Gunnar ?hrn drank the last few drops from a bottle of mineral water, then handed out packets to everyone which contained copies of everything they had documented about the case so far. It included the initial report; photos from the crime scene and immediate vicinity; a sketch of the Juhlén house where the victim, Hans Juhlén, had been found; and a short description of Juhlén. Lastly came a log with times and investigative steps that had already been taken since the victim had been discovered.
Gunnar pointed to the timeline that had been drawn on the whiteboard. He also described the initial report of the conversation with the victim’s wife, Kerstin Juhlén, which had been signed by the police officers in the patrol car. They had been the first to interview her.
“Kerstin Juhlén was, however, hard to talk to properly,” said Gunnar.
She had initially come close to being hysterical, had screamed loudly and talked incoherently. At one point she started to hyperventilate. And all the time she had repeatedly said she didn’t kill her husband. She only found him in the living room. Dead.
“So do we suspect her, then?” said Jana and noticed that Mia was still glaring at her.
“Yes, she is of interest. We have detained her. She hasn’t got a verifiable alibi.”
Gunnar thumbed through the packet of papers.
“Okay, to summarize then. Hans Juhlén was murdered some time between 15:00 and 19:00 yesterday. Perpetrators unknown. The forensic experts says the murder took place in the house. That is, the body had not been transported from anywhere else. Correct?”
He nodded to Anneli Lindgren to confirm.
“That’s right. He died there.”
“The body was taken to the medical examiner’s lab at 22:21 and inspectors continued to go through the house until after midnight.”
“Yes, and I found these.”
Anneli put down ten sheets of paper with a single sentence written on each. “They lay well hidden in the back of the wardrobe in the victim’s bedroom. They appear to be short threatening letters.”
“Do we know who sent them and to whom they were addressed?” asked Henrik as he reached across to examine them. Jana made a note about them in her notepad.
“No. I got these copies from forensics in Link?ping this morning. It’ll probably take a day or so before they can get us more information,” said Anneli.
“What do they say?” said Mia. She pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her knitted sweater, put her elbows on the table and looked at Anneli with curiosity.
“The same message is on each one—‘Pay now or risk paying the bigger price.’”
“Blackmail,” said Henrik.
“So it would seem. We spoke to Mrs. Juhlén. She denies any knowledge of the letters. She seemed genuinely surprised about them.”
“They hadn’t been reported then, these threats?” said Jana and wrinkled her brow.
“No, nothing has been reported by the victim himself, his wife or anybody else,” said Gunnar.
“And what about the murder weapon?” said Jana, switching the topic.
“We haven’t found one yet. Nothing was near the body or in the immediate vicinity,” said Gunnar.
“Any DNA traces or shoe tracks?”
“No,” said Anneli. “But when the wife came home, a window was open in the living room. It seems fairly clear that the perpetrator gained entrance that way. The wife closed it, unfortunately, which has made it more difficult for us. But we did manage to find two interesting handprints.”
“Whose prints?” said Jana and held her pen ready to note down a name.
“Don’t know yet, but everything points to their being the prints of a child. The strange thing is that the couple don’t have any children.”
Jana looked up from her notepad.
“Is that really significant? Surely they know someone who has children. A friend? Relative?” she said.
“We haven’t been able to ask Kerstin Juhlén more about it yet,” answered Gunnar.
“Well, that must be the next step. Preferably straightaway.”
Jana took her calendar out of her briefcase and flipped through to today’s date. Reminders, times and names were neatly written on the pale yellow pages.
“I want us to talk to her as soon as possible.”
“I’ll phone her lawyer, Peter Ramstedt, right away,” said Gunnar.
“Good,” said Jana. “Get back to me with a time as soon as you can.” She put her calendar back in her briefcase. “Have you questioned any of the neighbors yet?”
“Yes, the nearest ones,” said Gunnar.
“And?”
“Nothing. Nobody saw or heard anything.”
“Then ask more. Knock on all the doors along the entire street and in the immediate vicinity. Lind? has many big homes, a lot of them with large picture windows.”
“Yes, I imagine you would know that, of course,” said Mia.
Jana looked directly at Mia.
“What I am saying is that somebody must have seen or heard something.”
Mia glared back, then looked away.
“What more do we know about Hans Juhlén?” Jana went on.
“He lived a fairly ordinary life, it seems,” said Gunnar and read from the packet. “He was born in Kimstad in 1953, so he was fifty-nine. Spent his childhood there. The family moved to Norrk?ping in 1965, when he was twelve. He studied economics at university and worked for four years in an accounting firm before he got a position in the Migration Board’s asylum department and worked his way up to become the head. He met his wife, Kerstin, when he was eighteen and the year after that they married in a registry office. They have a summer cottage by Lake V?ttern. That’s all we’ve got so far.”
“Friends? Acquaintances?” Mia said grumpily. “Have we checked them?”
“We don’t know anything about his friends yet. Or his wife’s. But we’ve started mapping them, yes,” said Gunnar.
“A more detailed conversation with the wife will help fill in more detail,” said Henrik.
“Yes, I know,” said Gunnar.
“His cell phone?” Jana wondered.
“I’ve asked the service provider for a list of calls to and from his number. Hopefully I’ll have that tomorrow latest,” said Gunnar.
“And what have we got from the autopsy results?”
“At the moment, we know only that Hans Juhlén was both shot and died where he was found. The medical examiner is giving us a preliminary report today.”
“I need a copy of that,” Jana said.
“Henrik and Mia are going straight there after this meeting.”
“Fine. I’ll tag along,” said Jana, and smiled to herself when she heard the deep sigh from Inspector Bolander.
CHAPTER
THREE
THE SEA WAS ROUGH, which meant that the stench got even worse in the confined space. The seven-year-old girl sat in the corner. She pulled at her mama’s skirt and put it over her mouth. She imagined that she was at home in her bed, or rocking in a cradle when the ship rolled in the waves.
The girl breathed in and out with shallow breaths. Every time she exhaled, the cloth would lift above her mouth. Every time she inhaled, it would cover her lips. She tried to breathe harder and harder to keep the cloth off her face. Then one time she blew so hard it flew off and vanished.
She felt for it with her hand. In the dim light she instead caught sight of her toy mirror on the floor. It was pink, with a butterfly on it and a big crack in the glass. She had found it in a bag of rubbish that somebody had thrown onto the street. Now she picked it up and held it in front of her face, pushed away a strand of hair from her forehead and inspected her dark tangled hair, her big eyes and long eyelashes.
Somebody coughed violently in the space, and the girl gave a start. She tried to see who it was, but it was difficult to distinguish people’s faces in the dark.
She wondered when they would arrive, but she didn’t dare ask again. Papa had hushed her when she had asked the last time how long they would have to sit in this stupid iron box. Now Mama coughed too. It was hard to breathe, it really was. A lot of people had to share the little oxygen inside. The girl let her hand wander along the steel wall. Then she felt for the soft cloth from her mama’s skirt and pulled it over her nose.