispered in her ear, ‘Just relax and let me steer the boat until we’re in the port. Once we’re there, I promise to treat you to something really good.’

  She nodded again. Mostly because she didn’t know how she should react. Actually, she did know, and the truth was that she didn’t want to challenge him.

  ‘I want to start by welcoming all of you here!’ Sleizner removed his hand from her thigh and looked out over the assembly. ‘My name is Kim Sleizner, and for those of you who don’t know me, I’m head of the homicide unit here in Copenhagen. I have Dunja Hougaard with me, who will be a new face for most of you. This is the first time she’s joined me up on stage, so I hope you’ll be kind to her.’

  Scattered laughter spread throughout the assembly and Dunja smiled as best she could.

  ‘Dunja is responsible for the investigation of the murder of Karen Neuman. She has come to a number of interesting conclusions, to say the least. We’ve not only managed to identify a prime suspect, but it also appears we’ll be able to close five older homicide investigations – cases that have dogged us for several years. And in addition,’ he continued, holding a finger up, ‘it looks like we’re also going to be able to help our Swedish colleagues where they’ve faltered. But I’ll turn the floor over to Dunja.’ He turned towards her. ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Thanks very much. Uh… Yes,
just as Kim Sleizner was saying, we’re dealing with a perpetrator who is active on both sides of the Sound,’ said Dunja, feeling the sweat run down her back. ‘Our prime suspect, who is still at large, is named—’

  ‘Closer to the mic! Can’t hear you!’ someone was yelling.

  ‘Sorry.’ Dunja leaned toward the microphone. ‘Is this better?’

  ‘Yes, but it would be even better if you turn it on,’ said Sleizner, once again getting a few chuckles.

  Dunja also forced a laugh, while she fumbled for the little button on the microphone with shaky hands. Her laugh caught in her throat like a sticky mass that made her want to throw up and scream out loud to everyone that Kim Sleizner was a sexist, male chauvinist pig and that they could all go to hell. Suddenly, she felt as if something burst inside her.

  It didn’t hurt in the least. On the contrary, it calmed her. And when she raised her eyes and looked out over the laughing assembly, she had to bite back a laugh as it occurred to her that their low-pitched voices sounded like a herd of cows in rut. Her fingers stopped trembling and she calmly turned on the microphone.

  ‘Can everyone hear me now? One-two. One-two,’ she said, pulling the microphone out of its holder so that she could hold it. ‘You too, Kim?’

  Sleizner nodded, even though he looked anything but amused.

  ‘Excellent! But now the fun is over,’ she continued, pressing on the remote control that pulled up a portrait of Benny Willumsen. ‘This is Benny Willumsen. He’s a Danish citizen, but lives in Malmö. About two years ago, the Swedish police arrested him for this crime.’ She pressed the button again, whereupon an image from the murder scene in Rydebäck was projected behind her: a woman was lying lifeless on a sandy beach. A white sheet, stained red in several places from all the blood that had leaked from the deep wounds, covered her body.

  ‘Without going into specific details, we can confirm that there are a number of striking similarities between this case and the Karen Neuman investigation in Tibberup, even if he went a step further in the latter and…’ Dunja trailed off and looked at her phone that was vibrating on the table in front of her. It was Sverker Holm from the Helsingborg police, or ‘Klippan’ as he was evidently called.