Babylon (22 page)

‘I want it, I want it!’

Beckman took a deep breath. She was so tired it was as though a viscous substance were weighing down her veins.

‘No, Sigrid! You can’t have it!’

She tried to settle the child on her knee, keeping the cup of coffee out of reach as well. Beckman had been desperate for coffee, but as its
aroma combined with the acrid smell of Sigrid’s overnight nappy, her stomach turned. She pushed the cup to one side.

‘You’ll have to get down if you can’t be good.’

An attempt to remove the heavy nappy was met with a fresh barrage of protest. Sigrid was too old to sleep in a nappy, but every attempt to train her over the past year had failed miserably.

The kitchen clock showed that it was no longer as early as Beckman had thought. She would need to get Julia up straight away if she was going to get the children to nursery and pre-school in time; breakfast was served at eight o’clock on the dot. Woe betide anyone who was late for pre-school breakfast.

She went into the children’s bedroom, which had a stale, unhealthy smell. Julia was lying with the pillow over her head.

‘Come on now, Julia. We need to get a move on!’

After another frustrated glance at the clock, Beckman removed the nightdress from the limp body with a moderate amount of force and pulled on jeans and a top, while thanking her lucky stars that she had bathed the child the previous evening. When she was finally dressed, Julia mumbled something unintelligible, turned to face the wall and went back to sleep. Beckman could feel how hot the child was.

Her little sister was picking cuddly toys off the floor, more than she could carry; she whimpered in frustration when she dropped them.

One look was enough to make Sigrid scream again and clasp her wet nappy – that was staying on.

They were going to stay with their daddy at the weekend. Karin Beckman felt relieved, and this reaction bothered her.

Just as the cloakroom door at pre-school closed, Beckman’s phone rang. As she retrieved it from her bag, she willed herself not to look over at the house she had lived in until just a few weeks ago. One missed call. Shortly afterwards she picked up a voicemail from Bärneflod; his voice immediately dispelled all thoughts of the nursery wet-weather gear that might have been left at Göran’s, and the dark clouds drifting over Fiskebäck.

‘It looks as if there’s been a breakthrough with your Danish guy. You’re on your way in, I guess?’

‘I’m on my way,’ she informed the voicemail.

With a sense of liberation, she abandoned her role as a parent.

31

Gothenburg

‘Höije?’

‘He’s in Varberg.’

‘What the fuck is he doing in Varberg?’

‘He’s at the spa. At some leadership conference.’

When Beckman flopped into her chair, the inner circle was complete. Höije did not belong to that circle. Since their childish spat over Copenhagen, Tell had decided that it was necessary to cooperate with Höije so that his team could do the job as they saw fit. But Höije was not a sounding board for ideas and he certainly wasn’t a friend.

Höije was a talker, a man who twisted words. Tell had always had a problem with that kind of man in his personal life and particularly in his job. For him, everything came down to gut feeling. Höije also had an unpleasant way of scrutinising the person he was talking to, as if he would love to crawl under their skin.

‘Let’s get started,’ said Tell.

Beckman rubbed her forehead. As she put on her reading glasses and looked through the material, she began to feel even more tired. Tell suspected that because she had to leave work in time to pick up her children, she felt driven to work furiously between eight and five, unlike some of her colleagues who had the luxury of greater flexibility; he also suspected that she often skipped breaks. He valued her commitment and competence, and made a mental note to tell her that.

‘We’ve had a major breakthrough,’ he said. ‘Mads Torsen’s fingerprints were among those found in the hallway of Rebecca Nykvist’s house. Either we’ve been lucky, or else he’s a complete klutz. He presumably put on his gloves in the hallway, but touched the door before that. We didn’t find any other prints from him. We also know where Torsen is right now . . .’

‘So why are we sitting here?’

‘He’s not likely to make a run for it. He’s lying on Strömberg’s table. Dead.’

‘Have you spoken to Strömberg?’ asked Gonzales.

‘Yes. Strangulation marks. Internal bleeding and a couple of cracked ribs. But the cause of death was a heroin overdose two to three days ago, and general poor health.’

‘I don’t suppose he had any antiques on his person?’

‘No antiques on him when he was found, Karlberg. He must have managed to sell the figure before he died, or he could have hidden it, for all I know.’

‘I was there.’ Gonzales poured himself a glass of water. ‘It looked as if someone had tried to beat him to death. He must have dragged himself to that bench through sheer willpower.’

‘Where was the bench?’ asked Bärneflod.

‘In Slottsskogen, hidden in a shrubbery near Plikta.’

Tell looked at Beckman. ‘So now we know in principle that Torsen broke into Rebecca Nykvist and Henrik Samuelsson’s house. But was he alone?’

‘Have we checked the other fingerprints in the house against our records?’

Tell inhaled loudly. ‘No luck. Did you come up with anything else?’

‘I took a couple of witness statements from people who were near the cathedral at the time of the initial attack on Torsen. Not much to go on so far, except that the attacker was dressed in dark clothing, and wasn’t particularly tall or well built. Apart from that . . .’ She went back to her papers. ‘. . . I’m just investigating a twenty-four-hour stay at the hostel in Stigberget, it’s possible we might get something there. I’ll come back to you on that. I’ve also been in touch with Kent in the drugs squad; he’s asking his informers. He has no idea what Torsen might have been doing here, although he did know who Torsen was. I suppose the next logical step is to talk to our colleagues in Copenhagen.’

‘And Stena Line too, trains, planes, buses,’ said Tell. ‘He got here somehow. And if he had a friend, maybe that friend has gone home.’

‘That’s a bit of a stretch,’ Bärneflod objected. ‘We don’t even know
for sure if Torsen had a sidekick. I think it’s best if we speak to the Danes.’

Tell shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ve already spoken to Copenhagen; an Inspector Dragsted in their drugs squad has been keeping an eye on Torsen for quite some time. He seems to have a better idea of what Torsen’s been up to than the man himself has. Had.’

He leant back in his chair. ‘Dragsted is due in Malmö tomorrow evening on other police business. I’m meeting him there.’

Tell’s eyes and nose were itching. ‘Is everybody clear about what they’re doing now?’

As the group dispersed, he caught Beckman’s eye. ‘Could I have a word before you disappear?’ he asked, attaching a picture of Torsen to the investigation whiteboard.

‘No, I haven’t got time right now.’

He turned around in surprise. She had gone, leaving only the echo of her curt reply.

Tell had nodded off twice, even though it was a good film. When Seja tickled his neck for the second time, he headed to the bedroom. Once he was in bed, of course he couldn’t get back to sleep. Scenes from
A Beautiful Mind
spooled through his head, accompanied by the squeaks Seja made as she changed position on the leather sofa.

He gave up.

‘You’re back!’

Seja moved up to let him lie down beside her, then laid her head on his shoulder. Christian yawned behind his hand, opened his eyes wide and tried to concentrate on John Nash’s dizzying excursions into madness. He took another crisp, but regretted it as soon as the salty grease annihilated the fresh mint taste of toothpaste. He was working out a provisional schedule for the next day when Seja shifted to make room for his head on her knee. He had to put his legs up over the arm of the sofa to get comfortable; it really was too small.

‘You’re hot – do you have a temperature?’ she asked, gently stroking his forehead.

Buy a new sofa
, was the last thing he thought before his eyes closed. One that was big enough for both of them. He had had the same black leather sofa for twenty years.

By the morning his temperature had dropped, only to be replaced by a pounding headache that refused to go away, despite eleven hours’ sleep, painkillers and a proper breakfast. A sore throat and the beginnings of a blocked nose didn’t bode well for the afternoon’s trip to Malmö. Tell thought of what the day had in store. He needed to fire off a few emails and make a couple of phone calls, including one to Alexandr Karpov about the photograph Beckman had found in Henrik Samuelsson’s bedside cabinet.

He could just as easily work from home while he tried to decide if he was fit to go in.

Seja had left while he was still asleep. He knew she was intending to rise early to pick up her friend Hanna in Masthugget on the way out to Stenared; they were going walking in the forest or something like that. He felt stirrings of disappointment that she hadn’t woken him up before she left, hadn’t even written him a note.

Tell took his laptop over to the breakfast bar and emailed Renée, telling her that he would probably be in later. Then he opened and closed several messages asking him to contact Rebecca Nykvist. She wanted to know how the investigation was progressing; if they had any more leads. He deleted the lot; he had neither the time nor the energy to ring her. She would only get annoyed when he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer her questions.

Tell rubbed his eyes as he distractedly flicked through some papers Seja had left. Some kind of dissertation from the University of Gothenburg and several loose print-outs; he started when he saw the words Red List. She must have been researching something with a view to writing an article. Seja had a disturbing tendency to let his cases inspire her journalism, and this business of the Red List was something she’d picked up on in Copenhagen.

His first reaction was to feel slightly put out. They’d been through this before; sensitive police information was not to be toyed with. But he was glad that she was now at least being open about what she was doing, and that she wasn’t writing about the actual murders.

He keyed in the dialling code for Denmark and the direct line to Alexandr Karpov’s office, where an answering machine informed him that Karpov was not available to take his call.

He had better luck with the mobile number. Tell wasted no time on small talk when Karpov answered, and launched straight into an
account of the incident at Holmström’s Antiques, passing on Tony Svensén’s description of the object in question.

‘I’m going to send over a picture I’d like you to look at. It’s a photograph of a necklace and a small sculpture. What I’m wondering is . . . There you go, I’ve sent it.’

There was a click at the other end of the line. ‘Are you still there?’

‘So what’s your question?’ Karpov said eventually, sounding stressed.

‘What do you think the objects are?’

‘Why don’t you ask the expert you’ve already spoken to?’

‘Because Svensén insisted that you were more familiar with the area these artefacts come from. An Assyriologist, I think he called you. He said that the clay figure definitely came from a museum in Iraq and is on the Red List – what does that mean?’

‘That it’s stolen.’

‘Go on.’

Karpov sighed. ‘The Red List is compiled by an international group of twelve experts in the history of culture, who catalogued the artefacts lost during the American invasion of Iraq. When its museums were plundered.’

‘You might have mentioned this when my . . . my girlfriend and I saw you last?’

‘Perhaps I did. The list was published via Interpol, and is monitored by the world’s museums and serious antique dealers.’

‘And that system works?’

‘To a certain extent,’ said Karpov. ‘Quite a lot has been recovered. But the area is still being plundered. Every day cultural treasures are dug up from graves in Iraq.’

‘OK. Have you looked at the picture?’ Tell tried to control his impatience, tapping on his keyboard as he waited for Karpov to speak. ‘What do you think?’

‘Just a moment.’ Karpov sounded uncomfortable. ‘So you’re ringing me for . . . what shall I call it, a consultation? You’re talking to me because I’m an expert in the field? Or because this has something to do with the murder inquiry?’

‘Why else would I be bothering with it?’

‘Is this an interrogation?’ Karpov persisted.

‘Call it a consultation if you like,’ said Tell. ‘Shall we carry on? Could you look at the picture, please?’

Karpov cleared his throat. ‘Well, let me see. First of all, I have to say that it’s impossible to assess whether an object is genuine or not simply by looking at a picture. There’s a host of fakes and copies on the market here in Denmark alone.’

‘But apart from that, what era are we talking about?’

‘I would guess that the necklace could be from about six hundred BC, but the sculpture is older. Perhaps six thousand years old.’

Six thousand years was definitely old. Tell had to struggle to regain his train of thought.

‘So is it fair to say that there would be a certain amount of interest in this object?’

‘Well . . . Of course people collect this sort of thing, and in some cases are willing to pay huge sums of money. If your expert is certain that this figure was stolen from a museum, perhaps he knows if it carries an inventory stamp? Thirteen to fourteen thousand artefacts were stolen from the museum in Baghdad after the invasion.’

‘Can you tell me more about the figure? Imagine you’re talking to a five-year-old, please. I can see it looks like a person, at any rate.’

‘It’s a woman. As you can see, she’s holding a vase or some kind of vessel in front of her body. She’s highly representative of the Uruk period.’

‘So you mean women were depicted in a particular way at that time?’

‘And in that part of the world, yes, generally speaking. Present-day Iraq.’

‘Does the figure have a special meaning?’