Authors: Helene Tursten
In a formal tone, he said, “Please excuse my behavior.”
Tommy smiled in his friendly way. “We understand you’re not feeling well.”
Our plastic surgeon, Kurt Bünzler, told me last week, right before he went on vacation, he was going to retire this June. Today our anesthesiologist, Konrad Henriksson, turned in his resignation. He’s found a new position at Källberg Hospital.”
“So they’re looking ahead.”
“That they are.”
“Will it be difficult to find replacements?”
“Not just difficult. Impossible. Who wants to sign on to a sinking ship?”
“And you have the same problem finding nurses?”
“Of course. It’s been hard the past few years. We had the luck to find a few good nurses, although they were young when they started here.”
“Linda, Marianne, and Anna-Karin, you mean.”
“Right.”
Of those three
,
only one is still alive
, Irene thought. She mentally made a note to talk to Anna-Karin as soon as she could.
“If you can’t find replacements, what are you going to do?”
Löwander sighed. “I made up my mind this afternoon. I’m going to close the hospital this summer.”
“You’re giving up?”
Löwander nodded tiredly.
Irene cleared her throat. “I have a practical question. How many master keys are there for this hospital? The door to the attic, where we found Linda, was locked, and there were no signs of forced entry on the door or on the lock. Just as with Marianne’s murder.”
“There are two. Bengtsson, the security guard, has one. I have the other.”
“No one else has one?”
“No one.”
“Do you have yours with you now?”
“Yes.” The doctor stuck his hand into his pocket and took out a key ring. He snapped it open and looked through the keys before pulling one out. “It’s this one. This is the master key.”
He extended the key ring to Irene, who took it and examined it. It was a normal ASSA key with a large L engraved on one side.
“Do you always keep these keys with you?”
“Always.”
So all the master keys were accounted for. If it wasn’t one of these two men, who was it? Inadvertently, Irene thought,
Only ghosts can move through locked doors
.
She handed the key ring back. On impulse she asked, “What will you do after you close the hospital?”
“No need to worry about me. My patients will follow me to another clinic. Perhaps Källberg, I hope. I’m not sure where I’ll go, but it’ll work out somehow.”
“The other employees will lose their jobs,” Irene stated.
“Yes, they will. Unfortunately.”
“What will happen to the hospital building?”
“No idea. I’m going to put it up for sale as is.”
They could tell from his voice that he couldn’t care less what happened to the building. Irene and Tommy exchanged glances. They silently agreed there was nothing much more they could find out right now.
Just as they were getting up to go, Irene’s cell phone rang. Irene took it from her pocket. “Irene Huss.”
“Hi, Mama.” It was Jenny’s voice on the other end. “Your hairstylist just called. She was really mad you missed your appointment. She said you’d have to pay for it anyway.”
“Damn.”
SUPERINTENDENT ANDERSSON LOOKED
glum. Questioning the hospital employees had not yielded any leads. No one had noticed any change in either Marianne or Linda in the days leading up to the murders. Both had been acting normally. Only Nurse Ellen hadn’t been reinterviewed; she’d been sick and hadn’t been in. Andersson sighed and rubbed his bald head.
His investigators were starting to trickle in. Birgitta and Hannu were the first ones back. Birgitta said, “I’ve gone through three interrogations with that swine Schölenhielm. He’s out of his mind!”
Andersson tried to think. Who was Schölenhielm and how did he fit in at Löwander Hospital? Maybe he was the security guard? No, that guy was called Bengtsson.… He gave up. “Who is Schölenhielm?”
“The guy who beat his Polish girlfriend to death last Saturday. Maria Jacobinski.”
“What? What are you doing with that case? You’re supposed to be dealing with this Löwander problem.”
“Who else was available? Irene had to take over the shift for Hans Borg Saturday night because you forgot to have it covered.”
That last sentence came out a bit more spitefully than she intended, and, observing the shifting color of her boss’s face, she hurried to continue.
“I took over the case on Sunday. It’s clear-cut. The forensics team faxed the preliminary report yesterday. She was beaten all over, and her body had massive signs of earlier beatings as well. Two fingers had been broken, and from appearances they healed without treatment. The back of her skull was beaten in—that was the killing blow. During my first interrogation, the used-car salesman insisted that he’d lost his memory. I would rule it a massive hangover. But today he had a completely new story.”
In spite of himself, Andersson was curious. “Let’s hear it.” By now most of the group had arrived and was listening.
“He says that the Polish mafia forced their way into his apartment that evening and forced him to drink an entire quart of Grant’s. Then they beat his girlfriend to death. There was nothing he could do, since the alcohol had incapacitated him. He was helpless as he watched them kill his girlfriend.”
Jonny snorted. “Well, that’s a new spin on an old story. What was his name again?”
“Sten Schölenhielm. He took the name twenty years ago. He was born Sten Svensson. Probably thought that a name that sounds vaguely noble would be good for business.”
“All right, let’s ignore the salesman and his Polish whore for now. Birgitta, see if you can find someone to take over that investigation. Maybe Tomas Molander—What’s wrong now?”
Birgitta’s back was as straight as a board as she leaned over the table and stared into Andersson’s eyes. She said in an ice-cold voice, “How would you know?”
“How? What?”
“How do you know she was a whore?”
Andersson stared at Birgitta in surprise. “Everybody knows that’s what they’re all like.”
“All like what?”
“They hang around in bars picking up tourists. Find a rich foreigner and get off the street and away from their miserable lives.”
“And they’re all like that?”
“Well, maybe not all, but most of them.”
“And you know for a fact that Maria Jacobinski was a whore?”
“Yes … no … but she had to be.”
Birgitta and Andersson glared at each other like two roosters ready to fight. The air seemed to vibrate between them. Irene understood what was behind it. It had nothing to do with Andersson’s thoughtless comment regarding Maria Jacobinski. Birgitta still felt bad about Hans Borg, and Andersson had not backed her up. Birgitta wanted Hans Borg’s head on a platter. And Andersson couldn’t understand Birgitta’s reaction. He felt he’d made a smooth move as an administrator and solved the problem by exchanging Borg for Hannu Rauhala. No gossip and no leaks to the media about sexual harassment inside the police force.
Irene also knew that Birgitta would never win this fight. Perhaps she realized this herself, as she rounded off her harangue. “Most of those women are lured here by promises of marriage only to find they’re sex slaves in a foreign country. The cost of returning is just too high. And even if they manage to return, they end up having to take up the life anyway. Even if Maria Jacobinski had been a streetwalker back in Poland, that’s no reason for denying her justice here.”
“I never said she wouldn’t get justice.” Andersson bristled, outraged. His glare let Birgitta know she’d gone too far. “Forget about Tomas Molander. You’re still on this investigation.” He nodded toward the door.
Birgitta looked at him, not comprehending.
“Go and deal with your used-car salesman and Polish lady.”
Teeth clenched, Birgitta stood up and collected her papers. Without looking at anyone and with her back still straight, she walked right out the door.
An unpleasant silence filled the room until Jonny broke it by saying, “What a bitch!”
Jonny and Andersson exchanged a look of male camaraderie. Irene bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from speaking up. Like Birgitta, she knew that this was a fight she could not win.
“Back to Löwander Hospital,” said Andersson. “We haven’t gotten the final pathology reports on either the bird lady or Linda. Stridner promised we’d have both reports early tomorrow morning. We’ll go over them during morning prayer at seven-thirty.” A few members of the group nodded. “Stridner could tell me, however, that Linda was strangled and then hung up on the ceiling beam by the doubled flag line.”
“Why was she strung up?” asked Hannu.
“Maybe so it would seem like suicide?” Jonny suggested.
“No, he left the rope used for the strangulation embedded in her neck,” Hannu said.
The group pondered this for a minute until Irene said, “I believe Hannu has raised a good point. The intention was not to make it appear like a suicide. The murderer had something else to say. Otherwise it would have been enough just to strangle her and throw her behind the door of the locked attic.”
“As he had with Marianne,” Fredrik Stridh interjected. “Just throw her into the room.”
“Another strange detail. If it’s a detail. Why go down the elevator with Marianne’s body and drag her into the generator room when it would be easier to throw her into the attic, too? It took a lot of extra time.” Irene was thinking out loud.
“Time,” Hannu said.
Everyone in the group remembered Hannu’s succinct way of speaking from previous cases and knew it was best not to press him for more. When he was ready, he was ready. He wouldn’t say a word before then, which really got on the nerves of everyone else. However, every word he said was golden.
Andersson usually had great respect for the Finn’s acumen, but because he was still mentally off balance after his confrontation with Birgitta, he snapped. “What the hell do you mean?”
Unperturbed, Hannu continued. “The murderer needed time. That’s why he sabotaged the electricity. The respirator stops. The doctor and the nurse have to hurry to take care of the patient. The murderer can return to the attic and get on with stringing Linda up.”
The entire room fell silent. Most of them were surprised at such a long statement from Hannu, but what he said gave them much to think about.
“Continue,” Andersson said.
“The murderer has to go the electrical room anyway to sabotage the electricity. He takes Marianne’s body there because he knows that it will be found as soon as someone comes looking to see what’s wrong. That’s exactly what he wants. It might delay the discovery of Linda’s body.”
“That’s exactly the hell what happened—a whole week!” The superintendent stared gloomily at his underlings. No one said a word, because if Hannu’s theory was correct, it was a coldly planned trap and they’d all fallen into it.
“It’s pretty clear now that the murders of the two nurses are connected. But the murder of the crazy bird lady? Someone else?” Jonny asked.
Tommy shook his head. “No, Stridner believes it’s the same killer. ‘Brutal and strong,’ she said. And the probable murder weapon, the wire cutter, is the same one used to sabotage the electricity that night. Remember, it was found on the stream bank near Gunnela Hägg’s body.”
“Keep in mind, too, that everyone says that Linda and Marianne were acting totally normal right before they were murdered,” Andersson pointed out.
“There’s one niggling detail about Linda,” Irene said. “She asked her partner to move out, since she no longer loved him. Was she in love with someone else, even though she denied it? Perhaps we should look into this separation some more. Of course, this doesn’t explain where Marianne comes into the picture, not to mention the murder of Gunnela Hägg.”
“It’s all about the hospital.” Hannu’s calm voice.
Irene was startled. She’d also had that feeling many times. “I agree. We keep circling around Löwander Hospital and what happened a long time ago—”
The superintendent groaned. “Please don’t bring up that damned ghost.”
“No, not the ghost. We’re searching not for a phantom but a killer. But there’s something connected to the story of Nurse Tekla. Remember, the killer hung Linda’s body in the same place where the nurse hanged herself fifty years ago. That must mean something.”
“Such as?”
“No idea. We have to keep looking into the stories surrounding the hospital. Maybe the dead can lead us to the killer.”
“Have you lost your mind? We can’t keep digging into old shit when we’re up to our knees in what’s going on right now,” Jonny exclaimed.
Andersson quietly looked from one of his inspectors to the next. The superintendent was inclined to agree with Jonny, but he also felt there might be something to Irene’s point of view. Resolutely, he proclaimed, “Hannu, Irene, and Tommy, you dig around the hospital history. Fredrik, Jonny, and Birg—I mean, and myself will keep talking to the living.”
“
SO HOW SHOULD
we go about this?” asked Hannu.
The members of Irene’s group, which Jonny had already nicknamed the “Ghostbusters,” were sitting in Irene and Tommy’s office.
“I’ll track down Sverker Löwander’s first wife, Barbro. She knew Sverker’s parents and certainly knows some of the hospital stories. And I’d like to hear more about her accusations against Carina regarding the fire at the doctor’s mansion,” Irene said.
Tommy nodded agreement. “I’ll try to speak to Siv Persson again. I want to track down any of Tekla’s relatives, if any are still alive. And I want to know exactly where in the attic she was supposed to have killed herself. Did Linda’s murderer hang her in the exact same spot? And then the obvious follow-up question: Why?”
“How could the murderer know the exact place?” Hannu said.
Irene felt absolutely sure they must follow this trail. Everything was tied up in the history of the hospital. The ghost disguise was a smart move, but it might be the murderer’s downfall. Knowing the exact spot where Tekla had died made for a limited field of suspects.
“I’ll follow up the patients at Löwander Hospital during the summers of ’83 and ’84,” Hannu said.