Mari Jungstedt - The Dead Of Summer

Now Johan was worn out and feeling low. He rang Pia to tell her that he’d be at home if anything special happened. He didn’t give a damn what Grenfors might think about it. He went back to bed for an hour before he finally got up out of sheer boredom.

He took a shower and made some coffee. With his hair wet and a towel wrapped around his waist, he went out into the hall to get the morning papers, and there he discovered an envelope lying on the mat. He recognized the handwriting.

All it said on the front was ‘To Johan’.

She must have come over and delivered it personally, which meant it was important. He had to pour himself a cup of coffee and light up a cigarette before he could open the envelope. He didn’t usually smoke indoors, but what the hell. A thousand thoughts flew through his head as he tore open the envelope with fumbling fingers.

He licked his lips nervously before he read the message.

When Pia rang he was still sitting with the card in his hand, incapable of moving. He was too busy trying to collect his thoughts.

He could tell from her voice that something was happening.

‘A man was shot to death out at the stone quarry in Slite. It happened only about half an hour ago. I’ll pick you up. Go over to Söderport, and I’ll be there in five minutes.’

Johan stood up. Only something of this magnitude could have torn him away from studying Emma’s note. He pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and ran down towards Söderport, his hair still wet.

Ten minutes later they were on their way to Slite. Johan spent a major part of the drive talking on his mobile. First with the police, who refused to say anything except that a man had been found dead at the quarry in Slite. Then he talked to Grenfors, who could hardly believe that another murder had been committed on Gotland.

The area near the entrance to the quarry and factory had been cordoned off.

‘Damn it, we won’t be able to get in at all, we’re screwed,’ said Pia with a sigh.

They stood there staring like two fools. Suddenly Pia’s face lit up.

‘I know somebody who works here. I’ll try to get hold of him,’ she said.

The area where the murder had been committed was gigantic and it would be impossible to force their way in. Plus the factory employees were keeping their distance from the entrance, so there was no one to corner for an interview.

When Pia finished her phone call, she gave Johan a look of triumph.

‘I’ve found out what to do.’

A short time later, they reached the top of the stone quarry. Pia turned off from the main road and took a small track through the forest. The car jolted along. They could see limestone everywhere. The ground was white, and the bushes and trees that had managed to survive in what seemed like such an inhospitable environment were covered with a fine layer of dust.

‘It feels unreal,’ said Johan. ‘What a ghostly atmosphere.’

The track got narrower until Johan began to wonder whether they should venture any further.

‘What if we can’t turn round?’

‘We’ll just have to take that chance,’ said Pia, staring straight ahead. Branches and boughs kept striking the windscreen, and they had to plough their way through dense underbrush. Gradually, a clearing opened up, and that was where they parked.

Pia brought her camera with her as they followed an even smaller path into the woods. A moment later, they reached the quarry. It yawned before them like some sort of giant cauldron.

‘Good god,’ exclaimed Pia. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’

‘No, never.’

The view was both fascinating and terrifying.

‘How typical that we forgot to bring along anything to drink. My throat feels as dust-coated as the ground.’

They ventured closer to the edge and saw several police vehicles with people moving around them. They quickly backed up into the woods so as not to be seen.

‘What’s that over there?’ asked Pia, pointing to the other side of the quarry.

‘I have no idea.’ Johan squinted into the glare of the sun. ‘It looks like a little hut.’

Pia set up her tripod and began recording. She took a panoramic shot of the quarry and then pointed the lens at the hut.

‘What now?’ she asked.

‘What do you see?’

Pia raised her hand to shush him. She stood there for such a long time, shooting without moving the camera, that Johan began to feel uncomfortable in the heat. And he couldn’t see what had caught her eye, since it was too far away. When she finally finished, she simply looked at him, giving him an odd smile.

‘I think I’ll have a job with Rapport by autumn. Just so you know.’

JACOBSSON WAS OUT of luck. The police helicopter was in use, and the coast guard happened to be conducting extensive exercises elsewhere. To interrupt what they were doing in order to go out to Fårösund to pick up Jacobsson would take longer than her just catching the regular ferry out to Gotska Sandön. The next boat departed at two thirty. Before she left the quarry, someone at police headquarters had enough foresight to fax over personal information on Morgan Larsson, along with a copy of his passport photo.

When Knutas returned to police headquarters, the place was a whirlwind of activity. His colleagues were running from one office to another, exchanging information. Kihlgård came over to talk to Knutas.

‘What on earth is going on? This so-called summer paradise is turning out to be another Sicily!’

The allusion may have been something of a stretch, but Knutas understood what he meant, since he still had the events of the previous year, when decapitated horses had played a role, fresh in his mind. He chose not to reply. Instead he took his colleague by the arm and steered him towards the meeting room.

‘Meeting – of the investigative team – right now!’ he shouted as they moved quickly down the corridor. In spite of all the noise and commotion, his words seemed to penetrate through the walls, because a minute later everyone had gathered.

The only person missing, aside from Karin Jacobsson, was Erik Sohlman, who was still out at the crime scene.

‘At 11.52 a.m., a call came in to the officer on duty, reporting that a man had been found shot to death in a wooden building at the biggest stone quarry in Slite, known as Fila Hajdar and located on the western edge of town,’ Knutas began. ‘He was found by two individuals who were there with him to supervise the blasting. He was lying on the shed floor, shot in the forehead. And that’s not all. He’d also taken a large number of shots to the stomach. Exactly like Peter Bovide.’

‘What’s the victim’s name?’ asked the prosecuter, Smittenberg.

‘The man’s name is Morgan Larsson. He’s forty-one years old, unmarried, no children. He worked as an explosives expert at the factory, where he’d been employed for twenty years. He lived in a flat in central Slite. That’s all we know so far. Except for the fact that he was a classmate of Erik’s.’

‘Oh. So they knew each other? How well?’ asked Kihlgård.

‘Not very well, from what I can gather. At any rate, Erik is still out there. And by the way, when we were at the scene, we heard that Morgan Larsson had visited Gotska Sandön over the weekend. So that was the last thing he did before he was murdered. Karin caught the next ferry out to the island. All right, then. We’ve cordoned off a large area around the quarry. The forest above it is being searched by police dogs, and roadblocks have been set up all around Slite. All indications are that we’re dealing with the same killer. The empty casings that were found at the crime scene match those from the first murder, and according to Sohlman, they appear to have come from the same gun, meaning a Russian army pistol from the 1920s.’