Knutas looked down at his papers. “Middle-aged, about fifty, according to the super. Tall and heavy. He has a mustache, and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dark shirt, dark pants. He didn’t notice the man’s shoes. I think it sounds like Bengt Johnsson. He’s probably the only one of the local winos who fits the description.”
“It’s got to be Bengan. Those two were always hanging out together,” said Wittberg.
Knutas turned to the crime tech. “Erik, you can give us the technical details now.”
Sohlman nodded. “We’ve gone over the apartment and darkroom, but we’re far from done. If we start with the victim and his wounds, we need to look at the photos. I should warn you that they’re rather nasty.”
Sohlman switched off the lights and, using a computer, clicked the digital pictures onto the screen at the front of the room.
“Henry Dahlstrom was lying prone on the floor with extensive contusions to the back of his head. The perpetrator used a blunt instrument of some kind. My guess is a hammer, but the ME will eventually be able to tell us more. Dahlstrom was struck repeatedly on the head. The large amount of blood spatter resulted because the perpetrator first knocked a hole in the victim’s skull and then continued to strike the bloody surface. Each time he delivered another blow, blood sprayed all over.”
Sohlman used a pointer to show spatter that was visible on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.
“The killer probably knocked Dahlstrom to the ground and then stood over him and kept striking as he lay there. As far as determining the time of death, I would estimate that the murder took place five or six days ago.”
The victim’s face was a blotchy yellowish gray shifting to green. His eyes had a dark, brownishred color, and his lips were black and parched.
“The process of decomposition had begun,” Sohlman went on impassively. “You can see the little brown blisters on the body and the corpse fluid that has started to seep out. The same substance is coming out of his mouth and nostrils.”
His colleagues around the table grimaced. Jacobsson wondered how Sohlman could always manage to talk about bloody victims, rigor mortis, and decomposing bodies as if he were discussing the weather or his annual income tax returns.
“Everything in the place had been tossed, and the cupboards and boxes containing photos had been searched. The murderer was apparently looking for something. The victim also has defensive wounds on his arms. Here we can see bruises and scratches. So he attempted to resist. The bruise on his collarbone may have been made by a blow that missed its mark. We’ve taken blood samples, of course. We also found a cigarette butt in the basement hallway, and hairs that don’t seem to have come from the victim. Everything has been sent to SCL but, as you know, it will take a while before we get any answers.”
He took a sip of coffee and sighed. The response from SCL, the Swedish Crime Laboratory in Linkoping, usually took at least a week, more often three.
Sohlman went on. “As far as evidence goes, we’ve found footprints in the flower bed outside the basement window. Unfortunately, the rain made them impossible to identify. On the other hand, we did get some footprints in the hallway outside the darkroom, and in the bestcase scenario they should tell us something. The same footprints were in the apartment-which, by the way, was filled with bottles, ashtrays, beer cans, and a lot of other junk. We’ve secured quite a few fingerprints, as well as the footprints of four or five different individuals. We also searched the apartment.”
The photos of the mess in Dahlstrom’s place sent a clear message: The apartment had been completely turned upside down.
“Dahlstrom must have had something valuable at home, but I wonder what it might be,” said Knutas. “An alcoholic living on welfare doesn’t usually have assets of any great value. Did you find his camera?”
“No.”
Sohlman cast another glance at his watch. He seemed eager to get away.
“You said that you found a cigarette butt in the basement. Could the murderer have waited outside the darkroom for Dahlstrom to come out?” asked Jacobsson.
“Quite possibly.”
Sohlman then excused himself and left the room.
“In that case, the perp knew that Dahlstrom was inside the darkroom,” Jacobsson went on. “He may have stood in the entryway for hours. What do the neighbors say?”
Knutas leafed through the investigative report.
“We kept knocking on doors until late last night. We haven’t got all the reports in yet, but the neighbors in that stairwell confirm, as I mentioned, that there was a party at the apartment last Sunday. A bunch of people came staggering through the front door around nine p.m. A neighbor who encountered them in the entryway guessed that they had been to the racetrack because he heard some remarks about various horses.”
“Oh, that’s right, Sunday was the last race day of the season,” Jacobsson reminded herself.
Knutas looked up from his papers. “Is that right? Well, the track isn’t very far away, so they could have easily walked or bicycled home afterward. At any rate, there was a big racket in the apartment, according to the neighbors. A lot of noise and partying, with both male and female voices.
“The woman next door reported that the man who is probably Bengt Johnsson rang her doorbell first, to ask her whether she had seen Dahlstrom. She referred him to the building superintendent.”
“Does her description of him match what the super told us?” asked Norrby.
“Yes, for the most part. An overweight man, younger than Dahlstrom, about fifty, she thought. Mustache and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail-a biker-type hairstyle, as she expressed it. Wearing shabby clothes, she also said.”
Knutas gave a little smile.
“He had on dirty, loose-fitting jeans, with his stomach hanging out. A blue flannel shirt, and he was smoking. She recognized the man because she had seen him with Dahlstrom several times.”
“Everybody knows who Henry Dahlstrom is, but what do we actually know about him?” asked Wittberg.
“He’s been an alcoholic for years,” replied Jacobsson. “He usually hung out at Ostercentrum or at the bus station with his buddies. Or at Ostergravar in the summer, of course. Divorced, unemployed. He had been living on a disability pension for over fifteen years even though he didn’t seem completely destitute. He paid his rent and bills on time, and he kept mostly to himself, according to the neighbors, aside from the occasional party. His friends say that he was utterly harmless, never got into fights or committed any sort of crime. He apparently kept up his interest in photography. This summer I ran into him one day as I was biking to work. He was in the process of photographing a flower near Gutavallen.”
“What else do we know about his background?” Wittberg cast a glance at Jacobsson’s papers lying on the table.
“He was born in 1943 in Visby Hospital,” Jacobsson continued. “Grew up in Visby. In 1965 he married a woman from Visby, Ann-Sofie Nilsson. They had a
child in 1967, a girl named Pia. Divorced in 1986.”
“Okay, we’ll find out more about him today,” said Knutas. “And we’ve got to locate Bengt Johnsson.”
He looked out the window.
“Since it’s raining, the winos are probably sitting outside the Domus department store, in the mall. That would be the best place to start. Wittberg?”
“Karin and I can go.”
Knutas nodded.
“I’ve started to collate the interviews with his neighbors, and I’d like to keep working on that,” said Norrby. “And there are a couple of people I’d like to talk to again.”
“That sounds fine,” said Knutas, and then he turned to the prosecutor. “Birger, do you have anything to add?”
“No. Just keep me informed and I’ll be happy.”
“Okay. We’ll stop here. But we’ll meet again this afternoon. Shall we say three o’clock?”
After the meeting Knutas retreated to his office. His new office was twice as big as the old one. Embarrassingly big, he might say. The walls were painted a light color that reminded him of the sand at Tofta beach on a sunny day in July.
The view was the same as from their conference room next door: the parking lot at Ostercentrum and in the
