They went back to Restaurant Vesuvius. The head waiter was a gray-haired older man who showed them to a table for two in the smaller room with the movie-star photos on the walls. Two younger women sitting at a table by the window looked at Irene with undisguised jealousy and Irene became keenly aware of the fact that she was in the company of a very attractive man. When Peter stood near her in order to pull out her chair, she caught a whiff of his good aftershave. Light, masculine, and sensual. Could be Armani.
He pushed her chair in and when he leaned forward she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck.
“It’s been a busy day for you. Now you have to relax,” he said. He smiled encouragingly at her when he seated himself across from her. “Do you want wine?”
She hesitated for half a second and then common sense took over.
“No, thanks. I have to drive tomorrow. Jonny is already in fine form in the bar. He’s drinking Jell-O shots with a group of people. Something tells me it will be a quiet trip home.”
Peter laughed. His eyes were as blue as the short-sleeved Sand shirt he was wearing. The top two buttons were open, revealing blond hair. A thin gold chain glimmered against his golden brown skin. He had hung his light- colored linen jacket on the back of his chair.
She still had on her dark blue linen pants, which at this point were wrinkled. She had managed to press them a bit with the iron in the hotel room, but they weren’t pristine. Her linen jacket was still in good shape. She wore a new silver-gray satin top under the jacket. Her feet in blue suede sandals were bare.
“Beer then. What would you like to eat?”
“Something spicy that will make my spirits soar.”
“How does
“That sounds perfect.”
“Good. I’ll have that as well. A drink before dinner?”
She hesitated. “OK, one. A dry martini, please.”
The drinks came to the table very quickly. Peter and Irene raised their wide glasses in order to toast. Their eyes met and Irene felt her cheeks become hot. Damn the man for being so handsome!
A chill suddenly ran down her spine. Her brain became crystal clear. The police officer.
Mechanically, she took a sip of her drink as she thought feverishly. She put down her glass and said in as natural a tone of voice as she could muster, “You never had a chance to tell me where you got your tan.” She smiled encouragingly but didn’t get a response.
He looked into his glass. Finally he said, “I wasn’t planning on telling you. I was in South Africa.”
“How exciting! How long were you there?”
“Three weeks. A tour and safari.”
“How wonderful, to get away in March when the weather is so bad. . ”
“It wasn’t in March. We. . I left on April 1.”
A month after Marcus’s supposed trip to Thailand; Marcus had been dead for almost a month already. Peter’s sunburn also seemed to match better with three weeks in April than with a few weeks the month before.
But there were tanning salons. You could maintain a tan. She had to confirm the date Peter had taken his vacation.
He seemed unwilling to talk about his trip. The conversation became strained. Irene decided to start a new topic: Copenhagen as a tourist city. Peter thawed out a bit but the intimate feeling was completely gone. Irene felt that something had come between them despite the wonderful food and drink.
What had happened on the trip to South Africa? Had he
They finished dinner at ten o’clock. He escorted her back to the hotel but didn’t show any interest in following her inside.
Chapter 12
JONNY WAS ASLEEP BEFORE they left Copenhagen. He woke up when they rattled onto the ferry. Irritable, he tottered into the ferry’s candy store and pulled a wrinkled shopping list from his coat pocket. Absentmindedly, he put bags of Drungelvral, Dumlekola, and gummy bears into the shopping basket for his four kids. Irene noted that he didn’t buy anything for his wife, unless the bottle of Black Velvet he purchased in the liquor store next to the hotel was for her.
Jonny cheered up after consuming a strong beer in the cafeteria. Irene had two cups of coffee. He fell asleep again as soon as they got into the car and didn’t even wake up when they drove down the ramp.
The trip home along the coast of Halland went by quickly and uneventfully on the new highway. Jonny slept all the way to Kungsbacka. Jonny had to make a quick pit stop at Statoil. Irene filled up the car while she waited.
She dropped Jonny off outside his row house in Molndal and continued home to Fiskeback. It was almost two o’clock and she was hungry. She planned to unpack the car and get a bite to eat. Then she was going to drive to the station and speak with Andersson.
At three thirty she stepped into the superintendent’s office. He looked up from a stack of papers lying on the table in front of him.
“Hi. Good that you came. Where’s Jonny?” he asked.
Irene tried to look surprised. “He hasn’t come in yet?”
She was reluctant to reveal her suspicions to her boss. Jonny had probably gone straight to bed and was fast asleep now.
“No. When did you get home?”
“At two thirty. I dropped him off at his home so that he wouldn’t have to carry his things around with him and so that he could pick up his car. He hasn’t arrived?”
“No.”
“Maybe the car wouldn’t start. . ”
“Possibly. While we’re on the subject of cars, that ‘Mats’ from Copenhagen called. He’s so damned difficult to understand but I got that they’ve found Marcus Tosscander’s car.”
“Marcus’s car! Where?”
“In a garage. He said that I should tell you it was in Emil’s garage.” Emil’s garage? Emil had a garage? Where?
“ ‘Mats’ wants you to call him. He gave me some blasted number in Danish but I didn’t understand it. Fours and threes. . completely incomprehensible!”
Irene smiled.
“I’m thinking about asking for extra money for language assistance for these joint investigations.”
Since she had the numbers for both Peter Moller’s and Jens Metz’s direct lines she said, “I’ll call from my office. Then I’ll report to you. Prepare yourself because it’s going to take quite a while. Load up the coffeemaker.”
She nodded in the direction of the old coffee pot, which was standing on top of Andersson’s bookshelf. In recent years a coffee machine had been installed in the corridor but Andersson had kept his percolator. Irene knew that he always hid a package of coffee in the bottom drawer of his desk.
“YES. THIS is Inspector Metz.”
“Hi. Irene Huss. Thanks again for your assistance.”
“Thanks to you, too. It got real quiet here in Copenhagen after you left. Nothing is happening.”
Metz laughed and Irene politely laughed, too, before she interrupted him. “You spoke with my boss and said that Marcus’s car was found in Emil’s garage.”
“That’s right. There’s a garage under the building. Some of the tenants have parking spaces in the back lot but Emil had a spot in the garage. We did a routine check and found a Swedish-registered red Pontiac convertible. It turns out that it belongs to Marcus Tosscander.”
