The Spring Tide (37 page)

If it hadn’t been Magnuson who had licked the stamp.

Stilton assumed that they had followed him. From the Söderhallarna mall and all the way to the caravan which they had then set on fire. He also assumed that it was the same people who had beaten up Acke. Perhaps they’d seen when he and Mink had met Acke in Flemingsberg. Besides, he also assumed that they thought he had died in the fire. If they were to catch sight of him again, it should really stir things.

He had popped in at the editorial offices en route and bought a pile of magazines. They all asked him about the caravan. He got some warm hugs.

Now he was standing outside Söderhallarna again, selling
Situation Sthlm.

He was very alert.

To all the shoppers going in or out he looked just the same as he usually did. Like a homeless seller of the magazine. Who stood where he had stood several times of late.

They had no idea.

When it started to rain heavily and thunder could be heard, he went on his way.

The storm clouds had darkened the sky and flashes of lightning could be seen over the housetops. Liam and Isse were already soaking wet before they reached Lilla Blecktorp park. They hardly needed to sneak through the trees below
Ringvägen. And once in the park there were plenty of bushes and trees to hide behind. And they were wearing their dark hoodies too.

‘There.’

Isse pointed and whispered. He pointed towards a bench quite near a tree with a particularly large trunk. A tall slim figure was sitting on the bench holding a can of beer, slightly bent towards his knees, with the rain spraying his body.

‘It fucking well is him!’

Liam and Isse looked at each other. They were still amazed. They had caught sight of Stilton outside the Söderhallarna and hardly believed their eyes. How the fuck had the bastard survived the caravan fire? Isse pulled out a short baseball bat. You could hardly see it in the poor light. Liam glanced down at it. He knew what Isse was capable of when the spring was released. They cautiously went a bit closer and looked around them. The park was, of course, empty. Nobody with any sense was out in this weather.

Except the wreck on the bench.

Stilton sat there, his thoughts elsewhere. Being alone like this, in this sort of setting, reminded him of Vera. Of her voice, and of that one time they had slept with each other, just before she was beaten to death. There was something desperate about that memory.

Then he noticed them, out of the corner of his eye.

They had almost reached the bench. And one of them had a baseball bat in his grip.

Cowards, he thought. Two against one. And even so they needed one of those. At that point, he wished that his step-climbing training had started six years earlier, or that those six years had never happened. But they had. He was still only a shadow of his former physical self.

He looked up.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Do you want a gulp?’

Stilton lifted the can up. Isse swung his baseball bat lightly and hit the can perfectly. It went flying and Stilton watched as it landed several metres away.

‘Homerun,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Perhaps you ought to…’

‘Shut it!’

‘Sorry.’

‘We torched your fucking caravan. What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Having a beer.’

‘You fucking dickhead! Don’t you get it? Shall we smash your face in?’

‘Like you did with Vera?’

‘Which fucking Vera? Was that the bitch in the caravan? Was she your bitch?’

Isse burst out laughing and looked at Liam.

‘Hear that? It was his bitch we smashed!’

Liam smiled a little and pulled out his mobile. Stilton saw him turn the camera on. It was coming. He wasn’t really sure how to react.

Right at them, he thought.

‘You’re a couple of heaps of shit, do you know that?’ he suddenly said.

Isse stared at Stilton. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. How the fuck did the drunkard dare? Liam glanced at Isse. The spring would soon be released.

‘You should be locked up for life and fed with rotten cat shit.’

The spring was out. With a roar, Isse lifted the baseball bat well behind his shoulder and then started a violent swing. Right towards Stilton’s head.

The swing didn’t go all the way. It didn’t even go halfway. Before it got that far Isse got a long knife right into the upper part of his arm. He never saw where it came from, and Liam never saw the other knife either. But he felt how it went right
through his hand and caused the mobile to go flying in a high arc over the bench.

Stilton was soon on his feet and grabbed the baseball bat. Isse was crouching down screaming and staring at the knife stuck deep into his upper arm. The rain was whipping against his face. Stilton hyperventilated and felt how Vera’s horrific death had taken possession of the wooden bat. He held it to one side at the same level as Isse’s head. His brain was black. He now gripped the bat with both hands and was about to swing a blow with the full weight of his body straight at Isse’s throat.

‘Tom!’

The cry pierced right into his black brain, indeed deep enough in to stop the movement for a second. Stilton twisted round. Abbas was coming forward from the large tree.

‘Put that down,’ he said.

Stilton stared at Abbas.

‘Tom.’

Stilton lowered the baseball bat slightly. Suddenly he saw how Liam was trying to scramble away. He took two quick steps and aimed a blow straight over the back of Liam’s knee. Liam collapsed in a heap. Abbas reached Stilton and put his hand on the bat.

‘There are better ways,’ he said.

Stilton eased up a few seconds. He looked at Abbas and tried to control his breathing. After yet a few more seconds he let go of the bat. Abbas threw it deep into the bushes. Stilton looked down at the ground. He realised how close he had been. How the degradation in the rock shelter and all the other shit had made him almost transgress every possible boundary.

‘Can you give me a hand?’

Stilton turned round. Abbas had pulled the knife out of Isse’s biceps and hauled him up onto the soaking wet bench. Stilton dragged the terrified Liam off the ground and threw him onto the bench next to Isse.

‘What shall we do now?’ Abbas asked.

‘Take their clothes off.’

Stilton had to do it himself. Abbas stood to one side and wiped the blood off his knives. The youths on the bench stared at him in terror.

‘Get up!’

Stilton yanked Isse up onto his feet. Liam got up by himself. Stilton ripped their clothes off as fast as he could. When they were completely naked, he pushed them back onto the bench again. Abbas stood in front of them with his mobile. He turned the camera on and held a protective hand over it, for the rain.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Shall we have a talk?’

The text message that Janne Klinga had just received was short but very dramatic: “The mobile murderers are sitting on a bench in Lilla Blecktorn park. Their confession is out on Trashkick.”

He didn’t recognise the number.

Klinga, who perhaps had a good idea who had sent the SMS, was in the park as fast as his wheels could get him there. With three constables. They found two naked, soaking wet youths who were tied to a wooden bench. Mangled and broken.

An hour later, he sat with his boss Rune Forss and the entire MHP group in a room at police headquarters. As Klinga clicked his way to the Trashkick site, he could almost smell the expectation in the room. There he found a newly posted mobile film which showed two youths sitting naked on a park bench with terrified eyes and telling how they had killed an old hag in a caravan and some guy up in a park near Värta docks and torched that caravan a bit later and some other violent activities directed towards homeless people.

In quite some detail.

Rune Forss suddenly got up. He was furious. Partly because he had been served the two people that he himself had been
trying to find. Partly because the people who had filmed this and obviously lay behind it all couldn’t be identified.

And perhaps above all because the youths’ tattoos could be seen very clearly: KF, with a ring round the letters.

Just like Stilton had said.

First he had dropped in on Ronny Redlös and said he was sorry about the black coat having been incinerated. He was given another book to take with him. Then he had sought out Arvo Pärt who was in a sleeping bag under a bench in Fatbur Park close to Södra Station. Pärt was just as soaked as the sleeping bag. After another hour they had found Muriel just a few seconds before she was about to inject herself with an escape rocket in a cycle garage.

Now all three sat in a room at the Halt, a primary care clinic near Mariatorget.

‘You can go in now.’

All three went towards the room that the nurse had pointed to. The door was open and Benseman lay in the bed next to the wall. He was a broken man, physically, but at least he was alive. He had been given a room here at the clinic. Really it was against the rules, but it’s hard to send a smashed-up homeless convalescent ‘home’ to a dustbin room.

‘We’ve got them,’ said Stilton.

‘Thanks, Jelle,’ said Benseman.

Muriel held one of Benseman’s hands. Pärt dried his eyes. Tears came to him easily. Stilton handed a book to Benseman.

‘I looked in at Ronny Redlös’ place on the way here, he asked me to give you this.’

Benseman took the book and smiled. It was a volume by Akbar del Piombo. A completely manic pornographic description of nuns and horny men.

‘What’s the book?’ Muriel asked.

‘One of those that certain male writers have to write sometime in their life to get out of their system what they can’t write under their real names. Akbar del Piombo is a pseudonym for William S. Burroughs.’

Nobody round the bed knew who either of those authors was, but as long as Benseman was satisfied, they were satisfied too.

Mette stood beside the board in the investigation room. Some of the team were collecting their papers. The investigation into the murder of Nils Wendt had come to a standstill. Lisa Hedqvist came up to her.

‘What’s on your mind?’

Mette had been staring at the pictures of Nils Wendt’s corpse. The naked body. The big and distinctive birthmark on his left thigh.

‘There’s something about that birthmark, on his thigh…’

She unpinned the photo from the board.

Olivia had spent the day catching up on practical things. Cleaning, vacuuming. And talking with Lenni who was going to go to the Peace & Love music festival without Jakob.

‘Why?’

‘Well, his ex was suddenly back in the picture again.’

‘Oh that’s a shame.’

‘Yeah, I just can’t fathom what he sees in her. The only thing she’s given him is crabs!’

‘How disgusting!’

‘Yeah, isn’t it?’

‘Are you travelling up there on your own then?’

‘No, I’m going with Erik.’

‘Erik? Jakob’s mate?’

‘Yeah? What about it? You’re not seeing him are you?’

‘No, no way, but I thought that him and Lollo…’

‘No, she dumped him and pushed off to Rhodes yesterday. You must keep in better touch, Livia, you miss everything!’

‘I’ll do my best, I promise!’

‘But anyhow, I’ve got to pack now, must rush to the train soon. I’ll be in touch! Love you!’

‘Love you too!’

And then down to the laundry room. Several hours to do all her laundry. When she emptied the pockets of the clothes for the last load she suddenly came across the little plastic bag. The earring! She had forgotten all about it. The earring from Nordkoster that Stilton had given her. She opened the bag and looked at it. Surely it was in Jackie’s boutique she had seen a similar one? She put it next to her laptop, rather excited, and found her way to the boutique’s website. Under ‘Products’ she found lots of bits and pieces for Jackie’s shop. Including a collection of earrings. But nothing that looked like the one Olivia had in front of her. Not that surprising perhaps, she thought. The earring from Nordkoster is at least twenty-three years old. She must have seen it somewhere else. In another shop? Or had someone been wearing it? Or was it in somebody’s house?

Suddenly she remembered where!

And it was definitely not in Jackie’s shop.

Stilton was walking along Vanadisvägen. The storm clouds had more or less passed and now it was only drizzling. He was on his way to Abbas’ flat. He would kip down there one more night. Then he’d see. He wasn’t comfortable with the situation. Abbas was OK with it, he knew that. The problem didn’t
lie there. It was him. He wanted to be on his own. He knew that he could have violent nightmares and that those screams were always waiting in the background. That wasn’t something he wanted to drag Abbas into.

They had gone in different directions after the meeting with the youths in Blecktorn park. But, first, Abbas had wondered how Stilton knew that they would turn up just there.

‘I noticed that they followed me from Söderhallarna, and I phoned you.’

‘But you haven’t got a mobile!’

‘There are corner shops.’

Then they had parted. Abbas would upload the mobile film, they’d got the passwords for Trashkick. Stilton would get a new mobile. He had it in his pocket now. Abbas had forked out for it. Suddenly he heard a strange whistling sound right next to him. He turned around and looked about him. Empty. Another whistle. Stilton pulled the new mobile out of his pocket. The ringtone was set for ‘Factory whistle’.

He answered.

‘Olivia here! I know now where I’ve seen that earring!’

It didn’t take many minutes for Stilton to realise that Olivia, as usual, must phone Mette.

‘Now? But it’s so late…’

‘Detectives work day and night. Haven’t you learnt that?’

Stilton hung up.

Mette did not work day and night. She worked effectively when she worked and then she portioned out responsibility. That benefitted everybody. When Olivia phoned, she was on her way home. After a lot of overtime. She did at least manage to get down to the main entrance during the conversation, but then she turned back. Olivia’s information about the earring had suddenly got the penny to drop. After twenty-six years.