‘If you’re happy, then I’m happy too. It’s as simple as that. I’ll miss you terribly, but there’s nothing I want more than for you to have your own life.’ She smiled. ‘But you do have to tell me who it is. Otherwise I can’t leave.’
He mentioned a name, and Vivianne pictured a woman they’d worked with in connection with Project Badis. Again she smiled.
‘You have good taste,’ she said, and then fell silent for a moment. ‘You’re going to have to do a lot of explaining, and you’ll be held responsible. Should I really leave you alone with all this? I’ll stay if you want me to.’
Anders shook his head.
‘I want you to go. Bask in the sun and enjoy it for me too. I doubt I’m going to see much daylight for a while, but she knows about everything and has promised to wait for me.’
‘What about the money?’
‘It’s all yours,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I don’t need any of it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Again she took his face in her hands, as if touching him would help her to remember his familiar features.
He nodded and took her hands away.
‘I’m sure. And now you have to go. The plane won’t wait for you.’
He stood up and grabbed her suitcase. Without another word he carried it out to the car and put it in the boot. No one saw them. The hum of voices blended with the music, and everyone was focused on other things.
Vivianne got into the driver’s seat.
‘We did a good job, didn’t we?’ She glanced up at Badis, which glittered in the dim light.
‘A damned good job.’
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Vivianne took off her engagement ring and handed it to Anders.
‘Here. Give this back to Erling. He’s not a bad person. I hope he finds somebody else to give it to some day.’
Anders put it in his trouser pocket.
‘I’ll make sure he gets it.’
They stared at each other in silence. Then Vivianne closed the door and started up the car. Anders stood there for a long time, watching as she sped away. Then he slowly went up the stairs to Badis. He had decided to be the last person to leave the party.
22
Erling was starting to panic. Vivianne had disappeared. No one had seen her since the party on Saturday, and her car was also missing. Something must have happened.
Again he picked up the phone and rang the police station.
‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked as soon as Mellberg answered. When he received another negative reply, he could no longer control himself. ‘What exactly are you doing to find my fiancée? I’m convinced that something terrible must have happened to her. Have you dragged the water around the dock? Yes, I realize that her car is missing too, but who’s to say that somebody didn’t drive it into the harbour, and maybe with Vivianne inside?’ Erling’s voice rose to a falsetto as he pictured Vivianne trapped in the car, unable to escape as the water slowly rose. ‘I demand that you make use of all possible resources to find her.’
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.
23
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.’