Third Voice

by Börjlind, Cilla

  Forsman’s big eyes clearly revealed her feelings about Lisa Hedqvist.

  * * *

  It was that bell inside her head that got her to make a decision, the one that hadn’t been ringing loudly enough. Suddenly it did, as she sat on the toilet: the car! There was a dark car parked by Borell’s gate, close to where she’d parked her Mustang. A BMW. Sandra had seen a dark-blue BMW by the house when her father was murdered. Was the car by the gate dark blue? She had a feeling that it was.

  That was it.

  She made a decision that had probably been formulated in her subconscious long before that. Out of pure frustration, when she felt that she wasn’t getting any further with her main conviction: that the cork bag at Borell’s belonged to Bengt Sahlmann. And more than anything, when she thought about what had happened to Sandra. She could still see her bloody forearms in front of her. She wanted to do everything she could to take down the person who’d driven Sandra to cut herself. Her father’s murderer. She felt she owed her that much.

  The car was just the trigger.

  Her decision was easy: she was going to get into Jean Borell’s house. She was going to photograph the laptop in the cork bag, there, in his office. If she had the chance she’d look inside the bag and open up the computer to check whether it really was Sahlmann’s. Then she’d contact Mette and give her enough material to order a search warrant.

  She called Sandra and hoped that she’d answer. Charlotte had been in touch that morning and said that Sandra was due to come home tomorrow, so she was probably still at the hospital.

  Sandra didn’t answer, but she sent a text message shortly afterwards: ‘Sitting talking to some people at the hospital, can’t speak now.’ Olivia texted her back. All she needed was the password for the computer. A couple of seconds later she got it.

  She went out into the hallway.

  He loved that car, German quality through and through. This was the fourth BMW he’d owned. He turned into Folkungagatan and almost ran over a drunk man wearing a football shirt on the crossing by Östgötagatan. In his rear view mirror he saw the guy stumble and fall down in the road. He turned the music down on his CD player, he would shortly be arriving at Skånegatan. He was actually on his way to a meeting with the management team in Vaxholm, but he thought he’d pay Olivia Rivera Rönning a visit before. He pulled on his soft, black calf-leather gloves and hoped that she was alone. Jean had been very clear about this: the young woman had wheedled her way into his private home under false pretences and she’d witnessed an incident at Silvergården that simply could not come out. There was too much at stake for that.

  It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen, Thorhed thought. It’s my task to clean up around Jean. I’ve been doing that for a couple of years now, successfully, and it’s been well worth it. The money was good. The only thing worrying me is Jean’s weakness. Sooner or later he’ll run into problems with that.

  Thorhed turned into Skånegatan and noted that there wasn’t a parking space near the front door he was headed for, so he had to squeeze in between two old bangers on Bondegatan. He got out and started walking towards the building.

  Olivia was still there. She had what she needed and she knew what she had to do. She walked out through the door and decided to take the stairs. Halfway down she passed the lift on its way up. She carried on down and went out through the main door. But just a couple of metres down the street she realised that she hadn’t brought any extra batteries for the torch. There was no way she could risk it not working! She walked back towards the front door and was just about to open it when she realised that she didn’t have any spare batteries in her flat anyway. I’ll buy some on the way, she thought, and started walking along Östgötagatan. Just as she turned the corner, Thorhed came out of her building. He pulled off his calfskin gloves.

  Olivia went straight to the Värmdö municipal building and requested the floorplans for Borell’s house. They were public documents. When she went through them she saw that he’d blasted space for a boathouse in the rock directly under the spaceship-like house. There was a stairway leading up to the ground floor from the boathouse.

  So far it was easy.

  The first issue was whether he had an alarm in the boathouse. She thought she’d seen CCTV when she came to the entrance last time. But did he have that all the way round the house? He’d told her that all the artwork had been burglar-proofed. Each individual object had a separate alarm and nothing could be taken from the house. And he also had his vacuum room. But an alarm in the boathouse?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  Probably.

  The second issue was how she was supposed to know whether he was in the house. That issue was resolved more easily than she’d dared to hope. She called the Albion office and asked to speak to Magnus Thorhed. She was planning to try to find out where Borell was. But there was no need. The woman on the phone explained that Magnus Thorhed was at the Vaxholms Hotel with the management team and was not expected back at the office until tomorrow afternoon.

  ‘So he’s staying overnight?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Is Jean Borell there too?’

  ‘Yes, can I take a message?’

  She could not.

  So Borell was at some conference or another out in Vaxholm. She had no guarantees that he’d stay there overnight, but it seemed plausible that he’d be there all evening.

  The third issue was a boat. The easiest way to get into the boathouse was by boat. She didn’t have a boat and she couldn’t think of a realistic way of getting hold of one now. Not at this time of year. Let alone steering it into Borell’s house on Ingarö in the dark.

  She abandoned that idea.

  There were other ways of getting into the house.

  She turned off the main road at Brunn and started driving along the narrow forest lane. She was firmly gripping the wheel as she sped along. She was going to do what she’d set out to do and nothing was going to stop her.

  There was some light snowfall, but she had no problem seeing the road. And, moreover, she’d fixed her headlights.

  She’d decided to park the car a long way away from the gate, down a little logging track. She’d spotted a couple of those when she’d driven along that way last time. She found one not too far away from Borell’s house, drove some way down it and parked her car.

  She got out of the car with the torch in her hand. She’d put on dark clothes and a pair of leather boots. And thin gloves, not mittens. She locked the car and started walking. She navigated the first stretch through the forest using her inner compass, she knew roughly in what direction the house was. She made her way past vast pine trees and scraggy dead branches, as quietly as possible.

  Even though she was assuming that there wasn’t anyone in the house.

  There wasn’t.

  Well, it was completely dark anyway. Inside. She could see that when she came up onto the rock just at the edge of the plot. All she could see was the lantern-lined path.

  And she wouldn’t be going that way.

  She thought about the CCTV by the porch.

  She made her way through some more thick forest before she saw it. The wall that ran around the property from the pillar. A high stone wall. Probably edged with some barbed wire and splinters of glass if she had the measure of Borell. She followed the wall down to the water: sooner or later it had to end.

  It did, just at the edge of the water, with an additional iron extension far out into the water. Olivia shone her torch along it. If she was going to get past it she was going to have to wade out quite a way into the water and then pull herself around to the other side. She didn’t know how deep it was out there. She shone the torch down into the water. Were there any stones she could stand on? She could see something dark under the surface, just where the iron extension ended. She hoped it was a stone. Carefully she stepped out into the freezing cold water and felt how quickly the water reached her knees. But she still had quite a way to go. She grabbe
d the iron trellis, stretched her leg out and tried to feel the dark object under the surface with her boot. She put her foot down onto it, held on with one hand and pulled herself further out. It was a stone, but it was covered in algae and terribly slippery. Her foot almost slipped off and she had to grab the black trellis with both hands. The movement twisted her body around and caused her to fall over to the other side. Straight into the water. She got up, quick as a flash, and floundered her way back to dry land. She flopped down at the edge of the beach and tried to catch her breath. She’d done it! She’d got around the edge. Then she thought about the torch. The torch?! She must have dropped it when she slipped. It had ended up way out in the water at the far end of the iron trellis.

  It was gone.

  Stilton sat in his cabin staring at the stuffed bird. He thought about Olivia. He couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when she’d talked about Sandra Sahlmann. And Borell. And the laptop that she thought was in his house. He couldn’t forget the strain in her voice, the expression on her face. The dangerous clarity as she explained that she did not plan on involving Mette in this. She was going to deal with this herself.

  How the hell was she going to do that?

  He’d called her twice, but there was no reply. He’d called Mette as well, a long shot.

  ‘Has Olivia been in touch with you?’

  ‘No. Have you talked to her?’

  ‘Yes. It went well. We can talk about that later. Bye.’

  A while ago he’d passed by her flat. No sign of Olivia. No Mustang parked on the street. It didn’t mean anything, really. She could have been anywhere. At the cinema. But she wasn’t, he didn’t think. And he didn’t just want to take a chance.

  ‘Luna?’

  Stilton went into the lounge.

  ‘Yes?’

  Luna was sitting at the oval table with hundreds of stamps spread out in front of her. She was holding a magnifying glass in one hand. Stilton looked at the table.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. I got my dad’s collection, some of them are worth quite a bit but the rest is just crap.’

  ‘I have an album with ones like that out on Rödlöga. I think they were my grandmother’s.’

  ‘It would be great to see them some time.’

  ‘Yes, maybe. Could I borrow your car for a while?’

  ‘Do you have a driver’s licence?’

  But she was smiling as she handed over the car keys.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out and about.’

  ‘Out and about?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And off he went. Luna put down her magnifying glass and ran her hand through her thick hair. She was beginning to tire of Stilton’s attitude.

  He didn’t give an inch.

  Olivia peered along the edge of the beach. Not many minutes passed before she remembered the torch app on her phone. Fortunately her mobile was in her jacket and it hadn’t been affected by her floundering. She moved a few metres away from the wall towards the house, her phone lighting up the way ahead. She didn’t dare to face it upwards. She knew that she had to walk along the water for a bit before she reached the carved-out boathouse, but she had no idea how far. She went up a couple of metres and started walking. She stepped over driftwood and a washed-up piece of plastic. It couldn’t be far. She saw the large unlit house towering above her. The carved-out space should have been somewhere in the middle of the outer wall. The one with the glass. With the twin foetuses floating in it. She peered up and saw reflections in the large windows. Almost straight above her. I must be here now. She shone the light over the stones in front of her and she saw it. A low brick wall leading out of the water. One side of the entrance to the boathouse. She climbed up on the wall and shone the torch in front of her into a large cave. It stretched far into the rock. She couldn’t see a boat in there. Carefully she crept forward along one side of the rocky wall. A little way in, the wall was covered in wood. Tarred wood. She crept in a bit further and reached some wooden decking, which she saw ran along all three walls inside the boathouse.

  This was a critical moment.

  She was inside the carved-out rock now.

  Did he have an alarm in here or not?

  Slowly she moved the phone torch to scan the ceiling of the cave, the corners, the edges. No CCTV camera. Not that she could see anyway. It could have been hidden of course, but at least she couldn’t see one now. She did, however, see the door that was supposed to lead up to the ground floor.

  According to the floorplans.

  It was on the other side.

  She started walking towards the door. Right in the middle of the narrow decking was a wooden cupboard that forced her to squeeze along the rocky wall. When she was halfway in behind the cupboard she saw the first one. A couple of centimetres from her face. A gigantic cave spider. Black. With thick bent legs. When she turned her phone around she saw the rest. All over the wall. Most of them were moving, disturbed by the light. She quickly made her way through and shook off a few of these crawling beasts from her hair.

  Sayonara Kerouac, she thought to herself.

  She was only a few steps from the door now. She shone her torch on it. An ordinary handle, an ordinary wooden door, not a metal one. Would she be able to open it? Or was it another one of those that only slid open on command?

  It wasn’t.

  But it was locked.

  She’d expected that. But what kind of lock was it? If it was a seven-pin tumbler lock she was in trouble. She wasn’t going to be able to pick one of those. If it wasn’t, she could make use of her training. Thanks to those of her classmates who thought that picking door locks should be part of elementary police training. Without breaking them down as they did in films.

  They’d taught Olivia how to do this, with the help of some small dangling tools. She took out the metal cluster and began working on the spikes in the door lock.

  Borell was furious. The meeting had hit a wall. At first everyone agreed that the time period leading up to the next election needed to be milked to the max. Up to that point, things were running smoothly. Then came the conflict. There were two camps in the management team. One that wanted to expand and another that wanted to improve the organisation they were already running. Borell was part of the first group. After half an hour of discussion it was clear that they had reached a stalemate. So Borell ended the meeting. It came quite abruptly. Everyone had expected to be staying at the hotel overnight.

  But the plans were changed.

  Idiots, Borell thought to himself as he drove down the dark forest lane. Of course we need to expand as much as possible. That’s what this whole thing is about. He was so annoyed that he almost missed them, the tyre marks in the snow that turned off into the narrow logging road. First he just drove past them, then he put the brakes on, reversed and stopped. The tracks continued right in. Who the hell has been driving here? At this time? He carried on further down the narrow track and put his headlights on full beam. The tracks carried on further towards a small bend. He drove on a little further and stopped. His headlights were shining straight onto a white car that was standing just next to the road.

  A Mustang.

  Olivia managed to open the lock. It took a while, but she did it. Before she opened the door she thought about the alarm again. If there is one it’s probably connected to a security centre, and then I’ll have about twenty minutes before the security guards arrive, she thought to herself and opened the door. Silence. No alarm after all. Good. She climbed up the stairs and knew where she’d emerge. Roughly. She’d memorised the floorplans as best she could, and photographed parts of them with her mobile. She’d be coming out onto the ground floor and then she’d go up the stairs to the right. Once at the top she’d be back on the floor where she’d been a couple of days ago.

  The office floor.

  She found the stairs. She held the mobile torch straight onto the steps in front of her
, she didn’t want it casting too much of a beam. She didn’t want to risk it being seen from outside. Whoever might be out there. When she got upstairs she saw that she was in the right place. The only thing shining in the whole house was the aquarium in the large glass wall. The green light shone all the way over to the staircase where she stood. She quickly moved away. She knew where the office was. It’s so quiet, she thought, when that strange music isn’t on. She scurried through a narrow passageway and arrived at the office door. There was a small button on the wall. She pressed it. The door slid open just as silently as it had done last time. She stepped into the room and went straight over to the shelf where she’d seen the cork bag with the laptop and held her mobile up.

  The bag wasn’t there.

  On the art books.

  Where it had been before.

  Damn it!

  Had he taken it with him? Have I come here for nothing?! She scanned the room with the torch.

  There!

  The cork bag was lying on the edge of the desk. She switched on the camera on her mobile and took several pictures of the bag. Then she used the video function to show her location, slowly moving the mobile around the room. She focused on a large painting by Jan Håfström on one of the walls for a few seconds.

  She relished the moment.

  He carefully rubbed his thumb over his glass eye. The other one was watching Olivia. She was moving just a couple of metres in front of him, in his office. Every time she faced the mirror with the large golden frame, he was able to look straight into her eyes. He was standing in the narrow room behind the mirror. He’d had it built last year, secretly. It wasn’t on the floorplans. He relished standing behind the mirror watching his guests in his office. Some just sat and waited, others inspected the bookshelves or cast discreet glances over the desk. Most of them went up to the mirror to correct this and that, their hair or lipstick, right in front of him. He loved that.