Third Voice (36 page)

Just like the one in Borell’s office.

‘But can we be absolutely sure that it’s Sahlmann’s laptop in there?’ she’d asked.

‘Yes, I opened it. Sandra had stuck a sticker on the inside, a pink heart. I took a picture of that too.’

‘Good.’

Olivia put the newspaper down and sipped her cappuccino. She should probably have called Sandra to tell her she found her computer, but she felt that it would be difficult to explain
the situation. And the police technicians were probably busy with it at present.

So she waited with that.

Perhaps she should call Alex after all?

The fingerprints on the murder weapon were not Stilton’s. That was confirmed quite quickly. Once that was done the prosecutor had a brief chat with Karnerud and Forss: he saw no reason to keep Stilton any longer.

Stilton was sitting on the bench thinking about Abbas. He’d be home soon, unless of course he got off somewhere along the way. I wonder how he’ll react when he hears what’s happened, that I’m sitting here and that Olivia has been subjected to attempted murder by a now-murdered man? He was deep in thought, wondering how Abbas might react, when Rune Forss opened the cell door. Stilton got up. Forss took a couple of steps back out through the open door. Stilton followed him.

‘More questioning?’ he said.

‘There will be more questions, but not now.’

‘So I can go?’

Forss didn’t answer. Stilton saw the expression on his face. It wasn’t Forss’s decision, he’d been forced into it. How? Mette? Had Olivia explained? As he walked past Forss he lowered his voice slightly.

‘I’ve been talking to one of your old girlfriends from Red Velvet.’

He saw that this shocked Forss. Not much, but he certainly reacted. And it was enough. Stilton relished this moment. It may have been hasty to say it, but he’d said it now. He was happy to let Forss sweat for a while.

He deserved it.

He didn’t just sweat. He was both furious and frightened. As soon as Stilton had gone, he left the building and took out his mobile. He stood outside police headquarters in the drizzling rain and called Jackie Berglund. He was so hasty that she hardly had time to answer.

‘Is there any way Stilton can have found out about my old contacts?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Is my name still on your list?’

‘No, I’ve deleted it.’

‘When?’

‘About a year ago, after they called me in for questioning. Why? Why do you think that…’

‘Do you think any of the women have blabbed to him?’

‘Only one of them is still alive.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Ovette Andersson. But she won’t blab.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She isn’t the type.’

‘Have you got an address for her?’

Jackie did.

It was late by the time Stilton got back to the barge. He’d spent the last hour sitting at a café on Hornsgatan, because of the weather. He was used to bad weather and it seldom bothered him, but this was a bit much. It wasn’t just a storm, it was an absolutely unbelievable downpour that exploded across the skies and came pouring down in drops the size of golf balls. People leapt into doorways and cars had to pull over, their windscreen wipers unable to cope with the sheer amount of water.

Eventually it eased off enough for him to be able to finish his coffee and head back to the barge. Wet, but in good spirits. He’d
certainly shocked Forss, not enough for him to lose his balance, but a clear riposte. He stood outside his cabin and shook off the worst of the rain.

‘Were you out in that?’

Stilton turned around. Luna was sitting over in the lounge watching him.

‘No.’

‘What happened with the police?’

‘They took me in and let me go.’

Stilton walked towards the lounge. There was something he wanted to ask Luna and it was a good idea to do so straight away.

‘Can I sit down?’ he said.

That alone seemed strange. He was asking whether he could sit down. That wasn’t like Stilton. Had something happened? But she gestured and Stilton sat down.

‘Would you like a towel?’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Your hair.’

Stilton hadn’t cut his hair since returning from Rödlöga and it had grown quite a bit. Enough to look wet, it seemed.

‘It’s fine,’ he said.

‘OK.’

Stilton looked at Luna. When he was lying in his cell, half-asleep, he’d thought about her quite a lot, more or less willingly. She just popped into his thoughts. Now he could partly understand why. There was something about that woman sitting there, looking like she always did, calm and collected, that attracted him to her. Not in the same way as Claudette, that was about something else, Luna was Luna. He leant over towards her.

‘I saw that you checked the magazine before you put the gun back,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘To check whether there was a bullet missing.’

‘Yes.’

‘If there had been, it would have been me who shot Borell, right?’

‘Well, that would have been a reasonable assumption.’

‘So that possibility crossed your mind? That I could have done that?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’

So he’d asked what he had to ask. Luna had made sure that he hadn’t shot Borell. So she believed that he was actually capable of it. He looked down at his wounded hand, the one that Luna had kindly tended to.

‘But all the bullets were there,’ said Luna.

Stilton nodded. So they’d sorted it out. We know where we’re at, he thought, and asked: ‘Why do you have a gun?’

‘It’s just stuck around.’

‘Since?’

‘Since I needed it.’

She gave him a taste of his own medicine.

The music hadn’t helped.

He’d been standing right in the middle of the room for more than an hour, naked, and it hadn’t helped. He was just as afraid now as when he’d got the call.

‘Jean Borell has been shot.’

Now he was sitting hunched over at the round table next to the alabaster lamp. He’d just watched a cigarillo burn out in the ashtray, he’d hardly smoked it. There was a glass on the table. He filled it with port, right up to the brim – as he moved it towards his lips, half of it spilled out. He put it down again and turned towards the large room, his gaze resting on the beautiful wall opposite.

Was it his turn now? It was only him left now.

He looked down at his arms, the scratch scars were clearly visible. Would they stay or disappear?

He sat down on the floor, his legs crossed, and closed his eyes. His hands were tightly gripping the table legs in front of him. He tried to disappear, tried to dive into the darkness, away from this world he no longer wanted to be part of.

He couldn’t.

He lifted his head and felt the tears run down onto his hairless chest. He got up and went over to the bookshelf. With a trembling hand he pulled out a thick book, a German dictionary, hardcover. There was a gun lying behind it.

He looked at it.

He’d used it once before.

He could use it again.

It was bitterly cold. The kind of cold that’s not really about temperature, but lashing, icy, penetrating winds that forced people from open spaces to seek shelter. So there was no way Olivia could walk to the barge. At first she’d thought she would, when Stilton rang, take a nice walk and get some fresh air. She still felt the effects of that vacuum room.

‘Mette’s on her way here, it’s probably a good idea if you come as well,’ he’d said.

It probably was.

Things were actually rather muddled in her head. She could do with listening to Mette’s more analytical view of the situation to get an idea of what she should be doing herself. Because she was involved in this murder in several ways, some good and some decidedly less good.

But as soon as she got out of the door and almost got blown back in, she decided to take the car. She didn’t need that much fresh air.

She ran up the ladder so as not to be blown off and crept down into the lounge. Stilton and Mette were already sitting there. Luna was at the cemetery.

‘Hi,’ said Stilton. ‘Sit down.’

Olivia pulled her jacket off and sat down. Mette got going straight away.

‘We’ve taken over the Borell investigation,’ she said. ‘There was a fair amount of grumbling, but there always is. I went through all the material this morning and got our team up to speed. The autopsy report confirms what it says in the preliminary report. Borell was murdered. The murder must have occurred at some point after he left you, Olivia, down by the water, and before you, Tom, came back to the house. How long do you think that was?’

Stilton looked at Olivia.

‘What do you think? Just over two hours? I found you, carried you up to the car, we drove here, you changed, we talked for a while, you fell asleep and I drove back.’

‘Two hours sounds reasonable.’

‘So we have a timeframe within which the murder must have taken place,’ Mette said. ‘Did you see anything at all at the house other than the body?’

‘No,’ Stilton said. ‘I ran in and out.’

‘In just over four minutes, according to the surveillance camera. Good job you didn’t loiter about, that would have complicated things for you.’

‘When have you ever seen me loiter?’

Mette let the comment slip. She didn’t want to remind him of the five, six years that he didn’t do much else other than just that.

‘But Luna did hear a motorboat,’ Stilton said.

‘Was she there too?’

‘She came with me to collect Olivia’s car. She was standing by the gate while I was in the house.’

‘And that’s where she heard the motorboat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting. Could have been the murderer getting away. The camera outside hadn’t registered anything until Tom turned up in his car. That means the murderer must have gone in another way. Maybe the same way as you, through the boathouse, into the office, down again and then off in that motorboat. After dropping the murder weapon in the boathouse.’

‘Then I must just have missed him,’ Stilton said.

‘Probably. The next bit of interesting information came from the technical report. There was no laptop in a cork bag in Borell’s office. In fact, nowhere in the house at all.’

Stilton and Olivia looked at each other.

‘But it was there when I was there,’ Olivia said. ‘You saw that yourself on the pictures.’

‘Yes. Which means that the murderer must have taken it. Unless you did, Tom?’

Stilton gave Mette a rather fed-up look.

‘So the murderer stole Sahlmann’s laptop?’ Olivia said.

‘Apparently.’

‘Why?’

‘Do you think I have an answer to that?’ Mette said. ‘I don’t. And I don’t know who the murderer was either. I don’t know his or her motive. What I do know is that there was a man at the murder scene when the police arrived, after you’d left your anonymous tip-off, Tom.’

‘Who was that?’ Stilton asked.

‘His name is Magnus Thorhed and he seems to have been working for Borell.’

‘Was he there?!’

Olivia sat up.

‘You know of him?’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘It must have been his car we drove past,’ Stilton said. ‘He came racing through the forest like a madman.’

‘What was he going to do at Borell’s in the middle of the night?’ Olivia wondered.

‘He claims that he went there because Borell wasn’t answering his mobile,’ Mette said. ‘He knew that Borell had gone home. They been at some conference, and there was something he urgently needed to discuss with him.’

‘At that time?’

‘We asked him that,’ Mette said. ‘And he said that their company operates all over the world: when it’s night here it’s day in Boston. That was the explanation he gave. I’ll deal with him later.’

‘Aren’t you on sick leave?’ Stilton said with a smile.

Mette ignored the comment.

‘So now we have two connected murders. Via Sahlmann’s missing laptop. Is it the same murderer?’

‘Doubtful,’ said Stilton.

‘Because?’

‘Sahlmann’s murder was arranged to look like suicide. To disguise the fact that it was murder. Borell was just shot. Rather different approaches.’

‘True.’

‘Which means that Borell could have killed Sahlmann and then been murdered himself,’ Olivia said. ‘It must have been Borell who stole the laptop the first time, at Sahlmann’s, considering that it ended up in his office?’

‘He may not have stolen it himself,’ Mette said.

Magnus Thorhed? Olivia immediately thought. The man very much at the forefront of things? But suddenly she had other things to think about.

Abbas had stepped into the lounge.

‘Hi.’

He didn’t say any more than that. Nevertheless it took a few seconds before anyone in the room reacted. For several reasons. His sudden appearance was one. His actual physical appearance was another.

‘What happened to you!?!’

A question that both Mette and Olivia had good reason to ask. Mette got there first. But Olivia was first to get up and give him a big hug. He didn’t let on whether or not it hurt. He hugged her back. He’d been longing for it. Perhaps not from Olivia in particular, but from someone like her, who meant something to him.

Who was alive.

Stilton and Mette also got on their feet to greet Abbas.

‘What happened to
you
?’

Abbas pointed at Mette’s cheek. The nine stitches were still visible.

‘Let’s talk about that later.’

Stilton went to get another chair and Abbas sat down.

‘I’ve come straight from the train station,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about my face, it’ll be fine. I was assaulted and my nose took a beating.’

‘Who did this?’

Abbas opened his wheeled suitcase and pulled out a plastic file containing a black-and-white picture.

‘This guy.’

Olivia had a look first. All she saw was a slimy-looking man with an oiled face.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Mickey Leigh. A porn actor.’

When Stilton looked at the picture he saw something very different, something that gave him quite a shock. He saw the man who’d disappeared in through the door with Jackie Berglund. Two days ago. Here in Stockholm.

‘This is the guy who’s known as The Bull,’ Abbas said, looking at Stilton.

‘Were you the one who found this out?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

Stilton was trying to buy some time. When Abbas started explaining how he’d found Mickey Leigh, Stilton went through various options in his head. He knew what Abbas had done to Philippe Martin to get him to talk and could just imagine what he’d do to Jackie Berglund to get hold of Mickey Leigh. Jean-Baptiste had overlooked the matter. Mette would not.

He needed to keep Abbas calm.

So he kept quiet.

‘It’s so bloody frustrating,’ Abbas said. ‘Just when I find the right guy they throw me out of Marseille.’

‘Who?’ Mette asked.

‘The police!’

‘Jean-Baptiste?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps he had his reasons?’ Stilton said carefully.

Abbas didn’t reply. He didn’t want to clash with Tom over Jean-Baptiste. He put the picture back in the plastic file. Mette watched Stilton. She’d seen his reaction when he saw the picture
of Mickey Leigh. She didn’t understand why. She’d ask him when they were alone. For now she asked Abbas about what he’d been up to in Marseille, other than what she already knew from Jean-Baptiste. Abbas gave her a short summary, excluding the part about Martin. When he’d finished he wanted to go.

‘I can drive you home,’ Olivia said.

‘Thanks.’

Olivia and Abbas left the lounge.

Stilton followed them up onto deck and watched them leave.

He wanted to make sure they’d gone.

When he turned around to share what he’d been hiding from Abbas with Mette, she said: ‘You recognised that man on the photo. Mickey Leigh.’

‘Yes. He’s in Stockholm. He’s hanging out with Jackie Berglund. I saw them outside her building the other day.’

‘And why didn’t you want to tell Abbas?’

‘Well, you saw how he looked…’

Mette understood. She knew Abbas too.

‘Do you think that Mickey is wanted?’ she said.

‘I can check.’

Stilton called Jean-Baptiste. Mickey Leigh was indeed wanted, for grievous bodily harm and possible involvement in a dismemberment killing. The French police had just released information via Interpol as Mickey Leigh was registered as having left the country.

‘He’s in Stockholm,’ Stilton said. ‘I’ve informed Mette Olsäter.’

‘Good,’ Jean-Baptiste said. ‘Please ask her to keep in touch with us.’

Stilton ended the call. Mette had understood the implications of this conversation and got out her mobile. She called Bosse Thyrén and had Jackie Berglund’s building put under surveillance.

‘You can find his picture on an Interpol wanted list,’ she said.

‘OK,’ Bosse said. ‘Oh and by the way –’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s no match with Gabriella Forsman and Clas Hall’s DNA.’

‘Now we know.’

Mette ended the call and looked at Stilton. He looked troubled. He felt that the whole Marseille adventure had just landed in Stockholm.

And it didn’t feel good.

Ovette Andersson didn’t have many friends. Not many she could trust. Her colleagues were colleagues, and her friends from before were dead, most of them at least.

But she still had Mink.

They went back a long way – they’d grown up in the same suburb, Kärrtorp. Mink was the one she’d turned to when her son Acke had got into trouble last year, and Mink was the one she was turning to now.

‘Did he threaten you?’

Mink looked genuinely appalled. Not because he thought much of police integrity – that was pretty much in line with his view of the rest of the world – it was the fact that a detective chief inspector was personally engaged in threatening a single woman that provoked a reaction in him.

‘Yes,’ Ovette said. ‘He was bloody unpleasant.’

They’d meet in a narrow side street off Hornsgatan. Ovette had chosen this meeting place, out of sight of glares and cars. She was afraid, her weary eyes made plain that she’d had a sleepless night.

‘He was outside my front door yesterday,’ she said.

‘What did he want?’

‘He was wondering whether I’d been in touch with Tom Stilton. I said I hadn’t, but he kept going on about it. In the end he pulled me off into a dark corner and told me what he’d
do to me and Acke if I breathed a word to Stilton about him buying sex.’

Ovette swallowed several times and Mink saw tears welling up in her eyes.

‘What did he say he’d do to you?’ he asked.

‘Take care of us.’

‘OK, and by that he didn’t mean a package holiday to Mallorca or a new flat.’

‘No. His eyes were black as hell.’

‘What an arsehole.’

Ovette swallowed again and Mink saw how fragile she was. He put his arm around her. If the world was ending in December it didn’t matter all that much what that copper had threatened her with, but he also thought about what Stilton had said. It may be worth doing good until then, it might well pay off.

‘I think you should talk to Stilton again,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s a very smart guy. Who also happens to know that arsehole Forss. He might be able to arrange some protection for you? And he knows Acke too.’

Ovette didn’t reply. She started walking, with Mink’s arm around her shoulders.

Mette just managed to get into her office when she took the call. It was from one of the guys keeping an eye on Jackie Berglund’s building. They’d just seen Berglund go in through the front door accompanied by Mickey Leigh.

Mette reacted quickly.

Rather too quickly for someone who’d had a mild heart attack.

But she ignored that.

She immediately sent Bosse Thyrén and Lisa Hedqvist over to Berglund’s place on Norr Mälarstrand. With backup.

‘He’s wanted for grievous bodily harm in Marseille. And he might have murdered a woman as well.’

Bosse and Lisa took Mette’s warning about Mickey Leigh very seriously. They arrived with a police patrol van. Had they not done so, and instead opted to take their unmarked police car, they might have gone unnoticed. But a patrol van is quite hard to miss on an open street like Norr Mälarstrand. Jackie saw it through the window straight away. After spotting Stilton down on the street a few days ago, she’d been looking out through her windows more or less subconsciously several times a day.

She’d been gripped by a sense of paranoia.

She saw the patrol van as soon as it stopped outside her building.

‘The coppers are here.’

She largely said it as a statement of fact. It needn’t have been her they were coming to see, but it was certainly possible. She had no idea what they wanted, but she didn’t feel particularly concerned.

Unlike Mickey Leigh.

He leapt over to the window to catch a glimpse of the uniformed police on their way towards the building.

‘Do you have a back door?’ he asked.

‘What? What’s the matter with you? Why do you think they…’