As Irene could tell from Kia’s national identification number, Kia was just twenty-six years old, but she looked much older. Her skin was pocked with acne scars and her heavily bleached hair hung in clumps. Apparently she was trying to grow dreadlocks but with limited success. The coal-black makeup she wore on her eyelids had run.
“What do you mean Marcelo was ‘addicted’ to Sophie?” Irene asked.
Kia gave Irene a look, which Irene could not read. She answered shortly, “They lived together.”
“How long had they been living together?”
Kia gave a dry laugh, which crunched like leaves in the autumn sun. “Don’t know. She had a house of some kind.”
Irene had checked out the house and found it was true. Ernst Malmborg had died of cancer at seventy-three in the summer of 2002. His only child, Sophie, had inherited everything he owned, which was a substantial fortune: 400,000 Swedish kronor in the bank, a summer cottage on the ocean by Ljungskile and a large house in Änggården. For the most part, the wealth of the estate had come from Ernst’s inheritance from his first wife. He hadn’t been careless with his fortune, and had husbanded it. As soon as probate concluded, Sophie sold the summer cottage for a million Swedish kronor. She had been a wealthy young woman when she died.
Was that why she was killed? Her next-of-kin was her mother. Certainly Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson could use the money, but how often would a mother kill her own child for the sake of money? The reverse was more likely.
There were other indications that the motive was something completely different.
Sophie had disappeared that night from the Park Aveny Bar. The people in the elevator had seen her walk toward the stairwell. According to Angelika, Sophie had a phobia of elevators. She never took them, or even escalators for that matter. The security guard who had been posted at the stairwell actually saw her go up the stairs. The same guard had seen her on the second floor right outside the elevator doors, when he did a check of the stairwell a few minutes later. She was holding her cell phone, and it looked like she was sending a text message. She seemed to be concentrating, so he continued up the stairs on his rounds without saying anything to her. He’d walked all the way to the top floor. On the way back down, he hadn’t seen Sophie. None of the other employees had seen her leave the building. They were totally occupied in putting the bar back in order after the rowdy night.
Thomas Magnusson, the security guard, was the last person to see Sophie alive. He was in his third year at Chalmers University, and he had the job on the side to earn some extra cash. Irene and Tommy had run his name through an electronic search, but they hadn’t found anything remarkable. Magnusson didn’t even have a parking ticket. His record was so clean that it was suspicious. He was blond and well built, and his honest blue eyes and clear, steady voice gave her no reason to be suspicious of his testimony.
Sophie Malmborg disappeared from the bar of the Park Aveny Hotel at approximately 1:40 a.m. on Friday, September twenty-fourth, 2004.
She had received a text message on her cell phone at 1:38 and sent a reply two minutes later. The sender had been in the vicinity of the hotel, but could not be identified, as a prepaid phone card had been used. That text message was the last sign of life from Sophie. She had disappeared without a trace for three weeks.
On Saturday, October sixteenth, a storage shed in the industrial area of Högsbo had burned to the ground, and a charred corpse was found in the rubble. Another few days passed before the body was positively identified as Sophie Malmborg.
Irene had not yet gone to the site of the fire. She’d only seen the pictures. There was not much left of the building.
Irene got up from her desk to look at the map hanging on the wall. The location of the fire was in the oldest area of the industrial park at the end of a narrow cul de sac, not far from the rifle range. A thicket of hawthorn and birch trees had grown up around the abandoned building. No other industrial buildings were nearby. The shed had belonged to a tire company, which had closed years ago. . Recently, the entire area had been bought by a pharmaceutical company that planned to demolish the shed and the buildings nearby and start construction on a lavish new office complex.
All the buildings in the area had been searched thoroughly. Although there were signs of unauthorized inhabitation, there were no traces of Sophie. The police quickly were able to determine that Sophie had not been kept hostage in any of the other buildings. It was also highly unlikely that Sophie had been held in the burned building since, prior to the fire, most of the roof had caved in. The weather had been cold and rainy the three weeks that Sophie had been missing. The chill dampness would have killed her in just a few days. And the area was not so deserted that someone could come and go for weeks on end unseen.
Someone would wonder. Even if the suspect only appeared at night.
So the questions remained. Where had Sophie been kept the three weeks she had been missing? And who had been her captor?
* * *
“So where do we go from here?” Superintendent Andersson began.
He helped himself to a slice of mocha cake, which he rapidly stuffed into his mouth, washing it down with large gulps of coffee.
The other people around the table contemplated his question, ignoring the cake, which Brigitta Moberg Rauhala had brought in for her birthday. They all felt they needed to stay focused. The discovery of Sophie Malmborg’s body had made the papers with large, boldface headlines. Journalists were blocking the entrances to the main police station and the telephone lines were constantly busy. Irene could empathize with the journalists a bit. The case was sensational.
“We’ll have the autopsy report tomorrow or Wednesday. Then we can see what they’ve found out about Sophie,” Tommy said.
“Poor girl,” said Birgitta, shivering.
Birgitta’s husband and colleague, Hannu, who had recently returned to work after his paternity leave, nodded in agreement. Little Timo was now going to nursery school.
Irene thought it was good to have Hannu back in the department again. His substitute, Kajsa Birgersdotter, had returned to her position in general investigation, but after the New Year she was scheduled to start a new position in the narcotics division.
Kajsa was the one who had received the missing person report. Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson had been expecting Sophia for a dance recital on September twenty-fifth. When she was unable to reach her the following day, she reported her daughter missing. When the charred body at the Högsbo industrial park was identified as Sophie, Kajsa had handed over the investigation to her former colleagues in the Violent Crimes unit.
Irene sneaked a glance at Tommy. Kajsa had been a source of comfort for him right after his divorce. Tommy’s divorce had been a complete surprise for Irene—and also a hard blow. Tommy and his ex-wife, Agneta, had been best friends with her and her husband, Krister. Nothing would be the same again. No more shared vacations or Midsummer celebrations…no more New Year’s Eves together…Suddenly Irene was aware that everyone at the table was looking at her. She said, confused, “What? I was just sitting here and…”
“We know. Taking a cat nap,” said Jonny Blom.
“Thinking,” Irene countered. She stared at Jonny angrily.
It didn’t help a bit. Jonny was grinning, as he’d been able to get in his little dig.
“Yes? And what was the result of all your thought?” asked Andersson.
Irene mentally pulled up her earlier speculations about the case. “We can all agree that it is a remarkable coincidence that Sophie burned to death in that shed. Especially the burning, I mean. Fifteen years have gone by since we questioned Sophie about what really happened at Björkil, but we could never get her to talk. I think we must start again there: the fire at Björkil when Magnus Eriksson died.”
Fredrik Stridh swallowed the last bit of his slice of cake. He indicated that he wanted to ask a question. “Tommy told me that you’d gone to the scene of the fire fifteen years ago. Why? You were working
at the central station.”
Since both Fredrik and Birgitta had still been in training when the Björkil fire had taken place and Hannu was just starting at the Police Academy, Irene and Tommy had gone through the case with the entire group last Friday. Obviously Fredrik had been wondering how Irene and her colleague, Håkan Lund, who both worked in the central district at the time, had come to be in the northwest corner of Hisingen.
“Håkan and I were chasing a car thief. We lost him near Torslanda. When the alarm had come in at around five, we were the closest patrol car to the scene. All the cars in the seventh district were at the station for the shift change. We had been planning to head back to the station ourselves for the same reason, but as it turned out, we took the call on the fire in Björkil. We weren’t able to leave until about nine that evening, which is when we found Sophie next to her bicycle by the side of the road.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“Not a word. I interpreted it as shock, but I’m not so sure.”
The Superintendent gave her a gloomy look. “So you really think we should drag up that old investigation again?”
“I believe we do need to look at it.”
“Well, yes, I am aware that you were unhappy about how the investigation had gone before you took it over. Still, it didn’t last long. It was written off as a case of smoking in bed.” He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice.
When he was in that mood, no good came from arguing with him. Irene knew her boss much too well after all the years they’d spent working together. Perhaps he was aware of the holes in the case and also thought that the investigation of the Björkil fire had gone wrong. Andersson stared at her, but when Irene said nothing, he decided to keep talking.
“We must question everyone who was at the Park Aveny Bar the last night that Sophie was seen alive. There are no traces of her in the hotel, so she must have left. Why didn’t anyone see her go? There can’t have been that many young women walking around town in bright pink tights, am I right?”
The Superintendent had a point there. He fell silent and began to drum his fingertips on the table.
How had Sophie left the hotel unnoticed? Her trail after that was still a puzzle. They’d grilled the security guard, Thomas Magnusson, to within an inch of his life, but no results. It had been a fine night with clear skies. There’d been crowds of people—most of them young and in various states of inebriation—walking up and down Göteborg’s main boulevard, Avenyn. Perhaps no one noticed Sophie because they were all too intoxicated.
“She went out the rear door. She did not want to be seen,” Hannu said calmly.
This was a theory they were all considering: the suspect had gotten Sophie to sneak out the back door of the hotel.
“Still, someone must have seen her. Someone must have driven her somewhere. We will have to have an all-out search. Question everyone. Taxi drivers, hot dog sellers, doormen and the usual gang. Fredrik, Jonny, Birgitta, you’re on it,” Andersson said.
He wrinkled his brow in thought for a moment. Then he hit the table with the palm of his hand. “Tommy and Irene. You’re the most familiar with what happened fifteen years ago. Go dig up that old crap again. And you, Hannu, since you’re…well, you can go talk to that foreign kid who lived with the girl.”
It was obvious that Andersson meant that Hannu should question Marcelo because he thought Hannu was also of foreign extraction, but he was completely off the mark.
Hannu was Swedish. He came from the Finnish-speaking area of Sweden called Tornedalen, so he did have a Finnish tinge to his Swedish when he spoke. That is, if he spoke at all. He was a man of few words. Why he would be the best person to talk to a Brazilian was anyone’s guess. Irene knew that Andersson didn’t make these kinds of gaffes on purpose, but she was starting to wonder. With a pang in her heart, she remembered that Andersson had mentioned retiring at the beginning of the year. In spite of everything, she was fond of her boss.
* * *
Irene spent all of Tuesday going through the material about the fire in 1989. Now that she had fifteen more years of experience, Irene could see all the holes in the earlier investigation clearly.
Not a single detective had interviewed Sophie’s father, Ernst Malmborg. Now it was too late.
There’d been a short interview with Magnus Eriksson’s sister, Ingrid Hagberg, on the day after the fire, as she’d been the one to raise the alarm. Since her boss had told her to set aside the investigation, Irene had not dared to write a report about her informal conversation with the sister, and now she could remember only fragments of their talk.
There were no conversations recorded between Frej Eriksson and investigators. He’d been only eight years old when his father died, and he’d been at his aunt’s place when the fire broke out. According to Ingrid Hagberg, he’d fallen asleep after having a snack.
The boy must have had a long nap, Irene thought.
Ingrid had said that she couldn’t go to the scene of the fire while the boy was sleeping at her place. She had not wanted to awaken him. The fire alarm had come in at 4:56 p.m. Irene had seen Ingrid and Frej arrive at the scene at around 8:45. This meant that the boy had been napping for over three and a half hours. It wasn’t completely impossible, but it was strange for an eight-year-old to have an afternoon nap last so long into the evening.
Don’t people wake kids up if they nap too long? Just to make sure the kids sleep at night? Well, Ingrid did not have children of her own, so perhaps she didn’t think about it.
Not a single one of Sophie’s teachers had been interviewed.
She would have to contact child services. They must have records on Sophie’s personality and mental states.
Perhaps it would even be possible to track down Tessan, the girl in Sophie’s ballet class? Her mother, Maria Ohlsén, had driven the girls to their ballet class. Hans Borg had talked to her, but the questioning session had been brief.
Why had Sophie been out of breath when she’d biked to the store? Usually she was already standing there waiting in good time.
This was the detail that had made the police suspicious about Sophie in the first place. Did she set fire to the cottage, whether or not she knew Magnus Eriksson was sleeping there? Was this why she was burned to death fifteen years later? Or was this pure coincidence that both the girl and her stepfather died in the same manner?
Irene had no idea.
The only thing she could do was to go back to the beginning. But fifteen years had passed. Irene didn’t feel very optimistic that a renewed criminal investigation would yield results.
* * *
An idea came to Irene about how she could find more information about Ernst and Sophie Malmborg. Perhaps it was a long shot, but she’d try.
When she arrived home, she spent a few minutes with her overeager dog, Sammie, who was always overjoyed when a family member returned home.
Jenny was in the kitchen, stirring a pot. Katarina was out practicing jiujitsu and wouldn’t be home until after eight.
Krister would turn up at any minute. It was a rare day when the entire family sat at the table for dinner.
“Hi, sweetie, what are you making? It smells wonderful!” Irene called to her daughter in the kitchen.
“Lentil soup. I’ve made baked bananas for dessert,” Jenny informed her. “You can go ahead and pour yourself a glass of wine.”
Jenny had been a vegan for a few years now. Lately, she’d developed an interest in cooking. Since Krister was a professional chef, he found inspiration in her vegan creations. He’d lost about twenty pounds—a very good thing—but Irene found that she couldn’t reconcile herself to vegan food. She begged them to limit the vegan meals to three times a week.
On the other nights, Jenny had to fend for herself and often got by on leftovers from the previous night.
Irene could hear the jangle of Jenny’s many thin silver bracelets as she stirred the soup.
Recently, Jenny had been dying her hair r
aven black and wearing a lot of red and lime green. Many years had passed since Irene had argued with her daughter about her choice of clothes. Jenny was grown now and could wear whatever she wanted. Her old-fogey mamma had been forced to realize that her daughter’s role as a singer in a rock band with a punk edge demanded a certain look.
“Pappa called. He’s running late. Someone got sick,” Jenny said from the kitchen.
Irene sighed as she thought about her poor husband, who often had to stand in when one of the other cooks got sick. He’d been complaining of being too tired lately, which was certainly to be expected. Gladys’s was one of Göteborg’s most popular restaurants and even had a one star rating in an international guidebook, so expectations from both the boss and the patrons were high.
As soon as Sammie had enjoyed his fill of petting and tickling, Irene went into the living room to search through the bookshelves. She found the paperback by Max Franke.
His name was in bigger letters than the title. As she pulled the book from the shelf, a few grains of sand fell to the floor—a greeting from the sunny beaches of Crete. On the back cover was the name of the publisher and there she found what she was looking for: Borgstens Förlag AB. She wrote down the name on a slip of paper and put it in her wallet.
* * *
All the gathered detectives sat as straight as candles in a candleholder as morning prayer was about to start. Even Superintendent Andersson sat quietly in his chair, waiting, because, as they found out that morning, Yvonne Stridner intended to grace them with her esteemed presence. Professor Stridner was practically a legend as the Head of Forensic Medicine in Göteborg and was known as one of the best pathologists in Europe. She herself would have insisted she was one of the best in the world.
A few minutes after the clock showed it was time to start, they could hear the energetic click of Stridner’s high heels on the hallway floor. Professor Stridner appeared in the doorway and surveyed the auditorium before making her entrance. She walked to the podium, leaving a waft of expensive perfume in her wake. She shrugged off her fur coat and fluffed her bright red hair. As always, her clothes were modern and tailored. This autumn morning, she wore dark brown linen trousers and an emerald green angora sweater with an eye-catching brooch fastened to the collar. The brooch was a leopard whose glittering red eyes caught the light. Irene assumed that the red stones were real rubies.
The Fire Dance Page 6