The picture had been manipulated.
It was undeniably Elvin’s head, but the light on his face came from the left, not the right as in the rest of the picture. Furthermore, there was something about the sharpness that was out of line with the sharpness of the dress, which in turn made the contrast around the hair and by the neck more noticeable, despite obvious attempts to even them out.
Elvin had been inserted, in all likeliness scanned from one of the photographs missing from the album. The other was probably of Elvin’s sister, wearing a white dress, helping her mother hang laundry.
In other words, Elvin’s gender dysphoria was a fabrication. Probably intended to provide a motive that was shocking and complex enough to overshadow everything else, to make sure no one would even begin to suspect that he had been murdered.
He felt his pulse start to race and a rush of adrenaline. All of a sudden, it was as though he could see into the future, all the repercussions that would follow if it really did turn out to be Molander, a member of their own team, who was behind Elvin’s death. He had no idea how adept Molander was at photo editing, but given his general technical know-how, it wouldn’t surprise him if he was at least proficient.
Granted, the perpetrator could be anyone from an old convict who had done his time and come back seeking revenge to just about anybody. But if Elvin’s suspicions had turned out to be true and Molander had realized he was on to him, he had not only a motive but also the expertise needed to commit a murder so convincing that no one other than Elvin himself would know to be suspicious.
What he didn’t have was any solid evidence.
But as Stubbs liked to say, it didn’t matter how meticulously you cleaned up after yourself – somewhere, there was always a speck of dust.
18
Was this some kind of concert?
That was Lilja’s first thought as she slipped away from the group she had pretended to be part of and continued on her own. The adrenaline-fuelled metal music from Sabaton’s latest album, Carolus Rex, blared out of the speakers, filling every nook and cranny of the barn, which felt like a gig venue with spotlights nestled among the wooden beams in the ceiling and a raised stage at the far end.
It was one of Hampus’s absolute favourite bands, and even though he was fully aware of her feelings about their music, he insisted on constantly putting them on and turning the volume up as if he was trying to subject the entire street to Guantãnamo-style torture.
She estimated the number of people to be around a hundred and fifty, including members of some of the worst criminal motorcycle gangs ravaging Skåne at the moment. But this wasn’t a motorcycle club get-together. That much was clear from the elegant suits and the long leather coats, not to mention the swastika armbands.
She pulled out her phone and called Klippan, only to be redirected to his voicemail, where she left a message telling him she was inside.
‘I would like to start by welcoming you all,’ a voice said over the speakers, moments after the music had faded out, and the audience moved towards the stage where a short man dressed in something resembling a brown scout uniform was standing behind a podium. ‘It’s good to see so many people here, and this is just the beginning! Because as I’m sure you’ve noticed, people are finally starting to realize that unified resistance and violence is the only way forward!’
Several people in the audience clapped and whistled.
She’d heard rumours about these kinds of events. Secret Nazi meetings arranged by the Party of the Swedes, the National Democrats or the Nordic Resistance Movement Third Nest, as they called themselves in Skåne. They often rented a venue under a false name, such as a school auditorium, or, like tonight, gathered in a barn in the middle of nowhere.
In order not to draw attention to herself, she carefully shifted towards the edge of the crowd, where she could slip into the shadows, climb up on a chair and film the whole event on her phone.
‘This is something the Muslims have already realized,’ the man behind the podium continued. ‘They declared war on us a long time ago, and I promise you that unless we do something, we’ll soon have sharia laws and burka requirements in this country.’ Scattered booing could be heard. ‘Exactly! Many of us have been too blue-eyed, but then there’s nothing wrong with being blue-eyed, if you know what I mean.’ The booing turned into laughter. ‘We have to fight back now! Soon, it’ll be too late!’
Applause and shouting took over; soon, the whole venue was filled with raised right arms.
‘Let’s give tonight’s first speaker a round of applause. The man who never ducks the debate. Who like no one else knows how to make his voice heard and open doors for our policies! The one and only Sievert Landertz!’
Landertz stepped out on to the stage dressed in a dark leather jacket, shirt and tie, and, to the sound of applause and cheers, shook hands with the man in the scout outfit and stepped up to the podium.
‘People tell me all the time that you can’t judge all Muslims by what some Muslims do,’ he said as soon as the audience had settled down. ‘That only the most fundamentalist Muslims and Islamists are a problem. If you ask me, that’s semantics, and if semantics is the name of the game, we might as well call them by their real name. Which is to say “rats”, or why not “cockroaches”?’ There was more scattered laughter and clapping. ‘They’re certainly not people!’ He shook his head and smiled as if that was self-evident. ‘I don’t know about you, but I call them vermin!’ The shouting and cheering grew louder. ‘And what do we normally do with vermin? That’s right! We exterminate it!’ He mimed spraying pesticide in the air, and the venue exploded with cheering and raised right arms when he upped the ante by pulling on a swastika armband.
Lilja was not surprised in the slightest. Landertz was far from the first Sweden Democrat to have come out of the Nazi closet. Even so, it made her feel sick; she wanted to march up on to the stage, snatch the microphone from him and ask what in God’s name they thought they were doing.
‘At one end of the scale are people who are one hundred per cent human, like everyone in here,’ Landertz continued. ‘At the other end, they’re one hundred per cent Mohammadan, and right now they’re pouring in across our borders! Parasites out to rape our women, defecate in our churches and leech our country of all its riches. Just look at the numbers, it’s undeniable. We build. We produce and create. And what do they do? They take! They take our money. Our jobs. Our university places. Our homes. The bloody swine even have the gall to take our seats at the front of the bus!’
The audience was virtually roaring out its frustration at this point. Landertz eventually had to signal to them to simmer down before he could carry on.
‘But of course, we don’t hear about that on the news or read about it in the papers, which makes me wonder if it isn’t time to call the media by their real name too, which is to say “Lügenpresse”.’ Several people in the audience laughed. ‘But the “terrible” fire at the refugee centre outside Kvidinge, that they report on. What a sob story. I have no idea who was behind it, but whoever they are, I think they deserve a round of applause!’ People whistled and clapped and those right arms shot up again in unison. ‘We got rid of three rats! Three disgusting black cockroaches who can no longer breed and multiply. If we’re lucky, we’ll get rid of some more parasites before this is over!’ Applause erupted once more.
It was hardly unthinkable that one or several of the arsonists were present. But there were too many of them for her to consider trying to take down everyone’s details. Nor could she call for backup and surround the place, since the gathering, no matter how repellent, was not illegal in itself.
On the other hand, they had all arrived by car or motorcycle, and even if they weren’t the registered owners, there should be enough connections.
She had paused her filming to write a message to Klippan, asking him to walk around and take pictures of all the licence plates, when suddenly the chair disappeared from under her. It happened so quickly
she hit the floor without being able to catch herself. The phone slipped from her hand and slid out of her reach.
‘And what do we have here?’ A man dressed in leather with a denim waistcoat took a few steps closer, squatted down next to her and leaned in so close she could see every last detail of the Terminator tattoo that covered his neck and parts of his face.
‘Is this yours?’ said another voice, and her phone was held out to her by a hand that was missing its middle finger.
She nodded and watched her phone hit the ground and get crushed by a heavy boot.
The room was completely still now, apart from the groans she emitted as she defied the pain in her hip and got back on her feet. Her insides were in uproar and her heart was beating so fast and hard her chest hurt.
To conceal how she was really feeling, however, she made a show of brushing the dirt off her jacket, slowly and calmly, with one hand. Only when she was done did she turn to the man in the scout uniform who had stepped forward along with the bouncer.
‘My name is Irene Lilja,’ she said, ensuring she made eye contact with all three of them. ‘I work for the Helsingborg Police and am currently investigating the murder of Moonif Ganem.’ She paused and looked at all the people who had now turned to her. ‘We have a suspect and I want to know if anyone in here recognizes him.’ She pulled the zip of her jacket down halfway and moved her hand towards her inside pocket.
The reaction was instantaneous; three guns were suddenly aimed at her.
‘You don’t seriously think I’m going to shoot you, do you?’ she finally managed to get out, and to her own surprise, her voice was steady. She added a little laugh and underlined it by shaking her head as she pulled out the police sketch from her inside pocket.
Her theatrics seemed to have worked. True, the guns were still aimed at her, but none of the men were able to conceal the uncertainty in their eyes when they looked at her, and that uncertainty disarmed all the tattoos, studs and muscles. This wasn’t what they had expected and, weapons or no weapons, it was now her hand on the tiller.
‘This is what he looks like,’ she continued and held out the picture to the short man in the scout outfit.
But the bastard didn’t even glance at the picture; he was staring at her hand holding it. Her trembling fucking hand.
And just like that, the tiller slipped out of her grasp; she was powerless to act when he tore up the sketch and smilingly let the pieces fall to the floor.
‘You want to know who that is? You really want to know?’ He took a step closer. ‘He’s a true hero. A man who did what was necessary for our country. Unfortunately, I don’t know who he is, so I can’t thank him personally. But I can make sure the news of his deed, which hopefully wasn’t his last, spreads all the way down to the rats’ nest that washing machine boy came from. Then maybe they’ll think twice before coming here. Besides, the kid should be grateful. Not everyone is washed that clean before they go.’ He turned to the man with the Terminator tattoo. ‘Make sure you escort our guest all the way out.’
The man nodded and turned to the two others, who grabbed her arms and hustled her towards a door next to the stage.
All the way out.
She wanted to resist but had no choice but to follow them backstage. She wanted to wrench free and use any ensuing confusion to pull out the gun they had forgotten to frisk her for.
All the way out.
Did that mean what she thought it meant?
Yet another door was opened and she was led out into a yard where a car was parked.
Not just out, but all the way out.
Were they going to drive her into the woods and put a bullet in her head? Or were they going to lock her in the boot while the car was crushed into a small cube at the nearest junk yard? She wouldn’t be the first police officer to disappear without a trace.
‘Help!’ she heard herself scream. ‘Klippan, I’m here. On the other side!’
The reply came in the form of a fist against her cheekbone. An inch or two lower and her jaw would have been knocked out of joint. Instead, she passed out and had no way of knowing that she was put into the boot of the parked car and driven away.
19
Fabian emptied the brown evidence bag and the clutch of keys clattered on to the desk in the basement. There were seven keys in all. Seven keys, each different, and each one marked with coloured gaffer tape around their heads. Of the two blue ones, one was marked with a four-digit code, and on one of the two white keys, a longer code of six digits was printed. The other had a drawing of a fish. The three green keys all looked completely different and had question marks on them.
He used his phone to take pictures of each of the keys in turn. He had no idea what the different markings meant, but they all fitted in a lock somewhere and he wasn’t going to give up until he knew the purpose of each one.
The discovery that the photograph of the young Elvin wearing a dress had been doctored had prompted him to delve into the Molander investigation in earnest. He had spent all evening and soon half the night in the basement, going over and photographing some of the contents of Elvin’s locked desk drawer.
He had already flipped through some of the calendars. With a few exceptions, virtually every day had been marked with the initials I.M., presumably for Ingvar Molander, followed by two times of day. One in the morning when he arrived at the station and one later in the afternoon or evening when he left.
Sometimes, Elvin had drawn a face that was either happy, grumpy or simply had a dash for a mouth, and on some pages there was further information, which could be anything from Molander changing his phone number and which investigations he was working on to whether he had been on leave or just happened to make an odd comment during a meeting. On certain pages there was also a third time noted, which as far as Fabian could make out indicated when Molander got home, which suggested Elvin had at times gone so far as to stalk him.
One of the envelopes contained a collection of black-and-white photographs showing a woman getting into the passenger seat of a car. Or coming out – it was impossible to tell. Unfortunately, none of the pictures showed her face. When she wasn’t turned away from the camera, her hair was in the way, and as for the driver, it was too dark to see much more than that it was a man.
The car looked like a grey five-door Saab 9-3. But the registration plates weren’t visible in any of the pictures.
And then there were copies of various investigations. It wasn’t the first time he’d been through them, but it was the first time he’d taken the time to really dig into the details. He had decided to start with the oldest. It was by far the one he knew the least about.
The victim, Einar Stenson, was seventy-three years old when, on Saturday 21 April 2007, he passed away in his summer house by Ringsjöstrand in Hörby. Hörby was in the middle of Skåne, in the Southwestern Götaland Police District. Consequently, the investigation hadn’t been handled by Tuvesson and her team, but by a certain Ragnar Söderström in Eslöv, who had concluded it was a tragic accident that for a number of reasons had proved fatal.
According to the investigation, Einar Stenson had been alone in his summer house when he slipped on the newly waxed kitchen floor. He had fallen forward across the cutlery basket of his open dishwasher. The basket had contained, among other things, a kitchen knife pointing up, which had penetrated Stenson’s abdomen. A nose fracture and a laceration on his forehead suggested he had hit his head and passed out, which explained why he had bled to death.
It was undeniably a highly unusual accident, but at the same time completely plausible. A quick internet search revealed that Stenson was the only Swedish victim of such an accident. But in the UK, both a thirty-one-year-old woman and a six-year-old boy had died under what could be described as virtually identical circumstances.
The notes in the margin, however, indicated that Elvin had been very sceptical. He had, for example, highlighted the entire paragraph describing the kitchen floor as newly waxed and therefor
e very slippery, particularly since the victim had supposedly been wearing wooden clogs. The words newly waxed and clogs were circled and had question marks next to them.
But if the technical investigation was to be believed, the floor had, in fact, been waxed and in one of the pictures showing the victim slumped face down across the open dishwasher door, the left clog was still on his foot, while the right had fallen into the pool of blood on the floor.
It was an unsettling picture in more ways than one. Not because of all the blood that had spread out across the dishwasher and the floor, or the point of the knife sticking out through the victim’s checked shirt like a tiny silver shark fin. No, the truly frightening thing was just how little it took to end everything. As though it were enough for chance to suddenly decide to mess with you, just for a laugh.
One of the other pictures was taken from the ground up and from that angle was in some ways even more disconcerting, even though the victim had been removed. It showed the bloody knife sticking straight up out of the cutlery basket. It hurt just to look at it, as though he himself, Sonja and, above all, the children had really just been lucky every time they’d placed a knife exactly like that and not ended up dead.
But Elvin had had questions about this, too. He had marked the length of the blade with a question mark. It was not clear why. Instead, the red felt-tip symbol looked more like something had occurred to him and then he had simply moved on. Maybe he had followed up at a later date. Maybe the thought had been forgotten.
A search for Einar Stenson informed Fabian that he had spent most of his professional life working as a sports photographer for several newspapers. One of his most famous images was of a young Zlatan Ibrahimović in a header duel during one of his first years of playing for Malmö FF. In 1952, Stenson had married his wife, Flora, and soon after they’d had two daughters, a few years apart, Ulla and Gertrud Stenson.
Gertrud…
Fabian read the name again to make sure he’d got it right.
Motive X Page 10