Murder in Malmö: The second Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) by Torquil MacLeod

there would be little chance of retrieving them.
    Hakim was surprised to see Anita in so early. It was now eight.
    ‘Good weekend?’
    ‘Yes.’ He smiled at some memory. ‘Very good. And you?’
    ‘Yeah. By the way, I called into see Pelle Munk yesterday.’
    Hakim looked at her expectantly.
    ‘Nothing of any use.’
    Hakim took a magazine out of his bag. ‘I’m afraid this is going to complicate things.’ He handed it over to Anita. ‘Pages 38, 39 and 40.’
    Anita opened it. ‘Not the sort of thing I would have expected you to read.’
    ‘It’s my mother’s.’
    Anita found the relevant feature – a big glossy spread about Jörgen Lindegren’s unveiling of Dawn Mood . There were several photos of grinning people with champagne flutes and canapés. Among them Jörgen and Michaela Lindegren, Commissioner Dahlbeck, the cream of Malmö society and a far from excited Pelle Munk, whose strained smile spoke volumes. He’d rather be a hundred miles away. And there, prominently, was the painting. Any potential thief would only have to see the magazine, and the house, the room and the position of the painting were all displayed in glorious colour. All that was missing was a big finger pointing the way.
    Anita managed a strangled cry as she slapped the magazine down on her desk. ‘Well, that’ll save doing a lot of pointless interviews.’
    ‘It still doesn’t explain how the thief waltzed off with the picture without having to break in.’
    ‘I know,’ Anita said reflectively. ‘Makes one think it’s an inside job. Insurance number?’ She waved a hand in the direction of the magazine. ‘He certainly went to a lot of trouble to make sure the world knew he had the painting.’
    ‘If he needed the money, wouldn’t he make sure the most expensive painting in his collection got taken? He had a Corot in there.’
    ‘You do know your art.’
    ‘If the Corot had been taken, the insurance would be more.’
    ‘Nevertheless, we need to check out Lindegren’s financial situation. Is he in trouble? And have a word with his insurance people. How much it was insured for, and if Lindegren has all his works of art covered. If it was only the Munk, then we might be onto something.’
    ‘I think I know how it was done.’
    Moberg raised an eyebrow. He needed all the help he could get with the case, and he was hoping that anything Eva Thulin could supply might point him in some more helpful direction. That’s why he had made the effort to turn up at Thulin’s office.
    ‘I’m still not completely sure of the substance that was used to create the actual gas... the hydrogen cyanide. Problem is that there’s no physical evidence left. However, what was nagging me was that the pellets or crystals used would have been dangerous to the person handling them. More importantly, if they were just placed in the drain then they would probably have started working straight away. They turn into a lethal gas once exposed to the air. I’m pretty convinced that Ekman’s death wasn’t caused by the water in the shower reacting directly with the crystals.’
    ‘So how on earth could the killer set off the crystals at precisely the right time?’
    ‘That’s the clever bit. We’ve searched the drains and the sewer outside and, believe it or not, we found the answer. We found a minute trace of jelly.’
    ‘Jelly?’ Moberg snorted incredulously.
    ‘Yeah. Ordinary jelly. Those cubes of concentrated jelly you can buy in any supermarket.’
    ‘This is ludicrous.’
    ‘Not as daft as it sounds. Brilliantly simple, in fact. Our killer needed the crystals to activate when Ekman was in the shower. I think that the perpetrator pushed the crystals or pellets into the jelly. Then he placed the jelly under the drain cover. Along comes Ekman, gets in the shower and turns it on. The hot water from the shower then melts the jelly. That, in turn, releases the crystals into the air. Ekman probably started to feel the effects and must have