storage room for bicycles again. I’m standing in the room right now.”
“Yes?”
“We’ve found something odd, behind a vent. It’s a plastic bag with a package inside. It’s taped up and I didn’t want to open it because I thought I might destroy some evidence.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s a brown paper package with ordinary tape around it, very lightweight, about the same size as a stack of postcards.”
Under Knutas’s intense supervision, Sohlman opened the carefully wrapped package, which had been delivered to the crime tech division. It turned out to contain photographs. Rather blurry, but there was no doubt about the subject matter. Almost identical, they all seemed to have been taken from the same angle. In the pictures they could distinguish a man who was having intercourse with a young woman, or rather a girl. She seemed to be half the size of the man. Her face was hidden, partly by him and partly by her long black hair. Her arms were stretched up in an unnatural position, as if she had been tied to something. The man was bending over her, almost covering the girl’s body with his, but one of her legs was visible. She had dark skin.
Sohlman and Knutas looked at each other.
“It must be Fanny Jansson,” Knutas said at last. “But who’s the man?”
“God only knows.”
Sohlman ran a hand over his forehead. He took out a magnifying glass and began scrutinizing the photos.
“Look at this. There’s a painting hanging on the wall behind them. You can see a bit of red and a… What’s that? Maybe a dog?”
He handed the magnifying glass to Knutas. One corner of the painting was visible.
“It looks like a dog lying on something red. It could be a cushion or a sofa.”
Sohlman eagerly looked through the other pictures, but none of them revealed anything more.
Both men sank down on their chairs. Knutas dug his pipe out of his pocket.
“Well, we now have the connection,” muttered Knutas. “Dahlstrom took pictures of someone who had a sexual relationship with Fanny Jansson. He must have photographed them on the sly and then blackmailed the man for money. That’s where the twenty-five thousand came from. That would explain everything: the man at the harbor, the money, Fanny…”
“That means that the man we’re looking at in these pictures is the perpetrator,” said Sohlman, tapping his gloved index finger on the man’s pale back.
“Presumably. It’s easy to figure out why he killed Dahlstrom. But why Fanny? If it is her, that is. We can’t be completely positive.”
Knutas picked up one of the photographs and held it out.
“Who the hell is he?”
Knutas summoned the investigative team to a meeting to discuss the surprising discovery. The mood was one of nervous elation-rumors about the contents of the package had quickly spread through the corridors. Sohlman had scanned the photos so that he could project them on the screen at the front of the room. Wittberg was the first to speak.
“Are we positive that the girl in the photos is Fanny Jansson?”
“Her mother was just here, and she identified her. You can see the girl’s watch on her left wrist. Fanny got that watch as a birthday present last year.”
“How did the mother react?” asked Jacobsson.
“She fell apart,” said Knutas with a sigh. “And who wouldn’t, seeing their child in that sort of situation?”
“What kind of damn pervert is this guy?” growled Norrby.
“The only thing we’ve been able to determine so far is that we’re dealing with a grown man-definitely not a boy her own age.”
“It looks like she’s tied up,” Kihlgard interjected. “Her arms are stretched above her head. She’s tied to something.”
“Look at this,” said Sohlman, putting up the most detailed of the photos. “There seems to be a painting in the background. The only thing we can really make out is the image of a dog lying on a red sofa or something similar. Yellow-patterned wallpaper with a faint border is visible in the background, as well as a glimpse of the back of a chair. It looks like an antique chair with a high back and carved decorations. The photographer took all the pictures from the same angle. The fact that they’re so blurry could be because they were taken from outside, through a window. The question is: Where were the photos taken? It has to be somewhere in town or nearby, at some easily accessible place. Otherwise how would Dahlstrom have discovered Fanny and the unidentified man?”
“Maybe it’s a storeroom,” suggested Norrby. “Or a meeting room. Or it could be in the home of somebody that Dahlstrom knew.”
“The room looks brightly lit. Can you see how the daylight is coming through the window? I have the impression that it’s a big room,” Jacobsson said.
“I really wonder how the man met Fanny,” said Wittberg. “Could he be a friend of her mother?”
“How disgusting, if that’s the case. That would be horrible.” Jacobsson grimaced.
“I think the pictures look pornographic,” said Kihlgard, holding one up. “It might very well be a sex ring. Maybe there was a whole gang of guys who were exploiting Fanny, and this is just one of them. Maybe she got drawn into prostitution and was forced to sell her body to the neighborhood men.”
“Up until now we’ve been lucky to be spared that type of activity here on Gotland. At least as far as we know,” said Knutas with a sigh.
“Or pedophiles,” murmured Jacobsson. “Fanny might have been one of many children being exploited. We might have a pedophile ring right around the corner, and we don’t have the faintest idea about it.”
“The Internet. We have to check the Internet. I have a friend who’s working on a big pedophile investigation in Huddinge. I’ll ask her whether there might be anyone in that ring who has connections to Gotland.”
“Good idea,” said Knutas approvingly. “This could be about almost anything at all.”
He was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. The others listened in silence to his murmuring. When he was finished, he looked at his colleagues alertly.
“That was Nilsson at SCL. The samples taken from Fanny Jansson’s bedroom have been examined. No match was found in the police records, but the blood and hairs that were taken from her bed have been compared with the evidence from Dahlstrom’s place. There’s no doubt whatsoever-they match.”
Late that evening Knutas went back home and found his entire family gathered in front of the TV. They answered his greeting by saying, “Shh-this is so exciting!”
He sighed and went out to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a plate of leftovers, which he heated up in the microwave. The only one who wanted to keep him company was the cat, who rubbed against his leg and then hopped onto his lap and curled up. The cat seemed completely unaware of the problem she caused him. It wasn’t easy to lean forward to eat with a cat curled up on his lap.
The idea that a murderer and sexual predator was on the loose on Gotland gave him goose bumps. At first the perpetrator had given in to Dahlstrom’s demands and made two payments, but after that it clearly got to be too much. But actually deciding to murder the man who was blackmailing him was a big step. Maybe the killer thought he could get away with it if he made it look like a drunken brawl. And then there was the money from the racetrack. Most likely he knew about it and made use of the fact. He probably stole the money to mislead the police. The fact that Dahlstrom’s apartment had been searched must mean that he was looking for the photos. The same with the darkroom. But his search had been in vain. The package was hidden inside a vent, and no one had bothered to look there, neither the killer nor the police.
After the murder the perpetrator left the scene. He tossed the murder weapon and the camera into a grove of trees some distance away. He presumably had a car parked farther away, near the next apartment complex.
Knutas poked at his food: meatballs with reheated pasta. He poured on some more ketchup and aimlessly stirred it into his food. He took a gulp of milk. Not a sound from the living room. The movie must be very exciting.
And then Fanny was killed. Although maybe that’s where they really ought to start, since it was where the whole thing began. The story of the fourteen-year-old girl. How had the man met her in the first place? He must
