The Long Shadow

  ‘He told me he never said anything important on his mobile.’

  ‘True,’ Linde said, with a grin. ‘But only if you count his conversations in Spanish. One of the lads used to live in Rinkeby and Jocke didn’t think we’d be able to understand what he was saying if they spoke Swedish to each other.’

  ‘Is there any way to lower the lighting?’ Lotta called.

  ‘Lower it?’ he asked, turning towards her. She was lying on the floor with her camera pressed to her nose, photographing a broken pair of plate-shears.

  ‘A dimmer-switch or something?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  He turned to Annika and ran his finger quickly down her cleavage.

  Annika opened her eyes wide and pulled a face telling him to stop. They couldn’t start any rumours that she was having sex with her sources, not after the picture with Halenius. ‘So the distributor is Apits and its sister companies,’ she said, checking over his shoulder to make sure Lotta hadn’t seen anything. She was engrossed in the plate-shears.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And the men under arrest are … what? Small-time gangsters?’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘And the supplier is?’

  ‘The Colombians.’

  Annika looked at Lotta again. She recalled what Carita Halling Gonzales had said about her murdered father-in-law: the Colombians wipe out whole families. No one must be left to inherit anything. ‘Does the Colombian Mafia have a presence here on the Costa del Sol at the moment?’

  ‘Obviously they have representatives who make sure that the deliveries work.’

  ‘Is it okay if I move the saw?’ Lotta called from the corner.

  ‘Not really,’ Linde said.

  She wanted to touch him. She wanted to put her hand on his stomach and stroke downwards, over his jeans. ‘How big was the seizure?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean by “big”?’

  She stared at her notes. ‘Did everyone get excited and start cracking open the champagne?’

  ‘Seven hundred kilos is a lot, but on average the Spanish police seize a ton every day. So it won’t go down in the history books.’

  Lotta got to her feet and brushed the sawdust from her dress.

  Annika took a step back.

  ‘And Apits isn’t a particularly big player,’ Linde said. ‘But they’ve been established and active on the Costa del Sol for a long time. We’ve found information about rental contracts for trucks and warehouses going back to the mid-sixties. In other words, this is a small but very well-organized drug-distribution company. And obviously it’s a good thing if such an established syndicate gets smashed, particularly from our Swedish perspective.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because their main customers were in Holland, Germany and Sweden.’

  ‘And this is the first time they’ve been caught?’

  ‘They’re bound to have had smaller shipments seized, but nothing on this scale.’

  ‘What will it mean for them? Is this the end of the business?’

  ‘We don’t know anything about their internal state of affairs, so it’s difficult to answer that.’

  ‘Will they get trouble from the Colombians?’

  ‘They’ll have to replace what was lost, and usually both parties share the hit. Every tenth shipment is lost, and the Colombians bear that in mind in their planning. Anyway, it’s like a piss in the Nile for them. But for a set-up like Apits it could be make or break.’

  He took a step forward, so that he was standing right next to her, and put his lips to her ear. ‘I won’t be able to spend tonight with you.’

  She stiffened and her pen slipped, drawing a long line across her notepad. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have to be somewhere else.’

  He walked past her towards the door, carefree and untroubled.

  She stayed where she was, immobile. He’s got someone else, she thought. The woman in the background at the terrace where he was having coffee when I called. Hasta luego, then a kiss. Or Carmen at the restaurant up in that mountain village. Or one of the girls who were laughing so hysterically when he called me from the Sinatra Bar the first night I was here last time …

  ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’ he asked.

  Who is she? Annika thought. ‘Jocke Martinez,’ she said. ‘How did he get his information from the distributors?’

  He opened the door a crack and looked out, then closed it again. ‘That’s one of our biggest stumbling blocks,’ he said. ‘We don’t know how Martinez communicated with his employers, and we don’t know how Apits communicated with the Colombians.’

  ‘If they didn’t use the phone, did they write letters? Emails? Did they meet at various tapas bars and exchange coded messages in folded newspapers?’

  ‘We had Martinez under surveillance. He didn’t meet anyone we can link to the supply chain. We haven’t found any written evidence, and nothing on the hard-drive of his personal computer. But he could have gone to an Internet café and received messages under the alias Horny Finnish Housewife on some online messageboard that we don’t know about.’

  ‘Did he often go to Internet cafés?’

  ‘This was a really great place,’ Lotta said, stopping beside the police officer with a smile.

  ‘Never,’ Linde said. ‘By the way, I’ve found you a party girl. She says she wants to speak out in the paper as a warning to others.’

  ‘Great,’ Annika said, forcing herself to smile. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll drive you back to your hotel.’

  22

  Lotta dashed to sit in the front seat. She was talking enthusiastically to Linde about how much she had appreciated the bare setting of the warehouse, the harsh shadows, the worn tools.

  Annika sat in the back trying to get a grip on her feelings.

  Somewhere else.

  Obviously.

  What had she been expecting? That he’d move into the flat on Agnegatan?

  She stared out of the window. Gates and walls and rooftops rushed past. No, she thought. I wasn’t expecting him to move in with me, but I did think he’d be with me for the few nights I’m here.

  Then a terrible thought: He didn’t think I was any good in bed. She shut her eyes. Tried to pull herself together. I thought it was good, and that’s what matters. He can think what he likes. I don’t regret it. She stifled a sob.

  ‘What do you say, Annika?’

  She met his gaze in the rear-view mirror. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Do you agree that art is much more real than journalism?’

  She looked out of the window again. ‘That’s an impossible question,’ she said. ‘What does “more real” mean? It’s like asking, “What’s special about a fish?” and getting the answer, “It can’t ride a bike.” ’

  Linde burst out laughing.

  ‘What I mean is that art creates an experience inside you as a viewer, whereas newspapers only report other people’s experiences,’ Lotta said.

  ‘That’s crap,’ Annika said. ‘Do you mean you never experience anything when you read a newspaper or watch the news on television? When children are gassed to death? Or teenage girls vanish without a trace? Or dictators are toppled and people get democracy?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Lotta said, sounding hurt.

  ‘So what did you mean? That people will be more affected by your photographs of those plate-shears than reading about little children dying of fentanyl-gas poisoning on the floor of the landing outside their mother’s bedroom door?’

  The silence in the car was deafening. The only thing she could hear was her own agitated breathing.

  Oh, God, she thought. I’m doing it again. Going into battle for the most ridiculous things instead of talking about the real problems. There must be something wrong with me. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the most awful headache.’

  ‘Here in Spain there are lots of fun pills,’ Linde said. ‘Do you want me to stop at a farma
cia?’

  ‘I’ve got some paracetamol in my room,’ she said.

  They passed the bullfighting arena on the left and Annika could just make out the motorway below. Thank God they were nearly there.

  They sat in silence until they pulled up in front of the Hotel Pyr.

  ‘Give me a call before you leave,’ he said, with a smile, through the open window.

  She slammed the door and forced herself to smile back.

  Lotta went straight up to her room without looking at Annika.

  Fine, Annika thought. She went back out onto the street and set off towards the department store, turned right towards the harbour and went into McDonald’s. She’d had enough of spending the evenings starving in her hotel room. She ordered a quarter-pounder with cheese, carrot sticks and mineral water, then sat at a window table.

  It was relatively calm around her. A few kids were laughing near the counter. Two smartly dressed women were talking confidentially over a couple of muffins. At the table in front of her a man in a suit, white shirt and tie sat next to a teenager in a wheelchair. The boy seemed to have cerebral palsy. His arms, hands, feet and legs were contorted, and jerked uncontrollably. Annika made an effort not to stare at him, which was hard when he was sitting right in front of her. She picked at her carrots and drank the water.

  The dad was talking to his son in low, soft Spanish, feeding him fries and holding a cup with a straw for him to drink from. The boy tried to say something, which his father evidently understood, because he laughed conspiratorially, then said, ‘Sí, sí, claro.’

  The door opened and an elegant woman and a girl of about five walked in. The woman lit up when she caught sight of the father and son. She skipped between the tables, holding the little girl with one hand and shopping bags from D&G and Versace in the other. She went over to the table, kissed the man on the lips and the boy on the cheek, and said something that made all four of them laugh.

  Without thinking, Annika got up from her table and walked towards the door. She bumped into tables on the way, bruising her legs, but the pain was in her chest. There was so much love in the world, if you only knew how to find it. And what did she choose to do? Fight pathetic little battles with everyone, obsessed with the idea of winning, of being right, of showing off and getting recognition.

  Some British girls were coming along the pavement towards her, with loud voices, Zara bags and peeling noses. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and walked quickly, head down, towards El Corte Inglés. She stopped outside the department store and looked up at the hotel. She didn’t want to be alone in her room, waiting for someone to call.

  I have to be somewhere else.

  She looked in the other direction, and remembered that Rickard Marmén’s estate agency was just round the corner. Maybe he was still there.

  She turned right, past the British bookshop, and saw that the lights were still on. She tried the door, but it was locked. The office was empty, but a bluish reflection on the wall behind the desk told her that the computer was still on.

  She knocked on the glass.

  Marmén poked his head through a doorway at the back of the room. He seemed to say something, but Annika couldn’t make out what. He vanished again, but reappeared a moment later with a key in his hand. ‘Annika Bengtzon, our favourite representative of the Swedish press,’ he said, holding the door open. ‘Welcome!’

  Annika smiled and air-kissed him on both cheeks.

  ‘And what can we do for you this evening?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any new lives for sale?’ she said, walking into the shop.

  ‘But, my dear, we don’t sell anything else here. Dreams and new lives are our speciality. Did you have anything particular in mind? Marble floors, wild vines on the terrace? Four bathrooms, each with a sea view?’

  She laughed, and her spirits rose. She sat down on one of the chairs in front of his desk. There was a large dustball by the desk-leg. The window was smeared. Marmén locked the door again and came to sit next to her on the other chair. ‘What’s wrong with the life you’ve already got?’

  Annika decided to blank the question. ‘I’m here to write some articles about drug-trafficking and money-laundering,’ she said, ‘so right now things aren’t too bad. The title of the series is “The Costa Cocaine”.’

  ‘How exciting. Glass of wine?’

  Annika shook her head.

  He stood up anyway, then fetched a bottle of red wine and two glasses. ‘You can keep me company,’ he said. ‘How are you getting on with the cocaine?’ He poured some rioja into both glasses.

  ‘I’ve got a bit more to do before I go back home,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Drugs are one of the few things I’ve never dealt in. I’ve got no contacts at all. Cheers!’

  He drank with his eyes closed.

  Annika tasted the wine and put the glass to one side. ‘Has business picked up?’ she asked.

  ‘If it was static before,’ he said, ‘it’s going backwards now. The mortgage companies are demanding that buyers have a fifty per cent deposit in cash, even if there’s already planning permission. Only the drug barons have that sort of money, and although there are a lot of them, they can’t keep the whole market afloat. Prices are falling, so people would rather sit it out than sell. I’m thinking of opening a lettings agency instead. That’s what people are doing, these days, leasing their property in the hope that things will pick up—’

  Annika interrupted his tale of woe. ‘The drug-barons pay cash?’ she said.

  ‘If there’s one thing they’ve got plenty of it’s cash. You said you were writing about money-laundering? Building large, expensive houses is one way of cleaning up dirty money.’

  Annika looked at the man beside her. She really shouldn’t be remotely surprised. ‘So you know how money-laundering works?’

  Marmén smiled a very sad smile. ‘Sadly I’ve never been blessed with any dirty money that needed laundering,’ he said, ‘but knowing how the washing-machine works is no great secret.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  She pulled her pen and notepad from her bag. He refilled his glass.

  ‘So they buy property?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘The laws are constantly being tightened,’ he said. ‘Nowadays you can’t just waltz into a bank with a sack full of dollars – the police will be there before you can say “deposit account”. The banks and financial institutions have a duty to report anything suspicious. You have to be able to explain that you acquired the money legally.’

  ‘So you buy a house?’

  ‘Or you buy a plot and build a house. As much as possible gets paid in cash. It’s no problem for the builder to roll up at his bank with a bundle of notes because he can explain that it came from building a house. He’ll have receipts for pipes, cement and bricks. And then the house is there, all finished, and can be sold for X million euros. The drug-baron can prove that he got the money from selling a house perfectly legally. And then the money is back in the system.’

  ‘They must build a lot of houses,’ Annika said.

  ‘And they must have a lot of luxury yachts that they sail about in,’ Marmén said. ‘That’s why Gibraltar is so useful.’

  Annika put down her pen. ‘I read about something called “Operation White Whale”,’ she said. ‘Some huge crackdown where loads of crooks were arrested, and more than two hundred and fifty villas seized. Apparently they used solicitors and companies in Gibraltar.’

  Marmén nodded enthusiastically and drained his second glass. ‘That’s it exactly!’

  Annika was taking notes. ‘So how does it work? The money-launderer sets up a company in Gibraltar,’ she said, drawing a circle in the middle of her page. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Several companies,’ Marmén said patiently, reaching over and moving her notepad to his own lap. He drew several smaller circles a
round the first one. ‘The barons feed money into a few of the companies, then start sending invoices to each other. For rent, perhaps, or consultancy services, import and export of goods, everything between Heaven and Earth.’

  ‘But none of it’s actually real?’ Annika asked. ‘All the invoices are false?’

  He poured some more wine. ‘Are you sure you don’t want any?’

  Annika pointed at the circles. ‘When all the invoices are there, it’s perfectly all right that the money is there as well?’ she asked.

  ‘Hey presto,’ Marmén said. ‘Dirty drug money has become lovely clean company profits, all of it audited and signed off by solicitors and bankers and accountants. And Gibraltar is completely tax-free, which, of course, is wonderfully practical!’

  ‘But doesn’t anyone check to make sure that it’s all above board?’

  ‘Of course. The solicitors and bankers and accountants.’

  ‘Solicitors and bankers and accountants in Gibraltar?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She was starting to realize why Patrik had been so keen for her to interview someone practising there. ‘You don’t happen to know a Swedish solicitor I could interview?’

  ‘In Gibraltar?’ He rolled the wine around his mouth as he thought. Then he swallowed loudly. ‘Not a Swede,’ he said, ‘but a Dane.’

  ‘Does he launder money?’

  ‘Like I said, not for me. Would you like me to call him?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  She went through to the toilet while Marmén, swaying slightly, made his way round his desk and dialled a number with the prefix 350. There was no loo paper and the washbasin had dark-grey tide-marks. He had evidently cut back on cleaning costs.

  She stood and looked at her reflection as she heard his voice rising and falling out in the shop. It was obvious that she had been crying. Her eyes were red and her lashes were like spiders’ legs, with the clumped mascara. She was incredibly tired.

  Then she heard the telephone being hung up out in the office. She dutifully flushed some water into the basin and went back out to Marmén.