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244 pages

English

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When a leading Malmoe entrepreneur turns up bound and gagged in a city-centre cemetery, the Skane County Police have no obvious clues as to who is behind the kidnap. More complications arise when a second leading business figure is snatched and Inspector Anita Sundstroem and her colleagues are under pressure not only to find the victim, but also catch the gang. The team is then further stretched with the murder of a malicious investigative journalist who has ruined the lives of many prominent Swedes. Unlike the kidnap case, there is no shortage of suspects. Both investigations are far from straightforward, and Anita's professional life is about to become more turbulent with her nemesis, Alice Zetterberg, waiting in the wings. Warring companies... fallen celebrities... and an adversary from a past case reappears on the scene as Anita Sundstroem tries to find the truth in the sixth full-length Malmoe Mystery.

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	05 avril 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780957519084
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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MALICE IN MALM
The sixth Inspector Anita Sundstr m mystery
by TORQUIL MACLEOD
Copyright Torquil MacLeod 2018 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without express written permission of the Publisher.
Published by Torquil MacLeod Books Ltd.
eBook edition: 2018
ISBN 978-0-9575190-8-4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.torquilmacleodbooks.com
eBook conversion by www.eBookpartnership.com
Also by Torquil MacLeod:
The Malm Mysteries:
Meet me in Malm
Murder in Malm
Missing in Malm
Midnight in Malm
A Malm Midwinter (novella)
Menace in Malm
Jack Flyford Misadventures (Historical crime):
Sweet Smell of Murder
Contents
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
NOTES
Acknowledgements
About the author
Dedication
To Fraser and Paula, and Calum and Sarah. With love.

PROLOGUE
Eila knew she had been chosen because she was a girl. And pretty. It wasn t due to any great insight on her part; she was only six. Anders had told her. He knew these things because he was eight. Not that it made her feel any better. Nothing could compensate for the bewilderment and misery she had experienced at being wrenched from her home and loving parents and hastily despatched like a parcel to a foreign land. From what she could now remember, her life had been happy. Her mother and father had cared for her, though she d sensed that they d been behaving differently in the weeks before she d left their small apartment. There d been a number of hushed conversations. People called Russians were mentioned a lot. And then they appeared in the sky. And there were the peculiar and frightening sounds of wailing sirens, loud explosions and crackling fires in the buildings not far from their home. The faces of the people in the streets looked different, too. It was her first recognition of fear.
During the nights before the awful day of her departure, lying half asleep in her tiny bedroom, she could hear her mother crying through the thin wall. Her father, who had worked in an office in the centre of the city, usually left in an aging suit after breakfast. One day, he suddenly appeared in a new uniform. Eila had been startled at first but strangely thrilled. She thought he looked ever so handsome. Not that her father seemed pleased - or proud. He wore a glum expression, which wasn t like him at all. The evening before he left, he came into her bedroom to read her a story. When he d finished, he hugged her like he d never done before. She thought he might be sobbing, as his shoulders heaved gently as he clasped her to his chest. After saying goodnight, he hung around the door. She could still remember his silhouette hovering there for a good few minutes. The next morning, he was gone. Her mother said he d been called away to fight the Russians. Again, she didn t understand why these people were being so horrible and why her father had to go and fight them. When they d gone for a walk in the park later that day, Eila had picked a yellow flower to give to her mother to try and cheer her up. It had only made her weep more. Eila felt awful because she thought she d done something wrong.
The night before she was taken to the big railway station with the two huge, scary figures either side of the entrance, her mother had packed a suitcase with her things in it, including her favourite doll. Eila assumed that they were going on a holiday, as they d packed the same suitcase last summer when they d gone to the lake. That had been fun. Her father had smiled all week, sitting at the edge of the water smoking his favourite pipe. When it came to bedtime, her mother told her to get into the big bed in her parents room. That was exciting. She d never done that before. She d woken up when her mother came in. Her mother had snuggled up to her and she d fallen asleep in her arms.
When they got to the station, there were lots of other children of all ages gathering with their parents. She was still puzzled as to why her mother hadn t brought her own suitcase. None of the parents seemed to have suitcases - but all the children did. Eila began to panic as her mother shoved her towards the line of children.
A large lady, who smelt of mothballs, grabbed her arm. Her mother was holding a handkerchief to her eyes and her own tears started to flow as she realized something was terribly wrong. She broke free of this woman and rushed back to her mother. They hugged tightly. I m so sorry, my darling, her mother kept saying over and over again. The large lady, in her bulky, hairy fur coat, looking like an ogre from one of the stories her father used to read to her, roughly prized her away. Eila was now screaming, and the large woman told her to calm down and be a good girl. When she turned to call out to her mother to save her, all she could see was her back as she scurried away.
That was over a year ago. Now she was in a place called Sweden. She was living with Anders and Isabell and their parents. It had been so hard at first. They spoke a funny, half-familiar language, but she gradually began to understand it and to speak it herself. She had been taken to the same school as Anders, where some of the other children had said horrid things to her because she was a Finn. They made the word sound as though it was a disease. They laughed at her attempts to speak Swedish. Often Anders joined in. She could feel that he wasn t happy to have her around in their grand home in the country. Eila tried to keep away from him as much as possible. Isabell was totally different. She was just a few months younger than Eila, and they played together a lot. Isabell was Eila s only friend in the world. She was sweet and blonde and had sparkling, blue eyes. Anders often reduced those beautiful eyes to tears with his nasty jokes and bullying behaviour. His parents never seemed to scold him. He was their favourite. His mother s favourite, anyway; Anders father was rarely at home. He was an important businessman, and he left for work in the nearest town early each morning. Often, he was away for days on end on business . Eila couldn t understand why he wasn t fighting like her father was having to. Then again, no one seemed to talk about Russians in Sweden.
The most exciting thing to happen in her life was a letter arriving from her mother every two or three weeks. These letters were written in Swedish so Isabell s mother could read them out to her. Mamma always said the same thing: everything was well; her father was still away, but she was sure he would be fine. She said how much she missed her little girl, which would bring Eila to the edge of tears, though she tried not to cry in front of Isabell s mother. Then Eila was allowed to keep the letters, though she couldn t really read them. She kept them under her pillow so that when she was asleep, she was close to her mother and father. Then one day, she found that the letters had gone. Later, she found Anders in the garden. He d lit a small fire and Eila realized that he was burning her mother s letters. As she tried to save them, he pushed her roughly away and laughed. Isabell shouted at her brother, but he ignored her. When the flames died down, he walked off to the house, still laughing. Eila ran and hid behind the wooden summer house and curled up into an unhappy ball. How could he do such a cruel thing? Isabell found her and tried to comfort her, but Eila s sense of loss was deep. Even at six, she felt a great well of loneliness.
Then, the terrible day. It was a month later, just after midsummer. The family had friends over for Sunday lunch, and the children were sent off to play in the garden as soon as the meal was drawing to a close. Eila remembered the flowers were at their brightest and the leaves on the trees were still at their most brilliant green. After her early life in an apartment, she d learned to love this beautiful garden and the natural world that had only been fleetingly available to her in the park at home and her family s annual trip to the lake. Here, she could enjoy it every day. Her hobby was pressing flowers, and Isabell eagerly helped her pick them for a while until she grew distracted and ran off to find Anders, who hadn t been in a good mood after the adults had sent them packing from the house. When Eila had finished gathering her flowers, she looked around for Isabell. The afternoon sun was hot, and she wandered over to the shade of the two old oaks in the middle of the garden. One had a tree house built into the branches with a rope ladder dangling from it. It had been made specially for Anders that spring. There was no sign of either Isabell or Anders. Then there was a heavy rustling of leaves above her head. She squinted up. The next moment, a shock of fair