A cone of betrayal

The scream tore through the idyllic summer evening, a sharp, silver needle in the placid fabric of the small town of Årby. It came not from some dark alley, but from the ‘Glasstrutens Glädje’ The Joy of the Ice Cream Cone, a place of rainbows of sprinkles and the gentle whir of soft-serve machines. Inside, amidst the sweet, cloying scent of waffle cones and spilled strawberry syrup, lay the owner, Elsa Persson. The ice pick buried in her chest was a grotesque, metallic counterpoint to the pastel colours of her shop. It was a murder so brutal, so out of place, that it curdled the town’s innocence in an instant. For thirty years, the ‘Ice Cream Shop Murder’ festered, a cold case file that whispered of a killer who had melted back into the everyday life of Årby. Until now.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The call came on a Tuesday, a day of soft, persistent rain that greyed the streets of Växjö. Inspector Mats Lundström sat at his desk, a mug of strong, black coffee warming his hands as he contemplated a photograph of his son, David, grinning in his graduation gown at Oxford. The distance felt physical, a dull ache beneath his ribs. The phone was an intrusion.

“Lundström,” he answered, his voice a low rumble.

It was the station chief. “Mats, we’re sending you to Årby. The Elsa Persson case.”

Lundström’s eyebrows, thick and greying, knitted together. “The ice cream shop? That’s a museum piece.”

“Not anymore. New evidence. A DNA hit from the murder weapon. It’s come back to a local. A respected one.”

An hour later, Lundström’s Volvo crunched to a halt outside the now-derelict ‘Glasstrutens Glädje’, its cheerful sign faded and peeling. The local constable, a young man named Pettersson with an earnest face, stood waiting under a large umbrella.

“Inspector. It’s… an honour,” Pettersson said, slightly flustered.

“The honour is all mine, I’m sure,” Lundström murmured, his eyes scanning the quiet, rain-slicked square. “So, who is this paragon of the community our database has so rudely accused?”

Pettersson swallowed. “Stig Ahlin, sir. The pharmacist.”

Lundström gave a short, humourless laugh. “Stig Ahlin? He gives talks to the Rotary Club about cholesterol. He sponsored the new village flower beds.”

“Exactly, sir.”

Stig Ahlin’s pharmacy was a temple of order and clean, clinical smells. Ahlin himself was a neat, balding man in his late sixties, with wire-rimmed glasses and an expression of perpetual, mild concern. He didn’t flinch when Lundström and Pettersson entered, the bell above the door tinkling merrily.

“Inspector,” Ahlin said, wiping his hands on a clean white towel. “I heard you were in town. A dreadful business, dredging all that up.”

“The past has a way of floating to the surface, Herr Ahlin,” Lundström said, leaning casually against a counter of cough lozenges. “Especially when DNA is involved. Your DNA, to be precise. Found on the handle of the ice pick that killed Elsa Persson.”

Ahlin’s composure was remarkable. He simply nodded, a sad, weary gesture. “Yes, I was afraid of that. I knew Elsa. Everyone did. I was in her shop that afternoon, buying a tub of vanilla for my wife. I must have touched that ice pick. It was on the counter, you see. She used it to break up blocks of chocolate.”

It was plausible. Too plausible. It had the rehearsed feel of a story held close for thirty years.

“Convenient,” Lundström said softly. “And your wife can verify this?”

A shadow passed over Ahlin’s face. “My wife passed away five years ago, Inspector. Cancer.”

Lundström offered a curt nod of sympathy that didn’t reach his eyes. “My condolences. But a dead alibi is no alibi at all.”

The investigation became a slow, meticulous dissection of a town’s secrets. Lundström, with the eager Pettersson in tow, moved through Årby like a surgeon. They spoke to Birgit Karlsson, Elsa’s fiercely loyal former assistant, now running a small café. Her bitterness was as strong as her coffee.

“Stig Ahlin?” she spat. “He was always hanging around. Smarmy. Elsa was too kind. She lent money to half the town. Including him, I’ll bet. She was soft, but she kept a ledger. Meticulous. It vanished after she died.”

A ledger. The word hung in the air, tantalising.

They visited the grand, isolated house of Sven Berglund, a wealthy, retired businessman who had once been the town’s major employer. He received them in a study lined with hunting trophies.

“Elsa?” Berglund boomed, pouring himself a generous whiskey though it was only noon. “Pretty thing. A tragedy. This town has been living in the shadow of that shop for too long. Ahlin? A pill-pusher. But a murderer? I doubt it. More likely it was some drifter.”

But Lundström’s instincts, honed over thirty-five years, were twitching. He felt the subtle resistance, the carefully constructed narratives. That evening, sitting in his cramped, temporary office, he dialled England.

“Dad?” David’s voice, bright and clear despite the static, was a balm.

“David. Are you eating properly? That college food…”

“I’m fine, Dad. Are you on a case? You have your ‘puzzling’ tone.”

Lundström almost smiled. “A very old puzzle. It seems the most respectable pieces are often the ones that don’t quite fit.”

The break came from Pettersson, who had been doggedly chasing the ledger. He found it, not in a safe or a lockbox, but buried in a crate of old recipe books in Birgit’s café attic. It was a simple accounts book, but in the margins, in Elsa’s elegant script, were notes. Not just figures, but secrets. ‘S.B. - 50,000 kr - for silence?’ was one entry, next to Sven Berglund’s name. And next to Stig Ahlin’s: ‘S.A. - 25,000 kr - to fix his mistake. The girl.’

Lundström stared at the page, the pieces clicking into a dreadful, ugly picture. It wasn’t about money. It was about blackmail. Elsa hadn’t just been kind; she had been powerful. She knew things.

He confronted Berglund first. The businessman’s bluster evaporated when shown the ledger. “It was a long time ago,” he whispered, deflated. “A… business indiscretion. Elsa found out. She promised to keep quiet, for a price. But I didn’t kill her! I paid her!”

Then, Lundström went to the pharmacy. It was closed, but a light was on in the back. He found Stig Ahlin sitting at his desk, an old photograph in his hands. It showed a younger, happier Ahlin with his wife, and a baby girl.

“The girl,” Lundström said quietly, not as an accusation, but as a statement of fact.

Ahlin looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and utterly broken. The mask of respectability had finally shattered.

“My daughter,” he whispered. “She wasn’t… well. A difficult birth. My fault. A miscalculation in a compound I prescribed for my wife. Our little girl… she lived only a week. A secret we buried. My wife never recovered. Elsa… she was a nurse before she opened the shop. She recognised the symptoms, put it all together. She asked for money, to ‘help us through our grief’, she said. It was extortion.”

“So you went to the shop that night,” Lundström prompted, his voice gentle but relentless.

“To beg her to stop. I had the ice pick from my fishing kit in the car; I was going to the lake later. I don’t even remember taking it inside. She laughed at me. Said some secrets were too valuable to ever be forgotten. And then… the red. So much red, on all the white. It looked like… raspberry sauce.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of a clock and the patter of rain against the window.

“You wiped the handle,” Lundström said. “But not well enough.”

“I’ve been wiping it clean every day for thirty years, Inspector,” Ahlin replied, his voice hollow. “In here.” He tapped his temple. “I planted the flower beds in her memory. I gave talks about health. I tried to be so good. But the stain never goes away.”

Lundström nodded to Pettersson, who stood in the doorway. As the young constable read Ahlin his rights, Lundström looked out at the quiet, sleeping town of Årby. The killer hadn’t been a monster from the shadows. He had been the man who sold you aspirin and asked after your grandchildren. The evil had been served with a smile, in a place of rainbows and sprinkles, and it had taken three decades for the bill to finally come due.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Back in Växjö, the rain had cleared. Lundström packed the last of the Elsa Persson file into a cardboard box, the case closed. He picked up the photograph of David. The ache of distance was still there, but it felt different now. Less like a void, and more like a connection sustained. He thought of Stig Ahlin, a man so trapped by a single, terrible moment that his entire life had become its memorial. Lundström picked up the phone. It was time to book a flight to England. Some puzzles were meant to be solved, and some connections were meant to be renewed, before the ice, as it inevitably does, began to form.

END