Sunday, April 15
“EMERGENCY SERVICES 112, what has happened?”
“My husband’s dead...”
Alarm operator Anna Bergström heard the woman’s shaking voice and quickly glanced at the corner of the computer screen in front of her. The clock showed 19:42.
“Could you give me your name, please.”
“Kerstin Juhlén. My husband is Hans. Hans Juhlén.”
“How do you know he is dead?”
“He isn’t breathing. He’s just lying there. He was lying there like that when I came home. And there’s blood...blood on the carpet,” the woman sobbed.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is anybody else hurt?”
“No, my husband is dead.”
“I understand. Where are you now?”
“At home.”
The woman on the other end of the phone took a deep breath.
“Can I have your address please?”
“Östanvägen 204, in Lindö. It’s a yellow house. With large flower urns outside.”
Anna’s fingers worked quickly across the keyboard as she sought out Östanvägen on the digital map.
“I am sending you the necessary help,” she said in a calming voice. “And I want you to stay with me on the telephone until they come.”
Anna didn’t get any answer. She pressed her hand against the headset.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“He really is dead.” The woman sobbed again. The sobs immediately turned into hysterical crying, then all that could be heard in the alarm service’s telephone was a long anguished scream.
* * *
Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin and Detective Inspector Maria Bolander stepped out of their Volvo in Lindö. The cold sea air from the Baltic caught Henrik’s flimsy spring jacket. He pulled the zipper up to his neck and put his hands in the pockets.
On the paved driveway there was a black Mercedes together with two police cars and an ambulance. Some ways from the cordoned-off area stood another two parked cars, and judging by the lettering on their side doors, they belonged to the town’s competing newspapers.
Two journalists, one from each paper, were leaning so hard against the police tape to get a better look that it stretched tautly across their down jackets.
“Oh hell, what an upscale place.” Inspector Maria Bolander, or Mia as she preferred, shook her head in irritation. “Statuary even.’’ She stared at the granite lions, then caught sight of the huge urns next to them.
Henrik Levin remained silent and started to walk up the lit pathway to the house at Östanvägen 204. Small heaps of snow on the gray edging stones bore witness that winter had not yet given up. He nodded to the uniformed officer Gabriel Mellqvist who stood outside the front door, then he stamped the snow off his shoes, opened the heavy door for Mia and they both went in.
Activity was feverish inside the magnificent home. The forensic expert worked systematically to find possible fingerprints and other traces of evidence. They had already lit up and brushed the doors and door handles. Now they were focused on the walls. Occasionally the flash of a camera lit up the discreetly furnished living room where the dead body lay on the striped carpet.
“Who found him?” Mia asked.
“His wife, Kerstin Juhlén,” Henrik said. “She apparently found him dead on the floor when she came home from a walk.”
“Where is she now?”
“Upstairs. With Hanna Hultman.”
Henrik Levin looked down at the body that lay before him. The dead man was Hans Juhlén, in charge of asylum issues at the Migration Board. Henrik stepped around the body, then leaned down to study the victim’s face—the powerful jaw, the weather-beaten skin, the gray beard stubble and graying temples. Hans Juhlén had often been featured in the media, but the archive photos they used did not reflect the aged body that now lay in front of them. The dead man was dressed in neatly ironed trousers and a light-blue striped shirt. Its cotton material soaked up the growing bloodstains on his chest.
“Look, but don’t touch,” forensic expert Anneli Lindgren said to Henrik and gave him a meaningful look as she stood next to the large windows.
“Shot?”
“Yes, twice. Two entry points from what I can tell.”
Henrik glanced around the room, which was dominated by a sofa, two leather armchairs and a glass coffee table with chrome legs. Paintings by Ulf Lundell hung on the walls. The furniture didn’t appear disturbed. Nothing was knocked over.
“No signs of a struggle,” he said and turned toward Mia, who was now standing behind him.
“No,” Mia answered without taking her eyes off an oval sideboard. On it lay a brown leather wallet with three five-hundred-kronor bills stuck out. She felt the sudden urge to pull them all out—or at least one, but she stopped herself. In her head she said, enough was enough; she had to pull herself together.
Henrik’s eyes wandered to the windows which looked out onto the garden. Anneli Lindgren was still brushing for fingerprints.
“Find anything?”
Anneli Lindgren looked up at him from behind her spectacle frames.
“Not yet, but according to the victim’s wife, one of these windows was open when she came home. I’m hoping I’ll find something other than her prints on it.”
Anneli Lindgren continued her slow, methodical work.
Henrik ran his fingers through his hair and turned back to Mia.
“Shall we go upstairs and have a few words with Mrs. Juhlén?”
“You go up. I’ll stay down here and keep an eye on things.”
* * *
Upstairs, Kerstin Juhlén stared hollowly as she sat on the bed in the master bedroom with a cardigan draped around her shoulders. As Henrik entered the room, police officer Hanna Hultman took a respectful step backward and closed the door behind them.
On his way up the staircase Henrik had imagined the victim’s wife as a delicate woman in elegant clothes. Instead she appeared heavyset, dressed