In Harm's Way

by Viveca Sten

  “That’s why she had so much medication at home,” Thomas said.

  “Exactly. She had a range of drugs associated with cancer treatment; Zofran, for example, is used to counteract nausea during chemotherapy.”

  “So she was dying,” Margit said.

  “As I said, the cancer was advanced.”

  Sachsen drew the sheet over Jeanette’s body, and Ohlin silently helped to cover her face.

  “You haven’t told us anything about the cause of death,” Margit pointed out. “Was it related to her illness?”

  Thomas’s phone rang; he glanced at the display and saw that it was Aram. Not now, he thought as he rejected the call.

  “What was the cause of death?” Margit repeated.

  Sachsen looked positively excited. “Now we get to the interesting part! It wasn’t easy to work out what happened, not at first.”

  Margit’s raised eyebrows made it clear that he was talking in riddles, and that she wasn’t amused. She folded her arms. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain.”

  Instead of answering, Sachsen turned, went over to a table, and picked up a small plastic bag. When he came back, he held it up so that they could see the contents: a few black flakes, with a reddish substance at the bottom.

  “I found this in Jeanette’s large intestine. Do you know what it is?”

  “Will you stop asking questions?” Margit snapped. “Just tell us what you’ve found!”

  Sachsen’s face darkened, and Ohlin immediately seemed on edge.

  I guess he doesn’t have an easy time of it, Thomas thought.

  “I’m pretty sure this is a paternoster bean,” Sachsen replied, all trace of amusement gone from his tone.

  “Sorry?” Thomas said, ignoring the change of mood.

  “A paternoster bean, also known as a rosary pea, from the plant of the same name. They bear a close resemblance to coffee beans, except that they’re red, with a black patch on one end. They’re sometimes used to make necklaces or bracelets, the kind you see for sale in market stalls.”

  Sachsen put the bag back on the table. When he spoke again, his attention was entirely focused on Thomas. Margit had fallen out of favor.

  “The problem is that the seeds inside the bean contain a lethal poison. Have you heard of abrin? It’s a plant-based toxin closely related to ricin. Do you remember Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian who was murdered by the KGB in London in the 1970s? They stabbed the poor guy in the leg with an umbrella; the tip was coated with ricin.”

  “Ricin is related to castor oil, right?” Thomas remembered standing in the kitchen as a little boy, his mother holding out a spoonful of the clear, glutinous substance.

  It had tasted revolting.

  Sachsen nodded. “Yes. The oil is produced by pressing the shells of the beans, while the poison comes from the seeds. However, in this case we’re talking about abrin, which is even more dangerous. And there’s no known antidote.”

  “So what happens if you ingest it?” Margit asked in a subdued voice, letting Sachsen know that she’d gotten the message. However, he still addressed his answer to Thomas.

  “It causes the cells in the body to die. Death is inevitable if you ingest a sufficiently large amount. It’s usually taken orally; it can be eaten or inhaled. In this case it seems as if Jeanette ate it, since we found the remains of the beans.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “Violent vomiting. Blood in the urine, severe diarrhea, often containing blood. Then the blood pressure drops as the poison begins to work. The victim can also experience hallucinations.”

  “What constitutes a fatal dose?”

  “It depends; the seeds of just a few beans can be enough. In this case, probably even less; Jeanette Thiels was already considerably weakened because of the cancer. One seed could have been all it took.”

  “Any possibility that it was accidental?”

  Sachsen shook his head.

  “I can’t answer that, but I imagine it would take quite a lot for someone to start chewing on a bean with such toxic contents.”

  Thomas tried to digest the information.

  Jeanette had been poisoned. And she’d been suffering from advanced cancer. But she’d been found outdoors, as stiff as a poker.

  “Could you be more precise? Did she die from the poison, or did she freeze to death?”

  “Without the results from the tissue sample analysis, it’s hard to be completely sure. However, there are clear signs of frost damage, which means she can’t have been dead when she ended up at the spot where she was found.”

  “OK. So we’re definitely looking at attempted murder at the very least.”

  Thomas went over and picked up the plastic bag. He studied the contents carefully.

  “When do you think she ingested this?”

  “Once again, it’s hard to say. In most cases it can take twenty-four hours, perhaps a little longer, for the poison to take full effect, but we have to remember that Jeanette was in bad shape, so it could have been quicker.”

  “Can you give us a time frame?” Margit tried again.

  Sachsen put his glasses back on. The polished lenses enlarged his pupils, black orbs surrounded by a ring of pale blue.

  “The problem is that we don’t know exactly when the poison took effect, because she probably froze to death.”

  “But surely you have some idea?” Margit insisted.

  “Well, it was the vomiting and diarrhea that set me along this track . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Sachsen shrugged; he seemed reluctant to answer the question.

  “I would guess,” he said after a few seconds, “that she ingested the poison at the most twenty-four hours before it began to work. But we could be looking at a much shorter period, maybe only ten or twelve hours, given her weakened state. But that’s a ballpark guess. It’s possible that she collapsed in the snow because she’d been poisoned; there are no marks on the body to indicate that she’d been dragged or subjected to physical violence. Obviously I can’t say whether she might have been threatened with a weapon of some kind.”

  Thomas pictured the narrow strip of sand on the island, Jeanette lying facedown, her body covered in snow. Sachsen’s conclusions suggested that she must have taken the poison before traveling to Sandhamn—on the morning of Christmas Eve, or the evening of the twenty-third. When she met up with Anne-Marie Hansen.

  CHAPTER 42

  Axel Ohlin accompanied Thomas and Margit to the main doors. The place was still deserted.

  “Enjoy the rest of the holiday,” he said ironically as he let them out.

  “Do you think Jeanette’s ex-husband knew she was seriously ill?” Margit said after the door had closed behind them. “Surely she must have told him and Alice?”

  “In which case he should have said something when we were there, especially when we informed him that her death might not have been the result of natural causes.”

  A yellow snowplow turned into the parking lot, the huge shovel pushing piles of snow in front of it before dumping them at the far end. The driver just managed to avoid burying the disabled parking spaces.

  “We might as well go straight over there,” Margit said. “We need to speak to both of them again anyway.” She took her car key out of her pocket. “We can take my car and pick yours up on the way back. There’s no point in both of us driving out to Vaxholm.”

  As Margit reversed out of her parking space and headed for the E4, Thomas fastened his seat belt and called Aram back. His colleague answered almost immediately.

  “Hi, it’s Thomas. We were with Sachsen, so I couldn’t talk.”

  He didn’t tell Aram what they’d learned; the Old Man ought to be informed first. However, Aram didn’t appear to notice; he had something else on his mind.

  “I found something interesting in the documents from Jeanette’s apartment. Really interesting. There was a folder containing a number of letters from a lawyer she’d been in tou
ch with. They’re a mixture of email printouts, original letters, and handwritten notes.”

  “Hang on, I’m in the car with Margit,” Thomas said. “I’ll put you on speakerphone.”

  He switched the phone to his left hand and held it up between them so that Margit would be able to hear over the sound of the engine.

  “Go on, Aram. Who’s this lawyer Jeanette was dealing with?”

  “Her name is Angelica Stadigh. She specializes in family law with a firm called Stadigh & Partners. They’d been corresponding for over a year.”

  “About what?” Margit asked.

  “It seems as if Jeanette Thiels was thinking of taking her ex-husband to court; she wanted custody of their daughter. According to these letters, she’d been gathering evidence to prove that Michael was not fit to have sole custody of Alice.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “She claims that he drinks too much. That was one of the arguments she planned to use in court.”

  “Was she trying to take Alice away from him—going for sole custody?” Margit said.

  “That’s not clear from the documentation.”

  “What dates are we looking at?”

  “The first letter was just over a year ago, and the last email was sent in November.”

  “She must have already known she had cancer,” Margit said.

  “Is there any correspondence with Michael Thiels?” Thomas asked. “Did he know Jeanette was trying to get custody of Alice?”

  Something rustled in the background.

  “I’ve got a letter here from Angelica Stadigh to Jeanette,” Aram said. “She says she’s been in touch with Michael’s legal representative, and that he’s opposed to any change in the current arrangements. That was sent in May.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, according to Michael, Jeanette made up the whole thing—none of it’s true. He has no problems with alcohol. In fact he claims that she’s the one who’s totally unsuitable when it comes to caring for their daughter.”

  “It sounds as if they were at loggerheads,” Margit commented as she turned off for the E18 and Norrtäljevägen.

  “One more thing,” Aram said. “I found a note in Jeanette’s handwriting, documenting a phone call from Michael. She says he threatened her if she didn’t drop the custody case.” He briefly ran through the contents of the note.

  “Thanks for the information,” Thomas said when he’d finished. “We’re on our way to see Michael in Vaxholm; it will be interesting to hear his version of events.”

  He ended the call and looked out the window. There was very little traffic; it was so cold that there was still snow on the freeway. He saw an abandoned cab by the side of the road; maybe its engine had given up in the icy weather.

  “Why would someone start a custody battle with their ex, knowing they only have a few years to live?” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Presumably she wanted to spend the time she had left with her daughter,” Margit said. “I guess that’s how I’d feel in her situation.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell the truth, say she needed to see more of Alice?”

  “Not if she was afraid that Michael would use her illness as an argument against her.”

  Margit sounded unusually serious, and Thomas sensed she was thinking about her own daughters, Anna and Linda. They were older than Alice, nineteen and twenty-one, but he knew Margit had often worried about the girls when they were in their early teens. He slipped the phone back in his pocket.

  “The interesting question right now is whether Michael Thiels knew that Jeanette was terminally ill.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Nora buried her chin in her scarf, trying to get warm. It was just after one o’clock, but only an hour or so of daylight remained. In the winter the sun went down on the other side of the island. The Brand villa was on the north side, and at this time of year she saw no trace of the summer’s enchanting sunsets beyond Harö.

  Thomas’s call had given her a good reason to get out of the house. It was nice to be on the move; the cold meant she spent many hours indoors. Neither of the boys had wanted to come with her; Adam had barely glanced up from his computer when she asked. At least they’d stopped arguing.

  “In that case I’ll go on my own,” she’d said, wrapping up warmly. Secretly she didn’t mind at all; she enjoyed walking at her own pace.

  The snow crunched beneath her feet as she passed Fläskberget, the small beach named after the ship that sprang a leak there during the nineteenth century. Its entire cargo—barrels of pork, or fläsk, had to be unloaded, and it was said that the local population had been quick to help themselves.

  Nora had double-checked that the house belonging to Jeanette Thiels’s grandmother, Elly Söderberg, was on the southwest side of the island. However, since she wanted a good walk, she had decided to take the long way around past the point at Västerudd.

  She followed the narrow path until it led away from Fläskberget and up a small hill to the north of the churchyard. She still wasn’t far from the harbor, no more than ten minutes, and yet it was obvious that she’d left the heart of the village. Out here there were fewer properties on more extensive plots, nowhere near as close together as in the old part of the settlement.

  A white fence gave way to a red one, and she spotted a little gray squirrel with a bushy tail racing down a tree trunk on the other side.

  Poor little soul, she thought. It can’t be easy to find food in the winter. If it carries on like this, the ice won’t melt until April.

  She walked briskly, and soon reached the point. On the right a vacation home lay right by the water; she had never met the owners, but had heard that they didn’t like people crossing their land.

  If you live on Sandhamn, you just have to put up with it, she thought with a shrug as she cut across the property to head back south. The forest came to an end, and she emerged on the western shore between two dwarf pine trees.

  The sun was so low by now that the pale-yellow orb looked as if it was hovering on the horizon in a milky haze, its light caressing the surface of the sea. The skerries were clad in snow, and the top of a small, solitary birch shimmered with frost.

  The outer archipelago. Open sea, wide skies.

  There were very few islands beyond Sandhamn; then came the waters of the Baltic, a seemingly endless lead-colored expanse that separated Sweden from the Baltic states. If you got lost at sea to the east of Sandhamn, you wouldn’t see a harbor until you reached the coastline of Estonia.

  Nora tripped over a snow-covered branch sticking up out of the ground. Fortunately she had a soft landing; she rolled onto her back, unable to resist the temptation to make a snow angel.

  She got to her feet and brushed herself off, then stood there for a moment. It was so beautiful out here in the afternoon sun, with not a breath of wind, the snow crystals sparkling in the light.

  She pushed her hands into her pockets and set off toward Elly Söderberg’s house.

  In spite of it having snowed heavily, it wasn’t particularly difficult to make her way. If she stayed by the water’s edge, she could walk without sinking down too much.

  Project Phoenix crept back to the forefront of her mind.

  The more she went through the material, the more uneasy she felt.

  How could she give her blessing as legal adviser to the proposal Jukka Heinonen had sent over? There were too many unknowns, too many question marks.

  She had spent some time searching for information on the various companies, sending emails to contacts in overseas legal firms, trying to call the offices at the addresses given in the paperwork. So far she had found nothing to indicate that the companies concerned were anything besides legitimate institutions that were serious about the project. The legal firm in Gibraltar had sent over documentation confirming that the foundation was registered for charitable purposes. But that was the end of it.

  She couldn’t shake off the feeling th
at something wasn’t right. The payment via Cyprus was still bugging her. And why were several of the parties involved registered in a tax haven?

  However, even if she had little in the way of a concrete basis for her suspicions, she would have to come up with something if she wanted to question the deal. Feelings and intuition weren’t viable currency in this situation.

  Jukka Heinonen was expecting a response as soon as possible. He had sent her another email; the matter would be discussed at a special board meeting on January 20.

  It was urgent, and if Nora held things up, there would be consequences.

  I’ll call Einar and request a meeting tomorrow, she thought. I can go over for the day, leave the boys here. A nine-year-old and a thirteen-year-old will be fine on their own for a few hours. If I can sit down with him face-to-face, he’ll listen. I’ll be able to explain everything calmly and clearly.

  She still felt anxious about passing along her suspicions. It wouldn’t be easy to criticize the bank’s deputy director in front of Einar.

  The compliance department ought to take a look at the very least. Einar will appreciate the fact that I’ve decided to consult him. It’s my job to point out any risks. He’s the bank’s chief legal adviser; he has to be kept informed.

  Nora pushed aside all thoughts of work when she reached the cottage that had belonged to Jeanette Thiels’s maternal grandmother.

  It wasn’t far from Oxudden, the World War II military defense post where Swedish soldiers had been on watch day after day, waiting for the German invasion that never came.

  The cottage was a modest little place, built on the hillside not far from the water. It was more like a 1950s chalet than the kind of luxury summer homes many people associated with Sandhamn.

  The last rays of the sun shone on the yellow façade. The paint had begun to flake, and a few roof tiles had fallen off. It was clear that the windows needed cleaning, and when Nora peered in she could see thick cobwebs in the corners. It didn’t look as if anyone had set foot inside for several years.

  Just to make sure, she took a walk around the outside. She sank deep into the snow, and her socks were soon wet as the snow spilled into her boots.