Killer's Island

by Anna Jansson

  He knocked on the door. “You want some help?”

  “No, I want to be left alone. I’ll be fine. Just go to work. I need to rest, that’s all.” Why hadn’t she waited a little longer before getting out of bed? If she’d waited a few more moments he would have given her a kiss and left.

  She heard the front door shut, then the car starting. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, she waited a few more moments before daring to move. There was a risk he’d realize he’d forgotten something and unexpectedly come back. She started looking over the bathroom more carefully. The contents of the laundry basket. There wasn’t much there, just a towel and a pair of Julia’s jeans. The washing machine was churning away downstairs. She’d already gone through the medicine cabinet. She felt along the top of the shelf over the mirror. There was an expired, unopened pack of condoms up there. Expectations that had not come to fruition? She opened the drawers of the chest by the window, lifted out the towels and put them back in the same order. She sank down on the floor, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes. Then, as she was about to get up and leave, she saw some material under the bathtub. Carefully she pinched a corner of it and pulled out a pair of pants. She held them up in the light, turning them this way and that. There was some red paint on one of the pant legs. From Agnes Isomäki’s self-defense paint? She could hardly breathe, or move. No, no, it couldn’t be! Please God let there be another explanation!

  Quickly she got dressed and scrabbled her belongings together. At the bottom of her bag she put Anders’s robe and a pair of boots that might conceivably match those shoeprints. Her tears were running, her vision grew misty and her heart raced hard and fast. She could hardly swallow, her mouth was so dry. Only when she got back to the police station and closed her door did she dare relax a little and think things through. First she had to make some prints of the shoe soles, remove fibers from the robe, take samples of the stains and paint on the pants for analysis, then take the things back during her lunch hour. She worked intensely, disconnected from her feelings.

  “You were a bit late today, has anything happened?” Maria gave Erika a searching look when she appeared at the reception desk.

  “I overslept.”

  She should at least have told Maria, but something inside stopped her. Maria would only tell her to leave him immediately, forcing her into something she wasn’t ready for. Afterward she would understand that she’d been emotionally blocked and unable to make correct decisions. She should have been taken off the case. But right then, at that moment, the only sensible thing seemed to be to wait for the DNA analysis. Well-founded suspicions were not enough. Her love for Anders required evidence of his guilt before she could leave him – if, indeed, she’d even be able to leave him then.…

  “Want to go out with me for lunch or did you bring something with you?” Maria asked.

  “I’m going to swing past Anders’s place.” Her stomach turned as soon as she thought about food.

  Maria said nothing, which was almost worse. “There’s a meeting at one o’clock, you know that, don’t you? In the conference room.”

  Erika checked her watch. She might just manage it. Anyway, she’d been late for meetings before.

  “Do you know how Arvidsson and Ek are doing with the assault investigation?” Maria hadn’t been able to ask Per herself, but every day she had to wait was one day too much.

  “He’s back on the mainland, I haven’t seen very much of him. I mean one does wonder how much fun it can be for him, lodging with Ek. They don’t have much in common.” Erika tried to take everything in as they walked briskly toward the parking area. She was in a hurry. “The worst thing, apparently, is they have a different taste in music. Arvidsson says Ek’s favorite songs are not much better than German porn film music.”

  “How would he know?” Maria smiled slightly, then grew serious. She looked as if she were going to say something. Erika was worried that she’d say something about Arvidsson, which would take time. She had to take preventive action. Once Maria had started a conversation on the subject, it wouldn’t be possible to cut things short.

  “So, see you at one then?” Erika speeded up and was almost jogging to the car. Maria only saw her back, bearing away.

  CHAPTER 41

  SAM WETTERGREN SAT IN the wing chair in his homely study, furnished in the English style. He was skimming through a doctoral thesis on acupuncture as a treatment for specific sleep disorders, when suddenly the doorbell rang – first a single pulse, then a couple more in a very insistent manner. His wife had just gone to bed and he rushed to the door so she wouldn’t be disturbed. Who could this be, so late at night?

  “Anders, this is very unexpected! What can I do for you, my friend?”

  “Can I come in?” Anders Ahlström stepped into the hall and hung up his coat. “Can we talk privately somewhere?”

  “It sounds serious, has anything happened?” Sam thoughts raced through any possible problems. “I’m not on call,” he added.

  “Neither am I. This is not anything work-related.” Anders looked round for Sam’s wife, but she was nowhere in sight. Good.

  “Coffee and cognac?” asked Sam. “No, no, it’s no problem, it’s in the coffeemaker, I was going to have a drop while watching the late news. It’s a little ritual of mine. Take a seat in the study and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Anders remained on his feet in the room, watching his colleague through the open kitchen door: a tall, well-trained man in excellent physical shape, still exceptionally ambitious in spite of just having turned sixty. There were many rumors about Sam at the hospital, but nothing that rang true about any amorous adventures. Sam loved his wife and his family was sacred to him. The rumors were of an altogether different kind; they concerned his eruptive anger and almost sick intolerance of free-thinkers. His word was law at the clinic and whenever there were any changes, he would inform his staff of them as a fait accompli. On Sam’s instigation, one of his assistant physicians who had earlier questioned a diagnosis of his was later cautioned by the disciplinary committee for a minor offense. A nurse who demanded more interaction and dialogue had been transferred by him to the emergency room, which he knew she didn’t have the stomach for. And on one occasion he’d sent home a patient whose treatment had not yet been concluded, because the latter had been rude to a nurse. There was no pardon or discussion. Either one was loyal and enjoyed Sam Wettergren’s full support or one became his enemy.

  Sam served his colleague, then sat down in the armchair with his cup of coffee. Slowly he took a sip, then looked up at Anders.

  “So what’s on your mind?”

  Anders hesitated for a moment, not wanting to seem too eager. What he wanted to say now was something he’d been preparing and running through mentally every spare moment since the visit of his old pal from military service. “I was wondering whether you’d be able to get hold of a clinical report on me. For personal reasons I don’t want to do it myself. But with your contacts I’m sure you’d manage it.…”

  Sam put down his cup and drummed his fingertips against the table. Then, leaning back and looking as inscrutable and immutable as granite, said: “You’ll have to give me a bit more than that. A report on whom?”

  “Me. It’s from 1979 when I did my military service at Kronoberg Regiment. An investigation was held and I was discharged.”

  “What would be my reason for requesting it, would you say? I have to be able to answer that if someone asks me.”

  “I’m sure you’d find a convincing reason. I can’t think of anyone who would challenge you about it.” Anders made an artificial pause, watching Sam, who according to popular rumor was susceptible to a bit of flattery. If you laid it on thick you could maneuver him more or less any way you wanted, as long as you took things at his own pace, calmly and in a dignified manner. “They investigated my sleeping habits.”

  “I see. So you got sent home because of sleepwalking? Of course they couldn’t have a zombie among all those
weapons. Any movement that’s automated can be replicated by the sleepwalker and activated without conscious thought. I suppose that’s precisely what you were trained to do: assembling, loading, and shooting a weapon. There won’t be a problem getting hold of it for you.” Sam smiled in an avuncular manner, handing Anders one of the cognac glasses and sipping his own. “Of course, you make me rather curious. Why is this document so important to you?”

  Anders didn’t answer that one. But he could follow Sam’s entire thought process in his face, from the newspaper reports on a murderer who behaved like a sleepwalker to the fearful conclusion.

  Anders took a gulp at his cognac without taking his gaze away from Sam’s eyes. He waited for him.

  “You really think you might have done all this?” Sam whispered.

  “I don’t know. How could I know?”

  “Are there any other indications that it might have been you?” Sam’s eyes opened wide at the implications of it. “They were all your patients, and the murders were in your part of town.” His immediate curiosity was stilled. Now he was on guard instead.

  “Is it possible for a person to do things in his sleep that he’d never do while awake? Can you be convicted of murders you committed in your sleep?”

  Sam slid to the edge of his seat, then stood up and started pacing across the floor, still holding his glass of cognac.

  “Yes, it’s possible to commit crimes one would never have committed if awake and in full control of oneself. I’d say ‘no’ to your second question. You wouldn’t be given a prison sentence, you’d be placed in psychiatric care but only after a rigorous investigation. And that would be something for the police and the medical examiner, not me.”

  “I’m asking you as a friend and colleague, I must know where that document is. If I knew myself I would hand myself in to the police and explain the situation to them. Sometimes I’ve awakened in the morning and my room’s been rearranged, my shoes covered in mud by the bed, my robe’s got blood on it. But I can’t remember anything!”

  Sam stood by the window, looking out at the street where the raindrops were dancing in the wind under the streetlight. A car drove past. He opened the window. Anders wondered if he were opening up an escape route or giving himself a chance to call for help.

  “You have to help me. We’re colleagues. If you don’t, who else could I turn to? You can do this for me if you want to!” Anders was growing increasingly desperate.

  “It’s out of the question. Precisely because we are colleagues I’d never even want to be consulted about this. It would only complicate things for you if you got me involved.”

  “All I need is a miserable piece of paper from the military and a certificate that I’ve come to you for help with my sleep disorder.”

  “I won’t do it, you must leave now. I don’t want to get involved.”

  “But I prefer to stay.” Anders stood up and went to the computer. “Before I leave your house there’s something I’d like you to see, concerning your study.” He turned on the computer and told Sam to log on.

  “What do you want?” Sam’s voice, otherwise so strong and deep, sounded dry and frail. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Anders plugged in a USB memory stick, tapping his way to the study on which Linn Bogren and Sam had worked. The figures were Linn Bogren’s.

  “Where did you get that from?” Sam looked very old all of a sudden.

  “It arrived in the mail. I don’t know who sent it. Maybe Linn.”

  “There was so little missing,” Sam admitted. “Yes, I faked a couple of answers. Linn wouldn’t agree to it at first, but I persuaded her. For the good of the cause, because I knew this would benefit our patients even if was beyond their own understanding.”

  Anders took back the USB memory stick, hid it in his hand. “I’ll give this to you if you give me my certificate.”

  Sam logged out and turned off the computer. “What are you going to do?”

  “If I go down, you go down. I want you to make sure I get the material I need if there’s a trial. Do we have an understanding?”

  “I’ll follow you out.”

  “I want a certificate now and I want the excerpt from the clinical report I need within four days. Otherwise I’ll be very disappointed. Your children would probably also.…”

  Sam’s eyes were oozing bile, but he was forced to capitulate. “I’ll arrange it.”

  CHAPTER 42

  THE DAYS PASSED IN a cold sweat, waiting for the DNA analysis of the samples Erika had taken at Anders’s house and sent off without notifying her chief. She’d be given hell about this later, she knew that. From time to time she popped into the laboratory to ask about the results, whether they’d come in yet and if they could hurry things along a bit. On one of these occasions she got the result for Sam Wettergren’s DNA. It didn’t match any of the samples taken at the murder scenes, nor the material taken from the lethal assault. He was innocent. Erika had devoted a couple of hour’s work to reading everything that could be found on Fumarret. It was Sam Wettergren who had introduced it into Sweden. The money on his account, which initially seemed to have something to do with the study of plant steroids, might equally be a bribe pure and simple for maneuvering the drug into the Swedish market. Both involved the same pharmaceutical company. Whether or not anything criminal had taken place would have to be determined by the Board of Health and Welfare.

  Erika had more or less moved in with Anders and Julia. She slept in Anders’s bed, ate at his kitchen table and chatted with Julia as if they were quite safe. At night she kept vigil over Julia and nervously guarded Anders. She often thought about leaving, but outside there was nothing but meaninglessness waiting. In the nights Erika kept him under observation. He did not sleepwalk again. She noticed that he was tense. Maybe her anxiety was infectious, because he grew increasingly restless. Erika slept with her service weapon, loaded, in her purse. Whereas it should actually have been kept locked away at work. She hoped no one would notice. What she’d do if there was a serious situation, she did not know. Would she be able to shoot him to save herself and Julia? She should have brought up the situation with Hartman straight away. This decision was not hers alone. She only wanted to keep him with her a little longer, and love him for another few moments. They’d find him soon enough.

  Erika would never forget Anders’s expression when the police came to take him away. When he looked at her and knew that she’d known all along. But Erika refused to shoulder the guilt. She had to turn him in once the evidence came back. She was a policewoman. His DNA matched what was found at Linn Bogren’s home and on the cigarette butt by Harry’s mailbox and the white cotton strips on Tempelkullen. She could still see him, deep in shock.

  Each of Anders’s movements took time, as he walked clumsily across the drive and was shoved unceremoniously into the patrol car. Before disappearing he called out to her through the open car door.

  “I love you, Erika!”

  She looked at him, feeling as if a knife had been twisted in a wound at the top of her ribs. To think that words could hurt so much! Julia screamed when the police took away her father. Her grandmother was there to soothe and console her, but her eyes were full of despair.

  “My darling, everything will be all right. They don’t want to harm him. They’re only going to talk to him at the police station.”

  “Why can’t they talk to him here? When is he coming back?” Julia started crying when she saw her grandmother’s grave expression.

  “I don’t know, darling. I don’t know.”

  “I’ll give you two a lift home.” Erika caressed Julia’s hair, prepared at any moment to be pushed away by the child as the traitor she was. But Julia only stood there frozen to the spot and clutching her grandmother. How does one explain to a child that her father is a murderer? Eye to eye with Hartman, Erika let go of the whole charade. He had fetched coffee and stuck the mug in her hand. She drank mechanically, with
shaking hands.

  “I didn’t want it to be him,” she said and wiped her nose with the paper towel he handed her. “I didn’t want to understand even though it was so obvious. I love him.”

  “Maria Wern picked up on it at an early stage – the idea that Anders might be the guilty one. All the victims were his patients. Their worst fears came true – exactly what they confided to their doctor. We’ve been able to confirm this by looking at his patient notes. Linn Bogren’s fear of a male intruder. Harry Molin’s fear of dying. Arvidsson’s thoughts of suicide. Did it never occur to you? Maria has been very worried about you. We kept you out of the discussion, but we had you both under surveillance.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Erika stared at Hartman, hardly able to believe it.

  “Until we had some actual evidence we felt you were safer if you behaved normally. Just like you, we wanted to have some consideration for Julia. But we were there: on the balcony outside the bedroom, in the lilac bush outside the kitchen window, on the veranda behind the plank. They contacted me from the laboratory and told me you had handed in some samples for DNA testing. They found it strange that the results had to be sent directly to you, in person.”

  “What’s going to happen to me now?”

  “For the moment you’ll have to go home. I’ll be in touch.” Hartman’s conflicting emotions played themselves out in his face. He decided not to raise his voice at her, given her fragile state of mind.

  “But I have to know what’s happening! Please, you mustn’t shut me out!”

  “Right now you’re of no use to us as a police officer, but you could be a support to Julia.”

  “I’m having a hard time believing that a man who’s so loving and warm could turn into a monster when he’s asleep. I just don’t understand it.”