The Killer's Art (34 page)

His girlfriend had been deeply shocked to hear that he was the one who had killed both of the art dealers. According to her, he was the nicest and most gentle person you could possibly meet.

The whole thing started one day in the autumn when David happened to overhear a conversation between his paternal grandparents. They were talking about the fact that Erik was adopted. This had come as a complete surprise to David. His whole life, he had assumed that these two people were his grandparents, yet they weren’t related to him at all. Not really. His real grandparents were somewhere else, but had never made themselves known. When he found out the truth, it was easy to work out the rest.

The fact that Hugo Malmberg had given Erik up for adoption on the very day he was born had seemed to David an enormous act of betrayal. That he was wealthy and able to throw money around while Erik struggled to pay his bills had filled David with contempt. He started tailing Malmberg, following him to the gallery, as he went about town and at the gym. He soon discovered that his real grandfather was gay.

In the diary entries, David described the terrible incident that became the springboard for everything else. One afternoon in November, David had followed his biological grandfather to an underground club for gay men. There he had witnessed Hugo Malmberg, along with Egon Wallin, using his own son for his sexual pleasures, although without being aware of their kinship.

David was the only one who knew the truth of the matter. It took only a couple of seconds for him to understand what he was seeing. Those seconds turned him into a murderer.

During the investigation, it turned out that Egon Wallin and Hugo Malmberg had not only had a relationship, but on several occasions they had also paid to have sex with male prostitutes. Knutas thought this must have been the reason for Malmberg’s reluctance to admit to the police that his relationship with Egon Wallin was more than a business partnership. And that was why he didn’t want to admit that his colleague on Gotland was homosexual when the police asked him about that.

The basis for the murders seemed to be David Mattson’s complicated and deluded relationship with his father, Erik. As far as Knutas understood from the detailed descriptions in the diary, David had always loved Erik and looked up to him. At the same time, he seemed to have longed for a father who didn’t really exist – the kind that others seemed to have, someone who could give him encouragement, solace, confirmation, love and a sense of security. This hope remained so strong that David hadn’t been able to free himself from Erik. The diary entries were permeated with a striving to make his father happy, to straighten out his life, to please him. Maybe David was hoping that his father would then be able to give him what he needed in return.

The theft of ‘The Dying Dandy’ was, of course, pure insanity. But
in David’s eyes, it was a way to redress the wrongs done to his father.

Knutas interpreted the fact that he’d wanted to show a connection with the sculpture as proof that deep in his heart David Mattson wanted to be caught, that he wanted the world to see and understand the suffering he had been forced to endure. That was undoubtedly also why he’d arranged his victims the way he had done. Everything had to do with revenge and redress and going back to the past.

As for the stolen paintings, Wittberg’s persistent efforts had finally paid off. It turned out that Egon Wallin had been collaborating with Mattis Kalvalis’s manager, Vigor Haukas. The paintings were stolen by professional criminals from the Baltics and later sold from there on the international market. Haukas had run the whole operation, with Wallin acting as a middleman while the paintings made their way out of Sweden. It had been a lucrative business for several years.

Knutas sighed as he continued reading. It was a deeply tragic story. And there was one theme that had run through the whole investigation: secrets. First there was the murder of Egon Wallin and everything that he’d kept hidden from his family; then Erik Mattson’s double life; and all the secrets that were part of Hugo Malmberg’s past.

Knutas took out his pipe from the top drawer of his desk, got up and went over to the window. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun was shining, and in the distance the sea was gleaming bright blue, the way it did only in the springtime. He glanced over at Dalman Gate. That was where it had all begun, two months earlier.

It seemed like a very, very long time ago.

This story is entirely fictional. Any similarities between the characters in the novel and actual individuals are coincidental. Occasionally I have taken artistic liberties to change things for the benefit of the book. This includes Swedish TV’s coverage of Gotland, which in the book has been moved to Stockholm. I have the utmost respect for SVT’s regional news programme
Östnytt,
which covers Gotland with a permanent team stationed in Visby.

The settings used in the book are usually described as they actually exist in reality, although there are a few exceptions.

Any errors that may have slipped into the story are mine alone.

First and foremost, I would like to thank my husband, journalist Cenneth Niklasson, who is always ready to be my sounding board and offer me the greatest support.

Special thanks to:

Gösta Svensson, former detective superintendent with the Visby police,

Magnus Frank, detective superintendent with the Visby police,

Hans Henrik Brummer, chief curator at Waldemarsudde,

Martin Csatlos, the Forensic Medicine Laboratory in Solna,

Ylva Hilleström, Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm,

Johan Jinnerot, curator at Bukowski’s Auction House,

Johan Gardelius, crime technician, Visby police,

Ulf Åsgård, psychiatrist,

Birgitta Amér, owner of Muramaris.

Thanks also to Nicklas, for his valuable help, and a big thanks to Ingrid Ljunggren.

And I would like to thank my dear author colleagues – thanks for being there!

Thanks also to my readers for their valuable opinions:

Lena Allerstam, journalist, Swedish TV,

Kerstin Jungstedt, consultant, Provins fem,

Lilian Andersson, editor at Bonnier Educational Books,

Anna-Maja Persson, Moscow correspondent, Swedish TV.

My thanks to Albert Bonniers Förlag, and especially to my publisher Jonas Axelsson and editor Ulrika Åkerlund. Thanks to my designer, John Eyre, for the cover of the Swedish edition, and to both Niclas Salomonsson and Emma Tibblin at Salomonsson Agency.

Last, but not least, I want to thank my wonderful children, Rebecka and Sebastian.

Mari Jungstedt, Älta, May 2006
www.marijungstedt.se

Mari Jungstedt
lives in Stockholm with her husband and two children. This is her fourth novel set on the island of Gotland. The previous three,
Unseen, Unspoken
and
Unknown,
are all available in Corgi paperback.