The Beige Man

by Helene Tursten

  “A Nazi doesn’t dress like a rapper.”

  Tommy looked slightly put out, but had to admit she was right. Everything else had fit, and he hadn’t thought about what the car thieves were wearing.

  “That leaves just one name on my list: Niklas Ström. Nineteen years old, ran away from Gräskärr exactly one week ago. According to my contact, he had problems with some of the other boys in the institution. He’s gay, and that’s not popular with those who sympathize with people like Tobias Karlsson. Niklas couldn’t cope with the bullying.”

  “Why did he tell the others he was gay?”

  “He didn’t. It was obvious. He was charged with violent rape. The victim was a boy the same age who sustained severe injuries. In his defense, Niklas said that he was under the influence of drugs and couldn’t remember a thing. He got eighteen months.”

  “How come the sentence is always harsher when the victim is male?” Irene broke in.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  Tommy merely shrugged in response.

  Irene started to go through her list. “I also have one guy from Gräskärr and two from Fagared. The one from Gräskärr is Björn Kjellgren, known as Billy. Eighteen years old, went down for breaking into several houses and cars. A full-fledged little thief. One meter seventy-four, slight build. Strawberry blond hair that he wears in dreadlocks. Nothing unusual about that these days, but definitely worth noting, bearing in mind the rapper connection. A bit of a loner, apparently. He disappeared the day after Niklas Ström. According to the person I spoke to, he was inspired by Niklas’s departure. None of the staff thinks Niklas and Billy were friends.”

  “But Billy is the first one we actually know is a rapper,” Tommy pointed out.

  Irene smiled teasingly at him.

  “It’s not that simple. Both of my boys from Fagared also have the hip-hop vibe.”

  “Did they go missing at the same time?”

  “Yes, last Friday—five days ago. They’re friends, and they’ve known each other since they were toddlers. They’re both in for serious drug offenses. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to put them in the same institution. One is fully Swedish, the other is half-Jamaican, born in Sweden to a Swedish mother. Fredrik Svensson; he’s twenty-two and has Rasta braids, but they’re long and reach halfway down his back. The car owner should have noticed them.”

  “You’d think.”

  “Fredrik’s pal is Daniel Lindgren. He’s twenty, and he’s been selling drug for years. He also went down for illegal possession of a firearm. According to the investigating officer, he’s regarded as some kind of hit man for Fredrik Svensson’s gang.”

  “So we’re looking at a gang? Organized drug dealing?”

  “Yes. In broad terms both of them fit the description, but when it comes to Fredrik Svensson, he’s got those long Rasta braids. Plus his skin color is quite dark. Daniel Lindgren is one meter seventy. He’s not well built, but is very keen on working out. I suppose he’s got his image as a hit man to think of. The question is whether he could be described as slight.”

  “I think you ought to have a word with the owner of the BMW. He might remember things more clearly by now. I’ll carry on with our absconders,” Tommy said.

  ON HER WAY to the elevator, Irene bumped into Hannu Rauhala, who was heading in the same direction.

  “The medical examiner’s office called. They found a bunch of keys in the hit-and-run victim’s pocket. I thought I’d try them in Sandberg’s door,” Hannu said.

  “Brilliant. That would save a lot of time,” Irene replied.

  The owner of the BMW was Alexander Hölzer. He was in his apartment on Stampgatan, just a few hundred meters from police HQ. Irene decided to walk; it would be quicker than driving around trying to find a parking space.

  A large removal truck was parked in front of the building. Two men were loading a white leather sofa into the back. Irene glanced inside and noted that Hölzer’s furniture definitely hadn’t come from IKEA. Not that she had expected anything else, given that the stolen car was a BMW 630i. There aren’t too many families with young children driving around in those.

  She found the nameplate on the third floor and rang the bell. It wasn’t really necessary as the door was open, but it’s always best to be polite. It’s important to make a positive first impression and to create a good relationship with the witness right from the start. These basic rules in the art of interrogation would turn out to be somewhat wasted on Alexander Hölzer. Irene waited politely at the door for quite some time. Just as she was running out of patience and was reaching out to push the door, it was yanked open. She was confronted by an overweight man in his fifties, dressed in a red golf sweater with a prestigious logo on the breast, black chinos and noticeably elegant shoes.

  “Yes?” he said brusquely.

  “Detective Inspector Irene Huss. I’m looking for Alexander Hölzer.”

  “That’s me. What do you want?”

  At first Irene was surprised by his dismissive attitude. She made an effort not to show what she was thinking, and carried on in a pleasant tone of voice, “It’s about the theft of your car yesterday. I’d just like to ask you a few more ques—”

  Before Irene could finish the sentence, she saw the color rising in Hölzer’s face. His voice shook with suppressed fury. “I have nothing to say to you until we get the stroller back. I’ve called several times, but they just keep saying they haven’t finished examining it yet. What the hell are they examining the stroller for? The thieves weren’t riding around in it, were they? It’s just the police on some fucking power trip! It’s ridiculous! I’m the one who’s had my car stolen, and yet I’m being treated like some kind of—”

  “In that case perhaps you’d like to accompany me to the station so that we can continue this conversation.”

  Hölzer’s face turned purple and the words stuck in his throat; he eventually managed to force something out. “What the hell …?”

  Irene’s expression remained impassive. “This is not just about the theft of your car. This is part of a murder inquiry.”

  “A murder inq—” Hölzer’s eyeballs looked as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. This guy definitely needs to check his blood pressure, Irene thought. He simply stood staring blankly at her for a long time, not making any attempt to move from the doorway. The only sound in the stairwell was his heavy breathing. Gradually his high color began to subside; it was as if the steam were slowly hissing out of him. He shuffled backward to let Irene in, then silently led the way, lumbering through an empty hallway and into a virtually empty living room. A few packing cases stood by the wall, and a poinsettia wilted in the window.

  “That’s the last of the boxes. The moving guys will be back to collect them at any minute. The contract cleaners will be here tomorrow,” Alexander Hölzer said wearily. He fell silent for a moment, then cleared his throat several times before going on. “What did you say about … about a murder inquiry?”

  Irene briefly explained what had happened at the scene where Hölzer’s car had been found.

  “You’re kidding me.” Hölzer shook his head and didn’t speak for a little while. He ran a hand over his hair, which was peppered with grey, and with a practiced gesture, he arranged a long strand over his incipient bald patch. “I can’t cope with this. I’ve been told that the stroller is undamaged, and we really need it. Eleanor is five months old, and she’s too heavy to be carried everywhere. I asked if I could come and pick up the stroller, and I was told that was out of the question. It cost ten thousand kronor, so I don’t feel like buying a new one. And everything has been really stressful: the move, the car being stolen and … everything,” he concluded apologetically.

  That was probably the closest Irene was going to get to an actual apology, so she nodded to indicate that she understood the strain he was under.

  When Hölzer mentioned that the stroller had cost ten thousand kronor, an image flickered through Irene’s mind
: the well-used twin stroller made of blue corduroy that she had pushed her girls around in. It had cost five hundred kronor. She could still remember how happy she had been when she and Krister could afford to buy a new one made of red and white striped nylon. That was almost twenty years ago; she presumed that strollers were more basic back then. This luxury transportation system ought to have leather-covered handles, heated rearview mirrors and side airbags, given the price.

  Hölzer went over to the large living room window and looked down at the courtyard. He nipped off one of the poinsettia’s shriveled leaves and crumbled it between his thumb and forefinger. With his back to the room, he asked, “Do you seriously believe that my car has something to do with the murder of this girl?”

  “It’s being examined carefully in order to cover every eventuality,” Irene replied diplomatically.

  Hölzer merely nodded at his reflection in the window.

  “We’d like to know if you’ve come up with anything else regarding the description of the boys who took your car,” Irene said.

  He slowly turned around and looked at her with a frown. However, the concentration on his face suggested that he really was making an effort to try to remember any further details. Eventually he shook his head.

  “No. Two boys wearing baggy pants and jackets. Woolen hats. Dark clothes. Young.”

  “Did you see their hair?”

  “No. No hair,” he said firmly.

  Irene mentally crossed Fredrik Svensson off her list. Just to be on the safe side, she asked, “Did you manage to see anything of their faces?”

  “I only caught a glimpse of them.”

  “And you didn’t notice anything in particular?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “No scars? Skin color? Eyes?”

  “They were too far away for me to see their eyes. It was dark, so it was hard to tell what color their skin might have been. And as I said, I didn’t see their hair. But they were definitely two white guys. Not black. Although of course some of those Hispanics have pretty light-colored skin.”

  Hispanics. Irene thought about her daughter’s boyfriend. Felipe was half-Swedish and half-Brazilian, and could easily be classed as both Hispanic and black by someone who was inclined to think that way.

  Fredrik Svensson was definitely off the list. That left Daniel Lindgren, Fredrik’s wingman, and the two boys from Gräskärr, Niklas Ström and Björn “Billy” Kjellgren. If it turned out that none of them were involved in the theft of the BMW, then the investigation was going to be tricky. There was still a chance that the perpetrators were hiding out in the Delsjö area, in which case the patrols ought to find them at some point during the day. If not, there was a significant risk that they would suffer severe frostbite, or even freeze to death. The temperature hadn’t risen above minus twelve degrees so far, and as the afternoon wore on, the cold would once again intensify its grip. For several reasons, finding the two boys was a matter of urgency.

  Chapter 3

  “NO LUCK SO far. A helicopter equipped with a thermal imaging camera has been searching the area all afternoon, but it hasn’t spotted a thing. No break-ins have been reported in the holiday village. We’ve found no trace whatsoever of the missing boys, but the dog teams are still out there searching. Our theory is that they’ve got another vehicle, but no cars have been reported stolen in the local area in the past twenty-four hours.”

  Detective Inspector Erik Lind, head of the search unit, was bouncing gently up and down on the soles of his sturdy boots. He had taken off the thick winter snowsuit he’d been wearing out in Delsjö all day, and he was now facing the Violent Crimes Unit team in full uniform, hands behind his back: a habit from his time spent patrolling the streets of Östra Nordstan a quarter of a century ago. With his cropped grey hair and his sharp pale blue eyes, he looked like the Hollywood template of a Nazi officer. This was far removed from the reality; he was a very likable individual who inspired great trust among his colleagues. If Lind and his team couldn’t find the hit-and-run drivers, no one could.

  “Could they have had a getaway car nearby?” Tommy Persson suggested.

  Erik Lind considered the possibility for a moment before replying. “It’s not out of the question, but taking the BMW seems to have been an opportunistic crime.”

  “Or they were actually looking around Stampen for a car to steal so they could get to the other car. But that seems a bit … far-fetched,” Tommy admitted.

  “If they really wanted to get to this hypothetical getaway car, they could have gone by tram,” Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala pointed out.

  Which was perfectly true. And Tommy was right: his suggestion was far-fetched. According to his theory, the thieves would have stolen the car on Stampgatan, then run down and killed a pedestrian outside the TV studios on Delsjövägen, shattering the windshield in the collision and making the car virtually unusable. By pure chance they must have had another car in the area where the accident happened; it had to have been parked close by so they could reach it on foot. After that they had managed to continue their flight and disappear without a trace. The theory didn’t hold water, but at the same time it could explain why they had chosen Delsjövägen as their escape route. At the moment they couldn’t afford to rule out any hypothesis completely, Irene realized.

  “According to CSI, conditions around the side road and the root cellar are extremely challenging. They’ve found a whole bunch of tire tracks on the road, but it’s difficult to identify them. The ground is frozen solid, and there’s no snow. And a large number of police officers and dogs trampled around the place where the girl’s body was found. It’s fair to say that CSI isn’t happy,” Lind stated dryly.

  “No trace of the killer?” Superintendent Andersson asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  Hannu Rauhala slipped in through the door and sat down on the empty chair next to Irene. He reached into his pocket and fished out a key ring from the depths of his padded jacket.

  “They fit,” he whispered so that only she could hear.

  Irene felt her heart give an extra beat. Their suspicions were now confirmed: the victim of the hit-and-run was Torleif Sandberg. A colleague whom many people in the room had met and gotten to know. The hunt for these two car thieves would be intense. You don’t get away with killing a cop. They would soon realize that.

  “I’ll let you know if I have any news,” Erik Lind said, marching toward the door.

  It very nearly smacked him in the face. Professor Yvonne Stridner rushed into the room as Erik Lind was leaving at the same high velocity. The collision was as violent as it was inevitable. Neither of the parties involved was the type to go for lengthy apologies, so the atmosphere by the door was a little tense until Lind managed to extricate himself. Professor Stridner’s face was bright red by the time she reached Superintendent Andersson. No one dared smile. You just didn’t smile at the Professor of Forensic Medicine.

  “So rude! Crashing into people …!” Stridner broke off her indignant tirade and took a deep breath. “As I have to catch a train to Stockholm from Central Station in an hour, I thought I might as well swing by to give you my preliminary report on the murder victim. My colleague, Dr. Amirez, will be conducting the autopsy on the girl tomorrow afternoon. So far we have carried out only a visual examination, but I felt it was important to let you know what I have seen.

  “First of all, she looks much younger than she probably is. Her exact height is one hundred and thirty-six centimeters, and her weight is twenty-eight kilos, or just over sixty-one pounds. A skinny little girl with small breasts and sparse pubic hair. Cracks at the corners of the mouth and lesions in and around the mouth indicate malnutrition and a lack of vitamins and minerals. Poor dental hygiene and several examples of untreated cavities. However, the development of the teeth suggests she is around thirteen years old. The forensic dentist was in the department on another matter, and I asked him to take a look. He noticed that her molars had come through. Tomorrow
he will take X-rays of her teeth, and we will also X-ray the skeleton in order to establish her age.”

  The professor paused for breath and pushed up her luxuriant red hair with her fingertips. The short, light brown suede jacket looked elegant with the black pencil skirt. As usual she was wearing sky-high heels; this time it was a pair of designer leather boots in exactly the same shade as the jacket. Yvonne Stridner always dressed to make herself look taller and slimmer than she was.

  “Her vagina is in a very bad state. There are clear signs of old injuries, and she was suffering from a serious infection that caused a strong odor. I’ve sent off samples to try to find out what kind of bacteria is involved. There is also scar tissue and severe damage around the anus. This girl has been subjected to sexual abuse over a long period. She has puncture marks of varying ages on both arms; the oldest are from several months ago. There are also puncture marks between her toes and on her inner thighs.”

  You could have heard a pin drop in the room as she paused once more. For a brief moment a weary, anguished expression passed across the professor’s beautifully made-up face.

  “I can only report on the physical abuse she has suffered. No autopsy in the world can reveal her mental torment.”

  With that closing statement she marched over to the door and yanked it open with the same force as when she had entered just a few minutes earlier. It seemed only logical when Detective Inspector Erik Lind stumbled in from the opposite direction. His right hand fumbled in the air for the door handle, which was no longer where it was supposed to be.

  “What the hell—” he snapped, but he straightened up when he saw Stridner holding the handle on the other side.

  Two steely expressions crossed like rapiers in midair.

  Then something totally unexpected happened.

  The corners of the professor’s mouth began to twitch. Erik Lind’s eyes narrowed, and he broke into a broad smile. They started to laugh, at first with a certain amount of reserve, then loud and long. Some of the other officers joined in, albeit more quietly.