In Bad Company (Sandhamn Murders)

by Viveca Sten

  Thomas’s tall figure was indeed waiting for her when the elevator doors opened. In spite of the fact that they knew each other so well, she was struck by his air of calm authority. Something serious must have happened for him to show up unexpectedly.

  “Thomas—what are you doing here?” She almost gave him a hug, but stopped herself just in time. He’d obviously come to see her in a professional capacity.

  “We need to talk about your current case,” he said. “Could we go somewhere more private?”

  Nora checked the schedule and found an empty interview room. At that moment Leila appeared with a thick file under one arm. Nora beckoned her to join them, then swiped her pass card and led Thomas through the security barrier.

  “Coffee?” she said as they passed the small staff kitchen.

  “I’d prefer tea at this time of day. As you know,” he said with a wink. It almost felt like normal as they stood in the kitchen, chatting about nothing in particular. Then reality took over. Thomas wasn’t here for midmorning refreshments.

  They went into one of the smaller conference rooms equipped with green upholstered chairs and a whiteboard with old notes still faintly visible. Nora sat down opposite Thomas.

  It felt weird, being here like this. They had been friends for many years, but had never worked together, although she had acted as an informal sounding board in several investigations. Their paths had never crossed professionally while she was working as a legal associate at the bank, and this was the first time it had happened since she’d been appointed as a prosecutor with the Economic Crimes Authority.

  Thomas took out his notebook. “Sorry to turn up out of the blue like this, but something’s happened in the Nacka Nature Reserve, and we think there’s a connection to Andreis Kovač.”

  Nora had had a feeling that might be the case, but she still felt a tremor of anxiety in her stomach.

  “A body was found in the forest this morning. We have reason to believe that the victim is a man by the name of Dino Herco, who worked closely with Kovač.”

  Leila inhaled sharply. “What? Herco’s dead?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “How did he die?” Nora asked.

  “He was shot at close range, probably during the past twenty-four hours. A bullet through the brain—a straight execution.”

  “Shit,” Leila muttered, tugging at her long black braid.

  “His injuries suggest that he was tortured, or at least badly beaten before he died.”

  Only a few days ago they’d been sitting in Herco’s kitchen, questioning him about the call to the emergency dispatch. Now he was dead.

  Nora felt as if she’d entered some kind of parallel universe. “How did you find him?”

  “He was buried in a shallow grave in the nature reserve. A jogger and his dog practically tripped over him. Almost as if he was meant to be discovered.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if Kovač wanted to make an example of him,” Leila said. “A kind of warning: Don’t interfere in my affairs if you want to live. He seems the type.”

  “Do you think Kovač is behind the murder?” Nora asked. “Is there anything to connect him to the crime?”

  Thomas shook his head. “It’s way too early to say. I’ve come straight from Nacka; we haven’t located the murder scene yet.”

  Leila tugged at her braid again and moved it to the other shoulder. “What forensic evidence do you have?”

  “None at all. No bullet, because it passed right through the head, no fingerprints on the body. A team of CSIs is heading over to his apartment now.”

  “We only spoke to him a few days ago,” Nora said.

  Leila quickly filled Thomas in on their conversation with Herco and his involvement in the assault on Mina. She also told him about her interview with Herco two days ago.

  “He was terrified that Kovač would find out what he’d done,” she said, turning to Nora for confirmation. “So terrified that he actually threatened me while he was here.”

  Nora nodded.

  “This was exactly what he was afraid of,” Leila continued. “He became incredibly uncomfortable when we pushed him. He lied about basic facts, details that we could easily check.”

  “Which we did, of course,” Nora added.

  “If Kovač knew that Dino Herco called emergency services, there’s your motive,” Leila said.

  “We’re keeping an open mind,” Thomas replied. “We can’t rule out other motives or even different perpetrators. However, this does seem to have been a planned execution; there’s nothing spontaneous about the modus operandi.”

  “What’s your next move?” Nora asked.

  “We want Kovač’s phone tapped immediately. It’s going to take time for all the tests and analyses—strands of hair, blood, DNA. We’ll be waiting at the end of a long line.”

  “What else will you be focusing on, apart from forensics?” Leila said.

  “We’re putting Kovač under surveillance.”

  “He must have realized that the murder of Dino Herco would lead straight back to him,” Leila mused out loud. “Given how closely they worked together. That suggests narcissistic arrogance and a predilection for risk.”

  Or sheer ruthlessness, Nora thought.

  “Not necessarily,” Thomas said. “I recognized the victim by pure chance—thanks to you, Nora.”

  “Me?”

  “We were talking about him on the boat the other day. Otherwise I would never have seen a photograph of him, so I wouldn’t have had a clue who the dead man was.”

  “You’d have found out eventually.” Nora was unwilling to accept an undeserved accolade.

  “Yes, but it would have taken a lot longer. He had no ID on him, and no phone. He lives alone, so there were no family members to report him missing.”

  That was true. And all the indications were that Dino Herco had been single.

  “Kovač can’t possibly have expected you to be on his trail so fast,” Leila said. “That has to be a big advantage for you.”

  Thomas nodded. “I hope so.”

  “What are the odds that someone else would kidnap and murder Kovač’s right-hand man just two days after Herco admitted he was terrified of his boss?” Leila folded her arms, as if she were challenging Thomas to contradict her. “Come on—you know I’m right. You ought to bring him in immediately.”

  CHAPTER 87

  Ulrika Grönstedt shifted position on her chair behind her desk. She just couldn’t get comfortable.

  Her carefully planned strategy hadn’t worked, and the conversation with Andreis Kovač had made her uneasy. She doodled one meaningless shape after another on her pad and tried to think.

  Eventually she got up and closed the door. Then she took out the packet of cigarettes she kept in the bottom drawer for emergencies. She lit up, inhaled deeply, and gazed at the glowing tip of the cigarette.

  Her brain was still empty.

  She hated the feeling of having played all her cards, yet, at the same time, something wasn’t right. Mina wasn’t behaving the way Ulrika had expected. She’d been certain that Mina would give in as soon as the issue of a custody battle was raised.

  Ulrika stubbed out her cigarette in the screw-top tin she kept in the same drawer, well out of sight of her colleagues. She never smoked at home, for Fiona’s sake.

  There was only one reasonable explanation for Mina’s change of attitude, and it didn’t make the situation any better. Something must have happened yesterday, when Mina returned to the house on Trastvägen. Presumably Kovač had scared her so much that she didn’t dare go back to him.

  He’d been given a chance to fix everything, to show her how much he loved her. Instead he’d fucked it up. The guy was his own worst enemy.

  “Damage control,” she murmured to herself, without any idea of how to achieve that. There had to be a solution, a way of reconciling the couple. It was their only chance of stopping Mina from testifying against her husband.

  She needed a new plan
.

  Ulrika leafed through the file. Kovač had suggested using Mina’s parents as a way of reaching out to her. The last she’d heard was that the mother was in the hospital for some reason. Maybe she could talk to the father? Plead for compassion under these difficult circumstances? She could hint that the mother would feel better if she didn’t have to worry about her daughter’s conflict with her husband.

  It was worth a shot.

  Ulrika looked longingly at the half-full cigarette packet, but resolutely closed the drawer. She went over to the window and flung it wide open to get rid of the smell of smoke.

  Contacting Mina’s father was risky; the Bar Association would hit the roof if they found out, but the lack of alternatives left her no choice. She’d worry about the ethics some other time.

  She googled the name, found the cell phone number, and dialed before she could change her mind.

  Stefan Talevski answered just when Ulrika thought the call was going to voice mail. She introduced herself politely, and explained that she was representing his son-in-law, Andreis Kovač.

  “Why the hell are you calling me?” he spat.

  She hadn’t expected a warm response, but this open hostility took her by surprise. “My client is eager to see his wife and son,” she said, her tone as warm as she could possibly manage.

  “He should have thought of that before he beat her half to death.”

  Ulrika tried again. “He’s very sorry. He doesn’t know what came over him. He’s prepared to do whatever it takes to win her forgiveness. What he did was reprehensible, but it will never happen again.”

  She laid it on as thickly as possible, without saying anything that could be used as evidence against her client. If Stefan ever brought up this conversation, she would insist that she had been referring to a nasty quarrel between Andreis and Mina, nothing else. She had never in any way admitted that Andreis had used violence against his wife.

  “He’s desperate to see his son. Lukas is his only child. If your daughter goes back to him, he’s promised to seek help with his anger issues.”

  She would deal with Kovač’s response to that particular suggestion later. If the cost of getting Mina back was signing up for a counseling program, then he would just have to do it. There must be a way of getting him to agree if she managed to deliver Mina and Lukas back into his arms.

  “He really does want to change,” she added for good measure.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Do you seriously think I’d advise my daughter to go back to that lunatic after what he did to us on Saturday?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My wife still hasn’t regained consciousness; she’s in a coma because of your so-called client.”

  The conversation was spiraling out of control.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. The background noises suddenly made sense. Mina’s father was in the ICU, and the beeping and humming came from various machines.

  A carpet of sound in death’s waiting room.

  What the hell had Kovač done?

  Mina’s father let out a guttural groan, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Are you trying to tell me that you don’t know he came to our house on Saturday? That he threatened us, hoping to frighten us into telling him where Mina’s hiding?”

  Contacting Stefan Talevski had been a mistake. Ulrika needed to end this call as soon as possible. “Unfortunately I have to—”

  “He smashed the glass in our front door. I thought he was going to kill us. My wife was so terrified that she suffered a major heart attack. Her condition has deteriorated since she was brought in. The doctors don’t know if she’s going to make it. My daughter is never going back to that man!” Stefan yelled.

  “I didn’t know any of this.”

  “Do you have children?”

  Instinctively Ulrika glanced at the photograph of Fiona beaming into the camera. She would be eleven in June.

  “How can you defend such a piece of shit? How can you live with yourself?”

  CHAPTER 88

  They’d been in the conference room for almost an hour. Thomas and Leila had gotten caught up in a technical discussion about some of the details from the scene of the crime.

  Nora opened her notepad and drew a diagram of the situation.

  If Kovač became the subject of a homicide investigation, then things became a lot more complicated from her point of view. That would give her three parallel investigations to take into consideration, with another prosecutor brought in—presumably someone who was a lot more suited to handling a murder charge than she was.

  She’d held off filing the tax evasion charge because of the assault on Mina, but in the end she’d decided she had to file today. Now she had to think about the implications of this new information.

  A homicide investigation could take months. It might be better to postpone the tax evasion case until a later date; it wouldn’t be the first time something similar had happened.

  Before making a decision, she needed to hear what Mina had to say.

  Leila and Thomas were now talking about Kovač’s mental state.

  “I wonder if he’s starting to lose control,” Leila said. “The violence and aggression he’s displayed are worrying.”

  She got up and went over to the whiteboard, picked up a black marker, and drew a timeline, with a cross for each incident in which Kovač had been involved. It began with the assault on Mina just over a week ago, and ended with today’s date and the murder of Dino Herco. Kovač’s visit to Mina’s parents was there, with a symbol to indicate that Mina’s mother was in intensive care.

  Nora shuddered.

  “It feels as if he’s under increasing pressure,” Leila said, tapping the board with her pen. “One incident after another within the space of ten days. It’s escalating.”

  People under pressure did desperate things.

  Nora thought back to her interview with Kovač, the impression that she was sitting opposite a predator. What would happen if the pressure increased even more?

  Leila stared at the board. “The question is how far he’s prepared to go.” She put down the pen and sat down.

  “What about the visit to his in-laws?” Thomas said. “Can’t we charge him with threatening behavior?”

  “Mina’s mother is still unconscious,” Nora told him. She’d checked with the hospital, and Katrin’s condition was unchanged.

  “Her father refuses to go into detail,” Leila said, “even though we’re pretty sure about the course of events. He’s too scared to talk, which is understandable, given what happened yesterday.”

  Thomas looked up. “Yesterday?”

  “Kovač was about to shoot Mina in broad daylight,” Leila explained. “She managed to get on a bus with the baby in his stroller at the last minute, and the driver took off.” She filled Thomas in on the rest of the day’s developments, and Mina’s return to the shelter with a police escort.

  “So why hasn’t he been arrested?” Thomas asked.

  Leila grimaced.

  “The bus driver had his eyes on the road. He says that because of the angle of his seat, he didn’t see anything. The patrol that picked up Mina from the bus didn’t take the names of the passengers. We’ve issued an appeal, but nothing so far. We have no witnesses apart from Mina, who is still refusing to testify against her husband.”

  Nora realized she hadn’t told Leila about the call from Anna-Maria. The news about Herco’s death had taken all her attention. How could she have forgotten? It almost constituted malpractice. There was too much going on in her head right now.

  “Mina seems to have changed her mind,” she said. “We need to go back to Runmarö as soon as we’re done here.”

  Leila raised her eyebrows.

  “Anna-Maria called me earlier. Mina wants to see us again, and it sounds as if she’s actually ready to tell the truth about her husband. I’ve double-checked with
Herman Wibom, and he says the same thing.”

  Leila’s face broke into a smile. “At last—some good news!”

  Nora glanced at her watch. She didn’t want to hurry Thomas, but they ought to get away before Mina regretted her decision. She didn’t really trust Wibom’s assurances that Mina was determined to leave her husband and testify against him.

  “We really should make a move,” she said apologetically.

  Thomas closed his notebook.

  “I’ll send you everything we have on Dino Herco,” Leila said. “Then you can form your own opinion.”

  “Much appreciated. One more thing, do me a favor and ask Mina if her husband is left-handed. The injuries to Herco’s face suggest a left-handed perpetrator,” Thomas said.

  Nora stood up. “By the way, Kovač has a very sharp defense attorney—Ulrika Grönstedt.”

  “So much the better—she’ll know what’s what. We won’t have to provide him with representation.”

  “Kovač will deny everything if you bring him in,” Nora said.

  Leila nodded. “Plus you can assume he’ll have a perfect alibi—but you were probably expecting that.”

  “Bring it on.” Thomas didn’t seem particularly concerned. “I’m looking forward to having a conversation with him.”

  Bosnia, May 1993

  Andreis spotted Aunt Blanka through the window, and ran to open the door. Selma had just settled down on the sofa with Emir on her lap. She inhaled audibly when she saw Blanka.

  “Have you changed your mind?” she exclaimed. She’d wept when she said good-bye to Blanka earlier in the day, convinced that was the last time they’d see each other.

  Blanka went over to Selma without taking off her coat. “Is Zlatko home?” she asked quietly. Selma shook her head, and Blanka sat down beside her. “You and the children have to come with us tomorrow. There’s room in the car. I’ve spoken to Dario, and we’re both in agreement.”

  “It’s impossible.” Selma was holding Emir much too tightly. He started twisting his body around and whimpering until she loosened her grip and put him down on the floor. He immediately crawled across the room to Andreis, who was playing in the corner.