The Dangerous Game (10 page)

‘What about the door?’ asked Prosecutor Smittenberg. ‘Was there any sign of forced entry?’

‘No. It could be that the victim and the perpetrator knew each other. I can’t say. But why would Sandberg even bother to lock the door way out there in the woods? There doesn’t seem to be any reason to do that. But the perpetrator fastened the padlock on the door when he left, so Jenny Levin had to pick the lock with a pair of tweezers. Here’s something interesting that we found.’

The photo on the screen showed a close-up of a piece of jewellery. A shiny green stone shaped like a beetle, with tiny legs and antennae.

‘This earring was found on the floor under the victim’s body. Markus Sandberg does not have pierced ears. We need to find out whether it belongs to Jenny or any of the hotel staff. The cabin hasn’t been used in months, but it was thoroughly cleaned after the summer season. Of course, it’s possible that the earring was left there by a previous guest, but it could also belong to the perpetrator.’

He paused for dramatic effect.

‘I’ve been saving the best for last,’ he added, with some irony. He reached for his glass of water and peered solemnly over the rim at his colleagues seated around the table.

‘Now that you’ve seen the cabin, I’m going to show you the victim. Be prepared for the worst. These pictures are not very pretty. We got them from the hospital. So here is Markus Sandberg as he looked when he arrived.’

Everyone was paying rapt attention. Jacobsson closed her eyes halfway. She still had a hard time looking at victims who were seriously injured or dead. After fifteen years on the police force, she realized that she probably would never get used to it.

Even though the officers in the room were all very experienced, they gasped when the pictures of Sandberg appeared on the screen. He was unrecognizable. His face was swollen and lacerated, his jaw crushed, leaving a gaping wound with teeth and bone fragments sticking out of the remaining pieces of flesh. One side of his skull was covered in blood, and his right ear was missing. He had deep, nasty gashes on his hands, upper arms and forearms.

No one said a word as the photos were shown. Afterwards, they all continued to sit in silence. Not even Sohlman said a word. What kind of person would do something like this? Who were they looking for?

KNUTAS WOKE AT
five in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. Lina’s side of the bed was empty. She was working the night shift at the hospital. Feeling restless, he got up and made some coffee. Gloomily, he stared at the total darkness outside the window. Winter lay ahead, a grey, cold haze that would last four months, with the days getting shorter and night falling sooner, only a few hours after lunch.

The cat purred and jumped up on to the kitchen table, wanting to be petted, then slipped outside when Knutas opened the front door to fetch the morning paper. The November chill made him wince. It had been a cold night. He steeled himself, then hurried down to the letterbox, still wearing his dressing gown. Back inside the warm house, he sat down at the kitchen table and poured himself a cup of coffee. The entire front page was devoted to the assault out on Furillen. Knutas was startled to read that the police suspected the weapon used was an axe. The article referred to last night’s Regional News report, which had been broadcast on TV. Johan Berg again. That man had an infernal ability to dig up more details than the police wanted to reveal. Even though Knutas was annoyed, he couldn’t help feeling a certain admiration for the reporter. And there was really no harm done. The information was bound to leak out sooner or later, and in the best-case scenario, it might bring in more tip-offs to the police.

He quickly scanned the rest of the article. Nothing noteworthy, nothing that the police hadn’t made public. He managed to listen to the news on the local radio station before he had to leave for work. It was largely the same as he’d read in the paper.

He put on warm clothes and set off. It took him twenty minutes to walk to police headquarters on Norra Hansegatan. He enjoyed this part of the morning, before the city awoke. He was all alone on the quiet streets. Snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, melting the moment they touched the ground.

The only visible lights on in the police station were on the ground floor. As usual, Knutas greeted the officer on duty and exchanged a few pleasantries. Then he went up two flights of stairs to the criminal division. The light was on in Karin Jacobsson’s office.

‘Hi,’ he said in surprise when he saw her sitting at her desk. ‘You’re already here?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

He paused in the doorway.

‘Any special reason?’

‘No. Just the usual ghosts.’

‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘Sure. That’d be great.’

Knutas came back with two cups, setting one down in front of her before taking a chair across the desk from her.

‘Did you see the news on TV last night?’ he asked.

‘No, we were busy with other things.’

‘Apparently, Regional News reported that we suspect an axe was used in the assault.’

‘I saw that in the morning paper. Not totally unexpected. Berg must have gone out to Furillen and talked to someone. Everybody who works at the hotel knew about it.’

‘I can’t believe that people have such a hard time keeping their mouths shut.’ Knutas shook his head. ‘Anything new?’

‘Not really. Except that the earring that Sohlman found in the cabin keeps getting more and more interesting. Nobody seems to want to claim it. Evidently, it doesn’t belong to Jenny Levin or to any staff member or previous hotel guest. That particular hermit’s cabin was recently built, so very few people stayed there before Sandberg. And the very cooperative and efficient receptionist has managed to contact almost all of them. At the moment, all indications are that the earring belongs to the perpetrator.’

‘So we know one thing about him,’ said Knutas dryly. ‘He has at least one pierced ear.’

‘As for Sandberg’s computer, it’s going to be examined today,’ Jacobsson went on. ‘Let’s hope that it can tell us something useful. I’ve also started going through all the interviews and I’ve found at least one interesting thing. The cleaning woman who works at the hotel, and sometimes works on reception as well, reported that a man phoned the hotel about a week before the attack and asked some strange questions. When he heard a photo shoot was scheduled at the hotel, he asked detailed questions about the arrangements. The cleaning woman thought it was a bit odd, so she asked if he was a reporter. He hung up without answering.’

‘Did he give his name?’

‘No.’

‘We need to trace that phone call. Does she remember what day he rang?’

‘Actually, she does, because she was brought in when a staff member called in sick. Not last Saturday, but the previous Saturday. She’s positive about that. She even remembers what time he phoned, because she was listening to
Melodikrysset
on the radio and was annoyed at being interrupted.’

‘Bravo. Could you follow up on this today?’

‘Of course. We also have the reports from our colleagues who knocked on doors in the surrounding areas on Furillen, but they don’t tell us much. There are so few houses that are occupied this time of year, and the only people we were able to contact didn’t see or hear anything. An old man who lives right near the road claims that he definitely would have woken up if a car or motorcycle went by during the night. He’s a light sleeper. But all he heard was the ambulance. By the way, we still haven’t found the boat, but the helicopter will go out there as soon as it’s light. And no boat has been reported stolen. Today we’ll continue to search around Lergrav, Valleviken and the other communities in the vicinity. We’ll also try to talk to anyone who wasn’t at home yesterday in the houses along the road to Kyllaj.’

Jacobsson clasped her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling. Knutas looked at her for a moment without speaking. She was thin and petite, with short dark hair and big brown eyes. He noticed that she looked unusually pale, with dark circles under her eyes. But she’d said she hadn’t slept well. He liked her face. It was so sensitive. He’d been working with her for years, ever since she’d arrived as a trainee at police headquarters in Visby. He was almost fifteen years older than she was, but he never thought about the age difference. That’s so typical for a man in late middle age, he thought, with a good dose of self-contempt. We never want to admit how old we are. We’re constantly deceiving ourselves. But what did he know about Karin’s perception of things?

‘Do you often think about the age difference between us?’ he said, surprising himself by asking such a question out of the blue. He hadn’t intended to say anything. The words just slipped out.

Her cup banged as she set it down on the desk.

‘What did you say?’

‘Oh, er, I was just wondering if you think that … well, if you notice that there’s almost fifteen years between us,’ he said, embarrassed.

‘What do you mean? Are you asking me whether I think you’re old?’ She broke into a smile, revealing the gap between her front teeth.

‘Just forget it,’ he said, getting up.

She grabbed his arm.

‘Anders, seriously, what do you mean?’

‘It just occurred to me that I never think about the age difference between us, but maybe you do.’

‘It’s not something that I do think much about, I have to admit. Not often, at any rate. And we’re just co-workers, after all. If we were together, it would make a huge difference.’

She laughed annoyingly and gave him a poke in the side. Knutas felt like an idiot. There was something about Karin, something that he’d probably never fully understand.

THE WIND WAS
gusting harder across Kyllaj on this cold November morning as Eduardo and Dolores Morales drove towards the sea in their rental car. They had come to Gotland a few days earlier from their home in Seville in southern Spain to take part in a conference dealing with the depletion of fish stocks in Europe’s inland seas. Since they shared a keen interest in the history of fishing in various countries, Kyllaj was one of a string of fishing villages along the Gotland coast that the couple intended to visit. They wanted to take pictures that would become part of their ever-growing collection of photos from similar communities all over the world.

They got up early, enjoyed a hearty Scandinavian breakfast in the dining room of their hotel in Visby, and then set off to the north-east. Kyllaj was first on their list; then they would visit Lergrav, before continuing north to Bungeviken and Fårö.

They parked the car near the small-boat marina, which was deserted. All the boats had been taken in for the winter. Dolores Morales pulled up the zip on her heavy jacket before getting out of the car. The wind nipped at her cheeks, making her eyes water. The cold and the dark in these regions were indescribable. At this time of year, the sun set by four in the afternoon, and then it was pitch dark. She couldn’t for the life of her understand how the Swedes could bear it. It was beyond comprehension that anyone had come up with the absurd idea of settling this far north. Right now it was 3 degrees Celsius, with a north wind. The receptionist at the hotel had said this was nothing. Winter hadn’t even started yet. The truly bitter cold would arrive in January and February, when the seawater surrounding the island had cooled down completely. Then the temperature might drop to minus 10 degrees Celsius, or even minus 15, although that didn’t happen often on Gotland. Dolores Morales and her husband were experienced travellers, so they’d had the good sense to bring along appropriate warm clothing.

The fishing village consisted of a row of sheds down by the water, a small harbour with room for a dozen boats, and several wharfs. A few racks for drying fishing nets stood side by side, and two posts held beacons that came on at night to guide boats into the harbour.

As a matter of course, they headed off in different directions and methodically began to document what they saw. There was a feeling of complete desolation about the place, as if they found themselves at the world’s end, far from any real civilization. They peered in the windows of those sheds where the curtains were open and saw, as expected, mostly fishing gear, nets, and various tools.

Dolores was just about to suggest that they go back to the car and have a coffee break when she discovered that the padlock on one of the sheds was open. When she got closer, she could see that it had been cut. Someone had used pliers to cut off the lock. She looked around for Eduardo but didn’t see him. She called his name but, apparently, he didn’t hear her. Curiosity got the better of her, and with some excitement she opened the door to the shed.

It was dark inside, and the air was musty and damp. She looked about. Shelves loaded with tools and all sorts of fishing gear covered one entire wall. Hanging on another wall was a clumsily painted portrait of a smiling, bearded fisherman with a pipe in his mouth. She saw a rickety table with a paraffin lamp, a box of matches and a mug with dried coffee dregs in the bottom. On the floor stood a battered chest. She lifted the lid and found inside weekly tabloids and magazines that seemed to be forty or fifty years old. Many of them had cover photos of smiling women, some bare-breasted, some wearing bikinis. Somehow, they looked so innocent. She read the word
Se
, which was printed in white inside a red circle, and guessed that it must be the name of the publication. The date was 1964, which proved that she’d guessed right about the age of the magazines. She smiled at the sense of nostalgia that the covers conjured up in her. Those were the days.

She and Eduardo had met in the Basque country in the small town of San Sebastián. The fight for independence in that region of Spain had been heating up, and they were both only twenty years old. She had been so naive back then. Such an idealist. And what was she doing now? Documenting old fishing villages. Why, and for whom? she thought as she let go of the lid of the chest so that it closed with a dull thud. But the sound was loud enough to startle a mouse out of the shadows and send it racing across the floor. Dolores Morales was certainly not the type of woman who would be upset by something like that; she couldn’t care less about the mouse. But what did it have in its mouth? Something long and yellow. The light was dim inside the shed, and the mouse had quickly disappeared into a corner. But it had definitely been carrying something. She found a torch on a shelf, then glanced out of the window, but Eduardo was nowhere in sight. By now, he must be wondering what had happened to her. She switched on the torch and began searching for the mouse. She didn’t see it, but she did hear tiny claws scratching at the wooden floor. She aimed the beam of the torch at the floor and then at the walls lined with shelves. Ashes in the wood stove, a rusty drill, a saw, a glass jar containing freeze-dried coffee, a tin that she was curious enough to open. She smelled something sweet, although the tin was empty except for a few crumbs in the bottom. She recognized the fragrance of cinnamon and ginger. Then she realized what it was. Those typical, crisp biscuits that the Swedes served at Christmastime.
Pepparkakor
. As she looked around the space a little more, she finally realized what the mouse had been carrying. Next to the biscuit tin was a fruit platter with several old banana skins. Looking more closely, she saw that they weren’t that old – maybe from a few days ago, at most. Someone had been here recently.