Motive X

by Stefan Ahnhem

  A seven.

  He exhaled. That was practically as good as it could get. The fun wasn’t over yet. And he had a week before he was supposed to strike again.

  He took out the box with the six-sided precision dice, picked one and did a pre-throw to determine the number of dice.

  A three.

  That meant using one dice, so he picked it back up and rolled again.

  A two.

  He walked over to the pinned-up map that was divided into a grid of twelve by twelve squares. Column two was a special column, full of contradictions. It started in the north with the idyllic village of Arild in northern Skåne and ended in its complete opposite in the southern part of Copenhagen, also called Amager. If chance happened to be in the right mood, his victim or victims might even be found at Kastrup International Airport.

  He did another pre-roll.

  A four.

  The number of squares down would consequently be decided by two dice; he picked up an additional one.

  A one and a six.

  As though his pulse had already figured it out, he could hear it pick up both speed and force as he turned his eyes to the map and noted that the area the dice had chosen for his next mission was in the middle of Öresund, just north of the island of Ven.

  86

  Fabian pushed his fingers in under the skin of the chicken and gently separated it from the breast to create a pocket into which he could pour a splash of olive oil and throw a pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, which he then rubbed into the meat. Then he stabbed the chicken with the tip of the knife in a few select places and pushed the peeled and halved garlic cloves into the cuts.

  It was Sunday, and he’d decided to pull out all the stops and make a roast chicken from his own recipe, which he’d made a big deal of keeping secret all these years. It was his signature dish and, to his mind, no one came close to making a better chicken.

  Four days had passed since Eric Jacobsén’s arrest in a luxury villa on the Danish side of the sound. Fabian had spent most of that time at home with his family, though he had, admittedly, been unable to completely let go of the Molly Wessman investigation, which, if all went to plan, should be concluded in the coming week.

  Jacobsén had unreservedly confessed that he was the man behind both Columbus and the secret surveillance in eighty-seven flats all over north-west Skåne. He’d explained his actions by saying one thing led to another. From his pathological porn consumption to his wish to watch in real life to finally graduating to active participation.

  He firmly denied, however, any involvement in Molly Wessman’s murder, and when the attempted murder of Fabian in the jacuzzi was mentioned, he dismissed it as an act of panic and claimed there had never been any intention of actually killing him. An explanation unlikely to hold up in court.

  What’s more, Molander and his two assistants were far from done with the investigation of Jacobsén’s home, and they were all convinced that if they only looked hard enough, they were sure to find part of Wessman’s shorn fringe, traces of ricin extract or some other incriminating detail.

  The murder of Lennart Andersson, on the other hand, remained unsolved. None of the clues and samples collected from ICA Maxi in Hyllinge had led anywhere, and the only person they’d managed to identify through fingerprinting was, ironically enough, Jacobsén, who’d taken his son shopping there the day before the murder.

  Their hopes now rested with Klippan, who was busy combing through the CCTV footage from the week leading up to the murder and who had announced he was going to give a presentation at their next morning meeting.

  With a bit of luck, they may be close to solving that, too. Either way, the doomsday headlines had been replaced with considerably more hopeful ones about how the residents of Helsingborg could finally feel safe again. They’d even been given personal praise, both from the National Police Commissioner and the Minister of Justice, for the intensive work that had led to the arrests of Jacobsén and Skanås.

  Fabian was not at all prepared for the music that suddenly started blasting out of the speakers; even though he recognized the strings, the melody and the maracas in the background, he couldn’t place it. He turned around to see Sonja enter from the living room.

  ‘Remember this?’ she said with a smile, and he nodded, even though he still didn’t have the foggiest.

  ‘It’s Prefab Sprout’s “Hey Manhattan”, silly.’ She poured two glasses of wine and sang along. ‘Don’t you remember how you always used to put this album on whenever I was feeling blue?’

  Fabian nodded. He did remember now. The album was called From Langley Park to Memphis, and he’d found it a bit too poppy for his tastes when it first came out. But Sonja had loved it, and it had put her in a good mood whenever he played it. And in hindsight, he had to admit there wasn’t a single bad track on it.

  But that wasn’t what he was thinking about now; he was wondering at the fact that it was the first time in years Sonja had turned on any music at all. Normally, he was the one who turned it on and she was the one who asked him to turn it down or, even better, turn it off altogether. Now, she’d turned it up to a pretty decent volume. When she also handed him a glass and raised her own in a toast, he felt the evening couldn’t have started better.

  Only a few days had passed since he’d saved Theodor from taking his own life, but the events above the tracks in Pålsjö Forest were already beginning to feel like an increasingly hazy memory from a different lifetime. It was as though they’d hit rock bottom and turned and were now finally starting to find their way back to some kind of peace and harmony.

  They’d cooked together every night, played board games, watched films or just spent time together. Sonja had also found a therapist she wanted Theodor to meet the following week, even though he already looked like he was feeling much better.

  Granted, he still spent large parts of every day in his room. But at least he’d given it a thorough clean and he’d gone back to reading books instead of just playing computer games. And right in the middle of dinner on Midsummer’s Eve, he’d told them he was following the reporting on the trial of the four members of the Smiley Gang and had decided to head over to Helsingør after the weekend and tell the Danish prosecutor the truth.

  Neither he nor Sonja had mentioned it. The decision had been entirely Theodor’s own, and even though no one could say for sure what lay ahead, he seemed to have acknowledged that he had no other options.

  ‘How about a music quiz tonight after the children go to bed?’ Sonja smiled and walked towards him, glass in hand.

  ‘You don’t stand a chance.’ He bent down towards her.

  ‘Blimey, is this a bad time? We were wondering if you needed help with anything?’

  They turned to Matilda, who had just come down from upstairs with Theodor.

  ‘Of course it’s not a bad time. Why would it be a bad time?’ Sonja shrugged.

  ‘Why’s Dad’s face all red?’ Theodor said, making everyone burst into laughter.

  ‘All right, I confess.’ Fabian put his wineglass down. ‘I was just about to kiss your beautiful mother, so your timing actually couldn’t have been much worse. But since you’re here now, there’s potatoes to rinse and carrots and beetroot to peel. Have at it. I was going to make a salad.’

  Theodor and Matilda nodded and went over to the fridge.

  ‘Great, then I’ll lay the table.’ Sonja got out plates and cutlery, and within minutes, everyone was working away.

  ‘Hey, are we doing something for the summer holiday?’

  It was Matilda who had broached the subject, and when Fabian met Sonja’s eyes, he could tell she was as dumbfounded as he was. They’d been in shut-down mode; neither one of them had had the energy to reflect on the fact that they were now in the middle of the summer holidays.

  ‘I suppose we’ve given it some thought,’ he said.

  ‘We have?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Theodor said, mixing chunks of beetroot in
with the other root vegetables in an ovenproof dish.

  ‘Esmaralda’s parents have a boat. We should get one. It seems super cosy.’

  ‘Boat?’ For the first time in several days, Fabian thought about the two boat keys that had had him convinced Hugo Elvin owned a boat.

  He wasn’t so sure now. He had not only contacted the North Harbour in Helsingborg, which was the most logical marina for someone at Elvin’s address, he’d also checked with all the other marinas along the coast, both north and south of Helsingborg, without finding anything under Elvin’s or Molander’s names.

  ‘My family had a boat when I was a child,’ Sonja said. ‘Do you know how much work it is? We did nothing all autumn and spring but scrape and sand until we had frostbite on our hands.’

  ‘But wasn’t that, like, an old wooden thing?’ Theodor said. ‘We could buy a plastic boat.’

  ‘Old wooden thing. Bite your tongue. That’s my whole childhood you’re insulting.’

  On the other hand, there was nothing to say that Elvin, or Molander for that matter, had necessarily kept a boat under their own name. They might just as easily have borrowed it from someone else, which was why he’d spent a large part of that Thursday looking around the North Harbour.

  ‘And just so you know, a fibreglass boat is a lot of work, too,’ Sonja continued.

  He’d found, among other things, three old Pettersson boats, any one of which could have belonged to Elvin. Sadly, neither of the keys were a fit. In them or any of the other boats he’d tested.

  ‘You have to paint them and wax them and what not.’ Sonja shook her head and put out napkins and cutlery.

  He’d even tried punching in the four-number code from the larger of the keys as a passcode to the marina’s boathouse, but had been rewarded with nothing but an angry red diode.

  ‘But we can help.’ Matilda turned to Theodor. ‘We’d help, right?’

  ‘Of course,’ Theodor said with a nod.

  ‘That’s very sweet of you. But either way, it takes half a lifetime to get dock space at the marina. I remember, we had slip fifty-two and my dad was on the waiting list for the one next to ours, which was a few feet wider. But we never got it.’

  How could he not have thought of that? Of course that was what the numbers 0388 on the key meant. It wasn’t a passcode like he’d thought, it was a slip number, and given that there were four digits, it should be in one of the larger marinas, with more than a thousand slips.

  ‘Fabian, would you mind backing me up here?’ Sonja turned to him.

  ‘Um, I’m sorry… But isn’t Råå Marina pretty big? It is, right?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sonja looked from Fabian to the children, who looked no less surprised than she did, and back.

  ‘Wow, Theo, hear that?’ Matilda hugged her brother. ‘He’s on our side.’

  If Elvin had had access to a boat, of course it would have been docked at Råå.

  87

  Irene Lilja carried the last bin bag of clothes out of the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She’d been packing more or less all weekend. Box after box, of which at least half were going straight to the landfill. But it was worth it. She wasn’t going to leave so much as a hairclip behind. When she was done, there’d be no sign she’d ever even set foot there.

  As expected, Hampus had trailed her like a grovelling dog, tying himself in knots trying to make her change her mind. He’d tried everything from flowers every Friday to a trip to the Galapagos Islands. He’d even offered going to therapy and letting her choose which party he voted for in the next election.

  But unlike all the previous times, she’d stood firm and ignored him. As expected, it hadn’t taken him long to transition from anxiety to anger channelled into threats about how she’d never be free of him and how it made no difference that she refused to tell him where she was moving since he was going to find her anyway.

  That was exactly why she’d told him she was moving out on Monday instead of right now when he was at Ring Knutstorp, drinking beer and watching cars drive round and round a bumpy track, adding to climate change.

  The only question was when he was going to be home.

  Any other Ring Knutstorp Sunday, he would have rushed out in the morning and not been back until dinner. Today, the opposite had been true. He’d dawdled, saying he wasn’t feeling well, and almost cancelled even though he’d already paid for his ticket. He was clearly on to the fact that she was up to something, which was why she’d left the house before lunch, saying she had to wrap up the Moonif Ganem investigation.

  In reality, Assar Skanås was still in intensive care with his gunshot wounds and couldn’t be interviewed yet. Which wasn’t much of an issue since Molander had found his fingerprints on the glass door of the washing machine, which meant the interviews, whenever they took place, would be more or less pro forma.

  Anyway, Hampus could be home any minute, so she had to get out of the house and on her way to—

  The hand on her shoulder made her stop dead.

  ‘So this is where you’re hiding out.’

  The voice didn’t match the person she’d assumed it belonged to; even though it only took her a fraction of a second, it felt like an eternity before she put it together.

  ‘God, you scared me.’ She turned to Klippan.

  ‘I’m sorry, the door was open, so I—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Did you bring the trailer?’

  ‘And my neighbour’s van.’

  ‘Perfect. You know, I just want to get out of here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Then we’d better get cracking. I suggest we start with the big stuff: sofas, beds, cabinets and so on. Unless you mind me being in charge of the loading, that is.’

  Lilja laughed and shook her head. ‘I trust you implicitly.’

  ‘Great, now you tell me. Let’s see how you feel about it when we’re done. Let’s start with the bed.’ He turned to the bedroom door and was just about to open it when Lilja hurried over and blocked his way.

  ‘Look, I was actually going to leave it. New life, new bed.’

  ‘All right, any other cumbersome items in the bedroom that are coming with us? Wardrobe or chest of drawers?’

  ‘No.’ Lilja shook her head. ‘Nothing. So there’s no point going in.’

  Klippan nodded, but seemed puzzled. ‘All righty, then. Let’s grab that sofa.’

  Together, they carried the sofa through the hallway, out into the front garden and towards the driveway where Klippan had already unlatched the trailer so they could walk straight into the van.

  ‘What happened to your lawn?’ Klippan said as they walked back to the house. ‘It looks awful.’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Hampus has some project to get rid of the moss. Come on, let’s keep going.’

  But Klippan stayed where he was, gazing out across the ruined lawn.

  ‘Klippan, we don’t have all day.’ She’d managed to prevent him from entering the bedroom, but all she could do out here was hope he wouldn’t notice the swastika behind the reclining chairs and wheelbarrow she’d brought out and strategically arranged to hide it. ‘Please, Hampus could be back any minute.’

  ‘I don’t see any moss.’

  ‘Right, I think it was dandelions, now you mention it.’

  ‘I don’t see any dandelions either.’

  ‘Well, no, he got rid of them.’ She sighed, hoping it was loud enough for Klippan to hear. ‘That was the whole point. What does it have to do with my moving, anyway?’

  Klippan turned around and looked her in the eyes. ‘Irene. How are you really doing?’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? Seriously, what’s this in aid of?’ She didn’t have it in her. There was no time for this right now. ‘Can’t we just get the stuff out and—’

  ‘You’re not yourself,’ Klippan cut in. ‘You’ve been withdrawn and weird all week, and in the meetings you’ve stared at your phone the whole time. What’s the matter?’

>   ‘Nothing’s the matter! I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about. Did you come here to help me carry things or to play therapist?’

  ‘I came to help you, which is why I’m asking you what’s wrong. I’m not allowed to go into your bedroom. Hampus can’t even know you’re moving out today, and now this.’ Klippan walked towards the chairs. ‘Whatever this is, it has nothing to do with moss or dandelions.’

  ‘He hit me. Hampus hit me. Happy now?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’ Klippan stopped and turned to her. ‘Are you serious? Hampus?’

  Lilja nodded and wiped some of the make-up off her cheek. Klippan walked up to her and inspected the big bruise, which had turned every colour of the rainbow.

  ‘Jesus Christ…’ He hugged her. ‘Aren’t you going to report him?’

  Lilja shook her head.

  ‘Okay.’ Klippan nodded as though to persuade himself. ‘I assume you’ve thought it through. I guess we’d better get started before that prick comes back.’ He turned around and started walking towards the house. ‘Right, I keep forgetting to ask. Where are you moving to?’

  ‘To a flat on Carl Krooks Gata in town. I came across it when I was looking for Assar Skanås. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know who P. Milwokh is, would you?’

  ‘Milwokh?’ Klippan stopped and turned to Lilja.

  ‘Yes, my flat’s right next door.’

  ‘Did you say Milwokh?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you I was ringing his door and he refused to open it?’

  Klippan shook his head. ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘Well, do you know who it is?’

  Klippan pondered that. ‘No. I thought the name sounded familiar for a second, but I probably just imagined it.’

  88

  Fabian turned off Västindiegatan and parked his car behind the Sailing Association’s clubhouse in the Råå Marina. The summer night was dark and it had started to rain, just like on Midsummer’s Eve. Tiny, wet droplets that never seemed to let up.