Authors: Helene Tursten
“This particular source is rather … special.”
Irene saw his hand move toward the tape recorder on his desk. He hesitated and looked at Irene. “Perhaps it’d be better if I gave you some background information first. Then you can listen to the tape. It’s actually not all that clear. Come with me.”
He picked up the tape recorder, and they walked over to a nearby closed office. Höök opened the door and looked inside. The room was empty, and he ushered Irene in, carefully shutting the door behind him.
Hesitatingly, he said, “This … source is … how can I put it? Unusual. I don’t know her name, and I don’t know where she lives.” He fell silent for a moment, then went on. “It started like this. A guy who’s given me some small tips before called me on my cell phone yesterday afternoon. He’d obviously overheard a conversation between two police officers. Since I was already in the neighborhood, I decided to hop on over and have a slice of pizza while I was at it. By the way, do you want a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Irene said without thinking. Afterward she wished she’d bitten her tongue. Why would she need coffee just when Höök was about to identify the witness? Her longstanding caffeine addiction had won out.
Höök left the room and returned with two cups of steaming-hot coffee in plastic mugs. “Where was I? The guy was just about to tell me this tip when the front door opened.…”
Höök stopped in the middle of his story. He swallowed some coffee before continuing. “The smell … the smell made me turn around and look at her. The pizza place had a plastic bag full of old bread ready for her, and she sat down on one of the chairs. We ignored her, and the guy began to tell me about overhearing two officers talking about a ghost nurse who’d supposedly murdered someone at Löwander Hospital. Can you believe it? But my source was certain that’s what they’d said. Then the old hag—I mean, the old lady—butted in and said, ‘I’ve seen her. Nurse Tekla. She haunts the place to get revenge on the people who killed her!.’ At first we didn’t pay attention. She kept nattering on that she’d seen the ghost with her own eyes. And then she said, ‘I watched her come and I watched her go. Blood was dripping from her hands.’ It sent shivers down my spine. And—”
Irene interrupted him. “Did she really say ‘Nurse Tekla’?”
“That’s right. You’ll hear it yourself. I recorded what she said. I’m going to leave the room while you listen to the tape. Here’s paper and a pen if you need to take notes. But don’t tell anyone where you found out about this.”
“I promise I’ll keep it confidential.”
He turned on the tape recorder. What followed was truly strange.
“My name is Kurt Höök. What may I call you?”
“Call me Mama Bird. All my friends call me that. All my lovely ones. All my children. All of Mama Bird’s children.”
“Do you have many friends and children?”
“Millions and millions … my lovely ones, my children mychildrenmychildrenmychildren … all of my childrenmychildrenmychildren.…”
“I see. You said you’d seen a nurse in the gardens by Löwander Hospital?”
“Nurse Tekla! I am so scared of her. So scared, so scared. I have to keep special watch over my lovely ones. She will kill them, all of them, killkillkill … killkillkill.…”
“Who is she?”
Mama Bird said nothing but hummed a nursery rhyme.
“Focus a little and I’ll give you some pizza.”
“Beer and pizza is what I want. And bread for my lovely ones. My children.…”
“I see. Anything else that you know about Nurse Tekla?”
“She died … a hundred years ago. Deaddeaddead.…”
“You saw her in the park?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes.”
“What was she doing?”
A moment of silence and then Mama Bird’s hoarse voice: “She went into the hospital.”
“How?”
“Howhowhowhowhow.…”
“How did she get inside the hospital?”
“Through the door.”
“Did something happen while she was in the hospital?”
“God took away all the light. She was going to do a deed of darkness. The time had come, and all light was taken away. But I kept watch, I kept watchwatchwatch.…”
“Did you see her come back outside?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes.”
“What did she do then?”
Another stretch of silence. “She raised her hands to God and thanked Him for revenge! Revenge! Revengerevengerevenge!”
“And then what did she do?”
“She took the bike. God punishes theft!”
“She took the bike? What bike?”
“The other one’s bike. But now she’s dead. Everyone goes to their death! Tremble! Keep watch! Pray! Deathdeathdeathdeath.…”
“So Nurse Tekla took the bike and got out of there!”
As a reply, Mama Bird began to sing in a way that reminded Irene of a Sami joik: “Hoyahoyahoyahoya.…”
That’s when Höök had turned off the tape recorder. Irene rewound the tape and listened to it again without pausing. Then she rewound it yet again and began to take down the unusual conversation.
She had listened to the entire conversation a fourth time before Höök came back.
“You wrote an entire article based on this?” Irene asked, not trying to hide her surprise.
“Along with my other source, who had overheard two police officers discussing the same thing. Normally I would have blown it all off. But it made sense, in a weird way. If you think about what the two officers were saying, there must have been someone else inside the hospital who’d also seen the ghost nurse. Right?”
“Yes, someone did mention the old legend, but I don’t remember who it was or why it came up,” Irene replied before she quickly switched the subject. “What did Mama Bird look like?”
“I’m not going to tell you any more about her. You already know too much as it is.” He was right, but that would not make it any easier to find this woman. “So you got yours. Time for mine.”
Irene told him everything about Linda Svensson’s unusual disappearance on the night of Marianne Svärd’s murder. Höök took down notes as if his hand were on fire. Afterward he appeared satisfied.
“Thanks so much. Now I have to hurry over to your press conference at three. By the way, are they going to make Linda Svensson’s disappearance public?” he asked suspiciously.
Irene did her best to look innocent. She was happy that her bandages hid most of her face—a little silver lining there. “No idea. Superintendent Andersson will hold the press conference. This morning we were all told not to breathe a word about anything, especially to the media. So bye for now, and thanks.”
Irene tore out her pages from the notebook and got up quickly. Before too long the glass doors of the newspaper building closed behind her.
• • •
AT THE STATION
everyone was running full speed before the press conference. She rode the elevator up to her office, deciding she’d hide out there to avoid Kurt Höök. He probably wouldn’t be too pleased with her after the press conference.
There were two desks in her office, hers and Tommy Persson’s, both of them bare. She took a tape recorder from one of her desk drawers and recorded the dialogue between Kurt Höök and Mama Bird. Her own voice sounded stilted when she read her notes, trying to re-create the conversation word for word. She made several attempts before she was relatively satisfied.
She sat at her desk for a long time afterward, lost in thought. Mama Bird was crazy, all right, but she’d seen something that night. Who had she really seen? How did she know the story of Nurse Tekla? Where had Mama Bird been standing when she saw this person moving about the hospital grounds? And, most important, who was Mama Bird?
THE PRESS CONFERENCE
proceeded in the usual manner—mild tumult. Andersson confirmed that the night-shift nurse Marianne Svärd had been strangled around midnight on the eleventh of February. The murderer was still unknown. When a reporter asked about the ghost, Andersson snorted so loudly the speakers popped.
Then Andersson changed the subject to Linda Svensson’s disappearance. It was an unexpected bone tossed to them, and they threw themselves onto it. They scribbled down her particulars, noting that she was last seen wearing a red down coat and brown leather boots with platform soles. Her bicycle was also missing, and it was assumed that she’d ridden it away.
“It’s a city bike, light green metallic color,” Andersson concluded. Unfortunately, he was still standing too close to the microphone as he said, “What the hell is a ‘city’ bike?”
Questions from the reporters flew through the air, but Andersson could not add much. Instead he promised another press conference within twenty-four hours.
Irene watched the clock hit 4:00
P.M
. In an hour the detectives would meet again. Before then Irene decided to call home to check in with her twin daughters, who were on winter break. Jenny was happy that one of the girl cousins from Säffle had called. The girls had been invited to join their cousins in Säffle, and from there all four girls would head to the family summer cabin in Sunne, where they planned to go snowboarding in Finnfallet and do some cross-country skiing in Sundsberget. Irene gave them permission to go, even as she thought that this trip seemed rather hastily put together.
Then she collected her thoughts and wrote her report covering the day’s events. Actually, quite a bit had happened. She’d just finished when it was time to go to the conference room. She took the tape recorder and a new notebook. On the cover she wrote “Löwander” in black ink. She opened to the first page and wrote “pizza” in neat letters.
ALL OF THEM
had written their food orders on the list, and the orders had been called in.
“Everybody here?” Andersson said to open the meeting. “I see Jonny is missing. I imagine he’ll be here soon. Let’s get going.”
He took a breath and began to tell them about the morning’s phone call to Marianne Svärd’s parents, who had been extremely upset and shocked. The superintendent felt they’d need a few days before they were questioned again. Both parents agreed they’d never known of any threat to their daughter, nor had she behaved any differently when they’d last seen her over the weekend. That was two days before she’d been killed.
After that, Andersson summed up his conversation with Yvonne Stridner in Pathology. As he was wrapping up, Jonny appeared in the doorway, one eye covered with a bandage. His right hand was also wrapped up.
Irene tittered. “Hello. It looks like you’ve met Belker.” she said in her mildest voice.
Jonny’s flushed face contrasted nicely with his white bandages. He sank down into the nearest chair. “That damned cat jumped on me from the hat rack. I had to go to Mölndal Hospital for treatment. Including a tetanus shot. While I was defending myself from that cat, guess what? A little old lady came into the apartment and what does she say?” Jonny cleared his throat and proclaimed in perfect falsetto, “ ‘Are they being mean to you, little Belker?’ ”
Everyone around the table burst into laughter.
“Then she just picked up that tiger, and wouldn’t you know that little devil curled up in her arms and began to purr. She asked me to bring the cat’s feeding dish and water bowl into her apartment, because now she was going to take care of the poor little pussycat.”
Irene was happy to hear the last bit—both because Belker and Ruth Berg were going to keep each other company and because Linda’s apartment would now be terror-free for the police.
“Anything new about Linda Svensson?” asked Andersson.
“I went to Kungsbacka and talked to her parents. She’s an only child. They’re beside themselves with worry. I asked them if her ex had ever hit her, but they didn’t believe he had. According to them he’s not the violent kind. Otherwise nothing new turned up in Linda’s apartment. I searched the area around the apartment building for the bicycle, but I didn’t find it. The building manager lent me a master key, and I looked in the basement, the laundry room, and the garbage room. The building has two stairways, and there are nine apartments on each floor. None of the other inhabitants saw or heard anything around the time Linda disappeared. Well, except the old lady who took in that man-eating beast. She says she heard Linda leave her apartment on the tenth of February at eleven-thirty
P.M
. Not a trace since. She and the bicycle are just gone.”
Andersson frowned. He thought for a long time before he finally said, “Jonny, you keep working on finding Linda. Fredrik, too. It feels like time is running out on us. Birgitta, did you reach Linda’s ex?”
“Yes, but only by phone. He’s taking a seminar in Borås and won’t be back until late tonight. He works for some kind of computer company.”
“All right. You talk to that young man tomorrow. Take Jonny with you. Try to lean on him to see what he knows.”
“Okay,” said Birgitta.
Irene observed that Birgitta did not look at Jonny while she nodded. On the surface she didn’t show any discomfort, just seemed to accept the assignment. But Irene sensed the tension between Jonny and Birgitta, and she wondered why. Of course, all Jonny’s off-color jokes offended some people, but Irene hadn’t been a policewoman seventeen years for nothing. Her instincts told her there was more to it than that.
“Should we request a reverse search on Linda’s phone?” Birgitta asked.
“Reverse search?” Andersson echoed.
“Linda had an ID box on her phone, which, unfortunately, the cat destroyed. But we can ask the telephone company to check who called her phone number on the tenth of February.”
“Is that possible?” Andersson asked, surprised.
“Yes, but it’s not cheap. We have to go through the prosecutor’s office.”
“Inez Collin,” Andersson said gloomily.
“That’s right.”
Andersson sighed. “Okay. I’ll talk to Her Highness and arrange it. It sounds like something that won’t happen overnight, though.”
“I’ve got to leave at seven,” Irene put in. “But I want you to know that there were more than one person attending seminars on the night in question.”
She quickly explained the gist of her interview with Niklas Alexandersson, that he and Andreas Svärd were living together, and that she planned to interview them together in their home at seven-thirty.