The Long Shadow

by Liza Marklund

  Dreadful pictures, but they were exclusive.

  The minute’s silence at the golf club was the third item under ‘Costa del Sol Murders’. The picture of the three and a half celebrities in sunglasses was perfectly okay, with the caption, ‘If everyone was like Sebbe, the world would look very different.’

  She took a quick look at what the competition had produced. They were leading with the Söderström family, but with a different heading: ‘The Gas Murders’.

  The Madrid correspondent hadn’t got anywhere near as far today. She had fewer facts about Suzette’s disappearance and, of course, no pictures from inside the house. But she had already spoken to Francis, which was fairly typical. She’d have to try to squeeze Francis into the article about Suzette’s mother.

  In despair suddenly, she went to the bed and threw herself onto it. The best thing about staying in a hotel was that someone else cleaned up after you. It would have been nice if they could have brought up a bit of food every so often, but Officer Linde had offered to do that for her.

  She remembered her dream of them walking side by side through the pitch-black national park, the thorns, the mild breeze …

  Her mobile rang. It was Linde. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘We’ve got the burglars,’ he replied abruptly. ‘Can you find your own way to La Campana?’

  ‘Have you arrested them?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ he said. ‘Have you been to La Campana?’

  ‘No idea,’ Annika said. ‘How do you mean, dead?’

  The police officer groaned. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you up. Ten minutes.’

  She heard a shriek of car tyres before he ended the call.

  11

  The BMW’s side windows were spattered with mud.

  ‘Have you been driving off-road?’ Annika asked, as she pulled on the safety-belt.

  Niklas Linde didn’t answer, just handed her a local Spanish paper and set off for Nueva Andalucía.

  ‘What’s this?’ Annika said. ‘I can’t read Spanish.’

  ‘Take a look at page seven,’ the police officer said.

  She turned to it and found herself staring at her own pictures from inside the Söderström family home in Las Estrellas de Marbella.

  ‘Fuck,’ Annika said, crumpling up the paper. ‘I told them not to sell them to anyone else.’

  ‘I’m thinking of doing a deal with you,’ Linde said, manoeuvring the car between Porsches and cars rented for Sunday outings. ‘I’ll take you to the place where the Söderström burglars were found, and you can write an article about a case we’re working on.’

  ‘You’re thinking of doing a deal with me,’ Annika repeated. ‘What makes you think I’ll agree?’

  ‘Because that way you’ll get two good articles instead of none,’ Linde said. ‘I’ve done my research and found out that you’re the sort of person who likes doing deals.’

  She was horrified. ‘What’s that supposed to mean, “the sort of person …”? Who have you been talking to?’

  He glanced at her. ‘What is it you lot usually say? “My sources are protected by the constitution”?’

  ‘You’ve been talking to Detective Inspector Q,’ she said.

  He grinned and turned off into a rundown working-class district. He was heading for an industrial area, a polígono, and stopped outside a warehouse with shutters pulled down over its doors. ‘Apits Carga,’ Annika read, on a sun-bleached sign above the entrance. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.

  ‘In here the Spanish police found seven hundred kilos of cocaine less than two weeks ago,’ he said, pointing at the shuttered building. ‘It was concealed in a cargo of melons from Brazil. We know that some of the shipment was intended for Scandinavia, mainly Malmö and Stockholm.’

  Annika nodded. ‘Your colleague mentioned something about this when I met you at that shopping centre.’

  ‘Things have moved on since then,’ Linde said. ‘Now we need to pour oil on troubled waters up in Stockholm.’

  ‘You need an article,’ Annika said, ‘to calm down the intended recipients.’

  ‘Exactly. You can interview me about a big drug-smuggling operation being cracked on the Costa del Sol. A raid has been carried out and the final arrests will be made before you write the article.’

  ‘That’s not enough,’ Annika said. ‘I need a Swedish angle or my editor won’t take it.’

  ‘One of the men who’s been caught is a Swedish citizen. Will that do?’

  She hesitated, trying out the headline: ‘Swede arrested in Spanish drug raid’. ‘That’s not going to sell many copies,’ she said. ‘Definitely not a lead.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be the lead, as long as it gets into the paper.’

  ‘Then I’ll need details.’

  ‘You’ll get them.’

  ‘Can I take a picture?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  She pulled out her camera, opened the door and got out of the car. She took three shots of the peeling façade in portrait format, and four in landscape. Then she got back into the car. Linde drove off.

  The street was narrow, the houses small and shabby. Washing hung from the balconies. The pavements were full of rickety plastic chairs, advertising hoardings and doormats. Men in caps were drinking coffee from shot glasses. Large women were carrying vegetables in flimsy plastic bags. Workmen blocked the traffic as they loaded their tools into vans.

  ‘Looks like real people live here,’ Annika said.

  Linde waited as two young women crossed the street with their prams. ‘The construction workers who were ordered to build Puerto Banús in the 1950s came from the north. They had to start by building their own homes. That’s what we’re looking at here.’

  ‘And this is where the thieves were found?’ Annika said, fishing out her notepad. ‘Is it spelled the way it sounds, La Campana, with a C?’

  ‘The truck’s over there,’ Linde said, turning into a large vacant plot. The furrowed ground and mass of tyre-tracks indicated that it was used as a general car park. A police cordon surrounded the far end where an old truck was parked with its back doors facing the wall. One of the rear doors was open, creaking in the wind. A car from the Policía Local was parked beside the cordon.

  ‘Are they … still there?’ Annika asked.

  ‘The bodies were taken to the mortuary early this morning.’

  ‘And this is where they were found?’

  ‘In the driver’s cab, to be precise. Shall we take a look?’

  He switched off the engine, grabbed a torch and got out of the BMW. Annika followed, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. The policeman went over to his colleague, shook his hand and exchanged greetings. Then he waved and pointed, towards her and the car, and beckoned her over. ‘We can go in as long as we don’t touch anything,’ he said, holding up the tape so that Annika could get underneath.

  The ground was uneven and hard, and she stumbled. A few clumps of grass clung to life between the potholes. Patches of cement suggested some old foundations or a roadway.

  She stopped a couple of metres from the truck’s rear door. Linde took a few more steps, lit the powerful torch and directed the beam inside the vehicle. It reflected back towards them off a large flat-screen television. He moved the beam and Annika watched as it lit the frame of a painting, a statue, a large globe and a rolled-up rug. On the floor of the truck sat a jewel-box and several games consoles – Annika recognized a PlayStation 3 and an Xbox. She pulled out her camera and took some pictures. ‘Five lives,’ she said. ‘For this.’

  ‘Seven,’ Linde said. ‘The thieves were killed as well, of course.’

  He walked over to the left-hand side of the driver’s cab, where he was out of view of his Spanish colleague.

  ‘Is this everything that was taken?’ Annika asked, following him unsteadily.

  ‘The list isn’t firm. It was put together by the cleaner, and she hasn’t much idea of what the art was or who it was by.�
��

  ‘How did the thieves die?’ Annika asked. ‘Were they shot? Beaten to death?’

  He shook his head. ‘There were no external injuries on the bodies.’

  ‘Could it have been the gas? Fentanyl?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Who found them?’

  ‘A man who lives on the other side of the street above that restaurant. He’d seen the truck standing here for several days and thought it was odd that it was still here over Epiphany. He came over to take a closer look and found them.’

  Annika looked up at the cab. She could see only a dirty side-window and the edge of the roof. ‘They couldn’t have been visible from the outside,’ she said, ‘or someone would have noticed before.’

  Niklas Linde stopped beside the cab and inspected it, keeping his hands by his sides. ‘The cab was unlocked,’ he said. ‘The old man opened the driver’s door. One of the thieves was in the passenger side, the other in the driver’s seat. The driver tumbled out when the door was opened. The old man had a minor heart attack and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance.’

  ‘Can we open the door?’ Annika asked. ‘If it’s still unlocked?’

  He shook his head. ‘We can’t touch the handle.’

  ‘But if I climbed up,’ Annika said, ‘I could take a picture through the side-window?’

  ‘Without touching anything?’

  There were steps beside the wheel-arch that she could stand on. ‘Can you lift me up?’ she asked.

  He looked amused. ‘How much do you weigh?’

  She hit his arm.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said.

  Annika let go of her bag, took a firm grip of the camera with her right hand, and stood in front of him. He put both hands round her waist, breathing on the back of her neck. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  With a powerful thrust he lifted her into the air. She put one foot on a step to the cab and looked in through the side window. A narrow driver’s seat and a wider passenger seat in cracked vinyl, hamburger wrappers above the dashboard by the windscreen, a map of Marbella, mud on the floor, two half-empty beer bottles in the cup-holder by the radio.

  She raised the camera and fired off a series of pictures of the interior.

  Then he put her down. ‘Quite some place to die,’ he said, still holding her.

  She stood still, breathing into his shirt. He smelt of soap and grass.

  ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ he asked.

  At that moment her mobile rang in her bag by her feet. She pulled free, her cheeks glowing, bent down and grabbed the phone. It was the presenter of the radio programme Studio Six. ‘I’d like to have you on for a debate on Monday afternoon,’ the man said.

  She glanced up at Linde. The way he was looking at her was more than she could handle. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Who with, and what about?’

  ‘With Arne Påhlson, among others, about journalists’ credibility, about how easy it is to hold those in power to account when you’re sitting in their lap, about …’

  She screwed her eyes shut. Don’t get angry, don’t feel insulted, don’t do anything stupid. Don’t give them the chance to play an outraged response on the radio.

  ‘I’m in Spain on a job,’ she said. ‘I can hardly hear you. What did you say?’

  ‘Er, about journalists’ credibility, about how easy it is to—’

  ‘Hello?’ Annika said. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello?’ the man from Studio Six said.

  ‘Oh,’ Annika said, holding the phone some distance away. ‘He disappeared.’ She ended the call and switched off her mobile. ‘I’ve got a date,’ she said, looking up at Linde again. ‘With Lenita Söderström, Suzette’s mother.’

  ‘You didn’t want to talk to the caller?’ he asked.

  ‘Can you drop me back at the hotel?’

  They climbed back through the cordon, and Annika took a few pictures with the police car and the cordon in the foreground. She could already see the headline in tomorrow’s paper: ‘Sebastian’s killers died here.’ Then the story would be on its way off the front page.

  12

  Lenita Söderström checked into the hotel without Annika realizing who she was. The small woman stepped into the lobby with a brown suitcase on wheels, a coat over her arm and a slight limp, as if her shoes were chafing. She walked up to Reception and said something in laboured English, and Annika went back to the English-language edition of the local paper, Sur. They, too, had reprinted her pictures from inside the house. Photos: Evening Post.

  ‘Annika Bengtzon?’

  She’d been expecting a blonde who’d gone to seed, with tortured hair and low-slung jeans. The little woman in front of her had reading-glasses on a cord round her neck and a slightly pilled jumper. She was fifteen years older than her picture on Facebook, and introduced herself as Lenita Söderström with a sturdy handshake. ‘Can we go and get some lunch?’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’

  Annika folded the paper and left the interior shots of the Söderströms’ villa on the table beside her. ‘I don’t know anywhere to eat round here. We can ask at the desk.’

  ‘No need,’ Lenita Söderström said. ‘I’ve been here before.’ She led the way through the doors, turned left on the street outside, past the entrance to the El Corte Inglés department store, then went down the steps into the Marina Banús shopping centre. There she stopped. Little fashion boutiques and two trendy cafés filled the ground floor. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I know it was here somewhere …’

  ‘This will do fine,’ Annika said, making for one of the cafés.

  Lenita Söderström followed her hesitantly. ‘Isn’t it funny how the small, reasonably priced places never last?’ she said. ‘They always lose out to the big chains.’ She sat down opposite Annika at a small, round table. Annika glanced at her as she skimmed the menu. The café specialized in organic smoothies, freshly roasted coffee and salads ‘made with love’. She knew Lenita Söderström was forty-two, born the same year as Sebastian, but she seemed older. Her hair was ash-blonde, she had the beginnings of a double chin and a boyish figure.

  ‘These new places always seem to over-complicate things,’ Lenita Söderström said, putting the menu down. ‘I’ll have lasagne if they’ve got it, otherwise just a muffin. And a glass of red.’

  Annika ordered two chicken stir-fries in her hesitant Spanish, plus two agua con gas and una copa de vino tinto.

  Lenita Söderström sighed. ‘It’s so terrible not knowing where she is. It makes me so angry, so upset. The least she could do is call!’

  Annika took her pen and notepad out of her bag. ‘Is this the first time Suzette has disappeared? Or has she left home without saying where she was going before?’

  Lenita Söderström squirmed on her chair. ‘Don’t all teenagers do that? And she only does it because she knows how worried I get. I can’t eat, can’t sleep …’

  Their food arrived and Lenita Söderström tucked into the stir-fry without asking where her lasagne was. ‘Suzette doesn’t think of anyone but herself,’ she said, between mouthfuls. ‘Since she was four years old, it’s been nothing but “me, me, me” with her.’

  She drained her glass of wine and gestured for another.

  Annika couldn’t think of anything to say. The woman was stressed and wound up. This would take time.

  ‘And Sebastian was off playing ice-hockey the whole time. We were stuck in America, unable to understand what anyone was saying. How much fun do you think that was? And with a kid who did nothing but cry.’ The wine had arrived and she took a gulp.

  ‘Where do you think Suzette might be?’ Annika asked.

  Lenita Söderström leaned over the table. ‘All these years I’ve had to look after her on my own,’ she said emphatically. ‘Now Sebastian finally agrees to take a bit of responsibility, and what happens? She disappears after just two weeks. It’s incredibly irresponsible!’ She groaned and sank back in the rather too fashionable chair.

  ‘When did you last
hear from Suzette?’

  ‘She called and said she was going to be moving in with that woman who has the stables up in the mountains.’

  ‘And that was last Thursday?’

  ‘After we spoke yesterday I had a look at her Facebook page. She hasn’t added anything since then.’

  ‘Do you think something might have happened to her?’ Annika asked gently.

  The woman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I found out about Sebastian in the paper,’ she said. ‘Imagine finding out your ex-husband is dead from the gutter press. Do you have any idea how awful that was?’

  Annika wondered if the gutter press in question was her own paper.

  ‘I tried calling Suzette’s mobile straight away, but it wasn’t switched on. I left a message, but she hasn’t called back. I don’t understand why she’s treating me like this.’

  ‘You didn’t talk to her on New Year’s Eve?’ Annika said. ‘No text message at midnight, nothing like that?’

  ‘I was on a mini-cruise with my work colleagues, so I didn’t have a very good signal,’ Lenita said.

  ‘What do you do?’ Annika asked.

  ‘I’m in the hotel industry.’ Lenita ordered a third glass of wine. ‘I deal with the accounts, budgets, payroll. It’s very demanding.’ She mentioned a hotel that Annika had never heard of.

  ‘When Suzette has gone missing before, how long is it usually before she gets in touch?’

  Lenita closed her eyes, her shoulders slumped; the wine was calming her. ‘A day,’ she said. ‘Once she was gone overnight. She slept at a friend’s without telling me. After that we talked about this. About how worried I get.’

  Annika had been hoping for a different answer. She’d been hoping that Suzette had got into the habit of going missing for several days without being in touch, that she was experienced and competent when it came to running away, able to cope in all weathers. That evidently wasn’t so, and it was now a week since she had disappeared.

  ‘Has Suzette ever mentioned a friend called Amira, or Samira?’ she asked.

  ‘She never tells me anything.’

  ‘When did you realize she was missing?’

  ‘When I spoke to the Danish woman who owns the stables,’ Lenita said.