“That’s very possible. But if we’re going to catch the perpetrator, we need to talk to everyone who might have seen anything or who can tell us about Henry’s actions during the days before the murder. Do you have any idea where Bengt might be, Mrs Johnsson?”
“Hmm… He knows so many people. I suppose I could call around and ask.”
“When did you last hear from Bengt, or rather when did you actually see him last?” Jacobsson interjected.
“Now let me see… Aside from yesterday evening… It must have been yesterday morning. He slept late, as usual. Didn’t get up until eleven and then had his breakfast while I was eating lunch. Then he went out. He didn’t say where he was going.”
“How did he seem?”
“The same as always. He wasn’t acting strange or anything like that.”
“Do you know if anything unusual had happened lately?”
Doris Johnsson plucked at her clothing.
“No…” she said hesitantly.
Suddenly she threw out her hands.
“Well, yes. Henry won at the harness-racing track. He won the five-race jackpot, and he was the only winner, so it was a lot of money. Eighty thousand kronor, I think. Bengt told me about it the other day.”
Jacobsson and Wittberg looked at her in astonishment.
“When did this happen?”
“It wasn’t this past Sunday, so it must have been the previous Sunday. Yes, that’s when it was, because they were at the track.”
“And Henry won eighty thousand kronor? Do you know what he did with the money?”
“Bought booze, I assume. Part of it went straight to alcohol. As soon as they have a little cash, they start buying rounds for everybody.”
“Who else belongs to his circle of friends?”
“There’s a man named Kjelle that he hangs out with a lot, along with a couple of girls. Monica and Gunsan. Though I suppose her real name is Gun.”
“Last names?”
She shook her head.
“Where do they live?”
“I don’t know that, either, but somewhere here in town. Also a man named Orjan, by the way. I think he just moved here recently. Bengt has been talking about him lately. I think he lives on Styrmansgatan.”
They said good-bye to Doris Johnsson, who promised to call as soon as she heard anything from her son.
With the information about the track winnings, they now had a clear motive for the murder.
Knutas had brought along a packet of Danish open-faced sandwiches for lunch. His father-in-law had recently paid them a visit and delighted the whole family with the delicacies he had brought from Denmark. The three slices of dark rye bread each had a different kind of lunch meat: liver sausage topped with a piece of pickled squash; sliced meatballs with pickled beets; and his favorite, Danish sausage roll. And an ice-cold beer to go with this glorious repast.
He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Norrby stuck his head inside.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Of course.”
Norrby folded his nearly six-foot-two frame into one of the visitor chairs in Knutas’s office.
“I’ve been talking to one of the neighbors, who had something interesting to say.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Anna Larsson is an elderly woman who lives in the apartment above Dahlstrom’s. On Monday night around ten thirty she heard Flash go out. He was wearing his old slippers, which made a special sound when he walked.”
Knutas frowned. “How could she hear that from inside her apartment?”
“I know, that’s something you might well ask, but it so happened that her cat was suffering from diarrhea.”
“So?”
“Anna Larsson lives alone, and she doesn’t have a balcony. She was just about to go to bed when her cat shit on the floor. It smelled so bad that she didn’t want to have the garbage bag containing the shit in her apartment. She had already put on her nightgown and didn’t want to go downstairs to the trash cans, for fear of running into one of her neighbors. So she put the bag on the landing outside her door for the time being. She thought that nobody would notice if she tossed it out first thing in the morning.”
“Get to the point,” said Knutas impatiently. Norrby’s tendency to present too many details was sometimes annoying.
“Well, at the very moment that she opens her door, she hears Dahlstrom coming out wearing his slippers. He locks his door and goes downstairs to the basement.”
“Okay,” said Knutas, tapping his pipe on the table.
“Mrs Larsson doesn’t think any more about it. She goes to bed and falls asleep. In the middle of the night she’s awakened by her cat meowing. This time the cat has made a mess on the floor of her bedroom. That animal had a really bad stomachache.”
“Hmm.”
“She gets out of bed and cleans up everything. She now has another bag of cat shit that has to be put outside on the landing. When she opens the door, someone comes in the entrance one floor down and stops at Dahlstrom’s door. But this time she doesn’t hear Dahlstrom’s shuffling slippers; this person is wearing real shoes. She’s curious, so she stands there listening. The stranger doesn’t ring the doorbell but the door opens and the person goes inside, and she doesn’t hear any voices.”
Now Knutas’s interest was aroused. His pipe froze in midair.
“Then what happened?”
“Then everything was quiet. Not a sound.”
“Did she have the impression that someone had opened Dahlstrom’s door from the inside? Or did the person outside open it?”
“She thinks that the person outside opened it.”
“Why didn’t she tell us about this earlier?”
“She was interviewed on the evening when Dahlstrom’s body was found. She says that she felt stressed and upset, so she mentioned only that she had heard him go down to the basement. Afterward I got to wondering how she could be so sure about it. That’s why I went back to talk to her again.”
“Good job,” Knutas said. “It might have been the killer that she heard, but it could just as well have been Dahlstrom coming in from somewhere. This was several hours later, wasn’t it?”
“Definitely, but it seems quite unlikely that he would have gone out, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. Did the woman notice anything else after the person went inside?”
“No, she went back to bed and fell asleep.”
“Okay. The question is whether the person had a key-assuming that it wasn’t Dahlstrom, that is.”
“There’s no sign that the lock was forced.”
“Maybe it was someone he knew.”
“That seems most plausible.”
When the investigative team met again that afternoon, Jacobsson and Wittberg started off by reporting on their encounter with Doris Johnsson and what she had told them about the winnings at the racetrack.
“Now at least we have a motive,” said Jacobsson, concluding her report.
“That explains why the apartment was ransacked,” said Knutas. “The murderer apparently knew that Dahlstrom had won big at the track.”
“The money still hasn’t turned up,” added Sohlman, “so presumably the perpetrator found it.”
“Bengt Johnsson comes immediately to mind,” said Jacobsson. “I think we need to put out an APB on him.”
