A Touch of Truth

by Bertil Falk

part 2 of 3

“My husband went to the summer cottage on July 4,” she said. “I was working and did not get there until July 17.”

“You were not in touch for thirteen days?”

She shook her head. “No,” she sighed. “Our summer cottage is far off the beaten track and the mobile doesn’t work very well in the forest. He brought a pile of books and he would repair the outhouse. There was a hole in the roof. He was always anxious to repair things and on our last visit there he found that hole in the roof of the outhouse. He covered it in a makeshift manner and intended to repair it this summer.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “When I found him like... like that... I didn’t think of anything else but calling the police. Why would he commit suicide? I don’t understand anything.”

“You went there on July 17?”

“Yes, I took the train and a taxi. When I found him shot dead with a gun in his hand and in that disgusting condition, I panicked. I rushed out, remembered the ignition key, went back inside, but I could not find any key.

“The smell was horrible. I rushed out again and saw the taxi disappearing on the forest road. I screamed, but the driver didn’t hear me. I had to walk a couple of kilometers, then suddenly the mobile worked and I called the police.”

She did not look happy. Of course not! Her reasons for being happy were very restricted.

“What’s your opinion?” she whimpered.

“We suspect that he shot himself on July 8 or 9,” he said. “The leaf for July 9 was still on the wall calendar.”

“He always made a point of removing the leaves every day,” she said.

“That emphasizes that it must have happened on July 8 or 9.”

Roland Franzén cleared his throat.

“Was your husband mixed up in some business that could have led to this...” He almost said incident, but checked himself. “This unpleasant occurrence?”

“I don’t think so. He was a common bank employee in the loan department.”

Roland Franzén let out a ‘Hm’.” Loan department? Bank clerk? Did he cook the books? Had he committed suicide because he thought that his crooked dealings would be discovered?

Aloud he said, “Your husband brought a pile of books, you said. It seems to me that he read Nancy books?”

She nodded. “He was very interested in books for young people.”

“Books for girls?”

“Yes, that was his specialty. He collected them,” she explained. “He used to write articles about different writers and their books.”

The widow left him. Roland Franzén had a lot to think about. Suicide was per se nothing for the police, unless it was a veiled murder. But if the reason for a suicide was a crime, then it belonged to the police. Östen Stormsjö had never fallen out of the law. In general terms he was a law-abiding citizen. Nor was his wife a suspect. The marriage was considered a 10 on a scale of 0 to 10. And nothing seemed to have been stolen from the summer cottage.

Gambling debts?

The victim used to buy a lottery ticket now and then.

Some kind of illness?

No signs of that!

People had many reasons for committing suicide.

They had found the bullet that went straight through Östen Stormsjö’s skull in just about the same way that another bullet had put an end to the Norwegian campaign of King Charles XII in 1718.

The bullet had penetrated into one of the wooden corners of the veranda.

Greta Lindberg, the secretary, entered the room and sat down at the edge of the desk.

“Good to have you back where you belong,” she said. “I’ve missed you. How do you like to be a senior citizen?”

“It’s crap,” he said. “Pensioning ought to be prohibited by law.”

She laughed.

“The Swedish retirement age has a touch of compulsion,” Roland Franzén added. ‘Doctors are not permitted to continue though they want to. Thank God many retired doctors go to developing countries and work for the Rotary Doctor Bank, but isn’t it disgraceful that they can’t work at home?”

“You’re back. Why do you complain?”

“For a few days, but do you think that they will take me back permanently? Oh no, not in Sweden.”

“How about lunch with me?”

He was not slow to swallow the bait.

* * *

“The answer from the forensic laboratory turned the investigation topsy-turvy. When the bullet that had been pulled out from the corner of the veranda was compared with bullets after test shooting with the weapon that had been found on the spot, it turned out that it was not the gun the man had been shot with. The dead man’s fingerprints were to be sure on the trigger, but had obviously been pressed on to it when the gun was put into his hand.

“Why on earth had someone killed Östen Stormsjö with a gun only to substitute the murder weapon for another gun? It was the same thing as screaming out to the world that what looked like a suicide, actually was a murder!”

The bold venture indicated a certain arrogance of a very unusual kind on the part of the murderer. As if the perpetrator was conscious of being safe, totally confident that there was not a single clue as to his or her identity.

Mapping out the dead man’s life was just about as rewarding as was the search for a reasonable motive. His wife’s doings during the days she had been separated from her husband was something of the most alibi-studded thing Roland Franzén had ever stumbled over.

In daytime, she had been busy at the travel bureau booking journeys to the Canary Islands for unimaginative Swedish tourists. Unimaginative? Well, is there anything more unimaginative than Gran Canaria? Would that be Thailand?

In the evenings she had a small role as a waitress in a play and the days she was free, she had always been together with some friends. They went to cinemas and restaurants. She had not even slept at home but stayed with one of her female colleagues. There was not one single hour during these days that she had been alone. Much less had she had the time and the opportunity to drive to the summer cottage to kill her husband.

Her husband’s colleagues had not much to say about him. A hard-working man, whose days were filled with work with bank customers, who got their loan applications granted or rejected. He used to take a short lunch all by himself.

His circle of acquaintances was not very helpful. Except for an insignificant remark made by one of the members of a bridge team he belonged to.

Well, there was nothing mysterious or strange about Östen. Once he muttered that he had had problems as a young man, that he had been accused of some kind of outrage; but he never elaborated.

It turned out that Östen Stormsjö lived in Strängnäs until he was 17 years old. Higher school certificate, bookseller’s assistant during summer vacations, military service in Lapland, nothing specific. By request, the bank checked his doings specially. They found no embezzlements and no other irregularities.

Roland Franzén went to Strängnäs, looked up at the cathedral tower, where in the 18th century a student had been sucked out into the air during a storm but had landed elegantly by spreading out his student cloak like a parachute. Thus foreshadowing Batman, all except Batman, according to Emanuel Swedenborg.

Roland Franzén met some people who had known Östen Stormsjö and he found that there was something they hesitated to tell him. There was something about the murdered man that was... well, embarrassing or something like that. At last an old man, who had seen little Östen grow from a saucy brat to teenager, opened the sealed bottle and let out the genie.

“I liked Östen, but his interest in small girls went too far,” he said.

“Child assaults?”

“You bet. When it dawned on people, he disappeared and he was quick about it. He has not been seen here since. That must be at least twenty years ago or so. How old was he when he was murdered?”

“What about his parents?” Roland Franzén avoided the question.

“Dead.”

“Brothers and sisters?”

“Only child,” the man attested what Roland Franzén already knew.

“Was there any mention of a suspected pedophile in the newspapers?”

“No, never. It stuck to rumors. Nobody reported to the police. In those days we didn’t use the word pedophile. We talked about ‘dirty old men’. But Östen was a young man.” In those days nobody thought of ‘dirty young men’.”

“The rumor could have been false?”

“Hardly. Why did he disappear? His disappearance more or less confirmed that he was guilty.” The man paused. “At least in people’s eyes. And remember that after he was gone, the assaults ceased. But like most other things in life, Östen and his interest in small girls were forgotten.”

“Maybe someone didn’t forget,” Roland Franzén murmured.

* * *

“He returned to Malmö and what he had learned could be a clue. Östen Stormsjö had to all appearances been happily married, but that did not mean that his interest in small girls necessarily had gone up in smoke. He could have been using small girls, a parent found out and decided on getting rid of him. The theory was fairly good, and all of a sudden the Nancy book fell into a proper place. What if the man had got a kick out of reading books for girls?”

* * *

Proceed to part 3...