The Long Shadow (36 page)

‘In Puerto Banús,’ Annika said.

‘But possession isn’t a punishable offence under Spanish law.’

Shit, shit, shit. She hadn’t known that. ‘The police have accused him of intending to supply,’ she said.

‘How much cannabis are we talking about?’

‘Four kilos,’ she hazarded.

The young man blinked again and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it would be hard to claim that amount was all for personal use. I’m sorry, but this isn’t something that I—’

Annika leaned across the table and grasped his hand. ‘You’ve got to help me,’ she said. ‘He’s in prison in Málaga, in a
polígono
right next to the airport.’

Henry Hollister pulled his hand away in horror. ‘I know that prison,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help you. I’m not a solicitor, just a legal assistant. I’m not qualified for active work, just holding the fort for the time being.’

‘Holding the fort?’

‘Yes, until the new owner arrives.’

‘Has the firm been sold?’

‘It’s been transferred within the holding company.’

Really?
Transferred within the holding company.
She sniffed. ‘Spanish legal procedures take for ever, and my brother’s going to be shut away in there for years if I don’t do something. How long will I have to wait?’

‘The only thing outstanding is some sort of legal formality before the new owner can come down. It might take another month, six weeks …’

‘Why can’t he be here sooner?’

The young man looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t actually know.’

Annika let out a deep sigh. ‘It was so tragic about Veronica,’ she said. ‘Imagine if that terrible break-in had never happened. She’d have sorted this out in no time.’

‘Do you really think that?’ he said, clearly puzzled. ‘I never heard of her doing any work on minor felonies in Spain.’

‘Really? I thought she did. She was always away so much. What did she spend her days doing?’

‘Veronica was a business solicitor. She spent most of her time on contracts and negotiations for international companies.’

‘Oh,’ Annika said, trying to sound disappointed. ‘I always thought she defended innocent people, like my brother. That’s what it says on the sign downstairs, “Legal Services”.’

Henry Hollister’s mouth curled into a slight grimace. ‘You’ve no idea what accusations get made against international companies,’ he said. ‘The authorities are so suspicious of successful businesses in this part of the world. It’s quite different from the USA, where I come from. There, free enterprise is encouraged.’

‘What sort of companies did she work with most?’

‘Import-export,’ Henry Hollister said. He leaned towards her. ‘How did you say you knew Veronica, again?’

Her feet were starting to itch. ‘I look after My’s pony. We haven’t found a buyer for it yet. I ride it every day so it doesn’t lose its condition. It’s a lovely animal – have you ever seen it?’

The American stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help you.’

She sighed unhappily. ‘I suppose I’ll have to try somewhere else. Do you know of any good criminal law firms?’

‘I’m sorry,’ the man repeated.

She smiled, tried to put a bit of extra sparkle into her eyes, then held out her hand. ‘Thanks for seeing me,’ she said.

Suddenly he looked worried. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t tell anyone you were here talking to me. Call and book an appointment to see the new owner once he’s settled in.’

She pretended to be surprised. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘no problem.’

They went out into the cramped hallway. On the wall outside the conference room an ornate degree certificate was framed behind glass.
The Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford.
Veronica’s.

‘If you know anyone who’d like to buy a really lovely pony, call the stables,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.

The light had gone out and the stairwell was as dark as before. She felt along the wall and found the switch. Then she hurried quietly down the stairs.

In the street she stopped, out of breath, as if she’d been rushing upstairs, not down. Then she took a last look up at the building and hurried away. She stopped outside the closed estate agency and fished her pen and notepad out of her bag. She sat on the pavement and jotted down what she had found out during her conversation with the young American.

Veronica had studied law at Oxford University. She was primarily a business solicitor, even if the sign on the wall mentioned legal services. She had never worked on Spanish criminal cases. She had handled contracts and negotiations for international businesses involved in import-export. These international conglomerates were evidently the subject of ‘accusations’ every now and then. Perhaps that was when Veronica’s legal services had come into the picture.

After her death the firm had been transferred ‘within the holding company’. So a company with a number of proprietors now controlled Veronica Söderström’s law firm, unless it had always done so. The new owner, a man, was waiting for some sort of formality before he could ‘come down’ and take over the running of the firm. Come down from where?

For the time being the office was manned by an
American legal assistant who was clearly so bored that he let people in off the street, which he had presumably been instructed not to do. That much was clear from his parting remark. His smart appearance suggested sporadic contact with the outside world, or he would have been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Did the holding company pay unannounced visits to the office?

The building housing the office was a mystery in itself. Why was most of it shut up and abandoned? She’d read on Wikipedia that property prices here had gone through the roof. Ordinary people who worked in Gibraltar almost always lived on the Spanish side of the border, in La Línea, where housing costs were a third of what they were in Gibraltar.

She glanced up at the window of the closed estate agency. It looked as if it hadn’t been open for a while. There was a little row of dead insects along the ledge.

She got up, brushed the dust from her backside, and leaned forward to check out the cost of property in Gibraltar. There wasn’t much to choose from in the window, just faded pictures of a handful of villas and apartments, with little information and obviously no addresses. Carita had told her that Spanish houses might be on sale with ten different estate agents at the same time. No one ever had exclusive rights, so the agents always concealed the addresses in an effort to stop others muscling in.

She glanced at the pictures and realized that none of the houses or flats were in Gibraltar: they were like all the others on the Costa del Sol.

Then she stiffened. She thought her eyes were deceiving her. She took a step closer to the window and wiped the dust from the glass.

Existing Freehold Villa.

Ideal Family Home. Ideal Investment
.

The picture of the villa was faded and had slightly curled corners, as if it had been there for a while. There was no indication of where it was or its price, but Annika recognized it. A mixture of two and three floors, terraces and balconies, bay windows, pillars and arches, curved balcony rails and ornate iron balustrades. At the top there was a tower with arched windows. The pool, the light, the mountainside in the background.

It was the Söderström family home in Nueva Andalucía.

The picture had to be several years old because the trees were much smaller than she remembered, and there was a cement-mixer in the bottom corner.

She moved towards the door to see if there was any indication of opening hours. Nothing. Just a brass sign referring visitors to a website.

A Place in the Sun

Your Real Estate Agents on the Coast

Visit us at www.aplaceinthesun.se

She stared at the sign and read the last line twice.

Why would an estate agent in Gibraltar have a Swedish domain address?

She took out her notepad and wrote it down. Then she moved back to the window to see if the villa had a reference number.

It didn’t.

It wasn’t surprising that it was for sale, she thought. Obviously the executors would have to sell it, like the pony. But why not use a newer picture? Unless the picture had been there since the Söderström family had bought the villa. Veronica worked just round the corner, so obviously she must have walked past and looked in the window. Maybe that was how she’d found it. Maybe she’d bought it through this estate agent, and they’d just never got round to removing the picture from the window.

She looked at her watch. It was time to head to Estepona.

She didn’t have a car.

The bus station in La Línea was in the Plaza de Europa, a roundabout just a couple of blocks from the border. There were buses leaving for Estepona all the time, the next one due to set off in ten minutes. She bought a ticket at the counter, just as the bus rolled into the station. It was noisy and belched diesel. She climbed on board and smelt oil and disinfectant. The seats were stripy blue velour and there were grubby curtains at the windows. She had a sudden flashback to the school-bus that used to take her from Hälleforsnäs into Flen and on to Katrineholm.

Just like the school-bus, the Spanish local service was slow, calling at every stop. A distance that would have taken fifteen minutes by car took an hour and a half. Outside Marina de Casares she dozed off, waking when a boy with a surfboard got on in Bahía Dorada.

The road wound along the coast. The surface of the water was white from the wind. The sky was bright blue and free of clouds. She could tell they were approaching Estepona.

It was hardly the city’s fault that Julia had thought it was so awful, she thought, as the bus turned off towards the harbour.

The main street followed the beach. Palms and orange trees lined the road, and the wind was pulling at the treetops. The sunbeds on the beach were empty, but people had started to gather for lunch at the restaurants by the shore. She suddenly realized how hungry she was.

The young jet-setting Swede she was going to meet was called Wilma. Niklas Linde had texted her the girl’s mobile number. She got off the bus at Avenida de
España, pulled out her notepad and mobile, then called the number.

Wilma answered straight away, very excited about the chance to ‘tell her story in the paper’, as she put it. They arranged to meet in the beach restaurant below the bus station.

‘Annika Bengtzon?’

Annika looked up from the menu and knew at once that the series of articles had been saved.

Wilma fulfilled all of Patrik’s criteria: young, blonde, too much makeup and a pair of seriously enlarged breasts. Annika stood up and they shook hands. ‘It’s great you were able to see me at such short notice,’ she said.

‘Well, you want to do your bit, don’t you?’ Wilma said, sitting down opposite her.

All the men in the restaurant were staring at them.

‘What would you like?’ Annika said. ‘Have whatever you want.’

‘Have you tried the
almejas
? They’re a sort of mussel they catch out on the reef. Or
mejillones
? They’re a bit bigger. They’ve got shellfish here you’ve never seen before.’ Wilma closed her menu authoritatively. ‘Shall I order for you?’ she asked, evidently not expecting to be contradicted. She leaned back and waved to the waiter. Her nipples were clearly visible through her tight T-shirt.

‘
Camarero, queremos mariscos a la plancha, con mucho ajo y hierbas. Y una botella de vino blanco de la casa, por favor!
’

‘Goodness,’ Annika said. ‘Where did you learn to speak so fluently?’

The girl looked at her in surprise. ‘At school,’ she said. ‘Why?’

Annika took out her notepad and pen. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘I’ll be twenty in July.’

‘You know I got your name from Niklas Linde?’ Annika said. ‘He said you wouldn’t mind telling me about life down here on the Costa del Sol.’

‘I want to warn other people,’ Wilma said, smiling warmly at the waiter as he put a misted bottle of white wine and two glasses on their table. ‘
Gracias, señor, quiero probarlo
.’

She rolled the wine around her mouth in a practised gesture, then nodded in approval. The waiter filled their glasses and glided away.

‘It might look like life down here is all bars and nightclubs and guys with flashy cars, but there’s a completely different side of the Costa del Sol,’ Wilma said, sipping her wine. ‘The drug-dealers want to get rid of as much of their stash as possible down here,’ she went on. ‘That saves them the hassle of transport, and losing any of it on the way up through Europe. You don’t drink wine?’

Annika looked up. The girl was a walking, talking headline-generator. She just had to sit here taking dictation. ‘Er, yes, I’m just not thirsty.’ She had a symbolic sip. The wine was unpleasantly sharp.

‘You
loca
!’ Wilma said. ‘You don’t drink wine because you’re thirsty! It’s incredibly easy for young girls to be charmed by the good-looking guys down here. They’ve got big yachts and fast cars, and use girls as disposable goods. I see it time after time, Swedish girls turning up here thinking they’re going to marry a millionaire and live the high-life in some huge villa in Nueva Andalucía, but all that ever happens is that they get hooked on coke and end up nervous wrecks.’

‘What about you?’ Annika said. ‘Have you tried cocaine?’

Wilma nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I bitterly regret it. I got picked up in a raid back in February, but that
probably saved me. Talk about a warning! As luck would have it, I was questioned by Niklas Linde, and he put me on the right track. I mean, he’s just brilliant. Do you know him?’

Annika picked up her glass and swigged. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve just interviewed him a couple of times.’

‘It actually makes you feel a lot safer knowing the Swedish police have such competent officers.’

‘Can you tell me about the raid?’

‘It was a private party down by the harbour in Puerto Banús, in rooms above one of the clubs. The police came in at half past two with sniffer-dogs and everything, and searched everyone. It was horrible, but actually really good at the same time.’