by Viveca Sten
Sachsen examined the skin on the legs. There were uneven bluish patches spread across the thighs, the pattern reminiscent of Roman marble. A classic sign of frost damage, and proof that she was alive when she collapsed in the snow.
“She must have been lying there for quite some time,” he said, not expecting an answer from Ohlin. Andreasson had said that she’d been found only a hundred yards or so from the hotel.
“Why didn’t she go inside, into the warmth?” he asked himself as he picked up a scalpel. It sliced through flesh and muscle; there was no blood, only a little fluid. He folded back the skin for a better view.
“Because she couldn’t,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER 31
It was almost three o’clock, and Thomas’s back was beginning to seize up after several hours in the same position. If he was going to catch the last boat to Harö, he’d need to leave soon.
Across the table, Aram was methodically working his way through a pile of documents, while Thomas tried to interpret the notes they’d found on Jeanette’s desk: sheets of paper covered in cryptic writing. It looked like shorthand, but it was a unique system involving sprawling letters and abbreviations. A code, perhaps? No doubt it made sense to Jeanette, but it was impenetrable to the uninitiated.
Thomas had never been good at reading other people’s handwriting, and he was on the point of giving up. Maybe Karin could give it a go? She was pretty smart when it came to translating incomprehensible hieroglyphs in internal memos. He’d ask her to take a look.
Something was sticking out toward the bottom of the pile—a folded newspaper clipping. Removing and unfolding it, he saw that it was an article from Sweden’s biggest daily. A photograph covered most of the page. It was of an elegant blond woman, wearing a double rope of pearls around her neck and smiling straight into the camera.
Thomas recognized her at once: Pauline Palmér, the general secretary of New Sweden, the political group that always made Pernilla start muttering in front of the TV. They were against immigration, they thought taxes were too high, and they insisted that far too many people were claiming benefits from the state. Their ultraconservative stance was directly opposed to the social democratic values that had characterized Sweden for decades.
And yet they had recently gained considerable penetration in the media, mainly thanks to their new general secretary.
Thomas began to read:
Concern about growing number of retirees
The essential building blocks in order to guarantee a secure old age for Sweden’s retirees are a healthy economy and a balanced budget, according to New Sweden’s Pauline Palmér.
“We’re only saying what everyone already knows. There won’t be enough money for our elderly citizens, because expenditure on social benefits has reached astronomical heights due to immigration. Sweden’s welfare system is being sucked dry by claimants from other countries, which creates unfair tensions within our society. Who is taking responsibility for this state of affairs? Who is taking responsibility for the fact that our retirees will be left penniless when the coffers are empty?”
The article continued in the same vein. Pauline Palmér was adept at using rhetoric; Thomas had to give her that. She had no qualms when it came to exploiting the tensions between Swedes and immigrants. What she actually said wasn’t that remarkable, yet it carried a divisive message.
“Are you familiar with Pauline Palmér?” he asked Aram, holding up the article.
Aram put down his pen. “Fucking bitch. The worst kind.”
“She’s very good at getting publicity.”
“Exactly. Mass media are eating from her hand, when in fact she’s inciting discrimination and racism. My parents are terrified, it reminds them of . . .”
He fell silent.
“Well, you know.”
I have no idea, Thomas thought. I’ve lived in Sweden all my life, just like my parents and their parents before them. They worked hard to put food on the table, but they didn’t have to live with terror and torture. No one in my family has lain awake at night, filled with anxiety because relatives have vanished without a trace.
“I don’t think they should worry,” he said. “Not many people pay any attention to her.”
“Are you sure? Haven’t you noticed how often she appears on TV these days? You’d be surprised how many of your fellow citizens share her opinions.”
Thomas had to admit that Aram was right. Time after time Pauline Palmér turned up on various talk shows. She spoke so well that even her critics had to concede on certain points.
“She puts immigrants in one corner of the ring and everyone else in the opposite corner,” Aram went on. “Retirees, students, the unemployed—the whole lot. And she does it under the pretense that she cares about Sweden.”
“I know what you mean,” Thomas said. There was no doubt that New Sweden had gained a legitimacy, which it had lacked in the past. Pauline knew exactly how to get her so-called Christian message across. She made frequent appearances in every possible context, preferably with her husband. The perfect representative of the fair-haired nuclear family.
“Why doesn’t anybody come out and say that her views are unacceptable?” Aram said, folding his arms. “If you substitute Jews or Catholics for Muslims in her pronouncements, half the country would be up in arms.”
He sounded unexpectedly hostile, almost as if he were challenging Thomas to contradict him. Thomas reread the first few lines of the article again.
“She’s full of crap,” he said. “I hope you’re wrong, and that very few people agree with her.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to make a move if I’m going to catch the last boat to Harö; Pernilla and Elin are still on the island. How long are you staying here?”
Aram shrugged. “I don’t have anything else going on, so I’ll stick with it for a while. Sonja and the kids stayed on in Norrköping; we spent Christmas with her family.”
Thomas silenced his guilty conscience and got to his feet. Aram reached across the table and picked up the newspaper article; Pauline Palmér was still smiling away.
“Off you go,” he said. “I’m fine.”
CHAPTER 32
Alice slipped her iPod into her pocket and unlocked the front door. It was almost three thirty. It was already pitch dark outside, apart from the lights on the Christmas tree in the yard, illuminating the path between the mailbox and the house. Next door was dark, too; had everyone gone away for the holiday?
Alice stamped her feet to shake off the snow and went inside. Silence; no doubt Dad had gone to the grocery store. She looked out to see that the car wasn’t in the driveway, and remembered they’d used up the last of the milk at breakfast. She couldn’t cope with talking to him anyway; she’d done her best to avoid him since the visit from the police. In fact she could hardly bear to look at him.
Last night she’d felt as if she were drowning. He’d come into her room; she could see his lips moving, but the sound didn’t get through to her; it was as if her head were underwater.
Slowly she took off her jacket and scarf, then sat down and pulled off her leather boots before heading for the kitchen.
In the doorway she stepped in something wet. Where had that come from? She’d wiped her feet before coming into the house; that was one of the things Dad always nagged her about. She looked back at her boots, where a small pool of melted snow had already formed. Surely it couldn’t have gotten this far?
Never mind, her socks would soon dry.
There was a half-empty bottle of red wine on the counter. No doubt Dad had sat up drinking last night. She had no idea what time he’d gone to bed. She opened the refrigerator to look for something with no calories in it.
Hope Dad remembers cat food, she thought. They’d run out of that, too. Sushi appeared as soon as she heard the refrigerator door. The little white Birman had a healthy appetite in spite of her size.
“You’ll have to wait a little while, sweetheart,” Alice said, scratching Sushi behi
nd her velvety ears.
There was a banana in the vegetable drawer; that would do. Alice went into the living room and curled up on the sofa. Slowly she peeled back the skin and ate the banana in tiny bites.
The Christmas tree lights were glowing; she didn’t bother switching on any of the lamps. Somehow she found the shimmering red bulbs and sparkling decorations calming. They made everything seem normal. The tree looked exactly the same as it had since she was a little girl, when she and Mom used to trim it.
Sushi padded into the room, rubbed her face against the sofa, then jumped up and settled down beside Alice. She began to purr, her warm body vibrating. Alice stared out into the semidarkness. She didn’t want to cry; she knew that if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth. She had to stay in control. She felt as if a hand was gripping her heart and squeezing it much too hard.
After a while she reached into her pocket, being careful not to disturb Sushi, and took out her cell phone. She called her mom’s number.
“Hej, du har kommit till Jeanette, lämna ett meddelande så ringer jag upp. Hi, this is Jeanette—please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Mom sounded just the same as always, a little stressed, her mind already on something else. Typical. In the English message she pronounced her name with an American intonation, Ja-net. Alice used to tease her about that. “It sounds dumb, like you’re American instead of Swedish.”
Mom had smiled, but she hadn’t changed it.
Alice dropped the phone and clasped her hands together, like when she was a little girl getting ready to say her evening prayers with Mom.
“I’m sorry I was so horrible when you went away,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I said so many stupid things. I didn’t mean them, I swear.”
She’d been so mad on Christmas Eve because Mom hadn’t been in touch. Same as always, she’d thought as her eyes filled with tears. Fucking bitch.
Now she knew why her phone hadn’t rung. The guilty feelings came flooding back; she’d give anything to see Mom again. Just for a few minutes.
She picked up the phone and pressed “Redial,” then closed her eyes and tried to pretend that Mom was away on one of her trips.
“Hi, Mom,” she said quietly. “I really miss you—come home soon.” She held on until the beep ended the call. Surely Dad should be back by now? She hoped he hadn’t gone to see Petra. Alice pursed her lips at the thought. He wouldn’t go over there today, would he? Not after what had happened to Mom.
Alice knew that her mom hadn’t liked Petra either.
A sound from outside made her lift her head; was it the garage door closing? It must be Dad; he’d come inside soon, laden with bags of groceries, asking how she was feeling.
Alice really wanted to go and hide in her room so that she wouldn’t have to speak to him, but Sushi was on her lap now, purring away, and Alice didn’t have the energy to move. She was so tired, so sad.
Several minutes passed.
Alice turned her head, listening for Dad’s footsteps. Nothing.
That was weird—she’d been sure he was on his way into the house.
CHAPTER 33
Nora was sitting in front of her laptop in the kitchen at the Brand villa. It was snowing again, and frost had begun to form at the bottom of the windows. Nora was wearing thick socks; the cold from the basement penetrated right through the old wooden floorboards.
She’d spent the last few hours working on the material Jukka Heinonen had sent over. It was much more comprehensive than she could have imagined, and she had reluctantly emailed him to say that it would take time to go through everything, and that she wouldn’t be able to give him a detailed response until early next week.
As soon as she pressed “Send,” she felt like a failure, as if the complexity of the document was her fault.
Heinonen’s message included a PowerPoint presentation on the payment arrangements for the sale of the branch network across the Baltic states. It described an advanced chain of various companies that were involved, so complex that it was difficult to grasp the overall picture. However, she eventually managed to clarify the structure, and noted all the various payment streams on her notepad. The result now looked like an octopus, its tentacles spreading in all directions.
The buyer was a financial institution she’d never heard of before, a company based in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It was owned by a firm based on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, which in turn was owned by another company in Cyprus, explaining why the payment was to go through a Cypriot bank.
However, the final stage in the process lay with a trust in Gibraltar, administered by a law firm.
It wasn’t impossible to accomplish, but it was a million miles from anything Nora had done before.
The bank would be well paid—very well paid, in fact. The purchase price was way above the levels other interested parties had indicated, but there was no way of knowing who was actually behind the transaction. Everything ended at the office in Gibraltar.
It didn’t feel right to Nora, and the more closely she looked at the material, the more troubled she became.
Complex financial arrangements weren’t unusual in international commerce; sometimes they were necessary in order to optimize tax benefits for all concerned—usually other well-established banks.
In this case, though, they were selling to an unknown buyer who wanted to make use of companies and financial arrangements in all these different countries, leading Nora to suspect that shady individuals might be behind the deal.
For example, why was the payment going via Cyprus, a country well known for hiding money?
She couldn’t help but see the red flags. Was this about something else, criminals who wanted to gain access to a financial enterprise? Money laundering?
Nora sat back and stretched her arms above her head. Her muscles were stiff after several hours at the kitchen table, but she liked sitting there. The room faced southwest, and she loved the light.
She turned her attention back to the screen.
If she seriously believed that the purchaser was somehow suspect, then she had no choice but to contact the bank’s internal compliance department. The material Heinonen had sent gave no indication that this had already been done.
She knew that if she went down that route, it would sink the deal. She also knew that Heinonen had already embarked on negotiations with the purchaser. Speed was of the essence; many board members wanted to dispose of the debt-ridden branch network as soon as possible, before the credit losses increased still further.
The email’s subject line said, “Strictly confidential—for the eyes of the recipient only.” The message was encrypted, and the password had been sent separately, with a note stressing that the material must not be passed on without Jukka Heinonen’s express permission.
Nora stood up and went over to the window. The sun would soon be going down beyond the point at Västerudd. The gray-blue sky had already begun to darken, but strips of weak daylight were still visible. The pine forest on the western side of the island seemed to melt into the icy sea.
Nora rested her forehead on the glass, feeling the cold against her skin.
She had a good idea of what was going on; the new chairman of the board was the driving force. Hannes Jernesköld was one of Finland’s most well-established financiers, and had been the director of the Finnish bank before the merger. He was of noble descent, and had restored the family fortune. These days he socialized with the president of Finland, and was notorious for his tough approach when it came to business.
It wasn’t hard to imagine the rest. Presumably Heinonen had promised to deliver, and that was exactly what he was trying to do, regardless of the methods involved.
Would the board really be prepared to accept this arrangement? That wasn’t her direct concern; she was simply the legal adviser who had to make sure everything was in place.
She knew that Jukka Heinonen was a man who w
as used to getting his own way. If he could sell the Baltic network at a high price, it would look good for both him and the new chairman.
If Nora was going to question the deal at this stage, she would need rock-solid reasons.
She decided to make herself a cup of tea. The documentation was extremely complicated; with the right presentation, the board probably wouldn’t even understand the ramifications of the decision, let alone who they were really dealing with. All they’d see would be the decoy, an offer that exceeded anything else on the table by several hundred million kronor.
Maximum profit, no doubt about it.
Nora made her tea and took it back to the table. She needed information on the parties involved. Knowing which countries the companies were registered in wasn’t enough. She had to find out more about the owners, make sure they were clean.
With a sigh, she put down her mug and stared at the screen once more. Twenty-four PowerPoint slides with densely written English text, each one marked “Secret and Confidential.”
The deal would be a key part of the merger, yet she was sitting here with a knot in her stomach. If she green-lighted the proposal, then she would be responsible for approving the legal aspects of the transaction. If she objected and asked for more information, Heinonen would come after her; he might even remove her from the project, and that would be the end of any chance for a promotion within the bank.
It was getting dark quite quickly now, and Nora gazed at the text in the fading light without finding the answers she was looking for.
I need to go deeper, she thought. This won’t do.
CHAPTER 34
Thomas tried to spot Pernilla from the doorway of the Vaxholm boat as it reached the jetty on the island of Harö. Ice was forming on the Sound, but the shimmering waters were still open. If the cold spell continued, an icebreaker would have to be brought in to clear a route for the boats to travel around the archipelago.
