The Spring Tide (17 page)

Olivia looked about her in the living room which had been furnished in a personal style. Bold colours, lovely rugs, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves all along the walls. Wonder if she’s read them all, Olivia thought. Her eye fell on a shelf with photographs. True to character, she became curious. She got up and went up to the shelf: a very old wedding photo, probably Eva’s mum and dad. Then a considerably newer wedding photo with Eva and a well-built man, and next to that a photo with a much younger Eva and a handsome young man next to her.

‘Milk in your coffee? Sugar?

Eva’s voice could be heard from the kitchen.

‘Please, milk.’

Eva came in with two cups in her hands. Olivia went up to her and took one of the cups. Eva gestured towards the sofa.

‘Sit down.’

Olivia sank down on the soft sofa, put the cup on the table and nodded towards Eva’s wedding photo.

‘Is that your husband?

‘Was. We’re divorced.’

Eva sat down in an armchair and talked a little about her ex. A successful athlete many years ago. They had got to know each other when she studied at the College of Journalism. Now they were divorced, since about a year ago. He had met a new woman and the divorce had been very difficult.

‘He behaved like a real bastard, quite simply,’ she said.

‘What a shame.’

‘Yes. I can’t exactly say I’ve had any luck with men in my life, it has mainly been sorrow and grief!’

Eva smiled over her cup of coffee. Olivia wondered why she had the wedding photo on display if he was such a bastard? Personally, she would have put it away, from the off. She nodded towards the photos again.

‘And that nice-looking young guy you’re holding, was that the first sorrow?’

‘No, that’s my brother, Sverker, he died from an overdose. Now that’s enough about me.’

Eva suddenly adopted a totally different tone.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… sorry.’

Eva looked at Olivia. Her face was peculiarly strict, for a few seconds, then she sank back into the armchair and gave a little smile again.

‘I’m the one who should apologise, the thing is… my head feels as if it’s about to explode and it has been hell today, sorry, how are you getting on? Did you get anything from the material?’

‘Yes, but there was something I want to ask you, do you know who Jackie Berglund worked for in 1987, when she was a female escort?’

‘Yes, it was a fairly well-known guy, Carl Videung, he ran Gold Card. I think it says that in the folder.’

‘Oh? Then I missed it, what was Gold Card?’

‘An escort firm, and Jackie Berglund was one of the escorts.’

‘OK, thanks. Carl Videung, what a strange name.’

‘Especially for a pornography baron.’

‘Is that what he was?’

‘In those days. Are you still looking into Jackie?’

‘Yes.’

‘You remember what I said?’

‘About her? That I should be careful.’

‘Yes.’

Jackie Berglund stood beside a panorama window on Norr Mälarstrand and looked out across the water. She loved her flat, six rooms, top floor, with a fantastic view all the way to the heights of Söder. The only thing that disturbed her was the willow tree on the other side of the street. That hid the view, considerably. She thought that something ought to be done about it.

She turned round and went into the large living room. A trendy interior designer had been given a free rein a year or so before, and had achieved a miracle, a mixture of cold and warm and stuffed animals. Entirely in Jackie’s taste. She filled her little glass with a dry martini and put a CD on, a tango, she loved tango. Now and then she had men in her flat who she danced with, rarely someone who could tango. Some day I’m going to find a tango man, she thought, a mysterious man with ever-ready genitals and a limited vocabulary.

She was looking forward to that.

Just as she was on her way to a new martini she heard the phone. Not the one closest to her, the one in her study. She looked at the clock, almost half past midnight. That was when they rang.

Often.

The clients.

‘Jackie Berglund.’

‘Hi Jackie, this is Latte!’

‘Hi.’

‘Jackie, we have a little party going on and we could do with a bit of assistance.’

Regular clients, like Lars Örnhielm, knew how to express themselves on Jackie’s telephone line. Not too clearly. Not the wrong choice of words.

‘How many do you need?’

‘Seven or eight. High class!’

‘Preferences?’

‘Nothing special, but you know, nice with a happy ending.’

‘OK. Where?’

‘I’ll text you.’

Jackie hung up and smiled a little. Happy ending, that was something they’d taken from the menu of the Asian girls when they wanted to know if they should end with a top massage.

Latte needed some sweet girls who could deliver a happy ending.

No problem.

Acke came home that night in a battered condition. A decidedly battered condition. The ten-year-old walked between the
high-rise
blocks in Flemingsberg, on the dark side, away from the streetlights, with his skateboard under his arm, limping. The pain had come from the blows. Repeated blows. On places that you couldn’t see outside his clothes. He felt extremely lonely, limping along there, and those thoughts came into his head again. About his dad. The dad who didn’t exist. That mum never talked about. But he must be somewhere. All children must have a dad, mustn’t they?

He pushed those thoughts away and clasped the key around his neck. He knew that his mum was in town and working, and he knew what she was working on.

Or as.

An older boy at school had enlightened him after football some time ago.

‘Prossy! Your mum’s a prossy!’

Acke didn’t know what ‘prossy’ meant. As soon as he got home he went online and checked it.

Alone at home.

Then he fetched the jug of cold water that his mum had put in the fridge before she went into town and drank almost the whole of it. Then he went to bed.

And thought about his mum.

That perhaps he could help her with money so that she wouldn’t have to be what they called her.

Cars passed by now and then in the mist on their way to or from Waxholm. It was early morning in Bogesandsland and nobody paid any attention to the grey Volvo. It was parked on a discreet gravelled area not very far from the beautiful castle, surrounded by forest. In among the swathes of mist a group of wild pigs were grubbing for food.

Nils Wendt sat in the driving seat and looked at his face in the rear-view mirror. He had woken up at about three in the morning in his hotel room. At five o’clock he had got into his hire car and left the city, driving towards Waxholm. He wanted to get away from people. He looked at his face in the mirror. Haggard, he thought, you look haggard, Nils.

But he was going to cope with this.

There wasn’t much more to do now. This morning he had thought out the final pieces of the puzzle he was building. His harassment of Bertil had led to a plan. A plan that started to acquire form when he saw the strongly critical TV news report about MWM’s activities in the Congo.

Just as ruthless as before.

Then he had seen the demonstrators and read the pamphlets and clicked his way through lots of posts on various Facebook groups, ‘Rape-free mobile phones!’ for example, and understood how indignant the feelings were.

That was when his plan fell into place.

He would strike where it would be felt the most.

By a quarter past nine Bertil had solved the problem with the landowner in Walikale. Not personally, of course, but his good friend the military commander. He had sent a group of security police to the landowner and explained that on account of the troubles in the area they might have to order an evacuation. Just as a security measure. The landowner was
no fool. He asked if there was any way to avoid a compulsory evacuation. The police explained that the Swedish company MWM had offered to be responsible for security on condition that they could use some of the ground for mineral prospecting. That would mean that the troubles would be kept under control.

Done.

Bertil reminded his secretary to phone the company’s top manager in Kinshasa and make sure that an adequate gift was sent to the military commander.

‘He is very fond of topaz.’

So when Bertil went and stood beside the window and felt the strong rays of the morning sun he was in a comparatively good mood. Walikale had been dealt with. He was still thinking about the Congo when he automatically pulled his vibrating mobile phone out of his pocket and clicked to answer.

‘This is Nils Wendt.’

Although the voice Bertil had heard on the tape recording was many years younger, it was without doubt the same voice on the phone now. But not recorded.

It was Nils Wendt.

Bertil felt how his blood surged. He hated that man. A little insect that could cause a catastrophe. But he tried to restrain himself.

‘Hello, Nils, are you in town?’

‘Where can we meet?’

‘Why should we meet?’

‘Shall I ring off?’

‘No! Wait! You want to meet?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘All right.’

‘Where?’

Bertil feverishly flicked through places his head and looked out of the window.

The graveyard at Adolf Fredrik’s Church.

‘Whereabouts there?’

‘At Palme’s grave.’

‘23.00.’

The call was ended.

Ovette Andersson came out of the main entrance, alone, it was just after ten o’clock. She had followed along with Acke, against his will, to see the teachers in charge of after-school leisure activities. She wanted to talk to somebody there about his bruises. A couple of times recently he had come home and had bruises all over his body. Large yellowy-blue bruises. At first he had tried to hide it, they hardly ever saw each other in the mornings, but Ovette had happened to open the door when he was getting undressed one evening and had seen them.

‘Whatever have you done!’

‘What?’

‘You’ve got bruises all over your body.’

‘It’s football.’

‘That’s how you get such big bruises?’

‘Yes.’

And then Acke had slipped into bed. Ovette had sat in the kitchen and lit a cigarette by the window. Football?

Her son’s bruises had been on her mind since then. A couple of nights later, when she came home after her night shift, she had sneaked into his room and carefully lifted the covers and looked at them again.

Yellowy-blue bruises all over. And large scabs.

It was then she decided to talk to the teachers at the school leisure centre.

‘No, he isn’t being bullied.’

Acke’s teacher looked rather surprised.

‘But he’s got bruises all over his body,’ said Ovette.

‘What does he say himself?’

‘That it’s the football.’

‘And isn’t it that then?’

‘Not that sort of bruises. Everywhere!’

‘Well. I don’t know. He certainly isn’t being bullied, not here. We have a special programme to prevent bullying and violence and we would have noticed if there was anything going on here.’

And Ovette had to be satisfied with that.

Who else could she talk to? She didn’t have a social network. No neighbours she mixed with. The people she mixed with worked on the street and weren’t particularly interested in other people’s children. That was a bit of a minefield.

Ovette left the school and suddenly felt infinitely alone. And desperate. The whole of her hopeless existence played out before her eyes. Her inability to get out of the prostitution swamp. Her marked body. Everything. And now she saw her only child being hurt and she had nobody she could turn to. Not a single telephone number for anybody who could listen, and console, or help her. There was only her and Acke in the whole empty world.

She stopped beside a street lamp and lit a cigarette. Her chapped hands shook. Not from the cool breeze, but from something much colder, something that came from inside. Came from a dark sinkhole in her chest which seemed to get bigger with every breath and be just waiting for her to let go. If there had been a secret door out of life, she would have crept through it.

That was when she remembered him.

A guy who might be able to help her.

They had grown up together in Kärrtorp. Lived in the same block of flats and had a bit of contact over the years. It had
been a long time ago, but still. Whenever they did come across each other, it was always easy. They shared a past, had the same origins, knew each other’s weaknesses but didn’t care.

She could talk to him.

Mink.

It took a while for Olivia to trace him, but when his name turned up at the Rådan Retirement House in Silverdal, her efforts were rewarded.

And she was surprised.

The retirement home was very close to the Police College.

A small world, Olivia thought, when she steered her car on the familiar roads and parked outside the home. She could almost see the college through the trees. In some strange way, the entire college environment felt extremely distant. And yet it wasn’t at all long since she had been sitting on a bench over there and had chosen a case having no idea at all where it would lead her.

Just this minute it was leading her up to the second floor and out onto a little terrace where a man was sitting hunched over in a wheelchair.

Former pornography baron Carl Videung.

Now almost ninety years old, she had discovered. No close relations, and pleased by any distraction while he lingered out his days. Whoever it might be.

Now it was Olivia Rönning. She quickly realised that Videung was extremely hard of hearing and also had some speech impairments. So she had to express herself concisely, clearly and loudly.

‘Jackie Berglund!’

Yes, after a while, two cups of coffee and some ginger biscuits later, the name turned up inside Videung’s head.

‘She was a call girl.’

Olivia managed to decipher.

‘Do you remember any other call girls?’

More coffee, more ginger biscuits, and then a nod from Videung.

‘Who, then?’

Now more coffee wasn’t helping, and the biscuits were finished. The man in the wheelchair just looked at Olivia and smiled, a long time. Is he sitting and judging me, Olivia wondered. Whether I would do as a call girl? A dirty old man? Now the old man made a gesture that seemed to indicate that he wanted to write something. Olivia quickly produced a pen and a notebook and handed them over to Videung. He couldn’t hold the pad himself. Olivia had to push it down onto his thin knee and hold it in that position. He started to write. With handwriting that seemed close to ninety years old but was at least legible.

‘Miriam Wixell.’

‘One of the call girls was called Miriam Wixell?’

Videung nodded and let out a very long fart. Olivia twisted her head away slightly from the rotten odour and closed the notebook.

‘Do you remember if any of the girls were of foreign extraction?’

Videung smiled a little and nodded and held up one finger.

‘One of them?’

Videung nodded again.

‘Do you remember where she came from?’

Videung shook his head.

‘Did she have black hair?’

Videung turned towards the window and pointed at a Saintpaulia in a plant pot on the sill. Olivia looked at the flower.

Bright blue.

‘Was her hair blue?’

Videung nodded and smiled again. Blue hair, Olivia thought. Then it must have been dyed? Did you dye your hair blue if it was black? Perhaps. What did she know about how call girls in the Eighties dyed their hair?

Nothing.

She got up and thanked Videung and slipped away from the veranda to avoid yet another trombone from the former porn baron’s brown eye.

She did at least have a name.

Miriam Wixell.

Ovette had chosen a table deep inside the café. She didn’t want to bump into any of her colleagues from work. She sat with her back to the entrance with a cup of coffee in front of her. You weren’t allowed to smoke in here. Her hands moved restlessly across the table. Moving sugar cubes and cutlery and wondering if he would turn up.

‘Hi there, Vettan!’

He always called her Vettan. Mink had come.

He walked up to her table, swept away the little ponytail on his neck, and sat down. In the best of moods. He had just gone past a betting shop and had backed a winner. Four hundred kronor paid straight out. The money was burning a hole in his pocket.

‘How much did you win?’

‘Four thousand!’

Mink always added at least one extra nought. Except when it came to his age. Then he made a deduction. He was forty-one, but could readily say he was between twenty-six and thirty-five, depending on the company. When he tried ‘just over twenty’ with a girl from the north that was perhaps a bit risky. But she
was new in town and looking for fun so she swallowed it all, even though she thought he looked a bit older.

‘This town has a price,’ he said, and made New York look like a suburb of Stockholm.

But Ovette was not from the north, and she knew how old Mink was, so he didn’t need to pretend.

‘Thanks for coming.’

‘Mink always comes.’

He smiled, and thought he was a master of innuendo. Not many others thought the same. Most people kept Mink at a distance, after a while, when they had seen through his rather hollow figure and heard of his exceptional escapades one time too many. Like that he had solved the Olof Palme murder, or discovered Roxette. That’s when most people dropped out. What they often missed was that Mink had a big heart, hidden deep under a front of semi-desperate jargon. A heart that this very moment beat heavily when he saw the pictures Ovette showed on her mobile. Pictures of an almost naked boy with a body that looked as if it had been beaten black and blue and was covered with scabs.

‘I took this when he was asleep.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘No idea, at the school leisure centre they claimed that nothing had happened there, and Acke himself says it’s from football.’

‘You don’t get knocked about like that in football, I played for Bajen for many years, OK you could get bashed a bit in the penalty area, I was a centre, but never so that you’d look like that.’

‘No.’

‘Jesus, he looks as if he’s been beaten up!’

‘Yes.’

Ovette dried her eyes quickly. Mink looked at her and took her hand in his.

‘Do you want me to have a chat with him?’

Ovette nodded.

Mink decided to have a chat with young Acke.

Football?

No way.

It was almost closing time. The boutiques on Sibyllegatan were starting to turn down the lights. In Weird & Wow the lights were still on. Jackie Berglund always stayed open an extra hour. She knew her customers and this meant they could always drop in at the last minute and snap up an item of clothing or a furnishing detail to brighten up the evening’s party. At this particular moment an elderly gentleman from posh Östermalm was after something with which to appease his wife. He had missed an anniversary the day before and things had turned a bit sour, as he said.

‘Turned sour.’

Now he was fingering a pair of earrings hanging among other designer labels.

‘What do you take for these?’

‘For you I take seven hundred.’

‘And for others?’

‘Five hundred.’

That’s how they carried on, Jackie and her circle of more or less affluent customers, joking in a moronic manner.

But everything for business.

‘Do you think she would like these?’ asked the man.

‘Women have a weakness for earrings.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes.’

Since the elderly man didn’t have a clue as to what women had a weakness for, he took Jackie’s word on trust and left the
boutique with a pair of earrings in a beautiful pink box. When the shop door closed, Jackie’s mobile rang.

It was Carl Videung.

With a decidedly clear voice and impeccable hearing he informed Jackie about a visit he had received earlier in the day. A young woman from the Police College had asked about his escort services in former days. He had acted half-dead so that he could find out what she was after.