Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

Jolanta smiled faintly and glanced at Holt, but when she saw that she was occupied by something else her smile became broader and she nodded resolutely.

“I’m sure. They’re always locked. Curious, you know,” she said, winking at Jarnebring.

When Jarnebring and Jolanta went through Eriksson’s clothes closet, things got really interesting.

“A suitcase is missing,” said Jolanta, nodding toward two other suitcases that were on the topmost shelf in the clothes closet.

“You’re sure of that,” said Jarnebring.

“They were there the last time I cleaned,” said Jolanta.

“Large, small?” Jarnebring asked.

“In between,” Jolanta replied, measuring a rectangle of about two feet by twenty inches between her hands. “Neither large nor small, light brown leather, nice looking. Definitely expensive. I’d like one myself — but I’m not the one who took it if you’re wondering.”

“No, why would you have done that,” said Jarnebring.

“Nice looking,” said Jolanta, shrugging her shoulders as she smiled a little. “I suppose you know what Swedish guys say about Polish women?”

“Anything else?” Jarnebring asked, pretending not to hear her question. “About the suitcase, I mean.”

“He had his initials on it,” said Jolanta. “Face-to-face monogram, KGE... only one letter that didn’t fit,” she added, shrugging her shoulders.

The final discovery Jolanta made was in the linen cabinet in Eriksson’s bathroom, but she wasn’t nearly as certain as she was about the suitcase.

“I think some hand towels are missing,” said Jolanta. “I’m almost certain.”

“You think so,” said Jarnebring. It can’t be a great quantity in any event, he thought as he looked at the well-filled shelves.

“May I look?” asked Jolanta, nodding toward the laundry basket on the bathroom floor.

“Sure,” said Jarnebring.

Jolanta took her time and even counted through the towels that were in the cabinet and in the laundry basket. When she was done she nodded and looked more sure.

“A few are missing,” she said. “Not a lot but at least five or six. Of the medium-size variety,” she said, pointing to the towel rack next to the washbasin.

“Half a dozen hand towels,” said Jarnebring. “Eriksson couldn’t have taken them to the laundry himself?” Fucking Wiijnbladh, he thought.

“No,” said Jolanta. “He never did. He was too good for that. Maybe your colleagues took them with them,” she suggested.

“We’ll have to check,” said Jarnebring. “It’ll work out.”

As soon as she left, Jarnebring and Holt checked Wiijnbladh’s report from the crime scene investigation. There was a notation that all the drawers in the desk were unlocked, that some of them contained “various papers,” and that the top middle drawer was empty.

“Maybe Eriksson locked them just before he went out,” said Holt. “I would too if that woman was cleaning my house.”

A total of seven different drawers, thought Jarnebring. She would be coming to clean the next morning anyway. That’s quite a lot of locking and unlocking, he thought. He might lock one or two maybe, because he needed something, but all seven?

“This may solve itself when we see what they contain,” said Jarnebring.

“There’s nothing about any laundry, nothing about any hand towels... apart from the one that Wiijnbladh mentioned at the meeting,” said Holt, shutting the binder with the technician’s report.

“We’ll have to talk with the little man,” Jarnebring decided.

After that Jarnebring decided that the bookcases in the living room could wait. The built-in bookshelves covered the entire long wall from floor to ceiling. In total there was more than 150 feet of shelf space and up to several thousand books.

“Think about it,” said Jarnebring. “It’s going to take the whole day.”

“I realize we don’t have to read them too,” said Holt, who seemed rather cheerful.

They finished off the kitchen instead. Expensive china, beautiful glassware, every imaginable cooking utensil. So far it was like the rest of the apartment. The fridge, freezer, and cupboards were impeccable. Even the vegetables still seemed fresh, despite the fact that it would soon be a week since Eriksson had died.

But in general they did not find anything of interest. Wiijnbladh had already rooted through the garbage bag under the sink on Thursday evening, and according to his report even that appeared to have made a neat and tidy impression. The most exciting thing they found was a glass jar of preserves with an old-fashioned lid and a rubber ring, in which Eriksson apparently stored currency in smaller denominations, coins, and various receipts for alcohol and groceries.

But it took time, and as they stood discussing whether they should have lunch before they tackled the bookshelves, Bäckström called the victim’s phone to ask if they had found any safe-deposit box keys.

“That fucking blind bat Wiijnbladh didn’t find any,” Bäckström explained. “But now I happen to know that there should be a couple.”

Jarnebring had taken a wild chance and looked in the top middle drawer in the desk in the office. The key was way at the back, wedged between the frame and the bottom of the drawer, which was otherwise empty.

Strange, Jarnebring thought. If I stored my things in a desk like that, I would have all the ordinary stuff in that drawer, so why was that one empty?

“I found it,” said Jarnebring when he returned to the phone.

“That’s great,” said Bäckström. “Bring it over right away. Then you can tag along on a search at Handelsbanken.”

Holt chose to stay at the apartment. She nodded at the bookshelves in the living room.

“You go ahead, I’ll start going through the books,” said Holt, and without Jarnebring really understanding why, he almost felt a little disappointed as he got into their service car alone and drove up to Kungsholmen.

Bäckström was in a splendid mood. He had received a tip on the phone that morning.

“I hate it when I don’t know what they’ve been up to,” Bäckström explained. “Maybe you recall that we have three empty hours when Eriksson is unaccounted for between twelve o’clock and three last Thursday. After he’d left his conference and before he showed up at work.”

“Yes, I have a faint recollection of that,” said Jarnebring. “It was Holt and I who found that out, as maybe you recall.”

“Sure,” said Bäckström, who hadn’t noticed to begin with. “But now that’s cleared up in any case. He evidently has a safe-deposit box at the Handelsbanken office on Karlavägen, halfway between his office and where he lives, and he showed up there at one-thirty last Thursday, sat down in the vault, and went through his box before he left the bank at quarter to three. An hour and fifteen minutes he sat there. It was a gal at the bank who called and gave us the tip. She’d seen in the papers that he was murdered. An hour and a quarter,” Bäckström repeated. “This is getting fucking interesting.”

One hour later Bäckström and Jarnebring were down in the Handelsbanken vault, monitored by a very proper bank manager, looking on while a female employee with the bank’s and Eriksson’s keys lifted out a safe-deposit box of the largest available size.

“If you’ll excuse us,” said Bäckström overbearingly, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves, “I would like to look myself first.”

Fucking idiot, thought Jarnebring.

The box was empty. There was nothing in it at all. Not even a dust bunny.

“Damn it,” Bäckström hummed as they sat in the car en route back to the police station on Kungsholmen. “He must have emptied the box.”