The Glass Devil

Chapter 14

IRENE STORMED INTO HANNU Rauhala’s office with Sunday’s edition of GT in front of her.

“Hannu! Explain!”

He looked at the black headlines on the front page: “Church accountant who was questioned in SATANIC MURDERS is suspected of EMBEZZLEMENT!”

“Can’t. I only saw it yesterday too.”

Irene was so upset that her voice shook. “How could you talk to Kurt Höök about this?” Höök was GT’s famous crime reporter, and he had his sources. If you had a tip about a criminal activity, Höök was the person you called.

“I haven’t.” Hannu leaned back in his chair and looked her straight in the eye. Irene knew he wasn’t lying. Even if he might need money for the new house and the baby, he would never do something like that.

She threw the paper on Hannu’s desk and sat in the visitor’s chair.

“Honestly, I didn’t think you had. But who else could it have been? Only you and I and Sven knew about these rumors. I’ve been in London. And Sven would never speak with Kurt Höök. They detest one another. By the way, did you find anything that might point to there being some truth behind the accusations?”

“Nothing. The auditor showed me everything, going back ten years. There have never been any suspicions of embezzlement.”

“But this is still a catastrophe for Louise and Bengt Måårdh! It’s going to take a long time before they’re cleared.”

“Who has something to gain if these rumors come out?”

Irene wrinkled her brow. “Urban Berg.”

Hannu nodded.

Irene went into her office and did some serious thinking. She made her decision and placed a phone call. Later on in the day, she would make another, but it was still too early.

LOUISE MÅÅRDH bore obvious traces of the happenings of the last day. Her hair wasn’t combed, and her only attempt at makeup was sloppily swiped-on red lipstick, which clashed with her rust-colored sweater. She was wearing a light green T-shirt with a damp coffee stain on the front. Her dark-blue jeans were wrinkled and her feet were covered only by slippers which were worn at the heel. With a tired gesture, she motioned for Irene to come in.

The Måårdhs didn’t live in a rectory, but in a relatively new house outside Ledkulla. The house was decorated in pastels, which worked well with the modern furniture in light-colored birch. Bookshelves, filled with volumes, towered along the walls. The house had a soothing but sophisticated atmosphere. Even to Irene’s untrained eye, the rugs and art appeared to be of exceptional quality. She understood why suspicions and jealousy had grown over the years. “How can they afford it? It can never add up.” “She manages large sums of money. Think how easy it would be to let a thousand disappear from time to time.”

Louise led Irene into the light, airy living room. “Please, sit down,” she said dully.

Irene sat in a graceful armchair that was covered in light-gray suede. It was really comfortable. Louise sank down heavily onto the gray leather couch across from her. Irene felt uneasy and started, rambling, “I understand that this is terrible. We’re doing everything we can to try to find out what might have happened. It was one lead among many others we were looking into. Just routine. . How GT got ahold of it, we don’t know.”

“I can’t go to work. We’ve been hung out to dry in the press and already judged and found guilty. It doesn’t matter if I’m cleared eventually. People will always whisper ‘No smoke without fire’ and the like. Anonymous calls have already begun. I don’t even dare to go out and get the mail.”

“Has the press called?”

As if in reply, the sound of a ringing telephone cut through the room. After two rings, it fell silent. Someone at the other end of the house answered. Bengt must be home, thought Irene.

“They call all the time. It’s not that difficult to figure out which church accountant has been involved in the investigation of the Satanic Murders. There’s just one. Me.”

Her voice was still creepily toneless. But she couldn’t maintain her self-control any longer. Heavy sobs were wrenched from her and tears ran down her cheeks. Irene managed to find a clean tissue in one jacket pocket; she held it out to Louise, who took it.

Irene’s sympathy for Louise was mixed with growing anger. False rumors are evil, unpleasant, cruel. . and impossible to defend oneself against. Resolutely, she moved next to Louise on the sofa. Anger toward the person who had caused all this unnecessary pain made her voice sound cold.

“Listen and I’ll tell you what happened. Urban Berg came to see me at the police station and told me that Sten Schyttelius suspected you of embezzling money from the parish. Because this is a major homicide investigation, naturally we have to follow every lead we get. The risk of someone’s being revealed as an embezzler would theoretically be a motive for murder-”

Irene didn’t get any farther. Louise jumped up, her apathy and tears replaced by anger.

“Urban Berg! That drunken, hypocritical fool! I’m going to kill him!”

It probably wasn’t the wisest choice of words under the circumstances, but Irene understood. However, Bengt Måårdh looked startled when he stopped, hesitantly, on the threshold to the living room.

“But sweetheart, who is it who’s. .” he said awkwardly. His brown eyes behind his glasses were helplessly confused.

“Urban Berg! That damned Urban! He’s the one who’s behind the whole thing!”

It took them almost ten minutes, using all their powers of persuasion, to calm Louise sufficiently so that Irene could explain.

“Listen, Louise. This is what I think we should do,” Irene said at last.

THE FIRST thing Irene did when she entered her office was to call him. She had his direct number.

“Höök!” he answered briskly.

“Irene Huss here.”

“Well, hello!”

He sounded sincerely happy and Irene felt a stab of guilt for what she was about to do. But for Louise and Bengt’s sake, she had to pull herself together. None of this how’s-it-going-let’s-go-have-a-beer nonsense! Though it was usually fun to do that with Kurt. That would have to come later. First, he needed to make things right.

“Hello to you. I’m calling because you’re going to do an interview.”

A brief, surprised silence ensued. “I am? An interview with who?” he asked.

“Me.”

The next pause was considerably longer. It was obvious that he was on the defensive. “Really? About what?”

“You’re risking a prosecution for slander! And you’ll lose.”

“Wait a second, sweetheart. . ”

“I’m not your sweetheart! You didn’t check your source, and it has had disastrous consequences for the persons identified. Your information is based on pure lies and spite. Louise Måårdh has never been suspected of embezzlement or been the subject of a police investigation.”

“But I called and checked with the auditor. He wasn’t there, but. . a person close to him confirmed that the police had been there and checked the accounts.”

“That’s correct. We checked out the tip. But we didn’t find any irregularities whatsoever. Neither the auditor nor anyone else has any suspicions either. There’s no official police report or even a decision to investigate, so there’s no reason for prosecution. No one has ever put forth any valid suspicions about Louise Måårdh, just malicious slander and nothing else!”

Höök was silent. Irene continued, and in a pedagogical tone. “Assistant Rector Urban Berg tricked you, and me too. He came here and told me that Sten Schyttelius suspected that Louise Måårdh had embezzled money. No one else has ever heard anything like that and, as is commonly known, Sten Schyttelius is dead. Urban Berg probably thought it was safe to claim that a dead man had uttered suspicions about financial swindles. He lied to my face.”

“But why? Who could conceive of a pastor who lies?”

“In order to get rid of his toughest competitor for the rector’s position. Berg has two convictions for drunk driving. The only thing Bengt Måårdh has is a reputation as a ladies’ man-and actually, now that I think of it, that charge also came from Berg. Even if it is finally established that the accusations against Louise are unfounded, the decision about the new rector will have been made: Urban Berg would have become the rector of Kullahult. We’ve been joking during the investigation and saying that the pastors in this case are ‘petty gossiping pigs,’ but Urban Berg is something else. He’s a liar and a schemer.”

Kurt sighed. “And what do you think we should do about it?”

“Expose Urban Berg. We’re going to tell the public just what happened. I’m going to pull out the old drunk-driving convictions. I’m going to recount exactly what he said when he came to see me last week. Of course, we’re going to make it very clear that Louise Måårdh is innocent. You’re going to write the whole truth.”

“Is there any foundation to the charge that Mr. and Mrs. Måårdh spent a suspicious amount of money in the last few years?”

Irene smiled as she replied. “Bengt told me that he and his brother inherited a large sum of money from a childless uncle a few years ago. Neither Louise nor Bengt told anyone else about this inheritance, so that there wouldn’t be a lot of gossip.”

“And I’ll write that as well,” Kurt determined.

“Of course.”

“Poor Urban Berg. And poor me.”

“No one feels sorry for either of you. The least you can do is try to make things right. Innocent people have been hurt. Remember, there must be bold headlines on the front page!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll do it.”

“WELL. TWO days in London at our expense, and the only thing you come home with is a bandage on your forehead.”

Superintendent Andersson drummed his fingers on his desktop. Irene had just finished her account of her trip to London. They were reviewing the case in the afternoon, since morning prayers had been cut short because the superintendent had had to go to a superintendents’ meeting. With good reason, it could be assumed that this was one cause of his bad mood.

Another was that Jonny Blom had called in sick again. Since the unit was understaffed, if a single person was missing it was immediately felt. The ones who remained nearly collapsed under the requirements of the job. Work accumulated on their desks. Prioritizing was tough. It wasn’t easy explaining to the little old lady who had been threatened with a knife and robbed of a hundred and forty-three SEK, when she called for the seventh time in three days, that this investigation didn’t have the highest priority. For her, what had happened was a nightmare. For the police, it was yet another piece of paper on their desks. Maybe they would catch the culprit if there were further similar attacks in the area. If they were lucky, they might get a good description. If not, that report would just sink farther down under the pile of new cases.

“I actually think it provided us with a lot of new information. For example, I learned that Rebecka brought Christian Lefévre to Sweden last summer. They drove to Kullahult but never met her parents or brother. They drove up to Stockholm to discuss a job for Save the Children. Then they flew straight home to London again from Stockholm, without getting in touch with her parents,” said Irene.

“She never told her parents that they had been by the rectory?” Fredrik asked.

“I asked, and she said no.”

“What did they do for Save the Children?” Hannu wondered.

“No idea. That was the last question I was able to ask before she collapsed. Maybe we should contact Save the Children in Stockholm?”

“What the hell? They can’t have anything to do with the murders!” the superintendent exclaimed.

It really wasn’t one of his better days. Irene was overcome by a strong desire to send him over to Donna Thompson. Partly to get rid of him for a while, and partly because it probably would do him some good. But Donna would be disappointed. A pale and chubby bald superintendent with high blood pressure wasn’t what she had wished for. It was probably better for all involved if Andersson remained at the station in Göteborg.

“I know that it may be a dead end. But we don’t have any other leads, except for the computers, in this investigation. The only thing we know is that the computer screens were marked with bloody pentagrams. And that all the information on the hard drives was erased. Sten Schyttelius used computers. Jacob Schyttelius used computers. Rebecka works with computers at the highest level, as does Lefévre. The only one who didn’t have anything to do with computers was Elsa Schyttelius.”

“Where are the removable disks?” Hannu interjected.

“We haven’t found a single one,” Fredrik said.

“Exactly. There should be loads of them. Not least for backups,” Irene agreed.

“What exactly do Rebecka and that guy do?” Fredrik asked.

“Lefévre was communicative when I asked about their work. Apparently, most of it has to do with Internet security questions. How to stop sabotage and things like that.”

“What does that have to do with the murders?” the superintendent wanted to know.

“Perhaps nothing at all. But maybe it has to do with other things. When it comes to the Satanic lead, we’ve hit a dead end and can’t get any farther. What if Sten Schyttelius came across something completely different when he was searching for the Satanists? Something that was threatening enough to one or several people that they decided to kill him? That would explain why Elsa and Jacob were also killed. The murderer didn’t want to risk that Sten Schyttelius might have told the people closest to him about what he had found.”

It became quiet in the room. Eventually, Hannu said, “Then Rebecka is still in danger.”

“I’m afraid so. The murderer can’t know if Sten or Jacob had time to reveal anything to her. She seemed to feel a great deal of anguish and she was very frightened.”

“But why can’t the chick spit out what she knows?” Fredrik asked.

“Rebecka is a private person. Maybe she has no idea what it’s all about. Maybe she has a faint idea but doesn’t want to admit it to herself, suppressing everything that’s threatening. Maybe she’s in denial. I don’t know.”

“If the murderer took the time to destroy the hard drives, then he may have also destroyed the diskettes or removable disks. But maybe he still has them, so he can use the information they contain. Maybe they’re hidden somewhere in the area,” Fredrik suggested.

“Or they’re with the murderer,” Hannu added.

It would have been meaningless to destroy the hard drives and leave any removable disks. All the important information that was on the hard drives would also have been backed up, unless they had neglected this step. Had they? Not everyone was conscientious enough to back up their data.

“Could we have missed a place in the houses where you can hide discs or diskettes?” Irene asked, without much hope.

“Hardly. The houses have been gone over with a magnifying glass. Remember, the technicians found the hiding place behind the panel in the cottage,” Fredrik answered.

“The hiding place, yes. . Rebecka said that was used as a kind of safe. Who needs a safe in a cottage?” Irene asked.

“Maybe they feared a break-in. Break-ins at summer cottages are rising astronomically,” the superintendent muttered.

“But it wasn’t that far to the rectory. Why did they need a hiding place for important things at the cottage?” Irene persisted.

“Maybe he needed to hide the bottles from the wife,” Fredrik suggested.

“But according to Rebecka, everyone in the family knew about the hiding place.”

“What’s the guy like?” Hannu asked. A certain confusion arose until they concluded that he meant Christian Lefévre.

“A John Lennon lookalike who’s a thoughtful employer. He’s very worried about Rebecka. Overprotective. He’s tried to keep the police away from her. Having met Rebecka, I now understand him better. She really is in bad shape,” said Irene.

“Is it possible that she’s pretending to be sicker than she really is?” Andersson asked, with a hint of interest in his voice.

“No. She’s terribly ill. And Dr. Fischer told Gl. . Inspector Thompson that he had begun treating her for depression last fall. He seems to be a well-known doctor. Nice office.”

“And Lefévre and Rebecka don’t seem to have something going on?” Fredrik wondered.

“No. Not that I could tell.”

“Irene has to go back,” Hannu said, looking at the superintendent.

Andersson turned red. “That’s not possible. Do you know what it costs?”

“Rebecka holds the answer,” Hannu said.

“Possibly. But we’ll wait. She’s too damn sick to help us, according to Irene.”

Irene decided it was appropriate to break into the conversation. “I’ve spoken with the pastor at the Swedish Seaman’s Church in London. He promised to get in touch when Rebecka improves.”

“Then we wait until then,” Andersson concluded.

IT TOOK quite a while before Irene managed to get ahold of the right person. The one who had been most involved in the investigation was on Easter vacation in Idre but after a good deal of wandering about the telephone exchange, she was able to speak with an officer named Lisa Sandberg. Irene introduced herself and explained the reason for her call.

“My question, then, is what kind of work Rebecka Schyttelius and Christian Lefévre did for you at Save the Children.”

“It’s no secret from the police, even if I don’t want you to spread it around. There are probably a lot of people who would like to see Schyttelius’s and Lefévre’s heads on a platter,” Lisa Sandberg said seriously.

“The information will remain confidential. Only the investigation team will learn of it,” Irene assured her.

“Okay. What happened was that, out of sheer luck, we received a tip about a network of pedophiles who were spreading child pornography on the Internet. They had created a Web community, which is like a closed club, on the Internet. We traced them but didn’t have the ability to get into their archives of pictures and films.

“Then someone in our group mentioned Rebecka Schyttelius and that she worked with a very clever guy. They had done similar jobs for the WHO. We contacted Rebecka, and she and her partner came here. We gave them all the information we had, and they went back to London and started to work from there. They were able to get access to the group without being discovered. It turned out that there were fifty-seven people, from all over Scandinavia, in the community. They had a bulletin board and a chat site where they met at certain times and discussed pictures and fantasies. This is the largest child pornography ring ever identified in the Nordic region.”

“I remember reading about it in the paper last winter. There were a lot of people who one wouldn’t have suspected would ever be arrested for something like that.”

“A professor of comparative literature who was about to retire, a female municipal commissioner who was a mother of four, a famous Danish furniture designer. . Well, there were a lot of surprises. But that’s what we learned from this investigation: It’s never possible to predict who’s going to be obsessed with child pornography.”

“How were you able to identify all of these people?”

“It was very difficult. Everyone used nicknames and anonymous E-mail addresses. It was Rebecka’s and Christian’s work that made it possible to locate so many.”

“Was it possible to identify all of them?”

“No. Five remained unidentified: two in Sweden, two in Norway, and one in Denmark.”

“What were the ‘names’ of the ones in Sweden?”

“Peter and Pan.”

“Were Peter and Pan connected? It almost sounds that way. Peter Pan.”

“No. We also thought that, but we found nothing to support it.”

“So Rebecka and Christian made their way into this group, and then revealed the identities of those involved?”

“Yes. They followed the group’s activities for a few months and collected evidence. For example, they found out when, where, and how the E-mail addresses had been used in connection with other activities on the Web. They systematically revealed who had hidden themselves behind nicknames. If I understood it correctly, they traced them through the computer. I guess there’s something called an IP address number. . I’m not very good when it comes to the technological aspect.”

“No, I understand. That’s why you asked Rebecka and Christian for help.”

“Yes. They did a fantastic job. The pictures and films are of the worst kind and show violent assaults on children. A grown man having sexual intercourse with a three-month old baby; small girls and boys only five or six years old being raped in front of the camera; and so on. The network held visual documentation of thousands of sexual assaults on children. You could say that the admission ticket to the club was that you submitted your own pictures or films to the archive.

“We’re in the process of trying to identify the children. It’s a difficult job. The pictures came from all over the world. All of us who have seen them have been sickened. They’re terrible images, and I’ve had problems sleeping and sometimes felt depressed-for no immediate reason-after viewing them. I realize that it’s the terrible pictures that pop up in my head that are affecting me.”

A thought struck Irene: Was it the work on child pornography that had triggered Rebecka’s depression last fall? If seasoned investigators were disturbed by the evidence, it didn’t sound too farfetched to think that Rebecka could have been affected even more. Was this something to bring up with Dr. Fischer and maybe Rebecka herself?

“Thank you for taking the time to tell me about this,” said Irene.

“It’s not a problem. It’s Save the Children’s mission to spread information about what’s happening on the Internet. Sexual assaults on children happen every day, and pictures move with the speed of light and are spread via the global network. They’re copied all the time on an unknown number of computers around the world. Naturally, also here in Sweden.”

“It feels terribly. . hopeless. What can you do?”

“That’s difficult to answer. The Web has a life of its own. There are no limitations of time or space. But we must never give up, for the sake of the children. They don’t have anyone but us. The average person doesn’t want to know about what’s going on and doesn’t want to hear us talk about it. They cover their ears and pretend they don’t know anything. We’re talking about the majority of the adult population. But the thing is that if they do know what’s going on, but don’t do anything, they’re accessories. That’s my opinion.”

Irene agreed with her. She had investigated a few cases of incest over the years. Strikingly often, adults near the vulnerable children suspected or knew what was going on, but didn’t do anything to help them.

After she had hung up the phone, Irene sat for a long time and thought about things. Could Rebecka have come across information about someone she knew during the investigation of the child pornography ring? Had she told her parents and brother? Had they used that information? Perhaps in the wrong way, since all three were dead.

The only one who could answer the questions was Rebecka. Hannu was right. Irene had to go back to London after the coming Easter Weekend.

ON TUESDAY morning, a young ornithologist phoned Superintendent Andersson. During his birdwatching on Sunday, he had found the remains of a campfire near the north side of Norssjön. At first he hadn’t looked closely at the ashes, but an impulse made him do just that before he left the area. He was certain that there had been fragments of computer diskettes in the remains of the fire. Thanks to the newspapers, everyone knew about the destroyed hard drives and the bloody pentagrams at the crime scenes. Still, it took him all day Monday to convince himself that his discovery might have something to do with the murders.

Andersson set up a meeting with him, so he could guide them to the site of the fire. Sven beeped Fredrik Stridh without getting a reply. Then he dialed Irene’s direct line. She was in and promised to come by his office immediately. The superintendent gave her his information and asked her to bring a technician with her to the meeting place.

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD birdwatcher stood, stamping nervously, at the agreed-upon place outside the pizzeria in Kullahult. An expression of disappointment was visible on his acne-covered face when Irene drove up in her unmarked car and introduced herself as a detective inspector. The question was what disappointed him the most: that she was a female police officer, or that he wouldn’t have a chance to ride in a police car with its blue lights flashing. Irene jumped behind the wheel again. Svante Malm sat in the back seat, a large technician’s bag next to him. The youth introduced himself as Tobbe Asp. He sat next to Irene in the front passenger seat and directed them toward Norssjön. They stopped at a small side road a few hundred meters before the gravel road that led to the Schyttelius family cottage. The weather was beautiful, even if it was still chilly. Wiser now, after her earlier forest wanderings, Irene had brought along a pair of rubber boots. With the birdwatcher in the lead, they tramped down toward the lake.

At the edge of the lake, they found the abandoned campfire in a deep crevice in the cliff. With a naked eye, Svante Malm determined that there were remains of diskettes in the ashes.

While Svante took care of the remains and investigated the area surrounding it, Irene drove the helpful Tobbe back to the pizzeria. He inquired if it would be possible to go along to the technical lab at the police station, like, follow the ashes he had found. Irene said conspiratorially that for reasons of procedure it could not be done, but that his discovery was invaluable. With that he seemed to be satisfied.