Closed Circles (Sandhamn Murders Book 2)

by Sten, Viveca

  “I’m sure neither of you has a problem delaying your vacation by a few weeks? Just like last year? Another summer investigation at exclusive Sandhamn?”

  Margit had booked a dream trip to the Canary Islands at the end of August in addition to the three weeks she’d already taken off. She smiled back at Persson, unconcerned.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was already past eight in the evening, and the heat in the room was still oppressive. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Hans Rosensjöö discreetly wiped his forehead with a cotton handkerchief. The back of his polo shirt was damp, even though he’d just showered.

  To his left, the chair of the first vice chairman of the board sat glaringly empty.

  Someone had pushed together several smaller tables to form a larger one. Eleven of the fifteen board members were present. Not bad, Rosensjöö thought. Though most of them were already on Sandhamn because of the race. The Round Gotland Race, their largest, was the most important source of income for the Yacht Club.

  As a small boy, Hans Rosensjöö had accompanied his father to Sandhamn to watch the formal awards ceremony. Back in those days, majestic mahogany vessels competed in the Round Gotland Race. They carried dignified names, like Refanut, Barracuda, and Beatrice Aurora. Today, the vessels were named after sponsors: Eriksson and Volvo and whatnot. Hans sniffed. What kind of names were those for offshore racing boats?

  In the good old days, red velvet covered the sofas in the cabin and the faint aroma of cigars wafted around the skipper. Three-course meals accompanied by glasses of schnapps and good wine were standard fare.

  Nowadays, Hans thought, racing sailboats are empty shells. There aren’t even bunks for everyone, because the crew work in shifts anyway.

  In the modern era, the Round Gotland Race had become an enormous event that brought in millions of Swedish kronor. The first Sunday after Midsummer, the entire sailing world focused on the start of the race in Sandhamn. The spectator area on the southeast of the island was filled with guests of the sponsors, tourists, and other enthusiasts. Exclusive yachts competed for space with small outboards. Whether celebrating with champagne or with a cheese sandwich brought from home, everyone wanted to participate in this racing festival.

  Today, Hans thought the word festival was nothing but a mockery.

  Despite heavy emotions, he had handled the chaos following the unhappy event with character and resolve. The telephone rang constantly. When it wasn’t a journalist asking questions, it was a shocked spectator or some club official checking in.

  Rosensjöö was an upright and traditional man who adopted the motto of the old king, “Duty Above All.” He’d attained the rank of lieutenant commander as a reserve officer in the navy and was considered a dependable and honorable person with a high moral code.

  He never expected that the cold-blooded murder of his successor would cloud his last months of service as the head of the RSYC.

  Never before had he felt so powerless and uneasy at the start of a board meeting. He banged the venerable old gavel on the table, calling the proceedings to order.

  To his right sat Ingmar von Hahne, the secretary and second vice chairman. An untouched pad of paper and two sharpened pencils rested in front of him. Ingmar fastened his gaze on the gleaming white paper. A signet ring with his family crest glittered on his left pinkie finger.

  Here we have a man whose greatest talent lies in his family background and his social graces, Rosensjöö thought. At official dinners, no one charmed women or danced as elegantly as Ingmar. He was the queen’s favorite at all the Yacht Club parties. But he was not a man of action, one who could take Oscar’s place.

  Hans Rosensjöö’s eyes wandered until they rested on the head of the Facilities Committee, Martin Nyrén, who was drawing tiny figures on his own pad of paper. Next to him sat Arvid Welin, the head of the club committee, a corpulent man well known in the world of finance. Both board members appeared resolute.

  Hans Rosensjöö cleared his throat.

  “Let us begin with a moment of silence for our departed friend, Oscar Juliander,” he said.

  He lowered his head and managed some forty-five seconds. That felt like enough.

  “Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” he began. “Unfortunately, we are completely unprepared for a situation like this.”

  He fell silent as he searched for the right words.

  “The first thing we must consider is how to proceed with the race and preserve the good name of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club. There are a few decisions we must make.”

  He cleared his throat again.

  “Does anyone object to allowing the race to continue? We can honor Oscar by making sure the race goes on.”

  Everyone in the room nodded in approval. So far, not a single man in the room had spoken. The silence unnerved Hans, though he did not know why.

  “I believe that is what Oscar would have wanted,” he added.

  Then he took a deep breath and regarded the board members.

  “I hardly need to mention that we must cooperate with the police in every way possible.”

  “Mr. Chairman,” Arvid Welin said. His face was sweaty. “Who will we elect as the next chairman of the board at our annual meeting in September? Oscar had been nominated for the position, and you won’t be eligible any longer.”

  Hans Rosensjöö felt a wave of irritation rise. Arvid is such a stickler for formalities! Who cares about the election on a day like this?

  “Let’s take things one step at a time,” he said. “We’ll deal with that problem later, one way or another.”

  He was seven years old the first and only time he came home crying during lunch. He’d just started first grade at the Broms School in the Östermalm District of Stockholm. His family lived only a few hundred yards away, in an exclusive apartment complex by Karlaplan.

  Full of despair, he threw himself into his mother’s arms as she opened the door. His tiny body shook with sobs.

  He stiffened as he caught sight of his father in the hallway. Why was he home at this hour?

  The large figure in a dark suit gave him a disapproving look.

  “Why are you crying, boy?” His father’s voice sounded cold and distant.

  Through his sobs, he tried to explain that one of the bigger boys had taken his best marble, the one made from blue glass, while they were playing in the schoolyard.

  He stammered as he explained why he’d run away. Willie Bonnevier was two grades ahead. It did no good to argue with him. He couldn’t think of anything to do but leave the schoolyard.

  The slap almost knocked him off his feet. He was so shocked that he stopped crying.

  A large red mark spread over his left cheek. Nobody spoke.

  He looked at his mother, but she turned away. In the doorway to the kitchen, his beloved nanny, Elsa, stood perfectly still and silent.

  When the head of the household was in that kind of mood, it was best that everyone kept quiet.

  Elsa wrung her hands. Her heart ached as she watched the little boy shaking in front of his father.

  “You will return to school and get your marble back. In our family, we do not accept such treatment. Remember who we are. And stop crying. Immediately.”

  “Yes, Father,” he whispered.

  He bent his head and put his jacket back on, trying in vain to catch his mother’s eye.

  He walked slowly down the green marble steps and out through the heavy front door.

  He feared his father more than he feared any older schoolmates.

  Almost sick from anxiety, he demanded his marble back. Willie pressed it into his hand, either surprised that Hans had stood up for himself or simply bored with the new treasure. Hans would never know.

  When he returned home that evening, his father did not ask about the marble.

  He wet his bed again that night.

  MONDAY, THE FIRST WEEK

  CHAPTER 7

  The red boat taxi pulled away from the
dock in Stavsnäs just as Thomas and Margit came running from the overcrowded parking lot.

  The skipper saw them coming and brought the ferry in so they could jump on board.

  “Thanks,” Thomas called, nodding to the skipper.

  They walked down the stairs to the passenger area and found a table in the half-full dining space. Thomas paid the cashier for their tickets. The aroma from the grill made Thomas hungry.

  “What smells so good?” he asked the pleasant woman behind the cash register.

  “Grilled sandwiches,” she said. “Would you like one? They’re pretty good, if I do say so myself.”

  She showed him a sample plate.

  Easily persuaded, Thomas ordered one for Margit and one for himself. He added two bottles of light beer and carried them to Margit along with two glasses.

  He heard a familiar voice behind him.

  “Well, if it isn’t Thomas! How are you doing?”

  Thomas looked up to find one of his neighbors from Harö. Hasse Pettersson was seventy years old, a weather-beaten man who spent most of his postretirement time on Harö, where he’d been born and raised. His worn jeans were oil stained on one thigh. Pettersson knew everything worth knowing about engines. He was the man to turn to in any emergency and a neighborhood guru any time something needed fixing. All work done under the table, of course.

  “Hey, there, Pettersson. How are you doing?” Thomas stood up to shake hands.

  “Just fine. Won’t you be going on vacation soon? I ran into your father a few days ago, and he said you were planning to come out.”

  “Not yet.” Thomas shook his head. “I’m on my way to Sandhamn right now. On the job. You probably heard about the shooting yesterday? We’re heading out to talk to some of the people there.”

  “The great lawyer, Oscar Juliander.” Pettersson practically spat out the name. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s no great loss. He was an ugly bastard, that Juliander.”

  Pettersson nodded emphatically as he packed some snuff under his lip and sat down at their table, holding his cup of coffee.

  “You’ve met him?” Margit asked.

  “Many times. He tried to cheat me out of a lot of money once.”

  As he put his snuff tin into his back pocket, Pettersson snorted to show his displeasure. His right forefinger was stained from nicotine, and a black half-moon of snuff lined his fingernail.

  “How’d he try to do that?” said Margit.

  “He wanted to buy a piece of property of mine on Runmarö. There were building restrictions on it because of beach protection, so it wasn’t that valuable. He got in touch and offered next to nothing.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said he wanted it for timber.”

  “What’s that? A tree farm?” Margit asked.

  “No, it’s a piece of property where you can haul away fallen trees and stuff,” Thomas explained. “But you can’t build any kind of structure on it, not even a shed.”

  “So what happened?” Margit asked.

  “Let me tell you! It turned out that the district was thinking of redesignating some property as buildable after all because somebody complained to the European Union. If I understand correctly, some stubborn devil wasn’t content to own beachfront property if he couldn’t build on it.”

  “The district office probably wasn’t expecting that,” Thomas said.

  Pettersson dried his mouth with the back of his hand as he shook his head.

  “With permission to build, that property would be worth a few million, not the measly one hundred and fifty thousand Juliander offered.”

  He turned in his seat and spit the wad of snuff into a nearby garbage can. Without blinking, he pulled out his tin and stuffed another wad behind his lip, then slurped down the last of his coffee.

  “So, did you sell it to him?” asked Thomas.

  A smile of contentment spread over Pettersson’s face.

  “I had intended to, but my boy thought there was something fishy about the whole deal.”

  “I can see why,” said Margit.

  “Yep.” Pettersson chuckled. “Why in the world would a city lawyer want to pick up fallen wood? My boy was suspicious, so he checked with a friend down at the district office, who clued him in. After that I lost interest in selling to Mr. Big Shot Lawyer.”

  “Did he give up?”

  Pettersson shook his head.

  “Oh, no, he tried all kinds of tricks. He said we shook hands on it and claimed we had an oral agreement just as binding as a written contract. Finally he upped his offer to half a million. But I told him to stick his offer where the sun don’t shine. I didn’t hear from him again.”

  “And then he was shot,” Margit said.

  The old man flinched.

  “Perhaps he tried to cheat somebody else, somebody who wasn’t as forgiving as me.”

  “Well, here we are again,” Margit said. They’d arrived at Sandhamn and were walking down the gangway at the Steam Boat Dock. “Perhaps we should call it a summer rerun?”

  She looked around the harbor. Sailboats and motorboats crowded into the slips. As usual, a sandwich board displaying the day’s headlines stood next to the newsstand.

  The Round Gotland murder dominated the headlines. Speculations abounded in thick black fonts.

  Commerce was in full swing despite the threat of rain hanging in the air. Crowds of tourists picked through racks of clothing at a store called the Summer Shop. A few retired folks sat on the two park benches, watching people go by.

  As far back as Thomas could remember, elderly Sandhamn inhabitants had sat on those benches and commented on passersby. They were as much a part of the surroundings as the white ferryboats. For a moment, time stood still, and Thomas remembered how impatient he’d been as a boy, waiting for his father to finish chatting with some old guys sitting there.

  “Come on,” he said. He headed toward the Yacht Hotel.

  “They’ve arranged for a conference room for us. We might as well get started. It’ll take at least the rest of the day to talk to all the people we’ve lined up.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The narrow conference room didn’t look much different to Thomas than others, except for the view stretching east for miles, magnificent as a painting.

  Thomas and Margit sat on one side of a conference table, leaving an empty chair for the visitors across from them.

  Hans Rosensjöö had just left the room after confirming his short statement from the day before. Everyone aboard Bjärring’s Storebro when Oscar Juliander had been murdered told the same story. Just like them, Hans Rosensjöö could not remember exactly which boats were near the Emerald Gin at the moment the race started. Shock and a few glasses of wine had dulled his observations.

  Because the race had begun so far out on the open sea, the perpetrator must have been aboard a boat, either Juliander’s or someone else’s. At least that much was clear.

  Something occurred to Thomas as he reached for a bottle of mineral water. If he could find witnesses who could help him determine the angle of the shot that had killed Juliander, he might be able to limit the number of boats that could have had the shooter on board. They could then narrow down the search.

  The thought gave Thomas some relief. He smiled at Britta Rosensjöö as she entered the room.

  She looked like a frightened teacher called into the principal’s office for some mysterious infraction. Her thin blond hair, streaked with gray, had been cut into a pageboy that didn’t suit her at all. Her deeply tanned face, dry and wrinkled, showed she’d spent a great deal of time at sea. Thomas put her age at about sixty, but she could be sixty-five or even older.

  Britta Rosensjöö hesitated before sitting in the chair still warm from her husband.

  “What do you remember from yesterday’s incident? Can you tell us?” Margit began.

  Britta Rosensjöö’s eyes filled with tears.

  Thomas recalled yesterday’s unsuccessful attempt to speak with her. She
’d been hysterical, just like Sylvia Juliander. He hoped today she could collect herself and provide some answers.

  She dried the tears running down her brown cheeks with an embroidered handkerchief.

  “Would you like some water?” Margit asked. She held out a full glass.

  “I’m sorry,” Britta said. “I just don’t understand how Oscar was shot down right before our eyes and we couldn’t do a single thing about it. The whole ordeal is so terrible.” Her eyes watered again, but she swallowed hard and continued. “I’d been taking photos of his beautiful Emerald Gin just as it neared the starting line. And then that horrible thing happened. I can’t comprehend it.”

  She dried more tears with her handkerchief.

  Thomas, now interested, leaned forward.

  “You said you were taking photographs?”

  “Yes, I often bring my camera along when I go to these events with Hans. I’ve got several dozen photo albums at home from the regattas we’ve attended over the years.”

  “Could we see your photos?”

  Britta looked unhappy.

  “I would have brought them with me today, but I must have misplaced my camera.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m forgetful sometimes. But it has to be here at the hotel. We’re on the third floor, in one of the suites facing the harbor. It’s probably there with all of our other things.”

  “Britta,” Thomas said softly. “We definitely need to borrow your camera for a while. Or, I should probably say, the memory card, as soon as you find it.”

  Britta Rosensjöö smiled at them as if begging forgiveness. “I’m sorry, but it’s not one of those modern digital ones. It’s an old-fashioned camera that uses film. You see, I’ve never bothered to learn about many of these newfangled technologies.”

  “That’s all right. But we do need that film. It could definitely help us. Can you search again as thoroughly as possible?”

  Britta nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Was there anything else you took pictures of that day?” asked Margit.