MALICE IN MALMÖ

by Torquil Macleod

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Aren’t you surprised?’

  Svärdendahl gave a harsh laugh. ‘Of course I’m not. There must be hundreds of people out there lining up to kill the bastard. I’m glad he’s dead. Well done, whoever did it! He means nothing to me.’

  ‘That’s not quite true, is it? He must have meant something for you to storm round to Sanningen’s offices making all sorts of threats. You only left when they said they’d call the police.’

  ‘I was furious. He’d destroyed everything. My career, my family. It was just malicious. I wanted to get hold of him and...’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It struck Anita that Svärdendahl still thought what The Oligarch had done to him was totally unfair. He’d done nothing wrong. ‘I’m over that now. I’m slowly trying to rebuild my life. With my wife. I’m talking to people in the business about possible projects. This will blow over and I’ll be back. The public soon forgets.’ Anita wasn’t so sure.

  ‘When you had no luck finding The Oligarch at the newspaper offices, did you try and track Sami Litmanen down?’

  ‘Sami Litmanen. Was that his name? Sounds Finnish.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘God, that explains a lot. Whatever he was, he was a good actor. And, no, I didn’t try and find out where he was or where he lived.’ Anita could tell he was lying.

  ‘You didn’t search the internet?’

  ‘All right, all right. I did search the internet. Couldn’t find anything about him. It was as though he didn’t exist. If I’d known his real name, I might have had a chance. The only thing I could find was what harm he’d done to me on my Wikipedia page. Someone had enjoyed updating that.’

  It was getting late by the time Anita left Claes Svärdendahl’s apartment. She would have to look for somewhere cheap to spend the night before her early flight back to Malmö tomorrow. Outside in the street, she got out her mobile phone and called Hakim.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked immediately.

  ‘Presumably Pontus told you,’ he said with a groan. ‘I’m fine. The swelling’s gone down.’

  ‘Thank goodness. Have you and Pontus interviewed Absame yet?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We literally couldn’t get a word out of him.’

  The sun was still shining. A cold beer in Gamla Stan might be in order.

  ‘You’re keeping him in?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll have a go at him when I get back tomorrow.’

  ‘Have you tracked down Claes Svärdendahl?’ To Anita’s relief, he sounded almost like his normal self. Was she being slowly rehabilitated into Hakim’s world?

  ‘Yes. I’m standing outside his apartment. Long chat. He was near Lund on the night of the murder.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘We need to check out his alibi.’ She paused. ‘I think this might be a job for Pontus.’

  ‘He’s gone home.’

  ‘You’d better have the details then.’ She proceeded to give Hakim the location of the sex party and the names Svärdendahl could remember. When she’d finished, Hakim let out a low whistle.

  ‘I think Pontus is definitely the man for this job.’

  ‘Thought so. I know he’s not very diplomatic, but if he has a word with the hosts and establishes what went on that evening, that would be a start.’

  ‘Given the type of activities that supposedly go on at these parties, it might be difficult to trace Svärdendahl’s movements.’ Hakim sounded rather appalled. ‘Presumably the other guests would be preoccupied.’

  ‘They were. Once he realized he was in the frame, he described in nauseous detail what went on in an attempt to clear himself. There are some images that I’d rather forget. The point is he’d only need about an hour to get to Västra Hamnen and back. A few lash marks on his bum isn’t a good enough alibi.’

  CHAPTER 24

  At Arlanda, the weekday commuters were replaced by the holidaymakers and the weekenders as Anita shuffled through security. She reckoned she’d be back in Malmö before midday. As Absame was maintaining an obstinate silence, she was going to have to try and interview him as soon as she returned. That meant she wouldn’t be around to meet Kevin. She sent him an apologetic SMS, which she hoped he would pick up when he landed in Copenhagen, asking him to go straight to Lasse’s apartment when he arrived and she would meet him there later. A quick exchange of SMSs with Lasse confirmed that he and Jazmin would be around and happy to make Kevin at home. That pleased Anita. Lasse had missed Kevin.

  Security had taken longer than she’d anticipated, and Anita had to rush to her gate just as they announced final boarding. She heard her phone going off somewhere in her black hole of a bag. She let it ring while she tried to find her boarding pass – she’d stuffed that back into her bag, too, after going through security. By the time she’d found the phone, the caller had given up. She saw it was Hakim. It could wait. She’d be seeing him in a couple of hours anyway.

  The taxi dropped her off at the polishus at five minutes to twelve and she made her way straight up to her office. She tidied herself up and went to the meeting room. She hadn’t seen anyone around. She’d expected Hakim and Brodd to be there. The room was empty. As she took out her phone to call Hakim, the door opened behind her. She had a smile ready for whoever it was. But then it immediately slipped from her face. The person who had entered the room was Alice Zetterberg.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Anita demanded as she put down her phone, Hakim’s number unrung.

  ‘Overseeing your investigations.’ Anita was dumbstruck. This couldn’t be happening! Crime reporter Martin Glimhall had been right.

  ‘Who sanctioned this?’

  ‘Commissioner Dahlbeck. I’m taking temporary charge with immediate effect.’

  Had Hakim called to tip her off?

  ‘I don’t believe it. I only spoke to him the other day and he was quite happy for me to handle things while Erik Moberg’s away.’

  ‘Well obviously, he doesn’t believe you’re capable enough. He wanted someone more senior.’

  It was her sense of superiority that really bridled Anita. One look from Zetterberg would turn anyone’s milk of human kindness sour.

  ‘I’m not accepting that. I’ll go straight to the commissioner and get this sorted out.’

  Zetterberg gave a mirthless snort. ‘You’ll have a job. Dahlbeck’s just gone on two weeks’ leave.’ That had been another warning ignored. Moberg had told her not to trust the commissioner.

  ‘There must be other senior people around.’ Anita was just desperate now.

  ‘You may have noticed that Malmö’s got enough gang shootings, grenade attacks and burning cars at the moment to occupy a force twice our size. Besides, the commissioner regards these two cases as high priority, for differing reasons. They need someone of experience to lead them.’

  Zetterberg’s sarcasm only fuelled Anita’s resentment. ‘I’ve got as much experience as you have.’

  ‘I’m already head of a section. You aren’t. That says it all.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be running your little Cold Case Group?’

  Zetterberg brushed off the intended slight. ‘I can do that as well.’

  ‘You shouldn’t spread yourself too thinly,’ said Anita bitterly as she noticed that Zetterberg’s stout build had thickened further since their last encounter.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me, Anita. I can handle anything, including you.’

  ‘Well, that’s great to hear, but I’ve got a suspect to interview.’ Anita turned back to the door.

  ‘Absame?’

  Anita swivelled back round. ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He’s been released.’

  ‘On whose authority?’

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘You’re not serious!’

  ‘One of Dragan Mitrović’s sharp-suited lawyers turned up this morning and got his client out.’

 
; ‘This is ridiculous. He’s one of our main suspects for Sami Litmanen’s murder.’

  ‘We’ll get round to talking to him.’

  Anita stared furiously at Zetterberg. ‘I’d better go and speak to my tea... my colleagues and let them know what I found out in Stockholm.’

  ‘They’re not here either. I told them to have the weekend off and we’ll start afresh on Monday.’

  This was too much for Anita. She took two paces towards the door and had it half open when she heard Zetterberg shout behind her ‘If you dare walk out of here, I’ll have you officially taken off the cases. I’ll have you suspended for insubordination.’ For an agonizing moment, Anita nearly carried on going. In that instant, she couldn’t have cared less. Yet something inside, a deep sense of self-preservation, made her slam on the brakes.

  ‘Now,’ said Zetterberg, satisfied that she’d won a significant victory, ‘I want you to debrief me on both cases. Then I can formulate a strategy over the weekend so I’ve got a plan of action for my team on Monday. No more muddled thinking.’

  Muddled my arse. Anita was about to explode again. With great difficulty, she brought her temper under control.

  Over the next hour, with as much self-control as she could muster, Anita filled Zetterberg in. The kidnappings hadn’t produced any important leads. Two rich businessmen had been successfully targeted. There were some connections between the two, and they were working on the assumption that the same gang was responsible for the snatches, as both victims had been released in exactly the same way. The little evidence they had appeared to point to a possible Eastern European or Russian gang. Naturally, Zetterberg had revelled in Moberg’s discomfort at how easily the team had been duped by the gang when delivering Uhlig’s ransom; she, of course would never have fallen for such a trick. The team felt that, like Mats Möller, Peter Uhlig had been incarcerated in a port area. Möller had definitely been held in Malmö. Uhlig may well have been held in the city, too, though they hadn’t yet ruled out Helsingborg or Ystad. Uhlig himself had discounted Trelleborg as he was familiar with the regular pattern of sounds there, including ships’ horns.

  ‘So, you haven’t really got anywhere,’ Zetterberg concluded. Anita bit her tongue.

  At least as far as Sami Litmanen was concerned, they had three suspects with good motives, which Anita briefly outlined. As for opportunity, Absame was probably in Malmö at the time of the murder as he was the only one actually living in the city. However, without interviewing him, it was hard to establish whether he had an alibi or not. Zetterberg let that implied criticism pass. They’d tracked Folke Allinger down to Ystad, but hadn’t had the chance to interview him yet. Claes Svärdendahl had been near Malmö on the night of the murder at a sex party outside Lund: Brodd was looking into his alibi. ‘I would have thought a sex party was more your thing,’ said Zetterberg unpleasantly. There it was again; the reason for their mutual hatred: Zetterberg’s long-held, but erroneous, belief that her ex-husband had slept with Anita while at the Police Academy. Finally, Anita mentioned that Litmanen had been working on a current project to do with business rivals. His editor had no details other than that Litmanen had remarked that it had just got ‘personal’.

  ‘So there’s a possibility that the murderer had something to do with Litmanen’s ongoing investigation, though we have no idea how advanced that was,’ Anita concluded.

  ‘But we have two people that actually threatened The Oligarch in public.’

  ‘Yes. Absame and Svärdendahl, both at the newspaper offices.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. I think, with my guidance, we’ll be able to solve these cases before the commissioner comes back off his holiday.’

  CHAPTER 25

  By the time Anita reached Lasse and Jazmin’s small apartment in Rosengård, she still hadn’t calmed down. The sight of her family only partly soothed her sense of injustice. As Anita came in, Leyla gave an excited scream of recognition. Anita scooped her up and gave her a big hug. The little girl clutched her tightly. It was such a trusting gesture in Anita’s untrustworthy world. The welcome was quickly over and Leyla made it plain that she wanted down. The toddler went off to fetch a cuddly toy to show her grandmother. Jazmin’s hug was next. Anita noticed over Jazmin’s shoulder that she’d cleared up the living room. Anita smiled; she knew her son’s partner was just as messy as she was herself. If she made this effort for her, heaven knows what she did for her own parents, whose apartment was cleaned to within an inch of its life. On second thoughts, it was probably Lasse who’d done the tidying up. She could hear laughter in the kitchen, and Lasse and Kevin emerged with beer cans in their hands. Lasse kissed her on each cheek and Kevin gave her a tentative hug, unsure where their relationship stood. She pulled him to her and it felt good to have close physical contact with him again.

  After a very late lunch, Anita drove Kevin back to her apartment. They had done all the ‘have a good trip?’ small talk at Lasse’s. They sat in silence as Malmö’s Saturday-afternoon traffic ambled by. No one seemed in a hurry to get anywhere. Kevin glanced across at Anita. To him, she was just as beautiful and as desirable as ever, though it was clear she had something on her mind. She’d been unusually quiet over lunch and had spent most of the time fussing over Leyla. Was it his return that was the problem? Was she having second thoughts about having him back? He thought it was best to broach the subject before they let things fester.

  ‘You didn’t say much back there at Lasse’s. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She patently wasn’t. He sat back in his seat and stared at the road ahead.

  They didn’t speak again until she’d parked the car opposite the apartment and he’d taken out his suitcase and they’d crossed the street to the front door. She opened the door with her key and they stepped into the hallway.

  ‘Look, Anita, if you’ve changed your mind about me staying here, please tell me now. I don’t want—’

  ‘Shut up, Kevin. Take me to bed – now!’

  Later, over a bottle of wine which Kevin had bought duty-free at Manchester Airport, Anita began to unburden herself. Her frustration with the Zetterberg situation had built up so steadily in her mind that the only way she could think of banishing it was to take a far-from-reluctant Kevin to bed. Through the act of love-making – and it had been energetic and joyous – she had felt cleansed of the aggravation that had been eating away at her. Her final cry of pleasure had been a release of tension. As she had lain beside an exhausted Kevin, she wondered wryly if that’s what primal scream therapy was all about. If it was, it had worked for about an hour. By the time she tasted her first sip of wine, the conflicting feelings of exasperation, hatred and inadequacy had resurfaced.

  ‘It’s Alice Zetterberg. She’s the problem.’

  ‘What’s she got to do with the price of fish?’

  ‘You know Erik Moberg had his heart attack? Well, I was put in temporary charge of the team. We’ve got two big cases on.’

  ‘You mentioned them. A lot of responsibility.’

  ‘I know. It frightened the hell out of me to be honest. Then, when I was up in Stockholm, I realized that I was energized by the whole thing. At last, I could run things. I had the backing of the commissioner.’ She took an inelegant slurp of her wine.

  ‘And?’

  ‘When I got back today, there’s Alice waiting for me. The commissioner’s put her in charge over me.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ he said with exaggerated disbelief.

  ‘Wish I was. You know what it’s like between us. And she certainly won’t have forgotten all that Ivar Hagblom business. Made her look a fool, very publicly.’ The memory brought a brief smile to her lips. ‘Someone like her doesn’t forget. She’s going to make my life a misery.’

  ‘But you’re good,’ Kevin said, trying to be encouraging even if he didn’t feel it. He’d come across Zetterberg and had heard enough from Anita to know that the woman could be vindictive. ‘And you’re strong.’

  ‘I don’t fee
l it at the moment.’ Anita held up her nearly empty glass. Kevin refilled it. ‘What’s more, I can see her hindering the investigations more than helping them. She’s already let one of our chief suspects go before I could talk to him.’

  ‘Just try and carry on as though she’s not there. Keep stuff back that you can use, and only reveal it when you need to. I do that sometimes when I’ve had a useless boss; and I’ve had a few.’

  After another large slurp: ‘Problem is Alice isn’t a useless cop. If she could get over her prejudices, she would be all right. Her real weakness is that she can’t think on her feet. She’s inflexible. Once she’s got an idea into her head... Mind you, we can all be a bit like that,’ she added reflectively.

  ‘Look, Anita. Just be professional. Don’t antagonize her. And if you have to do things when she’s not looking that help the investigations, do them. You’ll win in the end. And, remember, if there’s anything I can do...’

  She suddenly felt a surge of affection for this amusing, infuriating, slightly strange-looking Englishman. She was glad he was here. ‘There’s one thing you can do for me. Keep this glass topped up.’

  On Sunday morning, Anita left a sleeping Kevin in bed. They’d ended up having a late night. She had a quick shower and a strong coffee and left a note saying she’d be back later. They’d go out for lunch so she wouldn’t have to cook. She got into her car and drove through the centre of town and out down Amiralsgatan past Folkets Park and on towards Rosengård. When she reached Apelgården, she turned off left. She brought the car to a halt in front of a block of nine-storey apartments. Other identical blocks stretched along the street, plonked there by some giant teaching his child to count. They were similar to so many unimaginative designs in Malmö. Here, the planners had at least made the effort to give the surrounding area some verdancy, with a ribbon of trees running along the entire length of the buildings and a large expanse of grass dividing them from the arboreous boundary of the adjacent Östra Kyrkogården, the cemetery where Peter Uhlig had been dumped. At this time on a Sunday morning, the only person taking advantage of the open space was a solitary dog walker.