The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Thanks a million!” I say.

  He looks at me oddly. “Emilion? No, my name is Stieg.”

  I laugh. “Yes! Of course it is!”

  He looks very puzzled as he walks away.

  Gamla Stan is the oldest part of Stockholm, where the city began, on an island that looks on the map like a plug in the waterway that runs through the centre of Stockholm, connecting the Baltic Sea on one side to the freshwater Lake Mälaren on the other. As I walk across the bridge towards it my spirits lift. From all those Scandinavian crime series I’d watched on TV I expected the whole country to be shrouded in a gloomy twilight, but instead I see white ships bobbing on sparkling water, and golden-hued old buildings glowing in the sun beneath spires reaching into an azure sky, and I think how elegant and clean and beautiful it all is. My hotel is just beyond the Royal Palace, right on the cobbled stone quay. I run up the front steps expecting to see my big sister waiting in the lobby, but it’s empty except for a blond hairy Viking sitting behind the reception desk.

  “Good afternoon,” I say. “Do you speak English, please?”

  “Of course,” he says, as if the question is insulting. “My name is Mikael.”

  Mikael Blomkvist? I almost ask, but stop myself in time. Perhaps he’s not a Larsson fan. I tell him who I am and he nods as if he knows already. As I fill in a registration form I tell him that I’m expecting to meet my sister, but he knows nothing about that. Instead he pokes about behind his counter and comes up with a padded envelope with my name on it. He doesn’t know how it got there. He hands me the keys and I take the lift up two floors to my room. As I’d hoped it faces out on to the quay, and I throw open the window and look out across the water to an impressive three-masted schooner tied up on the far side in front of an elegant white eighteenth-century mansion in a lush green park. I sit down on the bed and rip open the envelope and a mobile phone with recharging cable drops out. I switch it on and a text message appears on the screen: dearest matt so sorry not here to greet u tied up on business 24 hours see u 2morrow noon in outer courtyard royal palace luv sis.

  I try to phone the sender number, but it appears to be switched off. Instead I text: ok sis no worries luv matt. The truth is that I am disconcerted, but there’s nothing I can do. I decide to go for a walk up through the narrow winding streets of Gamla Stan, taking in the ancient buildings, the intriguing little shops – colourful children’s clothes and Viking toys, antiquarian books, tourist souvenirs. I stop at a café for a burger and a beer and then wander back to the hotel, where I have a hot shower and collapse into a deep sleep.

  I wake late the next morning and go downstairs for a smorgasbord breakfast in the hotel restaurant. When I return to my room I try to contact my sister again, but still her phone is turned off and there are no messages. Finally I decide to take a look at the mystery package I’ve brought over for her. I carefully undo the wrapping and find that, just as her friend Rich told me, it is a thick art book, of the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. It looks expensive, with bright red leather covers and gold lettering. I rewrap it, put it into my backpack and set off to meet Abbie.

  According to Mikael at the front desk, the “Inner Courtyard” is the parade ground behind the Royal Palace, where there is a changing of the guard every day at noon. He gives me directions, and I set off up the now familiar narrow streets of Gamla Stan. After a while I notice a girl riding towards me on a bicycle and as she gets closer I’m struck by her fierce expression and jet-black hair. To my startled eyes she looks exactly like Lisbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – or rather, like Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who plays her part in the movie. Struck by the resemblance I stand motionless for a moment, before being suddenly grabbed from behind and flung hard against the brick wall at my shoulder. I feel hands wrenching at my backpack, but the straps are tight and they are having difficulty. My arm feels as if it’s being torn out of its socket and I give a yell. There are two men, shaved heads, black leather jackets, one pushing me to the ground, the other pulling at the backpack. I look up and see the girl on the bike swerving towards us and then crashing into us. One of the men screams, the other curses and the hands release me. Instinctively I scramble to my feet and take off, pelting up the street, around a corner, down a narrow laneway, and find myself suddenly in a crowd of tourists. I’m gasping for breath, hurting all over, limping in one leg, but I still have the backpack. The crowd surges towards an opening and we find ourselves in a large semi-circular courtyard, surrounded by classical buildings. Ranks of soldiers occupy the centre of the space, the crowd packed around the edge, watching them, taking pictures. The soldiers are both men and women, in dark uniforms with white belts, gloves and spats, blue berets and long rifles. Orders are being shouted, and they march and do arms drill and exchange flags. They come to a halt and there is silence, and all the while I am frantically scanning the crowd, looking for Abbie. Where is she?

  A bell chimes midday, and from the streets outside the square comes the sound of a military band approaching. Soon it turns into the parade ground, bandsmen in blue uniforms and silver helmets as brightly polished as their instruments, and as they stride across the granite sets I catch sight of a black leather jacket and a red-faced shaven head approaching through the crowd to my left. I turn to the right, and see the other one. They’ve followed me here! Surely they won’t attack me in the middle of all these people? But then the crowd cranes forward and I get a clearer glimpse of the man on my right. He looks angry and there is the glitter of a blade in his right hand.

  I stare at the knife in the man’s hand as he closes in on me, imagining it rammed into my back, me falling and them running off with my bag before anyone realizes that something is wrong. There is a solid wall behind us and the parade ground in front. I really have no alternative. I take a deep breath and push my way through the crowd, jump over the perimeter rope and begin running across the open square. In front of me the band wheels around and heads straight for me. There are shouts, a roar of surprise and some laughter from the crowd as I find myself dodging through the instruments, knocking the big bass drum, and the bandsmen struggle to maintain their tune. Now I’m on the other side. There is a gap in the buildings ahead and I make for it as several soldiers run forward to cut me off. Looking back over my shoulder I see no sign of the two men trying to follow me. I charge on and just make the opening ahead of the soldiers and find myself in a narrow lane heading away from the palace and into the maze of streets beyond.

  When I finally slow down I realize that this is not a random mugging and that I have probably only delayed the men who will still be after me. Where can I hide? Then it occurs to me that it isn’t me they want, it’s my backpack, and Abbie’s book inside it, though why they should I can’t imagine. Where can I hide it? Somewhere behind me I hear a shout and panic grips me. And then I see the antiquarian bookshop ahead of me. What better place to hide a book than in a bookshop? I rush in, the doorbell tinkling. There appears to be no one around, although it’s hard to tell among all the bookshelves. Opening my bag I rip the paper off the book and shove it on to a high shelf in a dark corner. I grab another heavy book and ram it into my bag and run out into the street again, just as the two men appear at a corner, not fifty metres away. They give chase as I dash off, heading downhill. My leg is in agony now and they’re gaining on me. Ahead I see the quay; I must turn left or right. I choose left, towards the city centre across the bridge. They are gaining on me. I dodge across the street, behind a car – a Volvo, naturally – with a ski rack on its roof, and as it passes I lob my bag onto the rack.

  We come to a gasping stop, the three of us, them on that side of the road and me on this. Then they shout to each other and turn and chase after the Volvo. I watch it disappearing over the bridge, the two of them in hot pursuit.

  I jog painfully back to my hotel and Mikael at the desk tells me that I’ve had two visitors, men in black leather jackets. My heart gives a jolt – they’ve been here, they knew w
here I was staying! I ask Mikael not to tell them I am here if they come back, and I limp up to my room and collapse on the bed. I try Abbie’s number again without success and text her: where the hell r u ive been attacked. After several minutes a reply comes back: where r u.

  I hesitate. Why doesn’t she speak to me? How do I know this is Abbie? It could be anybody texting. I send another message: prove u r abbie. The answer comes back: dodger 4 ur 10 bday.

  For my tenth birthday our parents bought me a Labrador puppy called Dodger. I breathe a sigh of relief and text back: hotel, and get the reply, rich will come. Rich, I think, why Rich? Why not you, Abbie? I’m almost tempted to go to the police, but I don’t know if that would make things difficult for her. And anyway, they’d probably arrest me for disrupting the changing of the royal guard.

  It’s evening when Mikael rings up from reception. Someone called Rich wants to see me. I tell him to send him up. Rich is all concern for my troubles and makes soothing noises, but I’m not in a mood to be mollified. However, he’s brought a bottle of Swedish akvavit, which is pretty powerful stuff, and after a couple of glasses I’m feeling a bit more relaxed and my leg hardly hurts at all. While we sip the firewater I tell him some of what’s been happening to me. He shakes his head, looking worried.

  “This is bad, Matt,” he says, but seems hesitant to explain it to me.

  “It’s about that book you gave me, isn’t it?” I prompt.

  He nods reluctantly. “Yes.” He looks around the room. “Is it safe?”

  I haven’t explained about the bookshop and the Volvo. “It is, but it isn’t here.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I’ll tell Abbie when I see her, face to face.”

  “It’s difficult, Matt. She can’t get away right now. I’m here for her.”

  “Sorry. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  So eventually he relents and tells me the story.

  “In the last couple of years,” he begins, “Abbie’s role at the art dealer’s where she works has been to go around the UK to auctions, regional dealers and house clearances, looking for bargains.”

  “Like Antiques Roadshow,” I suggest.

  “Yes. She’s got a pretty good eye for it and she’s been quite successful, though her boss, a pompous old git, hasn’t recognized it in her pay. Anyway, a couple of months ago she came across an elderly lady who wanted her to look at a small sketch she owned, of the head of a bearded man. She’d inherited it from her mother, who’d been in service to an eccentric lord up in Scotland, and he’d given it to her when she retired. She assumed it was a portrait of one of his ancestors, and hoped it might fetch a hundred pounds or two. But Abbie had seen a very similar sketch once before, in Turin in Italy, a self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Leonardo? You’re joking!”

  “No, I’m not. It looked very like the real thing and Abbie told the owner that it could be worth much more, possibly several thousands, but she would have to take it away to authenticate it. The old lady was delighted and agreed. When she got to London Abbie used all the expertise at her disposal and discovered a fingerprint embedded in the red chalk material of the drawing. She compared it to a fingerprint that had been found in da Vinci’s painting of St Jerome in the Vatican, and got a match.”

  “Wow. What would it be worth?”

  “Thirty, maybe forty million dollars.”

  I’m stunned. “Her boss must have been delighted. Will she get a good commission?”

  “No, he doesn’t give her commission, just her basic salary, maybe a modest Christmas bonus. And he wasn’t delighted, because she didn’t tell him.”

  “Oh?”

  “Matt, this is a once in a lifetime discovery, a moment of truth. If she tells them, the old lady will get more money than she knows what to do with and will die next year and leave it all to the dogs’ home, and Abbie’s boss will stuff himself with even more big lunches and French champagne than he does already and have his coronary a little earlier than otherwise.”

  I’m not sure I like this story. It doesn’t sound like Abbie at all. Has London changed her? “So what did she do?”

  “She came to me for advice.”

  “And who are you, exactly?”

  “I work for Scotland Yard, Fraud Squad. Abbie and I met during a forgery investigation last year, and got on well. When she told me the story I advised her to keep the Leonardo, give the old lady five thousand and buy a few extra paintings for her boss, and both would be delighted.”

  “Only five thousand?”

  “Abbie wanted to give her more, but the old woman would have told everyone and word would have got back. Really, she was over the moon with that.”

  “You advised Abbie not to tell the owner that she had a multimillion-dollar masterpiece on her hands?”

  Rich looks uncomfortable. “It was only Abbie’s knowledge and expertise that made it that, Matt. I thought she deserved the profit, not the owner or her boss. Then I told her she had to find a special kind of buyer, a collector who wouldn’t care about where it came from as long as the scientific tests proved authenticity, which the fingerprint certainly did. And I thought I knew of the perfect customer, a Swedish billionaire recluse by the name of Martin Gräven, who is reputed to have bought stolen artworks in the past. He lives on his private island east of Stockholm, on the edge of the Baltic Sea. It’s called Blod Ö, which means Blood Island – apparently it was the site of a massacre during the Thirty Years War back in the 1600s.”

  I sit back, trying to digest all this. “So you’re a cop with Scotland Yard, and you’re helping Abbie to break the law?”

  “It’s only a technical breach, Matt, and like I said, this is a once in a lifetime chance for Abbie. She’ll walk away with half the true value of the sketch and set up her own gallery and show the lazy bastard she works for.”

  “And what do you get out of it, Rich?”

  “I’ll be her business partner, mate, maybe more than that if things work out – I’m very fond of Abbie as it happens. And who knows, we’ll probably need a bright lad like you to open an office for us down under.” He gives me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  “But something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it?”

  He frowns. “Yeah. I knew that Gräven had a reputation for being ruthless, but I hadn’t counted on him being quite such a bastard. The problem in this situation is making a deal without anyone getting ripped off – I mean, you can hardly complain to the cops afterwards. So we decided that one of us would come to Sweden to negotiate with him while the other waited for the all clear. Abbie had to be the one to come over, because only she could convince him of the technical verification, but Gräven’s made her a virtual prisoner on his island, and he seems to be very well informed about us, including our plan to have you smuggle the drawing into the country.”

  “You mean … he’s forced it out of Abbie? Tortured her?”

  He hesitates. “I don’t know. But I’m going to have to go to his island to get her out of there, and I can’t take the drawing with me or he’ll just take it and kick us out, or worse.”

  I’m appalled. “He’d go as far as murder?”

  “For something like a Leonardo original self-portrait as good as this one, I reckon he’d do pretty much anything.”

  “Then give it to him!”

  “First we have to get Abbie out, and the Leonardo is the only lever we’ve got. It’s hidden behind the inside lining of the back cover of the book. You’re sure you have it safe?”

  “Yes. I had to hide it when those two thugs came after me, but I can get to it anytime.”

  “Then we’ve got to keep you out of trouble. You’ll have to find another hotel.”

  “Right, and I can still keep in touch with the mobile phone Abbie left for me.”

  “Let me see that.” He examines it. “You’ve had it on all the time?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s probably how they’ve been able to keep tab
s on you.” He switches it off. “Come on, pack your things.”

  We go down to the lobby and pay Mikael, asking him to call a taxi for us. It pulls up at the door and we slip into the back and head into the commercial district across the river. The cab drops us outside a Vodafone shop where Rich buys me another mobile, and then we walk through the shopping streets until we find a small commercial hotel where I check in. We shake hands.

  “Good luck,” I say. “Give Abbie my love when you find her.”

  “Sure. Don’t worry. You just wait for my call,” and he strides away, leaving me feeling worried sick.

  I don’t hear from Rich again that day and the following morning I decide to go back to Gamla Stan to check on Abbie’s book in its hiding place on the shelf of the antiquarian bookshop. On the way I call in at a department store in the centre of the city and buy a parka and a cap in the hope that the skinheads won’t recognize me if they are still out there. It’s another cold crisp day with dark clouds threatening the blue sky as I walk back across the bridge and up the cobbled streets of the old town. I turn a corner and there is the bookshop in front of me. A small crowd is gathered outside around a man wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket with the word POLISEN printed on the back. As I approach I see that the shop door is barred by a striped plastic tape. At the edge of the crowd I ask a woman what is happening, and she tells me that the old man who owned the shop has been found murdered, the place ransacked. I work my way to the window and peer in. The lights are on and I see two people in white nylon overalls inside. The word printed on their backs is FÖRMIDDAG, which I guess means forensic. Behind them the bookshelves seem undisturbed, and I can see the place where I hid Abbie’s volume. But there is no red spine visible there now.