The Spring Tide (38 page)

There would be even more overtime.

She hurried back to her office in C-building. There she opened a large cupboard and lifted out a cardboard box which was marked NILS WENDT 1984. Mette wasn’t the sort of person who threw things away. They could be useful, sooner or later. She opened the box and dug out a little bundle of tourist photos. With the bundle in her hand, she pulled the blinds down, turned on her desk lamp, sat down behind the desk and opened a drawer. There was a magnifying glass right at the front. Mette took it out. On the table in front of her lay the photo of Nils Wendt from the forensic lab. Mette held up one of the tourist photos and examined it with the magnifying glass. It had been taken in 1985, from a distance, and was a bit blurred. The photo showed a man in shorts. You couldn’t really make out his face properly, but the birthmark on his left thigh could be clearly seen. Mette glanced at the corpse photo of Wendt. At the birthmark on his left thigh. It was just as clear on that image. And was identical to the one on the tourist photo. The man in the photo was Nils Wendt.

Mette leaned back.

She had been in charge of the search for Nils Wendt for a while, in the Eighties, and during that time they had been contacted by a couple of Swedes who had been in Playa del Carmen in Mexico on holiday. They had taken some candid photos of a man they thought was the missing businessman. Who had vanished under mysterious circumstances a while ago. They hadn’t been able to confirm it.

That it was Nils Wendt.

Strange, Mette thought. She looked at the two photos in front of her. You could hardly fail to notice that birthmark.

An hour later, they met, all three of them. Mette, Stilton and Olivia. Late at night. Mette met them down by the entrance and took them through all the necessary checkpoints. She didn’t encounter any problems. Now they stepped into her room. The
roller blinds were still pulled down, the desk lamp on. Olivia remembered the room. She had been here when? An eternity ago. In reality it was only a few weeks. Mette pointed to a couple of chairs in front of the desk. Stilton and Olivia sat down. Mette went and sat behind the desk. Like a schoolteacher. She looked at her visitors. A former detective chief inspector, now homeless and a slightly cross-eyed young police trainee. She hoped that Oskar Molin wasn’t working late.

‘Anybody want anything?’ she said.

‘A name,’ said Stilton.

‘Eva Hansson.’

‘Who is that?’ Olivia asked.

‘She lived with Nils Wendt in the Eighties, they had a summer house on Nordkoster. Now she is called Eva Carlsén.’

‘What!’

Olivia almost got up from her chair.

‘Has Eva Carlsén lived with Nils Wendt?’

‘Yes. How did you come in contact with her?’

‘Through my student project.’

‘And it was in her home you saw that photo?’

‘Yes.’

‘With the earrings?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was that?’

‘It’d be ten, perhaps twelve days ago.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I was taking a folder back to her.’

Stilton smiled a little, to himself. The whole thing was acquiring the character of an interrogation. He liked that. He liked it when Mette was in good form.

‘How did you know she had been on Nordkoster at the time of the murder?’

‘She told me herself.’

‘In what context?’

‘It… well, um… we met on Skeppsholmen and…’

‘How intimate was your contact with her?’

‘Not at all.’

‘But you were in her private home?’

‘Yes.’

What is this, Olivia thought. A fucking interrogation? It was me who told her about the earrings! But Mette went on.

‘Was there anything else, besides the earrings, that you reacted to in her home?’

‘No.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We drank some coffee, she told me she was divorced and had a brother who had died of an overdose, then we talked about…’

‘What was his name?’

Stilton suddenly cut in.

‘Whose name?’ Olivia asked, puzzled.

‘The brother. Who died of an overdose.’

‘Sverker, I think. Why do you ask?’

‘Because there were a couple of junkies in the investigation, on Nordkoster, they had…’

‘They were staying in one of her cabins!’

Olivia almost got up from her chair again.

‘Whose cabins?’ Mette asked.

‘Betty Nordeman’s! She threw them out because they were on drugs! But she said they left the island the day before the murder.’

‘I interrogated one of them,’ said Stilton. ‘He said the same, that they had pushed off before the murder. They had pinched a boat and gone across to the mainland.’

‘Did you check that about the boat?’ said Mette.

‘Yes. It had been stolen the night before the murder. It was owned by one of the summer visitors.

‘Who?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Could it have been Eva Hansson’s?’

‘Could have.’

Stilton suddenly got up and started pacing the room. Brilliant, Mette thought. She remembered so well that some of the people at the NCS used to call him the Polar Bear. As soon as he started pacing back and forth.

Like he had now.

‘One of the junkies in the cabin might have been that Sverker,’ he said. ‘Eva Hansson’s brother.’

‘How many people were in the cabin?’ Mette asked.

‘Two.’

‘And there were three up on the beach,’ said Olivia. ‘According to Ove Gardman.’

They fell silent. Mette held her hands together, twisting them so you could hear a cracking sound in the silence. Stilton had come to a halt. Olivia looked from one to the other. Mette was the one who put it into words.

‘So it could have been Eva Hansson, her brother and a junkie friend of his who were on the beach?’

They all took it in.

Two of them knew that there was still a very long way to go before they had a shadow of a chance to prove what Mette had just said. The third, Olivia, was a police trainee. She thought they’d almost cracked it.

‘Where’s the Nordkoster material?’ Stilton asked.

‘It will be in Göteborg,’ said Mette.

‘Can you phone and ask them to check what that junkie was called, the one we interrogated? And whose boat they’d nicked?’

‘Certainly, but it’ll take time.’

‘Perhaps it’d be easier with Betty Nordeman,’ said Olivia.

‘How come?’

‘She claimed she kept track of her guests, of the rental cabins. A register I suppose, she might still have it. They seemed a very well-ordered family, the Nordemans.’

‘Ring and find out,’ said Mette.

‘Now?’

The very same second she said it, she glanced at Stilton. ‘Detectives work day and night.’ But waking up old women out on the islands at this time of night?

‘Or do you want me to phone?’ said Mette.

‘I’ll phone.’

Olivia pulled out her mobile and rang Betty Nordeman.

‘Hello, this is Olivia Rönning.’

‘The murder tourist?’ said Betty.

‘Err, yes, that’s right. I do apologise for ringing so late, but we…’

‘We’re arm wrestling.’

‘Oh, right? Who are we?’

‘We in the club.’

‘Right. Well then. Yes, Betty, I’ve just got a little question, you told me that you’d had some drug addicts in one of your cabins that summer the murder took place, do you remember?’

‘Do you think I’m senile?’

‘Not at all, do you remember what they were called?’

‘No, I am that senile.’

‘But you kept a record, I thought you said.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think you could…’

‘One moment.’

There was silence at the other end, quite a long time. Olivia heard a bit of laughter and voices in the background. She saw how Mette and Stilton looked at her. Olivia tried to demonstrate that they were arm wrestling. Neither Mette nor Stilton reacted.

‘Axel says hello,’ said Betty suddenly on the phone.

‘Thanks.’

‘Alf Stein.’

‘Alf Stein? Was he one of…’

‘He was the one who rented the cabin, one of the drug addicts,’ said Betty.

‘So you don’t know what the other one was called?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t remember the name Sverker Hansson?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t know if one of the drug addicts had a sister who lived on the island?’

‘No.’

‘OK, thanks an awful lot. And say hello back! To Axel!’ Olivia ended the call. Stilton looked at her.

‘Axel?’

‘Nordeman.’

‘Alf Stein?’ said Mette. ‘Was that his name?’

‘Yes,’ said Olivia.

Mette looked at Stilton.

‘Was he the one you interrogated?’

‘Possibly. Perhaps. Sounds a little familiar…’

‘OK, I’ll phone Göteborg, they can check if it was. Now I’ve got other things to do.’

‘Like?’

‘Police work, that among other things includes your ex-wife at the SKL. Good night.’

Mette pulled out her mobile.

Olivia drove through the light summer night. Stilton sat next to her. Silent. They were on their way from the NCS and had their minds elsewhere.

Olivia was thinking about the remarkable situation in Mette’s room. An active detective chief inspector and a former detective chief inspector and her. A police trainee. Who got to sit there with them and discuss a murder investigation in that way. But she felt she had filled a function. She had contributed in several ways. In her opinion.

Stilton was thinking about Adelita Rivera. The pregnant woman on the beach. He put his hand on the Mustang’s worn instrument board.

‘This is Arne’s old car, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I inherited it.’

‘Nice car.’

Olivia didn’t answer.

‘What was wrong with it?’

‘Drop it.’

She had learnt. A taste of the same medicine, and then it was quiet.

The morning sun washed over the yellow house in Bromma, the rays mercilessly revealing how dirty the bedroom windows were. I’ll do them when I get home, Eva Carlsén thought, and closed the suitcase. She had been asked if she wanted to travel to Brazil to write about a successful treatment programme for adolescents who were slipping into crime. It suited her nicely. She needed a change of environment. The attack in her home had left its mark. All the publicity around the murder of Nils too. She needed to get away a while. She would pick up her visa in half an hour, and then take a taxi to the airport.

She took her suitcase down into the hall, put a jacket on and opened the door.

‘Eva Carlsén?’

Lisa Hedqvist was on her way up the front steps. Behind her was Bosse Thyrén.

The arrest of the two people who had murdered a homeless woman in a caravan got quite a lot of coverage in the media. And there were numerous pieces speculating about Bertil Magnuson’s suicide and the weird business with Erik Grandén, the cabinet secretary at the Foreign Ministry.

Grandén’s links to the sensational revelation from Zaire 1984 had led to feverish activity on the news desks. They all wanted to get hold of him. In the end it was a photographer who had taken the wrong turning at Skeppsbron in the Old Town; he had decided to park his car down on the quay. And it was there he had been sitting. The political prodigy. Behind the statue of Gustav III. With a folded razor in his hand and a look of total despair. When the photographer tried to talk to him, he just looked out across the water.

‘Jussi.’

That was all he said.

In the end he had been fetched by a mobile psychiatric team and taken to hospital. The Moderate Party had quickly issued a statement in which they explained that Erik Grandén was taking ‘time out’ for personal reasons.

Otherwise, they had no comment.

Stilton had got some information from the police archives in Göteborg via Mette. They had found his old interrogation with the drug addict on Nordkoster. He
was
called Alf Stein. The boat that had been stolen belonged to Eva Hansson. Mette had checked with criminal records to see what they had on Alf Stein.

Quite a lot.

Including an address in Fittja.

She gave that to Stilton.

They took Olivia’s car to Fittja and parked close to the centre. Olivia was to wait in the car.

Stilton already had a pretty good idea of Alf Stein’s present situation. It wasn’t very complicated. He was almost certain to be found among the other drunks near the alcohol shop.

And he was there.

Stilton himself had no difficulty in fitting in.

He sat down on the same bench as Alf Stein, pulled out a bottle of Explorer vodka, nodded at Alf and said:

‘Jelle.’

‘Hi.’

Alf glanced at the bottle. Stilton handed it to him and Alf wasn’t slow to grab it.

‘Thanks! Affe Stein!’

Stilton gave a start.

‘Affe Stein?’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hell, man, did you know Sverre?’

‘Which fucking Sverre?’

‘Sverre Hansson. Blond bloke.’

‘Or right, him, yeah. But that was a hell of a long time ago.’

Affe suddenly looked suspicious.

‘Why the fuck are you asking about him? Has he been talking shit about me?’

‘No way, not at all, he liked you, but he’s croaked.’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Overdose.’

‘Poor bastard. Mind you he was on really heavy stuff.’

Stilton nodded. Affe swallowed a hefty gulp of the vodka.

Without a tremble.

Stilton took the bottle back.

‘But what the fuck, was he talking about me?’ said Affe.

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything special?’

Are you worried? Stilton thought.

‘Nix. Nothing special… he said you were mates when you were younger, that you did some stuff together.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

‘Pretty wild stuff. Had fun, you know…’

Alf relaxed a little. Stilton handed over the bottle again and Affe put it to his lips. Thirsty bloke, Stilton thought. Affe wiped his mouth and gave the bottle back to Stilton.

‘Hell, man, we had fun, yes we did. And did some fucking crazy things too. You know what it can be like…’

I know, Stilton thought.

‘Didn’t he have a sister, Sverre?’ he said.

‘What about it? Why d’you ask that?’

Stilton saw he had gone a bit too fast here.

‘Nothing, he went on a lot about her, that’s all…’

‘I don’t want to talk about his fucking sister!’

Affe jumped up and stared down at Stilton.

‘Get it?’

‘Easy, man, fucking cool it!’ said Stilton. ‘Sorry. Sit down.’

Stilton held out the desirable bottle towards Affe as a gesture of reconciliation. Out of the corner of his eye he saw how Olivia stood beside the car and watched them with an ice cream in her hand. Affe swayed on his feet and realised it would be best to sit down again.

‘Forget his sister if it’s so fucking sensitive,’ said Stilton.

Affe took another gulp from the bottle and looked down at the ground.

‘She conned us fucking bad one time, the bitch. Get it?’

‘I get it. Who the fuck likes being conned?’

‘Right. Nobody!’

So Stilton decided to tell a whopper to his newfound mate Affe. About how he had been conned by a bastard of a mate to help him beat up another bloke. The mate had claimed that the bloke had been pawing his girl and they had given him a good beating. Then later he met his mate’s girl on some occasion who said that the bloke hadn’t been pawing her at all. It was a lie, this mate of his had owed the bloke money and wanted to be shot of him.

‘He conned me into beating up a bloke and he croaked, d’you get it?’

Affe sat quietly and listened, sympathetically. They’d both of them been conned, brothers in misfortune. When Stilton had finished, Affe remarked:

‘Fucking heavy story. The bastard.’

Affe went quiet. Stilton waited him out. After a while Affe opened his mouth again.

‘I got fucked up with summat a bit like that, or Sverre and me both, we were conned into some heavy shit by his sister…’

Stilton had all his senses on full alert.

‘She conned us to… oh fuck I’ve wanted to forget all that shit man…’

Affe reached for the bottle.

‘That’s what we all want,’ said Stilton. ‘Nobody wants to remember shit.’

‘No but it fucking well sticks there anyway… you know, Sverre and me we lost contact after that, totally. We just couldn’t see each other, hell, and it was a woman too!’

‘A woman?’

‘Yeah! We did it to a woman! Well we… she got us to do it, his fucking sister. Just cause she had some fucking problem with that poor woman. And she was preggers too!’

‘The sister?’

‘No! The woman!’

Affe sunk even lower on the bench. His eyes filled with tears.

‘Where did it happen?’

Stilton knew that he was pushing it, but Affe was deep inside his alcoholic memories and didn’t react.

‘On some fucking island…’

Affe suddenly got up.

‘I’ve got to fucking move, man, I can’t face talking ’bout this, it was such a fucking disaster!’

Stilton handed the bottle over to Affe.

‘Take this with you!’

Affe took the bottle with the last drops, swayed alarmingly and looked at Stilton.

‘And I took his sister’s fucking money for years to keep my

mouth shut! D’you get it?’

‘I get it, that’s heavy, man.’

Affe stumbled off towards the shadow of a tree. Stilton watched him when he fell down to sleep off his anguish. When Affe had conked out, Stilton got up. He put his hand into the
inside pocket of his scruffy jacket and turned off the recording function on Olivia’s mobile.

He had got what he was after.

Mette got a search warrant for Eva Carlsén’s house in Bromma. It took some time to go through the whole building. But it also gave results. Including a well-hidden envelope behind a shelf in the kitchen.

Written on the envelope was: Playa del Carmen 1985.

The room wasn’t particularly large. It didn’t contain anything superfluous. Just a table, three chairs, a tape recorder. On two of the chairs sat Mette Olsäter and Tom Stilton. He had borrowed a black leather jacket and a polo sweater from Abbas. On the chair opposite, sat Eva Carlsén with her hair loose and wearing a thin light-blue blouse. On the table between them lay various papers and objects. Mette had asked for a good table lamp. She wanted to create an intimate atmosphere. Now she turned on the lamp.

Mette was in charge of the interrogation.

A little earlier, she had contacted Oskar Molin and explained the situation.

‘I want Tom Stilton to be there.’

Molin understood why and gave it the OK.

In an adjacent room sat or stood the greater part of Mette’s team and a young police trainee. Olivia Rönning. They could follow the interrogation on a screen. Several of them had note-pads in their hands.

Olivia looked up at the screen.

Mette switched on the recorder and said the date, time and
names of those present. She looked at Eva Carlsén.

‘And you don’t require the presence of a lawyer?’

‘I can see no reason for it.’

‘All right. In 1987 you were questioned by the police in connection with enquiries about a murder that had taken place at the Hasslevikarna coves on Nordkoster. You were on the island when the murder took place, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the time you were called Eva Hansson, is that also correct?’

‘You know it is, you interrogated me about Nils’ disappearance back in 1984.’

Eva was going to defend herself. She adopted a slightly aggressive tone. Mette picked up an old tourist photo from a plastic folder and pushed it across the table.

‘Do you recognise this?’

‘No.’

‘There’s a man in the photo. One can’t really see his face, but you can see that birthmark there?’

Mette pointed to the very specific birthmark on the man’s left thigh. Eva nodded.

‘I would be grateful if you answered instead of nodding.’

‘I can see that mark.’

‘The photo was taken in Mexico almost twenty-six years ago, by a tourist, who thought it was your then live-in partner Nils Wendt, who was missing at the time. Do you remember that I showed you this picture?’

‘It’s possible, I can’t remember.’

‘I wanted to see if you recognised the man in the photo as your partner.’

‘I see.’

‘You didn’t. You said that it most definitely was not Nils Wendt.’

‘And what are you getting at with that?’

Mette put a newly taken autopsy photo of Wendt’s naked corpse in front of Eva.

‘This is a newly taken photo of Wendt’s body after his murder. Can you see the mark on his left thigh?’

‘Yes.’

‘The same mark as in the tourist photo, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the time of Wendt’s disappearance you had been living with him for four years. How could you claim that you didn’t recognise his extremely distinct birthmark on his left thigh?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘I want to know why you lied. Why did you lie?’

‘I didn’t lie! I must have made a mistake? Twenty-six years ago? Made a mistake? How should I know?’

Eva brushed away a lock of hair with an irritated gesture. Mette looked at her.

‘You seem irritated.’

‘And what would you be in my situation?’

‘Careful to tell the truth.’

Bosse Thyrén smiled a little and made a note on his pad. Olivia couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. She had met Eva twice and found her to be a forceful but friendly woman. Now she saw something completely different. A clearly tense woman who seemed unbalanced and vulnerable. Olivia started to feel herself becoming emotionally involved. She had promised herself to be professional. To try to see it like a police officer. Neutral. Like a future murder investigator.

That was already going badly wrong.

Mette put down a new tourist photo in front of Eva on the table. A photo from a bar in Santa Teresa. Brought back by Abbas el Fassi.

‘This photo comes from Santa Teresa in Costa Rica. The man in the picture is Nils Wendt, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you recognise the woman he has his arm round?’

‘No.’

‘You have never seen her before?’

‘No. I have never been in Costa Rica.’

‘But you might have seen a picture of her?’

‘I haven’t.’

Mette pulled out the envelope they had found behind a shelf in Eva’s kitchen. She took six photos out of the envelope and spread them out in front of Eva.

‘Six photos, all showing Nils Wendt and the woman from the earlier photo, who you didn’t recognise. You see that it is the same woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘We found these photos in your kitchen in Bromma.’

Eva looked from Mette to Stilton and back to Mette again.

‘That’s a fucking dirty…’

Eva shook her head. Mette waited until she had stopped.

‘Why did you say that you didn’t recognise the woman?’

‘I didn’t see that it was the same woman.’

‘As in the photos from your home?’

‘Yes.’

‘How have these six photos ended up in your house?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Who took them?’

‘No idea.’

‘But evidently you knew they were in your house?’

Eva didn’t answer. Stilton noted how the rings of sweat under her arms expanded down the light blouse.

‘Do you want something to drink?’ Mette asked.

‘No. Are we almost finished?’

‘That depends on you.’

Mette pushed forward yet another photo. An old private photo, where a smiling Eva stood beside her younger brother Sverker. Eva reacted noticeably.

‘You don’t stop at anything,’ she said, in a much lower voice.

‘We’re just doing our job, Eva. When was this picture taken?’

‘In the mid 1980s.’

‘So it was before the murder on Nordkoster?’

‘Yes? What’s that got to do…’