Neither of them felt like eating, and it was the wine that got them speaking again, albeit spasmodically. Though it was the elephant in the room, the subject of the specific threat to their families and careers was not mentioned. It seemed too frighteningly surreal for them to articulate. Maybe this was the beginning of the silence that the large man was demanding of them. One practical point that Anita did mention in passing was that the person who had spooked Jazmin was probably one of the secret service team doing background checks on the family. However appalling that was, she was relieved that it was nothing else.
‘Thanks for everything.’
Kevin raised his glass as though about to propose a toast. ‘I’m just glad I was here. Not exactly to help, but to support.’
‘Oh, you helped all right. I’m just sorry for involving you in all this. It’s been so awful for you. This was meant to be a holiday.’
‘Put it this way: when I go home tomorrow I won’t be writing this up on TripAdvisor.’
She gave him a good-natured kick for lightening the mood. ‘I was being serious.’
‘So was I. I’m not exactly going to recommend a holiday like this one. Come to sunny Skåne: stay next to a suicidal Scandinavian spy with a secret; follow a blonde bombshell as she tracks down a multiple murderer, before being threatened by Swedish security services. That’ll have ’em rushing over here.’
They didn’t finish the second bottle. They headed for bed and made love. Not the passionate, animal, selfish love of before, but a thoughtful, we’ve-been-through-a-lot-together, glad-to-be-alive love. They moved not as two individuals seeking pleasure from the other, but as one.
The only person in the meeting room who wasn’t bleary-eyed at six-thirty in the morning was Chief Inspector Moberg. That was the first surprise. The second was that there was no sign of the photograph of Pastor Elias Kroon or the images of Markus Asplund and Axel Isaksson on the board. But the news that greeted them was even more astonishing.
‘Right. We’re starting again. Pastor Kroon has been released. I hope we may be able to bring some charges against him, but murder isn’t one of them.’ As he saw Wallen about to question him, he held out a huge hand to stop her before she had time to speak. ‘Eva Thulin rang me last night. They’ve been able to extract DNA from a sweat stain on Ebba Pozorski’s running top. She found a match to our old associate, Karl Westermark.’
The three other officers in the room looked stunned.
‘But he’s dead,’ Hakim pointed out. Moberg, Wallen and Hakim had all heard the shot as Westermark had blown his own brains out in front of Anita Sundström in his apartment on Ön – and seen the bloody aftermath as a shocked Anita was led away. Not that any of them had had any sympathy for the detective who had murdered their much-respected colleague, Henrik Nordlund, as well as raping and killing a young teacher.
‘I said forensics had found a match. It’s a familial match. Someone in his family.’ To Hakim this also sounded far-fetched. How could there possibly be a tie-up with the murdered woman? ‘And the only living close relative Westermark seems to have had is his sister, Sigyn. I’ve had a couple of the night-duty boys trawling for details. She lives in America. What we’ve found out so far is that she was following her brother into the police and spent a year at the Academy in Stockholm, but she dropped out when she hooked up with an American called Brad Guzman. They went to live in Boston, where she trained as a teacher in physical education, which is what she’s been doing for the last few years. She married Guzman, but they’re now divorced. No kids. But she left her job earlier this year, and no one seems to know what she’s been up to since.’
‘But what could Westermark’s sister possibly have to do with Ebba Pozorski?’ Wallen’s question echoed the thoughts of everybody else.
‘Good question. Why should an expat gym teacher want to kill a Swiss-based prostitute in a Malmö park? I have no fucking idea! I can’t find a connection. The Westermark family have nothing to do with Sjöbo as far as we can see.’
‘What about when Ebba was picked up for soliciting? Was Westermark the arresting officer?’ Hakim suggested.
‘Looked into that, and it wasn’t him. Doesn’t mean Westermark wasn’t shagging her when she was working the streets before Asplund and Isaksson came to her rescue. God knows what he got up to before he killed Greta Jansson.’
‘At least the American connection would explain the butterfly knife,’ observed Wallen.
‘Yes. We’ve got means. But opportunity? We know she must have been in Malmö that night. Her DNA shows that. But we’ve got to prove beyond doubt that she was here. So, I want flights from Boston to Copenhagen checked from February up until now. You’ll need to look out for Westermark and Guzman, as she could be going under either name. Has she been in Malmö since she left her teaching job? If she has, what’s she been doing? Where’s she been living? We need to build up a picture of this woman. That’s the only way we can find a connection with Ebba. Maybe they met when Ebba was working at the travel agents, and she fixed her up with a flight to America. Maybe her husband was screwing prostitutes, and they’ve become hate figures. There must be something. We’ve got to find that link. More to the point, we’ve got to find her. If she’s back in America, we’ll need lots of evidence to get her extradited.’
Moberg took a photograph from his hastily compiled file and placed it on the whiteboard where Kroon’s had been the day before. Sigyn Westermark had short-cropped, blonde hair; and sturdy but pretty facial features with a wide mouth and a hint of her brother’s jaw. And for anybody who was familiar with Westermark, she had the same cold, piercing blue eyes. It was only Hakim who noticed that Pontus Brodd had turned white at the sight of the photograph.
Hakim caught up with Brodd in the toilets. Brodd was dousing his face in water. It did little to make him look any less wretched than he had been minutes before when Moberg had produced Sigyn Westermark’s picture.
‘Are you OK?’
Brodd wiped his face on a paper towel.
‘You know that woman, don’t you?’
Brodd nodded dolefully before tossing the paper towel in the bin. He leant back against the basin and held on to the sides behind him as though they would stop him from collapsing. Hakim waited for him to speak.
‘It’s Nora.’
‘Nora?’
‘Yes. She’s the woman I’ve been seeing lately.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, yes. You don’t forget a face like that. She’s even more gorgeous in the flesh.’ She was too like the hated Westermark for Hakim to see any beauty there.
‘You’ve got to tell the chief inspector. This is important. It means she’s still in Malmö.’
Brodd shook his head. ‘She might not be. She didn’t turn up for our last date.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘Saturday. Then we were meant to meet up at The Pickwick on Tuesday evening. She didn’t show.’
Hakim’s mind was whirring. ‘Where did you meet her? The first time, I mean.’
‘It was there, actually. Not my usual sort of place, but I’d heard Anita talking about it, and I thought I’d give it a try.’
‘What did she tell you about herself?’
Brodd gave him a puzzled look. ‘I don’t know really. Said she’d come from somewhere up north and didn’t know anybody in Malmö. She was a good listener, though. Really seemed interested in me.’
I bet she was, thought Hakim. Brodd wasn’t the obvious choice for a woman to pick up at a bar.
‘And what so interested her about you?’
He gave a pained grimace. ‘Well, this actually.’ He waved his hand at himself. ‘She liked the idea that I was a cop. She said she’d always wanted to join the police, but things hadn’t worked out.’
‘Did she ask anything specific about the job?’ Hakim was starting to worry.
‘I may have let slip that I was working on the Ebba Pozorski murder.’
‘Please
, no.’ Hakim was becoming incensed. He knew that Brodd would have exaggerated his importance. He’d probably indicated he was running the case. ‘Did you give her details of how it was progressing?’
‘I might have,’ he mumbled. ‘She just seemed fascinated.’
‘So, our killer knows exactly how the investigation’s been run?’ Brodd gazed back at him helplessly. ‘You’ve got to speak to Moberg right now.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ Brodd stood rooted to the spot, unable to tear himself away from the basin. ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’
‘At least she’ll not know that she’s under suspicion. That’s one thing. Have you got her number?’
Brodd shifted uneasily. ‘No. She rang me.’
‘What did you do with this woman?’ Hakim asked incredulously.
‘Nothing, actually,’ he confessed shamefacedly. ‘We talked a lot. But she did kiss me goodnight on the second date,’ he added as an afterthought. Hakim couldn’t believe that a man could be so full of bullshit. His pathetic attempts at self-aggrandisement had put the whole case in jeopardy. At least they would be able to trace Sigyn’s calls to Brodd, which might give away her whereabouts.
‘Just go.’
Hakim thought Brodd was going to be sick on the spot. He was pale and drawn. He could see the fear in his eyes. Eventually, he tore himself away from the comfort of the basin and walked out of the toilets. Hakim reckoned that Moberg’s explosive reaction would reverberate round the whole of the polishus once Brodd told him the news. But it still wouldn’t get them any closer to a connection between Sigyn Westermark and Ebba Pozorski.
CHAPTER 48
Hakim put the phone down. He was deep in thought. The impossible was entering his head. He had kept this particular notion at bay for a while, but it kept resurfacing. Sigyn Westermark (not Guzman) had arrived in Copenhagen on an SAS flight from Newark on March 25th – and had taken the same route back on Wednesday, June 4th, which was the day after Ebba Pozorski’s murder. Then she had returned on a Norwegian Air Shuttle flight from New York-JFK three days later. Why? It was a question to which he was beginning to form an answer. And it wasn’t one he liked.
And where was she now? He flicked onto Google and brought up a map of the streets around Pildammsparken. His eyes followed the route from Ebba Pozorski’s apartment on Kronborgsvägen through to where she was murdered in the park – the point where Sigyn Westermark struck the fatal blow. Now he could see it all clearly. How had they got everything so wrong from the word go? He suddenly had a second thought which was even more disturbing. He was out of his seat in a trice, and rushing down the corridor into Moberg’s office. A shell-shocked and grey-faced Brodd was sitting slumped in a chair opposite the chief inspector who was finishing off the bollocking of a lifetime.
‘What the fuck—’ Moberg started.
‘We’ve got to find her! And find her fast!’
The weather was showing signs of turning, with puffs of grey cloud languidly building up in the blue sky. It was still a lovely day to be driving over the expanse of the Öresund Bridge, and Kevin drank in the uninterrupted view. Ahead was Copenhagen. He arched round to gaze at Malmö and the white finger of the Turning Torso as it spiralled above the city. It was a bittersweet moment. He was leaving Sweden. This was the country of Anita, and her presence here would always make it a place to return to; a place to dream about when he was back in England. But it held bad memories too. He could never dismiss or forget the events of the last fortnight. That was partly why they had left the holiday home at about ten, after one last swim down in the bay. What had occurred had soured the location for both of them. Anita was cutting short her stay and was going to spend the rest of her summer vacation back in Malmö. He had a late night flight from Kastrup, so they decided they would spend their last day together in Copenhagen. He could do some shopping to find presents for his girls. They also planned to do a bit of sightseeing, and then spend a leisurely evening at a nice restaurant before Anita dropped him off at the airport on her way back to Malmö. He didn’t want that moment to come. But he knew he would have to bid her goodbye. Would he have the courage to say that he loved her? How would she react?
At the other side of the bridge, the road was swallowed up by a tunnel which funnelled traffic through to the Danish side of the Sound. He took out his mobile phone and switched in on. It was the first time he’d done so since Schönefeld Airport in Berlin. After everything that had happened yesterday, he’d forgotten all about their phones. Now they were in the tunnel, there was no signal. Anita glanced across at him.
‘Just want to see if there’s a message from Abigail. As the flight gets in at an unearthly hour, I’m getting a taxi to her flat to crash out till the morning.’ He sat fiddling with the phone. ‘Don’t forget to turn yours on.’
Anita shook her head. ‘Forget it. We’ve been through too much the last few days for me to want to get in touch with the world, or the world with me. It can wait a day.’
‘She killed the wrong person?’ Moberg’s disbelief was obvious.
‘Yes. I think she was trying to murder Anita.’
‘Anita Sundström?’
‘Exactly.’ Hakim could see that the chief inspector needed some persuading. ‘Firstly, I need to ask Brodd a question.’ Moberg’s wave in the direction of the distraught Brodd was the granting of permission. ‘At any stage in your evenings with Nora did she mention Anita?’
Brodd shifted uneasily in his seat and then gave an apologetic cough. ‘Yeah. Well, I did. When she was asking me about members of the team, I must have dropped in Anita’s name. But I told her that she was away on holiday.’
‘And that was it?’
‘Erm… she did ask if she had gone anywhere nice. You know how people talk whenever holidays are mentioned. It was just that sort of thing. Perfectly innocent…’ his voice trailed off.
‘And did you tell her?’
‘No. Because I didn’t know where she’d gone. I wasn’t that interested.’
‘What’s this all about?’ demanded Moberg.
‘Sigyn Westermark – that’s what she still calls herself – chucked in her job in Boston in February. She flew over here in March. The day after the murder, she took a flight back to America. Three days later, she was back here again. I believe that’s because she found out that the person she had killed was the wrong one. It’s Anita she’s after.’
‘Because of her brother?’ Moberg was beginning to see where Hakim was coming from.
‘I think so. The timing of her quitting her job and leaving America fits in with the release of the official report on Karl Westermark’s death. She probably got it into her head that it was Anita’s fault that he killed himself – or that she put him in such a position that he had no other option. A grieving, vengeful sister.’
‘You think she was planning it for some time?’
Hakim was busy ordering his thoughts so that they would come out coherently. ‘I imagine she was watching Anita and her routine, which often included late night jogs. What Sigyn couldn’t have known was that Anita was going on holiday. But Ebba Pozorski, blonde with a baseball cap similar to Anita’s; roughly the same size and shape, appeared in the dusk coming from the direction of Anita’s apartment. The path from Kronborgsvägen to the road across from the park goes down the side of Anita’s building. Sigyn assumed it was her intended victim. Afterwards, she flies back to Boston, only to discover she’s killed the wrong person. So, she comes back to finish off what she failed to do. But she can’t find Anita, so she hangs around the pub that Anita frequents – The Pickwick – to try and find out where she’s gone. She strikes lucky because she finds Brodd there, who is not only a cop, but working on the case.’ Brodd winced. ‘Now she knows how the investigation is going and she realizes that she’s in the clear for the moment – we’re chasing other suspects. The only problem is that Brodd doesn’t know where Anita’s gone. And this is why we have to act quickly. As you may know, my sister is living wi
th Anita’s son, Lasse. Jazmin reckoned that their apartment was being watched. It must have been Sigyn. Then Jazmin had her mobile phone stolen; the only thing she remembers is being aware of a blonde woman sitting next to her before the phone disappeared. Sigyn again.’
‘But why?’
‘Lasse has disappeared. I think Sigyn lured him using Jazmin’s phone. However it was done, my guess is that she’s got Lasse holed up somewhere.’ His eyebrows knitted into a worried frown. ‘Or has even killed him already.’
‘An eye for an eye?’
‘Absolutely. Either that, or it’s Sigyn’s way of guaranteeing that Anita returns to Malmö so she can complete the job.’
Moberg wiped his forehead. ‘Shit! Shit, shit, shit!’ He quickly weighed up the options. He couldn’t afford not to act decisively, even if he wasn’t totally convinced by Mirza’s theory. But it did make chilling sense, and if there was a young man out there facing a death sentence, they had to move heaven and earth to find him – and Sigyn Westermark.
‘Right! It’s even more urgent that we find out where she’s been over the last few months – house, work, et cetera. That might give us a clue as to where she is now. What’s your sister called again, Mirza?’
‘Jazmin.’
‘You say she had her mobile nicked. If Sigyn used it to get at Lasse, we should be able to trace where she made the call from – or any subsequent calls. Might give us a location to work on.’
‘Should we circulate her photo?’ Brodd suggested tentatively.
‘No!’ barked Moberg. ‘That’ll alert her that we’re on to her, and she might just kill Lasse and get the hell out of here. The one thing we’ve got – thanks to you – is that she doesn’t think she’s a suspect.’
‘And Anita?’ This was another major concern for Hakim.
‘Yes, Anita. I don’t want her alarmed. If she thinks her son’s in danger, she’ll go off the deep end and try and do everything herself and get in the fucking way.’
‘But I reckon she’s the real target. She’s got to be warned.’ It came out as an impassioned plea.
Midnight In Malmö: The Fourth Inspector Anita Sundström Mystery (The Malmö Mysteries Book 4) Page 29