The compass was more than brass and glass; it was a piece of Växjö’s soul. Forged in 1748 by a master cartographer obsessed with the uncharted Småland forests, it was said its needle, once activated by a cryptic rhyme, would not point north, but towards the lost treasure of the ‘Forest King,’ a legendary bandit. For decades, it was a dusty myth, displayed under a glass dome in the Växjö Museum. Until tonight. The alarm was a silent, blinking red eye. The laser grid, deactivated. The glass dome, empty. All that remained was the ghost of a legend and the beginning of a very modern mystery.
* * * * * * * * * *
The morning rain misted the windows of Inspector Mats Lundström’s Volvo, blurring the neat, sombre buildings of Växjö into a watercolour gloom. He cut the engine, sat for a moment, and massaged the bridge of his nose. A text from his son, David, in England, glowed on his phone: “Dad, remember you promised to call about my dissertation? No rush.” Always the ‘no rush’. Lundström made a mental note, a note he knew would likely fade amidst the day’s clutter.
The museum was a scene of controlled chaos. The young curator, Elin Viberg, was pale and trembling. “It’s impossible, Inspector. The system was armed. There’s no sign of forced entry on the main doors.”
Lundström, his trench coat dark with rain, stood before the empty plinth. “Who knew the codes, Fröken Viberg?”
“Myself, the director, Dr. Lindgren… and our head of security, Sven Olsson.” She gestured to a hulking, grim-faced man in a uniform a size too tight.
Olsson’s story was rigid, rehearsed. “I did my rounds at 10 p.m. All was secure. The motion sensors in this room were isolated for maintenance. A regrettable oversight.”
“Regrettable,” Lundström echoed, his tone flat. He knelt, peering at the floor. A single, tiny sliver of wood, dark and polished, lay near the display case. Not oak, like the floor. Rosewood. He bagged it silently.
The investigation began its plodding course. The museum’s director, the venerable Dr. Lindgren, was a man of dusty academia, wringing his hands over the insurance, his distress seeming genuine, if theatrical. “The compass is priceless! Its historical value!”
“And its value to a treasure hunter?” Lundström asked, watching him closely.
Lindgren scoffed. “Superstition! The rhyme is a children’s jingle. ‘When the crow flies over the silver lake, the king’s eye sees the path you take.’ Nonsense.”
But Lundström’s next visit was to someone who didn’t think it was nonsense. Arvid Persson was a local historian, a man whose obsession with the Forest King bordered on fanaticism. He lived in a cluttered cottage on the edge of the great forest, maps and manuscripts covering every surface.
“Lindgren is a fool!” Persson spat, his eyes alight with fervour. “The compass is real! The rhyme is the key. Without it, the compass is just a curio. But with it… with it, you can find the King’s Hoard. Someone knows this. Someone who has the rhyme.”
“And who has the rhyme?” Lundström asked, accepting a cup of bitter coffee.
“A copy was in the museum archives. Stolen six months ago. Lindgren called it a misfiling.” Persson leaned in conspiratorially. “But there are others. Passed down in certain families.”
The case seemed a dead end of folklore and hearsay until the first body was found.
Sven Olsson, the security guard, was discovered in the toolshed behind his tidy suburban house, a blow from a heavy, blunt object crushing his skull. The scene was staged to look like a botched burglary, but it was too neat. And on the ground, near Olsson’s lifeless hand, was another tiny sliver of rosewood.
“This is no longer a theft,” Lundström muttered to his young, eager sergeant, Anja. “This is a purge.”
The connection was the compass. Olsson had access. Someone thought he knew too much, or had outlived his usefulness. Lundström’s mind, a well-oiled machine of cynicism and intuition, began to turn. He re-interviewed Elin Viberg. She was distraught, her fear palpable. “Sven was a gentle man! He was… he was scared after the theft. Said he saw something that night, but wouldn’t tell me what.”
Pressure was applied. Lindgren, under the stark light of the interview room, cracked. His academic veneer splintered, revealing a desperate man buried in debt. “It was Olsson’s idea! He had a buyer. A collector from Stockholm. I was just to provide the access codes. I never wanted anyone hurt!”
“Where is the compass now?” Lundström’s voice was like ice.
“I don’t know! Olsson took it. He was to make the handover last night. He must have double-crossed them… or they double-crossed him.”
Them. The word hung in the air. There was another player.
Lundström and Anja raced back to Arvid Persson’s cottage. The door was ajar. Inside, the chaos was different. It was a frantic, violent search. Books were torn from shelves, drawers upended. And in the centre of the room, Persson lay dead, a letter opener protruding from his chest. In his hand, he clutched a torn piece of a map.
The hunt was now a sprint. The map fragment showed a section of Lake Helgasjön, labelled ‘Silver Lake’ in an old dialect. The ‘crow’ from the rhyme was Crow Hill, a promontory overlooking it. Lundström knew where the finale would play out.
Under a bruised, twilight sky, they moved through the pine forests surrounding the lake. The air was cold and still. And then, through the trees, they saw them: two figures grappling on the Crow Hill overlook.
Elin Viberg, no longer the timid curator, was fighting a tall, gaunt man Lundström recognised as a known antiquities thief from Malmö. In her hand, the antique compass glinted in the fading light.
“It was hers all along, sir?” Anja whispered, shocked.
“The mastermind,” Lundström said, drawing his service pistol. “The ‘regrettable oversight’, the stolen rhyme, playing Persson and Lindgren against each other. She needed Olsson for access, Lindgren for the code, and Persson for the knowledge. Then she started tying up loose ends.”
He stepped into the clearing. “Elin Viberg! Police! It’s over.”
She spun, her face a mask of fierce determination. “It’s mine! The treasure is my birthright! My family are descendants of the Forest King! He was no bandit, he was a rebel!” She held up the compass, chanting the rhyme. “When the crow flies over the silver lake…”
The needle spun erratically, then steadied, pointing not north, but directly down at the ground beneath her feet.
In that moment of triumphant revelation, the thief lunged for the compass. There was a shot—not from Lundström’s gun, but from the thief’s. Elin cried out, stumbling back, the compass flying from her grasp. It described a perfect, glittering arc over the cliff edge, vanishing into the dark waters of Lake Helgasjön.
The thief was quickly subdued. Anja tended to Elin, who lay bleeding on the ancient rock, her life seeping away along with her ancestral dream.
* * * * * * * * * *
A week later, the rain had returned. In his office, Mats Lundström finally made the call to England.
“David? It’s your dad. Sorry it’s late. Tell me about this dissertation of yours.”
He listened, staring out at the wet, dark streets of Växjö. The compass was lost, the treasure’s location once again a myth. Two men were dead, a woman was in critical condition, and a greedy man was in custody. The vortex of obsession had consumed them all. For Lundström, there was no grand treasure, only the quiet satisfaction of a pattern understood, a balance restored. And the small, vital comfort of his son’s voice, a connection far more real and valuable than any forgotten king’s gold.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment