Meet me in Malmö: The first Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) (12 page)

‘Are you married?’

The sudden question took Anita by surprise.

‘Sorry, that just popped out. None of my business.’

‘You’re right. It’s none of your business.’

Ewan flinched at the brusqueness of the reply. Yorkshire folk were meant to be blunt, but they had nothing on Swedish women. To his inherently polite British sensibilities it was a bit of a shock. Coming from such an attractive woman it was even weirder. Ewan retreated into his beer.

Anita realized that he had been taken aback. Maybe it was a chance to take her mind off the case for a while and talk about something else. After today she was even more confused. The dramatic arrest of Mednick and the revelation of Mick’s affair had only raised more questions than provided much-needed answers. Maybe she would shove the case to the back of her mind and re-examine it when she walked back to the quiet of Roskildevägen. She had left her stinking car in the polishus car park, as she couldn’t bear the smell any longer. She took off her glasses and put them next to her drink.

‘Divorced.’

Ewan came out of his beer.

‘I believe there’s a lot of divorce in Sweden. I mean, more than in a lot of countries.’

‘It’s a national pastime. Now, I haven’t time for a husband,’ she lied. ‘I’ve got a lovely son to look after.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Lasse. He’s coming up for nineteen. Away at university.’

‘Letting go. Can’t be easy. My mum died just before I went off to Durham, so I don’t know how she would have reacted. My father was delighted to see the back of me.’

Again Anita didn’t know whether he was being facetious or not.

‘It’s very hard for a mother.’ Anita put her glasses back on. Ewan thought she was just as beautiful with as without them.

‘And where’s your husband now?’ Ewan was feeling more relaxed in her company now. He was trying to get her to unwind because he could sense that she was tense and preoccupied.

‘He’s at the university in Uppsala.’

‘Obviously an academic.’

‘Professor now. He was just a lecturer when I met him.’

‘So how did a cop meet an academic? Not exactly the same line of country.’

‘I arrested him.’

Ewan looked at Anita blankly. Then he guffawed. ‘That’s fantastic.’

She was taken with his delight. His face lit up when he smiled. She thought that many things in life must amuse him. That was a good way to view things. Not the Swedish way.

‘So how come you arrested him?’ he said, still laughing.

‘We were called out to a rowdy party in Lund. That’s where I started after the National Police College in Stockholm. The neighbours complained. Parties with Björn were always noisy.’

‘Did he spend the night in the cells?’

‘Yes. He was drunk so he needed to sleep it off. It hadn’t helped that he had insulted the neighbours for complaining, but he came quietly enough.’

‘Not surprising. I’d happily be arrested by you.’ He smiled.

‘I don’t think you would.’ Though she said it seriously she couldn’t help but be flattered.

‘So how come arrest led to the altar?’

‘When we released him the next day he asked me out on a date. I was so surprised that I said “yes”.’

‘But it obviously didn’t last?’

‘Being surrounded by beautiful students was too much of a temptation.’

‘From lecturer to lecher?’

Anita smiled wearily. ‘Something like that.’

‘I won’t pry any further. Another drink…? Sorry, I can’t keep calling you Inspector.’

She finished her drink with an unladylike swig. ‘Another wine would be nice.’ She handed him her glass. ‘And it’s Anita.’

He took her glass. That twinkle was in his eye again. ‘Red wine…’ he let his tongue linger over ‘…Anita.’

As Ewan was over at the bar ordering the drinks Anita was trying to work him out. He was pleasant. Funny even. She was beginning to relax, which she didn’t often do socially in the company of men these days. She wasn’t so unaware that she couldn’t detect that he seemed smitten with her. He was no pretty boy, but she had been seduced down the handsome route too often for comfort. Yet something nagged at her; she had no idea what. She could see that he covered his loneliness with humour. But there was a hidden sadness. Swedes were good at detecting melancholy. They knew all about what they called
svårmod
, that blackness of the mind that came from the long winter nights. That was why the country went crazy at midsummer.

‘
Skål!
’ Anita said, raising her glass.

‘Skoll!’ Ewan replied, not quite getting his pronunciation right.

After a deep sip of beer, he put down his glass. ‘So, where have you hidden Mick?’

Ah. Was this the reason for the drink? Just when she was thinking it was because he wanted to be with her. Now it made her think again about Mick’s revelation.

‘Out of harm’s way.’

‘I hope I was useful to you. I mean, getting Mick to talk to you. He wasn’t keen until I persuaded him that he could trust you.’

It was her turn to smile. ‘Are you trying to say that I owe you a favour?’

‘No, that’s not what I’m after, honestly.’ He appeared genuinely horrified. ‘I just…’ but he seemed unable to complete the sentence.

Anita delved into her bag to try and find her tin of snus. The bag was like a black hole, and she was forever losing things in there. Had she left the tin in the office or the car? Oh, there it was. She pulled it out. She opened the lid and offered the tin to Ewan.

‘What’s that?’

‘Snus.’

‘What is it?’ he asked, pulling a face. ‘Looks like miniature teabags.’

She picked out a small sachet and held it in the palm of her hand. ‘It’s tobacco. You put it up here,’ she said putting her finger in her mouth between gum and upper lip. ‘It has minute fragments of fibreglass inside to puncture the gum so the tobacco gets in the bloodstream.’ Ewan pulled a face. ‘It’s good. It has helped me stop smoking. Snus is very popular in Sweden.’ And she popped a sachet into her mouth.

‘It sounds disgusting. I’ll stick to fags.’

Anita felt herself switching back into cop mode. ‘Actually, I was going to ask you about when you met Roslyn, at the Edinburgh film festival.’

He smirked. ‘Are you interrogating me again?’

‘We’re just chatting in a bar,’ she said holding up her glass, letting the light catch the richness of the red liquid. He hadn’t bought her the usual rubbishy wine she was used to on her occasional social outings.

‘Fair enough.’

‘Roslyn was there with Tilda Tegner and Bengt Valquist?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How was Roslyn with Miss Tegner?’

Ewan twirled his beer glass and puckered his lips. ‘Has he been playing away from home?’

Anita knew the expression from her time in London. She had also learned how to say “get lost” to over-amorous colleagues who saw the words “blonde Swedish woman” as a green light for an easy shag.

‘I am not saying that. It is just he’s a successful man and Miss Tegner is a young actress making her way in the business. He might be a mentor.’

‘I think Bengt Valquist assumes that role. To answer your question, there didn’t seem to be any untoward body language between them. In fact, it was Valquist who was the attentive chaperone. Possessive almost.’

‘And you’ve met Valquist since?’

‘A couple of times. Very nervous bloke, if you ask me.’

‘Could he easily become jealous?’

Ewan contemplated his beer. ‘A man with that little obvious self-confidence? Definitely.’

Ewan had enjoyed going to bed last night. He had played various scenarios over and over in his mind. They all ended up with Anita Sundström in his arms. On waking he was disappointed that she hadn’t featured in any of his dreams. In fact, the only woman he could remember was Malin Lovgren. He had run away from her but, however far he scuttled, she was still there. Still dead. However, he had a spring in his step this morning. He had got Anita – yes, Anita – to promise him that if there were any new developments, she would tip him the wink. This was only extracted after he explained that he wouldn’t print anything unless she had given him the ok to do so. He had no way of delivering that promise.

On returning to the hotel after his drink with Anita, Ewan had phoned Brian at his home and informed him that he had now established a great working relationship with one of the top detectives on the case. A lovely blonde woman, he had added in order to increase his stock with the lascivious editor. She had told him that an arrest had been made. He had made it sound as though he had been the first to know, and Brian was impressed. Maybe Ewan wasn’t as useless as he had always assumed him to be. Brian had asked if the arrest was anything to do with the Palme conspiracy theory.

‘Keeping that information close to her chest,’ Ewan said, knowing full well that it wasn’t, but he wanted to keep Brian sweet as long as possible.

‘Has she got a nice chest?’

Ewan had avoided answering the question. He hadn’t wanted Anita reduced in his eyes by the usual male banter and innuendo. She was better than that. Besides, despite his best efforts, he still couldn’t imagine her totally naked. He would work on it.

He knew he was falling for the attractive police inspector. He hadn’t felt like this since… Well, that was a long time ago. But what did she make of him? Was there hope? Or was the whole thing hopeless?

As he stood in the shower he tried to plan his day. If an arrest had been made he would have to find out more information. He would start by going onto the Internet and finding again that useful site that he had discovered yesterday which carried Swedish news stories in English. Things were going well. Sweden might not be so bad after all.

Anita was in early. She had skipped breakfast and had her first coffee of the day in her office. There were other early birds, too. She saw the public prosecutor, Sonja Blom, coming out of Moberg’s office. Even at that time in the morning she was irritatingly immaculate. She was wearing her usual smug expression that seemed to be permanently sand-blasted onto her face. She looked straight through Anita who had decided, against her better judgement, to say good morning.

Coffee in hand, Anita knocked on Moberg’s door and went in. Moberg and Nordlund couldn’t have had much sleep between them, though the chief inspector seemed happy enough. He was tucking into a sandwich.

‘The prosecutor looked pleased with herself.’

Moberg grunted. ‘She thinks we’ve got a result.’

‘Have we?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I think so.’ Anita caught Nordlund glancing down at the floor. She wasn’t sure he was convinced.

‘Has he pleaded guilty?’

‘Not yet. But he will. He’s admitted he went into the apartment. He says he was infatuated with Malin Lovgren and had plucked up the courage to go up and see her. Wanted to confront her for ignoring him. He knew the apartment combination because he had seen her punch it in.’

‘Roslyn thought that incident was ex-Säpo surveillance.’ said Anita, who was cupping her coffee to warm up her hands.

‘Mednick reckons that the apartment door was open when he got upstairs. He went in and wandered around before finding Malin Lovgren dead in the living room.’

‘How did he find her?’

‘Sitting up, as Thulin suggested. He claims he went over to her and was so upset that he hugged her, and when he let go, she slid to the floor. He was so horrified by the whole experience that he left her there and fled.’

‘Could it be true?’ Anita waited for the blast.

‘Pigs might fly! The bastard’s guilty. He was in the apartment, he handled the body. Forensics matched his prints and fibres overnight,’ Moberg said, picking up a file and flapping it down on the desk again. ‘He was in the army and he would have been taught how to choke someone efficiently, so that sorts that one out. We’ve got CCTV footage to show he was outside the scene of the crime at the right time. Anyhow, he’s confessed that much. The clincher was that bloody blue starfish pendant of yours in his apartment. You were right there. As for motive, he admits sending letters to Malin, though he didn’t think they were threatening.’

‘So, we’ve only got Roslyn’s word for it that they included actual threats. And we haven’t got the letters themselves.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got everything else except the actual confession. He was some poor sod who got sent to Afghanistan and lost his bottle.’

‘Mednick was at a place called Meymaneh.’ This was Nordlund’s first contribution. ‘He was with a Nordic group of the Security Assistance Force. It wasn’t a good place to be for a Scandinavian because there was all that bother about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. And to the locals all Scandinavians are the same. There was a nasty riot and Mednick was in the middle of it. Ironically, there were no Danes in the group.’

‘That’s why he got caught up with those immigrants in Möllevågen,’ added Moberg. ‘He’s got a thing about Muslims. It was while he was out in Afghanistan that he got into Malin Lovgren. They showed a couple of her films out there. No girl at home, so he starts fantasizing about the actress. It gets worse when he returns home after he’s kicked out of the forces because he’s not quite right any more. Malin doesn’t answer his letters. He’s fixated. He does something about it.’ Moberg took a satisfied bite out of his sandwich. He continued, with his mouth half-full. ‘Throw in the unlicensed firearm, which he picked up in Afghanistan, and using it to threaten a police officer, and Blom thinks we’ve got a very strong case. She’s off to court later today to make it all official so we can keep him under lock and key. Mednick is going to be officially charged and the commissioner is going to hold a news conference and announce to the whole of Sweden how brilliant the Skåne police force is, and, by implication, what a bunch of tossers they are up in Stockholm. They cocked up the Palme murder and we’ve tied up our celebrity case in three days.’

Anita took a sip of her coffee. It was going cold. ‘Why didn’t Mednick use the gun on Malin if he was seriously going to threaten her?’

‘Maybe he had it with him, but thought it was easier to strangle her instead,’ Moberg said dismissively as he flicked some sandwich crumbs into the corner of his mouth. ‘And it’s less noisy.’

Anita didn’t try and hide her scepticism. ‘Did he say where he found the starfish pendant?’

‘He said he found it on her lap,’ said Nordlund stroking his chin.

‘Said he took it as a trophy - something that belonged to her - back to his weird shrine of an apartment. But obviously what really happened was that it came off in the struggle in the kitchen and he took it away because the chain had broken. Clear up the evidence.’ Moberg was starting to get annoyed. He had explained everything. She should be pleased.

‘And the tea and two mugs?’

‘Didn’t mention that. He obviously wormed his way in. Mednick was a fan, Malin’s a nice girl and offers to make him a cup of tea. She turns her back and he throttles her.’

‘Does he drink tea?’

‘How the fuck should I know.’ Moberg was furious now. ‘It doesn’t fucking matter now. The case is closed.’ The rest of the sandwich disappeared into his mouth as he stood up. He was still chewing it when he said, ‘Must go up to the commissioner. I suspect he will want to congratulate the team.’

‘And are
you
sure Mednick’s the murderer?’

Moberg glared at Anita. ‘Look, Inspector, you can fanny about with your fucking female intuition and all that shit, but this case is finished as far as you’re concerned. We’ve got our man. Try and enjoy the moment. I am.’ As an afterthought. ‘And just you remember who’s running this investigation.’

Anita stared defiantly at him. ‘Remember Olof Palme.’

Moberg lumbered out of the room and left a contemplative Nordlund and a grim-faced Anita.

‘When Mednick was holding a gun to my head he said that he didn’t kill her. I thought he sounded sincere.’

‘Knew his time was up. Living in denial. Could be any number of reasons to plead his innocence.’ Nordlund locked his fingers together on his lap and began to twiddle his free thumbs over each other in a continuous circular movement. ‘It all seems to fit.’

‘That’s not the same as being guilty. He was wearing the same jacket when we took him in as he had on the night of the murder. If he had done it, surely he would have got rid of it. Or tried to hide it. And Moberg’s wrong to dismiss the tea as irrelevant. I’m convinced that she knew the person who was in that kitchen with her.’

Nordlund grimaced. ‘Anita, you’ve got to remember that Erik is under enormous pressure from above, from everyone, to solve this case. It makes one very single-minded.’

She was struck by a thought and picked up the forensics file. ‘I bet you another thing, Henrik; that Eva’s team didn’t find any of Mednick’s footprints in the kitchen.’

Nordlund stood. ‘Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t stop digging just yet. That’s why I think I’ll check out those photos Säpo have sent down from Stockholm.’

 ‘Thought you would like to know. There’s a press conference at the polishus at 2.30.’ Ewan was dumbstruck. He hadn’t really expected Anita to contact him. Now that she had, he was paralysed. As he didn’t say anything, she pressed on. ‘Commissioner Dahlbeck will be speaking. So will Chief Inspector Moberg. They’ll give you something to write about.’ Then there was silence. At last Ewan found his voice.

‘But I won’t understand what they say.’

‘Take along one of your Pickwick friends to translate. I’m sure some of the other journalists will fill you in. Most have reasonable English.’

‘Thanks.’ Then he suddenly blurted out, ‘Will you be there?’

But the connection had gone dead. She had finished the call. He cursed himself for not taking advantage of the situation. Say something about how much he had enjoyed his drink with her. Keep the conversation going a bit longer. The truth was that she had caught him on the hop while he was walking past the station on the way into town. It was an opportunity missed and he now felt utterly deflated. All that had gone right last night was ruined by his inability to think on his feet. Maybe Anita would be at the press conference and he could grab a word with her then.

Nearly all the snow from the night before had gone. The ground was wet but there were streaks of blue sky, the first he had seen since his arrival. Ewan stared at his mobile. He was still putting himself through the mental flagellation that men go through when they’ve cocked up the chance to enhance their relationship with a woman they seriously fancy. He was still in that frame of mind when he called David.

The call to Ewan had only been one of a number that Anita made from her office that morning. She felt that she owed him at least some help after he’d passed Roslyn onto her. Besides, he might still be a useful source of information concerning her own inquiries, which had been encouraged by Henrik Nordlund.

She had more respect for him than any other officer she had come across in her time in the force. He had taken the unofficial role of mentor when she had joined the department and was feeling constantly out of her depth. She liked the fact that he wasn’t an over-ambitious career cop like so many of the younger ones. Steady, clear-headed, if a little cautious. But their department needed his calming influence when characters like Moberg and Westermark were forever bulldozing their way through investigations, rushing into situations without thinking. And though he was an old-fashioned policeman, he had no hang-ups about her being a woman in the force. Quite the opposite, he respected women.

His own wife had been in the police before cancer had taken her some years before. His sadness was deep-seated, yet he never let it affect his work. Nor did he hold it against Anita that she didn’t have a Scanian accent, which the rest of Sweden derided as ugly. Her detractors viewed her voice as snobby, though she had spent a lot of her youth in Skåne. But the family had moved around – including spending time in England – and her accent was neutral. It meant she had something in common with Olander. They were both seen as outsiders. That was why, if Henrik Nordlund advised her to keep on digging, then she would do just that.

Certainly Nordlund didn’t appear to have Moberg’s solid belief in Mednick’s guilt. Or maybe even Moberg was only convincing himself because he was under pressure. Of course, she hadn’t been involved in Mednick’s interrogation. Often in that claustrophobic situation she had found herself forming an opinion of a suspect that flew in the face of the facts. Their body language was under the microscope. Their every utterance could be swiftly interpreted. Lies and truth could be disseminated. Above all, your instincts were always heightened by the close proximity to the suspect. More often than not you could sense whether the suspect was guilty or innocent.

Yet sometimes – and she had been culpable herself – one had gone into an interrogation so convinced of the suspect’s guilt that your instincts were banished from the room. Nothing that was said would change that view. Nordlund had often spoken about keeping an open mind, even in what appeared an open-and-shut case. Had Moberg gone into the Mednick interrogation with his mind already made up, or was there something about Mednick during the questioning that had convinced him that this was their man? She feared it was the former.

Anita had called Eva Thulin about the footprints. And, no, Mednick’s size forty-threes hadn’t shown up in the kitchen. Or any fingerprints. She had also put a call into Roslyn’s production company in Stockholm to find out the whereabouts of Bengt Valquist. The girl at the other end of the line, called Agnes, had told her that Bengt was at his apartment in the house he had bought his parents in Lund. That was where he stayed when he wasn’t working and schmoozing in Stockholm. He had been there since before the unfortunate murder, as he did some occasional guest-lecturing at the university. She gave Anita his address and mobile number. Anita also asked whether she knew where Tilda Tegner would be. Agnes said she didn’t know, but she assumed she would probably be with Bengt. Anita also asked whether Agnes remembered the fuss about the letters from H to Malin Lovgren. She did, but most of them had been delivered by hand to Malin’s Malmö apartment. She said that Mick had been upset by them more than Malin.