Motive X

by Stefan Ahnhem

  But the moment she turned around and met his gaze, she knew the hours of quarantine had not been enough. The cup sat untouched, and the way he looked at her as she walked up and took a seat across from him was so intense that her own eyes dropped to the floor out of sheer self-preservation.

  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she involuntarily shot him a conciliatory smile once she had mustered enough strength to look up again. The whole thing was so ridiculous she wanted to slap herself so she could snap out of it and start over.

  ‘Are you Igor Skanås, Assar Skanås’s younger brother?’ She looked him straight in the eye, determined not to look away before he did.

  Igor Skanås nodded, seemingly completely unperturbed by her attempt to dominate him.

  ‘I would prefer if you answered audibly since this is a police interview and not a pantomime,’ she continued, her eyes already burning from not allowing herself to blink. ‘Nodding has a tendency not to be picked up by the audio recorder.’

  ‘I bet, but maybe by one of the many CCTV cameras?’ Now he was smiling, but since he still hadn’t blinked even once, it only served as another reminder of who had the upper hand.

  ‘Good. Then at least we’ve established that you have the ability to speak.’ He studied her. But not in a sexual way. There was no lust in his eyes. No flirting. Not a trace of the lewdness she so often had to deal with. No, this was something else entirely and much more meticulous, which for some reason made her feel even more exposed. ‘Let’s start with why you shot at me.’

  ‘If I’d been shooting at you, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.’ His smile had vanished, and for a split second he looked away towards her right side before fixing her again.

  ‘So you claim you were aiming at the stag, even though the start of hunting season is over four months away?’ Her eyes couldn’t take it any more; she pretended to cough so she could close them for a few seconds without making her defeat too obvious.

  ‘That’s correct.’ He smiled as though he could see straight through her pathetic charade.

  ‘So, to put it differently, you admit to an offence against wildlife?’ Had he been looking at her ear? Both of her ears protruded slightly, as she was well aware. But not enough to cause a reaction. ‘Wonderful. Then let’s put that aside for now and talk about the reason we’re here, which is your brother, Assar Skanås.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s a suspect in the murder of eleven-year-old Moonif Ganem. You may have read about it in the papers.’

  Igor Skanås showed no reaction, apart from possibly lowering his eyes a fraction.

  ‘Or perhaps you haven’t been keeping up with the news since you’ve been out in the woods, hunting?’ What was he looking at now? Her nose? What the fuck was he up to?

  ‘You should try it sometime. A few hours in, you can even hear your own thoughts.’

  ‘And what are your thoughts? Regarding the allegations against your brother.’

  Igor Skanås crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair with a smile. ‘I assume this is about the little brown boy who went for a spin in the washing machine?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ She had assumed he was joking, testing her boundaries. But his smile wasn’t the smile of someone joking around. It was simply an outward expression of his delight. ‘A spin in a washing machine. Is that how you see it? That it was what he needed to wash his dirty brown skin clean. Maybe you would have preferred it if he’d poured in a bottle of bleach to make the boy even paler?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ Igor Skanås opened a tin of snus, unfazed by her outburst.

  Things were starting to make sense now. The swastika, the tidy room and the Renault Klippan had seen at the Nazi gathering. Those were all Assar’s brother’s doing.

  ‘If we’re lucky, it serves as an example and thins out the hordes of people who think they can just come here and take over,’ he continued. ‘So yeah, sure.’ He gathered snus between his thumb, index and middle finger and pushed it up loose under his top lip. ‘Given how many little gingerbread men die of starvation every day, it seems a fairly low price to pay for saving this country from complete meltdown.’

  She was about to argue with him. Her arguments were lined up like the gun belt of an automatic weapon. But she remained silent because she’d just realized why he was studying her.

  She would have given a lot to be able to stand up, leave the room and let someone else take over. But there was no one else, and no matter how heinous Igor Skanås was, he wasn’t who she was after.

  ‘Your brother. Is he as big a racist as you?’

  ‘You should ask him.’

  ‘Fine, I just have to find him first. When did you last see him?’ she said, doing everything in her power to keep her feelings from showing.

  ‘Wow, okay, I guess we’re changing the subject again.’

  ‘We’re here to discuss your brother. Not your twisted world view.’ Giving him short shrift was all she could do. ‘So if you wouldn’t mind focusing on answering, I promise I’ll ask questions. Like this one: When did you last see Assar Skanås?’

  ‘Last Wednesday when he got back, at around three or four in the afternoon.’

  ‘Did anything seem strange to you? Anything out of the ordinary that stood out?’

  ‘Everything about Assar is strange.’

  ‘But there was nothing to make you suspect that he had just committed a murder.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t ask where he’d been or what he’d been doing? Or why he came home in an orange Volvo 240?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have told me anyway, since he was in a mood.’

  ‘What kind of mood was that?’

  ‘Closed. Shut up inside himself. When he’s like that, it’s best to just leave him to his own devices.’

  ‘And what did he get up to?’

  ‘The usual.’ Igor Skanås shrugged. ‘Put on some Astrid Lindgren films.’

  ‘So he’s the paedo and you’re the Nazi. Wow, your parents really did a great job.’

  ‘I have no problem articulating and defending my political views. But as you said, we’re not here to discuss me. As far as my brother’s concerned, he’s always liked children, and in a way he’s still a child himself. He has an imagination like no one else and for as long as I’ve known him, he’s lived in his own bubble.’

  ‘But if everything’s just the same old, and you didn’t react to anything, why did you call him last night?’

  ‘So that was you in our house. I figured.’

  ‘Would you mind answering the question?’

  ‘I wanted to make sure he was still at home, watching films.’

  ‘But he wasn’t home.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘And not even that made you at all worried that something may have been amiss?’

  ‘Worried? My brother is sick and needs help. He’s been sick for as long as I can remember.’

  ‘Would you describe him as mentally deficient?’

  ‘No, I would describe him as a bleeding crackpot, and if you ask me, he shouldn’t be allowed out in public.’ Igor Skanås chuckled and shook his head. ‘Not only does he hear voices, he usually obeys them, too. If he’s cold, he might decide to make a fire in the middle of the floor, and just a few years ago he was convinced he was a French winemaker. For six months he walked around with a red neckerchief and spoke pretend French, even in his sleep.’

  ‘Fine, but if he’s that bad, why is he living at home?’

  ‘Good question. Beats me.’

  ‘It does? I mean, it seems pretty convenient for you to have the house, your car and whatever else registered to your brother. I haven’t checked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were quite a few unpaid parking tickets.’

  ‘Look, I’ve tried to get my brother committed a thousand times. But every time, they keep him for a few days, clean him up and do their little studies that more or less give him the medical all-clear, so long as he takes his medicat
ion.’ Igor Skanås snorted derisively and shook his head. ‘And you know why? Because they can’t afford to do anything else. Because even though we have some of the highest taxes in the world, we can’t even find the money to look after someone like Assar. That might strike you as a bit odd, until you realize all the money is going to the rainbow of people pouring in across our borders. Apparently, those are the people we should worry about. Not our own.’

  ‘You almost sounded like you had a point somewhere in that racist rant.’ She stood up, pleased to have hit a nerve. ‘I take it, then, you haven’t been in touch with him since you took to the woods. So if you have nothing more to add, I think we should—’

  ‘I have. I talked to him last night.’

  Lilja stopped mid-step and turned around. ‘Last night? But he wasn’t home last night.’

  ‘No, so I tried his mobile instead. You might have heard of them.’

  ‘What, he has a mobile phone? And you’re only telling me now.’

  ‘You didn’t ask. Besides, you could have just looked him up in the phone book.’

  He was right. How could she have missed something so basic. ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘Agitated. Stressed. Just like he usually does when he hasn’t taken his medication in a while and is about to have a breakdown.’

  ‘Did he say where he was?’

  ‘No, I didn’t ask. I just told him to go to the nearest hospital, but that pissed him off and he hung up.’

  Lilja nodded and opened her notepad to an empty page. ‘Would you mind writing down his number here.’

  Igor Skanås gave her a look.

  ‘Yes, I know he’s in the phone book. But I would still like you to humour me. Then you can leave.’

  ‘So we’re done?’

  ‘For the moment. But I want you to call me if you think of anything else.’

  Igor Skanås scribbled down the number, stood up and walked towards the door. But before he reached it, he turned back to her. ‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You have Jewish blood in you, right? You do, don’t you?’

  35

  It took Molly Wessman a moment after she regained consciousness to realize she must have passed out. She had no idea what time it was, if it was early in the morning or the middle of the night. She didn’t even know where she was, other than that she was lying on something hard and cold.

  The hours before she had drifted off had been pure torture. She actually felt a little better now; maybe whatever was wrong with her was passing.

  Her body still ached, though, especially her stomach and innards. Or was it her kidneys? Apparently, kidney stones could be fiendishly painful. But she wasn’t that old, and fatty foods had never been her thing. No, a stomach ulcer was more likely. Given how stressed she’d been lately, it was actually remarkable she hadn’t developed one sooner.

  The shower curtain with the red dots. She recognized it now. It was her own. At least she was in her own bathroom.

  She tried to get up, but the pain in her stomach returned with such force it felt like someone was grating her innards. Everything went dark and she didn’t even dare to scream for fear that would make it worse.

  As the pain subsided, she decided she would need to have another go at shoving her fingers down her throat. It was her only option if she wanted to survive. At this rate, she was going to pass out again before long and this time she might never wake up again.

  That said, she always felt that way when she was ill. She’d never been good at being sick. The slightest temperature and she started preparing for the end. Especially when she had food poisoning or a stomach flu. There was nothing worse than feeling nauseous, and now she was both sick and in a hellish amount of pain.

  She took a deep breath to summon her strength, grabbed the edge of the toilet bowl and heaved herself up so she could lean over it and stick her fingers down her throat.

  The problem was that no matter how far down she shoved her fingers, the only result was a series of gagging convulsions that made her feel like she was about to snap in half. Not even poking at her uvula brought up anything other than a small amount of searing bile.

  And blood. Black lumps of clotted blood.

  That was what scared her the most. A bleeding ulcer meant her stomach might be perforated, which was serious enough in itself. But when she thought about it, she hadn’t had any symptoms until yesterday, which meant this was probably something else entirely.

  For the first time in her life, she felt a clear, unequivocal fear of death. What she had once looked down on as a weakness suddenly yawned before her like an abyss.

  She wasn’t ready to die, not by a long shot. She, who had just got started and had so many things left to experience. Others might lie down and give up, but not her. It would take more than this to break her.

  Her phone… She had to find her phone and call someone. Anyone. If she waited much longer, she wouldn’t be able to. Where had she put it? She tried to stand up but was too weak, so she crawled into the hallway on all fours.

  The sun was streaming in through the living room window, hitting the hallway floor, which it only did in the afternoon. So she had been sick for somewhere between ten and fifteen hours, since coming home the night before. She had noticed the nausea going up the stairs, and she had only just managed to get her coat off before having to run to the toilet.

  Her boots were still sprawled on the floor by the front door, and apparently she had balled up her coat and tossed it on the shelf above the hooks. Of course, that’s where her phone was, as high up as possible and, given her condition, practically impossible to reach.

  Gritting her teeth against the pain, she started crawling towards the front door. But after no more than a few feet, she had to lie down on her stomach and drag herself the last bit.

  When she reached the door, she coughed up a few more lumps of coagulated blood before summoning her last ounce of strength and pulling herself up via the door handle and her raincoat, which was hanging on its hook.

  But as she grabbed the shelf to heave herself upright, it came loose from the wall, ramming into her shoulder as she hit the back of her head on the floor. She ignored the pain. It was nothing compared to what was happening in her stomach. The only thing she could bring herself to care about was that her phone really was in her coat pocket and that it had a thirty-three per cent charge.

  She just about managed to dial 112 and turn on the speakerphone before she dropped the phone in yet another blood-filled coughing fit.

  ‘This is Emergency Services,’ a woman’s voice said on the other end.

  ‘You have to come here. I’m really poorly.’

  ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat? I can’t hear you very well.’

  ‘Come here. You have to come here.’

  ‘We can’t come until you tell us what happened and where you are.’

  ‘Blood… I’m vomiting blood and can’t take it for much longer—’

  ‘Have you been shot or injured in some other way?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘And you’ve not been in a car accident?’

  ‘No, I’m just poorly… Really, really poorly…’

  ‘Okay, then I would recommend that you call your doctor or go to the nearest A&E… Hello, are you still there? … Can you hear me? … Hello? …’

  An annoyed sigh was followed by a click.

  Then silence.

  36

  From the 144 developed pictures, Fabian had picked out sixteen and placed them in chronological order on his work table in the basement. They all belonged to the same series of events. Sixteen frozen moments in time that together outlined an occurrence, a rendezvous between a man and a woman.

  Fabian studied the pictures one by one, first with the naked eye and then under the light with a loupe to make sure he hadn’t missed any details. They were all taken from a considerable distance with a powerful telephoto lens, and there was no doubt a pro
fessional photographer had been holding the camera. Even though the pictures had been taken late at night in difficult lighting conditions, most were razor sharp.

  The black contour behind the wheel couldn’t be anyone but Ingvar Molander, and the first pictures had clearly been taken outside his house as he reversed out of his driveway in the grey Saab 9-3, which according to the Swedish Road Traffic Registry had been registered to him from 6 January 2003 to 21 September 2007.

  Judging from the verdant greenery in the garden and Molander’s unbuttoned sports jacket, which hid parts of his checked shirt, it was sometime between June and August, and with the aid of the loupe he could make out the tax sticker in the middle of the licence plate.

  The big 3 told him that March was the last month before a new MOT and tax payment was due, and the two smaller numbers – 07 – in the top right corner next to the three crowns revealed that the last year it was valid for was 2007. Which in turn meant Einar Stenson had taken the pictures sometime during the summer of 2006, just over nine months before he died.

  The rest of the pictures were from a completely different location and showed Molander waiting in the car, which was parked in front of a backdrop of green leaves. The twilight was more or less unchanged from the previous pictures, which suggested no more than twenty minutes or so had passed. On the other hand, you can get pretty far in a car in twenty minutes.

  But thanks to the signs on the black signpost in the top right corner of the picture, Fabian was able to identify the location, even though he couldn’t recall when he’d last been there.

  The signs pointed to, among other things, The Springs and The Water Pavilion, names that could only refer to Helsingborg’s three-hundred-year-old spring, to be found in Ramlösa Brunn Park, which happened to be just a few minutes’ drive from Molander’s home on Lindhultsgatan.

  The smiling woman in the summer dress who was walking towards the car and climbing into the passenger seat was harder to identify. He’d had the feeling he’d seen her before when he first saw the picture at the Celluloid photography club, and now that he was able to study her more closely, he felt exactly the same.