While he waited, Johan made coffee. He was puzzled by the nonchalance displayed by the police regarding the thefts. He happened to think it was terrible that cultural treasures were being offered on a lucrative market and disappearing-not just from the island of Gotland but from Sweden as a whole.
He rushed over to the fax machine when it started whirring. There were only seven reports. One had to do with the most recent burglary at the Antiquities Room. The rest concerned similar thefts from the antiquities warehouse and from various excavations.
One report caught his interest. A necklace had disappeared from the excavation at Frojel. The police report was dated Tuesday, June 29. The stolen item was an amber necklace with silver settings. It had been found in the earth on the previous day by the person who filed the report. She had put the necklace in a bag that was placed inside a box in one of the carts that stood lined up a short distance away from the excavation site. That was where the archaeologists stored their finds along with a computer and various tools and implements. When the person who filed the report went to look at her discovery the next day, it was gone. No one could explain how it had happened. The cart had been locked up for the night, and the lock was undamaged.
The person filing the report was named Katja Ronngren. Johan thought he recognized the name and began searching through his notes. He found the list of people who had participated in the same excavation course as Martina. Sure enough, there was the name.
Katja Ronngren was one of the students who had left the course after Martina's death.
She lived in Goteborg. Johan tried different information services until he tracked down her phone number. He called her up at once. He introduced himself and explained what he wanted to know.
"This is Katja's mother," the woman said. "Katja's not here."
"This is very important. How can I get hold of her?"
"Katja's on Gotland."
"But she left the course several weeks ago, didn't she?"
"She was only home for a couple of days. Then she went back to try to finish it after all."
"Have you heard from her since then?"
"Several times. She said that she couldn't stay at the youth hostel because it was booked up. So she's staying with some friends in Visby. You can call her on her cell. Do you want the number?"
They had checked the passenger lists from Destination Gotland without result. Ambjornsson had apparently not changed his mind and taken the boat instead of the domestic flight.
A large number of people had been questioned, but it had given them no leads. Knutas's colleagues from the NCP were extremely capable, but they hadn't come up with anything new, either. And Agneta Larsvik had been forced to take on another case back in Stockholm.
After the eight o'clock meeting, Knutas decided to leave police headquarters and follow in the footsteps of the murderer on his own. He told the switchboard that he'd be gone for several hours. Then he got into his old Benz and chugged off. The weather kept changing. It had rained during the night, and clouds were gathering in the sky in dark, threatening clusters as he drove south along the coast road. Right before Klintehamn he turned off at Warfsholm and parked outside the hotel. The place was deserted. The tourists had no doubt gone into Visby since the weather was bad.
He went up to the hotel porch and sat down at the same table where Martina and her friends had sat just over a month earlier. A chill wind was blowing, and it had started to drizzle. The water was gray, and from the harbor he could hear the machines roaring. It was far from the vacation paradise that he had encountered when he was last here with Karin Jacobsson. He stood up and looked toward the path that led to the youth hostel. That was where young Martina Flochten had presumably met her killer. Why in that particular spot?
He strolled along the pathway, heading in the same direction that Martina had taken, and then stopped in the middle, where the willows on either side formed a tunnel. They sheltered him from both the wind and the rain. Somewhere along here she had been attacked. Then the perpetrator must have dragged her across the parking lot to the lawn with the juniper bushes and finally down to the water where her ring was found. Knutas continued on, taking the route that he imagined the killer had taken. On this side of the shore he would have been well hidden from view, so no one would have bothered him. After he drowned her, he must have stuffed the body into his car and driven away. Knutas stood still and looked around for a moment. Had they arranged to meet? Did Martina have a secret that was not linked to any romantic involvement? During her stay in Sweden, had she gotten to know someone without anyone else finding out about it?
The investigative team had exhausted all possibilities with regard to the excavation course and the college. There had to be something else, something hidden.
Knutas's next stop was Vivesholm, where he walked through the wooded area over to the birdwatching tower. That was the place where Martina's body had been hung from a tree. He would never forget the sight he had encountered on that morning.
He walked all the way out to the end of the promontory. The landscape was wild and barren. It reminded him of the heaths of Northern Ireland where he and his family had taken a driving vacation several years earlier. The wind forced him to squint, and the drizzling rain ran down his face when he looked up at the sky. The chilly gray weather made it feel like fall. He looked in the direction of the boathouses at Kovik. In the rainy mist he could hardly distinguish the outline of the solitary little chapel that he knew stood there. The funeral for one of his best friends had been held in that chapel barely six months ago. It was a small limestone building that stood all alone, with narrow windows facing the sea. Many a seaman had been buried out there over the years.
Deep in his subconscious something awoke as he stood there in the wind and the rain. He thought about what Agneta Larsvik had said about the murderer's modus operandi. Suddenly Knutas knew exactly what he needed to do.
Katja Ronngren didn't answer the phone. Johan left a message, asking her to call him as soon as possible.
He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. What did it mean that Katja had reported a theft, and that she had dropped out of the course but later returned? Maybe nothing, but the thefts were making him uneasy.
He sat down at his computer and logged on to the Internet. He plugged in various words and searched at random for things that might have to do with relics found on Gotland. He got a lot of hits, but most of them he could screen out as uninteresting. Then he gave a start. An American Web site purported to be selling ancient artifacts from Gotland. Objects such as tools, implements, coins, and jewelry were offered for sale, quite openly. There was also a contact address. Johan had an idea. He typed in a pseudonym and wrote that he was interested in buying some of the objects. He asked for a reply ASAP.
The phone rang. It was Katja Ronngren. She confirmed that she had filed a report with the police but that subsequently nothing had happened. She had no idea who might be behind the thefts. She couldn't even venture a guess. On the other hand, she told Johan that Martina had also discovered that an object they had excavated was missing, and she had talked about filing a report. Katja didn't know whether anything had ever come of it. She had the feeling that Martina suspected someone, although she wasn't willing to admit it.
The phone call gave Johan pause. So Martina had been about to file a police report but had never gotten that far. Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have been killed. Were the thefts the motive? Someone who wanted at all costs to continue to steal but had felt his activities threatened by the girls who were on his trail? If that was the case, then Katja should have been threatened, too. It would have been logical for her to be killed first, since she had actually taken steps to file a report with the police. How did Staffan Mellgren come into the picture? Was he mixed up in the plundering? Johan sensed that the identity of the murderer might be found by looking closer into how the whole theft operation had been set up. It must all fit together somehow: the burglary at the Antiquities Room and the thefts from the warehouse and the excavation site. Now it turned out that goods were even being sold on the Internet. As far as the police were concerned, this should clearly be considered a crime. How were the Americans getting hold of ancient Nordic relics unless they had been stolen?