The bitter harvest

The first victim was not a person, but a swan. It floated, porcelain-white and eerily serene, on the glassy surface of Lake Helgasjön at dawn. Inspector Mats Lundström, walking his aging terrier, Nisse, along the familiar path, spotted it. He knelt, the damp morning grass soaking into the trousers of his worn suit, and saw the unnatural stillness, the unseeing black bead of an eye. He fished it out with a fallen branch. No visible injury. Its neck, a perfect question mark against the grey mist, posed the first one. By midday, the question would become a scream.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The call came as Lundström was stirring a third teaspoon of sugar into his station coffee, a futile attempt to replicate the sweetness of a life that had long since departed, first with his ex-wife, Lena, to Stockholm, and then with his son, Jens, to a university in Exeter. It was a Tuesday. Växjö was wearing its pale, late-spring green.

“Mats, it’s the hospital,” said Sergeant Erika Ljung, her usual briskness edged with something sharper. “Two families. Violent illness. They’re saying it’s the kanelbullar from the Stortorget market.”

Lundström’s large, weathered hand paused mid-stir. A public market. A staple treat. His mind, a machine honed by thirty years in the Småland police, switched from idle melancholy to a low, humming gear. Poison. It was a word that carried a medieval dread.

At the hospital, the smell of antiseptic fought a losing battle. In a curtained bay, the Pettersson family, parents and two teenage girls, lay ghastly pale, connected to drips. The mother, trembling, clutched Lundström’s sleeve. “The cinnamon… it tasted… bitter,” she whispered. “Metallic.”

Across the corridor, the same story from the Lindbergs. Both families had bought the pastries from the same stall: “Britt’s Baked Bliss,” run by Britt-Inger Karlsson, a pillar of the local Women’s Institute.

Britt-Inger, a woman whose face was as kind and round as her own buns, was in tears at the market stall, now cordoned off with fluttering police tape. “I don’t understand! I bake everything fresh! The flour, the butter, the cinnamon… all from the co-op!”

Lundström, his grey eyes missing nothing, picked up a discarded bun from the grass where a panicked customer had flung it. He brought it to his nose. Beneath the warm scent of cardamom and sugar, a faint, acrid note. “We need the co-op’s delivery lists,” he said to Erika. “And I want to speak to everyone who works with Britt-Inger. Past and present.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

The co-operative warehouse was a cathedral of mundane abundance: sacks of flour like giant white pillows, drums of syrup, industrial-sized jars of spices. The manager, sweating nervously, confirmed the deliveries to Britt-Inger were identical to those of a dozen other bakers and cafes across Växjö.

“But someone,” Lundström mused, standing before a pallet of cinnamon jars, “could add a little something extra after delivery. To one specific jar.”

Erika’s phone buzzed. Her face tightened. “Another incident. The fika at the senior centre in Teleborg. Three people taken ill. Similar symptoms.”

“What was served?”

“Apple cake. With… cinnamon.”

Lundström felt a cold knot form in his stomach. This was no accident. This was targeted, yet sprawling. A shadow was moving through the town’s larders.

The investigation room at the station became a map of malice. Photographs of victims, delivery routes, and a growing list of contaminated products, cinnamon buns, apple cake, a batch of gingerbread cookies from a different bakery, pinned to a board. The common thread was ground cinnamon, but the source seemed deliberately chaotic, designed to spread panic.

“It’s not about killing,” Lundström said, more to himself than to the team. “Not yet, anyway. The doses are sub-lethal. It’s about terror. It’s about spoiling something good.”

“A grudge?” Erika offered.

“A very specific one. Against bakers? Against cinnamon? Against the very idea of fika?” He sighed, the weight of it settling on his broad shoulders. He missed Jens with a sudden, physical ache. Missed the simplicity of a case involving a drunk and a misplaced fist.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The break came from an unexpected source: Britt-Inger’s former delivery driver, a young man named Felix. Under the gentle but relentless pressure of Lundström’s questioning, conducted over surprisingly good station coffee, Felix remembered something.

“There was a guy. Maybe… six months ago? He used to work the warehouse shift at the co-op. Got fired. He came by the market once, shouting at Britt-Inger. Said she’d ‘poisoned his life’ or something. I thought he was just a nutter.”

“A name, Felix. Do you have a name?”

Felix scrunched his face in effort. “Sten. Sten… something. Malm! Sten Malm.”

Sten Malm’s personnel file was a slim, damning thing. Dismissed for repeated theft of stock and “aggressive behaviour.” His last known address was a run-down apartment block on the town’s outskirts. The landlord said he’d moved out two months prior. “A bitter man, Inspector. Always muttering about how the town owed him.”

As Lundström stood in the empty, stale-smelling apartment, he saw it. Not in the cupboard, but taped behind the toilet cistern: a small, leather-bound notebook. Filled not with recipes, but with formulae. Chemical abbreviations. LD50 ratios. And a list, chilling in its simplicity: Britt’s Buns, Teleborg Seniors, Växjö Fika Festival (June 10).

“He’s working up to something bigger,” Lundström breathed. “The festival. Thousands attend.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

June 10th dawned clear and bright. The Växjö Fika Festival filled the main square with cheerful chaos. Tents offered every conceivable form of coffee and cake. The air was thick with the smell of brewing coffee and sugar. And cinnamon.

Every uniformed officer and plainclothes detective was deployed, eyes scanning the crowd, the stalls, the delivery vans. Lundström, feeling every one of his fifty-six years, moved through the throng, his gaze sharp. He saw families, laughter, the simple joy of a shared pastry. The target was too perfect, the stage too public.

Then he saw him. A gaunt man in the drab overalls of a service company, wheeling a large, professional-sized thermos container on a trolley towards the main festival beverage tent. It was marked “Apple Cider – Spiced.” The man’s eyes darted, not with the harried look of a caterer, but with the furtive, gleaming intensity of a fanatic. Sten Malm.

Lundström moved, cutting through the crowd like a icebreaker through a frozen lake. “Malm!” he called, his voice cutting above the din.

Malm’s head snapped up. Panic, then a twisted defiance. He shoved the trolley violently towards the tent and ran, ducking under a stall banner.

A foot chase through a festival is a unique kind of hell. Lundström barrelled past startled children, around couples, his heart hammering a protest against ribs and years of desk work. Malm was younger, desperate, weaving towards the old cathedral grounds.

He dodged into the wooden storehouse behind the cathedral, used for summer garden supplies. Lundström followed, drawing his service pistol. The dim interior smelled of damp earth and fertilizer.

“It’s over, Malm!” Lundström’s voice echoed in the gloom.

“Over?” a voice hissed from behind a stack of seed bags. “They ruined me! Britt-Inger with her ‘perfect’ business, the co-op with their lies. They took my job, my reputation. I just wanted to give them a taste. A taste of bitterness!”

“You poisoned a swan.”

A bitter laugh. “A test. And it worked.”

Lundström edged forward. “The festival. That would have been more than a taste. People could have died.”

“A message needs to be heard!” Malm screamed, and lunged, not at Lundström, but at a shelf of chemical gardening powders, sending a cloud of white into the air.

In the blinding, choking haze, Lundström heard the scuffle of feet. He dove, not to shoot, but to tackle. They crashed to the concrete floor, grappling. Malm fought with the wiry strength of the unhinged, his hands clawing for Lundström’s eyes. With a final, grunting heave, Lundström rolled, pinning him, snapping cuffs on the thin, straining wrists as the toxic cloud settled around them like a poisonous frost.

* * * * * * * * * * *

A week later, the last of the victims had been released from hospital. The festival cider, upon analysis, contained enough arsenic-laced cinnamon to have caused mass casualties. Sten Malm sat in a high-security psychiatric unit, his notebooks providing a full confession.

Inspector Mats Lundström sat on his small balcony overlooking the quiet street. The evening was mild. Nisse snoozed at his feet. On the little table sat a fresh kanelbulle, from a bakery he trusted, and a cup of coffee. He had just finished a long, meandering video call with Jens, who was full of talk about British essays and the peculiar lack of proper cinnamon buns in England.

Lundström took a bite of the pastry. It was sweet, spicy, warm. Perfectly safe. He savoured it, not just the taste, but the normalcy it represented. The shadow had been lifted from the town, from its kitchens, from its simple pleasures.

He looked out at the gathering twilight over Växjö, the lights coming on in windows, the calm surface of the distant lake. The bitterness, for now, was confined to a cell and to memory. And for a man whose life often tasted of solitude and old regrets, that was a victory sweet enough. He took another sip of coffee, and allowed himself, just for a moment, to simply enjoy the peace.

The end

A necessary evil

The night was not quiet. In Växjö, beneath the pale, watchful eye of a crescent moon, rain began to slicken the cobbles of Linnégatan. At the Kompis Mini-Mart, the fluorescent lights hummed a tired tune against the gathering dark. Inside, two employees counted the minutes to closing: Amir, a philosophy student sketching Nietzsche in the margin of a ledger, and Lena, a grandmother whose knitting needles clicked a counter-rhythm to the freezer’s rattle. 

The security camera was a blind eye, broken for a week. The till held meagre kronor. It was the kind of place history passed by. Until, at 10:58 p.m., history decided to pay a call. The door chime jingled its cheerful dirge. Two figures entered, not for milk or cigarettes. They entered for cover, for time, for a desperate, dangerous pause in a plan already spiralling out of control. The door locked behind them. The ‘Closed’ sign swung. And the little store, insignificant no more, became a world unto itself, a world of fear, secrets, and ticking seconds.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Inspector Mats Lundström placed his empty coffee mug on the file marked ‘Burglary: Industrial Estate’ with a sigh that spoke of more than fatigue. It spoke of damp Swedish autumns, of a divorce that still felt like a missing limb, and of a son, Tom, whose emails from Oxford grew breezier and more distant with each passing term. The phone on his desk rang, slicing through his reverie.

“Lundström.”

“Sir, hostage situation. Kompis Mini-Mart on Linnégatan. Two armed individuals, two hostages. Patrol units have the perimeter. No demands yet.”

Lundström was already on his feet, his worn trench coat swallowing his broad frame. “A mini-mart? For God’s sake. Who robs a mini-mart and takes hostages?”

The rain met him outside the station, a fine, cold mist that beaded on the wool of his coat. The scene was a splash of garish light in the damp gloom. Patrol cars sat silently, their blue lights painting the wet street in swirling pulses. A huddle of onlookers, braving the weather, was held back by tape. The mini-mart window glowed, a cramped aquarium displaying a stark tableau: Amir and Lena, sitting on the floor by the magazine rack, and two figures in dark hoodies and grotesque rubber masks—one a lopsided Frankenstein, the other a screaming ghoul.

“They’ve been in there twenty minutes,” said Sergeant Linnea Ek, young, sharp, her breath fogging the air. “No communication. We’ve cut the phone line as per protocol. Their mobiles are inside. We wait.”

“We don’t wait,” Lundström murmured, his eyes not leaving the ghoul mask, which seemed to stare directly back at him. “We think. Who are they? This isn’t about the cash. That till wouldn’t buy a decent bottle of whisky. This is a bolt-hole. Something went wrong.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

The negotiator’s van arrived. Lundström bypassed it, walking a slow circle around the block. His mind, a repository for three decades of Växjö’s petty and not-so-petty crimes, worked methodically. An escape route gone awry? A nearby bank job? But the radio was silent on any other incidents.

Back at the perimeter, a nervous man in a delivery uniform approached an officer. Lundström intercepted him.

“My girlfriend, Lena,” the man stammered. “She’s in there. She just works there part-time… for the company.”

“Company?” Lundström asked, his voice deceptively calm.

“The knitting. She makes these… cardigans. Sells them online. She was posting parcels tonight…”

Lundström’s gaze drifted back to the store. Next to Lena’s slumped form was a small pile of brown-paper packages, a knitting needle poking from her bag. He then looked at Amir, who was talking, his hands moving calmly. Philosophy student, the initial report said. Works evenings.

“Get me everything on both hostages,” he told Ek. “And see if any high-value targets were hit nearby in the last hour. Quietly.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of damp wool, old coffee, and fear.

“You need to let Lena go,” Amir said, his voice steady, though his heart hammered against his ribs. “She has arthritis. She’s no use to you.”

“Shut up!” Frankenstein barked, his voice high-strung, young. He kept glancing at the door.

The Ghoul was older, quieter. He stood by the refrigerated unit, peering through the condensation at the blurred blue lights outside. “They’ll storm us. They always do.”

“Then we need a trade,” Frankenstein muttered, pacing the narrow aisle, knocking over a display of crisps. “We need leverage.”

“We have leverage,” Ghoul said, but he wasn’t looking at the hostages. He was looking at the back wall, at the door marked PRIVATE.

Lena’s needles had stopped. Her eyes, wise and terrified, darted between the masked men and the back door. She saw something. A slight tremble in the Ghoul’s hand as he touched the lock on the cold drinks cabinet. Not the lock. The keyhole beside it.

* * * * * * * * * * *

“Sir.” Ek approached Lundström, holding a tablet. “Amir Youssef. Clean. Lena Bergh. Clean. But… a flagged report from forty minutes ago. An alarm at the city archives storage facility. It was tripped and then went dead. Thought to be a fault. It’s three blocks from here.”

“Archives?” Lundström frowned. “What’s there? Old council minutes?”

“And… the evidence lock-up for decommissioned cases. Pre-digital. Awaiting shredding.”

A cold, clear understanding began to crystallize in Lundström’s mind. This wasn’t a robbery. It was a retrieval. Or a silencing.

“What cases were in that batch?” he asked.

“List is being emailed now. Mostly petty. But one… the ‘Sjöberg Land Fraud’ from 1998. High-profile at the time. Key witness recanted, case collapsed.”

“Who was the investigating officer?”

Ek scanned the list. Her eyes widened. “You, sir. Detective Inspector Mats Lundström.”

The rain felt suddenly colder. The past had just reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Inside, the Ghoul finally moved. He ignored the hostages, ignored his jittery partner. He used a small, precise tool on the keyhole beside the drinks cabinet. It wasn’t a keyhole. With a click, the entire cabinet swung outwards, revealing a dark space beyond—the entrance to the old bakery cellar that connected to the neighbouring buildings.

“We’re leaving. Now,” Ghoul said.

“What about them?” Frankenstein pointed his gun at Amir and Lena.

“They’ve seen nothing. They’re a complication.” The Ghoul’s voice was ice. He raised his weapon.

“Nej!” Lena cried out, not in fear for herself, but in a raw, protective surge, throwing her half-knitted cardigan like a useless shield.

Amir acted. He didn’t lunge. He spoke, clear and fast, in Arabic, then Swedish. “He will kill you too. You know that, don’t you? The young one. You’re the expendable local muscle. He’s the professional. You won’t make it to the tunnel.”

A fatal hesitation. Frankenstein’s head whipped between Amir and the Ghoul. “Is that true?”

The Ghoul sighed, a sound of profound irritation. “Idiot.” He shifted his aim.

CRACK.

The sound was not from inside. It was from outside. Lundström, reading the body language through the window—the reveal of the passage, the shift in stance—had given the order. A distraction flash-bang erupted against the service door at the rear.

In the confined space, the effect was chaotic. The Ghoul fired, but his shot went wide, shattering the microwave. Frankenstein, panicked, ducked and ran straight into a shelf of tinned soup. Amir pulled Lena down, covering her with his body.

Lundström and the tactical team were at the front door now. “Now! Go!”

* * * * * * * * * * *

The assault was swift and clinical. The front glass dissolved into a thousand crystalline beads. Frankenstein was pinned sobbing to the floor before he could raise his gun.

The Ghoul was gone, vanished into the dark passage.

Lundström didn’t follow the team. He went to the hostages, helping a shaking Lena to her feet, checking Amir. “You’re alright? You’re both alright?”

Amir nodded, breathless. “He went that way. The other one. He wasn’t here for money. He was looking for… a way out. And he kept looking at her parcels.” He pointed to Lena’s knitting.

Lundström knelt by the brown-paper packages. He picked one up. It was addressed to a post-office box in Malmö. It felt too heavy for wool. Using his pocket knife, he slit the tape. He pulled out not a cardigan, but dense bundles of old, faded documents. On top was a witness statement from 1998. The signature was a familiar, sprawling hand, a hand that had signed his divorce papers. His ex-wife’s brother, a corrupt land surveyor in the Sjöberg case.

“Oh, Lena,” Lundström said softly, looking at the grandmother, whose face had closed like a vault. “You weren’t just posting knitwear, were you?”

Lena said nothing. The mystery deepened, curdling into something domestic and vile.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The Ghoul was caught two blocks away, emerging from a basement laundry, his mask off, trying to blend in. He was a hired hand from Stockholm, with no known ties to Växjö. He wouldn’t talk.

But Frankenstein, in the interrogation room under the stark light, cracked like rotten ice. He was a local kid, in debt, recruited for his knowledge of the old city tunnels. The job was simple: break into the archive, retrieve a specific box of documents from the Sjöberg case, and deliver them to the Kompis Mini-Mart, where they would be posted out anonymously, lost in the mail system forever.

“Who hired you?” Lundström asked, his voice a low rumble.

“I don’t know a name! A voice on the phone. Money in an envelope. The guy in the mask, he was supposed to be my backup, make sure I did it. But the archive alarm linked to the police station… we had to run. The mini-mart was the fallback.”

“And why there?”

“The old woman. She was the postman. She was one of us.”

Lundström leaned back. Lena Bergh, knitting in the window, a silent, watchful cog in a machine designed to bury the past. To bury his past. His failure. A case from another lifetime, reaching out to poison the present.

* * * * * * * * * * *

In a quiet interview room, Lena Bergh sat with her hands folded around a cup of tea. The grandmotherly warmth was gone, replaced by a flinty resolve.

“My son,” she said finally, not meeting Lundström’s eyes. “He was the surveyor. The one who recanted. He was threatened. His family… my grandchildren. The man who threatened him is a city councillor now. Powerful. The evidence that could prove the original fraud, and the intimidation, was due to be shredded. We couldn’t let that happen. So we arranged to… redirect it. Post it to a safe journalist, piece by piece, in my knitting parcels.”

“And the men tonight?”

“The councillor must have got wind. He sent them to intercept. To destroy it.” A tear finally escaped, tracing a line down her wrinkled cheek. “I was so scared. Not for me. For my boy. Again.”

Lundström looked out at the dawn breaking over Växjö, washing the city in a pallid, forgiving light. The mini-mart was just a crime scene now. The hostages were the perpetrators, the perpetrators were victims, and the real villain sat in a comfortable office, untouched.

For now.

He thought of Tom, far away in England. He thought of the tangled, often cruel, web of family loyalty. He thought of justice, which was rarely neat and never simple.

“We’ll need a statement, Lena,” he said, his voice not unkind. “A full one. About everything.”

She nodded, a great weight settling on her, but a greater one lifting. “And my son?”

“That,” said Lundström, standing, his bones aching, “is a different case. But it seems I have some old reading to catch up on.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

A week later, the rain had returned. Lundström stood at his office window, looking down at the quiet street. The ‘Sjöberg Land Fraud’ file, now massively expanded, was on his desk. It would cause a scandal. Careers would end. The councillor had already resigned, citing health reasons. It was a start.

Amir had sent a letter, thanking him and musing that Camus was right, in the midst of winter, he had found within him an invincible summer. Lundström grunted, filing it next to a postcard from Tom, which simply showed the Radcliffe Camera with the scrawled message: Looks like your sort of mystery, Dad. Come visit soon.

He would. But not yet. Växjö, his city, with its lakes and forests and deceptively quiet streets, still needed him. The mini-mart had reopened. A new student was behind the counter. Life, petty and profound, went on.

He poured a measure of whisky into his coffee mug, a small, necessary evil against the damp and sat down. The next file awaited. It was, like the last, seemingly insignificant. But Mats Lundström had learned, once again, that there are no insignificant stories. Only ones where the deep, dark roots have yet to be uncovered. He opened the cover, took a sip, and began to read.

The end

The Växjö vulture

The forest south of Växjö is deep and quiet, a kingdom of pine, spruce, and secrets. To the weary city-dweller from Stockholm or Malmö, the promise of a lakeside parcel here, a clearing for a dream cottage there, tastes of pure, clean air and a simpler life. They don’t know the old maps.

They don’t know the land is not for sale; it is protected, or owned by the Crown, or simply part of the silent, ancient wild. But a man with a convincing smile, crisp paperwork, and a heartbreaking story of a family legacy reluctantly sold can make dreams feel more real than pine needles underfoot. Until you try to build a fence. Then the real owners come. And the dream curdles into a cold, expensive, and humiliating nightmare. That’s when the calls start coming into the Växjö police. And that’s when Inspector Mats Lundström begins to pick up the scent of a predator who sells ghosts.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The complaint that broke the camel’s back was from a German couple, the Brauns. They’d paid two hundred thousand kronor in cash for a “prime, development-ready” hectare by Lake Helgasjön. The vendor, a silver-haired, impeccably mannered man named Filip Dahlberg, had even shared a fika with them, speaking of his late father’s love for the land. The local builder they hired took one look at the deed and laughed without humour. “You own a swamp,” he said. “And a protected bird breeding swamp at that.”

Lundström stood at the edge of that same swamp, the late September mist clinging to his waxed jacket. He was a solid man, built like a weathered oak, his face a roadmap of lines earned from squinting at both crime scenes and life’s general disappointments. His ex-wife was in Uppsala with a dentist named Göran, and his son, Lars, was reading Philosophy at Cambridge, sending emails filled with theoretical concepts that felt galaxies away from the tangible deceit of a muddy hole in Småland.

“He was so charming, Inspector,” Frau Braun said again, her voice cracking. “He had photographs of the land in summer. Blueberries. Sunshine.”

“He had photographs,” Lundström grunted, jotting in his notebook. The con was elegant in its cruelty. It preyed on hope, not greed. Dahlberg wasn’t selling the Eiffel Tower; he was selling a specific, poignant Scandinavian fantasy.

Back at the station, Lundström spread out the files. Four victims in six months. Different names, different descriptions of the seller, but the method was identical: targeted approach at a local café or estate agent, flawless forged deeds from a defunct property office, cash-only transactions, then poof. A ghost.

“A vulture,” Lundström muttered to his young, eager partner, Constable Hanna Svensson. “Circling the new arrivals. The ones without local networks to ask.”

“A charismatic vulture,” Svensson added, reading a statement. “One victim said he reminded her of that actor… the kind one from the old films.”

“Everybody’s kind when they’re stealing your savings,” Lundström said, his voice like gravel. He missed proper tea. The station coffee tasted of burnt sin. He thought of Lars explaining some existentialist paradox and almost smiled. This was his paradox: a crime of fiction in the heart of the most factual landscape on earth.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The break came from an unexpected angle. A would-be victim, a sharp-eyed botanist from Lund named Anika, had been suspicious when “Dahlberg” pointed out “rare orchids” that were, in fact, common buttercups. She’d secretly snapped a photo of his car, a muddy Volvo and got a partial plate.

The car led them to a rental agency in Kalmar. Rented for single days, paid in cash with a stolen ID. But the clerk remembered the man. “Very polite. Talked about timber prices. He had a smudge of something green on his right shoe. Paint, maybe?”

Paint. Lundström’s mind, a slow but relentless machine, began to turn. The forgeries were physical, not just digital. They needed space, equipment. A studio. Not a city flat. Somewhere private.

He re-canvassed the victims. “Did he meet you anywhere else? Even to suggest it?” One couple remembered: he’d mentioned, off-hand, that he’d been on his way from inspecting “a derelict old place he was thinking of renovating” an old forestry commission depot off the road to Ryssby.

They found it an hour later: a sagging complex of brick buildings half-lost in the forest. No cars were present, but the padlock on the main shed was shiny new. Through a dusty window, Lundström saw not forestry equipment, but a high-end printer, light boxes, guillotines, and racks of paper. The air inside, visible through a broken pane, smelled of ink and chemicals.

“We wait,” Lundström said, his blood humming a quiet, steady tune. This was the part he liked. The stillness before the action.

* * * * * * * * * * *

They waited all night, mist turning to a soft, cold rain. Just after dawn, a Volvo, different plates, but the same model, crawled up the track.

The man who emerged was not silver-haired. He was younger, with sandy, thinning hair. But the posture was the same, the assured elegance. He carried a deli bag, presumably his breakfast. As he approached the shed door, Lundström and Svensson stepped out.

“Filip Dahlberg?” Lundström called, his voice cutting the morning silence.

The man froze. For a split second, his charming facade vanished, revealing something calculating and feral. Then he bolted.

He was fast, darting into the thick pine forest behind the depot. Lundström cursed, his knees protesting as he gave chase. Branches whipped at their faces. The con artist weaved through the trees with the agility of a deer, heading for the sound of a distant stream.

“He’s heading for the water!” Svensson yelled, younger legs pulling ahead.

Lundström followed, his breath ragged. He saw the man leap over a fallen birch, stumble on the slippery bank of a wide, rushing stream, and regain his footing. There was no bridge. The man waded in, the water rising to his thighs, fighting the current to reach the other side.

Lundström didn’t hesitate. He plunged in after him, the icy water shocking the air from his lungs. The current tugged viciously. Ahead, the con artist slipped on a rock, going under briefly before surfacing, sputtering.

With a final, lunging effort, Lundström grabbed the back of the man’s soaking jacket. They went down together in the shallows on the far bank, a tangle of limbs and cold water. The man fought with desperate strength, but Lundström’s solid weight and a policeman’s grip won out. He hauled him up, cuffing his wrists as the man coughed up water.

“Your… paperwork… is a mess,” Lundström panted, water streaming from his nose.

* * * * * * * * * * *

His real name was Viktor Strand. In his modest apartment in Växjö, they found wigs, theatrical makeup, and a library of books on Swedish property law and graphic design. He was a failed actor, a man who’d found his stage in the cafés and his scripts in the land registry archives.

In the interview room, the charm was gone, replaced by a brittle, intellectual arrogance. “I sold them a story,” Strand sneered, his true voice higher than his personas’. “A better story than their dreary city lives. I gave them a dream.”

“You sold them air,” Lundström corrected, his voice low and dangerously calm. “You sold them heartache and financial ruin. You’re not a storyteller. You’re a thief.”

“They were desperate for a fairy tale. I just provided the props.”

Lundström leaned forward. “The Brauns’ life savings. Anika’s inheritance. That’s not a prop. That’s blood, drawn by a vulture.” He laid out the evidence with methodical, crushing finality: the rental records, the photo, the forensic link of the specialist ink in his depot to the forged deeds. Strand’s defiance slowly crumbled into sullen silence.

Later, finishing his report, Lundström received an email from Lars. It was about Søren Kierkegaard and the concept of ‘authentic despair.’ Lundström snorted, typing a reply: ‘Had some authentic despair here. Man selling fake bits of Sweden. Caught him in a stream. My boots are still wet. Despair now his. Come home at Christmas. We’ll have glögg.’

He sent it, looking out at the Växjö twilight. The forest beyond the city lights was dark and no longer just a backdrop for crime. It was just forest again. For now.

* * * * * * * * * * *

A week later, the rain had returned. Lundström stood outside the station, lighting a rare, illicit cigarette under the overhang. The Strand case was neat, tied up. The money was mostly gone, spent on Volvo rentals and high-grade paper, but the victims had at least the cold comfort of justice.

Hanna Svensson joined him. “The Brauns sent a card. Thank you. They’re going back to Düsseldorf.”

“Can’t blame them,” Lundström said, watching the smoke get snatched by the damp wind. The dream of Småland, for them, was forever poisoned. That was the real damage; it wasn’t just the kronor, it was the spoiling of a beautiful idea.

He stamped out the cigarette, the briefcase with Kierkegaard heavy in his bag. The Växjö Vulture was caged. But the forests were deep, and people’s hunger for dreams was endless. He knew another would come, with a new story to sell. And he would be here, with his bad knees, his good instincts, and a profound understanding of the murky ground between what people wish for and what is actually, tangibly true. He went inside, the door swinging shut on the wet, whispering night.

The end

The melody of malice

The music box sat in its glass case like a slumbering heart. For a century, it had pulsed out its delicate, tinkling rendition of “Tonerna” a Swedish waltz of love and loss. Carved from rosewood and inlaid with mother-of-pearl Nordic stars, it was the jewel of the Växjö museum’s local history exhibit. 

More than that, it was the last relic of the Lundqvist family, bequeathed by a grieving widow. Tonight, its song was silent. The case was empty. All that remained was a single, white rose, lying where the box had been, its petals crisp under the sterile museum lights.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The call came at 5:47 AM, slicing through Inspector Mats Lundström’s dreamless sleep and the lingering taste of single malt whisky. “Mats? It’s Petra at the museum. They’ve taken it. The music box.” Her voice was a frayed wire.

Växjö, under a gauzy September dawn, felt deceptively calm. Lundström, a solid oak of a man with a face carved by Nordic winds and professional disappointment, stood in the hushed exhibit room. His ex-wife’s latest barb echoed “You care more for the broken things of this town than our own family.” Their son, Lars, was texting about rugby scores from Oxford, a world away.

The scene was fastidious. No broken glass. The lock, a high-quality Abloy, had been picked with elegant precision. No fingerprints on the case. Just the rose.

“A calling card, or sentiment?” mused Constable Hanna Eklund, young, sharp, and Lundström’s reluctant new shadow.

“Sentiment is a luxury in theft,” Lundström grunted, crouching. “And a liability. Check the security tapes. I want a list of everyone who’s been in this room in the last month. Curators, cleaners, patrons.”

The museum director, a man named Stig Blomqvist, wrung his hands. “It is irreplaceable! The Lundqvist heirloom! The insurance… the scandal…”

“The Lundqvists,” Lundström said, rising stiffly. “Who’s left?”

“Only old Agnes Lundqvist. The donor’s daughter-in-law. Lives at Solvik Manor, out by Helgasjön. She’s… formidable.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

Solvik Manor was a grand, tired villa on the lake’s edge. Agnes Lundqvist received them in a parlour frozen in time. In her eighties, she was erect as a general, her eyes the colour of winter ice.

“Stolen? I am not surprised.” She sipped her coffee. “That melody… it attracts moths to a flame. And fools.”

“Who would want it, Fru Lundqvist?” Lundström asked.

“The greedy. The sentimental. Or the guilty.” She set her cup down with a definitive click. “My husband, Filip, bought that box for his first wife, Elsa. She died young. It played at her funeral. He could never bear to hear it again. When he married me, he locked it away. Giving it to the museum was my attempt to bury the past. Clearly, the past has claws.”

“A white rose was left behind,” Eklund offered.

Agnes’s composure fractured for a single, telling second. A flicker of pain, then cold rage. “Elsa’s favourite flower. How theatrical.”

The lead was a ghost, but it had weight.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Back at the station, the security footage revealed nothing, a two-minute loop had been seamlessly inserted during the night’s low-power cycle. “Professional,” Eklund stated. “Or someone with inside knowledge.”

The list of recent visitors was a parade of Växjö’s respectable faces: retired businessman Sven Bertilsson, local historian Dr. Astrid Nilsson, antiques dealer Felix Gren, and even the town’s affable mayor, who’d shown a French delegation around.

Lundström’s method was a slow, deep grind. He visited each, his questions a gentle but persistent probe.

Bertilsson was brusque. “A music box? What do I need with that? My money’s in timber and steel.”

Dr. Nilsson was enthralled. “A tragedy! The craftsmanship! The Tonerna arrangement is unique! I’d have given anything to study it… but not like this.”

Felix Gren, in a cluttered shop smelling of beeswax and regret, eyed them with a dealer’s avarice. “On the open market? A quarter-million kronor, easy. But too hot to handle now. Everyone will be looking.”

Then, a break. A vagrant, sleeping rough near the museum’s service entrance, reported seeing a figure in dark clothing “Moving quiet, like a cat” carrying a heavy-looking duffel bag towards the lake shore.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Night was falling over Helgasjön, the water turning to ink. Lundström and Eklund walked the path. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth.

“Why leave the rose, Chief?” Eklund asked. “It’s a risk.”

“It’s a message,” Lundström said, his breath misting. “The theft wasn’t the point. The message was.”

A glint in the beam of his torch caught his eye. Behind a boathouse belonging to a lakeside summer cabin, something was half-submerged in the reeds. He fished it out with a stick. The duffel bag, empty. But inside, a single, mother-of-pearl star had come unglued from its setting.

“He panicked here. Dropped the bag, transferred the box to something else,” Lundström reasoned.

The cabin was owned by a holding company. Tracing it took hours, leading back to a shell corporation, and finally, to a name that made Lundström’s jaw tighten, Stig Blomqvist, the museum director.

* * * * * * * * * * *

They found Blomqvist not at home, but back at the museum, in the conservation lab, under the stark fluorescent lights. The music box was open on a workbench, tools laid out beside it. He wasn’t trying to hide it.

“Inspector.” He didn’t look up. “I was just… appreciating it.”

“You stole it from yourself,” Lundström said, filling the doorway.

“I saved it!” Blomqvist’s voice cracked. “Agnes Lundqvist was going to have it destroyed! She told me last week. She said the melody was a curse, a reminder of a love that wasn’t hers. She couldn’t bear for it to exist anymore.”

Lundström stepped in. “So you staged a theft. The white rose to point to Elsa, to cast suspicion on anyone who knew the story. A crime to prevent a… what? An act of cultural vandalism?”

“Yes! It’s not just a box, it’s history! I was going to hide it, then ‘find’ it later after she passed. A miracle recovery!” Tears welled behind his glasses. “But I fumbled by the lake. I was seen. I knew you’d trace the cabin.”

It was plausible, pathetic even. But Lundström’s mind, schooled on Colin Dexter’s convoluted symphonies, heard a discordant note. Agnes’s flicker of rage at the rose. Her theatrical comment.

“You’re lying, Stig,” Lundström said softly. “Or you’re only half-right. She didn’t tell you to destroy it. She asked you to steal it. To make it disappear forever. The rose was her instruction. A final, dramatic flourish to close the book on Elsa. And you, the lovestruck historian, you agreed. For her. Maybe for a promise of shared… appreciation.”

Blomqvist’s face collapsed, confirming everything. “She said she’d finally have peace. That we could… I’m a fool.”

“A fool who committed a felony,” Eklund said, moving to cuff him.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Lundström drove back to Solvik alone in the deep night. Agnes Lundqvist answered the door in a robe, no surprise on her face.

“He told you.”

“The melody of malice is a quiet one, Fru Lundqvist,” Lundström said, not entering. “You used his infatuation to make your husband’s first love vanish, once and for all. You turned a man who loved history into a criminal. That’s colder than any lake.”

She drew herself up. “That box held a ghost that haunted my marriage for fifty years. Now it’s gone. Do your duty, Inspector.”

“The box is evidence. It will be returned to the museum. The ghost stays.” He turned to leave. “Your peace will have to come from elsewhere.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

A week later, the music box was back in its case, under new, upgraded security. The scandal simmered. Blomqvist resigned. Agnes Lundqvist, shielded by age and a clever lawyer, faced no charges, but lived in a different kind of silence.

Lundström sat in his quiet apartment, the case file closed. He poured a modest whisky and opened his laptop. A video call connected. His son Lars, smiling, surrounded by books in an Oxford library.

“Hey Pappa! Solved the big mystery?”

“A box was stolen. A box was found. Some ghosts were stirred up,” Lundström said, a rare, tired smile touching his eyes. “Nothing changes, really.”

“Same old Växjö,” Lars laughed.

“Same old Växjö,” Lundström agreed, the haunting, tinkling notes of Tonerna finally silent in his mind. The melody of malice had ended, leaving only the familiar, enduring hum of human frailty. It was enough, for now.

The end