The Dead Of Summer

SUNDAY, 23 JULY

KNUTAS HAD TIPPED back his worn oak desk chair as he sat on the leather cushion, shiny with age. The appearance of the chair offered a stark contrast to the rest of the furnishings in his office. Police headquarters had been remodelled a couple of years earlier, and it was all Scandinavian design, with white walls; the old things had been replaced with plain, simple furniture made of light birch. But Knutas had refused to give up his favourite chair. It stimulated his thought processes, as did the pipe which he was now filling with the greatest attention. He rarely lit the pipe, but just fiddling with the aromatic tobacco helped him think.

He’d come back to headquarters, even though it was Sunday evening, because he wanted to go over the interviews that had been conducted over the weekend with the crew of the Russian coal transport. The results of the police raid had been meagre, at least from his perspective. They had confiscated hundreds of litres of Russian vodka, and a number of individuals had been arrested, suspected of illegal sales, but nothing new had surfaced that might propel the homicide investigation forward.

The search for the murder weapon was continuing without interruption. Everyone who lived on Gotland and had a licence for a gun had been checked, but nowhere had they been able to locate the Korovin gun that had been used for the killing. The police knew full well that a good many illegal weapons could be found in Swedish homes. But every few years a gun amnesty was conducted in the country for several months, when anyone could turn in their weapons to the police anonymously and without risking any sort of punishment. The last time this was done, they had collected 17,000 guns in three months.

Knutas leaned his head in his hands. There was something fundamentally wrong with this whole investigation, but he just couldn’t work out what it could be.