The Spring Tide (40 page)

Mette gave a start. All her focus had been on linking Eva Carlsén to the murder on Nordkoster. The murder of Nils Wendt hadn’t been on her agenda at all. She was completely convinced that Bertil Magnuson lay behind it. Suddenly she realised that Stilton was a step ahead.

Like in the old days.

‘Can you tell us about that too?’ he said.

And she did. Luckily for both Mette and Stilton since they had nothing concrete that could link Eva Carlsén to what had happened to her ex-partner. But Eva had no reason to lie at this stage. She had already confessed to a brutal murder and wanted to get the rest out too. Besides, she didn’t know what they knew. She didn’t want to be interrogated by Mette again.

She couldn’t stand that.

‘There isn’t that much to tell,’ she said. ‘He just rang the doorbell one evening, at my house, and I was really shocked. Not because he was alive, I knew that after all, but that he should suddenly turn up like that.’

‘Which evening was this?’

‘I can’t remember. The day before he was found.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I don’t really know, he… it was so weird… all of it…’

Eva became silent and sank into herself. She slowly went back in her mind to that weird meeting with her ex-partner. How there had suddenly been a ring on the door of the house in Bromma.

Eva opened the door. Outside stood Nils Wendt in the weak light from the porch lamp. He was wearing a brown jacket. Eva stared at him. She didn’t really know what she was looking at.

‘Hello, Eva.’

‘Hello.’

‘Do you recognise me?’

‘Yes.’

They looked at each other.

‘Can I come in?’

‘No.’

A few seconds passed. Quite a lot. Nils? After all these years? What the hell was he doing here? Eva tried to pull herself together.

‘Well, can you come out then?’ said Nils and smiled a little.

As if they were two teenagers who didn’t want their parents to see them? Is he crazy? What the fuck did he want? Eva turned round, took a coat off the hook, stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘Are you still married?’

‘Divorced. Why? How did you know where I lived?’

‘I googled you and found out that you’d married, many years ago, your husband was a very successful pole-vaulter, Anders Carlsén. You’ve kept his name.’

‘Yes. Have you been keeping track of me?’

‘No. I just happened across it.’

Nils turned a little, expecting her to follow him, and then walked towards the gate. Eva stayed in the porch.

‘Nils.’

Nils stopped.

‘Where have you been all these years?’

She knew that, very well. But he didn’t know that she knew.

‘Abroad,’ he answered.

‘And why are you turning up here? Now?’

Nils looked at Eva. She felt that she ought to go a bit closer, a bit more intimate. She went up to him.

‘I need to tidy up some things from the past,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Oh, right, and what are you going to tidy up?’

‘An old murder.’

Eva glanced around her, instinctively, she felt her neck tightening. An old murder? The one on Nordkoster? But he couldn’t have known anything about that? That she was mixed up in it? What did he mean?

‘That sounds unpleasant,’ she said.

‘It is too, but I’ll soon be finished, then I’m going home again.’

‘To Mal Pais?’

That was her first mistake. It just slipped out of her. The very next second she realised what she had said.

‘How do you know I live there?’ said Nils.

‘Well, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Shall we go for a drive?’

Nils nodded towards a grey car that was parked outside the gate. Eva was uncertain. She still had no idea what he was after. Talk a bit? Bullshit. An old murder? What could he know about that?

‘Sure,’ she said.

They got in the car and drove off. After a couple of minutes, Eva asked:

‘What was that about an old murder?’

Nils hesitated a couple of seconds, then he told her. About the murder of the journalist Jan Nyström that Bertil Magnuson had ordered. Eva looked at him.

‘Is that why you came here?’

‘Yes.’

‘To get back at Bertil?’

‘Yes.’

Eva relaxed. It wasn’t about Nordkoster.

‘Isn’t it rather dangerous?’

‘Getting back at Bertil?’

‘Yes. Well he did have a journalist murdered, apparently.’

‘He won’t dare murder me.’

‘Why not?’

Nils gave a little smile, but didn’t say anything. They drove over the Drottningholm bridge, out onto Kärsön and towards the other side of the island. Nils stopped the car near a slope down to the water. They both got out. It was a starry night. A half-moon spread light across the water and the rocks. It was a very beautiful spot. They had been there several times, in the old days, late in the evening. Gone skinny-dipping, with nobody around.

‘It’s just as beautiful here as it used to be,’ said Nils.

‘Yes.’

Eva looked at him. He seemed calm, as if nothing had happened. As if everything was as it used to be. Nothing is as it used to be, she thought.

‘Nils.’

‘Yes.’

‘I must ask you something else…’

‘Yes?’

‘Why did you never get in touch?’

‘With you?’

‘Yes. Who else? We were living together, do you remember? We were going to get married and have children and spend our lives together. Have you forgotten that? I loved you.’

Eva suddenly felt how she was being steered in the wrong direction entirely, by the wrong feelings entirely. But the whole situation with Nils at this spot after twenty-seven years was so absurd. The past erupted like molten hate within her, without her being able to stop it.

‘That was stupid, I ought to have got in touch, absolutely. I’m sorry,’ said Nils.

He’s saying sorry, she thought.

‘After twenty-seven years? You say you’re sorry?’

‘Yes. What do you want me to do?’

‘Have you ever thought what you have done to me? What I’ve had to go through?’

‘But, Eva, there’s no point in…’

‘You could at least have got in touch and said that you were tired of me and wanted a new life with her! I would have accepted that.’

‘With who?’

That was her second mistake. But she felt that there wasn’t much point in keeping quiet. There was no way she could resist what she felt deep inside. Nils was suddenly very alert.

‘With whom should I have a new life?’

‘You know bloody well! Don’t pretend you don’t know! Young and beautiful and pregnant and then you send her here to fetch your hidden money and think that she…’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

Nils’ eyes suddenly became icy cold. He took a step towards Eva.

‘Know what?’ she said. ‘About the money?’

Nils looked at her long enough to realise just how wrong he had been. All the time. It hadn’t been about Bertil at all. That Bertil had managed to trace him via Mexico to Mal Pais and then followed Adelita to Sweden to get hold of the stolen money. Bertil wasn’t involved in the murder at all. It was Eva who had nicked the money and…

‘Was it you who murdered Adelita?’ he said.

‘Is that what she was called?’

Suddenly Eva got a very hard slap right across her face. Nils was raging.

‘WAS IT YOU, YOU FUCKING BITCH?’

He threw himself at Eva. She tried to fend off the next blow. Eva was in pretty good condition, and Nils was not at his best.
Suddenly they were fighting, furiously, grabbing at each other, kicking, until Eva got a grip on his jacket and pulled him to one side. Nils couldn’t keep his balance, stumbled on a stone and fell backwards with his head straight onto a rock edge. Eva heard the muted sound when his skull hit the sharp edge of the granite. Nils collapsed in a heap on the ground. The blood was pumping out of the hole in the back of his head, over his neck. Eva stared at him.

Mette leaned in towards the light from the table lamp in front of Eva.

‘You thought he was dead?’

‘Yes. At first I didn’t dare touch him, he lay there bleeding and didn’t move and I was in shock and furious and everything.’

‘But you didn’t phone the police?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know, I just sank down on the ground and looked at him. Nils Wendt. Who had destroyed my life totally back then. And now he turned up again and said he was sorry. And started to hit me. And had realised what I had done on Nordkoster. So I pulled him across to the car and managed to get him into the driver’s seat, the car was right next to the slope down to the water, I only had to release the hand brake…’

‘But you must have realised that we’d find him?’

‘Yes. But I thought… I don’t know… he had threatened Bertil Magnuson…’

‘You thought that Magnuson would get the blame for it?’

‘Perhaps? Did he?’

Mette and Stilton glanced at each other.

It wasn’t exactly a joyful mood in Mette’s car later that evening. They were on their way to the big old house in Kummelnäs. All three had something to think over.

Stilton was thinking about the unravelling of the beach case. How just one solitary event can trigger such a violent chain reaction. Two Swedes meet on the other side of the world. They share a bottle of wine. One tells the other something that suddenly explains something he has wondered about for more than twenty-three years. He travels to Sweden to avenge the death of his beloved. Seeks out his former partner. Is killed. Is found by Mette who notices a birthmark on his thigh which she recognises from some previous occasion, and at the same time Olivia has started looking into the beach case.

Remarkable.

Then his thoughts moved on to much tougher things. To what would inevitably happen in a while. At Mette and Mårten’s house. And how he should deal with that.

Mette was thinking about her pursuit of Bertil Magnuson. How wrong she had been. But he had ordered a murder after all, he was guilty of instigation. She wasn’t going to take responsibility for his suicide.

Olivia was thinking about Jackie Berglund. What a blunder. If she hadn’t been fixated on Jackie, Elvis would still be alive today. A costly lesson.

‘That must have been how it was.’

It was Mette who broke the silence. She felt that they must be given a jolt. They would soon be home in her hotchpotch house. And she didn’t want to spread silence and suppressed thoughts there.

‘How what was?’ said Stilton.

‘The people who broke in and knocked down Eva Carlsén must have been sent there by Bertil Magnuson.’

‘To do what?’

‘To look for the tape recording. Magnuson will certainly have checked all the hotels and seen that there was no Wendt there, just like we did, and then he’d have remembered Wendt’s old former live-in partner, they would presumably have socialised back in those days, they both had summer houses on Nordkoster, and then he thought that perhaps Wendt was hiding at her house and had the tape there.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Stilton.

‘But the earring?’ Olivia wondered. ‘How did that get into Adelita’s coat pocket?’

‘Hard to say…’ said Mette, ‘possibly when they fought in the house, her and Eva.’

‘Yes.’

Mette braked as they approached the big old house.

As they were walking up to the house, Mette received a call on her mobile. She stopped in the garden. It was Oskar Molin on the phone. He had just had a meeting with Commissioner Carin Götblad and discussed a name in Jackie Berglund’s register of clients. A name he had been given by Mette.

‘What did you decide?’ said Mette.

‘To put it on the backburner for a bit.’

‘But why? Because it’s Jackie Berglund?’

‘No, because it would disturb the re-organisation.’

‘OK. But he’s going to be told about it?’

‘Yes. I’ll do that.’

‘Good.’

Mette hung up. She noticed how Stilton had stopped a couple of metres from her and heard the conversation. Mette walked past him without saying a word, and went up the porch steps.

Abbas opened, with his arm round Jolene. Olivia got a warm hug from her.

‘Now we want to eat!’ said Mette.

They all made their way through the rooms to the large kitchen. There Mårten was faffing around with all sorts of ingredients for what he had promised would be the gourmet peak of the summer.

Spaghetti carbonara with frozen wild chanterelle mushrooms.

The other members of the clan had been fed a while ago, and were now spread out in various places in the house. Mårten had explained that the lady of the house wanted some peace and that her guests wanted to eat undisturbed. Those who wouldn’t accept that would be sent up to Ellen in the attic and have to count knitting stitches.

It was comparatively quiet downstairs now.

‘Take a seat!’

Mårten swept his hand over the laden table, where some of Mette’s ceramic pieces also featured. Some as dishes, others as plates and others again as something in between. Cups, possibly.

They sat down.

Mette poured out some wine. Stilton declined. The warm glow from the candelabras glistened in the others’ wineglasses when they toasted each other and drank.

And relaxed.

It had been a long day for all of them.

Mårten too. He had spent quite a lot of time thinking about what would happen in a while, and how he should deal with it. He wasn’t entirely sure. It could go either way, and none of them was easy.

He waited.

And all the others did too, with the exception of Olivia. She felt how the first gulp of wine spread calm and warmth through her body. She looked at the group around the table. People who had been total strangers to her not so very long ago.

Stilton, a homeless man. With a past that she now knew one or two things about. But not enough to make a pattern.
A pattern that she was very curious about, but nevertheless. She remembered what he had looked like the first time they met, in Nacka. There was quite a difference to now. His eyes looked completely different, among other things.