THE RAIN STOPPED during the night, and the streets were slick. The temperature was just below freezing, and the traffic was as bad as it usually was during the winter in Goteborg.
Irene was late for “morning prayer,” but as it turned out, everyone else was late as well. Svante Malm was the last one to come through the door. An expression of relief passed over the superintendent’s face when he saw Malm. Technical investigations ought to be finished by now; maybe there would be some answers.
“Good morning, everyone!” Andersson began heartily. Irene understood this to be an attempt to energize the group, but both Birgitta and Jonny seemed to need more than a cheerful greeting. Jonny’s pale appearance probably was the result of having the stomach flu, but Birgitta’s face was also pinched and white. Maybe she was just tired from the weekend shift, but Irene feared she was holding in real anger.
However, the superintendent maintained his cheerful demeanor. “Hans Borg has asked to transfer to a less challenging job for now, so he’s moving to general and Hannu is joining us.”
Irene, Birgitta, and Hannu were the only ones who showed no surprise. Andersson ignored the shocked murmurs and plowed on. “Anything turn up on Linda Svensson?”
Fredrik and Birgitta shook their heads. “No one’s seen her since she left work last week,” Fredrik said. “We have only her neighbor’s testimony that Linda left her apartment at eleven-thirty that night, a strange time to leave on a Monday. There’s nothing to go on.”
“She certainly wasn’t dressed for a bar,” Birgitta added. “According to Pontus, the only things missing from her apartment are a red down coat, black stretch jeans, and a light blue angora sweater, her favorite one. But she’d never wear that sweater to a bar. She never wanted it to smell of smoke.”
“Angora sweater. Belker … she’s a cat lover,” Irene said, apropos of nothing.
“That could be important. She loves Belker and would never leave him without food,” Birgitta said. “The passport found in her apartment indicates that she’s not abroad. And if she’d left voluntarily, she certainly would have arranged a cat-sitter. Pontus Olofsson said this about her a number of times. And I think he’s right.”
Andersson looked at Birgitta a moment. “So you really feel she didn’t leave on her own.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Silence fell over the group. To everyone’s surprise, Hannu was the person who broke it. “I’ve made the rounds this weekend, and no one has seen her.”
Irene almost asked if he’d been trolling his underground Finnish contacts, but she managed to stop herself in time. The man had amazing sources. Irene remembered the first time that they’d worked together. Hannu was able to flush out things no one else could find. Whether all his methods were legal, she couldn’t say. At times she wished she knew, but at other times she suspected it was better not to know.
“I looked into Niklas Alexandersson. His alibi checks out. Three of his pals as well as employees at the Gomorrah Club saw him until two in the morning,” Hannu continued.
“Damn, he would have been perfect. Sneaking around the hospital in a nurse’s dress and murdering his rival,” muttered Andersson.
“Any clues in Linda’s day planner?” asked Birgitta.
Andersson shook his head. “No, I didn’t find anything. Maybe you should look through it again, though. A woman might see something a guy wouldn’t.”
He pushed the day planner across the table toward Birgitta. Without looking at her boss, Birgitta took it.
“I have a question. Where is Marianne’s pocket flashlight?” Irene asked.
All the others looked at her in surprise.
“I’ve been turning it over in my mind. Marianne was a night nurse. All the night nurses carry a pocket flashlight. But Marianne didn’t have one. All she had was Linda’s day planner.”
“It wasn’t in the ICU?” Birgitta asked.
“No. I asked about it when I was there getting my scratches checked out. No one had seen Marianne’s pocket flashlight.”
“Strange. And the thing with Linda’s day planner is also weird. Maybe Linda lost it before she went home and Marianne found it,” Birgitta mused.
“Maybe Linda was biking back to pick it up,” Fredrik suggested.
“Not in the middle of the night,” Irene pointed out. “She’d have called and asked Marianne to put it somewhere where she could find it the next afternoon.”
“Maybe there was something really important in it, so she needed it right away.” They could hear that Birgitta didn’t believe her own suggestion, but it wasn’t much worse than any of the others.
The superintendent broke in. “If she hasn’t left of her own free will, we must consider she might be dead. If so, where would her body be?”
“Perhaps she didn’t get far,” Jonny said.
“I agree,” Fredrik said. “The farther she biked, the more chances that someone would have seen her.”
“It was late, almost midnight, and at least ten degrees below freezing. So there probably weren’t many people outside,” said Irene.
“Okay. We’ll keep on pounding away on Linda’s disappearance. Hannu, Birgitta, Fredrik, and Jonny will continue that search.” Andersson slammed his palm onto the table’s surface so hard that his mug leaped and spilled coffee on the table—which didn’t matter much, since it was marbled in old stains already.
“Irene and Tommy, what’s up with the bird lady?”
Tommy told what they’d found out about Mama Bird. Then Hannu asked to take the floor again.
“I’ve contacted Lillhagen. Gunnela Hagg had been in care there since 1968, when her alcoholic mother died. The death of her mother triggered a psychosis. Schizophrenia, in her case.”
“How old was Gunnela when that happened?” Irene asked.
“Eighteen.”
Irene was surprised to hear that Gunnela was only forty-seven years old. Most of the witnesses that they’d questioned seemed to think that she was closer to sixty. Life had definitely not been kind to tiny Mama Bird.
“During the seventies and eighties, they’d tried to get her back into society, but were unsuccessful. She was just too sick.”
“Any support from the family?”
“No. Her father and one of her brothers are deceased. Gunnela’s younger brother works as a businessman and wants nothing to do with her. I called him, but he got angry. His family doesn’t even know that she exists.” Hannu’s calm face, with its high cheekbones and icy eyes, did not reveal his personal feelings, but a slight sharpening of his tone perhaps indicated some compassion for poor, disowned Mama Bird.
“When did she leave Lillhagen for good?” asked Tommy.
“She moved to an apartment on Siriusgatan in the fall of ’95. After a while a group of drug addicts took that over and she was booted out.”
“Where’s she been living since then?” Irene asked.
Hannu shrugged.
“I see. At least we know that she found shelter in the garden shed next to Lowander Hospital last Christmas. She was there as late as Tuesday night. That’s almost a week ago now. Where is she? Was she the person who set fire to the garden shed Saturday night?”
Irene turned to Svante Malm in expectation.
Svante’s freckled horse face broke into a smile. “I have no idea where she is. That’s your job. The fire inspectors took a look at the shed yesterday. It was a good thing that the patrol caught it before the fire could spread. Otherwise the hospital could have burned down. The fire was definitely arson. It started in a corner heaped with rags. The technicians found a charred candlestick. The person who started the fire probably lit a candle and then held some flammable like paper right next to it, counting on the fact that the fire would spread to the rags.”
“No sign of gasoline?”
“None. Underneath it all was an old sleeping bag covered with some kind of cotton blanket. Over that was a blackened layer of thin wool. And this.”
From a pocket in his jacket, Malm pulled out a murky plastic bag, within which was a flower shape with four visible blooms. Malm turned the bag over to show the soot cleaned away there. The silver metal inside contrasted brightly with the dark soot.
“This is a nurse’s brooch.”
