Menace In Malmö Page 5

  ‘Obviously not that harmonious, as one them killed him,’ butted in Zetterberg.

  ‘Obviously not. But before it all unravelled, they spent a lot of time together. They summered in Knäbäckshusen in 1994, a year after graduation. And they also spent a month together on Malta in the March of ninety-five. I don’t know whether it was then or when they joined up again that summer that the cracks in the Linus/Göran relationship began to appear. Anyway, Linus was the last one to arrive at Knäbäckshusen that last summer. The group all claimed that everything was fine among them, except for the situation between Linus and Göran, which caused some tension. Basically, none of the others had an obvious motive.’

  ‘You mean one that you could establish.’ Zetterberg could make anything she said sound snide.

  Zetterberg went over to a computer. She briefly fiddled with the keys. A map appeared on the whiteboard next to the photos of the victim and suspects. It showed the old part of the village of Knäbäckshusen, with the row of houses and their gardens. The house that the group had stayed in was marked with a neat red cross. It sat in a cul-de-sac off the main street. The garden at the back opened onto a large open area of scrubby grassland across which ran the path that led to the chapel bell tower, the chapel, and the beach beyond. Looking in the direction of the sea, the trees that Kurt had been hiding in were off to the left. The path and the chapel were both highlighted, as was the beach below. The orchard where the murder weapon was unearthed was also marked with a cross.

  ‘Right, let’s go back to the night of the murder. Three of the young people were at home. Ivar and Larissa doing things to each other. Carina was in another bedroom working.’

  ‘What was she working on?’ queried Szabo. ‘Wasn’t she meant to be on holiday?’

  ‘What turned out to be her first novel,’ answered Anita. She had followed Carina’s career with interest and enjoyed her books.

  Zetterberg pointed to the long garden area where there was an arrow next to the name “Lars-Gunnar”. ‘Lars-Gunnar was out here – this was confirmed by Carina, who spied him through a window. Over here,’ she said, indicating the beach, ‘we have the chief suspect, Linus. Of course, we now know that when Kurt Jeppsson saw him there, it wasn’t after the murder as he originally claimed. He saw him from the trees before it took place. However, that still means Linus was geographically closest to the victim at around the time of his death.’

  She moved closer to the map and used a biro as a pointer to indicate the movements of the characters involved. ‘So, we have young Kurt going into the trees here to light his cigarette. As he does so, he spies Linus on the beach. Shortly after his smoking fiasco, he hears someone hurrying away from the chapel.’

  ‘So, Inspector Nordlund’s team assumed that Linus had gone to the beach after the murder,’ reiterated Szabo slowly. ‘But we now know he was there just prior to Göran’s death. So, that begs the question as to whether Linus had enough time to get up from the beach and kill him.’

  ‘Good point,’ Zetterberg joyfully seized on the comment.

  ‘That depends on how accurate Kurt Jeppsson’s memory is,’ put in Anita, who could see where this was going. ‘The chapel is only a stone’s throw from the beach, and it would take less than a minute for him to reach it.’

  ‘He’d still have to be pretty quick,’ Szabo persisted. ‘And how did he know Göran would be in the chapel anyway?’

  ‘I think it was luck – or ill luck – that they were in the same place at the same time. Linus took his chance.’ Anita was adamant in her own mind that that was what had happened, irrespective of the new information. She took a deep breath. ‘Wouldn’t it make sense if you all went down and took a look at the scene of the crime?’

  ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing this afternoon,’ Zetterberg said firmly. ‘But I want my team to have full background knowledge before seeing the site.’

  ‘Sorry to go on,’ Szabo persisted. He glanced quickly towards Anita. ‘but wouldn’t Kurt have seen Linus with the skewer?’

  ‘Not the easiest thing to see from that distance in that light,’ suggested Erlandsson. Anita was relieved that she had someone in her corner.

  Zetterberg jumped in: ‘That’s as maybe. All we know is that Göran met someone at the chapel and ended up being stabbed. We don’t know if the meeting was pre-arranged, or by chance, as Nordlund’s team asserted. Whatever… the murderer was heard leaving by Kurt Jeppsson. Kurt then runs home and fetches his parents. Almost immediately after they find the body, Linus arrives. So, he was certainly in the vicinity. It’s interesting that he never denied being out and about. If he’d committed the murder, one would think he’d try and distance himself from the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Or do the opposite.’ Anita wasn’t going to let Zetterberg dismantle Henrik Nordlund’s case just to prove a point and discredit the team that had worked so hard on the original investigation.

  ‘Well, that’s for us to find out.’

  ‘And he did have blood on his T-shirt when he was first interviewed. Göran’s blood.’ Anita was still on the defensive.

  ‘If I’ve read the original case notes correctly, Linus is said to have rushed in when he recognized the body and immediately cradled his dead lover in a distraught manner. That would have produced the stains. The Jeppssons couldn’t remember if he already had blood on his T-shirt when he first appeared, as they were in a state of horrified confusion. And the forensic people couldn’t say whether the blood on the T-shirt was consistent with spatters one might expect from a stabbing by such a thin weapon because as Linus clutched the victim in his arms, they would be obscured by the blood seeping from the wound.’ Anita kept quiet. She remembered that had been a point of much debate at the time. The evidence was inconclusive, as they couldn’t get any corroboration from the Jeppssons. No other blood-stained garment was found, though the search for one didn’t happen for some days because it had taken a while to establish who was most likely to have been involved in the murder.

  ‘Our first job,’ Zetterberg continued, ‘is to track down the five members of the group and re-interview them.’

  ‘Well, I know Carina Lindvall lives in Stockholm.’ This was Erlandsson, who was obviously a Lindvall fan.

  ‘And according to Wikipedia,’ Szabo said, staring at his laptop screen, ‘Ivar Hagblom is a professor at Uppsala University.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ Anita said impatiently. ‘Don’t you recognize him from the TV? He’s the guy they always drag out to comment on the troubles in the Middle East. Every time Syria’s mentioned, he’s their go-to expert.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Obviously Zetterberg wasn’t a regular television news watcher.

  ‘I thought he looked familiar,’ nodded Szabo. ‘I can’t find the other three, but they’ll be easy enough to track down through our usual channels.’

  ‘You might find it harder with Linus Svärd.’

  ‘Why?’ Zetterberg almost snapped at Anita.

  Because Anita had kept an eye on Linus Svärd after the murder enquiry was wound down; she knew he’d spent a couple of years keeping a low profile in Malmö, and then had disappeared up to the far north after he was “outed” by a local newspaper. Residents had made it plain that they didn’t want a suspected killer living among them. Anita had tracked him to Kiruna, but then he’d gone abroad on some archaeological dig in Syria – the authorities couldn’t stop him. And then the trail went cold. What was clear was that he hadn’t returned to Sweden, unless he’d used a false name and passport.

  ‘He went abroad somewhere.’

  ‘Well, let’s find him.’

  After Zetterberg had called an end to the meeting – ‘I don’t think we’ll need to call on the assistance of Inspector Sundström again’, Szabo picked up his laptop, Erlandsson the original case files, and both left the room. Anita waited outside.

  ‘Still here?’ Zetterberg managed some mock surprise as she came out.

  ‘I know you’re trying to impress
your new team and prove you’re a tough cookie, but don’t ever speak to me again like you did in there. Try and be more professional.’

  ‘I was professional. It’s not my fault that your shortcomings – and Nordlund’s – are going to be exposed.’

  ‘You’re a conniving bitch, and I know how low you’ve stooped to get this job.’

  ‘I know how to serve my country.’

  ‘Stuff your country. And stuff you, too!’

  Anita stalked off. She was furious that she was furious. She had sounded so pathetically petulant. She’d let Zetterberg wind her up, which would just encourage the woman to dish out more bile. She was in no mood to rationalize her thoughts, but the truth of it was that Zetterberg had sown the first seeds of doubt in over twenty years of righteous conviction.

  CHAPTER 8

  The meeting had consumed Anita’s thoughts so much that after work she’d got into her car and driven across to Knäbäckshusen. The earlier rain had cleared, and it was an easy sixty-minute run as she cut across the middle of Skåne via Sjöbo and Tomelilla. She avoided the coast road, as it would be busier than usual with the train line out of action for the foreseeable future. She had already put up with Klara Wallen moaning about the situation – she’d had to take the emergency bus and, subsequently, been late for work. Anita noticed that Wallen had slipped off early to make sure she got back at a reasonable time to make Rolf’s evening meal. She skirted Simrishamn and headed up the Kivik road. That in itself brought back bad, far more recent, memories. At Rörum, she found the turning to Knäbäckshusen. The road curved through fields and orchards before straightening out as it entered the village. She knew that Zetterberg’s little gang would have been and gone by now so there was no likelihood of running into them; that would have been difficult to explain. Zetterberg had made it perfectly plain that she was no longer needed in their reopened investigation. So why was she here? It wasn’t a question she could answer coherently. She ruminated as she parked her relatively new second-hand Skoda in a gap by the kerb. Was it the thought that the new investigation was totally out of her control? Other people trampling over the evidence that she and Nordlund and the rest of the team had spent months accumulating and dissecting? Was she afraid, deep down, that Zetterberg might find something they had missed?

  Anita locked the car and walked along the street, which doglegged through the old part of Knäbäckshusen. The village consisted of attractive traditional fishermen’s cottages, picturesque with roses and hollyhocks. Except it wasn’t all that it seemed. These houses had only arrived here in the mid-1950s. The buildings were genuinely old, but their location wasn’t. They came from the village of Knäbäck, which lay twenty kilometres to the north. When the Swedish military decided that their Ravlunda artillery range needed extending, they wanted to raze Knäbäck because it was in the way. Despite widespread protests, the military got their wish. But the houses survived the demolition squad: a building contractor called Carl Liljedahl moved them to a new site. Now the village is made up of both full-time residential property and holiday homes, one of which had belonged to Ivar Hagblom’s parents – Stockholmers seeking the sun, sand and serenity of Österlen.

  Anita passed a few stragglers coming back from the beach. At the end of the street, on the right, was a grassy square, on the far side of which was the house where the friends had spent the summer of 1995. The house itself was single storey, half-timbered with whitewashed walls and the typical widely spaced stonework so prevalent in Skåne. It had a deeply pitched thatched roof secured at the apex in the traditional way by a row of wooden pegs. A wide chimney breast of stone and stucco dominated the middle of the front section of the roof, and a quaint arched dormer window nestled in its shadow. Anita walked to the open ground at the end of the street, known to the locals as Lilla Heden – the Little Moor – across which ran the path to the bell tower and down the slope to the chapel below. Except she noticed that this wasn’t the route that today’s visitors were taking. A new path with wooden steps ran along at the edge of the trees that Kurt Jeppsson had once hidden in. But Anita continued along the old route. The bell tower was a basic structure – two wooden posts supporting a little pitched roof from which dangled three bells of differing sizes. As she stood in its shadow, Anita gazed down the rough path to the chapel. It was up this bank that Göran Gösta’s killer had scrambled after piercing his victim’s chest with the skewer. Now she knew Kurt Jeppsson had heard someone, it might change things. If only he’d told them the truth twenty-one years ago. The killer must have passed the bells, cut across the corner of Lilla Heden and into the trees which separated the Moor from the field beyond where he had hidden the murder weapon. She could imagine him pushing his way through the undergrowth which even now was struggling ceaselessly to reclaim the path. Down the short, steep slope, she came to the entrance of the chapel, which, in 1958, had been converted from a fishing hut by the Reverend Albert J. Lindberg for his summer confirmation students. He would have been appalled at how it had been desecrated forty years later. Anita glanced up at the wooden cross that was attached in finial position at the top of the front gable. Twenty years ago she hadn’t recognized how striking it was in its simplicity. She opened the wooden door and entered. The Reverend Lindberg’s confirmation groups must have been pretty small, as you could hardly swing a cat around inside. The low brick altar with its white cloth draped along the top supported two unfussy candle holders bookending a jar of fresh, wild flowers, which had been placed immediately below a crucifix. Anita could see how this was a place of peace and mediation, but for her it would always be the crime scene of a brutal murder. Was it standing here, all those years ago, that she began to realize what a tough, uncompromising world she was working in? A world where people did really bad things? Was it an indictment of her and the job she did that she was no longer shocked by what she saw? The killing of Göran Gösta had been the start of that erosion process.

  Anita left the chapel and took the narrow path down to a flight of wooden steps that led directly onto the sand. The scene had changed since she was last here; the rocks that had edged the top of the beach on the left had gone. Now it was nothing but sand, which appeared to stretch as far as the promontory of Stenshuvud, where Linus had gone on his walkabout. In the other direction, she could see the villages of Vik and, further round the bay, Baskemölla. The strip of sand between the tree-lined banks and the sea was narrow. Twenty-one years ago not many people had used it. That had made their interviewing job easier. In recent years, the beach at Knäbäckshusen had been “discovered”, and tourists and locals alike flocked to the shore, their cars bunging up the small, compact village, much to the annoyance of the residents.

  Anita noticed a mother rounding up some children, and an elderly man in bulky shorts strolling along the shoreline where the rocks had once been. Otherwise, this section of the beach was hers. She wandered towards the rippling sea and stood looking out at the great expanse of blue stretching to the horizon. A couple of tankers could be seen in the distance, apparently almost sinking under the weight of their cargoes of oil. There was a fluttering sail closer in. At weekends this coastline was littered with such sails, like a flight of cabbage white butterflies hovering over the water. Anita half-twisted round and screwed up her eyes as she scanned the trees to the right of the chapel. She reckoned that must have been about the spot from where the young Kurt Jeppsson had seen Linus Svärd – standing just here, where she was now. He said Linus was gazing out to sea. Now she knew that it was before the murder and not after. It did make a difference. During the original investigation, they assumed, thanks to Kurt, that the deed had already been done and that Linus was on the beach disposing of the murder weapon. It fitted. It also explained why he was the first of the group to reach the chapel. He’d have noticed Kurt’s parents arrive at the scene and would have heard the ensuing hullabaloo. Fru Jeppsson had screamed, and her husband had been shouting. So, now Anita had to reconsider the timings. While Kurt disappeared i
nto the trees to light up his cigarette, Linus must have made straight for the chapel. He’d found the skewer lying on the beach where it had been left or dropped. Then he must have seen Göran go into the chapel. From where she was standing, she couldn’t see the entrance, but she knew it had been possible to do so twenty years before because she had made a note of it at the time. The surrounding bushes had grown up since then. She checked her watch and then strode across the beach towards the steps, which she quickly scaled, and then up the path to the chapel. She was slightly out of breath when she got to the door. She flung it open and stepped inside. Forty-seven seconds. Quick argument; Linus stabs Göran and then leaves. He made his escape up the path, as heard by Kurt. Anita did the same and walked as swiftly as possible without running. She skirted the bell tower and then cut across to the new track. It only took another minute and thirty-three seconds to reach the field. This landscape, too, was completely different now. At the time of the murder, the field was open to the road which ran along the back of the houses. Now, it was heavily fenced off, and the brown ploughed soil of twenty-one years ago had been replaced by neat rows of apple trees burgeoning with fruit, and a carpet of lush green grass. Linus couldn’t have hidden the skewer so easily now.

  Kurt had been hiding in the wood behind her. Linus must have made his escape before the boy had emerged from the trees nearer the beach. Then Linus must have hung about, maybe in the same clump of trees that Kurt had just vacated, because he hadn’t returned to the house. Anita glanced around. The crime was still doable, only the timings were different. There was no reason to question Nordlund’s conclusion that the murderer was Linus Svärd.

  Hakim pushed his plate away. He was full. He smiled across at Liv Fogelström, who was still finishing her pizza. He’d had too much of the free salad beforehand. He never learned. Every time they visited this city-centre pizzeria, he made the same mistake. His eyes were too big for his stomach.