Hidden in Memories (The Åre Murders), page 18
That’s the way the world looks with social media.
He parks the car, and they hurry down the hill. A short distance away they can just see the roof of Zlatan Ibrahimović’s house, a much-talked-about mountain lodge that the famous footballer had built a decade ago.
Today there is no time to admire its bold architecture. Instead they hurry to the area behind the hotel’s staff accommodation, a three-story gray building in front of a dense forest of fir trees.
A uniformed colleague whom Daniel recognizes beckons them over.
“Over there,” Jocke says, pointing.
Daniel’s stomach contracts when he sees the outline of the dead body, right next to a clump of trees.
“Who found her?” Hanna asks.
“The woman with the dog.”
She is sitting in one of the police cars. The back door is open, and a dog on a leash is sitting outside, whining impatiently. It’s a Samoyed—Daniel recognizes the characteristic fluffy coat that almost blends in with the white snow.
“I asked her to wait until you got here,” Jocke explains.
“We’ll talk to her in a minute—let’s take a look at the victim first.”
They make their way over to the spot where the body is lying on the ground. Daniel feels a terrible emptiness inside. They are standing in front of a deceased person who will never speak, laugh, or breathe again.
It’s a young woman. She looks very small lying half on her side, with pale cheeks and closed eyes. Her hands are resting on the snow, palms upward. Her fair hair surrounds her head like a frozen halo.
But there is nothing peaceful about this horrific sight.
Her quilted jacket has slipped down, exposing part of her throat. Her scarf is tight around her neck. It is obvious that someone has pulled as hard as they could.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about the cause of death,” Daniel says, “although of course the pathologist will have to carry out an examination.”
“Do we know her name?” Hanna asks.
One cheek is pressed down into the snow. The scarf has dug deep into her skin. Hanna spots a pass card hanging from a lanyard, and crouches down to take a closer look.
“Aada Kuus. It seems she worked at the hotel.”
Daniel turns to get an overview. The hotel is a few hundred yards away up to the right, on the same side of the road as the accommodation block. However, this particular area is well hidden. There aren’t many windows at the back of the staff building, and you can’t be seen from the road. Nor are there any streetlights. The entrance to the block is around the corner, so the exterior lighting is facing in the opposite direction.
He looks at the dead woman again.
No unwelcome eyes would have seen what happened here.
And no one would have heard her scream.
60
When they have finished with the crime scene and spoken to the woman who discovered the body, Hanna and Daniel set off for the hotel. They are meeting Espen Lund to find out more about the latest victim. They have had to postpone their plans to interview Paul Lehto, but are hoping to catch up with him later in the day.
On the way to the entrance, a group of journalists catches up with them. The guy from the major TV company who was so rude the other day more or less pushes Hanna aside and positions himself in front of Daniel. Hanna can see that he thinks he’s picked up the scent of something big. She recognizes his behavior from Monday, before Daniel yelled at him.
He has a feverish glow in his eyes.
“Is it the same killer as last time?” he asks loudly. “Has there been another stabbing in Åre?”
Daniel holds up his hand in a defensive gesture and tries to continue toward the door, but the reporter refuses to give up. He blocks Daniel’s path so that he has no choice but to stop.
“Come on, you have to give us something!”
“I don’t have to give you a damned thing,” Daniel replies.
“Is it the same killer? Could the police have foreseen this?”
“Enough!”
Daniel is getting angry. Hanna knows the warning signs—the deep frown, the compressed lips.
“Do you really have no idea what’s happened?” the journalist almost shouts in his face.
“No comment.”
Daniel moves to the side to go around him, but the journalist steps sideways so that he is still blocking Daniel’s route.
“Shouldn’t the hotel have been closed after the first murder?”
He persists, ignoring the clear signals that he needs to stop. This could go badly wrong. Hanna realizes that Daniel is going to punch the guy if she doesn’t do something.
“Get out of my fucking way!” he bellows. “Can’t you see we’re working?”
He is about to lash out when Hanna steps between the two of them. She feels as if she is undermining her colleague, he ought to be perfectly capable of handling the situation himself, but she has been here before, she has seen him lose his temper in other contexts.
Although it’s been a while.
“Call our press office,” she snaps. “If you don’t stop this right now, I’ll have you removed by our colleagues.”
Somehow she manages to edge Daniel away from the journalist before he explodes. They stand outside the main door while he pulls himself together.
“Thanks,” he says after several long, silent seconds.
“What happened?” Hanna has to ask. “I thought you were going to hit him.”
Daniel looks both tense and resigned. She would like to give him a hug, but contents herself with a cautious pat on the arm.
“I can’t really explain it. That guy, he was so disrespectful. There’s a dead woman, strangled, only a few hundred yards away. It just sickened me.”
Hanna understands—she is shaken too. But she has a feeling there is more to tell. He is holding something back, something that seems even more difficult to talk about.
“He . . .” Daniel pushes his hands deep into his pockets without looking at her. “He reminds me of my father.”
“Your father?”
She tries to catch his eye. Daniel has never said much about his father, even though they know each other pretty well by this stage. Of course she knows that his mother died in a road traffic accident, but his father is no more than a vague figure who disappeared from the picture when Daniel was little.
“There’s something about the way he acts.” Daniel sounds tortured. “It’s weird, the anger came from nowhere. I couldn’t control it.” He kicks out at a pile of snow, sending snow in all directions. “Shit!”
They ought to go inside and get on with the job, but Hanna can see he needs time to calm down first.
“I thought I was more professional than this! A year in therapy, and I haven’t learned a fucking thing!”
Hanna can’t hide her surprise.
“You’ve been seeing a psychologist? Why didn’t you say anything?” She tries to sound sympathetic, but she is shocked. She had no idea.
Daniel’s jaw has never been so tense. Beneath the tightly controlled surface, she senses powerful emotions that he is trying to keep in check. He never wants to appear weak, and yet she catches a glimpse of the unhappy child inside the man she cares about so deeply.
A short distance away they hear the hum of the tow lift, followed by a crack when a skier lets go of the loop, which flies up in the air.
“I guess I was embarrassed,” Daniel says eventually. He speaks quietly, his face turned away.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Lots of people have therapy.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“I had counseling last year,” Hanna points out.
“That’s different. It was because of something that happened to you in the line of duty.”
This sounds so stupid that Hanna rolls her eyes. “You know what I think you should do?” she says, without giving him time to ponder. “Ask for an emergency appointment with your therapist. Go and see him or her, explain what happened today. Get some help to process it right away.”
“I can’t do that—we’re in the middle of a case, we have a new victim . . .”
“Just do it.” Hanna isn’t giving up. “If you don’t deal with this now, you won’t be any use in the investigation.”
“I don’t have time,” Daniel protests, but with less conviction.
“Find the time. What if this happens again, and you really lose it?”
Hanna steps forward and hugs him tightly. Her feelings spill over when he relaxes in her arms.
“Thanks,” he murmurs in her ear. “For understanding.”
61
There isn’t much left of Espen Lund’s professional persona as he sits opposite Daniel and Hanna. The hunted look in his eyes reveals a high stress level, and there is a noticeable twitch beneath one eye. He is slumped on his chair, chewing a fingernail.
They are in the same conference room as before, and it is just over an hour since the body was found.
In spite of the difficult situation, Daniel feels calm. It was a relief to tell Hanna about the therapy, and he has taken her advice. He sent a message to Jovanka asking if she can squeeze him in as soon as possible. He has to try to find a window, even though the case is escalating.
He doesn’t want to disappoint Hanna, and deep down he knows she’s right. He needs to deal with his reaction to the journalist. This investigation has taken a greater toll on him than he realized.
The fact that another woman has been killed is nothing less than a nightmare.
Espen lets out a groan and buries his face in his hands. He appears to be on the verge of collapse.
“This is horrendous. We’re going to have to close the hotel, there’s nothing else for it.” With a pleading note in his voice he goes on. “Are you sure it was murder? It couldn’t have been an accident?”
“I’m sorry,” Hanna informs him. “There is absolutely no indication that it was an accident. We have to wait for the pathologist’s report, of course, but it looks as if the victim was strangled.”
Espen seems to shrink before their eyes as the scope of the catastrophe sinks in. His phone is constantly bleeping, but he doesn’t bother to switch it to silent. Or maybe he’s so shocked that he hasn’t even noticed.
Daniel feels for him, he is in a terrible situation, but they have no choice. The most important thing right now is to get as much information as possible about the latest victim so that they can make progress.
“What happens now?” Espen asks in a small voice.
For a moment Daniel isn’t sure whether he’s talking about the investigation or the hotel.
“What do I do? Should I send everyone home, all the guests and the staff, to be on the safe side?”
Daniel notices a burst blood vessel on his left cheek, tiny red threads spreading in all directions like a spider’s web.
“It’s probably best to wait a while,” Hanna advises. “We need the opportunity to interview everyone who lives in the staff-accommodation block, to find out if anyone saw or heard anything.”
“And we need all the information you have about the victim. Everything.”
Apart from the woman’s name, Aada Kuus, they have learned that she was twenty-one years old and came from Maardu, a small town in Estonia. Aada had worked as a cleaner for six months and was popular with her colleagues, although she was regarded as shy and reserved and didn’t speak Swedish particularly well.
No one in the hotel can understand what has happened.
Why would anyone want to murder Aada?
Her clothes were undisturbed, so there is no indication of a sexual motive. However, it is hard to ignore the stabbing that took place just a few days ago.
“We can’t help feeling that Aada’s death might be connected to Charlotte Wretlind’s murder,” Hanna says. “Are you aware of any links between the two women? Did they have any kind of contact?”
“I can’t answer that off the top of my head.”
“Okay. Did Aada clean the Silver Suite when Charlotte was staying there?”
Espen looks confused, as if his brain were scrambled.
“Can you access her work roster?” Hanna clarifies. “It would be a start.”
Espen focuses on the iPad on the table in front of him and searches the system.
“Aada was working on the night Charlotte was murdered,” he says after a little while. “Not in the Silver Suite, but on the same floor.”
“Can you see what time she was in each room?” Daniel asks. “I’m guessing it should be possible to see when she swiped her key card.”
“I’ll have to check that out with IT.”
His voice is steadier now, maybe it’s easier to function when there is a concrete task to carry out. This isn’t the first time Daniel has dealt with a shocked individual, and he knows that everyone reacts differently.
There is no right or wrong.
Espen picks up his phone, and after a brief conversation, they have their answer.
“Someone is bringing the log,” he says.
Within a couple of minutes, there is a knock on the door, and a tall man in hotel uniform appears. Daniel recognizes him—he’s the guy who told Hanna about the argument at reception.
“Excuse me,” he says to Espen. “IT told me to give you this.”
He hands over a printout. Espen gives him an appreciative smile and receives a brief nod in return.
When he has gone Espen spreads out the documents on the table and pushes the relevant sheet of paper across to Hanna and Daniel.
“Okay, so this shows that Aada cleaned several rooms on the sixth floor late on Sunday evening. We can see which rooms she went into but not how long she stayed, because the card doesn’t register when you leave. According to this log, she was in rooms 650, 642, and 633, all of which were due to receive new guests the following morning. Then she moved down to the fifth floor.”
“Which of those rooms is closest to the Silver Suite?” Hanna asks.
“Room 633—it’s next door.” There is a little more color in Espen’s face now. “It looks as if Aada went back to 633 late at night—six minutes after midnight. The late shift finishes at midnight, so I’m not sure why she would have done that—maybe she forgot something.”
Daniel considers this information. The time of Aada’s return to room 633 more or less matches the pathologist’s estimate of Charlotte’s time of death.
Admittedly an autopsy can’t pinpoint the exact moment when a person stopped breathing—that requires some kind of supporting evidence or additional factors. However, in this instance there is a witness—the father in the room below who heard a noise at that time.
“So Aada would have been in the neighboring room when we believe Charlotte was murdered,” Daniel says slowly.
Hanna nods in agreement. “That could be our explanation. If Aada happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and actually saw the killer when he fled from the Silver Suite on Sunday night . . .”
It was just hours after the argument at reception, Daniel thinks.
“Do you know if Aada has anything to do with Paul Lehto?” he asks. “Would Lehto have had access to her work schedule?”
The last time they spoke to Espen Lund, they asked a whole series of questions about Lehto. He hadn’t been aware of the quarrel between Lehto and Charlotte, and had reacted strongly to the information.
Now he reacts even more strongly, his eyes full of doubt.
“Do you really think Lehto could be involved in Aada’s death?”
“I can’t answer that,” Hanna says. “But it’s unfortunate if Aada witnessed the killer leaving the scene of the crime. He might have decided he needed to get rid of her.”
Daniel thinks she could well be right. The consequences of this conclusion are terrifying. He closes his eyes for a second. It says a great deal about the perpetrator’s character.
They are dealing with someone who not only kills in a burst of rage, but someone who is sufficiently cold blooded to take other lives if necessary.
He is prepared to kill in order to save his own skin.
62
A knock on the door makes Bengt Hedin glance up from his computer screen. He has been hiding in his office all day, canceling all his meetings and pretending to be busy.
He would have preferred to stay home, but doesn’t want to do anything that could be perceived as suspicious. He forced himself to come into work this morning, tried to act like nothing had happened. After that detective showed up yesterday, Bengt feels as if everyone is wondering, even though he did his best to play down the visit over afternoon coffee.
As soon as the cop left, Bengt started googling their powers, checking to see whether they had the right to go through his assets without his knowledge. The legal language was complex and hard to understand, and in the end he gave up, told himself he’d been careful. He hasn’t received a Swish transfer, or money paid directly into his personal account. Everything has gone into the family foundation, which Bengt alone administers. The police will never be able to track down that account—they’re not that smart.
He still feels uneasy.
He has already done so much to hide his tracks, crossed boundaries in a way that he would never have thought possible.
The adrenaline is coursing through his body, and he is worried about the mass media. They are always on the lookout. The second murder at Copperhill is big news, and the reporters seem to know far more than they should.
Bengt has read every word, breaking out into a cold sweat. How come they have access to so much information? What will he do if they find him?
He runs a sweaty hand through his hair. With every passing day he becomes more and more entangled. It feels like trudging through a bog, with his feet sinking deeper and deeper.
Another knock, and the door opens to reveal his fellow party member Gunilla Nymark.
“Do you have a moment?” she wonders, leaning on the edge of his desk.
Saying no is not an option. Gunilla is vice chair of the party on the council. She has held the post for a long time—he can’t afford to arouse her suspicions.
