Spice Trade

by Erik Mauritzson

  SPICE TRADE

  ERIK MAURITZSON

  Copyright © 2017 by Erik Mauritzson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

  For information, address:

  The Permanent Press

  4170 Noyac Road

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  www.thepermanentpress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mauritzson, Erik, author.

  Spice trade / Erik Mauritzson.

  Sag Harbor, NY : The Permanent Press, [2017]

  ISBN 978-1-57962-496-5

  eISBN 978-1-57962-537-5

  1. Detectives—Sweden—Fiction. 2. Mystery fiction.

  PS3613.A88315 S65 2017

  813'.6—dc23

  2017008731

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Suzanne

  1

  FALLING GIRL

  Weltenborg, Sweden

  Friday, January 20, 8:12 p.m. She crawled along near the edge of the steep roof, the sharp-cornered, icy tiles cutting into her hands and knees, a biting wind laced with cold rain catching at her thin cotton slip. Gashes in her arms and legs bled from struggling through the broken attic window. The cold, and overwhelming fear, distracted her from the pain.

  She tried not to look four stories below where rain-coated pedestrians hurried along the brightly lit, traffic-filled street as a fierce wind tried to pull umbrellas from their hands. She yelled to them, but her parched throat only produced a few throttled sounds.

  Through squinting, tear-filled eyes, she could just make out the large chimney at the end of the roof. Braced against it she prayed she might somehow be able to attract attention. The girl crept slowly forward, her knees and palms slick with blood.

  Her right hand slipped on the icy surface. Panicking, she tried to recover, fingers frantically scrabbling for a hold as her legs slid out from under her and over the roof edge, pulling her body along.

  No one heard her strangled cry as she fell.

  Directly across the street, Le Gourmand was crowded despite the rain beating down on the city. Loud voices and abrupt bursts of raucous laughter rang out from a group celebrating Friday at the long, dark mahogany bar.

  Rudi, the owner and a friend, had found a window table for Walther Ekman and his wife, Ingbritt, in the quieter, elegant little dining room with its white damask, flowers, and candlelight.

  Although it had now become a habit, their monthly night out had not started that way. It had been a conscious effort to break the daily routine long-married couples often fall into.

  “This wine smells really good,” Ekman said, as he inhaled and then raised his glass to Ingbritt.

  Taking a sip from her glass, she said with a smile, “And tastes good too. You picked the right one, Walther.”

  Absorbed in their dinner, at first they’d seen nothing beyond the thick glass, but turning in her chair, Ingbritt noticed a crowd gathered across the street.

  “I wonder what that’s about,” she said, staring out the window.

  Looking outside, Ekman said, “Whatever it is someone will deal with it.” It was the end of a stressful week and he was tired. He wanted to ignore whatever was going on, but as police chief superintendent he was never really off duty, much as he would have liked to be.

  They saw Rudi heading for the door, curious to find out what was happening. A few minutes later he was back, and hurried to their table.

  “I hate to interrupt your dinner, but I thought you’d want to know, Walther. A woman has fallen from a building across the way. An ambulance and the police are coming.”

  “I’d better take a look,” Ekman said, frowning as he got up. He reached over to the coatrack with a resigned look at his wife. Ingbritt just nodded. Over thirty-five years together she’d seldom reproached Ekman for his work’s frequent, unexpected interruptions. It was one of the reasons he loved her.

  The steady rain had already slowed the heavy traffic, which now crawled as drivers peered curiously at the growing crowd on the sidewalk. Starting across the road, Ekman cautiously threaded a path between vehicles.

  Using his six foot five, 270 pounds, he bulled through the outer ring of people around the girl’s body, their necks craning to see over the heads of those closer to her.

  “Stand back,” he barked. “I’m a police officer. Stand back.” Slowly, grudgingly, the throng parted, until he could make out the slender form sprawled on the wet pavement.

  Shoving through the last circle of gawkers, Ekman knelt by her, ignoring the damp seeping into his trousers, and placed two thick fingers on her throat searching for the carotid artery. There was no pulse. She was young, probably early twenties, and had been pretty before her head smashed against the cement.

  Ekman was surprised to see that she was naked under a sodden cotton slip bunched around her waist. Reaching over, his first impulse was to pull it down and cover her, but he stopped himself; he couldn’t disturb the body before the forensic team arrived. He stood up and, looking over the crowd, saw two police officers running toward the scene.

  People parted for the uniforms. When the officers saw Ekman standing beside the body they looked surprised and saluted.

  “How did you get here so fast, Chief?” said the older of the two, a woman. “We just got the word a few minutes ago.”

  “I was across the street.” He gestured toward the restaurant’s brightly lit windows. “Move everyone back. And call for more officers to set up a perimeter.”

  They heard the wailing of a Klaxon and saw an ambulance coming toward them, its glaring strobe lights flashing, slowly advancing between vehicles that had begun to move aside.

  As the officers urged the onlookers back, Ekman moved away and looked up at the building the girl had fallen from. A few faces had gathered at windows, peering down at the scene. We’ll have to question everyone with a window facing this way, he thought, including those across the street.

  None of the windows were open and the roof was steeply pitched. From where he was standing, he could see no way to get onto it. Where had she fallen from?

  It was a puzzle, but one he didn’t have to solve now. He took out his mobile and called his deputy, Chief Inspector Rapp, the duty officer that evening.

  “Alrik, it’s Walther. There’s been a death, a young woman, fallen from a building at,” he searched for the house number, “375 Vallgraven. Yes, I just happened to be having dinner across the street. This may be an accident or something worse. Two uniforms are on the scene and more are coming. We’ll have to cordon off about half the block.

  “We need a pathologist and crime scene officers out here now. You’d better alert public relations too. The press and TV will be here sooner than we want. And I’d like to have an inspector in charge, with at least two detectives. Is Gerdi Vinter working? Good. She’d be the right one to handle this. I’ll be in Saturday. Have her brief me in the morning. Thanks.”

  Ekman walked back to the restaurant, and hanging up his dripping coat and hat, found that Ingbritt had already eaten most of her dinner.

  “I didn’t know how long you’d be, so I just went ahead,” she said apologetically. “They’re keeping the rest of your food warm for you in the kitchen.” Their night out had become just one more evening lost to his work.

  He sat down heavily. The sight of the girl’s broken body had wiped away his appetite.

  “How bad is it, Walther?”

  “She’s dead. We should know more tomorrow about how it happened and why.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Young, somewhere in her early twenties,
I’d say.”

  “What a terrible waste.”

  “Yes,” he said, and left it at that. Young or old, a violent death was always a waste, but the younger the person, the more poignant it felt. Senseless deaths weighed heavier on him than ever. In thirty-one years on the force he’d become more, rather than less, affected by their visceral impact. If he ever became so hardened that he didn’t react emotionally, he thought it would be past time to retire.

  2

  THE KEEPER

  January 20, 9:50 p.m. The Keeper’s assistant was worried. More than that, he was frightened.

  He stood on the outer fringe of the crowd kept well back from the scene by the blue-and-white tape police barrier. A large, brightly lit tent now shielded the girl’s body and glaring klieg lights illuminated the area. Technicians in white head-to-foot protective suits, glistening from the still falling rain, were moving from the tent to their evidence van and back again.

  An ambulance sat at the curb and two attendants stood near it, waiting for the pathologist and forensic specialists to finish their work so they could move the body. A television mobile unit with large antennae on the roof was parked just behind the ambulance, and a reporter was talking with a woman who appeared to be in charge of the scene. She periodically interrupted his questions to direct the other officers.

  Tired of stale sandwiches and pizza, the assistant had broken the rules and left to get a real meal in a Lebanese restaurant on the corner. He knew something was wrong just after he’d gotten back and heard the ambulance siren. Checking the closed-circuit TV and not seeing her, he unbolted the bedroom door.

  The smashed chair, and the leg used to break the small window, were lying on the floor. He could see blood on the jagged edges of the remaining glass where she’d somehow managed to wriggle out onto the steeply pitched roof.

  He hesitated at first, then called the Keeper; he didn’t want to hear what the other man would say.

  “I’d gone out for only a little while. I know I shouldn’t have, but I’d just looked at the TV screen and she seemed to be sound asleep. She must have been faking and heard the door close. What should I do?”

  Instructions were given in a curt voice. He would have to leave. There was no time to thoroughly sanitize the place before police, questioning tenants, knocked at the door.

  He put the CCTV screen and video recorder in a cheap, battered suitcase, along with his spare shirt and a sports magazine. Going to the hall closet, he hurriedly got her clothes and shoes, and shoved them in the case.

  In the bedroom, he untied the leather restraining straps at each corner of the bed and packed them inside. Then, lifting a picture on the wall, he took down a wireless, pinhole TV camera that he stowed with the other things. Looking in the adjoining bathroom, he grabbed her few toiletries. He glanced quickly around the apartment for anything he might have overlooked and then went out, locking the door.

  Watching the busy technicians, he started when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see the handsome face of the Keeper.

  “Come away, Ahmed. You don’t want to be seen standing in the rain staring at them.”

  The two, Ahmed, stocky and dark, carrying a suitcase, the other, tall and blond, walked without speaking down the street and around the corner to a black Land Rover.

  “We need to get to the farm and figure out what to do,” the Keeper said as he started the engine, glancing over at the younger man.

  “I screwed up,” said Ahmed, looking down at his hands, as he twisted them nervously in his lap. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. These things happen. We’ll deal with it.”

  For the next two hours, they drove in silence broken occasionally by the Keeper’s questions and Ahmed’s mumbled replies. Accompanied by the swishing of wipers clearing lingering rain, they headed along increasingly narrow roads into the countryside north of Weltenborg and southwest of Stockholm.

  Turning left onto a barely visible, muddy track, they slowed and continued on for another five minutes. Ahead of them, looming abruptly out of the darkness was a large barn, and a little distance away, a ramshackle, two-story wooden farmhouse with yellow light streaming from downstairs windows. Pulling into a side yard, they parked next to a panel truck, and walked around to the porch.

  Going up creaking steps, the Keeper knocked on the door, which was unlocked and opened by a large, slab-faced, completely bald man who stepped aside to let them in.

  “Is everything quiet, Gotz?” asked the Keeper.

  “Yes,” he replied. Looking over at Ahmed, he said, “How did it happen?”

  Ahmed shrugged, dropping the suitcase by the door as he entered.

  The Keeper said, “Let’s have some coffee.” He went through to the kitchen, and sat down at a table in the middle of the room. He gestured for Ahmed to join him as Gotz put two full mugs on the table, and then leaned against the rear wall, looking down at them.

  As they sipped the steaming black coffee, the Keeper said, “What do you think our options are, Ahmed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’ll find out that you rented the apartment. And your fingerprints and DNA are all over it, right?”

  “Yes,” he replied in a subdued voice.

  “Then they’ll soon identify you, begin a search, and your name and picture will be in the papers and on TV. Isn’t that so?”

  “I guess.”

  “No guessing about it. It’s inevitable. So what should we do?” the Keeper asked, his pale blond eyebrows raised inquiringly. “We can’t let them get you.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “Maybe I should leave the country,” Ahmed said, his eyes on the floor.

  “That’s a possibility. But when they can’t find you in Sweden, they’ll look elsewhere. These days, Europol and Interpol are all connected with local police. So this wouldn’t go away; it would continue to be a major problem.”

  “I could hide here,” he said, his eyes wandering around the room.

  “For how long, Ahmed? Years? I don’t think that’s really feasible, do you?”

  Ahmed shifted in his chair, glancing nervously first at the table and then the walls.

  “Then what should I do?”

  “It’s not what you should do, it’s what we must do to keep you safe from the police.” Looking up at Gotz, who’d moved behind Ahmed, he nodded slightly.

  Gotz whipped a thin, steel wire loop over Ahmed’s head and around his neck, pulling hard on the wooden handles at each end. Ahmed half rose from his chair, grabbing frantically at the wire cutting deeply into his throat, his legs kicking wildly, knocking over his chair as he tried to breathe, then collapsed across the table, spilling the coffee mug. The dark liquid pooled on the table, dripping onto the cracked, white linoleum.

  “It wouldn’t have been worth the risk trying to get him out of the country. If he’d been caught, he’d have given them everything in a minute,” said the Keeper as he stood, looking down at Ahmed. “It may create problems with his people in Marrakech, but we had no choice.”

  “None at all,” said Gotz, bending down to pull out the garrote deeply embedded in Ahmed’s neck. He took it over to the sink and carefully washed it and then his hands. Wiping the garrote with a kitchen towel, he folded it and shoved it into a pants pocket.

  “You’ll be able to take care of him?” the Keeper asked.

  “I’ll manage, although the ground’s almost frozen. Probably out back, behind the barn.”

  “No, not here. At sea, would be better. From your boat near Halmstad.”

  “All right. It’s late, but I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Good. Drop him as far out as possible.”

  Wearing work gloves, they first took the CCTV equipment out of Ahmed’s suitcase. Then Gotz removed Ahmed’s clothing and pulled a paint-stained canvas tarp around the naked body. After tying rope tightly around and attaching the suitcase now filled with riprap from the ditch out front, they carried the heavy bundle
between them to the panel truck. Gotz reached over and opened the rear doors and they shoved it in.

  The Keeper glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight.

  He stared at the other man. “We need to keep this between just the two of us.”

  “Of course,” said Gotz, his face expressionless. He turned, climbed into the truck, and backed it out.

  The Keeper put Ahmed’s clothes in a paper bag; he’d burn them later in the trash barrel behind the house. Then he wiped down the kitchen table and floor, and set up the CCTV screen and recorder to see what had happened.

  The girl lay face down, spread-eagled on the bed, naked under her partially pulled-up slip. She was gagged to stifle screams, her hands and feet bound tightly by straps to each corner of the bed. Pillows under her stomach pushed her buttocks up. The onscreen clock showed 7:18 p.m. The Keeper fast forwarded.

  At seven thirty, the client came in and took his clothes off, folding them carefully over the chair, and neatly aligning his shoes and socks under it. Then getting on the bed, he climbed on top of her, and began slowly caressing her body. He pulled her slip all the way up and started to spank her, first lightly then harder, hearing her muffled groans as her buttocks became bright red. He turned her face toward him and saw sheer terror written on it at what was to come. He smiled.

  The Keeper fast forwarded again.

  He didn’t care to watch; sex with women didn’t interest him. He believed the client had insisted on a short, slender girl because he couldn’t admit to himself that he really wanted a boy. The Keeper had no problem with his own orientation and would have been happy to provide a young male if that’s what was wanted.

  Their clients had wide-ranging tastes: some, like this one, wanted boy substitutes; a few, real teenage boys; others, the majority, wanted women of assorted sizes, shapes, and ages. Over the three years of their operation, they’d found what they needed primarily in Eastern Europe. They seldom used a Swede or any woman from Scandinavia. Too many unexplained missing persons from a small country with mostly unbribable police would have soon become a problem.