‘A woman, among other people. Gabriella Forsman, she was the one who raised the alarm when the drugs went missing.’
‘Have you met her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you like her?’
‘Overly red hair, overly large breasts, and overly red lips.’
I like this guy, Olivia thought.
‘And I’ve talked to the woman in charge of the murder investigation,’ Alex said. ‘Mette Olsäter.’
I don’t like this guy, Olivia thought.
‘Why did you talk to her?!’
‘You know her?’
‘Why?’
‘Your reaction.’
‘I know her and would be damn grateful if you would keep me completely out of any chats you have with her. Both as a source and whatever else you bloody call it.’
‘Of course. I said that, didn’t I? Sources remain anonymous. Mentioning your name would be an offence. Would you like a beer?’
‘No.’
Both of them looked at each other. Alex smiled a little. Olivia did not. For the life of her she didn’t want to be linked with this journalist Alex Popovic when it came to Customs and Excise or the Sahlmann murder investigation. Things were messy enough with Mette as they were.
‘I’ll have some mineral water,’ she said.
Alex ordered some sort of soup and a mineral water for Olivia. When it arrived, Olivia had cooled off a little and reminded herself it was she who’d requested this meeting.
But it was Alex who changed the subject and starting talking about what she wanted to discuss.
‘So you wanted to ask something?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Olivia felt that she needed to back down a little and soften up around the edges. She wanted their conversation to have another tone. A private tone. An off-the-record tone, as he said.
‘Listen, I’m sorry if I snapped,’ she said. ‘I have my reasons. I’ll tell you about that some other time, somewhere else.’
‘Yes, please.’
Alex smiled at her. Olivia smiled back a few seconds later. There, that felt a bit better. He was probably ready now.
‘Well,’ she began. ‘When we met last time, you told me about a private dinner during which Sahlmann had had some outburst over his father’s death, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it directed at anyone in particular?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
Alex slurped a couple of spoonfuls of soup. Somewhat too carefully. Olivia saw that he was thinking, deliberating. Why? Was he trying to protect someone?
‘Is it sensitive?’ she asked.
‘Yes and no.’
‘Was it directed at you?’
‘No.’
Alex laughed, as though it was a fairly legitimate question.
‘It was directed at a mutual acquaintance,’ he said. ‘And I’m not that keen on revealing his name.’
‘Because?’
‘Because it feels like gossip.’
Oh my god, you’re a journalist, Olivia thought. Don’t you live on gossip? But she didn’t say it.
‘I understand. But you have source protection,’ she said and smiled.
Alex looked at Olivia. Reversed roles. He actually had no problem telling her who this person was, far from it. He just wanted to keep her on her toes. She was pretty full on.
‘It won’t go any further,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
‘OK. It was Jean Borell.’
‘And who’s that?’
‘You don’t know him?’
‘No?’
‘He’s a very successful venture capitalist.’
‘Why did Bengt have a go at him?’
‘Because his company owns the nursing home where Bengt’s father died. Albion.’
Olivia was having a sip of water. She pressed the glass against her lips extra firmly and leant back. If she hadn’t had back support she would probably have ended up on the floor. She swallowed the water and hoped that she sounded as she did before.
‘Albion?’ she said.
‘Yes. Dagens Nyheter did an investigative series of articles about it a while back, did you read it?’
‘No, I was abroad then.’
Why didn’t I find it online?
‘What was it about?’ she said.
‘It went through its organisation here in Sweden. Some heavy stuff. I can send it over if you want.’
‘Yes, please,’ Olivia said. ‘How did Borell react to Bengt’s outburst?’
‘Bengt was quite drunk and Borell is a first-class arsehole. He was bloody condescending and Bengt was close to attacking him. It was really awkward.’
Olivia nodded and smiled.
‘So you hang out with some first-class arseholes?’
‘Very occasionally. Borell also went to Lundsberg, at the same time as Bengt and me. That’s why we had the dinner. A few of us tend to get together for reunion dinners every now and again.’
Alex peered at his watch while popping some nicotine gum into his mouth.
‘Thank you for taking the time to meet me,’ Olivia said.
‘Are we done?’
‘I’m done.’
‘Why did you want to know who Bengt had had a go at?’
‘I was just curious.’
Alex looked at her and Olivia knew that it was the wrong answer. Just like last time.
Even if it was true.
‘It’s all a bit confused in my mind right now,’ she said. ‘I need to sort it out. Why don’t we have a beer some time?’
That generally worked.
‘Absolutely!’
It worked.
She didn’t trust Alex. Not after that business with Customs and Excise and Mette. She didn’t want to initiate him into her thoughts, she just wanted to use him as a source of information.
Nothing more.
They parted ways just after one o’clock. Alex was heading back to the office and took a taxi. Olivia started walking towards Söder.
Feeling rather overwrought.
Bengt Sahlmann and Albion’s owner Jean Borell were personal acquaintances?
Bengt had accused Borell of being responsible his father’s death?
Borell had been bloody condescending towards him?
What did that mean?
That’s when the thought hit her: Bengt Sahlmann had also talked to Claire Tingman at Silvergården! Had he been told the same things as Olivia? Maybe he’d found out a load more shit about how the nursing home was run? Were Alex’s suspicions correct, then? Had Bengt’s material been about the negligent care at Silvergården? Had he threatened Jean Borell with publicising it as revenge for his father’s death?
It was certainly possible.
Olivia quickly developed a theory: had Borell murdered Sahlmann and stolen his computer? Because it contained explosive material about Silvergården? Could that really be a motive for murder?
How much was at stake? Surely more than just a poorly run nursing home? There had to be more to it.
How could she find out?
Olivia stopped at the quayside and looked out over Stockholm. She knew herself pretty well, and she was all too aware of her tendency towards fanciful theories.
But theories can be proven, she thought. Or disproven. For now, she still wanted to try and prove hers. It could be correct after all.
Then Sandra called.
‘Hi! How are you?’
‘Yeah, all right,’ Sandra said. ‘Charlotte and I are sitting with a priest, talking about Dad’s funeral and we’re wondering when we can have it.’
‘I don’t know, but I can ask someone who’ll know.’
‘Thanks. Maybe you can ask about the computer too? Whether they’ve found it?’
‘Will do. Say hi to Charlotte.’
Olivia ended the call and rang Lisa Hedqvist at the National Crime Squad, not Mette. After some small talk about her trip abroad, Olivia asked about the funeral. Lisa promised to get back to Charlotte an
d Sandra.
‘And she asked about the laptop too. Have you found it?’ Olivia enquired.
Without thinking about the implications. But Lisa knew. And she’d been there when Mette had bemoaned the occurrences at Customs and Excise, and Lisa knew that Olivia wasn’t very high up on Mette’s list of favourite people. So she didn’t really know what to say. And Olivia picked up on that pretty quickly.
‘You don’t need to answer that,’ she said.
‘We haven’t found it.’
‘Thanks. Bye.’
The laptop was still missing.
It was still possible that Jean Borell had stolen it.
Her theory was still relevant.
Chapter 11
It was dusk in Marseille. The low sun was washing over the magnificent port, reflecting off the hundreds of masts in the bay and up across the bars on the quayside. It was still warm enough to sit outside.
Even though it was November.
I live in the wrong climate, Stilton thought to himself. He was sitting with Abbas at a dark wooden table right at the edge of the quay, soaking up the warm rays of sunshine. It was a fish restaurant. Both of them were hungry even though it was only just five o’clock. When Abbas got the menu he’d commented that they had seafood risotto.
‘You liked it, right?’
‘Absolutely. Do they have any meat?’
They ordered dorado and a carafe of white wine. Abbas did the ordering. Stilton noted that he’d ordered wine, but he didn’t comment on it. It was, as he’d said, Abbas’s trip. When they’d got their carafe and glasses and prepared to take their first sip, Stilton said: ‘So what was the first word in the letters you wrote to Samira?’
‘Hi.’
Abbas tasted the wine. He looked just like anyone else in this town, accompanied by a large pale foreigner. He didn’t look like the person Stilton had seen just a couple of hours earlier. He wanted to forget about that person. But Abbas had done what he’d needed to do and he’d done it his way, the way he’d come to know growing up. Now he was sitting sipping a cold glass of white wine, looking out over the beautiful port.
‘You probably won’t be very popular after this,’ Stilton said.
‘I never was, that’s why I left.’
Stilton nodded. He watched Abbas’s eyes shift to the side, over to another table further in. There was a man sitting at the table. Stilton didn’t recognise him.
Abbas did.
It was the barman who’d told them where to find Philippe Martin. And then called Martin to blab that Abbas owed him money. Then he watched the barman get up and hide behind a stone pillar. Hidden when viewed from Abbas’s direction, without thinking that his reflection could be seen in the window. Abbas watched the barman get out his mobile while quickly glancing over at Abbas’s table.
‘Someone you know?’ Stilton wondered.
‘No.’
Abbas looked at Stilton again.
‘Le Taureau,’ he said. ‘The Bull.’
‘Yes.’
Abbas had called Marie on the way to the restaurant to check whether she’d ever heard of anyone by that name. She hadn’t. He’d made two more calls, to people from before. No one knew who The Bull was.
‘Maybe he was lying,’ Stilton suggested.
‘Do you think so?’
‘No.’
Neither did Abbas. He’d been standing close enough to Martin to smell the fear. He knew that Martin hadn’t been lying.
‘Samira never returned from that film shoot. She was found murdered shortly afterwards. The Bull was there at the shoot.’
‘One plus one makes two?’
‘Generally, yes.’
‘So how do we find The Bull?’
Stilton didn’t feel entirely comfortable articulating these words. The Bull. It sounded extremely silly to him, but out of respect for Abbas he took it seriously.
‘I don’t know,’ Abbas said. ‘Maybe Jean-Baptiste has a few ideas?’
‘Yes.’
Stilton was already feeling uncomfortable about the meeting with Jean-Baptiste. He was convinced that Abbas’s actions towards Philippe Martin would spread through certain circles in Marseille like wildfire.
And so it would reach Jean-Baptiste just as quickly.
And then Stilton would have to give some answers.
The fish interrupted his thoughts. It was lightly grilled and deboned, and had a slightly nutty flavour. Both of them ate in silence. Stilton noticed that Abbas was keeping the same pace as him with the wine. He’s certainly affected by what happened over there, Stilton thought.
Comfort of some kind.
Even savagery is not seamless.
Once the sun had dipped down into the Mediterranean it turned a little colder. Stilton pulled on an extra jumper. They’d finished the meal, but Abbas sat still. He’d ordered another couple of glasses of wine, not a carafe. Stilton saw that his expression had calmed. The alcohol perhaps, or a reaction to something else? Abbas looked out over the old port, his gaze sweeping over the shabby white houses winding their way up the hill on the other side.
‘I lived there for a short time.’
Stilton followed Abbas’s pointing hand up to the houses on the other side of the port.
‘Is that the Arab quarter?’
‘No, I lived there when my old ma disappeared.’
Stilton noted his choice of words. Abbas referred to his father as ‘my dad’ and his mother as ‘the old ma’.
‘When did she disappear?’
‘When I was seven.’
Stilton thought about Luna’s mother, the wind walker. About absconding mothers.
‘Where did she go?’ he asked.
‘Well, if you disappear you disappear. I have no idea. I grew up with my dad.’
Abbas gulped some more wine.
‘He couldn’t handle me,’ he said. ‘He just wanted out. Every time he got drunk he told me about the Gulag prisoner.’
‘Who was that?’
‘A prisoner who woke in the barracks one night, got up without any clothes on and sewed buttons on his chest and took an axe and went out into the winter storm. He’d had enough, Dad said. I think he wanted to do what that guy did, escape from something he was hopelessly trapped in.’
‘So did he do it?’
‘No, he was trapped in his life. How do you escape that?’
‘Commit suicide.’
‘He didn’t dare. So he took it out on me instead.’
Stilton followed Abbas’s gaze over to the quay on the other side again.
There was a black car standing there.
‘Is it them?’
‘Yes.’
The man who answered was sitting in the passenger seat and had a thick bandage across one eye. The eye that had been cut. His lips were chewed up. The man sitting behind the wheel looked over at the quayside on the other side of the water. At Stilton and Abbas. He gripped the wheel with his large coarse hands, with a half-smoked, unlit cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
‘And they were looking for Samira’s murderer?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they were Swedish?’
‘They said they were.’
‘Why were they looking for Samira’s murderer?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘How much did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
The man behind the wheel peered at Martin, at the bandage across his injured eye.
‘Nothing? With what they did to your eye?’
‘Well, I didn’t bloody know anything.’
‘You knew about me.’
‘I’d forgotten that.’
The man behind the wheel looked at Martin. They knew each other from the streets, had done business together, neither of them trusted the other. Now one of them was forced to trust the other, that he hadn’t disclosed the wrong information. If he had, there were two people who knew the wrong things – the people sitting on the quayside opposite. Cou
ld he take that risk? Martin had been tortured.
But he chose to lie low.
‘We’ll have to watch them,’ he said.
‘You go ahead. I don’t want to be involved.’
‘OK.’
‘He’s lethal with those knives.’
The man behind the wheel saw big Martin look down at his seat with his good eye. Someone had scared the shit out of him, properly. He lit the cigarette and looked out over the water again, at Abbas and Stilton.
Knives?
Their glasses were empty. Abbas’s gaze had shifted down to the water below the edge of the quayside. His body had sunk down a little. He suddenly looked very small, Stilton thought. Forlorn. He saw Abbas’s head rocking a little. And it wasn’t just the wine that was flowing freely – he saw tears streaming down Abbas’s face. Stilton stretched out his hand and put it on Abbas’s arm. He kept it there a while. He hadn’t forgotten that Abbas had been there for him on various occasions, on various side streets in Stockholm.
‘Not everything comes back, Abbas, you have to realise that.’
‘I know.’
Abbas looked up.
‘Shall we go?’
Stilton nodded. As he got up he saw Abbas grabbing a load of sachets of sugar from the table.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nicking a few sachets.’
‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘I’ll get the bill.’
Abbas went off. Stilton looked out over the port and felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket. He’d put it on silent.
He took his phone out.
A text, a short one. ‘I’ve fixed a lock for your door. Luna.’
He read it twice, it was like a message from outer space.
Stilton put his phone back in his pocket just as Abbas was coming back.
‘Shall we walk back to the hotel?’ he said.
Stilton looked up. Dusk had changed to Mediterranean darkness and it was quite a way to walk. Through some equally dark streets.
‘OK.’
They walked around the old port to the other side of the quay, both of them caught up in their own thoughts. They passed by a black car with two men sitting inside and carried on past the bars and restaurants with scores of people sitting outside.
Neither of them noticed the car’s headlights being turned on.
Stilton assumed that Abbas was taking the fastest route and didn’t react when he suddenly turned into a small street. He just followed him. Abbas on the other hand did react once they’d walked a couple of hundred metres. It was a small street without any shops, with tall buildings on either side, and it was dark down on the pavement. That’s why Abbas noticed the car lights behind them. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw that the car was moving just as slowly as they were walking. Has the news already spread? he wondered, moving his hand across his body. The knives were where they were supposed to be.
Third Voice Page 16