Page 25 of Hidden in Memories
Grip pushes back a strand of her steel-gray hair, which tones with her deep-set eyes. “I agree. Let’s take a look at the victim’s background. What do we know about her?”
Anton has looked into Charlotte’s life while Daniel and Hanna were at Copperhill. He has his laptop open in front of him.
“I ran a multiple inquiry and searched all our databases,” he begins. “She doesn’t appear anywhere.”
A model citizen, in other words,Hanna thinks.
“She renewed her passport six months ago—this is what she looked like then.”
A passport photo of Charlotte appears on the screen. She looks cool and professional, wearing a dark jacket and a blouse with a pussycat bow.
“Born in 1965,” Anton continues, “which means she was fifty-six at the time of her death. Her mother lives in a care home for dementiasufferers. Her father is dead. She was married to a man called Mats Rutberg for a few years in the late nineties—the divorce went through in 2000. Since then she has been single, and is registered at an expensive address in the Östermalm district of Stockholm—Tysta Gatan 7.”
“Children?” Raffe wonders, adjusting the dark ponytail that his is signature. Hanna has never seen him with his hair loose, and only once with a different style, when he went for a man bun on top of his head.
“One son, born in 1997. His name is Filip Rutberg Wretlind, and he lives not far away from his mother, on Banérgatan in the same district. He has embarked on several education courses, including at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, but he hasn’t completed any of them. At the moment he seems to be mostly drifting around.”
“Has he been informed?”
“Yes. The Stockholm police took care of it.”
“And the ex-husband?”
“They’re trying to track him down—apparently he lives abroad.”
“What do we know about the victim’s finances and work situation before the Storlien project?” Daniel asks.
“For many years Charlotte was a partner in a well-known risk capital company, IQP. By any standards, her personal financial situation was very comfortable. Her apartment is pretty large, and is in one of Stockholm’s most desirable areas. She also has a summer cottage on the island of Ingarö in the Stockholm archipelago, and an apartment on Majorca. Three years ago she left the company and started her own business known as SEG—Swedish Establishment Group—where she is the director and chair of the board.”
“SEG are behind the Storlien project,” Hanna adds. “Charlotte’s business partner, Henry Sylvester, told us.”
“Exactly,” Anton says. “They have five employees, and the office is also in Östermalm.”
“What shape are the company finances in?” Daniel wants to know.
“I can look into that,” Raffe offers.
Hanna remembers that he took care of the financial aspect of their previous investigation, when the skier Johan Andersson was murdered. Apparently Raffe has completed some courses in business finance over the past year; personally she can’t think of anything more boring.
She also knows that Raffe and his partner, Nilla, are trying to have a baby, but it’s not going too well. Hanna has met Nilla a few times; she’s a sweet person in her early thirties who enjoys baking and works as a preschool teacher in Kall, where they live.
Maybe Raffe’s online courses are a form of distraction? Or maybe he’s just ambitious.
She glances at Daniel. He told her quite early on that Ida had unexpectedly found herself pregnant with Alice when they had been together for only a few months. At the time, they weren’t even sure they wanted to keep the child. It somehow seems unfair that Raffe and Nilla, who have been together forever, are struggling to have a family when it’s so easy for others.
Life,she thinks. It rarely turns out the way we expect. She is thirty-six years old and single, something that her mother often points out. It seems increasingly unlikely that she will ever meet someone and have children of her own.
The thought is unexpectedly painful.
Daniel’s voice interrupts her gloomy reverie.
“It’s interesting that the door of the suite shows no sign of forced entry, suggesting that the victim herself might have let the perpetrator in—but then again she was wearing nothing but panties when she was found, which contradicts that idea.”
Hanna thinks about Henry Sylvester, the business partner who has known Charlotte since they were children, and now seems likely to be able to drop out of a multimillion kronor investment he’d been talked into.
If he’d knocked on her door late at night, no doubt Charlotte would have let him in. Could he be involved? He said he flew up to Åre this afternoon—yesterday he was in Stockholm. Hanna makes a note to check out his alibi. She can’t really see the elegant businessman wielding the knife himself, but neither can she rule it out.
“Take a look at Sylvester too,” she says to Raffe. “See what shape his company finances are in.”
