Menace In Malmö Read online

  Moberg roused himself from his seat like a whale emerging from the ocean. ‘Get Hakim to go through our records, or those of the commune building inspectors, and see if there’ve been any reported cases of complaints about shoddy work in the last few months. Might throw up a lead as to who the other two were in the van. From the description of the bald hard man, he obviously wasn’t one of them, as they both had full heads of hair. We need to speak to someone who’s come across this lot. And I want you to go back and see this Joneberg fella and get him to spill the beans on Egon.’ He saw the doubt in her eyes. She had described him as intimidating. ‘Take Brodd with you. If Joneberg’s being uncooperative, drop into the conversation that he might be an accessory to murder. That should concentrate his mind.’

  Moberg shrugged on his jacket. It could have made a useful-sized tent. ‘Give yourself a pat on the back, Klara. Now, I’m going to enjoy a well-deserved lunch.’

  Anita was relieved that there wasn’t a large early-evening crowd in the Pickwick. The British-style pub had become a favourite haunt in the last couple of years. It reminded her of Kevin, imagining him in similar surroundings over in Cumbria. Besides, she liked most things British. She ordered a pint of Bombardier for herself and a glass of white wine for Bea Erlandsson. The girl behind the bar gave her a friendly nod of recognition. Anita didn’t regard herself as one of the regulars as she didn’t patronize the place enough for that, but it was a comforting spot to come to escape work and domestic problems. Faces were becoming familiar, and she no longer felt awkward if she came in on her own. Lasse even thought it was cool his mamma had a “local”.

  She returned to the table by the window, under the hanging model of a spitfire and close to the fireplace. No one was near enough to overhear them. ‘Here’s to Malta!’ said Anita, raising her glass. ‘I may never come back after I’ve murdered Alice Zetterberg. But it’ll be worth going to prison for.’

  Erlandsson appeared slightly horrified, not knowing how serious or jokey Anita was being.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make it look like an accident. I’ve got a lovely granddaughter to come back to. Not even Zetterberg’s going to get in the way of that.’

  Erlandsson took a sip of her wine. She was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. Should she really be telling someone else about the case when she knew her boss would go berserk if she ever found out? Anita read her mind.

  ‘Look, Bea, I know this isn’t correct procedure as such, but I’ve been asked by Commissioner Dahlbeck to go with Zetterberg to Malta to interview Linus Svärd. Zetterberg is deliberately keeping me out of the picture, yet I’m a serving detective who should at least be apprised of the facts even if I can’t act on them. After all, it was she who asked for my input at the beginning of your investigation.’

  Erlandsson put her glass down decisively. ‘You’re right. You should know.’ And she proceeded to fill Anita in on what they had discovered about Lars-Gunnar and his drug connection, Carina’s argument with Göran before the killing, and the general attitude of the group towards the murder victim. She told Anita about the conflicting versions of the Larissa/Ivar break-up, and the “something” that Ivar was so excited about during their month on Malta.

  ‘So, Lars-Gunnar and Carina have motives,’ Anita mused.

  ‘And less-than-solid alibis,’ added Erlandsson.

  ‘None of this emerged in the original investigation,’ Anita said bitterly. ‘Were we that shoddy?’

  ‘I think time has played its part. Back then, they all stuck together; told the same story. It was difficult for your team to break that down. The cracks have only shown up now.’

  Anita knew Erlandsson was trying to be kind. ‘All the same, were we thorough enough?’ She stared at her virtually untouched pint. ‘Who do you think was the killer?’

  Erlandsson didn’t answer straight away, as though weighing up exactly what she was going to say. ‘Despite the new findings, there’s nothing to suggest that Linus Svärd didn’t do it. All of the others think he committed the murder – except Carina.’

  ‘And now she’s provided him with a refuge.’ She raised her glass again. ‘Maybe it will all become clear on Malta.’ And then she took a deep, unladylike swig of beer.

  CHAPTER 23

  Anita felt better when the seat belt signs flashed off and the aircraft was now cruising and the cabin crew was stirring. She was never quite sure whether the plane would actually get into the air after the mad dash down the runway. Another relief was that because of the last minute booking, she didn’t have a seat next to Zetterberg. They had met up at security and had silently gone through the bag check. To Anita’s amusement, Zetterberg had been body-searched. Afterwards, they headed in different directions – Zetterberg to get some food at one of the overpriced Kastrup food kiosks; Anita, who wasn’t much of a breakfast person, to find a seat in the corridor leading to their gate, where she took out her book. As she eased herself into a slightly more comfortable position, she could see the back of Zetterberg’s head a few rows up. It was bent, presumably poring over her phone, which she seemed permanently attached to. What on earth did she look at that kept her attention for hours? Surely no one could possibly want to communicate with her – or the other way round? But if it kept her out of Anita’s hair, all well and good. The hotel might not be so easy. Yet she had to admit that she was getting increasingly excited at the prospect of facing Linus Svärd, even as an unwanted observer. This would be the chance to catch him at last. Had Zetterberg got the ability to do it – or the motivation? She wasn’t a terrible detective. Anita could tell the difference between a bad person and a bad cop. Westermark had taught her that much.

  As she thumbed through the in-flight magazine, she also thought about the Egon Fuentes case. She had hoped to sidestep that one. Now that wasn’t happening, she was going to have to give it her all. She’d spoken to Hakim on the phone after she’d got back from the pub. After Wallen’s initial visit to the building supplier, he had managed to dig up a complaint that had come in from a householder in Genarp. He was going to check it out in the morning. Wallen and Brodd’s second trip to the building supply yard had been successful. The threat of a full police and forensic search of the premises looking for evidence regarding a murder had worked. Good for Wallen, thought Anita. She wouldn’t have done that in the Westermark days. Bo Joneberg had suddenly backtracked and admitted that he had dealt regularly with Egon Fuentes over the previous months. It was always cash in hand and didn’t go through the books. He had no idea who the others involved were, though one constant was a bald-headed Brit with a scar, who organized the collection of the materials. Even the hulking Joneberg sounded wary of him. He was usually accompanied by a couple of young men who didn’t speak. It wasn’t always the same young men. Hakim reported that the chief inspector was getting increasingly animated, as a picture was beginning to emerge of what the gang might have been up to. But why was the young man in the van murdered? That was still a mystery.

  Anita had asked how Liv was. Hakim had given an evasive answer. She gathered that Liv hadn’t mentioned their conversation of earlier in the day. It turned out that Hakim hadn’t seen much of her, as she had been called out with her patrol partner to the multi-storey car park in Mobilia. The car that had been reported missing from the scene of the farmer’s murder by the Kristianstad police had turned up in Malmö. She’d organized its transport to forensics, who would go over it for fingerprints. Anita hoped that Liv and Hakim would sit down and talk through any potential parental problems. Liv was good for Hakim, and she hated the thought that Uday might drive her away.

  ‘Would you like any refreshments, madam?’ Anita gazed at the full trolley and the perma-tanned flight attendants. This wasn’t the flight she had imagined she would be taking this week. And this wasn’t going to be any sort of holiday, but she still bought herself a plastic bottle of red wine, even though it was only ten o’clock in the morning.

  Herr and fru Gradin lived in a verdant part of
Genarp, a mainly residential area in the south of the Lund Municipality. Their single-storey, yellow-brick house was one of many ordered homes in a quiet neighbourhood. The house and garden were neat in all aspects except for the cracks in the paved driveway. There, there were gaps where the pebble-grey block paving was meant to join. It was as though a mosaic had been attempted by a drunken Roman artisan. A number of the two-hundred-millimetre by one-hundred-millimetre blocks were split. Though the front garden was flat, there were clear bumps and undulations in the level of the drive. It was a mess and, as a still angry herr Gradin described to Hakim what had happened, fru Gradin slowly wept into a clutched handkerchief. As the story unfolded, Hakim, too, became angry that this elderly couple should have been ripped off so badly.

  Two months before, Egon Fuentes (herr Gradin recognized straight away the conman in the photo that Hakim showed him) had knocked on their door. He was charming, polite and persuasive. He could see that the drive needed sprucing up and assured them that his firm would do an excellent job at a very “favourable price”. He said they were a British-backed company called Pave the Way, which had a huge reputation in the UK and were now bringing their skills and expertise to Scandinavia. Fuentes had used an iPad to show them examples of work carried out by the firm and a number of enthusiastic endorsements from satisfied customers throughout Skåne. Hakim assumed these had been dummied up for the presentation. After choosing the materials for their drive from those displayed on the iPad, Fuentes costed up the job. Though slightly steeper than expected, the Gradins agreed, as they thought it would look good (Fuentes had used the expression “increased curb appeal”) and would enhance the value of the property. They shook hands on it, and Fuentes promised to return in a couple of days to collect the money up front as, he explained, they could get the best quality paving of the type that they’d requested at an advantageous price if he moved quickly. He’d described it as a “small window of opportunity”, but they would eventually get the best possible job for less than from local paving companies. He’d even done a price comparison on his iPad, which had particularly impressed herr Gradin. Hakim assumed that had been fabricated, too.

  Fuentes did return, and they paid him. He said he was very pleased with himself as he’d managed to get hold of even more expensive, even better quality blocks for the original quoted price, and he was sure they would be delighted with the end result. Work would commence a week later and take two days to complete. It did.

  ‘You can see the result,’ Gradin said bitterly. It was too much for his wife, who retreated into the shelter of the house.

  ‘Didn’t you complain?’

  The laugh was bitter too. ‘I tried to. But the man in charge was very aggressive. And I didn’t understand him clearly. He spoke English with a very strong accent. My English is not good. So, after they left and I rang Fuentes – he’d given me his mobile number and said I was to ring him any time – he apologized if there had been any problems and he would call by in the next couple of days. Of course, he never turned up. And when I tried to ring him again, the number was unobtainable. And now we’re left with this...’ He waved a hand disconsolately at his patchwork driveway.

  ‘The man in charge. What did he look like?’

  ‘Nasty. He was bald. Totally. Chilling, dark eyes.’

  ‘Did he have a scar on his cheek?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did. I have to admit I was a bit frightened of him. So were the two lads who were doing the work. Young fellows. They worked hard, but I don’t think they really knew what they were doing. Well, obviously not.’

  ‘And the young men?’

  ‘They were OK. Didn’t speak. Well, one did. In English. It was when their boss was away for an hour. Usually, he just sat in the van listening to the radio playing loudly. But, as I say, he disappeared for a bit, and my wife offered to make the young lads a sandwich. She thought they needed feeding up. Didn’t look in great shape. He was polite. But just as they were about to eat, the boss returned, and they went straight back to work without eating their food. That’s what I mean by frightened. He was angry because he suspected they had been talking to us. It was all so unpleasant. I don’t know how we got into all this trouble.’ Hakim knew exactly. The chief inspector had been spot on about Egon Fuentes’ persuasive skills.

  ‘Could you describe the young men?’

  ‘The polite one had really curly black hair; you know a bit like those perms footballers used to have in the eighties. He was medium height, I suppose. The other was light brown. Hair that is, not his colour. And a bit taller.’ It wasn’t much to go on. ‘Funny thing was that it was nice and hot the first day they arrived. But they didn’t take their shirts off despite the heat. They were sweating away. My wife noticed that when one of them was shovelling away and his T-shirt rode up, there was a big bruise on his lower back. Thought he must have been in a fight. I didn’t see it, but she mentioned it. She’s observant like that.’

  Anita was hit by the wall of heat the moment she stepped out of the plane and onto the top of the airstairs. With the possible exception of Moberg, this is what Swedes spend their winters dreaming about. She was thankful that she had abandoned her default fashion setting of jeans and T-shirt and was wearing a thin, brown cotton skirt and white sleeveless top – smart enough for meeting the local police yet practical enough to cope with the high temperatures that she knew Malta would throw at her. She was glad her legs were just passably brown enough. She’d also tied her hair back. It was still shoulder length – Kevin liked it that way, so she’d decided to keep it. She was joined by Zetterberg on the bus to the terminal. Not that Alice paid her much attention, as she continued to be fixated by her phone.

  An hour later, they were being taxied to the centre of Valletta. Zetterberg made sure that Anita sat alongside the chatty driver, who turned out to be English. His sailor father had married a Maltese girl when the islands were part of the Empire and an important naval base for the British Mediterranean fleet. He had returned to the land of his mother to escape British winters. After a fifteen-minute drive, they were whisked through the ornamental arched gate, Porta des Bombes, and along the wide boulevard of Triq Sant’ Anna with its elegant facades and palm trees running down the central reservation. The taxi turned off to the left and a few side streets later, they were dropped off at the Malta police headquarters in Floriana, the district bordering Valletta. The neoclassical, stone building, with its balustraded parapet and its high antenna tower, had formerly been the Central Hospital until the 1950s. Zetterberg let Anita handle the administrative process needed to make sure their visit matched the appropriate international protocols. Anita assured the helpful Maltese police official that they merely wanted to speak to a Swedish national currently residing on the island. If they felt that further action needed to be taken, they would, of course, consult with the Maltese police first.

  Another short taxi ride (they could have walked as it turned out) brought them to their hotel, which overlooked the Grand Harbour. This is when Zetterberg lost her cool when she discovered that she and Anita had both been booked into the same twin room. She demanded another room, but was told politely that at the height of the season, they were lucky to get the one they had at such short notice. Anita wasn’t exactly thrilled either. Though Anita was dying for a coffee, Zetterberg only allowed time for them to park their bags, and off they set to try and find Linus Svärd.

  Linus’s apartment was only a few minutes’ walk from the hotel, near the top end of Triq San Pawl. The narrow street had terraced villas on either side and dipped steeply to a central point before rising gracefully towards a distant speck of Mediterranean ultramarine. The houses were an attractive shambles of well-to-do dwellings and crumbling edifices in a state of complete dereliction. Valletta had originally been built in the mid-16th century on a rectilinear system, and the baroque style of its buildings reminded Anita of a holiday in Venice she had had with Björn when they were both still wrapt in love's young dream. The jumble of o
riel windows, supported by elaborately carved corbels, sometimes protruding up to a height of five storeys, lent wings to the imagination as to the centuries of secrets they concealed. However, no secrets were concealed in Linus’s apartment, as he wasn’t there. Having raised a sleepy-sounding neighbour from an afternoon siesta, Anita established that Linus was down on the waterfront taking passengers from cruise ships on foot tours of the old city.

  ‘Do you want to come back later?’ Anita asked Zetterberg after the neighbour had grumpily turned off the intercom. Her stomach was starting to gurgle and she wanted to find somewhere to grab a bite to eat.

  ‘No. We’re here to talk to Linus Svärd, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’

  Hakim reached Moberg’s office to report back just as Brodd was leaving. Brodd decided to hang around to see what he had to say. Hakim filled them in on his conversation with the Gradins.

  ‘That’s Egon, all right,’ Moberg confirmed with a shake of the head. ‘Smarmy shit. So, one of the workers was a young man with curly black hair. He could well be our murder victim.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Now we know exactly how they operated. Talk to our media people. Tell them we want something put out that we’re looking for people who have been scammed by this lot. Gradin reckoned they were British-backed? Pity Anita’s not here to contact the UK and find out if the police over there know anything about this mob. What’s your English like?’