MALICE IN MALMÖ

by Torquil Macleod

  Thanks to Bea, Anita had found out an interesting fact about Kristina’s toy boy. Goessling might be German, but he had a Swedish mother. All that flannel about conversing with Kristina in English was just that. He probably spoke Swedish perfectly well enough to pass as a traffic cop and phone in ransom demands.

  She turned back into the trees. Kevin hadn’t had time to go very far, yet he must have got near enough to something interesting to instigate Goessling’s reaction. She moved deeper into the wood. She knew from the map she’d studied last night that the Wollstad estate was extensive, consisting of woodland, gardens and areas of grassland. The wild boar had free rein, though they tended to stick to the woods. After a few minutes, she hit a wide track that ran through the trees. Still with her pistol at the ready, she followed it furtively, keeping her wits about her. Soon she made out what looked like a clearing a couple of hundred metres in front of her. The light became stronger as the canopy thinned until she found herself at the edge of a large, grassy, open space – in the middle of which was something which made her heart start racing. A green metal container.

  Before venturing into the open, she scanned her surroundings. The way was clear. All she could hear was the wind in the trees. She quickly crossed the grass and reached the door. She tried it. It wasn’t locked and opened easily. She slipped inside, leaving the door ajar. The thin beam of light behind her showed her that the container was split into two sections. There was a door in the dividing wall. In front of her were a table and three wooden chairs. It was tidy enough, though there were a couple of empty beer cans lying on the floor. But what really grabbed her attention was what was stacked against one of the side walls: four large speakers of the kind you might see at a rock concert, and several coils of wire. So, that’s how they’d created the illusion of a harbour. She felt one of the coils. She picked a piece of grass out of it. They must have surrounded the container with this sound system. No wonder the location had been impossible to find. It was nowhere near a port!

  Gingerly, she opened the dividing door. She took out her phone to give herself some light. There was a metal chair in the middle of the space and a bucket in one corner. This is where Peter Uhlig and Christer Offesson must have been kept. She guessed Offesson was shot on the grass outside. She took a couple of snaps then went back and photographed the sound system. Before she left, she would take some shots of the container from the outside.

  She stepped out into the light. Too late, she was aware of someone close by. Her hands went up to protect her head; then all went black.

  CHAPTER 52

  Anita had no idea how long she’d been out, but, however long, there’d been time to tie her hands behind her to one of the wooden chairs in the outer section of the container. She wanted to nurse her head, which was aching. The light from a lamp on top of one of the speakers hurt her eyes. Painfully, she lifted her head. A swarthy young man was pointing her own SIG Sauer pistol directly at her. He was totally relaxed and offered her a grin when she looked at him. He matched the description of the young man who had waved Peter Uhlig down.

  ‘I’m police. You’d better let me go.’

  He didn’t reply; just grinned again. Maybe he didn’t understand her. She tried again in English. Still he said nothing.

  Then the door opened and in came Kristina Ekman and Lothar von Goessling.

  ‘This an unpleasant surprise,’ Ekman said. She turned to Goessling. ‘This woman has been causing problems for a long time.’

  ‘Let me go,’ said Anita. ‘It’ll only make things worse for you if you don’t.’

  ‘I have no intention of letting you go; in fact, you’re not leaving here alive.’

  ‘Killing a cop will really finish you.’

  ‘I don’t think so. No one will find a trace of you here. Lothar’s already seen to your car.’

  ‘My boss knows I’m here.’

  ‘I don’t believe you; you wouldn’t have been sent on your own. No, it’s time you left us – permanently. Third time lucky, I suppose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know? I ordered that gunman to kill you and your Arab sidekick in Möllevångstorget all those years ago.’

  ‘I suspected that.’

  ‘And then there was your exploding car.’ And Anita had thought it was Dragan Mitrović! ‘Lothar was worried about what your English boyfriend might have seen, so we thought we’d get rid of you both. Sadly, that didn’t work out quite as we’d hoped, though it seems to have left its mark on your face. Never mind, you’re here now.’ Her smile was as cold as ice.

  Ekman nodded at the young man in the chair, whom Anita assumed was one of the Brazilians used for the kidnappings. She knew she had to play for time.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why all the kidnappings?’

  Ekman glanced at her gold watch.

  ‘I really haven’t got time for this.’

  ‘Why kill Christer Offesson? Don’t you want the satisfaction of telling me how clever you’ve been?’

  ‘I have to admit, I’m quite intrigued as to how you stumbled onto us. I didn’t think the police were that smart.’

  Anita realized that she needed to convince Ekman that her colleagues were on to her and that killing one of their own would not be a good move. She tried to halt her rising panic and to think rationally. ‘We’re smart enough to work out that you copied the Mats Möller kidnap.’

  ‘That’s what gave me the idea. And the really clever bit was my own kidnapping. I should have been an actress. I put on a brilliant performance for the police and the press. After that, who’s going to suspect little ol’ me?’

  ‘But we did suspect something wasn’t right. You shouldn’t have given Peter Uhlig proper food.’

  It was Ekman’s turn to be nonplussed. ‘Why? What do you mean?’

  ‘Kidnappers don’t usually go out of their way to cook food for their captives, especially if they’re supposedly holed up in some dockside container. They buy in easy rations. Takeaway meals.’

  ‘We fed him from the house. OK, that was sloppy. I wondered why I was asked about my meals. Gave the wrong answer, didn’t I?’

  ‘We also worked out that the kidnappings weren’t about the ransom money. The one thing you couldn’t know, and we didn’t at the time, was what Mats Möller paid out. But we now know that the gang that grabbed him extorted a lot more than four million euros. And they got their payment in dollars. You didn’t know that, either.’

  ‘Doesn’t really matter in the great scheme of things. To all intents and purposes, our gang was just doing the same for less.’

  ‘How did you know where to find Christer?’

  ‘You mean his dismal little trysts? The police aren’t the only people who carry out surveillance.’

  All the time they had been talking, Anita, realizing that her tied hands were in the shadows, had been trying surreptitiously to move her wrists to loosen the rope, and now she could feel a fraction of give.

  ‘We also worked out that the kidnappings – Uhlig’s, yours, Offesson’s – really had nothing to do with money. This is all about business. Or rather one particular business.’ In her late-night discussion with Kevin, it hadn’t taken a great leap to substitute the theory about Peter Uhlig and transfer it to Kristina Ekman and Dag Wollstad. The last she’d heard about Wollstad – and that was from Karl Westermark before he blew his brains out – was that the industrialist was in Bolivia. He must have moved. ‘I take it your father’s based in Brazil now. Let me guess. He bribed the authorities to shut down Trellogística. Probably when you put Peter Uhlig out of action. Similar thing with the Offesson coffee plantations?’

  ‘Yes, Father is buying them over for a fraction of their true value. Money and threats are a good business combination in Brazil, especially with the right connections. And in Colombia, too.’

  ‘And now you’re waiting for the share price to plummet before you move in.’

  �
�Offesson’s are in a mess without Christer. Their coffee empire will be part of an obscure Brazilian conglomerate within a couple of weeks. There’ll be no paper trail leading to my father.’

  ‘And Trellogística Brasil?’

  ‘That’ll be swallowed up by the same conglomerate when the officials untie all the red tape we wound them up in.’

  ‘Are you after Trellogistics as well?’

  ‘It’ll be taken over by Wollstad Industries soon enough.’

  ‘I understand that. What I don’t understand is why target Peter Uhlig and Christer Offesson so personally? There must be more legitimate ways of achieving what you’ve done.’

  A thin smile crossed Ekman’s lips.

  ‘Revenge, of course. My father is a great businessman. A visionary. But he didn’t come from the right background, and he didn’t follow the rules. The likes of the Uhligs and the Offessons made life very difficult for him in the early years. They disliked his methods. They disliked him, full stop. They tried to thwart him at every turn. Do you know that Peter Uhlig sold his cement business to the Hoffberg Group for less than my father offered? Simply out of spite. They all used their influence to sabotage his business deals, they bad-mouthed him in business circles, and even shopped him to the tax authorities. Anders Offesson was the greatest offender. But for all their malice, they couldn’t stop the rise of Wollstad Industries! And then, thanks to you, he’s condemned to live the rest of his life in exile.’ She poked Anita’s shoulder viciously. ‘And exile gives a man time to think, time to plot, and time to plan a day of reckoning. That’s just what he’s done with our help. My father and I make a great team. He provided Luis and his brothers for the kidnaps. They’re experts in their field over in Rio. Then I, and Lothar, of course, did the rest.’

  ‘We know your boyfriend was the patrol cop. And the voice phoning in the ransom demands. We checked up on his background and found his Swedish mother.’

  Goessling had been looking increasingly worried as the conversation went on.

  ‘Kristina, they know so much about us. We have to be careful.’

  ‘Don’t go all pathetic on me now!’ she snapped. ‘They won’t be able to prove a thing.’

  ‘I’m sure we can prove that you killed Christer Offesson,’ continued Anita, who could feel a further loosening around her wrists.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We know he was executed. You tried to make it look like he was escaping, but the bullets were fired from close range. Lothar didn’t do that very well.’

  ‘It wasn’t me! Kristina did it.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘We also know that the gun was Brazilian.’

  ‘Luis’s brothers took their guns back to Rio on Monday. You’ll have to go there to find the murder weapon.’

  ‘And then there was the soil and the grass. They were a real giveaway.’

  ‘The grass?’

  ‘When you took him outside. There was earth and grass found in Christer’s mouth and hair and on his clothes. Forensics are pretty clever these days. It’s amazing what they can do with soil samples. Once they match it to what you’ve got out there...’ Anita had no idea whether that was even possible and was banking on Ekman and an increasingly fidgety Goessling not knowing either.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Am I? Tell me, the timing of Christer’s kidnap. Was it because he was about to fly out to Brazil?’

  ‘We were always going to grab him. We had to move more quickly than we’d planned when we heard of his flight.’

  ‘And why did you have to kill him? We were about to arrest him for The Oligarch’s murder anyway.’

  Ekman looked bored. ‘Well, I’ve saved you the bother.’

  Anita was still playing for time. Her wrists and fingers were aching, but the knots were beginning to unravel. ‘So, why?’

  Ekman took out a cigarette and lit it. All the time, her eyes never left Anita. Anita was praying that she wouldn’t go round the back of the chair, so she held her gaze. She stopped all wrist movement until Ekman had started talking again.

  ‘We’d always intended to kill Christer. It would make sure he was out of the way while Father moved in and sewed up the plantations. Killing his son would just add to Anders’ hurt and humiliation. But in a feeble attempt to save himself, the fool blurted out that he’d killed The Oligarch – all that sordid business about the little girl – and that he’d done me and Father a favour. The Oligarch had spilled it all to Christer, obviously revelling in Offessons’ imminent demise: the story that he’d initially uncovered was about Father’s, shall we say, less-than-scrupulous transactions in South America. I don’t know how he’d got onto it in the first place, but he was about to expose my father’s dealings and the... “connections” that were helping him to stitch up both Uhlig and Offesson. My father has some useful but dubious friends in the Comando Vermelho, one of Brazil’s leading organized crime syndicates. The Oligarch’s story would have finished Wollstad Industries over here in Europe. I’d be finished. Christer even tried to propose a deal. If we let him go, he promised he wouldn’t stand in our way or tell the world about Father’s activities. We could ensure his silent complicity because we now knew he’d killed The Oligarch. He was willing to sacrifice his company to save his life. A couple of bullets put an end to the negotiations.’

  Kristina Ekman dropped her half-smoked cigarette on the floor and crushed it with her foot.

  ‘I think that’s enough. Time for you to disappear.’

  ‘Are you sure, Kristina?’ gabbled Goessling. ‘If the police know all this...’

  ‘Just do as I say. You don’t have to shoot her. All you and Luis have to do is get rid of the body.’ She came a little closer. Anita could smell her perfume. ‘Father is a great admirer of the late Juan Peron. He used to have political enemies taken out by plane and dropped into the Rio Plata. They were never seen again. We can learn a lot from the South Americans. We’ll do the same with you.’

  The rope was nearly loose enough for Anita to wriggle her wrists free. She just needed a few moments more.

  ‘Don’t you want to know how I found out that this was where you brought your victims?’

  Ekman gave a throaty laugh. ‘OK, why not?’

  ‘The wild boar.’

  ‘Come on! Surely not!’

  Anita was about to explain to give her extra precious seconds when an edgy Goessling suddenly said ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’ Ekman said petulantly.

  ‘I thought I heard something.’

  ‘Start being a man, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m sure I heard something.’

  ‘Luis.’ Ekman waved her thumb at the Brazilian.

  Luis ambled to the door, opened it and went out. Anita strained her ears; the silence was palpable. Then a shout: ‘Police!’ The next moment, there was a shot, followed by another, followed by a further exchange of gun fire.

  ‘Shit!’ cried Goessling as a bullet pinged off the side of the container.

  Goessling, now in a complete funk, rushed towards the door. As he pushed it wide open, he raised his arms. ‘Don’t shoot!’

  Ekman, just behind him, pushed her boyfriend forward and slipped out of Anita’s sight. Anita quickly untangled her wrists and freed her hands. She was out of the door in a flash. Outside, she could see Luis lying on the ground, clutching his thigh. Goessling was standing with arms raised shouting in Swedish that he hadn’t got a weapon. Half a dozen armed police in blue paramilitary-style uniforms were pointing their Heckler & Koch submachine guns at him. Behind them, Anita could see Zetterberg and Hakim.

  But Kristina Ekman wasn’t there. Anita ran round to the back of the container. Here, there was another path leading into the trees. She sped down it and, round a bend, she saw a fleeing Ekman in front of her.

  ‘Stop!’ Anita yelled.

  Ekman had no intention of being caught. She ran on with Anita in pursuit. Suddenly, she darted off the path into the trees. Anita foll
owed her, pushing her way through the tangled thicket. Ekman might know the terrain, but Anita was fitter, and she was gradually closing in. Ekman was about twenty paces ahead when she ducked under a low branch and, for a moment, was out of sight. Anita reached the spot but she couldn’t see Ekman anywhere. An old fallen tree trunk blocked the way. The next moment, she heard a noise behind her. Too late! A large branch, wielded by Ekman, crashed down on Anita’s back. She stumbled forward, pain shooting through her shoulder. Her glasses flew off in the fall. She twisted round just as another blow rained down and caught her upraised arm. From her prone position, despite the pain, and using all her strength, Anita lunged at Ekman as she turned to run off. Her hand just barely brushed Ekman’s heel but it was enough to unbalance her and she tumbled into the prostrate tree trunk.

  As Anita sank back to the ground, she was aware that Ekman was still there, lying across the tree, face down. Had she cracked her head when she fell? Gingerly, Anita got to her feet. Ekman hadn’t smacked her head; blood was gushing from her neck. A thin, sharp spike of wood jutting from the tree had gone straight through her jugular vein. The beautiful face was a mask of agony.

  A stunned Anita staggered out of the trees, cradling her arm. In her hand, she clutched her twisted glasses. Luis was being attended to and Lothar von Goessling was being escorted away. Hakim saw her and quickly came over.

  ‘Are you OK?’