The Spring Tide (26 page)

She was convinced that they knew more than her.

Suddenly she had found her way to a photo of a young Nils Wendt on the screen. Next to an equally young Bertil Magnuson. The photo was from an article from 1984. It described how the two men had just signed an agreement with President Mobutu in what was then called Zaire. The agreement would earn millions for MWM. They both smiled straight into the camera. At their feet lay a dead lion.

Magnuson was proudly holding a rifle in his hand.

Repulsive, Olivia thought. That very moment, her mobile rang. She checked the display, it wasn’t a number she recognised.

‘Olivia Rönning.’

‘Hello, this is Ove Gardman, I’ve just checked my Swedish mobile and you have left a couple of messages, you wanted to get in touch with me?’

‘Yes, absolutely!’

Olivia pushed her laptop to one side with fingers sticky from the ice cream, and sat up properly. Ove Gardman. The boy witness from Nordkoster!

‘What’s it about?’ Gardman asked.

‘Yes, well, it’s about an old murder investigation that I’m studying, about what happened at the Hasslevikarna coves, 1987, that you witnessed, if I’ve correctly understood?’

‘Yes, that’s right. But how weird.’

‘What?’

‘No, I was talking about that only a week ago, or so, with a man in Mal Pais.’

‘Where is that?’

‘In Costa Rica.’

‘And you were talking about the murder on the beach?’

‘Yes?’

‘Who were you talking to?’

‘He was called Dan Nilsson.’

Olivia kicked away the last vestiges of her promise about the beach case and tried to keep her voice as stable as possible.

‘Are you in Sweden now?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you come home?’ she said.

‘Last night.’

‘So you haven’t heard about the murder of Nils Wendt?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Dan Nilsson. He used that name, but he was called Nils Wendt.’

‘And he’s been murdered?’

‘Yes. Yesterday. Here in Stockholm.’

‘Oh gosh.’

Olivia let Gardman digest that. She had more to ask, but it was Gardman himself who went on.

‘Ugh, he did seem so… really unpleasant, I was at his place there and…’

At this point Gardman became silent and Olivia sneaked in.

‘How did you meet?’

‘Well, I’m a marine biologist and was in San José to help with a large water reservation that they’re planning, out on the Nicoya peninsula, and then I travelled across to the ocean side for a couple of days to see the place and that was when I met him, he was a guide in a rainforest reservation just outside Mal Pais.’

‘Did he live there, in Mal Pais?’

‘Yep… we had some contact in the reservation there, I don’t suppose he got many Swedish visitors and so he invited me to his home for dinner.’

‘And that was when you started talking about the murder on Nordkoster?’

‘Yes, we drank quite a lot of wine and then somehow we realised that we both had a connection with the island, he used to have a summer house here many years ago, and then I told him about that evening when I saw… er, that thing, up at Hasslevikarna.’

‘And how did he react?’

‘Well, he… it was a bit strange, because he became extremely interested, and wanted to hear lots of details, but I was only nine years old then and of course it’s more than twenty years ago, so I didn’t remember so very much.’

‘But he was extremely curious?’

‘In some way, yes. Then he left Mal Pais. I came back the next evening to fetch something, I’d forgotten my cap there, and he’d gone, a couple of young lads were running around playing with the cap, but they didn’t know where he was, just that he had left, evidently.’

‘He went to Nordkoster.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now he’s dead?’

‘Unfortunately. May I ask you, where are you now?’

‘At home. On Nordkoster.’

‘You’ve no plans to come up to Stockholm?’

‘Not just now.’

‘OK.’

Olivia thanked Gardman. In fact for much more than he realised. She hung up and immediately keyed in Stilton’s number.

Stilton was standing outside the Söderhallarna shopping centre selling
Situation Stockholm
. It wasn’t going well. Two copies in one hour. Not because there weren’t many people around but because virtually every one of them had a mobile pressed to their ear or a couple of wires hanging from their ears down to a mobile in their hand. We’re probably in the process of mutating, Stilton thought. A new race.
Homo digitalis,
an online version of Neanderthal man. Then his own mobile rang.

‘It’s Olivia! D’you know what I’ve just found out about Nordkoster?’

‘You weren’t going to carry on with that? You said that you…’

‘Nils Wendt met the boy witness Ove Gardman just over a week ago! In Costa Rica!’

Stilton fell silent. For quite a while.

‘That is rather strange,’ he finally said.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

An excited Olivia quickly described how Gardman had told Wendt about the beach murder and how Wendt just after that had left and gone home to Sweden. To Nordkoster. After having kept away more than twenty-seven years.

‘Why did he do that?’ she said.

Why did Gardman’s story about the beach murder trigger that reaction from Wendt? After all, he disappeared three years before the murder took place. Did he have some other connection with the woman on the beach? She was probably of Latin American extraction?

‘Olivia…’ Stilton attempted.

‘Had they met in Costa Rica? Had she been sent to Nordkoster to fetch something that Wendt had hidden in his summer house?’

‘Olivia!’

‘Was she tortured in the water to confess what she was looking for? By people who had been tipped off that she would turn up and had followed her? Had she…’

‘Olivia!’

‘Yes?’

Stilton had tired of Olivia’s conspiracy theories.

‘You must talk to Mette again.’

‘OK? Sure, absolutely!’

‘And stick to facts. To Gardman and Wendt. She can do the rest herself.’

‘OK. Are you coming along?’

He would go along. Besides, he had taken off his bandage and put a big plaster on the back of his head. A bit more discreet. They would go to a restaurant. Olivia had got hold of Mette who was just going to her car. Mårten and Jolene were at some dance performance or other in the city and would come home late. She herself would stop at a little restaurant in Saltsjö-Duvnäs and have a quick dinner.

‘Stazione,’ Mette said.

‘Where is it?’

‘In a red station building, the station’s called Saltsjö-Duvnäs, on the Saltsjö local line.’

Now they were sitting there, in the evening sun, on a wooden platform at the back of the beautiful station building, at a little round table just a couple of metres from the trains that came and went right in front of them. A strangely continental atmosphere. The restaurant was a family place, enormously popular with the locals, good food and lots of guests, which meant they had been shown to a table out here on the platform side. Fine with them. It suited their purpose perfectly. There was nobody sitting close to them who could hear. Especially not when Mette noticeably raised her voice a couple of times.

‘In Costa Rica?’

At last she had the answer to what she had spent quite a lot of time on twenty-seven years ago. At last she knew where Nils Wendt had hidden all those years.

‘In Mal Pais,’ said Olivia, ‘on the Nicoya peninsula.’

‘Incredible!’

Olivia was rather proud of generating such a reaction from the hardened detective. She looked very pleased when Mette immediately phoned Lisa Hedqvist and asked her to contact Ove Gardman and question him about Costa Rica. The information about where Wendt had been hanging out was of far
more interest to Mette than his possible connection with the beach case. Admittedly, the period for prosecution hadn’t actually expired yet, but she had a decidedly more topical murder investigation to take care of. Besides, she felt that the beach case was still Tom’s.

She turned her mobile off and looked at Stilton.

‘We need to make a visit.’

‘Mal Pais?’

‘Yes. Wendt’s home. There could be material there which could help us in the investigation, perhaps a motive for the murder, perhaps an explanation for why he disappeared. But it can be rather awkward.’

‘Why?’ Olivia wondered.

‘Because I don’t feel comfortable with the Costa Rican police, their efficiency is not exactly a hundred per cent, a lot of bureaucracy.’

‘So?’

Olivia saw how Mette and Stilton exchanged a glance which very quickly turned into a consensus.

Then they asked for the bill.

It wasn’t often that Mette had cause to visit Casino Cosmopol. The big woman attracted quite a few glances when she strode into one of the gambling rooms. Above all from Abbas. He had clocked her already in the door. It only needed a quick look between them and he understood that it was soon time for another croupier to take over.

Stilton and Olivia stood leaning against Mette’s car not far from the casino. On the way in from Stazione, Olivia had been given a short description of the person they were about to contact. Abbas el Fassi. A former bag-seller, now a croupier with a good reputation. He had done some undercover missions for both Mette and Stilton over the years.

Which had worked better and better each time and convinced them both that Abbas could be relied upon one hundred per cent when it came to tasks that needed to be done a little on the side.

Like this one.

Where they didn’t want to involve the local police and have to plough through their bureaucracy to get the permission that would be necessary to do this the official way.

So it would have to be the other way.

The Abbas way.

Olivia looked at Stilton.

‘Always?’

Stilton had just told her a little about Abbas. About his past. Without going into details. Above all not about what led to Abbas being pulled up out of a semi-criminal swamp with the help of Stilton and finding himself under probation in Mette and Mårten’s home. Where he ended up being regarded as one of the family. Largely thanks to Jolene. She was seven years old when Abbas made his appearance, and it was her who eventually broke through Abbas’ extremely hard outer shield and got him to dare. Both to accept the family’s care and love, and to express his own. A rather enormous step for an orphan boy from Marseilles. Still to this day, Abbas was regarded as a member of the Olsäter family.

And he himself watched over Jolene like a hawk.

And carried a knife.

‘Always,’ said Stilton.

He had rounded off by implying that Abbas was extremely fond of knives. He always carried a most special knife on him that he had made himself.

‘But what if he loses it?’

‘He has five.’

Mette and Abbas came out of the casino and headed for the car. Stilton had prepared himself for the meeting with Abbas. It was
quite a long time since they last met. Under circumstances that Stilton didn’t like to have to think about.

Now they met again.

But it went as it often did with Abbas. A couple of quick looks, a nod, and it was all done. When Abbas slipped into the seat next to Mette, Stilton felt how he had missed him.

Mette had suggested that they should drive to Abbas’s home. On Dalagatan. Without thinking about the roadworks for the new underground line. Or the area in which they creating a large cavern which in the future would become a commuter station on Vanadisvägen but for the time being occupied a whole block round where Abbas lived. More than once he’d been sitting in his flat and felt the underground explosions make the whole building vibrate, and looked out at the poor Matteus Church opposite where God had to struggle to keep the bricks in place.

Now they were all sitting in his living room. Mette told him why they had come. A visit to where Wendt had been living in Mal Pais in Costa Rica and a search of his home. Mette would see that there would be some degree of cooperation with the local police via her own channels. Abbas would have to take care of the main task himself.

As he saw fit.

Mette would cover the costs.

Then she went through all the known details in the case so far, and Abbas absorbed it. In silence.

When Mette had had her say, dealing with the issues connected with her own murder enquiry, Stilton pitched in with yet another request.

‘If you’re going there, you could also see if you can find any connection between Wendt and the woman who was murdered on Nordkoster in 1987. They might have met in Costa Rica, she might have travelled to Nordkoster to fetch something that Wendt had hidden at his summer house, OK?’

Olivia was slightly startled by this. She noted how Stilton, without even a glance at her, had pinched one of her ‘conspiracy theories’ and made it his own. That’s what he’s like, she thought. I’ll remember that.

Now they were waiting for Abbas’ answer.

Olivia had sat quietly the whole time. She felt how the three others had a very special chemistry, which stretched long into the past. There was a fundamental respect in the tone between them. She had also noted how Stilton and Abbas had occasionally looked at each other. Quick glances, as if there was something unsaid between them.

What was it?

‘I’ll go.’

Abbas didn’t say any more than that. But he did, however, ask if anyone wanted some tea. Mette wanted to go home and Stilton wanted to leave and they both said no thank you, and were on their way to the hall when Olivia said yes, she would like some tea.

‘That would be nice.’

Olivia didn’t really know why she said it, but there was something about Abbas. She had been fascinated by him the moment he had slipped into the car and down onto the seat in a single lithe movement. And there was a scent. Not perfume, something else, that she didn’t recognise at all. Now he came in with a silver tray with tea and cups on it.

Olivia looked at the room she was sitting in. A very attractive room. Painted white, sparsely furnished, with a few beautiful etchings on one wall, a thin sober textile hanging covered another wall, no TV, a slightly worn wooden floor. She wondered whether Abbas was a bit of a pedant.