Motive X

by Stefan Ahnhem

  He pulled out the middle drawer on the left-hand side and took out a cloth bundle, placed it on the desk in front of him and unfolded it. There it was, the gun Theodor had come home with on that fateful night when the earth had shattered beneath their feet.

  Since then, Matilda’s hospital stay had demanded all his attention; he hadn’t given the gun so much as a thought and had almost managed to forget it even existed. But here it was, waiting to be handed in, registered and examined, and of course he would do that, as soon as he’d found out exactly where Theodor had got it from.

  It was a Heckler & Koch USP Compact 9 mm, a model designed for close-range combat, common among the Danish police. That much he knew, but since the serial number had been scratched out, there was no way of doing a search on it.

  Was this the connection to Denmark? Could it really be true that his own son was mixed up with those heinous crimes? He had not been well, that was for sure. But that unwell… It had to be a misunderstanding.

  He had tried to bring it up with Theodor more than once. But when he hadn’t run away and withdrawn into his shell, he had, like the other night, reacted with rage. And Fabian’s guilt had made him tiptoe around any potential conflict, no matter how small. But the time for that was over. He didn’t care what Theodor’s reaction was. As soon as he got home from the cinema, the truth was going to come out.

  He found Dunja’s number on his phone and dialled it to ask if it was really her. It took a few seconds for the technology to connect, but instead of ringing, he heard an automated woman’s voice.

  ‘The number you have dialled is no longer in use. The number you have dialled doesn’t exist. The number you have dialled is no longer in use. The number…’

  He hung up and tried again, but this time he put the number in manually, only to be greeted by the same automated voice.

  Maybe there was a technical error. Maybe she’d changed providers. There could be any number of reasons why the number wasn’t working. But this was Dunja, and if he knew her right, it was a very deliberate choice.

  From: fabian.risk.privat@gmail.com

  To: 7hcx3h+fbpyhpq8xakfo@sharklasers.com

  Subject: Re: Theodor

  Hi Dunja.

  It seems you have a new number. Please call me so we can talk about it over the phone instead. I assume it’s you. If not, please tell me who you are and why you are contacting me regarding my son.

  Kind regards,

  Fabian Risk

  He sent the email and had an almost instantaneous reply.

  Final-Recipient: 7hcx3h+fbpyhpq8xakfo@sharklasers.com

  Action: failed

  Status: 5.1.1

  Remote-MTA: dns; gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

  (2a00:1450:4010:c0d::1b, the server for the domain gmail.com.)

  Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550-5.1.1 The email account you tried to reach does not exist. Try double-checking the recipient’s email address for typos or unnecessary spaces.

  Fabian didn’t know what to think. Her number didn’t work and she sent cryptic emails from an address you couldn’t reply to. What was she up to?

  He picked up his phone, found Kim Sleizner’s mobile number and was about to dial it when a window suddenly popped up in the middle of his computer screen.

  Recovery of 8GB Sandisk memory card completed.

  Do you want to view the files?

  Right. The pictures on the memory card. That’s what he’d been doing. He clicked YES, which opened a new window.

  A window full of pictures.

  He double-clicked the first one, which showed Flora Stenson waving to the camera from her vegetable patch. It was taken on 13 September 2005. Two years before Einar Stenson died. The next picture was a selfie taken only six minutes later, standing on a jetty by Ringsjö Lake. The next picture showed two steaks on the grill alongside jacket potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil and topped with big dollops of Béarnaise sauce.

  For a professional photographer, the pictures were surprisingly mediocre. The small digital device clearly hadn’t been Einar’s forte, and given that there were only about twenty pictures, he had likely grown tired of it quickly and stuck it in the attic.

  The rest of the pictures were private, too, and from Fabian’s perspective completely uninteresting. Most looked to be from Christmas 2005, and even though he had only been to Molander’s house three or four times, he felt he recognized the beige sofa and the rectangular dinner table set for a Christmas feast. Molander and his wife, Gertrud, were in some of the pictures; she was wearing a red skirt, he a button-down shirt and a lambswool jumper.

  The only picture he couldn’t make head or tail of had been taken in the days after Christmas and showed a group of about ten men seated around a set table in a basement room. Every one of them was laughing uproariously, holding full Snaps glasses and looking merrily straight into the camera.

  On the back wall was a sign; when he zoomed in on it, he could see it said PC Celluloid under a logo depicting an old-fashioned box camera. Of course, it was a photography club. A club that, if the name was anything to go by, only concerned itself with analogue film, which explained the hilarity when Einar pulled out his little digital marvel.

  He couldn’t be sure. But something told him he was finally breaking new ground. Hugo Elvin had undeniably sniffed out a lot. But chances were he hadn’t been here. That didn’t mean there was anything of interest to find. But if there was, he was finally a step ahead of both Elvin and Molander.

  29

  ‘There is still no statement from the Helsingborg Police regarding the arrest of Sievert Landertz early this morning,’ the newscaster said. ‘But according to unconfirmed sources, the arrest relates to the fire in the Sweden Democrats’ offices in Bjuv. And in today’s interpellation debate, leader of the Sweden Democrats Jimmie Åkesson seized the opportunity to comment on events.’

  ‘This is what I call a threat against democracy,’ Åkesson said. Lilja could feel her mood souring just from hearing the sound of his voice. ‘Can anyone here seriously believe that our justice system would ever contemplate detaining a Social Democrat like this, without any concrete—’

  Lilja turned the radio off. She’d had enough. If it wasn’t a threat to democracy, it was a threat to freedom of speech. As though there was no concrete evidence against Landertz. He had the word guilty practically tattooed on his forehead, for God’s sake.

  She had backed her car in between two shrubs that grew at exactly the right angle to hide her from anyone coming down the gravel road. From there, she also had a perfect view of Assar Skanås’s house just twenty yards away and would be able to call for backup the moment anyone set foot near it.

  Having made sure he was neither in the house nor lurking somewhere in the garden, she and Klippan had decided to hold off on calling in Molander and his team and instead to keep the house under surveillance overnight, in case he returned.

  But she had been staked out in her car for over four hours now and hadn’t done anything other than stare at an abandoned house through a zoomed-in camera lens while the news went on and on about Landertz and that damn party of his, which would probably be able to recruit even more members off the back of this debacle.

  Besides, the dashboard showed an outside temperature of just twelve degrees, which meant she had to turn the heat on in her seat and wrap herself in a thick blanket to stay warm. Something that in turn meant she had to start the engine every fifteen minutes and let it run for at least three.

  She lost a fight to suppress a yawn at the exact moment the blue numbers on the dashboard changed to 00:00. She had two more hours before Klippan was coming back to relieve her, and unless something happened pretty soon, she was going to fall asleep and drift so far away a Third World War could start without her noticing.

  She stepped out of her car, stretched and filled her lungs with the damp night air. They had agreed not to enter the house alone. Partly to leave it as untouched as possible for Molander, but also in case Skanås di
d come home. Then they would be at a significant disadvantage. Skanås had proven himself to be very dangerous and completely unpredictable, and in the house he would also have home court advantage.

  But the house was one thing, the garden something else entirely. When she was well inside it, she stopped and looked around. At the Volvo sitting there, only partially covered by the tarp, and at the lawn, which she’d only just noticed was freshly mowed, much like the flowerbeds were completely devoid of weeds.

  Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on what; and then her phone started playing ‘Sommartid’ by Magnus Uggla. Which meant it wasn’t Klippan calling. That would have elicited the old Bakelite ringtone. No, this ringtone was one of her absolute favourite songs and especially chosen just for Hampus. A relic of a time when she’d been so head over heels in love, her whole body had ached.

  It was his third attempt at calling her that night. He was probably wondering where she was and why she didn’t pick up. Nothing weird about that. But just as she couldn’t stand the rest of Magnus Uggla’s terrible mainstream discography, she couldn’t bear the thought that she was living with a Sweden Democrat.

  So she let the call go to voicemail and continued around to the back of the house, to the back door that led into the living room. It was still ajar, as it had been when they first got there.

  Everything pointed to Skanås having spotted them through a window and fled through this very door. But where had he gone after that? And the Renault, his own car, where was that? As far as she could see, there was nowhere to park it in the back and nowhere to drive off to. There wasn’t even a road, just fields.

  Suddenly, she heard the sound of a doorbell inside the house, an electronic melody spreading through the dark. But there was no one on the other side of the house, ringing the bell. Instead, she noticed that the cordless phone in its dock was lighting up in the gloom just inside the glass door.

  She pulled the door open wide enough to squeeze through and leaned in over the display that showed the number 072-684 43 82. While the melody kept ringing out as though it was never going to give up, she did a search for the number on her mobile but got no hits, which suggested it belonged to an anonymous prepaid SIM card.

  Careful not to contaminate the receiver with her own prints, she pulled her shirt sleeve down over her hand before picking up the phone and pressing the green button, silencing the ringing.

  ‘Yes, hello…’ she said, but there was no answer. The only sound she could hear was someone breathing heavily on the other end, sounding almost winded. ‘I’m sorry, who am I speaking to?’ It was a man. That much she could make out. A man who had just wrapped up a workout or finished some other physically demanding activity.

  ‘What are you doing in my house?’

  It was him. It was really him. ‘My name’s—’ she heard herself say before she was cut off by a click.

  30

  Fabian had just clicked into the photography club Celluloid’s website when a sudden draught gusting through the basement announced that the front door had been opened and closed again.

  Theodor was home.

  That was why he was now standing on the first-floor landing outside the closed teenage door, gathering the strength to knock. This was the time. No matter how Theodor reacted, this was it. But there was no reaction, so he knocked again, harder this time, and was rewarded by a tired sigh from the other side.

  ‘Yes… what is it?’

  He opened the door, stepped into the gloom and saw Theodor lying on his bed, squinting against the light coming from the hallway behind him. Granted, it was half past midnight, but it was also mere minutes since he came home. Had he even gone to the bathroom and brushed his teeth? What’s more, the room reeked of both smoke and alcohol.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ he heard himself say, noting that Theodor’s clothes lay in a pile on the floor.

  ‘Um, what?’ Theodor tried to focus his eyes on him.

  ‘I asked if you’ve been drinking. This place reeks of alcohol,’ he said, realizing it was probably the absolute worst way of initiating an intimate father – son conversation.

  Theodor sighed. ‘Yes, two beers. Happy? Or was there something else you wanted to talk about?’

  ‘Happy? Why would I be happy?’ Regret was pointless. It was already too late, even though he’d been in his son’s room for less than thirty seconds. ‘You know what Mum and I have said about drinking before you’re eighteen.’ Apparently, this was all his son had to do to throw him completely off balance.

  In an attempt to steer the conversation in a gentler direction, he took a deep breath, walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Look, I wasn’t exactly teetotal at your age either.’ He met Theodor’s eyes. ‘It’s not that I don’t understand that people your age need to break rules and try forbidden things. And between you and me, I have no problem looking the other way if it’s two beers. But two beers is nowhere close to what you’ve had tonight. Can we agree on that?’

  Theodor pondered that for a while before nodding.

  ‘Good. Because that actually wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.’ He broke off again.

  ‘What? Did something happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ He simply had no idea how to go on. ‘We all make mistakes from time to time, don’t we? Take me, for instance. I’ve done my best, but I would also be the first to admit that I’ve hardly been the world’s best or most involved dad. And in the light of everything that’s happened, it’s clear I’ve made more mistakes than most. Mistakes that in some cases are so serious that we’re going to have to live with them for the rest of our—’

  ‘All right, stop, what are you on about?’ Theodor cut in. ‘It’s the middle of the night and I’m exhausted. Could we maybe talk about this some other time?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Fabian shook his head. ‘This is already some other time, or the time after that. Much as we might like to, we can’t put it off any more. I need to know, right now, what really happened that night you came home, beaten black and blue and with a gun down your trousers.’

  Finally, a reaction. In the form of an eye-roll, sure, but it was better than nothing.

  ‘We’ve already talked about that. I don’t even know how many times.’ Theodor shook his head. ‘I was walking through Slottshagen on my way to meet up with some friends and these blokes appeared and—’

  ‘You’re right,’ Fabian interrupted. ‘That particular story I’ve heard enough to last me a lifetime. But that’s not what really happened, is it?’

  ‘Of course it fucking is.’ Theodor glared at him from bloodshot eyes.

  Fabian shook his head. ‘No, you weren’t walking through Slottshagen, and there were no “blokes” who held you at gunpoint until a third “bloke” appeared with a pit bull and scared them off.’

  ‘Fine, believe whatever you want.’ Theodor snorted derisively. ‘Like I care…’

  ‘Theo, I can see it. It’s clear from a mile away that—’

  ‘What do you mean, see it? You never see anything before it’s too late,’ Theodor hissed. ‘What the fuck is it you imagine you can tell from looking at me?’

  ‘That you’re not okay.’

  Theodor faltered, as though that had been the last response he’d expected.

  ‘I can see you’ve got something on your mind. Something heavy, that’s eating at you, and if you think it’s going to just go away on its own, you’re wrong. It’s going to get worse and worse, and if you don’t do something about it, eventually you’ll rot inside.’

  For the first time, his son actually seemed to be listening without protest. ‘You said I never see anything before it’s too late,’ he continued. ‘Painful as it is, I have to admit that that’s been true too many times. But I’m trying to change that, and that’s why I’m here now and not some other time. Because it’s not too late. There’s always a path leading forward, and yours starts with the truth.
No matter how difficult and terrible it may be, that’s where we have to start. Otherwise everything’s going to fall apart. So I’m asking you again. What happened that night?’

  Theodor was quiet, his eyes looking for something to rest on as he took in what had been said. But when they couldn’t find a safe point, his chin started to tremble instead.

  Almost an entire minute passed before he met Fabian’s eyes again. ‘Okay,’ he said in a voice as fragile as a butterfly wing. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t on my way to meet up with friends. I was standing by the cashpoint down on Stortorget Square when they appeared. Suddenly, they were just there, waving the gun around, telling me to get all my money out.’

  One lie replaced with another.

  He could see it in his eyes and felt disappointment rush through him. ‘Theodor… Dunja’s been in touch. You know, Dunja Hougaard, who saved your life two years ago.’ Suddenly, there was panic in Theodor’s eyes. ‘She tells a very different story. One that takes place in Denmark and in which you are one of—’

  ‘It wasn’t me! I promise it wasn’t me! They forced me. I never wanted to, but they forced me to be their lookout while they—’ Theodor broke off and scrunched up his face to fight back the tears.

  ‘While they what? Pushed a big firecracker down the victim’s throat and lit it?’

  ‘But I was never part of it. I promise, I didn’t do anything. I had no idea. I just accidentally watched one of their videos where they pushed this guy in a shopping trolley. It was horrible. You could see him struggling to get out, but he couldn’t, because they’d tied him to it and… Fuck, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen… Straight out on to the motorway, and then there was a lorry and—’ Theodor broke off again as silent sobs took over, racking his whole body.