Third Voice (37 page)

‘Back door?!’

She did. Without an understanding of what this was about, other than that it was a matter of urgency, she ran through the flat towards the kitchen door that led down to the garden. Mickey disappeared just as her doorbell rang. Jackie wondered whether she should open the door. Special operations police? They’d probably kick the door in if she didn’t. She stood in the hallway for a minute or so to give Mickey a chance to escape.

Then she opened.

‘Jackie Berglund?’ Lisa asked, holding up her police ID. Bosse and a couple of police officers were standing just behind her.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m from the National Crime Squad. We’re looking for Mickey Leigh.’

‘Who’s that?’

Lisa held up a picture of Mickey Leigh.

‘He’s wanted by Interpol. A short while ago he walked into this building with you. Is he in the flat?’

‘No.’

‘We’d like to take a look, please.’

Jackie stepped aside. She didn’t let on what she was thinking. Wanted by Interpol? Had he been hiding? Was that why he turned up here unannounced? What a fucking arsehole!

Lisa moved aside to let the police officers proceed into the flat. She and Bosse remained in the hallway with Jackie.

‘Is he staying with you?’ Bosse asked.

‘The man on the picture you showed me, the guy – I don’t know… What’s his name?’

‘Mickey Leigh.’

‘He’s just visiting Stockholm, we’re slightly acquainted, I had no idea that he was wanted.’

‘But he’s been staying here?’

‘No.’

A police officer came back out to the hallway to tell them about the back door and that the man they were looking for had probably escaped out through it. A couple of officers had headed off to look for him.

‘Whose is that?’

Lisa pointed at a brown suitcase in the hallway. There was a little leather name tag attached to it.

‘That’s his,’ Jackie said.

‘We’ll be taking care of that then. You can accompany us to the station.’

‘Why?’

Lisa didn’t reply.

Stilton sat in his cabin, trying to sort things out. He had not engaged his brain for several years and now it was being bombarded non-stop since Abbas had come to the barge wanting to go to Marseille. He tried to make sense of what had happened since then. There were positive developments, such as his relationship with Olivia. He was extremely happy about that. And there had been Claudette, another positive development. The barge and Luna? He peered at the stuffed bird. Yeah, that was good too.

Then there were things that were rather less good.

Borell’s attempt to murder Olivia and the meeting with Forss in the interrogation room, for example. Although the look of fear that flashed across Forss’s eyes when he mentioned his old sex contacts was certainly on the plus side.

Abbas’s assault was not.

And Mickey Leigh’s arrival in Stockholm certainly wasn’t good.

Although, on the other hand, it might help to pin something on Jackie Berglund. In that case it would certainly be on the plus side.

What was most negative, for his own part, was the news he’d just received from Olivia. She’d gone through her old material on Berglund and she couldn’t find any prostitute whom Forss may have had contact with.

His only hope of nailing Rune Forss.

But he’d forgotten about Mink.

That little snitch.

He called right in the middle of Stilton’s mental summary.

‘I think you should talk to Ovette again,’ he said.

‘Why?’

When Mink told him about Forss harassing Ovette the night before. Stilton felt his blood pumping. This was both good and bad. Bad because he felt sorry for Ovette and what Forss had done to her. And indirectly also Acke. Good because it might give him another chance.

With Ovette.

Maybe.

Just when he was about to end the call, Mink said: ‘You know, in the old days, people paid good money for this sort of work. Do you remember?’

‘Yes. What do you want?’

‘A donkey.’

Mink ended the call. Stilton looked at his mobile. A donkey? He knew that Mink was no stranger to indulging in the dark side of sexual desire. Maybe he was horny? Or perhaps it was some new code word he didn’t know? He hadn’t been on the streets for a while.

Jackie was questioned by Lisa and Bosse about her relationship with Mickey Leigh. He’d obviously been in her flat, his suitcase was there. But as she didn’t actually know that he was wanted, she had no trouble parrying most of their questions. She’d met him in good faith. She hadn’t overheard any of his telephone conversations. She didn’t even know whether he had a mobile.

She lied.

Although she didn’t actually know where he’d gone, or whether he knew other people in Stockholm.

‘No idea.’

But she called him as soon as she was released from police headquarters. Furious. And she made it quite clear that he was never to come anywhere near her again.

‘Do you have any idea what you’ve dragged me into, you fucking idiot?’

Mickey Leigh knew.

‘Just one question,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll leave you in peace. That guy standing down on the street outside your place, how do I get hold of him?’

‘Go to hell!’

Jackie ended the call.

That was the end of all that amazing sex.

Olivia drove Abbas back to Dalagatan. She hoped that he was going to invite her up for tea, but he just gave her a kiss on the cheek and got out.

He seemed pretty exhausted.

On her way back she started thinking about Magnus Thorhed.

The man who’d been creeping around the house when she visited Borell the first time, and then sat smoking in the bar without turning around when she left.

The man who turned up at the murder scene, just like that, in the middle of the night.

She felt instinctively repulsed at the thought of him. There was something evasive and calculating that she couldn’t put her finger on. She called Stilton.

‘You know that car we drove past in the woods, on the way back from Borell’s place, did you see what make it was?’

‘A BMW.’

‘Dark blue?’

‘Maybe, I don’t know. It was travelling so bloody fast.

Why?’

Olivia ended the call. A BMW? The car parked next to Borell’s gate when she was there the first time, was it Thorhed’s and not Borell’s? What if he was the one at the Sahlmanns’ house the night of the murder?

She called Alex as soon as she reached the next red light. There were a few things she wanted to ask him, but he was in the middle of a heated news meeting and whispered: ‘Come over to mine tonight.’

‘Can’t we meet at Kristallen?’

‘We’ll just get drunk if we go there.’

He had a point.

So Olivia listened to herself arranging a time to meet at Alex’s. In his flat. A place that, just ten seconds ago, she’d never thought she’d return to.

The brown suitcase had been put in Mette’s office, on her orders. She felt personally responsible for everything to do with Mickey Leigh right now. She’d heard Abbas’s story.

Bosse and Lisa took care of Jackie Berglund. Mette took care of the suitcase.

She put on a pair of rubber gloves and opened the suitcase.

What she saw in there was lightyears away from what she expected. Clothes at the bottom and two computers on the top. One computer was a silvery-grey colour, the other one was in a bag made from pressed cork.

She sat down at her desk. A cork bag? That sent her head spinning. She just waited, unable to make sense of her thoughts.

Eventually she picked up the cork bag and lifted out a MacBook Pro. When she opened it up, she saw the little pink heart. Sandra’s sticker.

It was Bengt Sahlmann’s laptop that had first been stolen from Sahlmann and then Borell. Now it was lying in a suitcase belonging to this wanted English porn actor.

Mickey Leigh.

Mette’s analytical ability was pretty legendary at the National Crime Squad. It had seen her advance to become one of Sweden’s best murder detectives. Now it was off course – all she could muster were elementary questions.

Had Mickey Leigh murdered Jean Borell? Had he murdered Bengt Sahlmann too? But he’d been in Marseille then? Or hadn’t he? What would his motive have been anyway?

And then her analytical ability got a hold over her thoughts.

If Mickey Leigh had murdered Sahlmann and stolen the laptop, it wouldn’t have been lying in Borell’s office that long
afterwards. Which it clearly was when Olivia was there. It would have been in the suitcase by then.

Then Bosse and Lisa stepped into the office.

‘Was that in the suitcase?’ Bosse asked, pointing at the laptop in front of Mette.

‘Yes.’

Then Lisa spotted the laptop bag lying next to it.

‘Is that Sahlmann’s?!’

‘Yes.’

Mette immediately sensed where this was going.

‘So was it Mickey Leigh who stole it from Sahlmann?!’

‘Did he murder Sahlmann?!’ Lisa asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Mette replied. ‘He was probably in Marseille then.’

‘So where the hell did he got hold of the laptop, then?’ Bosse said.

Mette looked at her two talented, young murder investigators. She had complete faith in them. And she knew that it was one hundred per cent reciprocated.

They’d get there after chipping away at it for a couple of minutes.

‘I think that Mickey Leigh stole the bag from Jean Borell,’ she said.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘It was in Borell’s office just before he was murdered.’

‘And how the hell do you know that?’ Bosse said.

And now Mette had to tell them.

‘Because Olivia saw it there.’

Just how much of the faith they had in her dissipated at that moment was hard to tell, but Mette knew that it was quite a considerable amount.

When she’d finished telling them about Olivia breaking into Borell’s house, the attempted murder, and how she’d intentionally kept this information from her colleagues there was quite a long silence.

‘Poor Olivia.’

It was Bosse who said it. It probably reflected what Lisa felt too. Both of them knew Olivia. Both of them also knew how close she and Mette were.

Both of them got it.

And returned to work mode.

‘So you think that this Mickey Leigh was in the house when Borell was murdered, is that what you’re saying?’ Lisa said.

‘The theft of the computers certainly points to that.’

‘And do you think he murdered him as well?’

‘Well, it’s not unlikely.’

Lisa sat down on the edge of the table and shook her head a little.

‘Why would an English porn actor based in Marseille come up here to murder Jean Borell?’

‘Maybe he’s a hitman?’ Bosse said.

‘Maybe.’

‘On whose orders would he have shot Borell then?’

‘No idea. We’ll have the computer guys go through the laptops, maybe they’ll find some clues.’

Mette took out her mobile.

Olivia had decided to lie low, take it easy. She’d been rather prickly towards Alex last time she was here and she hadn’t been answering his calls since then. This time she needed him for something very different. And she actually liked him too. It wasn’t his fault they’d ended up in bed. It was hers. Well, not a ‘fault’ as such – the sex had been good even though she was so drunk.

She wasn’t now.

She even declined his offer of a martini. It didn’t resonate particularly well with her.

‘But a Coke would be great.’

‘Sure.’

Alex got a Coke from the fridge and made himself a martini. He claimed that he needed it. Things had been pretty manic at the office, there was some climate summit in Doha that had presented some rather alarming information about the effects of global warming.

Olivia just listened with one ear. But she did listen, smiling occasionally. When he’d finished he lit a couple of tealights. They sat at the kitchen table in the large hangar-like space. She could smell a gentle waft of aftershave. Olivia noticed a packet of cigarillos at the other end of the table.

‘Don’t you use nicotine gum?’

‘Yes, but I cheat every now and again. You had some questions for me?’

‘Yes, thanks for the other night, by the way.’

Alex didn’t really know how to interpret that. What was she thanking him for? The whole visit? Or was she trying to smooth over her terrible mood the next morning?

‘Well, thank
you
.’

Then he waited. He knew she wanted something and that it wasn’t what she’d come for last time. She was just as fired up as she was when she came up to the office the first time. He could see it in her eyes. What was she after?

‘Magnus Thorhed,’ Olivia said.

‘What about him?’

‘Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘But you know
of
him?’

‘He’s Jean’s personal arse-licker.’

‘Have you met him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he there at the dinner when Bengt had his outburst?’

‘Yes.’

What was she getting at?

‘Do you know whether he was personally acquainted with Bengt?’ Olivia said.

‘Yes, I think so. Through Jean. Now it’s my turn.’

‘For what?’

‘To ask questions. One. Why are you interested in Thorhed?’

‘He smells of nutmeg.’

‘Olivia.’

‘He has a blue BMW. Sandra saw one at the house the night that Bengt was murdered.’

‘Interesting.’

‘I think so too. Any more questions?’

‘Yes.’

Alex reached for the little packet on the table and lit a cigarillo. He tried not to blow the smoke at Olivia. Then he asked: ‘Do you know how the investigations are progressing?’

‘Into the murders?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why would I know that?’

‘I get the feeling that you have plenty of conveniently placed sources, am I right?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘Has any connection been made between the murders?’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re interested in Thorhed, who’s a link between Jean and Bengt. Who’ve both been murdered.’