‘Oh, God!’ Magnusson sighed, setting down his glass on the carpet and putting both hands to his head. ‘Oh, dear God!’
Lorimer waited, quietly sipping the whisky. It was the moment when a man either lied his way out of a difficult situation or decided to tell the truth. He watched Eva’s father closely to see just which way he would go.
‘So you know about my little aircraft?’ Magnusson took his hands from his face, glancing at the tall man opposite.
Lorimer nodded.
‘It was horrible,’ Magnusson whispered, looking away to his feet. ‘I had called her but she was at some party or other, said she’d be back at the flat by midnight. So I waited for her there.’
Lorimer gave the merest trace of a nod but did not interrupt.
‘We quarrelled,’ Magnusson sighed. ‘About Anders. I’d found out that he was also in Glasgow.’ He looked at Lorimer again, eyes pleading as if to compel the detective to understand what he had felt that night.
‘I was furious with her. Said some things that I… now regret,’ he said, his voice failing for a moment in a sob.
Lorimer watched him take a large handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his eyes.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just, well, we parted on such bad terms.’ He looked at Lorimer with an expression of anguish in his eyes. ‘And I never saw her alive again.’
‘Was Eva alone in the flat when you left?’
Magnusson nodded. ‘There was no one else there. I remember the last I ever heard her voice. She was shouting at me from the landing outside the front door,’ he whispered, biting his lip, trying hard not to break down in tears.
Lorimer watched the man as he picked up his glass from the floor and emptied the whisky in one gulp.
Was that the truth? He wanted to believe that it was, but, looking at Magnusson’s hands clasped around the crystal glass, the detective superintendent wondered if they had in fact encircled his own daughter’s throat in a moment of fury.
CHAPTER 38
A self-obsessed man who needed to control his daughter at all costs. Solly looked at the words he had written. And, if that was true, had Henrik Magnusson attacked the very thing he loved most in a vicious need to bring her back into his command? It was possible. He was a powerful man in the world of business; did that power extend to ruling every aspect of his world? There could be a reason for that, Solly thought. His wife’s untimely death was something that had been outside his ability to control. So had that left him determined to fashion Eva’s life the way he had wanted? Perhaps he would speak to Rosie about her own impressions of the man. After all, his pathologist wife had been the first person to see the grieving father after Eva’s murder.
He frowned, reading the words a second time. If he had needed to control her to such an extent, why allow her to come to Glasgow in the first place? Sure, he wanted to split her up from the gardener’s son, but had Eva herself insisted on a break from her homeland? The psychologist stroked his beard as he pondered the difficult question of just who Eva Magnusson had been. That was the problem with appearance and reality, he told himself. Outwardly she had appeared to be a demure girl — yes, those were the words that Colin Young had used in his letter. And she had apparently charmed everyone she met. But Solly Brightman was beginning to create a different impression of the Swedish girclass="underline" someone who had been a passionate and sexual young woman, adept at hiding her true nature from everyone, especially from her father.
Or, he thought, leaning back in his office chair, was that absolutely the case? Magnusson had known about Anders. And Solly was pretty sure that the Swede had deliberately picked three young men as more than mere flatmates for his daughter. Were Colin, Gary and Roger simply potential boyfriends or had they been chosen to satisfy Eva’s sexual lusts? In selecting these three young men Magnusson had sought to maintain some sort of control over his daughter for one reason or another. It was a plausible theory, Solly decided. But was it one that could ever be proved? Perhaps when Lorimer met young Anders Andersson today he might find an answer to that question.
Stockholm on this January morning was wreathed in a low-lying mist but already Lorimer could see the glint of sunlight attempting to force its way through from the heavens.
After an uncomfortable dinner where Marthe Lindgren had taken pains to engage him in polite conversation, Lorimer had been only too glad to call a taxi to take him back to his hotel. There had not been an offer of a bed for the night and he was sure that Henrik Magnusson was relieved to see his uninvited guest depart shortly after the meal. It was good to walk on the well-gritted pavements, to breathe in the chilly air. The big house in Östermalm had felt suffocating despite the grand proportions of the rooms. They had eaten in a formal dining room with French windows. Lorimer guessed that they overlooked the gardens but any such view was shut off by thick curtains drawn firmly against the night.
Marthe had suggested that the detective superintendent would find Anders senior at home: after all, there was little call for a gardener at this time of year and she’d heard that the old man’s arthritis had worsened lately. Lorimer had glanced at Magnusson as Marthe offered this nugget of information but the Swede’s face had remained closed and impassive, as if his housekeeper’s contact with the Andersson family was of no interest whatsoever.
Lorimer crossed the street and stood looking out at the water. Already the mist was beginning to lift and the dappled surface had changed from steely grey to a silvery blue. For a moment he thought about his own city with the River Clyde running through its heart, severing north from south, then he recalled all of the murky things he had seen, things that had lingered in its depths. As the morning sun pierced the last shreds of vapour coating the surface of the water in a hazy brightness, Lorimer swept his gaze over the picture-postcard prettiness of the scene. It should have filled him with a sense of wonder, surely? Yet that image of Glasgow and the knowledge of so many cases in his past made the detective feel only a pang of despair. Was he always destined to look for the brutal things below the surface? And in that search had he lost the joy that came from seeing a morning sunrise?
The apartment where Andersson lived was a featureless block surrounded by glass and concrete, a savage contrast to the old medieval buildings in Gamla Stan. Standing at the security entrance, Lorimer tapped in the flat number that Marthe Lindgren had given him the previous evening. There was a crackle then a voice spoke in Swedish.
‘Mr Andersson? This is Detective Superintendent Lorimer from Strathclyde Police in Scotland. May I come up, please?’
There was a momentary pause before the same voice broke through. ‘Fifth floor.’
A single buzzing note accompanied the click as the door was unlocked and Lorimer stepped into the foyer.
As the lift opened Lorimer could see a short man wearing a fisherman’s jersey over worn jeans waiting for him at his door.
‘Mr Andersson?’
The man stared at him and nodded. ‘Better come in,’ he said gruffly.
The flat was warm enough, Lorimer thought as he was led along a short corridor and into a room that appeared to serve as a kitchen cum sitting room. His eyes flicked around the place, noting a table with breakfast dishes still in place: two empty mugs and a couple of cereal bowls pushed to one side.
‘My son is not here. I told you that on the telephone,’ Anders began. ‘So why you come all the way here?’
‘I need to see him,’ Lorimer said simply. ‘And I want you to tell me where he is.’
‘Why don’t you listen to me? I say he is not here!’
Lorimer turned to look pointedly at the breakfast table. ‘But he was here, wasn’t he, Mr Andersson?’
The old man followed his gaze then his mouth took on a mulish expression.