Third Voice

by Börjlind, Cilla

  Stilton looked at Olivia.

  ‘What do you think? Just over two hours? I found you, carried you up to the car, we drove here, you changed, we talked for a while, you fell asleep and I drove back.’

  ‘Two hours sounds reasonable.’

  ‘So we have a timeframe within which the murder must have taken place,’ Mette said. ‘Did you see anything at all at the house other than the body?’

  ‘No,’ Stilton said. ‘I ran in and out.’

  ‘In just over four minutes, according to the surveillance camera. Good job you didn’t loiter about, that would have complicated things for you.’

  ‘When have you ever seen me loiter?’

  Mette let the comment slip. She didn’t want to remind him of the five, six years that he didn’t do much else other than just that.

  ‘But Luna did hear a motorboat,’ Stilton said.

  ‘Was she there too?’

  ‘She came with me to collect Olivia’s car. She was standing by the gate while I was in the house.’

  ‘And that’s where she heard the motorboat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Interesting. Could have been the murderer getting away. The camera outside hadn’t registered anything until Tom turned up in his car. That means the murderer must have gone in another way. Maybe the same way as you, through the boathouse, into the office, down again and then off in that motorboat. After dropping the murder weapon in the boathouse.’

  ‘Then I must just have missed him,’ Stilton said.

  ‘Probably. The next bit of interesting information came from the technical report. There was no laptop in a cork bag in Borell’s office. In fact, nowhere in the house at all.’

  Stilton and Olivia looked at each other.

  ‘But it was there when I was there,’ Olivia said. ‘You saw that yourself on the pictures.’

  ‘Yes. Which means that the murderer must have taken it. Unless you did, Tom?’

  Stilton gave Mette a rather fed-up look.

  ‘So the murderer stole Sahlmann’s laptop?’ Olivia said.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you think I have an answer to that?’ Mette said. ‘I don’t. And I don’t know who the murderer was either. I don’t know his or her motive. What I do know is that there was a man at the murder scene when the police arrived, after you’d left your anonymous tip-off, Tom.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Stilton asked.

  ‘His name is Magnus Thorhed and he seems to have been working for Borell.’

  ‘Was he there?!’

  Olivia sat up.

  ‘You know of him?’

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  ‘It must have been his car we drove past,’ Stilton said. ‘He came racing through the forest like a madman.’

  ‘What was he going to do at Borell’s in the middle of the night?’ Olivia wondered.

  ‘He claims that he went there because Borell wasn’t answering his mobile,’ Mette said. ‘He knew that Borell had gone home. They been at some conference, and there was something he urgently needed to discuss with him.’

  ‘At that time?’

  ‘We asked him that,’ Mette said. ‘And he said that their company operates all over the world: when it’s night here it’s day in Boston. That was the explanation he gave. I’ll deal with him later.’

  ‘Aren’t you on sick leave?’ Stilton said with a smile.

  Mette ignored the comment.

  ‘So now we have two connected murders. Via Sahlmann’s missing laptop. Is it the same murderer?’

  ‘Doubtful,’ said Stilton.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Sahlmann’s murder was arranged to look like suicide. To disguise the fact that it was murder. Borell was just shot. Rather different approaches.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Which means that Borell could have killed Sahlmann and then been murdered himself,’ Olivia said. ‘It must have been Borell who stole the laptop the first time, at Sahlmann’s, considering that it ended up in his office?’

  ‘He may not have stolen it himself,’ Mette said.

  Magnus Thorhed? Olivia immediately thought. The man very much at the forefront of things? But suddenly she had other things to think about.

  Abbas had stepped into the lounge.

  ‘Hi.’

  He didn’t say any more than that. Nevertheless it took a few seconds before anyone in the room reacted. For several reasons. His sudden appearance was one. His actual physical appearance was another.

  ‘What happened to you!?!’

  A question that both Mette and Olivia had good reason to ask. Mette got there first. But Olivia was first to get up and give him a big hug. He didn’t let on whether or not it hurt. He hugged her back. He’d been longing for it. Perhaps not from Olivia in particular, but from someone like her, who meant something to him.

  Who was alive.

  Stilton and Mette also got on their feet to greet Abbas.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  Abbas pointed at Mette’s cheek. The nine stitches were still visible.

  ‘Let’s talk about that later.’

  Stilton went to get another chair and Abbas sat down.

  ‘I’ve come straight from the train station,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about my face, it’ll be fine. I was assaulted and my nose took a beating.’

  ‘Who did this?’

  Abbas opened his wheeled suitcase and pulled out a plastic file containing a black-and-white picture.

  ‘This guy.’

  Olivia had a look first. All she saw was a slimy-looking man with an oiled face.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Mickey Leigh. A porn actor.’

  When Stilton looked at the picture he saw something very different, something that gave him quite a shock. He saw the man who’d disappeared in through the door with Jackie Berglund. Two days ago. Here in Stockholm.

  ‘This is the guy who’s known as The Bull,’ Abbas said, looking at Stilton.

  ‘Were you the one who found this out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  Stilton was trying to buy some time. When Abbas started explaining how he’d found Mickey Leigh, Stilton went through various options in his head. He knew what Abbas had done to Philippe Martin to get him to talk and could just imagine what he’d do to Jackie Berglund to get hold of Mickey Leigh. Jean-Baptiste had overlooked the matter. Mette would not.

  He needed to keep Abbas calm.

  So he kept quiet.

  ‘It’s so bloody frustrating,’ Abbas said. ‘Just when I find the right guy they throw me out of Marseille.’

  ‘Who?’ Mette asked.

  ‘The police!’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps he had his reasons?’ Stilton said carefully.

  Abbas didn’t reply. He didn’t want to clash with Tom over Jean-Baptiste. He put the picture back in the plastic file. Mette watched Stilton. She’d seen his reaction when he saw the picture of Mickey Leigh. She didn’t understand why. She’d ask him when they were alone. For now she asked Abbas about what he’d been up to in Marseille, other than what she already knew from Jean-Baptiste. Abbas gave her a short summary, excluding the part about Martin. When he’d finished he wanted to go.

  ‘I can drive you home,’ Olivia said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Olivia and Abbas left the lounge.

  Stilton followed them up onto deck and watched them leave.

  He wanted to make sure they’d gone.

  When he turned around to share what he’d been hiding from Abbas with Mette, she said: ‘You recognised that man on the photo. Mickey Leigh.’

  ‘Yes. He’s in Stockholm. He’s hanging out with Jackie Berglund. I saw them outside her building the other day.’

  ‘And why didn’t you want to tell Abbas?’

  ‘Well, you saw how he looked…’

  Mette understood. She knew Abbas too.

&nbs
p; ‘Do you think that Mickey is wanted?’ she said.

  ‘I can check.’

  Stilton called Jean-Baptiste. Mickey Leigh was indeed wanted, for grievous bodily harm and possible involvement in a dismemberment killing. The French police had just released information via Interpol as Mickey Leigh was registered as having left the country.

  ‘He’s in Stockholm,’ Stilton said. ‘I’ve informed Mette Olsäter.’

  ‘Good,’ Jean-Baptiste said. ‘Please ask her to keep in touch with us.’

  Stilton ended the call. Mette had understood the implications of this conversation and got out her mobile. She called Bosse Thyrén and had Jackie Berglund’s building put under surveillance.

  ‘You can find his picture on an Interpol wanted list,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ Bosse said. ‘Oh and by the way –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s no match with Gabriella Forsman and Clas Hall’s DNA.’

  ‘Now we know.’

  Mette ended the call and looked at Stilton. He looked troubled. He felt that the whole Marseille adventure had just landed in Stockholm.

  And it didn’t feel good.

  * * *

  Ovette Andersson didn’t have many friends. Not many she could trust. Her colleagues were colleagues, and her friends from before were dead, most of them at least.

  But she still had Mink.

  They went back a long way – they’d grown up in the same suburb, Kärrtorp. Mink was the one she’d turned to when her son Acke had got into trouble last year, and Mink was the one she was turning to now.

  ‘Did he threaten you?’

  Mink looked genuinely appalled. Not because he thought much of police integrity – that was pretty much in line with his view of the rest of the world – it was the fact that a detective chief inspector was personally engaged in threatening a single woman that provoked a reaction in him.

  ‘Yes,’ Ovette said. ‘He was bloody unpleasant.’

  They’d meet in a narrow side street off Hornsgatan. Ovette had chosen this meeting place, out of sight of glares and cars. She was afraid, her weary eyes made plain that she’d had a sleepless night.

  ‘He was outside my front door yesterday,’ she said.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He was wondering whether I’d been in touch with Tom Stilton. I said I hadn’t, but he kept going on about it. In the end he pulled me off into a dark corner and told me what he’d do to me and Acke if I breathed a word to Stilton about him buying sex.’

  Ovette swallowed several times and Mink saw tears welling up in her eyes.

  ‘What did he say he’d do to you?’ he asked.

  ‘Take care of us.’

  ‘OK, and by that he didn’t mean a package holiday to Mallorca or a new flat.’

  ‘No. His eyes were black as hell.’

  ‘What an arsehole.’

  Ovette swallowed again and Mink saw how fragile she was. He put his arm around her. If the world was ending in December it didn’t matter all that much what that copper had threatened her with, but he also thought about what Stilton had said. It may be worth doing good until then, it might well pay off.

  ‘I think you should talk to Stilton again,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s a very smart guy. Who also happens to know that arsehole Forss. He might be able to arrange some protection for you? And he knows Acke too.’

  Ovette didn’t reply. She started walking, with Mink’s arm around her shoulders.

  * * *

  Mette just managed to get into her office when she took the call. It was from one of the guys keeping an eye on Jackie Berglund’s building. They’d just seen Berglund go in through the front door accompanied by Mickey Leigh.

  Mette reacted quickly.

  Rather too quickly for someone who’d had a mild heart attack.

  But she ignored that.

  She immediately sent Bosse Thyrén and Lisa Hedqvist over to Berglund’s place on Norr Mälarstrand. With backup.

  ‘He’s wanted for grievous bodily harm in Marseille. And he might have murdered a woman as well.’

  Bosse and Lisa took Mette’s warning about Mickey Leigh very seriously. They arrived with a police patrol van. Had they not done so, and instead opted to take their unmarked police car, they might have gone unnoticed. But a patrol van is quite hard to miss on an open street like Norr Mälarstrand. Jackie saw it through the window straight away. After spotting Stilton down on the street a few days ago, she’d been looking out through her windows more or less subconsciously several times a day.

  She’d been gripped by a sense of paranoia.

  She saw the patrol van as soon as it stopped outside her building.

  ‘The coppers are here.’

  She largely said it as a statement of fact. It needn’t have been her they were coming to see, but it was certainly possible. She had no idea what they wanted, but she didn’t feel particularly concerned.

  Unlike Mickey Leigh.

  He leapt over to the window to catch a glimpse of the uniformed police on their way towards the building.

  ‘Do you have a back door?’ he asked.

  ‘What? What’s the matter with you? Why do you think they…’

  ‘Back door?!’

  She did. Without an understanding of what this was about, other than that it was a matter of urgency, she ran through the flat towards the kitchen door that led down to the garden. Mickey disappeared just as her doorbell rang. Jackie wondered whether she should open the door. Special operations police? They’d probably kick the door in if she didn’t. She stood in the hallway for a minute or so to give Mickey a chance to escape.

  Then she opened.

  ‘Jackie Berglund?’ Lisa asked, holding up her police ID. Bosse and a couple of police officers were standing just behind her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m from the National Crime Squad. We’re looking for Mickey Leigh.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Lisa held up a picture of Mickey Leigh.

  ‘He’s wanted by Interpol. A short while ago he walked into this building with you. Is he in the flat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’d like to take a look, please.’

  Jackie stepped aside. She didn’t let on what she was thinking. Wanted by Interpol? Had he been hiding? Was that why he turned up here unannounced? What a fucking arsehole!

  Lisa moved aside to let the police officers proceed into the flat. She and Bosse remained in the hallway with Jackie.

  ‘Is he staying with you?’ Bosse asked.

  ‘The man on the picture you showed me, the guy – I don’t know… What’s his name?’

  ‘Mickey Leigh.’

  ‘He’s just visiting Stockholm, we’re slightly acquainted, I had no idea that he was wanted.’

  ‘But he’s been staying here?’

  ‘No.’

  A police officer came back out to the hallway to tell them about the back door and that the man they were looking for had probably escaped out through it. A couple of officers had headed off to look for him.

  ‘Whose is that?’

  Lisa pointed at a brown suitcase in the hallway. There was a little leather name tag attached to it.

  ‘That’s his,’ Jackie said.

  ‘We’ll be taking care of that then. You can accompany us to the station.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lisa didn’t reply.

  * * *

  Stilton sat in his cabin, trying to sort things out. He had not engaged his brain for several years and now it was being bombarded non-stop since Abbas had come to the barge wanting to go to Marseille. He tried to make sense of what had happened since then. There were positive developments, such as his relationship with Olivia. He was extremely happy about that. And there had been Claudette, another positive development. The barge and Luna? He peered at the stuffed bird. Yeah, that was good too.

  Then there were things that were rather less good.

&n
bsp; Borell’s attempt to murder Olivia and the meeting with Forss in the interrogation room, for example. Although the look of fear that flashed across Forss’s eyes when he mentioned his old sex contacts was certainly on the plus side.

  Abbas’s assault was not.

  And Mickey Leigh’s arrival in Stockholm certainly wasn’t good.

  Although, on the other hand, it might help to pin something on Jackie Berglund. In that case it would certainly be on the plus side.

  What was most negative, for his own part, was the news he’d just received from Olivia. She’d gone through her old material on Berglund and she couldn’t find any prostitute whom Forss may have had contact with.

  His only hope of nailing Rune Forss.

  But he’d forgotten about Mink.

  That little snitch.

  He called right in the middle of Stilton’s mental summary.

  ‘I think you should talk to Ovette again,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  When Mink told him about Forss harassing Ovette the night before. Stilton felt his blood pumping. This was both good and bad. Bad because he felt sorry for Ovette and what Forss had done to her. And indirectly also Acke. Good because it might give him another chance.

  With Ovette.

  Maybe.

  Just when he was about to end the call, Mink said: ‘You know, in the old days, people paid good money for this sort of work. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes. What do you want?’

  ‘A donkey.’

  Mink ended the call. Stilton looked at his mobile. A donkey? He knew that Mink was no stranger to indulging in the dark side of sexual desire. Maybe he was horny? Or perhaps it was some new code word he didn’t know? He hadn’t been on the streets for a while.

  * * *

  Jackie was questioned by Lisa and Bosse about her relationship with Mickey Leigh. He’d obviously been in her flat, his suitcase was there. But as she didn’t actually know that he was wanted, she had no trouble parrying most of their questions. She’d met him in good faith. She hadn’t overheard any of his telephone conversations. She didn’t even know whether he had a mobile.