MALICE IN MALMÖ

by Torquil Macleod

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Anita in English.

  As she spoke, another car crunched over the gravel. It was the technical back-up.

  Felicity spoke mechanically as though the situation was beyond her comprehension. ‘I’ve just had a call... a demand.’

  ‘From the kidnappers?’

  Felicity nodded.

  ‘What have they asked for?’

  ‘Four million euros. By next Wednesday.’

  ‘Have they said where?’

  ‘Where what?’ she said blankly.

  ‘Where they want the ransom money taken.’

  ‘The man said he would ring back with the location.’

  ‘Did he speak to you in English?’

  ‘No. Swedish.’

  A man and a woman got out of the car and started to unload equipment.

  ‘Hakim, can you see to them? Bit late, but better do it anyway. They probably won’t make contact again until the last minute.’

  Anita guided Felicity down the steps and away from the house. The woman was clearly traumatized and didn’t resist. They made their way across the gravel and wandered wordlessly down the lime avenue. The only sound was the crunch of their footsteps and the mellow rustling of the leaves overhead. Anita waited for Felicity to speak – she wouldn’t get much out of her by pressurizing. She would talk when she was ready.

  ‘You don’t have a cigarette?’

  ‘Sorry. Given up.’

  ‘So have I.’

  They continued on.

  ‘Are you cold? Do you want to go back to the house?’ asked Anita quietly.

  Felicity stopped. She shook her head.

  ‘Do you want to ask me anything?’

  Felicity stopped walking and stood with her hands clasped, swaying gently.

  ‘Where did they get hold of Christer? I thought the office would have contacted me; or the Helsingborg police.’

  ‘It was in Malmö.’ Felicity’s head jerked up.

  ‘Malmö? What was he doing there? I suppose it was something to do with his trip to São Paulo. He was due to fly out tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Why was he going there?’

  ‘He was tight-lipped about it. I gathered from Anders that it was important business he had to sort out. Something to do with distribution or some such.’

  This wasn’t going to be easy. ‘I don’t think it was to do with his trip. He came out of an apartment block on Östra Förstadsgatan.’

  ‘Where in God’s name is that?’

  ‘Not far from our headquarters, as it happens. Your husband owns the top floor apartment.’

  ‘I’ve never heard him mention it. Is it for business use?’

  ‘I haven’t been in yet but I don’t think it’s that sort of apartment.’

  ‘What is it for then?’

  ‘I think he was meeting someone.’ Anita paused before adding softly ‘A woman.’

  Felicity’s eyes widened as the inference sank in.

  ‘The bastard!’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘He’s been at it again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘He has previous. Hell, I’m previous. Always had a roving eye. I was his bit on the side. Never was good at keeping his dick in his pants, even after I ousted the first Mrs Offesson.’ She stamped her foot on the ground. ‘I bet I know who he was with.’ This was the information that Anita needed. ‘That red-headed bitch. Christ, he promised that was over.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Pernilla. Pernilla Glad. She worked for Christer. She was head of international sales, which meant that she often accompanied him abroad. I got suspicious. I reckoned they were making more trips than was necessary. Checked his cell phone one night when he was sleeping. He’d been carrying on behind my back. Lovey-dovey texts.’ Felicity had rapidly changed from the worried wife to the spitting-mad spouse. ‘Of course, he tried to deny it when I confronted him. I told him he could forget turning her into the third Mrs Offesson and if he didn’t sack her, I was going to take him for every krona he’d got. He backed down and “exit Pernilla”, or so I thought.’

  ‘It might not be her.’

  ‘Oh, it’s her. I just know. She lives in Malmö with her aging mother. That’s why he’ll not have gone to her place. What a complete shit!’ She had now worked herself up into a fury. ‘I’ve a good mind to let the kidnappers keep the bastard!’

  CHAPTER 47

  Anita hadn’t got home until very late on the Thursday night. She’d updated Alice Zetterberg with news of the ransom demand and of Christer Offesson’s possible mistress. Anita said she and Hakim would track Pernilla Glad down first thing in the morning. It was a straw that Zetterberg was all too keen to clutch at as nothing else had turned up on the kidnapping. She was trying to hurry through the forensics report on the dumped van.

  Pernilla Glad had been easy to find – all Anita had had to do was Google, and all Pernilla’s details came up: full name, age, birth date, address and size of house in square metres. It even had, helpfully: Pernilla is unmarried/not in partnership. Less helpfully was a list of Swedish celebrities who shared her birthday, January 8th. Kevin had been horrified yet intrigued at this amount of personal information so freely accessed. He believed in a degree of privacy, though he could see the advantages to the police – and to criminals.

  Anita and Hakim drove the short distance to Rostorp early; they wanted to catch Pernilla Glad before she went to work. They turned off the main Lundavägen thoroughfare into Dahlhemsgatan and went onto the parallel Åkerögatan; a quiet residential road of neat, detached, Swedish-style houses with the upper floor nestling under the eaves. The substantial gardens were fringed by trimmed hedges or low brick walls. This was a world away from the violence and unrest in some of the other parts of the city. Glad’s house was pristine. Hakim rang the bell. They heard ‘I’ll get it, Mamma.’ from inside, and the door was opened by Pernilla Glad. There was no mistaking her. Kevin would describe her as a ‘big girl’. She had a large, voluptuous figure accentuated by an expensively tailored, blue suit. Her red hair reached her shoulders and framed an attractive, freckled face. Anita certainly wouldn’t have taken her for the forty-two years she knew her to be if she’d passed her in the street. She had been a successful sales executive at Offesson’s, according to Hakim, and had easily found another job with an insurance firm when she’d been unceremoniously dismissed, though he suspected that Christer Offesson had used his influence. Her intelligent eyes were immediately wary, particularly when both Anita and Hakim held up their warrant cards.

  ‘We need a word,’ said Anita.

  ‘I’ve got to get to work. Can this be done later?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. It’s about Christer Offesson.’ Her flinch was all the confirmation they needed that they had the right woman.

  ‘What about Christer?’ There was more than a hint of anxiety in her voice.

  ‘You heard about the man who was kidnapped in Östra Förstadsgatan yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘It was on the television this morning. It’s all over social media.’

  ‘We haven’t released his name yet, but I’m afraid it was Christer.’

  The colour drained from Pernilla’s already-pale face.

  ‘Oh no! I had a nasty feeling it might be. Tried to convince myself it wasn’t; that he was on his way to South America.’

  ‘Were you with him yesterday afternoon?’

  Anita could see that Glad wasn’t going to protest. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time did you leave?’

  ‘We only had an hour. I had to go at around half past three.’

  ‘Was Christer still there?’

  ‘We usually give it half an hour or so before the other leaves. Christer was paranoid that Felicity would find out.’

  ‘She knows now.’

  Glad gulped.

  ‘We need you to take us to the apartment. You got a key?’

  She nodded.

  As love nests go, it seemed pretty modest. Not that An
ita had ever knowingly been in one before. Basically, it was a converted attic: two rooms with a small bathroom off. In the far room, two dormer windows overlooked a 1980s office block, framed in the middle distance by rooftops, above which poked out a couple of factory chimneys belching smoke and the stark, white Cementa tower on the docks. The room contained a tiny kitchenette, a small table with two wooden seats and a couple of comfortable armchairs facing an old television. In the bedroom was a king-sized bed opposite a closet with a serendipitously positioned mirrored door. There was nothing in the apartment to identify who owned or inhabited it: no photos, no pictures and no fripperies. There wasn’t anything to indicate that this was a rich man’s recreational pad. This was a functional space, and the function was sex.

  Anita stared out of the window. ‘How often did you meet up?’

  ‘Usually once a week. Maybe twice if Felicity was away,’ answered Glad matter-of-factly.

  Anita was relieved that Pernilla Glad wasn’t going to be awkward or obtuse. She wasn’t going to have to bully or coerce her into talking. Mistresses could be unforthcoming. Luckily, Pernilla Glad had been shaken by the fact that Christer Offesson was in danger. She genuinely cared. The poor woman probably loved him. Anita couldn’t make an informed judgement as to whether he was deserving of that love as she had never met their number one suspect.

  ‘And did anybody know about this place; about your affair?’

  ‘No. Christer bought this after I had to leave the company. We were very careful. He lost enough when his first wife divorced him.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone?’

  Doubt flickered across her face. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Someone knew. That’s why he was picked up in the street outside. A vulnerable spot.’

  ‘I honestly can’t think who it might be.’

  Anita swung away from the window. ‘Did you meet Christer on Sunday, May the fourteenth? He left a concert in Lund early that night.’

  ‘No. We never met at weekends. Felicity expected him to spend time at home then.’ So, Glad wasn’t the reason he’d slipped away from the concert. ‘What has that to do with his... his kidnapping?’

  ‘We’re covering all angles. Trying to get a picture.’

  Anita went back into the bedroom. Hakim was closing the closet door. He shook his head. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. Anita hadn’t been sure what might turn up that could connect Christer with the murder of Sami Litmanen. Nothing was the answer.

  ‘I did meet him here the next day.’ Anita and Hakim suddenly refocused. ‘Actually, I was rather early. I’d had a meeting cancelled. He was a bit moody, almost as though he wasn’t pleased to see me. It was the first time he’d ever been angry with me.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Anita.

  ‘I’d picked up a shirt he’d left on the bathroom floor.’

  ‘That’s a strange thing to be annoyed about,’ commented Hakim.

  ‘He was just tetchy, I suppose. He told me he was going to throw it out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It had a bit of blood on one of the cuffs. From a nose bleed or something.’ Hakim shot Anita a telling glance. ‘Said it wasn’t worth washing.’

  ‘Blood? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. These things happen.’

  ‘It must have happened when you weren’t here. The nosebleed, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose. Said he’d been here the week before. Doing some work on his own. He was under a lot of stress at work and wanted to get some peace away from the office.’

  ‘Did he do that often?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But he had definitely been working. There was some stuff on the bed. There was a suitcase, too, that I didn’t recognize.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘The usual kind of things – a laptop, files, some papers in a plastic bag. Oh, and there was a nice-looking wallet I hadn’t seen before. And some mobile phones. I did think that was a bit odd, but he explained he had different phones for different contacts.’

  ‘Like one for you, I suppose.’

  She flushed.

  ‘What did Christer do with these things?’

  ‘He cleared them away and put them in the suitcase.’ Pernilla Glad was perplexed. ‘Has this to do with him being taken?’

  ‘No. But it answers a lot of other questions.’ Unwittingly, Pernilla Glad had just confirmed that her lover had killed The Oligarch.

  CHAPTER 48

  The whole team was gathered that afternoon, and Anita was reporting the conversation she and Hakim had had with Pernilla Glad.

  ‘Clearly, after Christer Offesson killed Sami Litmanen on the Sunday night, he went to his attic apartment in Östra Förstadsgatan and dumped the laptop, files, etcetera – and changed his shirt. He must then have intended to come back the next day and get rid of the evidence before Pernilla turned up; except she was early. It all fits. Christer Offesson had motive: protecting his father and his company. He had opportunity: he left the concert with plenty of time to meet up with Litmanen—’

  ‘You reckon Litmanen had asked him to his apartment?’ butted in Zetterberg.

  ‘Yes. It was Litmanen’s chance to humiliate Offesson face to face. After what his mother had been put through, he couldn’t resist it. I suspect that it was Anders he really wanted to see, but Christer went instead. Either to protect his father or because he was the one who’d answered Litmanen’s second call. Whichever way, we can ask him when the kidnappers release him.’

  ‘But you haven’t got the evidence: the shirt, the laptop and the rest. More to the point, will Pernilla Glad stand up in court when she realizes that she’s condemning her lover?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hakim took a statement which covers what she found in the apartment the day after the murder. At this stage, she doesn’t appreciate the implications and she may withdraw it; especially when Offesson’s lawyers get hold of her.’

  Hakim followed on: ‘Though we can’t place Offesson at the scene of the crime, I’ve found CCTV footage of his car passing the Central Station at 22.57 on the Sunday night. The direction of the car suggests he was coming from Västra Hamnen and heading in the general direction of Östra Förstadsgatan. It fits in with our timeline.’

  ‘We have enough to pull him in,’ said Anita.

  ‘OK. As soon as he appears, you can arrest him. I’ll clear that with Prosecutor Blom. Just make sure you get a confession.’ Zetterberg shuffled some papers before continuing: ‘If we’re lucky, we’ll get Offesson back and arrest the gang when the family make the drop. No cock-ups this time. Kill two birds and all that. Presumably they can raise the money?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anita. ‘Felicity Offesson was confident that they could, though the Wednesday deadline’s a bit tight.’

  ‘Good. We’ll be there when the kidnappers make their call and we’ll have everyone ready to move when they give the location. And there’ll be no falling for any tricks this time.’

  ‘Have forensics come up with anything on the van?’ Erlandsson asked.

  ‘Nothing of any use. They’re very professional. We’ve still no real idea who’s behind this. All we can do is wait.’

  ‘Klara’s got a theory.’

  ‘Have you?’ Zetterberg said with some disbelief.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Anita.

  Wallen cleared her throat. She started hesitantly; she didn’t want to appear foolish in front of the group. ‘It’s Peter Uhlig.’

  ‘You can’t possibly think he’s behind the whole thing,’ jumped in Zetterberg.

  ‘Just hear her out,’ Anita said firmly. Zetterberg huffed.

  Wallen started again. ‘Trellogistics is in financial trouble. Through Anita’s investigation into Sami Litmanen’s death, it’s emerged that a subsidiary company in Brazil was struggling. They’ve been shut down. That enquiry also linked Trellogistics to the Offesson coffee business.’

  ‘So they have money problems. What big business doesn’t at some point?’
>
  Anita was about to intercede again, but Wallen continued. ‘I think that maybe the kidnaps have been perpetrated not only to raise money but, with this last abduction, to deal with a business rival. I started to think about this after the Kristina Ekman kidnap; there were small things that didn’t quite add up. The food for one.’

  ‘Not that again!’

  ‘Yes,’ Wallen said more determinedly. ‘Why did Uhlig get better food than the other two? That got me thinking about the actual kidnap. Möller, Ekman and Offesson were taken in very public areas; on the street, in the city. Uhlig was whisked away on some country road with no one around. Then there’s the ransom money. It was convenient that we didn’t see it being handed over. What if the whole episode with his daughter had been planned by the family?’

  ‘And as far as the Ekman kidnap is concerned, they have history,’ came in Anita. ‘Well, Peter Uhlig and Dag Wollstad clashed ten years ago; Uhlig sold his cement business to someone else despite Wollstad offering a better price. There was also a lot of animosity twenty years back between the upstart Wollstad and the long-standing companies. The latter didn’t like the way Wollstad conducted his business. The traditionalists didn’t want to be tarred with the same brush. A lot of harsh things were said on both sides and Wollstad moved in on some of his rivals. What better way of getting back at Wollstad than kidnapping his daughter and getting him to pay up?’

  Zetterberg was looking interested.

  ‘And now, Christer Offesson, who just happens to be head of the company that, we believe, might be causing Uhlig problems in South America. Offesson’s could be behind Trellogística Brasil’s sudden shutdown. We believe Litmanen was investigating this – that Offesson’s, for whatever reason, was putting the squeeze on Trellogistics; possibly softening them up for a hostile takeover. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Offesson was taken just before he was due to fly out to Brazil today.’

  ‘There’s another thing,’ put in Wallen. ‘We know from Kristina Ekman that she was kept in a container; the same story Uhlig told. Given that we can rely on her description, who has more access to containers in the whole of Skåne than Trellogistics? And easy access to all the ports in the area, in one of which we know Möller was held and are ninety-nine per cent sure that Ekman was held.’ She shrugged. ‘As I say, it’s just a theory.’