Third Voice

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Third Voice Page 25

by Börjlind, Cilla


  The priest who led the ceremony was a thin, upright man with short dark hair. Olivia assumed it was the same priest who’d been to see Sandra and Charlotte a few days ago. He delivered a very heartfelt and touching eulogy. Olivia realised that he’d been very close to Bengt and the family, which was confirmed when Maria whispered: ‘He was the one who buried Sandra’s mum.’

  Olivia nodded. She didn’t like funerals. She’d only been to two in her life – her fathers’ funerals. First Arne and then Nils Wendt, her biological father.

  But now she was here for Sandra’s sake.

  After the ceremony there was tea and coffee in premises next door. Olivia had a moment to talk to Sandra before they went in. She saw that Sandra was struggling to keep things together. They hugged. Olivia understood all too well what Sandra was going through: there wasn’t much to talk about.

  ‘Is there a toilet here somewhere?’ Sandra asked and Olivia pointed towards a couple of doors further down. Sandra walked off just as Charlotte approached Olivia. She was dressed in a tasteful black dress and her hair was tied in a tight bun. She looks a bit like Therese, Olivia thought. She remembered Sandra’s mother having the same blonde hair and quite unusual eyes, rather too close together. Sandra had said that Charlotte was the eldest of the sisters and had worked as a golf instructor.

  Charlotte walked towards her with open arms and they gave each other a little hug. Olivia noticed that Charlotte’s mascara had smudged a bit under her eye.

  ‘It’s so terribly sad,’ Charlotte said quietly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was such a good person.’

  ‘Did you have much contact?’

  ‘A great deal. I was his sister-in-law, and when Therese died we got even closer, it was a terrible time for both him and Sandra. Being alone with a child in those circumstances, that wasn’t easy.’

  ‘I can understand that. And you’d lost your little sister.’

  ‘Yes, but it was harder for him, much harder. There were many evenings and nights when I had to sit and comfort him, once Sandra had fallen asleep, because he didn’t want her to see too much of his sorrow.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So yeah, we got very close, it was a tough period… but gradually things got better, with time. Bengt started functioning again, feeling happy and looking forward. That’s why I never believed what Sandra told me, the first time, that Bengt had killed himself. It just didn’t make sense to me. Sure, he’d been a bit depressed of late, but to go from there to suicide is a pretty big step.’

  ‘Was it because of what happened to his father? At Silvergården?’

  ‘Yes, that as well.’

  ‘What else?’

  Charlotte turned and looked down at the toilet doors. No sign of Sandra.

  ‘I don’t think that Sandra knows this,’ she whispered. ‘And she shouldn’t either, but Bengt was very sad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He called me one evening and told me that he’d fallen in love again, for the first time since Therese died.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘A woman at work.’

  Gabriella Forsman was the name racing through Olivia’s mind.

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘No. But Bengt had fallen in love with this woman and then something happened at work that suddenly made him very sad.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, but apparently it made his relationship with this woman impossible somehow. He didn’t say why. But like I said, to go from that to suicide is quite a big step.’

  ‘And then it turned out it wasn’t suicide.’

  ‘No.’

  Both of them stopped talking when Sandra came back from the toilet. Charlotte walked towards her and gave her a hug. They carried on next door. Olivia stayed where she was, she didn’t know what to do. Most of all she just wanted to get out of there, leave. But she couldn’t.

  So she went next door as well.

  Charlotte and Sandra had sat down at a table with Maria and a couple of people whom Olivia didn’t know. The table was full. She got herself a cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits and wasn’t really sure where to sit. She saw that Alex had sat down next to the priest and a woman she didn’t recognise. I’ll just stand over here on the side. The room wasn’t very large and considering the nature of this event it was pretty quiet. Which is why it was rather clear when Alex raised his voice.

  ‘Because he’s a fucking arsehole.’

  Who he was calling an arsehole couldn’t be heard, as he lowered his voice immediately. But it got Olivia’s attention. The only arsehole whom she connected to Alex was Jean Borell. So she discreetly moved closer towards the table.

  Now she could hear even more muffled words.

  ‘I think you’re exaggerating,’ said the woman.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Alex said. ‘In your world. To me it’s a bloody cheek not even to turn up. Sending some flashy wreath? To show he can afford it? He’s bloody well known Bengt since they were seventeen!’

  ‘Can’t you fine-tune your language a bit, Alex?’

  The priest was trying to get Alex to tone it down.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex said. ‘I just think it’s bad form.’

  ‘But maybe he’s not in Stockholm?’

  ‘He’s here. Why are you defending him?’

  The priest smiled.

  ‘Someone has to. People tend to give Jean a pretty tough time.’

  ‘Well, there’s probably a reason for that.’

  Alex turned his head and spotted Olivia.

  ‘Hi! Come and sit down.’

  Alex pulled out a chair, which made it difficult for Olivia to decline. She sat down at the table. Alex introduced everyone.

  ‘Tomas Welander. Agnes von Born. This is Olivia, she knows Sandra.’

  ‘She’s talked about you,’ Welander said, looking at Olivia inquisitively.

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently it was you and your mother who took care of her that awful night.’

  ‘Yes, she stayed over at our house. My mum lives near the Sahlmanns.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Now I have to go,’ Alex said and got up.

  ‘Can I get a lift with you?’

  Agnes von Born wanted him to drive her and he said yes. Both of them left the table and then Alex reminded her about that beer that she’d talked about. Olivia promised to get in touch. She was rather troubled to see Alex and von Born go off.

  Leaving her with a priest.

  ‘So how do you think Sandra is now?’

  Welander had picked up his cup of coffee as he asked the question. Olivia was rather caught off guard. She felt that her relationship with Sandra was private. And nothing she wanted to talk about with other people. But he was a priest.

  And, more than just that, he was also a friend of the family.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m worried.’

  Welander looked over to Sandra’s table.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I see the same signs as before.’

  ‘Before? You mean when her mother died?’

  ‘Yes, she was in a really bad place then. For a long time. She almost became catatonic. I’ve been very worried that there might be a similar reaction now. I’ve been in touch with her on a daily basis and I think things are very much up and down.’

  ‘But that’s probably not a strange thing.’

  ‘No, absolutely not. She’s suffered such terrible tragedies, at such a young age.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s coming now.’

  Welander got up and greeted Sandra with open arms. They hugged. Olivia remained seated alone at the table. She was thinking about what Charlotte had said out there.

  Gabriella Forsman? And Bengt Sahlmann? What did that have to do with Silvergården? Nothing. It may well have had something to do with the missing drugs at Customs and Excise.

&nb
sp; Was her theory falling apart?

  * * *

  Mette had been waiting for Mårten’s archiving day. One day a week, he went into the city to dig into his past. He’d started researching his family history in his old age.

  ‘Why?’ she’d asked when he brought it up the first time.

  ‘Because I want to know where I’m from.’

  ‘You’re from Tjärhovsgatan on Söder.’

  ‘And before that?’

  That’s where it had ended. Mette was totally uninterested in her past. Sooner or later you find out that you’re related to a murderer or a nutty count in Germany. What was so fun about that? Surely it was enough to know that you were related to yourself.

  So when Bosse and Lisa rang the doorbell, she knew that she had a couple of hours. To themselves. In that big house.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Bosse had asked as soon as she opened the door.

  ‘Fine. Come in.’

  And that was all that was said about Mette’s condition.

  There was all the more talk about Clas Hall and Gabriella Forsman, particularly Forsman. The forensics team had basically given her computer an enema and found some rather mind-blowing information. Emails in particular. Both to and from Bengt Sahlmann. The email conversations revealed that they had had some sort of private relationship, a relationship with strong emotions, largely Sahlmann’s.

  ‘She got him on the hook,’ Lisa said.

  ‘You think that’s how it was?’

  Bosse wasn’t entirely convinced. That Sahlmann had harboured strong feelings for Forsman was pretty clear, but to what extent they were reciprocated was unclear as far as he was concerned. She might well have been in love with him too.

  Lisa didn’t think so.

  ‘I think she used him. I think she wrapped him around her red fingernails and consciously seduced him.’

  ‘To do what?’ Mette asked.

  ‘To engage in criminal activities behind his back.’

  ‘Is there any evidence of that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lisa took out a couple of printed documents from Forsman’s computer detailing an email conversation between Forsman and Sahlmann. The first email was from Sahlmann:

  Maybe you can’t understand how unbelievably painful it is to have to discover this. But I can’t close my eyes to it. I know what you’ve done.

  Dear darling Bengt! It’s not what you think. You have to believe me. I’ve been forced into it! I’ll call you tonight! My body is yours.

  ‘My body is yours’?

  Mette had to read the email with her own eyes. She had of course met Gabriella Forsman and was fully aware of this woman’s ways, but ‘My body is yours’?

  ‘What soap does she think she is she living in?’

  The next brief exchange of emails suggested that Sahlmann and Forsman had met up and that some kind of agreement had been made. Sahlmann used a rather different tone this time.

  Unless it’s all back by next Sunday evening, I’m going to report this to the police on Monday morning. You know I have to. Then the police will deal with Hall and you’ll have to face the consequences. B.

  It was Mette who summarised the information. She was the boss.

  Heart attack or no heart attack.

  ‘So Sahlmann had discovered that Forsman had stolen the missing stash of drugs. She’d confessed and blamed it on Hall. Sahlmann had given her an ultimatum, probably because of his feelings for her: unless the stolen drugs were back at Customs and Excise on Sunday at the latest he’d go to the police on Monday.’

  ‘Which he did not do as he was murdered on Sunday night,’ Bosse said.

  ‘By Clas Hall?’

  ‘Or Forsman?’

  ‘Or both?’

  ‘Good work!’ Mette said.

  Lisa and Bosse thanked her. They hadn’t done very much, it was the computer technicians who’d got all the information. But they revelled in Mette’s praise.

  ‘So now we just have two problems,’ she said. ‘The first one is that our suspects remain at large. They won’t be much longer, they’re amateurs. The second, and rather more tricky one, is Sahlmann’s laptop. The one that was stolen. Where is it? Not at Hall’s or Forsman’s, right?’

  ‘No,’ Lisa said. ‘But if they stole it because they thought that Sahlmann could have information on it about the theft then they probably wouldn’t have just dumped it somewhere.’

  Mette was just about to counter this with a couple of objections when she saw Mårten’s car outside the kitchen window. Now? He’d only been gone an hour. Mette jumped up, without leaning on the table for support, something that both Bosse and Lisa noticed.

  ‘You have to go now. Mårten’s coming.’

  Bosse and Lisa had just managed to pack up and open the front door when Mårten came in through the gate.

  ‘Hello?!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘They brought me some flowers!’ Mette shouted from the hallway. ‘They’re such sweethearts!’

  She waved at Bosse and Lisa who slid past Mårten and towards the gate. Mårten watched them. ‘Sweethearts’? He walked up the steps and gave Mette a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘What kind of flowers did they bring?’

  * * *

  As usual the central station was full of people. Olivia was standing by the so-called ‘spittoon’, Stig Lindberg’s beautiful metal ring in the middle where you can look down at people rushing to and from the commuter trains one floor down. When she travelled on those trains she always avoided walking right underneath: that was ingrained in her after growing up in suburbia. Of course it was Lenni who’d taught her. The first time they’d gone into the city together, Lenni had grabbed her by the arm as she was about to walk straight into the line of fire.

  ‘Are you crazy? Are you going to walk under that?!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can’t you see people standing up there loading up?’

  ‘Loading up with what?’

  ‘Spit! Everyone knows that! Those people up there are spitting pros. They use chewing gum like a performance-enhancing drug to get their saliva production going and then they choose their victim. It’s bloody revolting!’

  Olivia had looked up, but didn’t see anyone looking down, or even chewing, but ever since that day she’d avoided walking underneath the spittoon. Now she was standing there watching who had learned about this potential hazard and who had no idea. There were quite a few. She looked at the clock. Ove had called in the morning and was on a stopover in Stockholm on his way to Koster: there was some lecture in the afternoon and a conference in the morning, but if he had time he would meet up with her for a little while. Around about now in fact.

  ‘Hi!’

  Olivia turned around. There he was. Tanned, bleach-blond hair and crumpled clothes. Seriously hot actually, as Lenni would have said.

  ‘Oh hi! I didn’t see you!’

  Much to her annoyance, Olivia felt herself blushing under her tan. Why was she doing that? She also felt a bit uncertain about whether to hug him or not.

  So Ove got in there first.

  ‘It’s great to see you again! In real life!’

  Olivia manage to utter ‘You too’ during the hug and cursed Lenni. If Lenni hadn’t talked about Ove as some kind of presumptive boyfriend she wouldn’t suddenly have started blushing or feeling awkward in his presence.

  She never had done before.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he said.

  Ove had about an hour to spare before he had to head off to his lecture so they decided to have a beer at the Royal Viking Hotel just next door to the station, where they’d met for the first time a year and a half ago.

  As they sat down at one of the long tables in the lobby with a beer each, Olivia suddenly stopped feeling nervous. Good. It was entirely groundless. Those other feelings were only there in Lenni’s imagination. Now it was all back to normal and they were talking and laughing. Ove told her about his arduous journey home and that
he was looking forward to getting back to Nordkoster. She talked about what had happened since they last skyped, about her experiences at Silvergården and that it had something to do with Bengt Sahlmann’s murder.

  But she didn’t mention her visit to Borell’s.

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ Ove suddenly said.

  Olivia looked at him. The corner of his mouth was twitching a little. It always did when he was a bit nervous.

  ‘Oh right, sounds serious? It’s nothing to do with your dad, is it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s something completely different.’

  Now he was twisting and turning in his seat as well. What was it that was so difficult?

  ‘I’ve met a girl,’ he said.

  A bombshell. Olivia had just put the beer glass to her mouth and a few shameful drops came spluttering out. She immediately wiped them away.

  ‘Oh right, how cool!’ she said.

  She heard herself how fake it sounded and focused on putting her glass down without spilling any more.

  ‘She’s a marine biologist too, American, Maggie’s her name. You’ll like her. We worked together in Guatemala.’

  Ove carried on talking while the images started racing around in Olivia’s head without a chance for her to stop them. Ove and this Maggie on a beach, hand in hand, engaged in lively discussions about the problems of the dying coral reefs in the world’s seas. The perfect couple. She cursed herself for not going to meet up with Ove when she was on her long trip. He’d wanted her to stop by in Guatemala on her way from Mexico to Costa Rica. She’d said no, she wanted to be alone during this cathartic trip. Now she regretted it. If she’d said yes then maybe it would have been her walking hand in hand down the beach with Ove. But then again that was not something she wanted. Or was it? It was all running through her mind. What did she actually feel? Was Lenni right after all?

  No, she wasn’t!

  Olivia got a grip of herself after this chaotic burst of emotion. She was just surprised. She hadn’t had any idea. He could have prepared her for this! They were bloody well supposed to be friends and friends tell each other everything! Then Ove started talking again.

 

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