Part 36 (1/2)

'So he's spent thirty years camping?'

A short, weary sigh. 'We believe he pretended to be from north Africa,' Q said, 'as part of the group of illegal immigrants who drift around the countryside looking for seasonal work.'

'A farm labourer?' Annika said.

'They move from place to place, from country to country, wherever the crops are ready to harvest.'

Annika nodded unconsciously. 'And no one says anything about anyone else,' she said.

'Total loyalty,' Q said. 'No one cares if someone disappears for a few weeks, or a few months, or for ever.'

'And aren't surprised if you turn up again,' Annika filled in.

'No questions,' Q said.

'Cash in hand at the end of the day.'

'No bank accounts,' Q said.

'No rent to pay, no family to provide for.'

'A lot of the seasonal labourers have families,' Q said. 'Some of them provide for their extended family as well, but not our Ragnwald.'

'He picks grapes and oranges and shoots politicians in his spare time.'

'When he's not working in the docks or mines or somewhere else where he can be invisible and, in practical terms, unpaid.'

They were silent for a while.

'But why haven't you got him if he's back in Sweden now?'

Q gave a deep sigh. 'It's not as easy as you seem to think,' he said. 'Killers who kill with no apparent motive are the hardest to catch. Take the Laser Man, he shot ten randomly chosen people in Stockholm over the course of a year and a half before he was caught, and he lived in the middle of the city, had his own car, said h.e.l.lo to his neighbours on the stairs. In other words he was a rank amateur. The man we're dealing with now has killed four people that we know of. There's nothing to connect them apart from the boy witnessing the first murder. The methods are completely different, Ekland was run over, the boy's throat was cut, Sandstrom was shot. No fingerprints, the fibres we found don't match from one crime scene to the next.'

'That could just mean he changed his clothes and wore gloves.'

'Exactly,' Q said.

'No witnesses?'

'The best witness, the boy, is dead. Nothing else had contributed anything significant at all.'

Annika listened back to these latest comments in her mind.

'Four,' she said. 'You said four.'

Q was blank. 'What?'

'There's been another murder,' she said, sitting up in bed without thinking. 'He's done it again. Who?'

'You must have misheard me. I said three.'

'Rubbish,' Annika said. 'Someone's been killed in the last couple of days and another Mao quote has been sent to the relatives. Either you tell me exactly what's happened or I start ringing round.'

He laughed. 'An empty threat. If someone's been killed the media would already be circling like vultures over the story.'

She responded to his laughter with a snort. 'That's c.r.a.p. Not if it's a woman who's been killed. Her husband has probably already been arrested, and it would surprise me if even the local paper gave it their standard couple of lines.'

'Standard?'

'Family quarrel ends in tragedy. Not nice, not interesting, and impossible to write about. Tell me what you know and we can come to an arrangement.'

The silence was thick with thought for several seconds.

'I've said it before,' he said eventually. 'You're slightly creepy. How the h.e.l.l could you know that?'

Annika leaned back on the pillows again, a fleeting smile crossing her face.

'And she's got no connection to the other three?'

'Nothing we've found yet. Margit Axelsson, a nursery teacher in Pitea, married, two adult daughters, strangled on the landing of her home. Her husband was working s.h.i.+fts and found her when he got home.'

'And was immediately suspected of the murder?'

'Wrong. The time of death was before midnight, and he was in the liaison office at F21 with his colleagues until he finished his s.h.i.+ft at one thirty.'

Annika felt the adrenalin reach her brain and automatically stretch her legs out, forcing her to sit up straight.

'F21? He works at F21? Then there is a connection: the explosion of the Draken.'

'We've already checked. He did his national service at I19 in Boden, wasn't attached to the airbase until nineteen seventy-four. The fact that a murder victim's husband's employer happens to coincide with a crime scene which may have a connection to Ragnwald isn't enough to get my pulse racing; unlike yours, apparently.'

'The quote,' she said. 'What does it say?'

'Hang on a moment . . .'

He put down the phone, opened a drawer, looked through some papers, cleared his throat and came back on the line.

'People of the world, unite and defeat the American aggressors and all their lackeys. People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.'

They thought in silence for a while, the swaying stopped.

'”Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed,”' Annika said. 'Monsters. Of all kinds. Including nursery school teachers.'

'She taught for the Workers' Educational a.s.sociation as well. Ran courses in napkin-folding and ceramics. We're not paying too much attention to the quotation; I don't think you should either. The woman putting the profile together thinks he uses them as messages, like your lipstick kisses.'

'Have you got someone in from the FBI?' Annika asked, swinging her legs off the side of the bed, warm feet against cold wood floor.