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

The welcome committee

The first fire was put down to accident. A faulty heater in the converted fritidshus of the Dutch couple who’d moved to Småland for the silence. The second, a week later, was harder to dismiss, a Molotov cocktail through the kitchen window of a Brighton-born dentist’s newly painted villa. By the time the third blaze lit up the pine-dark night, charring the porch of a Syrian architect’s modern timber dream-home, the word was whispered in the konditori and the Systembolaget queue: Välkommnad. Welcome. It was Inspector Mats Lundström, staring at the soot-streaked face of a weeping German web designer, who knew this was no spontaneous combustion. This was malice, methodically applied.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The rain in Växjö was a fine, persistent mist, the kind that soaked a man to the bones without the dignity of a proper downpour. Inspector Mats Lundström shrugged his worn tweed coat a little higher on his shoulders as he crunched across the gravel drive of ‘Lindenrotd’, a name he considered overly optimistic for a boxy yellow house currently missing half its thatched roof. The air stank of wet charcoal and regret.

“Inspector.” A young uniformed officer, looking chilled and miserable, nodded towards a huddle of figures.

A man and a woman, wrapped in identical foil survival blankets, stood like gleaming ghosts under a dripping birch. The man, Lars, was Danish, a freelance sommelier. The woman, Anya, was a potter. They’d moved six months ago.

“We were at a lecture in town,” Lars said, his voice flat. “On local fungi. The neighbour called.”

“Nothing valuable inside?” Lundström asked, his notebook a damp curl in his hand.

“Everything valuable,” Anya whispered, her eyes fixed on the wreckage. “My kiln. Our books. The peace. That was valuable.”

Lundström made a non-committal sound, a low hum in his throat. He’d seen this hollow look three times now. It wasn’t just the loss of objects; it was the violation of an idea. The idea of safety, of a fresh start in the postcard-perfect Småland woods.

At the station, the case wall was a depressing collage. Three fires. Three professional couples, none native Swedish, all having moved within the last eighteen months. No discernible connection between them—different nationalities, professions, social circles. The only common thread was their status as newcomers.

“It’s a pattern, Mats,” said Constable Erika Andersson, tapping the photos. “But a pattern of what? Random xenophobia?”

“Too organised,” Lundström grunted, sipping bitter station coffee. “The first looked like an accident. The second and third were blatant attacks. The perpetrator is learning, gaining confidence. Or getting angrier.”

His phone buzzed, a text from his son, David, in Cambridge. Saw this weird story about Swedish arsonists online. That’s your patch, isn’t it? Don’t work too hard. Love, D. A familiar ache, part pride, part loneliness, settled in his chest. He replied with a simple All under control. Stay focused on your essays.

The breakthrough, of a sort, came from an unexpected quarter. The local historical society’s secretary, a formidable woman named Mrs. Pettersson with a steel-grey bun, called. She’d heard about the fires. She wondered if the inspector knew about the ‘Hävd’.

“Hävd?” Lundström asked, seated in her overheated parlour amidst porcelain shepherds.

“Customary right. Prescriptive right,” she enunciated, as if to a child. “For centuries, certain families here had rights to forage, to cut timber, to hunt on specific lands. Not allmänsrätt, everyman’s right but private rights. Many of those rights were technically extinguished with modern laws, but… memories are long in the forest, Inspector.”

“And the new residents,” Lundström ventured, “they bought these lands?”

“Some. The Danish couple’s plot, for instance, was part of the old Nygård estate. The Nygård family died out, the land was sold to a developer… and then to your Danes.” She handed him a brittle, hand-drawn map. “The right to collect fallen timber and mushrooms on that land belonged to the crofters in Lilla By. Perhaps someone misses their mushrooms.”

It was a thread, gossamer-thin. Lundström and Andersson began cross-referencing property deeds with old records. The second victim’s land, they discovered, had once been part of a commons where villagers from Gränshult had the right to pick cloudberries. The third had ancient fishing rights attached to a stream now piped under a patio.

“It’s not about nationalism,” Lundström said, standing before the case wall, a red marker in his hand. He drew lines connecting the fires to small, nearby villages, Lilla By, Gränshult, Sjöglänta. “It’s about… a perceived theft. Someone who believes these newcomers aren’t just occupying houses, but are erasing old, cherished privileges.”

The next likely target was identified through agonising paperwork: a Belgian bio-chemist and his wife, who had renovated an old millhouse near Sjöglänta. The property had once come with a fiskehävd, a right to net the millpond, for the farmhands of a now-demolished manor.

“We can’t protect them all,” Andersson sighed.

“We don’t have to,” Lundström said. “We just need to be there first.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

The millhouse was a picture of rustic charm, its new wooden shingles pale against the dark water of the pond. Lundström, feeling his age in every damp joint, had positioned Andersson and another officer in a patrol car down the lane. He himself sat in his own Volvo, parked in the overgrown remains of the old mill yard, a flask of coffee and a copy of Inspector Morse omnibus for company. The night was utterly black, the silence broken only by the drip of moisture from leaves.

Just after 2 AM, a sound. Not a car, but the soft, rhythmic crunch of a bicycle on gravel. Lundström slid down in his seat. A figure, dressed in dark clothing, a backpack visible, glided past his hiding place and towards the back of the millhouse. The figure moved with a rehearsed efficiency, pulling a bottle and rag from the pack.

Lundström was out of the car, his torch beam cutting through the night. “Police! Stop right there!”

The figure froze, then spun, hurling the unlit Molotov cocktail towards the house. It shattered harmlessly against the stone foundation. In the torchlight, Lundström saw not a wild-eyed fanatic, but a man in his late sixties, with a lined, resigned face. He didn’t run.

“Arne Persson,” the man said, his voice steady. “I live in Sjöglänta.”

In the interview room, Arne Persson was calm, almost relieved.

“The millpond,” he said. “My grandfather taught me to net pike there. My father taught me. I taught my son. For a hundred years. Then the old family sold up, and the new man from Belgium… he put up a sign. ‘Private. No Fishing.’ He put koi in the pond. Ornamental fish.” He said the word with profound disdain.

“And the others?” Lundström pressed. “The Danes? The Englishman?”

“The Nygård woods,” Arne said. “We always took the first autumn mushrooms there. The new people fenced it. Posted ‘No Trespassing’. The cloudberry moor near Gränshult is now a ‘natural garden’. The Syrian’s house blocks the old path to the spring.” He looked at Lundström, his eyes clear and hard. “They buy more than land, Inspector. They buy our memories. They wall off our past. A fire… it reminds them. The land can take back what it gives. It’s a welcome they understand.”

The logic was warped, tragic, and terrifyingly clear. Arne, it turned out, was a retired surveyor. He had the skills to research the old deeds, the hävd rights. He had no hatred for the people, he claimed. Only a desperate, flaming anger at the loss of a world he knew. He acted alone.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The rain had finally stopped. Mats Lundström stood on the shores of Helgasjön, looking out at the grey water. The case was closed. Arne Persson was in custody, his quiet confession detailing his grim, destructive campaign. The newspapers would call him a nostalgic terrorist. The sociologists would have a field day.

Lundström thought of David in England, building a new life in an old place. He thought of the Syrian architect, already vowing to rebuild, to stay. He thought of Arne’s lost spring, his vanished fishing pond.

Justice, in this instance, felt like a blunt instrument. It could punish the act, but it couldn’t mend the tear in the social fabric, nor restore a lost right. It was about laws, not the deeper, quieter laws of the heart and history.

His phone rang. It was Andersson. “Another call, Inspector. A complaint from a new family in Åryd. Someone’s been stealing apples from their orchard. They say it’s from a tree that’s always been for the village…”

Lundström sighed, a long, slow exhalation that fogged in the cool air. The mysteries here were never just about murder or arson. They were about the slow, simmering collision between the old and the new, about the price of a view, and the value of a childhood memory. He turned from the lake, back towards his car.

“Alright,” he said, his voice a tired rumble. “I’m on my way.”

The mist was rising from the fields, shrouding the dark line of the forest. Somewhere in the pines, an old story was ending, and a new, uneasy one was beginning. Inspector Mats Lundström buttoned his coat, and went to work.

The end

The poisoned petunia

The greenhouse was a paradise, a humid, fragrant oasis filled with the impossible colours of orchids and the heady scent of night-blooming jasmine. For an English county, or the quiet Swedish town of Växjö, it was a slice of the tropics. 

Arthur Pendelby, treasurer of the Växjö Garden Club, thought it the perfect place to check his investments. He wasn’t looking at the rare Dendrobium spectabile; he was peering at the roots, where carefully sealed, plant-waxed packets were nestled among the soil. Each packet contained not seeds, but a fine, pearlescent powder worth more than the entire greenhouse. As he reached for one, a shadow fell over the orchids. Arthur didn’t even have time to look up before the heavy, ceramic pot of a Venus Flytrap slammed into the back of his skull. The last thing he saw was dark, rich compost, smelling of earth and deceit.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Inspector Mats Lundström stirred the single sugar cube into his coffee and watched the granules dissolve. It was a small, daily rebellion against the doctor’s advice. His office was a monument to organised chaos, stacks of case files formed precarious towers, and a faded photograph of his son, Emil, laughing on a beach in Skåne, was the only personal touch. At fifty-six, Lundström felt the weight of every one of those years, a dull ache in his lower back a constant companion to the grey skies of Småland.

The call came just as he was contemplating a second cup.

“Lundström,” he grunted into the phone.

“Inspector, we have a body.” It was Sergeant Linnea Ek, young, sharp, and frustratingly energetic. “At the community greenhouses. It’s Arthur Pendelby. Looks like a burglary gone wrong.”

Lundström sighed. “A burglary. At a greenhouse. What did they take, the prize-winning marigolds?”

The scene was deceptively peaceful. Arthur Pendelby lay sprawled amidst a riot of blossoms, a grotesque still-life. The murder weapon, the pot, lay shattered beside him, the sinister little plant seemingly untouched.

“No forced entry,” Ek reported, her notebook already out. “Wallet, watch, all present. But his briefcase has been forced open. Empty.”

Lundström crouched, his knees complaining. He looked at the soil around the body, then at the pristine plants on the shelves. His eyes, the colour of a winter sea, narrowed.

“He wasn’t just killed, Linnea. He was interrupted. Look here.” He pointed to a specific orchid, its roots slightly disturbed, a faint, unnatural sheen on the dark compost. “He was looking for something. Or taking something. And someone didn’t want him to.”

Their first stop was the Garden Club’s weekly meeting, held in the impossibly neat sitting room of its chairwoman, Mrs. Eleanor Throckmorton-Smythe, a woman whose accent was as clipped and precise as her prize-winning hedges.

“A tragedy, a sheer tragedy!” she declared, pouring tea with a steady hand. “Arthur was such a dedicated soul. Our financial rock.”

The other members formed a chorus of genteel shock. There was Brendan Shaw, a ruddy-faced man who specialised in aggressive roses. Felicity Davenport, a fluttery woman obsessed with heritage vegetables. And the newest member, a quiet, intense young botanist named Isak Vogler.

“Did Mr. Pendelby have any enemies?” Lundström asked, accepting a cup of tea he didn’t want.

“Enemies? In a garden club? Inspector, really,” Mrs. Throckmorton-Smythe chided. “Our fiercest battles are over greenfly infestations.”

Lundström’s phone buzzed. It was the forensics report. The briefcase had traces of a complex organic compound, a cutting-edge synthetic opiate. And the soil from the orchid’s pot contained microscopic traces of the same substance, mixed with a unique, non-organic binding agent.

He looked around the room, at the harmless, tea-sipping enthusiasts. The garden club, he realised, was not just about gardens.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The investigation grew thorns. Isak Vogler, the botanist, had a record, not for violence, but for computer hacking. Brendan Shaw’s rose nursery was haemorrhaging money. Felicity Davenport, it turned out, made frequent, unexplained trips to Estonia. And Mrs. Throckmorton-Smythe’s late husband had been a shipping magnate with connections to the Baltic ports.

Lundström confronted them one by one in the interview room, its starkness a world away from their floral haven.

“The binding agent, Mr. Vogler,” Lundström said, sliding a lab report across the table. “It’s a polymer used in high-tech horticultural gels. Your field.”

Vogler didn’t flinch. “It’s a common compound. You can’t tie that to me.”

With Shaw, it was the money. “Your business is failing, Mr. Shaw. Yet you just paid off a significant loan. Where did the money come from?”

“A lucky bet on the horses,” Shaw blustered, his face turning the colour of his Red Dragon roses.

It was a delicate dance. Lundström and Ek pieced together the operation. The drugs, produced in a hidden lab, were shipped in via Mrs. Throckmorton-Smythe’s old contacts. Vogler developed the soil-wax coating to mask the scent from dogs. Shaw provided distribution through his nursery couriers. And Pendelby had been the financier, the money launderer, using the club's seemingly legitimate flower shows and plant sales to clean the profits.

“But why kill Pendelby?” Ek mused, as they sat in Lundström’s car, watching the rain sheet down.

“He was skimming,” Lundström said, his voice flat. “Or he wanted out. In this business, retirement is a permanent condition.”

The break came from an unexpected source. Felicity Davenport, terrified, came to the station. “I just grew the vegetables!” she wept. “I didn’t know what they were hiding in the seed packets! Eleanor… she’s not what she seems. She said Arthur was a ‘weak root that needed pruning’.”

An hour later, Brendan Shaw was found dead in his greenhouse, a pair of specialist pruning shears plunged into his chest. The message was clear: the gardener was pruning the operation.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Lundström knew it was time to confront the mastermind. He and Ek drove to Mrs. Throckmorton-Smythe’s manor house, its gardens a masterpiece of controlled nature.

They found her in the walled garden, calmly deadheading roses with a pair of sharp, steel secateurs.

“Inspector,” she said, without turning around. “Come to admire the Rosa ‘Munstead Wood’? Its fragrance is quite intoxicating.”

“Like your business, Mrs. Throckmorton-Smythe,” Lundström said. “We know about the shipments. The lab. We know you had Pendelby and Shaw killed.”

She turned, her smile as cold and perfect as a frozen bloom. “This is England in miniature, Inspector. Or Sweden, for that matter. Beneath the beautiful, ordered surface, there is a relentless struggle for survival. The strong thrive. The weak are compost.”

“You’re not in a Jane Austen novel,” Ek snapped. “You’re under arrest for murder and drug trafficking.”

A flicker of anger crossed the woman’s face. “You have no proof.”

“We have Felicity Davenport,” Lundström said. “And we have Isak Vogler, who is currently explaining his polymer gel to my colleagues. Your garden is full of weeds, Eleanor. And it’s time to pull them up.”

For a moment, she looked like she might lunge, the secateurs glinting in the afternoon sun. But then she seemed to wilt, the formidable strength draining away, leaving just a tired, old woman standing amongst her beautiful, poisonous flowers.

* * * * * * * * * * *

A week later, Mats Lundström sat in his quiet apartment, a glass of single malt whisky in his hand, another small rebellion. He’d just finished a video call with Emil in England. His son was full of talk of exams and pubs, a world away from the dark soil of Växjö.

He looked out at the night, the lights of the town twinkling innocently below. A garden club. It was almost laughable. It was a reminder that evil rarely announced itself with a snarl; it more often arrived with a polite smile and an offer of tea, its roots buried deep in the most unexpected and ordinary of places. The case was closed, the poison pulled up. But Mats Lundström knew that in the hothouse of human greed, new, venomous blooms were always waiting to sprout. He took a slow sip of whisky, the peat smoke a comforting, solid taste in a deceptively fragile world.

END