Andersson began. “We’re all here, so let’s get started. First I’ll review yesterday’s events.”
He went through the details surrounding the night-shift nurse’s murder. Both the power outage at the hospital and the sabotaged reserve generator seemed to be part of the murderer’s plan. On the other hand, Nurse Siv Persson’s report of the ghost nurse, Tekla, was incredibly odd.
“She must have seen something, right? Or was she hallucinating?” Fredrik Stridh asked.
Andersson nodded. “She must have seen something, yes. But the real question is, what did she see? Or who?”
Jonny Blom snorted. “Just a scaredy-cat nurse afraid of the dark. A waste of time.”
“Would you say the same thing if an old man had reported it?” Birgitta Moberg snapped.
Jonny Blom pretended he hadn’t heard her.
Tommy Persson cleared his throat before he gave his opinion. “I believe she did see something. I believe she saw the person who sabotaged the reserve generator and murdered Marianne Svard.”
Irene nodded her agreement. “The entire hospital was in the dark. Nurse Siv was certainly shaken by the death of Nils Peterzen, the patient, and by the fact that Marianne was gone. She certainly saw someone, and I wonder if that person was the murderer.”
Andersson looked at Irene thoughtfully before he replied. “It’s true that she was scared, but she insists she saw the figure quite distinctly. The sky was clear, and the moon was almost full, enough to illuminate the person. According to Nurse Siv, it was a woman wearing an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform: a long, black dress and a white cap.”
There was a silence, and then Jonny exclaimed, “Don’t tell me we have to go on a ghost hunt, too.”
Andersson gave him an irritated glance. “No, but we have to ask what it is we’re really hunting for.” He turned to Malm and asked hopefully, “Any ideas?”
“Not much, except you should look for a murderer with an inside knowledge of the property and a key, too,” Malm answered.
“A key?” Andersson repeated.
“Neither the outer nor the inner doors had any broken locks or even any damage. The entrance door is locked at five P.M. The back door is kept locked at all times.”
“Someone could have come in prior to five P.M. and hidden. In the basement, perhaps?” Irene asked.
“Theoretically, yes. However, there are people manning the phones and the reception desk all day, and they are there until the doors are locked at five P.M.”
Andersson sighed. “Keys and locking times are always tricky. At least this limits the number of suspects.”
A few of the detectives nodded.
Malm continued his summary. “One of Marianne Svard’s shoes was found in the elevator, which makes it likely she’d been brought to the basement that way. The murderer wore rubber gloves powdered with talcum. Svard’s stockings were black at the heels, and she had white talc on her lower arms. This indicates she was dragged. She was probably already dead when she was taken into the elevator.”
“To open the electrical room’s door, the murderer must have had to set her down, right?” Birgitta asked.
“That’s correct. And that door is always locked.”
“Once the murderer opened the door, he must have pulled Marianne upright and heaved her into the room. The murderer didn’t care that she landed on the reserve generator. The main thing for him was that her body was hidden,” Birgitta stated.
“Just a minute,” Irene objected. “That won’t work. If he’d wanted to hide the body, he wouldn’t have cut the power first. The electrical room would be the first place to go to see what was wrong.”
Svante Malm nodded his agreement. “There was no attempt to hide the body. Sabotaging the reserve generator was part of the plan. All of its cables were sliced, which was done before the power went out.”
“How do you know that?” Fredrik asked.
“When the power went out, the reserve generator would have kicked in from the drop in voltage. But its cables were already cut, so it couldn’t function.”
Tommy Persson thought out loud. “So it’s one hundred percent sure that Marianne Svard was murdered before the power was lost. After all, she was dragged into the elevator. It couldn’t work without power. And the murderer wouldn’t have been able to see very well in the basement or in the electrical room.”
“That’s clear,” Malm replied. “We haven’t found the wire cutters the murderer used to cut the cords to the reserve generator, but it must have been a big johnny.”
“What about the noose that strangled her?” asked Andersson.
“It’s still missing.”
“I called Stridner yesterday evening, but she hadn’t finished the autopsy. We’re supposed to receive her report right before lunch today. I’ll try to swing by the pathology lab. It’s easier to just go there than wait by the phone in case she graces us with a call.”
“That woman must be going through menopause,” Jonny said with feeling.
Andersson did not reprove Jonny, but he did mumble something about how Stridner was a good pathologist nevertheless.
Malm cleared his throat loudly to get their attention back. “We vacuumed Marianne’s clothes yesterday. With our naked eyes we could see dark strands of fiber on the back of her smock, and we’ve begun to examine them more closely. So far they appear to be finely spun wool.”
“Lord help us! We’re back to the ghost,” Irene said. “The ghost was wearing a black nurse’s dress.”
“How do we know that the dress was made of wool?” Birgitta pointed out. “Not to mention the fact that the color might have been dark blue or dark gray or dark green. It’s hard to tell colors apart in the moonlight.”
“Ghosts wear transparent clothes,” Jonny said sarcastically.
Andersson’s face was starting to flush. “Exactly! Listen to yourselves. Police officers don’t run off and hunt for ghosts, because ghosts do not exist. We hunt for live murderers. This one definitely had a physical body that could murder a nurse and snip power cables. Put the whole hospital in the dark. Ghosts don’t do that kind of stuff. How do I know? They don’t exist. And if they did exist, they probably wouldn’t bother with the sorts of things that the murderer did at Lowander Hospital.”
The superintendent had to stop for breath. No one dared point out that his last sentence made no sense. He was right, but Nurse Siv Persson’s testimony, whatever she’d seen, was still one small fact to fit into the puzzle.
Malm returned to his subject. “We found one more odd thing on Marianne’s smock.” He held up an item in a plastic bag for all to see. In it was a thick day planner, one of the popular brands. “This isn’t Marianne’s day planner. Written on the inside cover is the name Linda Svensson.”
Surprised silence greeted his announcement.
“Why in the world would Linda Svensson’s day planner be in Marianne’s pocket?” exclaimed Irene.
No one had a reasonable answer. Irene felt an icy shiver down the back of her neck. This was not a good sign, definitely not a good sign.
Since no one had any more ideas about the murder, Andersson changed the subject to Linda Svensson’s disappearance. Irene described her search of Linda’s apartment and how she’d been struck by the fact that she could not find anything like a day planner, an address book, or a list of telephone numbers. Also, Linda’s caller ID had been broken. She did not go into Belker’s attack.
Andersson took up the topic. “We put out a missing-persons call on Linda Svensson last night for the whole district. We contacted her parents in Kungsbacka, but they haven’t seen or heard from her. They didn’t know the new address of her ex-boyfriend.”
“But I do!” Birgitta exclaimed triumphantly. “Since I had his name and old address, I was able to get the new one from the post office’s change-of-address list.”
“Good. Then I’ll send you to interview him today. But take Tommy or one of the other guys with you. Irene?”
“I’m wondering about something Anna-Karin said yesterday. She’s a nurse in the same department as Marianne, but on the day shift. Anna-Karin is just a few years younger, and the two of them hung out a bit. She mentioned that Marianne had left Ostra Hospital because she could not stand running into a certain man every day.
