Third Voice (16 page)

‘But maybe you can push it until it reaches breaking point, to be able to produce some great numbers?’

‘That’s possible. There’s been some rather disturbing evidence of that. How come you ended up at Silvergården?’

‘Bengt Sahlmann’s father died there. But you mustn’t tell Mette.’

‘That he died there?’

‘That I was there. You saw what happened when I went to Customs and Excise.’

Mårten promised to keep quiet about Silvergården. Olivia accompanied him to the door and got another warm hug. Before pulling the door shut she said: ‘I hope that Abbas won’t get into trouble down there.’

‘We hope so too.’

Olivia closed the door and leant against the wall in the hallway. She thought that Mårten had been a little too vague on the topic of Albion. She wanted to know more about Silvergården, about Bengt Sahlmann’s reaction to his father’s death. She picked up her mobile and called Alex. It went straight to voicemail.

‘Hi, it’s Olivia Rivera. Could you give me a ring? There are a couple of things I want to ask you.’

She ended the call and went into her bedroom. And what should I do now? She felt that the energy in her body needed some release. She’d done enough googling. Alex was the next step for Silvergården. And she didn’t want to bother Sandra. Maybe I should call Ove? Or Lenni? She lay down on her bed. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,… She fell asleep before she had the chance to choose. With her clothes on.

Stilton lay awake most of the night in the cramped window alcove, partly because of the erratically flashing green pharmacy sign shining in through the window above his bed, and partly because he’d been hit by a ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ feeling, a feeling that kicks in when everything else but the darkness is stripped away and the only thing you can hear is your own breathing and a cockroach scratching on the wall.

But most of all he was lying awake because of the blackness in Abbas’s eyes. ‘Did he bring any knives?’ He had, and he knew what he was capable of doing with them.

In his state.

That kept Stilton awake.

He’d used his personal acquaintance with Jean-Baptiste to get a favour. It was based on trust, on what Stilton had seen in the large policeman’s eyes, which meant that Stilton had to take responsibility for Abbas’s knives.

In the middle of the night Stilton decided that he would look for the knives and hide them. And as soon as he’d thought it, he abandoned the idea, partly because it was a bloody stupid idea, in general, and partly because Abbas was probably sleeping with them under his pillow.

So Stilton lay there tossing and turning. He stared up at the flashing green light on the wall and listened to the sea eroding the rock underneath him, trying to think about nothing at all.

Which is basically impossible.

Just when he’d finally fallen asleep he was awoken.

The nature reserve was located just south of Marseille. Callelongue was large and beautiful, peaceful and wild at the same time. Cliffs and sea on one side, forest and mountains on the other. For nature lovers it was a real experience to hike there.

For Abbas it was just torture.

They’d taken a taxi from the hotel. Stilton had managed to swallow a couple of pieces of bread and some bitter coffee, before Abbas called him from the street. He had no idea what Abbas had eaten, probably nothing.

He was feeding off something else.

Both of them sat in silence the entire car journey – Stilton because he needed some time to wake up in the morning before he could be moderately sociable, and Abbas because he wasn’t really there. He was deep within himself, gathering strength for what he would experience out there.

In Callelongue.

The area where Samira’s dismembered body had been found.

On the way they passed a racetrack on the outskirts of a large park. Abbas nodded out through the car window.

‘That’s where Cirque Gruss used to have its tent.’

‘Where the racetrack is?’

‘Yes, it wasn’t there then.’

It was a blank statement.

Everything changes.

The taxi dropped them on the edge of the nature reserve and the driver wondered how they were going to get back.

‘Come and get us in an hour,’ Abbas said.

Why only an hour? Stilton didn’t want to ask, he assumed that Abbas had determined a finite time that he could handle. Or maybe it was just a guess.

But it was Abbas’s trip.

He was the one making the decisions.

So they headed into the beautiful surroundings of Callelongue. Stilton had learned his lesson when it came to clothes and was dressed in just a T-shirt. Abbas was wearing a thin beige jacket that he’d bought in Venice many years ago, which perfectly complemented his skin tone. It was chosen with care. Back then.

Now he didn’t care any more.

He could just as well have been wearing a sheet.

Neither of them knew where to go, but both of them knew what they were looking for. Stilton was feeling a bit below par after his sleepless night and found himself admiring the beauty of the place. The scenery of sharp shadows, soft terrain and reflections from the protruding rocks. It was a sensation of something from the past, wistful, ancient times passing by.

‘There!’

They’d been wandering around aimlessly for almost half an hour before Abbas caught sight of it, among trees and bushes, a piece of plastic tape that had been left behind by the police after they cordoned off the area. They squeezed through the pretty thorny bushes and saw the first hole. A large hole. Further in between the trees they could see another.

Abbas walked over to the first hole and took out his mobile phone. With surprisingly steady hands, he began taking photographs of the hole. Stilton was standing back, in silence. He didn’t know what was going on in that tormented man’s head. What pictures were flashing in front of his eyes? Wild boar? Gnawed skeletal remains? Or Samira’s face when he threw that last knife at her?

A few minutes passed.

Then Abbas put away his mobile and turned to face Stilton.

‘
Pourquoi
?
’ he said.

A question that could be referring to a great many things at this point. Why was Samira murdered? Why was she buried here of all places? Why was she dismembered? Why wasn’t I there? Stilton felt he was referring to all the above.

So he chose one of them.

‘Why was she murdered?’

Abbas was crouching down. Stilton saw the marks from the French technicians’ tents over the holes. He could imagine what they’d been looking for. Jean-Baptiste would have to tell them whether or not they’d found anything.

Hopefully.

‘Why was she murdered?’ Abbas said without looking at Stilton. ‘She was blind. Totally defenceless. To whom could she have been a threat?’

It was a rhetorical question and Stilton let it fade away. He felt a warm breeze coming in from the sea, the leaves in the bushes were gently sashaying in it, and the sun cast a shadow over the hole, as though nature wanted to cover up the savagery.

Abbas ran a hand over his face before turning to Stilton.

‘Well, there’s only one person who can answer that,’ he said.

‘Her agent?’

Abbas got up. He looked down into the hole, looked over at the other hole further in and turned around.

He was done.

He was going to find Philippe Martin.

The taxi was waiting for them as they returned, and drove them to the port right in the centre of Marseille, the Vieux Port. Abbas didn’t want to drive any further, he wanted to take the metro for the last bit of the journey.

‘Why?’ Stilton wondered.

‘To arrive in the right state.’

Abbas was preparing himself for the meeting with Martin. The metro would put him in the right mindset, the metro where he’d lived for many years, when he was young – thieving, pickpocketing, being chased by guards and white Frenchmen, being heckled and jeered.

He wanted to get back into that state again.

Philippe Martin was a white Frenchman.

‘Why did you take pictures of the hole out there?’ Stilton asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Abbas stepped into one of the white carriages. Stilton followed him. They stood by the doors. Almost all the seats were empty. The train started moving and Stilton thought about the knives. He knew that Abbas had brought them. He didn’t know
how many, but he knew he had them, and Stilton didn’t quite know how he’d deal with that. He looked into the next carriage. It was virtually empty, a woman was reading a children’s book to a child sitting on her knee. On her way to a place called home, Stilton thought. He, on the other hand, was on his way to meet someone who’d abused Samira.

And maybe even dismembered her.

‘So how are we going to approach this?’ he said.

They got off at Gare Saint-Charles, the main railway station in Marseille. The bar that Philippe Martin allegedly frequented was just outside. The sun was beating down here as well, onto the stone steps of the central station and onto drugged-up Rasta boys sitting hunched over with their heads between their knees, lost in thought. Onto heavily made-up eastern European women leaning up against stone statues and holding their mobiles up right in front of their eyes, engulfed in a world that wasn’t their own. And onto cripples sitting with their rags and plastic cups, hoping for a slice of a world that was not theirs either.

Abbas and Stilton passed by it all pretty quickly.

It took Stilton a little longer though, in his head. It wasn’t so long ago since he’d been sitting hunched over like that himself, not begging, but he was there. He was an outcast, homeless, and in many respects destitute. He had lain on old rags. Maybe that’s why he stopped in front of a scraggy woman to buy a copy of
Macadam
, Marseille’s street newspaper. He wasn’t going to be able to read it, but it felt good.

‘There it is.’

Abbas pointed at a bar a bit further down the street. Stilton followed his hand and saw a rather ordinary looking bar with a red awning and a couple of empty plastic chairs outside.

‘How do you know he’s there?’ he asked.

Abbas didn’t answer and went into the bar, closely followed by Stilton. There was very tall sturdy man in a green blazer sitting at the bar, and a dark-skinned old woman standing behind him.
The man sat with his back towards them. Abbas stopped and let Stilton get by. He approached the man.

‘Philippe Martin?’

The man turned around. Before that, it could have been just anyone, an accountant on a short lunch break or a psychologist without any patients.

But it wasn’t.

Once he had turned around, it became pretty clear who he was. Or at least what he did. And it wasn’t anything to do with balancing books or tending to people’s souls. He was no stranger to dodgy business dealings. It was written all over his face, judging by the number of scars on his face and the look in his eyes. Both Abbas and Stilton knew that look very well. It was typical of people who lived in that world. Maybe he had beautifully long piano fingers and five pedicured toes on each foot, but he was up to his eyeballs in dodgy dealings.

So Stilton repeated his question.

‘Philippe Martin?’

‘Are you the guy who owes me money?’

News travels fast in tight circles, Abbas thought. But it was Stilton who replied.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t owe me money.’

An old maxim: ‘To live outside the law you must be honest.’ Stilton didn’t owe this man any money, and so he wasn’t going to take money from him.

‘It was just an excuse,’ said Stilton, in his melodic Swedish accent. ‘I didn’t want to advertise what I really wanted.’

‘And what’s that?’

The man turned away. Stilton began again.

‘I’m from Sweden. I make films and I heard that you work in the same genre down here.’

‘Who told you that?’

Jean-Baptiste Fabre was definitely the wrong answer. Stilton rifled through his memory and said: ‘Pierre Valdoux.’

‘Who the hell is that?’

‘He imports films to Sweden. You don’t know him?’

The man, who clearly was Philippe Martin, looked at the woman behind the bar.

‘Do you know who Pierre Valdoux is?’ he asked with a smile.

‘No.’

‘Does your mother know?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Martin turned towards Stilton.

‘You see? No one knows who Pierre Valdoux is. Did you have bullshit for breakfast?’

‘No. Did you?’

Stilton could tolerate a certain amount of provocation. No more. He’d taken a big risk now and didn’t know how Martin was going to react. Maybe he was messing it all up now and it would just get worse.

Abbas was standing right behind him.

‘You wanna say that again?’ Martin said and slid down off his bar stool, a kind of physical warning. He was tall, though not quite as tall as Stilton. But he looked in pretty good shape. Stilton looked him in the eye.

‘The thing is, Philippe, I haven’t had bullshit for breakfast and neither have you. We work in the same industry. We have attitude. Good. But if you could disengage that for a moment and listen to me, you’ll soon find out it’s about money. I’m interested in investing in a French film for the Swedish market and I have an established distribution network all over the country. I’m prepared to put up quite a bit of cash and I want some good stuff. Are you interested?’

Maybe it was because Stilton was completely calm when he said it, his way of completely ignoring Martin’s physical warning, or maybe something else entirely, but Martin listened to what Stilton had to say. Eyes locked on his face. Then he nodded at Abbas.

‘Who’s that?’

‘A guide. He’s taking me around Marseille.’

Martin turned to the woman behind the bar.

‘We’ll go upstairs.’

The room was right above the bar, quite a big room, furnished like a small lounge, with a wide window facing out to the street. The standard of the furniture was a fraction higher than in the bar. A couple of shabby grey armchairs, a curved sofa and a chequered table in the middle. There was a round glass bowl with a goldfish on a small bureau. The light from the street was shining in between a couple of half-open window shutters made from grey wood. Martin walked over to the bureau, pulled out a box and lifted up a pretty hefty gun. He put it down next to the goldfish bowl. Another warning. He gestured towards Stilton to sit down in one of the armchairs. He completely ignored Abbas. Stilton sat down while Martin hung up his green blazer. He was wearing a short-sleeved blue T-shirt underneath that awarded glimpses of his bulging biceps. It also revealed a rather shoddy tattoo of a kitchen knife on his forearm. Why do criminals have such terrible taste? Stilton thought. He could have had a beautiful dagger instead.

Martin sank down into the other armchair.

‘Invest, you said?’

‘Yes,’ Stilton replied.

‘How much money are we talking about?’

‘It depends. Do you make your own films or do you buy them?’

‘Both. Are you after any particular kind of films?’

‘Yes. Back home we’re mainly used to white girls, eastern Europeans. I’m looking for something a bit more exotic.’

‘Blacks and shit?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘That’s no problem. Do you want the movie type or just straight-up fucking?’

‘Straight-up fucking.’

‘Good. That’s less trouble.’

‘Do you work with some girls in particular?’

‘Yes, but we can get hold of anyone.’

‘I saw some French porn online a while ago, with a bloody gorgeous girl, quite dark, and I think that she was blind?’