The Spring Tide Read Online Free Page A

It had taken place on a moonlit night in the Hasslevikarna coves on the island of Nordkoster. A diabolical method of murdering a naked pregnant woman.
    With the tide.
    The rising tide?
    That was quite simply torture, Olivia thought. An extreme form of drowning. Slow, hellish.
    Why?
    Why that spectacular method?
    Olivia’s imagination was in overdrive. Were there links to the occult? Tidal worshippers? Moon worshippers? The murder had taken place late in the evening. Was it some sort of sacrifice ? A rite? A sect? Were they going to cut out the fetus and sacrifice it to some lunar god?
    No, mustn’t get carried away, she thought.
    Olivia turned off the reader, leant back and looked down at her full notebook: a mishmash of facts and speculation, truths and guesses, and more or less credible hypotheses by various crime reporters and criminologists.
    According to one ‘reliable source’, traces of a drug had been found in the victim’s body. Rohypnol. Rohypnol is a classic rape drug, Olivia thought. But wasn’t she in the final stages of pregnancy? Had she been sedated? Why?
    According to the police, a dark cloth coat had been found up in the sand dunes. Hairs matching the woman’s had been found on the coat. Where were the rest of the clothes if that was her coat? Had the murderers taken them but forgotten the coat?
    They had tried to ascertain the woman’s identity via Interpol but this had led to nothing. Strange that nobody missed a pregnant woman, she thought.
    The police described the woman as between twenty-five and thirty years old, possibly of Latin American extraction. What was meant by ‘Latin American extraction’? How large an area did that cover?
    The entire sequence of events had been witnessed by a nine-year-old boy named by a local reporter as Ove Gardman. The boy had run home and told his parents. Where was he today? Could she get in touch with him?
    According to the police, the woman was unconscious but still alive when Gardman’s parents came to the beach. They tried to resuscitate her but when the air ambulance arrived the woman was dead. How far away did the Gardmans live? she wondered. How long did it take for the helicopter to get there?
    Olivia got up. Her brain was battered with impressions and reflections. Halfway up, she almost lost her balance.
    Her blood pressure had fallen through the floor.
    She sank down into the car on Humlegårdsgatan outside the library and felt her stomach protesting. She dealt with that bytaking a PowerBar from the glove compartment. She had been sitting for several hours in the library reading room and was rather surprised when she realised how late it was. Time had simply vanished down there. Olivia glanced at her notebook. She realised just how fascinated she had become by the old beach case. Not just because Arne had worked on it, that was an extra fillip, but for all its remarkable ingredients. Above all, one specific detail had fastened in her mind: they had never established the identity of the murdered woman. She was, and remained, unknown. For all those years.
    That spurred Olivia on.
    She wanted to know more.
    If only her dad had been alive, what could he have told her?
    She pulled out her mobile.
    Åke Gustafsson and a middle-aged woman stood out on the neatly tended lawn outside the Police College. The woman was from Romania and was in charge of the college’s catering. She offered Åke a cigarette.
    ‘Not many people smoke nowadays,’ she said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘It must be because of cancer.’
    ‘Quite likely.’
    And then they smoked.
    Halfway through his cigarette, Åke’s mobile started ringing.
    ‘This is Olivia Rönning, hi. Well, I’ve chosen that case at Nordkoster, and I’d like…’
    ‘I thought you might,’ Åke interposed, ‘your dad was involved in that…’
    ‘Yes, but that’s not why.’
    Olivia wanted to keep them separate. This was about her and now. It had nothing to do with her dad. At any rate not as far as her tutor was