A fictional crime story.
The envelope had no stamp, no address and no name.
It was lying on the doormat when Anna came home from work on Friday evening.
At first, she assumed it was an advertisement. But the envelope was made of thick grey paper and had been sealed carefully with transparent tape.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed her house at night.
Anna recognised the white wooden fence, the narrow driveway and the apple tree beside the garage. A light was burning in the upstairs bedroom.
She turned the photograph over.
On the back, someone had written:
You forgot to close the curtains.
The Upstairs Window
Anna had lived alone since her husband, Erik, died two years earlier. Their house stood at the end of a quiet road outside Malmö, surrounded by fields and low woodland.
There were only six other houses nearby.
Everyone knew everyone.
She looked again at the photograph. It had been taken from across the road, probably from behind the hedge near the old bus stop.
The image was slightly blurred, but one detail was perfectly clear.
A person was standing in the bedroom window.
Anna’s first thought was that it must be her.
Then she noticed the clothes.
The figure was wearing a dark jacket.
Anna had been wearing a white dressing gown that evening.
She dropped the photograph onto the kitchen table.
The Locked Door
Anna checked every room in the house.
The windows were closed. The patio door was locked. Nothing appeared to be missing.
Upstairs, the bedroom looked exactly as she had left it that morning.
But when she opened the wardrobe, she noticed something on the floor.
A small patch of dried mud.
Anna never wore outdoor shoes upstairs.
She called the police.
Two officers arrived an hour later. They examined the doors and windows but found no signs of forced entry.
“Do you have a spare key?” one of them asked.
“My sister has one.”
“Anyone else?”
Anna hesitated.
Erik had kept a spare key in the garage, hidden inside an old red toolbox. After his death, Anna had never checked whether it was still there.
They went outside.
The toolbox was empty.
The Second Photograph
The police advised Anna to change the locks and install cameras.
On Saturday morning, a locksmith replaced both exterior locks. In the afternoon, Anna bought two motion-sensitive cameras and placed one above the front door and another facing the garden.
That night, she slept badly.
At 3:12 a.m., her phone vibrated.
Movement detected: Back garden.
Anna opened the camera application.
For a few seconds, the screen showed only rain falling across the patio.
Then a dark shape moved past the kitchen window.
A person.
Anna called the police and locked herself in the bedroom.
The officers searched the garden but found nobody.
Near the back door, however, they discovered another grey envelope.
Inside was a second photograph.
This one showed Anna asleep in her bed.
The photograph had been taken from inside the bedroom.
Erik’s Notebook
Anna spent the following night at her sister’s flat.
The police took both photographs and began examining them for fingerprints and digital traces. They also searched the house again.
Behind a loose panel in the garage, they found a notebook belonging to Erik.
Most of the pages contained ordinary notes: telephone numbers, shopping lists and measurements for repairs.
But the final pages were different.
Erik had written down dates, times and vehicle registration numbers. Several entries mentioned a man called Martin.
One sentence had been underlined twice:
Martin knows what happened at the warehouse.
Anna had never heard the name before.
Her sister, however, had.
“Martin worked with Erik years ago,” she said. “They had some kind of argument. Erik refused to talk about it.”
The Warehouse Fire
Fifteen years earlier, Erik had worked as an accountant for a transport company.
One winter night, a warehouse belonging to the company had burned down. A security guard died in the fire.
The official investigation concluded that an electrical fault had caused it.
But according to the notebook, Erik believed the fire had been started deliberately to destroy financial records.
Martin Holm, the company’s former operations manager, had disappeared shortly after the fire.
Anna searched for his name online.
There were no recent photographs, but she found an old newspaper article.
The man pictured beside the burned warehouse had a long scar above his left eyebrow.
Anna stared at the image.
She had seen that scar before.
The previous week, a man had stood behind her in the queue at the supermarket.
He had smiled when she looked at him.
Someone Inside the House
The police placed a temporary camera inside Anna’s hallway.
For three nights, nothing happened.
On the fourth night, at 1:46 a.m., the camera recorded the cupboard beneath the stairs slowly opening.
A man crawled out.
He had been hiding inside the house before Anna returned home.
The recording showed him walking upstairs, entering the bedroom and standing beside the bed for almost five minutes.
Then he took a photograph.
The police recognised Martin Holm from the old newspaper picture.
But they could not find him.
His last registered address had been abandoned several years earlier.
The Voice Message
The following evening, Anna received a call from Erik’s old telephone number.
The number had been disconnected since his death.
She answered but said nothing.
A man whispered:
“You should not have opened the notebook.”
Then the call ended.
Minutes later, the police traced the signal to an industrial area near the harbour.
Inside an abandoned office building, they found photographic equipment, copies of Anna’s house keys and dozens of pictures of Erik taken during the months before his death.
They also found evidence connecting Martin to the warehouse fire.
Martin was arrested at the railway station later that night.
In his bag were a passport, cash and a third photograph.
The Final Picture
During questioning, Martin admitted entering Anna’s home.
He claimed that Erik had hidden documents proving who had ordered the warehouse fire. Martin believed Anna knew where they were.
He denied having anything to do with Erik’s death.
The police reopened the investigation.
Several weeks later, they discovered that Erik’s fatal car accident had not been an accident. The brake line had been deliberately damaged.
Martin was charged with murder, arson and the death of the security guard.
Anna eventually sold the house.
Before moving, she cleaned the bedroom one final time. Behind the wardrobe, she found another grey envelope.
Inside was a photograph she had never seen before.
It showed Erik standing outside the burned warehouse.
Beside him was Martin.
Between them stood a third man whose face had been carefully scratched away.
On the back, Erik had written:
Martin did not act alone.
Dark Stories 