Dark Angel (Anders Knutas 6)

or on his coffee cup. According the waitress, the man was wearing thin leather gloves, typical driving gloves with little air holes, the kind people used to wear in the sixties, if you’ll recall. The perp sat there for about ten minutes, tops, before he vanished without leaving behind so much as a strand of hair.’
    ‘Did the waitress talk to him?’ asked Jacobsson.
    ‘No, he didn’t say a word after paying for his coffee. We do have a good description of the perp, although it sounds as if he was wearing a disguise, so I’m not sure how much the statements from the witnesses can really tell us,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But there’s one thing we do know, at any rate. The killer is a man. The question is: Who is he?’
    ‘Just a minute,’ said Knutas.
    He got up and pulled down the white screen at the front of the room. Jacobsson, who sat closest to the switch, turned off the lights. Knutas used his computer to project an image on the screen. He’d had only a few minutes to tell Wittberg about his theory. No one else knew the identity of the killer they were looking for. The silence in the room was palpable.
    A face appeared on the screen. It was a passport photo of a man in his forties. He was blond with dark eyes and an open, pleasant-looking face. It was obvious that he bore a striking resemblance to Veronika Hammar. The man was clean-shaven, and his hair was cut short. He looked like rather a decent person as he mustered a vague smile for the camera. Hardly the image of a double murderer. Knutas clicked to bring up another photo of the same man.
    This one had been culled from the police records, taken fifteen years earlier. An unshaven young man with a crew cut and a wild look in his eyes , staring with hostility at the camera. Two very different portraits of the same man.
    ‘This is the eldest brother, Mats. According to his boss, he’s been in Mallorca for the past two weeks. But that’s not true. The charter company says that Mats never showed up at the airport to check in for his flight. Instead, he’s been shuttling back and forth between Stockholm and Gotland. I think this is the man we’re after.’
    The news caused a ripple to pass through the room.
    ‘So it’s the half-brother. The one who grew up with foster families,’ said Smittenberg with a sigh.
    Everyone was staring at the photo on the screen. Knutas told them what Mikaela Hammar had said about Mats Andersson and then added more details.
    ‘He’s forty-one years old and lives in Södermalm. Veronika gave birth to him at Visby Hospital in 1966. She was only fifteen at the time. Nobody knows who the father is. The birth records list the father as “unknown”. Mats is a bachelor with no children. He works at a silver-plating company in the industrial district of Länne in Haninge.’
    ‘A silver-plating company? What the hell is that?’ asked Wittberg.
    ‘They apply the finished surface to metal. And according to the CEO, there’s a specific substance that’s needed for the manufacturing process. Potassium cyanide.’
    Knutas paused for effect as his colleagues digested this piece of information.
    ‘The man has quite a troubled past. He grew up with a whole series of foster families, and has been convicted of assault on numerous occasions. He has also been arrested for receiving stolen goods and for petty theft. But he’s had a clean record for the past ten years. Seems he’s been behaving himself.’
    Sohlman looked at his watch.
    ‘It’s seven fifteen. The murder was committed around three thirty. So where is Mats now?’
    ‘He hasn’t left Visby, at least not using his own name,’ said Knutas. ‘The boat for Nynäshamn left Visby at four forty-five, and he could have easily made it on board. It arrives in Nynäs at eight o’clock, and we’ve asked to have all the passengers remain on board until the police search the whole ship. It’s going to cause a big ruckus, but that can’t be helped.’
    Memories of the previous year’s hunt for a murderer flickered through Knutas’s mind. On that occasion the police had also been forced to delay a Gotland ferryboat, but their search had proved fruitless, even though the killer was actually on board. Knutas cast a surreptitious glance at Karin. A searing pain passed through his body as he remembered what a dilemma he was in. Was he really going to keep her secret?
    Then he went on. ‘Our colleagues in Stockholm have been to his flat, but he wasn’t there.