Spring Tide

by Börjlind, Cilla

  Abbas el Fassi was on his way out of the plane. There was a bit of a crush in the exit corridor and he was tired too. He still had some pain from when he had been hit on the head. And on top of that, his body had just suffered another gruelling flight.

  A very heavy attack of perspiration together with a couple of unexpected air pockets over Denmark had forced him to pull out the material under his sweater and put it inside a plastic bag. He was carrying that in his hand now. A blue plastic bag. Otherwise he had no luggage in this direction either.

  He was not a man who bought a lot of things.

  He had given the knives to two little boys in Mal Pais.

  In the plexiglass corridor between the plane and the arrivals hall, he pulled out his mobile and rang Stilton. No reply.

  As soon as he got to the end of the corridor, he was met by Lisa Hedqvist and Bosse Thyrén. He knew who they were. Together they walked into the arrivals hall. Both Lisa and Abbas pulled out their mobiles. Lisa phoned Mette and said that everything was under control. They were on their way out.

  ‘Where shall we go?’

  Mette thought about that a couple of seconds. She considered it reasonable that Stilton should be there when Abbas showed his material from Costa Rica. It concerned the beach case to the greatest degree, she had already understood that much from Abbas’ short call between two planes. The police headquarters is not a good idea, she thought.

  ‘Take him to his flat on Dalagatan. We’ll meet you outside.’

  Abbas talked on his mobile with Olivia.

  ‘Do you know where Stilton is?’

  ‘In the caravan?’

  ‘He’s not answering.’

  ‘Really? But he’s there, I phoned not so long ago and he was there then. He seemed very tired, I think he was going to get some sleep. But he said he’d keep his phone turned on. Perhaps he’s too tired to answer?’

  ‘OK. We’ll keep in touch.’

  Abbas come out into the arrivals hall with Bosse and Lisa on either side. They went straight to the exit. None of them noticed the man standing by a wall and looking at the croupier from Casina Cosmopol who was just cutting across the hall. K. Sedovic pulled out his phone.

  ‘Is he alone?’ asked Bertil Magnuson.

  ‘No. He’s with a guy and a girl. Plain clothes.’

  Bertil processed that information. Were they people he had met on the plane? Or people he was working with? Were they plain clothes police?

  ‘Follow them.’

  Olivia sat in her kitchen clutching her mobile. Why hadn’t Stilton answered when Abbas phoned? He wasn’t going to turn his mobile off. Of course he would have answered when he saw that it was Abbas phoning. Had he turned it off after all? She tried to phone Stilton. No answer. Had his credit run out? But even so you ought to be able to phone him. She wasn’t quite sure how it worked.

  Her imagination set to work.

  Had something happened? Had he been beaten up again? Or is it that bastard Jackie Berglund? Stilton had been in the interrogation room.

  She jumped up.

  When she came out onto the street she was very upset and made a decision.

  The Mustang!

  She ran across to the residents’ parking area and stopped when she reached her car. She had very mixed feelings. She hadn’t sat in the car since that day with Elvis. Now Elvis was dead and the car was unpleasant. She had loved both of them, and now it had all changed. It wasn’t only Elvis and the car that they had taken from her, it was a bit of Dad too. But now it was about Stilton. Something might have happened to him! She unlocked the door and sank down behind the wheel. When she put the key in and turned the ignition, she felt her whole body trembling. She forced herself to put the car in Drive and set off.

  There was a natural explanation for why Stilton didn’t answer. His mobile lay like a little twisted plastic sausage in the ashes of what was once Vera Larsson’s caravan. Now transformed into a black smouldering ruin, surrounded by fire engines that were busy winding in their hoses. They had hosed water over the last burning remains and made sure nothing spread to the forest around. And they had cordoned off the area. Mainly to keep curious locals at a proper distance.

  Those same curious locals who now in whispers noted that the eyesore of a caravan was no longer there.

  Olivia parked her car some way away. She ran to where some trees had been cut down, and had to argue her way up to the cordon. But then she was stopped. Some uniformed police officers standing there prevented her from getting closer.

  Just behind them stood two plainclothes investigators: Rune Forss and Janne Klinga

  They had just arrived and noted that the site of Vera Larsson’s murder was no more.

  ‘Some rowdy kids out for a bit of fun…’ said Forss, thereby making Klinga face a dilemma. If he said that Stilton had moved into the caravan, he’d have to explain how he knew that. And that was something he couldn’t really explain.

  Not to Forss.

  ‘But someone else might have moved in, after her,’ he said.

  ‘Possibly, the technicians will tell us that. If there was someone here when it burned then there won’t be much left to interrogate. Will there?’

  ‘No, but surely we must…’

  ‘Is there anybody in the caravan?’

  It was Olivia who had pushed her way a bit closer. Forss looked at her.

  ‘Should there have been?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I know the man who lived there.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘He’s called Tom Stilton.’

  Klinga immediately felt he’d been let off the hook. Forss, however, was speechless. Stilton? Had he lived in this caravan? Had he died in the fire? Forss looked at the smouldering remains.

  ‘Do you know if he was there?’

  Klinga looked at Olivia. He remembered that they had bumped into each other in the door to the caravan a couple of days earlier, and realised that she knew Stilton. What would he say?

  ‘We don’t know, our technicians must go through the remains to see if…’

  Olivia abruptly turned round and ran towards a tree. There she collapsed in a heap, completely crushed, and hyperventilated. She tried to convince herself that Stilton hadn’t been in the caravan. There was no reason he had to be there. Just then. When it started to burn.

  She made her way back to the car. Confused, shocked. Behind her, the fire engines slowly drove away and curious onlookers left in various directions, chatting. As if nothing had happened, she thought. She pulled out her mobile with trembling hands and dialled a number. It was Mårten who answered. With a heavy stammer she tried to tell him what had happened.

  ‘Has he been killed in the fire?’

  ‘I don’t know! They don’t know. Is Mette there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ask her to phone me!’

  ‘Olivia, you must…’

  Olivia dismissed the call and then phoned Abbas.

  He answered from an unmarked police car on the way in from Arlanda. A car that just then was barely moving. A truck had managed to jackknife and ram the steel cables separating the carriageways and caused a major hold-up in the other direction. Their direction. They couldn’t get past the scene of the accident. The queues moved at a snail’s pace.

  The same applied to the car trailing them.

  It was just a few cars behind.

  Abbas hung up. Had Tom been in the caravan? Was that why he hadn’t answered? Abbas looked out through the car window, there were low patches of mist hovering over the wide green fields. Is this how you get notified of a death? he thought.

  In a traffic jam?

  Olivia drove home. Parked the car and walked slowly up to the entrance to the building. She could hardly think straight any longer. Digest the news. She couldn’t understand what had happened. But her instincts still worked, more or less. When she keyed in the door code and pushed the door open, she did so with some cau
tion. She had seen Jackie Berglund’s gaze from the taxi outside the police headquarters, and she had seen Vera’s burnt-out caravan. Was that Jackie’s revenge for the interrogation?

  There were no lights on in the lobby, but she knew exactly how far away the light switch was. She could reach it while still keeping the door open with her foot. She stretched out her hand towards the switch and suddenly gave a start. She had seen something out of the corner of her eye. She screamed at the same moment that she pressed the switch. The light flooded over a very pathetic looking figure with scorched hair and burnt clothes and whose arms were bleeding from various scratches.

  ‘Tom?’

  Stilton looked at her and coughed. Violently. Olivia rushed forward and helped him onto his feet. They made their way slowly up the stairs and into the flat. Stilton sank down on a chair in the kitchen. Olivia phoned Abbas. They had left the queue and were now close to Sveaplan.

  ‘Is he with you?’ said Abbas.

  ‘Yes. Can you phone Mette? I’ve not been able to get hold of her.’

  ‘OK. Where do you live?’

  Olivia put plasters on the bleeding cuts and scratches as best she could. Opened a window to air out the acrid stink of smoke and tried to offer him a cup of coffee. Stilton didn’t say a word. He let her carry on. The shock was still in his body. He knew how close it had been. If he hadn’t managed to smash a window at the back with a Calor gas tube, the technicians would now have picked up the remains of a twisted skeleton and taken them away in a black bag.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Stilton took the mug of coffee with trembling hands. Panic? He had panicked. Not surprising, perhaps, he thought. Shut inside a burning caravan. But he knew that it was something else that had triggered the panic. He so well remembered his mother’s words on her deathbed.

  Olivia sat opposite him. Stilton coughed again.

  ‘Were you inside the caravan?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how did you get…’

  ‘Forget it.’

  Again. Olivia was beginning to get used to it. When he didn’t want to, then he wasn’t going to. Obstinate, to put it mildly. She was beginning to understand Marianne Boglund. Stilton put the mug down on the table and leaned back.

  ‘Do you think Jackie Berglund was behind it?’ Olivia wondered.

  ‘No idea.’

  It could be her, he thought. Or it could be completely different people, who had followed him home from Söderhallarna. But that wasn’t Olivia’s business. When he felt up to it, he would phone Janne Klinga. For the time being he let the hot coffee calm his breathing. He saw Olivia looking at him, discreetly. She’s pretty, he thought. Something that hadn’t occurred to him earlier.

  ‘Are you in a relationship with somebody?’ Stilton suddenly asked.

  Olivia was very surprised by that question. Stilton had never shown any interest at all in her private life.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  He smiled. Olivia smiled back. Suddenly her mobile rang. It was Ulf Molin. From her class in college.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘How are things with you?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. What do you want?’

  ‘My dad phoned me a while ago, he had heard something about that Tom Stilton you asked about, do you remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Olivia turned away as she spoke. Stilton watched her.

  ‘Apparently he’s a tramp,’ said Ulf.

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Did you get hold of him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he a tramp?’

  ‘Homeless.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Is there a difference?’

  ‘Can I call you back? I’ve got a visitor.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes, do that. Bye.’

  Olivia hung up. Stilton realised who the conversation was about. There weren’t many homeless people in Olivia’s circle of acquaintances. He looked at her, and she looked back.

  Something in Stilton’s eyes suddenly reminded her of her father. From the photo she had seen at the Wernemyrs in Strömstad. Of Stilton and Arne.

  ‘How well did you know my dad?’ she said.

  Stilton looked down at the table.

  ‘Did you work together long?’

  ‘A few years. He was a good detective.’

  Stilton looked up, and now directed his gaze straight into Olivia’s eyes.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you choose the beach case for your college project?’

  ‘Because dad was involved in the investigation.’

  ‘Was it only that?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

  Stilton pondered this a moment. Just as he was about to open his mouth, the doorbell rang. Olivia got up, went out into the hall and opened. It was Abbas. He had a blue plastic bag in his hand. Olivia let him in and walked ahead into the kitchen. The first thing that came into her head was the mess. Fuck, she hadn’t cleaned the flat in ages!

  She hadn’t thought about that when she walked in with Stilton.

  With Abbas it was different.

  He stepped into the kitchen, looked at Stilton who looked back at him.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Feel like shit,’ said Stilton. ‘Thanks for Adelita Rivera.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘What have you got in the bag?’

  ‘The material from Mal Pais, Mette’s on her way here.’

  K. Sedovic, who had received orders from Sveavägen to follow the croupier from Arlanda, was brief as he spoke on his mobile.

  ‘The croupier went inside the building, the other two are sitting outside.’

  He was sitting some distance from Olivia’s building and watching the other car which was right outside the entrance. Bosse Thyrén and Lisa Hedqvist sat in the front.

  ‘Did he have that bag with him when he went in?’ Bertil asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Bertil couldn’t fathom what was going on. What the hell was Abbas el Fassi up to? A block of flats on Skånegatan? Who lived there? And why were the other two waiting outside? And who were they?

  A question that he very soon got an answer to. When Mette Olsäter turned in and parked right in front of Lisa’s car and got out. She went up to the wound-down window on the driver’s side.

  ‘Go back to the station. Call in the others. I’ll be in touch.’

  Mette disappeared in through the entrance. K. phoned Bertil again and told him what had happened.

  ‘What did she look like?’ Bertil wondered.

  ‘Grey hair in a bun. A very large woman,’ said K.

  Bertil Magnuson lowered his mobile and looked out across to the Adolf Fredrik churchyard. He knew immediately who the woman was. The one who had gone into the building. Mette Olsäter. The chief inspector who had asked him about Wendt’s short calls and given him a very distinct look: you are lying.

  This was not good at all.

  It was getting all screwed up.

  ‘It stinks of smoke!’ said Mette as she stepped into the kitchen.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Stilton.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Olivia looked at Stilton. Badly beaten up just a couple of days ago, and now half incinerated. And he says he’s all right. Was it just jargon? Didn’t want to give anything away? Or a way to shift focus to something else? Away from himself? Presumably, because Mette seemed satisfied with his answer. She must know him better, Olivia thought.

  Abbas emptied the contents of the plastic bag onto the kitchen table. A cassette tape, a little envelope and a plastic folder with a piece of paper in it. Luckily, Olivia had four kitchen chairs. She wasn’t sure how well Mette would fit in hers. They were a bit wobbly.

  She landed heavily. Olivia saw how the chair legs spread out a little. Mette put on a pair of thin rubber gloves and lifted up the cassette tape.

&nbs
p; ‘I’ve already touched that,’ said Abbas.

  ‘Right, so we know that.’

  Mette turned towards Olivia.

  ‘Have you got an old cassette tape recorder?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, I’ll take this to NCS.’

  Mette put the cassette back into the plastic bag and lifted up the little envelope that had lain in the leather bag. It was an old envelope, with an old Swedish postage stamp on it. Inside was a letter. Written on a typewriter and short. Mette glanced at the letter.

  ‘It’s in Spanish.’

  She held it up in front of Abbas. He translated aloud.

  ‘“Dan! I’m sorry, but I don’t think we are right for each other, and now I’ve got the chance to start a new life. I’m not coming back.”’

  Mette held the letter under the kitchen lamp. It was signed ‘Adelita’.

  ‘Can I look at the envelope?’ said Stilton.

  Abbas handed the envelope across, and Stilton looked at the stamp.

  ‘It’s postmarked five days after Adelita was murdered.’

  ‘Could hardly have been written by her then,’ said Mette.

  ‘No.’

  Mette opened the plastic folder and pulled out a typed A4 sheet of paper.

  ‘This seems to be more recently written, it’s in Swedish.’

  Mette started to read it aloud.

  ‘“To the police authorities in Sweden!” It’s dated 8th June 2011, four days before Wendt came to Nordkoster,’ she said and continued to read. ‘“Earlier this evening I received a visit from a Swedish man, here in Mal Pais. His name was Ove Gardman and he told me of an event on the island of Nordkoster in Sweden. A murder. 1987. Later in the evening I could ascertain that the woman who had been murdered was Adelita Rivera. A Mexican whom I loved and who was pregnant with my child. On account of various circumstances, mainly economic, she had travelled to Sweden and Nordkoster to fetch some money that I couldn’t fetch myself just then. She never came back. Now I know why, and I am fairly certain who lay behind her murder. I’m going to go to Sweden to see if my money is still on the island.”’

  ‘The empty suitcase,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Which suitcase?’ Abbas wondered out loud.