by Karin Nordin
Kjeld turned back to the first page. ‘Five years ago.’
‘Around the time that Peter Lindqvist went on his sabbatical.’
‘Let me get this straight. Five years ago someone performed a geological survey on my father’s property specifically looking to prove that the estimates in the geographical survey from 1979 were correct. That it did contain mineable amounts of ore in the ground. And then Norrmalm Industries starts mining on the property without purchasing the land?’
Esme nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘And Peter Lindqvist?’
‘That’s the part that doesn’t make sense,’ Esme said. ‘If Peter was looking to break the contract with your father in order to mine on his land, then his death should have prevented any mining at all. If Peter was trying to stop someone else from illegally mining on your dad’s property, say his brother for example, then that might explain why he was buried in the barn.’
‘Because it would implicate my father in his death,’ Kjeld said. ‘And allow that person to continue mining.’
‘It fits your father’s version of the events.’
‘Except that none of this proves anything except that Norrmalm is illegally mining on land that doesn’t belong to them.’
‘Which is why we need to see the redacted pages from the contract. That could explain the killer’s motivation. It could lead us right to them.’
Kjeld pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the medication to work faster on alleviating the dull throb at the forefront of his head. There was something he wasn’t seeing. Some important piece of information was missing from the puzzle and he had the nagging feeling that it was more than just land rights. What had the contract said? In exchange for agreeing not to purchase or mine on his father’s land, his father promised not to share information about the Lindqvists. But what information could be so dangerous that it would lead to murder?
‘Can you have a survey done on someone else’s land?’ Kjeld asked.
‘I suppose so,’ Esme said. ‘If you pay for it.’
‘Then whoever requested the geological survey of my father’s property could be responsible for the death of Peter Lindqvist.’
‘If the land is the reason for his death then, yes, it would be a plausible conclusion.’
Kjeld flipped through the pages of the metallurgical report. ‘Then we just need to find a signature of the person who had this survey conducted.’
‘Kjeld,’ Esme said, her tone sombre. She held out a page. It was a copy of the invoice signed by the local planning commissioner and the individual who purchased the report.
At the bottom someone had scrawled S. Nygaard.
Stenar Nygaard.
Chapter 50
The news of Peter Lindqvist’s death had officially been released to the Norrmalm staff. As a result, the executive board decided to suspend business hours until the following week, closing the company just after the lunch hour.
Esme and Kjeld waited until the last vehicle left the car park before pulling into a space near the side of the building. It wasn’t dark yet, but the sky was murky and drab. The inability to intuitively determine the hour messed with Esme’s biological clock and she knew now why she preferred the south. Time flowed more naturally down there. The clouds hung low overhead here and although it wasn’t snowing, Esme felt like it would sooner rather than later. She couldn’t wait to get back home.
‘You stay here and I’ll search the office,’ Kjeld said. It had been his decision to go to Norrmalm Industries first in order to search for the document. He’d called a woman in town – Hanna – who apparently worked as Roland Lindqvist’s personal secretary and was all too happy to assist after she, and most of the administrative staff, had received their walking papers that morning. As his secretary, she had access to the master key for the executive floor and promised him that she would leave Norberg’s office unlocked before she left for the day.
Esme sensed that Kjeld felt ashamed about asking for Hanna’s help, but she didn’t bring it up. Even though the conversation occurred over the phone, Esme could tell there was something between them and, quite frankly, she didn’t want to know.
‘The hell you’re going in there,’ Esme said. ‘You can barely even walk straight and your face is whiter than that snowdrift out there. You’ll pass out before you even get halfway across the car park.’
‘Esme, I am not letting you go in there by yourself.’
‘Why? Afraid a night custodian might come at me with a broom?’ She undid her seatbelt. ‘You’re the dumbass who got himself a head injury. You can play lookout. If you see someone coming, call me.’
‘But—’
‘The last thing I want to do is drag your deadweight back to the hospital if you fall unconscious again. Yesterday was enough for me.’ She climbed out of the car. ‘And keep the heat on. It’s freezing as balls out here.’
She slammed the door and headed out across the lot.
The service door on the far side of the building was unlocked for the after-hours janitorial staff, just as Hanna had said, and Esme easily made her way through the back entrance and up the stairs to the top floor without being seen.
But when Esme turned the knob on Norberg’s door it didn’t budge. She tried again. Locked. Esme glanced down the empty hallway and cursed beneath her breath. Kjeld should have asked Hanna to leave the key. That would have covered all their bases. Somewhere in the background she could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner. She had to think fast.
She removed her wallet from her back pocket and took out an IKEA Family card. She wedged the card into the space between the door and the frame until she could feel the pushback from the locking mechanism. Then she carefully bent the card away from the door handle until it slid between the lock and the frame. The door pushed open with little resistance. Esme stepped inside quickly and shut the door behind her.
Easy as a pancake, as her mother would say.
Norberg’s office was plain and outdated, as though he hadn’t used it on a regular basis in over a decade. Presumably this was because he spent the majority of his time in Stockholm where he managed most of his clients. There were a few photographs on the wall and a framed certificate declaring him a graduate of law, probably a photocopy of the original, but other than that there were no signs of a personality. Not that he had given Esme the impression of being a man with much of a personality. He seemed like the kind of man who made it through life by determination and a formidable list of influential clients, not by his ability to make idle conversation or impress a group with a well-timed joke. Then again, she’d only seen him briefly at the hospital. Perhaps she was judging him too harshly.
Esme walked around Norberg’s desk and looked through the drawers. No documents. On the far wall stood a medium-sized, four-drawer filing cabinet that looked like it had been there since the early Eighties. The top three drawers were unlocked. Esme didn’t know exactly where he expected to find a copy of the contract that was in Kjeld’s possession before it was stolen, so she tabbed through every file, periodically checking over her shoulder every time she heard the approaching sound of one of the cleaners.
By the time she reached the third drawer, the vacuum cleaner was right outside the door. It was nothing to worry about. The offices were supposed to be locked. No one would try to come inside. Still her pulse quickened. She picked up the pace and skimmed through the folders faster.
Bottom drawer. Locked.
Esme grumbled. She tugged harder on the drawer handle. The entire cabinet rattled in response. She ran her finger over the small key lock. Had she seen a key in the desk? She couldn’t remember. She scrambled over to the desk and searched through it. Pens, pencils, notepads, a bottle of Rémy Martin cognac that was more than half empty.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was probably Kjeld telling her to hurry up. She ignored it. All she needed was a few more minutes.
The soft tapping of shoes on carpet.
&nb
sp; She looked up at the door, expecting it to open. The shoes moved on. She breathed a sigh of relief. Then she found a sharp silver letter opener pushed back behind the stationery.
That might do the trick.
She crouched down in front of the filing cabinet and jabbed the letter opener into the key slot, wiggling it around to try and get it to turn. There was resistance at first, but when she angled the point she felt the lock begin to give. All that money on fancy windows and the offices were filled with cheap do-it-yourself cabinetry and bargain locks. If she hadn’t been so concerned that someone might walk in on her committing what probably looked like some form of corporate espionage, she might have found some irony in that.
Another hard jiggle and something on the inside of the drawer snapped. Success! She dropped the letter opener on the floor and pulled on the drawer handle in one harsh tug. It slid out crooked on its hinges.
Esme licked her index finger and began paging through the files, her focus so intent that she failed to hear the man behind her until he spoke.
‘Looking for something?’
Esme felt her stomach drop. Then she turned her gaze upward to meet Erik Norberg. Erik closed the door behind him and while it couldn’t be locked from the inside, Esme had the feeling of being cornered. Her eyes darted to the letter opener, but she didn’t reach for it. Instead she slowly drew herself to a stand and searched the lawyer’s expression for any sign of a reaction, but all she was met with was a grave stare. A stare that was made all the more unnerving by those swollen protruding eyeballs that seemed to peer directly through her.
Chapter 51
‘Please have a seat, Fru—?’
Esme stepped around the desk and sat on the edge of one of the two client chairs in Erik Norberg’s office. She didn’t know what to expect, but she kept her eyes on him. He seemed calm. Almost too calm. As though he were tired from multiple nights in a row of restless sleep.
‘Jansson,’ she said. ‘Esme Jansson.’
‘You’re a friend of Kjeld Nygaard’s, isn’t that correct?’ Erik leaned against his desk, arms crossed over his chest. Somehow it made him look even smaller than he already was.
‘We’re colleagues.’ Esme removed her identification badge from her pocket.
‘I assumed as much,’ Erik said, waving a dismissive hand at her. ‘Now tell me why your partner has you rummaging through my filing cabinet. Don’t tell me he was too afraid to do it himself. Or did he think that I might be kinder to a soft face if you got caught?’
Esme placed her hands in her lap, anxiously twisting the silver ring she wore on her thumb.
‘Well he’s shit at picking locks, for one.’
Erik stifled a chuckle. He only looked half amused. ‘Where is he?’
‘In the car park.’
‘And what does he have you searching for while he sits in the car park?’
Esme narrowed her gaze and scrutinised the lawyer. She found she was having difficulty reading his expression. His body language was off-kilter from his words. She had expected a different reaction. Anger. A raised voice. A call to the downstairs security room. But Erik did none of those things. If anything he was the exact opposite. He was relaxed and soft-spoken, seemingly unruffled by the fact that not two minutes earlier she was breaking into his locked cabinet with a letter opener.
A letter opener that still lay on the floor.
She glanced over at it and Erik followed her gaze. Then he bent down and picked up the letter opener, shoving it in the top drawer of his desk.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Detective Jansson. And I’m not going to call security. What would be the point? I’m sure the police will side with you and your partner. I’m just perturbed by the fact that neither of you considered asking me for whatever it is you want to see. Or whatever it is you want to know.’ He sighed. Then he slumped down in the chair behind the desk. It was too big for him and the resulting image reminded Esme of a child sitting in the giant chair in front of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. He leaned over the desk. ‘So I suggest we both save ourselves the trouble of play-acting this charade where we wait for one or the other to break. What were you looking for?’
‘A contract.’ Esme tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
‘What contract?’
‘A contract from 1979 concerning an agreement not to build on a specific property adjacent to the borders of Norrmalm’s mining plot.’
Erik raised his brows, giving his already bulging eyeballs the impression of being much larger. Then his left eye began to weep and he took out a handkerchief to dab at it. ‘And the parties involved in this contract?’
‘Peter Lindqvist and Stenar Nygaard.’
Erik held his breath.
‘With yourself as witness.’
‘Yes, I remember.’ Brusque.
Esme sensed that Erik was weighing two heavy options. She assumed that those options were telling her about the contract or denying that it even existed. She wasn’t correct in her assumptions, but neither was she entirely wrong.
‘He found the other contract then. Kjeld, am I right?’
Esme gave a suspicious nod. ‘Not all of it. Pages were missing.’
Erik folded the handkerchief into a neat square and slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit coat. ‘And I presume he’s looking to recover the rest of the contract because of the construction on his father’s property?’
‘So the Lindqvists have been knowingly digging on Stenar’s land?’
‘It wasn’t something I was aware of until after it had already begun. The contract you’re looking for is of course legal and binding, but it wasn’t made entirely available to all members of the board.’
‘Are you saying that Roland and David weren’t aware of this agreement between Peter and the Nygaards?’
‘I’m saying that they were aware of the agreement Peter made not to involve the Nygaards or their property in Norrmalm business. They weren’t aware of the reciprocating arrangement on the part of Stenar.’
‘What arrangement is that?’
Erik pulled open the lower drawer of his desk and reached up underneath the bottom of the upper drawer. Esme heard the ripping sound of breaking tape just before Erik placed an old discoloured file on the desk.
‘I always had the feeling this would one day come back to haunt us. All of us. Peter, Stenar, myself. You know, Varsund hasn’t changed much since its construction, but it was still a different time back then. It was easier to keep a secret. Easier to lie. I believe it was made with the best of intentions, but I always felt a bit ashamed. People deserve to know who they are, after all, without having to suffer the sins of their parents.’ Erik ran his hand over the front of the file. The edges were worn and the areas where the tape had held it up over the years were torn. He pushed it across the desk.
Esme accepted the folder with trepidation. She could tell that Erik was being purposefully cautious with his words, as though he might inadvertently implicate himself further in something unseemly. But she also sensed that he was telling her the truth. That he was relieved it would be out in the open. Out of his hands. And while she was surprised that he was giving her the document so freely, she suspected that its contents would reveal why he didn’t feel the need to be more protective of it. He looked like a man who’d reached the end of a long road and was glad to be done with it.
Still, she was nervous. Afraid that whatever was inside that document would make matters worse for Kjeld and his father. But there was only one way to know for certain.
She opened the folder and took out the contract. It was exactly the same as the one Kjeld had found in the safety deposit box at the bank except that it contained the missing pages. Missing pages that outlined the exact nature of the agreement between Stenar and Peter. Esme read through it quickly, her eyes widening as she reached the previously unseen pages. It didn’t hit her right away what it was she was reading, but when it did she looked up at Erik, shocked and confused.
‘But I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with Norrmalm or the mining on the Nygaard property.’
Erik pursed his lips and for a brief moment it looked as though the tension in his eyes had loosened, making his gaze slack downwards in unspoken bereavement. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. It has everything to with Norrmalm. And everything to do with the Nygaards.’
Chapter 52
‘Is this it?’ Kjeld asked as he slid the pages out of the envelope.
Esme nodded. ‘It’s a copy of the original, but he said he’d stay around in his office a bit longer if you have any questions. Or if you just wanted to talk.’
‘Is there something to talk about?’
‘It’s a lot to take in.’ Esme adjusted the heat in the car, but the vents continued to blow out cold air. She hit the centre of the dash with the palm of her hand. The vents made a wheezing groan and slowly started to warm up. ‘You should probably prepare yourself.’
‘You read it?’ Kjeld asked, searching her expression for a hint as to what he might find written in that document. But Esme was being uncharacteristically stoic. That was more unsettling to him than the fact that Erik Norberg was waiting in case he wanted to talk. Why did that sound more like an offer of therapy than legal advice?
Esme nodded and Kjeld could see in her face that whatever was in those redacted pages explaining the agreement between his father and Peter Lindqvist was more than what they had presumed. Her lips tightened into a line so thin that her mouth almost entirely disappeared. She looked like she was holding her breath.
So much for that hint.
Kjeld opened up the file and read through the document from start to finish without looking up. With every turn of the page he found his body instinctively tensing. His limbs clenched until the muscles strained to their maximum. Back rigid. Brows drew together into a tight constriction of the face. By the time he reached the final page he was leaning so far forward in the passenger seat that he looked like he might hit his head against the glove compartment.