The Golden Calf (16 page)

With her working left hand, she began to search around the doorframe hoping for a light switch. An eternity seemed to pass before she found it, and to her great relief, the light bulb came on. She immediately concentrated on the lock. It was a well-built, old-fashioned lock, and when she peered through the keyhole, she saw that the key had been left in.

Sometimes, Irene joked that most things could be solved by violence, but there was an element of truth behind her statement. She took one step back and kicked the area around the lock as hard as she could. Her third kick broke the door open, and she stumbled out.

Irene found Kajsa in the doorway between the living room and the hallway. She was on her back and a pool of blood was forming beneath her head from an open wound on her temple. Irene fumbled around in her backpack and found her extra T-shirt, which she wadded up and applied to the wound. To Irene’s great relief, Kajsa began to moan weakly and tried to
shake her head, but instinctively stopped in the middle of the movement. She fell unconscious again.

Irene thought as quickly as she could. Her right arm was still as good as useless. She’d have to loosen her pressure on Kajsa’s wound, but that couldn’t be helped. Once she decided what to do, she moved quickly. She dug out her cell phone from the front pocket of her backpack and hurriedly scrolled through her contacts. She was grateful she’d left the country code in her phone after an investigation in Copenhagen a few years earlier. Sighing with relief, she pressed the button and prayed that someone would answer right away. Her heart leapt for joy when she heard a familiar voice say, “Inspector Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala.”

“Hi, Birgitta, it’s Irene. Do you have an emergency number to call for a French ambulance?”

I
NSPECTOR
V
ERDIER HAD
cold, gray-blue eyes set close together beside his narrow nose. His thin, salt-and-pepper hair suffered from an unfortunate part. He wore a light beige trench coat over an impeccable gray suit, and he showed no sign of sweat even though it was a hot day. Irene thought that he looked like a character in the Ture Sventon detective series from her childhood. The difference between the story and reality was that the policeman looked like the criminal, Ville Vessla, and not the hero, Ture Sventon. Verdier had appeared at the hospital while Irene and Kajsa were still being examined. He had waited patiently while Irene was taken for an X-ray and as her badly sprained arm was fitted with a suitable sling. Irene was greatly relieved to hear that her arm wasn’t broken. The doctor, a black man with tired eyes, wrote something illegible on a prescription pad, and in halting English, encouraged her to take two pills three times a day. Irene nodded and tried to look obedient. She asked how her colleague, Kajsa Birgersdotter, was doing, but the doctor shrugged and said, “Not my patient.”

Inspector Verdier followed the doctor out the door, only to return a few moments later.

“Your colleague has a concussion,” he said in good, but heavily accented, English. “She has to stay here overnight for observation.”

There was no sympathy in his voice, only dry observation.

Irene thought he must have been assigned this case simply because of his English; he certainly wouldn’t win any points for his bedside manner or social skills.

“I would like you to accompany me to the station and explain what happened,” Verdier said.

He showed no curiosity in his expression, just chilly politeness. Before Irene was able to answer, the majestic notes of the French national anthem burst into the tiny examination room. Irene managed to fish her cell phone out of the backpack pocket to answer it.

“How are you two doing?” asked Birgitta.

“Fine.… Not so fine, actually. Kajsa has a concussion and has to stay overnight for observation. My elbow isn’t broken, but—hey, can I call you back later?”

Inspector Verdier was staring her down and tapping a sign on the wall. It showed the red slashed circle around a picture of a cell phone.

Irene quickly gathered up her things. She slung her backpack over her left shoulder and draped her jacket over her arm. Verdier did not make any move to help, but at least he held the door for her as they left the room.

He led her through the crowded emergency room and out the door by the ambulances. A nurse was about to protest but fell silent when he flashed his identification. Irene realized that it must be forbidden for patients or relatives to leave through this door because they risked being hit by an ambulance coming in at high speed. Obviously, this rule only applied to regular people, not Inspector Verdier. With his trench coat fluttering behind him, Verdier strode toward the parking lot without even glancing behind him to see if Irene was able to keep up. He unlocked the doors to a dark gray Renault Megane. He held open a door for her again, and Irene was not surprised he was offering her the back seat. Her French colleague obviously did not want to chat on the way to the
station. As Verdier drove through the afternoon traffic, Irene decided to call Birgitta. She answered at once.

“Why’d you hang up?”

“Not allowed to talk on the cell phone at the hospital. Now I’m in the back seat of a police car on the way to be interrogated.”

“Interrogated?”

“Third degree, for sure. My French colleague is giving me the shivers.”

She met Verdier’s expressionless eyes in the rearview mirror and forced herself to give a small smile. Birgitta giggled on her end.

“Look on the bright side. At least you can avoid Sven right now.”

Irene needed to hear that just then. She had no illusions that the superintendent had handled the news of what happened in Paris calmly. She heaved a great sigh and ignored Verdier’s eyes staring at her from the mirror.

“Birgitta, would you be so kind as to contact the travel agency to rebook our flight for tomorrow afternoon instead? And could you please ask them to find a hotel close to the Rothstaahl apartment while you’re at it? I don’t have a car here. By the look of it, I hardly believe our French colleague will offer to be my chauffeur. As long as I’m here, I really should find out as much as I can about Bergman and Rothstaahl.”

“That’s great! At least Andersson can’t complain that your trip was a complete waste. I’ll call you when I’ve handled the travel agency. And by the way, I called HP Johnson’s Parisian office this morning, and they told me that they never had an employee named Joachim Rothstaahl. Our young friend made up that story for his parents. Now we have to find out what those two guys really were up to.”

As soon as Irene ended the call, she suddenly felt
abandoned. Her contact with her native country was gone, and she was on her own in a foreign capital city where she couldn’t even speak the language. Not to mention that the only native she had contact with now was as friendly as a cold fish.

R
IGHT BEFORE THE
car swung in through the tall gates of the police station, Irene caught a glimpse of a building she actually recognized. The spires and towers covered with dragons and gargoyles could be nothing else but the famous Notre Dame cathedral. She’d recognized it from the Disney film
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
she’d seen with her daughters several years ago.

They walked through an imposing wooden door with massive iron mounting. It was covered with marks that, to Irene, looked like they were made by French Revolution battering rams and storming mobs. Now the gate was guarded by a uniformed policeman in a glass booth. He saluted smartly as they walked by, and Verdier waved a casual salute back.

They stepped into an ancient, rickety elevator. Verdier pushed a button marked “PJ.” Next to the button, the words
POLICE JUDICIARE
were engraved on a brass sign. The elevator carried them up a few floors, and after that they walked along a dark corridor. Tiny, dirty windows along one side let in the least amount of light possible. Irene felt as if she’d traveled several centuries back in time. Only the dull sound of traffic and the sirens of emergency vehicles gave her any sense of the present.

After a long walk down the dim corridor, the inspector stopped at a closed door and unlocked it.

“Please enter,” he said, as he held the door open.

They stepped into his office. A worn desk, two chairs, and a simple, wall-mounted bookshelf with a few binders were the only furnishings in the room. An old computer sat enthroned at the center of the desk. The room was chilly. Irene struggled
into her jacket before she sat down on the chair Verdier pointed to.

Before Irene was able to launch her long tale, her cell phone rang the Marseilles again. Birgitta informed Irene that she’d booked a room at the Hotel Montparnasse Raspail. According to the woman at the travel agency, the hotel should be close to the Rothstaahl apartment. She’d also rebooked their flight.

As Irene stammered out the entire Göteborg murder investigation in stumbling English, Verdier sat quietly and watched her. There were no pictures or flowers on the windowsill, so Irene was forced to look back at Verdier. Irene had never imagined that a person could stare that long without blinking. It was effective. For a second, Irene felt ready to confess to hitting Kajsa on the head and locking herself into the closet just to escape his chilly gaze. She controlled her emotions as she did her best to describe the case’s chain of events. If he could sit there cold as ice, well then, so could she.

When she finished, there was a long period of silence.

Finally, Verdier asked, “Why did your superintendent send two women here?”

Irene was not surprised by this question, but she was starting to feel fed up with the attitude. “He sent his two best detectives because this killer is especially dangerous,” she said.

For a fraction of a second, a sparkle flashed in the French Inspector’s eyes, but Irene couldn’t determine why before it disappeared again.

He fixed her in his gaze for quite some time. Defiantly, she stared back, and to her great satisfaction, he was the first to look away. He tried to disguise it by getting up from his chair.

“Would you like a ride somewhere,
madame
?” he asked.

His voice was as coolly polite as ever, but Irene could tell by the emphasis he put on
madame
that she was supposed to notice he refused to use her title.

“Yes, please,” she replied without hesitation. “You can drive me to my hotel on Boulevard Raspail.”

She knew that she wasn’t pronouncing its name properly, but she no longer cared. She just wanted to get out of this depressing room and away from the even more depressing Verdier. He handed her his card and said, “I would like your cell phone number, in case something turns up. Or I have to reach you.” He managed to make it sound like a threat.

A
YOUNG UNIFORMED
policeman drove Irene back to Montparnasse in an unmarked car. This time, Irene decided herself to sit in the back seat in order to avoid a stumbling conversation in broken English. As soon as she sat down, exhaustion overcame her. Spending time in the company of Inspector Verdier had taken more out of her than she’d realized. Not to mention the attack at the apartment and the time spent in the emergency room. And she’d had no chance to look in on Kajsa.

The doctor had said she could visit Kajsa once she had been moved out of Emergency later that evening. Irene checked the time and saw it was only six
P.M
. She had enough time to search the apartment once more before she had to return to the hospital. Before then, however, she needed at least several cups of coffee and a sandwich. Her elbow was starting to throb, so it would be a good idea to get her pain prescription too.

She pulled out her cell phone and called Krister, who had just arrived home. He was alarmed when he heard about the attack, and once Irene reassured him that she was relatively OK, he promised to hold down the fort at home. Krister was Irene’s anchor, and without him, Irene knew she could never have combined family and police work so well. Many of her married male colleagues with children had reached a similar balance at home. Like them, Irene rarely thought about it.

The car stopped directly in front of the entrance to Hotel
Montparnasse Raspail. She thanked her uniformed driver as she slung her backpack clumsily over her left shoulder. The hotel’s glass doors swished open automatically when she approached. The recently painted terra-cotta lobby was relatively small.

The young woman behind the reception desk was impeccably attired in a dark blue dress. She was unusually tall and thin. She had dreadlocks that she wore wrapped around the top of her head until they hung down her back, and she had added glass pearls to many of them, so that they clicked gently as she stood up from her chair. She smiled warmly, and her teeth sparkled in contrast to her dark skin.
What is this woman doing behind a hotel reception desk?
Irene wondered.
She could be earning big bucks on designer catwalks. This is Paris, after all
.

Irene gave her name, and the receptionist, who wore a nametag that read
LUCY
, typed it into the computer. She gave a friendly nod. “Welcome,
Madame
Huss. I hope you will feel welcome here.”

Her English was much better than Irene’s. “Thank you.”

Irene’s eyes found a small bar at the corner of the lobby. “Excuse me, but would it be possible to have some coffee and a sandwich?” She wasn’t able to hide the exhaustion in her voice.

Again, Lucy nodded. “Certainly,
madame
. I’ll arrange it, but it will take a while.” She leaned over the reception counter. “Forgive me for asking, but do you need some assistance?”

She was staring at Irene’s shoulder.

“No,” Irene said in confusion. “Just coffee and a sandwich, please.”

“I mean,
madame
, you have blood on your sweater.”

One glance at the mirror behind Lucy showed obvious bloodstains across Irene’s left shoulder, ruining her light blue top.

“Oh, no!” Irene exclaimed. “And I’ve already used my extra
T-shirt to stop the bleeding! This is not my blood—it’s my colleague’s. She was the victim of—an unfortunate incident.”