Camilla Lackberg - The Lost Boy

He slammed down the phone. A timid knock on the door made him glance up. Gunilla poked her head in, giving him a frightened look.

‘Yes?’ He wished everybody would just leave him alone. He’d been out searching for Vivianne all of Sunday, and this morning he’d come to the office only because he hoped she might try to reach him there.

‘The bank called.’ Gunilla sounded even more anxious than usual.

‘I don’t have time for things like that right now,’ he said, staring at the phone. She might ring at any moment.

‘It’s about the Badis account, something that’s not as it should be. They want you to call them back.’

‘I told you, I don’t have time for that,’ he snapped. To his surprise, Gunilla was still standing there.

‘They want you to call back, and they said it’s urgent,’ she told him, and then went back to her desk.

With a sigh Erling picked up the phone and rang their contact at the bank. ‘It’s Erling. Is there some sort of problem?’

He tried to sound authoritative. He wanted to make the call as brief as possible so that the line wouldn’t be busy if Vivianne phoned. He was hardly paying attention as he listened to the bank official, but suddenly he sat up straight.

‘What do you mean there’s no money in the account? You’d better check again. We deposited several million kronor, and additional funds will be arriving from Vivianne and Anders Berkelin this week. I know that we have a lot of suppliers that need to be paid, but there’s plenty of money in that account.’ Then he fell silent and listened some more. ‘Are you sure you’re not mistaken?’

Erling tugged at the collar of his shirt. He was suddenly having a hard time breathing. When he put down the phone, thoughts began whirling through his head. The money was gone. Vivianne was gone. He wasn’t stupid – he could put two and two together. But he didn’t want to believe it.

Erling had just tapped in the first three digits of the phone number for the police station when Anders appeared in the doorway. Erling stared at him. Vivianne’s brother looked haggard and exhausted. At first he merely stood there without saying a word. Then he came over to Erling’s desk and held out his hand, palm up. Light from the window shone on what he was holding and made tiny sparkles dance over the wall behind Erling. Vivianne’s engagement ring.

At that moment all doubt disappeared from Erling’s mind. In a daze, he tapped in the rest of the numbers for the Tanumshede police. Anders sat down in a chair across from him and waited. On the desk lay the engagement ring, glittering in the light.

On Wednesday morning Erica was allowed to leave the hospital and go home. It had turned out that the blow to her head wasn’t serious, but considering the previous injuries that she’d sustained in the car accident, the doctors had decided to keep her under observation for a few days just to be on the safe side.

‘Stop it. I can walk on my own.’ She glared at Patrik, who was holding her arm as they went up the front steps to the house. ‘You heard what they said. Everything looks okay. I don’t have a concussion, only a few stitches.’

Patrik opened the door.

‘Yes, I know, but …’ He fell silent when he saw the look Erica gave him.

‘When will the kids be home?’ She kicked off her shoes.

‘Mamma is bringing the twins over around two, and then I thought that we could all go and pick up Maja. She’s been missing you terribly.’

‘What a sweetie she is,’ said Erica, going into the kitchen. It felt strange to be home with no children around. She could hardly remember what that felt like.

‘Sit down and I’ll make some coffee,’ said Patrik, moving past her.

Erica was about to protest when she realized that she ought to make the most of the situation. She sat down at the kitchen table and with a contented sigh propped her feet up on the chair next to her.

‘Do you know what will happen with Badis?’ She felt as if she’d been living in a bubble at the hospital, so now she wanted to hear about everything that had been going on. She still couldn’t believe the rumours she’d heard concerning Vivianne.

‘The money and Vivianne are gone.’ Patrik was standing at the counter, making the coffee. ‘We found her car at Arlanda airport, and we’re in the process of checking the passenger lists from the weekend. Presumably she wasn’t travelling under her own name, so that makes things harder.’

‘What about the money? Can’t you track it down?’

Patrik turned around and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look good. We’ve asked the fraud division in Göteborg for help, but there are ways of transferring funds out of the country that make it extremely difficult to track the money. And I’m guessing that Vivianne planned the whole thing very carefully.’

‘What does Anders have to say?’ Erica got up, wanting to get something out of the freezer.

‘Sit down. I’ll get the buns.’ Patrik took a bag of cinnamon buns out of the freezer and put several of them in the microwave. ‘Anders has admitted to taking part in the embezzlement scheme, but he refuses to tell us where his sister and the money are now.’

‘Why didn’t he leave with Vivianne?’ Erica had sat back down at the table.

‘Who knows? Maybe he got cold feet at the last second and didn’t want to spend the rest of his life away from Sweden, in exile.’

‘Hmm, I suppose that’s possible.’ Erica paused for a moment and then asked, ‘So how is Erling taking it? And what’s going to happen to Badis?’

‘Erling seems mostly … resigned.’ Patrik poured two cups of coffee and then took the warm buns out of the microwave and set everything on the kitchen table. ‘As far as Badis is concerned, nobody really knows what its future will be. Almost none of the suppliers or builders have been paid. The question is, which option would be more costly: to close the doors, or to continue operating the place. After the party on Saturday, reservations have been pouring in, so the town might try to run the spa and hope to make it profitable. At least that would be a way to recoup some of the money. I think it’s possible that they’ll decide to keep the place open.’

‘It would be a shame to close Badis after doing such a great job on the remodelling.’

‘I agree,’ said Patrik, taking a big bite of a cinnamon bun.

‘How did Matte know that something wasn’t right? You said that Annika’s husband Lennart didn’t find any irregularities. It does seem strange that no one from the town was the least bit suspicious.’

‘According to Anders, Mats wasn’t positive, but he’d started wondering if something was wrong. On the Friday before he went to see Nathalie, he dropped by Badis and had a talk with Anders. He asked a lot of questions. For instance, he wanted to know why so many of the suppliers’ invoices hadn’t been paid. He also wanted to know when the funds that Anders and Vivianne had promised to invest would be arriving. And where that money was coming from. He wanted the names of contacts so he could verify the funds. Anders was really worried. If Mats hadn’t been killed, he probably would have uncovered the true state of the Project Badis finances and exposed Anders and Vivianne for the swindlers they are.’

Erica nodded. She suddenly looked sad. ‘How is Nathalie?’

‘She’s going to be evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist, and I think there’s very little chance that she’ll end up in prison. She’ll probably be institutionalized. Or at least she ought to be.’

‘Why were we all so stupid? Why didn’t we realize what was going on?’ Erica put down the cinnamon bun. She had suddenly lost her appetite.