The Treacherous Net (10 page)

The following day,
Linda Holm arrived in Irene’s office immediately after morning prayer.

“I brought us both a cup of coffee. I know you never say no,” Linda said with a smile.

She put down the steaming cup in front of Irene, who smiled back and thanked her. Tommy and Irene had worked with Linda while investigating the murder of a young girl a few years earlier. Irene and Linda had met up for coffee occasionally after they wrapped up the case, but she hadn’t seen Linda for a few weeks. They were both too busy, and Linda never really let anyone get too close to her.
It suits me perfectly that Linda has a strong sense of integrity,
Irene thought
. It means we don’t have to exchange personal confidences, the things we share on a professional level are enough
.

“I actually think I’ve found something,” Linda said, producing a clear plastic folder. Irene could see printouts from an Internet sex site; she recognized the type of page from an investigation into a trafficking-related murder some years earlier. There were pictures and descriptions of the young women currently offering sexual services in the Göteborg area. There was also an indication of which languages the women could speak, shown by the flag of the relevant country—usually Baltic languages, sometimes Spanish or Russian. If it said German or English, the girls often spoke only odd words or phrases that they had picked up from their clients.

“I didn’t look specifically for the girl who was killed—Moa—I just checked out the usual pages to see what’s happening right now. And I spotted this.”

Linda pointed to a Swedish flag next to a link, lolita.se.

“I’ve never come across this link before, so I clicked on it and a list of contact details came up—all Swedish girls, apparently. Sixteen total. And something tells me these are very young girls. That’s where I found this ad.”

She passed a sheet of paper to Irene.
i’m young and curious. we should meet up
. The address was [email protected].

The picture showed a girl with her face turned away, her body arranged in an unnatural pose. She was wearing nothing but a red see-through bra and panties, her pale nipples clearly visible above the cups of the low-cut bra. Irene recognized her immediately; it was Moa Olsson.

“We found that red lingerie set when we searched her room. She had another pair in black. Moa was wearing the black panties when she was found, and Alexandra was wearing the bra,” Irene said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“No, we haven’t told the media. It’s something we wanted to keep quiet; it helps us to eliminate the crazies who call up claiming to be the killer. We get at least one a day.” Irene sighed.

“And is that the only connection between the two cases?” Linda asked.

“No. We also found the same red nylon fibers on both items—three caught in the clasp of the bra Alexandra had on and five on Moa’s panties. We’ve sent the bra to a specialist lab in the UK, but I think it will be hard to find Moa’s DNA on it; Alexandra had been in the water for several days. But if it’s possible, they’ll find it,” Irene said.

“That would make the connection a hundred percent definite.”

“Yes. And then there’s the killer’s MO. The extreme sexual violence to which the girls were subjected is virtually identical. The main difference is that he strangled Moa with his bare hands but used a thin computer cable on Alexandra. We suspect it might actually be a cable from Moa’s computer. A small number of straight cuts had been inflicted on Moa’s body, while the cuts on Alexandra’s body were more numerous and kind of ornate. Moa was hidden in a crevice in a rock, while Alexandra had been dumped in the sea. But we have to remember that Moa was killed first; by the time he murdered Alexandra, he had added more rituals.”

“The places where the bodies were found are quite some distance apart,” Linda remarked.

“Yes, although we do have a witness statement indicating that the killer might have had access to a vehicle.”

Linda nodded, gazing at the picture of Moa.

“So you haven’t found Moa’s computer?”

“No, it’s missing. A laptop.”

“So it probably had a wireless connection. All new laptops are set up to work that way.”

“You could be right. According to her mother, she used to carry her computer around in a rucksack, which is also missing.”

“The killer probably took both.”

“More than likely. He knew we’d be able to trace him if we had access to her computer.”

“Did she have a cell phone? You can send emails via a cell these days,” Linda pointed out.

“That’s missing too, as is Alexandra’s cell. Once again, the killer probably took it.”

“Exactly. He needs to make your investigation as difficult as possible. Perhaps that’s why he chose to dump the bodies so far apart.”

“Possibly, but in that case surely he shouldn’t have made Alexandra put on the bra that matched Moa’s panties.”

“Right, that seems illogical,” Linda agreed. “But who can understand how a killer’s mind works?”

“There’s always a kind of logic in the sick mind of a killer, though he’s usually the only one who understands it.”

“These are particularly vile murders,’” Linda said, shaking her head. She waved a hand at Moa’s picture with an air of resignation.

“Girls of this age are surprisingly immature. They are incapable of analyzing the consequences of their actions, and are often completely governed by impulse. They might look like smaller mature women on the outside, but on the inside they’re still kids.”

Irene looked at the picture of the provocative fifteen-year-old, the girl who bought clothes that might possibly suit a girl who hung out in all the smart places on Avenyn in the city center. She couldn’t possibly have worn them in her everyday life; they just hung there in her closet, unworn. In the background she could see Moa’s bookcase with the cuddly toys, the expensive bottles of perfume, the makeup and the CD player.

She said thoughtfully, “Moa had a difficult upbringing. Her mother took her own life just a few days ago. She was an alcoholic.”

“I read about the suicide in the papers. And didn’t Moa have a brother who died too?”

“Yes. He was seventeen when he died after crashing a stolen car.”

They sat in silence for a little while; eventually Linda spoke.

“Some kids never have a chance.”

“No. Moa had a tough time. But Alexandra came from a well-off family, although as far as we can make out, she wasn’t happy. Her parents were in the process of getting a divorce, and she was pretty lonely. She loved horses; she even had one of her own. From a material point of view, she had everything a girl her age could wish for, yet she went looking for a friend online. And ended up in the clutches of the bastard who killed her.”

“Poverty isn’t always visible from the outside. Even the most apparently solid environments can hide a devastating internal poverty,” Linda said quietly. “Loneliness is the most widespread disease we have in Sweden today.” She suddenly stood up. “I have to go. See you.”

Before Irene had time to reply, she was gone.

Two days later,
Jens called Irene again.

“Hi, Jens here.”

“Hi. Anything new?”

“Yep. Our killer is using wireless broadband via a satellite connection, probably from a train or possibly a bus.”

“Can you trace the train or bus route? Whereabouts was he when he was chatting online?”

“That could take a while; we’re just looking into whether it’s possible or not. We need to examine the traffic on Alexandra’s computer; he might have used the 3G network at some point, in which case we can pin down the area he was in.”

“So all we can do is keep our fingers crossed and wait,” Irene said with a sigh.

“You’ve got it,” Jens said, ending the call.

Irene sighed again. She was beginning to get that familiar feeling of treading water. She hardly dared think about what might provide the catalyst to get things moving; another murder was a horrible thought, but with every passing day the likelihood increased that the killer would strike again.

The team worked
through the list of convicted sex offenders associated with extreme violence. Some had no alibi for one of the murders, but none lacked an alibi for both. Tobias Hansson’s story was still doubtful because his only witness was his overprotective mother. In spite of the fact that they had brought him in twice, they couldn’t get him to change a thing: he had been at home with his mom, and she confirmed every word he said. And there was no real evidence against him; he didn’t even have a driver’s license.

They were still very interested in the dark-colored van, but unfortunately the elderly witness had become less and less certain of the make and model during his conversation with Jonny Blom. Jonny had started by showing the man a picture of a Renault Kangoo. It was too small, the man insisted, but it might have been a similar model. But bigger. Jonny produced a picture of a Ford Transit; too big. The only conclusion they reached was that it was a dark-colored van, somewhere between a Renault Kangoo and a Ford Transit in size. Jonny had let out a loud groan, which didn’t exactly make the witness feel more comfortable. He couldn’t remember if the vehicle had rear windows or not. Nor did he recall if there had been anything written on the van, although he might possibly have noticed “something white on the side,” which could have been an inscription or a logo.

This meant they were looking at thousands of possible vehicles within a radius of only fifty kilometers of Göteborg. Medium-sized vans are commonly used within companies, which means that several people could have access to the same van. It was virtually impossible to speak to everyone who might have had access to a dark-colored van at the relevant time.

At the beginning of June the police made a public appeal through the media, asking anyone who had seen a van or car in the area around Store Udde during the hours of darkness on Walpurgis Night to get in touch. Several calls came in, but none of them led anywhere.

They also checked whether any of the men on the list of sex offenders could have had access to such a van. They contacted every car hire firm in the Göteborg area to find out whether any of these men might have hired a van at the relevant period, but the result was negative.

Moa Olsson’s father was found; he was working as a gardener in a park in Malmö, having gained a place in a methadone program. These days he had a stable family life with his new wife and five-year-old son. He told the police he had never gotten in touch with Moa after walking out when she was a little girl. “The years went by, and suddenly it kind of seemed too late,” he had said.

He was right; it was too late.

The department was snowed under with work. The investigation into Moa’s and Alexandra’s deaths was a priority, but there were constant interruptions as new crimes came in. The gang war escalated, with another car bomb and an armed attack on an apartment in Angered. The only good news was that there were no more fatalities in those incidents; the three they already had were more than enough.

Suddenly it was almost midsummer, and the holidays were approaching. Efva Thylqvist was due to go on vacation the day before Midsummer’s Eve. At morning prayer that same day she had news for the team.

“We will be getting a replacement for Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala. I don’t have a name yet, but he or she will be with us in August.”

The announcement was so unexpected that no one could think of anything to say. In the silence that followed, the superintendent got to her feet and wished them all a good summer. She would be away for four weeks.

Irene had a week left to work before her vacation began. She and Krister were going over to London to visit her good friend DCI Glenn Thomson and his family; he worked for the Metropolitan Police.

The murder weapon
was certainly old, and had seen better days. Sven Andersson weighed the pistol in his hand. The note attached to it said
Tokarev M1933
. There was also further data on the weapon:
7.622mm caliber, ammunition 7.62x25 (7.62 Tokarev) with flange. Function: semiautomatic with short recoil. Locking lugs all around the barrel. Length 195mm, weight 0.82kg, barrel 114mm with four right-facing grooves, 8-round detachable box magazine
.

They had received both the report and the pistol from ballistics the previous day. Test firing had shown that the bullets found in Mats Persson’s body had come from the Tokarev. The forensic pathologist had found traces of gunpowder around two of the entry wounds. It was estimated that the shots had been fired from a distance of no more than a meter. One bullet had gone straight into the heart and would have killed Persson instantly. There were no fingerprints on the gun.

At first Sven Andersson and Leif Fryxender had been optimistic: if the murder weapon had been found, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to trace where it came from. The results of their research had been depressing. The pistol lacked any distinguishing marks, apart from the five-pointed star and the letters
CCCP
on the butt. There was, however, a serial number on the back at the left-hand side. The four Cyrillic letters and the four-digit number confirmed that it was Russian and had been manufactured in 1937. Further research revealed that this particular model had been mass produced, not only in the Soviet Union but also in Hungary, Yugoslavia and the People’s Republic of China, particularly following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The murder weapon was pre-war, so it was almost certainly of Russian origin.

Leif Fryxender went back through the archives looking for a report of a stolen Tokarev M1933 around the time of Mats Persson’s disappearance in 1983, but without success; reports of stolen goods from such a long time ago no longer existed in any archive.

As far as the Cold Cases Unit’s investigations were concerned, there was no rush. Their clients were long dead, and would remain that way. But Andersson thought the unit’s existence was important; a killer shouldn’t feel safe until the statute of limitations is up. It is completely ridiculous that the statute of limitations for homicide is only twenty-five years in Sweden; in other countries it is significantly longer. No doubt some bright spark in a position of responsibility had worked out that it was an easy way of massaging the statistics on unsolved murders.

Sven Andersson snorted loudly and dropped the pistol back in the box, then pushed the box into a corner with his foot. He was about to start his well-earned vacation, and he had no intention of giving the mum—Mats Persson a single thought over the next four weeks.

Blue-grey thunderclouds hung low over the city. The air was still and heavy.