Chapter 31
It was Wednesday, two days before Christmas Eve, and Siri and Gerd were leaning toward the speakerphone to hear what the prosecutor in Halmstad had to say. He had finished delivering his formal report, but he had one last holiday message to convey:
“Okay, so, I’m going home now. Try to let Halmstad handle this until Monday. I’ll be back in then. And please stop bothering the people at Telia. I know you want those phone records, but it’s Christmas.”
Siri took a bite of a gingerbread cookie and shot a questioning look at Gerd.
“Absolutely,” Gerd said grimly.
Seconds of silence on the other end. “Merry Chr—”
Gerd slammed the receiver home and stood up. “Stay there, I’m going to grab something.”
Siri looked at the phone, which still seemed to be recovering from its harsh treatment.
She would have liked to do the same thing to it.
Instead, she turned to the report from Telia they had printed out.
After a call from Gerd earlier today, the phone company had moved their request to the top of their to-do list.
The local phone towers had crackled to life at seventeen minutes past eleven on the night of December 17, when a call was placed from one of the telephones in Pierre B?ck’s house in the middle of the party.
Someone had called Madeleine and Felicia’s house. Whether the call was subsequently answered was not evident.
Could Jakob Lindell have made the call? If he had, did that make him their suspect? Siri thought of the blood on the steering wheel in the car, of Killian Persson and the gash on his nose. They really did need to get a blood sample.
Jakob had a motive of sorts, but there was nothing to put him at the scene of the crime. Killian might have had a link to the scene, but he had no motive. Were both Jakob and Killian lying? Or was neither of them involved?
She couldn’t make it make sense.
Instead, Siri studied the results of the database search that glowed on the screen.
There was a computer in the office, but Gerd said she never used it.
If she needed to find information, she did it in the real world instead.
Siri found the real world unnecessarily tiresome and liked new technology, so she tried to start up the old dinosaur.
It beeped, hummed, and sputtered for a good long time, but after that it was usable.
She had noticed something just before the prosecutor called, a report that had been filed with the Halmstad police one evening last autumn.
It had to do with an assault at one of the bars on Brogatan.
The bar owner himself called it in. He wanted to advise law enforcement of a fistfight, that two men had flown at one another until one was knocked out by a punch and the other stormed off.
Names were included: Killian Persson’s father, Sten, and Mikael Soderstrom’s father, Karl-Henrik. Both from Skavboke.
Siri tried to follow up on the matter, but there wasn’t much to find beyond the initial interview with the bar owner and an attempt to get both Sten and Karl-Henrik to account for what had happened.
When neither of them wanted to talk, much less pursue any action, the matter was left to wilt away and that was that.
“Merry Christmas,” came Gerd’s cheerful voice, and she walked in with a wrapped present in hand.
It was a perky little houseplant. A handwritten note read: Hi! I’m an elephant ear, and I’m easy to care for. Water me once a week and don’t expose me to too much sunlight, and I’m sure we’ll get along.
Siri recognized Gerd’s handwriting. “Thank you so much.”
When she gave her a prolonged hug, Gerd grew awkward.
“I just thought it would help cozy the place up, is all,” she muttered, nodding at the computer screen. “What have you got there?”
“An assault.”
Gerd read it.
“I’ll be damned. I didn’t know about that.” She squinted at the screen. “How did you find this?”
“I thought about the looks I saw Sten Persson and Madeleine Grenberg exchanging in the chapel this past weekend, and I thought there might be something to it. So I performed a few searches, is all.”
“What a genius idea. He was at Madeleine and Felicia’s house today, did I mention that?
His car was parked there when I drove by.
It looked like they were having coffee.” Gerd brought a finger to the screen.
“This appears to have happened in Halmstad. No investigation opened.” She stood up straight and put her hands on her hips.
“Well, that explains why I don’t have any memory of it.
But,” she added, “the question is, what does it mean? If anything. It’s not exactly out of the ordinary for two area men to land in a drunken fight. When was this?”
“A year ago.”
Gerd pursed her lips. “Well, who knows.”
Just then, the desk phone rang. Gerd brought the receiver to her ear and listened. Her eyebrows shot up, adding extra wrinkles to her already furrowed brow.
“Oh? And what would that be?” She checked her watch. “Sure, of course. That’s fine. Good, see you soon.” She hung up and aimed a suggestive nod at the computer. “Speak of the devil.”