Spice Trade

by Erik Mauritzson

  “Yes. But it’s the best shot we’ve got at finding a brutal killer.”

  “Well then, I guess I have no choice except to try and obtain that warrant. I hope the judge will agree with us. The one for the bank account should be easier. Get me the affidavits and we’ll see what can be done.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Ekman said. “We’ve had no luck so far finding Chafik and there’s a strong possibility he’s already fled Sweden. Because there’s an outstanding warrant for his arrest, I think we should also issue an international arrest warrant and simultaneously request an Interpol ‘Red Notice’ asking any country he’s in to hold him for extradition.”

  “Good idea. You’ll have the formal Interpol request along with the warrants. I’ll leave it to you to get in touch with the right people in Stockholm. Be sure you go through them to contact Interpol. It’s the bureaucratic system we’ve created that we now have to put up with. We wouldn’t want anyone getting their nose out of joint,” he said with a rueful smile, getting up. “Good luck. I’ll look forward to your progress reports.”

  They shook hands as Ekman left.

  Kallenberg sat at his desk thinking about Ekman’s request to trace the mobile tower numbers. It was clever, but unlikely to produce any results. Using a throwaway phone without GPS was too common a criminal practice. He decided that anyone Jakobsson had called who was stupid or careless enough to use a traceable phone would be eliminated before being questioned.

  21

  PRAGUE

  Thursday, January 26, 10 p.m. The Medved Dance Club on Myslikova Ulice, a main street in Karimova Namesti, the New Town south of Prague’s historic district, was packed. Tomas stood with his back against the bar sipping sparkling water as he watched the crowd gyrating to the DJ’s deafening punk rock while colored strobe lights swept back and forth across the huge room.

  Tomas didn’t regret what had been done to Jakobsson: he’d become an unacceptable danger. The Keeper had called Tomas back later, describing his conversation with Gotz. They both were concerned he might become a loose cannon: he liked killing too much. But they needed Gotz’s special talents. Besides enforcement, he was good at breaking in new women, and the occasional boy. It was a form of payment Gotz seemed to enjoy even more than cash.

  Since the weekend, Tomas had been searching outside a much-too-risky Sweden for a replacement for Dahlin, but hadn’t had any luck with the two likely looking Czech women he’d already approached. They’d both been with friends, and while they’d been interested in him, had been too difficult to extricate.

  “Excuse me,” she said in heavily accented English. He’d been so lost in thought as he watched the dance floor that he hadn’t noticed the woman who’d approached on his left until she’d spoken. He turned toward her. She could have been Dahlin’s sister.

  “I want to get the bartender’s attention and there’s no room at the bar.”

  “Sorry,” he said in perfect British English, flashing an even, white-toothed smile. “I’m taking up more than my fair share of space. Please allow me to make amends by getting you that drink. What would you like?”

  She hesitated, “Okay, thanks, a Cosmo, please.”

  He caught the bartender’s eye and ordered.

  He clinked glasses with her, “Cheers.”

  “Are you English?” she asked.

  “As the occasion demands,” he said. “And you’re Czech?” “Actually, I’m Romanian. I’m a graduate student at Charles University.” She held out her hand, “Ilinca.”

  “Tomas,” he responded, holding her hand for a long moment. “How come Prague? Do you have family here?”

  “No, no one. I got a scholarship: in mathematics.”

  Better and better. “Where’s the boyfriend?” he asked, looking around as though he might appear unexpectedly from the crowd.

  “I just started this semester and haven’t made any real friends yet.”

  “This is my lucky night then,” he replied, with what he hoped was a dazzling, infectious grin, and meant every word.

  22

  OPENING DOORS

  Friday, January 27, 8 a.m. Ekman looked around the table at his team, noting several glum expressions. Well, he thought, let’s hear the bad news.

  “Let’s start with the Jakobsson murder,” he said, turning to Rosengren. “Any luck with those calls?”

  “Yes and no, Chief. Alenius and I quickly found an untraceable number in the right time frame. It was soon after you and Alrik left Jakobsson. We thought it was a safe bet that it was his. We tried pinging it to get its location, but it didn’t have GPS. Then we tried the number Jakobsson had called. There was no answer, so we tried pinging it too, but got nothing. So that stopped us.”

  “Well, we were afraid of that, but the possibility had to be pursued. Thanks for the good job checking it out.” Ekman was disappointed, but it had been a long shot anyway.

  “Alrik, what do we have from forensics and pathology?”

  “Jakobsson’s DNA didn’t match that of the second guy who had sex with Dahlin. They checked his clothing for new DNA, but whoever took his phone was probably wearing gloves. Also, when Bohlander opened his hands, there was nothing. The time of death was what we’d expected, about an hour after we’d spoken with him. The garrote was probably a thin steel wire. We don’t have anything on an MO like that in Sweden.”

  “Okay, so now we know he wasn’t one of the two men in the apartment with Dahlin. That’s helpful. But he had to be involved in some other way. Maybe he knew Chafik or the other man. What else do we know about Jakobsson?”

  “Our street informants confirmed he was just a small-time drug pusher. We’re trying to find some of his clients,” said Holm. “But I don’t think any of them killed him. I believe it was what we suspected before: he must have known something important about Dahlin’s death, threatened the wrong people, and had to be shut up.”

  “Do the rest of you think Enar is right?” asked Ekman. The others nodded their agreement.

  “This brings us back to Dahlin. If we pursue things from that end, it could tell us what led to Jakobsson’s death.”

  “We may have something for you there, Chief,” said Rosengren, looking more upbeat.

  “The woman who saw some people going into the apartment described Dahlin and Chafik pretty accurately. She’d seen him go in and out a couple of times, but she saw Dahlin only once. She seemed drunk or sick, the woman said, because she was leaning on Chafik and he was propping her up before they went in.”

  “So Dahlin was probably drugged to get her into the apartment. It tells us how they moved her, but that’s all,” said Rapp.

  “I know,” replied Rosengren in an irritated tone. “I’m not finished. She also caught a glimpse on another day of an older guy going into that apartment. She’s agreed to work with our sketch artist. So we could have a picture of him tomorrow.”

  “That would be a major step forward, if we can rely on her memory,” said Ekman. “Find out more about the lighting conditions in the hallway and how long she saw him. If she actually got a good look at him, we could give the picture to the media.”

  Turning to Vinter, he said, “Gerdi, what did you learn from Chafik’s bank account?”

  “When he came to Sweden a year ago, Chafik had a job with a wholesale spice importer, Worldwide Spices AB, in Stockholm. His account showed regular twice-a-month payments from the company that came to 365,000 kronor a year. Six months ago they stopped. Since then there have been monthly electronic transfers that were twice what he’d been making. The really interesting thing is that they came from Al-Amin Bank, in Marrakech.”

  “Gerdi, I’d like you and Enar to find out what you can about that spice company. Then both of you drive up this afternoon to Stockholm and pay them a visit. Make sure to check in first with the local police. We need to know what Chafik did there, why he left, and where he went afterward. He came to Sweden from Morocco, so the recent payments may have been from family. I’ll see
if we can find out more about who the money came from.

  “We’re making progress,” Ekman said. “See all of you tomorrow.”

  23

  GRANHOLM

  Friday, January 27, 10 a.m. Ekman phoned his friend, Superintendent Garth Rystrom at the National Criminal Investigation Department in Stockholm, hoping he’d catch him in.

  “Rystrom,” came the familiar voice.

  “Garth, it’s Walther. How are you and yours?”

  “I’m well. How are you doing?”

  “As good as can be expected. Garth, we’re working on a case you’ve no doubt heard about: the Dahlin girl. We need your help.”

  “Whatever I can do.”

  Ekman described where they were in the investigation. “Our prosecutor has authorized an international arrest warrant for Chafik and a request for an Interpol ‘Red Notice.’ I’ve lost touch with who would be best to handle this in the National Bureau. I was hoping you could suggest someone.”

  “I have just the person in mind. I’ll e-mail you the contact information. Let me talk with her first so she’ll expect your call. Her name is Valdis Granholm, a superintendent in International Police Cooperation. She’s with the special FAST unit for apprehending internationally wanted persons. We’ve worked on several cases over the last five years and I think you’ll find her easy to get along with.”

  “Thanks, Garth. I’ll look forward to speaking with her.”

  “You caught me just in time. I’ll be out of town on a brief assignment. And if you should meet with Valdis while I’m away, don’t be surprised, she’s not only very sharp, she’s stunning … and divorced. But maybe it would be better not to mention that to your charming wife. Anyway, take care of yourself, Walther, and say hello to Ingbritt for me.”

  Later that morning, Ekman phoned Granholm.

  “Garth filled me in on your investigation and what you need. I’ll be glad to be your contact with the international agencies.”

  “That’s great. We’ve also discovered that Chafik had recently been getting large monthly payments from the Al-Amin Bank in Marrakech. Possibly they came from his family there. He’d received a letter from a Fayyad Joumari, who may be an uncle. We’d like to know more about him, and also who was sending Chafik money and why.”

  “That may be more difficult. Let me talk to one of my colleagues with contacts in the Moroccan Interpol bureau. I’ll see what can be done.”

  “Thanks for your help, it’s really appreciated.”

  Ekman hung up, and pulling himself out of his much-abused desk chair, walked to the windows. For a few minutes, he watched the pedestrians scurrying across Stortorget plaza under a steady, freezing rain, before turning away.

  He sat back down and taking the needlepoint cushion cover he’d been working on from a desk drawer, began slowly adding a forest-green thread to the complex pattern. He and the team had agreed that Dahlin’s and Jakobsson’s deaths were elements of a single, connected case. Ekman hoped that, like the design he was working on, a hard tug on the Dahlin thread would unravel the pattern, revealing the truth.

  24

  THE VISITOR

  Wednesday, January 25, 6:50 p.m. The lame man’s flight to Stockholm had been uneventful; he’d slept most of the way. As he came out of the terminal trailing his small suitcase, looking for the taxi stand, he pulled his new overcoat tighter around him. After years in Marrakech he wasn’t used to a Swedish winter: it was zero degrees Celsius under a dark grey sky that threatened snow at any moment.

  A thirty-five-minute cab ride delivered him to the famous Grand Hotel, overlooking Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s ancient heart, where he found that the old man had unexpectedly paid for a suite.

  This family matter must really mean something to him, the lame man thought: doubling my normal fee, then a business-class seat, and now this suite. In the two years he’d worked for the old man he’d never known him to be free with money. He must want me to appreciate the importance of this assignment. He shrugged his shoulders and put it out of his mind as irrelevant.

  The lame man prided himself on always being coldly rational. While he understood, and used, the feelings that impelled others, including the old man, it was from an emotional distance he’d never crossed since he was a child. It didn’t matter to him whether an assignment from the old man involved one of his many legitimate or criminal businesses: it was all the same to him.

  Peering out the large, second-floor windows, he could see only the harbor lights; the nearby royal palace grounds were shrouded in darkness. The few things he’d brought were quickly unpacked.

  He took out his laptop and found what he was looking for without difficulty. There were several Swedish newspaper stories about the search for Chafik and his possible involvement in Lynni Dahlin’s death. He had the computer translate them into English and read through each carefully.

  After an hour of this, he debated whether to make the phone call now or wait until he’d had dinner. A late-hour call might prove more unsettling to the man he’d phone; he’d often found this useful. It might be better to wait, besides he hadn’t eaten on the plane and was hungry. He went down to Matbaren, one of the hotel’s Mathias Dahlgren, Michelin-star restaurants.

  The lame man had taken his time over an elaborate dinner; it was now ten fifteen. He settled on the elegant, green-and-white striped couch in the living room. A phone was within easy reach on the mahogany end table. Finding the number he was looking for among the papers the old man had given him, he lifted the receiver and got an outside line.

  25

  SPICE MERCHANTS

  Friday, January 27, 3:30 p.m. Gerdi Vinter and Enar Holm were sitting in the office of the manager of Worldwide Spices waiting for him to appear. His secretary, a plain, heavy-set blonde woman in her forties, had told them he was in a meeting and would join them shortly.

  They looked around the starkly furnished room with its cheap wooden desk, single steel filing cabinet, an old TV set, and two thinly padded guest chairs. The manager’s desk was bare; there were no family photos. The walls were undecorated except for a large, unframed map of the world, held up by push pins, to the left of the manager’s desk. The office told them nothing about the manager or the firm, except that extreme frugality appeared to be the company motto.

  They’d made good time driving up the E4, arriving in Stockholm two hours before their appointment. Going directly to the city police headquarters at Kungsholmgatan 43, they’d identified themselves to the desk sergeant who called upstairs. A grey-haired inspector came down to meet them and they explained that they were in Stockholm following a lead in the Dahlin investigation. He was curious about how that was going, but they didn’t provide any details. They knew Ekman would prefer they keep it that way.

  Holm found a convenient parking space down the street from the spice company’s warehouse at 420 Frihamnsgatan, near the docks. When they’d first driven into the neighborhood, they’d looked for a convenient place for a quick lunch, and spotted an Indian restaurant two blocks away. They decided to try it, and leaving their car, walked over.

  When they came in, they were surprised to see that this small, hole-in-the-wall place was filled with customers eager to take advantage of the reduced lunch prices, and it seemed, tasty food. They were lucky to find a table.

  “We made a good choice,” said Vinter, as she used a piece of naan bread to scoop up another bite of her palak paneer.

  “Yeah, they’ve got a great buffet,” Holm said, glancing over at the long table against the far wall. Customers were moving back and forth, ladling samples onto their overflowing plates from the row of twelve covered chafing dishes set out on a white linen tablecloth.

  Holm picked up another forkful of tandoori chicken and paused before putting it in his mouth.

  “So do you think the company’s legit?” he asked. They’d been talking only about their future plans together on the drive up and hadn’t discussed what Vinter had found out about the spice importer.
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br />   “It looks that way. They’ve been in business for six years and have had contracts with major supermarket chains like Coop Forum and ICA MAXI.”

  “Then it’s been a good business.”

  “Good enough. The Tax Agency told me that last year they had gross sales of around 330 million kronor.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “A holding company controls the stock, which isn’t unusual, except that this one’s based in Rabat, the Moroccan capital.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense. Who’s the real owner?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe Ekman can find out, but otherwise it’s a dead end.”

  “Perhaps using your feminine wiles, you can pry the information out of the manager,” Holm said, grinning.

  “My womanly charm is focused only on you, sir, as you very well know,” she replied. They’d been hopelessly in love for more than a year.

  “In that case, let’s see if I can be the persuasive one,” Holm said, looking at his watch as he pushed his chair back. “I’m going to grab another plateful, and then we’d better head over.”

  They looked up as the manager, a good-looking man in his thirties, wearing a conservative suit with a yellow tie, came into the office.

  “I’m really sorry to have kept you waiting, inspectors, an unexpected meeting,” he said apologetically, coming forward with his hand out, as they both stood up. “I’m Thore Ostlund.”

  He gave them a broad, friendly smile, as they all shook hands before he moved behind his desk and sat down.

  “Now, how can I help you?”

  “We’re looking into the disappearance of one of your employees, Ahmed Chafik,” said Vinter.

  “Actually he’s a former employee,” Ostlund said, giving her a wide grin that showed his white teeth. “Chafik left, let’s see, it was last summer, about six or seven months ago. I can get you the exact time.”