The Golden Calf (11 page)

“Hello!” Irene called out.

“Hello there! I’m in the kitchen!” a raspy female voice replied.

Irene stepped over the junk that littered the narrow hallway and aimed her feet in the direction of the voice.

The kitchen was large and light. The sun shone through the southern window. It would never be too sunny, though, because it would have to first make its way through a thick layer of salt and dirt.
External blinds, how practical
, Irene thought. The kitchen décor was from the seventies: all pine paneling, the stove and the refrigerator an avocado green. The smell in the kitchen was nauseating, and Irene was thankful she hadn’t stopped for lunch before this visit.

The woman was sitting at the table, scratching behind the ear of the black cat on her lap. It was purring so loudly the sound filled the kitchen. Both the cat and the mistress looked up when Irene entered the room.

“Hi, I’m Irene Huss. I’m the detective who called you earlier this morning. Are you Annika Hermansson?”

The woman nodded.

“I’d like to speak to you about the disappearance of Thomas Bonetti. You had called—”

“It’s about time! I called over and over again, but nobody cared. Apparently it takes years for the police to come out and take a look unless people are telling lies about you. Then you come right.…”

The woman stopped and mumbled something to herself. There was a wine glass on the table, half full, and she took a long drink. “You want anything?” she asked, gesturing at the wine box placed on the kitchen counter.

“No, thank you, I’m on duty,” Irene replied as she forced herself to smile.

Nothing about Annika Hermansson made Irene want to smile any wider. The woman’s hair was dyed black, and a few inches of gray had already grown back in. Her face was slack and doughy and showed obvious signs of long-term alcoholism. Her stomach beneath her dirty T-shirt was a big, round ball, but she had the thin arms and legs of an anorexic. She reminded Irene of a spider. It was difficult to tell how old Annika Hermansson was, but Irene guessed about fifty.

“Well, well, that’s all right. There’s not much left in the box. Billy will be here soon with a new one,” Annika muttered.

“Who’s Billy?” Irene asked the drunken woman, mostly so she could start a conversation.

“My son.”

Irene lifted old newspapers and other scraps from a stool so she could sit down. Angry with the disturbance, the cat hissed at her and jumped to the floor.

With great difficulty, the spider woman got up and walked over to fill her glass from the wine box. As she shuffled back to her place, she spilled some wine on the floor but didn’t bother wiping it up. Breathing heavily, she groaned as she made herself comfortable again.

“What happened that September evening three years ago?” Irene asked.

“I heard that monster of a speed boat coming and thought
it was odd so late at night and at that time of the year. Those Bonettis never come after September. The boat was their son’s. I’ve never liked that guy. Always boasting and lying. He’s five years older than Billy, but none of the other kids ever wanted to play with him. Not even Billy, for that matter.”

She fell silent long enough to drink a disturbing amount of wine in a single swallow. To help keep track of the conversation, Irene said slowly, “So he wasn’t popular in his circle of friends.”

“Friends? Ha! That boy had no friends.”

Annika’s laugh was raw. Irene glimpsed teeth that were in desperate need of a dentist, if they could be saved at all. They reminded Irene of the blackened remains of a garden shed she’d seen burned down years ago.

“How long have the Bonettis owned their summer cabin?” asked Irene.

“A long time. Long before Thomas was born. His sister was a baby when they moved here. I wanted to babysit her, but they wouldn’t let me. I was just eight-years-old, but I still knew how to take care of an infant. I had two little brothers.”

Irene felt liked she’d been dunked in cold water. Thomas Bonetti’s sister was thirty-five, which meant that Annika had to be just a year or two older than Irene herself. Since Billy was around twenty-eight, Annika had to have been sixteen when she’d had her son.

“Do you have any other children besides Billy?”

“Nah, he’s the only one. He was enough for me.” Again Annika broke into her hoarse laugh. She dug through the clutter on her table, and with a triumphant cry she pulled out a wrinkled cigarette pack. With shaking fingers, she pulled out a long though rather crumpled stub and stuck it between her chapped lips with a sigh of contentment. Her red-rimmed eyes met Irene’s. “Do you have a light?”

Irene shook her head. After another round of digging, Annika found a box of matches. She managed to light the
cigarette butt after a few attempts and inhaled deeply before releasing the smoke through her nose.

“I never told anyone who Billy’s father was. Nobody needs to know. But his father has paid up all this time. Even now. Just so I never tell.…”

She broke off in the middle of her sentence, and glared at Irene malevolently through the smoke, causing the doughy bags under her eyes to tighten.

Time to return to the subject at hand. “So that evening when Thomas disappeared, you heard his boat going past outside?”

“Yes, as I said, it was odd because—”

“What time was it?”

“Sometime between eight and eight thirty in the evening. Don’t really remember.”

“How can you be so certain of the time?”

Annika pointed at the opposite wall. Irene turned and saw a large kitchen clock made of pine.

“Billy made it in woodshop. It runs on a battery,” Annika explained with obvious pride.

“Tell me everything that happened. You heard the boat going past and.…”

Irene nodded encouragingly so that the woman on the other side of the table would continue.

“He killed the motor and tied up at their dock. Nothing strange about that, but then he started up the motor again and sped off.”

“How long did he stay before he took off again?”

“Fifteen minutes at the most. More likely ten minutes.”

“So you heard him start the motor again, but you couldn’t see it?”

“Nah, their dock is on the other side of the spit. But I saw the boat again once it headed back to sea.”

“What did you do then?”

“Went up to my telescope.”

“So you went up to get your telescope.…”

“Didn’t you hear me? I went up to my telescope! I didn’t
get
anything!”

Irene paused, unsure of how to continue. Annika sounded aggressive, and she was already drunk enough to become enraged. If that happened, there would be no chance to get a suitable testimony from her.

“Do you have a special kind of telescope?” Irene asked, making a tentative effort.

“A special telescope? You bet your ass I do!” A coarse laugh crossed the table along with the smell of sour wine.

“How could you see anything? It was dark.”

Annika rose to her unsteady feet. “Let me show you.”

She wobbled across the kitchen floor, through the cluttered hallway, and toward the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. With a solid grip on the handrail, Annika managed to heave herself up the creaking stairs.

The stairwell opened into a large room. Directly ahead there was a balcony window facing the ocean. On the balcony was an enormous telescope.

“A Swarovski with fluorite lenses,” Annika said proudly.

Irene didn’t know much about telescopes, but she knew enough to recognize that this was an advanced model. An eyepiece was placed above the tube at a forty-five-degree angle. She took off the lens cap and aimed the telescope at a small motorboat that was puffing along on the water. The passengers were just red and blue pricks. When Irene looked through the telescope, she was taken aback.

The man had a mustache and glasses. The woman was wearing a red jacket and handkerchief, and a few wisps of her gray hair fluttered in the breeze. The couple seemed to be in their seventies. They were talking to each other, and the woman handed a steel thermos to the man.

When Irene looked back out to sea without the telescope, all she could see was a tiny boat and two spots of color.

“Good heavens, this is some telescope,” she said.

“Yes, indeed! The twilight factor is sixteen point zero at twenty times magnification,” Annika clucked contentedly. This meant that as long as there was any bit of twilight left, you could see anything you wanted from this telescope. And out here in the archipelago, twilight lasted longer than in the city.

Irene stepped aside. “Would you please focus this on Branteskär?” she asked.

Annika bent down and adjusted her telescope. “There. I’ve focused it on Nisse’s Cairn.”

“Thanks.”

Irene could see a tiny island with steep sides heading straight down to the water. Farthest out on one edge of the island, she could see the top of a pile of stones.

“Are those stones on the other side of the island from our perspective?” Irene asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why is it called Nisse’s Cairn?”

“Because Nisse was the guy who made it. He’d run his boat right onto the rocks between Branteskär and Ärskär. So he built the cairn so that the rocks would be easier to avoid. Now the cairn has been moved. I’ve told you guys at the police station over and over that it’s been moved, but would you listen?”

“When did you notice that the cairn had been moved?”

“Right then! When Thomas disappeared. I noticed it just a day or two later. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but when … they said he’d gone missing … then I remembered that someone had moved the cairn.” Annika wavered and then sat down in a worn out sofa. She burped loudly and yawned. She slowly lifted her legs onto the sofa so she could lie down. Less than a minute later, she started to snore.

•   •   •

“I’
LL BE DAMNED!”
Andersson said.

He looked at Irene with respect. Not bad to find a new piece of evidence after three years.

“So, have you thought about how you will proceed now that you have this drunk’s testimony?” he asked.

“I believe we should take a closer look at Nisse’s Cairn. According to Annika Hermansson, it was moved around the time of Thomas Bonetti’s disappearance. And, according to her, she saw his boat go behind Branteskär, but she didn’t see him leave the island again,” Irene said.

“So you think his boat is buried beneath the rocks?” Jonny Blom said, grinning.

“No, but I believe Thomas is,” Irene said.

There was a moment of silence.

“That’s what you believe,” Andersson said at last.

“It’s clearly possible. I believe Annika about the cairn having been moved. Even though her entire house is a pile of garbage, she has that telescope, which must have cost a pretty penny. Åhlén believes it must have been at least fifteen thousand kroner. My guess is she hardly ever leaves her house, and the telescope is her only contact to the outside world. I am positive she knows each and every contour of the islands she can see through her telescope,” Irene said.

“So,” Andersson said with a sigh, “you want us to check beneath the cairn.”

“That’s right.”

Andersson’s forehead wrinkled. “All right, then. It’ll be done. I’ll give the boys at the sea police a call and tell them to bring some technicians with them to that island.”

“It’s called Branteskär,” Irene said.

The superintendent pretended not to hear her. Instead, he turned toward Tommy. “What has Her Highness Lady Ceder said today?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope. She moved back into her Askim house today. She’s gotten a doctor’s order that she is supposed to rest for the next few days. Her mother says she’s refusing to talk to anyone resembling a journalist, but she can hardly refuse to talk to us—she’s just delaying the inevitable by getting that doctor’s order. I’ll be able to have a chat with her on Tuesday at the latest,” Tommy said.

“That damned woman! We ought to bring her in and grill her,” grumbled Andersson.

“She’s a smart one, but perhaps not as smart as she thinks she is. I’ve gone through the Kaegler-Ceder finances. Sanna’s millions have disappeared at a rapid rate. Last year her taxed income in Sweden was fifty-two thousand kroner, and her savings are two hundred and nineteen thousand. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to tell if she has money in other countries, but at least here in Sweden, her fortune is running out.”

“Did she use it up by building the Askim house?” Birgitta asked.

“Not likely. I called the state property assessment office, and the property in Askim has been owned by Kjell B:son Ceder for years. He’d inherited it from his first wife. He’d kept it as the value rose over the years.”

“And then he let Sanna have it,” Birgitta said.

“Right, though Ceder’s company built the house. His restaurant and hotel are also owned by his company, which is called K B:son Ceder AB. One interesting point: his company’s tax declaration also shows that the company is on the brink.”

“On the brink?” echoed Andersson.

“It’s lost an incredible amount of money. From what I understand, it’s lost so much money that it’s about to go bankrupt.”

“And yet Sanna has been able to decorate her home in her
expensive taste without anyone complaining about the cost. Isn’t that interesting?” Irene said.

“Well, maybe that’s what Ceder did: complain. We know that they met on the Saturday before he was shot. Perhaps they discussed house expenses as well as the company’s bankruptcy,” suggested Tommy.

“According to the restaurant employees, they weren’t arguing,” Birgitta said.

“Maybe not, but remember, the employees work for Ceder. Perhaps they’re worried about losing their jobs. Who will be inheriting the company now that Ceder is dead? Sanna, of course.”

Birgitta shook her head. “I was the one who talked to the employees. The head of security, Michael Fuller, saw the Kaegler-Ceders in the dining room, and he insists that they weren’t arguing. Also, the maître d’ and the waitress at their table, as well as another server, have given similar testimony. I would have noticed if there was something wrong about their statements.”