Third Voice (32 page)

Wasn’t that enough?

‘How can I help you with that policeman?’ she finally said.

Stilton looked up from the table and caught her gaze. He saw the change. He saw that he’d broken through. He saw that she was looking at him as Arne’s daughter and he felt his stomach tighten. He was close to extending his hand to her, but he didn’t. It was too early. Too fragile. He’d do that when she laughed.

When that time came.

So he told her what he was looking for. Prostitutes working for Jackie Berglund ten to twelve years ago. He told her about his meeting with Ovette. He didn’t say that it was Mette who’d advised him to contact Olivia. He didn’t need to.

She probably suspected that herself.

‘I can’t recall any names off hand,’ she said. ‘But I have a few folders where I collected everything I found. I can go through them later. Do you want some coffee?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘What did you do in Marseille?’ Olivia asked while getting up to make the coffee. And Stilton started telling her. For some reason, he wanted to tell her. Everything. About Abbas and Samira. About the murder and the dismemberment. About everything that had happened down there. The only thing he didn’t mention was what Jean-Baptiste had told him. About Abbas being in hospital. He didn’t want Olivia to worry about that, he knew that she was very attached to Abbas.

‘So when’s he coming home, then?’

‘He’s on his way. He’s travelling by train. He’s so bloody scared of flying.’

There came the first smile from Olivia. Not a laugh, they weren’t quite there yet, but a smile. She knew how afraid Abbas was of flying.

‘So what are you up to now?’ Stilton asked.

He’d felt that that smile had paved the way for that question. He wouldn’t have dared to ask it a little while ago. If
he’d known the answer he was going to get, he might even have waited a while longer.

‘I’m going behind Mette’s back,’ Olivia said.

She put the coffee down on the table and poured it. Stilton waited. He drank almost three cups before Olivia had finished talking. She also felt that she wanted to talk. About everything. Even about Sandra.

When she stopped talking, Stilton looked at her. She’d changed. So had he. But he’d had six years to do so, she’d only had one. Nevertheless he recognised something of himself in her: she wanted to choose her own path and no one was to stand in her way.

Least of all Mette Olsäter.

‘So how are you going to find out if it’s Sahlmann’s laptop out there at Borell’s place?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Wouldn’t it be wise to contact Mette after all? She has very different resources available to her.’

‘What’s she going to do? She can hardly order a search warrant based on my suspicions? Not when it’s someone like Borell.’

‘No.’

Stilton knew that she was right. But he didn’t like what he saw in her eyes, they foreshadowed dangerous things. That Olivia might act single-handedly, in a way that definitely wasn’t advisable.

‘Please can I help?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I need to think about how I’m going to do this. But I’m not going to involve Mette.’

‘Because?’

Stilton understood that there was a conflict. He realised quite how serious it was once Olivia had described it. How hurt she still was. Now it’s Mette’s turn to be in the firing line, he thought, just when he’d escaped. He got up. Olivia accompanied him to the door. Before he left they looked at each other.

‘Olivia Rivera,’ he said.

‘Tom Stilton.’

She pushed the door closed and leant against the wall. There were many questions going through her mind. How did this happen? All of a sudden she’d been sitting with Tom Stilton telling him things that she hadn’t told anyone else. Him, of all people? How had that happened? So quickly?

She stood in the hallway for a while.

Gabriella Forsman and Clas Hall had been arrested at a deserted campsite just outside Flen, and they’d been taken straight to the National Crime Squad headquarters. The local police had seized a stash of the 5-IT from their car. Mette presumed that it came from the Customs and Excise haul.

Bosse Thyrén had questioned Hall. He would have preferred to take Forsman, but Lisa Hedqvist had been pretty adamant about that.

‘I’ll take her.’

‘Why?’

Lisa felt it went without saying.

So Bosse questioned Hall. It went quite quickly. Hall knew the routine – he denied everything and demanded to speak to a lawyer.

Forsman was not quite so experienced. This was the first time she’d been arrested, and she behaved accordingly. She spent the first ten minutes in the interrogation room crying. Floods of tears. Lisa just let her cry. Once she’d calmed down a bit, Lisa started asking her questions. First about the missing stash of drugs. Forsman didn’t know anything about it. Absolutely nothing! When Lisa showed her the email conversation between Forsman and Sahlmann, a couple of emails at a time, taken from Forsman’s own computer, the flamboyant woman broke down again. It took another ten minutes for her to regain composure. Lisa just sat there and watched with a blank look on her face. Thank God she’d managed to prevent Bosse from leading this interview. She wasn’t quite sure how he would have handled it.

Gabriella Forsman was pulling out all the stops.

‘So you were the one who stole the drugs from your workplace?’ said Lisa.

Forsman nodded. Her long, red hair was hanging down over her face. She flicked it aside with a small movement – it was a damn shame that she wasn’t being questioned by that young
man she’d met last time. He would no doubt have understood her much better. Particularly the part she was about to explain.

‘I was tricked,’ she said.

‘By whom?’

‘Clas Hall.’

Forsman was going to give it her best shot – it might work.

‘He took advantage of my feelings,’ she said.

‘In what way?’

Forsman explained how she’d fallen in love with Hall. How he’d seduced her and manipulated her and got her to do what he wanted.

‘He was just like that pastor involved in the Knutby murders! That’s just what he was like!’

‘He tricked you into stealing drugs?’

‘Yes! He said he was going to end it and throw me out if I didn’t help him. He needed money. He said that it was completely without risk. All I needed to do was take a few drugs from work and give them to him and we’d get money to go to the Caribbean.’

‘And you fell for that?’

‘What was I supposed to do? I was a victim of my own emotions!’

Victim, my arse, Lisa thought. But she was still satisfied with how things were going. Forsman had confessed that she was the one who’d stolen the drugs. The motive was irrelevant.

To Lisa at least.

The next step was the Bengt Sahlmann murder. Forsman denied any involvement in that. She’d never stepped foot inside his house.

‘Never?’

‘No.’

‘But weren’t you two having a relationship?’

‘Me and him?’

Forsman looked as though she’d been accused of having an STD until Lisa showed her the email that said: ‘My body is yours.’

‘Do you always write that sort of thing to your colleagues?’

At this point Gabriella Forsman felt that she’d had enough. The tears hadn’t worked very well and she wasn’t sure about the Knutby pastor thing. So she opted for the Clas Hall approach.

‘I want a lawyer.’

‘We’ll fix that. We’ll also be taking some swabs.’

‘What? Why?’

‘To see whether your DNA matches the DNA in the skin cells we found under Bengt Sahlmann’s nails.’

Forsman’s big eyes clearly revealed her feelings about Lisa Hedqvist.

It was that bell inside her head that got her to make a decision, the one that hadn’t been ringing loudly enough. Suddenly it did, as she sat on the toilet: the car! There was a dark car parked by Borell’s gate, close to where she’d parked her Mustang. A BMW. Sandra had seen a dark-blue BMW by the house when her father was murdered. Was the car by the gate dark blue? She had a feeling that it was.

That was it.

She made a decision that had probably been formulated in her subconscious long before that. Out of pure frustration, when she felt that she wasn’t getting any further with her main conviction: that the cork bag at Borell’s belonged to Bengt Sahlmann. And more than anything, when she thought about what had happened to Sandra. She could still see her bloody forearms in front of her. She wanted to do everything she could to take down the person who’d driven Sandra to cut herself. Her father’s murderer. She felt she owed her that much.

The car was just the trigger.

Her decision was easy: she was going to get into Jean Borell’s house. She was going to photograph the laptop in the cork bag, there, in his office. If she had the chance she’d look inside
the bag and open up the computer to check whether it really was Sahlmann’s. Then she’d contact Mette and give her enough material to order a search warrant.

She called Sandra and hoped that she’d answer. Charlotte had been in touch that morning and said that Sandra was due to come home tomorrow, so she was probably still at the hospital.

Sandra didn’t answer, but she sent a text message shortly afterwards: ‘Sitting talking to some people at the hospital, can’t speak now.’ Olivia texted her back. All she needed was the password for the computer. A couple of seconds later she got it.

She went out into the hallway.

He loved that car, German quality through and through. This was the fourth BMW he’d owned. He turned into Folkungagatan and almost ran over a drunk man wearing a football shirt on the crossing by Östgötagatan. In his rear view mirror he saw the guy stumble and fall down in the road. He turned the music down on his CD player, he would shortly be arriving at Skånegatan. He was actually on his way to a meeting with the management team in Vaxholm, but he thought he’d pay Olivia Rivera Rönning a visit before. He pulled on his soft, black calf-leather gloves and hoped that she was alone. Jean had been very clear about this: the young woman had wheedled her way into his private home under false pretences and she’d witnessed an incident at Silvergården that simply could not come out. There was too much at stake for that.

It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen, Thorhed thought. It’s my task to clean up around Jean. I’ve been doing that for a couple of years now, successfully, and it’s been well worth it. The money was good. The only thing worrying me is Jean’s weakness. Sooner or later he’ll run into problems with that.

Thorhed turned into Skånegatan and noted that there wasn’t a parking space near the front door he was headed for, so he had to squeeze in between two old bangers on Bondegatan. He got out and started walking towards the building.

Olivia was still there. She had what she needed and she knew what she had to do. She walked out through the door and decided to take the stairs. Halfway down she passed the lift on its way up. She carried on down and went out through the main door. But just a couple of metres down the street she realised that she hadn’t brought any extra batteries for the torch. There was no way she could risk it not working! She walked back towards the front door and was just about to open it when she realised that she didn’t have any spare batteries in her flat anyway. I’ll buy some on the way, she thought, and started walking along Östgötagatan. Just as she turned the corner, Thorhed came out of her building. He pulled off his calfskin gloves.

Olivia went straight to the Värmdö municipal building and requested the floorplans for Borell’s house. They were public documents. When she went through them she saw that he’d blasted space for a boathouse in the rock directly under the spaceship-like house. There was a stairway leading up to the ground floor from the boathouse.

So far it was easy.

The first issue was whether he had an alarm in the boathouse. She thought she’d seen CCTV when she came to the entrance last time. But did he have that all the way round the house? He’d told her that all the artwork had been burglar-proofed. Each individual object had a separate alarm and nothing could be taken from the house. And he also had his vacuum room. But an alarm in the boathouse?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Probably.

The second issue was how she was supposed to know whether he was in the house.  That issue was resolved more easily than she’d dared to hope. She called the Albion office and asked to speak to Magnus Thorhed. She was planning to try to find out where Borell was. But there was no need. The woman on the phone explained that Magnus Thorhed was at the Vaxholms
Hotel with the management team and was not expected back at the office until tomorrow afternoon.

‘So he’s staying overnight?’

‘Probably.’

‘Is Jean Borell there too?’

‘Yes, can I take a message?’

She could not.

So Borell was at some conference or another out in Vaxholm. She had no guarantees that he’d stay there overnight, but it seemed plausible that he’d be there all evening.

The third issue was a boat. The easiest way to get into the boathouse was by boat. She didn’t have a boat and she couldn’t think of a realistic way of getting hold of one now. Not at this time of year. Let alone steering it into Borell’s house on Ingarö in the dark.

She abandoned that idea.

There were other ways of getting into the house.

She turned off the main road at Brunn and started driving along the narrow forest lane. She was firmly gripping the wheel as she sped along. She was going to do what she’d set out to do and nothing was going to stop her.

There was some light snowfall, but she had no problem seeing the road. And, moreover, she’d fixed her headlights.

She’d decided to park the car a long way away from the gate, down a little logging track. She’d spotted a couple of those when she’d driven along that way last time. She found one not too far away from Borell’s house, drove some way down it and parked her car.

She got out of the car with the torch in her hand. She’d put on dark clothes and a pair of leather boots. And thin gloves, not mittens. She locked the car and started walking. She navigated the first stretch through the forest using her inner compass, she knew roughly in what direction the house was. She made her way past vast pine trees and scraggy dead branches, as quietly as possible.

Even though she was assuming that there wasn’t anyone in the house.

There wasn’t.

Well, it was completely dark anyway. Inside. She could see that when she came up onto the rock just at the edge of the plot. All she could see was the lantern-lined path.

And she wouldn’t be going that way.

She thought about the CCTV by the porch.

She made her way through some more thick forest before she saw it. The wall that ran around the property from the pillar. A high stone wall. Probably edged with some barbed wire and splinters of glass if she had the measure of Borell. She followed the wall down to the water: sooner or later it had to end.

It did, just at the edge of the water, with an additional iron extension far out into the water. Olivia shone her torch along it. If she was going to get past it she was going to have to wade out quite a way into the water and then pull herself around to the other side. She didn’t know how deep it was out there. She shone the torch down into the water. Were there any stones she could stand on? She could see something dark under the surface, just where the iron extension ended. She hoped it was a stone. Carefully she stepped out into the freezing cold water and felt how quickly the water reached her knees. But she still had quite a way to go. She grabbed the iron trellis, stretched her leg out and tried to feel the dark object under the surface with her boot. She put her foot down onto it, held on with one hand and pulled herself further out. It was a stone, but it was covered in algae and terribly slippery. Her foot almost slipped off and she had to grab the black trellis with both hands. The movement twisted her body around and caused her to fall over to the other side. Straight into the water. She got up, quick as a flash, and floundered her way back to dry land. She flopped down at the edge of the beach and tried to catch her breath. She’d done it! She’d got around the edge. Then she thought about the torch. The torch?! She must have dropped it when
she slipped. It had ended up way out in the water at the far end of the iron trellis.

It was gone.

Stilton sat in his cabin staring at the stuffed bird. He thought about Olivia. He couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when she’d talked about Sandra Sahlmann. And Borell. And the laptop that she thought was in his house. He couldn’t forget the strain in her voice, the expression on her face. The dangerous clarity as she explained that she did not plan on involving Mette in this. She was going to deal with this herself.

How the hell was she going to do that?

He’d called her twice, but there was no reply. He’d called Mette as well, a long shot.

‘Has Olivia been in touch with you?’

‘No. Have you talked to her?’

‘Yes. It went well. We can talk about that later. Bye.’

A while ago he’d passed by her flat. No sign of Olivia. No Mustang parked on the street. It didn’t mean anything, really. She could have been anywhere. At the cinema. But she wasn’t, he didn’t think. And he didn’t just want to take a chance.

‘Luna?’

Stilton went into the lounge.

‘Yes?’

Luna was sitting at the oval table with hundreds of stamps spread out in front of her. She was holding a magnifying glass in one hand. Stilton looked at the table.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. I got my dad’s collection, some of them are worth quite a bit but the rest is just crap.’

‘I have an album with ones like that out on Rödlöga. I think they were my grandmother’s.’