The Golden Calf

by Helene Tursten

  “We’ll have to find out who was out jogging in that weather,” Tommy said. “We can’t eliminate the jogger until we know who he is.”

  Tommy and Irene kept their voices low. They were at a restaurant on their lunch break, and there were a number of other diners around them. Tommy had suggested a sushi restaurant, much to Irene’s surprise. Apparently, he wanted something healthy. Perhaps he has put on a few kilos, Irene thought, but he doesn’t look that fat. Irene was fond of sushi, which was something of a rare treat for her, so she had agreed to meet him at The Nippon in the Vasastan district.

  Their waitress arrived with bottles of mineral water and chopsticks. She was a pleasant, plump Asian woman who wore a staid white shirt and black skirt. Though it was hard to tell, she seemed around fifty. An older man, perhaps her husband, was busy preparing sushi as fast as he could behind a glass counter in a corner of the restaurant. Behind him, Irene could see another chef preparing the hot dishes. The décor was pure Japanese, without any unnecessary details.

  A second, younger waitress brought their sushi dishes. Tommy poured a generous amount of soy sauce into a small porcelain bowl and began to dip pieces of sushi into it. Thin slices of raw fish were draped artfully over balls of rice on plates of red and black lacquered wood. Two pieces were topped by large, flayed shrimp. The sushi rolls were filled with rice, vegetables, and shrimp. The meal was delicious, and soon Tommy and Irene were comfortably full. The only drawback was being forced to eat with chopsticks, especially whenever the rolls fell to pieces.

  “I’ve talked to the technicians,” Irene said. “They’re still going through the house and property with a fine-toothed comb. At first I thought this case was cut and dry, but now it seems that we don’t have a single viable lead. No one has seen or heard a thing.” She sighed.

  Tommy didn’t appear too worried. “We’ll have to ask the newspapers to put out a public notice. ‘If anyone has seen anything around the time of the crime, blah, blah, blah.…’ ”

  “Probably,” Irene replied. “But first we have to figure out the exact time of death. And it’s very important to find this jogger—damn!” Irene swore as her last sushi roll fell apart. She fished the piece of shrimp out of her bowl of soy sauce.

  “On another topic, I’ve found out more about the sailing accident,” Tommy said. “I’ve looked at the investigation report and newspaper clippings. Kjell B:son Ceder married Marie Lagerfeld, the only daughter of the shipping magnate Carl Lagerfeld and his wife Alice, in 1985. Marie was a late child; her parents were both over forty. Her mother died when she was a teenager, and her father died two years before she married Ceder when they were both thirty-five. Neither of them had been married before and neither had children. The Göteborg high society was speculating about an heir. In the summer of ’88, they’d been married for three years. They decided to sail to England on a large sailboat with two other couples. All six people on board were experienced sailors wise to the dangers of the open ocean. This was in the middle of August, and the weather was calm when they left Göteborg. Once out on the North Sea, the wind picked up. It was raining, and the seas were high. It was very dark. Three of them were sailing the boat while the other three tried to rest. During the storm, the sheet came loose, and Marie and Kjell went on deck to fix it. For some reason, neither of them was wearing a life vest, which seems crazy because the weather was so bad. The report mentioned that there had been some heavy drinking earlier, which would explain their carelessness. Kjell came rushing into the wheelhouse and yelled that they had to turn around because Marie had fallen overboard. They circled for hours and tried to find her, but in vain. Her body was found three months later by the crew of a fishing boat. The body had gotten tangled in their nets, and by then, it had decomposed.”

  “How horrible!” Irene shivered.

  Tommy leaned forward and said in an even lower voice, “The thing that bothers me is that Kjell and Marie were alone on the deck when she fell. No one else saw a thing. According to Kjell, it all happened so fast. He’d already wrapped the sheet around the winch and was sheeting it home when he suddenly realized that Marie was no longer beside him. As he looked around the deck, he saw it was empty. He began to yell and scanned the water but couldn’t see anything. He even checked the cabin, in case she’d gone below without him noticing. But she wasn’t on the boat. She’d disappeared into the sea.”

  “So you think she might have been pushed?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “He was suspected of it even back then. She was worth several million, and as her husband, he was her only heir. However, there wasn’t a shred of evidence that things had happened any other way than Ceder had described. Still, I think his explanation of what went on was pretty weak. He should have noticed if she were washed overboard.” Tommy thought a moment and then said, “He didn’t marry again until sixteen years later, and that was to Sanna Kaegler, who was pregnant before the wedding.”

  “Maybe he wanted to make sure she could bear a child,” Irene said. “Men also have their biological clocks, don’t they? Maybe he just wanted to have an heir—better late than never. His first wife hadn’t had a child after three years of marriage.”

  “Technically correct,” Tommy said. “The first Mrs. Ceder was three months pregnant at the time of her death.”

  “A double tragedy, in that case.”

  “I found out as much as I could about Ceder while I was at it. He was already running a restaurant that had earned a Michelin star when he met Marie Lagerfeld. After she died, he bought another restaurant, and in the mid-nineties, he started building Hotel Göteborg. When the hotel was finished, he moved his newest acquisition, Le Ciel, to the top floor.”

  “Did he use any of the inheritance to build the hotel?”

  “Perhaps some of it. The hotel was a really massive project. I don’t remember how much it cost to build, but I doubt that he paid for it in cash. There must have been banks involved as well.”

  “Probably. But he still had enough money left over to build that house in Askim.”

  “Yep. It’ll be interesting to take a look at his apartment.”

  “We should head over there now.” Irene waved for their waitress. “Can we have our bill, please?”

  • • •

  WITH A GENTLE hiss, a state-of-the-art elevator lifted Tommy and Irene to Kjell B:son Ceder’s apartment, which took up the entire top floor of the building. The elevator was the only modern touch in an atmosphere that otherwise seemed caught a hundred years in the past. Everything else in the magnificent stairwell breathed fin de siècle.

  Sanna Kaegler Ceder’s mother warily opened the outer door. When she recognized Tommy and Irene, she immediately let them in, chattering, “You wouldn’t believe the nerve of those journalists! They have no respect!”

  She stopped speaking when Sanna came into the hallway. Mother and daughter shared a resemblance, though the mother was shorter and plumper. Both daughters, Tove and Sanna, had inherited their mother’s pale Scandinavian beauty, though she had now faded to colorlessness. It came to Irene’s mind that she didn’t even know the mother’s name.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Irene Huss. We weren’t properly introduced yesterday,” she said with a smile.

  A cold and clammy hand was limply placed into Irene’s. She had to hold on firmly so that it wouldn’t slip off. It felt like a wet rag.

  “I’m Elsy. Elsy Kaegler.”

  Elsy also greeted Tommy, who put on his most charming smile. He was especially skilled in dealing with middle-aged and elderly women and was always the one to interview anyone in that category. By now, Irene and Tommy had worked together so long that they didn’t even need to discuss who would do what. It came automatically.

  The light from the hallway lamp shone unkindly over Sanna’s face. She looked tired and wasn’t wearing any makeup. The skin around her eyes was swollen. Her blonde hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail high on her head, held in place with a black velvet band. She wo
re a black leather jacket, a white silk blouse and black linen pants. The diamond cross still glittered from her deep décolletage. Even in her grief, she was elegant and fashionable. She gave Irene and Tommy a slight, rather royal nod, as if deigning to acknowledge their presence, before she slipped past them in her narrow stilettos.

  Irene felt overly conscious of her worn deck shoes. She had no intention of removing them, not with a hole in her right sock, which her big toe poked through.

  Irene and Tommy hung up their coats in the hallway and were steered by the nervously chattering Elsy Kaegler into a large room with a high ceiling. The plaster stucco around the base of the heavy crystal chandelier was molded in an elegant rococo style. Three of the walls had bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Clearly this was the library. The last wall was dominated by a large, open fireplace. On the mantle was a black urn flanked by two golden candelabras.

  Irene was sure of one thing: Sanna had never lived in this apartment. There was not a trace of glass, modern art, or brushed steel. This place was decorated with expensive antiques and genuine carpets.

  “… and what difficulty we had bringing all of Ludwig’s and Sanna’s things here,” Elsy was saying.

  Sanna was already in the library. Irene took a chance and said in a light tone, “Why did your husband stay here? You and Ludwig had already been living in the house for months.”

  Sanna seemed prepared for that question. She gave Irene a chilly look and said calmly, “We have never lived together.”

  “Not even after you were married?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “We chose to live apart,” Sanna said stiffly. “Neither one of us wanted to live with anyone else over a long period of time. These days, living apart is no longer unusual.”

  That may be true, Irene thought, but only when the partners have to live a long distance apart, or when people feel they’re too old to adjust to someone else’s habits.

  As if she were reading Irene’s thoughts, Sanna threw back her head defiantly and said, “We entertain a great deal, and we each had very full lives, which we didn’t want to give up when we married. I kept my own apartment and stayed there until the house was ready for me and Ludwig.”

  “When was the house finished?”

  “At the beginning of July.”

  “So you no longer have your apartment?”

  “No, I sold it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here now.” Sanna waved her arm as if to indicate the entire huge apartment.

  “So did you spend time with your husband? Go to parties and events together and things like that?”

  “Of course we did. And we have Ludwig.”

  As if he had heard his name, there was the sudden sound of a child’s cry.

  “Oh, now he’s awake,” Elsy said. “I’ll go.…”

  “Yesterday you said that you’d spoken by phone with Kjell the day before. Around nine in the morning. Is that correct?” Irene continued.

  “Yes.”

  “Was he at the house or was he here?”

  “He was here.”

  “So you didn’t see him at all on Tuesday?”

  “No.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Last Saturday. We had lunch together at Le Ciel. Ludwig was with us, but he slept the whole time.”

  Irene wondered how she should continue. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Tommy was following Elsy Kaegler to talk to her out of her daughter’s hearing. Such a strange arrangement, Irene thought. People living separate lives even though they’re married and have a child together. Irene decided to go a bit deeper into the matter.

  “Didn’t Kjell want to live with you and Ludwig?” she asked cautiously.

  “No. He didn’t like children.”

  “But even so—”

  “That’s how it was!” Sanna snapped.

  Why would a young woman marry an older man who didn’t like children and then have a child with him? Simply because he was rich? Irene realized she couldn’t ask that question, even though it would be interesting to hear the reply. Instead, she headed into another line of questioning.

  “Do you know who Kjell was supposed to meet yesterday evening?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Perhaps you have a guess?” Irene continued stubbornly.

  Sanna appeared to waver for a minute, and then said firmly, “No.”

  “Do you know why Kjell wanted to meet this person at the house and not here at his apartment?”

  Sanna turned beet red from her décolletage to her cheeks. One of Irene’s questions had finally touched a nerve.

  “I have no idea! I will never forgive him for that! My house … my house … he’s ruined it! I’ll have to clean.…” She stopped in the middle of a sentence when she heard laughter in the hallway. Tommy came marching into the library carrying Ludwig in his arms. Elsy Kaegler was following him with a worried look on her face. She rubbed her hands together, making small, scared sounds as if Tommy were about to drop Ludwig on the floor.

  “Here you are,” Tommy said. “All fresh and clean and ready to go! He’s hungry now, though.” He smiled at Sanna as he handed Ludwig over to her.

  Sanna nodded but gave no hint of a smile nor thanks as she took her son and placed him on her hip.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “I can’t answer any more questions now. I have to take care of Ludde.” She left the room without even a glance back.

  Neither Tommy nor Irene had a chance to stop her. The snub had been quick and effective. Elsy started to wring her hands and mumble again while Tommy and Irene headed back into the hallway in turn. Although they couldn’t get any more information today, Irene was absolutely sure that they’d be back. Sanna probably realized this as well.

  “SANNA’S PARENTS HAVE been divorced for twenty years,” Tommy informed Irene once they were back in the car. “Elsy is an elementary school teacher, and her ex-husband is a principal at a high school here in town. Apparently, he remarried rather quickly, and there are two sons from the second marriage. According to Elsy, he hasn’t paid any attention to his daughters since he remarried.”

  “Do you think that Sanna married Kjell B:son Ceder as a father substitute?”

  “I don’t know. Apparently, lots of young women think that older men are more attractive: as a lover, as a partner—all sorts of ways!”

  Wow, what’s eating him? Irene glanced at Tommy, who had turned away and was glaring out the passenger side window. The tightness of his neck muscles told her he was furious. What’s going on with him? Maybe a belated midlife crisis? Irene didn’t know how she should handle the situation. They sat in silence for the rest of the way to the station.

  SUPERINTENDENT ANDERSSON WAS in his office, waiting for their return. Irene realized at once that something big had happened because Andersson had dug out his coffee maker and was brewing a huge pot. He rarely made his own these days, since there was the vending machine just down the hall.

  Irene did a double take when she saw that the normally colorless Kajsa Birgersdotter had dyed her hair a deep-reddish chestnut. The new color actually looked good on her. Kajsa’s dove blue T-shirt reflected her eye color in a flattering way. Has she gone and gotten herself color analyzed? Irene’s thoughts were interrupted when Andersson finally began to speak.

  “Stridner just gave me a call. The Ceder autopsy is done. He died from two bullets to the brain. The shots were fired at close range. It’s a small-caliber weapon—a shitty little ladies’ gun. But Stridner also discovered something else.…”

  Andersson paused dramatically, a conspiratorial smile spreading across his face. “Ceder had an operation—what are they called again? So he couldn’t have kids. He was castrated!”

  “Castrated?” exclaimed Birgitta.

  Andersson nodded, content with his declaration.

  “You mean he had a vasectomy?” Tommy said quietly.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what it’s called,�
� the superintendent said.

  “So he wasn’t castrated, just sterilized,” Tommy clarified. “The sperm ducts were severed so that semen wouldn’t exit the body, but everything else is intact and functional, sexually speaking.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Andersson said sourly. He hated to be caught up short in front of his subordinates.

  “I’ve actually had one,” Tommy said, unperturbed. “I thought three children were enough.”

  Kajsa Birgersdotter said something under her breath, as she got up quickly from her chair and left. Tommy appeared just as surprised as the others in the room. Irene watched his surprise fade and be replaced by the stiff, angry expression he’d had earlier in the car.

  “What the hell’s gotten into her?” Andersson asked. He was irritated that he no longer had control of the room. He took off his glasses and let them drop loudly on the table before he continued. “Let’s not worry about her for now. We have to discuss what’s next in this investigation. Perhaps we should find out who the real father of the baby might be?”

  “Could Ceder have had the operation after Ludwig was born?” asked Irene.

  “Stridner said that the procedure looked at least five years old,” Andersson replied with triumph in his voice.

  This was sensational news, although, as Irene thought about it further, the information would not make their investigation any easier—rather, this was an unexpected complication.

  “So who the hell is the father of the boy?” the superintendent asked again.

  All three detectives appeared to be deep in thought. Finally Irene said, “Well, we can always run a DNA analysis just to exclude Ceder. We have Ceder at the pathologist’s, and I’ll be able to get a sample from Ludwig.”

  “Sanna Kaegler will never agree to that!” Birgitta said with certainty.