The Golden Calf

by Helene Tursten

  Andersson brightened even more. He liked Irene’s reasoning.

  “Two suspected killers, but neither is alive to be questioned,” Fredrik complained.

  “And there’s this—who killed those two?” asked Tommy.

  “Not to mention Kjell B:son Ceder. Fewer than twenty-four hours later he was dead, too,” added Birgitta.

  “THERE’S A GAP in the timeline,” Tommy said.

  He was leaning back in his desk chair and tapping a pen on his front teeth. Irene felt that the personal tension between them had lessened, but she would be careful not to mention his upcoming divorce. She was not about to reopen a recently healed wound. If he wanted to talk about it, he’d have to speak first. The difference between a wise person and a foolish person is that the wise one does not repeat his mistakes, as Mamma Gerd used to say.

  “Where’s the gap?” asked Irene.

  “You said that Thomas picked up some belongings at his parents’ house at about five thirty. Then he went to Jaegerdorffsplatsen to buy whiskey. However, he didn’t turn up at the boat until eight P.M. Two hours. What was he doing? Was he meeting someone?”

  “He was going to the state liquor store. Maybe there was a long line,” said Irene. She was irritated at herself for not noticing the time gap.

  “They close at six. It only takes fifteen to twenty minutes to go from Jaegerdorffsplatsen to the small boat harbor. What was he doing before then?”

  “No idea,” Irene admitted.

  Tommy sighed and stuck his pen back into the clay pencil holder his daughter had made at her daycare center. It had been painted bright yellow and decorated with red hearts. In the middle, Tommy’s daughter had written Pappa in large, sprawling letters.

  “Let’s get something to eat before we go out looking for those fingers,” Tommy said. “It’s probably the best thing to do, so we don’t lose our appetite later on. Do you think that Bonetti’s parents have a finger?”

  “Why would they?”

  “Perhaps the killer was trying to blackmail them? If you don’t pay x amount of money, we’ll send his head next time. Something like that.”

  “No. His mother would have told me. She couldn’t have kept quiet about such a thing. You have no idea what it cost her to show me the box where Bonetti’s glasses were. That lawyer husband of hers really keeps her on a tight leash. Though he softened up when I told him about the missing fingers. He was truly shaken up about it.”

  “So you don’t think that the Bonettis received one?”

  “No.”

  “So who, then?”

  Just as Irene was about to say she had no idea, she realized who might have had one. Or two.

  • • •

  ELSY KAEGLER SLOWLY opened the door to the Askim house. Irene had pushed Tommy in front of her on a hunch, and she was right. Sanna’s mother beamed when she saw Tommy.

  “How nice to … I mean … please come in. Sanna is not … I mean, she’ll be here a little later. Ludde has just gone to sleep,” Elsy said, sounding as scatter-brained as usual.

  Irene wondered how Elsy Kaegler could be Sanna Kaegler’s mother. Sanna was so cold and calculating. And didn’t she hold down a job? Or maybe she was retired? Elsy didn’t appear to be older than sixty, but maybe she was.

  “I’ve just made a pot of coffee,” Elsy said. “I don’t have any buns or cookies, though. Is that all right?”

  “It’s fine,” the two detectives said in unison.

  “On a day like this, it would be wonderful to sit in the outdoor room, but it feels so … horrid. It’s where poor Kjell.… Let’s sit in the living room instead,” Elsy said with a shudder.

  “That’s fine. I’ll help you bring out the coffee,” said Tommy.

  Tommy and Irene followed Elsy into the kitchen. Elsy found some special tall glasses meant for coffee.

  “It’s going to be café latte,” explained Elsy.

  She warmed milk in the microwave; then the milk and coffee from the percolator were blended in just the right amounts and poured into the tall glasses. Elsy, chatting with Tommy the entire time, set the glasses on a tray that Tommy picked up. They headed to the living room while Irene hung back.

  “I’m just going to get a drink of water and find a tissue to blow my nose. I know my way to the living room,” Irene explained.

  “OK,” Tommy said, almost without interruption in his conversation with Elsy, who seemed oblivious of anything Irene said or did.

  Irene quickly crossed the tile floor to the freezer and opened its steel door to peer inside—with butterflies in her stomach.

  It was empty.

  There was nothing in the freezer, not even a thin layer of frost on the shelves or at the back. On the top shelf was an ice cube tray, and just to be sure, Irene looked into it, but there weren’t even ice cubes there. Disappointed, she closed the door, got a glass of water, and headed back to the others in the living room.

  Tommy hadn’t wasted any time. As Irene sat down in one of the pale armchairs, she heard him say, “Perhaps we can just get the key from you so that we don’t have to bother Sanna at all. We’ll be back with it before she even gets home.”

  He gave Elsy a trusting smile.

  “Well, maybe … she’s so stressed and unhappy, my poor child. All of this … it’s been too much for her. First Kjell, then Philip … it can’t hurt to let you have the keys. You’re police officers, after all.”

  At her last sentence, Elsy gave him a beatific smile.

  They finished their coffee as quickly as they could, and when they went to the door to leave, Tommy reminded Elsy about the key. Elsy dug around in a huge flowery cloth bag for a long time before she fished out a key ring with three keys. There was a metal tag etched with the words Hotel Göteborg. “Here they are!”

  They thanked her once more for the coffee and hurried to the car.

  “THE HOUSE WAS searched pretty thoroughly after Ceder was shot,” Irene said. “But perhaps we missed something in the freezer. Maybe a finger was hidden in a package of fish sticks or something like that, and there was time to get rid of it.”

  “Well, there was nothing there at any rate,” Tommy said. “Maybe we’ll have better luck here in the apartment.”

  He parked in an empty space close to Kjell Ceder’s entrance.

  They took the swift and quiet elevator up to the sixth floor and got out. Just as Tommy was about to insert the key in the lock, Irene said, “Wait! What if Sanna is here?”

  Tommy sighed and said, with conviction, “If there’s one place where Sanna is not, it’s this apartment. She hates it.”

  He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Bowing as if to a lady, he gestured for Irene to enter first.

  It seemed as if a sheet of unseen sound hit her, and Irene reeled from the shock. She stood absolutely still, and it took her a second or two to realize that the noise was a high-pitched scream. It took her another few seconds to locate the dark figure pressed against the wall at the other end of the hallway.

  Tommy fumbled at the inside wall and found the switch to the ceiling lamp. The light blinded her. Sanna stopped screaming just as quickly as she’d begun. Her eyes were wide-open from fear as she stared at the two police officers. Apparently, she didn’t recognize them. She pressed against the wall as if trying to disappear into the wallpaper.

  “Sanna, it’s me, Tommy, and Irene, from the police. We’re so sorry we frightened you,” Tommy said in his deep, calming voice.

  The whites of Sanna’s eyes were shining just like those of a frightened deer. Irene remembered a runaway horse she and Tommy were called to control when they still shared a patrol car. The animal was skittering and hysterical in the middle of traffic on a highway, creating total chaos. As they’d approached the horse, the detail that had struck her was the shining whites of the horse’s terrified eyes.

  Why was Sanna so terrified?

  “We didn’t know you were here,” Tommy apologized. “We were checking on the apartment and f
ound the door open, so we decided to come inside and see if there’d been a break-in.”

  Good Lord! Irene thought. She had no idea that Tommy was as good as she was at lying on the fly. Hopefully Sanna wouldn’t start to wonder how the police had walked into her apartment.

  They didn’t have a search warrant. Of course, they could have arranged one, but it would have taken at least a day. Tommy had been improvising when he’d asked innocent Elsy whether he could borrow the apartment keys. Now Irene strode across the threshold to within a few meters of Sanna.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It’s just us.”

  The fear in Sanna’s eyes faded to tears, which started to slide silently down her cheeks.

  “Come, Sanna,” Tommy urged. “Let’s go talk in the library.” He carefully took hold of her arm.

  Without any resistance, Sanna allowed herself to be led into the large room with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases and leather armchairs; the aroma of leather and dust created a sense of security. Tommy let her sink down into one of the armchairs.

  Meanwhile, Irene took a quick look at the surprisingly modern kitchen with dark stone counters and cupboards in light oak. Not a bit of brushed steel here. It was attractive and functional, not surprising considering Kjell B:son Ceder had been a cuisine professional. It also spoke to the great differences between the Ceders. Why had Kjell married Sanna?

  Irene pulled a sheet from the roll of paper towels on a dispenser near the stove. She decided to take a quick look into the upright freezer before she left the kitchen. It was next to the refrigerator and was just as tall as Irene.

  She had never before seen such a tightly packed and well-organized freezer. It would take hours to go through its contents, so all she could do was shut the door and leave the kitchen.

  Sanna had calmed somewhat, and Tommy was making small talk with her. As Irene came in, Tommy smiled and said, “Here’s Irene with a paper towel. We thought you’d gotten lost in the hallway,” he told Irene.

  “Good thing I learned orienteering when I was a kid,” Irene joked in reply and gave Sanna a small smile as she handed over the paper towel.

  Sanna took it without looking at Irene, dried her tears, blew her nose, and then tossed the crumpled paper into the fireplace.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked sharply.

  “That’s just what we were going to ask you,” Tommy replied.

  “It’s my apartment!”

  “Not quite yet,” Tommy said.

  “I’m well within my rights to be here!” she said defiantly. Sanna seemed to have recovered from the shock and was turning back into her former controlled self. If we’re going to get a sensible answer from her, Irene thought, we’re going to have to throw her off balance. She decided to be blunt.

  “We’re looking for the finger,” she said.

  It was a wild guess, but it hit the mark. Sanna stiffened. “You can’t—know anything,” she whispered.

  “We have found the finger Joachim had, and he’d written that other people had received fingers.…” Irene said, purposefully not finishing her sentence. Sanna interpreted it as a truthful statement.

  “Then … we’re marked for death.” Her terrified eyes flitted between Tommy and Irene.

  “Who is threatening to kill you?” Irene asked.

  Sanna shook her head and her pale lips moved, but no sound came out. She was truly scared to death.

  “Who is threatening you?” Irene repeated.

  “I don’t know. I have to find the finger. I don’t know if Kjell hid it or if he’d gotten rid of it.” Sanna covered her face with her hands and began to sway back and forth.

  Tommy got up and sat on the chair arm next to Sanna to protectively drape one arm around her. Irene was surprised, not so much at Tommy but at the fact that Sanna let him do it. Tommy spoke softly as if he were speaking to a child.

  “Now, now, Sanna. You don’t have to be afraid any longer. We know about this business with those chopped-off fingers. We know that they’ve been sent to a few people. Is someone trying to extort money from you?”

  “Yes … now, Ludwig.…” she whispered.

  “So they’ve threatened both you and Ludwig,” Tommy stated.

  Sanna nodded but didn’t take her hands away from her face.

  “Why now? Is it still about money?” Irene asked.

  Sanna said nothing and it took a long time before she took her hands down. She looked simultaneously desperate and hopeless.

  “I have to find Kjell’s finger or else … something bad will happen to me and Ludwig!”

  “So you received it three years ago.”

  “Yes, though it was just about money then. Blackmail. Now … that Thomas’s body has been found … they want the fingers back.”

  This was quite a macabre story. Sanna had been living under the threat of blackmail for three years. Irene realized why Sanna had reacted the way she did in the hallway. She naturally believed that the murderer had come to kill her.

  “What did you do with yours?”

  “My—? I threw it out! Right away! Directly into the apartment’s garbage can.”

  Her answer was so rapid it had to be the truth.

  “It came when you returned to Sweden?”

  “Yes. I moved home in August. The finger came at the end of September.”

  “What was in the message you received with it?”

  Sanna’s knuckles were chalk white. After a while, she relaxed her grip and began to wring her hands exactly like her mother did.

  “You received one just like everyone else,” Irene said firmly.

  She was improvising, but based her statement on the knowledge that a criminal tends to use the same method over and over.

  “Yes … I was supposed to pay money. It was extortion. The note said it was Thomas’s finger. If I didn’t pay up, the same thing would happen to me. I’ve been paying and paying … and soon I’ll have no money left at all.”

  Tears welled in Sanna’s eyes again, and Irene refrained from asking how Sanna had financed the house in Askim. That wouldn’t be wise. Sanna would just shut back up like an oyster. Right now she was actually talking to them, and most of what she was saying sounded like the truth.

  “Who have you been paying?” Irene asked.

  “Edward. He passed the money along to another account. He doesn’t know who owns it.”

  “How much have you paid so far?”

  Sanna swallowed a few times before she could answer. “Twenty thousand American dollars a month.”

  Irene converted the amount quickly in her head and understood immediately why Sanna was running out of money. She’d been paying a hundred and fifty thousand Swedish kroner a month for three years. Even a fortune would disappear at that rate.

  “So your brother-in-law’s brother, Edward Fenton, took care of this?” Tommy asked. “The man in charge of HP Morgan’s European head office?”

  “Yes. He’d also gotten rid of the finger sent to him. But now they’re demanding all four back. So Edward asked me to look for Kjell’s. I’ve looked for hours, and I haven’t found one!”

  Irene and Tommy exchanged glances. No surprise that Kjell B:son Ceder had received a finger, but why Edward Fenton? Since only four fingers were cut from Thomas Bonetti’s body, this meant that Edward Fenton, Sanna Kaegler, Kjell Ceder, and Joachim Rothstaahl had each gotten one.

  Something didn’t add up here, and Irene’s police instincts kicked in.

  “When did you get the demand for Kjell’s finger?” she asked carefully.

  “Yesterday morning. It must have been after Thomas’s body was found.”

  “Did the note tell you that Thomas had been killed?”

  “No, just that it was Thomas’s finger. It was so horrible. He was … gone. Though I have to say, Thomas is clever. He could have bought some fingers off another corpse and then sent them himself to extort money. Even if he’d gotten all ph.com’s money, it still must cost something to stay in hi
ding.”

  “But he wasn’t the one who sent them,” Irene said, drily. “He was already dead.”

  Sanna jumped as if she were a scolded schoolchild. Obviously she preferred her theory about Thomas’s cleverness to the stark reality.

  “Did Philip say he’d received a finger?”

  Sanna appeared sincerely surprised. “No, not that I know. But I wouldn’t be surprised based on … what happened to him later.” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she couldn’t hold back a sniffle. Irene crossed off any lingering suspicion that Sanna had been involved in Philip’s death. She was truly hit hard by his death. Perhaps she’d have been able to shoot Joachim or Thomas, but not Philip.

  If Philip, too, had received one, that would add up to five fingers sent. Obviously not the case. Irene felt more sure that something wasn’t adding up—not just fingers.

  “Why Edward?” asked Tommy.

  Sanna sighed and seemed to huddle into herself. “He’d gotten some money for ph.com from a man who absolutely did not want to lose anything. But that happens with risky capital. It’s part of the game. Anyway, Edward also received a finger and had to pay up or he’d meet the same fate as Thomas. It was the same threat as in my note.”

  “So Edward knows the name of this man who is demanding his money back,” Irene said.

  “He says he doesn’t.” Sanna looked totally uninterested. Obviously she had no idea how important this question was. Or maybe she did. Irene felt something did not fit in Sanna’s tale, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Instead, she asked, “How was the finger packed when it arrived?”

  “In a plastic tube. One of those for vitamin C tablets that fizz.”

  “How was the plastic tube packed?”

  “A padded envelope.”

  “Do you remember the post mark?”

  Sanna wrinkled her forehead and seemed to concentrate before she shook her head. “No, I don’t remember.”

  “Did the package come to your mother’s address?”

  “Why would it? I’d just moved to my own apartment. That’s where it came.”

  This meant that the sender kept tabs on Sanna. He knew that Sanna had moved back home to Göteborg and even knew her new address. So the murderer probably had ties to Göteborg.