Anger Mode
Anger Mode
Walter Gröhn Trilogy [1]
Stefan Tegenfalk
Sweden (2014)
Two cars collide head-to-head on a country road with little traffic. The
collision is violent. Ten year old Cecilia is catapulted through the
windscreen and killed. Five years later, criminal detective Walter Grohn
gets a perplexing case on his desk - one dead taxi driver and his
killer who has no idea why he committed the crime. The first murder is
followed by others, all equally as brutal and inexplicable. Together
with his talented assistant, Jonna de Brugge, he untangles threads that
lead back to the very core of the Swedish justice/judicial system.
This novel is the first title in the Walter Gröhn trilogy, which includes:
Anger Mode
Project Nirvana
The Weakest Link
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Nordic Noir Books,
an imprint of Massolit Publishing Ltd, London
www.nordicnoirbooks.com
Distributed in the UK by Turnaround Ltd
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Cover artwork: Stevali Production
Layout and design: Stevali Production
Originally published in Sweden as Vredens Tid in 2009
by Massolit Förlag, Stockholm (
www.massolit.se
)
Copyright © 2009 by Stefan Tegenfalk
English translation copyright © 2011 by David Evans
The moral right of Stefan Tegenfalk to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any method whatsoever, including electronic or mechanical, photocopy, recording or storage in any data retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. The events and persons described have no basis in real life, except for Anna Lindh, Olof Palme and Stig Bergling. RSU is the author’s own invention. Some locations do exist. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-908233-00-4
Typeset by Stevali Production, Sweden
Printed and bound in July 2011 by Nørhaven, Denmark
A fully developed human brain is considered to be the most complex of Nature’s creations. The brain is made up of more than one hundred billion nerve cells, and it uses electrical impulses and chemical hormone triggers to control and coordinate bodily functions like blood pressure, fluid balances, and body temperature. In addition, it handles our mental functions such as intellect, emotion, memory and learning.
“The more mankind researches the brain, the less is known about it.”
David H. Ingvar (1924–2000), Professor of Clinical Neurophysiology, University of Lund, 1983–1990
Author’s note
Lay juror
. In Swedish criminal and civil cases, the jury consists of a judge, who is also the court president, three lay jurors and a court secretary. Lay jurors are appointed by political assemblies and do not have to be qualified lawyers.
“
Law Speaker
” is an honorary title given to a senior judge.
Prosecutors
work for an independent authority within the Justice Department and are the only public officials who can initiate criminal investigations.
Prime Minister Olof Palme
was shot down on the streets of Stockholm on 28 February 1986. The murder investigation remains open.
Anna Lindh
was a Swedish Foreign Minister who was stabbed to death on 11 September 2003 in Stockholm. After three trials, Mijailo Mijailović, of Serbian parentage, was convicted of her murder.
Stig Bergling
was an employee of SÄPO who was convicted of treason for leaking secrets to the Soviet military intelligence service, GRU.
Contents
S
UNDAY, 14
S
EPTEMBER 2004
THE WRISTWATCH GLASS was cracked and the watch hands had stopped at eleven minutes past five. The red Winnie-the-Pooh rucksack, which she had thought herself too old for, lay not far from her body. From a rip in the battered back pack, a small, soft toy pony could be seen. It was light brown and had a small, white star between its dark eyes, just like the pony she used to ride every Sunday.
It was cold. She was lying face down in the muddy earth, eyes covered in mud, legs and arms lifelessly extended in all directions. She saw nothing. Felt nothing. Her heart had long since stopped beating.
A BATTLE SCENE opened up before Hans Jonasson of the Uppsala County Traffic Police when, during a routine drive along Route 72, he made an emergency stop on his police motorbike next to what was left of the car. As one of the most experienced police motorcyclists in the area, he had seen a great deal of death on the roads and the sight of the car crash on the road was all he needed to detect the presence of Death once again at this spot. The kinetic energy from both cars had transformed them into unrecognizable piles of twisted metal. One of the cars had catapulted into the field and had ploughed a large welt in the muddy topsoil. The other car, still on the road, was sliced into two parts. Bits of glass and metal were spread around the pieces of wreckage like fragments of a falling star. Hans quickly confirmed the absence of skid marks on the tarmac. The collision must have occurred with a brutal impact. Considering the appearance of the vehicles, it would have taken a miracle for anyone to have survived.
He made the call to the county communications centre while he was running to what looked like the front part of the car in the road. He took off his gloves and touched the mangled metal with his hand. It was still warm and what was left of the engine’s cooling system was hissing. A human body was wedged inside the demolished steel. The head was hanging forwards and the face was shredded to pieces. Hans squeezed inside and put his fingers against the neck, searching for a pulse. His fingertips registered a weak beat, and the lungs emitted a shallow wheeze. His first impulse was to try to bend up the metal to get the person out, to put the body in the prone position until help arrived. But the casualty could not be moved until the ambulance crew arrived – especially not the head and neck. The only thing he could do was to stop the bleeding and ensure that the airways were more or less open. After staunching the worst wounds using rudimentary bandages made from bits of clothing from the victim, he ran to what was left of the back part of the car. It was empty.
A car approached from the east. From this direction, visibility was better because of a long straight, leading to the tight curve of the road. Hans raised his hand in a stop signal and ordered the passengers to remain in the car. He then swore silently to himself because he had forgotten an obvious, routine precaution and ran back to his motorbike. He lit an emergency flare and placed it just ahead of the curve in the road, where he had been forced to brake, before continuing into the muddy field and towards the second car wreck.
The dark SUV had somersaulted and landed back on its wheels. The roof was partially caved in and the side windows were shattered. The front of the car had been folded back into the roof supports and the laminated windscreen had been partially ripped out of its frame. A youngish woman with long, wheat-blonde hair was sitting clamped between the seat and the steering wheel. Her head was resting lifelessly against the now oval shape of the wheel. From her nose and half-open mouth, blood had flowed and congealed. Hans tore open what was left of the car door and carefully leaned inside to search for a pulse on the woman’s neck. An unpleasant chill met his fingertips as they touched her skin. He shifted his fingers slightly, but was still unable to find a pulse. He carefully lifted her head and looked into her lifeless eyes.
More vehicles had arrived at the accident site up on the road. Curious onlookers were shocked at the mangled body that lay in the crashed car on the road. Someone was groaning and retching at the side of the road. An elderly woman held her hands to her face and wept. The sound of approaching emergency vehicles echoed from the edges of the forest while Hans was searching through the remains of the SUV. Suddenly, he stopped by the floor on the passenger side. Something resembling a child’s car-seat cushion was wedged between the seat and the floor. The seat belt was not secured, so it was unlikely that a child had been sitting there. Still, he instinctively looked around. The field was bare and the muddy ground was easily visible around the car. He turned towards the road where the first emergency vehicle had arrived. Next to the side of the road and a few metres from the tyre tracks of the SUV, there were some bushes. He made a quick mental reconstruction of the series of events – and immediately turned ice-cold.
She had blonde hair braided in two pigtails and was lying like a discarded rag doll in the bushes close to the road. Hans felt his pulse quicken yet another notch. He yelled to the ambulance crew making their way towards the SUV and an out-of-breath junior doctor with a red emergency kit broke away.
Hans summoned the doctor. With his mouth open and gasping for breath, the doctor threw himself to his knees by the side of the girl, who was lying with her face down in the mud. He pulled his stethoscope from his bag with one hand while putting his finger on the girl’s throat to find a pulse.
“Well?” Hans impatiently inquired.
The young doctor did not answer. Instead, he changed the position of his fingers while hanging his stethoscope around his neck.
“Can you find a pulse?” Hans continued.
After a few more attempts, the young doctor shook his head. He carefully turned over the girl’s body. The face was covered with blood that had dried with the topsoil from the ground into a red-brown mud mask. The doctor wiped the mud from the girl’s face, and her light-blue eyes stared emptily at the clear autumn sky. According to procedure, he still tried to revive the heart with a small, portable defibrillator but, as he feared, it was way too late. The doctor explained that she was probably dead even before she hit the ground. Her neck had presumably been broken at the moment she was catapulted from the car.
Hans nodded at the doctor, who had become pale.
“Bloody shame,” muttered the young doctor and slowly stood up with stethoscope in hand. He stroked his chin, as if he was feeling for beard stubble. Hans could see he was having a hard time holding back his emotions. He was not alone in that.
Not far from the dead girl’s rucksack, there was a diary. Small pink ponies adorned the cover. The little padlock had been torn off and, on the front, in the pretty, framed nameplate, someone had written “Cecilia” in ornate handwriting.
Hans picked the book up from the ground and opened it. It was written in straggling handwriting, with many spelling mistakes. He started browsing the diary at random and after a while arrived at the last entry. At the top of the page, he read today’s date and the time. It had been written less than an hour earlier. Something cut through the wall of indifference that he had built up during his years of police service. Sensitivity was not an advantage in his occupation and those who succumbed to their emotions never lasted long – this he knew.
He took a deep breath and tried to shake off these feelings. Where was his professional detachment when he needed it?
Less than an hour ago, she had been breathing. Living the trouble-free life only a child can. Unaware of all the dangers that are a part of life. Loved and full of dreams.
She was ten years old.