The Dangerous Game (22 page)

‘So, how are you?’ he asks in his gentle voice, placing his big, dry hand on top of hers.

‘I hate this place. You know that,’ she snaps, pulling away her hand. ‘And I feel shitty, in case you want to know.’

He ignores her tone of voice.

‘Grandma and Grandpa send their love.’

‘Huh.’

She’s already regretting her attitude. She doesn’t want to appear weak in Katarina’s eyes. Or as if she cares about her being there. Agnes casts a surreptitious glance in her direction. Come to think of it, Katarina actually looks rather nice. Dark hair under the beret she’s wearing. Brown eyes and a fresh complexion with rosy cheeks. Distinctive features. Pale-pink lipstick. Agnes shifts her gaze to her father and is suddenly seized with tenderness. He looks tired. His calloused hands are fidgeting. She notices the faint scent of his aftershave.

Per brings them their coffee. The china clinks and his hands tremble slightly as he fills their cups, one by one. It takes for ever.

‘Why don’t you join us?’ Agnes suggests. ‘You would ease the situation a bit. It’s rather tense, as you can tell.’

The next second, Katarina is on her feet, her lips pressed together in a tight line.

‘I can see this isn’t a good idea. I don’t think Agnes is ready.’

‘Don’t go,’ Rikard pleads as she leaves the room.

‘It’s okay,’ Per tells him. ‘I’ll go after her.’

He hurries after Katarina, who is angrily striding down the hall.

‘Was that really necessary?’ Agnes’s father gives her a reproachful look. ‘Couldn’t you at least try?’

‘She’s so highly strung,’ Agnes defends herself. ‘Can’t stand even the slightest criticism.’

‘This isn’t easy for her either. She’s been sitting in that day room for three months now. Don’t you think it’s about time you cut her a little slack?’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘Because Katarina and I are together and have been for quite a while now. How do you think I feel when you ignore her, pretending that she doesn’t exist?’

‘What about me? Don’t I mean anything to you?’

‘Agnes, sweetie. You’re everything to me. But I need to live my own life, too. I have my work, but everyone else has a family they can go home to. I don’t want to sit at home alone every evening and every weekend. And you’re here. And you don’t seem to be getting any better. Don’t you want to get well?’

‘Of course I do. But it’s not that easy.’

‘I spoke to the head of the clinic, and she says that you’re resisting the treatment. That you’re not helping yourself.’

‘Huh.’

Her father looks deep into her eyes, then reaches out to caress her cheek gently. She’s on the verge of tears, but she fights against it.

‘My beautiful daughter,’ he says tenderly. ‘My beautiful little girl. You’re the only one who can make yourself well. Nobody else can do it for you. What’s so awful about gaining weight? What are you afraid of?’

She shrugs. The words lodge in her throat.

Then she says, ‘I don’t know how to act if I’m not anorexic. I can hardly remember what I used to be like.’

‘Before all this happened, you were a happy, sweet girl who had lots of friends and enjoyed going to school. Until those damn fashion people came into the picture. Katarina agrees that it’s awful how they destroyed your life. I hate them for what they did. She does, too. She thinks it’s terrible how they treated you. I want you to know that Katarina cares about you, even though you don’t think she does. But you can have your life back, and everything can be the same as it was before. Don’t let those cold, calculating people win. They’ve already caused enough harm.’

JOHAN BERG WAS
about to have his morning coffee when he switched on the TV, as he usually did on Mondays. It made no difference that he was on holiday and staying at his mother’s home in Rönninge. He still had to watch the news. It was in his bones.

‘What the hell?’

He reached for the remote control to turn up the volume. His colleague from the Stockholm office Madeleine Haga was on the screen. She stood in front of a building in the city centre.

There is speculation that the murder may have had something to do with the staff Christmas party, which the agency hosted on Friday evening at a club on Stureplan, only a stone’s throw from its office. Robert Ek may have lain dead in his office all weekend. But the police are also asking the question …

Emma came into the living room, carrying a mug of coffee. The children were still asleep in one of the guest rooms upstairs. Johan’s mother wasn’t yet awake either.

‘What is it?’ she asked, sitting down on the sofa next to Johan.

‘The head of Fashion for Life is dead. He was found murdered at the agency.’

‘Really? Good Lord, this is too much.’

‘I know. His body was discovered last night. And they haven’t caught the killer.’

‘That’s unbelievable. What’s going on with that agency? And Jenny works for that place. This is starting to get really scary. I need to call Tina.’

She got up and left the room.

In the meantime, Johan rang his boss, the editor-in-chief, Max Grenfors, in Stockholm. He sounded out of breath. Johan could picture him running along the corridors of the huge television building.

‘What a bloody mess! The morning meeting starts in a few minutes, and after that we’ll decide how to tackle this story. Right now, Madeleine is on the scene, and I’ve got two reporters working on it here in the office. I’ll phone you back after the meeting and we’ll work out how to handle the Gotland angle.’

‘What are you hearing?’

‘There’s speculation that it’s some sort of personal vendetta against the two victims – that they were involved in some shit together, and that’s what provoked the attacks. They share a long history.’

‘Is that right? I didn’t know that.’

‘I’ll brief you later. Haven’t got time to talk right now. But since you’re here in Stockholm, why don’t you drop by the office? This could be a big story.’

Johan could hear excited voices talking in the background. Apparently, there were others who wanted Grenfors’s attention. Johan yearned to be there, in the midst of it all. He wondered what Emma would say about Grenfors’s idea.

He went back to his mother’s kitchen, which was elaborately decorated for the holidays with red curtains, Advent stars, Christmas elves and a gingerbread heart which hung in the window. The whole room was still fragrant from the ginger biscuits they’d baked the day before.

It was two days before Christmas Eve.

KARIN JACOBSSON AND
Thomas Wittberg were sitting in a conference room at police headquarters in Stockholm, along with Detective Inspector Martin Kihlgård of the NCP. They had just arrived from Visby and were about to get their first report on the situation. Outside the window, the light was fading, even though it was only eleven in the morning. Snowflakes were briskly tumbling down from the gloomy sky. In the big windows facing the park, someone had placed electric candles, which produced a warm glow against the hazy backdrop. Stockholmers hunched their shoulders as they hurried along the street in the snowstorm. No one paused or glanced to the side or bothered to meet the eye of other pedestrians. It was too cold for that. In these days before Christmas, everyone deadened their senses by spending too much on gifts and decorating their homes in a desperate attempt to withstand the darkness.

Martin Kihlgård reached out his hand to take a saffron bun from the basket of pastries on the conference table. He was famous for his appetite, and he was almost always eating something. He was solidly built, without being obese. Jacobsson thought his rotund appearance gave him a certain air of authority. And confidence. She had liked him from the very first time they met, several years ago, when he came to Gotland to help hunt for a serial killer.

‘How much do we know?’ she asked him now.

‘Robert Ek was found in his office at the Fashion for Life agency, murdered with an axe. He had been brutally attacked and had multiple wounds on his head and body. His skull had been split clear down to his eyes. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.’

Kihlgård shook his head, making his cheeks quiver.

‘What about the perpetrator?’

‘Not yet apprehended. But we did find some interesting items in the rubbish early this morning, including what appears to be the murder weapon. A bloodstained axe.’

Wittberg whistled.

‘Damn. Is it the same one that was used on Furillen?’

‘We don’t know yet. It was sent to the lab for analysis. The forensics guys also found Ek’s mobile phone. And it turns out that he received a text message from another mobile on the night of the party. And not just from anybody. The message was sent from Markus Sandberg’s phone! At 1.10 on Saturday morning.’

Wittberg and Jacobsson stared in astonishment at their colleague.

Kihlgård paused for dramatic effect before he went on.

‘This is what the message said: “Meet me at the agency in half an hour. Hugs. Jenny.”’

‘Are you serious?’ exclaimed Jacobsson.

‘Yup. That’s what it said. Word for word. I have the transcript here. And the next minute, Robert Ek sent a reply, saying that he would wait for her. Fifty-one minutes later, at 2.01 a.m., he sent a text saying, “I’m here. I’m waiting for you.”’

‘So that means the cases are definitely connected and, judging by the text, it’s the same perpetrator,’ said Jacobsson. ‘The question is whether Jenny Levin wrote it, or whether the killer pretended to be her in order to lure Ek to the agency. Sandberg’s mobile has been traced to Flemingsberg ever since Markus was assaulted, and Jenny hasn’t been anywhere near there, at least according to her. What does she say about all this?’

‘The problem is that we haven’t been able to reach her, but we just heard from her parents that she’s on a plane heading for Visby right now,’ said Kihlgård, casting a glance at his watch. ‘She should be landing any minute. I’ve asked our colleagues in Visby to contact her as soon as possible. From what I understand, she was one of the last people to see Robert Ek alive. Witnesses told us that the two of them were seen talking together at the bar during the party, around midnight. So that was about an hour before he left.’

‘What did the crime scene look like?’ asked Wittberg.

‘Lots of blood, of course. The SOCOs found footprints, but no fingerprints. There was no sign of a struggle, or any indication that someone had broken in. So either Ek left the door unlocked or the perpetrator had a key.’

Wittberg raised his eyebrows.

‘Is there anything that might lead us to think that one of the employees is the murderer?’

‘It’s far too early to say. We need to question more people and then put together the information from the interviews we’ve already done. The work has just started.’

‘What about the footprints?’ asked Jacobsson. ‘What can you tell us about them?’

‘They’re from a heavy shoe with a rubber sole. A rather small size. Five and a half.’

Jacobsson and Wittberg exchanged glances.

‘The same as on Furillen. We found footprints that were the same size.’

‘Interesting,’ murmured Kihlgård, biting into another bun. ‘One more thing,’ he said as he chewed. ‘There were two glasses filled with champagne and a bottle of Taittinger in a wine bucket on the table in the staff lounge. And he seems to have set the mood with candles.’

‘Taittinger?’ enquired Wittberg.

‘A type of champagne,’ Kihlgård clarified.

‘Do we know what time Ek left the party?’ asked Jacobsson. ‘And did he leave alone?’

‘The bouncer and the cloakroom attendant both say the same thing. He left the club around 1 a.m. and they think he left alone. There was a lot of coming and going, because people kept leaving to have a smoke. So they weren’t a hundred per cent positive, but he was alone when he picked up his coat.’

‘Was he drunk?’

‘He’d definitely had a few, but he wasn’t too bad.’

‘Since he was such a ladies’ man, he had plenty of opportunity to take someone home with him that night. His wife and kids were away, so he had the whole house to himself. Why didn’t he ask Jenny to go home with him?’

‘That’s a good question,’ Kihlgård agreed. ‘Although he’d already invited some people to stay the night. Maybe he didn’t want them to see her. At any rate, Robert Ek wasn’t planning to be at home alone. He’d invited a couple of male friends and given them a key. They brought along some girls from the club.’

‘How do we know this?’

‘His wife, Erna, could tell that there’d been a party in the house. She gave us the phone numbers of several of Ek’s closest friends, and they were quick to answer our questions. One of them, who also happened to be at the Christmas party, had borrowed a key to the house. We interviewed him late last night. He said that a bunch of them went to Ek’s house for an after-party, thinking that he’d turn up later on. When he didn’t, they assumed that he’d decided to stay with some girlfriend instead. This friend left the house on Saturday afternoon and put the key inside a pot at the back, as he and Robert had agreed. He didn’t give it any more thought.’

‘How many people were in the house?’ asked Jacobsson.

‘That’s a bit vague. This guy doesn’t seem completely trustworthy. He claims that he was really drunk and can only name one of the women, who also happens to be his girlfriend. He didn’t know the others. They were people he’d met at the club and had never seen before. He can’t recall exactly how many spent the night, but he thinks five or six. When he and his girlfriend woke up on Saturday, everybody else was gone.’

‘What’s the name of his girlfriend?’ asked Wittberg.

‘Katinka Johansson. She lives in Bagarmossen. Twenty-seven years old. Works at the 7–11 on Grev Turegatan.’

‘Has anyone talked to her yet?’

‘Yes, but she really had nothing to say. Could hardly remember where she’d spent the night, and she couldn’t name a single person who was there, except for her boyfriend.’

Wittberg looked at Kihlgård.

‘What about surveillance cameras? There must be some at the entrance to the club or along the street on the way to the agency. The building is smack in the middle of Stureplan.’