He made sure to keep putting things in his basket as he quickly moved towards the tills. At least stressed people in a hurry were a common enough sight.
It was all that bearded man’s fault. If not for him, the dice would have given its verdict and he could have focused on following them to their car and noting down their registration number. Now the mood was ruined, and of course neither Rutger nor his dad were anywhere to be seen when he reached the tills.
Where the fuck were they? They couldn’t have just disappeared. No one could escape the will of the dice. No one. And he was the one holding it, which meant the boy’s fate was in his hands. Thus it was decided and thus it was going to be.
Then he realized where they were. Of course. How could he not have thought of it? The more a parent was annoyed by a child’s nagging, the more likely he was to give in to it. Something young Rutger had clearly worked out long ago. And if one thing didn’t work, apparently, another might.
Because there they were, in one of the aisles in the section for useless plastic things, getting a big box containing a plastic guitar off the shelf. He took out his dice, shook it, only for a moment this time, and opened his hand.
Maybe he had just seen it wrong.
Were those really two little diagonal dots and not three?
Maybe he hadn’t shaken it for long enough.
No, it didn’t matter. Or at least, it shouldn’t. But what if he hadn’t given chance a proper chance? On the other hand, he’d been shaking it when the bearded bloke interrupted him, so no matter how badly he wanted one, he had no excuse to start over. The dice had been given all the time it needed, and it had settled on the two little dots. He just had to take it and let those ungrateful pricks continue towards the tills.
Disappointment broke over him like a wave, even though he knew how utterly futile that was. After all, this was exactly the point. Not knowing who, when and where. His own will had nothing to do with it. He was nothing but a passenger who had climbed on to the roller coaster blindfolded, about to take the most amazing ride of his life.
So why didn’t he feel exhilarated or excited? Had the bearded bloke ruined things for him or had it been the two aggravating dots on the dice? He didn’t know. Either way, the mood was far from ideal, and all he wanted to do was to abandon his basket and go home. But he couldn’t. Someone was supposed to lose their life tomorrow and he still didn’t know who.
Maybe he was just hungry. It had been almost three hours since his last meal, and a small break wasn’t against the rules, was it? If only to collect himself and get back in the mood. A rotisserie chicken leg, a tomato and a lemon-flavoured Ramlösa.
He could feel his spirits starting to return on his way over to the meat counter. When he took his queue number and noticed that the two people ahead of him in line were dressed in all grey and all black respectively, he felt his decision to take a break had been validated.
The girl behind the counter, who was dressed in white, called the next number and began to serve the man in black jeans, a black T-shirt and a dark jacket. His clothes were both neat and classy, so in some ways he deserved to live.
‘And how can I help you?’
He hadn’t realized the red digits were showing his number and that there was suddenly another person behind the counter. Lennart Andersson, according to the name tag pinned to his butcher’s smock. He looked to be well over fifty, though he was clearly doing everything in his power to look at least ten years younger. He was unusually fit for his age, and that, combined with his low hairline and fake tan, conspired to trick the eye. It was better to look at a person’s hands. That’s where you could count the rings. No surgery in the world could change people’s hands. Just like his colleague, Lennart was dressed in white, though with one small but significant difference.
His red tie.
Granted, only the knot was visible, but that was more than enough.
‘One rotisserie chicken leg,’ he said. He pulled out his dice and started shaking it while the man walked over to the heated display case.
A one.
One single dot in the middle.
It was what he needed to move on to the next phase.
The dice bounced on to the counter with a small bang and rolled over towards the basket of discarded queue numbers, where it finally came to a stop.
‘Anything else?’ Lennart put the price tag on the chicken bag.
A one.
Bloody hell, he really had rolled a goddamn one.
The decision had been slow in coming, but it was made now and in hindsight it seemed completely right.
‘No, thank you, that’s great, Lennart. Really great.’ He allowed himself a smile, slipped his dice back into his pocket and picked up his chicken leg.
‘All right then, have a good day.’
‘And you, and you. You never know how long the good times last,’ he said and walked towards the tills.
22
‘All right, that’s all I wanted to ask you.’ Lilja stood up.
‘What, so we’re done already?’ said the woman who had been caught on CCTV, dashing across Norra Stationsgatan in Bjuv just minutes after someone turned on the rinse cycle in a laundry room a hundred yards away.
‘Yes,’ Lilja said, walking the woman to the door. ‘But if we have more questions later, we will of course contact you again.’ She couldn’t see any reason not to believe the woman’s story about going to the shops and not having enough credit on her card and therefore having to rush home to get cash. She’d even shown her the receipt saying purchase cancelled.
The woman was the third person she had been able to cross off the list of people who’d caught their attention in one way or another when they watched the CCTV tapes. To be honest, they had mostly caught Klippan’s attention. For her part, she considered the whole thing a big waste of time. But she had promised, and being as firmly in his bad graces as she seemed to be after slipping into the Nazi rally without him, she wasn’t going to pick a fight over this, too.
He certainly was cross. So cross, he’d posted a handwritten ‘busy’ sign on his door and was refusing to take her calls. Three times she had tried to call him after bringing Landertz and his son in, and each time he had declined.
One of the times, he’d sent a text saying he was busy and that they’d have to talk later. As though he were the only person in the world with things to get on with.
But she wasn’t going to let him drag her down to his level and act cross back. That was his thing. Besides, she only had the man with the rental car left to check before she could actually make herself useful by sinking her teeth into the Sweden Democrats membership list.
That said, she hadn’t been able to refrain from sneaking a quick peek between interviews. Mostly to reassure herself the USB stick wasn’t empty. And it certainly hadn’t been.
It turned out the party had about eight thousand members nationwide. Approximately two thousand five hundred of them lived in Skåne; narrowing the area down further to just Bjuv and its surrounding municipalities, that number went down to eight hundred and forty-seven people, of which two hundred and nine were women. Since the list included their personal identity numbers, she had been able to filter out anyone under twenty-five or over sixty and finally landed on a list of three hundred and eight names, any of which could turn out to be the man with the smile that appeared before her every time she closed her eyes.
There was no guarantee he was on this particular membership list, but research had shown that even people with more extreme right-wing and even Nazi views often voted for the increasingly mainstream Sweden Democrats in order to secure a first foothold in parliament.
Besides, she was convinced Sievert Landertz had recognized the man in the composite sketch, even though he’d continued strenuously to deny it during his preliminary interview that morning. He’d also threatened to sue them if they didn’t release him immediately, and he would not only sue the police, but her personally for deliberately dest
roying his political career.
There could be no doubt Landertz had orchestrated the firebombing of his own office. But even though they had proof his car had been involved, that was not, according to Högsell, enough to press charges. And since the son denied everything as obstinately as his father, anyone could arguably have used the car because, if their information was to be believed, they routinely left the key in the ignition.
Hardly surprisingly, Högsell had advocated releasing them on their own recognizance. Lilja had agreed to let the son go, but not Landertz, not under any circumstances. In his case, she had referred to chapter 24 of the Code of Judicial Proceedings, which allowed them to hold him for up to three days if he was considered instrumental to the investigation.
So he was staying behind bars until twelve o’clock on Monday. That alone helped cheer her up a little. And it didn’t hurt that the newspapers had already sniffed out the fact that he was under arrest.
She still had a few minutes before her interview with the rental car driver, Pontus Holmwik, so she gave her mouse a prod to wake up her computer screen, which was displaying the names of all the Sweden Democrats on her filtered list. For some reason, they were sorted in reverse alphabetical order with surnames like Östlund and Zachrisson at the top.
She was scrolling down through the list when her phone started ringing. Of course it was Klippan. Now he wanted to talk. But she was busy; he would have to wait. She declined the call and returned to the names on her screen.
Her first thought was that she’d seen it wrong.
Her second was that it was someone else with the same name.
The third, she was unable to follow through to the end.
Wallsson was not an uncommon name per se.
But there was only one Hampus Zacharias Wallsson.
Her Hampus was a member of the Sweden Democrats. Fuck. She wanted to throw up all over the screen.
‘Hi, hello. Are you Irene Lilja?’
She looked up and in the doorway saw a man, dressed in a tight black leather jacket and equally black jeans, loosening the checked scarf tied around his neck. ‘Yes, I am.’ She got up to shake hands. ‘And you must be Pontus Holmwik. Come in and take a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?’ She couldn’t tell whether she was shocked, angry or sad. She was probably all those things at once. According to the information on her screen, he had joined two years ago, in conjunction with the parliamentary election of 2010. And he hadn’t breathed a word about it. Not one goddamn word.
‘No, thank you, I just had a drink.’ The man chuckled and sat down in the visitor’s chair. ‘I mean, water, or, actually, tea.’ He laughed again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit nervous. I’ve never been called in for questioning by the police before.’
‘There’s no need to worry. We just need to clear up some things. Hopefully you can help us with that.’ She and Hampus almost never discussed politics. But she remembered him saying during one of the election debates that he was going to cast his vote for the Social Democrats.
‘Can I just ask how long it’s going to take? Because I have an important—’
‘Fifteen, twenty minutes, tops.’ Lilja cut him off and flipped to a blank page in her notepad. ‘Let’s jump right in, shall we?’ That prick had lied right to her face. ‘According to our information, you rented a car from Hertz on Gustav Adolfsgatan here in Helsingborg last Wednesday. Is that correct?’
‘Yes,’ the man said with a nod.
‘Then you drove to Bjuv that morning and parked the car on Norra Stationsgatan, next to the mall.’
‘I don’t know what the street’s called, but I’m sure that’s right.’ The man smiled and nodded again.
It wasn’t that you had to vote for the same party just because you were a couple. ‘Were you visiting someone?’ On the contrary, she felt vague contempt for couples who always voted for the same party and agreed with each other on everything just so they wouldn’t have to think for themselves.
‘No, I don’t know anyone in Bjuv.’
‘So what were you doing there?’ But the Sweden Democrats, that was a different matter. That’s where she drew the line. ‘I assume you didn’t rent the car just to go to Bjuv Mall and eat at the Amore Pizzeria.’ If he voted for them, his world view had to be so fundamentally different from hers she simply couldn’t see how they could stay together.
‘Pizza? Oh no, I’d be the size of a whale.’ The man chuckled. ‘I was just scouting locations.’
‘What do you mean, locations?’ She had no choice but to leave him. As soon as she got home, she would have to pack her bag and go.
The man shrugged. ‘Anything that might work as a backdrop for my dog pictures.’
‘Dog pictures? I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand,’ Lilja said as she declined another call from Klippan. ‘Is that your job?’
‘Yes, people send in pictures of their dogs or cats. I edit them into different backgrounds. Like mountains, meadows or behind the wheel of a car. Completely up to the client. Then I filter the picture and tidy it up a bit before I print it and frame it.’ He added a smile as though what he had just described was the most natural thing in the world.
‘And this is something people pay you for?’
‘Yes. It pays really well.’
‘What’s the name of your company?’
‘PetFrame. Initially, I called it BeautyPet, but that made everyone think it was a beauty salon for pets, so I came up with PetFrame instead, which says exactly what it’s about. Right?’
The door opened and before Lilja could react, Klippan was standing in the middle of the room. ‘Högsell has just been on to me about not having enough to hold Landertz. Just so you’re on board with us releasing him.’
‘I’m not on board. We know he had something to do with the fire, and I’m fairly certain he knows who killed Moonif. So Landertz stays. Also, I’m in the middle of something.’
‘Okay, we’ll talk more about it later.’ Klippan sighed. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’
‘Fine. But whatever it is, it can wait until I’m done here.’
‘Not really,’ Klippan said and walked up to her desk.
She was aware that she was tired and had been running on fumes for the last few hours, and she was aware that she was about to completely overreact. But she’d had it up to here with his bullying. He’d been in charge for twenty-four measly hours, but was already walking around like he owned the whole fucking building.
‘I’m sorry,’ the man said. ‘But are we done or did you have more questions?’
Lilja raised her hand apologetically to the man and stood up to give Klippan the kind of chewing out she normally reserved for Hampus. But seeing the photograph he’d just put down on her desk took the wind out of her sails.
‘Assar Skanås, forty-eight years old, single, no children.’ Klippan met her eyes. ‘Isn’t he the one you’re looking for?’
How the hell had he managed this? She picked up the picture and studied the smiling man she’d spent the last two days trying to track down.
23
The first track had consisted mainly of piano clinking and down-pitched voices. But as soon as the marching drums and angelic chorus of the second track came on, Fabian knew Apparatjik was the exception that proved the rule.
It was the first time he’d listened to the disc since buying it, and since the GPS informed him his destination in Ringsjöstrand was still nine minutes away, he turned the volume up.
He actually didn’t have a lot of time for so-called supergroups. They seemed intrinsically unable to amount to anything other than a watered-down compromise. The Power Station with Robert Palmer and members of both Chic and Duran Duran was maybe one of the more embarrassing examples, though the Traveling Wilburys with giants like George Harrison and Bob Dylan weren’t really much better.
But Apparatjik seemed to be bucking that trend. With members from Mew, A-ha and Coldplay, this constellation was considerably more interesting than its constituen
t parts.
He lowered the volume back down when he had to slow the car to avoid running over all the ice-cream-eating beach tourists who had braved the overcast sky and in many ways typical June weather. Fifty yards further on, he crossed a small bridge, parked by the side of the road and climbed out to walk the last bit.
Whether Hugo Elvin had ever come out here was impossible to say from the sparse notes in the margins of the investigation. He had reacted, that much was certain. To what exactly, other than a few minor details, was hard to say. Maybe he had simply been interested because the victim was Molander’s father-in-law, and maybe he had eventually concluded that it really had been an accident, however unusual.
The whitewashed house was located in the middle of a hilly garden, less than a hundred feet from Ringsjö Lake. It was undeniably beautiful, a small, completely secluded piece of paradise.
This was where Molander’s father-in-law, Einar Stenson, was impaled on his own kitchen knife, in the couple’s summer house. His widow, Flora Stenson, lived in the house year-round now, and walking around the corner he spotted her on her knees, weeding, despite being eighty years old.
There was an old transistor radio next to her on the ground; Jessika Gedin was holding forth about the perfect breakfast and exactly how many millimetres wide the peels should be in orange marmalade to create optimal satisfaction.
‘Excuse me, are you Flora?’ he called out from afar so as not to scare her, but he still noticed her starting before turning the radio down.
‘Hi, my name’s John.’ Fabian held out his hand to the woman, who stood up and wiped her hands on her apron before taking it.
It wasn’t a lie. His name was John, or to be exact, it was John Fabian Gideon Risk. John was after his grandfather, who had changed his first name from Johan in 1963, after the American president was murdered. Where Gideon came from, he had no idea, and when he’d asked his parents once as a teenager, the mood had turned so uncomfortable he’d never mentioned the subject again.
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