She searched the kitchen thoroughly. Either Linda Svensson was anorexic or she never ate at home. All Irene found was one almost-finished bag of muesli, one unopened pack of yogurt, and one tube of Kalles caviar. There were spices, half a pound of coffee, and a few tea bags on the shelf above the stove. The freezer held one opened package of fish sticks. On the other hand, she found four more cans of cat food. At least Belker’s needs were seen to, even though he didn’t seem to have the sense to come when he was served.
The tiny bathroom also held no secrets. Neither were there clues in the hall closet. In the large living room, Irene searched through the bookshelf and then the neat pine desk by the window. She sat down on the swivel chair in front of the desk and systematically went through the contents of its one drawer.
The layout of the desk drawer showed that Linda was highly organized. The tidy piles of bills, postcards, letters, and bank forms had nothing in common with Irene’s own administrative system, which was “deal with the one on top first.” At the bottom of the drawer, Irene found a new passport in the name of Linda Sophia Svensson.
None of the papers gave any clues to Linda’s whereabouts. Suddenly Irene realized why. There were no address books or telephone lists—not even a pocket calendar. She searched the room again and found none of these things. Nor were there any keys, nor a wallet. Nor Belker.
Irene’s toes struck something. When she bent down to look under the desk, she saw an old yellow caller ID box with deep claw marks in the plastic. A gray cord had been disconnected from the telephone. Obviously the caller ID box had become a plaything for a bored Belker. Irene reconnected the ID box to the phone, but it was obvious that the device was completely dead, probably broken when it fell.
Nothing else to see here. Probably time to quit. Irene turned off the light in the room and went into the hallway. As she reached up to turn off that light, she wondered where Belker had gone to hide. A second later a tiger bolt flew from the hat rack onto her head. Belker hissed with fury, and with all the strength he possessed, the Siamese cat dug his claws right in under her chin. It hurt like hell. Irene instinctively grabbed his front leg, but then a burning pain shot through her right ear as Belker buried his teeth in it.
“OH, MY DEAR. This is really not a pretty sight.”
Nurse Ellen shook her head sympathetically as she continued to clean the wound in Irene’s ear. Irene’s right arm was sore after a tetanus shot, but she hardly noticed that compared to the pain in her ear and under her chin.
Dr. Lowander walked into the room and put on his professional cheerfulness. “This will heal without a scar. You’ll need some antibiotics, but it’s too late to fill the prescription at a pharmacy. We’ll start you out with a few pills from our medicine cabinet.”
He sank down at the desk and pulled out a prescription pad from the desk drawer. Before he began to write, he rubbed his eyes and smiled sleepily at Irene.
“I’ve been up thirty-six hours, and I’m still in shock over what happened to Marianne. And now Linda can’t be found.… I’m tired to death.”
Irene noticed that Dr. Lowander was in fact a very attractive man, despite the weariness etched into deep lines around his eyes and mouth, and despite the few silver streaks in the hair by his temples and forehead. As always, unfair, Irene thought. Women go gray, men become distinguished. She made a mental note to call her hairdresser for a color and cut.
Dr. Lowander wrote some scrawls on the prescription pad and ripped off the page. With that same sleepy smile, he handed the prescription to Irene. His eyes were bloodshot from fatigue, but their green still shimmered.
Impulsively, Irene said, “Let me give you a lift home. I’ve got to get home, too, and if I stayed here, I wouldn’t be a very good advertisement for Lowander Hospital.” She gestured at her head, covered with bandages. Her protruding right ear was especially comical, packed into a compress carefully taped in place.
“Don’t worry. It will heal just fine. And yes, I’d be glad to have a ride home,” he replied.
Superintendent Andersson rolled into the door just as Sverker Lowander was rising to leave.
“Time to go home?” he asked.
Lowander nodded in response. Before he walked out the door, he turned back to Irene and said, “Could you wait just a minute? I need to change.”
The chief inspector raised an eyebrow meaningfully once Lowander had left. “So? You’re going out with the doctor?”
Why did she find herself blushing? Irene sat up straight and hoped some of the redness in her face was covered by the bandages. “I thought I could chat with him on the drive home. He’s the head doctor here, after all, and he must know a lot about his staff.”
Andersson agreed. “I interviewed him this afternoon. He says he didn’t know Marianne Svard very well. Partly because she worked the night shift, partly because she wasn’t the chatty type. Pleasant and extremely professional about her work. And that’s all he’d say about her. On the other hand, he seemed very worried about Linda Svensson. Understandable, after the murder. He told me that Linda was a happy person and good at her job. Of course, he knows her better since she works the day shift. But to be honest with you, something tells me that Marianne’s murder and Linda’s disappearance are not related. The murder happened at the hospital. Linda was off duty then and now has disappeared from her home. We need to find the boyfriend. I called Birgitta Moberg and told her to flush him out.”
Andersson sank onto the desk chair, which groaned under his weight. He stared at Nurse Ellen’s back as she sorted pills into small red plastic holders.
“Excuse me,” Irene said politely.
Nurse Ellen turned and nodded.
“I’ve seen different nurses at this hospital all day, and I was struck by one thing. The nurses here are either very young or over fifty. Where are all the thirty- and forty-year-old ones?”
Nurse Ellen sighed deeply. “They were all laid off in the late eighties. The hospital closed an entire ward. Only we were left, but we were younger then.”
“How did Marianne Svard, Linda Svensson, and Anna-Karin in ICU get their jobs?” Irene wondered.
“Three old nurses retired within six months of one another, so Marianne, Linda, and Anna-Karin were hired around the same time.”
“Are there more nurses retiring soon?”
“This year there will be three: Siv Persson, Greta at reception, and Margot Bergman in ICU.”
“I’ve already talked to both Margot Bergman and Greta—let me see … what was her last name?”
“Noren,” Ellen informed her.
“Right! Thanks. Neither of them seemed to know Marianne and Linda all that well. Nurse Margot thought that Marianne was a hardworking, pleasant person. And that was it.”
Ellen Karlsson gave Irene a long look before she said, “That seems reasonable. They’re pretty different in age. They wouldn’t be meeting each other on their off hours. Just at work.”
So Anna-Karin was the only other person who’d socialized with Marianne and Linda. Irene still felt that the murder and the disappearance were connected, even though her boss had a different opinion. She decided that she needed to keep a good eye on Anna-Karin. Although the young woman appeared flighty, maybe she knew more than she realized about the events of the last twenty-four hours. Or maybe there wasn’t a logical connection? So far there was no evidence that Linda Svensson had even been the victim of a crime, and Irene hoped with all her heart that she would turn up okay.
IRENE HAD TO give up her hopes of getting more information from Sverker Lowander during the drive home. First of all, he’d fallen asleep the instant he reclined the seat back. Second, he only lived two kilometers from the hospital, on Drakenbergsgatan.
As Irene swung into the driveway in front of Lowander’s home, she almost collided with a dark BMW backing out of the garage. It was one of the larger, newer models. Both drivers slammed on the brakes. The BMW’s door flew open, and a woman jumped out before the car had come to a complete stop. In three strides she’d reached Irene’s car.
“What the hell are you doing, pulling in to my driveway like that!” she yelled.
Sverker Lowander had been jarred awake. As the woman bent over to get a good look at Irene, who was already rolling down her window, his tired voice stopped them both.
“This is Inspector Huss. She was kind enough to drive me home after this hell of a day. I didn’t notice you
