The Spring Tide (32 page)

‘They got up. I was forced to take care of an Englishman who had broken his foot, I carried him on my back all the way down to base camp. He was nobility, by the way, I’ve got a standing invitation to visit his mansion in New Hampshire.’

‘Isn’t that in the US?’

‘What did you say the name of the shop was?’

‘Weird & Wow. It’s over there, on Sibyllegatan.’

Olivia stopped some distance from the shop. She described what Jackie looked like and what she needed.

‘A hair, like, that’s what you want?’

‘Or saliva.’

‘Or a contact lens, that’s how we nailed the guy in Halmstad, he had vacuumed the entire flat after he’d killed his wife and then we found a contact lens in the bag from the vacuum cleaner and took DNA from it and then we had him.’

‘I don’t know if Jackie Berglund uses contact lenses.’

‘Then I’ll have to improvise.’

Mink skipped off towards Weird & Wow.

His idea of improvisation is subject to discussion. He went right into the shop, saw Jackie Berglund stand with her back to him next to a dressing table with a female customer and went straight up to her and pulled out a little wisp of hair. Jackie screamed, turning round towards Mink who then looked extremely surprised.

‘But WHAT THE FUCK? Sorry! I thought it was that bitch Nettan!’

‘Who?’

Mink waved his arms around as druggies tend to do. It came naturally to him.

‘Fucking sorry! My apologies lady! She’s got the same hair colour and she nicked a bag of coke and ran this way! Has she been in here?’

‘Get out!’

Jackie grabbed Mink’s jacket and dragged him to the door. Mink wasn’t slow to slip out. With one fist tightly holding a wisp of hair. Jackie turned to the slightly shocked customer.

‘Junkies! They hang out over in Humlegård Park and come past sometimes and try to steal and make a mess. I’m so sorry about that.’

‘It’s all right. Did he steal anything?’

‘No.’

Which could be up for debate.

Erik Grandén was just going through his diary for the next few days. Seven countries in as many days. He loved travelling. Flying. Always being on the move. Not strictly an essential part of his job at the Foreign Ministry, but nobody had objected so far. He was always accessible via Twitter. Then Lisa Hedqvist phoned, and wanted to meet him.

‘Can’t be fitted in.’

He really didn’t have time for a meeting. His arrogant tone made it clear that he had much more important things to do than talk with young woman police officers. So Lisa would have to do it over the phone.

‘It’s about the company called Magnuson Wendt Mining.’

‘What about it?’

‘You were on the board…’

‘Then. It’s twenty-seven years ago. Do you know that?’

‘Yes. Was there a controversy within the board at that time?’

‘Concerning what?’

‘I don’t know, were there differences between Nils Wendt and Bertil Magnuson?’

‘No.’

‘None at all?’

‘None that I know about.’

‘But you do know that Nils Wendt has just been murdered here in Stockholm?’

‘That was an extremely stupid question. Are we done now?’

‘For the time being.’

Lisa Hedqvist hung up.

Grandén was still holding his phone in his hand.

He didn’t like this.

It had been a lot easier that she had expected. All the way to the caravan she had massaged a battery of arguments and tried to think up every possible objection so she could parry it, and then he simply said:

‘OK.’

‘OK?’

‘Where is it?’

‘Here!’

Olivia handed over the little plastic bag with Jackie Berglund’s pulled-out wisp of hair. Stilton put it in his pocket. Olivia didn’t dare ask why he just said that. OK? Was it because he was on board? Or was he just being kind to her? Why should he?

‘That’s really great!’ she said, nevertheless. ‘When do you think that she…’

‘Don’t know.’

Stilton had no idea whether his ex-wife would help again. He didn’t even know if she was interested. When Olivia had left, he phoned her.

She was interested.

‘You want me to match the wisp of hair against that hair from the hairslide?’

‘Yes. It could be from one of the perpetrators.’

‘Does Mette know about this?’ said Marianne.

‘Not yet.’

‘Who’s paying for it?’

Stilton had thought about that too. He knew how expensive it was to do an analysis. He had already stretched it once. Begged. To do it again was really pushing it.

So he didn’t answer.

‘OK,’ said Marianne. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

‘Thanks.’

Stilton hung up. Really it was Rönning who ought to fork out for this, he thought. She’s the one who’s so keen. Couldn’t she sell that broken Mustang?

He had more important things to do.

He phoned Mink.

Bertil was on his way home in the grey Jaguar. He was tense and nervous. He still wasn’t clear what that croupier was doing. Abbas el Fassi. He had found out his full name and address and asked K. Sedovic to keep an eye on his flat on Dalagatan. If he should turn up there. He had also made sure he had people out at Arlanda airport. If he should turn up there. Presumably he was on his way back to Sweden. With the original cassette. What was he going to do with it? Did he know Nils? Would he continue with some sort of blackmail? Or was he connected with the police? But, damn it, the man was a croupier! He had worked at Cosmopol almost every time they’d been there and gambled. Bertil couldn’t understand it at all, and that made him tense and nervous.

One thing was positive. The original cassette would probably soon be in Sweden. It wasn’t still in Costa Rica and wouldn’t end up with the police there. It was just a question of making sure it didn’t end up with the police here.

Then Erik Grandén phoned.

‘Have the police talked to you?’

‘About what?’

‘The murder of Nils? I got a call from a nosey woman who wanted to know if there’d been any controversy between you and Nils when I was on the board.’

‘What do you mean, controversy?’

‘That’s what I wondered too! Why are the police interested in this?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Unpleasant.’

‘What did you say?’

‘No.’

‘That there wasn’t any controversy?’

‘Well there wasn’t any controversy. Not that I can remember.’

‘None at all.’

‘No, sometimes you can’t help wondering what level the Swedish police has sunk to.’

Bertil ended the conversation.

Acke Andersson sat in the big shopping mall in Flemingsberg with the man who was a friend of his mum: Mink, and one of Mink’s mates. A man with a big plaster on the back of his head. They ate hamburgers. Or rather, Mink and him ate. The other man drank a milkshake, vanilla.

It was the other man who wanted to meet him.

‘I don’t know that much,’ said Acke.

‘But do you know who arranges it? Who they are?’ Stilton asked.

‘No.’

‘But how do you know when you’re going to fight?’

‘Text.’

‘They text you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you got their number?’

‘What?’

‘The people who text you, you’ve got a mobile, surely you can see who’s texting you?’

‘No.’

Stilton gave up. He had asked Mink to fix a meeting with Acke to try to find out if Acke knew any more about the cage fighting. Names. Addresses. He didn’t. He got a text and then he made his way there or was fetched by somebody.

‘Who fetches you?’

‘Guys.’

‘Do you know what they’re called?’

‘No.’

Stilton gave up even more and sucked in the last of his milkshake.

Not that far from the hamburger place stood Liam and Isse with their hooded jackets. They had fetched Acke and taken him to the cage fighting once or twice. Now they were thinking of fetching him again. Suddenly they saw him talking with the bloke they’d filmed in a caravan when he was fucking one of their trashkicks. And who had spied on their latest cage fighting and been beaten up.

A homeless bloke.

Why the fuck was Acke talking with him?

‘Perhaps he isn’t homeless? Perhaps he’s a cop?’

‘An undercover cop?’

‘Yeah?’

All three left the hamburger joint. Mink and Stilton went towards the railway station. Acke ran off in another direction, without noticing that Liam and Isse followed him. They caught up with him over by the empty football pitch.

‘Acke!’

Acke stopped. He recognised the guys. They had fetched him once for the cage fighting. Were they planning a new one? Even though he didn’t want to any more. How could he explain that?

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Who were you with at that burger place?’ asked Liam.

‘You what?’

‘Just now. We saw you. Who were they?’

‘A mate of my mum’s, and a mate of his.’

‘The bloke with the plaster?’

‘Yes.’

‘What have you told him?’

‘About what? I haven’t said anything!’

‘The bloke with the plaster got into the cage fighting ring last time. How did he find out about it then?’ said Liam.

‘I dunno.’

‘We don’t like boys who snitch.’

‘I haven’t…’

‘Shut it!’ said Isse.

‘But I promise! I haven’t…’

A hand slapped hard across Acke’s face. Before he could turn away, another slap. Liam and Isse grabbed hold of Acke’s jacket, had a look about them and then dragged the boy, bleeding, off. Acke looked back to see where the grown-ups had gone, terrified.

The grown-ups were standing on a platform far away.

The phone call came in the middle of the night, just after three o’clock. It took a while for Stilton to clamber up to the surface and answer. It was Abbas. He was between two planes and was very brief. The contents was: the murdered woman on the beach was called Adelita Rivera, was from Mexico and was pregnant with Nils Wendt’s child.

Then he hung up.

Stilton sat there a long time in his underwear on the bunk and stared at the mobile in his hand. To him, the information from Abbas was simply incredible. After twenty-three years he had got what he never got before: a name for the victim and a father for the child.

Adelita Rivera and Nils Wendt.

She was murdered almost twenty-four years ago, and he just the previous week.

When he had worked through this unfathomable message many minutes, perhaps even half an hour, he started to think about Olivia. Should he phone her and tell her everything? Just like it was? Or what? What time was it? He looked at his mobile again. Half past three. A bit too early.

He put the mobile aside and lowered his gaze to the floor. An ant path wound its way past not far from his feet. The ants never stopped coming and going. He observed them, one line in each direction right next to each other. No ant deviated from the path. They all went in the same direction as the others. No ant turned back and went in the opposite direction. Or stopped.

He stopped looking at the ants.

A Mexican woman and Nils Wendt.

He still pondered this unfathomable news. Tried to think clearly. Look for connections, links. Facts. Hypotheses. He noticed how he started to reacquire a little of what had lain fallow for many years. He was starting to function again.
On a primitive level. Put things together and take them apart. Analyse.

Not like in the old days, far from it. If he’d been a Porsche then, he was a Skoda now. Without wheels. But nevertheless.

He wasn’t still stuck in the vacuum.

Ovette Andersson stood in Gallerian, the big shopping mall next to Hamngatan, and waited. There was a light shower outside. They had said ten o’clock and now it was almost half past. Her blond hair was damp.

‘Sorry!’

Mink came trotting along and raised his arm as an apology. Ovette nodded. They started to walk towards Norrmalmstorg. An unusual-looking couple in that rather posh setting at that time of day, just before lunch, with a stream of affluent shoppers and men in business suits on the street. Mink looked at Ovette. She had some make-up on, but it didn’t help much. Her whole face was pained with worry and dried tears.

Acke was missing.

‘How so?’

‘He wasn’t in the flat when I came home, I didn’t work that late last night and then he wasn’t there when I came home. He wasn’t in bed. He wasn’t anywhere. And he hadn’t been in bed either, and his food was still in the fridge, as if he hadn’t been home at all!’

‘I met him yesterday.’

‘You did?’

‘I was out there talking to him at the kebab place in the centre and he was like his usual self, then he went off and I came back into town. Isn’t he at the school leisure centre?’

‘No. I phoned them. What on earth is he doing?’

Mink, of course, had no idea, but he could sense that Vettan was on the edge. He put an arm around her shoulders. He was at least a head shorter, so it wasn’t an entirely natural movement.

‘That’s life. Kids. He’ll be doing something.’

‘But I thought about what you told me and if it’s something like that, if he’s mixed up in that?’

‘Those fights?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think so, I’m pretty sure he won’t do that any more.’

‘How can you know that?’

‘Never mind, but contact the cops if you’re worried.’

‘The cops?’

‘Yeah?’

Mink knew what Vettan was thinking. A worn-out whore. She wouldn’t exactly be given first priority. But even so. She could get some help there. That’s what they were for. They both stopped when they came to Kungsträdgårdsgatan.

‘But I’ll ask around a bit,’ said Mink.

‘Thanks.’

The rain spattered against the dirty plexiglass dome on the roof. Stilton sat on a bunk and put some more of Vera’s resin on the wounds on his chest. The jar was almost empty. He could hardly get hold of any more. Both Vera and her grandmother were out of reach. He glanced at a little photo of Vera on a shelf in the caravan. He had asked if he could have a copy of her seller’s ID and they’d given him one. With her picture on it. He often thought about her. He didn’t used to do that, when she was alive. Then he thought about completely different people. The ones who had been important to him before and that he had let go. Abbas, Mårten and Mette. It always boiled down to
three. Occasionally Marianne flashed past. But that was too big, too messy, too sad. It took too much of what little strength he survived on.

He looked down into the jar, almost nothing left. Then there was a knock on the door. Stilton kept on rubbing in the ointment, just now he wasn’t interested in visitors. He became interested a couple of seconds later. When his wife’s face appeared outside one of the windows. Their eyes met, for quite a long time.

‘Come in.’

Marianne opened the door and looked in. She was wearing a simple straight coat, light green, and had an umbrella in one hand. Her other hand was holding a grey briefcase.

‘Hello, Tom.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘Rönning. Can I come in?’

Stilton gestured and Marianne climbed in. He had put newspapers down on the more-or-less cleaned floor where the blood-stains had been. He hoped that no weird insects would crawl over them. Not just now. He put the ointment jar aside and gestured towards the bunk opposite.

This didn’t feel that brilliant.

Marianne folded the umbrella and looked about her. Did he really live like this? In utter dereliction? Is it possible? She kept herself in check and glanced at the window.

‘Pretty curtains.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes… no.’

Marianne smiled and opened her coat a little. She carefully sat down on a bunk and glanced around her again.

‘Is this your caravan?’

‘No.’

‘No, right… no, I see…’

Marianne nodded towards one of Vera’s dresses hanging over by the rusty Calor gas cooker.

‘Is it hers?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she nice?’

‘She was murdered. How did it go?’

Straight in, as usual. To get away. Always the same. Yet he did seem focused. There was a little of the old look she saw in his eyes. The look that when he was at his best had struck her rather hard, emotionally. A very long time ago.

‘There was a match.’

‘Is that true?’

‘The hair from that hairslide on the beach came from the same woman as that wisp of hair you gave me. Who is she?’

‘Jackie Berglund.’

‘
The
Jackie Berglund?’

‘Yes.’

Marianne had still been married to Stilton in 2005. When he was in charge of the investigation into the murder of Jill Engberg and when via that had got close to her employer Jackie Berglund. He had talked about various hypotheses concerning Jackie; they had talked about them at home, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in bed. Until he had his first psychosis and ended up on a psychiatric ward. The psychosis had nothing to do with his work, even though the tough workload had partly paved the way for it. Marianne knew exactly what had triggered the psychosis. Nobody else knew, as far as she was aware, and she suffered with him. Then they took away the Jill case from him. Six months later the marriage broke up too.

Not overnight. It wasn’t a decision made in haste. It was a result of Tom’s mental condition. He kept her at a distance, rejected her. Deliberately. More and more, he didn’t want any help from her, didn’t want her to see him, touch him. In the end he achieved what he was after. Marianne couldn’t stand it any longer, couldn’t support somebody who didn’t want supporting.

So they went their separate ways.

And he ended up in a caravan.

And now he sat here.

‘So it means that Jackie Berglund presumably was on the beach the same evening that the murder took place…’ said Stilton, more or less to himself.

Which she had denied during the interrogation.

He savoured that quite amazing piece of information.

‘Evidently,’ said Marianne.

‘Olivia,’ Stilton said calmly.

‘Is it her who got all this going?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what do we do now? With the DNA match?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘You can hardly work on this, can you?’

And why couldn’t I, he thought at first. Slightly aggressively. Until he saw how Marianne glanced at the ointment jar with its strange goo and at a couple of copies of
Situation Sthlm
on the table and then at him again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll need Mette’s help.’

‘How are things with her?’

‘Fine.’

‘And Mårten?’

‘Fine.’

And then he was there again, Marianne thought. Introvert and almost silent.

‘How come you’re up here in Stockholm?’ Stilton asked.

‘I’m giving a lecture at the police headquarters.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Did someone hit you?’

‘Yes.’

Stilton hoped that Marianne did not go looking for clips on Trashkick. The likelihood that she would recognise his body on top of Vera was considerable.

Copulating.

He didn’t want her to see that, for some reason.

‘Thanks for helping,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome.’

It became rather quiet. Stilton looked at Marianne and she didn’t look away. There was something endlessly sad about the whole situation, they felt that, both of them. She knew who he had been, and he wasn’t that any longer. He knew that too.

He was somebody else.

‘You are extremely beautiful, Marianne, you know that.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is everything OK with you?’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘No.’

She had hardly needed to ask. She stretched a hand across the formica table and laid it on top of Stilton’s veined hand.

He let it stay there.

As soon as Marianne had left the caravan, Stilton phoned Olivia. First he told her about Abbas’ call between two flights and got a long and justified reaction.

‘Adelita Rivera?’

‘Yes.’

‘From Mexico?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Nils Wendt was the father of the child?’

‘According to Abbas. We’ll hear more when he gets back.’

‘Incredible! Isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

In many ways, Stilton thought. Then he told her about Marianne’s DNA match. And got an even bigger reaction.

‘Jackie Berglund’s?’

‘Yes.’

When the news had sunk in a little and the excited Olivia was going on about how they had perhaps solved the entire beach case, Stilton felt obliged to point out that the hairslide
could
have fallen onto the beach at some completely different time than the murder. Earlier in the day, for example. Ove Gardman never saw Jackie lose it just then. Just when he was there and found it.

‘But, Jesus, must you be so negative all the time?’

‘On the contrary, if you want to be a good police officer then you must learn to never commit yourself to just one hypothesis if there are alternatives, it can come back at you like a boomerang in court.’

Stilton proposed that they should contact Mette Olsäter.

‘Because?’

‘Because neither of us can interrogate Jackie.’

Mette met up with Stilton and Olivia not far from the entrance to police headquarters on Polhemsgatan. She was fully booked and couldn’t go into town. Stilton had reluctantly accepted the meeting place. It was far too near buildings and people with whom he had a wounded past.

But the ball lay in Mette’s court.

In many respects.

She was in the middle of the Wendt murder and was just waiting for Abbas to land so that she could get hold of the material he had under his jumper. As he had put it. When he had told her about what happened in Costa Rica, a slightly tidied up version, she realised that the material could contain important keys to her investigation. Motive, perhaps. And in the best case, a murderer.

Or several.

So she was a little stressed.

But she was also an experienced and wise detective. She quickly realised that the DNA match that Stilton and Olivia
had got from the beach case ought to be decidedly awkward for Jackie Berglund. She realised just as quickly that the two people standing in front of her couldn’t, themselves, do anything about it. A student and a homeless person. Not just any old homeless person, admittedly, but for the time being not somebody you would leave alone in an official interrogation room with an as yet still open murder enquiry.

And a possible perpetrator.

So she would do her bit.

‘Meet me here in four hours.’

First she read up on the beach case, skimming through the file. Then she got some additional information from Norway. When that had been done, she chose an interrogation room that she knew lay at a safe distance from unnecessary questions. With a couple of sets of doors that allowed Stilton to sneak in behind her without attracting attention.

Olivia had to wait at Polhemsgatan.

‘We have some excerpts from the interrogations that were carried out in 1987 with you, in connection with the murder on Nordkoster,’ said Mette, with a distinctly neutral voice. ‘You were on the island at the time of the murder, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

Jackie Berglund sat opposite Mette. Next to Mette sat Stilton. Jackie’s and Stilton’s eyes had met just a few moments earlier. Both were most inscrutable. He could perhaps guess what she was thinking. But she had no idea what he was thinking. She was wearing a yellow tailored suit and her dark hair had been set up in a strict French twist.

‘In two of those interrogations, the one on the night of the murder, the other in Strömstad the day after, by Gunnar Wernemyr, you claim that you were never up by the Hasslevikarna coves, the place where the murder happened. Is that correct?’