The Spring Tide (3 page)

Olivia had never heard of him.

The other two were Tumba-Tarzan and Constable Björk. The latter had a police cap in his lap. Somebody had balanced an empty beer can on top of it.

Olivia opened her file. She hadn’t been intending to spend any time on college work during the hols, and this was voluntary too. But it got her out of the classroom so she wouldn’t have to listen to Ulf harping on about nothing.

Now she was curious though.

Her dad had been involved in one of the cases.

She quickly thumbed through the file. The summaries were very brief. A few facts about methods, places and dates, a bit about the investigations. She was quite used to police
terminology
. She had heard her parents discussing legal cases at the kitchen table throughout her childhood. Her mother, Maria, was a criminal lawyer.

She found the case almost at the end of the list. Arne Rönning had been one of the people in charge of the investigation.

Detective chief inspector in the national crime squad.

Dad.

Olivia looked up and let her gaze take in the view. The college was situated in the midst of almost unspoilt countryside, with
large well-kept lawns and beautiful woodland areas that stretched right down to the bay, Edsviken. An extremely serene setting.

Her mind was on Arne.

She had loved her dad, deeply, and now he was dead. And he’d only made it to fifty-nine. That wasn’t fair. And now the thoughts were back. The ones she had suffered from, often, and which she could almost experience as a physical pain. The thoughts about her betrayal.

Her betrayal of him.

They had been extremely close all through her teens, and then she had let him down when he suddenly fell ill. She’d gone off to Barcelona to study Spanish, work, chill out… have some fun.

I just ran away, she thought. Although I didn’t realise it at the time. I did a bunk because I just couldn’t get to grips with the fact that he was ill, and that he could get worse – that he could actually die.

But he did. When Olivia wasn’t there. When she was still in Barcelona.

She could still remember the phone call from her mum.

‘Dad died during the night.’

Olivia rubbed her eyes gently and thought about her mum. About the time after her dad’s death when she had returned from Barcelona. A dreadful time. Maria had been devastated and was locked up inside her own grief. And that grief had no room for Olivia’s guilt and anguish. Instead they had tiptoed around each other, not saying anything, as if they were afraid the whole world would shatter if they gave voice to their emotions.

Eventually, things settled down, of course, but it was still something they steered well clear of talking about.

That was putting it mildly.

She really did still miss her dad.

‘Have you found a case?’

It was Ulf, who had materialised in front of her in his own unique way.

‘Yes.’

‘Which one?’

Olivia looked down at her file.

‘A case from the west coast.’

‘When was it?’

‘Eighty-seven.’

‘Why did you choose that one?’

‘Have you found anything? Or perhaps you’re not going to bother? I mean, it wasn’t compulsory.’

Ulf gave a slight smile and sat down on the bench.

‘Does it bother you if I sit here?’

‘Yes.’

Olivia was quite good at speaking her mind. Besides, she wanted to concentrate on the case she had just picked out.

The case that her dad had worked on.

It was a rather spectacular case, as it turned out. Åke had written such an interesting summary that Olivia wanted to know more straight away.

She drove to the National Library and went down into the basement to the reading room with all the old newspapers on microfilm. The woman behind the counter showed her how to find things on the shelves and which microfilm readers she could use. Everything was arranged meticulously. Every single newspaper from the Fifties onwards was now on microfilm. All she had to do was to choose which newspaper and which year, sit down at the reader and get going.

Olivia started with a local newspaper that covered the island of Nordkoster.
Strömstads Tidning
. She had the date and the location of the murder from the file. When she launched the search function it didn’t take long for the headlines to fill
the screen: MACABRE MURDER ON ISLAND SHORE. The article had been written by a fairly excited journalist but did actually provide some hard facts about the time and place.

She was hooked.

She spent the next few hours working her way through the regional papers,
Bohuslänningen
and
Hallandsposten
, and then widening her scope bit by bit. The Göteborg newspapers. The Stockholm-based evening papers. The big national dailies.

And she made notes.

Feverishly.

Major features as well as details.

The case had really attracted nationwide attention. For several reasons. It was a deliberately brutal murder, the victim was a young pregnant woman, and the perpetrators were unknown. They hadn’t got any suspects. No motives had come to light. They didn’t even have a name for the victim.

The case had remained an unsolved mystery ever since.

Olivia became all the more fascinated. Both by the case as a phenomenon, but above all by the murder itself. It had taken place on a moonlit night in the Hasslevikarna coves on the island of Nordkoster. A diabolical method of murdering a naked pregnant woman.

With the tide.

The rising tide?

That was quite simply torture, Olivia thought. An extreme form of drowning. Slow, hellish.

Why?

Why that spectacular method?

Olivia’s imagination was in overdrive. Were there links to the occult? Tidal worshippers? Moon worshippers? The murder had taken place late in the evening. Was it some sort of
sacrifice
? A rite? A sect? Were they going to cut out the fetus and sacrifice it to some lunar god?

No, mustn’t get carried away, she thought.

Olivia turned off the reader, leant back and looked down at her full notebook: a mishmash of facts and speculation, truths and guesses, and more or less credible hypotheses by various crime reporters and criminologists.

According to one ‘reliable source’, traces of a drug had been found in the victim’s body. Rohypnol. Rohypnol is a classic rape drug, Olivia thought. But wasn’t she in the final stages of pregnancy? Had she been sedated? Why?

According to the police, a dark cloth coat had been found up in the sand dunes. Hairs matching the woman’s had been found on the coat. Where were the rest of the clothes if that was her coat? Had the murderers taken them but forgotten the coat?

They had tried to ascertain the woman’s identity via Interpol but this had led to nothing. Strange that nobody missed a
pregnant
woman, she thought.

The police described the woman as between twenty-five and thirty years old, possibly of Latin American extraction. What was meant by ‘Latin American extraction’? How large an area did that cover?

The entire sequence of events had been witnessed by a nine-year-old boy named by a local reporter as Ove Gardman. The boy had run home and told his parents. Where was he today? Could she get in touch with him?

According to the police, the woman was unconscious but still alive when Gardman’s parents came to the beach. They tried to resuscitate her but when the air ambulance arrived the woman was dead. How far away did the Gardmans live? she wondered. How long did it take for the helicopter to get there?

Olivia got up. Her brain was battered with impressions and reflections. Halfway up, she almost lost her balance.

Her blood pressure had fallen through the floor.

Åke Gustafsson and a middle-aged woman stood out on the neatly tended lawn outside the Police College. The woman was from Romania and was in charge of the college’s catering. She offered Åke a cigarette.

‘Not many people smoke nowadays,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘It must be because of cancer.’

‘Quite likely.’

And then they smoked.

Halfway through his cigarette, Åke’s mobile started ringing.

‘This is Olivia Rönning, hi. Well, I’ve chosen that case at Nordkoster, and I’d like…’

‘I thought you might,’ Åke interposed, ‘your dad was involved in that…’

‘Yes, but that’s not why.’

Olivia wanted to keep them separate. This was about her and now. It had nothing to do with her dad. At any rate not as far as her tutor was concerned. She had chosen a project and she was going to do it in her own way. That’s what she was like.

‘I’ve chosen it because I think it’s interesting,’ she said.

‘But pretty difficult.’

‘Yes, that’s why I called you. I’d like to look at the real murder investigation paperwork, where is it?’

‘Probably in the central archives in Göteborg.’

‘Oh really? That’s a pity.’

‘But you wouldn’t have been able to look anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s an unsolved murder and it’s still within the limitation period. Nobody is given access to an open
investigation
if you’re not a member of the investigation team.’

‘Yeah, right… so what do I do now? How can I get some more information?’

There was silence at the other end.

Olivia sat at the wheel with her mobile against her ear. What’s he thinking? She saw a female traffic warden approaching who looked as if she meant business. The car was parked in a space reserved for disabled drivers. Not a good idea. She started the engine just as she heard Åke’s voice again.

‘You could try speaking to the person who was in charge of the investigation team,’ he said.

‘He’s called Tom Stilton.’

‘I know.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘At police headquarters?’

‘I don’t think so. But you could ask Olsäter, Mette Olsäter, she’s a detective superintendent. They worked together quite a lot, she might know.’

‘And where can I find her, then?’

‘At the national crime squad, in C-building.’

‘Thanks!’

Olivia pulled away right under the nose of the traffic warden.

‘
Situation Stockholm
! Latest issue! Read about Princess Victoria and support the homeless!’

One-eyed Vera’s voice had no difficulty in reaching out over the hordes of affluent residents of the chic Sofo district in southern Stockholm who were going into the market hall complex to stuff their bags full with a mixture of junk food and luxury. She had the appearance of someone perfectly suited to perform at the National Theatre. Like the actress Margaretha Krook when she was in her prime, although Vera looked rather shabbier. But she had that same sharp gaze, a commanding presence and a charisma that you couldn’t help but notice.

Her copies were selling.

Half of her bundle was already gone.

Arvo Pärt hadn’t been as successful. He wasn’t selling anything. He stood leaning against a wall a little distance away. This wasn’t his day, and he didn’t want to be alone. He looked at Vera out of the corner of his eye. He admired her strength. He knew a lot about her dark nights, most of the people in her circle did. Yet now she was standing there as if she owned the world. Homeless. Unless you counted a decrepit old grey caravan from the 1960s as home.

But Vera did.

‘I’m not homeless.’

Which is what she told a customer who bought a magazine and wanted to peep into the world of the dregs of society. Social porn?

‘I’m in between homes.’

Which was partly true. She was on the council’s special ‘Housing First’ list, a political project to give the impression they were improving the situation for the city’s homeless. If she was lucky, she’d be allocated a flat in the autumn, they’d told her. A trial flat. If she behaved well, she might be able to keep it.

Vera intended to behave well.

She always did behave well. Almost always. She had her caravan and a disability pension of just over 5,000 kronor a month. She scraped by with that but it only covered the most basic essentials. To get the rest, she had to go rummaging in skips.

And she was doing OK.

‘
Situation Stockholm
!’

Now she’d sold three more copies.

‘Are you really going to stand here?’

The question came from Jelle. He seemed to turn up from nowhere with his five copies and had now parked himself quite close to Vera.

‘Yeah? What about it?’

‘That’s Benseman’s pitch.’

Every seller had their own spot in the city. It was written on the plastic card that hung around their necks, and had their name too. On Benseman’s card it had said ‘Benseman/Söder Market Hall’.

‘Benseman’s not going to be here for a while,’ said Vera.

‘It’s his pitch. Have you been allocated it temporarily?’

‘No, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, what are you doing here?’

Jelle didn’t answer. Vera took a step in his direction.

‘Anything against me standing here?’

‘It’s a good pitch.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can we share it?’ said Jelle.

Vera gave a slight smile and looked at Jelle. The sort of look that he backed away from as quick as he could. Like now. He looked down at the ground. Vera came right up to him, leant over and tried to catch his eye from below. About as easy as catching a trout with your hand. Hopeless. Jelle just twisted away. Vera let out that hoarse laugh which immediately caused
four families with little kids to swerve away with their designer pushchairs.