‘But why?’ Erica tilted her head as she pondered what she’d read. ‘I still think it might be an idea to talk to Axel. His brother may have told him something. I’ll give it a shot. You wouldn’t by any chance be willing to talk to your father, would you?’
Kjell was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Of course. And I’ll let you know if I hear anything from Halvorsen. Be sure to get in touch with me if you find out anything, okay?’ He raised an admonitory finger. He wasn’t used to working collaboratively, but in this case he apparently saw an advantage in having Erica’s assistance.
‘I’ll check with the Swedish authorities too,’ said Erica, getting up. ‘And I promise to let you know the minute I hear anything.’ She started to put on her jacket but stopped suddenly.
‘By the way, Kjell, there’s one other thing. I don’t know if it’s important, but…’
‘Tell me. Anything could be valuable at this point,’ he said, looking up at her.
‘Well, I talked with Britta’s husband, Herman. He seems to know something about all of this. Or at least, I’m not positive, but I got that feeling. Anyway, when I asked him about Hans Olavsen he reacted really strangely. He told me that I should ask Paul Heckel and Friedrich Huck. And I’ve tried to check up on the names, but couldn’t find anything. But…’
‘Yes?’ said Kjell.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I could swear that I’ve never met either of them, yet there’s something familiar…’
Kjell tapped his pen on the desk. ‘Paul Heckel and Friedrich Huck?’ When Erica nodded, he wrote down the names. ‘Okay, I’ll check on them too. But the names don’t ring a bell.’
‘Looks as if we both have something to do now,’ said Erica, smiling as she paused in the doorway. ‘I feel much better knowing that there are two of us working on this.’
‘That’s good,’ said Kjell, sounding distracted.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Erica.
‘All right,’ said Kjell, picking up the phone without looking at her as she left his office. He was eager to get to the bottom of this. His journalist’s nose had picked up the unmistakable scent of rat.
‘Shall we go sit down and review everything?’ It was Monday afternoon, and calm had descended over the station.
‘Sure,’ said Gosta, getting up reluctantly. ‘Paula too?’
‘Of course,’ said Martin. He went to get her. Mellberg was out taking Ernst for a walk, and Annika appeared to be busy in the reception area, so it was just the three of them who sat down in the kitchen with all the existing investigative materials in front of them.
‘Erik Frankel,’ said Martin, setting the point of his pen on a fresh page of his notepad.
‘He was murdered in his home, with an object that has already been found on the scene,’ said Paula, as Martin feverishly started writing.
‘That seems to indicate that it was not premeditated,’ said Gosta, and Martin nodded.
‘There were no fingerprints on the bust that was used as the murder weapon, but it doesn’t seem to have been wiped clean, so the killer must have been wearing gloves, which actually contradicts the idea that it was not premeditated,’ interjected Paula. She glanced at the words that Martin was writing on the notepad.
‘Can you really read what you’ve written?’ she asked sceptically, since his writing looked mostly like hieroglyphics. Or shorthand.
‘Only if I type it up on the computer straight away,’ said Martin, smiling as he continued to write. ‘Otherwise I’m screwed.’
‘Erik Frankel died from a violent blow to the temple,’ said Gosta, taking out photographs from the crime scene. ‘The perp then left the murder weapon behind.’
‘Again, these are not the hallmarks of a particularly cold-blooded or calculated murder,’ said Paula, getting up to pour coffee for herself and her colleagues.
‘The only potential threat we’ve been able to identify came from the neo-Nazi organization Sweden’s Friends, who targeted Frankel because he was an expert on Nazism.’ Martin reached for the five letters enclosed in plastic sleeves and spread them out on the table. ‘In addition, he had a personal connection to the organization through his childhood friend, Frans Ringholm.’
‘Do we have anything that might link Frans to the murder? Anything at all?’ Paula stared at the letters as if she wanted to make them speak.
‘Well, three of his Nazi pals claim that he was in Denmark with them on the days in question. It’s not a watertight alibi, if such a thing even exists, but we don’t have much physical evidence to go on. The footprints found at the scene belonged to the boys who discovered the body. There were no other footprints or fingerprints or anything else besides what we would expect to find there.’
‘Are you going to pour the coffee, or are you just planning to stand there holding the pot?’ Gosta said to Paula.
‘Say please, and I’ll give you some coffee,’ Paula teased him, and Gosta reluctantly grunted ‘please’.
‘Then there’s the date of the murder,’ said Martin, nodding to Paula to thank her for filling his coffee cup. ‘We’ve been able to establish with relative certainty that Erik Frankel died sometime between the fifteenth and the seventeenth of June. So we have three days to play with. And then his body remained there, undiscovered, because his brother was away and no one expected to hear from Erik, except possibly Viola – but as she saw it, he had broken off their relationship. And that happened just before he was killed.
‘And nobody saw anything? Gosta, did you talk to all the neighbours? Did anyone see any strange cars? Any suspicious people?’ Martin looked at his colleague.
‘There aren’t many neighbours to talk to out there,’ muttered Gosta.
‘Should I take that as a no?’
‘I did talk to all the neighbours, and nobody saw anything.’
‘Okay, we’ll drop that for the moment.’ Martin sighed and took a sip of his coffee.
‘What about Britta Johansson? It’s quite a coincidence that she had a connection to Erik Frankel. And to Frans Ringholm, for that matter. Of course it was a long time ago, but we have phone records showing that there was actually contact between them in June, and both Frans and Erik also went to see Britta around that time.’ Again Martin looked to his colleagues for answers: ‘Why choose that particular moment to resume contact after sixty years? Should we believe Britta’s husband, who says that it was because her mental condition was deteriorating, and she wanted to recall the old days?’
‘Personally, I reckon that’s bullshit,’ said Paula, reaching for an unopened packet of Ballerina biscuits. She removed the plastic tape on one end and helped herself to three biscuits before she offered some to the others. ‘I think that if we could only work out the real reason why they met, the whole case would crack wide open. But Frans is as silent as a tomb, and Axel is sticking with the same story that Herman gave us.’
‘And let’s not forget about the monthly payments,’ said Gosta, pausing for a moment as he painstakingly removed the vanilla top layer of his biscuit and licked off the chocolate filling, then continuing: ‘What do they have to do with Frankel’s murder?’
Martin looked at Gosta in surprise. He didn’t know that Gosta was up to speed on that part of the investigation, since his usual strategy was to sit back waiting for information to be fed to him.
‘Well, Hedstrom tried checking out that angle on Saturday,’ said Martin, taking out the notes he’d made when Patrik phoned to report on his visit to the home of Wilhelm Friden.
‘So, what did he find out?’ Gosta took another biscuit and the others watched, transfixed, as he repeated his dissecting manoeuvre. Off came the vanilla top layer, then he scooped out the chocolate filling with his tongue. The remaining layers of biscuit were then discarded.
‘Hey, Gosta, you can’t just lick off the chocolate and leave the rest,’ said Paula indignantly.
‘What are you? The biscuit police?’ replied Gosta, making a show of taking yet another biscuit. Paula merely snorted and picked up the packet of biscuits to put it on the counter, out of Gosta’s reach.
‘Unfortunately, he didn’t find out much,’ said Martin. ‘Wilhelm Friden died just a couple of weeks ago, and neither his widow nor his son knew anything about the payments. Of course, it’s hard to say whether they were telling the truth, but Patrik seemed to think they were. At any rate, the son has promised to ask their lawyer to send over all of his father’s papers, and if we’re lucky we’ll find something there.’
‘What about Erik’s brother? Did he know anything about the payments?’ Gosta glanced greedily at the biscuits on the counter and seemed to be considering actually getting up off his rear to fetch it.
‘We phoned Axel to ask him about the payments,’ said Paula, with a warning look to Gosta. ‘But he said he had
