Unspoken
uncertainly.
“Come here and sit down,” he said, patting the sofa cushion next to him.
From the clock on the wall she saw that it was two in the morning. This whole thing was crazy, but she did as he said.
It took only a second before he was on top of her. He was rough and determined.
When he forced himself into her, she bit herself on the arm to keep from screaming.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23
At the next day’s morning meeting everyone was talking about the discovery of the murder weapon. It was a breakthrough in the investigation, of course. By all accounts, the blotches on the hammer were blood. The hammer had been sent to the Swedish Crime Lab for DNA analysis. But there were no fingerprints.
Most of them had seen on the evening news how the hammer was discovered. Naturally Kihlgård made jokes about the police officers’ comments that were caught on tape, and he drew a good deal of laughter from the others. Knutas was only moderately amused. He was annoyed by the extent of the information presented in the news story. At the same time, he understood that the reporter was just doing his job. It was so typical that Johan should end up right in the thick of things. He had an incredible talent for showing up exactly when things were happening. Everything had gone so fast out there that no one had thought of reining him in before it was too late. Yet, once again Johan had provided new facts that would benefit the investigation, even though the police didn’t know the source of his report about the witness at the harbor. After the case with the serial killer that past summer, Knutas had learned to trust the persistent TV reporter, although Johan could drive him crazy with all the information he managed to dig up. How he did it was a mystery. If he hadn’t become a journalist, he would have made an excellent police detective.
The news program had started off with a long segment about the murder, the latest developments in the investigation, the payments Dahlström had received under the table, and the witness who had seen Dahlström with an unidentified man down at the harbor.
“Why don’t we start with the unreported carpentry work?” said Norrby. “We’ve interviewed four people who hired Dahlström in addition to Mr and Mrs Persson. Two of them are members of the same folklore society as the Perssons. They all said more or less the same thing. Dahlström did a number of minor jobs for them. They paid him for the work, and that was that. Evidently he conducted himself in an exemplary manner, showed up when he was supposed to, and so on. They knew, of course, that he was an alcoholic, but he had been referred to them by friends.”
“So it was through a referral from others that they got in touch with him?” asked Wittberg.
“Yes, and none of them had any complaints about his work. We’re going to keep questioning people.”
“The murder weapon wasn’t the only thing we found yesterday. We also found his camera. Sohlman?”
“It’s a professional camera, a Hasselblad. Dahlström’s fingerprints were found on it, so we’re confident that it did in fact belong to him. There was no film in it, and the lens was broken, so someone had treated it rather roughly.”
“Maybe the murderer took the film,” Jacobsson put in. “The darkroom had been searched, which indicates that the murder possibly had something to do with Dahlström’s photography.”
“ Possibly . At the same time, we’ve received reports from SCL on the samples that were taken from Dahlström’s apartment and darkroom. SCL have really outdone themselves—we’ve never received such quick results before,” Sohlman murmured to himself as he leafed through the documents. “All the prints from glasses, bottles, and other objects have been analyzed. Many are from Dahlström’s buddies who visited his apartment. But there are also prints that can’t be ascribed to any of them. They may be from the perpetrator.”
“Okay,” said Knutas. “At least we know that much. As if the information about Dahlström’s unreported carpentry work wasn’t enough, Johan Berg has also found a witness claiming to have seen Dahlström with a man down at the harbor last summer. Unfortunately, this witness does not want to talk to the police.”
From his notes he rattled off the description of the man at the harbor.
“They were standing in a narrow passageway between two containers and talking, around five in the morning. The witness
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