The Glass Devil (20 page)

“If the murderer took the time to destroy the hard drives, then he may have also destroyed the diskettes or removable disks. But maybe he still has them, so he can use the information they contain. Maybe they’re hidden somewhere in the area,” Fredrik suggested.

“Or they’re with the murderer,” Hannu added.

It would have been meaningless to destroy the hard drives and leave any removable disks. All the important information that was on the hard drives would also have been backed up, unless they had neglected this step. Had they? Not everyone was conscientious enough to back up their data.

“Could we have missed a place in the houses where you can hide discs or diskettes?” Irene asked, without much hope.

“Hardly. The houses have been gone over with a magnifying glass. Remember, the technicians found the hiding place behind the panel in the cottage,” Fredrik answered.

“The hiding place, yes. . . . Rebecka said that was used as a kind of safe. Who needs a safe in a cottage?” Irene asked.

“Maybe they feared a break-in. Break-ins at summer cottages are rising astronomically,” the superintendent muttered.

“But it wasn’t that far to the rectory. Why did they need a hiding place for important things at the cottage?” Irene persisted.

“Maybe he needed to hide the bottles from the wife,” Fredrik suggested.

“But according to Rebecka, everyone in the family knew about the hiding place.”

“What’s the guy like?” Hannu asked. A certain confusion arose until they concluded that he meant Christian Lefévre.

“A John Lennon lookalike who’s a thoughtful employer. He’s very worried about Rebecka. Overprotective. He’s tried to keep the police away from her. Having met Rebecka, I now understand him better. She really is in bad shape,” said Irene.

“Is it possible that she’s pretending to be sicker than she really is?” Andersson asked, with a hint of interest in his voice.

“No. She’s terribly ill. And Dr. Fischer told Gl . . . Inspector Thompson that he had begun treating her for depression last fall. He seems to be a well-known doctor. Nice office.”

“And Lefévre and Rebecka don’t seem to have something going on?” Fredrik wondered.

“No. Not that I could tell.”

“Irene has to go back,” Hannu said, looking at the superintendent.

Andersson turned red. “That’s not possible. Do you know what it costs?”

“Rebecka holds the answer,” Hannu said.

“Possibly. But we’ll wait. She’s too damn sick to help us, according to Irene.”

Irene decided it was appropriate to break into the conversation. “I’ve spoken with the pastor at the Swedish Seaman’s Church in London. He promised to get in touch when Rebecka improves.”

“Then we wait until then,” Andersson concluded.

IT TOOK quite a while before Irene managed to get ahold of the right person. The one who had been most involved in the investigation was on Easter vacation in Idre but after a good deal of wandering about the telephone exchange, she was able to speak with an officer named Lisa Sandberg. Irene introduced herself and explained the reason for her call.

“My question, then, is what kind of work Rebecka Schyttelius and Christian Lefévre did for you at Save the Children.”

“It’s no secret from the police, even if I don’t want you to spread it around. There are probably a lot of people who would like to see Schyttelius’s and Lefévre’s heads on a platter,” Lisa Sandberg said seriously.

“The information will remain confidential. Only the investigation team will learn of it,” Irene assured her.

“Okay. What happened was that, out of sheer luck, we received a tip about a network of pedophiles who were spreading child pornography on the Internet. They had created a Web community, which is like a closed club, on the Internet. We traced them but didn’t have the ability to get into their archives of pictures and films.

“Then someone in our group mentioned Rebecka Schyttelius and that she worked with a very clever guy. They had done similar jobs for the WHO. We contacted Rebecka, and she and her partner came here. We gave them all the information we had, and they went back to London and started to work from there. They were able to get access to the group without being discovered. It turned out that there were fifty-seven people, from all over Scandinavia, in the community. They had a bulletin board and a chat site where they met at certain times and discussed pictures and fantasies. This is the largest child pornography ring ever identified in the Nordic region.”

“I remember reading about it in the paper last winter. There were a lot of people who one wouldn’t have suspected would ever be arrested for something like that.”

“A professor of comparative literature who was about to retire, a female municipal commissioner who was a mother of four, a famous Danish furniture designer. . . . Well, there were a lot of surprises. But that’s what we learned from this investigation: It’s never possible to predict who’s going to be obsessed with child pornography.”

“How were you able to identify all of these people?”

“It was very difficult. Everyone used nicknames and anonymous E-mail addresses. It was Rebecka’s and Christian’s work that made it possible to locate so many.”

“Was it possible to identify all of them?”

“No. Five remained unidentified: two in Sweden, two in Norway, and one in Denmark.”

“What were the ‘names’ of the ones in Sweden?”

“Peter and Pan.”

“Were Peter and Pan connected? It almost sounds that way. Peter Pan.”

“No. We also thought that, but we found nothing to support it.”

“So Rebecka and Christian made their way into this group, and then revealed the identities of those involved?”

“Yes. They followed the group’s activities for a few months and collected evidence. For example, they found out when, where, and how the E-mail addresses had been used in connection with other activities on the Web. They systematically revealed who had hidden themselves behind nicknames. If I understood it correctly, they traced them through the computer. I guess there’s something called an IP address number . . . I’m not very good when it comes to the technological aspect.”

“No, I understand. That’s why you asked Rebecka and Christian for help.”

“Yes. They did a fantastic job. The pictures and films are of the worst kind and show violent assaults on children. A grown man having sexual intercourse with a three-month old baby; small girls and boys only five or six years old being raped in front of the camera; and so on. The network held visual documentation of thousands of sexual assaults on children. You could say that the admission ticket to the club was that you submitted your own pictures or films to the archive.

“We’re in the process of trying to identify the children. It’s a difficult job. The pictures came from all over the world. All of us who have seen them have been sickened. They’re terrible images, and I’ve had problems sleeping and sometimes felt depressed—for no immediate reason—after viewing them. I realize that it’s the terrible pictures that pop up in my head that are affecting me.”

A thought struck Irene: Was it the work on child pornography that had triggered Rebecka’s depression last fall? If seasoned investigators were disturbed by the evidence, it didn’t sound too farfetched to think that Rebecka could have been affected even more. Was this something to bring up with Dr. Fischer and maybe Rebecka herself?

“Thank you for taking the time to tell me about this,” said Irene.

“It’s not a problem. It’s Save the Children’s mission to spread information about what’s happening on the Internet. Sexual assaults on children happen every day, and pictures move with the speed of light and are spread via the global network. They’re copied all the time on an unknown number of computers around the world. Naturally, also here in Sweden.”

“It feels terribly . . . hopeless. What can you do?”

“That’s difficult to answer. The Web has a life of its own. There are no limitations of time or space. But we must never give up, for the sake of the children. They don’t have anyone but us. The average person doesn’t want to know about what’s going on and doesn’t want to hear us talk about it. They cover their ears and pretend they don’t know anything. We’re talking about the majority of the adult population. But the thing is that if they do know what’s going on, but don’t do anything, they’re accessories. That’s my opinion.”

Irene agreed with her. She had investigated a few cases of incest over the years. Strikingly often, adults near the vulnerable children suspected or knew what was going on, but didn’t do anything to help them.

After she had hung up the phone, Irene sat for a long time and thought about things. Could Rebecka have come across information about someone she knew during the investigation of the child pornography ring? Had she told her parents and brother? Had they used that information? Perhaps in the wrong way, since all three were dead.

The only one who could answer the questions was Rebecka. Hannu was right. Irene had to go back to London after the coming Easter Weekend.

ON TUESDAY morning, a young ornithologist phoned Superintendent Andersson. During his bird-watching on Sunday, he had found the remains of a campfire near the north side of Norssjön. At first he hadn’t looked closely at the ashes, but an impulse made him do just that before he left the area. He was certain that there had been fragments of computer diskettes in the remains of the fire. Thanks to the newspapers, everyone knew about the destroyed hard drives and the bloody pentagrams at the crime scenes. Still, it took him all day Monday to convince himself that his discovery might have something to do with the murders.

Andersson set up a meeting with him, so he could guide them to the site of the fire. Sven beeped Fredrik Stridh without getting a reply. Then he dialed Irene’s direct line. She was in and promised to come by his office immediately. The superintendent gave her his information and asked her to bring a technician with her to the meeting place.

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD birdwatcher stood, stamping nervously, at the agreed-upon place outside the pizzeria in Kullahult. An expression of disappointment was visible on his acne-covered face when Irene drove up in her unmarked car and introduced herself as a detective inspector. The question was what disappointed him the most: that she was a female police officer, or that he wouldn’t have a chance to ride in a police car with its blue lights flashing. Irene jumped behind the wheel again. Svante Malm sat in the back seat, a large technician’s bag next to him. The youth introduced himself as Tobbe Asp. He sat next to Irene in the front passenger seat and directed them toward Norssjön. They stopped at a small side road a few hundred meters before the gravel road that led to the Schyttelius family cottage. The weather was beautiful, even if it was still chilly. Wiser now, after her earlier forest wanderings, Irene had brought along a pair of rubber boots. With the bird-watcher in the lead, they tramped down toward the lake.

At the edge of the lake, they found the abandoned campfire in a deep crevice in the cliff. With a naked eye, Svante Malm determined that there were remains of diskettes in the ashes.

While Svante took care of the remains and investigated the area surrounding it, Irene drove the helpful Tobbe back to the pizzeria. He inquired if it would be possible to go along to the technical lab at the police station, like, follow the ashes he had found. Irene said conspiratorially that for reasons of procedure it could not be done, but that his discovery was invaluable. With that he seemed to be satisfied.

Chapter 15

“SHE WAS ACTUALLY THE one who suggested that I film her.”

Tommy waved the videocassette he held in his hand. Irene, Superintendent Andersson, and Fredrik sat in front of the TV in one of the larger interrogation rooms, the audience for Tommy’s movie premiere.

With a ceremonious expression, he inserted the cassette in the VCR and started it. The chosen audience could hear Tommy’s voice when he announced the date, which was a bit unnecessary since it was also displayed in one of the corners of the screen. Then he continued, “Present are myself, Detective Inspector Tommy Persson; Prosecutor Inez Collin; and attorney Henning Neijlert. The witness who will be questioned is Mrs. Gertrud Ritzman.”

The camera captured Inez Collin’s profile. Her light hair was gathered in a neat ponytail. She was wearing a light-brown leather blazer and a toffee-colored silk top under it, with the pearl necklace she often wore around her neck. She unconsciously stroked the pearls. Irene noted long bronze-colored fin-gernails and a large brilliant diamond ring on her left ring finger.

Attorney Neijlert was a nervous blinking man, a bit past middle age. His hairline was almost at the top of his head, but the curly hair that remained was surprisingly thick and silver-gray. His pointy facial features made him look like an old poodle.

Previously, Tommy had told Irene that Gertrud Ritzman had just turned eighty. She looked it, but her haggard appearance was mainly a result of her illness, not of her age itself. Her claw-like hands shook when she pulled a light-blue sweater tighter around herself. The skin on the backs of her hands was spotted and wrinkled. It seemed too big for her almost transparent hands. Her lips had a bluish tinge against the pale-yellow skin of her face, and her breathing was heavy and strained. A large oxygen tank sat next to her. A thin plastic tube ran from it to her nose to provide her with extra oxygen.

“Mrs. Ritzman has asked me to videotape her testimony about what took place on the night in question, and early that morning. She believes she’s ill enough that there’s a chance she might be . . . gone . . . when the time comes for the trial of Asko Pihlainen,” Tommy’s voice said.

“I’m going to be dead. I should be already, but I’m tough.” Resolutely, the little woman took the initiative and explained how she had seen Asko Pihlainen and his neighbor, Wisköö, pull up in front of the houses right across from her own on the morning in question. The time was almost five thirty. There was no way they could have been playing poker with their wives at around five o’clock, as they claimed.

Inez Collin asked a few questions in order to check how well Gertrud Ritzman was aware of dates and times. There was never the slightest hesitancy in her answers. Her memory was sound as a bell. The group asked a few supplementary questions. Toward the end, her clear gaze clouded somewhat and her voice shook noticeably between her wheezing breaths. She was completely worn out and wouldn’t last much longer. Tommy must have realized this as well, because he finished the questioning with a pan shot of the people present in the room. Then the TV screen turned black.

Andersson broke the silence. “Will this hold up?” he asked.

“According to the prosecutors, it will hold up in court,” Tommy replied.

“How is it going for Narcotics?”

“They are in the process of tracing some leads. Where the narcotics have gone after being brought ashore, and so on. But you know how Narcotics is: They don’t say much.”

“Okay. Keep in touch with them,” said Andersson.

Irene asked permission to speak and told them what Lisa Sandberg at Save the Children had said. She finished by explaining her own theory. “Apparently, the pictures are terribly disturbing and those who have seen the material have not felt well afterward. Rebecka’s depression in the fall started during her work on this pedophile ring. I’m starting to wonder if she came across something that threatened a certain person. Maybe she told her parents and brother. I think they revealed their knowledge to this person. Maybe they didn’t realize that it could be dangerous. The person felt so pressured that he—or she—killed all three of them.”

“But then why won’t Rebecka tell us what it’s about?” Fredrik exclaimed.

“I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t know herself. Or maybe she’s been frightened into silence.”

“Hell, she wouldn’t protect her own family’s murderer!” Andersson exploded.

“I agree that it sounds strange. But that’s the only conclusion I can reach.”

Finally, Fredrik said, “Rebecka is the key to everything. You will have to try to talk with her again. She must be made to understand that she might be the next victim.”

The superintendent drummed his fat fingers on the table. The color in his face rose and he moved his lips as he was thinking. Suddenly he slapped the palm of his hand on the tabletop. “Okay. Rebecka has to start talking, Irene. You’ll have to get in touch and try to arrange a new meeting with her.” He pursed his mouth thoughtfully. “There’s something that doesn’t add up about that girl. Could she have
done
it?” he asked.

Irene had just realized that Andersson’s words meant that she would get to go to London again. She was surprised by his follow-up question. The thought had never occurred to her. When she had recovered from the shock, she said, “No. Rebecka has an alibi. Christian Lefévre says that she worked all day. Then she had a headache and went to bed. And she was at work when Lefévre arrived on Tuesday morning. Jacob and her parents were killed during the night. No. There’s no chance.

“And furthermore, I honestly don’t think she could kill another person.”

“And Lefévre?” Tommy asked.

“Hardly. He has never met Rebecka’s family. And he went to his usual pub right after work and worked on a betting pool with his friends. That can be checked out.”

“Check it, then,” the superintendent decided.

The meeting was finished.

“HEY, GLEN,” said Irene.

After many fruitless telephone calls, she managed to reach him. He sounded sincerely happy when she said that she would be coming back to London for supplementary questioning of Rebecka Schyttelius. Irene told him about the information that Save the Children had provided. Glen reflected on what she had told him.

“It’s a possibility. In a way, I think it’s more plausible than the Satanist lead. Or maybe the search for Satanists on the Internet got the same result as the search for the pedophiles. That is to say, that Rebecka found something troublesome about a person who absolutely didn’t want it revealed.”

“You mean we can’t drop the Satanic theory?”

“Well, there were the pentagrams.”

He was right. Irene thought the pedophile theory was likelier, since Rebecka’s depression had started during the fall while she was working on that investigation. But then there were the bloody pentagrams. The murderer must have known about the Schyttelius family’s Internet search for Satanists. A pedophile could hardly have known that. Unless he was close to the family.

Irene had to admit that they couldn’t rule out the Satanists entirely.

They agreed that Glen would check Christian Lefévre’s visit to the pub, just as a formality to placate Superintendent Andersson. Irene would get in touch with the pastor of the Swedish Seaman’s Church, Kjell Sjönell. When she knew the dates she would be in London, she would contact Glen again.

“I ACTUALLY haven’t had time to call Dr. Fischer as I promised. Since Rebecka is so sick, I thought there wasn’t any hurry,” Kjell Sjönell apologized.

“There isn’t. But it’s of the utmost importance that I meet with Rebecka again. You and I didn’t have time to talk much, the last time I called you. How did Rebecka react when she found out about what had happened to her family?” Irene asked.

It struck her that she hadn’t asked Glen about this either.

“I’ve thought a great deal about poor Rebecka. To deliver news of a death is one of the worst jobs I’ve had. And still I’ve performed this service many times.” Sjönell’s voice was filled with compassion.

“How did she react?”

“At first it seemed like she didn’t understand what I had said. When she realized what had happened, it was as if ice-cold fear enveloped her and froze her.”

“What do you mean?”

“All color left her face. She sat there with her mouth gaping, with a terrified look in her eyes. As if frozen in the moment. Nothing else happened. She just sat there, in the armchair. The question is whether or not that scream is still frozen inside her. I think it never came up out of her throat.”

He was probably right. This man had seen a great deal and met a lot of people at different stages in their lives. Irene sensed that he possessed a good knowledge of human nature. He was putting into words what she had suspected when she met Rebecka.

“Did you and Inspector Thompson meet her in her apartment?”

“Yes. She has an amazingly beautiful home. But it seems a bit minimalist. Don’t misunderstand me: It’s as consciously minimal as the decor in home design magazines. But I got a feeling of . . . loneliness. It didn’t feel like she ever had large parties or entertained a lot of people in her apartment. If you know what I mean.”

“Yes. You see Rebecka as a lonely person.”

Sjönell seemed to weigh his words before he answered. “As a pastor, I often run into human loneliness. It’s an illness in today’s society. Yes, I think she’s solitary. The only ones she seems to have faith in are the young man she works with and Dr. Fischer. She asked us to call Dr. Fischer when she finally managed to say a few words.”

“So he came to her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Have you and Dr. Fischer had any contact regarding the practical details surrounding the funerals?”

“No. But I can call him this afternoon. I have a good friend who runs a very well-regarded funeral home in Göteborg. He can best help Rebecka with all the arrangements. Might it be better to postpone the funeral for a few more weeks? The possibility exists that Rebecka will become well enough to be able to travel home.”

“Yes, it may be best to wait a bit longer,” Irene agreed.

She didn’t think Rebecka would ever be able to come home, but decided not to say anything.

A CERTAIN calm had fallen over the unit before the approaching Easter weekend. It would probably last for a few days, then be broken by chaos on Easter Eve. Domestic disputes, drunks, assaults, rapes, murder; everything that usually went along with the celebration of a holiday would occur. If there was a murder, then the inspectors who were on duty would have to take care of it. For the first time in many years, Irene was going to be off duty the whole weekend. Four days free. It felt too good to be true. On the other hand, she had been on duty the whole Christmas weekend and would have to work over Midsummer, so being free for Easter was only fair.

“It seems appropriate to talk about ashes today on Ash Wednesday,” said Svante Malm.

He had shown up around three o’clock in the afternoon to make a report. Irene suspected that he had smelled the coffee all the way down in the lab. Either that, or it was the smell of the freshly baked Tosca cake. It was Tommy’s treat, since his birthday would fall on Easter Monday. The next day, Maundy Thursday, he was going to go with his whole family to Åre for the season’s last ski-and-snowboarding trip. Irene didn’t envy him. Four hundred and eighty miles in an old Volvo with two adults, three children ages nine to fifteen, and a lively dog—incidentally, a daughter of Sammie’s—plus a lot of luggage, didn’t seem like a dream vacation. Even if the car was a station wagon, it would be a tight fit. Personally, she was looking forward to a relaxing weekend off with her family.

“There were definitely the remains of diskettes in the ashes. But we also found remains of videocassettes. Everything was burned pretty badly. There isn’t a chance of recovering what was on them.”

He leaned forward and took out a thick transparent plastic bag filled with small black clumps and black powder. To Irene it looked like regular ashes.

“This is interesting,” the technician said.

The gathered police officers tried to look sincerely interested.

“He—or she—had brought along charcoal with which to start a fire.”

The superintendent looked blank. With a show of patience, in a pedagogic tone of voice, Svante Malm continued, “It was cold and it started raining during the night of the murders. It wouldn’t have been easy to start a fire with the damp branches that were available in nature. So the murderer brought some charcoal, which is used in outdoor barbecues, in order to start a fire. We’ve also found traces of lighter fluid around the fire. Charcoal burns longer than regular wood. It becomes very hot and everything is thoroughly incinerated.

“Charcoal and lighter fluid. So the murderer had planned on burning the diskettes and the cassettes. He knew what he would find before the murders and what he would do with it,” Tommy concluded.

“But, of course, he had a little bit of bad luck. The wind probably blew this out of the fire, because it was caught in a bush a few meters away from it. We think it’s the cover from a match book. Advertising matches.”

Svante bent and fished out a smaller plastic bag. At first, Irene thought it was empty; but then she saw a small burned piece of light cardboard in one corner. After yet another deep rummage in the roomy bag, Svante stood and leaned a large piece of paper against the flip-over notebook stand behind him.

“An enlargement,” he said and stepped to the side so that they all could see.

Pu

Mosc

“Moscow. A Russian bastard who comes from Moscow,” said Jonny Blom. He laughed to show that it was a joke. Nobody paid attention to his remark.

“‘Pu.’ Could it be, for example, ‘public’ or ‘pub’?” Irene asked.

“Possibly. The edge of the paper ends right after the ‘u’ in ‘Pu’ and after the ‘c’ in ‘Mosc.’ I’m a bit uncertain as to whether there really is a small ‘e’ in front of the ‘Pu,’ but it looks most like an ‘e.’ It has a different appearance than the other letters. Old-fashioned script style.”

“Gothic,” said Hannu.