Still Waters (Sandhamn Murders Book 1) (15 page)

F
RIDAY, THE THIRD WEEK

C
HAPTER
35

When Thomas arrived at the police station in Nacka on Friday morning, it was blissfully quiet. It seemed most of his colleagues who weren’t on vacation had opted for a late start. Even those who were normally in first thing were conspicuous by their absence.

He had caught the early morning ferry once again, and his reward was time alone in the office. Thomas appreciated the silence. It had been an intense week, and it wasn’t over yet. Being able to sit down at his desk without having to talk to anyone felt liberating. He went along to the kitchen with his mug, which was large and sturdy and bore the logo of the maritime police.

A selection of teas was arranged on a shelf. After some consideration he settled on Earl Grey. Not very original, perhaps, but a good choice first thing in the morning. Two teaspoons of sugar and a drop of milk—perfect.

He walked back down the corridor to his office. Apart from the obligatory desk, two birch wood chairs for visitors, and a neutral bookcase in the same pale wood, it was virtually empty. On the desk were piles of papers and documents. There were no photographs or potted plants to make the room homier.

He used to have a large photo of Pernilla next to the phone. He had loved that picture. It had been taken on Harö at sunset. Pernilla’s hair had been bleached by the sun, and the picture captured that special evening light that exists only in summer in the archipelago.

She had been sitting at the end of the jetty gazing out to sea, just as the sun was going down. She hadn’t noticed that he was taking the photograph, which was why it had turned out so well. A wonderful moment tenderly captured.

After the divorce he had put the picture at the bottom of a desk drawer.

He couldn’t have a photograph of Emily on display either. It was just too hard. Whenever he thought of Emily he saw her tiny hand resting in his. He had sat by her for hours before they came to take her away, just stroking those little fingers as they lay lifeless on his palm.

It had been impossible to grasp that he would never again be able to touch her soft cheek, never hold her in his arms. In the end, when the paramedics had insisted on taking her away, he had gone crazy, clinging to her as if he could make her start breathing through sheer willpower.

He had howled like a wounded animal. When they took his daughter from him, he had sobbed helplessly. Nothing had been as painful as watching the ambulance drive away with his daughter’s body—not the funeral, with the tiny white coffin in front of the altar, nor the unavoidable separation from Pernilla.

There was an envelope with his name on it sitting on his desk. He slit it open and immediately saw that it was the report from the national forensics lab in Linköping giving the results of the more extensive tests on the samples from Kicki Berggren’s body.

They had worked fast, he thought. He began to read. The report wasn’t what he had expected. And it didn’t cast any further light on what had happened on the island.

Quite the reverse, in fact.

He scratched the back of his neck and stretched. Persson would be even more annoyed. New information that didn’t help at all. It would probably be best to ask the prosecutor to attend their next meeting. She needed to hear this. She was leading the preliminary investigation, after all, which made her technically responsible for the case as a whole.

He picked up the phone to call Margit; she, too, must be informed. This was something the two of them needed to tackle.

C
HAPTER
36

The meeting began at nine thirty on the dot. Persson believed in punctuality. If you couldn’t turn up on time, then it didn’t say much for your character, in his opinion.

When Thomas walked in to the conference room, both Persson and Charlotte Öhman were already there. Kalle and Erik were sitting opposite, and Carina was next to them with her pen at the ready. Thomas noticed that she was wearing a barrette, but a few strands of hair had escaped. Her pink blouse looked pretty against her tanned skin.

Carina pointed to a plate in the middle of the table. “Help yourself to a cinnamon Danish, Thomas. I passed a bakery on the way in, and I thought a treat might help.”

Thomas nodded. “Thanks. Anything that raises the blood sugar and provides energy is welcome.”

Persson cleared his throat. “Right, let’s start. Is Margit with us?” He stared at the telephone.

The answer came loud and clear. “I’m here. How are things in Stockholm? It’s seventy-seven degrees here, and the water is almost as warm.”

“We can’t complain. So, let’s find out where we’re at.” Persson leaned back in his chair. “Thomas, you first.”

Thomas quickly summarized the events of the past twenty-four hours, then picked up the report from the lab. “According to the forensic analysis, Kicki Berggren was poisoned.”

Confusion spread around the room; they were all looking at one another without really knowing how to interpret this new information.

“Probably rat poison,” Thomas went on.

“You mean the cause of death was rat poison?” Carina asked.

“The underlying cause of death,” Thomas said. “The report states that she had ingested a fatal dose of warfarin, which is a component of rat poison. Indirectly, this is what killed her, by causing internal bleeding in the brain and other organs.”

“What do you mean, indirectly?” Erik asked.

“Warfarin works as an anticoagulant, which means it prevents the blood from clotting. The blows or the fall that Kicki Berggren suffered were the direct cause of death, because her body was unable to stop the bleeding they caused.”

“But otherwise she wouldn’t have died?” Kalle looked at Thomas.

“Probably not. The violence to which she was subjected would normally have resulted in nothing more serious than some nasty bruises and a small amount of bleeding. It would have been obvious that somebody had slapped her but nothing worse than that.”

“How do you think she consumed rat poison?” Margit asked.

“We need to check on that. It certainly seems odd,” Thomas said. Who could possibly consume something like that by mistake, particularly in view of the fact that the container was usually marked with a clear warning?

Margit spoke again. “I recognize the name warfarin; isn’t it used for people, too?”

Thomas nodded and skimmed through the report in his hand. “Warfarin is also a pharmaceutical drug used on humans under a number of different brand names,” he said. “It’s commonly prescribed after a stroke, because it reduces the formation of blood clots. However, it can also cause internal bleeding if it’s administered in large doses. That’s what happened to Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel. He suffered a blood clot to begin with, and when he was treated with blood-thinning drugs, it resulted in a major brain hemorrhage.”

“I heard about that on TV,” Carina said.

Thomas went through the report and tried to summarize the contents. “Forensics routinely checks for warfarin. Therefore it wasn’t particularly difficult for them to find traces of an extremely high dose and to make the connection with rat poison. This dose would also explain the other bleeding discovered during the autopsy.”

Persson drummed his fingers on the table, his impatience clear. “So, when did she take this rat poison?”

“According to the lab, it takes between twelve and twenty-four hours for the poison to achieve its maximum effect. The blow or blows she appears to have received at Jonny Almhult’s place are likely to have exacerbated the situation. She was found at around twelve o’clock that Saturday. According to the pathologist, she had been dead for several hours by then, which means she must have been poisoned at some point Friday, if we work backward.”

“In that case, it probably happened on Sandhamn,” Kalle said. “She arrived on the island after lunch on Friday; at least that’s what the girl in the kiosk said when we showed her Kicki’s photo.” Kalle seemed pleased that he had been the first to reach this conclusion. He looked around the table, radiating satisfaction.

Margit’s voice came through the speakerphone. “Are you sure she couldn’t have ingested the poison somewhere else?”

Thomas looked doubtful. “I suppose we can never be one hundred percent sure, but the analysis is clear. This kind of poison works within this time frame. It doesn’t seem likely that she was poisoned anywhere other than on Sandhamn, but of course we can’t completely exclude that possibility.”

“Who has access to rat poison?” Erik asked.

“Most people, I presume,” Thomas said. “You can buy it all over the place. But of course that’s something we need to look into.” He turned to Kalle. “Could you call the toxicology unit when we’re done here? Find out where you can get ahold of rat poison. Can anyone buy it, or are purchases traceable? Someone should be able to help.”

“Try Anticimex as well,” Carina suggested. “They’re the biggest pest-control company; they ought to know about rat poison and how people can get it.”

Persson reached out for his third cinnamon Danish and bit into it angrily, glaring at the speakerphone as he chewed. “So to sum up: we have a situation where this woman somehow ingested a fatal dose of rat poison. Then she was subjected to violence from an external source, although this violence was not sufficient to cause death under normal circumstances. However, she had so much rat poison in her system that the blow or blows did in fact prove fatal. And all this happened on Sandhamn, presumably in the company of a person who has since been found drowned, also on Sandhamn. Have they gone completely mad over there? Is it something in the water?”

Carina scribbled as if her life depended on it. The atmosphere around the table was tense. They were all looking down at their papers, avoiding eye contact. The situation was serious, to say the least.

Thomas cleared his throat. “I have something else to report. The manager from the Mission House contacted me this morning.”

Persson looked up from the report, which Thomas had passed over. “And?”

“It seems Kicki Berggren had asked her for directions to the house of someone who lived on the island. When we spoke to her before, she couldn’t remember anything because of the shock. But now a few details have come back to her. She thinks Kicki Berggren was asking about someone called Fille or Figge or possibly Pigge.”

The room was silent.

“Last name?” Persson asked.

“The first name was all she could remember. She also has a very strong accent, so that will probably affect the pronunciation. But it’s definitely worth looking into.”

“OK,” said Persson, turning to Carina. “Go through every homeowner on the island and check if anyone has a name that sounds similar. Try and get ahold of someone in the housing department as soon as possible. I hope they’re not closed on Fridays this time of year.” He shoved the rest of the Danish into his mouth and looked around. “By the way, do we know any more about Jonny Almhult?”

Margit didn’t speak, so Thomas took the lead. “No more than we established yesterday. The most likely scenario is that he drowned. There was extensive bruising, but we won’t know for certain until we have the report from forensics. I’ve called them twice and asked for priority, so we’ll see if that helps.”

“Anything from where the body was found?” said Persson.

“It wasn’t possible to secure any evidence from the beach. Nothing that could lead to a possible perpetrator. It’s as if Almhult’s body just popped up out of the water.”

“For God’s sake,” Persson said. “Do you have any idea where Almhult had been before he floated along in Trouville?”

“I’m afraid not. The call went out on Tuesday morning, but so far nothing useful has come in. I’ll contact the national CID again as soon as we finish here. At the moment we don’t know where he’d been since his mother last saw him.”

Persson shook his head. “And what about the link between Systemet and Sandhamn?”

“Nothing there either,” Thomas said, looking worried. “I thought I might go and see Berggren’s boss at Systemet again this afternoon to see if we can get any more out of him. I’ll take Erik with me.” He started to gather his papers. “We need to go through all the statements we’ve taken this week, look closely at every scrap of information we have. Kalle, you concentrate on Jonny Almhult, and the rest of us will stay focused on the cousins.”

Charlotte Öhman cleared her throat and spoke for the first time since the meeting began. Her hair was up in a ponytail just like the last time, and she looked cool and composed in a white blouse and blue skirt. “Haven’t we been rather cavalier when it comes to the question of motive? Shouldn’t we have a more fully developed hypothesis with regard to the reason behind the murders by this stage?”

Persson turned to look at Charlotte as if he had only just noticed her presence. “Are you suggesting we haven’t been doing our jobs properly?” he said. “We’re still in the process of building up a picture of the victims. Obviously a motive will form part of that picture.”

The prosecutor’s cheeks flushed, but she stuck to her guns. “And that’s exactly why we need to think very carefully about any possible motives, so we can find the perpetrator.” She looked Persson in the eye. “Or perpetrators. We can’t rule out the possibility that we’re dealing with more than one murderer.” She took off her glasses and swept the room with her gaze. “Unless anyone has any other ideas?”

Persson glared at Charlotte. “One thing I’ve learned over the years: sometimes murders are committed without there being a logical motive. People aren’t always as rational as we might think.”

Thomas tried to mediate. “Obviously we’ve considered various motives to try to establish a link between the three deaths. The problem is that the only clear connection between the first two is that they were cousins. We haven’t been able to find any direct link between them and Jonny Almhult’s death that explains why someone would want to take the lives of these three people. Neither their backgrounds nor lifestyles suggest any kind of common ground. But we’re devoting a lot of time to this aspect.”

He looked at Charlotte, who gave him a wry smile. Her expression was skeptical, but she seemed prepared to accept Thomas’s explanation. For the time being, at least.

“Good. But every possible scenario in this situation must be examined. I’m sure I don’t need to stress the seriousness of this case. We can’t risk another murder,” she said.

“Margit,” said Persson, reaching for another Danish. He stopped when he saw the expression on Carina’s face.

It’s hardly surprising that he looks the way he does,
Thomas thought.

“I want you back here on Monday so the prosecutor doesn’t need to worry about our resources being overstretched. Thomas could probably do with some help, and I think Ms. Öhman would prefer you to be here for the rest of the investigation.”

“I understand. I’ll be there.”

Margit was well aware of what the situation required and made no objections. Things were serious. Three dead bodies within the space of just a few weeks, and no resolution in sight.