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