Unseen (24 page)

There was only one entrance, and that was through the doorway they had just entered. On the floor lay a shattered mirror. The pieces glittered in the sunshine. A short distance away was a lump of clay.

“She must have been sitting here working,” said Knutas. “Do you see that lump of clay over there?”

“Yes,” replied Jacobsson, and then turned to Sohlman, who was squatting down next to the body. “How long do you think she’s been dead?”

“The body’s completely rigid. Taking into consideration the rigor mortis, I’d guess she’s been dead at least twelve hours, but not much longer than that. The body is still warm.”

“Who called it in?”

“A friend of hers. Cecilia Ångström. She’s in the house.”

“I’m going over there,” said Knutas.

From the outside, Gunilla Olsson’s house looked too big to be the home of just one person. It was a two-story limestone building that appeared to be very old.

Knutas went in the front door, trying to shake off the image of the act of violence he had just been forced to see.

At the kitchen table sat a young woman with her head bowed. Her long dark hair hid her face. She was wearing a light-colored summer dress with spaghetti straps. A female uniformed police officer was sitting next to her, holding her hand. Knutas greeted them. He knew the officer slightly. The young woman was about twenty-five, Knutas guessed. She looked at him with a blank expression. Her face was streaked with tears.

Knutas introduced himself and sat down across from her. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Well, Gunilla was supposed to come over to my house today. We were planning to celebrate Midsummer together, at my cabin in Katthammarsvik. She was supposed to arrive right after breakfast. When I didn’t hear from her and she still hadn’t shown up by noon, I started getting worried. She didn’t answer any of the numbers that I called. That’s when I decided to come over here.”

“When did you get here?”

“It must have been close to one.”

“What happened?”

“The door to the studio was open, so I went in. I found her there. She was lying on the floor. There was blood everywhere.”

“What did you do?”

“I went out and got in my car and locked the doors. Then I called the police. I was scared and wanted to leave, but they told me to stay here. The police arrived in about half an hour.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“Did you notice anything strange?”

“No.”

“How well did you know Gunilla?”

“Quite well. We’ve been friends for a couple of months.”

“And you were going to celebrate Midsummer together, just the two of you?”

“Gunilla was in the middle of working on a big commission. She’d been working really hard for the past few weeks and just wanted some peace and quiet. I felt the same way. That’s why we decided to spend Midsummer together.”

“When did you last talk to her?”

“The day before yesterday. She was supposed to call me last night, but she never did.”

“Do you know whether she had planned to do anything special yesterday? Or whether she was going to meet anyone?”

“No. She was going to work all day and in the evening, too.”

“Do you know where her family lives? Her parents? Her siblings?”

“Her parents are dead. She has a brother, but I don’t know where he lives. Not on Gotland, at any rate.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“No, not as far as I know. She hadn’t been back home very long. She lived abroad for a long time. She came back to Sweden in January, I think.”

“I see.” Knutas patted Cecilia Ångström’s arm and asked his colleague to drive her to the hospital. “We’ll talk some more later,” he said to Cecilia. “I’ll be in touch.”

He left the kitchen and walked through the rest of the house. His courage sank as he looked out a window. Not a neighbor for as far as the eye could see. The living room was big and bright. Colorful paintings hung on the walls, works by artists he didn’t know. He went upstairs and into the bedroom, where there was a big, inviting bed. Next door was a guest room that seemed unused, then a study, a big bathroom, and a sitting room.

He didn’t discover anything unusual, at least not at first glance. No damage or vandalism, from what he could see. Sohlman would go over the house later, so he didn’t want to touch anything.

The downstairs was equally bright and airy. Next to the kitchen was a big dining room with a fireplace. There was also another bedroom and one more room, filled with books and a big armchair for reading.
She certainly had a lot of room to herself
, he thought.

He was interrupted by Karin Jacobsson, who appeared in the doorway.

“Come here, Anders,” she called out to him breathlessly. “We’ve found something.”

No more than five minutes left in the school day. After school he usually went straight home. Hurry up. Hurry up. The key on a string around his neck. Since the only chance he had of escaping his tormentors was to get such a big head start that they couldn’t catch him, he would always start preparing several minutes before the last class was over. Cautiously he began gathering up his things. Quietly he closed his book. Then he put his pencil in the little slot in his pencil case and the eraser in its slot. The whole time he kept his eyes fixed on the teacher, who mustn’t notice anything. Slowly he closed the zipper on his pencil case. He thought it scraped as loudly as thunder through the classroom, but again the teacher didn’t notice a thing. It was normally dead quiet in the room because the teacher was strict and wouldn’t stand for any talking or playing around during class. Now she turned her back. Good. Carefully he opened the desk lid. Just slightly, enough so that he could slide his books inside. Then his pencil case. All right. His heart was thudding, hard and fast. The bell was going to ring soon. If only the teacher wouldn’t notice anything before then. Lisa, who sat next to him, saw what he was up to but didn’t care. She treated him like all the others did, ignoring him completely. Just like all those other chickens. No one dared make friends with him, out of fear that they, too, would fall victim to the hated demons
.

Johan slammed down the phone after talking to his source in Nynäshamn. How did the old guy find out everything so fast? He wondered who it was that was willing to feed him such good information.

He quickly grabbed his notebook, cell phone, and pens and rushed out of the room. Another murder had been committed. Three homicides in less than three weeks. It was frightening and totally improbable. His editors in Stockholm wanted him to go straight down to the farm in När and file a firsthand story from there for both the
Aktuellt
and
Rapport
news programs by phone. It was a matter of finding out as much information as possible before the broadcast. According to his source, it was the same scenario as the two previous cases: a murdered woman in her thirties, hacked to death and with a pair of panties in her mouth.

He called Knutas while he waited for Peter to pick him up at the hotel. The cameraman had been out, giving one of Gotland’s many golf courses a try, and Johan had interrupted him in the middle of a game. Knutas didn’t answer. Jacobsson didn’t, either. So he tried the duty officer, but he referred Johan to the head of the investigation, which meant Knutas.
Shit
. The duty officer would say only that something had happened on a farm in När. He refused to give any further details. The police were on the scene and needed to be able to work undisturbed. Johan impatiently lit a cigarette and cast a glance down the street. What was taking him so long?

A reporter from the central desk would be arriving on the first plane he could get. Over the next few days he would represent Swedish TV’s national news while Johan would continue to work for the regional division. The national reporter showed up only when things were hot. Like right now, when the inconceivable had happened: a third murder. Under normal circumstances, Johan would have felt offended that the national news wasn’t satisfied with using his reports in their program. Now he was glad. If he had to be working for all the news broadcasts at once, he wouldn’t have time to see Emma.

“Hurry up. Come on.”

Jacobsson sounded agitated. Knutas followed her out to the yard. In a clump of trees a short distance away, Sohlman and Kihlgård were bending over something. He trotted over to join them.

Sohlman was using tongs to pick up some object from the ground. It was oblong in shape and made of plastic. He turned it this way and that. Sweat was running down his back in the heat.

“What the hell is it?” grunted Kihlgård.

“It’s an inhaler for asthmatics.”

“Was Gunilla Olsson asthmatic?” asked Knutas.

His colleagues shrugged their shoulders.

Knutas ran back to the house. Cecilia Ångström and the policewoman were just about to leave.

“Do you know whether Gunilla had asthma?” asked Knutas.

“I don’t think so,” replied Cecilia hesitantly. “No, she didn’t,” she then said more firmly. “She couldn’t have. We were at a party a few weeks ago, visiting some of my friends, and they have both a dog and a cat. Gunilla didn’t say anything about it bothering her.”

“Do you have asthma?”

“No.”

Knutas went back outside to his colleagues, who turned to him with a look of inquiry.

“All right,” he said. “It is very possible that we now know something new about our killer. He might have asthma.”

Johan didn’t know much about När, other than that it was the home district of the Ainbusk Singers. In his attempts to find Gunilla Olsson’s farm, he and Peter ended up on the road leading to the windy harbor of Närshamn. The little fishing village reminded them of Norway or Iceland. A wharf jutted out into the sea. On it was a long barracks with fish stalls inside. There were fishing trawlers, stacks of polystyrene fishing crates, and piles of netting. The boats that weren’t out at sea rocked on their moorings beside the wharf. In the distance they saw a couple of tourists pedaling their bikes against the wind, heading for the lighthouse on Närsholmen. The waves broke in a steady rhythm that seemed predetermined.

Johan rolled down the window. The smell of seaweed awakened memories. He felt an urge to walk right out to the end of the wharf and let the wind fill him with energy. Thoughts of Emma floated around him, seizing hold of his heart, his brain, his genitals, and his stomach. Right now, though, a different reality was demanding his attention. Peter turned the car around.

“Goddamn it. We took the wrong road.”

After getting lost two more times, they finally reached the farm. As windy as it had been down at the harbor, it was completely still outside the murdered woman’s house. The police had cordoned off a large area, and a number of curiosity seekers had interrupted their Midsummer celebrations to gather outside the police tape.

From the village came the faint sounds of accordion music. The Midsummer celebrations were in full swing just a short distance away from the murder scene.

Johan made inquiries and learned that Knutas had left the woman’s residence only fifteen minutes earlier. Jacobsson had left, too. They were the only ones he had good contact with among the Visby police.

Johan called Knutas, who confirmed that a thirty-five-year-old woman had been killed at her home. The precise time of the murder was unclear. The police refused to comment on how she had been killed.

Knutas, who knew that the journalists could quickly find out the victim’s identity, asked Johan not to include her name or photo in his report. The police had not yet been able to contact her family.

Before it was time for his report, Johan managed to talk to a young guy in the crowd that had gathered outside the police tape.

Yes, it was true that a girl lived here alone. She was in her thirties, the guy told him. She worked with ceramics.

It was a few minutes before six when he called the
Aktuellt
editor in Stockholm. He was linked up to the studio and reported live on what he had learned to the TV audience.

When the phone spot was done, he had to try to find more material for the later broadcasts. A press conference at police headquarters was scheduled for 9:00
P.M.

By then the national reporter should have arrived, and they could work together. That suited him fine.

Peter walked around outside the police tape, shooting footage. The police refused to say anything more. Johan decided instead to talk to the people standing on the narrow dirt road outside the farm. Some had arrived on bicycles, a couple of teenagers came on delivery mopeds, and a few cars had stopped and parked along the road. Most of them turned out to be neighbors who had seen the police cars gathering around the farm.

Johan approached a short, plump, middle-aged woman wearing shorts and a polo shirt. She had a dog with her, and she was standing by herself, slightly apart from the other spectators.

He introduced himself.

“Did you know the woman who lived here?” he asked.