‘And Dragan Mitrović?’
‘Him too.’
Who said that intimidation doesn’t work? Then another thought occurred to Anita – what if Zetterberg had been bought off?
After such an early meeting, Anita went out and had a leisurely breakfast on Östra Förstadsgatan. She reckoned she deserved it after having to put up with the insufferable Alice Zetterberg so early in the morning. She was anticipating a quiet day and was looking forward to her trip out with Kevin tomorrow. Mitrović’s threat still hung over her like a dark cloud, but if Zetterberg was determined not to pursue that avenue, then the family would be safe. Whether she could just sit back and do nothing was another thing.
She had hardly been back in her office five minutes when Klara Wallen burst through the door.
‘I think there’s been another snatch!’
Anita accompanied Wallen down to Drottningtorget on foot – it was only a few minutes’ walk from the polishus. It was a very familiar part of town because Anita and Wallen often visited the excellent ice cream parlour whenever they needed their spirits lifting. The tree-fringed, cobbled square had been created in the early 1800s when the city’s original fortifications were removed. On the south side runs the main road leading to the centre of Malmö, with its 1960s office buildings. On the north side is a long, graceful, single-storey, yellow-stuccoed building: the old stables for the Royal Hussars, which now functions as a bar. The other two sides consist of apartments; the most graceful constructed in 1907, according to the plaque high up on the wall. It was this building that was to be the focal point of their visit, though their first port of call was one of the office blocks looking out onto the square. A woman was waiting at the entrance with a uniformed officer. In her mid-twenties, she had short ginger hair and a pallid face distorted by worry.
‘This is Janet Adem,’ said the officer.
‘Hello, I’m Klara Wallen and this is Anita Sundström.’
‘I hope I’ve done the right thing.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ said Wallen reassuringly. ‘We need you to take us through exactly what you saw, Janet.’
‘I work up there.’ She gestured towards the building behind them. ‘In an office on the third floor. I was just settling down at my desk. It overlooks the square, straight down that side,’ she said, indicating the pavement outside the graceful apartment building. ‘I happened to look through the window and I saw this blonde woman coming out of the far entrance of the block just down there.’ She pointed towards a doorway. ‘It was about ten past nine. Then this white van suddenly drove up from Norra Vallgatan over there and past that end of the Boulebar just as she came through the door and onto the pavement. Two men in masks jumped out of the back of the van and grabbed her. I... I just couldn’t believe it. It was horrible!’ Adem stopped for a moment.
‘It’s OK, Janet. Take your time.’
‘Obviously, I couldn’t hear whether she was screaming, because of the double glazing... and the distance, of course, but she appeared to be crying out. She was certainly trying to resist the two men.’
‘Two men?’
‘I assume they were men. They were bigger than the woman. They disappeared out of sight at the back of the van. It drove off quickly and turned down Östergatan. The back doors were closed, so the men must have shoved the woman in the back and got in with her. That’s when I phoned the police.’
‘Did you get the number plate?’
Janet Adem shook her head in apology. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Have you seen this woman before?’ Anita asked. ‘I mean, in the area?’
‘Sorry. I’ve only been in the job three weeks.’
‘Thank you, Janet,’ said Wallen. ‘This officer will take a statement.’ She put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. ‘You did the right thing.’
The officer took Janet Adem inside and Wallen called into the polishus to put out an alert for a white van that had recently left Drottningtorget, heading in the direction of Stortorget or Central Station. The chances of a sighting of an unmarked white van were remote, and it had had plenty of time to disappear, but she had to be seen to go through the motions. Then she and Anita walked over to the scene of the snatch and stood on the pavement where the woman had been abducted. The portal she had stepped out from was a tall, wide sunburst; the door itself one of a pair of tasteful design, the glazed insets in the wood giving the whole the appearance of German peg dolls.
‘I know these apartments,’ said Anita. She pointed upwards. ‘The top apartment anyway. That’s where Kristina Ekman lived, or lives.’
‘Of course.’
Anita didn’t have to explain. They had both worked on the case some years before in which Ekman’s husband, the owner of an advertising agency, had been killed in his shower in this very building. The investigation had eventually led to Kristina’s father, Dag Wollstad, one of the richest men in Sweden, becoming a fugitive in South America.
‘Do you think it could be her? Kristina Ekman?’ queried Wallen.
‘Janet Adem said it was a blonde woman. And she fits the kidnappers’ profile. She’s as rich as Croesus. Let’s go in and find out.’
An hour later, they were almost convinced that the woman who had been abducted was Kristina Ekman. None of the neighbours fitted the description of the woman briefly seen by Janet Adem; nor had there been any visitors, cleaners or delivery people coming in or out of the building at the time of the abduction. Kristina still lived in the block when she was in town, though, according to the neighbours, she was often away on the Wollstad country estate. Her children were at an international school in Switzerland. The old gentleman in the apartment below Ekman’s said he’d heard someone walking around yesterday, but not this morning. He’d had his television on loudly. None of the residents had actually seen her in the last few days.
In the centre of the square, they were joined by the two uniformed officers who had been first on the scene, one of whom had taken Janet Adem’s statement. A couple of people had seen the white van driving off but not the actual incident.
‘Did your witnesses notice any markings on the van?’ Anita asked one of the officers.
‘One of them said that she thought there was no signage on it; the other didn’t know.’
‘Thanks. Keep asking around.’
Anita and Wallen walked at military pace back to the polishus.
‘This is a bit different from the other two,’ Anita said as she strode along. ‘Very public.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Wallen, trying to keep up.
‘The other two snatches were done with no one else around.’
‘Maybe this was the easiest place to grab her.’
‘Possibly. Though, in theory, they could have stopped her on a country road. The Wollstad estate has lots of quiet lanes around it.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t have a fixed routine. That’s what they did with Peter Uhlig: worked out his routine’
‘That’s true. As soon as we get back, I’ll get the number for her country place. Find out if she’s there, and if she’s not, warn them they might be receiving a ransom demand. And if they do, to get in touch with us straightaway.’
Alice Zetterberg was sitting on the same seat in Claes Svärdendahl’s Stockholm apartment as Anita had sat on a week before. The more he talked, the more convinced she was that Svärdendahl was the killer. She had conflicting emotions. She knew he was a fatuous celebrity, yet she had always rather fancied him when she’d seen him on TV. As she grilled him about his sex party, there was a part of her wondering what it would be like to be screwed by him. She reckoned he would be good in the sack. And all this talk of sex was putting ideas into her head. She had the weekend free in Stockholm. It wouldn’t be hard to pick someone up. Compensation for her frustrations over her brother-in-law, who made it obvious on her last visit that he wasn’t going to stray from her dreadful, stuck-up sister. Needless to say, she wasn’t staying with them this time. In fact, they didn�
��t even know she was in the city.
‘Look, I don’t know what else to say. I did leave the party early on. I couldn’t get a phone signal at the place and wanted to speak to the kids before they went to bed. The car park was useless, too, so I drove a kilometre or so and stopped when I got a signal. I made the call.’ He felt in the back pocket of his jeans and eased out his mobile phone. He offered it to Zetterberg. ‘Go on, you can check. It’ll show that I’m telling the truth.’
Zetterberg took the phone and flicked through the menu until she got the calls made. Then the date. Svärdendahl had made a call at 21.13.’
‘You can check the number. It’s my wife’s.’
‘I didn’t think you were together.’
‘We’re not. But I still have access to the kids. And I phone them regularly. It was a bit late for them and she wasn’t best pleased. Nothing I do pleases her.’
‘Can’t blame her. Presumably it came as a shock to find she’d married a kinky sexaholic.’
He didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Just check it out.’
Zetterberg was staring at the phone. ‘The call only lasted nine minutes, twenty-three seconds. That’s not long.’
‘She wanted the kids in bed. My wife.’ Zetterberg noticed he never referred to her by her actual name.
‘OK, this proves you made the call, but it doesn’t prove where you made it from.’ Svärdendahl sighed heavily. ‘So what did you do then?’
‘As I said, I went back to the party. To do more shagging,’ he said aggressively. This woman was really getting under his skin. At least the other cop had been a lot more attractive.
‘We can’t find anybody to vouch for your movements during that time.’
‘There were a lot of darkened rooms. We don’t go round formally introducing ourselves at these things. We just get on with it. I couldn’t describe all the women I fucked that night.’
‘You still had time to nip down the road to Malmö, finish The Oligarch off and then get back to your sexual athletics.’ She’d already got him to describe some of the things he and the other house guests had got up to.
‘I’m telling you for the hundredth time, I didn’t go to Malmö.’ For the hundredth time, she didn’t believe him.
‘That’s odd,’ said Anita, putting down her office telephone. Klara Wallen looked up from her paperwork. ‘I’ve just been talking to a guy out at Kristina’s Illstorp place called Lothar von Goessling.’
‘German?’
‘Yes. That’s why we were speaking in English. His Swedish is virtually non-existent. He says he’s Kristina’s “companion”; which I take it means boyfriend. He claims that Kristina Ekman wasn’t in Malmö this morning. She’s out of the country on business.’
‘So who’s the woman who was snatched in Drottningtorget?’
CHAPTER 32
The answer to the question that Klara Wallen had posed the day before was not a jot clearer the next morning as Anita and Kevin set out for their drive into the Scanian countryside. The description of the white van had been so vague that nothing worthwhile had been reported. A van had been found later, burnt out on a rural side road north of the city, but the forensic team could find no clues on their initial inspection other than that it had been white in colour. If this was the van that had been used in the abduction, then the victim could have been transferred to another vehicle. Anita, Klara and the other members of the team had spent the rest of the day down at Drottningtorget, trying to establish the identity of the blonde woman who’d been bundled into the back of the van. The trouble was, despite the time of day, they only had one witness who had seen the actual event, and that was at quite a distance – could she have been mistaken? A number of witnesses had seen a van driving away, but there was nothing unusual in that. Or could Kristina Ekman’s ‘companion’ have assumed that she had gone abroad when in fact she’d been in Malmö all along? Maybe she hadn’t told him about her real movements?
That’s why Anita was incorporating a detour into their trip to include a visit to Illstorp and double-check Lothar von Goessling’s story. She’d reported the incident to Zetterberg in a call to Stockholm last night. She got the impression that Alice had been drinking – it sounded as though she was in a bar. She was typically dismissive of Anita’s news and, as there was no obvious candidate for the alleged abduction, Zetterberg was quite content to spend the rest of the weekend in the capital. So there was no way Anita was going to tell her about her little outing to Illstorp.
The day was fine and bright as the concrete surroundings melted away into open fields. The whole of Skåne was coming to life after months of hibernation. Brilliant yellow rape seared the landscape and through Anita’s open window, wafted the intense, musky smell of the flowers. Kevin, sitting beside her, was gazing intently at the passing countryside. She knew by his expression that a question was about to be sprung at her. She only hoped she could answer it.
‘It always fascinates me,’ he said, ‘that there are so many farms dotted around, all looking virtually the same, but no villages anywhere near. At home our farms are far more random and are often based in or around a community.’
This time, Anita did have an answer.
‘Rutger Macklean.’
‘Rutger MacLean? Sounds Scots.’
‘No, Swedish. It’s got a k in there. He was a politician and land reformer. Lived at Svaneholm, a castle on the way to Ystad – quite impressive. Maybe we should go there this afternoon. Your sort of thing. He studied agriculture in various countries.’
‘What time are we talking about?’
‘Late 1700s, early 1800s.’
‘Right.’
‘Anyhow, he wanted to make his land more productive. He studied other agricultural economies, especially Denmark. He broke up the existing farms which, like yours, were often based on villages. He divided his land up between seventy-five farms, each with a new farmhouse and barn and roads connecting them all. This proved very productive; the farmers producing more from less land. The system was adopted by Skåne as a whole—’
‘In 1802.’
‘How on earth...?’ She suddenly spied that he was fiddling with his iPhone. ‘You’ve got your phone out!’ she said in disgust. ‘I try and tell you something interesting for once and you spoil it.’
Kevin was abashed. ‘Sorry.’
‘I should think so.’ She was cross. ‘What it won’t tell you in Wikipedia is that it broke up communities. I feel sorry for the farmers’ wives, stuck out on their own; their support networks gone. It must have been a lonely existence for many of them.’
‘Like the hill farms in Cumbria.’ She thought that was completely different so she stopped talking.
After a while he announced: ‘My phone is off and put away.’
‘Good! You’re infuriating.’ Then she found she was smiling to herself.
Half an hour later, Anita turned off the main road between Tomelilla and Brösarp and they found themselves winding their way along pleasant country lanes. Another ten minutes, and Anita announced that they were there. She’d already explained the nature of their detour. Kevin was quite happy to make it if there was to be a good lunch afterwards. Anita knew they were getting close, as a mesh fence bordered the road. This was the edge of the Wollstad estate.
‘What’s that?’
Anita glanced over and saw a squat shape on the other side of the fencing. It moved out of the trees.
‘A boar.’
‘A wild boar? Fantastic! They were extinct in Britain for hundreds of years, but I think they’ve been reintroduced – in Gloucestershire, I believe. Not sure everybody’s happy about it.’
They drove through a pair of wrought-iron gates and up a long drive. Parkland opened out on both sides. The drive curved round the edge of a large man-made lake.
‘That’s quite a house,’ Kevin whistled.
The building resembled a château, with two elegant wings flanking the main part of the house, which was set slightly back. Over thre
e floors, rows of dark, perfectly aligned windows set in ochre walls glinted in the sun. Anita’s mind flashed back to the last time she was here; standing on the steps talking to Kristina Ekman and realizing that she was the mastermind behind the attacks by the ‘Malmö Marksman’, as he was dubbed by the press. Kristina was unpleasant and manipulative and, as far as Anita was concerned, a criminal. Unfortunately, she was untouchable as there was nothing against her that would stand up in a court of law. If she had been kidnapped, Anita wasn’t going to shed any tears; it was what Kristina deserved. So why was she here? Professional pride.
The car crunched its way up to the main entrance.
‘OK, I’ll go inside. Don’t know how long I’ll be.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t stray too far,’ Anita said severely. ‘I know what you’re like. I don’t want you doing your famous wandering-off trick and disappearing because something’s caught your eye. I want to get away from here as quickly as possible.’
‘Trust me.’
She didn’t.
The door was answered by the same housekeeper Anita remembered from her previous visit. She was just as brusque, and her sour demeanour didn’t change any when Anita produced her warrant card.
‘Malmö?’ she questioned, having seen the name on Anita’s ID. ‘This is not your area.’
Anita explained patiently that it concerned Kristina Ekman’s residence and presence in Malmö. Fru Ekman wasn’t around; she was away. Anita asked if she could speak to Lothar von Goessling if he was in. He was, she grudgingly admitted. She left Anita hanging around in the cavernous hallway with its array of coat hooks and shoe racks. When she’d visited some years before, at least she’d been treated with more courtesy and been shown into one of the reception rooms.
When Lothar von Goessling appeared, he was much younger than she had imagined; he must be a good ten years Kristina’s junior. Dressed in casual clothes – tight blue jeans and an open-necked shirt that showed off his chest hair – he hadn’t succumbed to a hipster beard, though the stubble was artfully crafted. The blue-black hair was long and wavy and curled over his shirt collar. The features were strong and the eyes a brilliant blue – the only concession to his Aryan blood. His smile was broad and, to Anita’s eye, untroubled. He held out a hand and shook hers.
MALICE IN MALMÖ Page 21