The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  He continued to make his way aimlessly through the warren of backstreets, through the damp darkness that was perforated from within by light, turning at random without reading the street signs’ Gothic lettering. He stopped in front of a skewed gabled end of a house that sort of lunged out at him from the blackness. There was a cozy, welcoming glow emanating from its windows. He suddenly moved up so close that he was almost standing inside someone’s living room. A man lying sprawled on a couch was languidly watching TV. On the floor above, a woman in a little kitchen. She was getting something from the sink, he could see the top of the faucet sticking up. She stood there for a moment with a glass in her hand, serene, looking out at nothing, in her own thoughts.

  Were they dreams of home, rest, and security, as outdated as the city itself? Perhaps they weren’t real. Perhaps they were just his dreams, his longing.

  Slowly, hesitantly, he fished out his cell phone from his back pocket. He switched it on and followed the start-up ritual with exaggerated attentiveness, the dancing logo and signature melody that ended with a short vibration before it was time to log in. He punched in his PIN code and began looking for the number as soon as it would permit him.

  * * *

  ELIN WAS STANDING in the kitchen when it happened. It was dark outside. She was drinking a glass of water, so cold that it hurt her teeth and the hand that was holding the glass.

  When she’d come out of the bathroom, Ricky wasn’t there. She hadn’t heard him leave, but it hadn’t surprised her to find him gone. When she had stood up and unlocked the bathroom door, it had felt as though she had been sleeping. Her body had felt heavy, and her head empty. It had felt good, or at least much better. Like sleeping away an illness.

  It had taken a while for her to realize that she was alone in the house. She had expected him to make his presence known one way or another once he’d heard her. But the house had been deathly quiet. She had peeked into his room, gone back upstairs to check the study, and had finally called out a few times.

  He had to have forced his way past the journalists and driven off in his car, if they had still been out there when he left. There hadn’t been any sign of them anyway when Elin came down. Maybe they had followed Ricky?

  She hadn’t minded being left alone for a while. It had felt good to be on her own with the feeling of being rested and calm. But when she put her glass down in the sink everything changed.

  The doorbell exploded in a long series of aggressive rings, which, when they finally ceased, were followed by two violent shoves against the door, so heavy and hard that she thought that the door was going to give way.

  “Come out here, you bastard! I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

  32.

  Fredrik caught sight of the unmarked car with Gustav behind the wheel the moment he stepped out of Pettson’s auto repair shop behind the police station. The white Volvo turned in toward the sidewalk and pulled up alongside him.

  He crossed his fingers that his own, much older Volvo would make it through its service without any unpleasant surprises. The muffler was in the danger zone, that much he knew and was prepared for, but he couldn’t afford much more than that. It was almost time to buy Christmas presents.

  Stupid of him to turn it in now. It would have been better to wait until after Christmas, postpone the problem. Also stupid, but a better stupidity.

  Fredrik opened the car door on the passenger side and climbed in. They drove off at once. The garage smell hadn’t quite had a chance to air out from the interior of the car and got mixed in with the scent of Gustav’s aftershave.

  “What the hell is wrong with people?” said Gustav.

  “Sounds like deep thoughts for this early in the morning,” said Fredrik as he put on his seatbelt.

  Gustav let out a tired snort before continuing.

  “This Karl-Johan character, he finds out that his father has been murdered. So he catches the first ferry over here, so far so good. But once he’s made it over here, the first thing he does is head over to the other victim’s children, who he’s related to by the way, and threatens to kill them. I ask you?”

  He looked at Fredrik with his already bulbous eyes flared open.

  “People can do strange things when they get worked up,” said Fredrik.

  “I hope that it’s just something like that. Sometimes I feel like I can’t take any more. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough for these two people to have died?”

  Gustav sighed and they continued up the hill toward the traffic lights at Allégatan.

  “I read something about some neuroscientist in the paper the other day,” said Gustav. “He claimed that although we may occasionally act civilized, underneath it all we’re nothing but apes. That’s why we need police and prisons. He said that, ‘That’s why we need police.’”

  Fredrik uttered what he felt to be a chimpanzee-like sound and scratched at his armpit.

  Gustav sighed silently and pretended to press the call button on his radio.

  “Unit sixty to dispatch. Detective Wallin requesting reassignment, over.”

  He turned off toward Gråbo and soon afterward they bounced up over the curb, and into the yard in front of Sofia Traneus’s row house.

  “Well, let’s see what kind of an ape we’ve got here,” Fredrik laughed as they got out of the car.

  “Just forget I said anything,” said Gustav and slammed the door.

  “No, but you’re right about that. Or that neuroscientist is. That’s just what we do. Hunt down apes. People who can’t act civilized.”

  They had tried to find Karl-Johan Traneus at his sister’s house already during the night, but the sister simply said that he was out somewhere or over at a friend’s place. Which friend she couldn’t say. Considering that no one had actually seen him outside Rickard Traneus’s house, it was hard to justify a search warrant. Besides which, the sister seemed credible.

  It was Sofia Traneus who opened up when Gustav rang the doorbell and she showed them straight in when they asked for her brother. Karl-Johan Traneus was sitting in the living room couch with his youngest niece in his arms and looked up at them with a good-natured smile when they entered the room. He was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a black T-shirt with washed-out print. He had a red, straggly beard that the baby tried to grab hold of with one hand.

  More of an orangutan than a chimpanzee, thought Fredrik.

  “Could you take the baby, please,” he asked Sofia Traneus.

  She looked at him questioningly, but when he nodded at the little girl that her brother was holding, she did as she’d been asked.

  “Visby Police Department,” said Gustav and flashed his badge. “We have to ask you to accompany us to the police station.”

  Karl-Johan Traneus looked at them with an even wider smile.

  “What, now, right away?” he asked and tried to sound cheerful.

  Fredrik looked at him without saying anything, but thought that Karl-Johan Traneus was the last thing that this investigation needed right now.

  * * *

  THEY TOOK HIM into the interview room on the ground floor.

  “What business did you have going over to Rickard Traneus’s house?” said Gustav as soon as they sat down.

  Karl-Johan Traneus face darkened slightly.

  “He knows where Arvid is. I know it. He’s hiding him.”

  “Threatening to kill someone is a serious crime. It carries a sentence of between six months and two years in prison.”

  Karl-Johan Traneus stiffened across the table.

  “Threatening? I was just … I wanted to speak to him, that’s all. Christ, all I want is for him to say what he knows.”

  Thank you for that, thought Fredrik. They had no witnesses who had seen him there, no plate number, nothing that tied him to the scene.

  “Let us handle this,” said Gustav, “it’s our job, not yours. And if we don’t have to waste time chasing after you, then we’ll be able to find whoever murdered Kristina Traneus an
d your father that much faster.”

  “Whoever murdered my father?” said Karl-Johan Traneus. “It was Arvid who did it and Rickard knows where he is.”

  He was sounding really irate now, as if he could start making threats again any minute. Gustav ignored the comment.

  “If you do that again, I guarantee you’ll get slapped with a restraining order, which means that you’ll be arrested and placed inside a sixty-five-square-foot cell over at our detention facility if you so much as stop your car outside Rickard Traneus’s house.”

  Gustav rounded off his mostly truthful rundown by pointing up at the floor above.

  “We appreciate the fact that you think that this is terrible and that you want to do something, but the best thing you can do is to stay out of the way. Look after your sister and your mother instead. Can we agree on that?”

  Karl-Johan Traneus nodded reluctantly without looking at Gustav.

  They got up and Fredrik asked if he needed a ride back, but Karl-Johan Traneus declined and quickly slipped out the door that Gustav held open for him.

  “Do you think he’ll do as he’s told?” asked Fredrik as they went up to the meeting they were already late for.

  “Don’t know. But I don’t think he’s going to kill anyone at least,” said Gustav.

  * * *

  LENNART SVENSSON WAS standing at the very back of the oblong room with his arms at his sides and his gaze directed toward the empty whiteboard at the far end of the room. He had days like that, when he couldn’t sit down for more than a few minutes at a stretch. By rights he shouldn’t even have to be at work on a day like that, but Lennart was old school. One of those dedicated older officers who stuck it out no matter what. He was a different breed altogether from those young slackers who took out comp time or called in sick as soon as they got half a chance.

  “So, in other words it’s completely unclear whether or not she was beaten?” Ove asked Eva, who had started to give them a rundown of the preliminary report from the medical examiner.

  “There’s nothing else in her life that could explain those injuries.”

  She was referring to the multitude of tiny fractures and scarring.

  “I mean it’s not like she was a professional hockey player,” said Lennart.

  Sara turned toward him demonstratively and glared at him.

  “Oh, for crying out loud, I’m sorry, okay?” he said and would probably have thrown out his arms in an over-the-top gesture, if a sudden move like that wouldn’t have risked sending pain shooting down his back.

  “There were fresh injuries as well,” Eva continued. “Kristina Traneus was subjected to violence about two days before she was murdered.”

  “Two days?” said Ove. “That makes it even more unlikely that Anders Traneus suddenly came rushing over to have it out with Arvid, or to protect Kristina.”

  “We shouldn’t take for granted that he knew about the abuse already on the Monday,” said Göran. “He may not have found out until Wednesday. But sure, in principle I agree with you.”

  “But then what did he want? I just can’t figure it out,” said Ove.

  “There’s another detail here, if I might continue,” Eva interjected. “According to the medical examiner, neither Kristina nor Anders Traneus had eaten much over the past twenty-four hours. The first examination produced no physiological explanation, but they’ll get back to us once the samples have been analyzed.”

  “If they had been going behind the back of a notorious wife-beater for a few years, then it wouldn’t be strange for them to lose their appetite when he suddenly moves home again,” Fredrik noted.

  They moved on, went through witness statements and phone lists, but the picture of what happened Wednesday evening didn’t become any clearer. Traneus’s farm was a fair distance away from the closest neighbor, and the three possible approach roads didn’t make it any easier. The murder weapon had not been found and they hadn’t uncovered a single trace of Arvid Traneus. No witness reports, no phone calls, not one single credit card purchase, nor was he listed as a passenger on any airline or ferry operator since Monday.

  “There ought to be something,” said Gustav. “It’s very strange. And damn irritating that he slipped through our fingers.”

  “Not that we had him in our hands to start with,” said Lennart.

  Göran clasped his hands loosely in the air and let them drop down in front of him onto the table. He started to worry that they had gotten stuck. That the lack of results came down to the fact that they weren’t going about it the right way. Thinking too narrowly, too early.

  He had been in contact with a Swedish-speaking representative of the international conglomerate that Arvid Traneus had worked for in Tokyo. She had explained that Arvid’s role in the company had been purely internal. Even if they seemed to be engaged in a highly competitive business, and that sometimes it could be a question of eat or be eaten, she had a hard time imagining that Arvid could have made any enemies. He wasn’t a decision maker and nobody outside the company knew exactly what he did there.

  If he had made enemies in Japan it would scarcely have been job related. At least, that was what she said.

  “Let’s hear something else,” he said hopefully and looked around the table expectantly. “Don’t think so ‘investigatively.’ Just throw something out there.”

  The room was silent. He leaned forward over the table and continued.

  “Sure, he may have financial resources that we don’t have any idea about, that don’t leave any trace, he may have taken refuge in some old monastery in the mountains north of Sapporo, or maybe he’s sitting on a beach somewhere in West Africa in a country where we’d have no chance of getting him extradited even if we found him. Leave that to National CID and Interpol. The question is what we can do here, right now.”

  Silence. Well, just let it be silent then for a while, he thought. Ove sat there hunched over staring down at the tabletop. He opened and closed the fingers of his left hand slowly. Was that just an unconscious mannerism or was it somehow a result of breaking his arm two years ago? Lennart wandered slowly across the room. A forced smile flashed across his face and caused Sara’s to smile in the same way. Fredrik cleared his throat as if he was preparing to say something, but nothing came. Gustav ran his thumb along his beard.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” said Göran, “we’ll go through all the passenger lists from the ferries and flights again, from Wednesday up until we first started monitoring departures from the island on Friday afternoon. If we follow up on and can confirm all the names, then we know that in all likelihood he hasn’t left the island under another name. Then, Eva, we’re going to have to turn that house upside down. Every inch of the place—the basement, the car … There’s got to be something in there that can give us a hint as to where he’s gone. How’s it going with those diaries, maybe they might give us something? Divide them up among yourselves and take them home for nighttime reading.”

  Göran mustered a smile.

  “And then we’ll continue questioning relatives, friends, acquaintances, colleagues. Anyone who might give us something.”

  “I was thinking about Karl-Johan Traneus,” said Fredrik. “Could there be something in what he’s saying, that Rickard knows something about his father’s whereabouts?”

  Göran turned toward Sara.

  “What do you think? You want to give it a try?”

  Sara squeezed her lips together and wrinkled her nose.

  “No, huh?” said Göran.

  “I’ve already been down that path. I haven’t come straight out and accused him of knowing something, but I’ve covered all the possible angles.”

  “Even if Rickard Traneus doesn’t know exactly where his father is hiding, he may be holding something back to protect him,” said Fredrik.

  “It might be worth letting someone else question him?” said Göran and looked at Fredrik and Sara.

  “Fine by me,” said Sara.

  “Then tha
t’s what we’ll do.”

  * * *

  GÖRAN LEFT THE briefing feeling uneasy. He would have liked to shake them up a bit, get them to think in new directions. All he had succeeded in doing was making everyone feel discouraged. He tossed his papers onto the desk and sat down with his back to the door.

  He tried to shake off the feeling of failure. It wasn’t even a proper murder investigation. The case was crystal clear, they knew who the killer was, all they had to do was find him. Sooner or later they’d catch him. Tomorrow or in three years from now. There was no reason to feel discouraged.

  But, if he turned it around, what did that have to do with his inability to inspire his investigators? He didn’t get any further than that before there was a knock at the door. It was Lennart.

  “Sit down,” said Göran without thinking.

  “No thanks,” said Lennart.

  “No, of course not. I noticed that you uhm … during the briefing. How are you doing?”

  Lennart walked up to the window that didn’t face outside, but looked out at the stairs leading down to the uniformed department, before he turned to Göran.

  “I don’t think it’s gonna work anymore.”

  Even though it was clear what he was referring to, for a split second Göran thought he was talking about the investigation.

  “Your back?” said Göran.

  “Yeah. It’s terrible.”

  “You should go on sick leave. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Seems like really bad timing.”

  “Bah,” said Göran and got up, “don’t you worry about that. It is what it is. Besides … this investigation, it’s only a question of time.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” said Lennart. “It’s just so damn unpredictable. I can be fine for long periods, but then all I need is one little strain, and I’m out for the count. What kind of a police officer is that, who puts his back out just by lifting a phone book in the wrong way?”