The Fire Dance (23 page)

The truth was they had nothing concrete to go on. For the first time, Irene wondered if it was a drawback to have been on the arson investigation all those years ago. Perhaps the old, unsolved case was preventing her from seeing this one clearly. She would just have to keep going forward one step at a time. Perhaps that would drive the killer out of his hiding place.

Irene sighed. Her speculations were not bringing her any further. She decided to convince Superintendent Andersson to ask the prosecutor for a search warrant for the Änggården mansion. It was the only thing she could think of right now.

W
HEN
I
RENE WALKED
into the conference room for the Friday morning prayer, she realized there was an unusual tension in the room. Everyone’s eyes turned to her, and Andersson glared at her darkly.

“You’re late!” he barked.

“There was an accident in the Gnistäng Tunnel …” Irene started to explain.

“And you’ve been reported for attempted murder!” the superintendent cut her off.

Irene’s mouth fell open as she tried to make sense of his statement. All that came out was a “Whaa …?”

“The nurse at Ingrid Hagberg’s assisted living facility phoned us, absolutely furious. She’d already called Frej and accused him of bringing sweets to her, but he denied it. Then they called his mother and she knew that you’d been there. So they put two and two together, and it came out you tried to off the old lady!”

“What? How? What … what do they mean?” Irene stammered.

“Ingrid Hagberg has a severe case of diabetes. After you filled her up with sugar, she wound up in a diabetic coma and is in intensive care right now!”

Ingrid’s greedy look at the bakery bag. The way she’d shoveled the cream puffs into her mouth. How her hands shook just like a dry alcoholic who’d gotten a free bottle of
the hard stuff. Irene replayed the scene in her mind and cursed her own idiocy.

“Oh, good Lord, give me strength!” she moaned.

“You could certainly use it,” Andersson replied drily.

“She didn’t tell me she had diabetes,” Irene tried to defend herself.

“No, after her brain damage, she is apparently unable to recognize her own illness. The nurse says that they regularly search her apartment to make sure there are no sugary things in it. Everyone who visits has firm orders not to bring anything with sugar.” Andersson took a deep breath as his fingers drummed the table. “Let me remind everyone here that this unit does not ever—and I mean
ever
—take anything sweet to anyone we want to interrogate!”

Irene kept her mouth shut. Of course, the sweets had been a bribe to get Ingrid in the mood to talk. Still, Irene had thought it would be nice for an old lady to have treats with her coffee even though she had to admit that she’d had an ulterior motive. She’d never considered that Ingrid could have diabetes. Irene felt absolutely awful.

“I’m going to take you off the Sophie case for a while. You’ve gotten nowhere with it anyway. We’ll take it from the top next week.”

The superintendent gave Irene a harsh look before he stretched to his full height and looked over his entire team.

“And now for the good news. It appears that the investigation of the so-called Gang Murder has gotten somewhere.”

The superintendent’s expression brightened as he turned toward Birgitta, who stood up. The large screen on the wall blinked on to reveal an enlargement of a photograph obviously taken at night.

“These photographs came in a padded envelope in the mail last night. Anonymously. However, we have found a fingerprint on the inside flap of the envelope. I’ll get back to that in a minute.”

Birgitta turned to look at the picture on the screen. The resolution was sharp, so it was easy to tell who and what was in it.

The photograph seemed to have been taken on a slant with a telephoto lens. In the background were two shimmering white taxis and a sign indicating it was taken in front of the Nils Ericson bus terminal at the Central Train Station. In the foreground, a large man was pressing a relatively thin young man against a brick wall. His left hand was around the young man’s throat. Both were wearing black leather jackets and baggy jeans. The large man had his hood up, but his victim’s face was easily visible. Without a doubt, it was gang leader Roberto Oliviera. He looked as if he were trying to defend himself by kicking his assailant.

Birgitta clicked to the next picture. It was an enlargement of the previous photo. In his right hand, the larger man was holding a stiletto knife. Both his hand and the knife were bloody. Roberto had sustained five knife wounds, including in the liver and one severing an artery. He was dead when the ambulance arrived ten minutes after the call went in.

The last photograph showed the suspect straight on. The top of his hoodie was still up, but his face could clearly be seen. It was Milan. No doubt about it. He still held the bloody stiletto knife. In his other hand, he had a white plastic bag. Apparently, he’d folded the knife and dropped it into the bag just seconds after this photo was taken. Perhaps he’d wrapped the bag around his hand earlier so that his clothes wouldn’t be covered with blood.
In the background, his victim was sinking to the ground. The date and time for the murder of Roberto Oliviera were stamped on the bottom left-hand corner of the photo.

“Milan’s fried,” Jonny said contentedly.

“Yeah, we got him all right, but the most interesting thing is who was behind getting him there,” Birgitta said calmly. She shifted back to the first picture. “Our technicians have gone over these and determined that they weren’t Photoshopped. Just to be on the safe side, we’re going to send them to England and have their experts make absolutely sure. These photos are consistent with what we thought happened. Roberto left his five companions to go to the bathroom. He had to search to find an empty stall, so he went over to the Nils Ericsson Terminal. His friends were still hanging around the Pocket Shop in the Central Station, talking to some girls. When Roberto came out to rejoin his friends, he ran into Milan. Perhaps Milan had been shadowing him. There are no witnesses to the murder itself—at least, not any who have come forward. The only one who talked to us, Victor Fernandez, is now in the hospital after being assaulted. He was part of Roberto’s gang, and he was the first one to find his boss. He stated that he’d seen Milan running away from the scene. Milan had turned around, and Victor recognized him. According to Victor, Milan was jumping into a black car on the other end of the parking lot. Unfortunately, no witnesses saw the car, either.”

“Now Victor can’t testify. He has come out of his coma, but he can’t remember the past few years at all. The doctors don’t think he will ever regain his memory,” Tommy informed them.

“Without the photos, we’d never have had any evidence against Milan. But now we do,” Birgitta said.

“So, spit it out, woman! Who sent them?” Jonny exclaimed impatiently.

Birgitta smiled at him spitefully and said, “The thumb-print is clear and has shown the sender of the envelope to be …” She let her glittering brown eyes sweep across the room to make sure everyone was paying attention before she dropped the bomb: “Glenn ‘Hoffa’ Strömberg.”

The room was so quiet they could have heard a pin drop. Everyone except Andersson and Hannu had the same expression: complete surprise.

“Impossible! That devil had been sent up the river permanently!” Jonny said.

“That was years ago. They’ve let him out.”

Irene felt a shiver all the way to the marrow of her bones. This was not going to be one of her better days. First this business with the diabetic coma and now Glenn “Hoffa” Strömberg reappearing like an evil jack-in-the-box. She had done everything in her power to drive the fat vice president of the Hell’s Angels from her memory, which had been difficult right after she’d confronted him. The past few years, things had gotten better. Sometimes she would still dream of the assault and the humiliation she and her young colleague, Jimmy Ohlsson, had suffered during the incident. Jimmy had been permanently injured by kicks to the vertebrae of his spine. Irene’s physical injuries had healed, but the mental scars were still there.

“Why did Hoffa send these pictures to us?” Jonny began excitedly. “And how the hell did he get them in the first place? How did he or one of his MC bandits just happen to be in the area with a camera the moment Milan attacked Roberto? It seems …”

“Drugs,” Hannu said quietly.

“Drugs?” Jonny repeated, as if he’d never run across narcotics before.

“Of course. Hell’s Angels have been running drugs throughout Western Sweden. Milan is supported by gangs from the Balkans and Poland who work with the Banditos. According to the Narcotics Division, the Hell’s Angels are angry that the Eastern Mafia is dumping cheaper drugs into the market and grabbing a larger share.”

“What the hell … Hell’s Angels and the Eastern Mafia … Why would Milan kill little Roberto if the battle is on that level? He was just a little fish,” Jonny protested.

“That’s right,” Hannu said. “A little fish who didn’t know his place. Milan was boastful and was attracting attention to himself. Twenty years old and feeling like he’s king of the hill. Sold drugs in an area he thought was his. Milan wanted to set an example and make sure the other small kings got the message that the Eastern Mafia was nothing to mess with. So Roberto was killed.”

“Okay, but that means that we are now back to square one. Why was a Hell’s Angels member photographing Roberto’s murder?” Jonny asked stubbornly.

“They wanted to get rid of Milan. Perhaps they were just following him to kill him later. But then they had a better idea when they managed to get a picture of Milan at just the right moment. It’s much easier to have us send him up the river than to get involved themselves.”

“Milan fell into his own trap,” the superintendent said contentedly.

“With just a little help from our friends, the Hell’s Angels,” Birgitta added.

Her comment resulted in a sour look from her boss, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he clapped his hands energetically and said, “All of you know what to do next. Let’s conclude this investigation.”

Everyone in the room started to get up from their
chairs, but Andersson looked directly at Irene. When she caught his eye, he said, “Irene, you stay here. I need to have a little chat with you.”

Jonny turned in the doorway and said in a stage whisper, “Someone’s gonna get a spanking!”

With a sneer, he walked out.

“One of these days I’m going to wring that bastard’s neck,” Irene hissed so quietly that only Tommy could hear her.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Yep. All we need is a place to bury the body.”

I
RENE SPENT
F
RIDAY
afternoon writing a report about her fateful coffee klatch with Ingrid Hagberg. When she was finished, she had to write reports about her meetings with the women in Milan’s family. It would be late before she could go home for the evening. A few days earlier, she’d promised her mother that she would take her to the cemetery to put lights on her father’s grave. “You can at least visit your pappa one day a year. At the very least on All Saints’ Day,” her mother, Gerd, had said. Irene realized that she would not be able to make it. After a great deal of calling around, she finally reached Krister, who promised to bring his mother-in-law to the cemetery before lunch. He was going to work the evening shift, and then he had the rest of the weekend off.

Irene had spent the entire previous day phoning people. Angelika was not all that upset, but seemed distracted as she listened to Irene’s apology about what had happened at Ingrid’s apartment. Frej, on the other hand, ranted about “the fascist police” and was actually pretty nasty about it. On the other hand, compared to the nurse at the assisted living facility, he was fairly easygoing. The nurse was quite clear about her opinion.

Irene also had little to say when she was alone with her boss. It did not seem to be the right time to mention the visit fifteen years before at Ingrid’s home. She simply reiterated
that she’d just hoped to make the afternoon a bit more pleasant for an old lady by having an old-fashioned coffee date. Andersson snorted and told her very clearly just what he thought about her idea.

After that, to Irene’s relief, he’d changed the subject to the gang murder. He decided that she and Birgitta would go interview Milan’s female relatives who had attended the Ramadan party the night of the murder. Hannu and Jonny would go interview the male relatives. Meanwhile, Fredrik Stridh was assigned to a new case, which had come in the day before. It was high priority since it dealt with an underage boy of about eight or ten and his sports trainer. The newspapers had already gotten wind of the story and had run a headline in large letters: PEDO TRAINER! Irene could not help but wonder if the headline writers actually double-checked what they wrote. It certainly had an unfortunate double meaning.

On Friday morning, then, Birgitta and Irene were joined by a female interpreter, and they all headed to an apartment building in the district of Hammarkullen.

Milan’s relatives were all Bosnian Muslims. He had moved to Sweden with his mother and four siblings during the war that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. The father of the family had disappeared during the war. The family arrived with two of the mother’s brothers and their families. The uncles had started a greengrocery, which became successful as the years went by. As far as the police could determine, they were honest, hardworking small businessmen. Unfortunately, they were probably going to be charged with perjury and had already been informed of the possibility. Both uncles had blanched behind their rather large mustaches, but neither of them changed their testimony. None of the women did, either.

Milan had been twelve when he arrived at his new
homeland. His classmates were afraid of him because he was strong and aggressive. He was “respected” right away. According to his teachers, he was intelligent, but not a scholar. During his last year of formal schooling, he rarely showed up in class.