“You? Olaf Gedda? Wow!”
“Wow is right, but I didn't do it. He was like a father to me, but nobody believes me.”
Sorenstam took a deep breath. She appeared to be regaining her composure. “How do I know you're telling the truth?”
“How do you know I'm not?”
“My father always says actions speak louder than words,” Sorenstam answered.
“You're lucky to have a wise father.” Any father at all. Salamander sat in silence for a moment and then pulled the SIG Sauer from its holster.
Sorenstam raised her hands and cried, “Please don't shoot me. Please don't! Oh, God no, please.”
“Margareta, relax,” Salamander said, unloading the pistol and handing her the clip of bullets. “Go on. Take it. It's a peace offering.”
Sorenstam took the clip and dropped it in her purse as though it might explode in her hand.
Again, Salamander smiled. “Now, my name is Gotilda Salamander. The first thing I need to do is get rid of the cruiser and this pig's uniform,” Salamander said. “Second, I need to get a wig and some clothes. And I may need you to rent a car for me. How do you feel about all of that?”
Sorenstam was silent.
“Only do it if you want to help. If we're smart, nobody will ever know you were involved and I'll be out of your hair by tomorrow.”
Sorenstam sat for a moment more without speaking and then clenched her fists and banged the steering wheel. “We're kind of like Thelma and Louise, aren't we?” She giggled. “My Pap Pap has an old barn on the other side of Hassela that hasn't been used in years. I know where he keeps the key. We can hide the car there.” She paused. “I think we should do that first, Gotilda. Right?”
Salamander smiled. “Right.”
The police cruiser and uniform were quickly hidden under lock and key in Sorenstam's grandfather's decrepit barn. Salamander left the Sig Sauer on the front seat but kept the car keys, just in case, and her new identity began to take shape. She removed the stud from her left eyebrow, the ring from her nose, and the replica of a fish hook from her naval, but left the gold rings and diamond studs in her ears before Sorenstam shaved her head down to blond stubble and bought her a wig that replaced her spiked purple hair with tight blond curls.
* * * *
Sunday, July 13
At ten the next morning, Salamander and Sorenstam drove into Hassela, two young blondes out on a Sunday shopping spree. Their first stop was the 7-Eleven near Tokens Gata towards Tinkersdamm, where stacks of Aftonbladet sat in the display rack by the entrance, its headline blaring at them:
olaf gedda's murderer escapes
“Holy moley!” Sorenstam said. “You're famous!”
“It's only going to get worse,” Salamander said. “Next thing you know, I'll be on Sweden's Most Wanted.”
They bought the newspaper along with a toothbrush, toothpaste, tampons, disposable razors, a carton of Marlboro Lights, eggs, kefir, skim milk, a loaf of whole wheat bread, and two coffees and chicken salad sandwiches. Sorenstam paid with her Visa card.
As they strolled down Tootenhattangatan, Salamander frequently checked to see if they were being followed. At Kjol & Blus she bought two pairs of jeans and SmartWool socks, a stylish cloth jacket, Doc Marten boots, and a pink T-shirt with well-behaved women seldom make historywritten on it. Again, Sorenstam paid with her Visa card.
Their last stop was the Avis office on Route 307 South, where Sorenstam leased a Volvo C30 for six months. Once again, she paid with her Visa card. Salamander assured her that she'd pay her back, and Sorenstam said that for some reason she knew she would.
Back at Sorenstam's house they unloaded their shopping and huddled close to each other on a small loveseat to read the newspaper:
HUDIKSVALL—A new name and face was added to Sweden's most-wanted list today as Gotilda Salamander, charged with the murder of multi-billionaire Olaf Gedda, escaped from the Hudiksvall jail after assaulting one officer and locking him and another in her cell at gunpoint. That same day, Salamander called TV4 at 6 p.m. to say that she was innocent of any wrongdoing and that it was time for someone to go to the jail and give Inspektors Tonsoffun and Noonesson their suppers.
Noonesson said that this type of erratic behavior was typical of Salamander, whom he characterized as odd as an orangutan at a smorgasbord, warning that she was armed and considered extremely dangerous.
Police throughout the country are searching for Salamander and the escape vehicle, one of Hudiksvall's two police cars. So far, Noonesson said, the police are clueless.
According to the police blotter, Salamander is 26, five-foot ten-inches tall, with a medium build and spiked purple hair, and sports a gold stud in her left eyebrow and small ring in her nose, along with numerous piercings in both ears. When she was booked, thepolice recorded no other identifying marks, although it is rumored that the escapee has numerous colorful tattoos in somewhat intimate places.
Research shows that Salamander was placed in a foster home in Hagersten at an early age but ran away from the home at 13. From 2003 to 2006 she worked in various capacities at Handelsbanken. A spokesperson for the bank said Salamander had an extraordinary capacity to deal with numbers and computers and that many of her colleagues felt she had a photographic memory. The spokesperson volunteered that Salamander had never shown any violent or aggressive tendencies even though she was known to be a serious student of the martial arts.
In 2006, Salamander turned to freelance consulting, primarily for Umlaut Magazine, before going to work full-time for Olaf Gedda.
Gedda was found shot to death in his home in Fiskbenstad on July 4th and, after a thorough police investigation, Salamander was charged with his murder. Gedda's lawyer and close associate, Manfred von Otter, urged that anyone matching Salamander's description be reported to the police immediately.
“You're an orphan?” Sorenstam asked.
Salamander nodded. “My brother and I were separated when we were little tykes. I don't have any idea what happened to him. He just fell off the face of the earth and I've missed him ever since.”
Rhindtwist splashed coffee on his Gap Skinny Fit jeans as he bolted upright on his couch. The TV4 Evening News had just been interrupted to announce that a nationwide manhunt was on for Olaf Gedda's murderer. The fugitive was identified as Gotilda Salamander and was reported to be emotionally unstable, armed, and extremely dangerous. “Say it isn't so,” Rhindtwist said aloud. “Gotilda, please, say it isn't so.”
Next, a police photo flashed on the screen. Salamander glowered at the camera. Every hair in her purple, spiked comb was clearly visible on his 32” Sony HD BRAVIA flat-panel, as were the gold stud in her left eyebrow, the silver ring in her nose, and her black lipstick. For the first time, Rhindtwist saw Gotilda the way others must see her and shook his head. No wonder people think she's looney tunes.
Rhindtwist clicked off the TV and stared at nothing in particular. He found it hard to draw a full breath. His confidence in Gotilda had been shaken to its core. He had thought his investigation of Gunnar Hakanson would eventually identify him as Gedda's murderer but now he wasn't so sure. Now he wondered if all that was said about Gotilda was true. Otherwise, why would she have escaped? He lit a Chesterfield and paced the length of his apartment. He was surprised by the revelation that Gotilda was someone he believed in and wondered what else about her would surprise him. He knew he'd been in love with her once but his inability to say no to Annika had been the straw that broke the camel's back, because Gotilda was an all-or-nothing type of girl. Oddly, Rhindtwist had been successful in suppressing his feelings for her . . . until now. But now regret and remorse came rushing to the surface and he fought the urge to scream that he loved her still, pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee instead. As he stared out his apartment window at Sergels Torg he chided himself that he was one messed-up dude who, on the one hand, thought Gotilda might be a murderer but, on the other hand, might have been his one chance at true love. HowthehelldidIgetmyse
lfintothismess?
* * * *
Inspektor Tonsoffun hunched over his desk studying Sunday's Aftonbladet. He couldn't believe what he was reading: “Salamander was placed in a foster home in Hagersten at an early age . . .” His sister and he had been put in the orphanage in Hagersten in 1985 when she was two and he was four. He was adopted within days but his sister was left behind and he hadn't seen or heard from her since. Was there a chance that Gotilda Salamander, a woman wanted for a front-page murder, was the same girl?
Tips had started to come in from Goteborg, Fiskben, and Norrkoping, and he thought, what if some trigger-happy agent from Sapo shoots her? He knowingly violated Violent Crimes Division Procedural Protocol #205 and put out an APB stating that the suspect must be apprehended without excessive force to ensure that a proper confession could be obtained. Tonsoffun was well aware that he would be reprimanded by the county police commissioner, maybe even by the brass at SNBP, but frankly, he didn't give a damn.
* * * *
Monday, July 14
When Salamander was sure Sorenstam was asleep, she left a note on the kitchen table along with 2,000 kronor and a promise to pay her the balance of what she owed her soon. She loaded her shoulder bag into the Volvo and drove along the Norrland coast, turning northwest toward Whatfors until she crossed over the Ljusnan River at the intersection of Route 84. Here she pulled off to the side of the road and walked back to the bridge. It was two-fifteen Monday morning. Ten days since Papa Geddawas killed. Ten days of hell, of confusing time with Jerker Rhindtwist.
She studied the river, debating if she should look upstream to see what life was going to bring her, or look downstream to see what had passed her by, what she was leaving behind. She elected to watch the river glide toward her, wondering if the answer of what was next lay beneath its broken surface. She lit a cigarette and lingered for a moment and then hurried to her car and drove until she found the unmarked dirt road that led to the cottage where she and Papa Gedda, and on occasion Manfred von Otter, had spent many a weekend fishing for trout, the cottage that would be her secret headquarters until she proved her innocence.
* * * *
Rhindtwist sat at his kitchen table drinking his first coffee of the day and smoking a Chesterfield. He opened his old Macintosh PowerPC with a hard drive of only 750 MB. He went to New Mail and choked as he inhaled because the first message was from: [email protected].
i need hakanson's e-mail address. sorry . . .
Rhindtwist scrolled through his Address Book and hit Reply.
[email protected]. r u ok? how can i help? b friendly, please.
He waited less than a minute for Salamander's reply:
all OK. more when i'm ready. don't push it . . .
Well, at least she's okay. He smiled. And she thinks it's Hakanson too. “Of course she's innocent,” he said out loud, “and I hope she nails that snake in the grass. Please, God, don't let her fail.”
* * * *
Salamander balanced her G4 titanium seventeen-inch Apple PowerBook on her lap, opened Asphyxia 1.3, and entered honeybee as her ID and MickeyFinn10 as her password. Within minutes she was into the mirrored hard drive of Hakanson'slaptop. A feeling of victory and satisfaction came over her. I'm home. In my secret world of discovery. In someone else's private life. And he has no idea I'm here. If only it were this easy with Jerker Two-Timing Rhindtwist.
Salamander scrolled through Hakanson's e-mail, starting July 1. A message to [email protected] on July 3 caught her eye:
The Sheraton at seven. Room 411. Wear that low-cut black number with no back.
Salamander continued to search. On July 4 at 12:05 p.m. Hakanson wrote Vanessa Lindgren again:
Can't do our afternoon thing. Manfred just called to tell me that Olaf was murdered this morning. I lied and told him I was in Helsinki and would be back ASAP. I can't quite believe the news. Olaf has been such an important part of my life and not just as a business partner but as a loyal friend. I don't know what I'll do without him. I'm very, very sad. Please say a prayer for him. I'll be in touch. How could this have happened?
Salamander found a message on July 11 to: [email protected].
Thinking of you. Could we meet?
Salamander shook her head. That creep!
Uggla answered:
Thinking of you, too. Some night after work?
Tonight? 7:00 at Café Hedon?
The Sheraton's closer.
I'll take the tunnelbana.
Will you get a room?
Yes, and I'm getting a boner.
That's the whole point!
Salamander called the Sheraton to verify that Hakanson had spent the night of July 3 and then started up the ICQ chat program and pinged up the address she'd created for Rhindtwist through the Yahoo group Idiot's Delight.
[I've got news.]
[Talk to me.]
[You men and your nookie. Hakanson wasn't in Helsinki, he was at the Sheraton with some woman in a black dress.]
[He still had time to kill Gedda.]
[His e-mails strongly suggest he didn't.]
Rhindtwist sighed. [That leaves Paulsson.]
[Hard to believe. We need the gun or something.]
[Anything more?]
[You're not going to like it. Hakanson's sleeping with Annika too. She's even hornier than you. Maybe it's your wake-up call.]
[Touché.]
Salamander laughed out loud for the first time in weeks and signed off.
* * * *
PART 3
A Needle in a Haystack
Reportedly, there are 155,000 handguns in civilian possession in Sweden.
* * * *
Tuesday, July 15
Paulsson the only suspect? No way. Salamander thought spending a little time fishing might clear her head. She filled a thermos with coffee, grabbed her tackle box, a small Tupperware container filled with night crawlers, her Winston Boron II fly rod, and her Ugly Stik(R) and hiked along the bank of the Ljusnan to the deep pool where she'd lost a large trout earlier in the season.
Three trout rose throughout the pool. Salamander sprayed herself with 100% DEET to ward off Whatfors’ notorious mosquitoes and cast, her cream-colored dry fly settling delicately on the water. On her fourth cast she caught a nine-inch brown trout and gently released it. Within fifteen minutes she caught and released two more, the largest thirteen inches long.
She sat on the bank, poured herself a coffee, smoked a cigarette, and waited for other fish to show. She stared at the rushing water and listened to its song. She wasn't sure how she'd gotten herself into this mess, and was even less sure how she'd get out of it, when a large trout porpoised at the head of the pool.
She cast a March Brown, a Quill Gordon, and an Ausable Wulff without any success. Ahwhatthehell. She picked up her spinning rod, threaded a worm on its treble hook, and cast. The worm grazed the rocks at the head of the pool and sank slowly. Salamander scraped and bounced it along the bottom. Suddenly it stopped. She waited and reeled a bit more. Her line tightened and her rod bowed. She reeled again, expecting the trout to run but it simply sat and sulked. She thought it must be one humongous brownie. She reeled slowly until she could see it, dark and motionless, and then realized it wasn't a fish, and hurriedly reeled whatever it was to her. Oh my God, it's a gun! Her treble hook had snagged a pistol by its trigger guard. She dropped it into her net and snipped her line and gathered her gear and rushed back to the cottage to make some sense out of what had just happened.
She laid the pistol on a towel and signed into Asphyxia 1.3 and navigated her way to the hard drive of SNBP's mainframe. She typed in firearms registration, clicked on Search, and entered the pistol's make, model, and serial number. Not found.She typed in missing weapons and retyped the details. Her screen went blank and then reported: Polish P-83 Wanad, 61068798, reported stolen 2007-06-22, Manfred von Otter, 22 Haagen-Dazs, Stockholm 111 43.
Manfred von Otter!
She reopened Asphyxia 1
.3 and hacked her way into von Otter's system. Folder after folder was in a lawyerly order. She opened Olaf Gedda's will and slogged through the legalese, stopping at the list of beneficiaries: Paulsson and herself, a few well-known charities such as Trout Unlimited and Pearl S. Buck International, and a much longer list of organizations she'd never heard of. Out of curiosity she picked Worldwide Daycare, earmarked for one billion kronor, and Googled it. KinderCare topped the list. No Worldwide Daycare.
Salamander Googled a second one-billion-kronor beneficiary, Help Homeless Haitians. UNICEF, USAID came up, but no Help Homeless Haitians. She opened a Word document titled “Help Homeless Haitians.” The content was short and sweet. Deposit one billion kronor in Barclays Bank PLC, Account No. 40408743.
She opened “Worldwide Daycare.” Same instructions, same Barclays account number.
How did he ever get Papa Gedda to sign this? Well, Advokat von Otter, no catch-and-release for you!
* * * *
Rhindtwist was preoccupied by the deadline for the upcoming issue of Umlaut when his iPhone quacked like a duck. He sighed. It was Tonsoffun.
“I'll be quick,” Tonsoffun said. “Have you heard from the girl?”
“No.”
“I don't believe you, but okay.” Tonsoffun paused. “Jerker, man to man?”
Rhindtwist scowled and said, “Man to man.”
“At one time, Gotilda and you were intimate.”
“Intimate?”
“You were sleeping with her, right?”
“Torsten, what's with you and Noonesson and your sexual fantasies?”
“Cool it,” Tonsoffun said. “Does she have a strawberry birthmark on her lower back?”
Rhindtwist sat stock-still and stared at his mobile. Howinthehelldoesheknowthat? He lit a Chesterfield and nodded as though Tonsoffun could see him. “Yes, but she covered it with a tattoo of a rainbow trout.” He heard Tonsoffun begin to sob when his ICQ pinged. [I've got our man.] “I'll call you right back,” he said to Tonsoffun, and hung up.
EQMM, May 2012 Page 4