A creaking grew louder in time with her movements, and she decided not to break until it stopped. She started counting every jolt and made it to 384 when the sound suddenly ceased and was replaced a moment later by a loud crash.
She didn’t dare open her eyes for a while, but once she did, she realized that she was lying on the floor with the overturned table behind her. Some of the straps must have come loose, because she could now wriggle one arm out and move it freely. With a little luck she could reach all the way over to the scalpel that had fallen on the floor only a metre or so from her.
67
IT WOULD TAKE SOME time before Fabian fully understood the extent of the wiretapped call between Grimås and Edelman. His body’s defences seemed to have switched on to keep the shock at bay. When the feeling had finally worked its way through, he got out of the taxi and took a few deep breaths in the winter night. His emotions were all over the place. Part of him couldn’t believe what he’d just heard, but another pictured him throwing himself at his old mentor, pushing him down on the ground, and cuffing his hands behind his back.
He’d been on his way to Herman Edelman’s apartment on Kaptensgatan to confront him about the recorded call, almost as if he subconsciously harboured a hope somewhere that there was still a sufficiently credible explanation that would allow him to get a good night’s sleep, and the reassurance that everything would return to normal as soon as they’d put this behind them.
He realized now that there was no such explanation. Edelman knew much more than he had let on, and was involved in the death of the Minister for Justice in one way or another. When it came down to it, he would be forced to put his boss against the wall and demand an answer from him. But not yet. He still knew far too little, and needed to ask the right questions to get real answers.
He got back into the taxi and asked the driver to continue past Edelman’s front door down towards Artillerigatan to the police station on Kungsholmen. Once he arrived, he swiped his pass card, entered the code and walked through the pitch-black corridor towards his and Malin’s office.
He had planned to go through the investigation again with fresh eyes. He was convinced that the solution was somewhere among all the pictures, notes and strange coincidences.
But when he walked into the room, everything was gone. At first he thought he’d gone into the wrong room. But no, it was his and Malin’s desks. He looked around in confusion. The whiteboard had been cleaned, the notes on the wall had been taken down and the piles of folders on the desks and floor had been tidied. The room was empty.
Yes, the investigation was officially closed and there would never be a trial, but it hadn’t been more than seven hours since Kremph committed suicide. Technical evidence still needed to be secured and categorized, reports needed to be written and meetings conducted before anything was ready to be packed up.
He logged on to his computer and searched the archive, but couldn’t find anything there either. Someone had removed all their evidence, and he didn’t have a clue who it could be. In fact, it could be anyone from SePo to Edelman himself, or someone else entirely. He sunk down into his desk chair and rested his head in his hands. All he knew for sure was that it must be someone who, like him, was fully aware that the perpetrator was still at large.
He decided to go home and try to get a few hours’ sleep, since he had no idea how to move forward. But just as he was turning off the computer, he noticed one of the two porcelain dolls they’d found in the condemned apartment. It was sitting on Malin’s shelf alongside a pile of folders and two packets of Marie biscuits. He had no recollection of either of them taking the doll. Even if they had it should have ended up with Hillevi Stubbs. Was it the doll from the apartment or one just like it?
He took it down and studied the curly hair, embroidered dress and matching hat, and his thoughts quickly shifted to his childhood doll. But he didn’t get much further than that before he realized that there was something off about the eyes, something that distinguished one from the other. When he looked closer he saw that the brown pupil was actually a hole.
With a growing sense of worry, he started to investigate the doll more thoroughly. He examined the hat, the unpleasantly realistic face, the hard arms and legs and under the skirt, which was attached with Velcro along the back.
At first it made no sense. Just like Carl-Eric Grimås’ abdomen, the doll’s back was hollowed out. A white, rectangular plastic box with a number of blinking diodes was squeezed into the little space. It said Anbash in the lower corner beside a little button, and a cable extended up one side through the neck towards the head. Fabian had never seen anything like it, but realized immediately that it had to be a battery-driven camera that was connected in some way to the cell phone network.
The moment he realized what was going on, he broke into a sweat and suddenly turned ice cold. The perpetrator had had the condemned apartment under surveillance, and their offices too, for the past few days. He had had access to all their thoughts and ideas and knew exactly where each of them was in the investigation, not only Malin, Tomas and Jarmo, but also himself.
In fact, the perpetrator could be looking at him right now.
68
DUNJA’S WHOLE BODY STILL hurt and she presumably looked like she’d been in a minor traffic accident, but she couldn’t say for sure because she deliberately avoided all mirrors for the entire morning. After being examined in the hospital, she had spent the night at Hotel Nora around the corner on Nørrebrogade, while Kjeld Richter and his men examined her apartment. Sleizner promised to cover costs. A psychologist from the Crime Victims office had been recommended to her, but she declined. She didn’t know why, but she hadn’t been able to take in the events from last night at all. Maybe she was still in shock.
She’d decided to stay at the hotel as long as she could, and try to enjoy her Sunday. But when she finally managed to get out of bed, take a bath and order a room-service breakfast, restlessness took over. No more than an hour later she limped out of the elevator and down the corridor towards the department where she ascertained that a meeting was in full swing.
Given all of the events of last night, she knew she really shouldn’t be there, but she couldn’t help thinking that it was a bit rude. This was her investigation. She was the person who had discovered the leads and tied everything together. She was the one who had led her team to an abandoned car near Copenhagen Airport, containing the mutilated bodies of Aksel Neuman and Katja Skov. Regardless of the fact that her conclusions were ultimately wrong regarding Benny Willumsen, they should at least have asked if she wanted to be there.
The door to the meeting room was open and she heard scattered laughter: the sound of a complicated investigation ending and a feared perpetrator being neutralized. She could hear the exhilaration in the air. They were eating up all the glory, she thought, right before she knocked on the open door.
The laughter stopped and they turned towards her.
‘Dunja? What are you doing here?’ Sleizner stood up and came over to her.
‘The question is, what are all of you doing here?’ She held up a hand defensively. ‘I thought I was the one leading the investigation.’
‘Yes, but now it’s over, thanks to you. It’s just a matter of tying up—’
‘Who said it’s over?’ Dunja asked. ‘Not me, anyway.’
‘No. But I did. After all, I’m still the one who makes the decisions in this department. Or have I missed something?’ Sleizner started laughing and turned to the others, who immediately joined him.
Dunja didn’t change her expression. The last thing she wanted was to join their little club.
‘Dunja, I don’t understand. What’s the problem?’ Sleizner continued. ‘The perpetrator has been identified and is dead. Sure, the investigation into what happened at your place isn’t finished, but that’s not anything you should be worried about. Instead, take it easy and—’
‘It wasn’t him.’
‘What do you
mean it wasn’t him?’ Sleizner exchanged glances with the others. ‘Are you suggesting, in all seriousness, that Benny Willumsen was innocent? For fuck’s sake, the man broke into your flat and tried to kill you!’
‘Yes, well, he’s not guilty of the murders of Karen and Aksel Neuman, and Katja Skov, at least.’ She limped into the room. Hesk looked so uncomfortable from her mere presence that he was squirming like an eel to avoid her gaze.
‘Dunja,’ Sleizner let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘This is your first case, and it’s not strange if you—’
‘Kim, this isn’t me—’
‘Can you let me finish talking?’
‘No, because I know exactly what you’re going to say, and you’re wrong.’ Dunja fed a pod into the Nespresso machine and pressed start. ‘So now you’re the one who should let me finish talking.’ She took the full espresso cup and was surprised to discover that she didn’t feel obligated to put a five-kroner coin in the basket. ‘For one thing, I’ve encountered the perpetrator – not Willumsen, but the real one. He’s a much smaller man.’
‘Was this in Sweden?’ asked Richter, and Dunja nodded as she sat down.
‘Yes. I had a hunch that he was travelling south towards Kävlinge. I followed him to a storage facility and caught him red-handed standing over the body of Katja Skov. It was horrible.’ She shook the image of Katja’s mutilated body from her mind.
‘Did you see his face?’ Hesk met her gaze for the first time.
‘No, he was standing with his back to me. When he turned around he was wearing a gas mask. Then he anaesthetized me the same way he must have done with the others.’
‘But he killed them.’
‘Which is my next point: why would he let me live in Sweden, and then try to kill me in Denmark just a few hours later?’
She was met with silence and an exchange of glances.
‘What’s your explanation?’ Sleizner said at last.
‘Willumsen was basically after the thrill, but our perpetrator has a completely different motive. And I wasn’t part of it.’
‘And how does Willumsen come into the picture?’ Sleizner went over to the coffee machine and conspicuously dropped a five-kroner piece into the basket. ‘If he’s suddenly so innocent, why would he break into your place and—’
‘Who said he was innocent? Only the three most recent murders aren’t Willumsen’s, but they were carried out to look that way – with extreme violence and genital penetration.’
‘You mean like a copycat?’ said Richter.
‘Yes, maybe. In any event, he must have understood that we were on his trail, and instead of fleeing—’
‘No, I’m sorry, but this doesn’t add up.’ Sleizner threw out his arms. ‘I have no doubt that this is Willumsen’s work.’ He nodded towards the whiteboard, which was filled with pictures and arrows that pointed to similarities between the old and new cases. ‘I can’t see a single point where we messed things up.’
‘Are you blind?’ Dunja exclaimed, slamming her palm on the table so that the espresso cup tipped over. ‘The point is that a murderer is still running free out there!’
There was complete silence around the table once again. Gazes shifted and everyone expected some form of reaction from Sleizner. This was the first time anyone on the team had raised their voice at him. Dunja stood up, pushed another pod into the machine, let it fill a new cup and sat down again – without so much as an effort to pay.
‘Dunja, I’m going to be completely sincere here,’ Sleizner said at last. ‘You’ve done an amazing job, there’s no question about that. And I think I can speak for everyone around this table when I say that no one expected the investigation would move so quickly. So, congratulations.’ He clapped his hands a few times in applause and started walking around. ‘But your tone and attitude right now are completely unacceptable.’ He stood right behind her. ‘I’m sure it can be explained by what you’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours and the euphoria you now have from managing to stay alive. As far as this matter is concerned, I’m willing to overlook it – for the time being. As far as our suspects are concerned, I think you’re on completely the wrong track. I’m convinced that you have no idea what you’re talking about. But I don’t want to be small-minded. I’ll entertain the idea of this so-called other perpetrator, mostly just as a little game to see where it leads us.’
‘How kind,’ said Dunja. ‘Then I suggest that we—’
‘So then my first question is: Why pack you into the trunk with Neuman’s and Skov’s body parts and not simply leave you behind in Sweden? You led us to the car much faster and to a lot of evidence, one piece of which has just been sent for DNA analysis.’
‘Evidence? What have you found?’
‘Not us. Pedersen,’ said Hesk, awaiting an okay from Sleizner before he continued. ‘He’s been working all night and has examined the body parts.’ Hesk took out two photographs from a brown envelope and set them on the table in front of Dunja.
Both images were bird’s-eye views: one showed Aksel Neuman’s chopped-off body parts set up on an illuminated examination table in their anatomically correct places with a few centimetres in between each part. Dunja counted eleven parts, and could not help picturing a magician, failing to saw a woman in half. The other showed Katja Skov laid out in similar fashion on the table alongside.
‘Where’s her right breast?’ Dunja looked more closely at the image. There was nothing where her right side should have been. Aksel Neuman, on the other hand, was cut down the middle.
‘It’s still missing, but here’s the important part.’ Hesk set out another image that was zoomed in on Skov’s genitalia. ‘Pedersen has secured traces of the perpetrator’s sperm, which is exactly what’s been missing all along to get Willumsen convicted.’
Dunja nodded. ‘And what if it isn’t his?’
‘We’ll find that out once we get the test results,’ said Sleizner. ‘But let’s go back to my question: What’s the point of keeping you in the car?’
‘I’ve asked myself the exact same question and have decided that there’s only one explanation.’ She met the others’ eyes. ‘He wanted us to find the car and everything in it quickly.’
‘You mean all the evidence?’ said Richter. Dunja nodded.
‘So the motive would be to get Willumsen convicted?’ asked Hesk.
‘That could be part of it, but likely more as a side effect. Keep in mind that we’re dealing with someone who is prepared to kill innocent people and mutilate them. Willumsen must have been a diversion to point us away from what this is really about.’
‘And what is that?’ said Sleizner with barely restrained irritation.
‘I don’t know for sure, but the answer should be in the victims. Or, if you ask me, what’s missing from the victims.’ She tapped her finger against the picture of Katja Skov. ‘Besides, we really should dredge up the car from the port at Helsingør, or at least have someone dive down and take a look. It’s how the perpetrator got over here.’
Sleizner clenched his teeth and thought. ‘Okay, as you wish, but as soon as the results from the DNA analysis arrive confirming it’s Willumsen, this investigation goes to the archive. Is that understood?’
Everyone nodded.
Everyone except Dunja.
69
07:30–08:30 Breakfast
08:30–08:42 Clean up after breakfast
08:42–09:00 Shower
09:00–09:14 Get dressed & pack. Shave (Daddy)
09:14–09:15 Scrape the windows on the car
09:15–09:30 Drive to the water park
09:30–12:00 Water Park!
‘COME ALONG NOW. I don’t want us to be late.’ Matilda yanked the handwritten schedule, illustrated with small, colourful drawings, out of Fabian’s hands.
At thirteen minutes past seven, she’d turned on the overhead light, climbed up on the bed, sat on his stomach and showed him the plan for their Sunday together. He hadn’t even got three hours of sleep,
which was less than half of what he really needed to function.
Two double espressos later, he almost felt awake, and he promised himself that he would devote this Sunday entirely to being a dad. The investigation could wait. Anyway, he needed time to think about how he could move forward without Edelman’s knowledge. Today he would let the kids decide. He even agreed to a visit to the water park, despite the fact he loathed it more than the subway at rush hour.
But first they would have a hearty breakfast. After he and Matilda had set out everything on the table and lit the Advent candle, he went into Theodor’s room to wake him. Usually, when he went into his son’s bedroom, the chaos and dust bunnies gave him an urgent desire to air out or, even better, decontaminate the room. But this time he felt something quite different, something that had nothing to do with the piles of clothes on the floor. It could best be described as a hard punch in the stomach.
Theodor was sleeping on his back, and Fabian was reminded of his own behaviour from last night. What he had done was not only a punishable offence, but a mortal sin. He had struck his son. His patience had run out, which had resulted in a hard slap right to his face.
Now it was not only red and blue, but also severely swollen around the right eye and the upper lip, where the blood was congealing into a scab. His stomach twisted and his appetite for everything waiting on the breakfast table disappeared. He sank down on the edge of the bed, put his head in one hand, and patted Theodor’s head carefully with the other. Had he really hit him that hard? How could he ever forgive himself?
The dirty jeans in the pile on the floor provided the explanation; or rather, the melted snow in a little pool on the floor beneath them did.
Theodor had been out last night, even though Fabian had explicitly said no. He had promised to stay home, but had gone out instead. Fabian wanted to wake him and call him out. But to what end? The damage was already done, and the best he could do was to let him sleep and bring it up with Sonja when all the other stuff had calmed down.
The Ninth Grave Page 28