The Spring Tide (18 page)

‘Can’t help being a bit curious when I smell coppers,’ he said.

‘Well, what did she want then?’

‘Don’t know, but she asked about you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. And who else was working at the same time as you.’

‘At Gold Card?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I gave her Miriam Wixell.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Because Miriam pulled out when she did, that wasn’t a nice thing to do, don’t you remember?’

‘Yes. So what?’

‘So I thought that the fancy Miriam might be a little embarrassed if police trainees start poking their noses into her past.’

‘You’re nasty.’

‘I hope so.’

‘What did you say about me?’

‘Nothing. I’m not that nasty.’

And thus the conversation ended. As far as Videung was concerned. For Jackie it replayed a while inside her head. Why was a girl going around asking about her time as a female escort? And who was she?’

‘What was she called?’

‘Olivia Rönning.’

That’s what Videung had answered when Jackie rang him back.

Olivia Rönning?

Olivia sat at home on the sofa and looked in
Nordisk
Kriminalkrönika
from 2006. Descriptions from the police themselves of various criminal cases during the previous year. She had borrowed it from the college library on her way home from Rådan. For a very special reason. She wanted to see if there were any criminal cases during 2005 that might possibly have involved Tom Stilton. And led to a conflict. The one that Åke Gustafsson believed had happened.

A lot of things had happened in the criminal arena in 2005. Various cases and incidents caught her interest. Among them an article about the spectacular escape from the Hall high security prison, the one involving the Malexander murderer Tony Olsson. So it took her a while to reach page seventy-one.

It was there she found it.

A brutal murder of a young woman in Stockholm. Jill Engberg. With details that made Olivia very tense. Jill was a female escort, and pregnant, and the case was unsolved. The murder was in 2005. The same year that Stilton left the police force. Did he work on that case? It didn’t mention him in the article, which was written by Rune Forss. Wasn’t he the guy on TV who was dealing with the assaults on the homeless, Olivia wondered, just as she phoned Åke Gustafsson.

She had got up speed.

‘Did Stilton work on the investigation of Jill Engberg? 2005?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered Gustafsson.

She lost some momentum. But it didn’t slow down her
imagination
. Jill was a pregnant female escort. Jackie was a female escort sixteen years earlier. The murdered girl on the beach was pregnant. Jackie had been on the island. Was there any connection between Jill and Jackie? Did Jill work for Jackie? In Red Velvet? Had Stilton come across such links and steered in the direction of the beach case? Was that why he was so strangely quiet for a while in the dustbin room?

She took a deep breath. She had been under the impression that the meeting in the dustbin room was the last contact she need have with Tom Stilton. A deep breath later, she phoned him again.

‘Did you work on the murder of Jill Engberg in 2005?’

‘Yes, for a while,’ he answered, and then hung up.

Which was something Olivia was beginning to get used to. He might well phone her in ten minutes and want to meet in some cosy spot and sit in the dark and the stench and play twenty questions.

Among the beavers.

But he didn’t.

Stilton sat in the editorial office of
Situation Sthlm
, almost alone. A girl was busy in reception. He had borrowed one of the magazine’s computers and gone online and started to look at the films from the Trashkick site. The first two weren’t there any longer but the rest were. Three of them. An assault under Väster Bridge of a homeless immigrant, Julio Hernandez, the next to last with Benseman and then One-eyed Vera. After her murder, nothing else had been posted.

Stilton forced himself to look at the films. Carefully. With attention to detail. Looked all over the screen to see anything besides what was in focus. That’s probably why he discovered
it. On the film from Väster Bridge. He cursed not being able to zoom in. Freeze an image and click on it to get a close up. But he could stop the film. And when he leaned towards the screen he could see it quite clearly. On his lower arm. Of one of the attackers. A tattoo. Two letters, KF, with a ring round them.

Stilton leaned back and raised his eyes. They landed on Vera’s photo on the wall in its black frame. At the very end of the row of other dead people. Stilton pulled his notebook towards him and wrote ‘KF’ with a ring round it.

Then he looked at the photo of Vera again.

The late screening of
Black Swan
had just finished and people were pouring out of the Grand Cinema on Sveavägen. A lot of them going in the direction of Kungsgatan. It was a lovely light evening with a pleasantly lukewarm breeze. A breeze that swept in over the graveyard around Adolf Fredrik’s Church and caused the flowers on the graves to sway. In here it was a bit darker. At least in some places. Beside Palme’s grave it was half-dark. Seen from Sveavägen, the four persons who were just meeting there were hardly visible.

Two of them were Bertil Magnuson and Nils Wendt.

The two others had been called in at very short notice, via K. Sedovic. The man that Bertil always contacted when anything slightly uncomfortable had to be dealt with. He assumed that such could be the case this evening.

And Wendt assumed the same.

He knew who Bertil was. And he wasn’t a man who came underdressed to a meeting like this. So Wendt hadn’t reacted when the two extra men appeared. Nor did he react when Bertil explained in a friendly tone that his two ‘advisors’ were going to check that Wendt didn’t have a recorder on him.

‘Perhaps you understand why.’

Wendt did. He let the advisors do their job. He didn’t have a tape recorder on him. Not this time. But he did have a cassette tape, with a recording of a conversation, which one of the gorillas handed over to Bertil. He held it up in front of Wendt.

‘The conversation?’

‘Yes. Or rather a copy of it. Listen by all means,’ said Wendt.

Bertil looked at the cassette.

‘Is the rest of the conversation on it?’

‘Yes, the whole of it.’

‘And where’s the original?’

‘Somewhere I expect to return to by the first of July at the latest. If I don’t do so, the tape will be sent to the police.’

Bertil gave a little smile.

‘Life insurance?’

‘Yes.’

Bertil looked across the graveyard. He nodded to his advisors that they could withdraw a little, which they did. Wendt looked at Bertil. He knew that Bertil knew that Wendt was a person who never left anything to chance. All of their business cooperation had built upon that. Bertil could react impulsively, but never Wendt. He had a belt and braces and an extra safety belt in every situation. If he claimed that he had arranged for the original, which was in some unknown location, to be sent to the police if he didn’t return before the first of July, then that is what would happen. He knew that Bertil would assume the same.

Which he did too. He turned towards Wendt again.

‘You’ve grown old,’ he said.

‘You too.’

‘One for all, do you remember that?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened to that?’

‘It disappeared in Zaire,’ said Wendt.

‘Not only that. You disappeared with almost two million.’

‘Were you surprised?’

‘I was furious.’

‘I can understand that. Are you still married to Linn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she know about this?’

‘No.’

The men looked at each other. Bertil twisted towards the churchyard. The mild evening breeze stroked along between the grave stones. Wendt kept his gaze firmly on Bertil’s face.

‘Do you have any children?’ he asked.

‘No, do you?’

If they had stood somewhere not quite so dark perhaps Bertil would have seen the slight fluttering, for a second or so, of Wendt’s eyelids, but now he didn’t notice them.

‘No, I don’t have any children.’

The dialogue ended in silence after a couple of seconds. Bertil looked out of the corner of his eye at his advisors. He still didn’t understand what was going on. What was Wendt after?

‘So, what do you want?’ he said and turned towards Wendt.

‘Within three days you should issue a statement where you declare that MWM will immediately cease all coltan mining in the Congo. In addition, economic compensation is to be given to all the inhabitants of the Walikale area who have been affected by your exploitation.’

Bertil looked at Wendt. For a second the thought crossed his mind that he was dealing with a mentally ill person. But he wasn’t. Ill, absolutely, but not mentally ill. Just completely stark raving mad.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Do I usually joke?’

No, Nils Wendt never joked. He was one of the driest people Bertil had met, and even though many years had passed since they knew each other, he could see in Wendt’s face and eyes that he hadn’t become any funnier over the years.

He was deadly serious.

‘So you mean that if I don’t do what you say then that conversation will end up with the police?’

He had to say it aloud to fully understand the meaning.

‘Yes,’ answered Wendt. ‘And you will be well aware of the consequences, no doubt.’

And Bertil was. He wasn’t a fool. The consequences of the taped conversation being made public were something he had envisaged already when he heard the first short excerpt on his mobile. The consequences would be catastrophic.

On all levels.

On all the levels that Wendt naturally understood.

‘Good luck!’

Wendt started to walk away.

‘Nils!’

Wendt turned his head and looked back.

‘Seriously, what’s this about… really?’

‘Revenge.’

‘Revenge? For what?’

‘Nordkoster.’

Wendt continued walking.

The advisors, who were standing off on one side, reacted a little and looked towards Bertil. He had his gaze directed at the ground, not far from Palme’s grave.

‘Is there anything else you want help with?’

One of them asked.

Bertil raised his head and saw Wendt’s back some way away among the gravestones.

‘Yes.’

Stilton sat on the third landing of the stone steps and talked with Mink on his mobile.

‘Two letters. K and F. With a ring round them’

‘A tattoo?’ Mink asked.

‘Looked like it, could have been drawn with a pen too, I don’t know.’

‘Which arm?’

‘Looked like his right arm, but it was hard to tell, so I can’t say a hundred per cent.’

‘OK.’

‘Have you heard anything otherwise?’

‘Not yet.’

‘See you.’

Stilton hung up and started to walk again. He was on his way up the steps, towards Klevgränd, for the fifth time that night. He had lowered his step time by several minutes and felt that his lungs were keeping up. He wasn’t panting as much as before and he sweated considerably less.

He was on his way.

Linn Magnuson was stressed. She was stuck in a traffic jam on her way in from Stocksund. In a little less than half an hour she would be standing on the podium at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions to talk about ‘Good leadership’ in front of a large number of intermediate managers from all over the country. Luckily she knew exactly what she would talk about. Clarity, communication, and dealing with relationships. Three points that she was completely at home with.

Dealing with relationships, she thought, lucky that it’s about working relationships and not private life. She didn’t feel that she was much of an expert at that just now. The
relationship
between her and Bertil was swaying. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t her, it was him. He had come home in the middle of the night, round about three, she thought it was, and gone straight out onto the terrace and sat in the dark. That wasn’t in itself so unusual. He often had telephone meetings at the weirdest times and would come home after that. What was unusual was that he had sat on the terrace with a little bottle of mineral water. That had never happened before, as far as Linn could remember. That he had sat on the terrace in the middle of the night with a mineral water. Never. If he had something with him it was always a little glass with something brown-coloured in it. Whisky, calvados, cognac. Never water. And in a close relationship like theirs, it was that sort of seemingly insignificant deviation that got you thinking.

Speculating.

The company? Another woman? His bladder? Had he undergone an examination in secret and discovered he had cancer?

Something was not as it should be.

That hadn’t been as it should be for a long time.

When she was going to ask him in the morning, he had already gone. Not just gone, he had never been to bed.

She left the queue and accelerated past the university.

‘A student essay?’

‘Yes.’

Olivia had arranged a meeting with Miriam Wixell under slightly false pretences. She had claimed that she was in her third term at the police college, which was true, and had been asked to write about so-called escort activities. ‘A really important essay.’ She had deliberately adopted a naive approach. Pretended she was something of an innocent and hardly knew anything at all. She had found Wixell’s name when one of the teachers had given her an old file about Gold Card, and Wixell was the only person she could find.

‘What do you want to know?’

That’s what Wixell had asked her on the phone.

‘Well, it’s more about how you thought. I’m twenty-three myself and I’m trying to think what it was like for people like you. How you became a female escort. What was the attraction?’

After further empty phrases she had hooked Wixell.

Now they were sitting at an outdoor café on Birger Jarlsgatan. The sharp sun reached down between the high buildings and had led Wixell to put on a pair of sunglasses. Olivia dutifully pulled out a small notebook and looked at her.

‘You write about food?’

‘Yes, on a freelance basis. Mainly travel magazines.’

‘How exciting. But doesn’t it make you fat?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you would have to eat lots of food that you’re going to write about.’

‘It’s not so bad.’

Wixell gave a little smile. She had agreed to an interview and a free lunch. She quickly described her time as a female escort. It hadn’t been long. When she had been asked to do things she wasn’t prepared to do, then she had dropped out.

‘You mean like sex, that sort of thing?’

Said Olivia with the widest eyes she could manage.

‘That sort of thing.’

‘But there were a lot of you working for Gold Card, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you only Swedish girls, or what?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Do you remember any of the others?’

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Well, perhaps I can get in touch with someone else too.’

‘I can’t remember who the others were.’

‘OK…’

Olivia noticed that Wixell became a little wary. But there was still more to ask.

‘Do you remember if there was anyone with blue hair?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I do!’

Wixell laughed suddenly. The memory of somebody with blue hair was evidently amusing.

‘It was a blonde girl from Kärrtorp, Ovette I think she was called, she thought it would be sexy. With blue hair!’

‘But it wasn’t?’

‘No, it was just ugly.’

‘I can imagine. Was there anyone who looked a bit Latin American too? Anyone you remember?’

‘Yeah… she… I can’t remember her name, but there was a really pretty girl who looked like that.’

‘Dark? With black hair?’

‘Yes… yes? Is it someone you know?’

‘No, it was someone who was described in that investigation and I wondered whether it might be someone who wasn’t Swedish and that there weren’t many immigrants in those days, I thought.’

‘Oh right? But there were some?’

Wixell suddenly felt that she couldn’t really grasp what this young girl was doing. She thanked her for the lunch and left. Rather abruptly. Olivia still had a question left but she never had time to ask it:

‘Did that dark-haired girl hang around with Jackie Berglund?’

Olivia got up too and started to walk. In the direction of Stureplan. A mild wind was blowing from Nybroviken bay. Lightly dressed pedestrians streamed in every direction. Olivia went with the flow. Somewhere near the East Restaurant a thought came into her mind.

She was only a couple of blocks away.

From the boutique.

Weird & Wow.

There it was.

Jackie Berglund’s boutique on Sibyllegatan. Olivia looked at the shop for a while, from the other side of the street. She heard Eva Carlsén’s words ringing in her ears: don’t go nosing around Jackie Berglund.

I’m not going nosing. I’m just going to visit her boutique and look at what’s for sale. I’m a completely unknown person who will be entering as a customer. What’s the harm in that? Olivia reflected.

And stepped into the boutique.

The first thing she reacted to was the smell. She breathed in a heavy dose of half-sweet perfume.

The second thing was the boutique’s wares. They were nowhere near her sort of thing. Ornaments and bits and pieces
that she would never think of having at home, and clothes that certainly wouldn’t suit her. With price tags that were really ridiculous, she thought, and leaned towards a dress. When she looked up, Jackie Berglund stood there right in front of her. Well made-up, dark hair, slightly above average height. Her intense blue eyes observed the young woman. Olivia suddenly remembered what those eyes had looked like when Eva Carlsén had asked about Red Velvet.

‘Can I help you?’

Olivia couldn’t think clearly, and didn’t know what to answer.

‘No, I’m just looking.’

‘Are you interested in home furnishing?’

‘No.’

Not a wise answer. Olivia immediately regretted her words.

‘You might like to look at the dresses here, new ones and vintage too,’ said Jackie.

‘Yes, right… umm…no, I don’t think they’re really my style.’

But she would have realised that the second I walked in, Olivia thought. She pottered around a few moments. Picked up some earrings and touched an old gramophone horn from the 1930s. Then she felt it was time to slip out.

‘But thank you very much!’

Olivia left the boutique.

That was when Jackie put two and two together. Or thought she had done. She phoned Carl Videung.

‘That Olivia Rönning who visited you, and asked about me, what did she look like?’

‘Dark hair.’

‘A bit of a squint?’

‘Yes.’

Jackie hung up and keyed in a new number.

Mink was not a morning person, more like a night person. The night was when Mink was in his element. It was then that he moved between the circles he did move in, and made sure he picked up something here which he could sell there. It might be a tip-off, or a white bag, or just a dog: last night he had rescued a tired Alsatian dog from an overdose victim in Kungsträdgården and taken him to a nurse in the suburbs, in Bandhagen, who had then broken down. She knew that her boyfriend did drugs, but she thought he had it under control. And he hadn’t.

The Alsatian was called Mona.

That too, Mink thought, and wondered if there was some political connection. Had the dog been named after the famous Social Democratic politician Mona Sahlin? He was sitting on the regional train on his way to Flemingsberg and had decided to have a talk with Acke.

At the school recreation centre.

Mink was not exactly a strategic genius.

Acke wasn’t at the school centre.

Mink asked the kids outside the building and soon discovered that nobody knew where Acke was.

‘Are you Acke’s dad?’

‘No, I’m his mentor.’

That was what Mink said. Mentor? Rather neat, he thought. Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure what it really implied, but it was somebody who knew a bit more than anybody else and Mink knew most things.

So mentor felt good.

On his way back to the station he suddenly caught sight of Acke. Or at least he saw a boy on his own who was kicking a football against a fence further down the street, and from the pictures on Vettan’s mobile he thought the boy could be Acke. Besides, he had seen Acke a few times with Vettan when he was younger.

‘Hi there, Acke!’

Acke turned round. Mink approached him with a smile.

‘Can I take a shot with the ball?’

Acke rolled the football across to the short man with the ponytail. He soon ducked when Mink kicked the ball – it veered off in all the directions that Mink hadn’t intended.

‘Perfect!’

Mink smiled. Acke looked if he could see the vanished ball.

‘D’you like football?’ said Mink.

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. Do you know who Zlatan is?’

Acke could hardly credit this weird guy. Who Zlatan was? Is the guy crazy?

‘Yes, of course. He plays for Milan.’

‘And before that he played for Spain and Holland, you know I worked with Zlatan early in his career, as his mentor, when he was in Malmö football club, I was the one who got him into Europe.’

‘Yeah, right…’

‘I suppose you could say I opened the E4 for Zlatan.’

Acke was ten years old and here was an adult man who talked about Zlatan and he couldn’t really follow what he was talking about.

‘Do you know Zlatan?’

‘You bet I do, if there’s anybody Zlatan rings if things go wrong, then it’s me. We’re buddies! Anyway, hello, my name is Mink.’

‘Hi.’

‘I know your mum, Ovette. Do you want a hamburger?’

Acke gobbled down a double cheeseburger at the Flemingsberg Kebab & Grill in the centre. Mink sat opposite him. He wondered how he should go about this. Ten year olds were not exactly his field, so he dived straight in.

‘Your mum says you’ve got lots of bruises and you blame football. I think you’re lying.’

At first Acke thought of getting up and leaving. Had his mum told this guy about his bruises? Why had she done that?

‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘That you’re lying?’

‘I’m not lying!’

‘I’ve played top football for many years, that’s why I came into contact with Zlatan, I know what sort of injuries you can get on the field. Your bruises are not football injuries, you’ll have to think up something better.’

‘Mum believes me.’

‘Do you like lying to her?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you do it?’

Acke squirmed in his seat. He didn’t like lying to his mum but he didn’t dare tell her the truth.

‘OK Acke, let’s say like this, you can go on lying to Ovette, that’s fine by me, I used to lie to my mum, lots of times, but between us – you and me – those aren’t football injuries, are they?’

‘No.’

‘Been in a fight?’

‘Sort of.’

‘You can tell me,’ said Mink.

Acke hesitated a second or two. Then he pulled up his sleeve a bit.

‘This is what I am.’

Mink looked at the exposed arm. It said KF with a ring around on his arm. Drawn with a marker pen.

‘What does that mean?’

Ten minutes later Mink left the hamburger bar to make a call. Acke waited inside.

Mink phoned Stilton.

‘Kid Fighters?’

‘Yes,’ said Mink. ‘That’s what they call themselves, the slightly older boys get tattoos with KF on their arms, with a ring round.

‘Where do they hang out?’

‘He wasn’t exactly sure, somewhere in Årsta, underground.’

‘The same place every time?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they’re there every evening?’

‘He thought so.’

‘Do you have any contact with UE?’

‘I think so. A number…’

Stilton knew that Mink never dropped a contact. A large part of his survival depended on that.

Mink followed Acke home. It felt best that way. When Ovette let them in, she got a big hug. From Acke, who immediately ran in to fetch his football clothes.

‘Are you going to play now?

‘Yes!’

Ovette looked at Mink who looked at Acke and got a wink back. Acke disappeared outside.

‘Is he going to football?’ Ovette asked.

She looked slightly worried.

‘Yes.’

Mink stepped uninvited into the kitchen.

‘But what did he say? Did you get anything out of him?’ Ovette wondered.

‘They weren’t football injuries. Are you going to work tonight?’

‘No.’

Ovette sank down opposite Mink. The cold light from the neon tube above the sink showed her face with unsentimental honesty. And that face had not worn well. For the first time,
Mink saw what a tough life Vettan lived. In a purely physical sense. He had always met her before when she had make-up on, even at the café in town, now she had nothing on her face that could hide what it meant to earn her living the way she did.

‘Must you carry on with that shit?’

‘The street?’