‘Hang on to what?’
‘To what we can call a normality.’
‘Why didn’t he want to do that?’
‘Several reasons, his mental problems, the divorce and…’
‘He’s got mental problems?’
‘He had, psychoses. I don’t know if he has them now. When you came here, it was the first time we’d seen him for I think nearly four years.’
‘Why did he have psychoses?’
‘A psychosis can be triggered by lots of things, people are vulnerable to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes it only needs a long period of stress, if you are extremely vulnerable. Overwork, or that something extreme suddenly takes place, that can trigger it.’
‘Was it something extreme with Tom?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘He’ll have to tell you himself, if and when he wants to.’
‘OK, but what did you do? Couldn’t you do anything?’
‘We did what we could, so we thought. Talked with him, many times, when he still could socialise, invited him to live here when he was thrown out of his flat, but then he slipped out of our hands, didn’t turn up when we had decided to meet, couldn’t be reached, and in the end he was more or less gone. We knew that Tom was a person who couldn’t be budged once he had made up his mind about something, so we let him go.’
‘Let him go?’
‘You can’t hold on to a person who isn’t there.’
‘But wasn’t it dreadful?’
‘It was dreadful, especially for Mette, she suffered for several years, and still does. But after your visit here, it got a bit better, he was communicating again, it was extremely… overwhelming. For both her and me.’
Mårten filled the wine glasses, sipped his own and smiled a little. Olivia looked at him and knew where she wanted the conversation to go although she hadn’t really got it on the admitted it to herself yet.
‘So how’s Kerouac feeling?’ she said.
‘Fine! Or good, he’s got that problem with his legs, but you can hardly get a Zimmer frame for a spider, can you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any pets?’
That was the direction Olivia had been aiming at. That was where she wanted to land. With somebody she could tell about it. Somebody who was far enough away and yet closer than anybody else. Just now.
‘I had a cat and I killed it with my car.’
She said, just to get it said, the most painful part.
‘You ran over it?’
‘No.’
And then Olivia told him, as clearly as she was capable, from the moment she saw the open window, via the moment she started the engine, to the moment she lifted up the bonnet.
Then she cried.
Mårten let her cry. He understood that this was a sorrow that she would take with her to her own cave-room and dip into now and then. That would never disappear. But just now she had formulated it and that was a part of the healing. He stroked her dark hair and gave her a cloth handkerchief. She dried her eyes.
‘Thank you.’
Then the door was wrenched open.
‘Hi! Hiii!’
It was Jolene who crashed into the room and gave Olivia a big hug right across the table. It was the first time they had met and Olivia was rather taken by surprise. Mette came in just after her. Mårten quickly poured a glass of wine for her too.
‘I want to draw you!’ said Jolene to Olivia.
‘Me?’
‘Only you!’
Jolene had already taken a drawing pad from a shelf and was now kneeling down in front of Olivia. An Olivia who quickly dried her eyes with the handkerchief again and tried to look natural.
Then Stilton phoned. On Olivia’s mobile.
‘Marianne’s going to help,’ he said.
‘She’s going to do the DNA?’
‘Do an analysis, yes.’
‘Take that away!’ said Jolene and pointed at the mobile.
Mårten bent down and whispered something to Jolene who crouched over her drawing pad. Olivia got up and went to one side.
‘When is she going to do it?’
‘She’s doing it now,’ said Stilton.
‘But how has she… have you been there? In Linköping?’
‘Yes.’
At this point she felt a warm feeling for Stilton surge up inside her.
‘Thank you’, was all she managed to say just as Stilton ended the call. Olivia turned round and saw how Mette looked at her.
‘Was that Tom?
‘Yes.’
Olivia rapidly and excitedly told the story of the hairslide and that they were now testing for a match, and what that might mean for the beach case. To her surprise Mette was not especially interested.
‘But it’s really interesting!’ said Olivia.
‘For him.’
‘Tom?’
‘Yes. And good that he is working on something.’
‘But isn’t it interesting for you?’
‘Not just now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m putting all my effort into solving the murder of Nils Wendt. It has happened now, whereas that happened twenty-four years ago. That’s one reason. The other is that it’s Tom’s case.’
Mette raised her wine glass.
‘And so it will remain.’
On the way home, that phrase echoed inside Olivia’s head. Did she mean that Stilton was going to take up his old case again? He wasn’t even in the police force. He was a homeless person. How would he be able to get at his old case? With her help? Was that what she had meant? ‘Without you, he would never have come here’, she remembered Mette saying. In the hall that last time. And she remembered very well how Stilton had unhesitatingly nicked her own hypothesis about Wendt’s link to the beach victim, when they were at Abbas’ place. Was Stilton getting back into his old case again? With her help?
Although her head was full of thoughts and questions, she was extremely wary when she approached the front door of the block of flats where she lived. She’d probably never again open that door without being all tensed up.
Especially after Stilton’s call.
And the DNA test.
Which had steered her directly back to that woman again, back to Jackie Berglund.
Whom she hated.
16
There are a large number of low-activity volcanoes in Costa Rica, and some active ones. Like Arenal. When it is active it is a spectacular natural phenomenon. Especially at night, the magma which makes its way down in the ready-cut gullies and embraces the mountain like glowing octopus tentacles. And the smoke, straight up in the sky and dramatically grey-black. If you see such an eruption from a little oval airplane window, then that alone is good value for the price of the journey.
Abbas el Fassi was totally uninterested in volcanoes. But he was afraid of flying.
Extremely afraid.
He didn’t know why. There was no rational explanation for it. But every time he was ten thousand metres up in the air only surrounded by a thin metal shell, he found himself on the verge of panic. On the verge; he could control it. He had to, but since he was no friend of drug-based or alcoholic anaesthetics it was an ordeal.
Every time.
It was only his natural brown skin colour that prevented him from looking like a newly dug-up corpse when he reached the Arrivals hall in San José and was met by a young man smoking a cigarette and holding a sign which said: ABASEL. FAS.
‘That’s me,’ said Abbas.
He spoke good Spanish. They were soon in the man’s little yellow-green car outside. Not until then, sunk down behind the wheel, did the man turn to Abbas.
‘Monsieur Garcia. Police constable. We’re going to Mal Pais.’
‘Afterwards. First we are going to Calle 34 in San José, do you know where that is?’
‘Yes, but I had orders that we should drive directly to…’
‘I’m changing that order.’
Garcia looked at Abbas. Abbas looked back. He had a really hellish flight in his body, from Stockholm via London and Miami to San José. He was near the edge. As Garcia could see.
‘Calle 34 it is.’
Garcia stopped outside a dilapidated building in a – as he had tried to explain to Abbas in the car on the way there – not particularly hospitable area.
‘It won’t take long,’ said Abbas.
He disappeared in through a shabby door.
Garcia lit another cigarette.
Abbas slowly lifted the lid off the little box and revealed two narrow black knives. Specially made, by his main supplier in Marseilles. A thin pale guy who came when Abbas called and who supplied things that Abbas couldn’t transport through the airports’ security controls around the world. So the pale man had to make them on the spot. Regardless of where that spot was.
Just now it was Calle 34 in San José, in Costa Rica.
They had known each other a long time.
So the pale guy wasn’t offended when Abbas asked for a couple of special tools that he knew the pale guy had with him. With the help of a little microscope he added the final touch to the edges of the blade.
For balance.
Something that could be a matter of life or death.
‘Thank you.’
They took the ferry across to the Nicoya peninsula and drove without stopping to Mal Pais, their conversation consisting of only a few words. Abbas found out what instructions Garcia had got from the Swedish police, that is from Mette. He was to drive the Swedish ‘representative’ and otherwise keep a low profile. On one occasion, Garcia asked what the visit was about.
‘A missing Swede.’
He was told no more.
The yellow-green car churned up quite a cloud of dust behind it. It was very rarely as dry as this on the roads along the coast.
‘Mal Pais!’ said Garcia.
They approached an area that looked like all the other areas they had passed. A few houses along a narrow dried-up road, only a stone’s throw from the sea. No type of centre, or even a crossroads, just a dusty road right through. The car came to a halt and Abbas climbed out.
‘Wait in the car,’ he said.
Abbas did the rounds. With a little plastic folder in his hand with two photos in it. One of the victim on Nordkoster and one of Dan Nilsson.
Alias Nils Wendt.
The rounds of Mal Pais were soon done. It was straight down one way, and then back again. No bars. A couple of restaurants some way up the mountainside, closed, a few small hotels and a beach. When he had walked there and back without meeting a soul, he went down to the beach. There he met with a couple of little boys who were playing at monitor lizards, scrabbling along in the sand and making small strange noises. Abbas knew that little boys had big ears and big eyes, when they wanted, at least he had had when he himself was little. It had helped him to survive in the slum districts in Marseilles. He sank down next to the boys and showed them the picture of Dan Nilsson.
‘The big Swede!’ said one of the boys straight away.
‘Do you know where the big Swede lives?’
‘Yes.’
The sun went quickly to bed in the ocean and left Mal Pais in cloying darkness. If he hadn’t had the little boys with him, he wouldn’t have discovered the simple wooden building in among the trees.
Now it was no problem.
‘There!’
Abbas looked towards the beautiful wooden house.
‘Does the big Swede live there?’
‘Yes. But he isn’t there.’
‘I know. He has gone to Sweden.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m his cousin, he wanted me to fetch some things for him that he forgot.’
Manual Garcia had followed after Abbas and the boys with the car. Now he got out and came up to them.
‘Is this his house?’
‘Yes. Come along.’
Abbas gave the little boys a hundred colones each and thanked them for their help. The boys stayed where they were.
‘You can go now.’
The boys didn’t move. Abbas gave them another hundred colones. Then they thanked him and ran off. Abbas and Garcia went in through the gate and up to the house. Abbas assumed it would be locked. It was. He looked at Garcia.
‘I forgot my map in the car,’ he said.
Garcia smiled a little. Is that how he wanted it? No problem. Garcia went back to the car and waited a minute or two. When he saw a light turned on in the house, he went back. Abbas opened the front door, from the inside, he had pushed in a little pane at the back and managed to open a window. The fast-descending dark gave enough cover for that sort of break-in. Besides, the animals had started to make themselves heard. Every possible sort of call. From birds, from apes, from the throats of other primates unknown to Abbas. The dry silence of an hour ago had turned into a humid rainforest cacophony.
‘What are you looking for?’ Garcia asked.
‘Documents.’
Garcia lit a cigarette and sat down in an armchair.
And lit another cigarette.
And yet another.
Abbas was a thorough man. Centimetre by centimetre he went through the big Swede’s house. He didn’t even miss the little stone slab under the double bed which hid a pistol. He left it where it was.
Pistols weren’t one of his tools.
When the packet of cigarettes was empty, and Abbas was on his third round of the kitchen, Garcia got up.
‘I’m going to buy some cigarettes, do you want anything?’
‘No.’
Garcia went out through the gate, got in his car and drove off. He vanished out of Mal Pais with a cloud of dust after him, on his way to Santa Teresa. When the dust had settled, a dark van drove out from one of the narrow tracks down towards the sea. The van stopped between some trees. Three men climbed out of the van.
Big men.
Of a type that the drug dealers in Stockholm would drool over.
Protected by the dark, they moved towards the big Swede’s garden. They looked at the house where the lights were on inside. One of them pulled out a mobile and took a couple of pictures of the man who was moving around inside the house.
The other two went round to the back.
Abbas sat on a bamboo chair in the living room. He hadn’t found anything of value. Nothing that could help Mette. No papers, no letters. No links to the murder of Nils Wendt in Stockholm. And nothing at all that was connected with the victim on Nordkoster, as Stilton had hoped for. The house was clean, except for the pistol under the bed. Abbas leaned back and closed his eyes. The long flight had taken its toll, physically. Mentally, he was inside his mantra, his way of recharging to be able to focus. So he didn’t notice the steps that slipped in through the back door, silently, the door that he himself had used. The very next second he did. He nimbly slipped out of the chair, shadow-like, and floated into the bedroom. The steps got closer. Garcia? Already? He heard the steps come into the room where he had just been sitting. Two? Sounded like it. Then there was silence again. Did they know he was here? Probably. The lights were on inside the house. He must have been visible from outside. Abbas kept close to the wooden wall. It could be neighbours. It could be people who had seen the lights on and wondered what he was doing in the house. It could be completely different people too. With completely different aims. Why couldn’t he hear anything? Abbas considered. The people outside knew that he was somewhere in the house and in the house there weren’t that many places he could be. The little kitchen was fully visible from the living room. They could see that he wasn’t there. So they must realise that he was where he was. Here. He breathed as silently as possible. Why didn’t they come in? Should he wait for them? Silently… in the end he made a decision and stepped out into the door opening. Two very brutally sculpted men with just as brutal pistols stood two metres in front of him with the muzzles of their guns pointed at his body. Calm.
‘Wh
o are you looking for?’ said Abbas.
The men glanced at each other: he speaks Spanish. The man on the right pointed with his pistol towards the chair where Abbas had just been sitting.
‘Sit down.’
Abbas looked at the muzzles, went across to the chair and sat down. The men were presumably Costa Ricans, he thought. Malevolent Costa Ricans. Robbers?
‘What’s this about?’ he said.
‘You’re in the wrong house,’ said the man on the left.
‘Is it yours?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Cleaning.’
‘That was a stupid answer. Try again.’
‘I’m looking for a missing monitor lizard,’ said Abbas.
The man glanced at each other. Bothersome type. One of them pulled out a thin rope.
‘Get up.’
That was a movement that was second nature to Abbas. Get up from a chair, crouching slightly forward, head bent over chest, and – in that movement – act. Neither of the men saw the movement but one of them felt the thin knife go through his throat and out through his carotid artery. The other got a squirt of warm blood straight in one eye. He took an involuntary step to the side and got a knife deep into his shoulder. His pistol went flying across the floor.
Abbas picked it up.
‘JUAN!’
The man with the knife in his shoulder called towards the door. Abbas glanced in the same direction.
The third man out there heard the shout from inside the house. He was on his way to the gate when Garcia’s headlights caught him. He crouched down in the ditch next to the gate. The yellow-green car braked to a halt in front of the house and Garcia climbed out with a cigarette in his mouth.
Hope that weird Swede is finished by now, he thought.
He was.
When Garcia stepped into the living room, two men lay on the floor. He immediately recognised them, from ‘Wanted’ descriptions and innumerable reports within the Costa Rican police. Two exceedingly notorious men. One of them lay in a large pool of blood on the floor and was presumably dead. The other sat leaning against a wall holding an arm against his bleeding right shoulder. The weird Swede stood beside the other wall and was wiping clean a couple of long narrow knives.
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