She ran through the open gate and jumped in her car and sank down into the seat. Why did I run? she thought. She shook her head a little, started the car, reversed and set off down the dark forest road in front of her. In her rear-view mirror she caught sight of a dark figure coming through the gate. Thorhed? Why weren’t her bloody rear windscreen wipers working? She put her foot down and tried to keep the car on the narrow lane. Suddenly she was forced to slam on the brakes. Her headlights had stopped working. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, it was a loose cable, she knew that. She got out of the car. As she was about to lift the bonnet she saw a couple of cones of light shining through the forest, far off behind her. I have no desire to meet whoever that might be, she thought, not now, and she jumped back into her car again. I’ll have to make do with my parking lights. She put her foot down again and tried to see as far ahead of her as she could. The rain had stopped and the clouds had revealed a cold moon. The greyish-blue moonshine gave her a good few more metres of visibility. She looked in her rear-view mirror and saw two blurry headlights getting closer. She drove as fast as she dared to. Twice she’d almost driven into the ditch, the gravel bouncing off her windscreen.
Suddenly she saw lights. Houses. Street lights. Suddenly she was no longer surrounded by forest. She’d almost reached Brunn. She pulled the car up onto the main road and looked into the rear-view mirror. The headlights behind her were gone. Had he stopped? Whoever the bloody hell it was? Thorhed? She sped out onto an asphalted road and kept her eyes looking straight ahead until she saw a petrol station.
She turned in and parked. There were several people moving around her, filling up their cars, going in and out of the shop. She turned off the motor and took her mobile out while looking at the time. It was only half past eight. She dialled Sandra’s number.
‘Hi, Sandra! Sorry to bother you, I just wanted to ask you about that bag you used for your computer, what did it look like again?’
‘It was some kind of pressed cork, with brown and black checks. Dad bought it in Milan… But apparently you can buy it online too. Have you found the computer?!’
‘Maybe. How are you?’
‘OK.’
‘Good. Listen, I need to head off now, but I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Bye!’
Olivia ended the call.
Chapter 17
The first thing he thought was that he was thinking. I think, therefore I live. They didn’t beat me to death.
But his face was a dream for a teacher of watercolour painting. He had the whole spectrum there. From deepest cobalt blue to purple and red and bright yellowy orange, connected with black stitches.
‘Have you seen your face?’
The question was put to him in French and it was Jean-Baptiste who did the asking. He was sitting on a chair next to Abbas’s bed at the Hôpital de la Conception in central Marseille.
‘No.’
Abbas had sat up a bit. He hadn’t looked in the mirror, he didn’t need to, he could feel what he looked like. But he was alive. It was thanks to the waiter at Eden Roc, who’d caught sight of him and called an ambulance, that he was black and blue instead of deathly white.
‘I thought you had your knives with you?’ Jean-Baptiste said with a smile.
He tried to lighten the mood a little. Abbas did not smile back. He couldn’t, otherwise half his face would have split open. But he could speak. Not completely clearly as his nose had been badly clobbered, but he snuffled out what he’d seen. The face of the guy who’d assaulted him, who’d had a little bull tattooed on his neck.
‘He must be the guy known as Le Taureau,’ Abbas managed to utter.
‘Presumably.’
Abbas described the man’s face to Jean-Baptiste. He shook his head.
‘It doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘But this has to have something to do with Samira?’
‘Or Philippe Martin.’
‘Or both.’
‘Yes. When are you being discharged?’
‘Soon.’
‘Are you going to go home?’
‘I’ll go when I’m done.’
Jean-Baptiste looked at the battered man lying in the bed. What was he planning to do? He’d already viciously attacked one person in this city, admittedly an arsehole, but still. Jean-Baptiste had accepted it, but he wasn’t going to accept any more. Stilton was no longer here. He leant forward a little.
‘El Fassi.’
‘Yes?’
‘As soon as you are discharged from this hospital you’re going to get out of Marseille. By train or plane. I don’t want to have to identify you in some morgue or take you in for whatever shit you do next. I’ve turned a blind eye once, I never do that twice. Do we understand each other?’
Abbas looked at the large policeman.
* * *
There was another man sitting in another hospital in another country at a similar hospital bed. Mette Olsäter was in the bed, half-sitting, with a thick plaster on her cheek. She’d needed nine stitches.
Her husband was holding her hand.
‘It was a heart attack,’ Mårten said.
‘I know. A mild one.’
‘This time. There might be more. You know that.’
The doctors had made that very clear to both of them. It wasn’t certain that there’d be more heart attacks, but there could be, unless the detective chief inspector changed a few things: her lifestyle in general and her workload in particular. And to underline the gravity of her situation, Mette was put on sick leave for a while. Which required her to stay at home.
It wasn’t something she was looking forward to. Mårten knew that.
‘But you have to,’ he said.
‘I know.’
Lisa and Bosse had visited her a short while earlier to give her an update. Clas Hall and Gabriella Forsman had managed to get out of the city despite a massive police presence. Their car was found outside Södertälje. They’d probably taken another car.
Several bags of 5-IT were also found at Forsman’s flat. They were currently trying to establish whether the bags were part of the missing drugs at Customs and Excise. It seemed likely. They’d also seized Forsman’s laptop and the computer forensics team was busy working on it.
After Lisa and Bosse had left, Mette realised how much she was longing to go back to the Squad already. Back to work. Instead, she was going to be sitting locked up in Kummelnäs, with a man who was going to be fretting about every step she took. On the stairs. In the cellar. Up in the attic.
‘But surely it’s going to be nice to come home and have a bit of a rest?’ Mårten said.
‘Yeah, lovely,’ Mette said.
It’s going to be unbearable, she thought to herself.
* * *
Stilton was sitting in the lounge on the barge drinking coffee. He found himself in an unbearable void. Mink hadn’t got back to him and Abbas still wasn’t answering. There was something wrong, seriously wrong – he was increasingly convinced of it. He looked at the screen in front of him. He had borrowed Luna’s computer to check for flights to Marseille. There weren’t any direct ones, only with stopovers and shit, just like on the way back, so it was going to take quite a while to get there.
Then Mink called. And came through for him.
‘Ovette Andersson,’ he said.
‘Acke’s mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has she worked for Jackie Berglund?’
‘Apparently. But she stopped eleven years ago, when Acke was born.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘Listen, us professionals don’t reveal our methods, right?’
‘Of course not. Thanks!’
‘So where are you planning to be?’
‘When?’
‘When the world ends?’
‘On the moon. Bye!’
Stilton ended the call.
Ovette Andersson? And Jackie Berglund? That was a big surprise.
He looked at the time again and
closed the laptop.
Marseille would have to wait.
* * *
There were quite a few pedestrians who turned around as the young woman charged past them on the pavement, at pretty high speed. Exercising in this weather was tantamount to masochism. Olivia realised that too. She was on her way home after a long run in bloody awful weather and she still had a way to go before she reached Skånegatan. The blister she’d got in Mexico was throbbing, but she tried to ignore the pain as best she could. Her adrenalin-fuelled mind tried to get to grips with her visit to Borell’s. ‘You’re not writing a dissertation. Am I right?’ Did he know that I was faking the whole time? Had he looked me up? How? So why did he let me come? And why was Thorhed hiding like that? Why didn’t he come and say hello? He didn’t even turn around in the bar.
She couldn’t work it out.
So she thought about the laptop that she’d seen in Borell’s office instead. Not the one on his desk, the one lying half-hidden among the art books on a shelf. In a bag made from hard-pressed cork. Unusual, but not unique. Borell could have bought it during one of his countless trips around the world. He could even have ordered it online. But he could have stolen it too. From Bengt Sahlmann, to get hold of any files about the neglect at Silvergården. That would mean he was involved in the murder of Sandra’s father.
In that case her theory was correct.
The cold, raw wind blew up from Hammarby and Skanstull and was pressed between the stone buildings. Once it reached Skånegatan it was like a wall of ice. She had to run with her head hunched over to be able to get home.
So what about her intuition? What use had that been? What had the visit to the spaceship out there yielded in that respect? What had she felt?
She’d felt a great many things, both during her visit and in the car on her way home. And during the night that followed. She’d gone through the visit from beginning to end, several times, gone through all the conversations. All the impressions, all that had remained unsaid. The next morning she’d boiled it down to what she’d just been thinking about.
There was a cork bag with a laptop inside in his office.
That had nothing whatsoever to do with her intuition.
On the other hand, she’d established that Jean Borell was a very unique man with very unique inclinations. A man who got what he wanted and probably did so without any scruples. And he was probably willing to go very far to protect what he had.
But how far was he willing to go to protect the millions he made in profits in the welfare sector?
Olivia cogitated about how she was going to find out to whom the laptop in the cork bag belonged. Was it Sahlmann’s or Borell’s? She couldn’t exactly go through Mette and order a search warrant on his house, she didn’t have enough to go on for that. In fact, she had nothing, nothing substantial. And, moreover, she didn’t want Mette in on this. This was her own theory. And if it was correct, it was certainly going to put Mette in her place.
She was already relishing the thought.
Then Mårten rang, just as she reached her building.
Once he’d finished, the feelings of joy quickly dissipated. Mette’s heart attack really shook her up, even though it was a mild one and she was getting better. But what if it hadn’t been mild? What if she hadn’t made it?
Olivia pushed the door open.
‘She’s going to be at home for a while in case you want to get in touch.’
That’s what Mårten had said. She hoped that he would have heard the shock in her voice, and that he’d communicate her reaction to Mette. But get in touch? Did he mean that she should come over and see her? Be the bigger person?
Of course she would, but not yet.
Tomorrow she was going to Bengt Sahlmann’s funeral.
That took precedence.
She went into the stairway and pulled the door closed, rather harder than usual. As she was walking up the last few steps, a little bell started ringing in her mind. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was something about a car.
She started taking off her running gear.
But why wasn’t that bell ringing loud enough?
Chapter 18
Stilton had tried to reach Ovette Andersson a couple of times on her mobile, but each time it went straight to voicemail and she didn’t call him back. Eventually he asked Mink to find out how to get hold of her. Mink knew straight away.
‘At Qjouren. She works there.’
‘Thanks.’
Qjouren was started by a charity called RFHL Stockholm four years ago and it was Sweden’s only women’s shelter for drug abusers. There were plenty of other women’s shelters, but none that took care of women drug abusers subjected to violence, even though it was this group who were most in need of protection.
Stilton knew Qjouren. He’d collected Muriel there once. She’d been assaulted after some casual liaison and sought refuge. Now Ovette Andersson was working there. Stilton waited outside, she’d be coming out sooner or later. It had been a year since he’d seen her – when her eleven-year-old son Acke had helped him pin down the so-called mobile murderers.
So he recognised her when she came out.
And she recognised him.
‘I’ve been trying to call you,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Do you have time for a coffee?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Can we discuss that over coffee?’
Ovette considered the offer for a few seconds. She had reason to. Stilton looked at her. A year ago she’d been a broken woman, selling her body to make a living. Far down the ranks. On the streets. That she’d been part of Jackie Berglund’s exclusive escort service many years before had really surprised him. Now he saw a rather different woman standing in front of him. Ovette was still broken, you can’t hide a certain kind of physical erosion, but she had a different expression on her face, another look.
She looked alive.
‘OK, ten minutes. Then I’m meeting Acke,’ she said.
They went and sat down in a suitably empty café. Ovette called Acke and told him where she was. Stilton waited for her to finish and then started asking her about Qjouren, to get her to start talking. She told him about the organisation. She’d stopped working on the streets after Acke was attacked last year, as she’d promised. Now she’d been working at Qjouren for six months. It gave her both purpose and insight about a lot of stuff she’d suppressed when she was vulnerable herself. Her experiences had made her a good contact person for other women at risk.
‘Now they’ll probably be closing the whole organisation down,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Because we no longer get government subsidies and the municipalities don’t want to support us. Women drug users suffering abuse have the lowest possible status. It’s ridiculous.’
Stilton saw how upset Ovette was. He understood her. It was always like that. Those most in need of help got the least: there were too few of them, they didn’t generate any votes. Solidarity had become a special-interest issue.
He thought it was disgusting.
‘So what did you want?’ Ovette asked.
‘To talk about Rune Forss.’
Ovette averted her gaze and looked into her coffee cup. Stilton knew that he didn’t have long, but he nevertheless gave some background information. His own. And how it included Rune Forss. He delivered it so passionately that he managed to get her attention again.
Then he asked the question.
‘Did Forss buy sex from you when you were working for Jackie Berglund?’
‘Yes.’
‘So would you be prepared to talk about this publicly?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’ve left that world behind. I don’t want to be reminded or dragged into it. And I know what Jackie’s like. How do you think she’ll react if I snitch on one of her high-ranking clients?’
Stilton understood all of her reasons and he could s
ee that she wasn’t going to change her mind. He tried to hide his disappointment.
‘Did he use any other escort girls?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know which ones?’
‘No.’
Either she knew and didn’t want to snitch or she didn’t know. But now he knew that there were more girls. He’d have to keep going without Ovette.
So he changed the subject.
‘How’s Acke doing now?’ he said.
‘Good. He’s well, he’s much more stable. That’s another reason.’
‘Because?’
‘He doesn’t know who his father is. If I were to drag all that up again it would complicate things.’
‘What do you mean complicate things?’
‘I have to go now.’
‘OK. Take care. Say hi to Acke.’
‘Will do.’
Ovette saw Acke walking up the road. She got up and left. Stilton swirled his finger around his coffee cup. Complicate things? How? What did she mean by that? Did she mean that…? He didn’t dare to think the thought in full. In one go. He was forced to let it float around some more before he could formulate it in his head. He looked out and saw Ovette walk off with her arm around Acke.
Was Rune Forss Acke’s father? Did he knock up a prostitute eleven years ago? And does he have a son with her whom he doesn’t know about?
Stilton looked at Ovette’s coffee cup. The meeting had confirmed what he knew. Rune Forss had used prostitutes. Although he was never going to be able to prove it with Ovette’s help.
Nevertheless, Stilton now had another way of approaching him.
* * *
Olivia sat down on a pew towards the back of Sollentuna Church. Sandra and Charlotte were sitting right at the front. There were quite a few people there, some of whom she recognised. One of them was Alex Popovic. They’d nodded at each other as she snuck in. She quickly ascertained that Jean Borell wasn’t there. He might well have been, and that would really have complicated things. She didn’t want Borell to know about her connection with Bengt Sahlmann.
Maria, her mother, on the other hand was there. She shook her head when Olivia turned up, late, and sat down in the pew next to her.
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