The lady of Lakeholm Manor

The call came as Inspector Mats Lundström was contemplating the profound sadness of a microwaved meatball dinner. The rain streaked his apartment window in Växjö, turning the city lights into blurry smears of gold. It was his sergeant, Anja, her voice crisp with professional excitement.

“A body, Mats. Out at Lakeholm Manor. Old money. The matriarch, Elsa Vesterberg. Looks like suicide, but the local copper on scene has a bad feeling.”

Lundström grunted, pushing his plate away. A bad feeling was the only thing that made the job interesting anymore. “I’m on my way.”

Lakeholm Manor was a hulking silhouette of dark wood and white trim, brooding over the mist-shrouded lake that gave it its name. It spoke of generations of timber wealth and quiet, unassailable power. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old polish and newer tension.

The local officer, a fresh-faced constable, met him in the grand hall. “Inspector. She’s in the library. Took a dose of cyanide, it seems. But…” He gestured vaguely.

Elsa Vesterberg, a woman in her late seventies with a hawk-like profile even in death, was seated in a leather wingback chair. A tipped-over whiskey glass lay on the Persian rug, its contents soaking into the intricate patterns. A small, empty vial was on the desk beside an open ledger.

“Too neat,” Lundström murmured, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his worn trench coat. He wasn’t talking to anyone in particular. He scanned the room. A fire smouldered in the grate. Books lined the walls, their leather spines a testament to unread classics. “Where’s the note?”

“No note, sir,” the constable said.

“Precisely. A woman who kept ledgers this meticulous wouldn’t leave this world without an itemised list of grievances.” He crouched, his knees complaining silently. He didn’t touch the glass, but he noted the way it had fallen. “And who found her?”

“The housekeeper, Birgit. She’s in the kitchen with the family.”

The ‘family’ was a collection of carefully composed distress in the drawing-room. There was Henrik, Elsa’s nephew, a man in his forties with the soft hands and petulant mouth of someone who managed a fortune he didn’t own. His wife, Eva, was all sharp angles and nervous energy, her fingers constantly plucking at her silk scarf. Then there was the grandson, Lukas, in his early twenties, with the sullen, artistic look of someone who considered the world a personal insult. And finally, the lawyer, Stig Molin, a man so impeccably grey he seemed to blend with the wallpaper.

Lundström let Sergeant Anja take the lead with the family while he sought out the housekeeper. Birgit was a solid, no-nonsense woman in her sixties, her eyes red-rimmed but her posture ramrod straight.

“She would never,” Birgit said, crushing a tea towel in her hands. “Not Miss Elsa. She was… formidable. And she was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Lundström asked, leaning against the vast Aga cooker.

“Of being got rid of. She was changing her will. Again. She told me so yesterday. She said, ‘Birgit, the vultures are circling, but I’ll clip their wings before I’m done.’ She had an appointment with Mr. Molin today to sign the new documents.”

Lundström found Stig Molin in the study, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “The new will, Mr. Molin. What were the terms?”

The lawyer sighed, a practised sound of legal regret. “I cannot divulge...”

“A woman is dead. The will is now a central piece of evidence. Divulge.”

“Very well. The old will divided the estate evenly between Henrik and Lukas, with a bequest for Eva and a pension for Birgit. The new one… cut everyone out. She was leaving the entire estate, lock, stock, and timber, to a nature conservation trust. She said her family were ‘leeches who had squandered enough.’”

Later, in the library, Lundström shared this with Anja. “Motive, suddenly, for everyone.”

“But the door was locked from the inside,” Anja countered. “The constable confirmed it. Windows, too.”

Lundström walked to the French windows, examining the latch. It was an old, brass mechanism. He ran a thumb over it, then looked out at the rain-lashed terrace. Something caught his eye: a tiny, dark smear on the white stone balustrade, almost washed away by the rain. Mud.

The following day, the forensics report landed on his desk. The whiskey in the glass and in Elsa’s system contained a lethal dose of potassium cyanide. But there were no prints on the vial except for Elsa’s, smudged as if her hand had been placed there. And then, the curious detail: under her fingernails, they found minute traces of soil and a specific, blue-tinted polyester fibre.

“Not from her own clothes, and not from anything in the library,” Anja said.

Lundström’s mind, which had been idling like a reliable old Volvo engine, suddenly kicked into gear. He thought of the locked room. The mud outside. The fibres.

He drove back to Lakeholm, ignoring the family, and went straight to the boathouse. Inside, alongside a vintage motorboat, was a rowing skiff. And tucked away in a corner, hung on a peg, was a blue, polyester work jacket, damp at the cuffs and smeared with mud. It belonged to the groundsman, a quiet, surly man named Pettersson.

Confronted in his cottage, Pettersson broke easily. “He paid me! Said it was just a prank, to scare her!”

“Who?” Lundström’s voice was dangerously quiet.

“The boy. Lukas. He gave me five thousand kronor. Said his grandmother was getting paranoid. Told me to go up to the library terrace last night, make some noise, scratch at the window. He said it would prove she was losing her mind.”

Lundström had Lukas brought in for questioning. The young man was defiant, then frightened.

“It was just a joke! I wanted her to think she was seeing things. I was trying to get Uncle Henrik named as her guardian, so he could stop her from throwing all our money away on badgers and beetles! I didn’t kill her!”

Back at the station, Lundström felt the familiar, nagging itch. The pieces were there, but the picture was wrong. Lukas’s stupid plan provided the means for the murder, the distraction at the window would have made Elsa get up from her chair, maybe call out. But it didn’t explain the poison in the glass. Or the locked door.

He sat in his office, the dim light glinting off the framed photo of his son, Tom, grinning in his Oxford gown. He missed the boy’s clear-eyed logic. He looked at the evidence board: the will, the family, the jacket, the mud.

And then he saw it. The ledger on Elsa’s desk. He’d assumed it was for accounts. But what if it was a diary? He drove back to the manor for the third time, the summer night refusing to grow fully dark.

In the library, now sealed, he put on gloves and opened the heavy ledger. It wasn’t accounts. It was a log of observations, written in a sharp, precise hand. Henrik took 5000 from the safe again. Eva’s new necklace, must be 20,000. Lukas’s idiotic ‘art’ grant, another 10,000. And the last entry, dated the day she died: Stig was here. More nervous than usual. Could he be in on it? Must finalise the new will tomorrow. Tired of their lies.

Stig was here.

The lawyer. He had access. He had a motive, if the old will stood, his firm continued to manage the vast estate. A nature trust would likely use its own lawyers. He had been in the house that evening, ‘comforting the family’.

Lundström sent Anja to check Molin’s alibi for the critical time. It was shaky. He’d claimed to be in his study in town, but a cleaner had seen his car near the manor.

The final piece clicked into place when Lundström examined the French windows again. The lock was old, the kind with a large, protruding key. He looked at the keyhole from the outside. Then he went into the garden and found what he was looking for: a long, thin, flexible stem of a hardy fern, snapped near the base.

He assembled everyone in the library, the family, the lawyer, the housekeeper. The room was thick with animosity and fear.

“Elsa Vesterberg was murdered,” Lundström began, his voice flat and tired. “It was made to look like suicide, but the killer made mistakes. He used Lukas’s childish prank as a cover. While Pettersson was scratching at the window, distracting Elsa, the killer was already in the room.”

He turned to Stig Molin. “You were here earlier, discussing the will. You knew she drank a whiskey every night at nine. You knew which glass she used. You slipped the cyanide into the decanter before you left. A gamble, but a calculated one. You then pretended to leave, but doubled back. When Pettersson caused his distraction, Elsa got up. She went to the window. And you, from the terrace, used this, ” he held up the fern stem. “...to push the key from the outside lock. It fell to the rug inside. Then you simply reached through the cat flap in the scullery door, a flap big enough for a small dog, or a man’s arm and used a length of wire with a hook to retrieve the key, lock the door from the outside, and pull the key back out, dropping it on the floor near her chair. You even guided her dead fingers onto the vial to plant her prints. You were creating a perfect, sealed room.”

Molin’s face was a mask of contempt. “This is fantasy, Inspector. Why would I do such a thing?”

“For the same reason most murders happen. Money. Or rather, the management of it. With the old will intact, your firm retains control. The new will would have ruined you. You saw the entries in her ledger. She was starting to suspect you.”

Molin laughed, a dry, brittle sound. “A plant stem? A cat flap? You have no proof.”

“We have the security camera from the neighbour’s house across the lake,” Lundström lied smoothly, the way he had learned to do over thirty years. “It’s quite a powerful lens. It clearly shows a man of your description on the terrace, performing that exact little pantomime with the fern. The forensics team are going over your car and your office as we speak. They’ll find traces of the soil from the terrace, and the unique polyester fibre from Pettersson’s jacket, which you had to brush past in the dark boathouse to get your ‘tool’.”

It was the last bluff that broke him. The mention of the blue fibre, the concrete, damning detail he hadn’t considered. Stig Molin’s shoulders slumped, the grey man finally showing his colour. “She was going to throw it all away,” he whispered.

As Anja led him away, Lundström walked out onto the terrace. The mist was clearing, and the first light of dawn was painting the lake in shades of silver and rose. It was beautiful, and it was peaceful. He thought of Tom in England, and for the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel the ache of distance, but a simple desire to call him and hear his voice. The puzzle was solved, the balance, however fragile, restored. For now, it was enough.

Dead coach walking

The scent of liniment and decades of sweat hung heavy in the Växjö Vikings’ locker room. It was a smell Inspector Mats Lundström associated with disappointed ambition, a far cry from the polished halls of the university where his son, Johan, was studying economics. Lundström, a solid man in his mid-fifties with a face that had seen too much Swedish gloom, stood over the body and felt a profound sense of waste.

Coach Magnus "Mackan" Andersson lay sprawled on the damp concrete floor, a legend brought low. He was a bull of a man, even in death, his face frozen in an expression of profound surprise. The cause of that surprise was grotesquely obvious: an old, rust-streaked football cleat was embedded in his temple. It stood upright, a grim, metallic parody of Excalibur.

“Not a pretty sight, Mats,” said Constable Pettersson, a young man who still believed in procedure.

“Death seldom is,” Lundström replied, his voice a low rumble. He noted the details. The cleat was antique, a relic from the sixties, not like the modern blades the team used. The locker room was in disarray, but it was the organised chaos of a post-game frenzy. Towels were strewn, benches overturned in celebration or frustration. The Vikings had won their derby match against Kalmar just an hour before.

Lundström’s first interviews were with the team captain, a handsome, serious boy named Viktor, and the star striker, the volatile and talented Tommi.

“Everyone loved Coach,” Viktor insisted, his eyes red-rimmed. “He was like a father.”

“Was he?” Lundström asked, his gaze drifting to Tommi, who was scowling at his expensive boots. “I heard he benched you for the first half, Tommi. For missing a curfew.”

Tommi’s head snapped up. “So? We won, didn’t we? It was a tactical thing. He was tough, but fair.”

The words sounded rehearsed. Lundström filed them away.

The trail led him away from the bright lights of the stadium into the quiet, leafy suburbs of Växjö, where secrets were buried under well-tended lawns. He learned that the beloved Coach Andersson was a man of contradictions. He ran a charity for underprivileged youth, but there were whispers about the charity’s finances. He was a family man, photographed with a smiling wife and two daughters, but Lundström’s source at a local bar mentioned a recent, heated argument with a woman who was not his wife.

The woman was Elsa, the wife of the team’s ageing, alcoholic groundsman, Stig. Lundström found Stig in his potting shed, the air thick with the smell of peat and cheap whiskey. The cleat, Stig confirmed with a trembling hand, was from his own playing days, a trophy he kept on a shelf. He hadn’t even noticed it was missing.

“He was destroying her, you know,” Stig slurred, his eyes bleary with drink and tears. “Magnus. Promised her the world. Just like he promised me a job for life. Liars, the both of them.”

It was a strong motive, but Stig had a cast-iron alibi, he’d been passed out in this very shed during the match, witnessed by half the neighbourhood.

The case seemed to be sinking into the familiar mud of domestic tragedy when Lundström received a call from the forensics lab. There were traces of a rare, high-performance adhesive on the cleat’s rusted studs. It was the same adhesive used to repair modern football boots.

Lundström returned to the locker room, now silent and forensically cleansed. He stood where Andersson had fallen, picturing the scene. The celebratory chaos. The cleat, heavy and sharp. It wasn’t a weapon of passion grabbed in the moment; it was a prop, planted. The rust was a disguise. The murder was premeditated.

He gathered the key players in the school’s trophy room, a hall of echoes and tarnished silver. Viktor, the captain. Tommi, the striker. The stern, efficient chair of the school board, Birgitta, who was also Magnus’s wife. And Elsa, the groundsman’s wife, her face pale with anxiety.

“We’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” Lundström began, his hands clasped behind his back, pacing slowly like a lecturer. “We thought it was a crime of passion. A sudden, violent argument. But the cleat was brought here deliberately. The rust was meant to point us to the past, to an old grudge. To Stig.”

He stopped in front of Birgitta Andersson. “You argued with your husband recently, didn’t you? About money. The charity funds were drying up, and he was getting reckless. He was going to leave you, for Elsa here. A scandal that would have ruined his legacy and your social standing.”

Birgitta’s face was a mask of cold contempt. “This is insulting.”

Lundström turned to Tommi. “And you. You didn’t just miss a curfew. Coach found out you’d taken a bribe to throw the first half. He was going to the board. Your career would be over before it began.”

Tommi looked at the floor, his shoulders slumping.

“And you, Viktor,” Lundström continued, his tone softer. “You knew. You’re a moral young man. You admired the coach, but you were loyal to your team. You were trapped.”

He turned to face them all. “But only one of you had the knowledge to use that specific adhesive. Only one of you had access to the repair kit, and a reason to make this look like a crime from the past, to muddy the waters.”

His eyes settled on the star striker. “Tommi. You’re a craftsman with those boots. You’re always fixing them, customising them. The adhesive is yours. You saw your future crumbling. You took the cleat from Stig’s shed, knowing it would point to him. After the game, in the confusion, you lured Coach to the storage cupboard. You argued. And you killed him. You thought the rust and the old scandal would cover your tracks. But you made one mistake. You’re too good at your job. You fixed the weapon too well.”

Tommi’s defiance collapsed. “He was going to destroy everything!” he cried out, his voice cracking. “It was just a stupid bet! He didn’t have to end me for it!”

As Pettersson led the sobbing boy away, the trophy room fell silent. The legacy of Magnus Andersson was secure, but at a terrible cost.

Later that evening, Lundström sat in his quiet apartment, the silence pressing in. He picked up his phone and dialled the number in England.

“Johan? … It’s your father. … Yes, I’m fine. Just… just wanted to hear your voice. How are your studies?”
The case was closed, but the emptiness remained. Another puzzle solved, another glimpse into the darkness that lay beneath the surface of his quiet Swedish town. He poured a single malt, the peat smoke a welcome ghost in the room, and waited for the night to pass.

End

The Lakeview Legacy

The call came at 4:17 a.m., a time reserved for bad news and old regrets. Inspector Mats Lundström was already awake, sipping bitter coffee and staring at the silent, dark expanse of Helgasjön from his apartment window. The ringtone sliced through the quiet, a jarring intrusion that felt, in some deep, unspoken part of him, like an inevitability.

“Lundström,” he answered, his voice a gravelly echo in the room.

“Inspector. It’s Andersson. We have a body. Out near the old Kronoberg Castle ruins.” The young sergeant’s voice was tight, trying to sound professional but betraying a tremor of unease. “You’d better come. It’s… it looks like the old ones.”

Mats closed his eyes for a brief second. The ‘old ones’. He’d been a fresh-faced constable then, just a spectator to the frenzy that had gripped Växjö. The Lakeview Slasher. Three victims over two autumns, each body found posed in a grim, ritualistic manner near the lake, a crude rune carved into the flesh. Then, nothing. The terror stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving behind only ghosts and a thick file of dead ends.

The morning mist clung to the gnarled oaks and pine trees as Mats crunched across the frost-kissed gravel towards the police cordon. The scene was a picture of serene Swedish gothic, the ancient stone ruins of the castle a brooding silhouette against the pale pink dawn. Sergeant Andersson, looking far too young for this, met him with a grimace.

“Over here, sir. A hiker found her.”

The woman lay on a flat, moss-covered stone at the edge of the crumbling fortress wall. She was in her late twenties, dressed in expensive hiking gear. Her positioning was deliberate, almost serene, hands folded over her chest. But the story was told in the details Mats’s experienced eyes immediately catalogued: the unnatural pallor, the tiny, precise cut on the neck, and just visible above the collar of her jacket, the edge of a carved symbol.

“The rune,” Mats stated flatly, kneeling. He didn’t need to see it fully. The memory was etched into his own mind as clearly as it was on the victim’s skin.

“The Ansuz rune,” a voice said from behind him. Dr. Elsa Lindgren, the county’s chief pathologist, approached, her breath pluming in the cold air. “Odin’s rune. Signifying wisdom, a message. It’s identical to the ones on the victims in ’98.”

Mats grunted, rising to his feet. His knees protested. “A message after twenty-five years? What kind of message is that?”

“A taunt?” Andersson offered.

“Or a legacy,” Mats murmured, his gaze sweeping over the tranquil, menacing landscape. He felt the weight of the past settle on his shoulders, heavier than his worn wool overcoat.

* * * * * * * * * *

The victim was identified as Karin Ekman, a freelance journalist from Stockholm. Her laptop and notes, retrieved from her hotel room, revealed her reason for being in Växjö: she was researching a true-crime book on the Lakeview Slasher case.

“She was stirring up the past,” Mats said, pacing the cramped incident room. Photographs of the original victims stared down from the whiteboard, their youthful faces a stark contrast to the crime scene photos beside them. “She talked to someone who didn’t want to be talked about.”

The investigation became a dance between two timelines. Mats and Andersson re-interviewed the surviving relatives and witnesses from the original case, a parade of ageing faces clouded with old fear. They were met with a wall of silence, a collective desire to let sleeping dogs lie. The original lead investigator, now retired and living in a sunny Spanish villa, was little help over a crackling line. “A ghost, Lundström,” he wheezed. “We were chasing a ghost.”

The break came from an unexpected source. Karin Ekman’s phone records showed a series of calls to a number registered to a Magnus Thorén, a reclusive, wealthy landowner whose estate bordered the lake. Thorén’s father, a prominent local historian with a known fascination for Norse paganism, had been an early person of interest in the original investigation, but nothing had ever stuck.

Thorén Manor was a vast, sombre house of dark wood and stone, looking out over the lake with an air of disdainful permanence. Magnus Thorén received them in a library that smelled of old leather and peat smoke. He was a man in his late fifties, impeccably dressed, with cold, intelligent eyes.

“Miss Ekman was a tenacious young woman,” Thorén said, swirling a glass of amber whisky. “She was convinced my father was the Slasher. A ridiculous notion. He was an academic, not a murderer.”

“And what do you think?” Mats asked, his tone deceptively casual.

“I think the past should remain buried, Inspector. Some secrets protect this town. My family has protected Lakeview for generations.” There was a threat woven into the civility of his words.

As they left the manor, Andersson shook his head. “Smug bastard. He’s hiding something.”

“He’s guarding something,” Mats corrected. “There’s a difference.”

The case took a violent turn that evening. Mats was at his desk, the low hum of the station a familiar comfort, when his personal mobile buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number. A photograph. His son, Erik, laughing outside his university library in England. The message below was a single word: Stop.

A cold fury, colder than the Swedish winter, washed over Mats. It was one thing to threaten him; it was another to drag his boy into this. The ghost wasn’t just back; it was in the room with him.

The next morning, a second body was found. Not a stranger, not a journalist, but Henrik Viklund, the elderly, gentle curator of the local museum. He had been one of Mats’s first interviews, a nervous man who had seemed to know more than he was saying. He was laid out in the woods behind the museum, posed in the same way, the Ansuz rune carved into his forehead. The message was clearer now: a warning to those who might break their silence.

“He was the original lead detective’s primary informant,” Mats realised, piecing it together back at the station. “Viklund knew something. Karin Ekman found him, and now he’s been silenced.”

The pressure mounted. The national press descended on Växjö, dredging up the old headlines. The chief constable wanted a quick arrest, suggesting they bring in Magnus Thorén for intense questioning. But Mats felt a nagging doubt. It was too obvious. Thorén was a bully, a manipulator, but the killings had a specific, obsessive signature that didn’t quite fit.

His answer came from an old evidence box. While re-examining the original files, he found a faded photograph he’d overlooked. It was of a group of teenagers, taken at the annual Midsummer festival in 1998. In the background, slightly blurred, stood a young Magnus Thorén, his arm draped possessively around the shoulders of the Slasher’s first victim. And standing next to them, looking at the victim with an expression of raw, adolescent adoration, was a boy Mats knew. The boy was now a man: Sergeant Nils Andersson.

The realisation hit Mats like a physical blow. The convenient leads, the subtle misdirections, the access to the investigation. The threat to his son, which required knowledge only someone inside the investigation would have.

He confronted Andersson in the evidence room, the door clicking shut with a sound of finality. The young sergeant’s face, usually so open, was a mask of weary resignation.

“It was you,” Mats said, his voice low and steady. “Not Magnus. You.”

Andersson didn’t deny it. He leaned against a shelf of cold case files, his shoulders slumping. “Her name was Lina. Magnus Thorén dated her, but he never cared for her. I loved her. I loved her so much it hurt.”

The story tumbled out, a tragedy of youth and obsession. Lina had broken things off with Magnus, and in a fit of rage, Magnus had killed her, staging it with the pagan symbols his father had obsessed over. Nils, discovering the body, had been shattered. But instead of going to the police, a twisted idea had taken root.

“He thought he could get away with it because of his name, his money,” Andersson whispered, his eyes glistening. “So I made sure he couldn’t. I killed the others. I made it a series. I made it the work of a monster, so that when the time was right, I could pin it all on him. I became the Slasher to avenge her.”

“For twenty-five years?” Mats asked, horrified.

“I buried it. I moved on. I even joined the force to make sure the file stayed closed. Then that journalist started digging. She found my diary from that summer. Viklund knew about my infatuation with Lina; he was going to tell her everything. I had to protect the legacy. My legacy.”

“The legacy of a murderer,” Mats said, his hand resting near the butt of his service weapon.

“The legacy of a man who loved enough to become a monster,” Andersson corrected, a sad, proud smile on his lips. In a sudden movement, he drew his own pistol. But the resolve to use it wasn’t there. The fight had gone out of him with the confession. He simply let the weapon hang limply at his side.

Mats moved quickly, disarming him with a practiced ease that belied his age. He read Andersson his rights as he cuffed him, the words sounding hollow and formal in the dusty, silent room.

* * * * * * * * * *

A week later, the circus had moved on. Magnus Thorén, cleared of the murders but facing charges of obstruction and historical assault, had retreated behind the walls of his manor, his reputation in tatters. The headlines had been written, the case closed.

Mats Lundström stood once more by the window, looking out at the dark, placid surface of Lake Helgasjön. The ghosts had been laid to rest, but the water looked no different. It had seen it all before. He picked up his phone and dialled the international number.

“Erik? It’s your dad. Listen… I was thinking. It’s been too long. How about I come for a visit? Just for a few days.”

As he listened to his son’s enthusiastic reply, a genuine smile, the first in weeks, touched Mats’s lips. Some legacies, he thought, were worth preserving. And others were best left behind, fading like a rune carved into old stone, slowly worn away by the relentless passage of time.

END