The Magdalena File Read online

  “Yeah, it’s just over there,” he said, pointing directly towards the channel.

  “We can’t leave until Forensics gets here. The broadcast on the police radio will keep other units nearby from coming out here, so we’re on our own for the time being. Can you stay, at least until the baggers arrive?”

  “Well, it’s the weekend, but sure, I can stay if I’m ordered to.”

  “Good,” she said. “Keep the house secure and keep an eye on the boat in case the killer comes back. Try to find out who owns it, if the name is listed in the boat register. I’m going to talk to people around here if I can find anyone at home. Create a tape perimeter around the house all the way back to the boat. If the wife comes back, ask her to sit outside for the time being and call me. Use your cell to talk to me if you have to contact me, and don’t use the police radio for anything regarding this case, OK?”

  Burger nodded, then asked, “Your boss asked if he could speak to the Terrier. I guess that’s what they call you in Stockholm.”

  “Yes.” Sara looked away for a second, then bared her teeth in jest. “They do.” She smiled at the memory of her departed friend, then asked, “And why do they call you Burger?”

  Burger mumbled an inaudible reply.

  *

  There were only three other houses near the Hoffberg house, all of them summer homes surrounded by a stretch of forest, and all close to the channel. Two of them were unoccupied.

  At the third house a young woman with a child on her hip answered the door. She let Sara in. Between shrieks and cries from her other children they were finally able to complete the interview.

  Her ten-year old son provided the information Sara needed. He’d been playing in the forest after lunch and had seen a car driving at high speed towards the main road. He was certain it was a dark-coloured Volvo 242, a two-door sedan.

  “I know my cars,” he’d said, and Sara saw pride fill his countenance.

  Sara asked the boy if he’d seen the licence plate, and he looked down at the rug as he tried to recall the entire scene.

  “AEU.”

  His mother explained that Sara should probably not make too much of the letters he’d given her – he was having a few problems with reading at school.

  “AEU,” the boy repeated, his head down and his voice quiet with determination.

  Sara thanked them both, left the house and sat in her car for a few minutes before starting the motor. The dark gravel driveway in front of her was spattered with yellow birch leaves, painting a scene of beauty she had no time to enjoy. She closed her eyes and concentrated on what she’d found so far.

  At the police academy, murder was presented as a family disease, and although she’d already investigated more than a dozen violent deaths of a spouse in her short career as a homicide investigator, this crime scene didn’t have the markings of a jealous wife ending an argument by smashing her drunken husband’s head with a frying pan. There seemed to be signs of torture indicating careful planning, but what kind of motive was she looking for? Had the wife been trying to find out the name of a mistress? Was she using electric shocks as a form of punishment for some newly discovered marital transgression? Women weren’t usually sadistic when they put their hubbies to death, Sara had noticed. Then there were the two shots to the chest. The minimal blood spatter from the exit wounds gave her a hint that Hoffberg was already dead from electrocution when he’d been shot.

  She remembered a comment by John Hurtree when they’d worked a case together several years ago: “Most women just haven’t got the guts to kill,” he’d said, “but when they do, they usually do a good job of it. They’re usually trying to kill their fathers by proxy, for some horrible thing done to them back in their childhood.”

  Was she looking for a psychotic spouse murderer, or just a drugged-crazed lunatic? The crazy ones were sometimes the easiest ones to catch; they’d be bragging to anyone who would listen within a few days, sometimes even posting details on the internet. Sara began to formulate questions for her interview with Hoffberg’s widow, and when her strategy was complete she started her car and followed the driving instructions to the Greens’ house.

  *

  Sara drove onto the main road towards Stallarholmen, first to the right, then towards Mariefred on the left. She found the address for the neighbour’s house where Kristina Hoffberg was staying. A grey Volvo station wagon was parked near the steps to the porch. They were expecting her, and she made herself comfortable in the living room as they waited for Mrs Hoffberg to emerge from her sedated nap.

  Mrs Hoffberg came out of the bathroom after several minutes, her face still wet from the cold water she’d thrown on it. The two women shook hands and sat down.

  “First let me say I’m sorry for your loss,” said Sara. “I understand it must have been a terrible shock to see what you saw today, but I need to ask you some questions which will help us find whoever did this to your husband.”

  Mrs Hoffberg sobbed when Sara reminded her of what she’d witnessed, but she continued the questioning anyway.

  “You can help me by telling me about today. Begin with what happened when you woke up this morning. Tell me everything you can remember.”

  Kristina Hoffberg began by describing the day in amazing detail. She could remember the sounds of the birds outside as she ate her solitary breakfast several hours before her husband woke up; the short conversation they’d had about the shopping she would do, mentioning that her husband would be working on a draft of a document which was very important for an environmental organisation, and he’d asked her to stop at the Post Office to pick up some stamps for him.

  “It was all so normal,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “So did you have an argument earlier today?” Sara looked closely at her face, watching for nervous twitches or flinches. There were none.

  “Not today,” said Kristina Hoffberg. “He quit his job at Parliament last year. I was against him quitting from the beginning, and I’d made it clear I’d have a hard time accepting the change in lifestyle his decision would bring. His entire career was coming into bloom, and it was stupid for him to quit. But then he threatened divorce, and well, I came to my senses, or maybe I came to his senses. Leo always knew what he was doing. That’s the way he was.”

  “Where do you usually shop?” asked Sara.

  “There’s a market in Mariefred, but I needed to buy a pair of boots and a jacket for the winter, so I drove to Södertälje this time,” she said. “I had time to stop at the café at the end of the golf course on the way in, and I sat there enjoying the sun for a few minutes.”

  “Did anyone see you there?” asked Sara.

  “Only the sleazy guy behind the counter. I watched a couple of golfers out on the course outside, but I don’t think they saw me.”

  Kristina said she’d answered a call on her cell phone to speak to an old friend. “We used to work together,” she said. “I was a librarian.”

  Sara was making notes as fast as she could. Kristina told her that at the height of his career, Leo managed to be appointed to several key committees in the Parliament, mostly connected to his environmental competence and his public notoriety. He was even appointed to the committee which ran the Defence Department.

  “Could you tell me a little about what happened when you got home? How did you find him?”

  “I left the car door open, and walked to the front door of our house,” she told Sara. “I was mostly thinking about the gravel on the driveway, that we’d soon be making it into an asphalt driveway and walkway to make it easier to remove the snow that’s going to be here soon. I tried the door, but it was locked, which isn’t at all usual for us out here. We always leave it open when we’re at home. Well, I called for Leo, but got no answer. All I could hear was the sound of wind coming down the channel like it does every day. Anyway, I went back to our car, got my purse and used my own house keys to open the front door.” Kristina Hoffberg paused for a minute, her
eyes fixed on something far beyond what was in front of her. “It squeaked when I opened it,” she said, “and I was a little irritated about it, and I was going to talk to Leo again.”

  “Was the back door locked?” Sara asked.

  “No, and I wondered about that – why he’d locked the front door but left the back door unlocked. At first I thought he was getting something from his boat, so I shouted his name. That’s when I went through the kitchen into the garage so I could open the garage door and park the car. That’s when I saw him. I remember screaming out his name again and fainting.”

  Kristina Hoffberg looked down at the coffee table for moment, then raised her eyes to look Sara squarely in the eye. “When I came to, I looked at Leo’s body again, and ran into the kitchen. Then I ran back into the garage just to make sure of what I’d seen, and then…and then I ran towards my car. I was afraid whoever had killed Leo might still be there, that I might become a victim too. I drove to our nearest neighbour, and, well, here I am.”

  “Is there anyone you can think of who might want to harm your husband?” Sara fixed her eyes on the widow’s face, looking for the slightest flinch.

  “No, no, I can’t think of anyone. Leo wasn’t well liked when he was in Parliament, but after he quit he’d barely had contact with any of them.”

  Sara’s notes were now several pages long. No detail was too small to be excluded at this stage. She concluded the interview, telling Kristina Hoffberg and the neighbours they were not to speak to anyone else about the murder, and they shouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t hear anything about it on the news yet. She told Kristina it would be better if she could find some other place to stay for at least the next day, since the forensic team would need some free space to work. The neighbours responded before Kristina could, and offered her a room for as long as she needed it. Sara told her she’d be back the following day to continue the interview and left to return to the Hoffberg house.

  *

  Forensics arrived at seven in the evening, just in time to watch the sun start to drop behind the tops of the dark line of fir trees framing the yard at the back of the house. Sara and the patrol boat officer helped them place markers on the footprints from the dock. The dog team wouldn’t be able to come until the following day, but having a trail to follow might give them a break later on. The team began the painstaking, gruelling work of documenting everything related to the case and spent several minutes outside, covering obvious tracks and other evidence to protect them from any rain which might fall during the night.

  Sara went with them to the bedroom and watched as they took down the box from the shelf in the wardrobe. It was empty. She asked them to look for prints on it; to be sure to detail the boat and then demobilise it if they could. She sat at the kitchen table as the forensic team gathered up piles of letters, bills and other correspondence lying on a counter next to the refrigerator, logging them into a database and taking digital photos for later use.

  Sara noticed a postcard of the City Hall in Stockholm, a red-brick building with three golden crowns at the top of the tower; a familiar sight to anyone who had ever been to Stockholm.

  “Wait,” she said to the young forensic assistant. “I’d like to look at that before you bag it.” The postcard had been postmarked only a week ago from the small harbour town of Trelleborg on the south coast of Sweden, with ferry connections to Poland and Germany. Sara read the brief message: Thanks for the info. Nice to see you at the Rose Garden last Tuesday. S. It was addressed to Magdalena at a box address in southern Stockholm, and had a yellow Post Office sticker redirecting it to the Hoffberg address.

  Sara jotted down the particulars from the postcard and asked as she returned it to the assistant, “Did you find any shell casings in the garage?”

  “No,” said the assistant, “but we found the two bullets used to make holes in the victim. We think he was already dead when he was shot, if that means anything to you.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” said Sara, “but I’m not sure what it means yet. Passion? Rage? Sadism? It means the killer took the risk of someone hearing two gunshots, but thought it was worth it anyway. Have you got a calibre?”

  “We’ll have to do the ballistics when we get back, but I’d say it was a 38. We’ll get something off the powder burns to his shirt, so we might get lucky and be able to identify the cartridges if you ever find the weapon,” the forensic assistant said.

  At 9.30 Sara asked if she could leave. Sven had booked her a room for the night in Mariefred, just a few miles away.

  *

  Sven had arranged a room from a list his administrator had made several years ago, containing the names and telephone numbers of hostels or private persons who had rooms cheap enough to fall into the miserly budget he was forced to work with.

  Sara drove into Mariefred and found the bed and breakfast on Strand Way with no trouble; a two-storey house with signs in three windows on the ground floor, all advertising rooms in three languages. Her room was on the ground floor facing the harbour, and a building off to the right that housed a restaurant for the many visitors who came by boat during the summer.

  Sara switched on the ten o’clock news as she kicked off her shoes and packed up the overnight case that was always lying in the trunk of her car, a lesson she’d learned early on.

  The TV commentator went from international to national news, and the concerned face of the Prime Minister filled the screen as he explained that unfortunately the Parliament Building would have to be evacuated for the coming week to allow a team of exterminators to eliminate an infestation of rodents. Members of Parliament would be given an extra week’s holiday.

  Sara grinned as she imagined the comments about parliamentary rats her colleagues at work would be coining after hearing such news, and then the screen shifted to regional events. They flashed some helicopter footage of Stallarholmen, and she could even see the house where her room was located. She felt dismay as she saw an aerial view of the Hoffberg house on the screen, and she assumed that her murder case had made the news already, but was relieved to hear that the newsreader’s comments were about the disappearance which had brought out the patrol boat in the early afternoon. The television cameras zoomed in on the Little Miss Perfect, stranded lengthwise across the channel where Lake Mälaren flowed into the Baltic, next to the House of Parliament.

  Her case was safe so far, and she wondered how long they could manage to keep it that way. Sara switched off the television and meditated for half an hour before retiring.

  Without meditation everything she did seemed to consist of attempts to beat into a gale-force wind, with a sail that flapped and popped with each gust. The logical methods she was supposed to use to solve crimes gave her the impression of movement and concrete results, but in reality the direction of her efforts was almost always being determined by an undercurrent of circumstances she was barely aware of. This time one of the currents came from abroad.

  Chapter 2

  Sweden’s Prime Minister sat in his spacious office in Government House in Stockholm, the usual hum of activity now silenced for the weekend. His political secretary stood behind him and they both stared once more at the letter in the PM’s hand. Rays of sunshine gleamed under dark clouds to the west just before sunset, and illuminated a single page of handwritten text.

  You rotten bastard! I’m tired of your political tricks to keep the country from seeing the choices open to them, and I’m sick of watching you get rich by secretly supporting the politics of war. I’ve tried and tried to make my voice heard, but you and your friends have managed to keep me silenced, so you think no one cares about my message. Now you and the entire country will be forced to listen. I’ve come across the means to make even you understand the unavoidable choice you have to make. World peace has to be achieved now, and I will make you save the world, and even the House of Parliament, where I’ve planted an explosive device powerful enough to destroy the entire centre of the city, and everyone there. I’ll expl
ain when you get back on Monday morning what steps you’ll have to take to save the city, and your own miserable ass.

  The letter lacked a signature.

  “How much longer before the man from the National Security Service gets here?” asked the PM, his tone a mixture of irritation and fear. “I want this person identified, apprehended, and this threat neutralised before Monday morning.”

  “Just a few more minutes, but can we trust the NSS?” replied the political secretary. “They usually get paid in favours to keep secrets, and I’m thinking this is something we don’t want to read about in the morning papers. Are you sure we don’t know who this guy is? All this crap about world peace makes me think of Leo Hoffberg.”

  “How could it be Hoffberg? According to the call from the National Bureau of Investigation, Hoffberg was murdered this morning. No, it can’t be him. Anyway, it’s disturbing that whoever it is put this letter into my own mailbox at the Parliament Building. Maybe the NSS can get some fingerprints, or see something using the security cameras. And how could anyone know I was supposed to be gone for the whole weekend?”

  “Your schedule is published on the government webpage,” said the political secretary. “Maybe we should do something about that.”

  “Let’s find out where this threat comes from, and if it’s real before we do anything rash,” said the PM, as he dropped the letter back on his desk. “It’s important the voters know what I’m doing. We should be drafting a plan to have the Parliament Building searched for explosive devices without attracting attention. I thought you said the NSS would be here soon? In the meantime we can start some kind of memorial speech for Hoffberg. He should be good for a point or two on the polls if we can get a word in during the news. Have the police let his murder reach the media yet?”

  *

  That same afternoon, Chief Inspector Lars Ekman, the head of Counter Terrorism, lounged in front of his TV, watching a soccer match between two Spanish teams. The exhilaration of watching a perfect bicycle kick was interrupted when his boss, the head of the NSS, called. Within fifteen minutes he was ushered in through the security doors at Rosenbad Government House, still tucking in his shirt.