Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery (15 page)

Johan Steen was watching him, blue
eyes maliciously bright, and Nick yanked his thoughts back to safer
ground before the chief of police could guess exactly where he’d
gone. “We’re not involved.”

“Of course not,” Steen said. “That
would be against regulations, wouldn’t it?”

Yes, it would. Which was why Nick
would probably never get the chance to see if this particular
librarian did it quietly.

“I’m here to keep an eye on her.
That’s all.”

Steen nodded. “Well, before you
can do that, I’m afraid I’ll have to have a chat with her
myself.”

“I’d like to sit in, please.”

Steen shook his head. “I’m afraid
not, son.”

Nick opened his mouth to
argue, and the chief barreled right over him. “Now you listen to
me, Mr. Costa. You may be from the FBI, and you may have your joint
investigation with the
Rikspolis
in Stockholm, with Detective
Berggren and everyone else including God vouching for you, but I
have a murder right here, and at the moment, I don’t know if it has
anything to do with your joint investigation or not. Until I do,
I’ll be working my case without your help. If it turns out that the
murder of Gustav Sundin is related to what you’re doing, you’ll be
the first person I call. But until then, you’ll stay out of my
business.”

The temptation to reach across the
desk and punch Steen in the nose was easy to resist. The temptation
to reach across the desk and twist his regulation tie until his
face was purple while telling him exactly what he could do with his
damned condescending attitude and insistence on playing turf wars
instead of cooperating with another agency was harder to fight.
Nick clenched his fists and concentrated on breathing slowly in and
out through his nose while Steen smirked at him. The chief probably
knew exactly what was going through Nick’s head.

It took a few seconds longer than
it should have before his voice was steady enough to attempt
speaking again. “Did you know Gustav Sundin, Chief Steen?”

If Johan Steen and Calle Magnusson
had been friends, and Gustav Sundin and Calle Magnusson had been
friends, chances were that Sundin and Steen had also known each
other.

“Of course,” Steen said. “This is
Visby, Mr. Costa.”

“Do you think it’s appropriate for
you to be investigating the death of someone you knew
personally?”

Steen straightened, fixing Nick
with a penetrating stare. “Mr. Costa.” His voice was layered with
heavy patience. “I realize things are different where you are from.
But this is a small town. I’m more than sixty years old. I’ve lived
in Visby my whole life. I know most everyone here. If I had to
excuse myself every time someone I knew was the victim, or for that
matter was guilty, of a crime, I might as well move to the
mainland.”

He had a point. Nick didn’t like
it, but he admitted it, if grudgingly. And silently.

“Gustav Sundin worked for us,”
Chief Steen added. “He retired last year, but for a long time
before that, he was our janitor.”

Really?

“
When someone murders one of
my people, I take it personally.” The chief’s voice hardened. “And
I’ll be damned if I let anyone else—even the
Rikspolis
or the American
FBI—tell me how to run my investigation. So you, Mr. Costa,” he
fixed Nick with a stare and a pointed finger, “will play this my
way. I don’t care who you think you are, but you’re in Visby now,
and this is my town, and you will let me conduct my investigation
the way I see fit. And if you can’t do that, you will kindly get
the hell off my island!”

There was a beat of silence after
the chief of police stopped speaking. Steen concentrated on
catching his breath. Nick found himself almost speechless, and the
words that did come to his mind were ones he couldn’t in good
conscience—and with an attitude of international
cooperation—utter.

Eventually he did the only thing
he could do. Got to his feet. “I’ll leave you to it. If there’s
anything I can do to help, please let me know.”

Chief Steen nodded. The angry
shade that had taken over his face while he spoke had faded, and he
looked normal again. Like a friendly, grandfatherly type.

“If you discover that the murder
has something to do with Carl Magnusson and the missing
silver...”

“
You’ll be the first to
know,” Steen said. “After I call the
Rikspolis
.”

Right.

“I’ll see myself out.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just
headed for the door before he fell into temptation and did
something he’d regret. Because whether he liked it or not, Johan
Steen was right. Visby was his jurisdiction and he was in charge.
And Nick’s ability to solve his case—any of his cases—was directly
related to the relationship he managed to maintain with local law
enforcement in the places he went. He needed Chief Steen’s
cooperation. He needed the information Steen could provide him, and
the access the chief could give him to the details of the murder.
Because whether Steen liked it or not, Nick had no doubt the murder
of Gustav Sundin would prove to be connected to the Magnusson case.
It was just a matter of time before the chief had to admit it.

Boy, did he look mad!

Annika watched Nick head down the
hallway from where she sat in a little room waiting her turn to
talk to the police chief. She was halfway out of her chair,
thinking to stop him, when she thought better of it. He looked
furious, with patches of color on his cheekbones and his jaw
clenched so tight she could see the tendons in his throat standing
out. When he got to the door at the end of the hallway, he pushed
it open with enough force that it slammed against the wall opposite
and then bounced back. It was only because he was going so fast
that he avoided getting hit on the backswing.

Annika moved from the chair to
stand by the window to the outside. After a few seconds she saw him
appear. He stalked into the middle of the parking lot, fists
clenched and head down. As she watched, he gave a small pebble in
his path a vicious kick and sent it flying. When he turned toward
the police station again, she swore she could feel the strength of
his glare like a laser beam. Amazing how the place didn’t just
crash into rubble.

Obviously his own interview with
the chief of police hadn’t gone well. That didn’t bode well for
hers, did it?

But how could they possibly
suspect Nick of having had anything to do with that poor old man?
She didn’t know much about death and dead bodies, but she did know
that they turned cold after a while. And Gustav had been cold. If
Nick had only gotten to Gotland on the ferry an hour or so before
she saw him, he couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the
murder.

Could he?

She wasn’t so lucky. She could
prove where she was from she arrived in Visby until she ended up at
Lena’s, but after that, she’d been on her own. Alone, in bed. She
might have left again. She might have walked the couple of miles to
Gustav’s cottage in the dark and killed him and then walked back to
Lena’s and been back in bed asleep before dawn. She couldn’t prove
she hadn’t.

Outside in the parking lot, Nick
gave the building one last glare before turning away. He stuffed
his hands in his pockets and walked out of the parking lot. The
bright sun shone on his bent head, making his black hair shine like
a raven’s wing. Annika watched him go, feeling a little like she
was losing her only friend.

But before she could dwell on the
fact that he wasn’t even going to wait for her, the door behind her
opened, and she swung on her heel, all thoughts of Nick momentarily
forgotten.

Officer Jansson had gone back to
Gustav’s house after dropping her off. This was another officer,
and Annika wasn’t sure what his name was. He was tall and blond and
good-looking, too, although not as good-looking as Nick, and a bit
too young for her. That didn’t stop her from appreciating the
admiring glance he shot at her legs before addressing her face.
“Chief Steen will see you now.”

He moved aside to let her exit the
room ahead of him. Annika did her best to keep her head high as she
stepped into the hallway, but the closer they got to the big office
at the back of the police station, the lower her stomach
dropped.

Her escort rapped on the door and
stuck his head through. “Here’s Annika Holst, Chief Steen.”

He gave her a sympathetic glance
and a gentle push. Annika swallowed and stepped through the door.
The soft click as it closed behind her sounded like the tolling of
a bell.

Chief of Police Johan Steen was a
big man with a ruddy complexion and cropped hair that had probably
been blond back in the day, but which had turned to silver now in
his sixties. He was wearing the same blue uniform as the younger
officers, and he was seated behind his desk making notes on a pad.
He let her stand there awhile before he looked up. A quick glance,
a gesture with the pen—“Have a seat,”—and then he went back to
writing. Annika squared her shoulders and stepped forward to sink
onto the uncomfortable visitors chair, imagining she might feel a
bit of Nick’s warmth lingering in the leather. It was probably her
imagination, but it helped to make her feel better.

Chief Steen kept writing. Annika
assumed she was supposed to sit and get progressively more worried,
but instead it had the opposite effect. Eventually she got annoyed
with the tactic, and the annoyance made her feel a spurt of temper.
As a result, by the time Steen placed his pen precisely beside the
stack of reports he’d just finished annotating, and looked up, she
was able to meet his gaze without flinching. Not even when he kept
staring at her without speaking for long seconds.

Annika gritted her teeth and kept
mum. He was the one who wanted to speak to her; he could make the
first move.

Eventually he did.
“
Fröken
Holst.”

It was impossible to determine
from his voice what the tone of the interview was likely to be. It
was just a deep rumble, uninflected. And Swedish.

“Yes.”

He switched over to heavily
accented English. “You don’t speak Swedish?”

Annika shook her head.

“But your father was Swedish.”

“He didn’t make sure I learned.”
In deference to the chief of police’s obvious lack of familiarity
with the English language, she made her answer short and
simple.

Chief Steen looked at her for a
moment. He seemed annoyed. Perhaps he wasn’t confident of his
ability to interview her in a language other than his own. Annika
bit her lip to stop herself from apologizing.

“Tell me what happened this morning.”

“I already told Officer Jansson—”

“Tell
me
,” Chief Steen said.

Annika flinched and launched into her story
once more. After she had gone through everything, he watched her in
silence for another few seconds, his gaze penetrating. “Your father
was Calle Magnusson.”

Annika’s heart leapt. “Did you know
him?”

It was horrible that Gustav was dead, and
she knew she should feel bad about it, but to be honest, part of
her had mourned most of all the fact that now he wouldn’t be able
to tell her about her father. But here was someone who might. Chief
Steen looked like he might be the right age to have grown up with
her father and Gustav.

“We were acquainted,” Steen said. “I didn’t
know what had become of him. He just disappeared one night.”

Surely it hadn’t been as abrupt as that?

“He went to Denmark,” Annika said. “He
married my mother and took her last name. For as long as I knew
him, I thought his name was Carl Holst.”

“Interesting,” Chief Steen said politely,
but with an inflection that made Annika wonder whether he didn’t
think she was a little lacking in wits. “Then what?”

“They emigrated to the United States. My
mother was a professor. She still is. She was offered a position at
the Pratt Institute. She still works there, although she and my
father separated when I was ten.”

“Were you their only child?”

“I have two siblings,” Annika said. “A
sister and a brother. Astrid is thirty one. She’s a clothing
designer. Andy—Anders—is twenty nine and lives in Costa Rica. He
has a surfing business there.”

“And you?” Steen asked.

“I’m a librarian.” A boring, unworldly,
nose-in-a-book, four-eyed librarian, who had never been able to
compete with Astrid’s talent and beauty or Andy’s charm.

Steen didn’t comment. “The others didn’t
want to come with you to Gotland?”

“I guess they were busy,” Annika said,
although she knew that wasn’t it. Neither of them had had a good
relationship with their father. And now that he was dead, neither
of them cared to pretend. She wasn’t sure she did. “I’m only here
for a few days. He wanted his ashes taken back here, so I brought
them.”

Chief Steen nodded.

“I was going to put them somewhere—dig a
hole so he could go back to the earth he came from—but then I lost
the ashes at the airport.” She shrugged. “I don’t suppose you know
where he grew up?”

“Martebo,” Steen said. “But there’s nothing
there.”

“Nothing...?”

He seemed to reconsider for a moment, maybe
rethinking something he’d planned to tell her, or maybe just trying
to get around the language barrier. “It’s a small place. A village.
Just a few people. And no family left. He was the last.”

“Oh.” Annika bit her lip. She hadn’t really
expected that she would find relatives here, but in the back of her
head, there might have been a little hope of it. “I guess the house
where he grew up belongs to someone else now?”