Without a Trace (Annika Bengtzon 10)

by Marklund, Liza

  But she never spoke.

  I waited and waited and waited. I was so clever and alert and focused. I really was prepared: at night I would look out of the window until dawn to make sure I didn’t miss her, but she let me down, night after night after night.

  In the end I turned my back and stopped longing.

  I burned the photograph album containing all the pictures from her youth on a mound of stones at the edge of the forest.

  *

  Johansson was sitting in the meeting room on the eighth floor, crying, when Nina got there. No one else had arrived, and she stopped in the doorway, unsure whether to step inside or walk away. He noticed her presence, coughed and blew his nose. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  She stayed where she was. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked cautiously.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I’m not too bad,’ he said shakily. ‘Coffee?’ He held up a flask and a mug.

  She didn’t really drink much coffee – at home she always made tea – but she stepped into the room and nodded. ‘Thanks, I’d love some.’

  He poured her a mug and passed it to her. ‘Sugar and milk?’

  ‘Thanks, it’s fine as it is.’

  Silence descended. Nina sat on a chair a suitable distance away from him and let the mug warm her hands. ‘Why are you so sad?’ she asked quietly.

  He sat and thought for a while. ‘Is it possible to be anything else?’ he said eventually. ‘Considering the way the world looks?’

  ‘Do you mean in general terms, or from our perspective here at work?’ Nina asked warily. She heard how bureaucratic the question sounded. The chair suddenly felt uncomfortable, and she shifted position.

  Johansson evidently took the question seriously because his brow furrowed as he pondered his response. ‘Both, actually,’ he replied. ‘Or, rather, they’re connected, aren’t they, our work and the reality of the world out there? They’re two aspects of the same thing, the whole, and the splinters that we work with.’ He blew his nose again. ‘But of course it feels good to make a contribution. That’s why I joined the police. Well, I’m sure you understand that – you’re a police officer too.’

  Nina drank some coffee. How much did he really know about her? How much were people told when a new member of staff was employed? ‘Have you always worked at National Crime?’ she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too nosy.

  He shook his head. ‘I was transferred here after the accident.’ He reached for a bundle of papers and began to sort through them.

  Nina took a few deep breaths. ‘The accident?’

  Johansson looked surprised, as if the whole world had been kept updated about his life story. ‘Yes, I got shot in the leg during a training exercise. Just a flesh wound. I was in the rapid response unit back then, but it went horribly wrong. The bullet hit me in the thigh and it looked like I was going to bleed to death, but one of the guys in the group had medical training. He tied a tourniquet, and, well …’ He carried on sorting his documents. ‘I got a bit sensitive after that. Over-sensitive, according to my kids, but that’s not the sort of thing doctors diagnose.’

  Lamia trotted into the room with her laptop in her arms. ‘Yep, that’s the way it is,’ she said. ‘Johansson’s a former tough guy who got shot and lost his edge.’ She went over to the big man and kissed his cheek. Johansson smiled shyly at her, and she turned to Nina. ‘How are you getting on? Do you feel at home here yet?’

  Nina had never felt at home anywhere, and refrained from answering.

  The blonde smiled and patted her arm, then sat down in her usual place and opened her computer. ‘Q’s got an important visitor from Rosenbad so we’re going to have to look after ourselves today. They might call in a bit later.’

  Nina’s skin burned where Lamia had touched it, and she rubbed her arm.

  Lamia looked up at them. ‘How are we going to do this? Who wants to start?’

  Johansson distributed his papers: printouts of the report from the Nacka Police. It included an interview with Ingemar Lerberg’s staff: two secretaries, Märta Hillevi Brynolfsson and Solana Nikita Levinsky, the results of their door-to-door inquiries and a thorough analysis of Lerberg’s political activities. It also contained an account of the as yet fruitless search for the person who had notified the emergency services.

  Nina handed round a summary of the murder at Kråkträsken. Lamia was clutching some printouts, but hadn’t made copies of them.

  ‘The cordon at the crime scene on Silvervägen has been lifted,’ Johansson said. ‘We’ve got access to a set of keys if anyone wants to go and take a look. The second round of door-to-door inquiries in the area didn’t come up with anything. There’s no post-mortem report for the victim at Kråkträsken yet, but they’ve found fragments of skin under one fingernail so it might be possible to get some DNA. The staff at Lerberg’s business, Hillevi and Solana, have been questioned several times. But you can read that for yourselves.’

  Nina picked up the papers eagerly. She liked transcriptions of interviews, the spontaneous and fragmentary dialogue – they became film scenes in her head. She could sense the anxiety of the two employees.

  Lead interviewer: This new client, what was the name again? Ah, here it is, ASCL …

  Solana: Asia Shipping Container Lines.

  LI: Yes, Asia Shipping.

  S: Ingemar negotiated the contract. It’s only a trial to begin with, but it’ll give us one hell of a boost …

  LI: Have you met the client?

  S: Who, me? God, no! I look after the invoices. But once the contract is up and running we usually get a freelancer to do the invoices and I become office manager. I’ve been doing this for ages now.

  Nina leafed through the document, reading random extracts.

  Lead interviewer: Have any threats been received?

  Hillevi: Threats?

  LI: Towards Ingemar or the company, anything you’re aware of?

  H: No. Not … no.

  LI: The three big clients, the shipping companies from Panama and those other countries, do you have any contact with them?

  H: Me? No, not me.

  LI: Have they ever expressed any dissatisfaction with the way your company has managed things?

  H: How do you mean?

  The text woke memories of the monotonous routine of work in Katarina District, all the interviews she had conducted and typed up, all the weapon-cleaning and reports to fill in. The nights in patrol car 1617 with its hard suspension, the people she took in for questioning, who didn’t want to talk, the smells at the bottom of the food chain, bad coffee and acid reflux.

  Lead interviewer: Have you noticed any change in mood recently?

  Solana: In Ingemar, you mean? No. Should I have?

  LI: I was wondering if you might.

  S: I mean, I’ve been with him so long, ages really. I was working for him back when he was in Parliament, when Ingemar was a Member of Parliament, I mean, and … well, he’s been the same cheerful person the whole time. Well, maybe not when those horrible things were being written about him, that was really awful.

  LI: Has anything happened that …?

  S: He didn’t talk so much after all those articles, actually. He seemed a bit more cagey around strangers. Not towards me, of course, we go way back. But he got more cautious. Different. Towards other people, I mean.

  ‘One question,’ Lamia said, waving one of Nina’s printouts.

  Nina straightened her back, ready to answer.

  ‘Why was he called Kag?’

  Nina blinked. Lamia waited expectantly for a reply.

  ‘I don’t actually know. Karl Gustav, KG, that probably ended up as Kag …’

  Lamia made a note.

  ‘This child’s drawing,’ Johansson said, hunched over a different printout. ‘Was it done by one of the Lerbergs?’

  ‘That hasn’t been confirmed,’ Nina said. ‘The crayons don’t match those found in the house, but it could have been drawn at
a friend’s or at school.’

  Nina was aware that the connection between the crimes was tenuous. One happened indoors, the other outside. In one the victim had died, in the other he survived. One was dressed, the other naked. The methods were different. Lerberg was an establishment figure, Kag a down-and-out.

  ‘The excessive violence is the connection between the crimes,’ she said. ‘And it’s not subtle. We’re supposed to know. Both the acts themselves and the drawing are messages.’

  ‘Who for? Us?’ Lamia asked.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Nina said.

  Lamia looked at both her and Johansson. ‘Is it my turn now?’ She didn’t wait for confirmation, just sat up straight and started. ‘There haven’t been any transactions in any known bank accounts since Wednesday last week. No matches at any passport checks or on any passenger lists in the past twenty-four hours, and no ransom demand.’

  ‘Are we talking about Nora now?’ Nina wondered.

  ‘She adopted her maiden name a year ago. Until then she was just Lerberg. Mrs Andersson Lerberg has a personal Visa card, and a Mastercard from her husband’s company. Statements from her personal account show repeat purchases. Every Thursday she goes shopping at ICA Maxi on Per Hallströms väg in Nacka. The Maxi shops are those really big ones. Then there’s ICA Kvantum, which sounds like it ought to be bigger but isn’t. Then there’s ICA Supermarket and ICA Nära as well …’

  ‘Perhaps we could skip the size of ICA’s various stores,’ Johansson said amiably.

  Lamia smiled. ‘Okay. Nora used to top up with eggs and milk and other fresh groceries at the ICA Supermarket on Torggatan in Saltsjöbaden twice a week on average – that’s the smaller sort of store, but not the smallest. She gets petrol from Statoil on Solsidevägen and at weekends she buys fresh bread from Kringelgården bakery up in Igelboda. She uses Classic Dry-cleaning and Tailoring on Laxgatan in Saltsjöbaden – they repair shoes and cut keys as well – apart from a couple of occasions when she went to Royal Tailoring on Östermalmstorg in the centre of Stockholm. A piano-tuner from Vaxholm takes care of her piano each spring and autumn. She goes to Ikea before Christmas, Easter and midsummer, and on her last visit she spent a hundred and ninety-two kronor—’

  ‘No plane tickets?’ Nina asked.

  ‘No travel at all. Apart from petrol. For the car.’

  ‘Nothing to Switzerland on the third of May, then?’

  Commissioner Q walked into the meeting room, accompanied by a blond man so handsome that Nina caught her breath.

  ‘So,’ Q said, ‘this is the group working on the Lerberg case – Arne Johansson, Lamia Regnard and Nina Hoffman.’ He gestured towards each of them as he introduced them. Lamia’s eyes twinkled like stars at the blond man.

  ‘This is Thomas Samuelsson, the government’s special investigator into money-laundering and economic crime.’

  Nina gasped. Dear God! He must be Annika Bengtzon’s husband, or were they actually divorced now? Nina had never met him, but Annika had talked about him. He worked for the government as a researcher – at least, he had four years ago: could there be two with the same name?

  The man walked straight over to Nina and introduced himself. His handshake was warm and strong. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. His eyes looked right into hers: they were pale, almost translucent.

  ‘Bearing in mind our victim out at Kråkträsken, I thought it would be in order for us to get an update on the situation down on the Costa del Sol in Spain,’ Q went on.

  Lamia fluttered her eyelashes when the blond man shook her hand. Even Johansson looked happier.

  But Annika Bengtzon’s husband had had one hand chopped off when he was kidnapped in Somalia, and this man had two. She had just shaken the right, and the left held a coat and an expensive leather briefcase.

  ‘I assume you’re aware of the basics of how money-laundering works,’ Thomas Samuelsson said, sitting down on one of the desks with his briefcase beside him, one foot firmly on the floor, the other dangling in the air. He was wearing an expensive suit with a simple T-shirt underneath, which gave him a casual but sophisticated air.

  Nina saw both Lamia and Johansson nod: yes, they were very familiar with money-laundering.

  ‘The problem for international crime syndicates isn’t manufacturing weapons or drugs, smuggling goods or finding a market for them. It’s cleaning up the dirty money so that it can be used. Building a network, or smurfing, as it’s known in bank jargon, is the big bottleneck in the flow of illegal money. A good smurf is worth his weight in gold to a crime syndicate.’

  He smiled at Nina.

  ‘As far as Spain is concerned, there’s been a noticeable deterioration in the conditions for international crime syndicates in recent years, specifically on the Costa del Sol,’ he went on. ‘The Spanish government has taken a number of steps to put a stop to such transactions. On the thirty-first of October 2012, for instance, new fraud legislation came into force, limiting cash payments between companies to two and a half thousand euros. And early in 2013 they finally permitted greater scrutiny of financial institutions, under a law that has existed since 2010 but which hadn’t previously been implemented.’

  Lamia shifted in her chair, making her skirt slide up her thigh, but apparently Thomas Samuelsson didn’t notice.

  ‘Of course, we have to remember that the financial crisis has hit everyone. Spain’s economic development since the millennium was based upon rapid expansion of the construction sector. That was also where a lot of the laundered money was processed, so when the industry suffered a total collapse, the criminal machinery developed problems.’

  Nina got it. The euro crisis meant Kag had run into trouble – or, rather, the companies he fronted had.

  Johansson leaned forward. ‘What other effects has the crisis had? Has drug use in Spain gone down, for instance?’ He sounded genuinely interested. Nina had never heard him sound so enthusiastic before.

  Samuelsson adjusted the creases in his trousers. ‘It’s still the biggest market in Europe, but it’s a very good question. It is possible to detect a slight reduction and …’

  Q stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the man. Nina had to stop herself craning her neck to look over his shoulder. ‘Nacka have found Kag’s landlord,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought perhaps you might like to drive out there and have a word with him.’

  ‘I’ll go as soon as we’re finished here,’ she said.

  Q cast a glance at the blond man and smiled.

  Anders Schyman had decided to hit back, hard and with force. He devoted six pages of the print edition of the paper to his own defence, with photographs, facsimiles and detailed explanations, countering the accusations on the Light of Truth, or the Lie of Truth as the headline writer so cleverly called it.

  Engage in some sort of debate about responsible publishing?

  Yeah, right!

  This was how bullies, online trolls and conspiracy theorists should be dealt with, full blast: hit them with their own arguments, ram their so-called facts down their throats.

  He had published his contract of employment with Swedish Television (he most certainly wasn’t freelance!), his tax returns for the years when the documentary was broadcast, its original screening and the repeat (he hadn’t earned millions in those years when he was a television reporter on state wages), and his thirty-one-year-old contract for the house. All his other tax returns were available for download as a PDF for anyone who was interested. There was also a picture of their house (luxury villa?), the view from their terrace (not a glimpse of sea as far as the eye could see!), and, just to be sure, pictures of his and his wife’s cars (an ordinary Saab and a Volvo).

  The intercom burst into life. It was from Reception. ‘Anders? Can you take a call from a news agency? It’s about the reports filed with the police.’

  He stared at the intercom. ‘Reports filed with the police?’

  The loudspeaker clicked.

  ‘Anders Schyman?’

  It
was a male voice. He picked up the receiver.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he asked curtly.

  ‘Hello, I’m Anders Burtner, from the TT news agency. I was wondering if you wanted to comment on the accusations filed against you with the police?’

  He stared at his shelves, the reference books he kept going back to, again and again, his lodestars in the murky world of tabloid journalism: a dog-eared copy of Günter Wallraff’s Lowest of the Low from 1985, Jan Guillou and Göran Skytte’s Stories from the New World, and many editions of the Publicists’ Association yearbook.

  ‘What accusations?’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t heard about—’

  ‘No,’ he interrupted.

  Show strength and solidity. The one who stands firmest wins.

  The agency reporter took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been reported to the police for fraud and document forgery because the contract for your house is a fake,’ the reporter said. ‘The tax office will be investigating your tax returns for the past ten years. My source tells me that unfortunately they can’t go back any further than that. Also, you’ve been reported to the National Board for Consumer Complaints …’

  Schyman sank onto his chair and stared at the wall in front of him.

  ‘… the Broadcasting Commission, and the Parliamentary Ombudsman …’

  ‘What a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money,’ he said. ‘This is all bollocks.’

  ‘Bollocks?’

  ‘None of this is going to lead anywhere – anyone can see that.’

  ‘So your comment is that this is bollocks?’

  ‘You bet it fucking is,’ he said, and hung up.