Third Voice

by Börjlind, Cilla

  ‘Yes. Like it was yesterday.’

  Mette smiled thinking about it. She’d done a night shift and had been dealing with a number of left-wing protestors in Kungsträdgården, one of whom was Mårten. A couple of weeks later they’d ended up at the same restaurant on Söder. Mårten had chatted her up, not remembering who she was, and later that night they’d ended up in bed. In the morning she’d told him that she was a police officer and then Mårten recognised her. A few years later they had four children.

  And now they were sitting here.

  Mette put her hand on Mårten’s. He noticed the thick blue veins on his hand – Mårten was approaching seventy.

  ‘You’re the only thing that makes life worth living,’ she said. ‘You and the family. You know that. The rest is just an occupational disease. Sometimes it obstructs my vision, like now. I know I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. It’s selfish. There’s too much at risk here, with my heart and stuff. I’m sorry, I should have thought about that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mette pulled her hand away and picked up her glass, as did Mårten.

  ‘But for now you’re still here,’ he said.

  Mette nodded, without raising her glass.

  * * *

  Olivia lay in bed trying to sleep. She was close a couple of times, but just as she was about to drift off, those words popped into her head again: ‘He needn’t have committed the murder himself. He may have hired someone to do it for him.’

  And then she was wide awake again.

  Eventually she got up and sat in the kitchen. She didn’t have the energy to make tea. She lit a candle on the table and stared out into the darkness. Maybe I should go out for a run? To physically exhaust myself? She turned to have a look through the window above the sink and saw drops of rain splashing up from the windowsill outside. I won’t, she thought and turned around again. Her gaze landed on the yellow Post-it note from Sandra. It was still on the table, she read the text again: ‘I’m not as strong as you.’

  She hadn’t called Sandra yet. She was putting it off. How much of the truth should she share with Sandra? In her fragile state? How would she react to her father falling off the pedestal she’d placed him on? Just like Arne had? Would she react like her? Hate him? Run away? Disappear? Or try to kill herself again?

  However she reacted, the truth would torture her.

  For a long time.

  Olivia blew out the candle and went back to bed.

  ‘He may have hired someone to do it for him.’

  Olivia pulled the covers up to her chin.

  Thorhed?

  Then she finally drifted off.

  * * *

  Abbas was not in a rush. He waited until the middle of the night. He wanted to be sure that everyone had left the area. The people asleep in the caravans didn’t bother him, he would sneak in through the back of the tent. Where it was pitch dark.

  When he pulled the body under the canvas of the tent, he still hadn’t switched his torch on. He remembered how it looked, he’d been there the night before. And the large hole at the top of the pole let in some light as well.

  Moonlight.

  He carried on as quietly as he could. He heard the traffic on Lidingövägen in the distance and knew that it would drown out quite a bit of the noise. He dumped the body once he’d got further into the ring and dragged out the spinning wheel.

  The knife-throwing wheel.

  He placed it at the edge of the ring and pulled out the cables for the power switch and speed control.

  Then he took off all of Mickey Leigh’s clothes and lifted him up. It took quite a while to tie his large body onto the wooden wheel with the leather straps. By his hands and feet.

  But he did it.

  He looked at the wheel. A streak of moonlight poured over the naked body on the wheel. The man was still out of it, but he wasn’t completely unconscious.

  Very soon he’d be very awake.

  Abbas moved back from the wheel a few metres and switched his torch on. He put it down on the yellow plastic in the ring, angled directly up towards the body.

  He stared at the wheel in front of him.

  This tanned man.

  The Bull.

  Then he turned the switch and started the wheel. Slowly.

  After just the first rotating lap, Mickey lifted his head and tried to focus his gaze. Not very successfully. All he saw was a torch shining straight into his face.

  But he heard the voice.

  It came out of the shadows behind the light, quiet and calm.

  ‘My name is Abbas el Fassi. It was me you assaulted in Marseille. I loved Samira Villon, the woman you murdered and dismembered.’

  Mickey made a sound from under the duct tape. He tried to make out the shadow in the dark as he spun around.

  It was hard.

  ‘Many years ago I was a knife thrower,’ Abbas said out of the darkness. ‘I was pretty good. But it’s quite an art. Particularly throwing at rotating targets. Particularly in the dark. I haven’t practised this sort of knife throwing for a long time. Tonight I’m going to try again. I’ve got five knives with me. Two for your head. Two for your middle and one for the most difficult one. The knife that I’ll aim at your crotch. A perfectly executed throw will mean that the knife ends up just below your balls. But like I said, it’s not easy.’

  Mickey stared out into the darkness. Every time his head ended up in an upright position, he tried to catch a glimpse of the shadow. There was a profuse amount of sweat running over his face.

  ‘I’m going to increase the speed of the wheel now,’ Abbas said. ‘It mustn’t go too fast, but not too slowly either. That would be cheating.’

  Abbas increased the speed of the wheel. He knew that there was a point at which the person spinning around would faint, when the brain could no longer cope with the rotation. He didn’t want to risk that. When he’d reached an optimum speed, he took out the first long, black knife. He weighed it in his hand. He had not been lying – neither about how long ago it was since he’d done this, nor about how difficult it was.

  It was difficult.

  When he raised his hand, he was extremely focused.

  All the noise of the traffic was gone.

  The smell of animals and their droppings was gone.

  Everything was gone.

  All except the body on the spinning wheel.

  The first knife landed just where it was supposed to. So close to Mickey Leigh’s cheek that he could feel it. There was a deep roar from behind the duct tape, but it didn’t reach more than a few metres.

  No one would hear that.

  The other knife landed perfectly too. Right next to the other cheek.

  The third one did not.

  It pierced the wooden wheel about five centimetres too far to the right. It startled Abbas. Had it been on the other side, it would have punctured The Bull’s abdomen. That would have ruined everything.

  So he weighed the fourth knife an extra few seconds before he flung it.

  It landed exactly right, beside his naked waist, so close to the skin that the man on the wheel could feel it.

  Again.

  Abbas saw brown liquid running from The Bull’s nether regions – he heard muffled sounds coming from behind the duct tape and he saw his wide-open eyes filled with terror.

  ‘Now it’s just one more knife left,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve called it Samira. Did you know that her name means “lunar beauty”?’

  Abbas looked up at the hole in the tent at the top of the pole, towards the moonlight. Then he increased the speed of the wheel one more notch. The body was rotating faster. He could hardly focus on the limbs.

  It was all about this knife. The one that could hit his balls and the penis that had penetrated Samira.

  For money.

  It was a difficult task.

  He lifted the knife in the dark, balanced it, felt the weight and pulled his arm back.

  Just as he was about to throw it, th
e sharp bray of a horse filled the tent.

  Chapter 25

  The text message arrived at ten past four in the morning. Mårten was the one who woke hearing the vibration. He gently tugged at Mette’s black eye mask.

  ‘Darling.’

  Then Mette heard the mobile on her bedside table, picked it up. The message was short: ‘You can collect The Bull from the tent at Circus Brillos.’

  ‘Who is that?’ Mårten wondered.

  ‘Abbas.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  Mette pulled the mask up onto her forehead and sat on the edge of the bed. Her fingers wearily typed in a number to dispatch a police patrol to Circus Brillos.

  ‘He has avenged Samira Villon.’

  Mette sat with her back towards Mårten when she said it. He saw her slouch down a little. He understood why. He stroked her shoulder.

  Both of them feared what neither of them dared to articulate.

  She was still sitting in the same position when the patrol police called back, twenty minutes later. Her mobile was still in her hand. Mårten tried to hear what was being said, even though he was lying down on the other side. He could only decipher individual words but he saw that she sat up straight during the short conversation.

  She was not slouching down any further.

  ‘How bad was it?’ he dared to ask when she’d ended the call.

  ‘The man had no physical injuries whatsoever, except a large bump on the back of his head and marks from the straps,’ Mette said. ‘That said, he was “a gibbering wreck”, as they put it.’

  ‘The straps?’

  Mette told him how the patrol had found Mickey Leigh. Tied to a knife-throwing wheel. Naked. Then she sent a short text message to Jean-Baptiste Fabre in Marseille: ‘Mickey Leigh has been arrested. I’ll be in touch.’ She did not intend to release any details and she doubted whether Mickey Leigh would do so himself.

  Then she pulled her eye mask back over her eyes and lay down.

  Stilton and Olivia could wait.

  Chapter 26

  Olivia had a long shower. She’d finally fallen asleep, well into the night, and now she was trying to kickstart her system. It wasn’t going very well. She hadn’t slept enough. When she realised that she was washing her hair a second time, she pushed open the shower doors and put her dressing gown on. She put the tea water on in the kitchen and went to get her mobile. One missed call. From Alex, fifteen minutes ago. She wondered whether she should focus her energy on her hair-dryer or the journalist. Then he called again. And got straight to the point.

  ‘Hi! Are you still interested in Magnus Thorhed?’

  ‘Yes? Why are you asking that?’

  ‘I spoke to Tomas yesterday, the priest you met. I wanted to apologise for the outburst at the funeral, it was rather unnecessary. Well, anyway, we started talking about Bengt’s murder and then he mentioned that Thorhed had called him the same night that Bengt was murdered.’

  ‘Really! What did he want?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tomas didn’t want to go into detail.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No idea, but he knows I’m a journalist, so it might have been a sensitive matter.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Do you want me to guess?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stop it, I have no idea. I just thought about you and your interest in Thorhed. You’ll have to do your own guesswork.’

  ‘OK. Just a minute!’

  Olivia got up and pulled the furiously boiling tea water from the stove, splashing a few drops onto her hand in the process. Her short yelp could be heard loud and clear at Alex’s end.

  ‘Hello? What’s happening? Olivia!’

  ‘Yes, sorry! I bloody well burned myself with boiling water. Just a second!’

  Olivia held her hand under cold running water. A few seconds later, she held the mobile back up to her ear again.

  ‘It’s all right now. Listen, thank you for calling.’

  ‘Well, I look after my sources.’

  ‘What do you mean by sources?’

  ‘Nothing. Relax.’

  Alex laughed a little.

  ‘Dare I ask how things are going?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. With what?’

  ‘I don’t know, you don’t say much. You mainly ask questions.’

  ‘Maybe I should be a journalist?’

  ‘Maybe indeed. Bye!’

  Alex laughed again and ended the call. Olivia took her hand from the running water and looked at it. The skin was covered in tiny red spots. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. Why did Thorhed ring Welander on the night of the murder? Was it just a coincidence? Not likely. What did he want? To confess to someone sworn to secrecy? Why am I sitting here guessing, she thought. I can go and ask Welander myself. I’m no journalist, after all.

  As she raised the warm cup to her lips, the previous night’s ruminations popped back into her head. She felt that she needed to share these with someone.

  That someone turned out to be Stilton.

  ‘Hi, Tom, are you awake?’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘Sorry, can you talk?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘You can always hang up.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I just have all these thoughts running through my head. I felt I needed to talk to someone, and as you were the one to set them off, I thought I’d ring you.’

  ‘Set what off?’

  ‘“He needn’t have committed the murder himself. He may have hired someone to do it for him.” That’s what you said yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, and?’

  Olivia told him about Magnus Thorhed. About his blue BMW, the same make of car that had been seen at the Sahlmanns’ house the night of the murder and was parked outside Borell’s house the first time she was there. A man whom Borell himself had described as ‘very much at the forefront of things’, insinuating that Thorhed dealt with most things for him.

  ‘Was he the one who was at Borell’s when the police came?’ Stilton wondered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think he’s involved in this?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just a theory, but it’s not inconceivable that Thorhed could have stolen Sahlmann’s laptop on the orders of Borell, while he was in India.’

  ‘It is indeed conceivable.’

  ‘And that means it’s also possible that he murdered Sahlmann.’

  ‘On behalf of Borell?’

  ‘On his behalf or on his own initiative. To protect Borell. According to this guy I know, Thorhed was a supreme arse-licker.’

  ‘But murder?’

  ‘I know, it’s just a thought.’

  ‘A thought that you’ll be pursuing, if I know you correctly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The same night that Sahlmann was murdered, Thorhed rang a priest Sahlmann knew. I reckon the conversation was about the murder.’

  ‘But you don’t know for sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how are you going to find out?’

  ‘Ask the priest. I know him a little.’

  ‘OK.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Well, so that’s that, then,’ Olivia said. ‘Thanks for listening.’

  ‘Thanks for calling.’

  Olivia ended the call and started getting dressed. She’d called Stilton just like that, to have a chat.

  That felt good.

  She’d just got in the car when Mette called and told her about Mickey Leigh. Again, Mette didn’t go into detail. Abbas could do that if he wanted to.

  ‘So one of the murderers has been caught,’ Olivia said and drove out to Skånegatan.

  ‘I’m presuming so, yes.’

  ‘So it’s just the Sahlmann murder left.’

  ‘I’m not sure it is a matter of “just”.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

 
Olivia thought for a few seconds. Not long ago she probably wouldn’t have told her what she was doing, or where she was going. But a great deal had happened since then.

  ‘I’m on my way to see a guy, who I hope will tell me something about Magnus Thorhed.’

  ‘Borell’s colleague?’

  ‘Yes, have you questioned him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About the Sahlmann murder as well?’

  ‘No. Do you think he might have something to do with it?’

  ‘Not sure. I couldn’t sleep last night and lay awake cogitating about this and that, and his name popped into my head.’

  ‘OK. So how’s the history of art going?’

  Olivia didn’t know whether Mette was trying to be funny or whether it was a dig. She clearly was spending a great deal of time on everything but history of art. Not least, digging around in Mette’s murder investigation.

  ‘I’m not starting until after Christmas,’ she said. ‘Please say if you don’t want me involved in this.’

  And had it been a while ago, Mette would have given her a lecture and told her that she should spend her time doing things that she thought were much more important than making a difference, but a great deal had happened since then, even for Mette.

  ‘Do whatever you like,’ she said. ‘Just no more Borell adventures.’

  A double-edged admonition, Mette thought. She was well aware of the importance of Olivia’s ‘Borell adventure’. It was thanks to her discovery of Sahlmann’s laptop in Borell’s office that Mickey Leigh could be linked to the murder scene. Without it they would have had no idea where he’d got hold of the stolen computer.

  ‘I promise,’ Olivia said.

  Mette ended the call. Mårten had of course been right the whole time. Just go with the flow when it comes to people like Olivia and Tom. Sooner or later they’ll end up where they belong. Olivia would come back to her eventually, she felt it.

  She sat in the kitchen in her dressing gown. It had become an enjoyable habit, not getting dressed. Showering, freshening up and then getting back into her dressing gown. That urgent desire to be at the Squad had dwindled a little. It both concerned and consoled her. She’d be retiring soon. It might not be as traumatic as she’d imagined. She might get really into pottery… She had her own oven in the cellar and a husband who loved any kind of deformed eggcup she produced.