‘But I told you—’
‘Do I look like a messenger? You’ll have to take it up with the picture desk. What are you writing for tomorrow?’
‘The burglars are dead, the stolen property’s been found and Suzette’s still missing. I’m starting to run out of new angles,’ she said.
‘The whole story’s gone cold,’ Patrik decided. ‘Get the first plane home tomorrow morning. You can spend today tidying up anything that’s left.’
‘I’ve got something about a Swede picked up in a recent drug raid down here,’ she said, thinking of her deal with Niklas Linde.
‘Write it up and we’ll see if we can use it. For tomorrow I want a summary of what life’s like for the Swedes down there. Are they all tax-dodgers, by the way?’ He sounded wistful, four thousand kilometres away in the newsroom. ‘ “Swedes flee Costa del Sol”,’ he added. ‘Death in Paradise. End of an era. Truckloads of possessions heading north again.’
He took an audible gulp of something, probably coffee. ‘I’ve heard there’s a Swedish estate agent down there who knows all there is to know about the Costa del Sol. His name’s … Hang on, I’ve got it here somewhere … Rickard Marmén! Do you think you can find him yourself or shall I try to get a phone number for him?’
Oh, so Mr Marmén was an estate agent as well, was he? Of course he was.
‘I think I can manage,’ Annika said, leafing through her notepad until she came to his number.
‘Get some really doom-laden quotes that show the whole thing’s about to go under,’ he said, and hung up.
She called Rickard Marmén’s mobile number from the hotel phone, but got his voicemail. Must have been a late night at Carita’s, she thought, and left a message asking him to call her.
Then she rang Niklas Linde.
He picked up at once.
‘The Swede in the drug raid,’ she said. ‘I need more details.’
‘I’ll pick you up from the hotel at eight this evening,’ he said. ‘See you then.’
Her mobile rang.
‘Sorry I didn’t answer in time, love. How are you today?’ Rickard Marmén was as cheerful as ever.
‘Fine, thanks. My bosses in Stockholm have just asked me to interview you in your capacity as an estate agent. What do you think?’
‘We could probably sort something out. Call in at my little boutique at lunchtime. It’s opposite El Corte Inglés in Puerto Banús, the big department store that—’
‘I know where it is,’ Annika said. ‘And lunch, that’s at two o’clock?’
‘Say half past,’ he said.
She looked at her watch. She had four hours to kill.
The yachts were packed in along the jetties in the harbour. The lower the number of the jetty, the bigger the boats. So jetty zero had boats that looked like miniature versions of the ferries that sailed between Sweden and Finland. She walked slowly past them, licking an ice-cream. There weren’t many people about, a few men carrying tools on a huge vessel, a woman polishing the rail of another.
There was a sharp breeze from the sea and little warmth from the sun. She went into the Sinatra Bar, where Niklas Linde had been the first night she called him, and ordered coffee. It was decorated in pale blue and white, with a maritime theme. The coffee wasn’t particularly good. She didn’t like silly little cups with two centimetres of tar at the bottom. At home she brewed a litre every morning in her French cafetière, and warmed cups of it in the microwave throughout the day.
She was actually looking forward to getting back to her flat, to the rooms she hadn’t moved into properly, to the cafetière in the austere kitchen, to the stack of unread paperbacks on the living-room floor, and the children’s scent in their bedclothes. She was happy to be living back on Kungsholmen island.
For some reason an image of Julia Lindholm popped into her mind. Julia had been homeless for exactly the same amount of time as Annika had. The night Annika’s house had burned down, Julia had been arrested and locked up for the murder of her husband.
She looked out at the boats bobbing about in the sharp wind. Julia and Alexander were going to be stuck in the rehabilitation centre at Lejondalssjön for several more months yet. And how would they feel when they finally got back to the three-room flat on Södermalm where David had been shot?
Like moving back into a nightmare, Annika thought. I couldn’t have moved back into the burned-out ruins at Vinterviksvägen.
She shivered. The bar was filling. Four blonde women were taking the first tinto verano of the day at one of the window tables. A few British football fans were drinking Spanish beer straight from the bottle. Two young girls were giggling over a newspaper.
Annika stood up to pay at the counter. She handed the man at the till a fifty-euro note, then turned to watch the people going past outside. He put a few coins in change by her elbow. ‘Hey,’ she said, pointing at the pile of shrapnel. ‘Shouldn’t I get a few notes as well?’
The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said, and turned away.
‘Hey,’ she said again, louder this time. ‘I paid with a fifty-euro note.’ The man was absorbed in doing something with his back to her. His muscular shoulders moved under his black T-shirt. He probably needed the money for anabolic steroids. ‘Give me my change,’ she said, loudly and angrily.
The bar had fallen silent now. A couple came in through the door and looked round for somewhere to sit.
‘Don’t come in here,’ Annika said. ‘They cheat people out of their change.’
‘Shut up,’ the man behind the counter said, tossing two twenty-euro notes at her.
‘Fucking crook,’ Annika said, in Swedish, picked up the notes and walked out.
When she was on the quayside her mobile rang. It was Berit. ‘How’s life in the sun?’
‘Someone just tried to cheat me out of four hundred kronor in change in some shitty bar.’
‘You give them what for. How’s it going with the missing girl? I saw the mum’s down there with you now. Is there anything we can use to move on with this?’
‘Her friends back home in Bromma, maybe,’ Annika said. ‘But I’ve already contacted them through Facebook. They haven’t got back to me.’
‘Facebook?’ Berit said. ‘I read in the business pages that Facebook’s on the way out.’
‘Well, of course it is,’ Annika said, ‘seeing as I’ve finally joined. Listen, I was thinking about Julia Lindholm. Has anything happened with the review of Filip Andersson’s case?’
‘That’ll probably take months,’ Berit said. ‘They’ve got a lot to check through. The preliminary report alone ran to over a thousand pages. It was woolly and circumstantial, full of holes and things that weren’t clear. There were people shouting about a miscarriage of justice even when the first verdict was announced.’
‘Did you know Filip Andersson has a sister in the police?’ Annika said. ‘Nina Hoffman – Julia Lindholm’s best friend.’
‘She’s Filip Andersson’s sister? I didn’t know that.’
‘Don’t you think it’s odd that two such criminal individuals as Filip Andersson and Yvonne Nordin should have a sister who’s a cop?’
It sounded as if Berit was leafing through a paper. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘To me it seems more like different sides of the same coin. Opposite reactions to the same sort of upbringing, so to speak.’
‘So Nina’s the white sheep of the family?’
‘Stranger things have happened. Bill Clinton has a brother who’s a petty crook. And my cousin Klas-Göran’s done time as well.’
‘Bill Clinton’s brother’s done time?’
‘Clinton pardoned him on his last day as president, the twentieth of January 2001. Him and a hundred and thirty-nine other criminals. It’s the custom for American presidents to do that. What’s your sister up to, these days, by the way?’
Annika was taken aback. ‘Birgitta? No idea. I don’t even know where she lives.’
The silence that followe
d spoke volumes.
‘Do you think I should try to contact Suzette’s friends?’ Berit eventually asked.
‘It might make more sense to try Sebastian Söderström’s Swedish relatives,’ Annika said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘See if they have any idea where the girl might be.’
‘We’ve already tried, but no one wants to talk.’
‘What about Astrid Paulson, then? Everyone seems to be saying that she was the only person who got on well with Suzette. Maybe she’s got family who might know something.’
‘I’ll give it a try,’ Berit said. ‘Have you been able to do any work on that series of articles Patrik keeps going on about?’
‘The Costa Cocaine? I haven’t actually seen a single rolled-up euro note, let alone any drugs.’
They arranged to meet on Monday and ended the call.
Annika had reached the end of the quay. She was outside a shop selling bags where even the cheapest cost five hundred euros.
She turned her back on its window and looked up ‘Nina H, police’ on her phone. She clicked ‘call’ and waited to be connected, then everything went quiet. The voice that came on was metallic: Telefonica le informa, que actualmente no es posible connectar al numero llamado. Telefonica le informa … She ended the call. Telefonica was one of the big Spanish telecom companies, but why was their message cutting in on Nina Hoffman’s Swedish mobile? Was Nina in Spain, or was there something wrong with the signal on her own mobile?
She tried again.
Telefonica le informa, que actualmente no es posible …
She gave up and looked at the time. Twenty past two.
Time to visit Rickard Marmén.
The estate agency was hidden behind a British bookshop. It wasn’t much more than a hole in the wall. A dozen fairly faded advertisements for various properties were stuck in the window.
Marmén was sitting behind a desk and typing at a computer when Annika walked in. ‘Ah, here you are, my dear,’ he said, getting up and kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Is the Evening Post thinking of buying an apartment in Puerto Banús?’
‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘How’s business?’
‘Fucking awful,’ he said. ‘There’s no movement at all. It’s this damn Operation Malaya.’
Annika had no idea what he was talking about, which must have shown on her face because he went on, ‘One hundred and two people have been arrested for corruption in the property market down here, including the whole of Marbella’s previous town council. The bribes for illegal planning permission were astonishing. The place was awash with money. The head of the highways department turned out to have three farmhouses, each of which was the size of Stockholm City Hall. He had at least a hundred racehorses and a genuine Miró above his jacuzzi.’
Annika laughed. ‘And we thought it was a scandal when our old prime minister used the wrong sort of scaffolding at his country house.’
Marmén leaned back happily in his chair. ‘The mayor was arrested in her bedroom where she was recuperating after her latest liposuction. Ten council workmen were busy fitting a new kitchen for her. Now every application for planning permission over the past twenty years is being investigated with a fine-tooth comb. Until that’s done, the banks are refusing to authorize any mortgages. Talk about putting a dampener on the market. It’ll take at least a year before things pick up. A glass of wine, perhaps?’
She shook her head. ‘Tell me how the Swedish colony has reacted to the death of the Söderström family,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’ll scare Swedes away from the Costa del Sol?’
‘They’ve already been scared off,’ Rickard Marmén said. ‘Not by crime, but by the price of property. Operation Malaya has stopped prices going up even more, but you still won’t find a flat in Marbella for less than three million kronor, or a terraced house for less than four. The smallest detached houses cost at least six million, and you won’t get a normal family villa for under thirteen. Around Alicante you can get the same properties for around half the price.’
‘Why’s everything so expensive at the moment?’ Annika asked.
Marmén threw out his hands. ‘Because Marbella is exclusive and Alicante is common. People pay for the address. See this!’ He opened a website and turned the screen towards Annika. ‘This is a vacant plot with no view on the hill just below Carita’s house. The owner’s asking five point six million euros for it.’
Annika looked at the picture. There was a rusty lamppost by the side of the road. A tarmac drive, lined with thistles and brambles, led down to an abandoned set of foundations in a hollow. Beyond it the undergrowth took over. ‘Fifty million kronor! That must be a joke.’
‘It’s not,’ Marmén said, turning the screen back again. ‘Mind you, the owner hasn’t managed to get shot of it.’
‘So people aren’t scared of crime?’
He became serious. ‘Even if breakins involving gas are common, this is the first time anyone has died,’ he said. ‘My experience is that people carry on living in the same houses, even after they’ve been gassed. A lot of them are in a bad way, much worse than after an ordinary breakin, but they still stay. And I don’t think there are as many muggings as there are in Stockholm or as much street crime. I’ve got no figures for that, but it hardly ever happens.’
‘But there are so many criminal gangs here,’ she said, remembering Knut Garen’s statistics: 420 gangs carrying out more than thirty contract killings each year in the Málaga area alone.
Marmén thought for a moment. ‘Nobody notices them,’ he said. ‘What you see in the street are a lot of police cars, a lot of Guardia Civil, a lot of police officers on the beat or on motorbikes. That means people feel safe, not scared.’
Annika put her pen on her pad. This wasn’t going to make much of an article.
‘Am I disappointing you?’ the estate agent asked.
She laughed. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘My head of news, maybe. He wanted the headline “Swedes flee Costa del Sol”.’
‘I don’t think he’s likely to be proved right,’ Marmén said. ‘So, how are things going for the big papers these days? Do they still pay for lunch?’
‘Definitely,’ Annika said.
That afternoon she was lying on the bed in her hotel room reading a Harlan Coben thriller when she fell asleep. She dreamed of Kalle and Ellen: they were missing, and she was searching for them in a sterile lunar landscape with no water or vegetation.
She felt incredibly thirsty when she woke up.
As she showered and got ready for the evening, she tried calling Nina Hoffman twice. This time the phone rang and rang until the call was cut off automatically.
She called Carita Halling Gonzales and thanked her for being so great to work with, gave her the details for the invoice, and said she would be flying home the next morning.
‘We can stay in touch, can’t we?’ Carita said. ‘Maybe you’ll be down here again.’
Annika said, ‘Sure’, remembering Patrik’s series of articles.
She was standing outside the hotel in good time.
Niklas Linde was almost half an hour late. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, with a grin. ‘I’m starting to get a bit Spanish.’
She got into the car without smiling. She didn’t like being made to wait. ‘Okay,’ she said, slamming the door. ‘How many arrests, how many suspects, where, when and how were they arrested, what does the prosecutor say, and what about the defence?’
‘First I’m going to make sure you have something to eat,’ he said, as he drove under the motorway.
She folded her arms over her chest. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, then realized she had lied.
Niklas Linde smiled at her. He turned off into a narrow street that led to an even narrower road that went on up the mountainside. After just a couple of minutes the car was surrounded by total darkness, which made Annika feel both relieved and nervous. She couldn’t see the drop at the edge of the twisting road, but the drawback was that the view ahead was almost as bad.
‘Have you been through the stolen property in the thieves’ truck?’ she asked, holding onto the dashboard as the car went round a right-hand hairpin.
‘Everything seems to be there, apart from the safe.’
‘Apart from the safe,’ she echoed. ‘Now, where could that have got to?’
‘If it was brought out in the back of the truck along with everything else, there’d have been some evidence of it, but there was nothing.’
‘What sort of evidence would a safe leave?’
‘It was cemented into a brick wall in the villa. The thieves knocked the wall down to get it out. There’d have been grit, cement dust and fragments of brick somewhere in the back of the truck if it had ever been in there.’
‘Maybe they put the safe in a bag?’ Annika suggested.
Niklas Linde looked away from the road to stare at her instead.
‘Please, the road,’ Annika said, pointing in front of her.
The police officer sighed. ‘It wasn’t a huge safe,’ he said, ‘but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could just chuck around. It would have taken two people to move it. I think there’s another explanation.’
They drove round a jutting cliff, and a moment later a built-up area appeared on the mountainside in front of them. Row after row of white houses clung to the slope, lit by streetlamps and small neon signs. The glow from televisions flickered in windows.
‘Where’s this?’ Annika asked.
‘Istán,’ Linde said. ‘It means “spring”. It was founded by the Moors in the thirteenth century. I know the woman who runs the restaurant in the square.’
They parked on a hill above the little town and walked slowly down through the cobbled streets. There was a mild breeze that smelt of herbs. Annika could see the lights of the coast twinkling in the distance, in another age, another world. The sound of running water followed them. There were drinking fountains dotted around, fed by water brought along underground channels from mountain springs.
Suddenly Annika stopped. ‘I know what happened to the safe,’ she said.
Linde smiled. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘The first time we met, you told me you’d found evidence of two vehicles and three people outside the Söderström family house. The third person didn’t die in the truck. The third person wasn’t interested in the stolen property, just the safe. The third person took it with them, in the other car.’
The Long Shadow Page 16