The Golden Calf (26 page)

“Do you remember where it was sent from?”

“Yes. Göteborg.”

Perhaps that meant the murderer was from Göteborg, but Irene couldn’t be sure yet. “Could Thomas get along without his glasses?”

“No. He had bad eyesight.”

“He sends you the glasses he needs to see. Didn’t you think that was strange?”

Marianne’s gaze wavered. It was clear she was debating what to say and how to say it. After a few seconds, she pressed her
lips together until they formed a narrow line. She said with finality, “Antonio said it was a sign. A secret signal. Thomas was trying to tell us he’d changed his appearance. It was not something he could say directly, but we were supposed to figure it out.”

“Of course we would! We’re his parents!” roared a voice.

Both Irene and Marianne jumped. Neither of them had heard Antonio Bonetti come in.

“I—I was trying to explain why we thought—Thomas was still alive,” Marianne said in a tiny voice.

Her husband strode angrily into the living room in his extra-high shoes. He ignored his wife completely and aimed his glare at Irene. If he’d hoped to intimidate her by his stare, it didn’t work. Irene stood up calmly and looked straight back at him. In order to keep eye contact, he had to crane his neck. “How nice that you’ve come,” Irene said. “I have something which I have to tell both of you together. We have received the final autopsy report. I’m afraid that there is a strange and rather unpleasant detail I must tell you.”

T
HE FIRST OF
October dawned beautiful and clear. When the sun appeared over the horizon, the temperature was just above freezing, but it was supposed to rise with the sun’s journey across the sky. If luck held, there would be a few days of Indian summer.
Or is an Indian summer when it falls in October? Which one is Saint Birgitta’s summer and which one is an Indian summer?
Irene decided it wasn’t important. She would just enjoy the day as it came.

She parked her car in the lot next to the police station and got her backpack with the plastic bag holding the brown box of Thomas Bonetti’s eyeglasses and his short letter. Both parents were convinced that Thomas had written the letter, but they’d had trouble finding another sample of handwriting to compare it with. Thomas was not much of a letter writer, according to his parents; he’d mostly sent emails and called on the phone. After a thorough search, they finally found a post card, a birthday greeting to Marianne. The card showed the Statue of Liberty and was dated
NY 1999-03-04
. Thomas had used capital letters on this as well. Irene thought they appeared similar to the writing on the letter that had come with the glasses, but she wasn’t much of an expert. On the back, written in black ink from a ballpoint pen, were the words:

Happy birthday, Mamma!

Hope this card arrives in time for your birthday. Things are just
fine here. Many meetings but business is going in the right direction for us. Hugs, Thomas

Irene had found room for this postcard in the plastic bag, too. There was no room for it in the box, but there was enough for one of Antonio Bonetti’s business cards. Both parents had put their fingerprints on that to help the technicians, who could then eliminate them right away. In her own mind, Irene wondered what the lawyer would say if he knew that his fingerprints had already been lifted, a few days earlier, from another one of his business cards.

Antonio Bonetti’s rage had deflated as soon as Irene had told them about the missing fingers. The parents were deeply shaken. They also had asked why anyone would do such a thing. Irene had had a vague hope that they might know something more about the reasons why, or suggest a theory, but they didn’t. The mystery remained.

Irene swung by the lab and gave the plastic bag with its contents to Svante Malm. She decided to leap up the stairs two at a time as a way to get her blood moving; she was feeling energetic and happy because of the sunny day. As she leaped over the top stair, she almost crashed into Fredrik Stridh, who was striding down the hallway at top speed.

“Whoops!” cried Irene.

“Whoops, yourself. I’m in a hurry. Rothstaahl’s dad just called, absolutely hysterical. They had been defrosting a freezer in the basement in preparation for that girl and her boyfriend to rent the place, in spite of what had happened. They were going to move in today. Yesterday evening, as they checked the freezer, they saw that there was something left behind—a tube of vitamin C tablets—at the very bottom. Rothstaahl’s mother picked it up and thought it was empty, but it rattled, so she opened it. Guess what she found?”

“No idea. Cocaine?”

“Nope. A finger.”

T
HE SUPERINTENDENT HAD
changed the normal time of their morning prayer from eight
A.M
. to eleven
A.M
. Fredrik Stridh had returned from fetching the vitamin C tube and its macabre contents from the Rothstaahl’s summer house. The tube had been forwarded to the pathology lab. Even Professor Stridner had raised an eyebrow when it came in, he reported. That was small comfort for Andersson. He glared grimly at his team.

“Some devil is having fun at our expense,” he growled.

No one contradicted him.

“We can be reasonably certain that this is Thomas Bonetti’s finger. Or one of them,” Birgitta said.

“So where are the other three?” Jonny wanted to know.

“It shouldn’t be impossible to guess. Perhaps Rothstaahl had all four in his possession, but that is doubtful. The other three would have turned up,” Birgitta thought out loud.

“What if it was planted?” asked Jonny.

“That’s a possibility. After shooting Joachim and Philip, the killer could well have gone to the basement and put the tube with the finger into the freezer,” Birgitta agreed.

“According to Rothstaahl’s parents, the tube had been embedded in a thick layer of snow. It looked like Joachim hadn’t defrosted the freezer in years. This explains why they didn’t see the tube when they first started to remove things. They only found the tube once the snow was gone,” Fredrik said.

“It’s not called snow when it’s in a freezer,” Jonny said.

“I don’t care what it’s called,” Andersson said. “Keep going.”

Even Jonny thought it best not to cross their boss in his present state of mind. Jonny folded his arms and muttered something to himself. Andersson looked at Birgitta and commanded, “Go on.”

“If we surmise that Joachim had only one of the fingers, we could assume that three other people had the others. If the finger was a warning, we ought to suspect that Kjell B:son Ceder and Philip Bergman had also received one finger before they were killed. The question is, who got the fourth one, and who is likely to be the next victim?”

The investigators sat quietly and digested this information. Finally, Jonny asked to speak. “It could be that the killer kept the other three fingers for himself. As trophies. Or to keep for the future.”

Obviously, Jonny hadn’t let go of the serial killer theory, but there could be some truth to what he said.

“We have to look for the remaining fingers. We should start with the houses of the other victims,” Tommy suggested.

“If that Rothstaahl guy kept Bonetti’s finger in the freezer, maybe he was Bonetti’s killer. Or at least one of his killers,” Jonny said.

Silence fell again as everyone thought this through. This was a new idea, and it wasn’t all that far-fetched. Irene agreed Jonny had a good point.

“We should keep that in mind,” she said. “It could give us a clearer picture of how Thomas Bonetti was killed. But it would have been hard for one person to carry out this complicated murder. Two or more killers might’ve been needed, one to maneuver the boat and handle the flashlight while the other kept Thomas under control. Two people could have forced him to the stone heap by holding a gun on him, and then he was shot when they got there.”

“What the—?” Andersson exclaimed. “Two killers? So we’re supposed to be looking for two killers now? And who would the other one be?”

“Why not Philip Bergman?” suggested Irene.

“Philip Bergman! Why would he be involved?”

“We don’t know if Rothstaahl had an axe to grind with
Bonetti—it’s possible. Yet we don’t even know if they knew each other. On the other hand, we do know that there was animosity between Bonetti and Philip Bergman when ph.com was going under.”

“And the motive?” asked Andersson. He didn’t look as grim and was listening carefully to Irene.

“Money. Of course it has to be money. We know that Thomas Bonetti got out of Poundfix by the skin of his teeth but with a lot of money. We also know that he was being blamed for swindling between five and twenty-five million kroner from ph.com. Joachim and Philip would certainly believe that this was their money, too. Perhaps they wanted revenge.”

Andersson brightened even more. He liked Irene’s reasoning.

“Two suspected killers, but neither is alive to be questioned,” Fredrik complained.

“And there’s this—who killed
those
two?” asked Tommy.

“Not to mention Kjell B:son Ceder. Fewer than twenty-four hours later he was dead, too,” added Birgitta.

“T
HERE’S A GAP
in the timeline,” Tommy said.

He was leaning back in his desk chair and tapping a pen on his front teeth. Irene felt that the personal tension between them had lessened, but she would be careful not to mention his upcoming divorce. She was not about to reopen a recently healed wound. If he wanted to talk about it, he’d have to speak first.
The difference between a wise person and a foolish person is that the wise one does not repeat his mistakes
, as Mamma Gerd used to say.

“Where’s the gap?” asked Irene.

“You said that Thomas picked up some belongings at his parents’ house at about five thirty. Then he went to Jaegerdorffsplatsen to buy whiskey. However, he didn’t turn up at
the boat until eight
P.M
. Two hours. What was he doing? Was he meeting someone?”

“He was going to the state liquor store. Maybe there was a long line,” said Irene. She was irritated at herself for not noticing the time gap.

“They close at six. It only takes fifteen to twenty minutes to go from Jaegerdorffsplatsen to the small boat harbor. What was he doing before then?”

“No idea,” Irene admitted.

Tommy sighed and stuck his pen back into the clay pencil holder his daughter had made at her daycare center. It had been painted bright yellow and decorated with red hearts. In the middle, Tommy’s daughter had written
Pappa
in large, sprawling letters.

“Let’s get something to eat before we go out looking for those fingers,” Tommy said. “It’s probably the best thing to do, so we don’t lose our appetite later on. Do you think that Bonetti’s parents have a finger?”

“Why would they?”

“Perhaps the killer was trying to blackmail them? If you don’t pay
x
amount of money, we’ll send his head next time. Something like that.”

“No. His mother would have told me. She couldn’t have kept quiet about such a thing. You have no idea what it cost her to show me the box where Bonetti’s glasses were. That lawyer husband of hers really keeps her on a tight leash. Though he softened up when I told him about the missing fingers. He was truly shaken up about it.”

“So you don’t think that the Bonettis received one?”

“No.”

“So who, then?”

Just as Irene was about to say she had no idea, she realized who might have had one. Or two.

•   •   •

E
LSY
K
AEGLER SLOWLY
opened the door to the Askim house. Irene had pushed Tommy in front of her on a hunch, and she was right. Sanna’s mother beamed when she saw Tommy.

“How nice to … I mean … please come in. Sanna is not … I mean, she’ll be here a little later. Ludde has just gone to sleep,” Elsy said, sounding as scatter-brained as usual.

Irene wondered how Elsy Kaegler could be Sanna Kaegler’s mother. Sanna was so cold and calculating. And didn’t she hold down a job? Or maybe she was retired? Elsy didn’t appear to be older than sixty, but maybe she was.

“I’ve just made a pot of coffee,” Elsy said. “I don’t have any buns or cookies, though. Is that all right?”

“It’s fine,” the two detectives said in unison.

“On a day like this, it would be wonderful to sit in the outdoor room, but it feels so … horrid. It’s where poor Kjell.… Let’s sit in the living room instead,” Elsy said with a shudder.

“That’s fine. I’ll help you bring out the coffee,” said Tommy.

Tommy and Irene followed Elsy into the kitchen. Elsy found some special tall glasses meant for coffee.

“It’s going to be café latte,” explained Elsy.

She warmed milk in the microwave; then the milk and coffee from the percolator were blended in just the right amounts and poured into the tall glasses. Elsy, chatting with Tommy the entire time, set the glasses on a tray that Tommy picked up. They headed to the living room while Irene hung back.

“I’m just going to get a drink of water and find a tissue to blow my nose. I know my way to the living room,” Irene explained.

“OK,” Tommy said, almost without interruption in his conversation with Elsy, who seemed oblivious of anything Irene said or did.

Irene quickly crossed the tile floor to the freezer and opened its steel door to peer inside—with butterflies in her stomach.

It was empty.

There was nothing in the freezer, not even a thin layer of frost on the shelves or at the back. On the top shelf was an ice cube tray, and just to be sure, Irene looked into it, but there weren’t even ice cubes there. Disappointed, she closed the door, got a glass of water, and headed back to the others in the living room.

Tommy hadn’t wasted any time. As Irene sat down in one of the pale armchairs, she heard him say, “Perhaps we can just get the key from you so that we don’t have to bother Sanna at all. We’ll be back with it before she even gets home.”

He gave Elsy a trusting smile.

“Well, maybe … she’s so stressed and unhappy, my poor child. All of this … it’s been too much for her. First Kjell, then Philip … it can’t hurt to let you have the keys. You’re police officers, after all.”