Alex Gray - The Swedish Girl

If I wanted to hide a wee thing like a sim card, where would I put it? she wondered. Somewhere nobody would find it but a place that would be handy if I used it regularly. Late at night. When I was in my bed…

The dead girl’s bed had an ornate white carved headboard that matched the little table to one side. Kneeling down, Kirsty saw the pair of electrical sockets just above the skirting board. The bedside lamp was plugged into one, its wire snaking behind the table. The other, hidden by the sweep of pink silken counterpane, held one of those plastic safety covers that her Aunty Joyce used when her kids were wee.

Kirsty blinked, noticing that one side of the plastic cover protruded just the tiniest bit away from the socket. Would the scene of crime officers have pulled that out to have a look?

She held her breath as her fingernails eased it out.

‘Bingo!’ Kirsty’s smile broadened as she turned the cover over to see the tiny sim card taped carefully to the inside of the socket cover.

‘This is Detective Superintendent Lorimer, Strathclyde Police. Am I speaking to Anders Andersson?’

There was a short pause before a thickly accented voice replied. ‘This is Anders. What do you want?’

‘Mr Andersson, I wanted to ask you some questions about your stay in Glasgow.’

‘You got wrong fellow,’ the man interrupted. ‘This is Anders senior.’

‘It’s your son who was a student at the University of Strathclyde?’

‘That’s right. Young Anders did a… what is it… an exchange, yes?’

‘Yes. Can I speak to him, please? Is he there?’

‘This about the Magnusson girl?’

‘That’s correct, Mr Andersson. We are still investigating the circumstances around her death.’

There was a longer pause before the deep voice proclaimed, ‘Anders is not here any more. Sorry. Can’t help you,’ before the click that let the policeman know the call had been terminated.

Cursing under his breath, Lorimer redialled the number but it was already engaged.

He imagined the father calling his son at that very moment, telling him that the Scottish police were looking for him. Biting his lip, Lorimer had a growing feeling that the elusive Anders might really have something to hide. Well, perhaps there was more than one way to find out. Dialling the mobile number he had copied from Eva’s extra sim card, he wondered if the father was speaking the truth or if he simply didn’t want to become involved.

As the engaged signal rang out from the student’s mobile, Lorimer nodded to himself. He would bet a month’s salary that he was right and at this very moment father and son were discussing what to do about this call from the Scottish police.

‘The initial call to Mr Magnusson was made to his mobile,’ DS Wilson told Lorimer.

‘And the call was logged at what time, exactly?’

Wilson glanced at his notes. ‘It was just after ten a.m. on the Saturday morning, sir. Fiscal had to be informed first.’

Lorimer nodded. ‘I’ve checked out a few things. Magnusson told Dr Fergusson he had to get a domestic flight to Glasgow, but I honestly can’t see why he didn’t simply use his own aircraft.’

‘He has his own plane?’ Alistair Wilson’s eyes widened.

‘Aye,’ Lorimer said. ‘Your Kirsty told us that. And thank God she did. There’s something funny going on and once I’ve spoken to the good people at Glasgow airport we may just find out what that is.’

‘You’re going where?’

‘Stockholm,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Pity it’s not anywhere near half term or you could have come with me. You deserve it after coming up with that idea about Eva’s sim card.’

Maggie Lorimer shook her head. ‘What do the rest of the team think of this?’

‘I haven’t told them all yet,’ Lorimer replied. ‘Anyway, they’re all answerable to me at the moment.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s some consolation being the boss.’

‘And Solly?’

He grinned. ‘Wondered if you’d ask me that. It depends on what cover he can get for his classes. He’ll come with me if he can. He’s still working on the profile though. Reckons it’s no coincidence that these blonde women are so alike.’ He made a face. ‘But he still sticks to his opinion that Eva was killed by someone else.’

Maggie laid down her wine glass and looked at her husband. ‘Seriously, what do you think you’re going to achieve by flying all the way to Stockholm?’

‘Hopefully we will be able to speak to the Andersson boy and his father, but they’re not the only ones we need to talk to.’

‘Oh?’

‘No.’ His face clouded for a moment. ‘It was a remark that Kirsty made, actually. We followed it up. Seems like Mr Magnusson has his own private jet.’

Maggie’s eyebrows rose. ‘Impressive,’ she remarked.

‘Well, we all know he’s a multi-millionaire,’ Lorimer replied. ‘But’ — he paused, looking his wife in the eye — ‘what we didn’t know until today is that Henrik Magnusson was in Glasgow the night his daughter was murdered. And that his jet took off from Glasgow airport shortly after two a.m. on the Saturday.’

‘This changes everything.’ Jo Grant ran her hand through her newly gelled hair.

‘Yes,’ Lorimer replied. ‘As far as we knew, Magnusson was in Stockholm that night. Even told Dr Fergusson that he couldn’t get a flight out straight away. Something’s not right.’

‘No.’ The DI’s sigh seemed to come all the way from her thick-soled boots. ‘How long will you be gone?’

Lorimer shrugged. ‘As long as it takes. Might have to hook up with some of the local police in Stockholm, we’ll see. Depends on what I find.’

‘And Colin Young?’

Lorimer caught sight of her face, eyes flicking away from his own. She was feeling it now, all right, a sense of unease that she had arrested the wrong man after all.

‘Up to the Fiscal. But I doubt there’s anything like enough evidence to release him yet. And, Jo?’

‘Yes?’ She met his keen blue gaze now.

‘Despite what Kirsty Wilson thinks, you might still be right.’

Professor Solomon Brightman sat back and looked at the words he had typed onto the screen. He blinked, thinking about the profiles he was creating. One was of a shadowy figure that leapt out at blonde women from his hiding places in the woods. And his chosen victims were so alike. That was significant, he thought. Why a person should suddenly take it into their head to attack and try to kill suggested some sort of trigger. Something to do with a woman who resembled his victims, perhaps? Had the killer undergone a recent trauma? Or were the attacks drug-related in some psychotic way? He would think more about that later but now he wanted to concentrate on a different man.

Solly scrolled back to read the pages that related to a previous profile: Henrik Magnusson. So far he had built up a picture of a domineering father who was trying to mould his only daughter into the sort of woman he wanted her to be. Someone in the image of her dead mother, perhaps? He stroked his beard. It was a possibility. He had asked Lorimer to find out what he could about the late Mrs Magnusson. Had she been a virginal bride? Or had he elevated her to a position of perfection as memory had faded? It happened sometimes. It was easier to forget the petty, human things that made a couple irritated with one another and only remember the good times.

And if his theory was correct then he had to ask one important question: had Eva been a disappointment to him in some way? Solly stared at the screen. He was seeing not the words now but picturing in his mind’s eye the photograph of a girl laughing into the camera on the ski slopes, laughing for her father. Or, he wondered, had she been laughing at him? A teenage girl who had slept around as easily as Eva had in the months she had been in Glasgow was surely adept in her sexual adventures long before her arrival in the city.