Icehotel: Episode 48

I stared at him, not understanding. There was a note of exasperation in his voice

After a silence, Hallengren said: “You and Professor Auchinleck were close, I think. Were you lovers?” “What damn business is it of yours?” He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. “Harry was gay,” I said quietly. “Did he have any enemies, Miss Stewart? Anyone who might have wanted to kill him? Anyone homophobic, perhaps?”

“No one I can think of.”

“What about the Irishman, Mr Molloy?”

“We met him for the first time a few days ago. But he and Harry got on fantastically well.”

“And Miss Hallam?” His expression was unchanged. I felt myself losing control. “My God, what are you suggesting? Do you think Liz did this?” He was watching me closely.

“Look, Harry was a wonderful man. Everyone liked him.” I felt the tears welling, but I was determined not to cry in front of Hallengren again.

He put the notebook away, and walked to the window. The light from the snow-covered landscape whitened his skin, making him look ill. “Inspector.”

He turned his head.

“Do you have any idea who did this?”

News flash

He gazed out of the window again. “No, Miss Stewart.”

“There’s been talk about a hotel killer. We saw a news flash at the airport.”

He returned to the chair. “It does not surprise me. It has been widely reported.” He smiled thinly. “Every time there is a death in a Swedish hotel, even from natural causes, someone resurrects the Stockholm hotel killer.

“It does not help that a tourist was found dead last Saturday. That is what the news flash would have been about.”

“Yes, the American.”

“So you have read about it. Initially, we did not suspect – how do you say it? – foul play.”

“But Denny Hinckley told me his neck was broken.” Hallengren looked at me with interest. “The Stockholm police have only just released that information. To have found that out so quickly, your reporter friend must have contacts in high places.”

“His contacts are all in low places, Inspector,” I said, trying a smile. He raised an eyebrow. “Do not all reporters have such contacts?”

He studied me, frowning, as though trying to make up his mind about something. “A press statement is due to go out today, Miss Stewart, so I can tell you now. We believe Wilson Bibby was murdered.”

“Murdered?” I whispered, my heart thudding against my ribs.

“The post mortem was on Thursday. The report reached my desk the same evening.” He ran a hand over his head. “We were suspicious when we saw Bibby’s body on one side of the bed and his clothes on the other.

“If he had wanted to use the rest room, why would he not have got out of bed on the same side as his clothes? But, yes, people do get out of bed on the wrong side. However, we discounted that when the pathologist’s results arrived.”

I saw again Wilson’s corpse, stiff as a board, the parchment-like skin, the frozen trickle of saliva. But there was no sign of violence. And no murder weapon. Hallengren leant forward.

Drugged

“The temperature of his body and the state of rigor mortis put the time of death at or close to 3.30am. For a man of his body weight to freeze to death, he must have been out of his sleeping bag at approximately 2 am. But even more interesting was what we discovered in his blood and urine.”

“Was he poisoned?”

“He was drugged. Our forensic team found a powerful sleep-inducing drug in his body. A barbiturate.” He stumbled slightly over the word. “Is that how you say it?”

I nodded.

“The quantities of both the drug, Phenonal, and the chemicals that the body” – Hallengren paused, trying to remember the word – “metabolises from it, indicate that he was very heavily drugged.” He was watching me closely. “Wilson had taken a dose of Phenonal so large that he would have been unconscious at 2am.”

I stared at him, not understanding. There was a note of exasperation in his voice. “He was too deeply drugged to get up by himself. Someone pushed him out of his sleeping bag at around 2am.”

“So he didn’t have a heart attack?” I said, stunned. “The autopsy showed that his heart was not as weak as everyone thought. No, Miss Stewart, Wilson Bibby did not die of a heart attack. He was drugged, pushed out of his sleeping bag and left to die.”

After a brief silence he said: “That is what Thursday evening was about. As soon as I knew Bibby had been drugged, I had my men search the Excelsior for Phenonal. We turned the kitchens upside down. I am still waiting for the results of the tests but I do not expect to find anything. Like most hotels, the Excelsior disposes of unused food quickly.”

“I thought you were looking for the pages from Wilson’s diary. That is, until Harry saw your men examining his soap dish.”

“We looked for the missing pages too, and for the locker key. The search was originally organised for that purpose. The autopsy results came in as we were leaving.” He gave a dismissive shrug. “It would have been a miracle if we had found anything. But we had to try.”

“So Wilson was pushed out of bed at 2am,” I said, half to myself.

Hallengren got to his feet and zipped up his suit. “I suggest you eat something, Miss Stewart, even though you may not feel like it. You need to regain your strength.” He was looking at me strangely.

Encouraged

It was only after the door had closed that it struck me: my statement put me awake and in the corridor outside Wilson Bibby’s room at 2am – the time he’d been pushed out of his sleeping bag and left to die.

An hour later the woman returned with a tray. She encouraged me in broken English to eat, then gave up and left. I had no appetite. My mind was a tumult of unformed thoughts and hypotheses, analysed, and rejected.

Wilson had been murdered. The events since his death had been coloured by my conviction that he’d died of natural causes. Now, I was seeing those events in a new light. The removal of the diary pages took on greater significance.

Those, surely, must hold the key to his murder and possibly to Harry’s. Whoever had taken the pages had known that either Wilson was dead, or he was unconscious and wouldn’t recover. The thief was therefore Wilson’s murderer.

But someone else could have pushed Wilson out of bed and the thief had arrived to find a frozen corpse. Yet, what if he’d found Wilson still breathing? And hadn’t raised the alarm, because it would be in his best interests to keep quiet? By leaving him to die, he’d become an accomplice to murder.

More tomorrow.