Authors: Helene Tursten
ANNA-KARIN WAS SCRUBBING
out the medicine cabinet when the police officers arrived at the tiny ICU, and at first she didn’t notice them watching her from the doorway. She just continued to scrub away with a rag soaked in smelly disinfectant. Irene was ready to put her money on Anna-Karin. The bacteria didn’t stand a chance. As her rag swished around each bottle, Anna-Karin checked the expiration dates and tossed the expired ones into a cardboard box marked pharmaceutical returns. This job shouldn’t be all that stressful, but Anna-Karin’s face was flushed with effort.
Tommy cleared his throat to get the nurse’s attention. Anna-Karin jumped at the noise.
“God, you scared me,” she exclaimed. She stopped the frenetic scrubbing. The rag dangled from her hand.
“Excuse us, we didn’t mean to startle you,” Tommy said. “We just need to talk to you for a moment.”
He smiled and gave Anna-Karin with his best cocker-spaniel-puppy face. Irene had tried this technique herself, but it never worked. People would get nervous or ask her if something was troubling her, so she’d quit attempting it.
“Can’t now. I have a great deal of cleaning to catch up on,” Anna-Karin said.
“The dust bunnies won’t run away,” Irene said.
Tommy looked at Irene with irritation, but she couldn’t help it. This little nutcase wasn’t going to hide behind her jobs anymore. Time for her to spill the beans—right now!
Anna-Karin ground her teeth together. They could see the muscles working in her jaw, but she remained silent. Finally she threw the rag onto the desk. “All right, but I’ve already told you everything.”
“No, you have not,” Irene replied.
The effect of these words on the nurse was electric. All the color fled from her face; her blue eyes widened. Her right hand fumbled for the desk chair, which she drew toward her and sat down in heavily. Her blanched face then turned red, but she still said nothing.
Irene was surprised at such a strong reaction. Her police instincts went to high alert, and she turned her internal lie detector all the way up. Did Anna-Karin have a bad conscience about something? Or was she frightened?
“Please tell us a bit more about Linda’s sudden breakup with her boyfriend,” Tommy began gently.
Anna-Karin relaxed, and her answer was calm. “We never had the chance to talk about it. It happened so fast. One day she just told me that Pontus was moving out.”
“That must have been around February first. Am I right?”
“Yes, that sounds right to me.”
“Before that moment you had no idea that things were not going well between them, if I understand you correctly,” Tommy continued.
“Not a clue. But I’ve told you all that already.”
“We know. We want to hear it again,” Irene said.
“So the two of you had no chance to talk about the reasons behind her sudden breakup, if I understand you right,” Tommy said.
“No. Things were too stressful here at work,” Anna-Karin whispered.
“And therefore you never got together alone after the separation?”
“No. She helped Pontus pack and … we never had time.”
“But you talked on the phone.”
“No.”
The trapdoor closed, and Anna-Karin was caught. She still didn’t realize it, but she was about to.
“We know that you’re lying now. It would be much easier for you to tell the truth at this point. We know that you called Linda the last evening she was alive. You called her from the hospital. The call was traced.”
Yet again Anna-Karin’s face blanched and then reddened. It did not look good on her either.
“Yes … I forgot … that call. Was it Monday night? I thought … it was on the weekend.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Linda was planning a party the following weekend. She wanted to borrow my waffle iron. We were going to have waffles and cloudberry ja … ja … jam,” Anna-Karin’s voice broke, and she started to cry.
Tommy and Irene exchanged looks but said nothing. They waited patiently until Anna-Karin finished her crying fit.
She rubbed at her runny nose with her cleaning rag. Her nose flamed red at once. Irene realized that the chemicals must be truly powerful.
“This has all been so awful. Everything about Linda and Marianne. And I’ve had to work overtime. And Siv Persson is gone, too. It’s all too much, and my brain is mixing everything up. I really thought it was Sunday afternoon when Linda and I last talked. It was just a few words. About the waffle iron.”
Again Anna-Karin clammed up. It was clear she would stick to the waffle-iron story.
Irene said calmly, “I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to come down to the station.”
“Why would I have to do that?” Anna-Karin said with terror in her voice.
“For an official interrogation. Our theory is that Linda was lured to the hospital in the middle of the night. Probably by a phone call. Why else would she come there at that time? In the winter, no less? Linda did not call you about borrowing a waffle iron. You were the one who called her.”
The fear was palpable. Anna-Karin was almost screaming. “Linda and I had already talked about the waffle iron before. I didn’t know if mine worked, and I was just calling her back to tell her it was okay. That’s the truth!”
Maybe it was, but all of Irene’s instincts were crying, Lies! “A waffle iron. Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be checking to see if Linda already owns a waffle iron, and whether you have one or not.”
Anna-Karin didn’t reply, but she looked up straight into Irene’s eyes. Irene stared back. Anna-Karin was the first to look away.
“
MAYBE WE SHOULD
have brought her to the station,” Tommy said as they sat in the police car on the way to lunch at a Chinese restaurant.
“No, her nerves are already on edge. We should give her some time to sweat. She probably won’t be able to sleep. She knows something that she doesn’t want to tell us. That’s obvious. Tomorrow she might be more ready to spill it.”
“You think? She seems like she’s holding fast to her story.”
“We’ll see. We’re not done with our little lady.”
Irene managed to parallel-park the police car into a tight spot in front of the Chinese restaurant. They ordered pork in sweet and sour sauce. A cup of coffee and a fortune cookie were included in the fifty-crown price.
Irene’s fortune cookie read, “Don’t stare blindly into the fog. Gather your strength until the fog clears and you can see.” Irene laughed but still thought it sounded pretty wise.
BIRGITTA
M
OBERG WAS
in her office about to undertake the mission of locating Linda’s waffle iron. Before she vanished through the door, she said, “The lab called. Both the hair and the fingerprints on the suitcases belong to Carina Löwander. By the way, Jonny and Fredrik are going through Marianne’s apartment one more time. The last time we didn’t find any indication that there was a new man in her life.”
“The man in her life was Andreas,” Irene said.
“Obviously. Some people are monogamous by nature,” Birgitta said as she disappeared down the hallway.
Her words struck something in Irene, but she didn’t have time to puzzle about it further. Hannu took Birgitta’s place at the door. He must also have heard Birgitta’s last sentence; Irene noticed how he glanced back at her. For a fraction of a second, she thought she caught a glimmer of affection, but when his ice-blue eyes turned back to Irene and Tommy, they did not reveal any sign of sentiment. He was merely his usual unflappable self.
“Death certificate for Tekla Viola Olsson. One son. Father unknown.” Hannu held out the sheet of paper.
Tekla Olsson, born October 8, 1911, Katarina Parish. Death by suicide March 28, 1947. One son, born January 2, 1947, Bromma Parish.
Tommy flipped through his desk calendar. “January second. That’s the name day for Sverker.”
“Tekla is buried in Stockholm,” Hannu informed them.
Tommy sighed. “Let’s hope she can finally rest in peace.”
HURTLING AROUND THE
corner, brakes screeching, Irene turned in to the asphalt driveway.
“Answering an alarm, are we?” Tommy said.
Irene didn’t reply. Maybe her driving was a bit careless.
They rang the doorbell, then had to wait a long time before the door was opened by a small, chubby girl. Irene was confused at first and wondered if they’d come to the wrong house. The girl stared sulkily at them from behind her thick blond bangs and didn’t say a word.
“Hi,” Tommy said in a friendly voice. “Is your mommy or daddy at home?”
“Mama’s home,” the girl said shortly.
The girl’s gaze went from Tommy to Irene. The girl, who had to be Sverker and Carina’s daughter, had inherited the same sea-green eyes as her father and grandmother had. Other than that she didn’t resemble either. Irene remembered that the girl’s name was Emma and that she was eleven. Emma turned her head and yelled toward the interior of the house. “Mama!”
They had to wait for a minute or so longer before Carina Löwander came to the door. Irene heard Tommy’s quick intake of breath. She had to admit that Carina was striking. Her blond hair was swept up in a ponytail high on her head. She was wearing a short, baby blue aerobics outfit with a deep décolletage. The knitted leg warmers matched her outfit, and to accentuate her small waistline she wore a black knitted belt. The decorative thong was also black. Carina’s tanned skin glistened. Maybe she’d oiled it; a slight scent of coconut wafted in the air. To her chagrin Irene noticed that Carina did not smell of sweat.
“Hi. Excuse my outfit. On days when I’m not working at the gym, I work out at home. Please come in.”
Carina gave them a friendly smile as Irene and Tommy hung their coats on a heavily lacquered black hat rack.
Tommy cleared his throat. “We’d like to talk to you about what you found in those suitcases.”
“I understand. How stupid of me not to tell you earlier. On the other hand, it was a while back, and I had no idea that they’d have anything to do with … what happened to Linda.”
She turned and led them into the house.
Irene noticed how Tommy was staring at the black thong sliding between Carina’s butt cheeks. She walked vigorously as well as beautifully.
That woman doesn’t have a single ounce of fat on her body, only muscles!
Irene thought with envy. Irene kept in shape, but she never went that far, working every single muscle to make sure it appeared as beautiful as possible. She also didn’t understand the sick desire. Fitness center indeed! There was something indecent about the whole thing.
Carina led them down the stairs to the basement. Once upon a time, it’d probably been a den, but Carina had fashioned it into a home gym. As far as Irene could tell, the room had everything piece of equipment needed. There were even mirrors on the walls.
Carina walked through the gym and opened a door on the other side. “This is my personal office. Here you’ll be able to see exactly what I took from Hilding’s suitcase.”
Irene and Tommy stepped inside the surprisingly spacious room. Underneath the large basement windows, there was a desk pushed against the wall. On it stood a computer, a fax machine, and a telephone. Three storage shelves from IKEA stood along the side wall. The rest of the wall space was covered by posters of male and female bodybuilders. On the kitchen table in the middle of the room were a number of carefully rolled papers. Carina turned on the ceiling lamp and bent over the table, going through the rolls until she found what she was looking for.
“Here they are. The original architectural drawings of Löwander Hospital.”
The paper was faded from age. The year 1884 was written in the bottom-right-hand corner. There was no doubt these were the original drawings.
Irene noted that the area where both Tekla and Linda had been found dead was designated “Attic Storage Space.” The modern-day operating rooms were over four rooms marked “Nurse Apartments.” At the end of the hallway, there was a shared kitchen and bathroom area. On the other side of the hallway, there was a room for a doctor on call, a house mother’s office, and the apartment now meant for the on-call doctor. This apartment had been named “House Mother’s Apartment.”
Inside her head Irene imagined Hilding Löwander carefully opening the door from the on-call room and glancing around to see if the coast was clear before he hastily crossed the hall to Tekla’s apartment.
The plans for the care wards were identical to the present layout, except for a room identified as the “Operation Room,” which had been transformed into the ICU room.
The stairway and the patient elevator were not on the drawings, of course, since they weren’t added until seventy-five years later.
The basement had a kitchen as well as the usual basement storage areas. Irene was reminded of something she’d barely considered. Where did the food for the patients come from now? Did they have a contract with a restaurant to send in food? Or did the patients diet so they’d look slim as well as younger after getting their faces expensively lifted?
“Why did you need these old drawings anyway?” Irene asked.
Without speaking, Carina lifted another roll of paper and spread it over the older drawing. She had chalked the hospital’s outer contours and drawn in the additional stairway and elevator. She’d marked all the load-bearing walls correctly. There the resemblances to the old Löwander Hospital came to an end. Where the present operating rooms existed, “Massage and Relaxation Room” was marked. The on-call apartment and two offices were marked “Employees.” The third office and the attic were “Storage.”
The care wards had been changed to one large gymnasium, or “Aerobics Room” as Carina had written on her drawing. The ICU and one of the care wards had become “Weight Training.” The first floor had “Reception,” “Cafeteria,” “Mani-Pedi,” and “Hair Salon.”
The basement was similar to the present configuration. There was an employee changing room, a furnace room, a power room, and the usual basement storage, but where the security guard’s room had been was now marked “Changing Room—men” with showers, hot tub, and a sauna. A similar space was set up on the other side of the basement for women.