Buried in Secret (Sandhamn Murders) Read online

  Thomas contemplated the plastic bags at Nilsson’s feet. He could just make out something that resembled the bones of a human hand. It looked small, but that didn’t necessarily mean it belonged to a child or a woman. He knew from experience that size was hard to assess when flesh and skin had disappeared.

  “Any idea about the cause of death?” Aram asked. “Natural or unnatural? Are we looking at a crime here? Homicide?”

  The look Nilsson gave him answered his questions.

  “What about the person’s age?” Aram persevered. “Or how long the bones have been buried?”

  They could be looking at an ancient burial site, but as far as Thomas was aware, Telegrafholmen had always been uninhabited.

  Nilsson shook his head. “Too soon to say.”

  Thomas glanced around. “Who’s in charge of the site?”

  Nilsson pointed to the gray-haired man who’d been on his phone when they arrived. “He’s the foreman—you could start with him.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The foreman introduced himself as Percy Norräng.

  “Is there somewhere we could have a few words?” Thomas asked.

  Norräng nodded and led the way to a site trailer at the bottom of a slope.

  “Coffee?” he said, pointing to a pot on the scratched counter. Without waiting for a response, he poured three mugs. Judging by the smell, the coffee had been sitting there for quite a while, but that didn’t appear to matter. Norräng took a swig and sat down. He seemed unmoved, but Thomas noticed a slight tremor as he placed his mug on the table.

  “What a way to start the day,” Norräng said. “It feels unreal . . . A hand, just lying there . . .” He scratched the back of his neck without looking at the two officers. “I suppose it’s part of everyday life to you,” he went on, still with his face turned away.

  “A situation like this is shocking for everyone,” Thomas assured him. “It’s perfectly normal to feel upset.”

  “Can you tell us what happened this morning?” Aram said.

  Norräng blinked. “We’re clearing the ground for the first batch of houses; they’re supposed to be finished by summer next year. We’ve been working up here for a while, but we’ve fallen behind, so we’re trying to catch up.”

  “Have you been here all summer?” Thomas asked.

  “The guys had some time off after Midsummer, but we’ve basically kept going.”

  “But there was a period when no one was on-site?”

  Norräng suddenly realized where Thomas was going with his questions.

  “You mean someone could have come up and buried . . . the body?”

  “We’re just trying to establish the facts. Get a clearer idea.”

  Norräng gazed up at the ceiling. It was white, but there were brown nicotine stains directly above the table.

  “What did the area look like before you started blasting?” Aram said.

  Norräng shrugged. “The usual. All the trees had been felled, but the ground was uneven and needed leveling. It was a mixture of grass, earth, and stones.”

  Thomas tried to picture the scene. There must have been enough soil to bury a human body—unless of course they were dealing with a homicide and the corpse had been dismembered.

  They mustn’t get locked into one particular scenario; anything was possible at this stage.

  “Do you have a photograph of the original site?” he asked.

  Norräng picked up his phone and flicked through the images with callused fingers. “I took this the other day when we were calculating the force of the blast.”

  Thomas stared at the photo. It was as he’d expected; the site consisted of a large, irregular surface. He could see the odd stone, but it was mostly grass. In certain places the soil seemed to be deeper, because the vegetation was greener and lusher. At the far end was a rocky slope with grass and yellow moss growing in the crevices.

  Thomas pointed to the slope. “Is this where you were blasting today?”

  “Exactly. Two houses will be built on that spot.”

  Thomas took a closer look. The grave must have been pretty near, since the explosion had scattered the bones, and yet someone had dug deep enough to ensure that the body wasn’t found by wild animals.

  The ground at the bottom of the slope appeared to be untouched, not as if it had been recently dug up or flattened down by human hands. Then again, it didn’t take long for nature to reclaim her territory.

  The bones gathered so far bore no trace of clothing, skin, or tissue, which meant that the grave had been there for a considerable amount of time.

  “You didn’t notice anything before you started blasting?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some indication that this was a burial place? Not a headstone, of course, but maybe a cairn, or signs that someone had been digging?”

  “It was just the same as the rest of the island,” Norräng said, beginning to sound slightly defensive. “There was nothing unusual.” He finished off his coffee and stood up to pour himself another cup. “By the way, how long will that area be cordoned off?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Hard to say,” Aram replied. “As long as it takes for us to secure the scene and collect evidence.”

  Norräng frowned. “Can we carry on working in the meantime?”

  “No chance,” Thomas said.

  “My bosses won’t be pleased. As I said, we’re already behind.”

  CHAPTER 6

  It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon when Thomas returned to the police station in Flemingsberg. Margit had asked for an update as soon as he arrived; she was at her desk when he stuck his head around the door of her office.

  Aram had gone home; one of his daughters was sick, and Sonja, his wife, had a night shift at the hospital.

  “I heard that Staffan Nilsson’s on the case,” Margit said, putting down a folder. “Good news.”

  Thomas sat down opposite his boss. They’d worked together for over ten years, which included transferring to Flemingsberg when the Nacka police district disappeared in the restructuring. Margit was still only acting head of department, even though almost two years had passed. He knew the situation was taking its toll on her, not least because there were rumors that the post was about to be advertised externally.

  “OK, what have we got?” she went on. “Do the bones come from one person, or more than one?”

  “I’ve no idea. There’s no indication that the grave was marked in any way; all the witnesses are in agreement on that.”

  “Is there a crime involved?” Margit asked, resting her chin on her hand.

  It was a fair question; Thomas and Aram had discussed the matter on the way back. Why would someone go to the trouble of burying a body on an uninhabited island if it hadn’t been done in secret?

  “I’d say things are definitely pointing in that direction,” he conceded. “I mean, there’s a perfectly good graveyard on Sandhamn.”

  “Could we be looking at a dismembered body?”

  “Impossible to say. They haven’t found anything yet, plus, of course, the blast will have caused a great deal of damage. Some parts of the skeleton might have been reduced to powder by the explosion.”

  “How old did Nilsson think the bones might be?”

  “He couldn’t say.”

  “Months? Years?”

  “He wouldn’t commit.”

  Margit was barking out questions as if Thomas had all the answers at his fingertips.

  “So they could be pretty fresh or God knows how old?”

  Thomas nodded.

  They both knew that bodies began to decompose as soon as they were placed in the ground. Most of the organs were gone in only two or three weeks, as soon as the bodily fluids had evaporated and bacteria and larvae did their work. Within months, little was left apart from the skeleton.

  The bones in Nilsson’s plastic bags had been dirty, but there were no visible signs of tissue or clothing.

  “So we have the bones of someone—male or female—who could have died as recently as last spring,” Margit said. “Or decades ago. And we might be dealing with more than one person.” She drummed her fingers on the cluttered desk. “How are you intending to move forward?”

  Thomas hadn’t even started to formulate a plan. He leaned back and thought for a moment. Margit should know better than to ask for clarity at this stage.

  Perhaps she read that in his face.

  “I’ve asked Ida Nylén, the new girl, to take a look at missing persons,” she said. “It’s a start.”

  She seemed uncharacteristically agitated about the situation.

  “Why the urgency?” Thomas asked. If this was a cold case, there was no need to stress.

  “The construction work can’t be delayed,” Margit said wearily. “The company has already brought in its lawyers, and they’re leaning on us. It’s a highly prestigious project, and large amounts of money have been invested. There are penalty clauses, so if we’ve cordoned off the site . . .”

  She sighed. In recent weeks the police had been heavily criticized for inefficiency and long, drawn-out investigations. The county police chief had publicly promised significant improvements. The pressure from above didn’t make life easier for someone who was only acting head of department.

  “The company is also worried about negative publicity,” Margit continued. “The houses will go on the market for over a hundred thousand kronor per square yard, so they don’t want anything to go wrong.”

  A hundred thousand kronor per square yard for a summer cottage. Bizarre.

  “It’s a crime scene,” Thomas pointed out. “They’ll just have to put up with it.”

  He hated this kind of situation, but he wasn’t naïve. There were people with influence in every
part of society, particularly when big money was involved. It wasn’t corruption, just friendly contacts that were used to pass on a discreet but clear message.

  “You mean everyone is equal before the law,” Margit said wryly. She rubbed her chin. “OK, but you can assume that these people will do everything in their power to make sure our investigation is concluded as quickly as possible. If we want to solve this case, we need to act fast.”

  Tuesday,

  August 9

  CHAPTER 7

  It was only seven thirty in the morning, and Nora was sitting down by the jetty. She’d brought her coffee; she needed a little time for herself before the rest of the family woke up.

  It was a beautiful day. Wispy clouds caressed the blue sky while the sparkling sunlight danced across the water. She could just see a sailboat in the distance by the island of Eknö, its course set for Sandhamn.

  She usually liked to be up early, especially in the summer when the clear air held the promise of another sunny day, but now she could feel the lack of sleep in every part of her body; it had been another bad night. Yesterday evening she’d stood in the bathroom clutching the bottle of sleeping pills; she’d forced herself to put it back in the cabinet. She had to learn to sleep without medication. She would soon be back at work.

  Thank God she’d been spared the worst nightmares, but it had taken her forever to get to sleep, and she’d woken up repeatedly, as if her brain couldn’t allow itself to relax. Fear was constantly nibbling away at the back of her mind.

  Nora took a sip of her coffee. She’d sent yet another text message to Mina but hadn’t received a reply. It had been months since she’d heard from her, and she was becoming more and more worried that something terrible had happened to her and little Lukas. Otherwise surely she would have gotten back to Nora? If everything was OK?

  Maybe Emir Kovač had tracked Mina down and avenged his brother. In which case, did that mean it was Nora’s turn? Was he looking for her right now? She had tried to erase his words from her memory, but they kept on coming back.

  She shuddered, even though the sun was still shining.

  She heard footsteps approaching and turned around to see Jonas with the newspaper in his hand, the gravel crunching beneath his scruffy deck shoes. As usual he wasn’t wearing any socks.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I thought you’d be down here.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Once again, she felt guilty for wanting to be left alone. She couldn’t deal with company, not even Jonas and Julia, her husband and her daughter.

  Jonas opened the paper and showed her a headline.

  “Have you seen this? They’ve found human remains on Telegrafholmen.”

  Nora sat up a little straighter. “What?”

  “Yesterday, apparently.”

  Jonas sat down and spread the paper out on the table. Together they read the article about the bones that had been discovered by the construction workers. A police investigation was underway, but so far the identity of the deceased wasn’t known.

  Nora looked over toward Telegrafholmen; its western point was almost directly opposite the Brand villa. She had seen the island all her life but hadn’t been there for years. She had a vague memory of a covenant stating that no houses could be built there, and yet planning permission had been granted for a significant number of summer cottages.

  “How terrible,” she said with a shudder.

  “It sounds like a bad joke,” Jonas said, leaning back. “A body buried on an uninhabited island and dug up by construction workers.”

  Nora didn’t want to hear it. That was exactly the kind of thing Emir Kovač might have done with Mina.

  “A joke?” she snapped, turning away so that she didn’t have to look at the article. “We’re talking about a human being here. Someone’s mother or father. Or maybe a child.”

  Jonas took her hand and gently stroked her palm with two fingers.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Nora tried to smile. She had to pull herself together, stop overreacting.

  “It’s OK,” she murmured.

  A young man wearing a red life jacket passed the end of the jetty in a green kayak. He was paddling with long, even strokes, as if the paddle were part of his upper body. The waters quickly closed behind him.

  Nora couldn’t settle.

  “I’m going to the bakery for some fresh rolls,” she announced, getting to her feet before Jonas could say anything.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mornings without Elin ought to be stress free, Thomas thought as he grabbed a mug of tea on his way to the morning briefing.

  When his daughter was with him, it took all his time to get her dressed, give her breakfast, and drop her off at school before work, but without her, he was somehow slower, as if he lacked direction, and he often arrived at the police station at the last minute.

  Aram was already in the conference room, along with Margit, Staffan Nilsson, and several other colleagues.

  Ida Nylén, the new girl, arrived at the same time as Thomas. When they almost collided in the doorway, he noticed how toned her body was. She wasn’t particularly tall, but she obviously worked out.

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  Margit tapped her pen on the table to indicate that she wanted to get started. She handed it over to Staffan Nilsson, who gave a brief summary of the previous day’s discovery on Telegrafholmen.

  “We’ll be treating this as a criminal investigation,” Margit said, clearing her throat. “We’re under considerable pressure to remove the cordons as soon as possible, because there are significant costs involved when construction is halted. I’ve had orders from above to act fast.”

  She made no attempt to hide her irritation, but at the same time she was obviously prepared to give in. One of the major investors in the project on Telegrafholmen must be in a position to influence the police.

  “We must try to live up to the expectations of our superiors,” she said, turning to Ida. “What can you tell us?”

  Ida pushed back a few strands of her long hair, which was colored in various shades of purple and tied back in a scrunchie.

  “I’ve tried to produce lists of all those who’ve been reported missing, but there are a hell of a lot of them,” she began, tugging at the sleeve of her denim jacket. “In the Stockholm district alone, it’s over four thousand a year. Over half of these progress to a formal report, so it’s a huge task.”

  Ida was telling everyone in the room something they already knew.

  “And there’s no crime involved in ninety-seven percent of cases,” Aram said. His soft Norrköping accent took the sting out of his words, but Ida was clearly embarrassed.

  “Oh . . . I didn’t realize the figure was so high . . .” She broke off and looked down at the table, so unmistakably fresh out of the police academy that Thomas couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. He’d been in the same position himself once upon a time; he didn’t want to count how many years had passed since then.

  “Did you check the National Crime Unit’s database of missing persons?” he asked in a warm tone. Between twenty-five and thirty-five people remained missing each year and were entered into the national database, which typically contained some nine hundred names.

  “I haven’t gotten around to that yet.”

  Margit pressed the tips of her fingers to her temples. “That’s your next job, as soon as we’re done here. Bring in some of the trainees—tell HR I said so.”

  Thomas wondered if Ida would have the nerve to pass on Margit’s message. He put down his mug.

  “Start with the place where the bones were found,” he said. “Look for anyone who has some kind of link to Sandhamn and the archipelago, or at least to Värmdö and Nacka. That should make the task more manageable.”

  “Nacka police district?” Margit said with a hint of longing in her voice.

  “Yes.”

  Margit wasn’t the only one who missed the old days. Nacka had had one of the highest clearance rates, and yet it had still disappeared in the restructuring process, which in spite of all the hopes and promises had led to a clear decline in morale within the force.

  Politicians could talk all they wanted about priorities and improvements in resources; without efficient organization, decent salaries, and functioning leadership, nothing was going to improve.