Midnight In Malmö: The Fourth Inspector Anita Sundström Mystery (The Malmö Mysteries Book 4)

by Torquil Macleod

  ‘I saw nothing wrong with the scene. The man either tried to avoid an animal or just nodded off for a moment and lost control. He’d just come back from Germany, I’m led to believe.’

  Anita was about to mention that Klas was returning from Berlin with some important information concerning Rylander; then she thought better of it. Pointless mentioning the Källströms, too.

  ‘Who was the other cop who turned up at Rylander’s on the morning his body was found?’

  Zetterberg’s eyes blazed with fury, but she kept her voice calm. ‘Why are you coming to me with this shit? Trying to get your name in the papers again?’ she added nastily. ‘Either a colleague feels he needs to blow his brains out in front of you, or you’re shooting the wrong person. If I were you – and thank God I’m not – I would avoid publicity in the future. Go back to your little holiday with your skinny British boyfriend, and leave the professionals to do their jobs.’

  Moberg picked up his office phone and dialled an internal number.

  ‘Wallen. I want you and Mirza to go and see Asplund now. Do a DNA swab. If he objects, threaten him with something. Obstruction. Anything. We need to make things happen.’

  He slammed the phone down. His meeting with the commissioner hadn’t improved his mood one jot. Not only did Dahlbeck want action on this case, but he was tying his hands behind his back because Isaksson was off limits. The politician had made a formal complaint.

  ‘You’ve got no evidence. And what on earth were you doing going to the bloody man’s house? Are you completely stupid?’

  ‘But he’s a genuine suspect,’ Moberg had protested; he had had difficulty keeping his temper in check.

  ‘He’s not now because you barged in there after I expressly told you not to.’

  The dressing-down continued for another ten minutes. Moberg left with the commissioner’s orders ringing in his ears: ‘Asplund sounds like our man. Put pressure on him and get a result.’

  Moberg was sure that the politician had a lot to hide. In his opinion, all politicians did. They would have to crack Asplund first, but he would get Axel Isaksson in the end.

  Anita was still spitting feathers by the time she reached the cabin and found Kevin at the living room table, surrounded by notes. He had a beer in his hand. By the thunderous look on her face, he didn’t think it worth bothering to ask how she had got on.

  ‘That fucking woman!’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘Alice Zetterberg!’

  Kevin put down his bottle and shook his head. ‘What on earth did you go and see her for?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Kevin stood up. ‘Come and sit down. And calm down. I’ll fetch a bottle.’

  ‘Make it a big one.’

  He went into the kitchen and picked up a bottle of Shiraz. He made sure that the wine glass was full before handing it over. Anita nodded gratefully and took a huge gulp. She was more composed by the time she had related the tale of her discovery about the non-existent Källströms and then her fruitless approach to Zetterberg.

  ‘What did you think that would achieve?’ Kevin asked after she had finished.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I thought it would awaken her curiosity if nothing else. But she’s too brainless.’ By now, she was on her second glass, and Kevin had opened another bottle of Honeybee beer from the local Bohman & Brante Brewery, which he was growing fond of.

  ‘But you didn’t give her much to go on.’

  Anita’s eyes blazed. ‘She wouldn’t have listened, whatever I said. As far as she’s concerned, there isn’t anything suspicious in the deaths.’

  ‘You have to find out more before you can go back. You need something concrete. Something like evidence!’

  Anita’s fierce expression melted. ‘Oh, fuck off!’ she grinned. ‘I’m sorry.’ She leant across the table and squeezed his hand.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go through this lot,’ Kevin said nodding in the direction of Lennartsson’s notes. ‘They’re all in Swedish. And there are some CDs, too.’

  ‘Forget it. I’ll have a look through later.’ Her hand was still on Kevin’s. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Just being here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

  She gave his hand another squeeze. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be in the bedroom?’

  ‘But it’s still the afternoon.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  Hakim and Wallen tracked Markus Asplund down just as he was leaving his office in Västra Hamnen. He glanced at his watch in an agitated manner.

  ‘We need another word,’ opened Wallen.

  ‘Look, I’ve got a train to catch.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Gothenburg. I’ve got a trade event this weekend. I need to get up there tonight to make sure that the stand is ready.’

  ‘Well, you might have to miss it.’ Wallen was being firm. Again, Hakim was impressed.

  ‘Can you be quick then?’ Asplund said, anxiously glancing around. The wide avenue was nearly empty.

  ‘You lived in Sjöbo some years ago.’

  ‘So? My wife comes from there.’

  ‘You said you didn’t know Axel Isaksson other than by reputation. He comes from Sjöbo. Isn’t it possible that you came across him?’

  ‘No. It’s not a very big place, but I was busy trying to establish a business and raise a family. Besides, we weren’t there for that long.’ Again, his eyes strayed to his watch. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We need a DNA swab.’

  Asplund looked momentarily stunned.

  ‘What if I don’t want to cooperate?’

  ‘We can do this down at the polishus. But you’ll miss your train.’

  ‘We can give you a lift to the station in our car,’ Hakim put in helpfully.

  ‘Why do you want it?’

  ‘To compare it with a DNA sample in Julia Akerman’s apartment,’ answered Wallen, who felt there was nothing to be gained by hiding any details. The more he knew what the police knew, the more he was likely to panic and give himself away.

  For a second, Hakim thought he saw a flicker of relief in Asplund’s eyes.

  ‘OK, but can we please be quick?’

  Hakim exchanged a surprised glance with Wallen as they turned towards their car, which was parked just along the pavement. On the way over, they had speculated about how accommodating Asplund would be. They knew that if he refused outright, there would be very little they could do, despite what Moberg had ordered.

  By the time they got to the station, Hakim had swabbed Asplund’s mouth in the back of the car.

  ‘Can I go now?’

  Wallen turned from the driver’s seat and smiled. ‘Thank you for your cooperation. When will you be back in Malmö?’

  ‘Late Monday. I’ll be going home on Sunday first. If that’s OK with you,’ he added sarcastically.

  Asplund climbed out of the back of the car. He looked thankful to able to get away.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Hakim suddenly said. ‘When you lived in Sjöbo, did you hear anything about the Church of God’s Mission on Earth?’

  ‘No,’ he said in exasperation. ‘I’m not religious. Not my thing.’

  They watched him as he hurried off through the doors of the expensively refurbished station.

  ‘We’d better get his DNA off to Eva Thulin to keep the chief inspector happy,’ Wallen said as she manoeuvred the car into the traffic. ‘Do you think it’ll match what we found at Akerman’s?’

  Through the glass wall he could see Asplund disappear down the escalator. ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Kevin woke to find that Anita wasn’t in bed beside him. After their afternoon lovemaking, he had gone down to the beach for a swim, followed by a leisurely supper of fried chicken pieces with salad. Kevin was amused at Anita’s supposed indifference to Klas Lennartsson’s research material, which she had cleared away for the meal. He kn
ew she was itching to have a look at it. So, he wasn’t surprised when he found her in the kitchen poring over Lennartsson’s notebooks at two in the morning.

  ‘You were snoring, so I thought I’d get up.’

  ‘Cheeky bugger! I don’t snore.’

  Anita gave him a tired grin. ‘That shows how long it’s been since you shared your bed with someone.’

  Kevin slumped down in a chair opposite her.

  ‘Well, we’re both awake now. Cuppa?’

  ‘Coffee for me.’

  ‘Blimey, you’ll never get to sleep. It’ll have to be instant.’

  He filled the kettle up and flicked it on. With a big yawn, he turned and watched Anita, in a blue T-shirt and black knickers, intently sifting through the paperwork that covered one man’s extraordinary life. Yet the most extraordinary piece was missing. Would they ever find it?

  She didn’t acknowledge him when he placed the mug of black coffee next to her. She was so absorbed that he took his cup of tea outside with him. He’d slipped on a jersey and shorts. He shivered as he stood on the porch. Despite the heat of the day, it was nippy at that unearthly hour of the morning. He sipped the warm liquid greedily. The lack of urban illumination meant that the myriad stars had free rein in the night sky. It was as though they had scooped up all the light from the earth and scattered it randomly about the universe. In the stillness, he could hear the sea lapping the shoreline below. He might be falling in love with Anita, but he was definitely falling in love with Sweden. Was it always like this? At that very moment, he felt he could chuck it all in back in Britain and come and live here. Then again, this was only a holiday, despite Anita trying to turn it into an investigation. And it was notoriously easy to be seduced into thinking of moving abroad after a great experience. Grass always greener. He remembered that he and Leanne had thought of buying a small place in Spain after a surprisingly argument-free fortnight in the sun. But he knew deep down that he could never be too far from his girls – and Anita might not be too happy to have him hanging around on her doorstep. Any remotely profound thoughts always left him gasping for a cigarette. Best not. He didn’t want to go back to bed with Anita, smelling of smoke. Not very romantic. Not that he was sure that she would be going back to bed anyway. He finished his tea and went inside.

  To his surprise, Anita was dressed. She had a bunch of keys in her hand.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the Källströms’ house.’

  ‘At this time of night! Can’t we do it in the morning?’

  ‘They’re mixed up in this. I don’t know how or why, but they were here for a reason, and I suspect it wasn’t to soak up the sun.’

  She went into the kitchen and rummaged around for a torch.

  ‘Is this really necessary?’

  ‘Do you want to come or not?’

  Kevin sighed. No chance of getting her back into bed while she was in this resolute mood. It was a side of her that he hadn’t come across before. He rather liked it.

  ‘Just let me get some trousers on. It’s cold out there.’

  Ten minutes later, they were making their way across the damp grass in front of Rylander’s house, and beyond to the third property. Like their cabin, it was all on one floor. From this side of the buildings, the only noise was the soft pad of their footsteps; the sound of the sea being blocked out.

  ‘I feel like a burglar,’ Kevin found himself whispering.

  Anita ignored him as she carefully slotted one of the keys into the Yale lock by the light of her torch. They stepped inside. They found themselves in a small hallway with a row of hooks for coats and an empty rack for shoes. Anita found a switch. The hallway opened out into a corridor. Further switches were flicked on to reveal a kitchen at one end and a large wet room at the other. Across the corridor from the hallway was an open door, through which a large space loomed. Once she had turned on the light, Anita’s immediate impression was of a very well-appointed living room. The furniture was stylish in a deliberately rustic way. At the far end, large picture windows overlooked the sea. Off the living room were two bedrooms. By now, the house was ablaze with light.

  ‘Nice place. But what are we looking for?’ Kevin asked.

  Good question. Anita wasn’t entirely sure why she had rushed over here. Her famously unreliable female intuition? More on an impulse really. She had suddenly remembered the keys she had borrowed from the letting agent in the middle of reading Klas’s notes, a lot of which were transcriptions of the CDs that Klas had used for his interviews. She could see that Rylander had had a fascinating career with spells around the world, particularly in London, Washington and East Berlin. He had some scurrilous things to say about certain ex-colleagues and leading political figures whom he’d come across in the course of his long diplomatic career. As he would be dead by the time the book was supposed to come out, no one would be able to sue him, and many of the people he referred to were also dead anyway. But the references in themselves would certainly get the press excited. She had also found Rylander’s father’s incredible story about saving Lenin’s life. Was it really true? Rylander was convinced. Had that turned the son, like his horrified father, against Communism for the rest of his life? But none of that explained why she was standing in the middle of the Källströms’ living room with her new lover at three in the morning. The sun would be coming up soon.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘That’s a good start.’

  ‘You’re a policeman. You should be used to having no idea what you’re looking for. I don’t know. Could they have left something to give us a clue as to why they were here?’

  Kevin wandered over to a small bookcase, which only housed about a dozen paperbacks.

  ‘Won’t they have had a cleaner in by now? They went a week ago.’

  ‘Not necessarily. They’d booked six weeks. The cleaners might not come until the next occupants are due to arrive.’

  Kevin ran a finger along the top of the bookcase. ‘Looks pretty clean to me.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, we’ve nothing to lose.’

  Anita left Kevin to scrutinize the living room while she went into the bedrooms. One had a double bed, while the other had two singles. All the beds were neatly made. The fitted wardrobes yielded nothing except empty hangers. Nothing in the drawers. Maybe the cleaners had been in. Before leaving, she pulled back the duvet on the double bed. The bottom sheet was neatly tucked in, but she could tell by the small creases that it had been slept in. So, no cleaners after all. This made her go back and re-examine the room with the twin beds. She did the same with the duvet on the first bed. This definitely hadn’t been slept in. It made sense that a couple would use the double bed. But when she idly whisked back the duvet covering the second single, someone had definitely been in there.

  ‘Kevin!’ she called. He came into the bedroom.

  ‘Did you say that the woman, Fanny, indicated they were a married couple?’

  ‘She referred to him as her husband. Something like: “my husband works in IT”.’ Anita pointed to the sheet. ‘Well, it doesn’t look as though they shared a bed. This and the double bed have both been slept in.’

  ‘Maybe he snores!’

  ‘Mmm.’

  They both went back into the living room. Kevin flopped down on the sofa.

  ‘This is more comfortable than yours.’

  ‘You can move in here if you want. It’s been paid for.’

  Kevin yawned widely.

  Anita strolled over to the window. The first streaks of morning light were appearing in the distance. The spell of good weather appeared to be continuing.

  ‘If Fanny and Benno weren’t wife and husband, and had separate rooms, what were they doing here? And why did they suddenly cut their supposed holiday short? Right on the morning after Rylander killed himself – or not, as the case may be?’

  ‘She said that they had to get back to work. Perhaps that was just an excuse. Maybe they had a falling out. Couples do. Leanne was forever shutting
me out of her bedroom. Or shutting herself in other men’s bedrooms,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘I know what you’re saying. But don’t you think the timing’s odd? They obviously aren’t who they say they are. They gave someone else’s address when they booked this house.’

  ‘Maybe they’re married to other people. This was an illicit hideaway.’

  Anita gave him another of those withering looks he was starting to get used to. ‘You’re not helping.’ She came over and sat next to him. ‘That figure you saw outside watching Rylander’s. Could you describe him?’

  ‘No. Too dark.’

  ‘But was the figure small, medium or large? Fat or thin?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Well, I suppose he was large. Otherwise, I might not have noticed him. But it was all shadows.’

  ‘Large,’ Anita muttered to herself. ‘Large.’ She suddenly put a hand on his knee. ‘Was he bald? Totally bald?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Could have been. Actually, come to think of it, the moonlight caught him for a moment on the second occasion. Yes.’ Now even Kevin sounded excited.

  ‘Moa the nurse said that the policeman with Zetterberg was large and bald. The one who didn’t say anything. And Zetterberg didn’t answer my question when I asked her about him. Who’s the mysterious herr Large?’

  ‘I thought you said he had no hair.’

  ‘Very funny. Mr Large, then.’

  Kevin sat up. ‘What if Mr Large wasn’t watching Rylander’s place, but this one? Where I saw the figure in the trees, he could easily have seen over here. Especially with these picture windows. Maybe that’s what drove the Källströms away. He might have been a private investigator.’

  ‘Trust you to complicate matters!’

  Kevin sniggered. ‘It’s only a theory. Now I’ve got one too!’

  Anita raised her hand quickly and slapped him playfully on his knee. ‘It’s not a competition.’

  Kevin pretended to be hurt, but he couldn’t keep it up and dissolved into laughter.

  ‘Can we go to bed now?’

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was that a car coming along the track?’