Now the woman was carrying a child in her arms. He hadn’t been there a moment ago. Nathalie was sure of that. But now he too was looking at her with big, pleading eyes. He was talking to Sam. Nathalie wanted to put her hands over her ears and scream to shut out the voices of the boy and the woman. But her hands were holding Sam, and the scream stuck in her throat. Her shirt was starting to get wet, and she gasped for breath as the cold water reached her stomach. The woman was walking very close. She and the boy were both talking at once – the woman to Nathalie, and the boy to Sam. Against her will, Nathalie started to listen to what they were saying. The voices forced their way in just like the salt water was soaking through her clothes and reaching her skin.
They had come to the end of the road, she and Sam. Any minute now, those people would find them and finish what they’d begun. The memory of the blood spattering the wall and colouring Fredrik’s face flashed through her mind for a moment. Nathalie shook her head to make those images go away. Were they dreams or fantasies? Or were they real? She no longer knew. She remembered only the icy feeling of hatred and panic. And a fear so great that it seized hold of her, leaving only the most primitive and furious of reactions.
When the water came up to her armpits, she could feel how light Sam was in her arms. The woman and the boy were very close. Their voices were close to her ear, and she clearly heard what they said. Nathalie closed her eyes and finally relented. They were right. A sense of certainty filled her body and made all fear disappear. She knew that they wished her and Sam well, and she stood there, letting a feeling of calm wash over her.
Far behind her, she thought she heard other voices. Others who were calling her, who wanted something, and who were trying to get her to listen. She ignored them. They were less real than the voices so close to her ear that were still talking.
‘Let him go,’ said the woman gently.
‘I want to play with him,’ said the boy.
Nathalie nodded. She needed to let go. That was what they had wanted the whole time, what they had tried to explain. He belonged to them now. He belonged to the others.
Slowly she released her hold on Sam. She let the sea take him, let him disappear beneath the surface to be carried away on the currents. Then she took a step forward, and another. All the voices were still talking. She heard them both near and in the distance, but again she chose not to listen. She wanted to follow Sam and be one of them. What else should she do?
The woman’s voice was pleading, but the water rose up over her ears, drowning out all sounds and replacing them with a roar, as if from the blood that was rushing through her body. Onward she went, feeling the water closing over her head and the air being pressed out of her lungs.
Then something dragged her upwards. The woman was surprisingly strong. She pulled her to the surface, and Nathalie felt anger rise up inside of her. Why wasn’t she allowed to follow her son? She fought back, but the woman refused to let go and kept dragging her back towards life.
Another pair of hands grabbed hold of her body and pulled her up. Her head broke through the surface and her lungs filled with air. Nathalie uttered a scream that rose up towards the sky. She wanted to go back under the water, but instead she felt herself being dragged towards land.
Then the woman and the boy were gone. Just like Sam.
Nathalie felt herself being lifted up and carried away. She gave up. They had found her at last.
The party went on all evening and well into the early morning hours. Everyone enjoyed the excellent food, the wine flowed, the guests of honour and the locals mingled, and new friends were made on the dance floor. In other words, it was a very successful event.
Vivianne went over to Anders as he stood leaning against the railing, watching the couples dance.
‘We’ve got to leave now.’
He nodded, but something in his expression made her feel more uneasy than ever.
‘Come on.’ She tugged at his sleeve. Without looking her in the eye, he turned and followed her.
She had hidden her suitcase in one of the rooms that wasn’t reserved for guests. She picked it up and headed for the door, ready to leave.
‘Where’s your suitcase? We have to leave in ten minutes, otherwise we might miss our plane.’
Anders didn’t reply. Instead he sank down on to the bed and stared at the floor.
‘Anders?’ She had a tight grip on the handle of her suitcase.
‘I love you,’ whispered Anders. Those words suddenly sounded ominous.
‘We have to go,’ she said, but she knew in her heart that he wasn’t going with her. In the distance they could hear the thudding music. She set her suitcase on the floor and sat down next to him.
‘I can’t.’ He looked at her. His eyes filled with tears.
‘What have you done?’ She didn’t want to hear what he said, didn’t want to know that her worst fears had come true. But she couldn’t stop herself from asking the question.
‘Done? Good Lord, did you think I was the one who …?’
Anders shook his head and began laughing as he wiped away his tears with the back of his hand. ‘Good Lord, Vivianne. No!’
She felt enormously relieved, but in that case, she really didn’t understand what was going on.
‘Why then?’ Vivianne put her arm around her brother’s shoulders, and he leaned his head against her. That conjured up so many memories of all the times they had sat like this, with their heads close together.
‘You know that I love you.’
‘Yes, I know that.’ And suddenly she understood. She straightened up so she could get a proper look at him. Gently she took his face in her hands. ‘My dear brother, have you fallen in love with someone?’
‘I can’t go with you,’ he said, his eyes again filling with tears. ‘I know that we promised each other that we’d always stay together. But you’ll have to make this trip without me.’
‘If you’re happy, then I’m happy too. It’s as simple as that. I’ll miss you terribly, but there’s nothing I want more than for you to have your own life.’ She smiled. ‘But you do have to tell me who it is. Otherwise I can’t leave.’
He mentioned a name, and Vivianne pictured a woman they’d worked with in connection with Project Badis. Again she smiled.
‘You have good taste,’ she said, and then fell silent for a moment. ‘You’re going to have to do a lot of explaining, and you’ll be held responsible. Should I really leave you alone with all this? I’ll stay if you want me to.’
Anders shook his head.
‘I want you to go. Bask in the sun and enjoy it for me too. I doubt I’m going to see much daylight for a while, but she knows about everything and has promised to wait for me.’
‘What about the money?’
‘It’s all yours,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I don’t need any of it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Again she took his face in her hands, as if touching him would help her to remember his familiar features.
He nodded and took her hands away.
‘I’m sure. And now you have to go. The plane won’t wait for you.’
He stood up and grabbed her suitcase. Without another word he carried it out to the car and put it in the boot. No one saw them. The hum of voices blended with the music, and everyone was focused on other things.
Vivianne got into the driver’s seat.
‘We did a good job, didn’t we?’ She glanced up at Badis, which glittered in the dim light.
‘A damned good job.’
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Vivianne took off her engagement ring and handed it to Anders.
‘Here. Give this back to Erling. He’s not a bad person. I hope he finds somebody else to give it to some day.’
Anders put it in his trouser pocket.
‘I’ll make sure he gets it.’
They stared at each other in silence. Then Vivianne closed the door and started up the car. Anders stood there for a long time, watching as she sped
away. Then he slowly went up the stairs to Badis. He had decided to be the last person to leave the party.
22
Erling was starting to panic. Vivianne had disappeared. No one had seen her since the party on Saturday, and her car was also missing. Something must have happened.
Again he picked up the phone and rang the police station.
‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked as soon as Mellberg answered. When he received another negative reply, he could no longer control himself. ‘What exactly are you doing to find my fiancée? I’m convinced that something terrible must have happened to her. Have you dragged the water around the dock? Yes, I realize that her car is missing too, but who’s to say that somebody didn’t drive it into the harbour, and maybe with Vivianne inside?’ Erling’s voice rose to a falsetto as he pictured Vivianne trapped in the car, unable to escape as the water slowly rose. ‘I demand that you make use of all possible resources to find her.’
He slammed down the phone. A timid knock on the door made him glance up. Gunilla poked her head in, giving him a frightened look.
‘Yes?’ He wished everybody would just leave him alone. He’d been out searching for Vivianne all of Sunday, and this morning he’d come to the office only because he hoped she might try to reach him there.
‘The bank called.’ Gunilla sounded even more anxious than usual.
‘I don’t have time for things like that right now,’ he said, staring at the phone. She might ring at any moment.
‘It’s about the Badis account, something that’s not as it should be. They want you to call them back.’
‘I told you, I don’t have time for that,’ he snapped. To his surprise, Gunilla was still standing there.
‘They want you to call back, and they said it’s urgent,’ she told him, and then went back to her desk.
With a sigh Erling picked up the phone and rang their contact at the bank. ‘It’s Erling. Is there some sort of problem?’
He tried to sound authoritative. He wanted to make the call as brief as possible so that the line wouldn’t be busy if Vivianne phoned. He was hardly paying attention as he listened to the bank official, but suddenly he sat up straight.
‘What do you mean there’s no money in the account? You’d better check again. We deposited several million kronor, and additional funds will be arriving from Vivianne and Anders Berkelin this week. I know that we have a lot of suppliers that need to be paid, but there’s plenty of money in that account.’ Then he fell silent and listened some more. ‘Are you sure you’re not mistaken?’
Erling tugged at the collar of his shirt. He was suddenly having a hard time breathing. When he put down the phone, thoughts began whirling through his head. The money was gone. Vivianne was gone. He wasn’t stupid – he could put two and two together. But he didn’t want to believe it.
Erling had just tapped in the first three digits of the phone number for the police station when Anders appeared in the doorway. Erling stared at him. Vivianne’s brother looked haggard and exhausted. At first he merely stood there without saying a word. Then he came over to Erling’s desk and held out his hand, palm up. Light from the window shone on what he was holding and made tiny sparkles dance over the wall behind Erling. Vivianne’s engagement ring.
At that moment all doubt disappeared from Erling’s mind. In a daze, he tapped in the rest of the numbers for the Tanumshede police. Anders sat down in a chair across from him and waited. On the desk lay the engagement ring, glittering in the light.
23
On Wednesday morning Erica was allowed to leave the hospital and go home. It had turned out that the blow to her head wasn’t serious, but considering the previous injuries that she’d sustained in the car accident, the doctors had decided to keep her under observation for a few days just to be on the safe side.
‘Stop it. I can walk on my own.’ She glared at Patrik, who was holding her arm as they went up the front steps to the house. ‘You heard what they said. Everything looks okay. I don’t have a concussion, only a few stitches.’
Patrik opened the door.
‘Yes, I know, but …’ He fell silent when he saw the look Erica gave him.
‘When will the kids be home?’ She kicked off her shoes.
‘Mamma is bringing the twins over around two, and then I thought that we could all go and pick up Maja. She’s been missing you terribly.’
‘What a sweetie she is,’ said Erica, going into the kitchen. It felt strange to be home with no children around. She could hardly remember what that felt like.
‘Sit down and I’ll make some coffee,’ said Patrik, moving past her.
Erica was about to protest when she realized that she ought to make the most of the situation. She sat down at the kitchen table and with a contented sigh propped her feet up on the chair next to her.
‘Do you know what will happen with Badis?’ She felt as if she’d been living in a bubble at the hospital, so now she wanted to hear about everything that had been going on. She still couldn’t believe the rumours she’d heard concerning Vivianne.
‘The money and Vivianne are gone.’ Patrik was standing at the counter, making the coffee. ‘We found her car at Arlanda airport, and we’re in the process of checking the passenger lists from the weekend. Presumably she wasn’t travelling under her own name, so that makes things harder.’
‘What about the money? Can’t you track it down?’
Patrik turned around and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look good. We’ve asked the fraud division in Göteborg for help, but there are ways of transferring funds out of the country that make it extremely difficult to track the money. And I’m guessing that Vivianne planned the whole thing very carefully.’
‘What does Anders have to say?’ Erica got up, wanting to get something out of the freezer.
‘Sit down. I’ll get the buns.’ Patrik took a bag of cinnamon buns out of the freezer and put several of them in the microwave. ‘Anders has admitted to taking part in the embezzlement scheme, but he refuses to tell us where his sister and the money are now.’
‘Why didn’t he leave with Vivianne?’ Erica had sat back down at the table.
‘Who knows? Maybe he got cold feet at the last second and didn’t want to spend the rest of his life away from Sweden, in exile.’
‘Hmm, I suppose that’s possible.’ Erica paused for a moment and then asked, ‘So how is Erling taking it? And what’s going to happen to Badis?’
‘Erling seems mostly … resigned.’ Patrik poured two cups of coffee and then took the warm buns out of the microwave and set everything on the kitchen table. ‘As far as Badis is concerned, nobody really knows what its future will be. Almost none of the suppliers or builders have been paid. The question is, which option would be more costly: to close the doors, or to continue operating the place. After the party on Saturday, reservations have been pouring in, so the town might try to run the spa and hope to make it profitable. At least that would be a way to recoup some of the money. I think it’s possible that they’ll decide to keep the place open.’
‘It would be a shame to close Badis after doing such a great job on the remodelling.’
‘I agree,’ said Patrik, taking a big bite of a cinnamon bun.
‘How did Matte know that something wasn’t right? You said that Annika’s husband Lennart didn’t find any irregularities. It does seem strange that no one from the town was the least bit suspicious.’
‘According to Anders, Mats wasn’t positive, but he’d started wondering if something was wrong. On the Friday before he went to see Nathalie, he dropped by Badis and had a talk with Anders. He asked a lot of questions. For instance, he wanted to know why so many of the suppliers’ invoices hadn’t been paid. He also wanted to know when the funds that Anders and Vivianne had promised to invest would be arriving. And where that money was coming from. He wanted the names of contacts so he could verify the funds. Anders was really worried. If Mats hadn’t been killed, he probably would have uncovered the tr
ue state of the Project Badis finances and exposed Anders and Vivianne for the swindlers they are.’
Erica nodded. She suddenly looked sad. ‘How is Nathalie?’
‘She’s going to be evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist, and I think there’s very little chance that she’ll end up in prison. She’ll probably be institutionalized. Or at least she ought to be.’
‘Why were we all so stupid? Why didn’t we realize what was going on?’ Erica put down the cinnamon bun. She had suddenly lost her appetite.
‘How were we supposed to know? Nobody knew that Sam was dead.’
‘But how did he die?’ She swallowed. Her stomach turned over at the thought of Nathalie living in that house for more than two weeks while her son’s body slowly decomposed. She was filled with both horror and compassion.
‘We don’t really know. And we may never find out. But I talked to Konrad last night, and apparently they discovered that another woman was booked on the flight to Italy with Nathalie’s husband and Sam. They talked to the woman and found out that the plan was for her to accompany Wester, while Nathalie would disappear out of the picture.’
‘Did she know how Nathalie’s husband was planning to accomplish that?’
‘He was going to use her cocaine habit to blackmail her. He threatened to make sure she would lose all custody rights if she didn’t voluntarily step aside.’
‘What a bastard.’
‘That’s putting it mildly. He probably confronted Nathalie with the plan the night before they were supposed to leave for Italy. The police found two blood types when they did an analysis of the blood in the double bed. It’s likely that Sam crept into the room and got into bed with his father. So when Nathalie sprayed the bed and her husband with bullets from his gun, well … she didn’t know that her son was there too.’
The Lost Boy (Patrick Hedstrom and Erica Falck, Book 7) Page 45