The Joona Linna Thrillers 3-Book Bundle

  But right now Joona isn’t worrying about the outcome of the investigation. His mind is not on the future, but on the recent past. It’s on the old woman who followed him outside the Adolf Fredrik Church in Stockholm and delivered a message from Rosa Bergman.

  Her thin hands had held up two tarot cards.

  “This is you, isn’t it?” she’d asked. “And here is the crown, the bridal crown.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything,” the old woman had said. “But I have a message for you from Rosa Bergman.”

  Joona’s heart had begun to pound, but he’d forced himself to shrug and say nonchalantly that there had to be some kind of mistake “because I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “She wants to know why you pretend your daughter is dead.”

  “I’m very sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Joona had forced himself to smile as he answered. His voice had sounded odd in his own ears, foreign and cold, as if it came from underneath a large stone, and he’d been tempted to grab her skinny arms and demand to know what was going on. But he didn’t. He managed to stay calm.

  “I have to go,” he had said, and was about to turn away when a migraine had shot through his brain like a knife stabbing his left eye. His vision disintegrated into a shimmering, pulsating halo.

  When he was able to see again, a circle of people had gathered around him, a circle that broke only for the paramedics. And the old woman had disappeared.

  He’d lied when he’d told her he didn’t know Rosa Bergman.

  Of course he knows who Rosa Bergman is. She’s in his thoughts every day. Rosa Bergman is the only person who knows where his wife and daughter are. But she should not know about him. If she knows who he is, then something has gone terribly wrong.

  Joona left the hospital a few hours after the migraine attack, and immediately began his search for Rosa Bergman. He requested and was granted a leave of absence. He soon learned that no such person was listed in any of Sweden’s public registers, but there are at least two thousand people with the last name Bergman in Scandinavia.

  He began to systematically work his way through register after register. Two weeks ago, he began digging through archived church records. For hundreds of years, the Church of Sweden was responsible for keeping population registers, until 1991, when the responsibility was shifted to the Tax Office, where these records are now kept in digital form.

  He started in the south of Sweden at the archives in Lund, where he pored through drawers of index cards, searching for any Rosa Bergman whose birth date might be right. He then traveled to Visby on the island of Gotland, and then to Vadstena, and after that to Gothenburg. Then he headed north to Uppsala and on to the massive archive in Härnösand. He searched through hundreds of thousands of files that recorded birth dates, places of birth, and parentages.

  It was late in the afternoon yesterday, sitting in the Östersund archive, surrounded by the sweet scent of aged, stained paper and loose-leaf binders, that Joona found the record of a girl born eighty-four years ago. She was baptized Rosa Maja in the parish of Sveg, municipality of Härjedalen, Jämtland Province. Her parents were Kristina and Evert Bergman. He was unable to find any record of their marriage, but the mother had been born nineteen years earlier in the same parish. Her maiden name was Stefansson.

  It took Joona three more hours to locate the name of Maja Stefansson, born the same year as Rosa Bergman, whose address was listed as a home for assisted living in Sveg. It was already seven in the evening by then, but Joona decided to drive there immediately. When he arrived, the residents were already in bed so he was denied entry.

  Joona checked into the Lilla Hotellet. He went to bed early and woke at four. Since then, he’s been standing at the window, waiting for dawn to break.

  10

  Sunlight slowly marches around the high walls of the room, dancing briefly in the glass panel of a grandfather clock. Joona’s fairly sure he’s found the right Rosa Bergman. She’s changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name and used her original middle name as her first name. Joona glances at his watch and decides it’s time to go. Buttoning his jacket, he leaves the room, walks through the lobby, and heads out the door into the tiny town of Sveg.

  The nursing home is called Blåvingen. It occupies a group of buildings, all of them faced in yellow stucco, surrounding a well-groomed lawn. There are paths and benches for resting.

  Joona opens the door to the main entrance and steps inside. Now that he’s this close to meeting her, he’s suddenly apprehensive and has to force himself to walk down the hall, past the closed office doors, under the harsh fluorescent lights.

  She was not supposed to find me, he thinks. She wasn’t even supposed to know of my existence. Something has gone very wrong.

  Joona never talks about what led him to be such a loner. Still, the reasons are with him every waking moment. His life had burned like magnesium, flaring and then out. From bright white to smoking ruin in an instant.

  A thin, bent old man watches television in the activity room, staring intently as a chef heats up oil in a sauté pan while describing a new recipe for the traditional crayfish festival. He peers at Joona.

  “Anders? Is that you?” he asks.

  Gently, Joona replies, “My name is Joona,” his soft Finnish accent coming through. “I’m looking for Maja Stefansson.”

  The old man stares at him, with eyes that are damp and red.

  “Anders, my boy, please listen to me. You have to get me out of here. There are only old people in this place.” The man slams his bony fist onto the armrest of the sofa but freezes the moment he sees a nurse enter the room.

  “Good morning,” Joona says to the nurse. “I’m here to visit Maja Stefansson.”

  “How nice,” she replies. “But I must warn you Maja has started to suffer from dementia. She tries to run away at every opportunity.”

  “I understand.”

  “Last summer she managed to get all the way to Stockholm.”

  The nurse leads Joona through a freshly scrubbed but dimly lit hallway and opens a door.

  “Maja?” she says. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  11

  An old woman is making her bed. She looks up and Joona recognizes her at once. It is the woman who approached him outside Adolf Fredrik Church and who showed him the tarot cards.

  “Are you Rosa Bergman?” Joona asks.

  “Yes,” she says, shyly holding out her hand.

  “You had a message for me,” he says softly.

  “Oh my goodness … I don’t remember,” she says, and sits down on her sofa.

  Joona swallows hard and steps closer.

  “You asked me why I’m pretending my daughter is dead.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t do that,” she reprimands him. “It’s not a nice thing to do at all.”

  “What do you know about my daughter?” Joona asks gently, taking another step. “Have you heard anything at all?”

  She smiles absently and Joona has to look away. He tries to think clearly. His hands are shaking. He goes to her tiny kitchenette to steady them and makes two cups of coffee.

  “Rosa, this is very important,” he says slowly as he sets the cups down on her coffee table. “It’s extremely important to me.”

  Rosa blinks a few times. It is clear she’s grown suddenly frightened. “Who are you? Has something happened to Mother?”

  “Rosa, do you remember a little girl named Lumi? Her mother’s name is Summa and you helped them to …”

  Joona falls silent as he sees her wandering, lost gaze.

  “Why did you come to Stockholm to find me?” he asks, although he knows his question won’t be answered.

  Rosa Bergman begins to cry. A nurse comes in and comforts her in a practiced manner.

  She says quietly to Joona, “Come with me. I’ll show you out.”

  They walk along the wide hall, designed for wheelchairs.

>   “How long has she been suffering from dementia?” Joona asks.

  “Things went quickly for Maja. We started to see the first signs last summer, so, for about a year. In the old days, they used to call it a second childhood, which is not so far from the truth.”

  “If she … if she’s able to think clearly at all …” Joona says seriously.

  “It’s unlikely,” the nurse says, but you never know. “I can call you.”

  “My card,” Joona says, and hands it to her.

  She looks impressed. “Detective Inspector?” She tacks it to the bulletin board behind her desk.

  12

  Joona steps into the fresh air and takes a deep breath. Perhaps Rosa Bergman did have something important to tell me, he thinks. Maybe someone sent her, but she began to suffer from dementia before she could do anything about it.

  Perhaps he’ll never know what the message was.

  It has been twelve years since he lost Summa and Lumi, and the last trace of them has disappeared with Rosa Bergman’s memory.

  Joona climbs into his car and wipes the tears from his cheeks. He closes his eyes for a moment, then starts the drive back to Stockholm. He’s barely gone thirty kilometers along the E45 when he gets a call from Carlos Eliasson, chief of the National Police.

  “There’s been a murder in Sundsvall. A girl,” Carlos says. “The call came in just after four this morning.”

  “I’m on leave,” Joona says. His voice is barely audible. He’s driving through a forest that offers glimpses of a distant silvery lake between the trees.

  “Joona? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  In the background, someone yells for Carlos.

  “There’s a damned board meeting I’ve got to go to, but I would like … You see, I just talked with Prosecutor Susanne Öst and she thinks that the police in Västernorrland do not intend to request our help in the case.”

  “So why call me?”

  “I told them we would send an observer anyway.”

  “Since when do we send observers?”

  “As of now,” says Carlos. He lowers his voice. “Things are kind of touchy around here these days. Remember the mess with the captain of the hockey league, Janne Svensson? The press had a field day with the police department’s incompetence.”

  “Because they didn’t find—”

  “Let’s not discuss it. That was Susanne Öst’s first big prosecution. I don’t want to say the press had it right, but the Västernorrland police could certainly have used you that time. They were just too slow and kept going by the book. Time ran out. Not unusual, perhaps, but it can lead to media unpleasantness.”

  “I can’t talk anymore,” Joona says, trying to cut short the conversation.

  “You know I wouldn’t trouble you if this was just an average murder case,” Carlos says. Joona can hear him breathing deeply over the phone. “The press is going to be all over this one, Joona. It’s extremely violent, extremely bloody. And there’s one especially nasty thing: the girl’s body has been arranged.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “She’s lying in bed with her hands over her face.”

  Joona says nothing. His left hand is on the wheel. The trees flash past as he drives, and Joona can hear a babble of voices in the background. Carlos waits patiently, and Joona turns off the E45 and onto the E14, leading east to Sundsvall, on the coast.

  “Just go there, Joona,” Carlos says. “Be nice and let them solve the case themselves, preferably before the press gets to town.”

  “So now I’m more than just an observer?”

  “No, no. That’s what you are, but stick around and keep an eye on the investigation. Make a few suggestions. Just keep in mind that you have no authority in the case.”

  “Because I’m under internal investigation?”

  “It’s important you keep a low profile.”

  13

  North of Sundsvall, Joona leaves the coast and turns onto Highway 86, which heads inland toward Indalsälven. After two hours, he’s close to where the home for troubled girls should be. He slows down and eventually turns onto a gravel road. Rays of sunshine stream past the dark trunks of the tall pines.

  A dead girl, thinks Joona.

  During the night while everyone slept, a girl was murdered and then set up, “arranged,” in her bed. According to the local police, the crime was brutal. They have no suspect and now it’s too late to close off the roads, but all officers in the area are on alert. Commissioner Olle Gunnarsson is leading the preliminary investigation but, Carlos tells Joona, the situation has been so chaotic, the girls have been so agitated, so uncontrollable, that the investigation has not yet begun.

  It’s ten by the time Joona reaches the home. He parks outside the line of police tape and gets out. The only sound he can hear is the buzz of insects in the ditch beside the road. Here the forest has opened into an enormous glade. Tree trunks, still damp with dew, shimmer in the sunshine. A hill slopes down to Lake Himmelsjö, and a metal sign beside the road reads BRIGITTAGÅRDEN, HVB: A HOME FOR YOUTH WITH SPECIAL NEEDS.

  Joona heads toward the group of red buildings, which form a square around a gravel yard. An ambulance, three police cars, a white Mercedes, and three other cars are parked near the buildings.

  A dog is barking. His leash is attached to a line running between two trees.

  An older man with a walrus mustache and a beer belly, wearing a wrinkled linen suit, is standing by the main building. He’s noticed Joona but does not acknowledge him. Instead, he taps a cigarette out of a full packet and starts to light it.

  Joona swings his legs over a second ring of police tape while the man reconsiders and puts the cigarette behind his ear.

  “Joona Linna from the National Police.”

  “Gunnarsson,” the man replies. “Detective Gunnarsson.”

  “I’m supposed to observe your work.”

  “As long as you don’t get in the way,” Gunnarsson says coldly, looking Joona over.

  Joona glances at the big house. The technicians are already busy. Floodlights are blazing in all the rooms, making the windows shine with an unnatural light.

  A white-faced officer comes out of the house. He’s holding his hand over his mouth and wobbles down the steps, then, leaning on the wall for support, he bends forward and throws up into the nettles by the rain barrel.

  “You’ll do the same once you’ve been inside,” Gunnarsson says, grinning at Joona.

  “What do we know so far?”

  “We don’t know a damn thing. The alarm came early this morning. The therapist in charge here called. His name’s Daniel Grim. It was four o’clock. He was at home on Bruksgatan in Sundsvall. He’d just got a phone call from the place. He didn’t know what was going on when he called us, but said the girls were screaming about a lot of blood.”

  “So it was the girls themselves who called him?” Joona asks.

  “That’s right.”

  “They didn’t call emergency? They called the therapist in Sundsvall?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Shouldn’t there be staff on-site?”

  “Apparently there’s not.”

  “But some adult?”

  “We don’t know. It’s impossible to talk to the girls,” Gunnarsson says. He sounds weary.

  “Which one of them made the call?”

  “One of the older ones”—Gunnarsson glances at his notebook—“by the name of Caroline Forsman. From what I understand, she was not the one who found the body, but the crime scene’s a mess, several of the girls have looked into the room. One of them got so hysterical they had to take her to the hospital. Let me tell you, it’s a gruesome sight.”

  “Who were the first officers on the scene?” Joona asks.

  “There were two, Rolf Wikner and Sonja Rask. And I got here around a quarter to six. I called the prosecutor. She must have shit her pants over it, since she called you guys in Stockholm. And now I have you hanging around my neck.?
??

  Gunnarsson smiles again at Joona. It’s not a friendly smile.

  “Any suspects yet?”

  Gunnarsson sighs and then says, as if he’s giving a lecture, “I’ve been at this sort of thing for a long time and my experience tells me to let the investigation take its course. Start from the beginning, find witnesses, secure evidence—”

  “May I go inside and take a look?” Joona asks, glancing at the front door.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it. We’ll soon have photos for you.”

  “I need to take a look at her body before it’s moved,” Joona says.

  “It’s blunt trauma,” Gunnarsson says. “The perpetrator is tall. After she died, the victim was placed on her bed and no one noticed anything until one of the girls had to go to the bathroom and stepped into blood that had come out from under the door.”

  “Was it still warm?”

  “You know, these aren’t the easiest girls in the world to work with,” Gunnarsson says. “They’re frightened and angry all the time and they’ve been arguing about everything we say and not listening at all. They’ve been screaming at us. Earlier this morning they tried to cross the police tape to fetch things from their rooms, iPods and jackets and so on, and when we tried to move them out to the smaller building, two ran off into the woods.”

  “Ran off?”

  “Oh, we caught up with them, and we’re trying to get them to return on their own. Right now they’re lying on the ground and demanding that Rolf give them a piggyback ride.”

  14

  Joona puts on his protective gear and walks up the steps into the big house. Inside the entrance, he can hear floodlight fans humming, and the air is already too warm. Dust motes float through the air.

  He walks across the protective mats that have been placed on the tiled floor. A picture has fallen from the wall and the broken glass glitters in the bright light. There are bloody footprints in all directions, to and from the front door.