The Beige Man

by Helene Tursten

  “The car wouldn’t start … it’s too old for this weather,” she said by way of an apology.

  Which was perfectly true.

  “Coffee?” she ventured, smiling at her boss.

  “Later,” he snapped, marching into the conference room.

  Irene sighed. She had a bad feeling as she walked in and saw that the others were already there. She immediately noticed the high level of tension in the air—it was almost tangible. She could tell something extraordinary had happened. With a nod to everyone in general and no one in particular, she quickly sat down on the nearest chair and tried to look attentive.

  “It’s been a busy night, as I’m sure you’re all aware,” the superintendent began.

  Irene wasn’t aware of that at all, but realized this wasn’t the time to say so. She leaned back in her chair, making every effort to appear totally up to speed with the night’s events.

  “As usual the morning paper got most things wrong, but the local radio report was more or less correct. Apart from the girl. They didn’t know about her, but the evening papers have gotten a hold of that information,” he went on. He peered over the top of his cheap reading glasses with a grim expression.

  To Irene’s relief, Tommy Persson put up his hand like a well-behaved schoolboy and asked, “What’s happened? I missed the morning news. I had to scrape the ice off my windshield, then I had to ask my neighbor to help get the car started with jumper cables. I didn’t even have time to look at the paper before I left.”

  The superintendent stuck out his lower lip and glared at Tommy, which didn’t help; Persson still had no idea what had been going on. Andersson sighed loudly and continued.

  “At twenty-one seventeen last night, we received a report that a car had been stolen on Stampgatan. The owner was busy loading things into his car, which was a BMW 630i. As it was so cold, he left the engine running. The car was parked approximately twenty meters from the main door of the apartment complex, where he had piled up several items he was intending to take with him. Apparently the family is in the process of moving. He had placed a folded stroller in the trunk and had just gotten back to the doorway when he heard the car doors open and close. When he turned around, he saw the car drive off.”

  “So he didn’t see who took it?” Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala interjected.

  “He did, in fact. Just after he had put the stroller in and closed the trunk, he saw two young men approaching along the sidewalk. According to the description, they were wearing dark, baggy clothes and woolen hats. He said they looked like rappers.”

  “Boys wearing huge pants that hang halfway down their ass,” Jonny Blom said with a grin.

  Irene was a little surprised. When she bumped into Jonny and his eldest son in Frölunda Square shortly before Christmas, the fifteen-year-old had been wearing baggy jeans and an oversized hoodie. Beneath his knitted hat she could see lumps and bumps that could well have been dreadlocks in the making. Irene sensed conflict within the Blom family.

  Andersson pretended that he hadn’t heard Jonny Blom’s contribution and went on. “The witness estimated the age of the boys at between seventeen and twenty-five. They shot away along the tramlines, crossed Västra Folkunga Bridge and continued along Skånegatan. Which means the bastards drove past here a minute or so after taking the car. They headed for Liseberg, then turned off toward Örgrytemotet. They drove to Sankt Sigfridsplan, then out onto Delsjövägen. At the same time, a general call went out over the radio about the theft of the car. A patrol car was parked by the fast food kiosk on Deljsövägen and saw the BMW pass at high speed. They called it in and set off in pursuit. They gained visual contact with the suspect vehicle and saw it hit a pedestrian just outside the TV studios.”

  Andersson paused to clear his throat. “Of course the patrol car stopped at the scene of the accident and called for an ambulance and backup. But it was a hell of a collision. According to the medical examiner, the victim died instantly. The entire skull was crushed. And …” He paused again and swallowed several times before continuing. “The victim was wearing a track suit top with the police logo on it. His face was more or less gone, but … but it seems very likely that he was a police officer.”

  The silence in the room was suddenly electric. Everyone stiffened. A colleague. One of them. Someone they perhaps knew.

  “Who?” asked Hannu Rauhala. He had been married to Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala for a few years now, and they had a two-year-old son. The superintendent had never gotten over the fact that they had married, but had gradually resigned himself to the situation.

  “There are three colleagues who live nearby, although we were able to eliminate one straight away because Kicki Börjesson was in the backup car. Stellan Edwardsson was on duty last night, so we were able to eliminate him as well. Which leaves just one person. He retired some years ago, a little early I think. We’ve tried to get a hold of him on the phone, but no luck so far. He lives alone. I’m sure some of you know him … Torleif Sandberg.”

  “Muesli,” Jonny said.

  Andersson glared in Jonny’s direction and frowned. However, he didn’t contradict him; everyone had referred to Torleif as Muesli during his time as duty officer. Torleif always had a bowl of yogurt with oat muesli when the others were drinking coffee and eating Danishes. He would tirelessly hold forth to his less-knowledgeable colleagues on the health risks of the sweet pastries. No one had ever been tempted to try the dirty brown mush he recommended so heartily. His lentil soups, barley grain burgers, root vegetable stews and similar whole-food dishes were equally safe in the refrigerator. No one had ever nibbled away at the mysterious contents of his little foil containers.

  “Muesl—Torleif and I started in the force at the same time,” Andersson said, his voice slightly unsteady. He cleared his throat once more before continuing. “As yet we have no definite confirmation that Torleif was the victim of the hit-and-run, but we’re trying to track down his family just in case … We’ll see what happens.”

  Irene remembered Torleif Sandberg clearly. His unremarkable appearance with his thin, mousy hair and skinny body hadn’t exactly etched itself in her memory, but she did recall his quirks. Considerate and imperturbable, but a real fanatic when it came to health. He would often talk about his favorite subject: a healthy way of life. This involved a vegetarian diet, exercise, meditation, and of course total abstinence when it came to alcohol. He didn’t even drink low-alcohol beer. His enthusiastic explanations had been met by somewhat muted responses in the staff room, to put it mildly. His colleagues often would tease him gently. He hadn’t liked being called Muesli, which was probably why he never managed to shake off the nickname.

  And now there was a chance he might be dead. Run down by car thieves while he was out jogging in his Police Sports Association tracksuit.

  Irene’s thoughts were interrupted as the superintendent took a deep breath and exclaimed, “But not only did they run him down, the bastards drove off and left him! Even though the windshield was shattered. A witness saw the guy on the passenger side hanging out of the window, guiding the driver up Töpelsgatan. The car disappeared up the hill. Several patrol cars were sent to the area. At twenty-one forty-six, the glow of a fire was spotted on a side road. When the patrol arrived, the officers discovered that the little shits had torched the BMW. They managed to put out the fire with the extinguisher in their car. Other patrol teams arrived and started searching the immediate vicinity. Because of the darkness and the difficult terrain, a dog team was brought in. After just a few minutes both dogs drew attention to an old root cellar. The door had been broken open. Inside was a dead body. A girl.”

  Irene glanced at her colleagues. They all looked every bit as surprised as she felt.

  “A girl? Could she have been one of the people in the car? If they were wearing baggy clothes, it might have been difficult to tell if one of them was a girl.” The theory was put forward by Fredrik Stridh. He was thirty years old, but much to his annoyance he was still regarde
d as the youngest member of the team. However, he had his head screwed on, and Irene liked working with him.

  Andersson shook his head. “According to the ME, she had been dead for between two and three hours before she was found. And he estimated that she was approximately twelve years old.”

  “Has anyone reported a girl of that age missing?” Birgitta asked.

  “No. She was wearing a T-shirt, nothing else. The rest of her clothes were in a heap beside her in the cellar. The only thing we know is that she was white and blonde. The probable cause of death is strangulation.”

  “A sex crime?” Hannu asked.

  “The ME thought that was likely. They won’t get around to looking at her until this afternoon; they’re short staffed, apparently.”

  It was a well-known fact that the medical examiner’s office in Göteborg had been understaffed for a number of years. They had great difficulty in filling available posts. If anyone asked Superintendent Andersson why that might be, he was clear about his opinion: no one in their right mind would voluntarily work for Professor Yvonne Stridner. She might be regarded as one of Europe’s most skilled forensic pathologists, but he didn’t care. To him she was one of the most terrifying women on the planet.

  “What happened to the bastards who mowed down Muesli?” Jonny asked.

  “They’ve gone up in smoke! We’ve found no trace of them, but the dog teams are carrying on with the search today. They’ll be going through the holiday village with a fine-tooth comb,” Andersson replied.

  “Hopefully their balls will have frozen and dropped off by now,” Jonny said in a voice dripping with sincerity.

  “It was minus sixteen in the small hours. I’m sure several things will have frozen and dropped off.”

  This provided some small measure of consolation.

  “Is there a connection between the car thieves and the murdered girl?” Andersson wondered aloud.

  His team didn’t require much time to think about that before collectively shaking their heads. Tommy Persson expressed everyone’s thoughts. “It was pure chance that we found the girl so quickly. The dogs were trying to track the car thieves when they found the body. If they hadn’t, she could have been lying there undiscovered for a long time.”

  “Exactly. And the guys in the car can’t have hidden her in the root cellar. They didn’t have time,” Birgitta pointed out.

  Tommy Persson nodded. “The girl can’t have been in the trunk of the BMW because there was a folded up stroller in there. The body could have been in the back seat, but why would the two guys have bothered to move it in that case? They had every reason in the world to get away from the car as fast as possible, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten very far, and we would have found them.”

  “If the girl’s body was in the car, then surely the owner wouldn’t have reported it stolen?”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, once the car was stolen, he had to report it. He might have planned on saying that he had nothing to do with the body, and putting the blame on the guys who stole the car.”

  “They didn’t have time to move the body,” Birgitta said again.

  Most of the team were inclined to agree with her.

  During a relatively brief period of thirty minutes, the two boys had stolen a car, driven at least five kilometers at high speed toward the lake at Delsjö, run down a pedestrian, set fire to the car and managed to get far enough away to make it impossible for the dogs to find them. No, they wouldn’t have had time to conceal a body, Irene concluded.

  “Have we any idea who these boys might be? Is anyone on the wanted list?” she asked.

  “I thought you could look into that,” Andersson said.

  He glanced around his team. As usual when he was thinking, his fingertips beat a tattoo on the surface of the desk. Once he had made his decision, he slapped down the palm of his hand and said, “Irene, Tommy and Hannu will take the hit-and-run. Try to confirm the identity of the victim and check out any possible suspects for the theft of the car. Contact me as soon as you come up with anything. Birgitta, Jonny and Fredrik, you take the girl. Same thing there: contact me as soon as you know who she is.”

  He linked his fingers, turned his palms outward and stretched them until his knuckles cracked.

  “I’ll keep an eye on door-to-door inquiries and collate the witness statements that come in during the day. Not that I think we’ll get very far, but one of the residents in the apartment complex on Töpelsgatan might have seen something. Then it’ll be the usual goddamn puzzle as we try to sort out what goes with the hit-and-run, what goes with the murdered girl and what’s totally irrelevant.”

  Andersson sighed deeply, and Irene could hear the whistling from his windpipe as he breathed out. This cold weather was no good for his asthma.

  In five weeks he would be moving over to the cold cases team. It was a relatively new initiative, and its brief was to try to cast fresh light on old investigations before the statute of limitations ran out. Superintendent Andersson hadn’t a clue when it came to computers and the latest DNA technology, but he was an excellent homicide investigator. Irene thought he would be a great asset to the cold cases team, and she also believed he would be very happy there during his final years as a police officer. But she would miss him, particularly in view of who his replacement was likely to be. There were strong indications that it would be Acting Superintendent Efva Thylqvist from the drugs squad; everyone knew she had applied for the post. Irene didn’t know her, but she had heard plenty about Thylqvist and sincerely hoped that the rumors were exaggerated.

  THERE WERE VERY few reports of absconders from juvenile detention centers and prisons in Västra Götaland. Most of those who had run away over Christmas and New Year were back. At this time of year it was too cold to make a bid for freedom unless you had somewhere to go. Those who were planning to make a break for it would wait until spring. Their desire for liberty increased as the temperature rose outside.

  “We have seven possible suspects, all of them already on the wanted list,” Irene said.

  “Do any of them look particularly interesting?” Tommy asked.

  Irene quickly scrolled through the list on her computer screen. “Grievous bodily harm … contributing to the death of another person … robbery … vandalism … a whole range of drug-related felonies … We’ve got the lot here. It could be any of them.”

  “Or none of them.”

  “None of them?”

  “It could be two petty thieves who have never been arrested, which means they won’t have a record.”

  Irene nodded and sighed loudly. “In that case it’s going to be hard work.”

  “Yep. Might as well start with the names we’ve got.”

  They divided the names between them. First they would try to form a picture of the runaways using the information already available in the system. If they found anything interesting, they would go out together and start looking. It wouldn’t be a good idea to meet any of these guys alone. They were often armed and hung out with like-minded associates.

  Hannu was trying to establish the identity of the hit-and-run victim. He stuck his head around the door and said he still hadn’t managed to get in touch with Torleif Sandberg. A patrol had been sent to his apartment, but no one had answered the door. Nor had anyone reported him or any other male missing during last night or this morning. The probability that the dead man was the retired police officer was growing stronger by the minute.

  AFTER LUNCH IRENE and Tommy went through what they had found.

  “We can eliminate Mijailo Janovic right away; he’s one meter ninety-three and powerfully built, so he doesn’t fit the description. However, his pal Janos Mijic does. They disappeared from Fagared at the same time, on New Year’s Day. Mijailo is nineteen years old, and was in for grievous bodily harm and attempted murder. He sliced open the belly of a guy from a rival gang. The victim survived, but only just. It was probably a drug-related fight, but neither of them was prepared to admit to
that, so Mijailo was given quite a lenient sentence: two years and three months. Janos is his trusty shadow. Wherever Mijailo is, that’s where Janos is, too. They’re the same age and claim to be cousins. Which isn’t true, because for one thing, Mijailo is a Serb and Janos is a Croat. This fact doesn’t seem to bother them. Janos is of slight build, one meter seventy-eight. He could fit the description of our rapper. Except for what I said before: wherever Mijailo is, that’s where Janos is. And Mijailo was not one of our car thieves,” Tommy said.

  “So it’s not them,” Irene agreed.

  “Nope. However, Tobias Karlsson could be a person of interest. He also absconded from Fagared, but only last Friday. Five days ago. He fits the description. Nineteen years old, and he already has a record as long as your arm. Serious drug offenses, grievous bodily harm, and … there you go! Stealing cars. Several, in fact.”

  “Pretty advanced for his age. Definitely of interest.”

  “Absolutely. His mother lives in Tynnered. Thinks the police are persecuting her son just because he holds certain strong political views. We live in a free country and everyone has the right to their own opinions: that’s what she yelled out in court the first time he ended up there. The charge was extreme violence and racial harassment. The victim was a young immigrant who ended up scarred for life. Before that Karlsson had only been involved in stealing cars, but at the time he was too young to be charged.”

  “A Nazi,” Irene said.

  “Of course.”

  “Shaved head? Tattoos?”

  “The whole package,” Tommy replied smugly.

  “In that case it’s not him.”

  “What?”