Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery (14 page)

That librarians did it
quietly?

“Well, is it?” He couldn’t imagine
her as a screamer, but maybe a few throaty moans...?

“I’ve never found sex to be
something worth screaming about,” Annika said primly.

Nick nodded. Out on the road, the
sirens reached a crescendo just as the first black and white police
car hit the track to the cottage and bumped across the grass.
Hopefully they’d make it in without driving over Lena’s bicycle.
He’d buy her a new one if he had to, but there’d be explanations
and probably hell to pay first.

He turned back to Annika, who
watched the approaching horde with about as much anticipation as
the citizens of Visby must have watched Valdemar’s approach back in
1361. Her teeth were firmly embedded in her lip.

Nick cleared his throat and
brought her attention back to himself. “Maybe you’ve just had sex
with the wrong men.”

That did it. Her eyes widened
behind the lenses, and her mouth dropped open. He grinned and
lowered his voice. “Librarians may do it quietly. But some of us do
it well enough to make any woman scream.”

And then he winked and left her
standing there while he went to greet the police.

Holy cow
.

Annika blinked, although it took a
while.

Had he really just said what she
thought he’d said?

Well, yes. He’d said exactly what
she thought he’d said. There was nothing wrong with her hearing.
She’d heard him perfectly well.

But had it been a joke?
Flirtation? Or had he basically invited her to bed with him?

But no, surely not. She
turned to watch him walk away.
Just look at him
. A guy like that
wouldn’t be interested in a girl like her. Not even for sex.
Especially not for sex. He could have any woman he wanted; why
would he want her?

He was gorgeous. Just the way he
moved was pure poetry. The way he sauntered over to the police car
as if he had every right to be here. As if there wasn’t a dead body
inside the house and they wouldn’t both be suspects in the murder.
He was totally confident, as if this situation wasn’t new to him at
all.

Financial
advisor. Hah
.

Yes, look at that. He pulled
something out of his pocket and showed it to the policeman.
Identification? Some form of badge?

Who
was
this guy?

Later. He said
he’d tell you later
.

And he would. She’d make sure of
it.

Hopefully the explanation was
something she could live with.

Both the policemen had exited the
car now. One approached the house and slipped inside, gun drawn and
ready. She thought about telling him there was no one in there but
Gustav, and that he wasn’t in a position to shoot anyone, but the
cop would figure it out for himself. The other one was talking to
Nick, until they both turned and came toward her.

“Annika.” Nick stopped beside her.
“This is Lars Jansson, with the Visby police. Tell him what you
told me.”

Jansson was tall, taller than
Nick, and blond. He seemed nice enough, and he spoke good English
with the usual lilting Swedish accent. “Nice to meet you, Miss
Holst. Please walk me through what happened this morning.”

Annika went through it again, from
waking up to getting to Gustav’s house to Nick showing up. Jansson
scribbled notes as she spoke, and then asked why she’d wanted to
talk to Gustav. After establishing the fact that Gustav had been a
friend of her father’s, and that her father had just died too,
Jansson glanced at Nick.

“The Brooklyn police are working
on that,” Nick said.

And of course they were, but how
did he know?

Then again, she’d told him what
had happened, and he knew she was from Brooklyn, so maybe it was
simple deduction.

Jansson nodded. “It’s just
routine, but can you account for your time for the past twenty four
hours?”

“He hasn’t been dead twenty four
hours,” Nick said.

“I know. But until we know the
time of death, I’d rather be safe than sorry. The chief is a
stickler.”

Nick nodded. “I just arrived on
the ferry an hour and a half ago. I still have my ticket.” He dug
in his pocket and fished it out. “I stopped at the Valdemar Hotel
to look for Annika, and then tracked her down to a different place,
and then here.”

Jansson looked at the ticket, made
a note, and handed it back. “And you?” he turned to Annika, who
swallowed.

“I left Lena’s about an hour ago.
And walked here. Woke up less than an hour before that. I got here
on the ferry last night. Around five, I think, but I don’t have the
ticket anymore. I had dinner with a friend later, at a tavern near
the west wall. That’s where I met Gustav. My friend walked me back
to the Valdemar Hotel. That’s when I discovered that my room had
been ransacked, so I moved.”

Jansson’s eyes sharpened. “What
was stolen?”

“Nothing,” Annika said, avoiding
Nick’s eyes. He looked angry. Hopefully it wasn’t at her.

“I don’t remember seeing the
report this morning.”

“I didn’t make one.” Annika
squirmed. “Like I said, nothing was stolen. And I think the lady at
the hotel didn’t want the hassle.”

Nick’s jaw clenched, and she
looked away, back to Officer Jansson. He nodded. “We’ll check with
her. Thank you.”

Saying “you’re welcome,” when
she’d just dumped a dead body and a burglary in his lap didn’t seem
quite right, so Annika nodded.

“Since you found the body, we’ll
need you to come back to the police station to make a formal
statement.”

“Of course.”

“I can take you there now, if you
want. That way you won’t have to bike back.”

Bike? Annika had her mouth open to
deny having biked anywhere when she caught Nick’s eye and changed
her mind. “Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t mind a ride myself,”
Nick told Jansson, who nodded.

“You should probably talk to the
chief anyway. He likes to know what’s going on in his town. I’ll
just let Adolfsson know we’re leaving.” He headed for the house
while Nick put a hand against the small of Annika’s back. It was
warm and hard through the thin cotton of her T-shirt, and the
support felt good. She was shivering, but she wasn’t entirely sure
whether it was because of Gustav, or because she was about to be
interrogated by the police, or just because of Nick’s
closeness.

He guided her toward the police
car, but stopped before he got there, beside a red bike resting on
its side in the grass. It had a woven basket lined with gingham
fabric hanging from the handlebars, and in spite of her fear and
the severity of the situation, Annika swallowed a hiccup of
slightly hysterical laughter. “You rode here... on that?”

He glanced down at her, and his
lips curved reluctantly. “Lena lent it to me. I was in a
hurry.”

Just that hint of a smile had her
mouth going dry. Annika swallowed. “Why?”

“I was worried,” Nick said.

“About what?” It wasn’t like he
could have foreseen anyone murdering Gustav. Nick had never even
met him. She had; and she’d certainly had no clue.

He looked down again, and this
time held her eyes for a moment. “About you.”

“Me?” She tried to laugh off the
suggestion, but it didn’t come out sounding right. “No one’s trying
to hurt me. Are they?”

“Not that I know of,” Nick said.
“That doesn’t stop me from worrying.”

He dropped his hand from her
back and bent to lift the bike upright. The muscles in his forearms
moved smoothly, and so did the muscles under the thin, white shirt.
Annika felt her mouth go a little dry again as she thought about
what he’d said earlier.
Maybe
you’ve just had sex with the wrong men.

Maybe he was right. And if he was
willing to make himself available, maybe Annika should just relax
her usual prejudices against casual sex, and take advantage of the
situation. And Nick.

Visby chief of police Johan Steen turned out to be a grizzled man
in his early sixties. A veteran of the war on crime, and the type
of police chief Nick had—to his detriment—run across before. Some
members of the force, like Fredrik Berggren, were happy to have
input and help from other branches of law enforcement. Fredrik knew
that he and Nick were on the same side, working on the same team,
and he didn’t care which one of them actually found the silver or
nabbed the thief—or in this case, murderer. All he cared about was
that someone did.

Steen was the other kind of cop,
the kind who was fiercely protective of his turf and jurisdiction,
and who seemed to feel as though input from another agency—even one
as venerable, or perhaps especially one as venerable, as the
American FBI—was a personal threat.

“I should have been notified you
were here,” he said, not for the first time.

Unlike Jansson, who spoke very
good English, Steen was of a different generation, and the
conversation took place in Swedish. Nick was fine with that. His
Swedish was nowhere near as good as his English, but it was a whole
lot better than Steen’s English could ever hope to be. Conducting
the discussion in Swedish was the lesser of the evils. And Steen
was a big enough problem in and of himself.

“I told you,” Nick replied, also
not for the first time, “I just arrived on the ferry this morning.
There hasn’t been time.”

Steen leaned back in his chair and
folded his hands across his stomach. It wasn’t big, but the man was
solid: big and thick like a tree trunk. “Tell me again why you felt
you had to go haring off immediately instead of presenting yourself
to the local police, the way you should have done. Did you have
information that something was about to happen?”

Nick straightened in his chair,
stung. “Of course not. If I’d known that someone was about to
commit murder, I wouldn’t have wasted time trying to find Annika
Holst.”

Although he sure as hell wouldn’t
have taken the time to introduce himself to local law enforcement,
either. If he’d realized what he’d find when he followed Annika,
he’d have done everything in his power to get there sooner. It
would still have been too late for Gustav—the man had most likely
died while Nick had been tossing and turning in Nynäshamn last
night—but at least he could have saved Annika from finding the
body.

“Hmmm,” Steen said.

Nick gritted his teeth against the
need to argue. He was a goddamn agent of the F-B-fucking-I, and he
was damned if he’d be reduced to defending his competence to this
two-bit police chief in this tiny jurisdiction on an island in the
middle of the Baltic Sea. His reputation and his job spoke for him,
dammit, and Johan Steen would just have to deal with it.

So he pried his teeth apart
and made sure his voice was civil when he said, “I’m sure Detective
Berggren with the
Rikspolis
in Stockholm will be happy to
vouch for me. He’ll tell you all about the joint
investigation.”

He laid a bit of emphasis on the
last two words, even as it occurred him to wonder why Chief Steen
didn’t already know about the joint investigation, when the robbery
and murder had happened on his turf. It had been a long time ago,
sure. Long before the chief had become chief. But he might have
been in the police back then. Most people in law enforcement
started young. Some burned out early, but the ones who made it to
the rank Steen had were usually lifers. Chances were Johan Steen
had been a rookie traffic cop thirty five years ago.

Nick tilted his head. “Did you
know Calle Magnusson, Chief?”

Johan Steen watched him for a
moment in silence, and Nick wondered whether he was supposed to
squirm under the steady, unblinking regard. When he didn’t, Steen
nodded curtly. “Before he left, yes.”

“You grew up together?”

“Not so much together,” Steen
said. “Calle grew up in Martebo. Thirty miles north of here. I
didn’t meet him until we were older.”

“But at the time of the robbery,
you knew him?”

The chief shrugged. “He was known
to the police. And to me personally. Why do you ask?”

“
I just wondered why
the
Rikspolis
hadn’t seen fit to notify you of the joint investigation. But
I guess it was because you had a personal connection with the
suspect.”

“Who says they didn’t notify me?”
Steen said.

“So they did notify you?” Why the
hell hadn’t he just said so? Why give Nick the fucking fifth degree
if Steen already knew all about him?

The chief of police smirked. There
was no other word for it. “Relax, Mr. Costa. I’m just playing with
you. Detective Berggren contacted me weeks ago, to let me know the
Americans had found Calle Magnusson.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Even if the
bastard had just called him Mr. Costa instead of agent, the way he
ought to address a colleague.

“We expected you a few days ago,
though.”

Nick tried not to read too much
into the gentle tone. Steen had no business telling him his
business, and he’d just go along with the idea that that wasn’t
exactly what the chief was doing. Because if it was, Nick might
feel compelled to say something about it. Instead, his response
was, “Something came up.”

The chief’s smirk widened, and
Nick could feel his cheeks heat. “Not like that.”

There was a pause, while Steen
watched Nick squirm. Then—

“Pretty girl,” the chief of police
said.

Nick shrugged. And did his best
not to think about Annika’s long legs in those short shorts, not to
mention that provocative T-shirt. Hell, was there a man alive who
could look at her in that and not feel challenged to prove to her
that he could make her be loud?