The Spring Tide (21 page)

Olivia looked around quickly, saw a plastic bottle with water and poured some into an unwashed glass. There weren’t any others. Mink took the glass and helped Stilton to swallow two pills while he whispered to Olivia:

‘Stesolid is a sedative, it’s not a painkiller.’

Olivia nodded. They both looked at Stilton. He had closed his eyes. Olivia sank down a little on the other bunk. Mink sat on the floor with his back leaning against the door. Olivia glanced around the inside of the caravan.

‘Does he live here?’

‘Evidently.’

‘You don’t know? You don’t know him?’

‘I know him, he lives a bit here and a bit there, just now he’s living here.’

‘Were you the one who found him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you homeless too?’

‘No, definitely not. I live in Kärrtorp, a studio flat, I own it, it must be worth at least five million today.’

‘Oh, right, are you an artist?’

‘A tightrope-walking artist!’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I’m involved in all sorts of things. Capital, derivatives, in and out, and in between I do a lot with art, Picasso, Chagall, Dickens.’

‘Wasn’t Dickens an author?’

‘Mainly, absolutely, but he did some etchings when he was young, heavyweight stuff, not well known, but good!’

At this point Stilton opened his eyes slightly and glared at Mink for a moment.

‘I’ve got to go out into the bushes for a moment.’

Mink disappeared. When he shut the door behind him, Stilton opened his eyes properly. Olivia looked at him.

‘Is that a mate of yours? Mink?’

‘He’s an old snitch. Soon you’ll hear how he solved the Palme murder. Why did you come here?’

Olivia didn’t really know what to say. The first-aid kit? But that was just an excuse.

‘I don’t really know. Do you want me to leave?’

Stilton didn’t answer.

‘Do you want me to?’

‘I want to be left in peace. From the beach case. You phoned and wondered if I worked on the Jill case. I did, and I found links to Jackie Berglund. Jill worked for her, in Red Velvet, and bearing in mind the murder and Jill’s pregnancy I looked into the beach case again. It didn’t lead anywhere. Are we done with each other now?’

Olivia looked at Stilton. She realised that she ought to leave. But there was something she wanted to tell him and this might be the last opportunity.

‘I was on Nordkoster a week or so ago, up by the Hasslevikarna coves, and met a very strange man. On the beach. Can I tell you about it?’

Stilton looked at Olivia.

The pretty girl had poured out another glass of water for Stilton. She had finished her story. Stilton hadn’t said a word. She handed over the glass while putting her hand on the wall of the caravan again.

‘Is this where Vera Larsson lived?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is this where she was…’

‘Drop it.’

Again.

Then Mink came in, with a totally unmotivated but very characteristic smile which he flashed at Stilton on the bunk.

‘Feeling better?’

‘Are you?’

Mink gave a little laugh. Caught out a bit there, but so what? Hadn’t he helped the former cop in an extremely precarious situation?

‘I’m feeling tip-top!’

‘Good. Can you leave now?’ said Stilton.

He closed his eyes again.

Side by side, they walked away from the caravan. A thoughtful Olivia next to a short, spaced-out snitch whose facial expressions seem to stretch in every direction.

‘Yes, you know, got my finger in lots of pies, you have to spread your…’

‘Have you known Stilton a long time?’

‘Yonks. I mean, he was a cop before and we were a bit of a team for many a year. I can tell you that without me he wouldn’t have collected nearly as many scalps, in fact a lot of them would still be on their original heads, if you get my meaning. You always need somebody who can hammer in that final nail in the coffin and that’s me in a nutshell. Incidentally, I solved the Palme murder.’

‘Oh yes?’

Olivia steeled herself. Every metre that separated her from her car felt like having to traverse a bog. Until it finally occurred to her that he would of course ask for a lift. How the hell could she get out of that? In the middle of the Ingenting forest.

‘Yes, you know, I served it up on a plate to the murder squad. But did they act? No. I mean it was so fucking crystal clear that the man’s wife shot him! He’d been having a lot on the side, and she had got fed up with it and BANG! Nobody saw the shots! Did they?’

And now they had reached the Mustang.

The crucial point.

Mink just stared at the car.

‘Is that yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow, that’s a fancy machine! What… hell, it’s a
Thunderbird
!’

‘Mustang.’

‘Yeah, right. You’ll give me a ride, right? You know we can go past Kärrtorp and I can stock up on some stuff, there’s a bed waiting and, well, Mink is well hung!’

That was the last straw for Olivia. She looked down at him. He was a head shorter than her, had a wide smile and no shoulders. She stepped closer to him.

‘You? Sorry, but I wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole even if someone was pointing a loaded gun at my head… you are a pathetic little shit, get it? Take the tube!’

She got into her car, revved up and shot off with a spray of gravel in her wake.

Down in the rock shelter in Årsta there was a rush of activity. Stilton’s appearance had scared the organisers. Did more people know where they hung out? The rock shelter had been quickly emptied of spectators. Now they were moving all the lighting and other electronic equipment out. Cages were being dismantled.

These premises were useless now.

‘Where shall we take it?’

The guy who asked had a black hooded jacket and was called Liam. His mate, Isse, who had a dark green hooded jacket was just going past carrying a large metal box. On his lower arm the KF tattoo could be seen.

‘I don’t know, they’re talking about it now!’

Isse nodded backwards towards a rock wall where four older boys were having a discussion with a large map between them. Liam turned back and pulled his mobile out. He was going to see how many visitors the new film had already notched up on their site.

The film with the naked rough sleeper.

Olivia was still furious when she arrived back home and went into the building. ‘Mink is well hung!’ Her head was still partly
back there in the forest when she reached out to turn the light on in the stairwell and was slapped hard across her cheek. Before she could scream, a hand was pressed over her mouth and an arm around her waist and she was dragged into the lift. A very old lift, for two people, with one of those concertina iron doors. It was pitch black in the stairwell. She couldn’t see anything. But she could feel how yet another person pushed their way into the far too cramped lift. The hand was still pressed over her mouth. The iron doors were pulled shut with a crash and the lift started to move slowly upwards. Olivia was terrified. She had no idea what was happening. The bodies that were pressing against her were hard. She assumed they were men. She could feel the raw sweat and sour breath pushing up into her nose. None of them could move. They stood there like packed meat in the dark.

Suddenly the lift stopped between two floors.

Silence… Olivia got cramp in her stomach.

‘I’m taking my hand away now. If you scream then I’ll wring your neck.’

The rough voice came from behind. Olivia felt the man’s breath on her neck. The hand over her mouth twisted her head back and forth a few times. Then it was moved from her mouth. Olivia violently gulped in some air.

‘Why are you interested in Jackie Berglund?’

Now the voice from the side. A lighter voice, a man’s voice, about ten centimetres from her left cheek.

Jackie Berglund.

That was what this was about.

Then Olivia felt real terror.

She had moral courage, sure, but she wasn’t a Lisbeth Salander. Far from it. What were they going to do? Ought she to scream out? And get her neck wrung?

‘Jackie doesn’t like people poking their noses into her business,’ said the light voice.

‘OK.’

‘You’re not going to go snooping around?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

A rough hand was pressed over her mouth again. The men’s bodies pushed hard against her. She struggled to breathe through her nose. Tears ran down her cheeks. The men’s breath settled over her face. A long time. Suddenly the lift started to move down again, all the way to the ground floor. The iron door was abruptly opened and the men pushed their way out. Olivia fell back against the inside wall of the lift. She saw two large figures disappear out onto the street. The door slammed shut behind them.

Olivia slipped slowly down to the floor of the lift while her stomach did somersaults. Her knees banged together. She was on the edge. Suddenly she started to scream. A high-pitched scream, and she screamed until the light in the stairwell was turned on and a neighbour from the first floor came running down and found her.

The neighbour helped her up the stairs. Olivia said that two men had frightened her in the entrance lobby. She didn’t say why, and thanked the neighbour for his help. He went down again while Olivia turned towards her flat door – it was slightly ajar. Had they been up in the flat too? The fucking bastards! Olivia pushed the door open and stepped inside quickly, locked the door behind her and sank down in the hall. Her hands were still shaking when she pulled out her mobile. Her first reflex was to phone the police. But what would she say? She couldn’t get her head round this just now, so instead she keyed in Lenni’s number instead. An answering machine started up, and Olivia hung up. Ought she to ring her mother? She lowered her mobile and looked up. She wasn’t shaking so much now. Her stomach had settled down. From the hall floor she could see into the living room, and suddenly she noticed that a window was half
open. It hadn’t been when she left the flat earlier. Or had it? She got up and suddenly thought about Elvis.

‘Elvis!’

She quickly searched the little flat. No Elvis. The window? She lived on the second floor and sometimes Elvis had got out onto the window ledge. Once or twice in the spring he had even managed to somehow get down onto a neighbour’s window ledge and eventually down into the yard. She closed the window and ran down to the yard. With a little torch.

A small back garden, with a few trees and benches and plenty of opportunity for an agile cat to get into the
neighbouring
back gardens.

‘Elvis!’

No cat.

Bertil Magnuson had stretched out on a sofa in his big office, awake, with a glowing cigarillo in his hand. He had come here straight from the Theatre Grill, restless and nervous, phoned Linn and – to his relief – found himself talking to her answering machine. He had quickly explained that he had to have a conference call with Sydney at three in the morning and would probably sleep at the office. That happened now and then. Just down the corridor they had a comfortable bedroom for such occasions. But Bertil wasn’t going to use that. He wasn’t going to sleep at all. He just wanted to be alone. A few hours earlier he had come to a decision. And what made him do it was a couple of sentences from the graveyard the previous evening.

‘Are you still married to Linn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she know about this?’

‘No.’

Was that a veiled threat? Was Nils contemplating getting in touch with Linn and letting her listen to the tape? Could he
be such a bastard? Regardless, Bertil couldn’t take that risk. So he made a decision instead.

And now he needed to be left alone.

Then Latte phoned.

He had phoned several times during the evening. Bertil hadn’t felt up to answering. Now he did, to stop him phoning again.

‘Where are you? There’s one hell of a party we’ve got going here!’ Latte shouted into his mobile.

The Cub League was having a party. They consisted of eighteen mature men with lots of connections to one another. Via family, business empires or boarding schools. And all with an absolute faith in the discretion of the others in the league.

‘We’ve booked the entire club!’

‘Latte, I’m not…’

‘And Jackie has delivered some really top of the line merchandise! No one older than twenty four! With happy ending in the contract! You must come, Bibbe!’

‘I’m not in the mood, Latte.’

‘But you will be! We must bloody well celebrate the Company of the Year! I’ve got hold of a gang of dwarves who serve wearing ballet dresses and Nippe has flown in five kilos of Iranian caviar! Of course you must come!’

‘No!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing, I’m simply not in the mood. Say hi to the others!’

Bertil hung up and turned his mobile off. He knew that Latte would try again and then Nippe and the rest of the ‘old boys’ would try too. When they’d made up their mind to have a party, then a party there would be. There wasn’t much that could get in the way. They were never short of money. Nor of bizarre ideas. Bertil had been to some parties in a variety of incredible settings. A year or two ago they had held a party in an enormous barn out on the Östgöta plain. A barn full of unbelievably
expensive luxury cars and artificial lawns with fountains and a mobile bar that moved through the barn on a special steel rail. And in every car there was a half-naked young woman in the driving seat, hired from Jackie Berglund to be ready to cater to the whims of the old boys’ network, whatever they may be.