Unspoken (7 page)

“Well, yes. Henry won at the harness-racing track. He won the five-race jackpot, and he was the only winner, so it was a lot of money. Eighty thousand kronor, I think. Bengt told me about it the other day.”

Jacobsson and Wittberg looked at her in astonishment.

“When did this happen?”

“It wasn’t this past Sunday, so it must have been the previous Sunday. Yes, that’s when it was, because they were at the track.”

“And Henry won eighty thousand kronor? Do you know what he did with the money?”

“Bought booze, I assume. Part of it went straight to alcohol. As soon as they have a little cash, they start buying rounds for everybody.”

“Who else belongs to his circle of friends?”

“There’s a man named Kjelle that he hangs out with a lot, along with a couple of girls. Monica and Gunsan. Though I suppose her real name is Gun.”

“Last names?”

She shook her head.

“Where do they live?”

“I don’t know that, either, but somewhere here in town. Also a man named Örjan, by the way. I think he just moved here recently. Bengt has been talking about him lately. I think he lives on Styrmansgatan.”

They said good-bye to Doris Johnsson, who promised to call as soon as she heard anything from her son.

With the information about the track winnings, they now had a clear motive for the murder.

Knutas had brought along a packet of Danish open-faced sandwiches for lunch. His father-in-law had recently paid them a visit and delighted the whole family with the delicacies he had brought from Denmark. The three slices of dark rye bread each had a different kind of lunch meat: liver sausage topped with a piece of pickled squash; sliced meatballs with pickled beets; and his favorite, Danish sausage roll. And an ice-cold beer to go with this glorious repast.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Norrby stuck his head inside.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Of course.”

Norrby folded his nearly six-foot-two frame into one of the visitor chairs in Knutas’s office.

“I’ve been talking to one of the neighbors, who had something interesting to say.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Anna Larsson is an elderly woman who lives in the apartment above Dahlström’s. On Monday night around ten thirty she heard Flash go out. He was wearing his old slippers, which made a special sound when he walked.”

Knutas frowned. “How could she hear that from inside her apartment?”

“I know, that’s something you might well ask, but it so happened that her cat was suffering from diarrhea.”

“So?”

“Anna Larsson lives alone, and she doesn’t have a balcony. She was just about to go to bed when her cat shit on the floor. It smelled so bad that she didn’t want to have the garbage bag containing the shit in her apartment. She had already put on her nightgown and didn’t want to go downstairs to the trash cans, for fear of running into one of her neighbors. So she put the bag on the landing outside her door for the time being. She thought that nobody would notice if she tossed it out first thing in the morning.”

“Get to the point,” said Knutas impatiently. Norrby’s tendency to present too many details was sometimes annoying.

“Well, at the very moment that she opens her door, she hears Dahlström coming out wearing his slippers. He locks his door and goes downstairs to the basement.”

“Okay,” said Knutas, tapping his pipe on the table.

“Mrs Larsson doesn’t think any more about it. She goes to bed and falls asleep. In the middle of the night she’s awakened by her cat meowing. This time the cat has made a mess on the floor of her bedroom. That animal had a really bad stomachache.”

“Hmm.”

“She gets out of bed and cleans up everything. She now has another bag of cat shit that has to be put outside on the landing. When she opens the door, someone comes in the entrance one floor down and stops at Dahlström’s door. But this time she doesn’t hear Dahlström’s shuffling slippers; this person is wearing real shoes. She’s curious, so she stands there listening. The stranger doesn’t ring the doorbell but the door opens and the person goes inside, and she doesn’t hear any voices.”

Now Knutas’s interest was aroused. His pipe froze in midair.

“Then what happened?”

“Then everything was quiet. Not a sound.”

“Did she have the impression that someone had opened Dahlström’s door from the inside? Or did the person outside open it?”

“She thinks that the person outside opened it.”

“Why didn’t she tell us about this earlier?”

“She was interviewed on the evening when Dahlström’s body was found. She says that she felt stressed and upset, so she mentioned only that she had heard him go down to the basement. Afterward I got to wondering how she could be so sure about it. That’s why I went back to talk to her again.”

“Good job,” Knutas said. “It might have been the killer that she heard, but it could just as well have been Dahlström coming in from somewhere. This was several hours later, wasn’t it?”

“Definitely, but it seems quite unlikely that he would have gone out, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. Did the woman notice anything else after the person went inside?”

“No, she went back to bed and fell asleep.”

“Okay. The question is whether the person had a key—assuming that it wasn’t Dahlström, that is.”

“There’s no sign that the lock was forced.”

“Maybe it was someone he knew.”

“That seems most plausible.”

When the investigative team met again that afternoon, Jacobsson and Wittberg started off by reporting on their encounter with Doris Johnsson and what she had told them about the winnings at the racetrack.

“Now at least we have a motive,” said Jacobsson, concluding her report.

“That explains why the apartment was ransacked,” said Knutas. “The murderer apparently knew that Dahlström had won big at the track.”

“The money still hasn’t turned up,” added Sohlman, “so presumably the perpetrator found it.”

“Bengt Johnsson comes immediately to mind,” said Jacobsson. “I think we need to put out an APB on him.”

“Considering that this involves a homicide, I have to agree.” Knutas turned to Norrby. “We’ve obtained some new information from a witness.”

His colleague told everyone about Anna Larsson and her sick cat in the apartment above.

“Damn,” said Wittberg. “That indicates that the perp had a key. Which reinforces our suspicions about Johnsson.”

“Why is that?” Jacobsson objected. “The perp could just as easily have killed Dahlström, then stolen his keys and gone up to his apartment.”

“Or he might have just picked the lock,” Sohlman interjected. “Dahlström had a regular cylinder lock on his door. A skilled burglar could have gotten it open without leaving any sign of forced entry. We didn’t find any damage on first examination, but we’ll take another look at the lock.”

“I agree with Wittberg,” said Norrby. “I think it was Bengt Johnsson. He was Dahlström’s closest friend and it’s likely that he had a spare key. Unless it was Dahlström himself who had decided to go out again in the middle of the night. Wearing real shoes this time.”

“Sure, that’s possible. But if it was Bengan, why would he then contact the super?” said Jacobsson, sounding skeptical.

“To divert suspicion from himself, of course,” snapped Norrby.

“If the neighbor woman’s testimony is accurate, then Dahlström was alive twenty-four hours after he went to the racetrack and had a party in his apartment,” said Knutas. “That means he wasn’t killed in connection with the party. The murder most likely took place late on Monday night or in the early hours of Tuesday morning. We’ll soon have a more precise determination of the time from the medical examiner.”

“By the way, we received another interesting piece of information from a witness,” Norrby went on. “I was out there today, talking with all the neighbors for a second time. One of them who wasn’t home gave me a call later on.”

“Yes?”

Knutas leaned his head on his hands, preparing for another lengthy report.

“It’s a girl who goes to Säve High School. She also heard someone in the stairwell late Monday night. She said it was Arne Haukas, the man who lives across from her on the floor below, meaning the same floor where Dahlström lived. Haukas is a PE teacher, and he usually goes out jogging in the evening. Normally he goes out around eight, but on Monday she heard him leave his apartment around eleven p.m. She also saw him from her window.”

“Is that so? How can she be so sure of the time and day?”

“Her older sister from Alva was visiting. They were up late, talking, and they both saw him. This girl has been keeping an eye on him ever since she discovered that he’s a bit of a Peeping Tom. He always looks in her window whenever he runs past. She thinks he goes jogging in the evening as a pretext for peering in people’s windows.”

“Does she have any proof for her allegations?”

“No. She actually sounded a little doubtful herself. She said that she wasn’t sure about it, that it was just a feeling she had.”

“Is this Haukas married?”

“No, he lives alone. And there could be some basis for the girl’s uneasiness. I’ve only managed to make one phone call about the man so far, and that was to Solberga School, where he works. The principal, whom I happen to know personally, told me that several years ago Arne Haukas was accused of spying on the girls when they changed their clothes. The students claimed that he would barge into the locker room to tell them about something trivial. Four of them thought it was so unpleasant that they filed a complaint with the principal.”

“What happened?”

“The principal had a talk with Haukas, who denied the allegations, and that was the end of the matter. It apparently never happened again. No other students have complained.”

“There seem to be a lot of sleazy individuals living in that building,” Wittberg interjected. “Alcoholics, sick cats, Peeping Toms . . . It makes you wonder what kind of madhouse that place is.”

His comments prompted some merriment around the table. Knutas raised his hand in admonishment.

“In any event, we’re not looking for a sex offender; we’re looking for a murderer. But this PE teacher might have seen something since he was out running on the night of the murder. Has he been interviewed?”

“No, apparently not,” replied Norrby.

“Then we need to do that today.”

He turned to Jacobsson. “Anything new on Dahlström?”

“We know that he was employed as a photographer at
Gotlands Tidningar
. He worked there until 1980, when he resigned and started his own company, called Master Pictures. The business did well for the first few years, but in 1987 it went into bankruptcy, with major debts. After that, there’s no information that Dahlström had any sort of job. He lived on welfare until he started receiving a disability pension in 1990.”

“Where are his wife and daughter now?” asked Knutas.

“His ex-wife still lives in their old apartment on Signalgatan. His daughter lives in Malmö. Single, with no children. Or at least she’s the only person listed at that address. Ann-Sofie Dahlström, his ex-wife, was on the mainland, but she’ll be back home later this afternoon. She promised to come straight here from the airport.”

“That’s good,” said Knutas. “We need to get in touch with the daughter, too. I want to put out an internal APB on Bengt Johnsson immediately. We need to ask everyone in his circle of acquaintances where they think he might be staying. Sohlman, you’re in charge of examining the apartment door lock one more time. The question is: How many people knew about the money Dahlström won at the track? Everyone who was at the track with him that evening has to be interviewed. But did anyone else know?”

“In those kinds of circles, news like that probably spreads like wildfire,” said Wittberg. “No one that we’ve talked to in town has said a word about the money, but they may have their reasons for not talking.”

“You’ll have to interview them again, along with all the others,” said Knutas. “The money throws a whole new light on the case.”

If there was one thing that Emma detested, it was sewing machines.

To think that anyone should have to bother with this kind of shit work
, she thought, her mouth full of pins. Her sense of irritation was fast becoming a headache. She swore silently. Why should it be so damned difficult to make a pair of pants? When other people sewed in a zipper, they made it look ridiculously easy.

She was really trying her best, and she had armed herself with tons of patience before she started, promising herself that this time she wouldn’t give up. She would not surrender to the slightest obstacle, although she had a tendency to do just that. She was certainly well aware of her own weaknesses.

She had been struggling with this sewing project for an hour, and she had already smoked three cigarettes to calm her nerves. Sweat broke out on her forehead as she tried to straighten out the denim fabric under the presser foot. Twice she had been forced to undo the seam when the zipper ended up buckling.

In school she had always hated sewing class. The silence, the sternness of the teacher. The fact that everything had to be so finicky—the seam allowance, the fitting of the pattern, the wrong and right side of the fabric. The only bad grade that she’d ever received on her report card in grade school was in sewing. It was a permanent reminder of her failure to make anything from pot holders to knitted caps.

The ring of her cell phone came like the arrival of a much anticipated guest. When she heard Johan’s voice, fire raced through her breast.

“Hi, it’s me. Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, but you know you’re not supposed to call me.”

“I couldn’t help it. Is he home?”

“No, he plays floorball on Monday nights.”

“Please don’t be mad.”

A brief silence. Then his voice again, low and gentle. Like a caress on her brow.

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. But I was just about to have a hysterical fit and throw my sewing machine out the window.”

His soft laugh made her stomach lurch.

“You’re trying to sew something? What happened to that vow you made?”