He sank down at the desk and pulled out a prescription pad from the desk drawer. Before he began to write, he rubbed his eyes and smiled sleepily at Irene.
“I’ve been up thirty-six hours, and I’m still in shock over what happened to Marianne. And now Linda can’t be found.… I’m tired to death.”
Irene noticed that Dr. Löwander was in fact a very attractive man, despite the weariness etched into deep lines around his eyes and mouth, and despite the few silver streaks in the hair by his temples and forehead. As always, unfair, Irene thought. Women go gray, men become distinguished. She made a mental note to call her hairdresser for a color and cut.
Dr. Löwander wrote some scrawls on the prescription pad and ripped off the page. With that same sleepy smile, he handed the prescription to Irene. His eyes were bloodshot from fatigue, but their green still shimmered.
Impulsively, Irene said, “Let me give you a lift home. I’ve got to get home, too, and if I stayed here, I wouldn’t be a very good advertisement for Löwander Hospital.” She gestured at her head, covered with bandages. Her protruding right ear was especially comical, packed into a compress carefully taped in place.
“Don’t worry. It will heal just fine. And yes, I’d be glad to have a ride home,” he replied.
Superintendent Andersson rolled into the door just as Sverker Löwander was rising to leave.
“Time to go home?” he asked.
Löwander nodded in response. Before he walked out the door, he turned back to Irene and said, “Could you wait just a minute? I need to change.”
The chief inspector raised an eyebrow meaningfully once Löwander had left. “So? You’re going out with the doctor?”
Why did she find herself blushing? Irene sat up straight and hoped some of the redness in her face was covered by the bandages. “I thought I could chat with him on the drive home. He’s the head doctor here, after all, and he must know a lot about his staff.”
Andersson agreed. “I interviewed him this afternoon. He says he didn’t know Marianne Svärd very well. Partly because she worked the night shift, partly because she wasn’t the chatty type. Pleasant and extremely professional about her work. And that’s all he’d say about her. On the other hand, he seemed very worried about Linda Svensson. Understandable, after the murder. He told me that Linda was a happy person and good at her job. Of course, he knows her better since she works the day shift. But to be honest with you, something tells me that Marianne’s murder and Linda’s disappearance are not related. The murder happened at the hospital. Linda was off duty then and now has disappeared from her home. We need to find the boyfriend. I called Birgitta Moberg and told her to flush him out.”
Andersson sank onto the desk chair, which groaned under his weight. He stared at Nurse Ellen’s back as she sorted pills into small red plastic holders.
“Excuse me,” Irene said politely.
Nurse Ellen turned and nodded.
“I’ve seen different nurses at this hospital all day, and I was struck by one thing. The nurses here are either very young or over fifty. Where are all the thirty- and forty-year-old ones?”
Nurse Ellen sighed deeply. “They were all laid off in the late eighties. The hospital closed an entire ward. Only we were left, but we were younger then.”
“How did Marianne Svärd, Linda Svensson, and Anna-Karin in ICU get their jobs?” Irene wondered.
“Three old nurses retired within six months of one another, so Marianne, Linda, and Anna-Karin were hired around the same time.”
“Are there more nurses retiring soon?”
“This year there will be three: Siv Persson, Greta at reception, and Margot Bergman in ICU.”
“I’ve already talked to both Margot Bergman and Greta—let me see … what was her last name?”
“Norén,” Ellen informed her.
“Right! Thanks. Neither of them seemed to know Marianne and Linda all that well. Nurse Margot thought that Marianne was a hardworking, pleasant person. And that was it.”
Ellen Karlsson gave Irene a long look before she said, “That seems reasonable. They’re pretty different in age. They wouldn’t be meeting each other on their off hours. Just at work.”
So Anna-Karin was the only other person who’d socialized with Marianne and Linda. Irene still felt that the murder and the disappearance were connected, even though her boss had a different opinion. She decided that she needed to keep a good eye on Anna-Karin. Although the young woman appeared flighty, maybe she knew more than she realized about the events of the last twenty-four hours. Or maybe there wasn’t a logical connection? So far there was no evidence that Linda Svensson had even been the victim of a crime, and Irene hoped with all her heart that she would turn up okay.
IRENE HAD TO give up her hopes of getting more information from Sverker Löwander during the drive home. First of all, he’d fallen asleep the instant he reclined the seat back. Second, he only lived two kilometers from the hospital, on Drakenbergsgatan.
As Irene swung into the driveway in front of Löwander’s home, she almost collided with a dark BMW backing out of the garage. It was one of the larger, newer models. Both drivers slammed on the brakes. The BMW’s door flew open, and a woman jumped out before the car had come to a complete stop. In three strides she’d reached Irene’s car.
“What the hell are you doing, pulling in to my driveway like that!” she yelled.
Sverker Löwander had been jarred awake. As the woman bent over to get a good look at Irene, who was already rolling down her window, his tired voice stopped them both.
“This is Inspector Huss. She was kind enough to drive me home after this hell of a day. I didn’t notice you offering to pick me up.”
Irene was startled at how quickly the woman’s face softened from twisted with rage to great beauty. It happened so fast that Irene wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.
This woman seemed slightly shorter than Irene. She had thick blond hair, cut slightly above her shoulders. In the light from the garage, Irene could see that she was deeply tanned. Since it was just the middle of February, Irene wondered if she had a private tanning bed.
“You know I can never pick you up on a Tuesday. My job ends at five, and my aerobics class starts at six-thirty. Why didn’t you just drive the Mazda home?”
Her voice was now pleasant but still had a slightly hard, metallic undertone. Irene wondered if she was hearing things. Perhaps she was just projecting her feelings onto a younger and more beautiful woman.
Löwander sighed. “I walked to work yesterday morning.” He heaved his weary body out of the car and walked through the open garage door. Irene heard a door open and close. She got out of her Volvo and reached out to shake hands.
“My name is Inspector Irene Huss.”
The woman’s hand was cool and her handshake surprisingly strong. “Carina Löwander.”
“Did you hear about what happened at the hospital?”
“Yes, Sverker called me from work this morning. But there was no time to talk.”
Carina Löwander looked at her wristwatch, cupped glass with a metallic blue face. She was making an obvious point. “Excuse me, but my class begins in fifteen minutes. And I’m the trainer,” she said with a smile.
She turned in her high heels and adjusted her fur coat before sliding gracefully into the BMW. The only thing Irene could do was get into her own car. She knew she didn’t have the same air, not with her scuffed boots, worn leather coat, and rusty Volvo. And a head covered in bandages. No competition with fur coats and tanned skin.
IRENE’S FAMILY HAD plenty of comments to make when she got home.
“What did you do to yourself?” her daughter Katarina exclaimed.