Julia Ågerud is a modern author known for her captivating Scandinavian detective novels that blend philosophy, art, and humour. Born in Ukraine and now living in Sweden, she brings a unique perspective to her writing. With a background in mathematics, she has a keen interest in philosophy, psychology, and gardening, which often influence her storytelling.Her debut novel, Hostages, is the first book in the Sleepy Torp series, set in the charming Swedish town of Torp. Julias intricate plots and rich characters invite readers to immerse themselves in the mysteries she crafts, making her an interesting new voice in contemporary detective fiction.
Julia Ågerud is a modern author known for her captivating Scandinavian detective novels that blend philosophy, art, and humour. Born in Ukraine and now living in Sweden, she brings a unique perspective to her writing. With a background in mathematics, she has a keen interest in philosophy, psychology, and gardening, which often influence her storytelling. Her debut novel, Hostages, is the first book in the Sleepy Torp series, set in the charming Swedish town of Torp. Julia's intricate plots and rich characters invite readers to immerse themselves in the mysteries she crafts, making her an interesting new voice in contemporary detective fiction.
Saturday
In the morning, Benson left the car and his assistant next to number 3, where Helene and Stephan lived. He looked around, then confidently headed diagonally across the street to number 6: the scientists’ closest neighbours.
The door was opened by a ginger, well-fed, middle-aged … cat. Behind him, stood the person who must have stumped up the money for this cat’s home. For quite some time yet, the young man in pyjamas struggled to concentrate. He ran his hand over his head – balding early, considering his age – and, not finding the amount of hair he had hoped for, was satisfied with what he had. He adjusted his pyjamas a couple of times over his slightly bulging belly and finally said the long awaited, ‘Hej!’
After introducing himself and stepping into the house, the inspector discovered that the cat had two owners. The second was the wife of the first – a young woman in pyjamas, sporting a hoody with the slogan: ‘I love my cat more than my husband.’ She pulled her hood up over her head and looked questioningly through her huge glasses. Much more than just her eyes, they framed the whole of her youthful face.
Benson, having completed his usual routine with the notebook on his iPad, unashamedly asked for a cup of coffee.
While Max, the cat’s first owner, set about fiddling with the coffee machine, the inspector loudly began his questioning.
‘How well do you both know your neighbours, Helene and Stephan, from number 3? They discovered a body in number 4 yesterday?’
‘Nat—I mean, Natalie and I only moved to Torp in the middle of spring. And, like, a month to a month and a half after us, they arrived too, and I can’t say we know each other all that well’, said Max as he poured coffee into their mugs.
‘Yes, they moved here roughly at the start of summer, around three months ago. Max, do you remember when we all celebrated the move together by the lake? We know them, like, as neighbours – nothing more. They’re doctors, they work in their private clinic, I think. They moved to Sweden from … Poland. Pretty decent people.’
Benson jotted something down in his notebook and took out a photo of the body.
‘Do you know this man?’
They both shook their heads. Natalie looked at the photo again.
‘The face seems kind of familiar … but no, I can’t say I do.’
The inspector downed the last of his coffee and closed his eyes. He folded his hands on his stomach in satisfaction and smiled for the first time during the entire conversation. After thanking them for the coffee, he suddenly stood up and stuffed his things into his briefcase.
‘What do you do for work?’
‘I’m a programmer, and Nat is an analyst’, Max said, surprised.
Without another word, Benson made his way over to the door and – almost stepping on the cat – walked outside. He waved, either intended as a ‘goodbye’ to those standing behind him, or a ‘don’t start the car’ to Erik, waiting ahead of him.
***
Max looked at Natalie and, finally awake after a long night of computer games, summarised,
‘Nat, you were right. We need to start bumping into our neighbours more often. I’ll text Stephan to say we’ll be expecting them for coffee tomorrow morning.’
‘Max, didn’t you find it weird that the inspector only asked about the doctors? Not a word about the scientists themselves. And for some reason, nothing about our alibi at the time of the murder.’
Natalie took off her huge glasses and looked at her husband with a familiar look, one that practically always meant, ‘Successfully levelled up!’ or simply, ‘the fun is just beginning.’
Max instantly tucked his pyjama top into his trousers. He grabbed his coffee, sat down in front of the computer and proudly declared,
‘Then we’ll find the killer ourselves! Seems like our grandpa detective is busy doing other things before he retires.’
‘And maybe the police still haven’t figured out the exact time of death’, said Natalie mysteriously, ‘I saw in a film once that it’s easy to mess with time of death. It all depends on how you preserve the body. Like, water, ice, air temperature, ventilation in the house; things like that. It’s strange though, that the body looks more like a doll than a living person.’
‘Well, a corpse isn’t a living person, by definition’, Max grinned, before searching the internet for any news about their street.
‘The body of a man has been found in a freezer in the middle of the living room … the police are trying to identify him …’. ‘Oh, nothing major.’
The cat stretched out across the keyboard, conducting his own investigation with a paw.
‘Actually, Max, this whole thing is a total pain. Imagine you’re watering your neighbours’ plants. And suddenly you happen upon a body … Oof, poor Helene.’
‘Yeah, it’s a total downer. I water the flowers … Why couldn’t I have found the body?’ Max disappointedly agreed with his wife, ‘Flowers just aren’t my thing, really. It’s pretty cool if we’re living on the same street as a killer, though. But who could it be? The person who found the body? Or the scientists themselves? Let’s say it’s the scientists. They did their experiments on the poor guy, and he couldn’t take it and died. So, they calmly took themselves off to Africa to continue their hellish experiments.’
‘Ah, and so they were, like, secretly hoping that the people looking after their house would never open the freezer standing in the middle of their living room?’
The cat silently agreed with this version of events, methodically cleaning around his tail and casting penetrating glances at his hostages. Natalie stroked the cat and continued scratching behind his ear, before adding in a ventriloquist voice,
‘No, it’s not the scientists who left the body in their house. Yes, my little boar’, she said to the cat, switching back to a normal voice, ‘I don’t believe that version either. Much too theatrical.’
‘I agree’, said Max as he began to pace around the room, ‘we’ll find the killer ourselves and solve the case. Tomorrow, when the neighbours come round, we’ll get more information out of them.’
‘And what if they’re the killers?’ suggested Natalie conspiratorially.
‘Then we’ll get to the bottom of it right away. And we’ll tip off the police. I’m great at seeing through people’, boasted Max.
‘Right, but first we have to figure out whose body it is.’
Then, before Natalie could convince him, the ginger cat jumped onto Max’s keyboard, spilling his coffee all over the keys. And with that, the investigation ended before it had even begun, to the sound of an endless stream of cursing and curious metaphors about woolly, ginger, fat things with tails.
***
Teresa, barely taking her eyes off her knitting, glanced furtively at her husband. Klas clumsily hid behind a curtain in front of the window. This was his usual spot for spying on the neighbours from number 6 across the road, where Max and Natalie lived.
‘Look, it’s the policeman from yesterday. I’m sure he wants to find our murderer as soon as possible’, he whispered to his wife. ‘It’s a shame we couldn’t hear what he was asking them about.’
‘Well, that much is clear. Their alibi for the time of the murder. I’m sure he’ll come to us soon enough’, added Teresa calmly, as if a murder was an everyday occurrence on their little street in Torp.
‘Stop talking nonsense! He might hear’, whispered Klas nervously, ‘and we don’t have an alibi. I can’t even remember what we were doing yesterday. So … what would two pensioners like us do?’
Teresa adjusted her neat hair and saw her husband’s face redden as his blood pressure rose. His short grey hair had begun to resemble the spikes of a balding hedgehog. She took off her glasses and calmly added,
‘Who knows? We could have been tending to the garden … Watching TV … or arguing, as usual. And because of you, we missed a “live murder”. We could have seen it all with our own eyes and caught the killer, you know!’
‘Do you mean we were arguing with each other or with the neighbours?’ he asked, moving furtively to the other window to watch their other neighbours from number 3, the doctors.
Teresa sighed and reluctantly but carefully placed her knitting in the basket. She lifted herself up, leaning on the arm of her chair to look out the window at Helene and Stephan's house. But the tall hedges between their gardens blocked everything. She flopped back into the chair and said resentfully,
‘Can’t you see? We should have trimmed the top of the hedges all the way through, not just on our side.’
‘Why’s that? They should have been nicer to us first’, Klas muttered.
‘Just take a walk down the street and look at how the shared hedges are trimmed! You’ll see straight away what kind of relationships people have’, added Teresa, anxiously unpicking a couple of rows in her knitting. She looked angrily at her husband, as Klas’s face turned purple. With that, he rose proudly to his stage – as he always did – to deliver the self-pitying monologue from their usual squabble,
‘Why have I fought for human rights my whole life? Just for some “newcomers” to show me their arrogance today?’
‘You should have spent your whole life fighting for the rights of people like you. Anyone who hates people just because they come from another country is called a —.’
Teresa’s sentence was abruptly cut off by the...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 31.1.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Sleepy Torp |
| Übersetzer | Charlotte Ford blarlo |
| Verlagsort | Vachendorf |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror |
| Schlagworte | Benson • Crime • Detective Novel • discovering the body • Ginger cat • Hostages • Inspector • Investigations • Julia Ågerud • Murder • Mystery • scandinavian detective • Sleepy Torp • Torp |
| ISBN-10 | 3-68995-691-9 / 3689956919 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-3-68995-691-2 / 9783689956912 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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