‘I come from a family of seal hunters.’
Luna gulped the whiskey and put the glass down. As she let go she saw her hand was trembling slightly. It was a sinewy hand, divided by furrows, some from hard work and others were secrets. She turned it over and looked at her nails, broad, evenly cut, unpainted. She wasn’t one for nail polish. She was vain in a different way.
But the trembling?
She clenched her fist to calm it. The trembling was troubling her. She’d had it that morning too, and at the cemetery the day before. A light tremble in both hands that she couldn’t explain. She was forty-one years old and had been fit as a fiddle her entire life, apart from the odd allergy. She looked at the corridor into which Stilton had disappeared. Shame that he wasn’t been a doctor, she thought. Former coppers probably didn’t have much to say about trembling hands. She leant back and put the lights out in the lounge. The lamps on the quay were casting a dull raking light through the portholes, and her silhouette was visible against the dark wood-panelled wall behind her. She lowered her body onto the wooden bench and stretched out a little. She’d had trouble falling asleep recently. Sometimes she went up to lie down in the lounge, just to get a change of environment, and every now and again she fell asleep there. She shut her eyes and felt that she was drifting off, the booze rocking her in the darkness. Just a second before she was about to surrender to sleep, she heard the scream.
It came from Stilton’s cabin.
She sat up, her heart pounding. She was just about to lie back down when she heard another scream. Luna got up and went over towards the corridor. She stopped some distance away from Stilton’s cabin. There was no light seeping under the door. She stood there in silence. Then there was another scream, lower now, shorter, followed by a long protracted whimper.
He’s dreaming, she thought. Nightmares.
When Stilton asked whether he could lock the cabin door, she’d already felt that there was something mysterious about this man. As though the rent he was paying was just a necessary evil, a quick and easy way of getting an abode, a place to sleep and nothing more.
She went back into the lounge.
***
The little round beam of light slowly slid across a bare white bedroom wall. Carefully it brushed against the edge of a framed poster, paused, hesitated, and then slid back across the bare wall again.
Abbas sat on the floor with a small torch in his hand. He’d wrapped himself in a grey bedspread. His eyes were just about visible in the light, sore and red from all the rubbing and crying, and lack of sleep. He tried to look at the wall opposite, tried to reach the part that was shadowed in darkness, but he didn’t dare. He closed his eyes to win some time. He knew he had to look at the poster.
Now.
He’d been sitting here for hours, waiting for the darkness to fall, trying to gather his strength. To no avail. His entire body was drained, the arm holding the torch was limp and weak, the signals from his brain hardly reached his hand.
‘I have to look at it now.’
He heard himself utter those words. He repeated them again. Slowly he opened his eyes and began steering the shaft of light across the wall and towards the poster again, held back, the light trembling up and down, and then he allowed it to spill over the edge, carefully.
It was a large, beautiful poster, a circus poster from France, Cirque Gruss, from the mid-nineties, in red and blue. The light explored the energetically charged image, the jugglers, the trapeze, the elephants; it took a while before he dared to move all the way to the bottom, towards the texts with the performers’ names.
There it remained.
Suddenly, the light went out and it became pitch dark. The only sound to be heard was a heavy inhalation.
The hoover had fallen silent.
Chapter 6
Just before reaching the top of the stairs, Agnes Ekholm had to stop and take a breather. She had trouble with stairs, especially going up, and she was now on her way to the fourth floor. She’d pulled a coat over her pink dressing gown and put her feet in a pair of soft fluffy slippers. When she reached the landing she hesitated a little.
Which door was it?
Her vision now required different glasses for different distances, and she had of course taken the wrong pair with her. She stuffed them back into her coat pocket and leant very close against the door. Yes, it had to be this one. With a slight tremble, she rang the doorbell. The noise on the other side was clear even to Agnes with her massacred hearing. After a couple of minutes she rang again. Maybe he wasn’t at home? She rang once more, waited and pushed down on the door handle. The door was locked. Agnes sighed and turned to leave. All that mountaineering for nothing. Just as she shuffled towards the first step, the door behind her opened. She turned around. There was a man standing in the doorway, she could see that, wrapped in a bedspread. He had thick stubble, his hair was all over the place and his eyes were nestled into a couple of dark cavities. Agnes recoiled a little.
‘Sorry. I was looking for Abbas.’
‘Yes?’
Agnes stared at the man and was forced to realise that it was indeed Abbas standing in the doorway. In a state in which she’d never seen him. She’d never even seen him unshaven.
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t see that it was you.’
‘What did you want?’
‘I just ran into the postman and he said that your box was full, there was no room for today’s post, it looked like it hadn’t been emptied for a while.’
‘I’ve been unwell.’
‘Well, I can see that, poor boy. What’s…’
‘I’ll empty the box.’
‘Good. Well, I do hope that you feel better soon. You don’t want some carrot cake?’
‘No, thanks.’
Agnes nodded slightly and made her way back down. Abbas quickly pulled the door closed.
A full letterbox?
He took a few steps into the hallway and looked at himself in the narrow mirror. He immediately understood Agnes’s reaction. He looked terrible. How long had this been going on? He let go of the bedspread and saw a couple of large stains on his jumper. Did I throw up in the kitchen sink? He vaguely recollected that. He stepped into the living room and saw the hoover on the floor. Have I been hoovering? Why? He was rooted in the middle of the room. There was something in here that this was all about. What? Slowly his eyes wandered down onto the glass table. Towards the newspaper. His subscription. It was exactly where he’d left it, one side perfectly in line with the edge of the glass. He looked at it. Was it that?
It was.
What had to return slowly returned.
Little by little.
When everything was restored in his memory, he headed straight for the shower.
First hot, for a long time, to emerge from his descent, then gradually colder. When it was freezing cold he’d caught up with himself and made a decision.
The first thing he got out was the knives.
Five Black Circus knives.
Double edged.
* * *
Mette walked through the corridor very quickly, without nodding through the glass at any of her colleagues sitting in their offices. She was in a hurry. She turned the corner with a thick file under her arm and opened the door into the meeting room she’d chosen. Bosse Thyrén and Lisa Hedqvist, two of her favourite young investigators, were already in the room. For now she wanted to keep the group as tight as possible. She dumped the file on the table at the front and sat down in the chair behind it. She’d had the reply from forensics less than an hour ago: Bengt Sahlmann had been killed. There was no doubt about that.
‘He was dead before he was hung up. The murder was probably preceded by a scuffle, he had fragments of skin under his nails.’
‘DNA?’
‘It’s being dealt with.’
Mette had also got door knocking underway in Rotebro and sent technicians to his house.
‘We’ve lost valuable time,’ she said. ‘Sah
lmann was found hanged the night before last by his daughter Sandra and there was nothing at the scene to indicate that it was anything other than suicide. The preliminary report is impeccable. Which means that the murderer or murderers are more than thirty-six hours ahead of us. I’ve asked Lagerman to check Sahlmann’s finances. Elin is mapping out his social circle. His wife died in the tsunami. He has a sister-in-law who lives at Johan Enbergs Väg 8 in Huvudsta. Her name is Charlotte Pram. His daughter Sandra is with her now. She has not been informed that this is a murder inquiry. You take care of that, Lisa, but be careful. Bosse and I will go to Customs and Excise.’
‘So why are we dealing with this investigation?’ Bosse wondered.
‘I wanted it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there are links to an international drug trade. A large stash of 5-IT drugs recently disappeared at Customs and Excise. It was part of that massive drug raid earlier in the autumn, you know the one?’
‘Yes,’ said Lisa. ‘But what’s Sahlmann got to do with it?’
‘He was in charge of the internal inquiry at Customs and Excise that was trying to find out where those drugs had disappeared to. He eventually uncovered some information that put him in danger.’
‘Is that speculation?’ Lisa asked.
‘Yes. What’s less speculative is that Sahlmann’s laptop was stolen from his home the same night that he was murdered.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘From a source.’
For some reason, Mette didn’t want to name her source, Olivia Rönning. Or Rivera. Both Bosse and Lisa knew Olivia since the Nordkoster case, she knew that. At that very moment she realised that they needed to speak to Olivia of course. She was at the murder scene just an hour or so after it had happened.
So Mette took a step back.
‘Olivia Rönning was the source.’
‘And how did she know about it?’ Bosse asked.
‘She’ll have to tell you that herself. Why don’t you speak to her before we head over to Customs and Excise?’
‘OK.’
Bosse and Lisa got up. Mette got out her mobile. Lisa took a couple of steps towards her.
‘So Olivia is back?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how is she?’
‘She’s going to change her surname. To Rivera.’
‘Really?’
‘And she’s decided not stay in the force.’
‘Why?’
‘Let’s work now, OK?’
Lisa got the message and headed towards the door. Mette picked up her mobile and prepared to call Olivia. When Bosse and Lisa had closed the door she pressed the call button. Olivia answered immediately.
‘Hi, Mette! Thanks for last night!’
‘Well, thank you for coming. Did you get home all right?’
‘Yes, thanks. A little more tipsy than I’d thought, but it was fun that –’
‘You were right.’
‘About?’
‘Bengt Sahlmann was murdered. I got the report a short while ago.’
Olivia remained silent. Mixed feelings. Positive because it confirmed her suspicions, negative because of Sandra. Or perhaps not. Maybe it would come as a relief to her that her father did not end his own life? But murdered? Just like her own biological father? Was that so much easier to deal with?
‘Have you told Sandra?’ she asked.
‘Lisa’s on her way there now. Bosse is going to contact you. Speak to you later.’
Mette ended the call.
* * *
A grey morning, blackish grey clouds that rode across the sky at a leisurely pace, but no rain yet. It was only a matter of time. Stilton stood by the railings and brushed his teeth: he liked doing that outside, a habit he’d picked up on Rödlöga, a feeling of freedom. He had some water in a plastic cup. Luna was standing some distance away, observing him while she brushed her hair. Stilton worked hard with his toothbrush, for a long time. While he was homeless he hadn’t even owned a toothbrush, he’d picked his teeth with his index finger and rinsed his mouth when there was water around. Or coffee. On Rödlöga he’d changed all that. Hygiene had crept up on him. Every morning he’d forced his skinny body into the biting cold seawater, as long as it wasn’t frozen, to scrub himself clean with a brush that he’d found behind the enamel tray in the kitchen alcove. As though outward cleanliness would clean up some of his inner mess too.
His teeth were a part of that. Luna saw how feverishly he brushed back and forth, almost compulsively.
‘You’re very meticulous about your teeth,’ she said.
‘They’re the only ones I have.’
‘You had nightmares last night.’
‘Really?’
‘You were screaming pretty loudly.’
Stilton rinsed his mouth with water from the plastic cup, gurgled for a while and spat over the railings. When he turned around, Luna had disappeared. Good. He didn’t have time for small talk: he was stressed, he’d slept far too long, and apparently he’d had nightmares. What did that have to do with her? He wanted to get going. In just over an hour he’d be meeting Mette to talk about Rune Forss. It was time to get things moving.
Then he saw Abbas.
On the path in front of the shipyard.
On his way to the barge.
After one of the missed calls to Abbas the day before, Stilton had left a message mentioning the Sara la Kali at the Mälarvarvet shipyard where he’d rented a cabin. Apparently Abbas had listened to his messages. He climbed up the ladder and the first thing that Stilton noticed was that he was unshaven. Stilton had roughly the same experience of Abbas’s shaving habits as Agnes Ekholm and couldn’t remember ever having seen him unshaven.
‘Hello,’ said Stilton. ‘I came to see you yesterday, but you didn’t open. Were you hoovering?’
‘No. I have to go away for a while and I want you to come along.’
‘Where to?’
‘Marseille.’
‘Marseille? When?’
‘Tonight.’
Stilton looked at Abbas. It wasn’t just his facial hair that was odd. Everything was. It’s the first time he’s been here and he’s not asking anything. About the barge. Why I’m living here. Why I’m in the city? Just straight to the point.
Not good.
‘What are we going to do in Marseille?’
‘Let’s talk about that later. Are you coming?’
‘You know I am.’
It really didn’t fit with Stilton’s plans right now. But he owed Abbas.
A great deal.
Moreover, he knew that Abbas would not have been asking him if it hadn’t been extremely important.
‘Does Mette know about this?’ he asked.
‘No. Why?’
‘She’s been trying to get hold of you. Maybe you should get in touch? Are we flying?’
‘No, we’re going by train.’
‘Why?’
‘It travels on land.’
Abbas had a fear of flying. Moreover, it was easier for him to keep an eye on the knives on the train – that would have been more difficult on a plane. That was probably the decisive factor.
‘When are we going?’
‘At around four. Come by my place before.’
‘OK.’
Abbas turned around and went back down the ladder. Stilton was watching him. When Abbas was at a safe distance, he slammed his fist into the railings. He’d been building up for some time to come to the city to deal with the things he had to deal with, and now he had to go to Marseille. Without a clue as to why.
All he knew was that it wasn’t a holiday.
‘Who was that?’
Luna came walking across the deck, dressed in a dark-green lumber jacket and a pair of light washed-out jeans. Her thick hair hung over her shoulders and framed her sharp nose and broad, even eyebrows, much darker than the colour of her hair. It caught Stilton’s eye. She reminded him of the women on the melodramatic covers of his belo
ved crime novels, a bit Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn. He hadn’t thought of that until now, now he was on his way to Marseille.
‘A friend,’ he replied. ‘Abbas el Fassi.’
‘An Arab?’
‘Frenchman, grew up in Marseille. We’re going there tonight.’
‘To Marseille?!’
‘Yes.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘No idea.’
‘Is it a holiday?’
‘No.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Don’t know, I suppose it’s something important. I have to pack.’
Stilton walked past Luna and disappeared below deck.
Pack? thought Luna. What are you going to pack? Your little blue bag. Suddenly she became pensive. She had no idea who Stilton was. She hadn’t done any checks on him. She’d just accepted what he’d said. She’d felt she could trust him, largely because of her intuition. She’d been around, and learned to read people: she was seldom wrong.
Perhaps she was this time.
Maybe he was a drug dealer? What do I know about that? Suddenly going to Marseille at the drop of a hat? What was that all about? ‘I suppose it’s something important.’ Luna was considering going down to Stilton’s cabin to demand some answers. On the other hand she’d been given a month’s rent in advance. If there was any crap it wouldn’t affect her.
But she was extremely eager to find out what it was all about.
Abbas just got through the door when his mobile rang. He saw that it was Mette and thought about what Tom had said.
So he answered.
‘Finally! Hello, Abbas! Has something happened?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I’ve called you so many times and you normally always…’
‘My mobile died the other day.’
‘What do you mean died?’
‘How are you?’
‘Good. And you?’
‘I’m going to Marseille tonight.’
‘Tonight. Why? Has something happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing I want to talk about, it’s about the past.’
Mette accepted his answer.
Third Voice Page 7