“Do you have any kind of estimate?”
“Perhaps five or six million.”
This meant that Bonetti had had at least 10 million kroner at his disposal when he disappeared, not 5 million as the police had estimated. Was Sanna correct? That was a lot more money.
“Is it possible that he may have taken even more?” asked Irene.
“Yes, we suspected he took more. Maybe as much as 2 million American dollars.”
“Did you and Philip Bergman get together after the company went bankrupt?”
“Yes, but not so often. He was still living in London, and now he’s moved to Paris.”
“When was the last time you saw each other?” asked Irene.
“Actually, it was in London two years ago.”
“Have you kept in touch some other way?”
“By email. He sent a card when we got married and when Ludwig was born.”
“Do you know what Philip was doing in Paris?”
“Doing?” Sanna repeated.
“What he was working on.”
“Business. He was a very good businessman.”
“Do you know what kind of business?”
“He was the manager of mutual funds.”
“Which firm was he working for?”
“He had a company with another guy,” said Sanna.
“Do you know what its name was?”
“I’ve probably heard it mentioned … Euro Finance or something like that.”
A bell went off in Irene’s brain. “What was the other guy’s name?”
“Joachim Rothstaahl.”
“Do you know Joachim Rothstaahl?”
“Not so well. We met a few times in London.”
Although Irene was expecting this, she felt it difficult to control her emotions. It certainly must have shown in her face.
Joachim Rothstaahl had run a fund management company with Thomas Bonetti, and now it appeared that Bonetti’s former and new partners had gotten together to start their own similar company. Was this new company also a pyramid scheme? Were things getting too hot for Bergman and Rothstaahl in London? Was that why they had to move to Paris?
It seemed as if Sanna were reading her thoughts when she asked sharply, “Why are you asking all this about Thomas and Philip?”
Instead of answering Sanna’s question, Tommy asked a new one. “So, besides email and a few cards, you haven’t heard anything else from Philip Bergman?”
“No, not more than that.”
“Did you know he was planning to return home to Göteborg last weekend?”
“No. Did he?” The surprise in her voice seemed genuine.
“I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for some bad news,” Tommy said in a calm manner.
Her princess face hardened, but Sanna did not say a word.
“Both Philip Bergman and Joachim Rothstaahl have been found dead. They were shot—murdered. I am very sorry for the loss of your friends,” Tommy said with true compassion.
Sanna did not move at all. Irene heard a soft, gurgling sound and realized that Sanna was trying to say something. Slowly, she stood up while gripping the armrests of her chair. A despairing whimper came from her throat and rose to a heart-rending wail. “Noooo! Not Philip! Not Phil.…”
This time Irene was able to catch her before Sanna fell to the floor.
“SO SHE FAINTED again,” Andersson said.
Tommy nodded. “Yep. It seems she does whenever her emotions are too strong. At least, that’s what her mother says. Her blood pressure is too low. Though I think the reverse should be true.”
Irene shuddered as she remembered the tumult. Elsy hadn’t made things better by running in circles, wringing her hands. Finally, she decided to call the doctor who’d prescribed the tranquilizers before. The doctor had his private practice a few doors down and arrived within ten minutes. It felt freeing to hand over all responsibility to him. Sanna had shown signs of coming to but would surely faint again if she tried to stand up.
“She fainted in Askim as well,” Irene said. “But I have the feeling that it was due to the fact that Kjell B:son Ceder was in her house.”
Tommy nodded. “I remember her saying that the house was sullied.”
“But she had a real shock when she heard that Rothstaahl and Bergman were dead,” said Irene.
“I believe it was mostly Bergman’s death that affected her. She didn’t know Rothstaahl all that well.”
“We have to take everything that lady says with a grain of salt,” Irene said. “And I believe we should have a DNA test run on the two gentlemen in the morgue. Perhaps little Ludwig truly is fatherless.”
“Do you think that either of them could be the boy’s father?” asked Tommy.
“Who knows? At the moment only Sanna knows who the father is. Perhaps the father knows as well, but that might not be the case. Everyone assumed that Ceder was the father.”
“But both Sanna and Ceder knew he wasn’t. So why did Ceder decide to take on some other guy’s kid?” asked Andersson stubbornly.
“We’ll have to ask Sanna when the time is right,” Tommy said.
“There’s a lot of questions that woman has to answer.” Andersson stood up and rubbed the bags under his eyes. He looked old and worn out. Why does he stay on the force? Irene asked herself and then answered her own question. Because the force is his life.
“Well, I think it’s time to call it a day,” Andersson said. “See you at morning prayer tomorrow.”
Andersson walked over to the door and took his threadbare coat from the hook.
Chapter 6
“BERGMAN’S CAR WAS found in Saltholmen,” Andersson said when they gathered the next day for morning prayer. “It was found parked in a meadow that is used as overflow area for long-term parking during the summer months. The technicians are looking it over now.” Andersson paused. “There wasn’t any leather jacket or briefcase in the car.”
“Saltholmen is where the ferry boats to the archipelago leave. Also the ferries to Styrsö Island,” Irene pointed out.
“You thinking about that Bonetti guy?” Andersson asked.
“Yes, I am,” Irene said.
“So you think there’s something fishy about the Bonetti case.”
“Absolutely. There are connections between our murders and Bonetti’s disappearance. We weren’t able to get anywhere the first time we investigated. I’d like to take a second look at the material we collected in that case. We know more now, and maybe I’ll see something that didn’t seem important at the time. And, with what happened to Bergman and Rothstaahl, I believe we can view the Bonetti case as a homicide and not a case of a missing person. At least unofficially for the time being.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions here. Damn it all, we already have three official cases of homicide on our hands! Bonetti was wanted for financial crimes, and you yourself said he had sticky fingers, so the guy certainly had enough reasons to disappear.”
Andersson’s face was turning red, and he was drumming his fingers on the table in irritation. He knew he had to let her follow her instincts, though; they’d proven right in more than one past investigation. A true homicide detective had experience, intuition, and stubbornness, and Irene had all three.
“All right. You can spend the day on the Bonetti case,” he said glumly.
Irene nodded without showing an ounce of triumph. She knew very well that she could be heading down a dead end and a whole day’s worth of work would have been wasted. On the other hand, there was nothing unusual in digging into a related cold case. Often something that seemed unimportant at the time would show its absolute importance after further facts had been brought to bear.
“Tommy, you’ve been questioning Sanna Kaegler-Ceder,” continued Andersson. “I want you to lean on her a bit. She must know a great deal more than she’s willing to admit. She knew all of the victims to some degree. And, like I mentioned yesterday, check the Kaegler-Ceder’s finances. Money is always a st
rong motive for murder.”
The superintendent looked over his team. Kajsa was missing. She had already left for her meeting with the online journalist, but she’d said she’d be back by the afternoon meeting. Birgitta was also absent, since Philip Bergman’s parents had requested that she come over at eight A.M. They wanted to leave town and travel to their summer cabin to avoid the stream of reporters. Last night’s headlines had been huge. TWO WELL-KNOWN FINANCIERS KILLED! and GOLDEN CALF MURDERED!
Kajsa had mentioned to Irene that the press often called Philip Bergman “the Golden Calf.” His name came from his phenomenal ability to attract investors without needing to lift a finger. Everyone had fought to have the chance to dance around the Golden Calf.
Andersson stood up. “OK, gang, let’s get going.” He turned in the doorway, “I’m in some stupid meeting this morning, but you can reach me after lunch.”
Andersson did not look particularly pleased as he made this announcement. He despised meetings. No matter what the proposed topic of the meeting was, they all boiled down to the same thing: trimming expenses and ruining a well-functioning organization. He’d been a policeman now for more than forty years and everything had been better before, if you asked him.
Irene started by skimming through the witness reports from Långedrag’s small harbor one more time. Three men and two teenagers had seen the same thing at eight P.M.: Thomas Bonetti speeding into the parking lot in his BMW. He’d parked and taken two duffel bags out of the trunk. One of the men remembered that Bonetti had been speaking on his cell phone as he’d gotten out of the car. The police were not able to trace the call. Grumbling loudly, Bonetti had lugged the bags to his boat. All of the witnesses had the impression that the larger bag had been extremely heavy. Once he’d lifted the duffel bags onto the boat, he got on board, started the motor, and cast off. The five witnesses had watched the boat until it disappeared out to sea.
Nothing in the five witness reports gave Irene anything more to go on. Too bad they hadn’t been able to trace the cell call.
The interviews with Bonetti’s parents hadn’t given them much, either. He’d only told them that he needed some peace and quiet to think things over. Neither of them had any idea what it was that Bonetti had to think over. At one point, Irene felt Antonio Bonetti was using an imperial tone when he’d said, “Thomas is involved with global business. In that realm, you can’t talk about what you’re working on. All great businessmen learn this fairly quickly. You only leak the information that you deliberately want to come out, and you make it seem as if it was given in extreme confidence. Since he didn’t tell us what he was up to, there was certainly something important going on.”
Well, getting ready to disappear off the face of the earth could certainly be classified as important, Irene thought sarcastically. And a great businessman? As far as she was concerned, he was a swindler. She stopped her train of thought. Didn’t Sanna also say that Philip Bergman was a great businessman? Did they actually take themselves for serious men of business?
There was one last witness. The same day that the police had made the disappearance known to the public, a woman had dialed 112 and reported that she wanted to speak to someone involved in the investigation. She had talked to an investigator Irene only knew by name. At the end of his report, he’d written his own comment: “The witness is slurring her words and is obviously intoxicated. Promised to contact her if we believe it will help the investigation.”
Nowhere in the material was any indication that the woman’s report had been followed up on.
Her name was Annika Hermansson. She was the nearest neighbor of the Bonetti summer cabin and recognized the boat as well as the sound of its motor. According to her report, the boat had passed her house at eight thirty P.M. and was tied up at the Bonetti dock. Ten minutes later, it started again, which surprised her and made her curious, so she decided to take a closer look using her telescope. The boat had gone behind Branteskär, and he must have tied it up there, because she didn’t see him come out the other side. According to her report, she’d waited for hours to see him come out. When nothing happened, she got bored and went to bed. When she woke up later, she saw that Nisse’s Cairn, a cairn of stones nearby, had been moved. According to her, the police really must investigate why the cairn had been shifted. It could be a sea hazard.
The detective had written in his report, “Branteskär is marked on the sea chart and is 2.5 kilometers from the witness’s residence on Styresö Island. Considering the late hour, the distance, and the darkness, there is no possibility that the witness could have seen anything through a telescope.”
Irene agreed with her colleague, but at the same time, this was the only report from a witness that had not been checked. She picked up the phone and dialed the number that Annika Hermansson had left three years earlier.
THERE WERE ABOUT thirty passengers on the lunchtime ferry to the islands in the southern archipelago. Most of them were mothers of young children and retirees who’d been shopping in town. The sun was shining through sparse clouds, and the tops of the waves glittered. Seagulls hovered near the boat’s hull, perhaps in hopes that it was a fishing boat. After a pleasant half-hour journey, Irene could see the settlement of Styresö Bratten.
The contrast from her earlier visit was remarkable. A light breeze drifted through the crowns of the birch trees, giving off the scent of summer despite the fact that one or two golden leaves had already appeared. Irene looked at the ferry thermometer and unbuttoned her coat. It was almost twenty-one degrees Celcius, which was quite nice for the middle of September.
Irene walked the same way she’d gone with Tommy on that windy, cold December day more than three years ago. The address she’d gotten from Annika Hermansson led her to the house with the lovely glass veranda that she remembered from her first visit. The glass was mullioned with small, colored windowpanes in red and green. The large, wooden house resembled many of the other houses on the island; it had presumably been built at the turn of the previous century as a summer home for a wealthy Göteborg family. As Irene came closer, she saw that the old house was beginning to look dilapidated. The yellow paint was coming off the walls in strips, and the paint around the windows was almost gone. The beautiful downspouts with dragonheads were nearly rusted through, and the grass of the tiny lawn was almost knee-high. A swath of honeysuckle from the overgrown garden wrapped itself around one of the downspouts.
Irene knocked on the cracked door. After a moment, she heard a husky voice yell, “Come on in, the door’s open!”
Irene entered the house and was immediately struck by the odor of the dirty house: cigarette smoke, old wine, and rancid cat food.
“Hello!” Irene called out.
“Hello there! I’m in the kitchen!” a raspy female voice replied.
Irene stepped over the junk that littered the narrow hallway and aimed her feet in the direction of the voice.
The kitchen was large and light. The sun shone through the southern window. It would never be too sunny, though, because it would have to first make its way through a thick layer of salt and dirt. External blinds, how practical, Irene thought. The kitchen décor was from the seventies: all pine paneling, the stove and the refrigerator an avocado green. The smell in the kitchen was nauseating, and Irene was thankful she hadn’t stopped for lunch before this visit.
The woman was sitting at the table, scratching behind the ear of the black cat on her lap. It was purring so loudly the sound filled the kitchen. Both the cat and the mistress looked up when Irene entered the room.
“Hi, I’m Irene Huss. I’m the detective who called you earlier this morning. Are you Annika Hermansson?”
The woman nodded.
“I’d like to speak to you about the disappearance of Thomas Bonetti. You had called—”
“It’s about time! I called over and over again, but nobody cared. Apparently it takes years for the police to come out and take a look unless people are telling lies about you. Then yo
u come right.…”
The woman stopped and mumbled something to herself. There was a wine glass on the table, half full, and she took a long drink. “You want anything?” she asked, gesturing at the wine box placed on the kitchen counter.
“No, thank you, I’m on duty,” Irene replied as she forced herself to smile.
Nothing about Annika Hermansson made Irene want to smile any wider. The woman’s hair was dyed black, and a few inches of gray had already grown back in. Her face was slack and doughy and showed obvious signs of long-term alcoholism. Her stomach beneath her dirty T-shirt was a big, round ball, but she had the thin arms and legs of an anorexic. She reminded Irene of a spider. It was difficult to tell how old Annika Hermansson was, but Irene guessed about fifty.
“Well, well, that’s all right. There’s not much left in the box. Billy will be here soon with a new one,” Annika muttered.
“Who’s Billy?” Irene asked the drunken woman, mostly so she could start a conversation.
“My son.”
Irene lifted old newspapers and other scraps from a stool so she could sit down. Angry with the disturbance, the cat hissed at her and jumped to the floor.
With great difficulty, the spider woman got up and walked over to fill her glass from the wine box. As she shuffled back to her place, she spilled some wine on the floor but didn’t bother wiping it up. Breathing heavily, she groaned as she made herself comfortable again.
“What happened that September evening three years ago?” Irene asked.
“I heard that monster of a speed boat coming and thought it was odd so late at night and at that time of the year. Those Bonettis never come after September. The boat was their son’s. I’ve never liked that guy. Always boasting and lying. He’s five years older than Billy, but none of the other kids ever wanted to play with him. Not even Billy, for that matter.”
She fell silent long enough to drink a disturbing amount of wine in a single swallow. To help keep track of the conversation, Irene said slowly, “So he wasn’t popular in his circle of friends.”
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