by Andy Maslen
She’d back out from under the bed and come round to kick him in the belly to drive his wind out. Then she could escape. And if she didn’t gasp or grunt he’d probably think he’d been attacked by a man.
‘Has anyone been giving you a drink or did Stella forget?’
What the hell! Who was the man talking to? For a dreadful second she thought she’d left a foot sticking out from beneath the bed. She drew both feet in as much as she could. And waited.
Holding her breath, she watched his feet move in front of her and towards the window. Then she heard the sound of water pouring. What the hell was it? A trickle for a few seconds. Then a pause. Then another splashing.
Was he pissing? No. He was watering her houseplants!
She wanted to laugh. She tightened her stomach muscles until they hurt, but the effort squashed the hysteria building in her gut.
A minute more and he was gone. She waited until she heard the front door close behind him. Waited a minute more in case he’d forgotten something. Sure he was gone, she struggled out from her hiding place and sat on the floor, her back to the bed.
In the light, she could examine the boot more closely. Where the missing stud should have been were three little slits, each no more than two millimetres long. She fished around in her pocket until she could bring out the stud in its protective tissue wrapping.
The tabs at the base of the tiny metal cone were bent. She straightened them with her fingernails, cursing as one broke near the quick. She bit it clean off and spat it out. Swearing at her carelessness, she stretched out to retrieve the ragged sliver and pushed it down into her pocket.
She lined up the stud with the slits in the leather and pushed it home. Nodding with satisfaction, she took a series of photos of the boot, both with the stud and without.
She considered taking it with her but realised it was premature. If Stella had kept it this long she obviously hadn’t realised she’d lost a stud, or, if she had, thought it had come off while riding. Either way, she hadn’t dumped it yet, so it was safe to assume she wouldn’t now.
The stud, she rewrapped and pocketed. That was staying with her, along with the FBI’s analysis of the lake mud in which it had been embedded.
Back at Paddington Green she called Rachel Fairhill and asked for a letter of introduction for the Swedish police.
29
Umeå
Annika stared at her laptop. Inger Hedlund’s Facebook profile occupied most of the screen. Her smiling, grandmotherly face twinkled with good humour.
The photos were of her and Erik enjoying retirement. Canoeing on Lake Nydalasjön. Holding glistening rainbow trout aloft, hers bigger than Erik’s. A humorous caption, ‘Now who’s the expert?’ Drinking beer from tall frosted glasses with a group of other happy, elderly, complacent, look-away-and-it-didn’t-happen Swedes.
Annika herself didn’t have a Facebook account. Or Twitter. Or Instagram. She’d had them all, once. But when her plan started to take shape, she realised it would be better to become less easy to find.
She didn’t know, but she suspected the quartet of evil-doers still had connections. Powerful connections. The kind of connections who wouldn’t think twice about silencing a woman for reaching down elbow-deep into the muck to drag out long-buried secrets.
When she’d been married to Ulf, everything had been fine. He’d accepted her inability to have children with good grace and even suggested they adopt. But the state agencies turned them away with vague phrases about Annika’s ‘suitability’.
She knew what it meant, even if Ulf didn’t. Those bastards hadn’t just torn part of her womanhood away from her. They’d poisoned her file so nobody would ever trust her with a child, whether her own or someone else’s.
Oh, she’d spent years, decades, trying to access her records. But even with Sweden’s so-called Freedom of Information law, it turned out there were some kinds of information that just didn’t qualify for the freedom.
Then Ulf had been taken away from her, too. No drawn-out illness. No car crash or sporting accident.
He’d been shopping in Östermalm Market Hall in Stockholm and a man, an immigrant from one of those war-torn countries somewhere in the Middle East, had starting hacking at people with a machete.
The police shot him dead but not before he’d seriously injured five people and mortally wounded two. One, Mika Aronsson, a student nurse, died at the scene.
Ulf lasted for an hour after the ambulance rushed him to Karolinska University Hospital. He died on the operating table from blood loss.
That’s when the idea came to Annika. There was so much random evil in the world, one couldn’t hope to do anything about it. But the evil that they had perpetrated against her, and the tens of thousands of others, had been anything but random.
They’d thought about it. Studied it. Planned it. And then they’d damn well gone ahead and implemented it.
With Ulf gone, and nobody else to care for – Lord knew, she hardly cared about herself – she decided then and there to take revenge.
She finished the profile on Inger Hedlund later that evening. She sat at her desk sipping a freshly made cup of coffee.
The sleek weapon she would employ to destroy Hedlund sat before her, gleaming in the light from her Ikea desk lamp. Designed in America but manufactured in China, every single part was there for a purpose. No waste, no decoration, no frills. But in the right hands – hers – devastating.
She leaned back in her office chair and kissed the air at her cat, Ziggy. He twitched his whiskers and jumped up onto her lap. Scratching him absentmindedly behind the ears, she stared at the face of the woman on screen. Inger was smiling. She wouldn’t be smiling for long.
Purring so fiercely that Annika felt the vibrations on the tops of her thighs, Ziggy chose this moment to extend his claws. Annika winced as the needle-points penetrated her corduroy jeans and pricked her skin.
Gently, she lifted his paws, one at a time, cooing to him until he retracted his claws. ‘Naughty cat!’
30
Umeå
Inger awoke to sunshine streaming through the curtains. She rolled to her left and stretched out her arm for Erik, but found only rumpled cotton, cool to the touch.
She levered herself into an upright position and slipped her feet into her soft Moroccan leather slippers. Erik had bought them for her in the souk on their holiday before last. He’d bargained for them hard, but good-naturedly, with the stall-holder. The elderly man with brown skin like a wizened apple had nodded enthusiastically as they dickered, revealing missing teeth in his friendly grin.
She crossed to the window and drew the curtains. Erik was down on the dock, his old split-cane rod in hand.
He’d concealed his abundant white hair beneath a floppy, sun-bleached hat in which were hooked a dozen or more rainbow-coloured flies.
He always claimed mornings were the best time for trout, when they rose to take insects from the surface before the heat drove them into deeper waters.
She wrapped a thin cotton dressing gown around her and went downstairs to make a pot of coffee. Once it was brewed, she assembled crispbreads and honey on the tray and carried it all into the garden. There, she sat down to watch Erik.
After a few minutes, she saw a silvery splash in the lake a dozen or so metres from the dock. Erik jerked the rod back. He’d caught a fish. Maybe she’d change her dinner plans and cook it, if it was big enough.
Catching a lake trout always put Erik in a good mood. With the addition of a nice bottle of white wine, she could frame her confession in a way he’d at least hear out.
He played the fish with his customary skill and grace, never trying to force it into the shore, but allowing it to run, then reeling it back whenever it tired. The reel fizzed each time the fish took off.
Holding the rod in his left hand, Erik reached down for his landing net. In a single, flowing movement borne of long practice he scooped the net under the inbound fish and brought it, writhing and flippin
g, clear of the water, dripping water like diamonds onto the worn boards of the dock.
She rose from her chair and walked down the garden to join him. If it was a nice fat lake trout, she’d stuff it with lemon, garlic, parsley from the garden and breadcrumbs, slice some almonds on the top and roast it.
‘Hej!’ she called. ‘What did you catch?’
Erik turned, his weathered face creased from smiling, and held the glittering fish aloft, strong fingers hooked through its gills. She smiled back, seeing the boy she’d first fallen in love with back in the sixties. He’d had such long hair then. Dark, too. Not like now, white and—
Erik’s head exploded in a pink mist.
His body fell backwards, splashing into the lake. The trout dropped to the dock, flopped a good forty centimetres clear of the wet boards and twisted off the edge to join Erik.
Inger was too shocked to scream. Her mouth opened wide but nothing came from her stretched lips.
A sharp sound impinged on her consciousness. A crack like a branch snapping in winter. A shot! Someone shot my Er—
The second bullet entered her own skull at the inner corner of her left eye. It killed her instantly, sparing her the sight of her own blood filling the air around her head in a scarlet cloud.
Nor did she hear the second gunshot, which echoed off the side of the cottage Erik had inherited from his mamma and pappa.
31
Umeå
Stella sensed something big had happened the moment she entered the CID general office at just after 9.00 a.m. People were grouped round William Ekland, taking notes.
She saw plenty of uniforms with their black pistols strapped to their hips, as well as the full complement of detectives. Oskar was already there, seated towards the back of the group. He beckoned Stella over.
‘What happened?’ she whispered.
‘Inger and Erik Hedlund were murdered this morning. Shot,’ he added.
William looked over in their direction, frowning. ‘Good morning, Stella,’ he said, switching to English. ‘Did Oskar just explain what happened?’
‘Yes. Who found them?’
‘A neighbour. She’d gone round to talk about planning for the village Midsommar party.’
‘Oskar said they were shot. Any mutilations?’
He shook his head, visibly pale. She guessed murders of elderly couples weren’t a common occurrence in Umeå.
‘No. The bodies were intact. Well, apart from most of their heads being missing.’
‘Something high-powered then?’
‘Yes. We haven’t found the bullets, but I would say a hunting rifle is most likely the murder weapon. The pathologist agrees.’
‘Do many people own those round here?’
‘Thousands. Mostly for elk,’ he added. ‘There are over thirty-one thousand licensed firearms in Umeå. Many more if you widen out to Vasterbötten County.’
‘What do you think, Stella? Do you think they’re linked to Brömly?’ Oskar asked.
She nodded. ‘Hundred percent.’
William continued with the briefing, switching back to Swedish with an apologetic smile for Stella. It didn’t matter. She knew what sort of orders he’d be giving. House to house. Search teams. Background checks on the victims. Enemies. Debts. Identify next of kin. But her mind was forming other connections.
Whoever killed Tomas Brömly had also killed the Hedlunds. That made it urgent she speak to Kerstin Dahl. If they thought she was the killer, they needed to bring her in to custody before she could kill Mattsson.
On the other hand, if she wasn’t the killer, her life was in real danger. Oskar might want to take her into protective custody. Or at least arrange a safe house.
After the briefing broke up and the teams of detectives and uniforms scattered to their allowed tasks, Stella and Oskar went to see William, who had retreated to his office.
‘Brömly’s murder is a British case,’ William began, still standing. ‘But the Hedlunds were murdered on Swedish soil. That means we have jurisdiction. I’m afraid from now on you will need to be accompanied by a Swedish officer at all times. We must keep the prosecutors happy.’
Stella nodded. ‘Of course. We need to find out whether Kerstin Dahl or Ove Mattsson have rifle permits,’ Stella said as they sat down.
‘I already did. Kerstin doesn’t but her husband, Josef, does. Ove does, too. So either of them could have done it. Do you still believe your killer could be a woman?’
Stella nodded. ‘There’s no reason why not. A rifle’s an easy weapon for a woman to use. No need for brute strength. No need for close-quarters combat. Not that either of the Hedlunds could have put up much of a fight.’
William shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’m struggling with this, I have to admit it. A woman? Really?’
Stella had already come to the same conclusion. Yes, she still thought it could be a woman. But the odds were against it. She thought back to the hard evidence they’d already got. The running shoe print across Brömly’s face. The tool mark of the Teng grips. The witness evidence from the girl at the coffee shop. The hair found in Brömly’s flat.
The hair was male. The girl said she thought the stranger was a woman. But as her medical condition meant she couldn’t recognise faces, that was shaky. The running shoe was of a size that could be a man’s or a woman’s. The tools said nothing. Nothing pointed conclusively to the sex of the killer.
‘If our killer is seeking revenge for being sterilised, then the probability is we’re looking for a woman,’ she said. ‘I’ve been researching the forced sterilisation scandal,’ William winced, ‘and female victims vastly outnumbered men.’
‘Can you really see a woman doing all this?’ William asked.
‘I can. And I have,’ was all she said.
‘What about your other theory? That this is one of the four trying to silence the other three?’
‘Then it’s either Mattsson or Dahl.’
‘Unless there’s another member of the group,’ Oskar said. ‘One we don’t know about.’
‘But then, why didn’t Brömly write to them as well?’ William asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Stella said, trying to marshal her thoughts. ‘Maybe I’m reaching. Let’s stay focused on the original four for now. I need to interview Kerstin.’
Annika stared at her computer screen. She re-read the news alert that had just popped up. She felt mixed emotions. Pleasure in the death of another of her torturers. And a mounting sense of urgency. Mattsson and Dahl would be taking precautions by now. She had to get her skates on. She snapped the laptop shut with a scowl and went to make some coffee.
32
London
Roisin knocked on the door and entered Rachel Fairhill’s palatial office at Scotland Yard. For the second time, she took in the expanse of carpet, the new-looking furniture, the plaques and commendations, and the photographs with government ministers. She imagined how those images might look with her own face smiling out of them. And the captions…
Commissioner Griffin cuts the ribbon on the Met’s new headquarters.
From a childhood in rural Ireland, Roisin Griffin now holds one of the most powerful jobs in British policing.
Dame Roisin Griffin at the palace after accepting her award.
Ever since she’d been a girl, she’d been able to daydream while remaining conscious of what people were saying to her. So when Fairhill offered her a seat, she smiled, nodded, and said, ‘thank you’. Reluctantly, she let the fantasies fade. For now.
‘How was your trip?’ Fairhill asked.
‘Good, Ma’am. Really good.’
Fairhill smiled. ‘That sounds encouraging. What did you find out?’
Ah. Well, now. That was the big question, wasn’t it? What had she found out? That one of the Met’s most senior working detectives was a murderer? Possibly a double-murderer? Of a fellow officer and his wife?
Before she dropped the bomb, Roisin wanted to be absolutely sure she had enough evidence
to put Stella not just in the dock, but away. For a long time.
Get it right and the publicity alone would catapult her onto the radar of the most powerful people not just in the Met, but in the places where the policies affecting the Met were made.
Get it wrong… She shuddered. Put it this way, if there were any photographs of Roisin in the media, they wouldn’t be taken outside Buckingham Palace.
‘Slow and steady wins the day, Roisin.’ That’s what her Da used to say when his fiery-tempered, red-headed daughter was all for charging off all guns blazing.
‘I uncovered some evidence that suggests the killer is a police officer,’ she said, eventually.
It was true, which helped. It was also vague enough that she didn’t have to point the finger at Stella. Not yet, anyway.
Fairhill’s eyebrows arched. ‘American?’
‘British.’
‘What kind of evidence?’
The woman in front of Roisin could light the blue touch paper under her career. Or, just as easily, extinguish it for ever. Desperate not to lie to her, Roisin delivered the line she’d worked on during the flight home and most of the previous evening.
‘I think Detective Chief Superintendent Collier and his wife were lured to their deaths, Ma’am,’ she said. ‘I believe the killer had inside knowledge of British police procedures. It’s how they were able to get under his guard.’
‘Could Lynne have been the target, do you think? With Adam as collateral damage?’
It was a good question. Fairhill hadn’t completely sunk into the swamp of admin, finance and politics that consumed so many able detectives once they made the leap into senior management.