Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (7 page)

The locksmith tucks away his tools with practised speed and wipes sweat from his face. Lena hands him a card for him to forward to his manager. He takes it, nods, heads down the stairs and out into the blizzard.

Lena moves to the side of the door and motions for Agnes to be ready to open it, then reaches for the small torch in her belt clip. The torch is shorter and not much thicker than her thumb, but it is enough to illuminate most rooms.

She runs her tongue over her teeth, forms her fingers around the grip of her gun, and grits her teeth. Memories spring to her mind quicker than she can push them away.

Sirens, shouts, and dark, fleshy holes. The stink of sanitizers. Amplified pleas, screamed accusations, crying children. Flashes of bright orange. The gun, jolting like an animal in her hands.

“Lena?” Agnes looks at her and frowns. “Are you all right?”

“Wait,” Lena says. “I thought I heard something.”

She hates lying, and she knows she does not do it well, but Agnes does not look suspicious. Then she does hear a sound from inside the flat: two rapid thuds, muted but still distinct. They sound like footsteps. Agnes’s eyes widen.

“I’ll call for backup,” Agnes says and reaches for her radio.

“No.” Lena shakes her head. “We can’t wait. He might jump through a window, and we won’t spot him in this weather.”

So much for her hopes that John would not be around. It could be a friend, but that was unlikely. She pulls the pistol free from its holster and glances down at the weapon. Its weight outside the shooting range always surprises her.

A colleague had once told her he thought of his weapon as an extension of his hand. Another officer had claimed his gun felt like an unreliable lump of steel and plastic, prone to break down at the worst of times.

She disagrees with both ideas. To her, the gun is a catalyst, amplifying whispers to roars. She feels it right then: Submerged under concentration and schedules, that honey-sweet urge stirs and reaches out, loosening the reins on her conscience.

“Now,” Lena says.

Agnes nods and opens the door.

Lena’s torch reveals a cramped hall, part of a small kitchen on her right, and a larger room ahead. She holds her gun parallel to the beam of light. Agnes switches on her torch, forcing the shadows back.

There is no sound or movement, but the noise came from inside these rooms. She peers at the silhouettes of furniture, the walls, the shadows. Someone is hiding in there.

“Police,” Lena calls out. “We’re coming in. Put your hands on your head and stay still.” She breathes out and swallows. The air is thick with the scent of oil and chemicals.

Once they move past the doorway, they can see most of the flat. Hall, kitchen, a tiny bathroom and a single living room. The small kitchen allows for only one person at a time. The cupboards are the size of bar fridges. No hiding spaces in there.

The bathroom door is wide open. She takes a quick step inside and checks the bathtub. Empty. Only one room remains.

Lena and Agnes turn to the living room and pause in the doorway.

There is no one in the room, but its walls are covered with paintings. Most are the size of regular papers, some are several square metres, others are small as postcards. Stacks of canvases and cardboards lean against the wall and lay in knee-high piles. Drawings and sketches are heaped around the floor. Along the right-hand wall is a table littered with brushes, tubes of oil colour and bottles of acrylic paint. Wooden rulers and sharpened charcoal sticks jut out from teacups in different sizes.

Some of the paintings portray people, alone or in groups, wandering among looming cityscapes or huddled in open fields and mountain ranges under wide skies. Others depict open landscapes, horses, mansions and gardens. Many of the smaller paintings are detailed renderings of small objects: flowers and lush trees, intricate symbols and trinkets, candlestick holders and ornate lamps. Art is not Lena’s strong point, but many of the paintings look photorealistic. She assumes John made them.

“Huh,” Lena says and edges into the room. She must have imagined the noise.

On the opposite wall is a window, its drawn blinds turned into a glowing grey square by the street lights outside. Below the window is a bed covered partially by a blanket. Next to the bed is a three-way spotlight floor lamp, and beside that two IKEA sideboards.

On Lena’s right is an easel with a large unpainted canvas. No TV, no sofa, no couch. A bedside alarm clock blinks midnight in bright red to the soundtrack of its radio spitting soft static. She sweeps her light over the cluttered walls; the light switch has to be somewhere.

The sheets move.

Lena whips her torch back to the bed. Something under the blanket. Too small for a man. A child, perhaps. An infant.

Before Lena has more time to reflect on what is hiding in the bed, Agnes walks across the room and lifts the corner of the blanket. A cat peeks out, hisses and shows off its tiny fangs before retreating deeper under the blanket.

Lena exhales. “There’s our bump in the dark,” she says. “Let’s get some light in here.” For the second time that day, she longs to be back in the blizzard; her hands are so clammy she can barely hold on to her pistol.

Agnes finds a dimmer control behind an easel. As a soft light fills the room, she holsters her gun and unzips her jacket. “Are you looking for something specific?” she asks.

“Anything that might point to where he is.” Lena brushes a tangle of hair from her face. Someday soon, she promises herself, she will get a navy cut. “Notebooks, postcards, envelopes with different addresses.”

“Would he hide in a place where we’re bound to look?”

“Possibly,” Lena says. “He’s scared, and he’s cold. I wonder why the clock is reset?” The noise of static is grating on her concentration, so she walks over to the bedside clock and turns the power off.

“Maybe there’s been a blackout?” Agnes suggests.

Lena nods absently and leans close to some of the smaller paintings to study them. A young woman carrying a large key and walking down a dark tunnel. An open silver locket holding a tuft of blonde hair. Something that looks like a black Rubik’s Cube. All three paintings are as small as pocketbooks and so meticulously painted they look almost lifelike.

“He’s good,” Lena says quietly.

“What?” Agnes looks up from the table.

“At painting. He knows this stuff.”

“He works for an advertisement company. Maybe it’s part of his job.”

Lena grimaces. “Perhaps.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“How often do you see paintings in ads?” Lena asks.

“Good point.”

“Work or hobby, this place is absolutely crammed.” Lena gestures at the room. “Let’s have a look around. I’ll call the animal welfare people about the cat.”

Agnes nods, glances down, and frowns momentarily before she turns to search the room. Lena looks down and realizes she is still holding her gun. She shoves the weapon back in its holster, snaps the security strip in place, and investigates the desk.

She soon finds an order in the chaos. The mess is the kind of untidiness that stems from inspiration, not disinterest in cleaning: a continual wake of disorder behind someone with an idea in sight. Or perhaps she sees patterns because she wants to be there. It would not be the first time. Shivering, she thinks of her own chaotic flat.

Her phone rings. The office. She takes the call. “Franke.”

“This is Wiknell from the information department. I have the mobile phone records you requested. They’re for a man called John Andersson.”

“Go on.” Lena parts the blinds and peers at the parking lot. No one there.

“There’s only one company, but lots of matching calls. I’ll email the list.”

“Anything that stands out?”

“Not really. Most calls were made evenings, all within the past three months.”

“When’s the latest call?”

“This afternoon, just after two o’clock.”

“Right.” She looks at a painting of clouded sky, layer upon layer of deep grey and blue. “I’ve got to go.”

She ends the call, turns to Agnes and briefs her. As Agnes scribbles in her small, leather-bound notebook, Lena watches the woman’s concentrated face and wonders if Agnes takes notes when watching the morning weather forecast.

Once Agnes is done, she returns to checking the drawers. “Clothes and paints,” she calls over her shoulder to Lena. “Some papers, mostly bills. Blue overalls.” Agnes holds them close to her face. “Smells funny. Paint, I think.”

Agnes turns to searching the kitchen while Lena gets down on one knee and looks under the table. Underneath the tabletop is a pet cage with a tattered toy mouse stuck through the fenced door. Next to the cage are rows of paint bottles, spray cans, a folded rug, and two large plastic bottles of solvent.

Behind the bottles is a phone cord nailed along the skirting board. She follows the cord to the plug and finds a plain red telephone behind an empty canvas.

“I found the phone,” Lena says, “but there’s no modem.” She hears Agnes rummaging through cupboards, lifting plates and moving packets around.

“He might use a neighbour’s connection,” Agnes replies from the kitchen. “Or a mobile phone. Useful if you’re doing something illegal. Hard to trace.”

Agnes comes back from the kitchen and shakes her head. “Nothing in there. What do you want to do now?”

Lena runs her thumb along the edge of the canvas on the easel. “We’ll go back to the station. I’ll brief Gren, and I’ll make sure the warrant’s been forwarded to other stations. And to the underground security companies, too.” Looking at the canvas, she notices the motif and takes a step back.

“I’ll be damned,” she says under her breath. “Look at this.” She takes a step back to let Agnes get a better view.

The portrait depicts a woman in a deep green dress. Sitting next to a blossoming tree on a hill, she looks wistful and at peace, her face turned to a setting sun outside the frame. Her hands are resting in the tall billowing grass around the base of the tree.

In the background are mountain tops, grey waves blending with an equally ashen sky. Some way away from the tree, the ground seems to end, as if the grass hides a vertical cliff. The scene is both vast and detailed.

“It’s her,” Agnes says quietly. “Isn’t it?”

“I think so,” Lena replies. She saw the same face less than an hour before, though then it was only a shell, void of anything resembling life. In this painting, caught in thick oil and precise brush strokes, Molly looks fully alive. The grass appears to wait for a gust of wind to caress it. She cannot make out the woman’s expression, but she seems to be smiling.

Lena’s radio beeps. She pulls back from the canvas and answers.

“Franke here.”

“This is Nordström from patrol one. We’ve just completed a third sweep of the area.”

“Any sign of John Andersson?”

“No, but he’s definitely out there. People have seen him down by the station. Although the station’s security is absolutely sure that he hasn’t passed through the turnstiles. We also have a confirmed sighting from the owner of a corner shop near the crime scene, but the man said you’ve already talked to him. And there are some others who say they’ve seen him, too
.
”

“Who?”

“A few people around the station. Commuters and retail staff. One man saw John use a nearby cash machine. The most definite statement is by a woman who works at the gas station near the roundabout.”

“I think I know which gas station you mean. What did she say?”

“John bought shoes and a lot of chocolate bars. The woman said he looked at her in a creepy way. Not dirty, but weird.”

“Do they have any cameras?” Lena asks.

“Yes, but they don’t record anything.”

Lena looks at the ceiling, closes her eyes, and exhales hard in frustration.

“So John didn’t catch a train,” she says, summing it up to herself. “Instead he bought shoes, withdrew money, and went back to the scene to buy a computer.”

“It seems so. But there’s another thing.”

The coil of worry in Lena’s stomach stirs. “Go on.”

“There’s a strong possibility that another man ran from the flat. Or one more, that is. Not just John Andersson.”

“Proceed.” Lena opens her eyes. She had been right: this was not a case of a boyfriend gone off the rails. It was more complicated and could soon become far worse.

“Many disagreed on the victim’s neighbour’s description of how John was dressed. We compared our notes, and like I said, it’s likely that there’s another man involved. He wore a grey sweater, had dark hair and was unshaved. Black trainers and blue trousers. Maybe a bag or a backpack. Some witnesses say the first suspect also had a bag. It’s confused, I know.”

“How sure are you that the second man is part of this?” Lena asks. “Have people seen him near the victim’s flat?”

“Yes. A woman walking her baby even saw him leave the building. Running as if he was on fire, she said.”

“In the same direction as John Andersson.”