The Golden Calf

by Helene Tursten

  “They were in good company. A huge number of Internet companies went bust. At the turn of the millennium, the burst of the dot-com bubble affected the economy of the entire world,” Birgitta said.

  “That’s right. They weren’t paying any attention to their finances, and the money just went up in smoke. Bonetti wasn’t the only one who took money out of the company right before it went bankrupt. That must have been the money he had in his various bank accounts. However, we still have a lead via the bank account in Sweden, which holds the money he inherited. The day he touches that money, we got him,” Tommy said.

  “Who set up the account?” Birgitta asked.

  “His father set it up when Thomas inherited money from his paternal grandparents. According to his father, it’s a long-term savings account that doesn’t have a card attached, so if he wants to get the money, he has to contact the bank personally. At that moment, he’d leave a clue as to where he was, and then we’d get him.”

  “Or at the very least, we’d have proof he’s still alive,” Irene said.

  Tommy nodded.

  Birgitta pointed at the picture on the wall and asked, “How are Philip Bergman and Joachim Rothstaahl connected?”

  “According to Rothstaahl’s father, the two of them had been pals for a long time,” Jonny replied. “That’s all we know right now.”

  “It appears that the death rate around Sanna Kaegler’s closest friends and relatives is particularly high,” Irene commented drily.

  “Yep. We need to figure out what really happened with the company. Who else was involved? And we have to check whether can connect Thomas Bonetti and Joachim Rothstaahl.”

  “Just a second, let’s back off a bit,” Andersson said, looking around the room. He took a deep breath before he continued. “Let’s go back to the case in question. Two crime scenes and three murders. So far we have nothing concrete to connect the two crime scenes, and we don’t actually know whether all three of them were killed by the same weapon. And what would connect Kjell B:son Kaegler to some damned Internet business?”

  “So far we have no connection,” Tommy replied calmly. “However, he was married to one of the founders. One other founder has been killed, and the third disappeared without a trace three years ago. The only thing all three victims have in common is Sanna Kaegler.”

  Andersson kept breathing heavily as he thought about all these unexpected complications. There was a whistling noise coming from his windpipe, which made Irene nervous. She thought he might have an asthma attack. Finally, Andersson made up his mind.

  “We’re going to sit tight until Philip Bergman’s identity has been confirmed. Once it has, I want Irene and Tommy to head out and have a chat with that prima donna Kaegler. And don’t press too hard until we’re sure that Ceder is not the father of her son. Anything new from the lab?” The last question was directed to Åhlén who seemed to be dozing. Irene gave him a sharp poke in the ribs with her elbow, and he jerked upright. He got up, walked over to Andersson, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and faced the room. As usual, he looked like a mole coming up to the surface.

  “Sanna Kaegler’s hands had no trace of powder or soot residue. On the other hand, there was a considerable amount on the victim around the entrance wound and the face, which indicates he was shot at close range. We have estimated the distance at half a meter. There are no signs of forced entry to the house, but we found some muddy footprints with clay residue inside by the door at the rear of the house. There’s a lot of clay outside the doorway, and on the inside doormat, there are blurred footprints of size forty-four jogging shoes. There are also signs of dried moisture beneath a clothes hanger. The theory is that the murderer could have entered through the back door, hung up his wet coat, and changed to dry shoes. Neither the outer nor inner back doors have any sign of forced entry. Either the murderer had a key to the house or else the door had been left open.”

  “There are no other footprints on the floor?” asked Tommy.

  “No, only the ones on the mat. He could have also put on plastic foot coverings over his muddy shoes.”

  “He could hardly have gone unnoticed by Ceder in that case,” Irene said. “Those plastic coverings make a lot of noise when you’re walking in them. Not only that, they’re slippery on tile floors.”

  Tommy nodded in agreement. “True. I believe he was already inside the house and waiting for Ceder.”

  Irene reflected on the smell of whiskey in the house. She quickly put together a possible scenario.

  “Ceder was up in his lighthouse room, drinking a glass of whiskey. He was carrying the glass in his hand as he walked down the stairs. The killer was at the foot of the stairs waiting for him.”

  “Maybe he was hiding below the spiral staircase,” Åhlén said, unperturbed by the interruption. “That’s where we found this.” He pulled out a plastic bag from the pocked of his lab coat. “This is an elastic reflective band a lot of joggers use. They put it on their right upper arm when they’re jogging at night along roads with vehicle traffic. We have found half of a thumb print on it.”

  “Wonderful! Now we just have to find a guy with half a thumb!” Jonny laughed at his own joke.

  No one else in the room was laughing. They were all used to his lame jokes by now and didn’t bother reacting. Åhlén had given them a good clue. If they were able to find a suspect, there was a chance they could tie him to the crime scene by the thumbprint. It would be much easier to prove the case.

  “As far as Långedrag goes, Malm says that the preliminary report will be available this afternoon at three,” Åhlén said.

  “You haven’t told us anything about the bullets!” protested Andersson.

  “No, because there’s not much to say. A .25-caliber pistol. Not mantled. Massively deformed after ricocheting around the brain. Ballistic examination will be difficult.” Unaffected by Andersson’s critical tone, Åhlén stuffed the bag back into his pocket and drifted out of the room.

  There was silence after he left. Finally, Andersson took a deep breath and said, with the whistling sound coming out at the same time as his voice, “Jonny and Fredrik are to continue searching for possible witnesses to the Långedrag case. Question Rothstaahl’s father and girlfriend to see if they can try to remember if he mentioned a specific person he was planning to meet. Birgitta will contact the relatives of that Bergman guy to get a positive identification. Once that’s done, Irene and Tommy will question Sanna Kaegler. Be tough on that woman. I can smell the shit stinking from here, as far as she’s concerned.”

  Good thing that Sanna Kaegler isn’t around to hear that, Irene thought. She’d be more offended by being accused of stinking of shit than being connected to a murder.

  “And what’s my job?” asked Kajsa.

  At first, he looked shocked that she’d spoken to him that way, but after an awkward pause, he said, “You’re going to have a special assignment. Since you’re already interested in those clowns who built up a company that was worth a billion before bankruptcy, I think you should dig up all the facts you can on them. Find every single piece of info that’s out there.”

  Kajsa turned momentarily pale and then brightened up. “Okay, I’ll dig.”

  Chapter 5

  TOMMY DECIDED TO deepen his knowledge of Kjell B:son Ceder. The circumstances concerning the death of Ceder’s first wife were especially interesting.

  “As Andersson likes to say, this smells like shit!” Tommy said to Irene, smiling.

  “You think?”

  “Yep. I’m going to follow my investigator instincts.”

  “Then I’ll follow mine and dig up what I can on Thomas Bonetti. Remember when we were poking our noses into that case? By the way, lunch at twelve?”

  “Sounds good. Then I think we should hear what Svante Malm has to say at three o’clock regarding the results from Långedrag. I agree with you that these murders are connected.”

  “Your investigator instinct again?”

  “Nope. Co
mmon sense and pure logic.”

  WHEN TOMMY AND Irene had gone to Styrsö that cold December day three years ago, neither of them had any idea what industry Thomas Bonetti worked in. They’d thought of him as a rich techie who’d gone missing with a lot of money. As they had headed back on the ferry, Tommy had theorized that Bonetti was lying on a beach in the Bahamas, holding a drink with an umbrella in one hand and a buxom blonde in the other, while poor police officers froze to the bone searching for him.

  By lunchtime, Irene had a much better understanding of Bonetti’s past. She didn’t like him, but that was the fate of most of the people Irene learned about from the crime register.

  At the time of his disappearance, Bonetti was thirty-one-years-old, but he looked more like forty in the photographs. He was the only son of the famous lawyer Antonio Bonetti. His father, who had emigrated from Italy, had fair skin and red hair. Nothing in Thomas’s appearance suggested his Italian heritage. Thomas had a sister who was two years older. He went to a private school during his elementary and high school years and then began to study at Göteborg’s business school. While at university, he was arrested twice for possession of narcotics. Both times cocaine was the drug of choice, but the amount was so small that he’d gotten off with light punishments. He had never been in the military

  After working at a Swedish bank for a few years, Bonetti moved to London. He decided to start an investment bank with another Swede whom he’d known since his university days. They met a Norwegian man their age, who was already working in the finance sector and wasn’t happy with his income. He wanted to start something of his own, so he joined his new Swedish friends with the intention of making some fast cash.

  Bonetti’s Swedish business partner was named Joachim Rothstaahl. Irene felt her pulse race as she read the name. Positive confirmation that Bonetti and Rothstaahl were connected! One missing without a trace and the other killed along with another of Bonetti’s later partners. Her head started to spin. She had to make sure she knew exactly how all these people fit together, but the most important fact was established. Seven years earlier, they were already in business together. Perhaps there wasn’t a connection to the three murders, but this fact could be important.

  The Norwegian man was named Erik Dahl. The name didn’t ring a bell, but she wrote it down for further research. The three business partners, using the right contacts and many elegant meetings at one of London’s finest restaurants, managed to convince numerous businesses and people from Scandinavia to invest money in their management fund, which they named Poundfix. They made sure to have famous English politicians and a lord or two at all their functions so that they would have a cover of respectability.

  In practice, the fund was nothing more than a pyramid scheme. The new money coming into Poundfix was used to pay the high dividends and to redeem the investments when people wanted out. It worked for a while, but the bubble burst when their largest customer, a Norwegian company, demanded an audit. There was no money to audit, since the three partners had already made off with it. Thomas Bonetti had seen the end coming and managed to pull his money out before the ceiling fell in. He had a couple million kroner in his pocket by then.

  Joachim Rothstaahl came through the experience with no more punishment than a good scare. Since he was a Swedish citizen living in England, he couldn’t be forced to face a Norwegian court. Erik Dahl, on the other hand, was the one who had to face the music in Oslo. He was sentenced to seven years in jail for major embezzlement.

  Irene stopped. Could Erik Dahl have been released from prison? Was he now looking for revenge on his former partners? He wouldn’t have been out of prison at the time of Thomas Bonetti’s disappearance, but maybe now? She made a note in her notebook to follow up, when she realized that there was a problem—what was the connection between Erik Dahl and Kjell B:son Ceder? She glanced at the clock and saw it was time for lunch. It had been a fruitful morning.

  THE OBLIGATORY THURSDAY pea soup with pancakes was always a favorite. Perhaps a little more thyme in the soup would have been nice, but there was no need to be petty. Tommy probably didn’t even notice that the soup was lacking as far as herbs were concerned. He was gesturing wildly with his soup spoon to emphasize his points. Irene noticed a drop of mustard fly off the spoon and land on the paper tablecloth. Tommy didn’t see it, or perhaps didn’t care. He was totally caught up in his morning’s research.

  “There’s no way to get a clearer picture of what actually happened on deck that night. Only Kjell B:son Ceder and his wife Marie were there. Perhaps the man who steered the boat might have seen something. Guess who he was?” Tommy grinned, and Irene frowned when he didn’t continue.

  “I have no idea,” she said sourly.

  “Edward Fenton!”

  Irene stared at him. “Fenton? You mean Doctor Fenton? Morgan Fenton?”

  “No, Edward! Morgan Fenton’s younger brother! Don’t you remember that Morgan Fenton mentioned a brother who was employed by a London bank? Both Edward and his girlfriend were on the boat as well as Morgan and his late wife! She was pregnant! It must have been that kid you talked to yesterday.”

  Irene nodded. Christopher Fenton was fifteen-years-old. He’d also been on that fateful trip, although just a baby in his mother’s womb. She tried to pull together what she already knew.

  “So both Morgan and Edward Fenton were friends with Ceder sixteen years ago. They also knew his first wife Marie. Morgan Fenton divorced and married Tove Kaegler, and a few years later, Kjell B:son Ceder married her sister Sanna. You said yesterday that Sanna had business connections with Edward Fenton and was also mixed up in that Internet business. This means that Edward also knew Thomas Bonetti and Philip Bergman. Interesting—but complicated.”

  “Exactly! So I sniffed around the Fenton brothers, but I didn’t find much. Morgan is an orthopedic doctor here in Göteborg, and Edward now works for a large American investment bank named HP Johnson. He’s the head of their European office in London. The mother of the brothers was a Swedish woman, who died a number of years ago, and their father was an Englishman. He is still alive, but has been living in Spain for the past few years.”

  “He has to be really old.”

  “Well over eighty.”

  “How old are the Fenton brothers?”

  “Morgan is fifty-one, and Edward is forty-two.”

  “So Edward’s our age,” Irene pointed out.

  “Yep. Their parents divorced at the end of the seventies, and their mother moved here with Edward. A few years later, Morgan also came to Göteborg and started studying medicine. He decided to stay, and he got married here.”

  “So that’s why Morgan speaks Swedish so well. He’s been living here for more than twenty-five years.”

  “That’s right. He stayed here, and his brother Edward returned to England. He studied economics at Cambridge and shot straight up in the financial world. He also made a good marriage, though he didn’t marry the woman who was on board the sailboat when Ceder’s wife drowned. Edward’s wife is an American, and they’ve been married for ten years. They have two children.”

  “Wow, you found out an incredible amount on Edward Fenton. How’d you do it?”

  “Online. There’s lots of stuff on him. He’s an important man in banking circles, or so I understand. And he’s also in the American tabloid press. His wife seems to be from an influential family. Her father is Sergio Santini, and her name is Janice. Her father is one of those self-made men that the Americans love so much. He was poor but worked hard to get an education. His career took off, and now he has a business empire and is as wealthy as Midas.”

  “So Edward married into the financial world as well?”

  “Yep.”

  “Odd that he doesn’t work for his father-in-law.”

  “He already had a good position when he met his wife. Perhaps he didn’t want his father-in-law or his brother-in-law to be his boss.”

  Irene told Tommy what she’d found out concerning Tho
mas Bonetti and his earlier escapades on the London financial market. As she expected, Tommy was excited when she revealed the connection between Bonetti and Joachim Rothstaahl.

  “It’s like we had a sixth sense about it. The murders are connected!” he exclaimed.

  Irene asked him to keep it down. Others were beginning to pay attention to their conversation. Even if it wasn’t uncommon to hear police talk in the cafeteria, there’s nothing like the word murder to make people prick up their ears.

  Tommy lowered his voice. “It’s clear that everyone involved knew everyone else for some time. We have to find out how exactly each and every person knew each and every other.”

  “We have to dig into the past. As usual.” Irene sighed.

  Tommy was interrupted by his cell phone vibrating in the pocket of his denim jacket. “Hi, Birgitta,” he said.

  Tommy listened for a while and then turned to Irene. He gave her the thumbs-up, and Irene knew what Birgitta must have found: the third victim was indeed Philip Bergman.

  TOMMY AND IRENE arrived at the apartment, but only Elsy Kaegler was there. She was watching Ludwig while her daughter ran errands. Sanna had a lot of things to do, Elsy informed Irene. She had to contact the funeral home, which would be taking care of her husband’s burial, for starters. Elsy didn’t believe that Sanna would be back until later that afternoon. Irene asked Elsy to tell Sanna that she should expect a visit from the police later, at four thirty P.M.

  • • •

  SVANTE MALM, THE technician, had acquired at least a thousand new freckles during his vacation in Greece. Irene thought of her fair-haired husband Krister’s freckles after their vacation in Crete a month earlier. He could have given Svante a run for his money. In her opinion, pinkish people shouldn’t go tanning. They just ended up looking like boiled tomatoes. After some time, their skin peeled off, and they were just as pale as before. Irene had been telling her husband this for at least twenty years now, but it didn’t change a thing. Krister burned every year. Svante, on the other hand, looked rested and rejuvenated, and he waved happily to Irene and Tommy when they slipped into the room and took a seat in the back. From the front row, Kajsa turned and smiled at them, but Irene didn’t smile back. She knew Kajsa’s smile wasn’t meant for her.