“As he had with Marianne,” Fredrik Stridh interjected. “Just throw her into the room.”
“Another strange detail. If it’s a detail. Why go down the elevator with Marianne’s body and drag her into the generator room when it would be easier to throw her into the attic, too? It took a lot of extra time.” Irene was thinking out loud.
“Time,” Hannu said.
Everyone in the group remembered Hannu’s succinct way of speaking from previous cases and knew it was best not to press him for more. When he was ready, he was ready. He wouldn’t say a word before then, which really got on the nerves of everyone else. However, every word he said was golden.
Andersson usually had great respect for the Finn’s acumen, but because he was still mentally off balance after his confrontation with Birgitta, he snapped. “What the hell do you mean?”
Unperturbed, Hannu continued. “The murderer needed time. That’s why he sabotaged the electricity. The respirator stops. The doctor and the nurse have to hurry to take care of the patient. The murderer can return to the attic and get on with stringing Linda up.”
The entire room fell silent. Most of them were surprised at such a long statement from Hannu, but what he said gave them much to think about.
“Continue,” Andersson said.
“The murderer has to go the electrical room anyway to sabotage the electricity. He takes Marianne’s body there because he knows that it will be found as soon as someone comes looking to see what’s wrong. That’s exactly what he wants. It might delay the discovery of Linda’s body.”
“That’s exactly the hell what happened—a whole week!” The superintendent stared gloomily at his underlings. No one said a word, because if Hannu’s theory was correct, it was a coldly planned trap and they’d all fallen into it.
“It’s pretty clear now that the murders of the two nurses are connected. But the murder of the crazy bird lady? Someone else?” Jonny asked.
Tommy shook his head. “No, Stridner believes it’s the same killer. ‘Brutal and strong,’ she said. And the probable murder weapon, the wire cutter, is the same one used to sabotage the electricity that night. Remember, it was found on the stream bank near Gunnela Hägg’s body.”
“Keep in mind, too, that everyone says that Linda and Marianne were acting totally normal right before they were murdered,” Andersson pointed out.
“There’s one niggling detail about Linda,” Irene said. “She asked her partner to move out, since she no longer loved him. Was she in love with someone else, even though she denied it? Perhaps we should look into this separation some more. Of course, this doesn’t explain where Marianne comes into the picture, not to mention the murder of Gunnela Hägg.”
“It’s all about the hospital.” Hannu’s calm voice.
Irene was startled. She’d also had that feeling many times. “I agree. We keep circling around Löwander Hospital and what happened a long time ago—”
The superintendent groaned. “Please don’t bring up that damned ghost.”
“No, not the ghost. We’re searching not for a phantom but a killer. But there’s something connected to the story of Nurse Tekla. Remember, the killer hung Linda’s body in the same place where the nurse hanged herself fifty years ago. That must mean something.”
“Such as?”
“No idea. We have to keep looking into the stories surrounding the hospital. Maybe the dead can lead us to the killer.”
“Have you lost your mind? We can’t keep digging into old shit when we’re up to our knees in what’s going on right now,” Jonny exclaimed.
Andersson quietly looked from one of his inspectors to the next. The superintendent was inclined to agree with Jonny, but he also felt there might be something to Irene’s point of view. Resolutely, he proclaimed, “Hannu, Irene, and Tommy, you dig around the hospital history. Fredrik, Jonny, and Birg—I mean, and myself will keep talking to the living.”
“SO HOW SHOULD we go about this?” asked Hannu.
The members of Irene’s group, which Jonny had already nicknamed the “Ghostbusters,” were sitting in Irene and Tommy’s office.
“I’ll track down Sverker Löwander’s first wife, Barbro. She knew Sverker’s parents and certainly knows some of the hospital stories. And I’d like to hear more about her accusations against Carina regarding the fire at the doctor’s mansion,” Irene said.
Tommy nodded agreement. “I’ll try to speak to Siv Persson again. I want to track down any of Tekla’s relatives, if any are still alive. And I want to know exactly where in the attic she was supposed to have killed herself. Did Linda’s murderer hang her in the exact same spot? And then the obvious follow-up question: Why?”
“How could the murderer know the exact place?” Hannu said.
Irene felt absolutely sure they must follow this trail. Everything was tied up in the history of the hospital. The ghost disguise was a smart move, but it might be the murderer’s downfall. Knowing the exact spot where Tekla had died made for a limited field of suspects.
“I’ll follow up the patients at Löwander Hospital during the summers of ’83 and ’84,” Hannu said.
Irene nodded and tried to hide a yawn. It had been a long day, and tomorrow hardly promised to be a shorter one.
She’d have to remember to call her hairdresser for another appointment.
Chapter 14
BARBRO LÖWANDER WAS now a medical secretary at Sahlgren Hospital. Irene had called her first thing in the morning. Barbro did not want to speak to a police officer and wanted nothing to do with Löwander Hospital. Irene pressed her case, using a thinly veiled threat of interrogation in the police station, and Barbro gave in. They agreed to meet at 11:00 A.M. at the main entrance of Sahlgren Hospital.
This worked for Irene. She’d be able to attend Andersson’s morning prayer and catch up on some of her paperwork, not to mention calling her hairdresser for a new appointment.
“LET’S START WITH Gunnela Hägg. Was anyone at the autopsy?”
No one in the room had gone.
Andersson rustled two faxes and put on his reading glasses. He cleared his throat. “Gunnela Hägg. Born January nineteenth, 1950. According to the police report, found dead in a culvert underneath a bridge. Near the body a pair of large wire cutters was found, with traces of blood and hair. Massive fractures of the skull. Skull shattered near its base with a great deal of bleeding in the brain. Autopsy shows she died from that blow. The combined picture indicates a homicide. A complete toxicological examination will take place. Samples have been taken for forensic examination.’ ”
The superintendent finished reading and looked up over the top of his glasses, the cheap square kind that can be bought at any drugstore or gas station. He slowly folded them and took up the thread again. “I managed to reach Professor Stridner this morning before you arrived. She tells me that the murderer is right-handed and strong. Her theory is that the killer hit Gunnela Hägg with the side of the wire cutters many times, using much more force than necessary to kill the little old lady.”
The “little old lady” was thirteen years younger than the superintendent. Irene would refrain from commenting on that.
“The murderer felt threatened,” Jonny said.
“He knew that she’d seen him,” added Hannu.
“The newspaper article led to her death,” Tommy said.
Irene put in, “He knew that Gunnela saw him do something incriminating. Perhaps that he rode away on Linda’s bicycle and dumped it in the culvert?”
“Yep. That’s what I think. I also believe that the murderer took off the uniform under the cover of the bridge. Then he walked up onto the road and headed away. Maybe even in a car,” Tommy said.