Zetterberg was chewing her index finger by the time Wallen had finished. ‘And his trucks go to and from Russia. All right. As we’ve nothing else to go on, it’s worth pursuing. Do we really think Peter Uhlig is capable of organizing a kidnap gang?’
‘I’m sure he could get hold of the right sort of contacts,’ Wallen suggested.
‘Right. I want a watch put on Uhlig. Night and day.’
And it was a night and a day later, early Saturday evening, that Anita was about to take over Hakim’s shift in the Limhamn street where Peter Uhlig lived. In this affluent area, most of the houses were hidden behind high walls and security gates. She eased into Hakim’s unmarked car.
‘Anything?’ She could see the gates of Uhlig’s house further down the street. There was no other way in or out.
Hakim yawned. ‘He and his wife went down to the marina for lunch. He’s got a boat down there. Met up with friends. His business may be in trouble but that doesn’t seem to be interfering with his weekend. Came back shortly after three and hasn’t emerged since. His wife came out at around four to walk the dog. She was gone for nearly an hour.’
‘I hope they haven’t got anything planned for the evening. I don’t fancy following them all over town.’
‘Have fun.’
‘Who’s taking over from me?’ asked Anita.
‘Pontus.’
‘He’s keen. Didn’t he do the one before you?’
‘Wants to impress the “boss”; and he needs the overtime.’
Hakim’s mobile phone started to ring. ‘Hi Liv. I’m just finishing my surveillance shift. Anita’s taking over. Look, I’ll be over later. Need to change first. Be there about eight.’ He listened and then swivelled round to Anita. ‘She wants a word with you.’ He handed over his phone.
‘Hi Liv. You OK?’
‘Yeah, fine. I wanted to have a quick word with you. I’ve found something on the net that might be of interest.’
‘Concerning?’
‘The kidnaps. I read this online paper called The Local. It’s Swedish news in English. It’s quite interesting to read their take on Swedish life. Anyway, they have various editions for different countries... Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Spain. It was the French one that caught my eye. Or a story did. It was a kidnapping in Paris. A dot com millionaire was grabbed on a Friday after work and reappeared, trussed up and with a hood over his head, in Père Lachaise Cemetery on the Monday morning. He paid his own ransom via computer. All done and dusted over the weekend. Interestingly, the victim also had a Moroccan connection. Liked to holiday there. Ring any bells?’
Anita lips flapped as she exhaled a deep breath. It certainly did ring bells. ‘Do you know how much the victim paid?’
‘He wasn’t shy on that front. Ten million dollars.’
‘And when was this?’
‘Two weekends ago. He was picked up on the twenty-sixth and released on the twenty-ninth.’
‘That’s the same time that Kristina Ekman was a captive.’ She stared out of the car windscreen. There were only a few other cars parked in the street. ‘Liv, that’s really good work. Thanks.’
‘No problem.’
‘Want to speak to Hakim again?’
‘No. I’ll see him later.’
The line went dead and Anita passed the phone back to Hakim. ‘Liv has just made quite a discovery. We appear to be dealing with two kidnap gangs.’
‘Two?’
‘She’s found almost an exact Mats MölIer operation in France. I always had a nagging doubt about that first kidnap. Different money – dollars not euros – different type of business targeted. And Moberg wondered about the time gap afterwards and then two in quick succession. Now three, of course. They’re copycat kidnaps. There’s something here that’s more important than ransom money going on. If it was plain extortion, then the ransoms would have been higher. I think there’s an ulterior motive here. I think Klara might be right. Peter Uhlig is behind this, though I’m not entirely sure why.’
Anita was shattered by the time she opened her front door at six on Sunday morning. Her surveillance stint had been uneventful. Peter Uhlig hadn’t left his house. Lights came on at dusk and the last one went out shortly after midnight. Anita had had difficulty keeping awake after her thermos of coffee had run out at three. It was even harder to keep her eyes open with no one to talk to. Normally, they would have worked in pairs, but everyone was working flat out as more cars were being set on fire and the wave of discontent was leading to inter-gang violence in the poorer parts of the city. Throw in the usual Saturday night drunkenness, and the force’s resources were being stretched to breaking point.
She crept in as quietly as possible so as not to disturb Kevin. She couldn’t decide whether to have a shower or just go to bed. Maybe a coffee first. She went through to the kitchen. Before she even had time to put the kettle on, her mobile sprang into action.
‘Anita,’ she said wearily.
‘It’s me, Bea. Go to St. Pauli Kyrkogården as quick as you can; middle section.’
‘Has Christer Offesson turned up?’
‘Not sure. A call’s just come in. Could be. I’m at the polishus and I’m just about to go over there.’
Anita wearily grabbed the keys of Kevin’s hired car and left the apartment. The drive to the cemetery didn’t take long. The streets were deserted at that time on a Sunday morning. This couldn’t be anything to do with Christer Offesson as she was sure that the ransom hadn’t yet been paid, unless Felicity and Anders had done it secretly.
The middle section of St. Pauli Kyrkogården was situated between Sankt Knuts väg and Nöbelvägen. On the other side of Sankt Knuts väg, where Anita parked, was the north section of the cemetery, only minutes’ walk away from the polishus. Anita could see why it was the perfect place to leave a kidnap victim. Despite being near the centre of town, the roads round about weren’t residential. The middle section was bordered by an industrial estate on one side and a school on the other. Further cover was provided by trees lining a walkway to the chapel. Anita hurried through the gate and down the gravel path. On either side of the path were the usual multifarious plots, some flaunting an elaborate array of monuments and mausolea. Past the chapel, and Anita could see Bea Erlandsson ahead of her with two uniformed officers. Bea was talking to a tall youth who looked the worse for wear. His black hair was spiked and the crotch of his trousers was virtually below his knees. He was clutching a drinks can and appeared agitated. When Bea saw Anita, she moved away from the youth, and exposed a figure beyond sitting on a bench. He was bound to the bench and still hooded.
‘Why haven’t you freed him?’
‘I thought I’d better not.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said a tired and fractious Anita as she pushed past the young detective.
‘Anita!’ Erlandsson called after her. ‘He’s dead.’
CHAPTER 49
Half an hour later, there was quite a crowd in the vicinity of the body. Bea Erlandsson was explaining to Zetterberg that the young man, Filip Kowalski, was heading home after a late night party and had wandered through the cemetery. He found the man and took the hood off. Shocked at finding a corpse tied to a bench, he had the presence of mind to phone the police. When Bea reached the scene, she identified the victim from his photographs back at headquarters and then, wearing gloves, replaced the hood so forensics could investigate the scene properly.
The hood had now been removed and the stiff corpse untied, and Eva Thulin was busy at work with Anita in attendance. In both directions, police were combing the ground between the victim’s location and the gates at either end of the cemetery.
‘Couldn’t the lad have found this after I’d had my breakfast?’ Thulin grumbled happily. ‘I was going to get breakfast in bed today because it’s my birthday.’
‘Happy birthday,’ said Anita.
‘Actually, it was yesterday, but my miserable hubby was out playing football so couldn’t indulge me.’ Christer Offe
sson was still in a sitting position. Thulin had pulled up the blood-stained shirt he was wearing and was examining his back. ‘And I was on a promise this morning. Yesterday, he was too knackered after his game.’
‘Too much information, Eva. What about our man here?’
‘Well, the method of death is straightforward enough. Two bullets in the back.’
‘Handgun?’
‘Yes.’
‘Interesting that they’re in his back. So, it’s not an execution?’
‘Wouldn’t have thought so. That’s usually a bullet in the back of the head.’
‘I wonder if he was trying to escape?’
‘I can’t speculate on that.’
‘Maybe the shooter didn’t mean to kill him. Just stop him. Christer Offesson was worth more to the kidnappers alive. Dead, he’s worthless.’
‘Well, accident or not, why go through all this charade again? Risk dumping the body in the middle of Malmö?’
‘A warning to the next victim? Pay up or else? But they didn’t give the Offessons much time to raise the cash.’ There was a lot to ponder. ‘Time of death?’
‘Difficult to say; probably about twenty-four hours. Rigor’s set in – the perps might have had a job moving him; he must already have been in a sitting position when they did. Seems they knew exactly what they were going to do with him.’
‘That would mean he died within forty-eight hours of being abducted. Why wait to dump the body?’
‘When it’s quiet?’ Eva Thulin stood back and let the photographer snap the grim scene. She waved to him to take close-ups of the victim’s back. ‘Now you’ve got two murders on your plate,’ she said, peeling off her latex gloves.
‘No, just the one. This was our prime suspect in the other one.’
On Monday morning, Anita felt more refreshed. After a quick meeting on returning from the cemetery with Zetterberg and the rest of the team, she had gone back home to catch up on some sleep. Zetterberg had decreed that the surveillance of Peter Uhlig was to continue, even though, because of the surveillance, he had a watertight alibi for the day Christer Offesson was killed. Of course, he could still have been behind it all. Zetterberg was flirting with the idea of hauling Uhlig in for questioning, though she’d have to run that by Prosecutor Blom. Straw poll opinion was that Offesson may have been shot while trying to get away from his captors. They desperately needed more information from forensics.
Over an evening meal the night before with Kevin, Anita had decided on her next move. First thing on Monday morning, she made three calls. The first was to Mats Möller, the second to Dragan Mitrović and the third to the polishus, which Pontus Brodd answered. Then she headed for the Central Station with Kevin in tow. She’d promised him a day out.
Brodd stuck his head round Zetterberg’s door. He looked shifty.
‘Yes?’ Zetterberg said impatiently. She was gathering herself for a debriefing of yesterday’s events with Commissioner Dahlbeck. He was in a tizzy at the thought of the scion of Sweden’s most famous coffee-making dynasty lying in the mortuary in Lund – on his patch. Fail to solve this and the comfortable government consultancy role he was trying to line up in Stockholm would be out of the window.
‘You asked me to keep an eye on Anita.’
‘Yes.’ She was interested now.
‘She’s just rung in. She’s going off to Helsingborg.’
‘What the hell is she going up there for?’
‘Going to the Offesson head office.’
‘What! I bloody didn’t sanction that. Christ, that woman!’
Just then her phone rang. Commissioner Dahlbeck was ready to see her.
The train took about an hour to snake its way up through Lund, Kävlinge and Landskrona and a number of minor stations before it reached Helsingborg on the west coast of Skåne. While Kevin was staring out of the window taking in the view, Anita was deep in thought about the consequences of Christer Offesson’s death. It had been an unpleasant jolt. And truly frustrating. After going all round the houses to find their killer, Offesson had been snatched from her grasp before he could be brought to justice. On reflection, she could see that they might have had difficulty getting a conviction without Pernilla Glad backing up her statement; and that wasn’t guaranteed in the circumstances once Glad realized what she was being asked to do. They hadn’t found the shirt or the missing items stolen from Litmanen’s apartment – and they probably never would. All the same, it felt like all their hard work had come to nothing. Someone else had carried out the sentence. But who? There was uninformed speculation in the free Metro newspaper she’d picked up at the station. There was no way the murder of Christer Offesson could have been kept under wraps. She hadn’t envied Zetterberg’s task of informing the victim’s father and his widow. At least she’d done it and not designated the job. Pernilla Glad would just have to find out through the media like the rest of the public.
Anita was now convinced that the Mats Möller abduction had nothing to do with the other kidnaps. Her call to Möller that morning had all but confirmed it. She knew he was reticent about saying how much had been extorted from him, so she asked him whether the ransom he paid was anywhere in the region of the dollar equivalent of four million euros. His answer was that what he paid was ‘well north of that figure’. He’d also heard about what had happened in Paris and reckoned it sounded like the same gang.
So that left three copycat kidnaps, the last of which had gone wrong. Her call to Dragan Mitrović hadn’t yielded any fresh information; he simply repeated his belief that the gang wasn’t local, substantiated by his own enquiries. He was clearly angry that the gang was muscling in on his territory. Reading between the lines, Anita gathered that he didn’t condone violence unless it was necessary to further his own strategic business plan. She’d asked if it was feasible for a wealthy businessman to bring in a professional gang to kidnap rivals. He thought it was entirely possible. It was quite common in places like the Middle East and Latin America. From the tone of his voice, she suspected that he’d been approached at some stage in his career to do something similar.
It made perfect sense that Peter Uhlig was behind these kidnaps despite the flimsy evidence being circumstantial – the fact that he had eaten herring and potatoes during his incarceration was hardly going to stand up in court. Furthermore, it was not proving easy to progress with the investigation into Trellogistics – hence Anita’s visit to Helsingborg, the headquarters of the Offesson operation. Maybe there was some clue she’d pick up there that would unlock the real reason why Christer Offesson and Kristina Ekman had been kidnapped.
At Helsingborg, they exited the station through the shopping area with its impressive arched, glass roof. The station abuts the shoreline, and a ferry was just leaving the harbour for its twenty minute crossing to Helsingør on the Danish side of the Sound. Järnvägsgatan opened up in front of them; the harbour on the left, and an eclectic mix of buildings lining the other side of the street. Lending sumptuous splendour to the vista was the neo-Gothic town hall with its eighty-five-metre clock tower bearing a striking resemblance to St. Mark’s campanile in Venice. The size and grandeur of the building was testimony to Helsingborg’s nineteenth-century prosperity.
‘Hey, this is quite a place!’ Kevin remarked appreciatively.
‘You can have a mooch around while I investigate Offesson’s.’
They turned into Stortorget which, in reality, was more of a boulevard than a square. They carried on towards a series of old, stone, arched gateways following a steep incline, at the top of which was a castellated tower.
‘That’s Kärnan medieval tower. On a fine day like this, you’ll get great views across the Sound. You’ll be able to see Helsingør Castle, what Shakespeare called Elsinore.’
‘How good is that?’ Kevin put the palm of his hand on his breast in a theatrical pose. ‘You can be Ophelia to my Hamlet.’
‘I don’t think so. I’m not drowning myself for anyone, least of all you.’
<
br /> ‘You’ve no soul.’ Then he grinned lecherously and with a melodramatic gesture cried ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’
‘That would be one way of getting rid of you.’ Anita was glad there weren’t too many people about.
They walked a little further up the square. ‘So, where are you off to?’
Anita pointed to an impressive building at the end of the street. A former bank built in the neo-classical style, this had been the Offesson headquarters since the 1930s.
Kevin gave it the once-over. ‘I was expecting some big neon sign with Offesson’s writ large. It’s all very low-key and discreet. Like some of the offices in the City of London.’
‘That’s old money for you. Nothing too vulgar.’
‘Like me.’
‘Not sure about that.’
Anita was shown up a wide, sweeping staircase and into an oak-panelled room with a long table and heavy, leather-upholstered chairs. It should have reeked of coffee but reeked of understated opulence instead. Much needed illumination from long casement windows with Juliet balconies compensated for the décor. A few minutes later, a man entered the room. He must have been well into his sixties. Bald except for a halo of white fuzz, he wore a suit and tie. His face was creased in anxiety and he apologized profusely for keeping Anita waiting. He introduced himself as Bengt Månsson, the company secretary.
‘Have they offered you a coffee?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
As they both took seats at the end of the long table, Månsson said ‘As you can imagine we’re all in a state of shock. We weren’t even aware Christer had been kidnapped.’ His fingers ran nervously along the surface of the table like a piano player warming up for a recital.
‘Christer Offesson was grabbed by a gang outside an apartment block in Östra Förstadsgatan in Malmö.’
MALICE IN MALMÖ Page 32