The Long Shadow
Page 45
‘Have they found anything?’ Annika asked.
Nina shook her head. She was staring implacably at the police officers who were digging soil and sand from the beach behind the oak tree. ‘How did you manage to get them out here?’ she asked.
‘I said I’d received a tip-off,’ Annika said, ‘and that the caller wanted to stay anonymous. They can’t do anything about that. They’re not even allowed to ask me who it was because that would be a breach of the constitution.’
‘I read your articles about Suzette.’
‘The constitution’s come in handy there as well. Her mother called me, in a complete state, demanding to know where she is.’
They stood in silence for a moment.
‘Is everything okay otherwise?’ Annika asked.
‘I’m on temporary secondment as a duty officer for the summer.’
‘Do you know if anyone’s heard anything from Carita Halling Gonzales?’
‘Not a sound.’
Annika took a step closer to her and lowered her voice. ‘Has anyone reported Filip Andersson missing?’
Nina’s shoulders stiffened. ‘A young man called from Gibraltar. Apparently Filip was supposed to be taking over some sort of law firm.’
Henry Hollister, Annika thought.
‘And his lawyer’s called twice, something about his claim for damages. I told him exactly what had happened, that Filip had contacted me to ask if I could speed up his passport application, but that I wasn’t able to help him. There’s been no official report that he’s disappeared.’
‘And the others?’
‘I don’t know.’
Annika looked out across the lake. ‘And Julia? How are she and Alexander?’
‘Alexander’s started back at nursery school. Apparently it’s going very well. He plays with his old friends as though nothing ever happened.’
‘What about his tantrums?’
‘They don’t happen as often now.’
They fell silent again.
In the end Annika cleared her throat. ‘Have you said anything to Julia? About Fatima?’
‘No,’ Nina said. ‘Moroccan marriages aren’t registered automatically by the Swedish authorities. It’s up to individuals to tell the tax office that they’re married, and David never did. But of course he was married, which invalidates his marriage to Julia. Which in turn means that she wouldn’t be counted as his next of kin.’
Annika tried to follow her train of thought.
‘And that would mean she isn’t entitled to his life insurance, which is all she’s got to live on.’
‘Precisely.’
Nina looked at her. ‘Didn’t the paper want to know where you’d been? When you met Suzette?’
Annika chuckled. ‘They don’t care where I’ve been. The only thing that interests them is where they can send me. They’ve just asked if I’d like to be the paper’s Washington correspondent.’
Nina raised her eyebrows. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Impressive.’
‘Not really,’ Annika said. ‘It’s mainly about getting me as far away from the newsroom as possible.’
‘How’s that going to work with the children?’ Nina asked. ‘Are you going to leave them in Sweden?’
Annika hunched her shoulders against the wind coming off the lake. ‘Thomas might come as well,’ she said. ‘It’s possible that the department will have a new policy proposal for him to—’
She was interrupted by cries and shouting from the beach. There was frenetic activity in the excavated pit. The officers were making calls on their mobiles and their radios were crackling.
The onlookers around them moved as one towards the cordon. Nina and Annika followed.
The two officers with the shovels had dug so deep that their heads were scarcely visible over the edge of the hole.
‘Could three young girls really have dug down that far in one night?’ Annika whispered.
‘They were used to hard physical labour,’ Nina said quietly. ‘Sowing and harvesting and gathering hay …’
‘Is it true, then?’ a man called. ‘Have you found a body down there?’
One of the police officers who had been checking the excavated soil came over to the onlookers. ‘It looks like we’ve found human remains.’
‘Who is it?’ an old woman asked from a distance.
‘We don’t yet know what sex the body is, or how long it’s been here. It’ll be up to the forensics team and the pathologist to work that out.’
‘Could it be my brother?’ the woman cried. ‘Could it be Sigfrid Englund?’
The police officer went to her. ‘Was he reported missing?’
‘He’s been missing since 1953, when he was twenty-one years old. He was raised as a foster-child on a neighbouring farm.’
Annika began to head back towards the car.
Nina hurried after her. ‘Aren’t you going to write about this?’
‘I’ll leave that to the local paper,’ Annika replied.
Acknowledgements
This is fiction. All events and characters depicted are entirely the creation of my possibly somewhat morbid imagination.
But, as in all my novels, the events, physical locations, and laws and regulations are often, but not always, grounded in reality. As a result, I have, as usual, conducted some research.
I would therefore like to thank the people I bothered with numerous hypothetical questions. Their titles below refer to the positions they held at the time of my investigation.
For information about the European drugs trade, and how narcotics are smuggled and distributed, I would like to thank Rolf M. Øyen, police attaché at the Norwegian Embassy in Madrid and also Nordic liaison officer for Malaga, as well as Detective Inspector Göran Karlsson and Detective Superintendent Jan Magnusson of the regional narcotics unit in Stockholm. I would also like to thank the drug-squad officers working undercover whose names I can’t reveal here: I’ve thanked them in person.
Kent Madstedt, Chief District Prosecutor at the Financial Crime Authority in Stockholm, for explaining how money-laundering and financial crimes are carried out in Europe.
Joakim Caryll of the information department of Stockholm Police, for help with contacts.
Hampus Lilja, judge referee to the Supreme Court, for information about how decisions are reached regarding applications for a retrial.
Fredrik Berg from the Office of the Prosecutor General, and public relations officer for the Public Prosecution Authority, for help with the procedures and formulations used in decisions of the Prosecutor General.
Anders Sjöberg, Detective Inspector for Interpol in Stockholm, for information about the criteria for international alerts via Interpol, both for missing people and suspects.
Anna Block Mazoyer, counsellor at the Swedish Embassy in Rabat, Morocco, for information about registers covering people and property in Morocco.
I would like to thank Peter Rönnerfalk, chief medical officer at Stockholm County Council, for ongoing help with a whole range of things, but in this instance particularly for information about narcotic gases, naloxone and fatal doses of morphine.
Thomas Bodström, of course, chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Justice, for proofreading and discussions on judicial and political matters.
Anna Rönnerfalk, psychiatric nurse, for help with the diagnosis and symptoms of patients suffering severe mental stress.
Niclas Salomonsson, my agent, and his staff at Salomonsson Agency in Stockholm.
Emma Buckley, my British editor, all the dedicated staff at Transworld Publishers and of course Neil Smith, who translated it all into English.
Tove Alsterdal, my editor, obviously, who has been involved the whole way through, from start to finish, as always. Thank you for being there.
And, always, Micke Aspberg, my love throughout all these years, for everything else.
Any mistakes or errors which have crept in are entirely my own.
LIFETIME
LIZA MARK
LUND
The most famous police officer in Sweden is found murdered in his bed. His four-year-old son is missing. His wife is suspected of killing both of them. No one believes her when she says she is innocent.
No one except for news reporter Annika Bengtzon. Her personal life in turmoil, she turns all her energies to her work, investigating the life of the murdered man.
But if his wife is innocent, where is their son? And will the truth be uncovered in time to find him … before it’s too late?
‘An astonishing talent.’
JEFFERY DEAVER
LAST WILL
LIZA MARKLUND
Knowing the truth can be deadly.
A frosty December night in Stockholm. Inside the City Hall, over a thousand guests attend the prestigious Nobel Prizewinners’ dinner. With a lavish meal laid on to the backdrop of a full orchestra, this is one of the city’s most glamorous events of the year. But things are different this year. Two shots are fired on the dance floor.
Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon is there, covering the event for the Evening Post. As the police realize she caught a glimpse of the suspect, she is far more interested in getting back to the newsroom.
But as more brutal murders follow, Annika finds herself in the middle of something far larger than she had anticipated. No longer just a reporter but also a vulnerable key witness, she begins to close up the gaps linking these crimes, just as the suspect starts closing the net in on Annika herself …
‘Twists and turns you never see coming.’
KARIN SLAUGHTER
VANISHED
LIZA MARKLUND
People can’t just disappear … or can they?
At a derelict port in Stockholm, two brutally murdered men are found by a security guard. In the same area a young woman, Aida, is on the run from a deranged gunman.
Meanwhile, journalist Annika Bengtzon is approached by a woman wanting her story published in the Evening Post. She claims to have founded an organization to erase people’s pasts – giving vulnerable individuals a completely new identity.
Annika helps Aida to get in touch with the foundation. But as she begins to investigate this woman’s story, more bodies turn up and she finds herself getting dangerously close to the truth – that all is not as it seems …
‘One of the most popular crime writers of our time.’
PATRICIA CORNWELL
RED WOLF
LIZA MARKLUND
AN ACCIDENTAL DEATH
Reporter Annika Bengtzon is working on the story of a devastating crime when she hears that a journalist investigating the same incident has been killed. It appears to be a hit-and-run accident.
A SERIES OF MURDERS
Several brutal killings follow – all linked by handwritten letters sent to the victims’ relatives. When Annika unravels a connection with the story she’s writing, she is thrown on to the trail of a deadly psychopath.
THE HUNT IS ON
Caught in a frenzied spiral of secrets and violence, Annika finds herself and her marriage at breaking point. Will her refusal to stop pursuing the truth eventually destroy her?
‘An exceptionally well-crafted and suspenseful work.’
DAILY MIRROR