Third Voice (18 page)

It was dusk in Marseille. The low sun was washing over the magnificent port, reflecting off the hundreds of masts in the bay and up across the bars on the quayside. It was still warm enough to sit outside.

Even though it was November.

I live in the wrong climate, Stilton thought to himself. He was sitting with Abbas at a dark wooden table right at the edge of the quay, soaking up the warm rays of sunshine. It was a fish restaurant. Both of them were hungry even though it was only just five o’clock. When Abbas got the menu he’d commented that they had seafood risotto.

‘You liked it, right?’

‘Absolutely. Do they have any meat?’

They ordered dorado and a carafe of white wine. Abbas did the ordering. Stilton noted that he’d ordered wine, but he didn’t comment on it. It was, as he’d said, Abbas’s trip. When they’d got their carafe and glasses and prepared to take their first sip, Stilton said: ‘So what was the first word in the letters you wrote to Samira?’

‘Hi.’

Abbas tasted the wine. He looked just like anyone else in this town, accompanied by a large pale foreigner. He didn’t look like the person Stilton had seen just a couple of hours earlier. He wanted to forget about that person. But Abbas had done what he’d needed to do and he’d done it his way, the way he’d come to know growing up. Now he was sitting sipping a cold glass of white wine, looking out over the beautiful port.

‘You probably won’t be very popular after this,’ Stilton said.

‘I never was, that’s why I left.’

Stilton nodded. He watched Abbas’s eyes shift to the side, over to another table further in. There was a man sitting at the table. Stilton didn’t recognise him.

Abbas did.

It was the barman who’d told them where to find Philippe Martin. And then called Martin to blab that Abbas owed him money. Then he watched the barman get up and hide behind a stone pillar. Hidden when viewed from Abbas’s direction, without thinking that his reflection could be seen in the window. Abbas watched the barman get out his mobile while quickly glancing over at Abbas’s table.

‘Someone you know?’ Stilton wondered.

‘No.’

Abbas looked at Stilton again.

‘Le Taureau,’ he said. ‘The Bull.’

‘Yes.’

Abbas had called Marie on the way to the restaurant to check whether she’d ever heard of anyone by that name. She hadn’t. He’d made two more calls, to people from before. No one knew who The Bull was.

‘Maybe he was lying,’ Stilton suggested.

‘Do you think so?’

‘No.’

Neither did Abbas. He’d been standing close enough to Martin to smell the fear. He knew that Martin hadn’t been lying.

‘Samira never returned from that film shoot. She was found murdered shortly afterwards. The Bull was there at the shoot.’

‘One plus one makes two?’

‘Generally, yes.’

‘So how do we find The Bull?’

Stilton didn’t feel entirely comfortable articulating these words. The Bull. It sounded extremely silly to him, but out of respect for Abbas he took it seriously.

‘I don’t know,’ Abbas said. ‘Maybe Jean-Baptiste has a few ideas?’

‘Yes.’

Stilton was already feeling uncomfortable about the meeting with Jean-Baptiste. He was convinced that Abbas’s actions
towards Philippe Martin would spread through certain circles in Marseille like wildfire.

And so it would reach Jean-Baptiste just as quickly.

And then Stilton would have to give some answers.

The fish interrupted his thoughts. It was lightly grilled and deboned, and had a slightly nutty flavour. Both of them ate in silence. Stilton noticed that Abbas was keeping the same pace as him with the wine. He’s certainly affected by what happened over there, Stilton thought.

Comfort of some kind.

Even savagery is not seamless.

Once the sun had dipped down into the Mediterranean it turned a little colder. Stilton pulled on an extra jumper. They’d finished the meal, but Abbas sat still. He’d ordered another couple of glasses of wine, not a carafe. Stilton saw that his expression had calmed. The alcohol perhaps, or a reaction to something else? Abbas looked out over the old port, his gaze sweeping over the shabby white houses winding their way up the hill on the other side.

‘I lived there for a short time.’

Stilton followed Abbas’s pointing hand up to the houses on the other side of the port.

‘Is that the Arab quarter?’

‘No, I lived there when my old ma disappeared.’

Stilton noted his choice of words. Abbas referred to his father as ‘my dad’ and his mother as ‘the old ma’.

‘When did she disappear?’

‘When I was seven.’

Stilton thought about Luna’s mother, the wind walker. About absconding mothers.

‘Where did she go?’ he asked.

‘Well, if you disappear you disappear. I have no idea. I grew up with my dad.’

Abbas gulped some more wine.

‘He couldn’t handle me,’ he said. ‘He just wanted out. Every time he got drunk he told me about the Gulag prisoner.’

‘Who was that?’

‘A prisoner who woke in the barracks one night, got up without any clothes on and sewed buttons on his chest and took an axe and went out into the winter storm. He’d had enough, Dad said. I think he wanted to do what that guy did, escape from something he was hopelessly trapped in.’

‘So did he do it?’

‘No, he was trapped in his life. How do you escape that?’

‘Commit suicide.’

‘He didn’t dare. So he took it out on me instead.’

Stilton followed Abbas’s gaze over to the quay on the other side again.

There was a black car standing there.

‘Is it them?’

‘Yes.’

The man who answered was sitting in the passenger seat and had a thick bandage across one eye. The eye that had been cut. His lips were chewed up. The man sitting behind the wheel looked over at the quayside on the other side of the water. At Stilton and Abbas. He gripped the wheel with his large coarse hands, with a half-smoked, unlit cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

‘And they were looking for Samira’s murderer?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they were Swedish?’

‘They said they were.’

‘Why were they looking for Samira’s murderer?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘How much did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

The man behind the wheel peered at Martin, at the bandage across his injured eye.

‘Nothing? With what they did to your eye?’

‘Well, I didn’t bloody know anything.’

‘You knew about me.’

‘I’d forgotten that.’

The man behind the wheel looked at Martin. They knew each other from the streets, had done business together, neither of them trusted the other. Now one of them was forced to trust the other, that he hadn’t disclosed the wrong information. If he had, there were two people who knew the wrong things – the people sitting on the quayside opposite. Could he take that risk? Martin had been tortured.

But he chose to lie low.

‘We’ll have to watch them,’ he said.

‘You go ahead. I don’t want to be involved.’

‘OK.’

‘He’s lethal with those knives.’

The man behind the wheel saw big Martin look down at his seat with his good eye. Someone had scared the shit out of him, properly. He lit the cigarette and looked out over the water again, at Abbas and Stilton.

Knives?

Their glasses were empty. Abbas’s gaze had shifted down to the water below the edge of the quayside. His body had sunk down a little. He suddenly looked very small, Stilton thought. Forlorn. He saw Abbas’s head rocking a little. And it wasn’t just the wine that was flowing freely – he saw tears streaming down Abbas’s face. Stilton stretched out his hand and put it on Abbas’s arm. He kept it there a while. He hadn’t forgotten that Abbas had been there for him on various occasions, on various side streets in Stockholm.

‘Not everything comes back, Abbas, you have to realise that.’

‘I know.’

Abbas looked up.

‘Shall we go?’

Stilton nodded. As he got up he saw Abbas grabbing a load of sachets of sugar from the table.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nicking a few sachets.’

‘What are you going to do with them?’

‘I’ll get the bill.’

Abbas went off. Stilton looked out over the port and felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket. He’d put it on silent.

He took his phone out.

A text, a short one. ‘I’ve fixed a lock for your door. Luna.’

He read it twice, it was like a message from outer space.

Stilton put his phone back in his pocket just as Abbas was coming back.

‘Shall we walk back to the hotel?’ he said.

Stilton looked up. Dusk had changed to Mediterranean darkness and it was quite a way to walk. Through some equally dark streets.

‘OK.’

They walked around the old port to the other side of the quay, both of them caught up in their own thoughts. They passed by a black car with two men sitting inside and carried on past the bars and restaurants with scores of people sitting outside.

Neither of them noticed the car’s headlights being turned on.

Stilton assumed that Abbas was taking the fastest route and didn’t react when he suddenly turned into a small street. He just followed him. Abbas on the other hand did react once they’d walked a couple of hundred metres. It was a small street without any shops, with tall buildings on either side, and it was dark down on the pavement. That’s why Abbas noticed the car lights behind them. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw that the car was moving just as slowly as they were walking. Has the news already spread? he wondered, moving his hand across his body. The knives were where they were supposed to be.

Stilton didn’t notice any of this. The wine had dulled his senses. He felt secure with Abbas by his side.

He wouldn’t have if he’d known what was going on in Abbas’s head: stay and wait for the car and go for a confrontation? Or turn off?

He turned off. Sideways into a narrow alleyway, too tight for a car. Stilton hardly managed to keep up.

‘Are we going in here?’

‘Yes. Come on!’

Abbas was moving quickly and Stilton followed him. Now all his senses were in gear again. He turned his head and saw a car stop down on the street. Were they being followed? Abbas turned another corner. Stilton ran after him. There were two bins standing against the wall. He had to weave in between them. Then he almost tripped over a black cat that came shooting out from behind one of the bins. He managed to grab hold of a windowsill and stopped himself from falling. He heard a clattering noise a long way behind him.

He had no idea how long they ran between the densely packed houses, but they suddenly emerged through an archway into a small square with some empty vegetable stalls. A young man was wheeling an elderly woman across the square in a wheelchair. The wheels were squeaking loudly. Abbas hailed a taxi that was driving past and jumped in the back seat. Stilton jumped in the front. The driver looked straight ahead and asked: ‘Where are we going?’

Stilton gave the hotel address in his heavy Swedish accent, which inspired the taxi driver to try to do a little detour, until Abbas tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Take the fastest route,’ he said.

In his expressive Marseille dialect.

So the taxi drove straight to Hotel Richelieu. Abbas paid and both of them jumped out. There was a seedy nightclub right opposite the hotel. The music was pounding out onto the street. There were a couple of hefty, drunk Russians standing at the entrance, trying to get in. There’d probably be a fight next. Abbas and Stilton walked in through the hotel doors. They’d already disappeared up the stairs as the black car drove past.

Once it had passed by, the driver put his foot down and disappeared off into the darkness.

Darkness had fallen outside Olivia’s window too, another kind of darkness, heavy Swedish autumnal darkness. It was probably that that prompted her to light the candles on the table. She sat on the small sofa in her living room with her laptop in front of her, the candles just behind it. They weren’t creating much light, but all she needed to see was the keyboard.

She’d been reading for quite a while already.

It was both interesting and alarming. It was
Dagens Nyheter’
s series of articles on Albion. A number of journalists had been digging and analysing and checking.

Thoroughly.

They’d turned the company upside down and found some damning information. The cases of negligence at Albion’s nursing homes hit them one after the other. They had escalated in the past year. Three different homes in three places around Sweden were subject to external investigations due to negligent care. Several municipalities were currently reviewing their contracts with Albion. The company had been subject to scathing criticism. Various representatives had defended the organisation in different ways.

These did not include Jean Borell.

He was nowhere to be found in any of the articles.

Journalists all over the world had tried to reach him for comments without success. The only person they’d managed to reach was his closest colleague in Sweden, Magnus Thorhed. On one occasion, a journalist had bumped into Borell in Australia, during the Australian Open, more or less by accident. Borell had agreed to a short interview about Albion after the match and had then disappeared.

Olivia started googling Jean Borell but there was hardly anything about him. Born in Danderyd, living in London – she didn’t find much more. She hadn’t expected to either. It was a typical sign of people at that level, in that world – they were invisible in the media.

So she went back to reading the articles.

What was pretty clear was Albion’s precarious situation. It was a company struggling for survival. They’d generated enormous profits over the years. In 2011 alone, municipalities and county councils had bought services from private companies for 71 billion Swedish kronor. She didn’t know how much of that had ended up at Albion, but it was probably quite a sizeable chunk. So they weren’t talking peanuts. The debate about profits in the welfare sector had hit Albion’s reputation hard. But the company had party-political ties – several leading Moderate Party politicians supported the organisation. A multi-million deal was currently under negotiation with the City of Stockholm. A strongly criticised deal. The critics highlighted all the nursing homes that had been mismanaged by Albion. Instead the politicians talked about Silvergården in Nacka, as an example of an exceptionally well-run organisation.