Anders Knutas 04 - The Killer's Art

by Mari Jungstedt

  The question was whether it was too late to do anything about the matter. Karin hadn’t yet submitted her resignation. Maybe she was planning to take a leave of absence first – to try it out. Her parents and all of her friends lived here on Gotland. Would she be happy on the mainland – and in the big city? Knutas felt panic-stricken at the mere thought of showing up for work every day without her.

  He had to find a solution. Anything at all.

  Late on Friday afternoon Knutas had something else to preoccupy his thoughts. The Stockholm police emailed him a list of individuals in Sweden who were considered to have a special interest in Nils Dardel.

  He scanned the list, at first not recognizing a single name. But when he reached the middle, he stopped abruptly. The letters practically jumped off the page as they formed a name that he’d already encountered several times during the investigation. Erik Mattson.

  Knutas slowly exhaled through his nostrils. Why on earth did this man’s name keep cropping up?

  He got up and looked out of the window, trying to keep his excitement in check. Erik Mattson, the man who valued works of art at Bukowski’s and who had also attended the gallery opening here in Visby. He had assessed the stolen paintings found at Egon Wallin’s home without mentioning that he’d been on Gotland on the day of the murder. Knutas was ashamed to admit to himself that he’d actually forgotten to ring Mattson and question him about that. The theft at Waldemarsudde had taken precedence.

  Just before receiving the email, Knutas had been about to leave for the day. He’d planned to buy a couple of bottles of wine and some flowers for Lina on his way home. He’d been neglecting his family far too much lately.

  Now he was going to be late again. He rang home. Lina didn’t sound as understanding as usual. And that wasn’t surprising. Even she had her limits. Knutas felt guilty, but he pushed that aside for now. He had to focus on Erik Mattson. He would have liked to ring Bukowski’s Auction House at once, but he stopped himself. If Mattson was the perpetrator, or one of them, Knutas needed to proceed with caution. He felt a strong urge to talk to Karin and went out into the corridor. The door to her office was closed. He knocked. No answer. He waited a moment before he cautiously opened the door. The office was empty. She’d gone home without saying goodbye to him, he realized, feeling hurt. He couldn’t recall her ever doing that before. With his tail between his legs he slunk back to his own office. He had to do something, so he punched in the number for Bukowski’s, even though it said on their home page that their offices would be closed by now. The phone rang for a long time before someone finally answered.

  ‘Erik Mattson.’

  Knutas just about fell out of his chair.

  ‘Er, yes. This is Anders Knutas from Visby police. I’m sorry for ringing on a Friday evening like this, but I have a few important questions I need to ask you.’

  ‘Yes?’ replied Mattson, his voice expressionless.

  ‘When we discussed the paintings that were found at Egon Wallin’s home, you didn’t say that you were actually at his opening on the day before he was murdered.’

  A brief pause. The silence on the phone was palpable.

  ‘There’s a perfectly simple explanation for that. I didn’t go to the opening.’

  ‘But according to your boss, you had an invitation. You and a colleague stayed overnight in Visby so that you could both attend the opening.’

  ‘Actually Bukowski’s received a general invitation, and my colleague, Stefan Ekerot, and I were thinking of going since we were going to be on Gotland anyway. But neither of us ended up attending the opening. Stefan’s baby daughter got sick during the night, so he caught the first plane home on Saturday. She’s only a month old, you see. And I wasn’t feeling well on Saturday afternoon, so I stayed in my hotel room to rest. So I didn’t go to the gallery either. That’s why I didn’t happen to mention it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Knutas, deciding for the time being to accept Mattson’s explanation. ‘I understand that you’re an expert on the work of Nils Dardel. What do you think about the theft of “The Dying Dandy”?’

  Again there was silence on the phone. Knutas heard Mattson take a breath before he replied.

  ‘It’s terrible, a sacrilege. And a tragedy if the painting’s not recovered. “The Dying Dandy” is without a doubt one of the most important paintings in the history of Swedish art.’

  ‘Who do you think might have stolen it, and why?’

  ‘It must have been a contract job, so that it can be sold to a collector. The painting is so well known, both in Sweden and the rest of Europe, that trying to sell it on the open market would be impossible.’

  ‘Are there any big collectors of Dardel’s work here in Sweden?’

  ‘His paintings are scattered among different collections. His art has been controversial. Some people even think his work isn’t first-class; don’t ask me why. I’m sorry, but I actually have to go now.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

  Knutas thanked Mattson for his time and said goodbye.

  When he had hung up, he felt even more confused. The surge of hope that he’d felt a few minutes earlier was already gone.

  Erik Mattson didn’t sound like a murderer.

  He decided to put the investigation aside for the weekend if nothing important happened. Maybe he just needed to let things percolate for a while. He hoped that he’d be able to view the case with fresh eyes on Monday.

  Right now he just wanted to go home and spend time with his family.

  The next step in his plan was now decided, and his head was filled with all sorts of ideas. Earlier in the day he had rung the funeral director to find out when Egon Wallin was going to be buried. The funeral wouldn’t be for another two weeks, which gave him plenty of time to make his preparations. He was thinking of attending; wearing a disguise, naturally, so that nobody would recognize him. He was longing for that day. To see everyone without anyone seeing him. He felt a flutter of anticipation in his stomach as he pictured the whole scene in his mind.

  Right now he was alone, and there was something he had to do today. He went down to the cellar storage room and took out the canvas that he’d hidden there. Luckily he didn’t run into any of his neighbours. He quickly returned to his flat and then carefully unrolled the canvas on the living-room floor. Several weeks before the theft, he had ordered a custom-made frame that would be the right size.

  Just as he was about to put the first nail in the frame, the phone rang. Annoyed at being interrupted, he glanced up and let it ring a few more times, thinking he might not answer. But then he dropped the hammer and stood up.

  Right at this moment, he thought after the conversation was over. To think he would call at this very moment. It had to be fate.

  Then he spent a long time carefully attaching the canvas to its new frame. When he was done, he leaned the painting against the wall, took a few steps back and regarded his handiwork.

  He was more than satisfied.

  Saturday started off with the pale and hesitant light of winter sunshine.

  Johan served Emma breakfast in bed. He placed a red rose on the tray. They ate warm croissants with raspberry jam, drank coffee and read the newspaper as Elin slept so sweetly in her cot. Emma’s parents would arrive around eleven to take care of Elin, so they’d have the rest of the weekend all to themselves. They’d gone to the jeweller’s together to select their rings. Emma had decided on a ring of white gold with five diamonds. Johan felt dizzy when he saw the price, but then how often in life did a person get engaged?

  Over and over they’d discussed how they should exchange rings, yet both of them had agreed that they should do it soon. Of course they wanted to have some peace and quiet and time alone, free from a crying baby and dirty nappies; yet they didn’t want to be away from Elin for too long.

  Finally they had decided to have a private engagement ceremony at Emma’s favourite place: the beach at Norsta Auren, at the northernmost tip of Får�
�. Her parents owned an old limestone house there, and Emma and Johan could have it all to themselves. They wouldn’t be able to have dinner in a restaurant because none was open on Fårö in the wintertime. Instead, they decided to have a cosy time at home alone. The house stood right by the sea, and it had a fireplace, so it should be fine.

  They left Roma before lunch and drove north. At Fårösund they took the ferry across the channel and over to the small island. The landscape was more desolate and barren there, although in the winter the difference didn’t seem as great as in the summer.

  Beautiful Fårö church stood high on a hill, and the Konsum grocery store was open, although only one car was parked in front. Johan wondered how the shop managed to stay in business during the winter. They had done all of their grocery shopping in Visby, just in case. They didn’t want to run the risk of the small shop not stocking fillet of beef, tiger prawns and Belgian chocolates.

  Johan enjoyed looking at the landscape as he drove. The snow was unusually deep, a thick white layer covering the island’s lovely stone fences, windmills and pasture lands. Here and there they passed a farm, its stone buildings built to withstand the wind and severe weather.

  When they turned off the main highway that cut across Fårö, the road got narrower. They passed the beach at Ajkesvik, where seagulls bobbed on the crests of the waves, and continued on towards Skär and Norsta Auren. The road became a bumpy cow track for the last stretch of the way, and here the snowdrifts were even higher. They almost couldn’t drive all the way up to the house, in spite of the fact that Emma’s father had been out to shovel off the snow that morning.

  The white limestone house stood all alone, surrounded by low stone walls, with the sea as its neighbour. When they got out of the car, they were struck by the magnificence of nature. And for once the wind was hardly blowing at all.

  The first thing they did was go down to the shore, which extended for several kilometres and was wider than most beaches that Johan had seen. It stretched beyond the bay’s furthest promontory, preventing them from seeing the Fårö lighthouse, which stood on the other side.

  This was a special place, for several reasons. Not just because of its natural grandeur but also because of the memories it evoked. Here Emma had run for her life as she was chased by a serial killer a couple of years earlier. The memory was still strong for both of them. Johan had joined the chase and was hard on her heels. But the perp was too fast for him, and he had disappeared in a car with Emma as his hostage.

  Maybe they both wanted to replace those awful memories with something as positive as their engagement. Regardless of what had happened, Emma loved this shoreline more than any other place on earth.

  They decided to carry in their belongings, have lunch, and then take a walk along the shore. The rings were in a little box in Johan’s pocket. He felt as if the box were on fire.

  They ate fish soup with prawns and fresh basil. They had brought along fresh-baked bread, which they warmed up in the oven. Johan felt strangely solemn as he sat there at the big drop-leaf table in the kitchen. Emma was wearing a turtleneck sweater, and she had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. He found himself wondering how she would look as an old woman. The next second he felt a surge of happiness come over him. Were they really going to grow old together? Spend the rest of their lives together? Sometimes that realization seemed so obvious, like a door thrown open with him standing outside, looking at himself from a distance.

  Emma was his family now. Emma and Elin. And that felt amazing.

  They bundled up in warm clothes and a bit reluctantly left the warmth of the house to take their walk along the beach. Johan took Emma’s hand and led the way, trudging through the snow.

  ‘Take it easy,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’m about to fall over.’

  ‘The question is, how are we going to exchange rings without freezing our fingers off? I’m already frozen,’ he shouted happily.

  Out on the beach it was bitterly cold and the wind cut right through their clothes, making their eyes fill with tears. The sea was a steel grey and the water struck the shore in rhythmic waves. Johan had never seen a longer horizon. The sky and sea merged – it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. There were no buildings in sight except for the house owned by Emma’s parents. They were enveloped by the sky, the sea and the snowy white shore. Its wide expanse rose up to an embankment, and on the other side were the woods, so typical of Fårö with their stunted pines whose branches had been twisted by storms that had come and gone over the years. It was all so magnificent that Johan shouted with joy, reaching out for the wind.

  ‘I love Emma! I love Emma!’

  His words vanished over the sea, drowned out by the shrieks of seagulls. Emma’s eyes were filled with laughter as she looked at him, and he felt more strongly than ever before that it was true. So true. He didn’t want to wait a second longer. He pulled out of his pocket the box holding the rings and then drew Emma close. He pressed his lips against her hair, damp with cold, as he put the ring on her finger. She did the same for him.

  All of a sudden she cried, ‘Look, Johan! What’s that?’

  Something big and grey was lying at the water’s edge a short distance away. It looked like a big boulder, but how had it ended up there? Everywhere else the beach was flat and white as far as the eye could see.

  Cautiously they approached. When they were about twenty yards away, the shape began to move. Emma instantly pulled out her camera. She snapped a picture just as the grey seal dived back into the water.

  For a long time they stood there in silence, watching as it disappeared into the waves.

  On Monday morning, Knutas arrived at police headquarters early; it was only six thirty. The weekend had provided a much-needed respite from the investigative work. On the other hand, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Karin, so he had discussed the matter with Lina. She thought he needed to do something dramatic if he wanted to keep Karin on the force. Over a few glasses of wine on Saturday evening, while the children were watching a song contest on TV, they had come up with a solution. It wasn’t going to be popular, but that couldn’t be helped. He felt confident about his decision, and he was prepared to weather whatever storm would come. He’d discussed the idea with the county police commissioner on Sunday, and she had accepted the reasons for his proposal.

  One thing that Jacobsson and Knutas had in common was that they were both morning people. He’d been at work only half an hour and was putting together a draft for his plan when he heard Karin’s light footsteps in the corridor. He asked her to come into his office.

  ‘Sure,’ she said happily. ‘I’ve found out some really interesting things over the weekend, and I can’t wait to tell you about them.’

  ‘All right, but that can wait,’ he said dismissively as she sat down in his visitor’s chair. ‘There’s something else we need to talk about first.’

  ‘OK.’ Jacobsson gave him an inquisitive look.

  ‘I don’t want you to resign, Karin. You know that. So I have an offer to make. You don’t have to answer right now; take some time to think about it, and then let me know sometime this week whether you accept my proposal or not. OK?’

  ‘Of course.’ Jacobsson looked both nervous and full of anticipation.

  ‘I want you to be the assistant superintendent for the criminal division. Meaning my deputy. One day, when I retire, I want you to take my place. This police station has never had a woman detective superintendent, and it’s certainly about time.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No, no, I have no plans to retire. But I’m at an age when ten more years on the job will be the maximum. And besides, Lina has been telling me that she wants to try working on the mainland in a few years, and I’m open to the idea. If she decides to do that, I’ll move over there with her. We have more freedom now the children are older. I want a deputy I can trust completely. And you’re the only one, Karin.’

  She gave him a bewildered look
. Her expression had changed from nervousness to surprise to astonishment. The tell-tale red spots had appeared on her throat. She opened her mouth as if to speak.

  ‘No, Karin, please don’t say anything right now. The only thing I ask is that you think it over. And let me also say something about the salary. Of course you’ll receive a significant pay increase, and we can discuss that in greater detail if you decide to accept the offer. But just so you have some idea what you’re looking at, it would be at least seven thousand kronor more per month, plus you’d be attending a number of courses in management skills, and so on. And you should know that I have the full support of the county police commissioner. She would like to see you as assistant superintendent.’

  ‘But Lars …’

  ‘Lars Norrby is my problem, not yours, Karin. So I hope you’ll consider the offer.’

  Karin nodded mutely.

  ‘Good,’ said Knutas, relieved to have the conversation out of the way. He got up and went over to stand at the window, not daring to look at her. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  ‘Shall I tell you what I found out?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, tell me.’

  ‘This weekend I checked out the connection between Nils Dardel and Muramaris. The original of the sculpture that was found at Waldemarsudde after the theft happens to stand in the garden at Muramaris, and I wanted to find out whether Dardel had any links to the place.’

  ‘Smart thinking,’ murmured Knutas.

  ‘But I found out something else. Listen to this,’ said Jacobsson eagerly. She leaned forward and gave him an intent look. ‘Did you know that Dardel was homosexual?’

  ‘I’d heard that mentioned, yes. But wasn’t he married?’

  ‘Yes, he married Thora Klinckowström, and they had a daughter, Ingrid. Dardel had several serious relationships with women. For example, he was secretly engaged to Nita Wallenberg before he met Thora. But their engagement was broken off because her father didn’t think Dardel would make a proper son-in-law. Even back then, rumours were raging about his alcoholism, homosexuality and decadent tendencies. That was in 1917, when he was twenty-nine years old. But at the same time that he fell in love with women, he was in love with men. Dardel had a long-lasting and relatively open homosexual relationship with his friend and patron Rolf de Maré, the only son of Duchess Wilhelmina von Hallwyl’s daughter, Ellen.’