“Evening, honey!” she heard her husband call from the kitchen.
A seductive aroma crept out into the hallway. Irene tiptoed across the kitchen floor and wrapped her arms around Krister from behind, as he was busy with various kitchen implements at the stove.
“Mmm, that smells delicious! I’m starving,” she murmured into the nape of his neck.
“Roast fish soup. Well, the peppers and other vegetables have been roasted in the oven, not the fish and the shellfish. I’m cooking those separately as usual,” Krister said, turning his head to try to kiss her.
It was essential to cook and serve the fish and shellfish separately because Jenny had been a vegan for several years now. These days it wasn’t really a problem, but Irene had found it difficult to get used to the idea. Some days they all ate vegan food, and on other days Jenny warmed up the leftovers while the rest of the family had something different. They usually prepared vegetable dishes that could be complemented with meat or fish for those who wished to partake.
Jenny came downstairs. She had let her hair grow without coloring the roots, which were golden blonde. The rest was coal black. The band she had been in for several years had split up after the summer, and Jenny hadn’t made much of an effort to find a new one; she had been fully occupied working in various daycare facilities over the fall and winter, employed on an hourly basis.
Jenny poured some of the soup into a smaller pan. She then added half the contents of a tin of butter beans in order to make it more substantial and richer in protein. She looked thoughtfully at her father as she slowly stirred the soup.
“Any chance you might be able to fix me up with a job at Glady’s?” she asked.
Krister raised his eyebrows. Jenny was a good cook when it came to preparing delicious vegan meals, but she had never shown any real interest in the restaurant industry.
“Doing what?” he wondered.
She shrugged. “Don’t know. Like, helping to cook maybe?”
“We have trained chefs with years of experience who are desperate to work for us. Glady’s is a top-class establishment. You might possibly be able to help out as a general kitchen hand. Or as a dishwasher. Although the cleaning is contracted out to another company, so the restaurant isn’t responsible for that anymore.”
“Right,” she said. She couldn’t hide her disappointment, even though she was trying hard.
“I thought you were happy working at the daycare,” Irene said.
“I am. But it doesn’t feel like it’s what I’m really meant to do.”
“And what about your music?” Krister asked.
“I won’t give that up, but right now I just feel like I want to do something different.”
“Any idea what?”
“No. Well … I think working in a restaurant would be pretty cool.”
“You mean cooking.”
Jenny nodded and lifted the pan off the heat. The soup smelled delicious. She poured it into a bowl and scattered chopped fresh parsley over the top. The contrast between the bright red paprika soup and the green parsley was beautiful. Krister gazed thoughtfully at the results of her efforts.
“You’ve actually got a feeling for food, and an eye for what looks good. But you don’t have any formal training. And the fact that you’re vegan is another problem. You’d have to learn to cook meat and fish if you’re going to work in a restaurant.”
“Not if it’s a vegetarian restaurant,” Jenny shot back.
“So you’d like to learn to cook vegetarian food?”
Jenny nodded again.
“In that case you need to try to get yourself a job in a vegetarian restaurant.”
“That’s not easy. There are only, like, two or three in the whole of Göteborg,” Jenny said.
“In that case you’ll just have to get in touch with those two or three restaurants and introduce yourself. And you can tell them who your dad is,” Krister said.
He smiled at Jenny, who smiled back. They’re so alike, Irene thought, feeling a warm glow around her heart.
WHEN IRENE WENT over to the bedroom window to close the blinds, she saw that it was snowing heavily. She decided to get up early the next morning so she would have time to clear the snow off her car and wouldn’t run the risk of being late for work again.
“So she wants to take up cooking—how about that!” Krister said into the darkness when they had switched off the lights. He couldn’t hide the satisfaction in his voice.
“Do you think she’s serious?” Irene asked.
“I hope so, I really do. I think it would suit her.”
Irene felt slightly put out, somehow. She had always thought that her daughter would choose music. A vegan cook. Oh well, why not?
Chapter 5
JUST A SPOONFUL of snow in Göteborg, and it’s chaos, Irene’s mother, Gerd, always used to say. There was more than a grain of truth in her comment since she was speaking with seventy-seven years’ experience.
During the night several spoonfuls of snow had fallen; almost twenty-five centimeters covered the city. There was traffic chaos everywhere. The snowplows had hardly even started clearing the streets when the morning rush hour began. As usual, the residents of Göteborg were caught off guard by the fact that heavy snow had fallen this year, too. Those who didn’t have winter tires—which was a lot of people—were slithering around in the slush. Cars slid off the road and crashed into one another. Because of all the mishaps and narrow escapes, the traffic was more or less at a standstill. Irene realized she was going to be seriously late for the first time in her sixteen years with the Violent Crimes Unit. She sat there calling down the worst retribution of Judgment Day on those responsible for this pathetic attempt to clear the snow. Which didn’t really help at all. She was stuck there, gridlocked along with her fellow drivers. Her only consolation was that the temperature had started to creep upward.
IRENE WAS ALMOST half an hour late when she arrived at the department, extremely stressed. She saw Fredrik Stridh further down the corridor.
He waved and called out, “Take it easy. Hannu and Birgitta aren’t here yet.”
It felt good to have time for her morning ritual. She hung up her coat, exchanged a few words with Tommy, then headed for the coffee machine. To be on the safe side, she took two cups of coffee into the briefing with her.
The others were sitting chatting in the meeting room. It was a little while before Irene realized that Superintendent Andersson was missing.
“Where’s Sven?” she asked.
Both Jonny Blom and Fredrik Stridh looked surprised.
“Isn’t he around somewhere?” Fredrik said. “He’s usually the first to arrive in the mornings.”
“I suppose he’s stuck in the goddamn snow like everybody else,” Jonny said.
“Birgitta just called. They’ll be here in ten minutes,” Tommy Persson relayed as he came into the room.
“Have you seen Sven?” Irene asked.
“Nope. Isn’t he here?”
“No.”
They sat down around the table with their coffee. Irene told them about the keys that had been found in the victim’s pocket, and that one of them opened the door to Torleif Sandberg’s apartment.
“Which means that it’s likely that Torleif is our victim. They’re doing a dental X-ray this afternoon; apparently the lower jaw is pretty much intact,” she said.
There was an uncomfortable silence as they remembered the crushed head.
“Muesli was a bit of a bore—all that jogging and chewing on stuff that tasted like straw. And he didn’t drink,” Jonny said with his usual inability to read the atmosphere.
“I wouldn’t have said he was a bore,” Tommy chipped in. “But he had his … principles.”
“Principles, exactly! The man was a big ball of principles!” Jonny said. He suddenly stared at Tommy. “Did you ever hang out with Muesli?”
“Not really. But it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s boring, just because—”
“Doesn’t it? Do any of you know whether Muesli ever spent time with anybody at all?” He glanced at each person in turn. They all shook their heads, and Jonny said triumphantly, “Nobody hung out with him because he was so goddamn boring. Just imagine being invited to dinner at his place.” He cleared his throat, then spoke in a falsetto, “Welcome to my home this Friday evening; we’ll be having bean soup with water.”
The others laughed at the performance until they noticed Andersson in the doorway. The look he gave Jonny was venomous.
“I used to hang out with Torleif,” he said tersely.
In the silence that descended over the room, he lumbered over to his place at the head of the table. Puffing and panting, he sank down on the chair, which creaked beneath his weigh. He looked old and tired, Irene thought. Which of course he was, she reminded herself. Sixty-two, seriously overweight, high blood pressure and asthma—it was a pity his friend Torleif hadn’t had more influence on his lifestyle and eating habits. But it was news to Irene that Torleif Sandberg and the superintendent had spent time together. It was difficult to think of two more different individuals. What had they had in common? It struck her that she didn’t actually know anybody who hung out with Sven Andersson outside work. Irene looked at her boss as she remembered Torleif’s apartment. She realized what the common denominator was: loneliness.
“I had no idea you and Muesli were friends,” Jonny said, genuinely surprised. As usual he had put into words precisely what everybody else was thinking.
Andersson looked down at his hands for a little while before he spoke. “We had … a number of things in common. When I got divorced, he’d been through the same thing. We talked quite a lot back then.” Suddenly he looked up and smiled at his colleagues around the table. “He actually invited me round for cabbage pudding once, and it was one of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten.”
“Cabbage pudding? But that has ground beef …” Jonny began.
“He used some kind of soy substitute, but it took a while before I realized it wasn’t real meat.”
“You’ll be telling us next that he offered you a beer as well,” Jonny said, rolling his eyes.
“He did, actually. Low-alcohol beer, but still.”
Andersson was interrupted by the arrival of Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala. There was a brief period of confusion as she started to tell them about a pile-up on the highway outside Floda, while at the same time apologizing for her and Hannu’s late arrival.
“We’ll have a quick meeting before the press conference at ten,” Andersson decided. Then he turned to Tommy and asked, “The body that was found yesterday—where are we on that?”
“It was found by a police dog in rough terrain behind the TV mast at Brudaremossen. It was in a crevice in the rocks in a half-sitting position. Both Fredrik and I thought it seemed like the remains of a male. He looked as if he’d been there for quite some time—several months at least,” Tommy said.
“Young or old?” Andersson asked.
“Not young, judging by the clothes. Gumboots size forty-two, plus something that looked like a Helly Hansen jacket and a hat with earflaps.”
“Warm clothing,” Irene remarked.
“Yes, although the gumboots would suggest that the temperature wasn’t below freezing. More like damp weather in the fall,” Tommy speculated.
“Minus sixteen. Torleif Sandberg was wearing sneakers,” Hannu suddenly said. He didn’t appear to be addressing anyone in particular.
The others stared at him in surprise.
“And?” the superintendent said.
“Cold,” Hannu said laconically.
Andersson, who often seemed flummoxed by their Finnish colleague, didn’t reply; instead he turned to Fredrik with his next question. “Any idea how he died?”
“He definitely died where he was found. We didn’t see anything suspicious at the scene: no guns or other possible weapons. And as far as we could make out, nothing about the body suggests foul play. The autopsy will clarify that, although it’s likely to take a few days.”
“No doubt. They’re so goddamn short staffed,” Andersson snorted.
He drummed a rapid solo with his fingers on the desk while pushing out his lower lip: unmistakable signs that he was thinking. Eventually he said, “Fredrik, check through missing persons for males of the right age group in the area for the past twelve months. Otherwise we’ll keep that investigation on the back burner until we have the results of the autopsy. And I can tell you that door-to-door inquiries around Töpelsgatan haven’t produced any results so far.” He rubbed his hands together energetically and turned to Birgitta. “Any news on the girl?” he asked.
“Not really. I’ve spoken to colleagues in Norway, Denmark and Finland, but there are no reports of missing girls in their early teens that match, so I’m going to speak to Linda Holm in the Human Trafficking Unit today.”
“Oh! Little Blondie. They couldn’t use her undercover, so they had to make her the chief,” Jonny said with a laugh.
“What are you talking about?” Birgitta asked.
“When they sent Little Blondie out on the streets in Rosenlund, the whole thing was a complete mess. All the johns wanted the blonde sitting in the car. The other hookers were furious and threatened to beat her up.”
Jonny laughed again and seemed very pleased with his anecdote. One look at Birgitta was enough to convince him that she didn’t appreciate it. She was clenching her jaw so tightly that he could see her muscles straining, and a furious flush was spreading upward from her throat to her cheeks.
“Can’t you hear yourself?! You’re saying the superintendent only got her job because she was no good out in the field!”
“Hey, I was just kidding …”
“And on top of that do you realize how misogynistic referring to her as ‘Little Blondie’ is?!” Birgitta was so angry that she was gasping and had to take a few deep breaths.
“Have you become a member of the Feminist Initiative or something?” Jonny sneered. He never missed an opportunity to make things worse.
Birgitta flew out of her chair and leaned across the table, her eyes flashing with rage. “Shut your mouth, Jonny! Superintendent Linda Holm is a law graduate and an excellent police officer. You could never achieve what she has, which is why you feel the need to put her down. The only thing you can actually accuse her of is being a woman!”
“That’s enough, both of you!” Andersson’s face was purple as he slammed his fist down on the table. He hated this kind of thing. He pointed a threatening finger at Birgitta and Jonny. “Enough!” he barked.
Birgitta sat down. She pressed her lips together and glared at an old, faded print on the wall. It showed several cranes in a harbor against an insipid grey-blue sky.
“Over-sensitive … nit-picking … no sense of humor,” Jonny muttered, just loud enough to be heard.
Irene attempted to dispel the tense atmosphere by telling the late arrivals about the key that fit the door of Torleif Sandberg’s apartment.
“So it seems like it really is Torleif lying there in the morgue,” Andersson said.
“Yes. And we’ve started to check on boys who are on the run from various institutions right now. There aren’t very many of them: three who fit the description, as far as we can tell.”
“Try to pick them up so we can eliminate them from the investigation if nothing else,” Andersson said to Irene.
She nodded and caught Tommy’s eye. Time to get to grips with Daniel Lindgren, Niklas Ström and Billy Kjellgren.
Andersson turned to Birgitta. “So why are you going to speak to Superintendent Linda Holm in Human Trafficking?” he said with heavy irony.
“Such a young girl should have been reported missing if she’s Swedish or from another Scandinavian country, but there’s no record anywhere of such a report. There are clear signs on her body that she has been subjected to extreme sexual violence over a long period. Stridner also said that the girl was suffering from some kind of infection, and
there are the needle marks on the body, indicating narcotics abuse. Putting all of this together, I think our murder victim is a sex slave who has been smuggled into the country.”
Andersson nodded slowly and gazed pensively at the dark windows, the wet snow pattering against the glass. With a little imagination it was possible to sense a hint of light that just might be dawn in the miserable greyness. He started drumming his fingers again. In spite of the fact that they were prepared for it, everyone jumped when he suddenly slapped his palm down on the table.
“Irene, Fredrik and Birgitta, you work on the murdered girl. Jonny, I want you to take Irene’s place in the investigation into Torleif’s death, along with Tommy and Hannu. As for the guy in Brudaremossen, we’ll wait for the results of the autopsy. If he’s been dead for months, then he can wait a few more days,” he decided.
Irene was just as surprised as everyone else, but she realized why Andersson had changed things around. There was far too much tension between Jonny and Birgitta, and it could affect the investigation. The reasons behind the toxic atmosphere went back at least seven years, to the time when Birgitta started in the unit. Almost immediately Jonny had started coming onto the blonde cutie with the sparkling brown eyes. He had gone in with his usual blunt style. At the annual Christmas party his attentions had turned physical, and Birgitta had had enough. In the middle of the dance floor she had expressed her opinions on Jonny and his groping. To the delight of her colleagues, she certainly hadn’t minced her words.
The following year, when Birgitta received pornographic photos in an envelope through the internal mail with no sender’s name on the envelope, Jonny immediately had become the prime suspect. Even though it later transpired that another former colleague had sent the pictures, the working relationship between Jonny and Birgitta was totally ruined. It had improved somewhat in recent years, but it was never going to recover completely.
The Beige Man Page 5