Motive X

by Stefan Ahnhem

  ‘It’s no one’s fault,’ Matilda breathed. ‘She just knows what’s going to happen, that’s all.’ A single tear trickled down her cheek.

  Fabian hugged her. ‘Matilda, it’s not that I don’t understand that you’re worried. Quite the opposite. You clearly believe in these things. But try to think of it as a dream.’

  ‘Dream? It’s not a dream.’

  ‘In a way, that’s exactly what it is. The problem is you can’t see it. And how could you? How could you know you’re actually just asleep?’

  Her eyelids were growing heavier. But her lips were moving; to hear what she was saying, he leaned in closer.

  ‘What if you’re the one who’s asleep.’

  5

  Even with the fluorescent lighting, the flash of the camera lit up the room enough for Lilja’s shadow to be sharply drawn on the white concrete wall behind her. During her six years as a violent crime investigator, she’d seen quite a few things that would have given the most hardened person insomnia. Everything from bodies that had lain undiscovered for so long the coroner had to scrape them off the floor to bodies that had been so badly tortured it hurt just to think about what they’d been put through.

  Bodies.

  That was how she had always thought of them when she was in the coroner’s office or, like now, at the scene of a new murder. Bodies. Not people with real lives, dreams and hopes, but lifeless bodies. A conglomeration of atoms that together formed a mass. All to push down her feelings, keep a clear head and think logically.

  But she couldn’t any more. The shock had sunk its claws deep enough into her that the only thing she could manage was to sit on a stool, staring at the wall. Granted, the wall wasn’t completely uninteresting; apart from her own shadow, which reappeared every time one of Molander’s assistants snapped a picture, there were a few scratched-in swastikas and racist slogans, though they seemed too time-worn to have anything to do with the murder.

  This was the first time she had ever found herself unable to look at a murder victim. Even for a moment.

  Because it wasn’t just a body. It was an eleven-year-old boy with a beautiful name, a jacket with Spiderman buttons, friends and a life just waiting to be lived. A boy who had been asked to carry a bag of empty bottles to the recycling room on his way to school. But he had never made it there. Instead, someone had attacked him and dragged him down to the laundry room.

  She was still having a hard time taking in the details of the course of events, although the words coming from Molander and his two assistants were clear enough.

  ‘Ingvar, listen, I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this.’

  ‘Fredrik, if you want to talk about your feelings, call your therapist or your girlfriend,’ Molander said, sounding as dry and matter-of-fact as ever. ‘We have to focus on getting this body out. Or are you saying we should leave him here and just let the residents go about their business?’

  ‘No, but I honestly don’t know how we’re going to do it. Not without damaging the body even more.’

  ‘All right.’ Molander sighed; his knees cracked when he squatted down. ‘My suggestion is that we simply disconnect the whole drum and open it up with an angle grinder. What kind of feelings do you have about that?’

  ‘So this is where you’re hiding.’

  Lilja turned around to see Klippan in the doorway, and everything suddenly felt a little better.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ he continued as Molander’s assistants removed the back of the washer and went to work with screw guns.

  ‘For obvious reasons, getting him out is a bit tricky.’ Molander got back up and stretched out his back. ‘But it’s dogged as does it.’

  ‘What do you mean? Is there more than one reason?’ Lilja said, primarily to show that she had snapped back in.

  ‘You can say that again. To be exact, about fifteen hundred rpms.’

  ‘Bloody hell…’ Klippan shook his head. ‘It’s enough to make you start wondering where this world’s heading.’

  ‘Start wondering? I’ve been wondering that for years,’ Molander said as he helped to lift out the cylindrical drum and place it on a blanket. ‘I suggest you cut this, and then it should be fairly straightforward to break it into two halves. Okay?’ His assistants nodded and Molander turned back to Klippan and Lilja. ‘This is going to be loud, so if you have anything else to say, you’d better spit it out now.’

  ‘Have you found anything of interest?’

  ‘Not really. A few specks of blood, probably from the boy. And fingerprints from at least fifty people, some in peculiar locations if all you’re doing here is laundry.’

  ‘Two uniformed officers from the local station are going door to door, collecting prints from the residents,’ Lilja said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see if there’s a match.’

  ‘So you suspect one of the residents,’ Klippan said.

  Lilja shrugged. ‘I just figure it would be easier for someone who knows the common spaces, knows there’s a washing machine of that size here and has a key to get around.’

  ‘He might just as easily have used the victim’s key,’ Molander said. ‘It would be more interesting if we found fingerprints that didn’t match any of the residents’.’

  ‘And that swastika.’ Klippan pointed to the wall behind Lilja. ‘It’s several years old.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean the motive has changed,’ Lilja said.

  ‘Well, maybe we should refrain from rushing to conclusions.’ Klippan looked around.

  ‘True, and we should keep all investigative avenues open and blah blah blah. But forcing a little boy who has fled from Syria into a washing machine, what is that about if not racism and—’

  The sharp sound drowned out everything else as the angle grinder cut through the metal of the washing machine drum in a shower of sparks; the only thing Lilja and the others could do was cover their ears and wait until the assistants had finished and were carefully prising the drum open.

  Having been unable to make herself look at all, Lilja was now unable to tear her eyes away from the boy. Judging from the face alone, it almost looked like nothing had happened to him. The closed eyes visible behind his matted black hair made it look more like he was asleep.

  But Moonif wasn’t asleep.

  Like an oversized foetus, he was curved from the neck down, his spine describing an almost perfect circle. His legs were bent too, but the wrong way, stretching out on either side of his head, down past his shoulders where his feet were pressed against his body.

  The sight cut through every layer of experience and made everyone in the room pause. Even Molander seemed taken aback. No one said anything. Klippan, who up until now had stayed calm, stood gaping, making it look like the heart-rending scream was coming from him.

  But it wasn’t Klippan’s voice, it was a woman’s.

  Lilja was the first to react. She rushed over to stop the boy’s mother from throwing herself on top of her son. But the woman fought her like it was a matter of life or death; it was only when Klippan stepped in that they managed to overpower her and usher her out of the laundry room.

  ‘Calm down,’ Lilja bellowed.

  But the boy’s mother continued to kick and flail her arms about in her attempts to get free of Klippan and refused to give up until several minutes later.

  ‘There now,’ Lilja said as Klippan slowly relaxed his hold on her.

  The woman collapsed in tears, which after a while morphed into a kind of wailing lament.

  ‘There now,’ Lilja said again, and gently put her arms around her.

  ‘She’s in shock, she needs something to calm her down,’ Klippan said, breathing heavily and wiping sweat off his brow. ‘I suggest Helsingborg Hospital. Then we can interview her later this afternoon after the meeting.’

  Lilja nodded and started leading the woman down the basement corridor.

  *

  What had made them crawl out of their lairs? Was it the sweet smell of death that h
ad drawn them? Or was the blue-and-white police tape fluttering in the wind enough to make people crowd in and gawk at them curiously?

  It had only been an hour and twenty-five minutes since Lilja arrived. At that point, the area had been virtually deserted. Now she estimated the crowd to be at least forty people, who followed every step she and Klippan took as they guided the boy’s mother to the car.

  Luckily, she could see no telephoto lenses, which indicated the media hadn’t yet joined the fray.

  ‘This is the victim’s mother, Adena Ganem,’ Lilja told one of the two uniformed officers, and she was about to instruct them to take the woman to Helsingborg Hospital when she spotted a gangly man in the crowd on the other side of the police cordon.

  He was watching them, but that wasn’t what made her react and have Klippan take over. Everyone was watching them. Nor was it that she’d seen him crossing the street when she first arrived, nor his slightly unusual appearance with jeans pulled up high, blindingly white trainers and a beige jacket with the Sweden Democrats logo on the chest.

  It was his smile.

  A smile that made him, unlike everyone else, positively beam with glee. Could it be the perpetrator was still here? It wouldn’t be the first time. Contrary to what people might think, it was not at all unusual for a perpetrator to stay near the scene of his or her crime to keep an eye on the police’s work and, first and foremost, other people’s reactions.

  She took a few steps towards the man and noted an instant shift in his expression. The smile was still there, but the worry in his eyes was new, as was the nervous twitching below his left nostril. A second later, he had melted into the crowd.

  He wasn’t going to get away. Under no circumstances was she going to let him disappear, she repeated to herself as she stepped over the police tape and pushed her way through the gaggle of curious onlookers.

  And there he was. Two hundred feet further on, she saw him dash across the car park next to the mall, looking back over his shoulder to check if she was following him. She was. But only to see him run straight out into Norra Storgatan.

  The old orange Volvo coming from the left didn’t have a chance to stop in time.

  The collision itself was no more than two dull thuds when the man landed on the bonnet and then hit the windscreen before disappearing on the other side of the car, which skidded to an abrupt stop.

  Lilja raced across the car park and saw the door on the driver’s side open and an older man climb out, take a few steps and then bend down over the body, which was likely lying right next to the car. She could only hope he had survived. There was almost nothing worse than criminals who chickened out and went off and died before they could be made to explain their motives.

  That didn’t seem to be the case here, though, since she could see him getting to his feet on the other side of the car’s grimy windows. She was almost there now and would have no trouble catching him.

  But instead of pressing on across the street on foot, the man got in the driver’s seat and started the car, leaving a foiled Lilja and a bleeding car owner in his wake.

  6

  Twenty-five days, fourteen hours and forty-two minutes.

  Astrid Tuvesson, chief of the Helsingborg crime squad, tore her eyes from her wristwatch and left her office. Another eighteen minutes and she was going to break her old record. Granted, she wasn’t actually sure about the exact minutes. But according to the doctor, it was good to fix on a concrete time at this early stage, so you could count the hours. He’d also claimed things would get easier with each passing day, and that eventually it wouldn’t even occur to her to count. But in that, he had been wrong so far.

  The truth was, she thought about it all the time. Every day, every hour and every minute was a struggle. The thirst, that damn thirst. How she loathed never being allowed to quench it. And the doubt that had just grown stronger with each passing day. Was it really worth it? But that wasn’t something she told anyone, not even her sponsor.

  When she got to the kitchen, she poured the freshly made coffee into a thermos, took the milk out of the fridge and continued towards the conference room. This was her third day back at work since she nearly died of hypothermia a month ago, locked in a chest freezer by the same terrifying pair who shot Matilda. She actually had another six weeks of sick leave to take and could have stayed home, reading one of the many books awaiting their turn, or finally getting into The Wire that everyone was always going on about.

  But the thirst, in combination with the loneliness, had left her climbing the walls and she was convinced she would have fallen off the wagon if she’d stayed home any longer.

  Here, she had colleagues to distract and keep an eye on her. She had a role to fill and things to do, even though she was not above admitting she’d been looking forward to a few relatively quiet work weeks, especially since they were still recovering from their latest case, by far the most difficult murder investigation she had ever been in charge of.

  But apparently, that was too much to hope for.

  They hadn’t even had time to take down and archive the pictures from the various murder scenes – the victims lined up as though it had been a case of crimes against humanity – before it was time to put up new pictures. This time from a laundry room in Bjuv, where the perpetrator had forced his victim into an oversized washing machine and set it to rinse and spin.

  As if that wasn’t enough, Fabian’s desk was glaringly empty and would not be filled again until after the summer when he came back from his sabbatical. It was a long time, and she could already sense they were going to miss his ability to think outside the box.

  At the moment, there was no indication this was anything but a stand-alone act of madness. Besides, serial killers were very rare in Sweden. But in light of the fact that the country had been rocked by not one but two cases involving serial killers in the past two years, she was not about to jump to conclusions. That both investigations had ultimately ended up on her desk made her even less likely to make a snap judgement.

  She gathered up the pictures from the previous murder investigation, put them in a folder and had started erasing the notes on the whiteboard when Klippan arrived with his laptop.

  ‘Molander says we’re going to have to start without him. He’s still in Bjuv.’

  ‘Has he found anything?’

  Klippan shrugged. ‘You know how taciturn he can be when he’s in that mood.’ He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. ‘Hey, where’s Lilja?’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be here any minute. How have you got on? How’s the mother doing?’

  ‘Probably as well as you or I would be if our children had just been centrifuged to death in a washing machine.’ He shook his head. ‘I spoke to the hospital. They’ve given her a tranquillizer, and if you ask me, we’re not going to be able to interview her any time soon.’ He fell silent and sipped his coffee. ‘I don’t usually have any trouble understanding why some people act the way they do. I find it’s usually possible to understand even the most heinous crimes if you really put your mind to it. But this. This is not just sick. It’s fucking incomprehensible.’

  ‘That attitude is hardly helpful. You know that as well as I do,’ Tuvesson replied just as Lilja entered, carrying a folder.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?’

  ‘Nothing. We’ve only just started, but I think we’re trying to understand the motive.’

  Klippan nodded mutely.

  ‘What do you mean, trying? If this is not an open and shut case of racism and xenophobia, then what?’ Lilja poured herself a cup of coffee.

  ‘And what are you basing that on, other than that the victim was from Syria?’

  ‘We’re talking about Bjuv. Isn’t that enough said?’

  ‘It really isn’t.’ Klippan turned to Lilja. ‘Bjuv is not particularly racist compared to some other municipalities.’

  ‘Klippan, I didn’t mean to offend you. I know you grew up there and I’m sure things were dif
ferent back then. People watched Roots and The Onedin Line, and an ice cream cost no more than two kronor. Today, they’re carving swastikas into the walls and spit on other people on the bus if they are of a different skin colour.’

  ‘That was actually in Staffanstorp, not Bjuv.’

  ‘Fine, but I’ll give you one guess where that old git was from.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t think we’re going to get much further on this right now.’ Tuvesson walked over to the whiteboard wall. ‘Let’s instead agree that xenophobia and right-wing extremism is one of several possible motives.’ She wrote it on the whiteboard wall. ‘What others could there be?’

  ‘Irene, didn’t you say something about him dating someone called Samira, or whatever?’ Klippan said.

  ‘No, I said he had a bit of a crush.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ Tuvesson said.

  ‘I was just wondering if it could be honour-related.’

  Lilja was about to sip her coffee but instead she put her cup back down and turned to Klippan. ‘Are you saying Samira’s family forced an eleven-year-old boy with a pre-adolescent crush down to the laundry room and shoved him into a washing machine?’

  ‘Irene, I find this every bit as horrible as you do. But why not?’ Klippan shrugged. ‘I’m no expert when it comes to honour-related violence.’

  ‘No, but you’re walking on very thin ice, just so you know.’ Lilja shook her head and drank her coffee.

  ‘Better than being blind.’

  ‘I’m sorry, who’s blind?’

  ‘Irene…’ Tuvesson tried to intervene, but she couldn’t get a word in.

  ‘No, I want to know what he means. Because if it turns out we have a closet racist on the team, I want him as far away from this investigation as possible.’

  ‘You’re certainly not shy about throwing the word racist around. If it’s not the perpetrator, it’s me,’ Klippan said, pointing to himself. ‘But since you’re asking, I’m neither racist nor xenophobic. I’m just not as hysterically politically correct as you, which means I can see things for what they are. Which may not be such a terrible thing, considering the work we do.’