The Long Shadow (3 page)

Something wrong with the translation?

She blew cautiously on the coffee and took a careful sip. It tasted even worse than yesterday’s.

She went back to Google, tried ‘gas’ and ‘break-in’, and this time the results were better.

‘Driver knocked out with gas during break-in,’ was fourth on the list. The article was from Radio Sweden and had been published on 14 December 2004. Several pallets of flat computer screens had been stolen from
a lorry at the Shell garage at Västra Jära on highway 40, just west of Jönköping. Neither the driver nor his dog, who had both been asleep in the cab, had noticed the robbery. When he had woken up the driver had had a headache and felt sick. The police suspected he had been knocked out with some sort of gas. They had taken blood samples to see if they could find any trace of it.

Here we go, she thought, and scrolled down the screen.

‘Thieves drugged dog with gas – rapid rise in burglaries in Stockholm,’ she read. The article was from
Metro
, and was only a week or so old.

She went into the paper’s archive and carried on looking.

‘Thieves used gas on tourists – Four people knocked out in campervan – Heavy doses of hexane gas can cause serious injury,’ and ‘Action-film director robbed with gas –
The whole thing was terrible
’.

The article was about a Swedish director whose home on the Spanish coast had been broken into. He and his girlfriend had woken up the next morning to find all the doors wide open and the flat empty.

‘So, we’re back to being foot-soldiers again,’ Berit said, putting her handbag down on the other side of the news desk.

‘Happy New Everything,’ Annika said.

‘How are you?’ Berit asked, hanging her coat on the back of her chair.

Annika’s hands hovered above the keyboard. ‘Pretty good, thanks. This year has to be better than last because anything else just isn’t possible.’

Berit put her laptop on the desk. ‘Is it just you and me left?’ she asked.

Annika looked round.

Patrik was talking animatedly into his mobile over
by the sports desk, there were a few people from the online edition in what had once been Entertainment but which now produced copy for cyberspace, and one of the Sunday-supplement editors was hanging around the picture desk. Tore, the caretaker, was laboriously fixing that day’s flysheets – the newspaper’s yellow posters – to the notice-board.

‘Newspaper wars are just like any other,’ Annika said. ‘The ground troops are cut and everything gets spent on technology and smart bombs. When did Schyman talk to you?’

Berit Hamrin pointed at Annika’s coffee. ‘On Friday. Is that drinkable?’

‘Negative. He called me this morning. Did he want you to join the management team?’

‘Head of news,’ Berit replied. ‘I said thanks but no thanks.’

Annika glanced at her computer screen. Schyman had offered her the more senior position. ‘I’m looking into a fatal gassing in Spain,’ she said. ‘A whole family was killed in a break-in on the Costa del Sol.’

Berit switched on her computer and went to the coffee machine. ‘Give Rickard Marmén a call,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘I don’t know his number, but if there’s anything going on in Spain that’s worth knowing, he’ll know about it.’

Annika picked up the phone and dialled Directory Enquiries.

Engaged.

She went back into Google, thought for a moment, then typed
buscar numero telefono españa
. Was that the right spelling? Search telephone numbers Spain?

The first result was for something called
Paginas Blancas
.

Bingo!

She narrowed the search to Málaga and typed in ‘Rickard Marmén’, then pressed
encontrar
.

Who’d have thought it?

He lived on the Avenida Ricardo Soriano in Marbella; his landline and mobile numbers were listed.

Berit sat down with her coffee.

‘So who’s Rickard, then?’ Annika said, with the receiver in her hand.

‘An old friend of my brother-in-law. He’s lived down there for twenty years now, has tried his hand at pretty much everything you can think of and failed at all of it. He’s rented out sunbeds and bred stud horses and run a guesthouse, and once he had a share in a company selling log cabins.’

‘On the Costa del Sol?’ Annika said dubiously.

‘As I said, he always fails.’

‘What’s the dialling code for Spain?’

‘Thirty-four.’ Berit pulled a face as she tasted the coffee.

Annika tried the landline first. After five rings an electronic voice said something unintelligible in Spanish and she hung up. She tried the mobile number, and two seconds later a male voice said loudly: ‘
Sí, dígame!
’

‘Rickard Marmén?’

‘
Hablando!
’

‘Er, my name’s Annika Bengtzon, I’m calling from the
Evening Post
in Stockholm. You do speak Swedish, don’t you?’

‘Course I do. What can I do for you?’

He had a strong Gothenburg accent.

‘I’m calling because I’ve been told you know about everything that happens on the Costa del Sol,’ she said, glancing at Berit. ‘I was wondering if you knew anything about gas being used in a break-in somewhere down there?’

‘Gas? In
a
break-in? Listen, love, we don’t have any other sort of break-in here these days. Every break-in uses gas. Gas-detectors are more common than fire-alarms in the villas of Nueva Andalucía. Anything else you want to know?’

There was a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like he was standing beside a motorway.

‘Er, okay,’ Annika said. ‘So, what exactly is a break-in involving gas?’

‘The thieves pump some sort of knock-out gas through the windows or air-conditioning. Then, while the occupants are asleep, they can go through the whole house. They usually take their time, have something to eat in the kitchen, open a bottle of wine.’

‘And this is the most common type of break-in, you say?’ Annika asked.

‘It’s an epidemic. It started five, six years ago, although gas was sometimes used before that.’

‘Why is it so common down there?’

‘There’s a lot of money here, darling. Thick bundles of cash under mattresses all round Puerto Banús. And there’s a significant criminal element, of course, and plenty of poor bastards who’ll do anything for a bit of cash. They caught a gang of Romanians last autumn. They’d cleaned out more than a hundred villas right along the coast, from Gibraltar up to Nerja.’

‘The news agency’s just let us know that a whole family’s been killed by gas in a break-in,’ Annika said. ‘You don’t happen to know anything about that?’

‘When? Last night? Where?’

‘Don’t know,’ Annika said. ‘Just that everyone died, including two kids and a dog.’

Rickard Marmén didn’t answer. If it hadn’t been for the traffic in the background she would have thought she’d been cut off.

‘Does he know anything?’ Berit asked.

Annika shook her head.

‘Killed by gas in a break-in?’ he said, and the traffic noise behind him changed. ‘Can I call you back?’

Annika gave him her numbers. ‘What do you make of it?’ she said, once she’d hung up.

Berit bit into an apple. She seemed to have given up on the coffee. ‘Crime on the Costa del Sol or this latest reorganization?’

‘The reorganization.’

Berit put on her reading glasses and leaned towards the computer screen. ‘You just have to make the best of things,’ she said. ‘If someone else is responsible for my work, I get more time for the stuff I really want to do.’

‘Such as? Your own articles? Gardening? Deep-sea diving?’

‘I write songs,’ Berit said, and concentrated on the screen.

Annika stared at her. ‘What sort of songs? Pop songs?’

‘Sometimes. Once we sent in an entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.’

‘You’re kidding. You made it to the
green room
? What was it like?’

‘The song didn’t get very far. The last I heard, it had been picked up by a local group in Kramfors who play it at gigs around south-east Ångermanland. Have you read Lilian Bergqvist’s report to the Court of Appeal?’

‘I haven’t had time. What’s it called?’

‘“Application for Judicial Review in the Case—”’

‘The song.’

Berit took off her glasses. ‘“Absolutely Me”,’ she said. ‘One of the lines is the ground-breakingly innovative “To be or not to be”. Now, I’ve spent thirty-two years working on this paper, and if I’m lucky it’ll stay afloat for another ten. By then I’ll be sixty-five, and ready to
retire. I like finding things out, writing articles, but I don’t really care who gives me the jobs or which desk I sit at.’ She looked at Annika intently. ‘Does that make me sound bitter?’

Annika took a deep breath. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I feel exactly the same. Not that I can retire any time soon, but we’ve changed direction so many times that I don’t even feel travel-sick any more. “To be or not to be”. What about the rest?’

‘“No more crying, no self-denying”,’ Berit said, putting her glasses back on and turning to the computer again. ‘What do you make of Filip Andersson’s chance of a pardon?’

‘The fact that it’s the attorney general herself requesting the judicial review adds weight to it,’ Annika said. She went onto the attorney general’s website and clicked through to the request.

‘You met him in Kumla Prison a few months ago, didn’t you?’ Berit said. ‘Do you think he’s innocent?’

Annika glanced through the report. Reading about these murders always unsettled her. She had been in the patrol car that had been first on the scene that evening, and had wandered blithely among the victims. Then, last autumn she had come across Filip Andersson’s name several times when she’d been digging into the case of the murdered celebrity police officer, David Lindholm. Filip Andersson had been a reasonably successful financier, famous for his appearances in gossip magazines until he became known throughout Sweden as ‘the Södermalm Axe Murderer’. He had been a close friend of David Lindholm.

‘Those people were killed by Filip’s lunatic sister,’ Annika said. She shut the website. ‘How well do you know Rickard Marmén?’

‘I wouldn’t say I know him well,’ Berit said. ‘My
brother-in-law, Harald – Thord goes fishing with him sometimes – has had a flat in Fuengirola since the late seventies. When the children were small we used to borrow it for a week every summer. Rickard’s the sort of guy you bump into sooner or later if you spend any time down there. I’m not so sure that Filip Andersson
is
innocent.’

‘He’s a fairly unpleasant character,’ Annika said, typing
Swedes Spain Costa del Sol
into Google. She clicked a link and found herself at www.costadelsol.nu. A moment later she read that the Costa del Sol had a Swedish-language commercial radio station, broadcasting twenty-four hours a day. There was a monthly Swedish magazine, a Swedish newspaper, Swedish estate agents, Swedish golf-courses, Swedish restaurants, Swedish food shops, Swedish dentists, vets, banks, construction firms and television engineers. She found a diary that informed her, among other things, that the Swedish Church was planning to celebrate ‘cinnamon-bun day’. Even the mayor of Marbella turned out to be a Swede or, at least, was married to one. Her name was Angela Muñoz, but she was evidently known as Titti.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘Marbella looks as Swedish as a rainy Midsummer Eve.’

‘But with a rather better chance of sun,’ Berit said.

‘How many Swedes live there?’

‘About forty thousand,’ Berit said.

Annika raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s more than there are in Katrineholm,’ she said.

‘And that’s just the permanent residents,’ Berit said. ‘There are plenty more who only live there for part of the year.’

‘And a whole family has been murdered,’ Annika said, ‘in the midst of this Swedish idyll.’

‘Good angle,’ Berit said, picking up the phone to call the attorney general’s office.

Annika clicked and read ‘Latest news from Spain’. The Spanish police had seized a large shipment of narcotics in La Campana, 700 kilos of cocaine hidden in a container-load of fruit. Three leaders of the controversial Basque party ANV had been arrested. There were fears of drought again this year; a whale had beached outside San Pedro; and Antonio Banderas’s father was going to be buried in Marbella.

She closed Google and went into the paper’s own archive. Loads of Swedish celebrities seemed to have houses or apartments down there, actors and artists, sports stars and businessmen.

She picked up the phone and dialled International Directory Enquiries, and had better luck this time. She asked for the numbers of La Garrapata restaurant, the
Swedish Magazine
, the
South Coast
newspaper and the Wasa estate agency, all of them in the district of Málaga.

Then she started ringing round.

None of the Swedes who answered on their crackly Spanish telephones knew anything about anyone being gassed to death in connection with a robbery, but they all had juicy stories about other break-ins, the history and development of the area, the weather, the people and the traffic.

Annika found out that there were more than a million people living in the province, half a million in Málaga and a couple of hundred thousand in Marbella. The average temperature was seventeen degrees in winter and twenty-seven in summer, and there were 320 days of sunshine each year. Marbella had been founded by the Romans in 1600
BCE
, when it was known as Salduba. In 711 the city had been conquered by the
Arabs, who renamed it Marbi-la. The oldest part was built on Roman remains.

‘We were still in animal skins when people down there had running water and air-conditioning,’ Annika said, after she’d hung up.

‘Do you want to go and get some lunch?’ Berit asked.

They logged off their computers so that no one could send fake emails from their accounts. Annika was digging out a lunch coupon from the bottom of her bag when the phone on her desk rang. The number on the little screen was eleven digits long, and started with 34.

‘Annika Bengtzon? Rickard Marmén here. Okay, I’ve looked into that break-in. It seems to be true.’