Joona Linna, right? the man with the mustache says. If youre as good as they say, you ought to come work for us.
They shake hands.
Goran Stone, Sapo, the man says contentedly.
Are you in charge of the initial investigation? asks Joona.
Yes, I am. Or rather, formally, its Saga Bauer. For the sake of statistics, he adds and grins.
Ive met her. She seems capable-
Isnt that right? Goran Stone laughs out loud and then snaps his mouth shut.
Joona glances out the window. His mind is back to the drifting boat. What kind of contract had the killer been given, and why? He knows its much too soon to draw any type of conclusion, but still, a tentative hypothesis is not a bad thing. Joona leaves the kitchen and heads for the bedroom. The bed is made. The cream bedcover is smoothed. Saga Bauer from Sapo is standing in front of a laptop on the windowsill while also talking on her cell phone. Joona remembers her from a counterterrorism seminar.
Joona sits down on the bed and tries to reorder his thoughts yet again. Three people on a boat. He visualizes Penelope and Viola standing before him and in his mind he places Bjorn next to them. All three of them could not have been on the boat when Viola was killed, otherwise the killer would have gotten the right person. At sea he would have just killed all three, put them on their beds, and sunk the boat. So they were not at sea. Theyd docked the boat somewhere.
Joona stands up again and walks into the living room. He lets his eyes wander over the flat-screen TV on the wall, the red plaid blanket folded over the arm of the sofa, the modern table with copies of Ordfront and Exit fanned on top.
He walks over to a bookshelf that covers an entire wall. He stops and thinks about the boat. He visualizes the apparently crimped cables in the engine room, which were supposed to have generated an electric arc within a few minutes; the seat cushion stuffed behind the cables in order to catch fire more easily; the loop in the rerouted fuel line. Why hadnt the boat sunk? They had probably not run the engine long enough.
These were not coincidences: Bjorns apartment is set on fire. The same day, Viola is murdered, and if the boat had not been abandoned, there would have been an explosion in the fuel tank. Then the killer tries to ignite a gas explosion in Penelopes apartment.
Bjorns apartment. The boat. Penelopes apartment.
Hes searching for something either Penelope or Bjorn possesses. He started by searching Bjorns apartment and when he didnt find what he was looking for, he set the apartment on fire. Then he followed the boat and when hed searched it and couldnt find what he was looking for, he tried to force Viola to talk. When she couldnt reveal anything useful, he headed to Penelopes apartment.
Joona borrows a pair of latex gloves from a box and goes back to the bookshelf. He peers at the layer of dust in front of the books and sees there is none in front of some of the volumes. He concludes that someone has pulled out those books recently, perhaps sometime during the past several weeks.
I dont want you here, Saga Bauer says behind him. This is my investigation.
Ill be going, he says softly, but theres one thing I have to find first.
Five minutes, she says.
He turns to look at her. Can you have these books photographed?
Already done, she snaps.
From above so you can see the dust, he says, not troubled at all.
She realizes what hes getting at. She doesnt change her expression, but simply takes a camera from a technician and photographs every shelf she can reach before she tells Joona that he can look at the books on the five lower shelves.
Joona takes out Karl Marxs Das Kapital and looks inside. Flipping through it, he notices the underlined passages and notes written in the margins. He looks at the gap between the books but sees nothing. He replaces the book. Then his eyes range over a biography of Ulrike Meinhof, a worn-out anthology called Key Texts of Political Feminism, and the collected works of Bertolt Brecht.
She realizes what hes getting at. She doesnt change her expression, but simply takes a camera from a technician and photographs every shelf she can reach before she tells Joona that he can look at the books on the five lower shelves.
Joona takes out Karl Marxs Das Kapital and looks inside. Flipping through it, he notices the underlined passages and notes written in the margins. He looks at the gap between the books but sees nothing. He replaces the book. Then his eyes range over a biography of Ulrike Meinhof, a worn-out anthology called Key Texts of Political Feminism, and the collected works of Bertolt Brecht.
Joona looks at the next shelf down. Three books have obviously been taken out of the bookshelf recently since theres no dust in front of them. One of them, The Cleverness of Antelopes, is a collection of witness reports from the genocide in Rwanda. Another is Pablo Nerudas poetry collection Cien sonetos de amor. The last is The Roots of Swedish Racial Ideas in the History of Ideas.
Joona flips through each one. When he reaches The Roots of Swedish Racial Ideas in the History of Ideas, a photograph falls out. Its a black-and-white picture of a serious young woman with braided hair. He recognizes Claudia Fernandez. She cant be more than fifteen years old, and the resemblance to her daughter is remarkable.