by Andy Maslen
A giggle threatened to burst from her lips and she coughed to hide it in case Sigge was within earshot.
And what about the terror alert? It could have been genuine. But the timing was just a bit too perfect. Just as she and Oskar arrived to interview and potentially arrest Ove, his adoring husband disappears and ten minutes later the call goes in to Umeå’s cop shop.
If Sigge was trying to improve the odds, he’d sent the wrong one of them on a wild goose chase.
No, this was only going to go one way. All she needed was to find a single piece of evidence compelling enough to justify arrest and she was home free. She could accept Ove’s earlier invitation to stay for dinner, wait for Oskar to return and then give him the nod. Because he would return. She’d no doubt the alert was a hoax.
After relieving herself, she washed her hands, taking her time while she got her thoughts in order.
The CSIs would need to make and compare prints to ascertain whether the wear pattern on the shoe outside the little room in which she was standing matched that from the crime scene. But she was sure in her heart they’d be a perfect match. She dried her hands and unlocked the door.
In the kitchen, Sigge was arranging slices of gravlax on a plate. Stella caught the strong aroma of the dill leaves pressed into the edges of the translucent slices of cured salmon.
She saw antique china dishes in white, pale blue and yellow piled high with potato salad, pickled herrings and various salads.
‘You’ve got enough there for a lot more than three, Sigge,’ she said, watching him for any sign he might suspect she was onto him.
He turned, smiling. ‘I can’t help myself,’ he croaked.
To Stella, he seemed utterly unconcerned by her presence. She didn’t have him down as a psychopath, able to conceal what limited emotions he possessed behind a veneer of calm. So if he looked unconcerned it was because he was unconcerned.
He had a full shot glass of clear liquid by his elbow. Good. The more he drank, the easier he’d be to control.
Sigge beckoned her closer and cut a triangle of the cured salmon. He offered it to her on a small square of dark-brown bread. She popped it into her mouth. Complex flavours of salmon, dill and picking spices washed over her tongue.
She nodded her appreciation as she chewed and swallowed.
He took a sip from his glass. ‘It’s a family recipe. Passed down for generations,’ he said hoarsely. ‘The Svenssons are pure-blooded Swedes back to the time of Håkan the Red.’
Bloody hell! Was he teasing her? Dangling the idea of racial purity in front of her like that. If he was, he was bloody confident. Maybe over-confident.
‘Well, they deserve a medal,’ she said. ‘It’s delicious.’
He smiled again. ‘As it’s Ove you’ve come to see, I’ll let you wander the garden till he arrives.’
Taking the hint, and glad of the space to think, Stella walked down the lawn to look at the lake. A couple of boats were out and a flock of white birds wheeled and dipped over the water, emitting long, drawn-out cries as they skimmed the surface.
40
Umeå
Stella checked her watch. It was five past eleven. Mattsson was late, but presumably he’d arrive home at any minute. She desperately wanted something strong enough for her to arrest Sigge on the spot.
In fact, for safety’s sake she thought she’d be better off arresting the pair of them.
She wasn’t sure of Swedish law, but in the UK she’d have good grounds for arresting him as a suspected accessory to murder. And if he turned out to be innocent, well, he could be released, possibly with a police apology.
She’d researched citizens’ arrests and discovered the law in Sweden was much the same as in Britain. As long as she had good reason to suspect he’d committed a crime, it was enough.
So there needed to be an outstanding arrest warrant. She thought Oskar would probably help her out there. He’d said it was his biggest case to date. Well, it wasn’t hers, and she knew all about bending the rules to deliver a suspect into custody.
She turned and walked back up the lawn. At the side of the house she saw a wooden outbuilding.
Wondering if she might find a gun cabinet in it, she took a quick look towards the kitchen door. Sigge was bent over the work surface, busy with a knife.
She strode across the grass, stepped right over the gravel path between the house and the outbuilding and went round to the front. The double doors told her it was a garage. There was a side door as well. She tried the handle and it opened on silent hinges.
Sunlight streamed in through the windows, picking out dust particles that floated in and out of the pale yellow beams and revealing the curved contours of what appeared to be an old rally car.
Painted a deep shade of cherry-red with a white roof, it bore a large white roundel on the driver’s door enclosing a black number 62. She checked out the front end: a Volvo. Not a scrap of rust anywhere that she could see.
She skirted its curved rear end, looking out for anything that might contain a rifle. A wooden workbench ran along the whole of the back wall. Above it, tools outlined in white hung from a pegboard panel.
In a dark corner where the sunlight didn’t reach, she saw a long, narrow, vertical steel cabinet bolted to the wooden frame of the building. Inside, she knew, would be a hunting rifle. Most likely a high-powered hunting model with the sort of high-calibre rounds capable of bursting a person’s head like a melon.
She cursed the CSIs for not being able to find either of the slugs Sigge had used to kill the Hedlunds. It was unfair, she knew. They might be in the lake. Or buried in the leaf litter in the birch forest fringing the property.
Would the rifle have Sigge’s prints on it? Possibly. In fact, almost certainly. He’d be clever enough, surely, to leave them there. After all, whether the rifle was his or Ove’s it would be the most natural thing in the world for him to claim he’d used it recently.
‘Of course,’ he’d say, when questioned. ‘I was out hunting yesterday.’
And if he had GSR on his hands, the same answer would suffice.
She looked under the bench and felt her pulse jerk upwards. She was looking at a red metal tool trolley. She drew it out from under the workbench and lifted the lid.
Staring out at her were two glaring yellow eyes beneath devilish black eyebrows. Teng Tools. Another match with Lucian’s findings.
She pulled out the top drawer. Screwdrivers nestled in recesses. The shafts gleamed. Not a speck of oil or dirt on any of them. She tried the next drawer down. Here were the sockets: gleaming chromed cylinders in ascending size order, from tiny pieces the size of 9mm rounds to giants as big as cotton reels.
She slid it back in on greased roller bearings and reached for the third drawer. This one was deeper. It resisted her at first, so she applied more force. With a metallic screech, it shot open. She looked round guiltily, aware she was almost certainly breaking Swedish law by searching uninvited without a warrant. Too late to go back now.
Stella looked down and nodded with satisfaction. Here they were. The variously sized grips without which no car mechanic could practise their trade.
She glanced over her shoulder then back at the drawer. All the shaped slots were filled. She ran her eye over the sizes. The killer had used a twelve-inch pair on Brömly. Obviously he wouldn’t have taken his own. But he’d bought ones in London he was familiar with.
She picked up the grips. They fitted her hand comfortably. She opened and closed the jaws, wondering as she did so how Sigge had felt when he used an identical pair to tear out Brömly’s tongue.
She heard a car pull up outside. Footsteps on the gravel. Squaring her shoulders, the grips still clutched in her fist, heart thumping, she turned towards the door. She’d have preferred to deal with Sigge alone. Restrain him somehow, before arresting Ove. Now that option had disappeared.
‘Hallå? Vem är där inne?’ Mattsson demanded loudly. Who’s in there?
He was standi
ng in the open doorway, a look of puzzlement on his face.
In that moment, her last shred of doubt that Sigge had murdered Tomas Brömly vanished. Ove’s voice didn’t fit the description provided by Natasha from Kafé Valhalla in London.
Though it was high for a man, there was a rough undertone that marked it as masculine. A girl who habitually relied on voices to remember people wouldn’t be fooled into thinking its owner was female.
‘Is that you, Detective Inspector Cole?’ he asked in English.
She hadn’t planned it this way. But now he’d discovered her snooping around in his garage, her plan had collapsed. She’d arrest him first, then find a way to get to Sigge. She walked around the car to him.
‘Ove Mattsson, I am arresting you for being an accessory to the murders of Tomas Brömly, Inger and Erik Hedlund and Annika Ivarsson.’
His eyes flash-bulbed.
‘What? This is madness! I didn’t murder Tomas or Inger or anyone else.’
Here it was. Her chance to get leverage with Sigge. All it required was the right pressure.
‘Brömly was going to expose your role in the sterilisation programme here in Umeå. His face bore the imprint of a running shoe exactly like the one in your boot room. His tongue was pulled out with a pair of grips like these,’ she said, holding up the Tengs for him to see.
‘But, I don’t run. I’m too old for that. I paint. They’re Sigge’s shoes. So are the tools. He uses them on the Amazon there,’ he added, pointing at the red-and-white Volvo.
Stella caught the crunch of gravel. Sigge appeared in the doorway behind Ove. He no longer wore an apron. He was holding a small black pistol. His eyes were dark. And he was no longer smiling.
Ove turned and his mouth dropped open. ‘Sigge?’
His eyes never leaving Stella’s, Sigge smiled.
‘There’s gravlax and potato salad in the kitchen, darling,’ Sigge said. ‘Could you put it out on the table for me, please?’
The croak had disappeared, along with Sigge’s friendly demeanour. Stella heard the true voice beneath the faked sore throat.
A lighter tone than most men’s.
Smooth.
Womanly.
She had her murderer. But he had a gun aimed at her head.
‘What are you doing?’ Mattsson asked. ‘And where did you get that pistol?’
‘Now, please,’ Sigge said. ‘I need to talk to her alone.’
Stella removed her hand from Ove’s shoulder, keeping her eyes fixed on the muzzle of the pistol in Sigge’s hand. His face unreadable, he turned away from her, squeezed past Sigge and disappeared around the edge of the doorframe.
Sigge watched him go. Which was a mistake.
Stella rushed Sigge, swinging the heavy grips down at his gun arm. He screamed. The pistol fell from his hand and skittered under the Amazon.
She spun him round by the shoulders and kicked the back of his right knee.
He yelped as his leg folded beneath him. Stella shoved him hard between the shoulder blades, sending him sprawling to the concrete floor.
She bent over him, going for his right hand, intending to hold him down until she could free her phone to call Oskar.
She looked down at her pocket for a second. That glance meant she didn’t see Sigge’s left arm come up holding a length of steel pipe.
He swung it over his head and smashed it against her temple. As dark curtains swung across her vision, and her head exploded with pain, she saw him run.
The lake was freezing. Adam was pulling her down by her ankle.
‘Join us, Stella,’ he said, bubbles rising in a swirling column from his tongueless mouth. An eel wriggled out of the hole in his forehead and swam away.
Lynne grinned up at her. The fish had removed all the flesh from her skull.
‘Yes. Come on down. The water’s lovely.’
Stella screamed. She kicked Adam’s hand away and struck out for the surface.
Gasping for breath, Stella popped out of the freezing water like a fishing float.
A hazy shape above her resolved into Ove’s face, creased with concern. He pursed his lips as he sponged more cold water onto her forehead.
‘Thank god. I thought he’d killed you,’ he said.
‘How long have I been unconscious?’
‘It can’t be long, I think. I came back when you and Sigge didn’t join me. I thought there must have been a mistake,’ he said. ‘A practical joke of some kind, for Midsommar. Sigge loves them.’
‘How long, though?’ Stella asked again, wincing as he dabbed at her left temple.
‘I don’t know. A few minutes. No more than that. Please tell me. What’s going on?’
Stella sat up then cried out as a blinding flash of pain speared through her head from her left temple.
‘Can you help me up, I need to call someone.’
Mattsson helped her to her feet and together they stumbled back to the house. He dragged over a chair for her to sit in at the kitchen table.
She called Oskar.
‘Stella. What’s going on?’
‘It’s not Mattsson we want. It’s his husband. His name’s Sigge Svensson. He knocked me out then ran. You’re looking for a sixtyish white male. Slim build, short dark hair with a bit of silver. Blue eyes. He might have his arm in a home-made sling. I think I broke his wrist.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. I’ve got a goose egg on the side of my head but I’ll live.’
‘Stay put, yes? I’ll get everyone on this. I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’m sorry for letting you go alone.’
‘It’s not your fault. It was supposed to be a quiet chat.’
During this conversation, she’d watched Ove’s face. His expression revealed utter bewilderment. She’d seen it before. People suddenly confronted with a completely different truth about their spouse to the one they’d believed in.
His eyes searched hers: she knew what he wanted. Reassurance that it was all some dreadful mistake. A mix-up. Sigge wasn’t a murderer. How could he be? He played tennis and went for early morning runs. Baked. Prepared delicious Midsommar feasts.
‘I have to go. Stay here. Do not leave the property,’ she said, gritting her teeth against the fresh wave of pain that washed up against the backs of her eyes. ‘If he contacts you, or comes back, don’t do anything to antagonise him.’
‘But, where are you going? How can this be happening? Sigge’s a good man.’
‘I don’t know. Hopefully, I’ll have answers for you soon. Have you got any painkillers?’
He nodded. ‘Paracetamol, ibuprofen?’
‘Anything stronger?’
‘There’s some codeine in the bathroom cabinet.’
‘Those, please. Double dose.’
‘That could be dangerous.’
‘I’ll take the risk.’
He left, reappearing a few minutes later with four white tablets. He ran a glass of water from the tap and handed it to her along with the pills.
She swallowed all four at once, gulping down the water.
Holding the edge of the table and bracing for the pain, she took a deep breath and then left the house by the front door.
Outside she kept her breathing slow and regular and found that the pain had eased off a little as the codeine kicked in.
She looked at the track leading away from the house. He must have taken it. Where else could a fugitive run to? The woods? He’d be found easily. No, he would have run up the track and headed for the village.
She set off at a gentle jog-trot, ignoring the throbbing that came and went behind her eyes, grateful that it was reducing in severity. She picked up speed, taking heart from the scuffed footprints she saw between the wheel tracks each side of the narrow track.
As she neared the village, she heard music. Violins and an accordion. A drum being beaten heartily in a simple one-two-one-two rhythm.
Children’s laughter and high-pitched squeals came next.
And the
n she saw him. In the distance, just on the outskirts of the village where the first wooden houses, Falun-red with white gables, appeared each side of the road.
41
Umeå
Bare-chested, Sigge was limping badly, dragging his right foot. The ankle looked grotesquely swollen. Inflated somehow.
She realised he’d bound it with material torn from his smock. He must have sprained it running on the uneven track. He’d have had to stop to strap it up and that’s why she’d been able to catch him. His right arm hung uselessly at his side.
‘Sigge Svensson!’ she yelled. ‘Stop! Sluta!’
He looked at her and then turned and hobbled on. She ran faster, oblivious of the pain. Because she’d seen a black object in his left hand. The gun. She hadn’t thought to check whether he’d left it beneath the car and now she didn’t need to.
Cursing her carelessness, she accelerated into a sprint. And then a sound pierced the forest. A young girl’s scream. High-pitched like the others, but this time wound around a vibrating core of pure fear.
The first scream was joined by another, and another. She knew what had happened.
Sigge had come amongst some of the village girls, who were expecting nothing from this night but dancing, drinking and being admired for their flowered head-dresses, and he’d terrified them. Maybe even grabbed one.
Men were shouting, and women’s screams joined those of the girls.
Stella reached the edge of the village and sprinted into the centre of the crowd. People were running in all directions, and the flower-girls were running towards her, their faces taut with fear.
A gunshot tore through the noise, immensely loud in comparison to the screams, which redoubled a moment later. She ducked, then straightened, looking for Sigge.
In front of her, a young girl in her early teens, blonde hair braided under her wreathes of cornflowers, ivy and daisies, toppled to the ground, blood streaming from her arm. It looked like a flesh wound. It would hurt badly, but she’d live. Two women ran towards the fallen teenager.