wife died of cancer, and weekends suddenly felt much too long and desolate. Sport had soon become like a poison in his blood. He now regarded his job, in which he had never been terribly interested in the first place, only as a disruptive element that prevented him from being out on the golf course.
Despite the fact that his salary was meagre, he had managed to save enough to buy a flat on the Costa del Sol in Spain. Soon he’d be able to devote the summer months to playing golf in Sweden and the rest of the year he could spend on the courses in Spain. Although, he had to admit, these murders had succeeded in arousing his interest for the first time in ages. But not so much that he wouldn’t rather play eighteen holes right now if the season had permitted it.
Next to him sat the station’s youngest member. Martin Molin elicited varying degrees of parental instincts in all of them. They took turns acting as invisible crutches for him at work, although they were careful that he never notice anything. They only gave him assignments that a child could do, and they went over and corrected everything he wrote before his reports reached Mellberg’s desk.
He had graduated from the Police Academy no more than a year ago. Everyone was astonished that he’d been able, first of all, to immerse himself in the difficult booking procedures and second, complete his training and pass the exam. But Martin was pleasant and good-natured, and despite his naïveté, which made him totally unsuitable for police work, they all reckoned that he couldn’t do any great damage here in Tanumshede. So they gladly helped him over all obstacles. Annika in particular had taken him under her wing and sometimes, to everyone’s great amusement, she showed her feelings by spontaneously pressing him to her large bosom in a bear hug.
On those occasions Martin’s fiery red hair, which always stood on end, and his equally red freckles competed with the colour of his face. But he worshipped Annika and had spent many evenings visiting her and her husband when he needed to ask advice about being unlucky in love – which he always was. His innocence and amiability seemed to make him an irresistible magnet for women who ate men for breakfast and then spat out the remains. But Annika was always there to listen, patch up the shreds of his self-confidence, and then send him back out into the world, in the hope that one day he would find a woman who could appreciate this gem of a man, hiding beneath the freckled exterior.
The last member of the group was also the least popular. Ernst Lundgren was a big-time arse-kisser who never missed a chance to promote himself, preferably at the expense of others. No one was surprised that he was still single. He was a far from attractive man. Even though uglier men than he had found a partner thanks to a helpfully pleasant personality, Ernst lacked this attribute completely. That’s why he was now living with his old mother on a farm six miles south of Tanumshede. Rumour had it that his father, who was notorious in the area as an alcoholic and highly aggressive man, had received a helping hand from his wife when he fell from the hayloft and landed on a pitchfork. That was many years ago now, but the rumour was revived whenever people had nothing more exciting to talk about. In any case, it was true that only a mother could love Ernst, since his buck teeth, straggly hair and big ears were accompanied by a choleric disposition and a self-promoting manner. Right now he was hanging on Mellberg’s every syllable as though his words were pearls, and he took every opportunity to shush the others testily if they dared make the slightest noise to distract attention from Mellberg’s speech. He eagerly raised his hand like a schoolboy to ask a question.
‘How do we know that Anders wasn’t murdered by the drunk, who later merely pretended to discover him this morning?’
Mellberg gave Lundgren an appreciative nod.
‘A very good question, Ernst, very good. But as I said, we’re going on the assumption that it’s the same person who killed Alex Wijkner. Just to be safe, though, we’ll check out Bengt Larsson’s alibi for yesterday.’
Mellberg pointed with his pen to Lundgren as he scanned the rest of the group.
‘This is the sort of alert thinking we need to solve this case. I hope you will all listen and learn from Ernst. You have a long way to go before you reach his level.’
Ernst modestly lowered his eyes, but as soon as Mellberg turned his attention elsewhere, he couldn’t resist casting a triumphant look at his colleagues. Annika snorted loudly and stared back without blinking in response to the angry look Lundgren gave her.
‘Now where was I?’
Mellberg hooked his thumbs under the braces he was wearing under his jacket and spun round on his chair. He ended up facing the whiteboard that had been set up on the wall behind him to track the case of Alex Wijkner. A similar whiteboard had now been put up next to it, but the only thing on it was a Polaroid photo taken of Anders before the ambulance attendants cut down his body.
‘So, what do we know so far? The body of Anders Nilsson was found this morning, and according to the preliminary report, he’d been dead since sometime yesterday. He was hanged by one or more persons unknown, presumably more than one because it would take considerable strength to lift up a full-grown man high enough to hang him from the ceiling. What we don’t know is how they went about it. There are no signs of a struggle, either in the flat or on Anders’s body. No bruises to indicate rough handling of the body, either before or after death occurred. These are only preliminary data, as I said, but we expect confirmation as soon as the autopsy is complete.’
Patrik waved his pen. ‘How soon do we expect to get the autopsy results?’
‘Apparently they have a whole pile of bodies waiting, so unfortunately I haven’t been able to get any information as to when the report will be ready.’
Nobody looked surprised.
‘We also know that there’s a clear connection between Anders Nilsson and our first murder victim, Alexandra Wijkner.’
Now Mellberg stood up and pointed at the photo of Alexandra that was in the middle of the first whiteboard. They had received the picture from her mother, and once again they were all struck by how beautiful she had been in life. It made the picture next to it, of Alexandra in the bathtub with a bluish, pale face and frost in her hair and eyelashes, look even more horrible.
‘This ill-matched pair had a sexual relationship. Anders himself admitted it and we also have certain evidence, as you know, to support his claim. What we don’t know is how long it lasted, how they got involved with each other, and above all why a beautiful society woman would choose as her bed partner a filthy and generally repulsive alcoholic. Something is fishy here, I can smell it.’
Mellberg tapped his index finger a couple of times on the side of his bulbous red nose.
‘Martin, you’re assigned to dig deeper into this. Above all you need to press Henrik Wijkner a lot harder than we’ve done so far. That guy knows more than he’s admitting, I’m sure of it.’
Martin nodded eagerly, taking notes for dear life. Annika gave him a tender, motherly look over the tops of her reading glasses.
‘Unfortunately, this brings us back to square one as far as suspects in the first murder are concerned. Anders seemed very promising in that role, but now the case has taken a whole different turn. Patrik, you’ll have to review all the material that we have on the Wijkner murder. Check and double-check every detail. Somewhere in that material there’s a lead we missed.’
Mellberg had heard that line on a TV cop show and memorized it for future use.
Gösta was now the only one who hadn’t been given an assignment. Mellberg looked at his list and thought for a moment.
‘Gösta,
