Anita slept incredibly well and didn’t wake until after nine. By the time she’d crawled into bed, she had been awake for thirty-six hours. She’d been so exhausted that she hadn’t even woken up in the middle of the night to worry about asking Kevin to investigate Tyrone Cassidy. When requesting the favour, she hadn’t really appreciated the possible danger he might face, but he was a big boy and could look after himself. However, now that she was brewing her first coffee of the morning, she was starting to have doubts. Maybe she’d put him under unfair pressure. She went back into her bedroom to phone him and tell him not to go. Too late: on her phone she found an SMS saying that he was on the London-bound train and would reach Euston Station just after eleven.
Anita returned to the kitchen and noticed a scribbled note sitting on the top of the microwave. It was from Björn. He must have put it there on Monday morning.
Sorry to have missed you last night. Are you avoiding me? Thanks for the bed for the weekend. Great catching up with Lasse and Jazmin; and isn’t Leyla a star? I think she’s going to be as stubborn as you.
Hope you get away on holiday sometime, even if it is with your Brit boyfriend.
See you sometime.
Hugs and kisses,
Björn
PS By the way, my Lund contact confirmed that Ivar Hagblom didn’t use Björnstahl in his PhD. Any use?
Anita held the note in her hand as the percolator hissed and bubbled ferociously behind her back. Typical of Björn in the middle of his thanks to have a dig at her private life at the same time. But that PS: Any use? She didn’t know. She couldn’t see the significance of it other than that it was strange that Ivar hadn’t used the Björnstahl letter after all. It would have been quite a coup within his academic circle. Was he the type to pass up such an opportunity? Not the Ivar that Linus Svärd had described. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it after the murder; his triumph over Göran no longer of any importance. Still...
The drizzle streaked Bea Erlandsson’s windscreen. The weather had turned, though there was still no hint of an early autumn chill. She’d seen the forecast before she left home, and heavier rain was due this afternoon. The weather matched her mood. Zetterberg and Szabo were off to Stockholm, and she had drawn what she considered to be the short straw – Lars-Gunnar. After Larissa Bjerstedt’s revelations, Erlandsson was convinced that their murderer was either Carina Lindvall (though she hoped it wasn’t) or Ivar Hagblom. Lars-Gunnar was a sideshow. Nothing that Larissa had said had changed the evidence concerning him. Yet now she was sitting in her car watching the windscreen steam up, and having second thoughts.
Erlandsson had turned up at the post office depot in Ystad at half past nine only to be told that Lars-Gunnar had failed to turn up for work the second day running. He hadn’t phoned in sick, which the supervisor said was unusual; he was a reliable employee. She had driven the twenty minutes to Veberöd, only to find that Lars-Gunnar was not at home. No one was. Her peering through the windows of the Lerstorp house had aroused a neighbour’s suspicions, and he demanded to know who she was. After producing her warrant card, she explained she needed to speak to herr Lerstorp. Just routine enquiries. The neighbour told her that he’d seen the family leave a couple of days ago in their car. He had assumed that they were going on holiday, as they had suitcases with them. Erlandsson tapped the steering wheel with her notebook. Why had Lars-Gunnar done a disappearing act? Were they getting too close to the truth?
She took out her phone and called Zetterberg.
Zetterberg took the call while in a taxi on the way from Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport to Carina Lindvall’s home in Norra Lagnö. There had been no messing about on trains to Stockholm – she and Szabo had flown up on the first flight from Sturup, Malmö’s airport. She didn’t want to waste any time. The accounts department would have to handle the bill. In Zetterberg’s mind the expense was justified. And it was worth it just to see Carina’s face when she opened the door. The welcome wasn’t warm.
‘I thought we’d said all that was needed on your last visit.’ Carina made it clear that she wasn’t going to let Zetterberg over the threshold.
‘That’s when we thought you had an alibi. Now we know you don’t.’
Carina returned the hostile scrutiny. Then her eye caught sight of Szabo. Her gaze drifted up and down the young detective.
‘You’d better come in. And bring your toy boy, too.’
They took seats in the same living room that Zetterberg had been in before. However, this time the novelist was more suitably dressed in a flouncy, blue top and short, white skirt. Judging by where Szabo’s eyes were glued, Carina still had the legs to carry off the hemline. Before she even sat down, Carina had lit up a cigarette.
‘I hope this won’t take long. I’m due in Nacka for a lunch appointment.’
‘That depends on you,’ said Zetterberg, making herself comfortable and looking forward to making Carina as uncomfortable as possible.
Carina swatted away the first plume of smoke to emerge from her mouth. ‘Well?’
‘We’ve discovered that you lied about hearing Ivar and Larissa having sex at the time of Göran Gösta’s murder.’
‘Ivar didn’t tell you that, did he?’ Zetterberg’s grin gave her the answer. ‘Of course not. So it must have been the lame Larissa.’
‘This raises two very interesting questions. Firstly, why did you lie about Ivar and Larissa? And, secondly, where were you during that time? The fact is you no longer have an alibi. And you’ve got a good motive: protecting your boyfriend from his unscrupulous dealer.’ Szabo shifted uneasily; he wasn’t sure that his boss should be taking such delight in putting a suspect under the spotlight, especially one with such nice legs. Carina crossed them, and he caught a momentary hint of her white knickers. ‘How would one of your fictional characters get out of that one?’
Carina gave a smoker’s cackle. ‘I’d conjure up a better alibi, and I’d employ a brighter, better-looking detective. Oh, I was forgetting; I already have. In twelve best-selling books.’
Zetterberg spat out: ‘Just answer the questions.’
‘The answer to your first one is simple. Ivar asked me to give him an alibi. He’d been out looking for Linus. And, as he couldn’t account for his movements, he realized that the police would immediately suspect him. I knew it couldn’t have been him, so I was happy to tell a little white lie.’
‘That little white lie could have stalled this investigation for twenty-one years, for God’s sake!’
‘I was young, naive. We all were. I was just protecting a friend. An innocent friend.’
‘Oh, I think he was more than a friend.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Carina bridled, aggressively flicking ash into her cut-glass ashtray.
‘Come on. Larissa’s antipathy towards you can’t just be about your writing success. There’s something deeper. Are you trying to tell me that you and Ivar weren’t lovers?’ Zetterberg knew that she was guessing, though she was fairly confident she was on the right track. She’d observed from the way that Carina talked about Ivar in their previous conversations that there was some spark there.
Carina held her cigarette elegantly in her fingers as she considered what to say. The smoke coiled hypnotically upwards.
‘We were lovers.’
‘When did it start?’
Carina still made no attempt to smoke her cigarette. ‘Malta. It was just a one-off. We were all drunk. Lars-Gunnar was too far gone to get an erection. Larissa had flaked out, and there were just the two of us left. I was in the mood, so was he. It just happened.’
‘But that wasn’t the only time.’
‘No. It resumed that summer in Knäbäckshusen. Life was getting increasingly difficult with Lars-Gunnar. He was so into his drugs, I couldn’t see a way out. And I think Ivar was starting to get bored with Larissa. She was getting very clingy. He wanted a bit of freedom.’
‘Which you provided,’ Zetterberg said scornfully.
‘Occasionally. It wasn’t easy with Larissa around. Ivar was her ticket to a better life. She wasn’t going to give that up easily. But sometimes when she was sunning herself on the beach and Ivar said he had work to do, we’d sneak in a quickie.’
‘Did Larissa discover you two were carrying on behind her back?’
‘No, of course not. We were bloody careful. I didn’t want to upset Lars-Gunnar either.’
‘That was very considerate of you.’
‘You may mock, Inspector, but I did care for Lars-Gunnar. He’s a decent human being, and there aren’t many of those around these days.’ Her stare was firmly aimed at Zetterberg.
‘Did anyone else get wind of what you and Ivar were up to?’
Carina shook her head. Then she half started to say something and stopped.
Zetterberg seized on the hesitation. ‘Someone did, didn’t they?’
‘Well, not exactly. After one of our quickies, I did bump into Göran as I was coming out of Ivar’s room. I made some excuse for being in there. Returning a book or something. He couldn’t have heard anything. We always made sure we grunted quietly.’
‘And how long after that did you have that argument with Göran about the drugs?’
‘I can’t remember. A couple of days, possibly.’
Zetterberg noted that Szabo was scribbling down Carina’s answers. ‘That explains why you vouched for Ivar, but we still don’t know where you were at the time of the murder.’
Carina gave up on her cigarette and plonked it onto the ashtray to smoke on its own. ‘I was exactly where I said I was. In my bedroom. I’d seen Lars-Gunnar through the window lolling around the garden when I first started work then I got engrossed in what I was doing. The next thing I know, there’s all this activity in the street. I went out and was told that something had happened to Göran at the chapel. I got Larissa from her room and we went down.’
‘That fits in with what Larissa said. So, you didn’t see Lars-Gunnar for most of that time.’ She paused: ‘We’ve been trying to talk to him. He’s disappeared.’
‘Has he?’ For a moment Zetterberg caught a flicker of concern on Carina’s face. ‘You lot have probably frightened the poor guy off. He was never the most robust of people. The drugs were his way of hiding from life.’
‘What about Larissa? Where was she?’
‘As I said, she was in her bedroom. Earlier, I heard someone in the kitchen at some stage. I assume it was her, as she was always Little Miss Tidy. Tediously so. Always clearing up. Always badgering us to keep the blessed place shipshape. Trying to make a good impression for what she thought would be her future in-laws. Deluded bimbo.’ With a wave of her now-free hand: ‘Obviously, I didn’t mention that; it wouldn’t have fitted in with Ivar’s story that they were together.’
Carina spoke as though she were having a normal conversation and not being interviewed about a murder.
‘What can you tell us about Jacob Björnstahl?’
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ Carina screwed up her eyes to emphasize that she had no idea what Zetterberg was talking about. ‘I can’t be expected to remember the names of all my young admirers,’ she added flippantly with a sidelong glance at Szabo.
‘Jacob Björnstahl. He was a famous orientalist. Ivar found some of his writings from the 1770s on Malta. He got very excited about them apparently.’
‘Ah,’ Carina said in recognition. ‘I’ve never heard of this Björnstahl, but it explains why Ivar was so energized at the time. He got more turned on by those daft things from the past than he did by sleeping with the likes of me, which is not exactly flattering. None of us knew what it was about, and that got on Göran’s tits. I do remember that.’
Carina adjusted her expensive gold wristwatch. ‘Look, are we going to be much longer? My luncheon date won’t wait.’ She recrossed her legs and smiled at Szabo. ‘Unless I get a better offer, of course. I like silent, blond types.’
‘We’re finished,’ said Zetterberg. ‘But don’t think about taking any trips any time soon.’
‘I’m due to go to a crime book festival in Dublin at the weekend.’
‘I suggest you cancel it. I don’t want you leaving the country.’
‘And why not?’ Carina was indignant.
‘I don’t think you appreciate the seriousness of your situation. You’ve lied to the police, which is obstructing the course of justice, in a murder investigation where you have no alibi and a strong motive. You’ve just gone to the top of our list of suspects.’