Meet me in Malmö: The first Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) (4 page)

‘Mick was beside himself. But it was obvious that I hadn’t killed her. Even he could see that she was stiff. Must have been dead for a while.’

‘Are you used to seeing dead bodies?’

‘Only my mother’s.’ He stared down to his feet as though embarrassed. ‘I held her, too.’

She turned back and faced Ewan. ‘So what were you doing here?’

Ewan was amazed at how accurate her English was after the error-strewn efforts of the shouting policeman. ‘I came to interview Mick.’

‘You say, Mick. You know him?’

‘We were at university together. In England.’

Ewan went onto explain the arrangements that had been made for him to come over for the interview, where and when to meet and how he had come into the apartment on finding the door unlocked.

‘Just as a matter of interest, why Malmö and not Stockholm? That’s where they spent most of their time.’

‘I have no idea. The girl I dealt with to arrange the trip is based at his production company in Stockholm. And it seems odd because Mick was up in Stockholm yesterday and wasn’t coming down until this morning. Maybe it just fitted in with his schedule.’

She tugged thoughtfully at one of the ends of her scarf.

‘We will need to speak to you again, Mr Strachan.’

‘But I’ve got a flight back to Newcastle tomorrow.’

She smiled, though it contained no warmth. ‘That is not possible. Where are you staying?’

‘At the Hotel Comfort.’

‘Please leave your details with Olander here. We will speak later.’

‘But why? I haven’t done anything. I just found…I need to—‘

‘Later,’ she said brusquely and turned away. Then she paused at the door and swivelled round. ‘For the record, where were you last night between about eleven and one?’

‘In bed. Asleep. Where the hell did you expect me to be?’

Her eyes narrowed and the stare was uncompromising, but she didn’t say anything. Ewan wondered how he going to explain this mess to Brian?

Anita came out of the studio and closed the door behind her. Malin Lovgren’s slender frame was being eased into a body bag. The operation was being supervised by Thulin. The bag was about to be zipped up when Anita said, ‘Wait a second. Eva, did you notice whether she was wearing a pendant?’

‘No, she wasn’t, though there were signs that there had been something about her neck. But I really need to have a closer look because naturally there are a lot of abrasions in that area.’

‘Last night, on the telly, she was wearing a pendant. I noticed it because I’ve got one that’s similar.’

Thulin laughed. ‘They’re paying you too much.’

‘No. It’s not expensive. It’s just that it’s made by a girl I know in Simrishamn. Lotta Lind. She specialises in these colourful glass starfish designs. That’s why I noticed it last night. It was blue.’

‘She probably took it off when she got home.’

‘Possibly, but she still had all the same things on. We can soon check.’

As Anita left the room there was a loud rasping metallic sound of the zip finally closing the world of Malin Lovgren.

He hovered at the back of the crowd. Who was it? they wondered. Speculation was rife; theories were already being bandied about. It was a businessman, someone suggested. A prostitute, assured another. No, it was one of the alkies who spend their life in the Systembolag opposite. Committed suicide by mistake. It was a knifing, the policeman over there had said to the woman in the fur hat standing behind those two students. Malmö was turning into New York. It was dreadful. It was bound to have been committed by an asylum seeker. Couldn’t trust them. A drugs deal gone wrong.

But he knew the truth. He knew who it was.

He had seen the female cop with the glasses standing up at the window. Was she good at her job? Would she ask the right questions? Would she come after him?

Ewan drew long and hard on his cigarette. When he exhaled it was difficult to tell whether it was smoke or cold vapour. Despite the deep winter chill he was sitting on a bench between an old-fashioned green lamppost and a modern green waste bin on Kungsgatan. The wide avenue of leafless trees channelled the eye towards St Pauli Kyrka, a four-sided red brick church with a confection of curves, straight lines, and rounded windows, all topped off with an iced cake of mini-spires and a central clock tower shaped like an inverted ice-cream cone. Maybe, after he had finished his cigarette, he would take sanctuary inside and gather his thoughts.

The last hour had already played havoc with his clear initial impressions and begun to blur them. One minute he was going to interview an old university acquaintance, the next he was found clutching the dead body of the wife of the interviewee. He hadn’t had time to panic as Mick had burst in and thumped him. Thank God for the photographer or he would have been pulped. And why had Mick not been there in the first place? The police hadn’t been very friendly. Surely he couldn’t be a suspect? He supposed they would find his prints on the body as he had held her, but she had been dead a long time so they couldn’t place him at the scene. But you never know with police under pressure. They would want a quick conviction in a high-profile case. He hadn’t got an alibi so was an easy target. They might ask awkward questions. Maybe not the big fat aggressive one but that Sundström woman looked sharp. She didn’t appear the sort who would take prisoners.

He had been glad to be able to escape the increasingly claustrophobic flat after giving his details to the young police sergeant - home address, mobile number, hotel room number. He had managed to slip out of the block as the crowd were pushing forward to try and ghoulishly catch a glimpse of the body as it was wheeled out. He hadn’t seen Mick, which was a relief. What do you say to a man who has just had his glamorous wife murdered? The interview was out of the window. Brian would go ballistic. This would probably cost him his job, which was hanging by a thread anyway. And Brian would be happy to snap it and get rid of him. Well, fuck him! He’d find another job. Still, he would wait until he returned to the hotel before calling Newcastle with the bad news. First, a couple of drinks.

He took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it to the ground. As he was crunching it out with his heel he became aware of someone standing next to the bench. Ewan turned his head – it was Mick. Despite the cold he was only wearing a fashionably expensive leather jacket. Their eyes met. Mick’s gaze made Ewan feel uncomfortable. Mick appeared totally calm now.

‘Now you really have a story.’

Ewan stood up. This was an awkward situation. All that he managed was a mumbled, ‘It’s dreadful’.

Ewan found himself walking slowly towards the church with Mick at his side. In this time of difficulty the church seemed to be pulling them towards it.

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘I know,’ said Ewan. He found it easier to walk slowly alongside Mick as he didn’t have to look at him.

‘When I saw you there…for a minute I …’ Mick’s voice trailed off.

‘It’s ok.’

They had now reached the far side of the church. A flight of steps led up to a studded wooden door, framed by three arches.

‘She looked beautiful.’ Ewan felt it was his turn to instigate a conversation. ‘Malin, I mean.’

Mick’s eyes followed the lines of the church up to its main tower. He was still looking heavenwards when the reply came. ‘She was the most beautiful person I have ever known.’ His head suddenly dropped as though he had received a blow on the back of his head. ‘And I have spoilt it all.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I have.’ When he turned to Ewan there were tears in his eyes. Ewan didn’t know where to put himself. He was bad at dealing with raw emotions. He found it hard enough to take when women cried. In men, it was just embarrassing. He had only cried once before in manhood and it wasn’t even when his mother had died. And afterwards he had sworn he would never cry over another human being again. Yet here was the most self-possessed man he had ever met letting tears spill slowly down his cheeks.

The appalling spell was broken by the sudden burst of a mobile phone. The tune was familiar, but it wasn’t Ewan’s phone. Mick looked startled before realizing that it was his. It was still playing away as he took it out of his jacket pocket. Then Ewan remembered where he had heard the tune before. It was the theme from Mick’s last film
The Geese
. Mick stared at the mobile’s panel. He held it out in the palm of his hand towards Ewan. ‘Please. I can’t.’

Ewan took the phone. ‘Yes?’

‘
Hej, Mick
,
hur är det?’
The voice stopped. ‘Mick?’

‘This is Mick’s phone but I’m Ewan Strachan.’

‘Ah, the interview. Sorry to interrupt you.’ The voice had switched to English. ‘I’m Bengt. Bengt Valquist. I produce Mick’s movies.’ He was the man who had been so attentive to the actress in Edinburgh, Ewan remembered. ‘Can you tell Mick to call me when you are finished, please?’ His English was very precise as though thinking through the words before he said them.

Ewan could see that Mick was in no state to call anybody.

‘You won’t have heard.’

‘Heard?’

‘Malin Lovgren.’

There was a pause at the other end. ‘What about Malin?’

‘She’s dead.’ There was no other way he could put it. The long silence at the other end made Ewan think that Valquist had hung up. ‘Hello?’

‘Yes. I heard.’

‘Last night. She was…killed.’

‘
Herregud
,’ came a hoarse exclamation from the other end. ‘
Var är…
,’ he quickly corrected himself, ‘Where is Mick now?’

‘With me. We’re by some church near his flat.’

‘I must come. I must see him. Tell him, please.’ And he was gone. Ewan lowered the phone from his ear and offered it back to Mick, who took it with some reluctance.

‘It was Bengt. He’s coming over.’

Mick nodded but didn’t move. His tears were dried up now.

‘And you? The police?’

‘I’m meant to be flying back tomorrow but they say I have got to stay. I don’t know for how long.’ This wasn’t the time to go into the problems this would cause him or how it might stuff his career.

‘I’ll go back. Wait for Bengt.’

‘Right.’

Mick cut a pathetic figure. All the cock-sureness was gone. It was as though someone had sucked all the vitality out of him. Without that he was nothing. He had visibly aged. His face was as gaunt as that of his wife lying in that impersonal body bag. Ewan watched him wander back in the direction of Värnhems torget and the busy road. What Ewan needed was a stiff drink.

The room was full of expectant faces. Commissioner Dahlbeck had just addressed the assembled detectives on the importance of the case. How the whole of Sweden would be looking at their every move. They had to combine speed with thoroughness. The public still hadn’t forgotten the assassination of Olof Palme and all the questions that that had raised. Fortunately, catching the murderer of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh had been more straightforward, but this one being such a high-profile case they couldn’t afford any slip-ups. It was a cover-your-arses speech that was doing nothing to push forward the investigation. Anita grew impatient and her attention wandered to the window.

Below them was the wide canal that encircled the old part of the town like a moat. In the summer, pedal boats made the round trip. It took about an hour but if you were a few minutes over your time you were charged for a second hour. She had been taken round on one of her disastrous Internet dates by a pedalo gigolo. She couldn’t remember his name, but having dawdled past Kungsparken he had suddenly realized that the hour was nearly up. She thought he was going to have a heart attack as his increasingly desperate pedalling got the boat back with a minute to spare. His triumphant but sweaty face hadn’t created the right romantic impression.

In fact, the whole Internet dating process depressed her. It had been Sandra’s idea after the divorce. It emerged that there were three types of date. The first was frightened off as soon as they found out that she was a cop. The second thought that as an inspector she would want to be the dominant partner and that went against good old Swedish male chauvinism. The third type wanted her to don a police uniform and handcuff them to the bed. She had had her fill of Swedish men. She had requested the site to remove her dating ‘nickname’ and photo.

‘I’ll hand over to Detective Chief Inspector Moberg.’ Anita’s concentration returned.

‘Thank you, commissioner.’ Moberg’s strained smile was the signal for the Commissioner to beat a retreat so that the real policing could start.

‘Keep me posted hourly,’ was the Commissioner’s parting shot. He was followed out of the room by the elegant Sonja Blom, the new public prosecutor. She was said to have a brain that was as sharp as her clothes. Anita didn’t know her but she had made up her mind that she didn’t like her. The couple of times Anita had come across the public prosecutor she had felt scruffy and inadequate by comparison.

Once he was out of the room Moberg looked round at the assembled group. ‘Now that you know how important this is…’ He waited for a low murmur of laughter. ‘Right. The victim is Malin Lovgren.’ He looked at the large whiteboard that had been set up against the wall and tapped the photo of the actress, a publicity shot that had been downloaded from her Internet site. ‘She had been strangled and was found in the living room. But according to Thulin she wasn’t killed there. We don’t yet know where in the apartment she was actually murdered. We’re awaiting details from forensics. She was found at her apartment this morning at about 11.30 by an English journalist called Ewan Strachan.’ He wrote down Strachan’s name in blue felt pen. ‘You know what I think about journalists so I’d like to assume that he did it!’ Further amusement. ‘However, the murder was committed last night, somewhere between about eleven and one the morning. We’ll get a more exact time later but it puts our journalist in the clear. Is that right, Anita?’

‘I think it’s probably a case of the wrong place at the wrong time. He came over to interview Lovgren’s husband, Mick Roslyn.’ As she continued, Moberg wrote up Roslyn’s name on the board. ‘Roslyn set up the time and the place. Strachan says he arrived on time but hung around for Roslyn to turn up. Getting impatient he tried the door, which he found unlocked. He went in, and on entering the living room he found Lovgren on the floor. For some reason he cradled her – he doesn’t know why – and it was in this position that Roslyn turned up and found him. He was with a photographer who had been booked to take shots for the article. Roslyn, seeing Strachan on the floor with his apparently unconscience wife, lost it and attacked him. The photographer, Jonas Mjallby, pulled Roslyn off Strachan.’

‘Do we need to pursue the journalist any further?’

‘I would like to talk to him again. There are one or two things that may or may not be significant. The two men were at university together so there may be a history there. The other thing is that Roslyn set up the trip and dictated its timing. He was meant to be in Stockholm last night and came down early this morning. Strachan thought it was strange that they were meeting in Malmö and not Stockholm where Roslyn and Lovgren spent most of their time. His production company is up there. So is their main residence.’

‘Ok, let’s check that Roslyn was in Stockholm last night.’

‘And why was he late?’ put in Anita. ‘If he had been on time he would have discovered the body himself.’

‘Maybe he was meant to.’ This was Henrik Nordlund, a man of few words and those he did use were usually well chosen.

‘A possibility,’ mused Moberg. ‘If that was the case then it was premediated. Whatever, we need to talk to Roslyn as soon as possible. He was too upset to be coherent earlier.’

‘He’s volunteered to come in later,’ said Anita.

‘Good. You talk to him. If he’s upset he’ll probably find it easier to talk in English…and we all know how good the lovely Anita’s English is.’ The men smirked. Anita’s two female colleagues in the room scowled. ‘But be gentle with him. He’s just lost his wife. More importantly, he’ll have powerful friends in Stockholm so don’t upset him – yet.

‘Now, Malin herself. I want her movements traced for last night. We know she was on the telly, but what time did she go to the studio and what time did she return to the apartment? Did she do anything in between? Meet anyone? The one thing we know is that there was no forced entry. In fact, she may have known her murderer because she was about to make two cups of tea. So who would turn up that late? She wasn’t dressed for bed so she might have been expecting someone?’

‘A man friend?’ Karl Westermark would suggest that, thought Anita. He was the station Romeo and the resident creep. He had even grabbed her arse at the last Christmas party. He wouldn’t do that again in a hurry. ‘Husband away, coast clear. He wasn’t expected until the next morning.’

‘You look into that. She might have been having an affair. She might have other admirers. See if she has ever had any stalkers or guys pestering her. Attractive women in the public eye often do. Check with our colleagues in Stockholm if they have anything along those lines. Basically, we need to build up a complete picture of this woman. What was she like? Was she a down-to-earth girl or a brainless prima donna? Was she saint or slut? She certainly didn’t mind getting her kit off for the cameras.’

‘That doesn’t make her a slut.’ Anita’s interjection brought an awkward silence.

Moberg stared at the board for a few moments and puffed out his bloated cheeks as if he were searching for inspiration. Anita took advantage of the break to take out her snus tin and pop a miniature bag of tobacco next to her gum. She was quite pleased with herself that she had been off cigarettes for six months.

‘We also need to check the Internet. They have some strange sites out there. There may be some lunatic fans around.’ Moberg hardly knew how to work his computer; not even to access porn. ‘And I want any CCTV in that area looked at. At the bus station there will surely be some footage available.’