since he had the training and quickness of a sloth. She used a firm grip to keep him down. He whimpered that she was hurting him, but she didn’t care. As long as she had a jujitsu black belt, third dan, no one would hurt a colleague. Borg now was painfully aware of that.
Andersson and Fredrik Stridh had also rounded the corner. Irene still kept her grip on Borg while he moaned. Birgitta stood holding the brown envelope tight to her chest. When she saw Andersson, she said, “Sven, we need to talk to Hans.”
Andersson took one look at the brown envelope and blanched. “What the hell! Of all the bastards!” Andersson’s neck and face went from pale to beet red. All his officers knew that this was bad indeed.
“Irene, take Hans into my office,” Andersson commanded.
Fredrik Stridh looked like he was dying to ask, but he knew enough to duck into his own room. Irene was still in the dark, but Birgitta and Andersson seemed well aware of the significance of the brown envelope. And Hans, too, of course. Without loosening the grip on his arm, Irene pulled Hans to his feet. As he straightened, she whispered into his ear, “Don’t forget I’m right behind you.”
Hans didn’t answer.
Andersson gestured to Hans to take a seat in front of the desk. Hans slumped into the chair with no resistance.
Andersson sorrowfully shook his head. “Why, Hans, why?”
Borg said nothing.
“Answer me or this goes right to Internal Investigation. I’ve seen the other pictures. Disgusting.”
Irene took the envelope from Birgitta, opened it, and pulled out some pictures. One glance was all it took. Not soft porn, either.
“That.… She … kept thinking she was so damn good and … clever.… Knew computers and was always up on the latest … All she had to do was wave her tits and get the best assignments and benefits. Talk about affirmative action. She was showing it off to everybody. But I saw through her.”
Hans looked up at Birgitta as he spit out his venom. Even though his ranting was ridiculous, Irene could see that Birgitta was holding back tears. She was smart and talented with computers, but she wasn’t the kind to flirt and flaunt. She and Fredrik had been in love at one time, but that wasn’t what Borg was spouting about.
It was hard to imagine a deeper shade of red than the red on Andersson’s face. He said nothing, however, just drew his hand over the sparse hair at the back of his neck. Finally he leaned across his desk and stared right into Hans’s eyes with barely controlled anger.
“Bullshit. Birgitta’s a good cop. You seem to have some problems, though. Go home and take a few days sick leave. This can’t be swept under the rug, you understand. I’ll have to report this to a higher level.”
Hans sat motionless. Birgitta seemed as if she wanted to speak but bit her lower lip instead.
“You can go,” Andersson dismissed Hans. “I’ll call you this afternoon.”
With one last spiteful look at Birgitta, Hans got up and lumbered out of the room. The superintendent sighed heavily and gave Irene a weary glance.
“This has been going on a while. A year and a half ago, Birgitta came to me and said someone had been sending pornographic pictures to her by internal mail. Something happened … that made her think Jonny was behind it, but Jonny denied that he was involved.”
Birgitta could not keep silent any longer. “I didn’t think it could be anyone but Jonny, the way he was always trying to cop a feel ever since I started here. Not to mention all his sex jokes. And the insinuations—” She stopped abruptly and tried to calm herself down before she continued.
“The whole thing started four years ago. Every few weeks an internal envelope would appear in my in-box with these porn pictures. When Fredrik and I were going out together last spring, it dropped off. But it all started again when I returned from Australia in October. I decided to hand over the envelopes to Sven.”
The superintendent nodded. “I have five sets locked in my drawer. We checked for prints, but there weren’t any. The last two had been addressed to Birgitta with a green felt pen. This morning Birgitta saw a similar envelope addressed with a green felt pen. I’d just walked into the hallway when she spotted it. I’d been out seeing about getting Rauhala on our team. Jonny couldn’t have left it, since he was out sick since last night, but I was the only person who knew that Jonny wasn’t coming in today. Birgitta and I decided to leave the envelope there and see if something happened, and it did.”
He absentmindedly stroked the nonexistent hair on his bald head. He seemed old and worn out. “I’ll deal with Borg now. Go on back to work.”
Irene and Birgitta left his office in silence. They stopped outside Birgitta’s room.
“I don’t know what to say. This is … unbelievable,” Irene exclaimed.
Birgitta nodded glumly. “No less true, though. In the beginning I just ignored those pictures. Thought that the whole thing would blow over. But … it never did.”
Impulsively, Irene laid a hand on Birgitta’s arm. “Let’s go get some coffee. I could use a bucket of it after this.”
Birgitta smiled. “Your universal cure for all problems—coffee.”
TOMMY HAD ALREADY started phoning to set up interviews.
“First we’re going to Nordstan shopping mall to see whether Mama Bird is hanging around there. The patrol cars are alerted, and they’ll keep an eye out for her. A foot patrol will check the garden shed all night at regular intervals just in case she shows up. At least we won’t need anyone posted there. The weather sucks, and it’s supposed to be bad all through the weekend.”
Irene looked out the window. The weather was truly bad, but at least she could stay inside where it was warm and dry. The foot patrol that she and Tommy would check in with had no such luck.
“Then I’ve made an appointment with one of the field-workers at the City Mission. We’re supposed to meet him at three-thirty if we haven’t found Mama Bird by then. He’ll also ask around in case one of his co-workers knows anything. I gave him my cell number.”
“But first it’s over to our colleagues in Nordstan.”
“Yep.”
POLICE INSPECTOR STEFANSSON had recently been appointed squad leader for Nordstan’s relatively new police station. Both Irene and Tommy knew him well from previous work.
He was sitting at a shiny new desk and seemed blinded by its glare. He wasn’t much for desk work, but it came with the promotion. He looked at them thoughtfully before he said, “Yes, I know who you’re talking about. A short, bony lady who feeds birds. It has to be her.”
Irene was surprised when Stefansson tittered. He stopped as soon as he saw their raised eyebrows. “We’ve had to deal with her quite a bit, actually,” he said. “At least once a week, someone from a grocery store calls and screams at us: ‘She’s here again.’ ”
“What does she do there?” Tommy asked.
“Steals, but only bread and other stuff you can feed to birds. She takes a shopping cart and fills it up with what she wants and then heads through the checkout line without paying. That’s when the fur flies.”
“Do they yell at her for taking stuff?”
“No, she yells at them for insisting she pay. She’s even thrown bread loaves at people’s heads and spit on them.”
“Do you know her real name?”
“No, I don’t.” Stefansson shook his head in apology.
“Where’s the most likely place we could find her?”
“Since it’s raining cats and dogs out there, I suspect she’s trying to keep dry inside the mall, in one of the shops or maybe the parking garage. Let me check with foot patrol to see if anyone’s seen her today.”
Stefansson called both foot patrols on duty inside the Nordstan shopping mall complex, but neither of them had seen the bird lady for a while. Shrugging in apology, Stefansson said, “Sorry, you’ll have to search for her yourselves. At least she hasn’t been taken to jail lately.”
AFTER THREE HOURS going through stairwells and parking garages, Tommy and Irene gave up, went to McDonald’s, and had one Big Mac apiece. It appeared that Mama Bird was nowhere to be found in the entire Nordstan shopping complex. Stefansson had called different shops to check whether anyone had seen her, but all his results were negative. No one seemed to have seen her the last few days.
“Where can she be? She’s not here. She’s not at the shed.” Irene sighed.
