Without a Trace (Annika Bengtzon 10)

by Marklund, Liza

  She put the pen down and studied what she had written. ‘So Viola had a car that no one knew was hers. She had a name that no one knew about. She had two passports and a tailor-made coat containing about a hundred thousand dollars.’

  ‘Correct.’

  She picked up the pen again and tapped it against her front teeth. ‘And that car is the one captured in the picture,’ she said.

  The picture from an illegal surveillance camera at the petrol station outside Piteå was the only real evidence that Viola Söderland had fled, and that she was alive. Annika remembered it clearly: it had been reprinted everywhere in the aftermath of the TV documentary.

  ‘It was that car, yes,’ Schyman said.

  Annika could see the photograph in front of her, very clearly, in spite of all the years that had passed: grainy black-and-white, a light-coloured car, a flash hitting the windscreen, a woman in a dark coat in the passenger seat and a fuzzy figure to the right of the picture. There was a pump to the right, slushy snow, and an out-of-focus rubbish bin in the foreground. The number-plate was clearly visible in the light of the flash.

  ‘Critics claimed it wasn’t Viola Söderland in the picture,’ she said.

  Schyman nodded. ‘It was her.’

  She looked at him carefully. There was definitely something that didn’t make sense, something he wasn’t telling her. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I’m quite sure.’

  ‘How did you get hold of the picture?’

  ‘It’s in the public domain. It was taken at that petrol station on the E4 in Norrbotten. The owner had got fed up of people driving off without paying and had set up his own surveillance camera overlooking the pump, without putting up any signs and without permission or a licence … He was prosecuted and convicted for breaking the law on camera surveillance, and that picture formed part of the evidence.’

  She nodded. ‘I remember the story, but how did you find the picture?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s in the public domain.’

  She fixed him with her gaze. ‘And how did you know where to look?’

  He reached for a bottle of water on the table, poured himself a glass and drank it. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘This picture was buried in the evidence of a humdrum case in – what? – Luleå district court? And you just happened to stumble across it?’

  He put the glass down. ‘Piteå had its own court in those days. The petrol station was on the E4 in Håkansö, on the way to Luleå.’

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘I’m sure you were a very talented reporter back in the day,’ she said, ‘but there’s no way you could have found this on your own. You had a source. Someone who put you on the trail, sent you in the right direction …’

  He didn’t answer.

  She looked at her notes. There wasn’t much to go on. ‘Names,’ she said. ‘The name of the man who sold the car to Harriet Johansson, and the names of the tailor and the owner of the petrol station?’

  ‘You’ll get them,’ he said.

  ‘And you aren’t willing to let me have your source?’

  She waited for him to reply.

  ‘If it is the case,’ he said eventually, ‘that I have a source I’ve never revealed, then there’s probably a very good reason why I’ve kept quiet.’

  She nodded. ‘Viola’s colleagues, Pettersson and Witterfeldt, why are they so angry with you?’

  Schyman let out a deep sigh. ‘They were prosecuted in Viola’s place. They’ve probably been waiting to have their revenge for years and, of course, Viola isn’t around.’

  ‘And there was never anything to suggest that Viola was the victim of any sort of crime?’

  ‘The police found a broken vase by the front door in her home, apparently, and there was some footprint or fingerprint or strand of hair, something along those lines, which could never be traced. A neighbour had seen a man outside, but that never led anywhere.’

  ‘What do I do about the Lerberg case?’

  He seemed not to understand what she was talking about. Then he stood up. ‘Write up what you’ve got. Berit will have to come back from Oslo a day early – she can take over. I’ll tell Patrik that you’re working on a special project from now on.’

  ‘What about the trainee, Valter?’

  ‘I’ll have a word with him about confidentiality,’ Schyman said.

  ‘No need,’ Annika said. ‘I can do that.’

  She stood up, clutching the sheet of notes, then moved to the desk and replaced Schyman’s pen.

  At the glass door she stopped. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘did you have dinner with Ingemar Lerberg at Edsbacka krog a couple of weeks before he resigned?’

  Anders Schyman stared at her, eyes wide. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  She kept her gaze on him. ‘Speaking of information in the public domain, if I managed to find the receipt, there’s a chance that other people will too.’

  All of a sudden he was angry. ‘So what? We had dinner, he offered to pay, we were fellow Rotarians.’ He sat down on the desk, hands on his thighs, combative now.

  ‘Was that why we were the worst?’ she asked. ‘To prove that we weren’t making any special allowances for him?’

  ‘We were worst at everything in those days.’

  She turned to leave.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she heard Schyman say behind her back. ‘What happened to Daniel Lee?’

  She stopped at the sliding door. ‘He made a solo album that got to number two on the Billboard chart, and number one on iTunes in Canada and the USA. According to MTV, it was one of the five best debut albums in the world that year. And his detractors still claim that he’s lying.’ She closed the door behind her.

  All children drew pictures, didn’t they?

  Lundqvist hadn’t been impressed. He wanted to find out if the child’s drawing had been produced by one of the Lerberg children before he linked the investigation on Silvervägen with the one at Kråkträsken. Nina couldn’t recall seeing any children’s drawings in the house, but they could have been tucked out of the way somewhere.

  She made herself more comfortable at her desk. If she wanted information about Kag from the Spanish police, the protocol was clear: she needed to contact Interpol and get them to pass on any questions she wanted answered. She clicked her ballpoint pen. It was a long time since she had lived in Spain, but the years hadn’t done anything to shrink Spanish bureaucracy, she was sure. If she went the formal route she could probably expect some sort of answer next month, possibly next year. And how should she formulate the question? What was she after? Her palms itched: picking up drunks and cleaning police cars had been much easier.

  She pulled her laptop towards her, went onto Google and searched for ‘karl gustaf evert ekblad’, and got almost thirty thousand hits. A bit too broad, clearly … She limited the search to the exact name, and got no results at all.

  She pushed the laptop away, got up and went to stand at the end of the desk, looking out at the courtyard. Had he been tortured where he was found? Henriksson couldn’t say anything definite before he had conducted a thorough search of the site, but it didn’t seem improbable. Regardless of where the abuse and murder had taken place, the victim must have screamed with pain – might someone have heard something? The site was in the middle of the forest, and Ekblad’s mouth was covered with duct tape, so it was unlikely that anyone would have been able to hear muffled cries at a distance of half a kilometre or so, over by the residential area. If their preliminary guesses were correct, Ekblad had died during the night, when it was pitch black and pouring with rain, so no one would have been out running. The scene was also a hundred metres from the path, which also happened to be waterlogged and impassable.

  So how had Ekblad got there? Was he tricked into entering the forest, or was he forced?

  And why?

  She had to start by finding out who he was.

  Nina went back to her chair, pulled her laptop towards her again,
then tried ‘buscar gente España’ (search people Spain). There were a number of possibilities, most of them dating sites. She tried ‘paginasblancas.es’, the Spanish telephone book, and searched for ‘karl gustaf evert ekblad’ in every possible combination and in every province. No results.

  He didn’t appear to have been particularly visible in Spain either.

  But where had he got his money from? He had been lodging somewhere for several years, he drank every day, and bought food from the Orminge Grill. He must have had some sort of income, and his fellow alcoholics had said he had a mobile phone.

  She went onto another search site, einforma.com, which listed individuals and companies, typed the murdered man’s name into yet another search box and pressed ‘buscar’. The page took ages to load.

  Empresas y Autónomos (5) Ejecutivos (1)

  Karl Gustaf Evert Ekblad

  Coicidencia por denominación principal

  Provincia: Málaga

  Her arms goose-pimpled.

  Hello there, Kag.

  She clicked the first result.

  Denominación:

  Karl Gustaf Evert Ekblad

  Domicilio Social:

  AVENIDA D …

  Localidad:

  29660 MARBELLA (Malága)

  Forma Júridica:

  Sociedad limitida

  CIF:

  B924

  Actividad Informa:

  Servicios relativos a la propiedad immobiliaria y a la propiedad industrial

  CNAE 2009:

  6810 Compraventa de bienes immobiliarios por cuenta propia

  Objeto Social:

  EL COMERCIO IMMOBILIARIO SIN LIMITACIÓN, Y EN SU CONSECUENCIA, LA ADQUISICIÓN, USO, ARRENDAMIENTO, VENTA, ENAJENACIÓN TRANSFORMACIÓN POR CUALQUIER TÍTULO DE BIENES INMUEBLES Y DERECHOS REALES SOBRE LOS MISMOS, ASÍ COMO …

  It was a business. Kag had a business in Spain. Something to do with property and industrial rights of ownership, the acquisition of property, unlimited trade and acquisition, leasing, sales and rental …

  An estate agency.

  She clicked the address and found herself confronted with a new form. To find out the details of Kag’s business she had to register on the site and fill in all the marked fields.

  No problem, she thought. As she filled in her name, telephone number and email address, the white boxes turned green until she reached the one labelled NIF/CIF, which required a Spanish ID number. She thought for a moment, then made one up that looked like it might be genuine, starting with a capital L followed by seven numbers, then a final letter. The box turned red. She tried a different number. Red. Another letter. Still red. She could feel frustration creeping in: she wasn’t going to get hold of the information without a correct ID number.

  She clicked back and looked at one of the other five results.

  La importación y exportación de suelos de piedra y madera …

  Import and export of stone and wooden flooring, sales and installation of kitchens and bathrooms, interior design and architectural services …

  A building company.

  She went back and checked the other results. They were presented in the same way, and gave her fragments of information. There were another two construction companies, and a building-supplies wholesale business.

  So Kag ran five companies in Marbella while he was sitting on a bench in Orminge shopping centre.

  She wasn’t able to find out exactly where the companies were based. The only thing she could see was the postcode, which told her that all five were in the area inland from Puerto Banús on the Costa del Sol, in el barrio known as Nueva Andalucía. She couldn’t get any further details about the ownership structure, nothing about the composition of the boards, or any detailed information about turnover and level of activity.

  But all of this could be uncovered by the Spanish police in the blink of an eye.

  She Googled ‘policia nacional marbella’, reached for her phone and dialled the number. She peered at her watch and hoped it wasn’t siesta time. Mind you, the Spaniards had aire acondicionado these days. She had read somewhere that it had fundamentally changed Spanish society, more than any other single phenomenon. For the first time in the history of civilization they no longer took four-hour lunch breaks during the afternoon when the sun was at its hottest. Instead they switched on el aire frío and carried on working.

  ‘Policia nacional, buenas tardes. Cómo puedo ayudarle?’

  Nina shut her eyes and asked for the duty superintendent, the words pouring out of somewhere inside her brain that she hadn’t known existed: her voice and intonation changed, assuming a lower tone. She had missed Spain: she missed the smells, the heat, the greenery.

  The superintendent came on the line and she introduced herself, explained who she was and why she was calling. The police officer sounded surprised and rather sceptical.

  ‘I know I’m not following official procedures here,’ Nina said, ‘but this is a very unpleasant case, extremely brutal, and it would be a huge help if I could have some assistance getting hold of information about the murder victim’s businesses.’

  She could hear a radio in the background, a jingle, radio ora, tam-ta-dam, la lejor selection de música …

  ‘Excuse me,’ the superintendent said, at the other end of the line. ‘This might sound like a strange question, but are you from the Canary Islands?’

  She took a deep breath and, to her astonishment, felt tears spring to her eyes. ‘Si, señor, nací en Tenerife …’

  ‘Well, then,’ the police chief said, ‘why didn’t you say so straight away? What was it you wanted help with?’

  She gave him Kag’s details and the names of the companies, and heard the superintendent’s pen scratch as he made notes.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you before the weekend. Hasta pronto.’

  The dog had been killed using ‘unusual methods’. That was what it said. It was an article in the local paper. I remember it well – it was at the bottom of the page on the left-hand side. It described how the perpetrators, two ‘young boys’, had caught the dog and bound its paws together. Then they had put fireworks in the dog’s anus and ears, and set light to them.

  I can still feel the boundless terror I experienced as I read those words. I can conjure it up at any moment, the incomprehensible disgust, the nausea, the disbelief: how could it be true?

  The picture that illustrated the article showed a solemn uniformed police officer, Stefan Westermark. He was the officer who had caught the ‘young boys’.

  ‘You just can’t understand how normal lads could do something like this,’ he said in the caption.

  The boys’ excuse was that the dog was only a stray that hung around outside the blocks of flats in Fisksätra, shitting in sandpits.

  When Ingemar finally agreed to get a pet, I knew exactly what sort of dog I wanted. Not some inbred puppy with a family tree, but a stray from a dogs’ home. I wanted to do good – I wanted to make amends, make a difference.

  But the dog I rescued from suffering and being put down doesn’t like me.

  It doesn’t understand that I mean it well.

  THURSDAY, 16 MAY

  Suddenly Annika was lying awake and staring at the wall, fragments of the nightmare already dissolving into fog.

  She had been back in Hälleforsnäs, the small town where she’d grown up, by the stream below the old works. Midges were buzzing about. Birgitta had been there, and Sven, her first boyfriend. He looked so sad.

  ‘Can’t you sleep?’ Jimmy said.

  She turned her head. He was half sitting up, reading his iPad. She realized she was thirsty and needed a pee. The disquiet of the dream faded and she took a deep breath, hearing the rain beat against the windowpane. Through the open bedroom door she thought she could make out the children’s breathing as a chorus of warm gasps, but that must have been her imagination.

  Birgitta still lived in Hälleforsnäs. She passed the stream by the works every
day – she had walked those streets all her life, and now her daughter was doing the same. They visited Mum up at Tattarbacken and bought pizza from Maestro on Friday evenings. Then she saw the women of Solsidan in her mind’s eye, with their coffee-machines and polished stone floors.

  ‘What is normal life, really?’ Annika whispered. ‘The calm, happy, normal thing that everyone else has, where is it?’

  Jimmy lowered his iPad, which lit his face from below, and smiled. ‘Every life is abnormal, an endless process of crisis management. If it’s not something to do with the kids, it’s health or work. The rest is just the gaps in between.’

  She hauled herself up into a sitting position beside him, plumping up the pillows behind her back. ‘Are you happy?’

  He switched the pad off, his face vanished and his head became a dark silhouette against the pale wallpaper. He pulled her closer to him. ‘Is it important? Are you?’

  She snuggled up beside him, and noticed that he was a bit sweaty between the legs. She breathed in his scent. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s important. You’re important, and the children, and belonging somewhere …’

  He ran his hand over her taut stomach and kissed her.

  ‘I need to pee,’ she whispered, and disentangled herself from his arms.

  By the time she got back to the bedroom he was already asleep.

  *

  I went looking for Mum.

  Naturally I heard what the grown-ups said, that she was gone, that she’d gone home to God, but I thought she must have left me something, that she would find a way to communicate with me, to let me know that everything was all right, that it was just a terrible mistake. The bird on the windowsill looked at me with Mum’s bright eyes. Perhaps it flew between the sky and Heaven. (The bird version of Mum didn’t have her tired, dead eyes after the chemotherapy, but the real ones, the ones she had when she still had hair.) Maybe she was hiding among the weeds in the field down towards the porcelain factory … Maybe she was in the wind.