Stone Coffin Part 25

Lindell nodded weakly toward the window.

"I'm thinking of Emily," she said quietly.

"Little kids dying is the worst," Beatrice agreed. "I've also been thinking of her."

They were both quiet for a while. Lindell sensed that Beatrice would like to continue. She both wanted and didn't want Beatrice to ask her more about how she was feeling. She realized that she needed to talk to someone. Her mother was out of the question, in part because their discussion would have to be over the phone and because the situation of finally getting a grandchild but without a son-in-law would be so confusing for her mother. She would not be able to provide any sensible or comforting words.

Beatrice was the only woman who was somewhat close to Lindell, but only because they saw each other daily, not because they had very much else in common.

"Don't take this personally," Beatrice said. "I know that sounds absurd, but-"

"I can handle it," Lindell interrupted.

The morning meeting was a somber affair. Everyone was affected by the new homicide and the fact that the Cederen case had to be taken in a different direction. Sammy Nilsson was the exception. He seemed to be stimulated by the fact that the situation had grown more complicated.

"Gabriella Mark is the key," he said enthusiastically.

The rest of them pondered this for a few seconds, but no one found anything revolutionary in the p.r.o.nouncement. There were plenty of keys. A new lead could be found by accident. Stating that solving the murder of Gabriella Mark could break the entire MedForsk case was hardly a revelation, but his colleagues let the comment stand. It was good that someone was positive. Perhaps they would even find a hint of value in his lengthy commentary.

"I have been checking her calls over the past few months," he continued. "She has not made very many, but a couple stick out as more important than the rest. A couple actually complicate this whole thing even further."

He paused dramatically. Now the others realized that perhaps he had a reason for his optimism and waited for him to continue.

"Four times she has made calls to Jack Mortensen, the CEO of MedForsk. And once to Cederen's parents."

Lindell's head jerked up. "Mortensen?" she said. "He denied all knowledge of Cederen's having a lover. When were the calls?"

"The last one was the day before yesterday," said Sammy Nilsson. "Fourteen-ten. And before that, on three separate occasions. The first call took place the day after Cederen's death."

"d.a.m.n," Lindell said in spite of herself.

"The call to the parents was made a week ago and was about eight minutes long. Her call to Mortensen was about fifty-two minutes long."

"Fifty-two minutes," Haver echoed. "They must have had a lot to talk about."

"Let's bring him in," Ottosson said. "Let him sweat a little. Ann, why don't you talk to Cederen's father again and see what the call with Gabriella was all about."

Lindell could see the old couple in her mind's eye. What did Mark have to say to them? Perhaps they knew one another from before.

"We know that she was strangled between nine and ten the night before last," Ryde said. "There are indications that it happened in the kitchen. A throw rug was scrunched up in a strange way. Since the rest of the kitchen was tidy, the state of the rug seemed significant, but of course we can't be sure. There were no fingerprints apart from hers and Cederen's. Nothing in the garbage, nothing under her fingernails. No other indications of injury on the body and no bruises."

"We have the journal," Berglund jumped in. "It doesn't give us more than the name Plle. We also have some chicken scratches on a little notepad, not exactly a diary, but a series of writings that appear to stem from the time that her husband died. Sad reading. The address book had about forty names, which has to be characterized as relatively few. There is no Plle anywhere. I'm still in the process of reviewing the list."

Ottosson looked appreciatively at him and nodded.

"Her shoes were still in the house. As you know, she was found barefoot, which corroborates the theory that she was killed inside. Her heels are dirty, consistent with the body's having been dragged down to the stone pile," Ryde said, and Lindell had the impression that he and Berglund had staged their partic.i.p.ation.

"Have any of the neighbors seen anything?" Ottosson asked.

"No, not anyone we've talked to so far," Haver said. "Nilsson-our Rasbo expert-is in charge of that. But there are some indications that someone has been lurking at the edge of the woods. Bronkan's team found some evidence, but he didn't want to jump to conclusions. There's elk s.h.i.t, to be sure."

"Okay," Ottosson said. "Someone came to the cottage, most likely someone that Mark knew. He entered, either invited or uninvited, strangled her, and then took off. There's no sign that anything else was touched or stolen."

"Hard to say. We don't know what was there before," Berglund pointed out.

"That's true," Ottosson said. "But nothing appeared messed up or searched through, I mean."

There were a couple of seconds of silence before Lindell took over.

"There's the question of motive. Gabriella Mark talked to me on the phone twice. The first time she sounded bewildered and upset, but the second time she was more collected and convinced that Cederen was innocent. She also thought it was completely unbelievable that he would have committed suicide. As her strongest argument, she raised the issue of the gin. What do we think of that?"

"So Cederen had been forced to drink gin and then been ga.s.sed to death?" Ottosson said skeptically.

Lindell nodded.

"It's not completely out of the question," she said. "Mark was very sure of herself. We're looking into Cederen's background to see if he ever drank gin."

"Who could have told her that detail? It wasn't in the papers."

"I've been wondering that too," Lindell said.

"Did we tell anyone?" Haver asked.

"I have," Beatrice said and everyone's faces turned toward her. "I talked to Cederen's parents, and when his mother asked me if I thought her son had suffered very much before he died, I said no. I said that he had been heavily intoxicated when it happened and probably hadn't felt a thing."

No one said anything.

"I said it to comfort her," Beatrice added.

"Did you mention that it was gin?" Lindell asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. That may have been wrong," she went on when no one said anything.

"Right, wrong," Ottosson said. "I understand what you were thinking. Let's just ask Cederen's mother," he added, trying to lighten the situation.

The meeting wrapped with Lindell summarizing the current findings and a.s.signing tasks. This wasn't strictly necessary, since all of them were clear on what they were doing, but it was helpful for her own sake, to negate her own pa.s.sivity. Ottosson smiled at her and rubbed his beard. Beatrice glanced at her from the side. Haver just looked impatient.

Afterward, Lindell went straight to the bathroom. She wanted to see herself in the mirror, to check if her inner confusion was visible from the outside. She drew one hand tenderly across her cheeks and forehead, as if in a lover's caress. The wrinkles around her eyes had deepened, and what was even worse was that her eyes had lost their sparkle. They stared dully out of a stranger's face attached to a stranger's body.

She left the bathroom in a state of despair and had to force herself to take the fifteen steps to her office. Once there, she pulled her notepad over and looked up Jack Mortensen's number. He wasn't at MedForsk and he also didn't answer his cell or home numbers. She left a voice mail on each line.

Haver was poring over pa.s.senger lists from Arlanda. This project had begun the moment that Cederen had disappeared. The goal then had been to find Cederen's name. Now the search had been widened to include a number of incoming and outgoing flights from the Dominican Republic and Mlaga. There were thousands of names. He had ruled out most of the charter flights and was concentrating on the regular routes.

His idea had been that somewhere along the line he would see a name that he recognized from the investigation. Either Cederen or someone else at MedForsk. Now he was eyeing the lists to try to find the killer's name.

Cederen had traveled frequently to Mlaga over the winter and spring. His secretary had noted some twelve trips to that city.

The company's offices and factories there had been expanded, and that was where most of the production took place. Perhaps Cederen had had company. Haver did not know exactly what he was looking for, but something could be hidden somewhere among all these names. In particular, he was watching for the name Pieda, the person who had written the letter. Had he possibly traveled to Sweden to make his case? But so far Haver had not found anything of significance.

Mortensen returned the call after fifteen minutes.

"I don't have my cell phone on," he explained. "People are constantly calling."

Isn't that why you have a cell phone? Lindell thought to herself.

"I want you to come down to the station immediately," she said without any polite small talk.

"Right now?"

"Yes, now. We have things to talk about."

"I see."

Mortensen sounded as if he was having trouble getting the words out, but also as if he was gathering himself for some kind of protest.

"Now," Lindell repeated.

She did not have to wait more than twenty minutes before she received a call from reception and was told that she had a visitor. She walked down to get him and escorted him quietly back to her office.

He had stopped pretending to be baffled, which Lindell appreciated. She hated a.s.sertive types who became nervous teenagers with the police.

"You lied to my face," she began without introduction.

"What do you mean?"

"Cederen's lover. You knew about her existence and you knew where she was."

Mortensen looked back at her and she thought she saw a faint smile on his face. Was he mocking her?

"Yes, I know Gabriella."

"She's dead," Lindell informed him, though she regretted it immediately.

"That isn't possible."

"Why did you lie to me?"

"What happened to her?"

"Answer the question."

"I..." he started but immediately faltered. He stared at her as if he thought she was bluffing.

"You could have saved her life if you had told us where she was."

"Did she kill herself?"

"Tell me why you lied to me. No more s.h.i.t."

"I wanted to protect her," he said quietly. "She has suffered enough. You may not know everything she's had to go through."

"Instead you contributed to her death," Lindell said sharply.

Mortensen looked as if he was reflecting on this statement but offered no reb.u.t.tal. He gazed down at his hands, lifted his head for a moment, and met her eyes, but then looked down again at once.

"She talked to me before she died," Lindell said.

His head jerked up with a look of astonishment that was also mixed with something else. Fear, perhaps.

"What did she say?" Mortensen said hesitantly.

"That doesn't matter. She wanted to talk about Cederen."

"How did she die?"

"She was strangled."

Mortensen swallowed.

"How well did you know her?"

"Not very. I knew that she and Sven-Erik were together. I met her several times. Who did it?"

"Tell me about their relationship."

Mortensen collected himself somewhat and launched into a more or less coherent account of how she and Cederen had met and how he had gradually started to change. Gabriella Mark was the reason for much of this change in his personality, he believed. Cederen started asking different questions, became more distracted, lost his focus on the company mission. He started to question his work, even the fundamental concept behind MedForsk.

"Was it the animal experimentation?"

"No, not that. Perhaps a little bit, but we've worked with test animals our entire professional careers. Working on animals is necessary in medical research, and we know the role that it plays in advances."

"So he was not a militant animal rights supporter?"

"No, definitely not," Mortensen said.

"Then what was it?"

"I think he was having some kind of life crisis. It must have had something to do with Josefin as well. I think they had grown apart."

"That's often the case when you start something on the side," Lindell said.