Niklas nodded in response.
IRENE SWITCHED OFF the recording and gazed at her colleagues who were sitting around the conference table. The superintendent looked pensive, as did Tommy, Fredrik and Jonny. Hannu was leaning back in his chair, ostensibly relaxed, but the deep lines around his eyes gave him away. When did he last get a full night’s sleep, Irene wondered sympathetically. She was also tired after the extraordinary events of the last week, but she still felt excited following the interview with Niklas Ström.
“He was telling the truth. We now know for certain that Torleif Sandberg’s car was parked by the path leading down to the canoe club before eight thirty in the evening. We have witnesses: Martin Wallström and his mistress, Marika Lager. We know that the white Opel was still there when Billy and Niklas arrived at approximately nine forty.”
“Muesli was run down at nine thirty-five. What the hell was he doing rambling around in the forest for over an hour? With nothing on his head and dressed so inappropriately that he ended up with frostbite? He lived just a few minutes away!” Jonny exclaimed.
“Don’t you find it more remarkable that the car was parked in that particular spot?” Hannu said quietly.
“He must have seen something. Maybe he saw the actual murder … saw the killer hide the body in the root cellar. Torleif lay low and watched what was going on, then he tried to follow the bastard,” Andersson said with conviction.
Irene felt very sorry for him. The truth was going to come as a terrible blow. But the truth cannot be disguised. It is what it is: naked and unadorned.
“He did indeed see Tanya’s murder at close quarters. It was actually Torleif who killed her,” Irene said.
Andersson’s eyes widened, and his face flushed a deep red. Everyone in the room recognized the signs of an impending explosion.
In order to forestall him, Irene quickly added, “We have irrefutable evidence.”
Then came the explosion.
“What the hell are you saying?! Are you suggesting that Torleif killed …” He was so agitated that he couldn’t breathe.
“Here.”
Irene took out a sheet of paper marked TANYA.
“I got this from Svante just before the meeting. The semen we found in Tanya’s hair comes from Torleif.”
Andersson sat there openmouthed, gasping for breath. His expression was mirrored on the faces of Jonny, Fredrik and Tommy. Hannu merely nodded to himself, as if his suspicions had been confirmed.
“We haven’t got a result yet from the skin fragments under Tanya’s nails, but the DNA in the semen is sufficient proof. Svante said we were lucky. Torleif’s funeral is tomorrow, and he’s being cremated. If we hadn’t taken the DNA sample, it would have been too late. Svante has also charged the battery in Torleif’s cell phone. It’s a new Nokia with a camera, and it can also record short video clips. And replay them. Look at this.”
She took out the neat little cell and flipped it open. She selected multimedia from the menu and clicked on VIDEO. She pressed the start button and held out the phone to Andersson. He looked skeptically at the small screen.
There was also sound. They could hear a young girl’s wailing voice, along with the heavy panting of a man. Flickering images filled the screen.
A blonde head. Hands trying to fight back. Close-ups of a girl’s naked crotch. The girl turning away. An erect penis seen from above as it moved toward the girl’s pale, blurred face.
The silence was oppressive as the Nokia was passed around the table. No one commented until they had all seen the clip.
“There are stills, too,” Irene informed them.
She clicked through to the first picture, and the cell did the rounds once again.
“That’s enough,” Andersson said.
He was breathing heavily, and suddenly his face had an unnatural pallor. His lips had lost all their color, and were almost blue. He looked dreadful, and Irene worried he was going to faint.
“I never thought … never …”
The last word was no more than a whisper.
“No. Initially we were called to the scene of the accident, where Torleif had been killed by two young car thieves. And while we were looking for them, we found Tanya’s body. None of us had any idea that the two cases were connected.”
“And a police officer … someone we knew.”
Andersson looked utterly devastated. Irene understood how terrible this must be for him; on his penultimate day with the Violent Crimes Unit, his old friend and colleague was revealed as sex offender and killer. It was a tough way for things to end. He had a week off before joining the cold cases team, and he would probably need it, not least to recover from the shock he had just had.
“When did you work it out?” Hannu asked, narrowing his eyes as he looked at Irene. He still gave the impression that he might fall asleep at any moment from sheer exhaustion, but the unexpected turn of events had sparked a glimmer of interest in his expression.
“I think I started to suspect something when Anders Pettersson said that Heinz Becker had sent Tanya to see a doctor, accompanied by a trusted client. Who wasn’t far from the root cellar at the time of the murder? Who could be more trustworthy than an ex-cop? And which of the men involved had we not taken a DNA sample from? Torleif Sandberg.”
Andersson nodded to himself as if he was beginning to accept the facts.
“What do you think happened?” he asked.
Irene quickly thought through her reconstruction before she spoke. “It all began in Tenerife. According to my source within the police, there has been tension between different gangs for quite some time, primarily on the issue of drug dealing. One of the gang leaders, Jesus Gomez, owed money to another, Lembit Saar. Gomez couldn’t pay off his debt in cash, but he had something else that Lembit Saar wanted. Contacts. Saar needed girls for the nightclub he had just opened. I’m sure there were plenty of willing girls for the club itself, but he wanted special girls for special clients. Girls who were kept shut in the rooms at the back of the club. Girls who have no voice and have to agree to anything. Girls who bring in plenty of money for their owners. The victims of trafficking. Sex slaves.”
She paused to catch her breath and think for a moment. None of her colleagues interrupted her.
“Jesus Gomez got in touch with Heinz Becker, who happened to have two suitable girls who met Saar’s requirements: very young, and blonde. Becker was on tour with the girls, but was happy to sell them on after they had been to Sweden. The problem was that neither of the girls had a valid passport. They had both been smuggled in. So Gomez arranged false passports, and to make sure that everything went smoothly, he also provided his right hand man, Sergei Petrov, with a false passport. He was given a new identity, Andres Tamm, and was supposed to be the father of the two girls. Under his new name, Petrov would escort the girls from Sweden to Tenerife.”
“But it all went wrong,” Jonny said.
“You could say that. The little Russian—Tanya—became ill. Seriously ill. She contracted an aggressive form of gonorrhea that spread through her body. Sergei Petrov was due to arrive in Sweden on Thursday, January nineteenth, to pick up the girls. On Tuesday, the seventeenth, Heinz Becker realized he was going to have to send Tanya to see a doctor. She was probably in pretty bad shape by then. For various reasons he couldn’t take her himself, so either he asked his trusted client Torleif Sandberg to get the girl some help, or Torleif offered. Whichever was the case, I’m sure Becker was very grateful. He didn’t want to advertise the fact that he was in the country, and that the girl was his.”
“So Muesli took the girl in his car. But he didn’t go straight to the doctor. He thought he’d have some fun for free first,” Jonny said.
Irene nodded. “I think you’re right. The images on his cell phone would certainly support that idea, along with the semen in her hair. But something went wrong. We saw her trying to defend herself in the video clip. Perhaps he lost his temper when she refused to do what he wanted. We’ll n
ever know exactly what happened, or where it happened. But we do know that he strangled her.”
“Oh my God,” Andersson groaned.
“What a bastard!” Fredrik exclaimed.
“I’m sure we can all agree on that. After he’d killed Tanya, he had to dispose of the body. He knew the area around Delsjövägen very well, and he knew about the old root cellar, which was no longer used. He wrapped Tanya in the blue fleece blanket that we found in his car. Fibers from the blanket match the fibers we found on her body. He drove to the little side road—or perhaps he was already there when the murder took place—in order to hide Tanya’s body in the root cellar. He used an implement of some kind to break off the padlock on the door, then stowed the girl and her clothes inside. Up to that point, everything was going his way. But then his luck changed.”
“That’s why he was dressed so inappropriately. He never intended to spend any time outdoors,” Hannu stated with a degree of satisfaction.
“Exactly. Martin Wallström and Marika Lager turned onto the side road; according to Wallström, they were parked there for almost an hour. I think we can assume that Torleif was hiding, waiting for them to leave. Obviously he didn’t want to leave his car at the spot where he’d just hidden the murder victim—especially with the keys in the ignition. But he could hardly return to it or make a campfire to keep warm because the turtledoves in the Volvo would have seen him. The cold broke him. Eventually he realized he was in danger of frostbite, so he decided to head home. But instead of running along the main road leading down to Delsjövägen, he ran down one of the bridle paths. He had a flashlight with him; we know that because it was found on the sidewalk after the accident. Just before he reached the parking lot by the TV studios, he dropped his cell phone. Presumably he didn’t notice; he might not have been thinking clearly because of the cold. This would explain why he misjudged the speed of the BMW as it raced toward him. Perhaps he thought he could make it across the street. But he was wrong.”
“He was run down and he died,” Andersson said laconically. His face had begun to regain its normal color.
“As Torleif was running down the bridle path toward the TV studios,” Irene went on, “Martin Wallström and Marika Lager left the side road and drove toward Delsjövägen. Wallström saw the blue flashing lights of an emergency vehicle, which was no doubt the patrol car that had been in pursuit of the BMW, and decided to take a little detour in order to get home.”
“And we know the rest thanks to Niklas Ström’s statement,” Tommy said.
“Yes. The one we’ve just listened to,” Irene said.
“It was bad luck for Torleif Sandberg that Martin Wallström turned up, then sat in his car talking for such a long time. Otherwise Torleif might have gotten away with it,” Fredrik mused.
“Yes. And Heinz Becker was out of luck, too. When Sergei Petrov arrived in Göteborg on Thursday to collect his girls, Tanya was still missing. Heinz hadn’t a clue where she was, and he couldn’t get in touch with Torleif either. We know why that was, but neither Heinz nor Sergei had any idea. Maybe they were intending to wait a while longer in the hope that Torleif would turn up with Tanya, but then they were hit by the raid in Biskopsgården. They escaped by persuading one of the builders to hand over the keys to their truck. They fled through the snowstorm; everything was going well until they came off the highway. Heinz and Sergei died at the scene, and Leili, the other girl, sustained serious injuries and is still on a respirator.”
“Have we managed to identify either of the girls?” Tommy asked.
“No. We’ve sent out their details via Europol, and to various countries across the Baltic, but nothing so far. According to Linda Holm, the girls were probably smuggled out of Russia or Estonia. It’s likely they were sold by the staff of some children’s home, or by their parents. Or they might have run away themselves and fallen into the clutches of human traffickers. We may find out their true identity one day, but we may not.”
“I’ve spoken to Varberg Hospital today. They believe Leili is brain dead. A neurologist is going to examine her this afternoon, and if that’s his conclusion, they will switch off the respirator.”
“God have mercy on the souls of those girls,” Irene said with a sigh.
She wasn’t particularly religious, but her words came from the heart.
“Amen,” said Andersson.
Chapter 26
STEFAN SANDBERG LOOKED older than on the previous occasion when they had met, probably thanks to the black suit and white shirt and tie he was wearing.
“The funeral is over. I’ve been to the bank to sort out the final details with regard to the sale of the house in Thailand and his apartment here. So I was a little surprised to hear from you again,” he said. He looked away quickly, and Irene heard him murmur, “Or perhaps not.”
She decided to pretend she hadn’t heard, and said, “I’m glad you were able to come in. I have some very difficult news for you.”
Stefan sat motionless on the chair opposite her during the entire account. Irene told him about his stepfather’s role in the murder of the little Russian known as Tanya. She wanted him to know the whole truth before it hit the headlines.
He remained silent long after she had finished. Irene began to wonder whether the shock had been greater than she had expected. After all, Stefan himself had said that he and Torleif hadn’t been particularly close.
“This hasn’t come as a complete surprise to me,” he said eventually, as if he had sensed what Irene was thinking. “I took Torleif’s laptop back to Umeå with me, along with the book on researching your family tree that was lying next to it. I thought it would be interesting to find out more about him … after all, I am his only heir.”
He compressed his lips into a thin line and stared down at his hands, which rested on top of each other on the desk.
“There were indeed files on genealogy. And on the house in Thailand. But above all there was a huge amount of pornography. All kinds of pornography! The most hardcore, the most disgusting variations you can imagine.”
He ran a hand over his face, as if to brush away the images flickering before his mind’s eye.
“I’d appreciate it if you could send the laptop down to us. It could contain evidence. And we can help you to clean it if you want it back.”
“No thanks. I never want to see it again.” He shook his head. Then he said thoughtfully, “I always thought he was strange. I never really liked him. Mom always said he was a man with a small face.”
“Interesting expression. What did she mean?”
“That Torleif was so ordinary. He wasn’t the kind of person you really notice. There was nothing to make him stand out in a crowd. He was kind of beige, if I can put it that way. But if you looked more closely at him, he had his little quirks. Vegetarian. Clean living. Pedantic. Mean. And according to Mom, he didn’t really have a sense of humor. A mediocre guy with a slightly odd personality. But I never thought he was capable of something like this.”
“No. Nor did anyone else.”
My thanks to:
Thomas Ekström, Superintendent with the Police Authority in Västra Götaland, LKP / Trafficking. It was extremely useful to learn what the situation in the market for sex slavery is like in Sweden today and how the police in Göteborg are working to combat human trafficking.
Leif Johansson, head of Children and Young People’s Services, and Kristina Andersson, coordinator, both with the Swedish Migration Board. They helped me to gain an insight into how cases involving asylum-seeking children with no known relatives are handled.
Lena Krönström, a teacher in Sunne who is of Estonian origin. She helped me with appropriate Estonian names for some of my characters.
As usual I have taken considerable liberties with geographical facts. I do not adapt my narrative to suit the existing geography; reality is adapted to fit the story instead. All resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental and not the intention of the author. The sole exception i
s Sammie, who is my own dog. He continues to remain indifferent to literary fame and takes life as it comes.
Helene Tursten
The Beige Man Page 28