by Andy Maslen
He nodded.
In reality, Stella thought she’d maxed out on caffeine a day or so earlier, but conversations in Sweden seemed to go better with mugs of that infernally strong brew in everybody’s hands. As she had limited police powers in Sweden, she needed all the allies she could get. If the cost was another sleep-deprived night, so be it. She’d sleep when she got home.
Kerstin reappeared with coffee after a few minutes. Her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Stella resolved to go carefully. She opened her mouth to ask her first question, but Kerstin didn’t give her a chance.
‘I know why he killed Tomas and Inger,’ she blurted. ‘I think Ove and I will be next.’
‘Why?’ Stella asked, feeling that her suspicions were about to be confirmed.
‘We ran the forced sterilisation programme in Umeå in the first half of the seventies. I was the vice-regal governor of Västerbotten County at the time,’ she said in a halting voice. ‘Ove headed the medical team at University Hospital in Umeå. Inger maintained all the legal paperwork. Tomas managed all the logistics.’
Stella’s stomach flipped over. Had the elderly woman sitting opposite her at a slatted wooden garden table just referred to the mass forced sterilisation of girls and boys as young as fourteen as ‘logistics’? She bit back a caustic remark.
‘Go on,’ she said, instead.
‘Obviously, someone that we…’ she hesitated, and Stella had time to wonder what verb she would pick, ‘…someone whose life we ruined, has waited all this time and now they want to take revenge on us. I understand why, but I don’t want to be murdered. I want to find a way to stop them. You have to find them. To arrest them. I’ll do what I can to make amends, but you have to find them!’
She uttered the last few words in a rush, the pitch of her voice rising to something approaching a suppressed shriek.
‘Tell me,’ Stella said, pulling out her notebook, ‘do you have any idea who the killer might be? You said “he” a moment ago.’
‘No. It could be anybody. There were thousands of them!’
Kerstin’s cheeks blanched, then suffused with a blush, as the enormity of what she’d just said hit her.
‘Where were you when Mr and Mrs Hedlund were murdered?’ Oskar asked.
‘Here with my husband.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I think in the garden. Pruning, weeding, you know.’
‘Did you see anybody besides Josef? Did anybody come to the house?’
Kerstin looked skywards as if hoping for divine help answering the question.
‘No. No,’ she repeated, shaking her head. Then her eyes widened. ‘No, but we saw our neighbours on their boat on the lake.’
‘What time would this have been?’
‘About eight-thirty? Maybe a little later.’
Stella made a note. ‘What are their names?’
‘Axel and Jenny Söderström.’
‘Do you have an address for them? Or a phone number?’
‘I have both. I can get them for you?’
‘Let’s leave that for now. Do you remember where you were on the second of this month?’
Kerstin frowned. ‘Not exactly. I mean, here, obviously, in Umeå. I’d have to look it up in my diary.’
‘Not in London?’
‘No. Definitely not.’
Something about Kerstin’s answers persuaded Stella that she was interviewing a potential victim, rather than the killer. Not just the way she looked her in the eye, but the speed and lack of evasive phrasing. And, after all, would a killer really ask for police protection? It made a little kind of sense as a diversionary tactic, but she didn’t see it.
In any case, her alibis would be easy enough to check out. And Stella had already calculated the time needed to get to the Hedlunds’ place from the spot where she was sitting.
Given the pathologist’s confident – and tight – estimate for time of death, if Kerstin had been at home at 8.30 a.m., she simply couldn’t have made the round-trip in time to commit the murder.
‘We think there’s a chance that the murderer was afraid Tomas was going to confess to his involvement in what he called the Project,’ Stella said. ‘Which we now know was the forced sterilisation programme in Umeå. I’m assuming you received his letter?’
Kerstin nodded. ‘I did.’
‘Was there anyone else involved at your level, apart from the four of you?’
Kerstin shook her head. She ran a hand through her tousled blonde hair, which Stella saw in the harsh sunlight was actually a very skilful dye-job. Then she looked straight at Stella.
‘You think it’s Ove, don’t you?’
‘Do you?’
Kerstin didn’t answer straight away. Instead she looked off to one side, staring out at the lake. Stella followed her gaze. In the distance she saw a couple of white-sailed boats heeling over in the breeze.
‘Do I think Ove might be a murderer?’ she asked as she looked out towards the lake. Stella waited. ‘I suppose he could be. Why not? Is it such a big step from preventing lives from ever starting to cutting them short once they’ve begun?’
‘Do you or your husband own any rifles?’ Stella asked.
‘Josef owns one, yes. For hunting. Do you want to see it?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Come with me.’
Stella and Oskar followed Kerstin inside. Kerstin took a key from a varnished wooden board on the kitchen wall and used it to unlock a cupboard behind the door. Standing in a rack beside a pair of knee-boots were two rifles with polished wooden stocks.
‘We’d like to take these to Umeå police station and have them analysed,’ Oskar said.
Kerstin nodded mutely, flapping a hand in the direction of the rifles.
‘Take them.’
It was another tick in the column marked Not Guilty that Stella was building in her mind.
36
Stockholm
Roisin decided to walk from her hotel to the police headquarters on Kungsholmsgatan. She’d emailed ahead to let them know a Met detective inspector with a letter of introduction was arriving on their turf. So this was a formality.
The receptionist asked her, in flawless English, who she was there to see. When Roisin told him it was Assistant Police Commissioner Olsson, the young man’s eyes widened momentarily. He smiled up at Roisin and nodded.
‘I’ll call his assistant for you. Please, take a seat.’
His expression said it all. Visiting British detectives were a rarity in themselves. But when one turned up with an appointment to see so senior an officer, that was big news.
Roisin was enjoying the sense of power that came from travelling with not just a letter of introduction from the CPS but also a personal letter of introduction from Rachel.
The receptionist issued her with a visitor pass on a blue lanyard and directed her to a seating group beneath a picture window giving onto the street.
She wandered away from the reception desk and chose an armchair facing the sweeping staircase to the mezzanine floor. The lifts were housed in a short corridor to its right, so, whichever way her host arrived, she’d have advance warning.
She saw a couple of uniformed cops laughing and chatting as they headed out of the main doors. One, the female, was black, the other was a male cop wearing a deep-blue turban. Somehow she’d been expecting that all the cops would be blonde and blue-eyed. Then she realised how stupid that was and reproached herself.
In fact, she saw uniformed officers in as diverse a range of skin tones as she’d become used to in the Met. Plenty of plain clothes too, though that made it hard to tell who was a detective and who a civilian employee, or even a member of the public.
The sharp, efficient click of heels on the gleaming floor tiles grabbed her attention. She swung her head round, already getting to her feet, to see a suited woman of about her own age striding towards her.
Now, here was a specimen of exactly the type she’d been imagining populated
the Swedish Police Authority.
Six foot in her heels, pale-gold hair done up in a sleek, pinned style from which not so much as a single strand trailed loose. And eyes of a pure cornflower blue that put Roisin in mind of summer meadows.
On her left jacket lapel she wore an enamelled Swedish flag, its jewel-like panels of yellow and blue the only bright flash of colour in her otherwise sober outfit.
‘Detective Inspector Griffin?’ the woman asked.
‘God Morgon,’ Roisin said, extending a hand and smiling at her host.
She received a wide smile in return.
‘Your accent is very good, but you won’t need it. I’m Rebecka Wistrom, APC Olsson’s Executive Assistant. Come with me, please. Nik is expecting you.’
If Rachel Fairhill’s office was a tribute to how far she’d climbed the Met’s greasy pole, APC Olsson’s office was an altogether more practical affair. Half the size of Rachel’s and crammed with basic, functional furniture, its sole window gave onto a carpark at the rear of the building.
It spoke of a puritanical mission to root out corruption so all-pervading, its occupant couldn’t even bear to allow himself the luxury of a view of the park.
A single picture broke up the featureless expanse of beige-painted wall: a photograph of uniformed police officers at some sort of parade.
Rebecka introduced them then withdrew, promising to return shortly with coffee and pastries.
Olsson had the hungry look common to a lot of extremely thin men. His dark eyes seemed to bore into hers as he bade her sit. He wore a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just past his bony elbows. On his shirt’s button-down epaulettes, black shoulder boards bore the insignia of his rank: a crown surmounting two narrow gold bands enclosing a wreath of oak leaves.
He’d kept his tie on even though, she knew from reading the SPA’s Wikipedia page, ties were optional in hot weather. And, Sweet Mary, Mother of God, the weather outside certainly qualified.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Sir,’ Roisin said, to kick things off. ‘Assistant Commmissioner Fairhill asked me to send you her personal regards. She said she remembers fondly the dinner after the Europol conference.’
At this, Olsson’s eyes widened and he smiled. The effect was magical. The hungry look disappeared, replaced by a twinkling expression that suggested he was thin because he burned off any spare energy having fun.
‘She’s lucky. I can barely remember it at all. Send my regards back to Rachel, won’t you? And, by the way, before we go any further, no need for all the titles, and “Sir” business,’ he said. ‘Makes me feel like some stuffed shirt. I’m Nik. Short for Nikodemus. My parents thought it was a good name to live up to.’
‘I guess it is. He went to Jesus to discuss his teachings. “Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus” John 3:1.’
Nik smiled. ‘You know your Bible.’
‘I’m a good Catholic girl, what can I say? I had it drummed into me as a young girl.’
‘Then do you know John 7:50?’
‘“Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”’ She smiled. ‘Not a bad verse for a cop who investigates other cops.’
It seemed a nice, simple way to draw the conversation around from the pleasantries to the reason she was in Sweden. And in the spartan office of the most senior internal affairs cop in the country.
Because Nik was the head of Avdelningen för särskilda utredningar – the Special Investigations Division. Roisin had researched his department before leaving the UK. His and Callie’s had such similar names, yet the people they investigated couldn’t have been more different.
Serial killers and bent cops. Roisin knew which species of wrongdoer she regarded as the greater danger to society. Despite the lurid headlines when one of the outliers made the news, the average serial killer only murdered three people before being caught.
But a bent cop undermined the whole fabric of the police. They eroded public trust and with it the whole basis of policing by consent. That way anarchy lay and Roisin would have none of it.
She’d been approached before by internal affairs cops in the Met looking for recruits, and had always rebuffed their approaches.
Not because she hated them, as so many of her colleagues did. But because she’d always thought the route to the brass was shorter and more direct through the ranks of CID.
But with the scent of blood in her nostrils and the praise from Rachel and Callie still fresh in her mind, she wondered, for the first time ever, whether she was wrong.
Nik nodded his thanks to Rebecka, who had just placed a tray with coffee and buns in between them on his plain-topped desk. He pushed a mug and plate towards Roisin, then loaded his own with a couple of cakes and bit one in half, washing it down with a swig of coffee.
‘Rachel was typically discreet when she called me. Why are you here in Sweden?’
Roisin explained. ‘I believe the killer was another serving officer,’ she concluded.
Nik steepled his fingers underneath his beaky nose. He regarded her steadily with those close-set eyes, and all of a sudden she saw how he had risen so far in the SPA. Something predatory lay behind them. A hunter’s instinct. And she’d just given him the scent.
‘And this…officer,’ he said, slowly, ‘is in Sweden at the moment?’
She nodded. ‘They are.’
Nik smiled, a tight grin that, unlike his assistant’s, didn’t reveal his teeth. Roisin suspected they were sharp. Pointed. The kind to fasten onto something and not let go.
‘You said, “they”. You don’t want to reveal this officer’s gender. You play your cards very close to your chest, Roisin, as a good internal affairs investigator should.’
She nodded, finding time to register that upon mentioning her chest, he’d not allowed his gaze to slide over her breasts as most male cops would, unconsciously or not. She sensed she was in the presence of a man for whom work was one hundred percent about professional duty.
She glanced at his left hand, saw a wide gold band on the fourth finger. Doubtless he was as faithful in his marriage as he was in his work. Or was he one of those hypocrites – ‘whited sepulchres’, Ma used to call them – who preached continence and moral purity in public, then committed all manner of foul misdeeds in their private lives? Like those disgusting priests with their hands down choirboys’ trousers, eh, Ma? You never would hear a bad word about them, now would you?
‘I’m sorry, Nik. Probably just being over-cautious,’ she said.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, sipping from his mug and regarding her over the rim. ‘But if you were to reveal this officer’s gender, I wonder, would it be female?’
He’d surprised her, but she hid it by taking a sip of her own coffee. It was so strong, she felt her pulse jolt as it hit her stomach. Her guts squirmed unpleasantly.
She nodded a second time.
Had he guessed? It was a fifty-fifty call after all. No, of course it wasn’t. She didn’t know the proportion of female to male officers in the SPA, but in the Met it was just over a quarter.
Nik leaned back in his chair. He looked pleased with himself. ‘A female officer with the Metropolitan Police, in Sweden, right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not you, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘But attached to the same unit as you.’
My god. He knew. She swallowed. Was he going to be an asset? Or had Callie done something to ambush Roisin before she’d even got properly started.
‘Yes.’
‘So, putting two and two together, which is about the level of my mathematical ability, I am assuming you are investigating Detective Chief Inspector Cole, who turned up here a few days ago on the trail of the murderer of our former ambassador to London.’
Roisin moistened her lips. One thing she doubted about Nik was his false modesty over his maths abilities. She had a strong suspicion he could solve quadratic
equations in his head while eating his breakfast. Probably something wholesome. Plain oatmeal. Unbuttered toast. Or, just possibly, raw meat. She made a decision.
‘Yes, that’s her. For reasons I don’t yet know, she followed, or I should say pursued, Detective Chief Superintendent Collier to the US, lured him out to a deserted spot in rural Minnesota and shot him dead, along with his wife.’
The double-murder was a stretch, but he didn’t have to know that. All he needed to do was help her apprehend Stella Cole.
Nik rubbed the point of his chin. In the silence, Roisin could hear the faint whisper of his fingertips on the close-shaved skin. He looked at her.
‘Obviously, this is a matter for you and your colleagues in the Met. But if there is anything, anything,’ he repeated, eyes ablaze, ‘that you need while you are here, ask.’
The last word came out like an order. He meant it.
Roisin nodded, looking him in the eye. Yes, here was one of those rare creatures, though commoner in some departments than others: the utterly driven cop.
She suspected they could take away his pension rights, dump him in a windowless office in the basement and let the beautiful Rebecka be snatched away by a functionary in Communications or HR, and still Nik would turn up for work, wearing a tie in ninety degree heat, pursuing his vocation.
‘I need a car,’ she said. ‘And a gun. I brought my Met firearms accreditation with me along with my letter of introduction.’
Nik nodded. He picked up his desk phone and asked Rebecka to come in and take a few notes.
37
Umeå
Killing Tomas and Inger was obviously necessary. They were part of the original quartet. Erik was collateral damage and couldn’t be helped. His thinking had a nice, closed quality to it.
But now the plan has broken free of its original confines. It’s – he doesn’t use the word ‘spiralling’. Because the next phrase would be, ‘out of control’. But if he acts fast, he can seal off the loop again before killing Kerstin.
Tracking down Ivarsson wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. She had no social media accounts and her website only listed an email address. In the end, thanks to a little help from a friend in the police, he managed to get her address. She’d been ticketed for speeding five years earlier.