Spring Tide

by Börjlind, Cilla

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘With the beach case?’

  ‘Yes. Did you get hold of Stilton?’

  Stilton? He hadn’t been on the agenda at all the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘No. But I spoke to Verner Brost, at the Cold Case Division, he said that Stilton had left the force for personal reasons. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘No. Or rather yes.’

  ‘No, or rather yes?’

  ‘He left for personal reasons.’

  ‘OK. No, otherwise I haven’t found much.’

  She thought she could save her Koster experiences for a more considered summary at some later date.

  If there ever was to be one.

  The Wernemyrs lived in a beautiful old building, on the first floor, with a view of the harbour that estate agents love. Gunnar’s wife, Märit, had made some coffee and given Olivia a spoonful of brown liquid to ease her throat.

  Now they sat in the couple’s green-painted kitchen, which probably hadn’t been renovated since the early 1960s. On the windowsill, small china dogs vied for space with photos of grandchildren and pink Mårbacka geraniums. Olivia was always interested in photos. She pointed at one of them.

  ‘Are they your grandchildren?’

  ‘Yes. Ida and Emil. They’re our pride and joy,’ said Märit. ‘They’re coming to visit next week and they’ll be staying over the midsummer holiday. It will be such fun to look after them again.’

  ‘Now, then, don’t exaggerate,’ Gunnar smiled. ‘You usually think it’s rather nice when they go home again too.’

  ‘Yes, it is rather a lot at once. How does your throat feel?’

  Märit gave Olivia a sympathetic look.

  ‘A bit better, thanks.’

  Olivia sipped some coffee from the dainty china cup with red roses on it. Her grandmother had the same service. And they chatted about today’s police training, all three of them. Märit had worked in the police archives in Strömstad.

  ‘Now they’ve centralised it all,’ she said. ‘Everything has been put into the central archives down in Göteborg.’

  ‘I suppose that’s where the case records are now,’ said Gunnar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia.

  She hoped he wouldn’t be too secretive when it came to opening his heart a little about the investigation. It had, after all, happened many years ago.

  ‘So what did you want to know about Jackie Berglund?’

  Not so secretive, Olivia thought, and said:

  ‘How many times did you interrogate her?’

  ‘Twice, here at the station. And once out on Nordkoster, to help with enquiries. That was the first,’ said Gunnar.

  ‘Why was she brought in here for an interrogation?’

  ‘It was because of the yacht. Do you know about that?’

  ‘Not really…’

  ‘Well, Jackie was evidently a female escort.’

  A luxury prostitute, Olivia reflected from the viewpoint of her Rotebro upbringing.

  ‘You know, one of those luxury whores,’ said Märit in her Strömstad manner.

  Olivia smiled a little. Gunnar went on:

  ‘She was on board a fancy Norwegian yacht with two Norwegians who left the island shortly after the murder. Or tried to leave the island, one of our police boats stopped the yacht some distance from land, checked where it came from and accompanied it back to the island. And because the Norwegians were extremely drunk and Jackie Berglund was clearly under the influence of something other than alcohol, all three of them were brought here so that we could interrogate them when they had sobered up.’

  ‘And you were in charge of the interrogation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gunnar was the best interrogator on the west coast.’

  Märit said that more as a statement of fact that as a boast.

  ‘And what did you get out of them?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘One of the Norwegians said they’d heard on the radio that a storm would blow up the next day so they left the island, they wanted to get to their home harbour. The other one said that they had run out of booze and they were sailing to Norway to get some more.’

  Very different versions, Olivia thought.

  ‘And what did Jackie Berglund say?’

  ‘That she had no idea why they sailed off, she just went along with them.’

  ‘She said: “Sailing’s not exactly my thing”,’ said Märit with a Stockholm dialect.

  Olivia looked at Märit.

  ‘That’s what she said, that Berglund woman, we had a good laugh about it when you came home and told me, do you remember?’

  Märit smiled at Gunnar who looked a bit embarrassed. Leaking information from an interrogation to your wife was not exactly according to the rule book. Olivia didn’t care.

  ‘But what did they say about the actual murder?’ she asked.

  ‘They all said the same about that, none of them had been up by Hasslevikarna, not on the murder evening or before that.’

  ‘Was that true?’

  ‘We don’t know, not a hundred per cent, the case was of course never solved. We didn’t have anything that could connect them to the site of the murder. Are you related to Arne Rönning, by the way?’

  ‘He’s my father. Or was.’

  ‘We read that he had passed away,’ said Gunnar. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Olivia nodded and Märit pulled out a photo album with pictures from Gunnar’s police career. In a couple of photos he was standing with Arne and another policeman.

  ‘Is that Tom Stilton?’ Olivia wondered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right… you don’t have any idea where he is today? Stilton?’

  ‘No.’

  * * *

  She had chosen the cerise dress, in the end, after all. She was particularly fond of it. It was simply cut, but pretty. Now she was standing next to her husband at the Chamber of Commerce and smiling. It wasn’t just for show. She smiled because she was proud of her husband. Just like she knew he was proud of her. They had never had any problems with keeping a professional balance. He looked after his business, and she looked after hers, and they were both successful. She on a lesser scale, globally, but still successful. She was a career coach, and had been doing very well in recent years. Everybody wanted to have a career and she knew the tricks. She had learnt some of them from Bertil, there were few with his experience, but the greater part of her success was due to her own merits.

  She was competent.

  So when the Swedish monarch leaned forward and gave her a compliment on the cerise piece it wasn’t indirect polite flattery intended for Bertil. It was addressed directly to her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  It wasn’t the first time they had met. The monarch and Bertil shared an interest in hunting, especially grouse shooting. They had been in the same hunting party a couple of times and were on speaking terms. In as far as anyone was on speaking terms with a king, she thought. But sufficiently ‘speaking’ for Bertil and his wife to be invited to a couple of small dinners with people in the royal family’s closest circles. They were rather formal for Linn’s taste, the Queen was no joker, but they were important for Bertil. Contacts were established, and it was never a bad thing if word got about that you had had dinner with the King now and then.

  Linn smiled to herself, that was important in Bertil’s world, less important in her own. What was more important was to try to bring an end to all the mud that was being slung at MWM just now. Mud that even splashed onto her. On their way into the ceremony there had been a little flock on Västra Trädgårdsgatan with banners which accused MWM of rather nasty things. She saw that this irritated Bertil. He knew that the media would cover this too, and be sure to compare it with his award.

  And dirty it a little.

  A pity.

  She looked around her. Most of the people there were familiar to her. There was a cast of rich business men named Pirre and Tusse and Latte and Pygge and Mygge and simi
lar. She had never really learnt who was who. In her world people had more distinct names. But she knew that these people were important for Bertil. People he went hunting with, sailing with, did business with – and to whom he was often related.

  But he refrained from other activities.

  She knew her husband well enough to know that.

  They were still in love with each other and had a good sex life. Not that frequent, but fully satisfactory when it finally went bang.

  ‘Satisfactory’, she thought. What a word for sex. And smiled, just when Bertil looked at her. He was looking good today. A tie in a muted purple, simple black suit, elegant, his hand-sewn Italian number. The only thing she didn’t like was the shirt. All blue with a white collar. That was more or less the ugliest item of clothing she could imagine. For several years she had waged quite a campaign against that sort of shirt.

  Without success.

  Some things were deeper than scars. For Bertil, it was a blue shirt with a white collar. It was a sort of archetypical emblem for him. It signalled a belonging that she herself felt very alien to.

  Timeless class.

  So he thought.

  Absolutely ridiculous, in her opinion. And ugly.

  Bertil received his award directly from the King’s hand. He bowed slightly here and there, glanced at Linn and gave her a wink. Hope his bladder stays under control, she thought. This is not exactly a good moment to go looking for the toilet.

  ‘Champagne!’

  A number of rented white jackets sailed around with trays full of well-chilled Grande Cuvée. Linn and Bertil each took a glass and raised them.

  That was when it rang.

  Or, rather, vibrated. The mobile in Bertil’s pocket.

  He withdrew a little with his champagne glass, fished up his mobile answered it.

  ‘Magnuson.’

  A dialogue could be heard in the mobile. Fairly short, but – for Magnuson – shocking. An excerpt from a recorded conversation.

  ‘I know that you’re prepared to go a long way, Bertil, but murder?’

  ‘Nobody can link us to it.’

  ‘But we know.’

  ‘We don’t know anything… if we don’t want to.’

  The dialogue was cut off.

  Bertil lowered the mobile after a couple of seconds, with a decidedly numb arm. He knew exactly when that conversation had taken place and he knew exactly who the voices belonged to.

  Nils Wendt and Bertil Magnuson.

  The last line had been his own.

  ‘We don’t know anything… if we don’t want to.’

  What he hadn’t known, was that the conversation had been recorded.

  ‘A toast! Bertil!’

  The King raised his glass to Bertil. With supreme effort he raised his own and forced his mouth into a sort of smile.

  A desperate smile.

  Linn reacted immediately. His bladder? She quickly took a couple of steps and smiled.

  ‘If the King can excuse us, I must kidnap my husband a few minutes.’

  ‘But of course, of course.’

  The King did not stand on ceremony. Especially when faced with a cerise beauty like Linn Magnuson.

  So the cerise beauty took her obviously preoccupied husband aside.

  ‘Bladder?’ she whispered.

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’

  ‘Come along.’

  Just like an efficient wife should behave when her husband goes down, she took command and led him to a not too distant toilet where he sneaked in like a shadow of his old self.

  Linn waited outside.

  Which was probably lucky, for a very simple reason.

  Bertil did not empty his bladder.

  He bent down over the toilet bowl and vomited. The dainty sandwiches as well as the champagne and his breakfast toast with marmalade all came up.

  The big player had shrunk.

  * * *

  The passenger on the seat next to her explained how unfortunate it was that the seats were so close together, considering how germs fly hither and thither through the air. Olivia agreed. She also did her best to smother her mouth and nose when she couldn’t help releasing a hefty sneeze, and tried to turn away as best she could. And she wasn’t very successful. Sometime around Linköping, the passenger moved to another seat.

  Olivia remained where she was, on the X2000 express. She had a pain in her chest and felt that her forehead was alarmingly hot. She had spent an hour on her mobile and perhaps another thirty minutes making notes. Then her thoughts had turned to the conversation in Strömstad and to Jackie Berglund… ‘Sailing’s not exactly my thing.’ And what was your thing then, Jackie? she wondered. To be rented out on a fancy yacht to be fucked by Norwegians? While a young woman was buried in the sand fifteen minutes away from your orgies. Or what?

  Or what? Suddenly an entirely different thought popped up inside Olivia’s feverish head.

  What did she know about the drowned woman?

  She suddenly realised how much she had been coloured by the fact that nobody knew anything. About the ‘poor’ victim. And how that had created an image of a helpless young woman who was subjected to horrifyingly evil treatment.

  What if it wasn’t like that at all?

  Nobody knew anything about the victim after all.

  Not even her name.

  What if she had been rented out too? A call girl.

  But she was pregnant!

  Calm down now, Olivia, there are limits.

  Or are there? At college they had had a lesson about porn sites. About how they were organised, how hard it was to trace them, how hard it was to… pregnant women! Here and there, not infrequently, among the billions of porn films that were churned out, there were special sites for ‘Looking for a bit of kinky stuff?’ and ‘Fucking pregnant women?’

  She remembered that she had found that even more repulsive that the rest. Sex with donkeys or dinosaurs, fine, that was just ridiculous. But buying sex with women in the final stage of pregnancy?

  There was a market for it, unfortunately.

  That was a reality.

  What if the victim on the beach had been one of Jackie’s mates? Rented out precisely on account of her being pregnant. And then something went wrong on that fancy yacht and ended with the murder.

  Then again! … and now her feverish imagination was in overdrive… then again perhaps one of the Norwegians was the father of the child and she refused to have an abortion? She and Jackie might have had sex with those Norwegians on other occasions and then the victim had got preggers and tried to blackmail the Norwegian and then it all blew up and they killed her?

  At that point, her mobile rang.

  It was her mum. She wanted to invite Olivia to dinner.

  ‘This evening?’

  ‘Yes. Have you got anything else on?’

  ‘Just now I’m sitting on a train from Göteborg and…’

  ‘When do you arrive?’

  ‘At about five-ish, then I need to…’

  ‘But you don’t sound too good? Are you ill?’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a…’

  ‘Have you got a fever?’

  ‘Perhaps, I haven’t…’

  ‘Is your throat swollen?’

  ‘A bit.’

  In five seconds, Maria’s worried questions had taken Olivia all the way back to when she was five. She was ill and her mum was worried about her.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Seven,’ said Maria.

  * * *

  The esplanade on Strandgatan is very beautiful. Seen from the water, it is an impressive mixture of old architecture stretching out along the tree-lined street. Specially if you raise your eyes and look up at the roofs. All those eccentric towers and corners and brickwork. A respectable face to the world.

  What hides behind that face is another matter.

  The beauty of the street was hardly foremost in Bertil Magnuson’s mind as he walked along the quay. At a safe distance from anyone he called P
igge and Mygge and Tusse. His slightly concerned wife had dropped him off at Nybroplan at the beginning of Strandgatan after he had firmly reassured her that everything was okay now. It had just been a bit too much with the ceremony and the king and those chanting demonstrators outside.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. I need to think about a contract that we’re going to negotiate on Wednesday, I want to walk a little.’

  He often did that when he needed to think something through, so Linn dropped him off and drove on.

  Bertil was decidedly overwrought as he walked along. He had immediately understood who lay behind that taped conversation on his mobile.

  Nils Wendt.

  At one time a very close friend. A musketeer. One of the three who stuck together through thick and thin at the Stockholm School of Economics back in the Sixties. The third was Erik Grandén, now a very senior man at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The trio had seen themselves as modern versions of Dumas’ heroes. They even had the same motto as the musketeers.

  That was as far as their imagination would stretch.

  But they were convinced that they would astound the world. At any rate, parts of it.

  And they succeeded.

  Grandén became a political wunderkind and chairman of the youth section of the Moderate Alliance party when he was only twenty-six. Magnuson himself and Wendt started MWM – Magnuson Wendt Mining. This soon became a bold and successful prospecting company in Sweden as well as abroad.

  Then things started going a bit wrong.

  Not for the company. That expanded, globally and financially and was floated on the Stock Exchange after a few years. But things started to go wrong for Wendt. Or the relationship between Bertil and Wendt. That went wrong. And it ended with Wendt disappearing from the picture. And ‘Wendt’ was changed to ‘World’ – Magnuson World Mining.

  And now Wendt was back.

  With an extremely unpleasant conversation between him and Bertil. A conversation that Bertil had had no idea had been recorded, but which he immediately understood the scope of. If it were to become public then Bertil Magnuson’s time as a big player was over.