‘And you’ve never asked what happened between them?’
‘I asked Bengt once but he just glossed over it, as though he didn’t want to – I don’t know – gossip maybe.’
Shame I didn’t know about this yesterday, Olivia thought.
Alex might have told her a thing or two in bed.
On the other hand, she probably wouldn’t have been able to remember a single word of it today.
Olivia went straight into her living room and flopped down on the sofa. She’d collected the car from Rotebro and driven straight home, and now she was absolutely exhausted. The past twenty-four hours, with everything from the news about Ove’s girlfriend to the drunken night at Kristallen, the night with Alex and then Sandra’s attempted suicide – it had worn her out. She was lying thinking about Sandra while watching a gently swaying spider’s web hanging down from the stucco ceiling. Poor Sandra, what was going to happen with her now? Would she finally get proper help? She, Charlotte and the priest hadn’t done a very good job. Suddenly her mobile started vibrating. She picked it up and saw that it was a text message. ‘Please call me!’ It was from Ove. He’d rung her several times during the day, but she had neither wanted to nor had the time to answer. Now he was clearly trying a new tactic. She couldn’t understand what he wanted. She’d been very clear about not wanting to meet that Maggie person. Olivia closed the message.
Then her phone rang again, but this time it was Lenni, so she answered. She could do with some cheering up.
‘You sound tired!’
‘I’m shattered. It’s been a supremely shit day. You have no idea what I’ve been through.’
‘Yeah, you woke up in the wrong bed for a start. What the hell are you playing at?’
Olivia’s heart sank when she heard the tone of Lenni’s voice. She didn’t normally tend to sound so disapproving.
‘It’s one thing to drown your sorrows and quite another to grab hold of the first available guy who comes your way!’
This wasn’t what Olivia wanted to hear at all. She wanted a softly-softly approach, not to be criticised.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said.
‘So how was it, then?’
‘We know each other from before.’
‘I got that bit. And now you know each other even better?’
‘Why do you sound so pissed off? You’re generally not one to preach.’
‘Why don’t you pick up the phone when Ove calls?’
‘Because I neither want to nor have the energy to do so… How do you know he’s called?’
‘Because he’s called me.’
‘You?!’
‘Yes, and he sounded very upset.’
Now Olivia was sitting upright on her sofa. Ove had been complaining to Lenni. Just because she didn’t want to meet his girlfriend. She felt her claws begin to come out.
‘Well, he can go and cry on Maggie’s shoulder then.’
‘She didn’t come. She changed her mind and stayed in the US. Apparently she had another boyfriend there.’
Her tired head was really starting to spin now. Did Maggie have another boyfriend in the US?
‘Oh right, so he’s counting on me to be there to comfort him straight away, then?’
‘I have no idea what he’s counting on, but he sounded very sad that he’d upset you, more so than about Maggie not turning up. It sounded more like her chasing him than the other way around and he’d mostly just been flattered.’
‘He hasn’t spared any details.’
‘Yes, and he would have told you all this too if you’d bothered to answer his calls. But you were too busy with that Alex person!’
That made Olivia angry. Lenni had no right to judge her and make it sound like she was cheating on Ove – because she wasn’t.
‘The only person you’re lying to is yourself.’
‘Stop it now, Lenni! You’re talking about stuff you have no idea about.’
Lenni laughed. Not in amusement.
‘Listen,’ Lenni said. ‘I sat there listening to you for hours yesterday, so I know quite a bit. If you can remember, that is?’
Suddenly Olivia felt nervous. She wasn’t used to Lenni having a go at her like this. Lenni was the most loyal person Olivia knew, but even the people you like the most could go behind your back. Bitter experience had taught Olivia that.
‘You haven’t blabbed to Ove about yesterday?’
‘Blabbed?’
‘Yes, about what we talked about. You didn’t tell him about Alex or what I said?’
‘Have I ever “blabbed” anything about you?’
‘How should I know?’
Silence. And then Lenni answered.
‘You really don’t know that? Shame.’
Olivia heard how hurt Lenni was and she regretted what she’d said. Why was she so annoyed that Ove and Lenni had spoken? She liked them both so much.
‘Sorry, Lenni. Of course I know. It’s just been a bit much today. I’ve just got back from A&E. Sandra, the girl I told you about, she tried to kill herself. Everything’s just a mess right now.’
Silence.
‘Lenni? Hello?’
But Lenni had already hung up before Olivia had even said sorry. OK. So now she’d fallen out with Lenni too. A great end to a great day! Olivia threw her mobile down on the sofa. Now all she wanted to do was sleep.
Then the doorbell rang.
Olivia got up, went out into the hallway and opened the door.
‘Hi,’ Stilton said.
A few seconds passed before Olivia replied.
‘Are you going to ask to borrow the shower again?’
Stilton had come knocking on her door once before, about a year ago. When he was still living on the streets. Olivia had let him in. Two minutes later he’d asked where the shower was and got right in without being embarrassed, even though they barely knew each other. It took quite a while for Olivia to get over that.
‘I have my own shower now,’ Stilton said. ‘Rivera?’
‘How did you know?’
‘It says Rivera Rönning on the door. Can I come in?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need your help.’
Olivia looked at him. There was a very different man standing in front of her, but he had that same frank attitude. She was not planning to let him in. Turning up a year later to say hello? Who did he think he was?
‘Why do you think I’d help you?’
‘Because it’s about Jackie Berglund.’
Jackie Berglund? That nasty bitch? Was he after her? She stepped aside and let Stilton in.
‘You have five minutes.’
‘Perfect.’
Stilton went straight into the kitchen and sat down. The last time he sat there he was half-dead and had just saved himself from a burning caravan. Olivia had found him down by the entrance. This time she stopped in the kitchen doorway.
‘One minute’s almost up,’ she said.
‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’
‘No.’
Stilton had prepared himself for this. He knew how she’d react. But he’d still managed to get into her kitchen. Now it was just a matter of keeping her hooked.
‘I want to take down a policeman who’s been using prostitutes,’ he said. ‘Jackie Berglund arranged the meetings.’
‘Why do you want to take him down?’
Stupid question, Olivia thought to herself, but she wanted to maintain a distance.
‘For personal reasons. He’s the reason I left the Squad.’
‘So you think I’m going to help you with a personal matter.’
‘I hope so. You don’t have any coffee, do you?’
‘No.’
Stilton looked at her completely expressionless face.
‘It’s not only about helping me,’ he continued. ‘For you, it’s also a chance to get to a person who’s been fucking awful to you.’
‘Like you.’
She said it without affect, calmly and m
atter-of-factly. Stilton felt they’d reached a turning point, one he’d sincerely hoped he wouldn’t have to address.
That’s how naive he was.
He assessed the situation. He could get up and go. Empty handed. Then he’d be back to square one with Rune Forss again.
Or he could just face the music.
‘Like me,’ he said. ‘What I did to you is something that I’ve regretted every day for a whole year, when of course I haven’t been wondering what I could have done instead. I’ve got no excuse. I was cowardly and selfish and I never put myself in your shoes. I’m no expert when it comes to empathy, but that’s no excuse. If I could make it undone I would. But I can’t.’
He was really going for it, he realised that, but there was a great deal of truth in what he was saying. He’d chosen not to tell Olivia that the murder case that she obsessed with last year had been about her own mother. That it was her mother who was the victim on the beach, even though he’d known it the whole time. Once she’d realised that he’d misled her, she’d reacted as she had. And that feeling was still there.
‘But what hurts me the most is that I made a promise to Arne,’ Stilton said.
‘What was that? What promise did you make to my dad?’
Olivia sat down on a chair opposite Stilton and tried to hide how surprised she was. And interested. This wasn’t something she knew about.
‘To always look out for you, no matter what happened to him. It was only me and him and a couple more people who knew the truth about you. If something happened to him I promised to always be by your side, as long as you needed me. I broke that promise.’
‘You went off the rails.’
‘As much as anyone can. And there was no room for you there, not for anyone.’
Stilton looked down at the table. Olivia watched him. She was having a hard time doing as she’d set out to do, maintaining a distance, she felt it slowly fading away. She’d already realised in Mexico how Stilton had borne the brunt of her anger towards Arne, how she’d passed on all the blame to Stilton. Arne was dead, Stilton was alive. Now he was sitting opposite her, suffering for what he’d done to her.
Wasn’t that enough?
‘How can I help you with that policeman?’ she finally said.
Stilton looked up from the table and caught her gaze. He saw the change. He saw that he’d broken through. He saw that she was looking at him as Arne’s daughter and he felt his stomach tighten. He was close to extending his hand to her, but he didn’t. It was too early. Too fragile. He’d do that when she laughed.
When that time came.
So he told her what he was looking for. Prostitutes working for Jackie Berglund ten to twelve years ago. He told her about his meeting with Ovette. He didn’t say that it was Mette who’d advised him to contact Olivia. He didn’t need to.
She probably suspected that herself.
‘I can’t recall any names off hand,’ she said. ‘But I have a few folders where I collected everything I found. I can go through them later. Do you want some coffee?’
‘That would be nice.’
‘What did you do in Marseille?’ Olivia asked while getting up to make the coffee. And Stilton started telling her. For some reason, he wanted to tell her. Everything. About Abbas and Samira. About the murder and the dismemberment. About everything that had happened down there. The only thing he didn’t mention was what Jean-Baptiste had told him. About Abbas being in hospital. He didn’t want Olivia to worry about that, he knew that she was very attached to Abbas.
‘So when’s he coming home, then?’
‘He’s on his way. He’s travelling by train. He’s so bloody scared of flying.’
There came the first smile from Olivia. Not a laugh, they weren’t quite there yet, but a smile. She knew how afraid Abbas was of flying.
‘So what are you up to now?’ Stilton asked.
He’d felt that that smile had paved the way for that question. He wouldn’t have dared to ask it a little while ago. If he’d known the answer he was going to get, he might even have waited a while longer.
‘I’m going behind Mette’s back,’ Olivia said.
She put the coffee down on the table and poured it. Stilton waited. He drank almost three cups before Olivia had finished talking. She also felt that she wanted to talk. About everything. Even about Sandra.
When she stopped talking, Stilton looked at her. She’d changed. So had he. But he’d had six years to do so, she’d only had one. Nevertheless he recognised something of himself in her: she wanted to choose her own path and no one was to stand in her way.
Least of all Mette Olsäter.
‘So how are you going to find out if it’s Sahlmann’s laptop out there at Borell’s place?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Wouldn’t it be wise to contact Mette after all? She has very different resources available to her.’
‘What’s she going to do? She can hardly order a search warrant based on my suspicions? Not when it’s someone like Borell.’
‘No.’
Stilton knew that she was right. But he didn’t like what he saw in her eyes, they foreshadowed dangerous things. That Olivia might act single-handedly, in a way that definitely wasn’t advisable.
‘Please can I help?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I need to think about how I’m going to do this. But I’m not going to involve Mette.’
‘Because?’
Stilton understood that there was a conflict. He realised quite how serious it was once Olivia had described it. How hurt she still was. Now it’s Mette’s turn to be in the firing line, he thought, just when he’d escaped. He got up. Olivia accompanied him to the door. Before he left they looked at each other.
‘Olivia Rivera,’ he said.
‘Tom Stilton.’
She pushed the door closed and leant against the wall. There were many questions going through her mind. How did this happen? All of a sudden she’d been sitting with Tom Stilton telling him things that she hadn’t told anyone else. Him, of all people? How had that happened? So quickly?
She stood in the hallway for a while.
Chapter 20
Gabriella Forsman and Clas Hall had been arrested at a deserted campsite just outside Flen, and they’d been taken straight to the National Crime Squad headquarters. The local police had seized a stash of the 5-IT from their car. Mette presumed that it came from the Customs and Excise haul.
Bosse Thyrén had questioned Hall. He would have preferred to take Forsman, but Lisa Hedqvist had been pretty adamant about that.
‘I’ll take her.’
‘Why?’
Lisa felt it went without saying.
So Bosse questioned Hall. It went quite quickly. Hall knew the routine – he denied everything and demanded to speak to a lawyer.
Forsman was not quite so experienced. This was the first time she’d been arrested, and she behaved accordingly. She spent the first ten minutes in the interrogation room crying. Floods of tears. Lisa just let her cry. Once she’d calmed down a bit, Lisa started asking her questions. First about the missing stash of drugs. Forsman didn’t know anything about it. Absolutely nothing! When Lisa showed her the email conversation between Forsman and Sahlmann, a couple of emails at a time, taken from Forsman’s own computer, the flamboyant woman broke down again. It took another ten minutes for her to regain composure. Lisa just sat there and watched with a blank look on her face. Thank God she’d managed to prevent Bosse from leading this interview. She wasn’t quite sure how he would have handled it.
Gabriella Forsman was pulling out all the stops.
‘So you were the one who stole the drugs from your workplace?’ said Lisa.
Forsman nodded. Her long, red hair was hanging down over her face. She flicked it aside with a small movement – it was a damn shame that she wasn’t being questioned by that young man she’d met last time. He would no doubt have understood her much better. Particularly the part she was about to explain.
‘I was tricked,’ she said.
‘By whom?’
‘Clas Hall.’
Forsman was going to give it her best shot – it might work.
‘He took advantage of my feelings,’ she said.
‘In what way?’
Forsman explained how she’d fallen in love with Hall. How he’d seduced her and manipulated her and got her to do what he wanted.
‘He was just like that pastor involved in the Knutby murders! That’s just what he was like!’
‘He tricked you into stealing drugs?’
‘Yes! He said he was going to end it and throw me out if I didn’t help him. He needed money. He said that it was completely without risk. All I needed to do was take a few drugs from work and give them to him and we’d get money to go to the Caribbean.’
‘And you fell for that?’
‘What was I supposed to do? I was a victim of my own emotions!’
Victim, my arse, Lisa thought. But she was still satisfied with how things were going. Forsman had confessed that she was the one who’d stolen the drugs. The motive was irrelevant.
To Lisa at least.
The next step was the Bengt Sahlmann murder. Forsman denied any involvement in that. She’d never stepped foot inside his house.
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘But weren’t you two having a relationship?’
‘Me and him?’
Forsman looked as though she’d been accused of having an STD until Lisa showed her the email that said: ‘My body is yours.’
‘Do you always write that sort of thing to your colleagues?’
At this point Gabriella Forsman felt that she’d had enough. The tears hadn’t worked very well and she wasn’t sure about the Knutby pastor thing. So she opted for the Clas Hall approach.
‘I want a lawyer.’
‘We’ll fix that. We’ll also be taking some swabs.’
‘What? Why?’
‘To see whether your DNA matches the DNA in the skin cells we found under Bengt Sahlmann’s nails.’
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