Something had seemed wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it then and I couldn’t now

The young cop replaced the receiver. “Inspector Hallengren will see you now. Please follow me.” The room was at the end of the corridor. The door was open, but he still knocked loudly. Hallengren’s voice came from within. The young man stepped back, motioning to me to enter, then left. If I’d expected clues to Hallengren’s private life, I was disappointed. There were no family photographs, only office furniture: filing cabinets, a cluttered desk, and a table and chairs.

Hallengren got to his feet. “Miss Stewart, this is an unexpected pleasure.” He motioned to a chair. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you.” I sat down.

He lowered himself into his chair. “I am hoping this is a social visit,” he said, a smile playing on his lips.

“It isn’t, Inspector.” I hesitated. “I’ve come about the diary.”

“I see.”

I’d expected more of a reaction. “You told me it was missing,” I added.

“I do not believe that I did. I asked whether you had seen the contents. I did not say it was missing. What precisely have you come to see me about?”

“I overheard a conversation between Marcellus and Wilson Bibby’s lawyer.” Hallengren raised an eyebrow. “His lawyer?”

Frowning

“Aaron Vandenberg. I think you may not have met him.”

“I had no idea Wilson had brought his lawyer with him.” He reached for a file. “He has not been staying at the Excelsior. I would have remembered the name.”

“He’s been in Kiruna since Monday. He’s at the Excelsior now.”

Hallengren studied me, frowning. “You heard him speaking to Marcellus Bibby about the diary?” I nodded.

“When was this, Miss Stewart?”

“An hour ago. I was in the church tower when they came in.” I chewed my lip. “I hid behind the door, listening.”

If Hallengren had a view as to my behaviour, he kept it to himself. “Inspector, I can only just remember what I overheard,” I said impatiently.

He opened a drawer and produced a portable recorder. “Do you mind speaking into a machine, Miss Stewart?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you remember. I will not interrupt.”

He listened intently, making notes while I recounted the conversation between Marcellus and Aaron. When I finished, he rose and paced the room.

“Miss Stewart,” he said, sitting down, “you must promise to keep this information to yourself.”

“Again?” I said, with mild irony. “Will you tell me why this time?” He drew his brows together, saying nothing. “Look, Inspector, we’re crammed into the Excelsior like sardines, Aaron and Marcellus included.

“If what I’ve told you is of interest, and I think it is or you wouldn’t be wanting me to keep quiet about it, then I might be able to help you further. I may overhear things, but I won’t know if they’re useful unless you tell me about this diary.”

He must have seen the force of my argument. “The diary is not missing,” he said reluctantly. “It never was. But there are pages that have been removed.”

“I’d worked that out for myself,” I said wryly. “But what’s so unusual about pages removed? They doubled as memo slips. Memo slips are meant to be removed.”

Torn out

“But not the carbons. All the pages from last week, the week Wilson Bibby stayed in Stockholm, have been removed, carbons included. They were torn out by someone in a hurry.”

“From what Aaron Vandenberg said, you can get them from the Swedish Minister.”

“Maybe not the final page.”

“Aaron has a copy,” I said, wondering if Hallengren had missed that point. He nodded, saying nothing.

“Inspector, do you think Aaron and Marcellus are involved in something illegal? And it’s on that last page?”

“If it is, Miss Stewart, then Wilson Bibby would have been involved too. It is his diary.”

“I suppose.” I sat back. “There’s something else I should tell you. I spoke with Aaron Vandenberg earlier, before I went to the church. He told me he’d flown down that morning from Stockholm.” “What time did you speak to him?”

“A little before eight o’clock.”

“Then he cannot have. The first plane from Stockholm to Kiruna is not until 10.30. He could have chartered a plane – I can easily check – but, even so, it contradicts what he said to Marcellus.”

“What do you think’s going on with the two of them?”

“I have no idea, Miss Stewart.”

“But you know that this diary is important. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me to keep quiet about it.”

“I asked you to keep quiet because it may be important.” After a silence, he said: “Miss Stewart, did you look into Wilson Bibby’s room on the morning his body was discovered?” He was watching me, his gaze steady.

“You seem surprised by the question. I cannot think why – I understand half the guests in the Icehotel took a good look at the corpse.”

I shifted in the chair. “Did you notice anything unusual?” he said. “About the room?”

“About the corpse. Apart from the fact that Wilson Bibby was not wearing his snowsuit.”

I cast my mind back to the scene. At the time, something had seemed wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it then and I couldn’t now.

“There was something else he was not wearing, Miss Stewart. There was no locker key round his wrist.” Hallengren waited for the information to sink in. “We checked every inch of his room – we even sifted the snow – but we could not find it.

Volunteered

“We know that he used the locker because there are witnesses who not only saw him leave his clothes there, but saw him use his key.”

“I take it he hadn’t left it in the lock.”

“In the end, we opened the locker. All his effects were there, according to Marcellus, the money, the credit cards. It was Marcellus who drew our attention to the diary. He was looking through it and discovered that some pages had been torn out.”

“He volunteered this information?”

“He was very helpful.”

I felt like saying: “Then why were you giving him such a hard time when you interviewed him?” But I said nothing; from what I’d overheard in the church, Marcellus wasn’t exactly squeaky clean.

“How would you account for the missing locker key, Miss Stewart?”

“Wilson dropped it on the way to his room?” “We combed the entire Icehotel.”

I recalled the anxiety in Marcellus’s voice when he told Aaron the pages were missing.

More tomorrow.