Spring Tide

by Börjlind, Cilla

  ‘OK? Sure, absolutely!’

  ‘And stick to facts. To Gardman and Wendt. She can do the rest herself.’

  ‘OK. Are you coming along?’

  He would go along. Besides, he had taken off his bandage and put a big plaster on the back of his head. A bit more discreet. They would go to a restaurant. Olivia had got hold of Mette who was just going to her car. Mårten and Jolene were at some dance performance or other in the city and would come home late. She herself would stop at a little restaurant in Saltsjö-Duvnäs and have a quick dinner.

  ‘Stazione,’ Mette said.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In a red station building, the station’s called Saltsjö-Duvnäs, on the Saltsjö local line.’

  Now they were sitting there, in the evening sun, on a wooden platform at the back of the beautiful station building, at a little round table just a couple of metres from the trains that came and went right in front of them. A strangely continental atmosphere. The restaurant was a family place, enormously popular with the locals, good food and lots of guests, which meant they had been shown to a table out here on the platform side. Fine with them. It suited their purpose perfectly. There was nobody sitting close to them who could hear. Especially not when Mette noticeably raised her voice a couple of times.

  ‘In Costa Rica?’

  At last she had the answer to what she had spent quite a lot of time on twenty-seven years ago. At last she knew where Nils Wendt had hidden all those years.

  ‘In Mal Pais,’ said Olivia, ‘on the Nicoya peninsula.’

  ‘Incredible!’

  Olivia was rather proud of generating such a reaction from the hardened detective. She looked very pleased when Mette immediately phoned Lisa Hedqvist and asked her to contact Ove Gardman and question him about Costa Rica. The information about where Wendt had been hanging out was of far more interest to Mette than his possible connection with the beach case. Admittedly, the period for prosecution hadn’t actually expired yet, but she had a decidedly more topical murder investigation to take care of. Besides, she felt that the beach case was still Tom’s.

  She turned her mobile off and looked at Stilton.

  ‘We need to make a visit.’

  ‘Mal Pais?’

  ‘Yes. Wendt’s home. There could be material there which could help us in the investigation, perhaps a motive for the murder, perhaps an explanation for why he disappeared. But it can be rather awkward.’

  ‘Why?’ Olivia wondered.

  ‘Because I don’t feel comfortable with the Costa Rican police, their efficiency is not exactly a hundred per cent, a lot of bureaucracy.’

  ‘So?’

  Olivia saw how Mette and Stilton exchanged a glance which very quickly turned into a consensus.

  Then they asked for the bill.

  It wasn’t often that Mette had cause to visit Casino Cosmopol. The big woman attracted quite a few glances when she strode into one of the gambling rooms. Above all from Abbas. He had clocked her already in the door. It only needed a quick look between them and he understood that it was soon time for another croupier to take over.

  Stilton and Olivia stood leaning against Mette’s car not far from the casino. On the way in from Stazione, Olivia had been given a short description of the person they were about to contact. Abbas el Fassi. A former bag-seller, now a croupier with a good reputation. He had done some undercover missions for both Mette and Stilton over the years.

  Which had worked better and better each time and convinced them both that Abbas could be relied upon one hundred per cent when it came to tasks that needed to be done a little on the side.

  Like this one.

  Where they didn’t want to involve the local police and have to plough through their bureaucracy to get the permission that would be necessary to do this the official way.

  So it would have to be the other way.

  The Abbas way.

  Olivia looked at Stilton.

  ‘Always?’

  Stilton had just told her a little about Abbas. About his past. Without going into details. Above all not about what led to Abbas being pulled up out of a semi-criminal swamp with the help of Stilton and finding himself under probation in Mette and Mårten’s home. Where he ended up being regarded as one of the family. Largely thanks to Jolene. She was seven years old when Abbas made his appearance, and it was her who eventually broke through Abbas’ extremely hard outer shield and got him to dare. Both to accept the family’s care and love, and to express his own. A rather enormous step for an orphan boy from Marseilles. Still to this day, Abbas was regarded as a member of the Olsäter family.

  And he himself watched over Jolene like a hawk.

  And carried a knife.

  ‘Always,’ said Stilton.

  He had rounded off by implying that Abbas was extremely fond of knives. He always carried a most special knife on him that he had made himself.

  ‘But what if he loses it?’

  ‘He has five.’

  Mette and Abbas came out of the casino and headed for the car. Stilton had prepared himself for the meeting with Abbas. It was quite a long time since they last met. Under circumstances that Stilton didn’t like to have to think about.

  Now they met again.

  But it went as it often did with Abbas. A couple of quick looks, a nod, and it was all done. When Abbas slipped into the seat next to Mette, Stilton felt how he had missed him.

  Mette had suggested that they should drive to Abbas’s home. On Dalagatan. Without thinking about the roadworks for the new underground line. Or the area in which they creating a large cavern which in the future would become a commuter station on Vanadisvägen but for the time being occupied a whole block round where Abbas lived. More than once he’d been sitting in his flat and felt the underground explosions make the whole building vibrate, and looked out at the poor Matteus Church opposite where God had to struggle to keep the bricks in place.

  Now they were all sitting in his living room. Mette told him why they had come. A visit to where Wendt had been living in Mal Pais in Costa Rica and a search of his home. Mette would see that there would be some degree of cooperation with the local police via her own channels. Abbas would have to take care of the main task himself.

  As he saw fit.

  Mette would cover the costs.

  Then she went through all the known details in the case so far, and Abbas absorbed it. In silence.

  When Mette had had her say, dealing with the issues connected with her own murder enquiry, Stilton pitched in with yet another request.

  ‘If you’re going there, you could also see if you can find any connection between Wendt and the woman who was murdered on Nordkoster in 1987. They might have met in Costa Rica, she might have travelled to Nordkoster to fetch something that Wendt had hidden at his summer house, OK?’

  Olivia was slightly startled by this. She noted how Stilton, without even a glance at her, had pinched one of her ‘conspiracy theories’ and made it his own. That’s what he’s like, she thought. I’ll remember that.

  Now they were waiting for Abbas’ answer.

  Olivia had sat quietly the whole time. She felt how the three others had a very special chemistry, which stretched long into the past. There was a fundamental respect in the tone between them. She had also noted how Stilton and Abbas had occasionally looked at each other. Quick glances, as if there was something unsaid between them.

  What was it?

  ‘I’ll go.’

  Abbas didn’t say any more than that. But he did, however, ask if anyone wanted some tea. Mette wanted to go home and Stilton wanted to leave and they both said no thank you, and were on their way to the hall when Olivia said yes, she would like some tea.

  ‘That would be nice.’

  Olivia didn’t really know why she said it, but there was something about Abbas. She had been fascinated by him the moment he had slipped into the car and down onto the seat in a single lithe movement. And there was a scent. Not perfume
, something else, that she didn’t recognise at all. Now he came in with a silver tray with tea and cups on it.

  Olivia looked at the room she was sitting in. A very attractive room. Painted white, sparsely furnished, with a few beautiful etchings on one wall, a thin sober textile hanging covered another wall, no TV, a slightly worn wooden floor. She wondered whether Abbas was a bit of a pedant.

  He was, on some levels.

  As for the other levels, very few people knew about those.

  Olivia looked at Abbas. He stood next to a low discreet bookcase, filled with very slim books. His white short-armed sweater hung comfortably above a pair of well-cut grey chinos. Where does he keep it? Olivia wondered. The knife? That he always carried on him, according to Stilton. Always. Her eyes looked over Abbas’ body. He’s hardly wearing any clothes. Has he put it down somewhere?

  ‘You have curious eyes.’

  Abbas turned round with a little cup of tea in his hand. Olivia felt caught out. She didn’t want Abbas to misinterpret her look.

  ‘Stilton says that you always carry a knife.’

  Abbas’s reaction was minimal, but evident. And negative. Why had Stilton told Olivia about his knife? Unnecessary. The knife was a part of Abbas’ hidden character. It was not something public. Not even this young girl ought to have access to that information.

  ‘Sometimes Stilton talks a lot.’

  ‘But is it true? Do you have it on you now?’

  ‘No. Sugar?’

  ‘A little, yes please.’

  Abbas turned round again. Olivia sank back on the low armchair and just that very same moment something hit the wooden frame right next to her – a long thin black knife trembled only a couple of centimetres from her shoulder. Olivia jerked to one side and stared at Abbas who was walking towards her with a cup in his hand.

  ‘It isn’t a knife, it’s a stripped Black Circus, 260 grams. Shall we talk a little about the beach case?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Olivia took hold of the cup of tea and started to talk. A little too fast and strained. The knife was still stuck in the armchair. At the back of her head, the question was: where the hell had he had the knife?

  * * *

  Ove Gardman sat in the kitchen in his old family home on Nordkoster. He looked out through the window. A little earlier, he had talked to a woman police officer in Stockholm and told her what he knew about Wendt and Mal Pais. The can of ravioli had been eaten. Not in itself a culinary experience, but it had done the job and satisfied his hunger. Tomorrow he would go shopping and buy some proper food.

  He looked around in the old family house.

  He had stopped off quickly at his two-room flat in Göteborg before going on to Strömstad, visiting his old dad at the retirement home and travelling across to Nordkoster.

  ‘Home to Nordkoster’, since that was where he belonged.

  It was as simple as that.

  Now his mum and dad no longer lived in the house, and it made the place a bit sad. And empty. His mother Astrid had died three years ago and Bengt had recently had a stroke. Now he was partially paralysed on the right side of his body. An unpleasant handicap for an old weather-beaten lobster fisherman who all his life had defied the sea with his amazing constitution.

  Ove sighed a little. He got up from the kitchen table, put his plate in the sink and thought about Costa Rica. It had been a fantastic journey, instructive, and strange.

  And it got even stranger when he got home and rang that Olivia Rönning. Dan Nilsson murdered. A missing businessman who was really called Nils Wendt. Who had gone to Nordkoster straight after their meeting in Mal Pais. And then been murdered. What had he done here? On the island? Weird. Unpleasant. Was it connected with what I told him about the woman on the beach? Ove wondered.

  He went up to the front door and turned the latch. He never usually did that. You didn’t really need to here on Nordkoster, but he did it anyway. Then he went up to his childhood room.

  He stood in the doorway and looked into the room. It had hardly been touched since he moved to Göteborg to study at university. The old wallpaper with the shell motif, entirely in accordance with the wishes of the young Ove, had passed its best-before date many years ago and needed painting over.

  He crouched down. The linoleum on the floor had fulfilled its function. There would certainly be a wooden floor under it that he could paint or sand down and oil. He tried to pull up the corner of the lino to see what was underneath, but couldn’t loosen it. A chisel, perhaps? He went out to the big tool cupboard in the hall, his father Bengt’s pride. Everything was there sorted and hung up in perfect order.

  Ove smiled to himself when he opened the cupboard and saw it. His own old box of treasures. A wooden box he had made in the carpentry class at school, and that he filled with things he found on the beach. Amazing that it had survived. And here of all places? In Bengt’s beloved tool cupboard. He lifted out the box with the powerdrill and carefully picked up his old box.

  He took the box into the bedroom and opened it on the bed. Everything was still there, just like he remembered it: the bird’s skull that he and mum found up by the Skum coves. Bits of birds’ eggs. Beautiful stones and bits of wood, and pieces of glass that had been worn down by the sea. Some odder things too, things that had washed up on the beach. Half a coconut, for example, and all the shells. Whelk and cockle shells, oyster shells and fan mussels. Shells that he and Iris had found the summer they were nine years old and in love. And the hairslide he had found later in the summer. Iris’ hairslide. He had found it in the seaweed on the beach and was going to give it back to her, but she had moved home for the summer and the year after he had forgotten about the hairslide and Iris.

  Ove took it out of the box.

  Just think, there was even a little strand of hair from Iris on it. After all those years. But? Ove held the slide under the light from the table lamp. Hadn’t she had blond hair? These hairs were much darker. Almost black. How strange.

  Ove started to think about it. When had he found it? Really? The hairslide? Was it the same evening as… yes, damn it, it was! Suddenly his memory was crystal clear! He had found the hairslide in the seaweed next to the new footprints in the sand, and then… then he had heard those voices further along the beach and he’d hidden behind the rocks!

  That night there was a spring tide.

  Abbas pulled the knife out from the armchair frame. Olivia had drunk her tea and left. He had followed her to the door. There was no more to it. Now he keyed in a number on his mobile and waited. He got an answer. In one of his two mother tongues, French, he expressed his wishes to somebody at the other end.

  ‘How long will it take?’ he asked.

  ‘Two days. Where shall we meet?’

  ‘In San José, Costa Rica. I’ll text you.’

  He hung up.

  15

  Three people were making their way down the corridor at the National Crime Squad. They were all newly awakened, yet alert and ready.

  Mette had summoned her team especially early, at 06.30 they were all in the room. Ten minutes later she had told them about the information she had received from Olivia the day before. To this was added Lisa Hedqvist’s conversation with Gardman the previous evening. It didn’t really contain anything new. But now they knew where Wendt had been living before he came to Sweden. A large map of Costa Rica was put on the board. Mette pointed out Mal Pais on the Nicoya peninsula.

  ‘I have sent a personal contact out there.’

  Nobody reacted. They all knew that Mette knew what she was doing.

  Bosse Thyrén walked up to the board. Mette had phoned him when she left Abbas’ flat the previous evening and given him the necessary information to get going.

  ‘I have mapped out Wendt’s route,’ said Bosse. ‘He checked in at the airport in San José in Costa Rica under the same name that he used to rent the car here, Dan Nilsson.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Friday, 10th of June, at 23.
10 local time.’

  Bosse wrote this on the board.

  ‘What passport was he using?’

  ‘We’re working on that. The plane flew to London via Miami, arrived 06.10, and then he took a plane to Landvetter, Göteborg, on Sunday 12th of June at 10.35.’

  ‘Still as Dan Nilsson?’

  ‘Yes. From Landvetter airport he took a taxi to the central station and bearing in mind his sighting in Nordkoster later that evening we can assume he went directly to Strömstad and took a boat across.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks, Bosse. Did you get any sleep at all?’

  ‘No. But it’s OK.’

  Mette gave him an appreciative look.

  Bosse’s information was quickly put together with his earlier mapping of Wendt’s movements after he left Nordkoster. Now they had a pattern of movements that stretched from San José in Costa Rica to the Oden hotel on Karlbergsvägen. Via Nordkoster.

  ‘The technicians have been in touch about Wendt’s mobile, they’ve got it to work.’

  One of the older investigators came up to Mette with a plastic folder.

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything of value?’

  ‘Yes, I would say so.’

  A slight understatement, Mette noted when she quickly looked at the report. Among other things it contained a detailed list of calls.

  With dates and exact times.

  * * *

  Ove Gardman had phoned Olivia late the previous evening and told her about the hairslide he had found. A slide with a black hair in it. Might that be of interest?

  It might.

  Gardman has also received an urgent request to stand in for somebody at a lecture on marine biology in Stockholm the next day, and he intended taking the morning train up.

  ‘The lobby bar at the Royal Viking. Next to the Central Station. How would that suit you?’ Olivia suggested.

  ‘Fine.’

  Gardman strolled into the bar with washed-out blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Tanned, and with sun-bleached hair. Olivia examined the guy who’d come in and wondered if he was single. Then she stopped looking. Gardman went up to the bar and ordered an espresso. When he’d got his coffee he turned round, looked at his watch and caught sight of a dark-haired girl over by the panorama window. He took a gulp of his coffee and waited. Another gulp later Olivia raised her head and had another look at the guy at the bar again.