Marked For Revenge
Marked For Revenge
Emelie Schepp
Swedish public prosecutor Jana Berzelius is back in the twisted second instalment of Emelie Schepp’s award-winning series, perfect for fans of Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson.When a girl overdoses smuggling drugs across the Swedish border, the trail points to the one man Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy.Notorious criminal Danillo Pena knows the truth about Jana’s old identity – and, as one of Sweden’s best-respected public prosecutors, Jana can’t risk that information becoming public knowledge. With Danillo closing in, Jana knows she must hunt her nemesis down…and kill him, before he can reveal her secrets.But, as she prepares for the fight of her life, Jana discovers an even more explosive betrayal—one that will take her deep into a deadly network of crime.
When a Thai girl overdoses smuggling drugs, the trail points to Danillo, the one criminal MMA-trained public prosecutor Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy. Eager to erase any evidence of her sordid childhood, Berzelius must secretly hunt down this deadly nemesis with whom she shares a horrific past.
Meanwhile, the police are zeroing in on the elusive head of the long-entrenched Swedish narcotics trade, who goes by the name The Old Man. No one has ever encountered this diabolical mastermind in person; he is like a shadow, but a shadow who commands extreme respect. Who is this overarching drug lord? Berzelius craves to know his identity, even as she clandestinely tracks Danillo, who has threatened to out her for who she really is. She knows she must kill him first, before he can reveal her secrets. If she fails, she will lose everything.
As she prepares for the fight of her life, Berzelius discovers an even more explosive and insidious betrayal—one that entangles her inextricably in the whole sordid network of crime.
The second in a trilogy of fast-paced, high-stakes thrillers by the international bestselling author Emelie Schepp, Marked for Revenge involves the international drug trade and child trafficking and features the brilliant, enigmatic prosecutor Jana Berzelius, whose own dark past has, until recently, been hidden even from herself.
Marked For Revenge
Emelie Schepp
For H.
Contents
Cover (#u1c7d99d8-338d-5260-be0d-beeb9939430b)
Back Cover Text (#u8c4b4a33-b5a3-522d-806a-4a4a0fd6ecd0)
Title Page (#u144a84d0-d7ee-5fc9-8da9-5439afb30a9b)
Dedication (#u36e38294-becf-5079-b12f-559ea0daa5be)
PROLOGUE (#u262fd4b6-6c94-5c6e-bcb0-3215940dacd2)
CHAPTER ONE (#u8b7314ef-c288-57f7-9f9b-ec8197acc6dd)
CHAPTER TWO (#u8b6e870b-5765-5b76-94f9-2df6deed5892)
CHAPTER THREE (#u8336dd12-1464-51ee-80e6-7387fb48e5e7)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u13230cd9-8f1e-56e7-81d5-70028849c8a7)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u04216e2e-2a3d-5c8d-ae48-503b223bd987)
CHAPTER SIX (#uc3022653-9403-598a-a6a1-5ee2e0f524a7)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u18c1bfca-45b1-5256-98a1-54ddc82f372d)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u8e8035b3-7893-56a8-8bb8-478a3c55440b)
CHAPTER NINE (#ud2b73e6f-db75-5594-8ed7-cd0aec8d654b)
CHAPTER TEN (#ubc2b7fdc-f385-5605-b673-4a88df188ab9)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THE GIRL SAT QUIETLY, looking down at her bowl of yogurt and strawberries. She listened to the clinking of silverware against china as her mother and father ate breakfast.
“Would you please eat?”
Her mother looked at her imploringly, but the girl didn’t move.
“Are your dreams bothering you again?”
The girl swallowed, not daring to lift her gaze from the bowl.
“Yes,” she replied in a barely audible whisper.
“What did you dream about this time?”
Her mother tore a slice of bread in half and spread marmalade on it.
“A container,” she said. “It was...”
“No!”
Her father’s voice came from the other side of the table, loud, hard and cold as ice. His fists were clenched. His eyes were as hard and cold as his voice.
“That’s enough!”
He got up, pulled her from the chair and shoved her out of the kitchen.
“We don’t want to hear any more of your fantasies.”
The girl stumbled forward, struggling to keep ahead of him as he pushed her up the stairs. He was hurting her arm, her feet. She tried to wrench herself from his grasp just as he changed his grip and put his hand around her neck.
Then he let go, his hand recoiling as if he’d been stabbed. He looked at her in disgust.
“I told you to keep your neck covered all the time! Always!”
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around.
“What did you do with the bandage?”
She felt him pull her hair aside, tearing at it, trying frantically to expose the nape of her neck. Heard his rapid breathing when he caught sight of her scars. He took a few steps back, aghast, as if he had seen something horrifying.
And he had...
Because her bandage had fallen off.
CHAPTER ONE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THERE! THE CAR appeared from around the corner.
Pim smiled nervously at Noi. They were standing in an alley, in the shadows of the light from the streetlamps. The asphalt was discolored by patches of dried piss. It smelled strong and rank, and the howling of stray dogs was drowned out by the rumbling highway.
Pim’s forehead was damp with sweat—not from the heat but from nerves. Her dark hair was plastered to the back of her neck, and the thin material of her T-shirt stuck to her back in creases. She didn’t know what awaited her and hadn’t had much time to think about it, either.
Everything had gone so quickly. Just two days ago, she had made up her mind. Noi had laughed, saying it was easy, it paid well and they’d be home again in five days.
Pim wiped her hand across her forehead and dried it on her jeans as she watched the slowly approaching car.
She smiled again, as if to convince herself that everything would be okay, everything would work out.
It was just this one time.
Just once. Then never again.
She picked up her suitcase. She’d been told to fill it with clothes for two weeks to make the fictitious vacation more convincing.
She looked at Noi, straightened her spine and pulled her shoulders back.
The car was almost there.
It drove toward them slowly and stopped. A tinted window rolled down, exposing the face of a man with close-cropped hair.
“Get in,” he said without taking his eyes from the road. Then he put the car in gear and prepared to leave.
Pim walked around the car, stopped and closed her eyes for a brief moment. Taking a deep breath, she opened the car door and got in.
* * *
Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius took a sip of water and reached across the pile of papers on the table. It was 10:00 p.m., and The Bishop’s Arms in Norrköping was packed.
A half hour earlier, she’d been in the company of her boss, Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath who, after a long and successful day in court, had at least had the decency to take her to dinner at the Elite Grand Hotel.
He had spent the two-hour meal carrying on about his dog who, after various stomach ailments and bowel problems, had had to be put to sleep. Although Jana couldn’t have cared less, she had feigned interest when Torsten pulled out his phone to show pictures of the puppy years of the now-dead dog. She had nodded, tilting her head to one side and trying to look sympathetic.
To make the time pass more quickly, she had inventoried the other patrons. She’d had an unobstructed view of the door from their table near the window. No one came or went without her seeing. During Torsten’s monologue, she had observed twelve people: three foreign businessmen, two middle-aged women with shrill voices, a family of four, two older men and a teenager with big, curly hair.
After dinner, she and Torsten had moved to The Bishop’s Arms next door. He’d said the classic British interior reminded him of golfing in the county of Kent and that he always insisted on the same table. For Jana, the choice of pub was a minor irritation. She had shaken her boss’s hand with relief when he’d finally decided to call an end to the evening.
Yet she had lingered a bit longer.
Stuffing the papers into her briefcase, she drank the last of her water and was just about to get up when a man came in. Maybe it was his nervous gait that made her notice him. She followed him with her gaze as he walked quickly toward the bar. He caught the bartender’s attention with a finger in the air, ordered a drink and sat down at a table with his worn duffel bag on his lap.
His face was partly concealed by a knit cap, but she guessed he was around her age, about thirty. He was dressed in a leather jacket, dark jeans and black boots. He seemed tense, looking first out the window, then toward the door and then out the window again.
Without turning her head, Jana shifted her gaze to the window and saw the contours of the Saltäng Bridge. The Christmas lights swayed in the bare treetops near Hamngatan. On the other side of the river, a neon sign wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year blinked on and off.
She shuddered at the thought that there were only a few weeks left until Christmas. She was really not looking forward to spending the holiday with her parents. Especially since her father, former Prosecutor-General Karl Berzelius, suddenly and inexplicably seemed to be keeping his distance from her, as if he wasn’t interested in being part of his daughter’s life anymore.
They hadn’t seen each other since the spring, and every time Jana mentioned his strange behavior to her mother, Margaretha, she offered no explanation.
He’s very busy, was always her response.
So Jana decided not to waste any more energy on the matter and had just let it be. As a result, there had been few family visits over the past six months. But they couldn’t skip Christmas—the three of them would be forced to spend time together.
She sighed heavily and returned her gaze to the man whom the server had just given a drink. When he reached for it, she saw a large, dark birthmark on his left wrist. He raised the glass to his lips and looked out the window again.
He must be waiting for someone, she thought, as she got up from the table, carefully buttoning her winter jacket and wrapping her black Louis Vuitton scarf around her neck. She pulled her maroon hat over her head and gripped her briefcase firmly.
As she turned toward the door, she noticed that the man was talking on his phone. He muttered something inaudible, downed his drink as he stood up and strode past her toward the exit.
She caught the door as it swung shut after him and stepped out onto the street and into the cold winter air. The night was crystal clear, quiet and almost completely still.
The man had quickly vanished from sight.
Jana pulled on a pair of lined gloves and set out for her apartment in Knäppingsborg. A block from home, she caught sight of the man again, standing against the wall in a narrow alley. This time he wasn’t alone.
Another man stood facing him. His hood was up, and his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets.
She stopped in her tracks, took a few quick steps to the side and tried to hide behind a building column. Her heart began to pound and she told herself she must be mistaken. The man in the hood could not be who she thought he was.
She turned her head and again examined his profile.
A shiver went down her spine.
She knew who he was.
She knew his name.
Danilo!
* * *
Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin turned off the TV and stared at the ceiling. It was just after ten o’clock at night and the bedroom was dark. He listened to the sounds of the house. The dishwasher clunked rhythmically in the kitchen. Now and then he heard a thump from Felix’s room, and Henrik knew his son was rolling over in his sleep. His daughter, Vilma, was sleeping quietly and still, as always, in the next room.
He lay on his side next to his wife, Emma, with his eyes closed and the comforter over his head, but he knew it was going to be difficult to fall asleep with his mind racing.
Soon he wouldn’t be sleeping much at night for other reasons. The nights would instead be filled with rocking and feeding and shushing long into the wee hours. There were only three weeks left until the baby’s due date.
He pulled the comforter down from his head and looked at Emma sleeping on her back with her mouth open. Her belly was huge, but he had no idea if it was larger than during her earlier pregnancies. The only thing he knew was that he was about to become a father for the third time.
He lay on his back with his hands on top of the comforter and closed his eyes. He felt a sort of melancholy and wondered if he would feel different when he held the baby in his arms. He hoped so, because almost the whole pregnancy had passed without him really noticing. He hadn’t had time—he’d had other things to think about. His job, for example.
The National Crime Squad had contacted him.
They wanted to talk about last spring’s investigation of the murder of Hans Juhlén, a Swedish Migration Board department chief in Norrköping. The case was closed and Henrik had already put it behind him.
What had initially seemed to be a typical murder investigation of a high-ranking civil servant had turned into something much more, much worse. Something macabre: the smuggling of illegal refugees had led the team working the case to a narcotics ring that had, among other activities, been training children to be soldiers, turning kids into cold-blooded killers.
It was far from a routine case, and the investigation had been front-page news for several weeks.
Tomorrow, the National Crime Squad was coming to ask questions about the refugee children who had been transported from South America in shipping containers locked from the outside. More specifically, they wanted to talk about the ring leader, Gavril Bolanaki, who had killed himself before anyone could interrogate him.
They’d be reviewing every minute detail yet again.
Henrik opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness. He glanced at the alarm clock, saw that it was 10:15 and knew the dishwasher would soon signal the end of its cycle.
Three minutes later, it beeped.
CHAPTER TWO (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
HER HEART WAS pounding and her pulse racing.
Jana Berzelius breathed as quietly as possible.
Danilo.
A wave of mixed emotions flowed over her. She felt simultaneously surprised, confused, irritated.
There was a time when she and Danilo had been like siblings, when they had shared a daily existence. That was a long time ago now, back when they were little. Now they shared nothing more than the same bloody past. He had scars on his neck the same as she, initials carved into flesh, a constant reminder of their shared dark childhood. Danilo was the only one who knew who she was, where she came from—and why.
She had sought out Danilo last spring to ask for his help when the shipping containers filled with refugee children began appearing outside the small harbor town of Arkösund. He had seemed helpful, even favorably inclined, but in the end he had still betrayed her. He had attempted to kill her—unsuccessfully—and then disappeared underground.
Ever since then, she had been searching for him, but it was as if he had vanished into thin air. She hadn’t been able to find a single trace of him in all those months. Nothing. Her frustration had intensified in proportion to her desire for revenge. She daydreamed of different ways to kill him.
She had sketched his face in pencil on a white sheet of paper, drawing and erasing and drawing again until it was a perfect likeness. She had saved the picture, pinned it to a wall in her apartment as if to remind herself of the hatred she felt for him—not that she could ever forget it.
In the end, she had given up on her search for him and returned to her everyday life with the belief that she would probably never find him.
He was gone forever.
Or so she had thought.
Now he stood fifty feet from her.
She felt her body tremble and stifled an impulse to throw herself forward—she had to think rationally.
She held her breath so that she could hear the men’s voices, but she couldn’t make out a single word. They were too far away.
Danilo lit a cigarette.
The worn duffel bag lay on the ground, and the man with the birthmark was crouched down next to it. He pulled the zipper, exposing its contents. Danilo nodded and gestured with his right hand, and both of them went with quick steps through the alley and disappeared down the stone steps toward Strömparken.
Jana clenched her teeth. What should she do? Turn around and go home? Pretend she hadn’t seen him, let him get away? Let him disappear from her life yet again?
Silently, she counted to ten before stepping out of the shadows and going after them.
* * *
Detective Inspector Mia Bolander opened her eyes and immediately clapped her hand to her forehead. Her head was spinning.
She got out of bed and stood there naked, looking at the man whose name she had forgotten, who lay on his stomach with his hands under a pillow.
He hadn’t been completely with it. For twenty minutes, he had paced the room and repeated that he was a waste of space and didn’t deserve her. She had told him again and again that of course that wasn’t true, and in the end she had convinced him to get into bed with her.
When he later asked considerately if he could massage her feet, she was too exhausted to say no. And when he had put her big toe in his mouth, she had finally reached her limit and asked straight out if they couldn’t just fuck. He had gotten the hint and taken his clothes off.
He had also moaned loudly, licked her neck and given her hickeys.
That shithead.
Mia scratched under her right breast and looked down at the floor where her clothes lay in a heap.
She dressed quickly, not caring if she made noise. She just wanted to go home.
She’d only intended to make a quick stop at the pub. Harry’s had had a Christmas-themed karaoke night, and the place had been packed with women in sparkly dresses and men in suits. Some had been wearing Santa hats and had probably gotten drunk earlier in the night at some Christmas party somewhere in Norrköping.
The man whose name she had forgotten had been standing at the bar, holding a beer. He seemed to be around forty and had straight, blond hair that was oddly styled—parted straight down the middle. She had seen a colorful skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his neck. He had otherwise been neatly dressed in a sport coat with overstuffed shoulder pads and a tie.
Mia had sat down a few stools away from him, fingering her glass and trying to get him to notice her. He finally had, but it took even longer for him to walk over and ask if he could join her. She had answered with a smile, again running her finger around the top of her glass. He’d finally understood that he should buy her another drink. Three pints of beer and two seasonal saffron-flavored cocktails later, they’d shared a taxi home to his apartment.
She could still taste the saffron. She went out in the hall, into the bathroom and turned on the light. She was blinded for a second and kept her eyes closed while she drank water out of her cupped hands. She squinted into the mirror, tucked her hair behind her ears and then caught sight of her neck.
Two large red hickeys featured prominently on the right side, under her chin. She shook her head and turned off the light.
She took his sport coat from the hook in the hall and rifled through the pockets. His wallet was in the inside pocket and only held cards—no cash at all.
Not a single krona.
She looked at his driver’s license and saw that his name was Martin Strömberg, then she replaced it and put her boots and jacket on.
“Just so you know, Martin,” she said, pointing a finger toward the bedroom, “you are a goddamn waste of space.”
She unlocked the door of the apartment and left.
* * *
Jana Berzelius stopped at the top of the hill near Norrköping’s Museum of Work and looked around. She couldn’t see Danilo or the man with the birthmark anymore.
She surveyed all the street corners in front of her, but neither of the men were there. She didn’t see another living soul, in fact, and was amazed at how deserted the industrial landscape could be on a chilly Wednesday evening in early December.
She stood there silently for ten minutes, watching. But she didn’t hear a single sound or see the slightest movement.
Finally, she accepted that they were gone. She had lost him. The anger welled up inside her. There was only one thing to do now, and that was to leave, go home with the feeling of again having been tricked.
But what had she thought was going to happen? What had she been thinking? She shouldn’t have followed him; she should just leave him alone and take care of herself.
There was nothing else she could do, really.
Walking along Holmensquare, she suddenly had the strange feeling that someone was following her, but when she spun around, the only thing she saw was a short man walking a dog off in the distance. She glanced up at the apartments along Kvarngatan and saw advent candelabras in many of the windows. The sky was pitch-black and still crystal clear.
Shivering, she pulled her shoulders up before continuing across the square and into the tunnel. Halfway through, she was again gripped by the feeling of being followed.
She stopped, turned and stared into the darkness behind her. She stood still, breathing quietly, listening.
Nothing.
She crossed Järnbrogatan with quick steps and rushed through the pink archway that marked the entrance to the Knäppingsborg neighborhood.
Then she suddenly heard a sound behind her.
There he stood, alone.
Thirty feet from her.
His chin was down and his jaw was clenched.
She met his gaze, dropping her briefcase, and prepared herself.
CHAPTER THREE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
“JUST SWALLOW IT!”
Pim gave a start and met the man’s eyes. He stood, leaning over the table with his face a few inches from hers. He was wearing a dark gray shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
She looked at the capsule in her hand. It was larger than a grape tomato and had more of an oval shape than she had expected. The contents were tightly packed in layers upon layers of latex.
Noi sat next to her and looked pleadingly at Pim, nodding almost imperceptibly in encouragement. You can do it!
They were sitting in a room above a pharmacy, the stairs to which had really been more of a ladder. A fan on the floor hummed from one corner of the room. Even so, it was hot and smelled musty.
She’d had no problem swallowing the tablet that neutralized her stomach acid. It had slid right down. But the capsule looked so huge, she thought now, pressing against the coating with her pointer finger and thumb.
The man grabbed her arm and slowly pushed her hand toward her mouth. The capsule touched her lips. She knew what she was supposed to do and her mouth instantly went dry.
“Open up!” he said between clenched teeth.
Pim opened her mouth and placed the capsule on her tongue.
“All right then, chin up and down the hatch with it.”
She looked at the ceiling and felt the capsule drop far back on her tongue. She tried to swallow, but she couldn’t. The capsule refused to go down.
She coughed it up into her hand.
The man slammed his fist onto the table.
“Where did you find this piece of garbage?” he said to Noi, who turned white as a sheet. “I can’t afford idiots, do you understand that? Time is money.”
Noi nodded and looked at Pim, who avoided meeting her gaze.
“Try again,” Noi whispered. “You can do it.”
Pim shook her head slowly.
“You have to!” Noi insisted.
Pim shook her head again. Her lower lip quivered and her eyes watered. She knew that she was lucky, that she should be happy that she had this opportunity. She wasn’t used to good luck, but when Noi told her about the possibility of earning quick, easy money, her heart had leaped in excitement.
“Okay, that’s it! Get out of here!” The man grabbed Pim’s arm and pulled her to standing. “I have plenty of others who want to earn some cash.”
“No! Wait! I want to!” Pim screamed, resisting. “Please, I want to! Let me try again. I can do it.”
The man held her tightly. He glared at her for a moment, at her narrow, bloodshot eyes, red cheeks and compressed lips.
“Prove it!” he said.
With a bottle in one hand, he grabbed her jaw, forced her mouth open and squirted lubricant into her mouth three times.
He held up the capsule.
“Here,” he said.
Pim took it and popped it into her mouth. She attempted to swallow. Poking it with one finger to move it farther back into her mouth, she only gagged more.
She grew more panicked.
She stuck the capsule down her throat again, thrust her chin up. But that only resulted in more gagging.
Her palms were damp with sweat.
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, poking the capsule as far down her throat as she could.
She swallowed.
Swallowed, swallowed, swallowed.
Slowly, it slid down toward her stomach.
The man clapped his hands together and grinned.
“There you go,” he said. “Only forty-nine left.”
* * *
The first blow was aimed at her head, the second at her throat.
Jana Berzelius deflected Danilo’s fists with her lower arms.
He was in a rage, darting from side to side, trying to land blows from every direction. But she fought against him, got her right fist up, ducked, jabbed with her left and then kicked. She missed but repeated the movements, quicker this time, striking Danilo’s knee. His leg buckled slightly, but he kept his footing. She knew she had to make him lose his balance and fall, so she kicked again—this time at his head. But as she did, he grabbed her foot, wrenching it forcefully to the left. She was twirled around and landed flat on her back on the cold, hard ground. In almost the same movement, she rolled to the side, hands in defensive position, and jumped to her feet.
Danilo was standing completely still in front of her, waiting, his nostrils flaring and teeth bared.
He rushed toward her, throwing himself forward. At the same moment, she bowed her head, holding her fists in front of her face. Using all of her strength, she raised her foot and kicked in defense.
She hit her target.
As Danilo crumpled to the ground, she pounced on top of him and was about to put one knee on his chest when, with a primal roar, he threw his weight around so that they rolled together and he ended up on top. He sat astride her, punching her in the ribs with all of his strength.
Grabbing her hair, Danilo pulled her head toward him, lifting it from the ground. She tried to lift her upper body to lessen the pain, but his weight on her chest made that impossible.
“Why are you following me?” He leaned forward, hissing in her face.
She didn’t answer. She was thinking feverishly: this can’t happen, she couldn’t let him win. She knew far too well what he was capable of. But she was trapped, her arms under his legs. She reached out with her fingertips, trying to find something to defend herself with, but there was only ice and snow.
An unpleasant feeling began to wash over her. She hadn’t counted on ending up on the bottom. She had been intending to ambush him—she’d had the advantage from the beginning.
She clenched her fists and flexed her muscles, summoning all of her energy. Swinging her legs into the air, she drove her knees into his back. Danilo arched backward, losing his grip on her hair. She kneed him again and again, trying unsuccessfully to hook one leg around his neck.
He wouldn’t budge.
He grabbed her hair again.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he snarled, beating her head against the ground.
The pain was incredible. Her vision went black.
He slammed her head against the ground again and again, and she felt how the strength ran out of her body.
“Stay away from me, Jana,” he said.
She heard his voice as if in a fog, far away from her.
She didn’t feel the pain anymore.
A warm wave washed over her, and she realized she was about to lose consciousness.
He raised his fist, holding it near her face without striking her. It was as if he was hesitating. Meeting her gaze, panting, he said something unintelligible that echoed as if in a tunnel.
She heard a shout that seemed to be coming from far away.
“Hey!”
She didn’t recognize the voice.
She tried to move, but the pressure on her chest made it impossible. Fighting to keep her eyelids open, she looked straight into Danilo’s dark eyes.
He glared back at her. “I’m warning you. Follow me one more time and I’ll finish what I started here.”
He held her face a half inch from his.
“One more time and you’ll regret it forever. Understand?”
She did, but was unable to answer.
She felt the pressure on her chest release. The silence told her Danilo was gone.
She coughed violently and rolled to her side, closing her eyes for a long moment...until she thought she heard the unfamiliar voice again.
* * *
Anneli Lindgren laid a plate with two pieces of crispbread on the kitchen table and sat down across from her live-in partner, Gunnar Öhrn. Both worked for the county police, she as a forensic expert; he as a chief investigator.
Steam rose in wisps from their teacups.
“Do you want Earl Grey or this green tea?” she asked.
“Which are you having?”
“Green.”
“I’ll have that, too, then.”
“But you don’t like it.”
“No, but you’re always saying I should drink it.”
She smiled at him and as she opened the tea bags, music came drifting in from Adam’s room. She heard their son singing along.
“He seems to like it here,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Of course.”
She could sense Gunnar’s anxiety in the question, so she answered quickly and without hesitation. It was the only way to avoid any follow-up questions. He was always nervous about everything, overthinking, analyzing, obsessing about things he should have let go of long ago.
“Are you sure? You like it here now?”
“Yes!”
Anneli dropped her tea bag into her cup and let it swell with hot water as she listened to Adam’s voice, the music and lyrics he had memorized, and watched the color from the tea leaves seep into the water, counting the number of times she and Gunnar had lived apart but then together again. It was too many to remember. It might be the tenth time, maybe the twelfth. The only thing she could be sure of was that they had lived together off and on for twenty years.
But it was different now, she tried to convince herself. More comfortable, more relaxed. Gunnar was a good man. Kind, reliable. If he could only stop harping on every little thing.
He rested his hand on hers.
“Otherwise we can try to find a new apartment. Or maybe a town house? We’ve never tried that.”
She pulled her hand away, looking at him without bothering to voice an answer. She knew the look on her face was enough.
“Okay,” he said, “I get it. You’re happy here.”
“So stop nagging.”
She sipped her tea, noting that there were approximately ninety seconds left of the song Adam was playing. One guitar solo and then the refrain three times.
“What do you think about the meeting with the National Crime Squad tomorrow?” he asked.
“I’m not thinking anything in particular. They can come to whatever conclusion they want. We did a very good job.”
“But I don’t understand why Anders Wester would come here anyway. I have nothing to say to him.”
“What? That really sexy guy is coming?”
She couldn’t help teasing him. There was something in his unnecessary worry, his jealousy, that she got a kick out of. But she regretted it immediately.
He glared at her.
“I’m only kidding,” she said.
“Do you really think so?”
“That he’s handsome? Yes, at one time I did.”
She tried to look nonchalant, amused.
“But not anymore?” he asked.
“Oh, stop it,” she said.
“Just so I know.”
“Stop! Drink your tea.”
“Are you sure?”
“Stop nagging!”
She heard the guitar solo. Then Adam’s voice singing the refrain.
Gunnar got up and poured the contents of his teacup into the sink.
“What are you doing?” Anneli asked.
“I don’t like green tea,” he said, heading for the bathroom.
She sighed, at Gunnar and at the music she could barely stand. But she didn’t want to end the evening with yet another argument. Not now, when they had just decided to try living together again.
She was already tired.
So tired.
* * *
“Hello? Are you okay?”
Robin Stenberg knelt down beside the woman who was lying on the ground in the fetal position. The chain from his ripped jeans clattered as it touched the hard concrete. He saw she was bleeding heavily from the back of her head and was just about to poke her when she opened her eyes.
“I saw everything,” he said. “I saw him. He went that way.”
He pointed toward the river, his hand trembling.
The woman tried to shake her head.
“Ffff...ffeh...ehlll,” she tried to say, her voice thick.
“No,” he said. “You didn’t fall. You were attacked. We have to call the police.”
He got up and dug around in his cargo pockets, looking for his cell phone.
“Nuuuh...” she said.
“Shit, you’re bleeding really bad,” he said. “You need an ambulance or something.”
He paced back and forth, unable to stand still.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he repeated.
The woman moved a little, coughing.
“Don’t...call,” she whispered.
He found his phone and typed in the passcode to unlock it.
The woman coughed again.
“Don’t call,” she said again, clearer this time.
He didn’t hear her as he typed in the emergency number. Just as he was about to hit the green call button, his phone disappeared from his hand.
“What the...”
It took a few seconds before he understood what had happened.
She had gotten up and now stood before him with his cell in her hand. Blood was dripping down from her head over her left ear.
“I said you shouldn’t call.”
For a moment, he thought it was a joke. But when he saw her threatening look, he understood that she was serious. He saw how she was examining him and despite being fully dressed, he felt almost naked.
Her eyes swept quickly over him, noting his black hat, heavily lined eyes, tattoo of eight small stars on his temple, pierced lower lip, lined denim jacket and worn-out military boots.
“What’s your name?” she asked, more a command than a question.
“R-Robin Stenberg,” he stammered.
“Okay, Robin,” she said. “Just so we understand each other, I fell and hit my head. Nothing more.”
In shock, he nodded slowly.
“Okay.”
“Good. Take this now and go.”
The woman tossed his cell to him. He caught it clumsily, stumbling backward a few steps and began to run.
It wasn’t until he was inside his apartment on Spelmansgatan and had locked the door behind him that the magnitude of what he had just witnessed sunk in.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THE INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok was swarming with people. Long lines wound around from every desk, and from time to time the clerks yelled out names of people who were requested to contact the information desk. The sound of suitcases arriving on the conveyor belt at baggage claim thundered through the hall.
Large groups were chattering noisily, babies were crying and couples were arguing about their travel plans.
“Passport, please.”
The woman behind the check-in desk put her hand out.
Pim held her passport with both hands to hide the fact that they were trembling. She had been told not to panic, to relax, to try to look happy. But as the line in front of her got shorter, her anxiety grew.
She had fiddled so continuously with her ticket that it was now missing a bit of the paper in the corner.
Her stomach hurt.
The nausea came in waves, and she wished she could just stick her finger down her throat. She wanted to spit—the amount of saliva in her mouth increased with every wave of nausea—but she knew she couldn’t. So she swallowed, again and again.
Two lines away, Noi stood obsessively flicking her backpack strap. They avoided looking at each other, pretended they were strangers.
For now, it was as if they had never met.
Those were the rules.
The woman behind the counter tapped on her computer keyboard. Her hair was dark and pulled into a tight ponytail. The airline emblem was embroidered on the left pocket of her black jacket, underneath which she was wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar.
Pim stood with one arm on the counter. She leaned slightly forward in an attempt to reduce the pain in her swollen belly.
“You can put your bag on the belt,” the woman said, examining Pim’s face. Taking a deep breath, Pim swung her suitcase onto the conveyor belt.
Nausea ran through her like an electric shock.
She grimaced.
“Is it your first time?”
The woman looked at her questioningly.
“Going to Copenhagen, I mean?”
Pim nodded.
“You don’t need to worry. Flying isn’t dangerous.”
Pim didn’t answer. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She kept her eyes on her shoes.
“Here you go.”
Pim took her boarding pass and immediately left the counter.
She wanted to get out of there, away from the woman, away from her wondering gaze.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
No one.
“Hey! Wait!” The woman behind the counter called to her.
Pim turned around.
“Your passport,” she said. “You forgot your passport.”
Pim went back and mumbled thanks. Clutching her passport to her chest with both hands, she walked slowly toward security.
* * *
Alone again, Jana Berzelius sank slowly to her knees. The pain was excruciating.
She just wanted to close her eyes. Carefully, she touched the back of her head, feeling the wound. Her fingers were immediately covered in blood. She wiped them on her jacket and looked around. Her maroon hat lay fifteen feet to her left, next to her briefcase. She carefully crawled to it, feeling the hard ice against her legs, knowing she couldn’t stay out here on the cold ground.
Then she noticed the bitter taste of metal. She spit and saw that it was red.
As red as the color of her hat.
She counted to three and struggled to her feet again. It felt like someone was stabbing her in the head, and the world was spinning. She supported herself with one hand on the wall of the pink archway.
She didn’t yet have the strength to walk.
So she stood there, letting the blood run down her neck.
* * *
Pim was shaken awake by the plane flying through turbulence.
She clutched the armrests, breathing quickly. Nausea radiated through her body, causing her heart to pound even faster.
She craned her neck in an attempt to see Noi, who was sitting in a window seat seven rows behind her. The headrests were in the way.
The plane was quiet. Most of the passengers were sleeping, and the flight attendants had withdrawn behind the curtains. The lights were off, but here and there a reading light glowed above someone’s seat. Some people were reading, others watching movies on the tiny screens mounted on the seat backs in front of them.
The plane shook again, this time more forcefully.
Her palms were damp with sweat, and she kept her death grip on the armrests, closing her eyes and trying to focus on taking long, slow breaths.
Her stomach was aching.
She suddenly had the urge to go to the bathroom and glanced over the headrests toward the bathrooms at the rear of the plane. After a brief moment’s consideration, she unlatched her seat belt and slowly stood. Walking carefully down the aisle, she gripped one headrest after another along the way to keep her balance.
Her stomach cramped up again, and she started panicking.
The plane’s jerky movements made her sway and bump against the seats.
A quiet voice from the cabin crew encouraged all passengers to remain in their seats and fasten their seat belts.
Pim stopped, hesitating, but continued toward the bathrooms.
She had to go, there was no stopping it. No waiting, either.
Not even for a minute.
She stumbled forward and had just reached the back of the cabin when the plane suddenly dropped. She lost her balance and fell to the side, but she was able to keep herself mostly upright until she reached the door of the bathroom. Rushing in, she closed the door behind her and locked it.
The pain in her stomach was unbearable.
She opened the lid and looked into the toilet. The stink of industrial toilet cleaner and urine hit her in the face. On the floor lay damp, trampled, ripped hand towels. The white plastic faucet dripped, and she could hear the thunder of the engines clearly.
Pim gave a start when there was a knock at the door.
“Hello? I’m sorry, but you must return to your seat,” yelled a voice in English.
Pim tried to answer, but her body crumpled in pain. She pulled down her pants and sat on the cold seat.
“Can you hear me? Hello?” the voice outside continued.
“Okay,” Pim said.
Then she could say nothing more.
Panic had captured her in its iron fist. The pain in her stomach slowly sank farther down in her gut.
She held her breath, sitting absolutely still for thirty seconds. Then she got up and again looked into the toilet.
There it was. A capsule. Lying there in the toilet.
“I’m sorry, but you really have to return to your seat now! All passengers!”
There was pounding on the door and the handle jiggled up and down.
“Yes! Yes!”
Pim wiped herself, tossed the paper in the wastebasket, pulled up her pants and carefully reached her hand into the toilet to retrieve the capsule.
She retched when she saw the brown film on its surface.
Holding it under running water, she carefully rubbed the rubber membrane with soap and water a few times.
She knew what she had to do now. She had no other option.
When the pounding on the door started again, she opened her mouth and placed the capsule on her tongue, tilting her head back, her panicked gaze fixed on a point on the ceiling.
She sweated profusely as the capsule slowly slid down into her stomach.
* * *
It was early morning when Jana Berzelius saw her reflection in her two-hundred-square-foot bathroom. She had managed to stumble home and pass out on her bed the night before. She decided to work from home today, having no desire to put in an appearance at the Public Prosecutor’s Office, or risk questions or curious glances from colleagues or clients. She didn’t want anyone to see her in the rare moments when she wasn’t totally put together.
She rested her hands on the square sink mounted on a black granite countertop. There was no cabinet underneath, instead only a shelf with folded snow-white washcloths in two perfect stacks. The shower was enclosed with dark tinted glass and the showerhead came directly out from the ceiling. The floor was Italian marble, and the room also held two closets and a white bathtub. Everything was sparkling clean.
Jana stood there in a camisole and panties. Her skin was covered in goose bumps.
Her face was swollen and her neck ached.
She cleaned the wound on the back of her head, replacing the bloody bandage with a clean one.
She was thinking about Danilo. She had thought about him all morning. He had attacked her, abused her and again tried to kill her. The thought of it all made her tremble in rage. If that skinny Goth kid hadn’t appeared, she might not be standing here—she might be dead.
Danilo had been vicious and brutal. He had had the advantage and had left her feeling completely powerless.
It was a strange and unpleasant feeling.
She shook her head and tucked her hair behind her ear, his words echoing in her head.
I’m warning you. Follow me one more time and I’ll finish what I started here.
She tried to massage her aching muscles but gave up, letting her hand fall back to the sink.
One more time and you’ll regret it forever. Understand?
The message was unmistakable. It was a death threat, and she was completely certain that he meant it.
But what was he so scared of that he would want to kill her?
He was the threat—a threat to her, her career, her life. So why did he want to kill her? He could destroy absolutely everything for her if he wanted—but as long as he stayed away from her, he was no threat. As long as she stayed away from him, she was no threat to him, either.
She shouldn’t have followed him. I have to keep him out of my life, she thought, becoming aware that she stood at a crossroads. She had to make a decision.
She had nothing to gain from him. Next time, he would kill her. She knew that for a fact. She simply couldn’t let there be a next time.
Never.
Never.
Never.
She’d made up her mind. He would never be a part of her life again. She was finally going to put her past behind her.
Her hands trembled against the cold, hard porcelain.
The walls were closing in on her, and she was having trouble breathing. She understood that letting him go was the most important decision of her life. It meant letting go of her horrific childhood, her past, and moving on with her life—but she had lived her entire life with the uncertainty of who she was and had just begun to find answers.
She looked into the mirror. Her eyes narrowed.
There is no time for hesitation, she thought, turning around and yelling as if Danilo were standing there. She hit the door, aiming again, kicking, screaming.
Panting, she sat down on the floor.
Her mind was racing. Memories of him washed over her like a tidal wave. His face in hers, his ice-cold eyes, his hard voice.
I’m warning you.
“I have to,” she whispered. “I don’t want to, but I have to.”
She got up carefully and repeated this again and again, as if to convince herself that she was making the right decision. Slowly she stepped back to the sink and forced herself to breathe calmly.
From now on, everything is different, she thought.
From now on, I’m done with Danilo.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
GUNNAR ÖHRN AND County Police Commissioner Carin Radler stood in front of the oval table in the police department conference room on the third floor. Gunnar glanced at the clock just as Detective Inspector Mia Bolander came into the room, almost ten minutes late for the meeting with the National Crime Squad.
“Sorry,” she said, mumbling an inaudible explanation. She sat down at the table, avoiding Gunnar’s tired look by fixing her gaze out the window.
He closed the door and sat down next to her.
Around the table sat Mia, Gunnar and Carin, as well as Anneli Lindgren, Henrik Levin and technician Ola Söderström. Mia noticed one more person in the room.
She guessed from his appearance that he was VIP brass.
“What about Jana?” she whispered to Gunnar.
“What about her?” he hissed back.
“She’s not here?”
“No.”
“Why not? Why should we have to be here if she doesn’t have to?”
“Because we were told to be here.”
“But she should be here. She was in charge of the preliminary investigation in the case, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” Gunnar looked at her. “Do you want me to call her?”
“No.”
“Then be quiet.”
Carin Radler cleared her throat.
“Now that we are all here, let me introduce the commissioner of the National Crime Squad, Anders Wester.” Gesturing toward him, she continued, “He and I have had an internal conversation and I’ve called this meeting so that you will all be informed of what he has to say about the investigation that was carried out last spring.”
“Isn’t it better for us to spend our time working on new cases rather than closed ones?” said Gunnar.
Carin ignored him and sat down.
Mia smiled wryly. This was going to be interesting, she thought, her eyes drifting to Anders Wester. She examined his bald head, black-rimmed glasses and blue eyes. His lips were narrow and his face seemed relatively pale. His posture was less than impressive, with stooped shoulders and feet that pointed inward.
“Thank you,” Anders began. “As Carin said, we have already begun a discussion about the investigation you carried out last spring, and that is what I’m here to talk to you about today.”
“Get on with it then,” said Gunnar.
“It happens at times—” Anders straightened his shoulders a little “—that some districts attempt to lead federal murder investigations on their own, without the help of the National Crime Squad. Sometimes the outcome is good. Sometimes not so good. We have brought to Carin’s attention the mistakes that were made in last spring’s investigation.”
The room was quiet. Everyone exchanged glances, but no one spoke.
Then Gunnar scratched his chin and leaned forward over the table.
“Come on, you can say it! You think we did a bad job,” he said.
“Gunnar...” Carin said, holding up a hand to calm him.
“A mistake was made, yes,” Anders replied.
“A mistake?” Gunnar said. “What do you mean, a mistake?”
“It’s called a lack of cooperation. As you know, Gunnar, our purpose is to fight serious organized crime, and in order to carry out our purpose as professionally as possible, we have to cooperate on a national level. It sounds obvious, for most...”
“Listen. We did everything... There wasn’t any more we could do.”
“Except contacting us earlier. Playing special ops is not recommended. Not at the county level.”
“What should we have done, do you think?”
“You should have brought us in much earlier, as I said.”
“We let you take over.”
“Yes, but even that didn’t go according to plan.”
Gunnar chuckled.
“And whose fault was that?”
“Gunnar...” Carin gave him a look of warning.
Mia stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Gunnar continued, “but we exposed a gang that had for many years been trafficking drugs via illegal refugee children. We captured their leader, Gavril Bolanaki, and everything was handy-dandy until you took over and started negotiating with Bolanaki.”
“You know very well that he had important information.”
“Oh, yes. I know that you were going to protect him in exchange for his information. Names of middlemen, pushers, places. But he never got around to revealing anything, did he?”
“No. Exactly. What are you getting at?”
“That your ‘protection’ didn’t work very well. Admit it. You never got any information.”
“His case is closed. He killed himself. There wasn’t much more we could do there.”
“Who told you he had information anyway? Bolanaki himself?”
“I am convinced that Gavril Bolanaki would have been a resource for us,” Anders said. “But as I said, that case is closed.”
“Exactly. That must be a tidy way of solving an investigation. Say to hell with finding answers and just end it. It’s obvious you are very competent in this kind of operation.”
“Gunnar!”
Carin slammed her hand down on the table.
“Anders is claiming that we didn’t do our job,” said Gunnar. “But I disagree. We’re the ones who got Gavril Bolanaki, and I think it’s time to say it was you, Anders, who didn’t do your job because you were supposed to protect him.”
Anders smiled.
“That’s funny. You don’t understand what I’m saying, Gunnar. There is no ‘you’ and ‘us.’ The police are one single organization, and I hope you’ll have learned this when the new authority takes over.”
“Oh, yes, thank you. We know that the National Crime Squad is changing its name to the Department of National Operations. But we don’t know anything more than that. We have no idea how the organization will look in detail.”
“No, because it hasn’t been fully decided yet,” Anders interrupted.
Gunnar exchanged an angry glance with Carin, which Anders noticed.
“Maybe it’d be better if Carin explained it to you. Carin is very well-informed about the reorganization.”
“But I am not?”
“You will be now, because unlike you, I choose to share the information I have rather than hiding it.”
“How nice.”
Anders stood behind Carin and rested his hand on her shoulder.
“Carin has been offered the position of regional police chief for Eastern Sweden, and has accepted. Over the course of the year, she will work together with the six other regional chiefs to finalize the details of the new organizational structure and create an action plan for 2015. At the same time, she will be finishing out her assignment here as county police commissioner until she steps into her new position at the start of the New Year.”
Carin stood up, adjusting her jacket, and said, “We have a tight timeline and it will be quite a challenge. Replacing the twenty-one police districts with a single authority can’t be done overnight. As I’m sure you know, we initiated the change in 2010, and now we’re down to the final steps. I understand that you have questions, and I will try to answer them as best I can. Your participation in this process is important to me.”
Carin nodded at the team sitting around the table. Henrik and Anneli smiled, Ola gave her a thumbs-up and Gunnar clapped cautiously.
“Well, congratulations,” Mia said, her arms crossed.
Carin nodded in reply and sat down.
“Carin is right. Your participation and your opinions are important.”
Gunnar sighed loudly. Too loudly.
Anders rubbed his hand across his balding head.
“You know what, Gunnar? I truly believe there are many advantages with the new Swedish Police Authority. But the greatest advantage is probably that the boundaries will be erased, that it will become easier to work together. Don’t you think so?”
* * *
The farm fields were covered in snow, the white blanket taking on a blue cast in the growing darkness. Narrow paths led into the dense forest. Lights from houses and farms glimmered through the trees.
Pim sat with her head resting against the vibrating window on the X2000 express train between Copenhagen and Stockholm. The train had left Copenhagen at exactly 6:36 p.m. and would reach Norrköping in less than four hours.
She touched the passport stuffed into her waistband and felt a gnawing anxiety in her belly. She turned around toward Noi, who sat in the row behind her, arms hanging limp, mouth open. Her gaze was locked on a point far beyond the window.
“Are you sleeping?” Pim asked.
“No,” Noi said, slowly.
“Are you sure someone is going to meet us?”
Noi didn’t answer. She closed her eyes.
“Noi? Noi!”
Noi slowly opened her eyes again and continued to stare out of the window. “I’m freezing,” she said, closing her eyes again. Her head fell gradually forward until her chin met her chest.
“Who’s coming to meet us? Noi? Noi!”
Noi slowly lifted her head back up to meet Pim’s eyes.
Her pupils were awfully small, Pim noticed.
“What’s going on? Are you feeling okay?” Pim asked.
“Nothing...sleep...” Noi slurred.
“Who’s going to meet us? Can’t you answer me?”
But Noi didn’t answer.
Pim pulled her knees up to her chest and sat huddled on the seat, watching the landscape rush past outside. Apart from her anxiety over the drugs still inside her, she felt a different kind of uneasiness now. She remembered clearly the last time she had felt this way.
It had been just one month ago. She’d been sitting on the floor and looking at her dead mother’s face. Her little sister, Mai, hadn’t yet understood what was happening. She’d thought her mother was sleeping, because that was what Pim had told her.
But she hadn’t been sleeping. She’d had the fever. Dengue fever.
Her mother had had bloodshot eyes and large bruises on her body. She’d screamed from the pain in her muscles and joints.
That one time, Pim had wished her father were there. She’d wished him there so that she could be allowed to be a child again.
Just a child.
She had wished that a grown-up would come in and make everything right. But it had been pointless to even think about it, a fruitless hope. Her father had abandoned them long ago. He had a new family; he couldn’t come to her aid then.
And when her mother had refused to go to the hospital, Pim’s last hope had vanished.
“It’s best for me to be here,” her mother had said.
“But they can help you.”
“Help costs money, Pim.”
“But...”
“Promise me instead...that you’ll take care of Mai.” Her mother had coughed out the sentences while frantically clawing at her arm until the fluid-filled blister had popped.
“No... I can’t do it myself!” Pim had said, starting to cry. “She’s only eight years old.”
“You’re fifteen. You can do it.”
Now Pim looked down at her hands, thinking of Mai and wondering what her little sister was doing that very moment. Was she sleeping? Did she feel alone or scared? But Pim was only going to be gone for five days, and soon, soon she would be home with Mai again.
Her lower lip started to quiver and she suddenly felt another, stronger pain—this one from the pills in her stomach.
I have to make sure I get home again, she thought.
* * *
Gunnar Öhrn sat at the desk in his office with his legs spread apart. He stretched his arms up and grunted when he felt the twinge in his shoulders. The pain went all the way up to what used to be his hairline. He felt too heavy and old, but he pushed those thoughts away. He didn’t have time to worry about things like that.
Investigation reports were piled on the bookshelf behind him. He was going to start somewhere in the middle, being effective and focused, reading carefully to shake off this feeling of tiredness.
He picked up folder after folder, flipping through a couple of documents in each one, but hadn’t gotten any further than this when there was a knock at the door. Anders Wester appeared with two coffee mugs in his hands.
“Did I wake you?” he said.
“What do you mean, wake me?” Gunnar asked.
“It looked like you were sleeping.”
“I was just thinking. Since when is that forbidden?”
“This damn weather.”
“I don’t feel like talking.”
Anders put the mugs on the table, sitting down in the chair across from Gunnar and resting his fingertips against each other.
“How is she?” Anders asked.
“Who?” Gunnar said.
“Anneli.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“She looks tired.”
“I’m not into small talk.”
“I just want to know how she is.”
“You shouldn’t give a damn about her, do you hear me?”
“Calm down,” Anders sneered. “I was just asking how she is.”
“And I’m working.”
Gunnar shifted his weight in his chair, feeling the sweat on his back seeping through the material of his shirt. He looked at Anders, who sat composed and still, hands now by his mouth, fingertips still pressed against each other. He had an expression of superiority on his face, a crooked smile visible at the corner of his mouth.
“Coffee?”
“Oh, are we going to take coffee breaks together now, too?”
“Here you go,” Anders said, pushing the mug toward Gunnar, who looked at it with disgust.
“I don’t understand how you can dare to come in here,” Gunnar said.
“I value your opinions,” Anders replied.
“You have nothing to do here.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“To think that you have the balls to question our investigation.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“We’re doing ours, too.”
“Clearly not, because I’m here.”
“There must be another reason you’re here. I really want to tell you to go to hell.”
“I know.”
“But then I risk retaliation?”
“You might anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I just said.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Anders continued smiling, rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.
“No, Gunnar. Why would I threaten you? I just want to make sure that you’re all doing a good job here in Norrköping.”
“I have worked in law enforcement my whole life. I know how to do a good job.”
“Then I’ll have to see that you do a better job, then.”
“You can sit here, leaning in to seem more dangerous,” Gunnar said, leaning back in his chair, “and you can say whatever you want. I’m still not going to listen.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Anders said.
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think you do. It seems like you don’t understand the importance of cooperation. That we are going to cooperate. Regional and National Crime Squads. Norrköping and Stockholm. You and me, Gunnar.”
Gunnar didn’t want to hear any more. Sweat ran down his temples, but he didn’t dare wipe it away for fear of showing Anders how upset he really was.
“Obviously, we will cooperate,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You and me. Anything else I can do for you?”
Anders stood up.
“No,” he said, putting his hand out and giving Gunnar a firm handshake. Unnecessarily firm, for unnecessarily long.
And Gunnar responded.
Just as unnecessarily hard and for just as unnecessarily long.
CHAPTER SIX (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
HIS COAT SPARKLED with snowflakes.
Karl Berzelius stamped the snow from his shoes before he got into the taxi outside the Louis De Geer Concert Hall.
He raked his hand through his thick gray hair and straightened his coat underneath him.
Margaretha was already sitting in the backseat with her purse on her lap. She wiped her delicate eyeglasses with a tissue before replacing them on her nose and carefully folding the tissue and putting it back into her purse, closing it with a click.
“Fantastic,” she murmured as the taxi swung out onto the cobblestones.
“What did you say?” Karl asked, looking out the window.
“The concert was fantastic. The best I’ve heard in a long time. Makes me happy.”
“Yes, it is one of the most played pieces in the entire piano repertoire.”
“I understand why.”
“Rachmaninoff, hard to beat.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the snowdrifts. As the car turned to the right, he turned his gaze up to the garlands that hung over the street, watching the thousands of lights swaying back and forth.
“It’s the second Sunday of Advent this week,” Margaretha murmured. “And Christmas soon...”
She said it quietly, but he heard her.
“Yes? And what about it?”
She didn’t answer at first, as if she were biding her time. Then came the question he had expected. “Maybe it’s time to invite her over?”
He looked at his wife, saw how she was hugging her purse and knew that she was waiting for his reaction.
“For Christmas, yes,” he replied.
“Or earlier, maybe even this Saturday so that we could...”
He held his hand up, signaling that he’d heard enough.
“Please, Karl.”
“No.”
“But I don’t want to wait until Christmas, and I think it’s a good idea if we...”
“She hasn’t called.”
“But I’ve called her.”
He glared at her, making Margaretha hug her purse even more tightly.
“Have you spoken with her?” he asked.
“Yes, and you should, too. It’s been a long time since you did,” she said, adding his name. “Karl.”
He cleared his throat.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” he said.
“So we should just leave her alone?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“That’s enough! If you want to see her, do it. Invite her over. Do what you want! But leave me out of it!”
There it was again. The anger, irritation. He surprised himself with it. He heard her sigh but didn’t care.
He turned his gaze back to the window.
Back to the swaying lights.
* * *
Jana Berzelius opened her inbox and glanced through new emails that she had received during the late afternoon. The first was from Torsten Granath, an invitation to the regional prosecutorial chamber’s traditional Christmas dinner at the Göta Hotel in Borensberg. The next two were regarding a hearing about an assault at a pub, to be held at Norrköping’s district court within a week. The last one contained a two-page document that had to do with an amendment decision in the Swedish Prosecution Authority statute book.
Twenty minutes later, she turned off her computer and walked slowly into her bedroom, taking off her clothes, folding them and putting them on a chair. She turned on the light in her walk-in closet and stood before the mirror that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. She pushed her long, dark hair to the side, letting it fall over her right breast.
She stood and examined herself for a moment, studying her arms, hips and thighs. She let her hand caress her shoulder, down to the curve of her back, her buttocks. Her whole body shuddered as she surveyed her bruises. They had darkened, and would gradually disappear—along with her thoughts of Danilo.
She pulled a drawer out, forcefully grabbed a silk bra and matching panties, flung them onto the bed and went into the bathroom. She showered quickly, put on the underwear and swept a thin bathrobe around herself.
In the kitchen, she poured a glass of wine, stood by the window and looked at the dense clouds. After taking a big sip, she held the cool glass to her temple. Leaving the window, she went into her office and unlocked the door to the secured inner room.
Standing on the threshold, she turned on the light and looked into the small secret space. Her gaze traveled across the bulletin boards, whiteboard, pictures, photographs, books and notes. Every detail of her childhood that she could find, she had recorded here. She carefully stroked her neck with her fingertips. She felt the uneven skin, the three letters that would never disappear, that were immortalized in her pale skin. K. E. R. Ker—the goddess of death.
Her eyes focused on the drawing in the middle of the bulletin board, attached with staples in every corner. It was a sketch she had drawn of Danilo after their encounter last spring. After all these years, she had searched for him then in his home in Södertälje.
Tell me instead what you as a prosecutor are doing in my place, he had said to her. He hadn’t any idea who she was when she had suddenly appeared in his home.
I need your help.
He had laughed.
Oh, really? You don’t say. How interesting. And what can I help you with?
You can help me to find out something.
Something? And what is this something about?
My background.
Your background? How could I help you with that when I don’t even know who you are?
But I know who you are.
Really? Who am I, then?
You are Danilo.
Brilliant. Did you work that out all by yourself, or did you perhaps read my name on the door?
You are someone else, too?
You mean I’m schizoid?
Show me your neck?
He had fallen completely silent.
You’ve got another name written there, she had said. I know what it says. If I guess right then you must tell me how you got it. If I guess wrong then you can let me go.
We’ll change the agreement a little. If you guess right then I’ll tell you. Sure, that’s no problem. If you guess wrong, or if I don’t have a name on my neck, then I’ll shoot you.
She had guessed correctly.
She took another sip of wine, went into the room, sat on the chair and put the glass on the desk in front of her.
She felt some sort of melancholy about what she had to do.
No one knew that she had a room dedicated to all of the unsorted memories of her childhood, and no one would ever know, either. She hadn’t said a word about it to anyone. Not her father or mother. The room had been her own business and no one else’s.
Last spring, she had gotten more answers about her background than she had wanted. She had found out about the man who had made her into what she was, into what she had been: a child soldier.
She still remembered his words: From a crushed child you can carve out a deadly weapon. A soldier without feelings, without anything to lose, is the most dangerous there is.
She was made to call him Papa.
But his real name was Gavril Bolanaki.
Now Gavril was dead, and from Danilo—or Hades, as was carved into his neck as a trafficked child—there was nothing left to gain.
She got up suddenly and started to pull the pictures of the shipping containers from the walls and folded them up. She ripped down the pictures of the house on the island outside Arkösund, where she had lived with Danilo and the other children. She put the photographs of mythological gods and goddesses into an envelope and piled the books about Greek mythology in stacks. She erased the notes from the whiteboard. She took empty boxes, lined them up along the wall in the bedroom, and put all of the pictures, books, photographs and notes in them. Finally, she took down the sketch of Danilo and put it on the boxes.
In the kitchen, she poured a new glass of wine and drank it standing up. Then she went back into the bedroom, opened her nightstand drawer and looked at the journals hidden there.
For a moment, she considered just leaving them there, but she regretted the hesitation and put them into the boxes, too.
After two hours, both the hidden room and one more glass of wine were empty.
With her finger on the switch, she looked around the room and realized that, without all of the materials of her investigation, the room looked remarkably naked.
She had cleaned up everything that revealed her background. It was meaningless to keep it. She should let it remain a secret, live her life as buttoned-up as the oxford shirts she wore in court.
She closed her eyes.
And turned off the light.
She stood still, listening to the sound of her heart pounding.
Her life would take another direction from now on, no longer driven by shadows from the past.
She felt a shiver go down her spine and wondered if it was relief she felt.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
TRAIN ATTENDANT MATS JOHANSSON kept his eyes looking out the window. The late night’s intense calm had settled in on the X2000 between Copenhagen and Stockholm. It was the sort of quiet that made him relax.
He always longed for peace and quiet, which is why he and his wife spent every summer in a little red cottage in the middle of a forest in Småland. The cottage had a white veranda, and they sat there every warm summer evening and looked out at the majestic trees and the emerald green lawn. They puttered around in the garden each day, planted carrots and tomatoes. But this time of year there was nothing to do there, Mats thought. Not in cold, harsh Sweden.
He saw the clock turn 10:12 p.m., knew that there were ten minutes left before they would arrive in Norrköping and went with calm, steady steps down the aisle, keeping his balance as the train swayed.
When he opened the door to the fifth car, he saw a young woman standing outside the bathroom. Her hair was dark, shoulder-length and glossy.
She was pounding on the locked door and yelling, turning toward the people sitting closest to her, but no one would meet her panicked eyes.
The train slowed down with wavelike motions, and the brakes squeaked lightly on the rails.
The young, desperate woman yelled again.
Mats went to her quickly, and when she saw him coming closer, she rushed forward and grabbed his arm. Speaking in a language he didn’t understand, she dragged him to the locked bathroom door and gesticulated wildly.
He understood that something serious was going on.
The clock read 10:22 p.m. when he finally was able to force the door open.
He saw the toilet. To the left of it was a wall-mounted changing table. He stepped cautiously forward and saw a young woman propped up in a sitting position on the floor. Her fingers were bloody. Her face was pale and her lips were blue. Some sort of white foam dripped from her lower lip onto her chest.
Mats covered his mouth with his hands and stared in horror at the dead woman’s body.
* * *
Mia Bolander reached for the cell phone that was lying on the table. She scrolled through the status updates on Facebook but was irritated, as usual, by all the people who had posted pictures of freshly baked cakes, Christmas decorations and things as idiotic as pictures of future vacation destinations.
How the hell do they have the energy? she thought, releasing her phone onto her lap.
She drew her hand through her blond hair and yawned, sinking into the sofa. She cast a glance at the fifty-inch television that she had bought on a payment plan last spring and sure, it was a great deal, but now she was behind on her payments. Two months, maybe, but as soon as she got her next paycheck, she’d rectify that, for sure. It kind of sucked, though, paying so much for a TV that was now almost a year old. She’d rather put the money toward a new one, and had seen an awesome one with a curved screen. If she had only been a little less impulsive last spring, she’d have bought one like that instead.
Mia wound a blond lock around her finger. She was tired and not satisfied with how the day had gone. Nor her life, for that matter.
She was turning thirty-one in two months and had discovered new wrinkles on her forehead and around her eyes. The skin above her breasts also seemed less tight and made a fanlike pattern when she wore a tight sports bra.
She tried to convince herself that she still looked good, but it didn’t work. In spite of her regular workouts, with strength training three times a week, she didn’t feel attractive. She never slept enough, ate at odd times and drank too much.
All wrong.
She spent money on unnecessary things and was always broke. She had a tiny apartment and only occasional relationships with men who seemed all but normal. The last one had seemed loving and tender, but as soon as they went back to his place, he had shown a sick interest in her feet. A foot fetishist.
He’d had a corny name, too.
Martin.
He had satisfied her, but she never wanted to sleep with him again. Not with someone who wanted to suck her toes.
That was crossing the line.
She had spent just over half her life finding out what a mature sex life had to offer. She had lost her virginity when she was fourteen and spent the rest of her teen years experimenting with horny classmates and older high schoolers. She had a heavy make-out session with a teacher at an end-of-the-year party when she was in ninth grade, had a threesome with two guys in a bathroom and had on one occasion given blow jobs to three heavy metal dudes at a house party. In her twenties, she had tried bondage with a tattooed man from Falun. She had dressed up as a flight attendant, a nurse and an innocent girl wearing a corset. Whipped and been whipped. Had sex at secret clubs and in public places. Her sex life required a constant stream of new men.
She was, therefore, not interested in a long-term relationship, and had never understood how someone could be with the same person year after year. She had sat in the police department cafeteria and listened to her female colleagues gush about how their male partners were wonderful, insightful, exciting, generous, warm and romantic one day, then bitch the next day about their bad habits and how they left beard hairs on the sink and shit-stained boxers on the bedroom floor for days. She had heard them say that they had met the man they wanted to grow old with, have children with, that he was The One. Mia had never felt that way. She didn’t want just one.
She wanted many.
Preferably.
She looked out the window at the darkness outside. She rubbed her hands across her face and thought about brushing her teeth, but she felt too lazy and instead put her feet up on the table.
Her thoughts wandered to the two-hour morning meeting with the National Crime Squad. She’d had a hard time deciding in the last half hour if she should do something, say something. Anders Wester was an unpleasant man. He had criticized their work and been really hard on Gunnar. She had never seen Gunnar so irritated and tense.
But he had been the only one who had defended them, and the only one from the investigation who had said anything during the meeting. Maybe she should have said something, stood up for herself and her colleagues. But no one else had, either. It wasn’t only her responsibility.
Carin could have been more assertive in the conversation. But she surely didn’t dare, Mia thought. Not having just received a new position—in the new Police Authority, where everything would be changed for the better and everyone would take part and live happily-ever-after. What bullshit!
She lay down on the sofa, crossed her arms over her head and stayed there for a long time before picking up her cell phone.
She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she’d regret it.
Still, she looked for Martin Strömberg’s number.
But just as she raised the phone to her ear, someone called.
She saw from the display that it was Henrik Levin.
“Yes?” she answered.
“You have to get down to the train station. Right now!”
* * *
The X2000 to Stockholm with departure time 10:24 p.m. stood still on Track 1 at Norrköping’s Central Station. It had taken an hour to evacuate all of the travelers and get them on a bus to Nyköping where a regional train had been waiting to take them to their planned destination.
All of the platforms had been roped off, parking lot and building, too.
Henrik Levin stood at the police tape and watched as Mia Bolander parked her wine-red Fiat Punto at the intersection of Norra Promenaden and Vattengränden. He waved when she got out of the car. She pulled her white hat down over her ears and zipped her jacket all the way to her chin to keep out the cold.
“So what happened?” she asked, ducking under the tape.
“A young woman was found dead in a bathroom. Her name is Siriporn Chaiyen, Thai national. We found her purse with her passport and other possessions in it.”
“How old?”
“Eighteen.”
Henrik saw her raise her eyebrows.
“Come on,” he said, showing her the way to the train and the bathroom in Car 5 where Anneli Lindgren crouched down with tweezers in her hand. The small room was illuminated with bright lights.
Henrik and Mia stood in the doorway and studied the dead woman. She was young, with a characteristically Southeast Asian appearance.
“A suicide?” Mia asked.
Anneli looked up.
“No...” she said, getting up from the floor. “At first glance, it looks like an epileptic seizure, like she asphyxiated. But exactly how she died, I’m not sure yet.”
“So what are we doing here?”
“We can eliminate suicide,” said Henrik. “And it’s probably not an epileptic fit.”
“Who found her?”
“A train attendant, Mats Johansson,” Henrik said. “He is unfortunately in shock, but we were able to speak with him for a moment before he was taken to Vrinnevi Hospital. He said that he had been rushed by a crazy woman who had forced him to open the bathroom door. I know what you’re going to ask next—who was that woman?”
“Yes. But what, don’t I get to?”
“Well, you should, but I don’t know the answer.”
Mia gave him a questioning look.
“Why not?”
“She disappeared from the train.”
“And where is she now?”
“No one knows.”
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
IT SMELLED STRONGLY of bleach in the corridor of the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping.
Pathologist Björn Ahlmann looked up as Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander walked into the room. Björn stood at his stainless steel autopsy table with a serious look on his face. His eyes flashed a silvery blue.
The fluorescent lights cast their harsh light on the tiled walls, the double troughs and channels for drainage.
Henrik stood a bit from the table and observed the woman lying there. He thought how small and thin she looked. Above her breasts, her sternum was clearly outlined and her ribs stuck out under her smooth skin.
Her complexion was pale and her long black hair lay over her forehead and shoulders. It looked like she was gazing out into the room with a mixed expression of amazement and sorrow.
But there was no gleam in her small, narrow eyes.
“I saw the announcement in the paper. It was tiny, as if death doesn’t interest anyone anymore,” Björn said with a sigh.
“Everyone is probably too preoccupied with their own worries,” Henrik said.
“How did she die?” Mia asked. “Do we know now?”
“You didn’t have to come here to find out.”
Björn passed the autopsy report to Henrik, who glanced expertly through the main points.
“As you see,” he said, “the cause of death is asphyxia, a complete blockage of oxygen to the brain.”
“So she suffocated?” Henrik asked.
“Yes. The result of an overdose,” Björn said. “Heroin. She had fifty capsules in her stomach.”
“Fifty?” Mia asked, whistling.
“Yes, you heard right. Fifty,” Björn said.
“And the capsules?” Henrik asked.
“They’ve been analyzed,” said Björn, pushing his glasses up his nose. He nodded toward the report. “Everything’s in there.”
Henrik contemplated the lifeless body. The nails on her fingers and toes were painted pink. He took a deep breath and felt depressed, as he always did when victims were young.
“Anything else you can give us?”
“No, there’s nothing that sticks out. Besides that she was a teenager, fifteen years old.”
“Fifteen? On her passport it said she was eighteen.”
“I can only say what I know,” said Björn, giving him a serious look. His glasses flashed as he turned toward the body again.
“Christ,” said Mia. “Someone’s using young women to smuggle. That’s just shitty, plain and simple.”
“She wasn’t a young woman,” said Henrik. “She was just a child.”
* * *
It was hard to stretch out her legs enough as she ran up the steps, yet she increased her speed. Running the last bit quickly and easily, she slowed down toward the top, stopping and panting for a moment on the landing.
In her apartment, she did one hundred sit-ups. The back of her neck itched from sweat. Jana Berzelius pushed her hair to the side and stroked her fingers across the inscribed letters.
After a quick shower, she put on a discreet amount of makeup, though she had to do extra touching up in those places where her skin was still discolored. She looked at herself, turning first to the right and then to the left, checking to see if the bruises showed through the layers of makeup. She reluctantly dabbed on a little extra blush and decided that would have to do.
With her briefcase in one hand and her overcoat in the other, she went down to the basement. Her high heels drummed rhythmically as she walked quickly over the concrete in the garage. She unlocked her black BMW X6 from thirty feet away and placed her briefcase on the black leather passenger seat.
A shiver went down her back. She felt ready to work, again checking her face in the mirror, repeating to herself that no one would suspect anything through the makeup.
But she was still nervous. She hesitated a moment before pushing the start button and driving out of the garage.
* * *
Anneli Lindgren sat on the edge of the bed, her hair loose and not yet brushed. She opened her nightstand drawer and took out a pair of heart-shaped diamond earrings, weighing them in her hand. She carefully fastened them to her ears and stood, remaining there for a moment in her nightgown, gazing out the window. The wind rustled the frosty leaves on the trees. A rabbit bounded away, and she followed it with her eyes until it disappeared into a yard.
She lifted her hand to her ear, twisting one of the earrings and thinking about when she had received them. It was a long time ago now, during a period when everything had been different, free. She still remembered that time in his apartment, how she had looked at him with red, warm cheeks. He had opened a dresser drawer, taken out a plastic fastener and a soft whip, forcing her arms up over her head. She’d lain on the bed protesting, keeping her legs together, twisting away when he pulled her panties down. He’d hovered over her, kneeling, watching her attempts to get free. He had smiled when he began to caress her from her knees up to her upper thighs, smiled even wider when she had stopped protesting, spread her legs and let him enter her.
He had carried the package in his sport coat, then placed it on her naked stomach and said something that sounded like love. But she hadn’t been looking for love—she had only wanted to quench her desire. For once, at least, she had been able to give herself up to the desire she felt for him.
For Anders.
“The meeting starts in ten minutes.”
The door to the bedroom squeaked when Gunnar came in with a towel around his hips.
“Yep...” she said absentmindedly.
Gunnar laid his hand on her shoulder, and she felt the warmth from his damp skin. He gently caressed her neck, under her hair, over her right shoulder. She felt the shoulder strap of her nightgown slip off. When he then tried to caress her breast, she carefully pushed his hand away.
“What’s wrong? What were you thinking about?” he asked.
“About you. And us,” she said, leaving the window. “We have to get going. We can’t be late to this meeting.”
She opened the closet and grabbed the first shirt she touched. She just wanted to get out of the bedroom without him seeing the blush on her cheeks.
The blush of shame.
* * *
Jana Berzelius entered the conference room on the third floor of the police station in Norrköping. She sat at the oval table and glanced furtively at the team that was already seated there. Anneli Lindgren was taking down important details about the dead woman from the train; Mia Bolander was drawing ten pointy flowers in the margin of her notes. Ola Söderström was adjusting the screen of his laptop. Gunnar Öhrn was sitting with his hands folded on the table.
“Ah, so you also had to show up?” Mia said without raising her eyes.
“Yes,” Jana said, her head held high and her back straight. Her jacket was black, her skirt was knee-length and her hair was stick straight.
“But don’t you prosecutors usually wait until we’ve done the heavy lifting? Or at least until we have a suspect?”
“Not all do,” Jana said.
Henrik gave Mia a tired look, as if he wanted to tell her to skip the bullshit. She knew very well that preliminary investigations were led by the prosecutor if the victim was under eighteen years old.
“And not all come rushing into the initial briefing,” Mia continued.
“No,” Jana said. “But that’s how it is to be devoted to your work.”
“Thanks, I know what that means,” Mia said, glaring at her.
“Well, then,” Henrik said, tossing the autopsy report on the table, thus beginning his report on the preliminary examination that Björn Ahlmann had performed on the dead woman from the train.
“So you’re saying she had swallowed fifty capsules of heroin and cocaine,” Gunnar summarized when Henrik was done. Standing, he continued, “One capsule had begun to leak, and she died of an overdose. We’re dealing with an obvious case of narcotics smuggling, right, Ola?”
“Yes,” Ola said, opening the screen of his laptop. “The woman was a ‘bodypacker,’ a person who transports illegal narcotics within her own body. A courier, drug mule, pack mule...”
“Pack mule?” Mia repeated. “‘Bodypacker’ sounds more accurate.”
“I agree,” said Ola. “And that’s one typical name. But despite the fact that drug mules are a well-known problem, it’s hard to catch them. Every year, between sixty and seventy million people cross the Swedish border.”
“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Henrik said.
“Right. Many more mules get through than are caught. Customs largely works based on intelligence. Sure, they are always trying to find patterns in the modus operandi, but these drug mules crop up everywhere, frequently change their identity and come from all different countries.”
“In this case, from Thailand,” Henrik said.
“But she could just as well have come from Japan. Or China. Or Malaysia or something,” Mia said, rubbing her nose.
Gunnar cleared his throat.
“Her passport was issued in Thailand, so we can assume that she is a Thai national. So, Ola, continue.”
“Lots of mules come via budget flights from Spain. Often what happens is that vulnerable people are recruited in the Málaga area. But a lot also come from West Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern countries and South America. A lot of narcotics pass through Holland. Schiphol Airport has such a huge problem that the border police sometimes don’t even arrest the drug mules. Instead, they just send them back on the next flight out. It is, as you might guess, a lengthy process to secure evidence against bodypackers.”
Ola crossed his arms and rested his elbows on the table, continuing.
“If they are arrested, the police have to decide if the mules should be X-rayed at the hospital, then further decisions have to be made about whether the suspects should be kept under constant observation until they have answered nature’s call. The swallowers have to use a nonflushing toilet, and then the jail guards have to dig around in the toilet to find the capsules and confiscate them.”
“Sounds lovely,” Mia said.
“We used to use an emetic to make them vomit. The mules would take a huge dose and then after just a couple seconds, the proof would come up. It was effective, but the Swedish Prosecutor-General decided sometime in the nineties that it shouldn’t be allowed anymore, that it violated human rights,” Ola said.
Jana straightened up, saying, “From what I know, it takes about five days for the capsules to pass through the body.”
“That’s right,” said Ola, “but it varies a lot. It can take as short as two days or as long as two weeks. Most use a laxative or enema, but not everyone has access to these, and it has happened that smugglers have died from injuries related to constipation. The most common cause of death, though, is leakage, as with our victim.”
Ola closed his computer.
“But drug mules, or rather those who employ the mules, are constantly learning better ways to smuggle. It’s not common to use cutoff rubber gloves or condoms anymore. Now, the capsules are machine-made, wrapped in multiple layers and coated with beeswax. Generally the mules are carrying between fifty and seventy capsules in their stomachs, and every capsule contains about ten grams of narcotics. The capsules are then divided into ‘balls’ of two-to three-tenths of a gram. One ball of heroin could cost one hundred fifty kronor on the street—a third of what it cost a few years ago.”
“But experienced drug mules can smuggle more than seventy capsules, can’t they?” Gunnar asked.
“Yes. Some mules swallow over a hundred capsules. Last year an Eastern European man was arrested at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport. He had 1.2 kilograms of heroin and cocaine in his stomach. The street value was hundreds of thousands of kronor,” said Ola.
“Denmark is also a common stop. They fly into Kastrup and then take the train over the Öresund Bridge into Sweden. I would dare to guess that this is what happened here,” said Gunnar.
“I think so, too,” said Ola. “The dead woman wasn’t traveling alone. It’s common that the leader of the operation will send a number of mules, because they figure that a few of them will get stopped by customs. If he sends twenty, for example, maybe eighteen will get through and he’s made his money.”
“Fifty percent, then,” Mia said.
“No, not exactly. Eighteen of twenty isn’t half. It’s ninety percent,” Jana corrected, fixing her gaze on Mia without moving a muscle in her face.
Mia clenched her jaw.
“I was talking about our girls! Two girls were sent, and one of them died, so only one got through. Half. Fifty percent. Exactly.”
“There could have been more mules on the train,” Henrik said, clasping his hands around one knee.
Mia sighed.
“But we’re focusing all of our energy on the female friend who disappeared. And we assume that she is also a mule,” Gunnar said. “Otherwise she probably would not have run.”
Jana nodded at Henrik.
“Were there witnesses?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Henrik. “We have a number of passengers who have provided information.”
“And the train attendant? Where is he?”
Henrik opened his mouth to answer, but Mia spoke up quickly.
“He’s in shock.”
“I didn’t ask about his condition. I asked where he was,” Jana said without looking at Mia.
“He’s at Vrinnevi Hospital,” she said curtly.
“Have you talked to him?”
“Only briefly. I’ll question him after we’re done here,” Henrik said.
“If you’re lucky,” Mia said. “He’s being treated. He might have to go to therapy, delaying the investigation even further.”
Gunnar pretended not to hear her, walking instead to the whiteboard.
“According to the train attendant, the second woman ran straight out from the train, and this is confirmed by the security camera footage that Ola checked.”
“Exactly,” Ola said. “I studied the film from Central Station this morning. At exactly 10:23 p.m., a young woman runs off the train. Like the victim, she has Asian features, and I assume that she is the woman we’re looking for. On the film you see clearly that she runs from Platform 1 straight toward the parking lot and then disappears into the darkness.”
“So we have a picture of her?” Jana asked.
“Yes, not as clear a picture as I’d like, but I think it will help.”
Ola leaned forward across the table.
“You can see that she’s completely panicked,” he said. “I mean, she’s sprinting as fast as she can from the train. But what’s strange is that she stops, looks at something in the dark, hesitates and then speeds up.”
“As if she’s trying to find someone?” Henrik asked.
“Yes, as if she’s looking for someone,” Ola said. “And at the same time you see red brake lights, like a car is slowing down in front of her.”
“You think she jumped into a car,” Henrik said.
“Yes, someone was probably waiting at the station, waiting for her and her friend. And we need to find out who that someone is.”
“So the narcotics may have been destined for here, for Norrköping?” Jana asked.
“Well, that’s a reasonable possibility,” Henrik said. “We’ve seen signs that something is going on in the area when it comes to narcotics. Not least since Gavril Bolanaki disappeared.”
“You mean that the market has increased?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said Gunnar. “As you all understand, these women are just pawns in a much larger game...” He leaned forward with his hands on the table and looked at the team. “We need to find the woman who ran. She could be our key into this whole operation. If we find her, we have a good chance of finding who was controlling her.”
CHAPTER NINE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THE SOUND OF waves woke her up. Her head was pounding, and Pim blinked a few times to clear her eyes. She sat up on the thin mattress and noticed that she had been covered up by a blanket. Next to her was a bucket with no handle.
How long had she been sleeping?
She tried to open her mouth but couldn’t. Tape stretched from one cheek to the other. She wanted to rip it off, but her hands were bound behind her back with a coarse rope. She twisted and turned until she was breathless. Trying to take short quick breaths, she felt like she was going to suffocate.
She had felt like this before. Often, when they played, her little sister, Mai, had sat on her, held her hands tightly and yelled, Try to escape, Pim. Try to escape, if you can!
Then she had to fight to get free, to cast the weight off her chest. Mai had almost choked with laughter. It was just a game. But it wasn’t now.
No part of this was a game.
The room had no windows. It was small, with a wooden floor and ceiling. It was cold and damp.
She thought about Noi and began to cry. She should have stayed with her, shouldn’t have left her alone on the train.
She slowly pulled one leg up, shifted her weight onto her knees and sat up. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for a way out.
Where was she?
She had no idea.
And no one else had any idea that she was sitting there with her hands bound, her mouth taped shut, in a strange country.
Her legs shaking, she stumbled forward toward the wall, stood with her back to it and began feeling for something sharp.
Finally she found an uneven spot in the planks and immediately began to rub the rope against it. She pushed her back against the wall, up and down, to the sides, fighting and tearing to get the rope to break.
* * *
Jana Berzelius placed her notepad in her briefcase and left the conference room.
Outside the window, she saw snow falling heavily in the light gray darkness. She placed her hand on the shiny handrail and walked down the stairs from the third floor to the garage. The stairwell smelled like dust and Pine Sol. She stepped slowly, listening to the echo of her high heels and thinking about the investigation they had just begun. She was back to doing what gave her purpose—that meant something: a job, punctuality, achievement. She felt energetic and strong again. She wanted to focus on what lay ahead, on her future.
At that moment, her cell phone rang. She stopped, pulling it out of her pocket, but when she saw it was her colleague Per Åström she silenced it and put it away.
She had reached the first floor and was about to continue down the next flight when she stopped suddenly.
Through the glass door that led to the main entrance and reception area of the police station sat the thin, black-clad kid she had met the other evening at the entrance to Knäppingsborg.
Robin...Stenberg.
What was he doing here?
He sat with his elbows on his knees, one leg bobbing up and down with nervous energy.
She took a step forward, wanting to go into the reception area and talk to him, but a stronger impulse convinced her to instead leave the station.
Then Robin got up from the chair and was soon out of her field of vision.
She continued down the stairs, barely conscious of the fact that she was walking more quickly now that her thoughts were back at Knäppingsborg, seeing Robin’s slim body, the panicked look on his face, the stars tattooed on his temple and his worried voice saying that he had to call for help.
That he had witnessed her violent encounter with Danilo gave her an uneasy feeling.
She pushed open the door to the parking garage just as a police car swung out from a parking space and disappeared in the heavy snowfall, its lights flashing.
* * *
Henrik Levin pushed the gray button that opened the door to the Psychiatric Clinic at Vrinnevi Hospital. They had hoped that someone would soon come forward with information that would help them find the missing woman, and he realized now that he had the most faith in the train attendant, Mats Johansson.
Henrik shook hands with Mats’s doctor and exchanged a few words with him before being allowed into the patient’s room.
A woman was sitting on the bed, and he met her brown eyes. She drew her hand through her curly hair before standing and quietly introducing herself as Marianne.
“I’m Mats’s wife,” she added, taking Henrik’s jacket and hanging it carefully on a hook on the back of the door. As quietly as possible, she moved her chair closer to the bed, sat down and took her husband’s left hand in hers.
“Mats,” she whispered. “You have a visitor.”
Henrik stood on the other side of him and observed his angular face, the wide mustache, the thin hair and pale skin. Mats’s eyes moved under his closed eyelids.
“He’s been dreaming a lot,” Marianne said, smiling apologetically. “It’s horrible, of course, to witness such a thing...and on his train, too... He’s been rambling quite a bit.”
“What does he say?” Henrik asked.
“Mostly nonsense, actually.”
Marianne chuckled.
“I heard that,” Mats said, opening his eyes. He lifted himself up on one elbow with a great deal of effort and looked at Henrik.
“Hi,” Henrik said, putting his hand out. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin. I need to talk with you, ask a few questions.”
“Okay,” Mats said, weakly shaking Henrik’s hand.
“As I understand it, you found the woman in the train bathroom.”
Mats nodded.
“Yes, I found her. She was lying in there...on the floor.”
“Can you tell me anything else about it?”
Mats bit his upper lip.
Henrik took the close-up picture from the security camera out of his pocket.
“I’m going to show you a photo now, and I want you to look at it very carefully.”
Mats sat up and looked at the photograph for a long time—at the black hair, the narrow eyes, the pale skin.
“Do you recognize this woman?” Henrik asked. “This isn’t the one you found in the bathroom.”
Mats nodded.
“This is the girl who was standing outside the door, who ran away when I opened it. I couldn’t stop her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I had to stay with the girl in the bathroom. Noi, her name was.”
“Noi? You mean Siriporn? The girl who died?”
“No...” Mats looked confusedly at him. “I mean Noi.”
Henrik cast a glance at Marianne.
“Think carefully, Mats,” his wife said.
“Was her name Noi?” Henrik asked.
“I don’t know.” Mats sighed. “But that’s what she said, the other one, the one who ran away. When I came down the aisle, I saw her standing there, banging on the bathroom door. She was yelling ‘Noi’ again and again. I assumed that was the girl’s name. And when I had opened the door, she ran away. I called out to her to stop, but she didn’t.”
Henrik thought for a moment.
“Where were they while the train was moving?”
Mats rubbed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. He seemed tired now, weary of thinking, of remembering. He took a deep breath before he answered.
“Both were in Car 5, but they weren’t sitting together. They were each in their own seat, one in front of the other, if that makes sense. There were plenty of open seats. The train wasn’t full.”
“How were they acting?”
Mats wrinkled his forehead as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Were they nervous, uneasy, sullen, angry?”
“No, they mostly just slept.”
“Where did they get on the train?”
Mats lay down with his head on the pillow and looked at the ceiling.
“They got on at the start, in Copenhagen.”
“And they were heading for...?”
“Norrköping. That’s why she screamed...why I needed to open the door. They were supposed to get off.”
Mats paused, closed his eyes. Marianne stroked his cheek in an attempt to comfort him, but he turned his face away.
“I’ll leave you to rest now,” Henrik said. “Thank you for seeing me.”
Marianne nodded in response.
Henrik met her gaze and saw that she was holding her husband’s left hand in both of hers.
* * *
“So Anders is still in town?”
Gunnar Öhrn glared at Carin Radler, who was sitting in a visitor’s chair in his office.
“Yes, and the next time you call a meeting, it’d be best if you let him know,” she said, crossing one leg over the other. She bounced one high-heeled foot up and down.
“Or he’ll make sure he’s here in the building,” Gunnar said.
“Which he’s doing anyway after he’s gotten settled in the hotel.”
“Is it certain that he’s staying here?”
“Considering that we have just had a case of narcotics smuggling fall into our laps, yes.”
“He’s not going to give up?”
“Anders has fought for many years to stop narcotics trafficking. It’s thanks to his efforts that we’ve been able to arrest multiple central figures who control the different narcotics markets in Sweden. Just last spring, coordinated raids flushed out a huge gang in Gothenburg. Anders had comprehensive responsibility for the whole operation, and long prison sentences are waiting for those who were arrested.”
“Yes, I’d heard that he got to show off in the newspapers.”
Carin raised her voice.
“His war against drugs has given results, Gunnar!”
“And now he wants to do the job for us?”
“No, but he is extremely competent when it comes to questions of narcotics, which we can naturally benefit from.”
Gunnar sneered. “So we’re supposed to be best friends now?”
“You know that he’s working hard for the new Police Authority, and I am, too.”
“I understand your new role, but his?”
“He is running to be the National Police Commissioner, as I think you are well aware.”
“So he’s looking for more power, you mean.” Gunnar rubbed his eyes.
Carin uncrossed and recrossed her legs, answering in a calm voice. “I know that you don’t like him. But he is actually a good boss. Just like you.”
“Cut the flattery. You and I both know that I may not be here long.”
Carin sighed. “The problem with this reorganization is that we’re faced with completely new, maybe even unforeseen, challenges, and that will require a lot from everyone.”
“So who’s to stay?”
“I can’t answer that right now.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“I understand you’re worried.”
“I’m not one bit worried. But my colleagues are worried, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell them.”
“Tell them that we have a narcotics case that we have to solve. That’s where our focus should be right now.”
“In cooperation with Anders,” Gunnar said with a sigh.
“Yes, in cooperation with Anders,” Carin replied.
* * *
Mia Bolander came into the police station cafeteria, took a pear from the fruit bowl and stuffed two more into her pockets. It was really too many, but she knew she couldn’t put them back once she turned around and caught sight of Henrik Levin and Ola Söderström. She rubbed the pear on her knit cardigan and sat down across from them.
Henrik removed the blue lid from his glass container, the steam from the red curry stew warming his face.
“That’s a small lunch,” Mia said.
“There wasn’t much left after dinner last night.”
“What, did Emma eat everything?”
“She’s pregnant, you know.”
“When’s she due?”
“December 31.”
“She’ll have to keep her legs crossed tight for the baby’s sake. It’s no fun to have your birthday on the last day of the year, because then you’re the last to get your driver’s license or get into bars.”
“No, it’s...”
“And you have to ask your buddies to buy drinks for you.”
“Right, of course.” Henrik sighed. “But the main thing is that the baby is healthy.”
“Everyone says that. The main thing is that the baby is healthy and has ten fingers and ten toes and develops a little faster than all the other kids. Just imagine how it is for people who have ugly babies. I mean, really ugly, not just the normal ugly.”
“What do you mean, people? You mean, what if I have an ugly baby?”
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
“But I’m the one who’s going to have a baby.”
“Take it however you want.”
Mia examined her pear.
“If we’re being honest, though?”
“But aren’t all babies cute?” Henrik asked.
“Parents say so, yes. But have you ever heard someone say, ‘Oh, what an ugly baby’?”
“No, because there’s no such thing as an ugly baby.”
“No, it’s because no one would dare to say so. But everyone has thought it at one time or another.”
“But not everyone thinks that babies are ugly!” Henrik protested.
“Haven’t you ever thought it?” Mia asked.
“No. Never.”
“See, it’s because you’re a father. If you weren’t, you would have. You agree with me, don’t you, Ola?”
Ola held his hand up. “No comment.” He wasn’t going to join in Mia’s fun.
“Wimp. You agree with me,” Mia said.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Ola said.
They all fell quiet. Ola broke the silence. “Going back to our previous conversation, Henrik, did that train attendant actually have anything to say?”
Henrik didn’t have a chance to answer before Gunnar Öhrn came into the cafeteria and interrupted them.
“Mia!” he barked.
“Yes?” she said, turning around.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes. It’s important. In my office in five minutes.”
Mia sighed and took a bite of the pear.
* * *
Gunnar sat in his office and knew that as soon as he had given Mia the assignment, he should let Anders Wester know that a new witness had turned up at the train station. But it was hard.
He fiddled with his phone and pulled out Anders’s number. It still felt unnatural having the National Crime Squad looking over his shoulder, as if their department had suddenly become a class of special needs kids with Anders Wester as their “normal” peer mentor.
He knew that if she could hear his thoughts, Anneli would say, Knock it off! You’re being childish!
He began to type in Anders’s phone number, but when he came to the last digit, he changed his mind and deleted it. He had absolutely no desire to talk to Anders, or to have anything at all to do with him, really.
Just then, someone knocked on his door. Mia stuck her head in. “You wanted something?”
Gunnar rubbed his hands over his face several times.
“Sit down,” he said, pointing at the chair in front of him.
“What is it?” she said, sitting down.
“I just want you to interview a witness who was in the parking lot yesterday when the train with the dead woman rolled into the station. He says he saw a man. Find out what he saw. His name is Stefan Ohlin.”
“Sure, sure, sure.”
Gunnar took a deep breath.
“And one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Your attitude is a little, well, how should I say this. It’s too much.”
“Are you going to fire me or what?” Mia crossed her arms over her chest.
“No, I’m not going to fire you. But...you’re sucking energy out of the group with your attitude, and I want you to get it together.”
“Okay. I should shut up, you mean?”
“That’s exactly the attitude I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean? I’m just saying what I think.”
“Well, stop doing that, then. Keep your opinions to yourself and focus on doing a good job instead!”
Mia didn’t answer, just pursed her lips.
“This is how it’s going to be,” Gunnar said. “We have the National Crime Squad looking over our shoulders, and I want you to help me live up to their expectations. We can’t give them any reason to question our work.”
“Sure,” Mia said, nodding slowly.
“Good. So then, I want you to start by interviewing this Stefan guy. Here’s his number. He’s a teacher at Vittra School in Röda Stan, the neighborhood with all the red houses, and wants us to meet him there.”
“Henrik and I will go...”
“You go by yourself.”
“Okay. I’ll leave right away.”
Mia got up and walked toward the door.
“And, Mia...”
Gunnar looked at her with a frown.
“Yes?”
“Show me what you’ve got. Please?”
“I will,” Mia said with a wide, bright smile.
She looked happy, Gunnar thought. Way too happy.
Then he understood.
She had been telling him to go to hell.
With her smile.
* * *
Jana Berzelius did not seem to be in any hurry when she entered the Public Prosecution Office on Olai Kyrkogata 50, in the middle of downtown Norrköping. But in reality she was in a terrible state. She didn’t know how to handle the fact that she had seen the skinny kid Robin Stenberg at the police station. Hadn’t he understood that she was serious? The last thing she wanted was for the police to get involved.
She put her briefcase on the floor and stood behind the desk in her office without sitting down. She didn’t want to sit; she just wanted to stand, wanted to escape the unpleasant feeling that Robin Stenberg was about to do something at the police station that wouldn’t turn out well for her.
It was quiet on her floor. The only thing she could hear through the glass wall was a colleague’s steps and the electronic hum of a printer spitting out copies of a report, a court order or some other document that was hundreds of pages long.
A photograph hung on one wall of her office. It showed a family standing on the steps of a large yellow summerhouse. Jana looked at the girl’s eyes, meeting the gaze of herself as a nine-year-old girl, and remembered that day. The sky had been clear and the air dry and warm.
The sunshine had made the house stunningly gorgeous. Her mother always said that you couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place. They had driven from Norrköping to Arkösund, walked down to the cliffs and looked over the sea.
Then it had been time for the family picture. The three of them, together. She’d been wearing a white dress and had stood unmoving on the stone steps in front of the house, her mother and father standing next to her. Her mother had stood still while her father stamped his feet impatiently, his voice stern, as always.
“Hurry up!”
“Just one last adjustment.”
The photographer waved his hand, signaling that they should move closer to each other.
“Now smile, all of you! One, two, three.”
Click.
“I want all of you to smile at the same time. One more time. One, two three.”
Click.
“Are you happy now?” Karl asked.
“No, one more. Now we’re smiling, come on now, little girl, you, too—give me the prettiest smile you can.”
But she didn’t smile.
“Let’s try again!”
“Wait!” her father said, turning toward her. “Why won’t you smile, Jana?”
She didn’t answer.
“If you smile,” he said, “I’ll buy you a toy. Would you like that?”
She looked at the ground, feeling unsure of herself. His voice was suddenly soft, his face so kind.
“What do you say?” he asked.
“What kind of toy?” she asked.
“Whatever you want.”
“Really?”
“If you smile.”
She had a strange feeling in her stomach. She thought that a smile would buy her what she wanted most of all in the whole world—a doll to hold tight at night, so she wouldn’t feel so alone.
A doll, for a smile.
The photographer signaled again.
“Okay!” he yelled. “Now then. One, two, three!”
She smiled.
Click.
“There we go! That’s it.”
She had sat expectantly in the car on the way home. As they approached downtown, she couldn’t keep it in any longer.
“Are we going shopping now?” she asked.
But her father had kept his eyes straight ahead the whole time.
“No,” he said.
“But we were going to buy a doll...”
“I don’t have time right now.”
“You promised,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t promise it would be today.”
She had tried to catch his eye but couldn’t. Then she understood. His voice had been soft.
She had felt a small shudder pass through her body. She had been afraid that he would notice, afraid that he would see that she had learned how to tell when something was wrong. When something was terribly wrong.
Jana moved her gaze from the photograph to the window. Her hands were clenched into fists. That day, as a nine-year-old in the car on the way home from their summerhouse, she had learned not to trust anyone. If she wanted something, she had to rely on herself. There was no one else to do it for her. She couldn’t leave anything to chance.
If she wanted to stop the gnawing sense of uneasiness in her body, she would have to find Robin Stenberg. Tonight.
CHAPTER TEN (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
MIA BOLANDER PARKED outside Vittra School and walked through the gate into the schoolyard. She was met by happy cries, running children and flying snowballs.
Three little girls with their hats pulled down over their foreheads came running toward her. Their cheeks were red from the cold and snot was running down the upper lips of all three.
“Who are you?” they said in chorus.
“I’m Mia.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“A man who works here at the school.”
“What’s his name?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a secret.”
“Why is it a secret?”
“Because it is. I need to know how to get to the third grade classroom.”
“The yellow group is over there.”
One of the girls pointed with her mitten toward one of the entrances.
Mia stepped inside and was met by the smell of the damp outerwear that hung lined up on hooks in the hallway. The floor was wet with melted snow. A hand-written sign instructed everyone to take off their shoes in the cloakroom. Mia ignored the sign, walked forward, turned to the right and took the stairs to the second floor.
She walked through the lounge, looking for the right classroom, and finally found it all the way down the hall.
The class was empty except for a man, a few years older than herself, who was standing in front of a whiteboard writing the day’s lesson. She knocked on the door frame and walked in. She noticed the map of Sweden, the calendar and the colorful alphabet on the walls.
“Mia Bolander, police.”
“Wonderful, great that you could come right now,” the man said, introducing himself as Stefan Ohlin. “You had some questions?”
“Yes, about your testimony.”
“Come in. Sit down.”
Stefan pulled out a chair from a round table and gathered up the notes that lay on it.
“Group work,” he said. “The yellow group is learning about the Bronze Age.”
Mia nodded and looked at his reddish hair and beard, freckled face and hands.
“How long can we talk?” she asked.
“Fifteen minutes max. They’re at recess now.”
“I noticed. The playground is a lively place.”
He was silent for a moment.
“So...” both said at the same time.
“I’m sorry. You start,” Stefan said.
“Okay,” said Mia. “You were at Central Station yesterday?”
“Yes. I was waiting for my wife, who was coming on the commuter train from Linköping just before eleven o’clock. She’s also a teacher. At the university there.”
“But you were there early?”
“Yes, I’d met a buddy who just had a kid and left their house around ten in the evening. Because we live a ways out, in Krokek, there wasn’t any point in going home, which takes twenty to twenty-five minutes round trip, so I went downtown and waited.”
“What time was it then?”
“Well, what would it have been, around ten fifteen or ten twenty, maybe.”
Mia pulled out a small notebook, looking for a blank page to write on but didn’t find one. All the pages were full of scribbles. She began taking notes on the brown cardboard back.
“Where were you parked?”
“Right in front of the taxi stand.”
“And while you sat there waiting, what did you see?”
“Yes, that’s the thing. There was a car parked right behind me, and a man sitting in it.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I only got a quick glimpse.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Stefan thought, resting his chin on his hand.
“No, cars have never been my thing. But I would guess that it was a Volvo, an older model. Or a Fiat.”
Mia wrote again.
“Color?”
“Dark. Blue, maybe.”
“Hatchback?”
“No.”
“License plate?”
“The thing with memory is that it only gets worse with age. I used to be so good at remembering things like that, but...maybe a G in the beginning, and a U. Or maybe vice versa.”
“Any digits?”
“It started with a one, but then...no, I don’t really remember. I think there was a four and a seven.”
“Okay, so 147?”
“No, probably 174, I think.”
“Good,” said Mia. “Then we’re only missing the letters. Tell me about the driver...”
“Sure. I left my car to go into the convenience store. I wanted something sweet, I’m addicted to Daim bars, but anyway, when I walked into the shop, I ran into the driver, I mean, the man. He stood in the doorway with a lighter in his hand, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should go in...”
“So he never went in?”
“No, not that I saw. But I bumped into him accidentally and he dropped the lighter.”
Stefan glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“The children will be coming back soon.”
“Okay, can you describe the man for me now?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have hardly noticed him if he hadn’t been acting so nervous, as if he didn’t want to be seen. In any case, he was wearing dark clothes, had his jacket collar pulled up to his nose, was wearing a hat.”
“Did he have a mustache? Beard? Light or dark hair?”
“He had dark hair. It was sticking out on the sides. I thought he looked foreign.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was his hair that made me think that. And his eyes.”
“Which were?”
“Also dark.”
“A dark-haired man, possibly foreign. How old?”
“Oh, hard to say. Around thirty, maybe.”
“Anything else that stood out about him?”
“No...it was mostly that he was acting so nervous...but I hope I’ve been able to help anyway.”
Mia closed her notebook.
“Your observations are very important to us,” she assured him, getting up from the chair to leave.
“Wait!”
Stefan held his hand up in the air, smiling.
“GUV!” he said. “I just remembered the license plate. GUV 174.”
* * *
“We have a description of a man who might have picked up the girl,” Mia said into the phone.
Henrik Levin sat in his office with the phone to his ear. His gaze was fixed on his bulletin board as he listened to Mia tell about her meeting with the teacher at Vittra School.
“You’re saying that we’re looking for a foreign-looking man, with dark clothes and dark hair,” Henrik said. “I know that this isn’t going to sound good, but there are quite a few people who fit that description.”
“I know,” Mia said. “I’ll check with the convenience store and see if they have a security camera, since he poked his head in there. Maybe we’d get a better description.”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“The teacher seemed a bit unsure, but ask Ola to search for license plate number GUV 174 or something similar. It should be a Volvo or Fiat, a dark color.”
Henrik combed his hand through his hair and shifted his weight in his chair, feeling a pang of hope.
“Bye,” Mia said, ending the call with a normal closing. No swearwords, nothing cynical, no sighing. Just “bye.” Henrik was almost shocked. What had happened to her?
“Did you get somewhere?”
Ola Söderström suddenly appeared, leaning against the door frame, smiling. His ears were sticking out from under his striped hat. He always wore a hat, no matter whether he was inside or outside, no matter what the season.
“Good thing you came by. I have some new information for you. First, I want you to look for a car with the license plate GUV 174.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Then, I have the feeling that the dead woman on the train, or rather, her passport, was fake. Björn Ahlmann said she was fifteen years old, but according to her passport, she was eighteen. And the train attendant thought her name was Noi, not Siriporn.”
“But Noi isn’t a given name, it’s a nickname. It’s common in Thailand, especially because first names can be so long.”
“How do you know that?”
“My cousin married a Thai woman. They met in Phuket. Love at first sight. They just clicked.”
Ola snapped his fingers.
“Even if the passport is fake, we shouldn’t underestimate its importance,” he continued. “I’ve sent a request to all of the airlines. I haven’t heard anything yet, but we can still hope that her name is on the passenger list somewhere. It would be good to know where they came from.”
“Both of their names should be on some list,” Henrik said.
“If they flew on the same plane, that is. They may not have.”
Ola scratched with his hand up under his hat.
“It might help that they looked Asian,” he said. “I mean, more people would have noticed her, or them, on the train.”
“Right,” Henrik said. “If you don’t find anything from the license plate, we have one relatively poor description of the man who was driving the car. Check it out, see if you can get anything from that. The capsules we found in the woman’s stomach were supposed to be delivered to someone, after all, and I’m wondering who.”
“I know where to look,” Ola said.
“Great. So get to it.”
* * *
The sound of the doorbell made Jana Berzelius jump up from the chaise lounge. It was late in the afternoon, and she went suspiciously toward the door. She wasn’t expecting any visitors; she never had any.
She padded silently into the hallway and looked through the peephole. She clenched her jaw when she saw the face of her colleague, prosecutor Per Åström.
He rang one more time, then knocked, too.
Slowly, she turned the dead bolt, leaving the chain fastened.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You haven’t been answering your phone.”
“I’m really busy.”
“With what? Why are you avoiding me?”
Per threw up his hands.
“Look,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other in eight months...”
“We see each other multiple times every week at work.”
“You know what I mean. I want to see you again. There. That’s what I came here to say.”
“Great,” Jana said, closing the door and resting her forehead against it, eyes closed.
The doorbell rang again. And again. Short, quick buzzes as if a child were standing outside and wanted to come in.
She hesitated before opening the door again.
His eyes—one blue and one brown, characteristic heterochromia—met hers.
“One more thing,” he said. “Would you have dinner with me tonight?”
“No.”
“Great! Should we go to The Colander? The usual?”
“No.”
“Eight o’clock?”
“No.”
“Perfect! Should I pick you up?”
“No. I want someplace new.”
Per looked confused, pulled at his blond hair.
“Are you sick?” he said.
“Just need a change. Let’s go to Ardor, eight thirty. I’ll meet you there.”
Then she shut the door.
* * *
“I didn’t find any car with license plate GUV 174,” Ola said upon meeting Henrik Levin in the hallway. His arms were filled with file folders.
“As I suspected,” Henrik said with a worried look. “Mia said that the guy seemed a little unsure. Or the plate could have been fake.”
“Possible,” Ola said, thinking for a moment. “It’s too bad, though. This was the best tip we had to go on, right?”
“Yes, and we haven’t gotten any more info from the street,” Henrik said. “Our usual sources have been silent. Either they don’t know anything or they don’t dare say.”
“Typical,” Ola said.
“Yeah, but I still think something about it is strange. A young girl dies with her body packed full of narcotics—someone should have seen or heard something. It’s not usually the case that someone hides their tracks so well. This is no amateur we’re dealing with. They clearly have their eye on importing and distributing. Someone has to be willing to talk.”
“Had an eye, you mean. Obviously something went wrong with the girl on the train.”
“Absolutely, but as I said, they’re calculating for some waste, as in all import/export businesses.”
Ola held out the files.
“I did a little searching of my own and printed out all of the files on men with connections to drug trafficking. I thought someone must know something. Two of the files are thick as Bibles.”
“Great,” Henrik said, taking the files. “If we aren’t going to get anything from the streets, we’ll have to do our own digging.”
* * *
In spite of the growing blister on her skin, Pim continued fighting to get the ropes around her wrists to snap. Even with the chill in the room, sweat was running down her back.
Suddenly she heard footsteps outside the door.
She hurried to the corner of the room, overturning the bucket in the process. She picked it up and huddled with her knees to her chest, taking short, silent breaths, sitting completely still, listening.
The door slid open and a man stepped into the room. He was wearing dark clothes, and his eyes were as dark as night. He put a plate of food on the floor.
Pim looked at the food, then pushed it away.
He stood in front of her, stared, and then in a single movement ripped the tape from her mouth. The pain was immense. She wanted to scream, but she was too scared to make a sound. She didn’t say anything when he violently loosened the ropes around her wrists. She only rubbed one hand carefully against the smarting sore on the other wrist.
She heard him say something before the door closed behind him.
She carefully picked up the plate and looked at the sandwiches and plastic gloves. Only then did she think about the capsules that were still in her stomach.
She returned to the corner, picked up one of the sandwiches and forced herself to chew.
Touching one of the thin gloves, she looked at the bucket and knew what she had to do.
* * *
Henrik Levin turned slowly out of the general parking lot of the Ektorp shopping center. Next to him sat Mia Bolander in an oversize down jacket.
“He didn’t say shit,” she muttered, waving one of Ola Söderström’s files in Henrik’s face before tossing it in the backseat. She balanced the others on her lap.
“I don’t get it. He’s committed hundreds of break-ins and has been caught for possession a thousand times, and now he’s on disability for a slipped disk. And he’s not even thirty? And he’s got five kids. Completely unbelievable. Completely fucking unbelievable.”
“Yeah...” Henrik sighed.
“If they’d placed the camera at a smarter angle at the convenience store, we wouldn’t have to drive around chatting with criminals,” Mia said.
The afternoon traffic moved slowly down Kungsgatan. A bus stopped in front of them and released a single passenger, who immediately jaywalked across both lanes. Henrik considered honking his horn, but changed his mind.
“Who’s next?” he asked instead.
Mia flipped through a new folder, looking at the picture for a moment.
“Stojan Jancic,” she read. “Born in Serbia. Was sentenced for, among other things, a felony narcotics charge after being arrested for selling a mix of Ecstasy and ketamine. Three years in prison.”
She entered the address into the navigation system and closed the folder.
Twelve minutes later, they were there. Henrik made a U-turn across both lanes and parked in a spot reserved for visitors.
A streetlight flickered on when they got out of the car. The light stretched over a gravel field.
Stojan opened the door on the second ring. His hair was sticking out at all angles, his jeans were filthy and his T-shirt had large holes along the neckband.
“Come in,” he said after Henrik had introduced them and their errand.
Mia was quiet and kept her hands in her pockets as they stepped into the apartment and sat at the kitchen table.
Henrik leaned against the kitchen counter and took a notebook from his pocket. He squinted out the gray-streaked window that faced the parking lot.
“Your tattoo...” he said. “Does it mean something?”
“No, well, yes, well, fuck. I don’t know,” Stojan said.
He sat across from Mia and rubbed his hand across his neck, over the large cross and the black letters above it that spelled “Respect.”
“I mean, is it a sort of identification?”
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Emelie Schepp
Swedish public prosecutor Jana Berzelius is back in the twisted second instalment of Emelie Schepp’s award-winning series, perfect for fans of Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson.When a girl overdoses smuggling drugs across the Swedish border, the trail points to the one man Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy.Notorious criminal Danillo Pena knows the truth about Jana’s old identity – and, as one of Sweden’s best-respected public prosecutors, Jana can’t risk that information becoming public knowledge. With Danillo closing in, Jana knows she must hunt her nemesis down…and kill him, before he can reveal her secrets.But, as she prepares for the fight of her life, Jana discovers an even more explosive betrayal—one that will take her deep into a deadly network of crime.
When a Thai girl overdoses smuggling drugs, the trail points to Danillo, the one criminal MMA-trained public prosecutor Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy. Eager to erase any evidence of her sordid childhood, Berzelius must secretly hunt down this deadly nemesis with whom she shares a horrific past.
Meanwhile, the police are zeroing in on the elusive head of the long-entrenched Swedish narcotics trade, who goes by the name The Old Man. No one has ever encountered this diabolical mastermind in person; he is like a shadow, but a shadow who commands extreme respect. Who is this overarching drug lord? Berzelius craves to know his identity, even as she clandestinely tracks Danillo, who has threatened to out her for who she really is. She knows she must kill him first, before he can reveal her secrets. If she fails, she will lose everything.
As she prepares for the fight of her life, Berzelius discovers an even more explosive and insidious betrayal—one that entangles her inextricably in the whole sordid network of crime.
The second in a trilogy of fast-paced, high-stakes thrillers by the international bestselling author Emelie Schepp, Marked for Revenge involves the international drug trade and child trafficking and features the brilliant, enigmatic prosecutor Jana Berzelius, whose own dark past has, until recently, been hidden even from herself.
Marked For Revenge
Emelie Schepp
For H.
Contents
Cover (#u1c7d99d8-338d-5260-be0d-beeb9939430b)
Back Cover Text (#u8c4b4a33-b5a3-522d-806a-4a4a0fd6ecd0)
Title Page (#u144a84d0-d7ee-5fc9-8da9-5439afb30a9b)
Dedication (#u36e38294-becf-5079-b12f-559ea0daa5be)
PROLOGUE (#u262fd4b6-6c94-5c6e-bcb0-3215940dacd2)
CHAPTER ONE (#u8b7314ef-c288-57f7-9f9b-ec8197acc6dd)
CHAPTER TWO (#u8b6e870b-5765-5b76-94f9-2df6deed5892)
CHAPTER THREE (#u8336dd12-1464-51ee-80e6-7387fb48e5e7)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u13230cd9-8f1e-56e7-81d5-70028849c8a7)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u04216e2e-2a3d-5c8d-ae48-503b223bd987)
CHAPTER SIX (#uc3022653-9403-598a-a6a1-5ee2e0f524a7)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u18c1bfca-45b1-5256-98a1-54ddc82f372d)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u8e8035b3-7893-56a8-8bb8-478a3c55440b)
CHAPTER NINE (#ud2b73e6f-db75-5594-8ed7-cd0aec8d654b)
CHAPTER TEN (#ubc2b7fdc-f385-5605-b673-4a88df188ab9)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THE GIRL SAT QUIETLY, looking down at her bowl of yogurt and strawberries. She listened to the clinking of silverware against china as her mother and father ate breakfast.
“Would you please eat?”
Her mother looked at her imploringly, but the girl didn’t move.
“Are your dreams bothering you again?”
The girl swallowed, not daring to lift her gaze from the bowl.
“Yes,” she replied in a barely audible whisper.
“What did you dream about this time?”
Her mother tore a slice of bread in half and spread marmalade on it.
“A container,” she said. “It was...”
“No!”
Her father’s voice came from the other side of the table, loud, hard and cold as ice. His fists were clenched. His eyes were as hard and cold as his voice.
“That’s enough!”
He got up, pulled her from the chair and shoved her out of the kitchen.
“We don’t want to hear any more of your fantasies.”
The girl stumbled forward, struggling to keep ahead of him as he pushed her up the stairs. He was hurting her arm, her feet. She tried to wrench herself from his grasp just as he changed his grip and put his hand around her neck.
Then he let go, his hand recoiling as if he’d been stabbed. He looked at her in disgust.
“I told you to keep your neck covered all the time! Always!”
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around.
“What did you do with the bandage?”
She felt him pull her hair aside, tearing at it, trying frantically to expose the nape of her neck. Heard his rapid breathing when he caught sight of her scars. He took a few steps back, aghast, as if he had seen something horrifying.
And he had...
Because her bandage had fallen off.
CHAPTER ONE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THERE! THE CAR appeared from around the corner.
Pim smiled nervously at Noi. They were standing in an alley, in the shadows of the light from the streetlamps. The asphalt was discolored by patches of dried piss. It smelled strong and rank, and the howling of stray dogs was drowned out by the rumbling highway.
Pim’s forehead was damp with sweat—not from the heat but from nerves. Her dark hair was plastered to the back of her neck, and the thin material of her T-shirt stuck to her back in creases. She didn’t know what awaited her and hadn’t had much time to think about it, either.
Everything had gone so quickly. Just two days ago, she had made up her mind. Noi had laughed, saying it was easy, it paid well and they’d be home again in five days.
Pim wiped her hand across her forehead and dried it on her jeans as she watched the slowly approaching car.
She smiled again, as if to convince herself that everything would be okay, everything would work out.
It was just this one time.
Just once. Then never again.
She picked up her suitcase. She’d been told to fill it with clothes for two weeks to make the fictitious vacation more convincing.
She looked at Noi, straightened her spine and pulled her shoulders back.
The car was almost there.
It drove toward them slowly and stopped. A tinted window rolled down, exposing the face of a man with close-cropped hair.
“Get in,” he said without taking his eyes from the road. Then he put the car in gear and prepared to leave.
Pim walked around the car, stopped and closed her eyes for a brief moment. Taking a deep breath, she opened the car door and got in.
* * *
Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius took a sip of water and reached across the pile of papers on the table. It was 10:00 p.m., and The Bishop’s Arms in Norrköping was packed.
A half hour earlier, she’d been in the company of her boss, Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath who, after a long and successful day in court, had at least had the decency to take her to dinner at the Elite Grand Hotel.
He had spent the two-hour meal carrying on about his dog who, after various stomach ailments and bowel problems, had had to be put to sleep. Although Jana couldn’t have cared less, she had feigned interest when Torsten pulled out his phone to show pictures of the puppy years of the now-dead dog. She had nodded, tilting her head to one side and trying to look sympathetic.
To make the time pass more quickly, she had inventoried the other patrons. She’d had an unobstructed view of the door from their table near the window. No one came or went without her seeing. During Torsten’s monologue, she had observed twelve people: three foreign businessmen, two middle-aged women with shrill voices, a family of four, two older men and a teenager with big, curly hair.
After dinner, she and Torsten had moved to The Bishop’s Arms next door. He’d said the classic British interior reminded him of golfing in the county of Kent and that he always insisted on the same table. For Jana, the choice of pub was a minor irritation. She had shaken her boss’s hand with relief when he’d finally decided to call an end to the evening.
Yet she had lingered a bit longer.
Stuffing the papers into her briefcase, she drank the last of her water and was just about to get up when a man came in. Maybe it was his nervous gait that made her notice him. She followed him with her gaze as he walked quickly toward the bar. He caught the bartender’s attention with a finger in the air, ordered a drink and sat down at a table with his worn duffel bag on his lap.
His face was partly concealed by a knit cap, but she guessed he was around her age, about thirty. He was dressed in a leather jacket, dark jeans and black boots. He seemed tense, looking first out the window, then toward the door and then out the window again.
Without turning her head, Jana shifted her gaze to the window and saw the contours of the Saltäng Bridge. The Christmas lights swayed in the bare treetops near Hamngatan. On the other side of the river, a neon sign wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year blinked on and off.
She shuddered at the thought that there were only a few weeks left until Christmas. She was really not looking forward to spending the holiday with her parents. Especially since her father, former Prosecutor-General Karl Berzelius, suddenly and inexplicably seemed to be keeping his distance from her, as if he wasn’t interested in being part of his daughter’s life anymore.
They hadn’t seen each other since the spring, and every time Jana mentioned his strange behavior to her mother, Margaretha, she offered no explanation.
He’s very busy, was always her response.
So Jana decided not to waste any more energy on the matter and had just let it be. As a result, there had been few family visits over the past six months. But they couldn’t skip Christmas—the three of them would be forced to spend time together.
She sighed heavily and returned her gaze to the man whom the server had just given a drink. When he reached for it, she saw a large, dark birthmark on his left wrist. He raised the glass to his lips and looked out the window again.
He must be waiting for someone, she thought, as she got up from the table, carefully buttoning her winter jacket and wrapping her black Louis Vuitton scarf around her neck. She pulled her maroon hat over her head and gripped her briefcase firmly.
As she turned toward the door, she noticed that the man was talking on his phone. He muttered something inaudible, downed his drink as he stood up and strode past her toward the exit.
She caught the door as it swung shut after him and stepped out onto the street and into the cold winter air. The night was crystal clear, quiet and almost completely still.
The man had quickly vanished from sight.
Jana pulled on a pair of lined gloves and set out for her apartment in Knäppingsborg. A block from home, she caught sight of the man again, standing against the wall in a narrow alley. This time he wasn’t alone.
Another man stood facing him. His hood was up, and his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets.
She stopped in her tracks, took a few quick steps to the side and tried to hide behind a building column. Her heart began to pound and she told herself she must be mistaken. The man in the hood could not be who she thought he was.
She turned her head and again examined his profile.
A shiver went down her spine.
She knew who he was.
She knew his name.
Danilo!
* * *
Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin turned off the TV and stared at the ceiling. It was just after ten o’clock at night and the bedroom was dark. He listened to the sounds of the house. The dishwasher clunked rhythmically in the kitchen. Now and then he heard a thump from Felix’s room, and Henrik knew his son was rolling over in his sleep. His daughter, Vilma, was sleeping quietly and still, as always, in the next room.
He lay on his side next to his wife, Emma, with his eyes closed and the comforter over his head, but he knew it was going to be difficult to fall asleep with his mind racing.
Soon he wouldn’t be sleeping much at night for other reasons. The nights would instead be filled with rocking and feeding and shushing long into the wee hours. There were only three weeks left until the baby’s due date.
He pulled the comforter down from his head and looked at Emma sleeping on her back with her mouth open. Her belly was huge, but he had no idea if it was larger than during her earlier pregnancies. The only thing he knew was that he was about to become a father for the third time.
He lay on his back with his hands on top of the comforter and closed his eyes. He felt a sort of melancholy and wondered if he would feel different when he held the baby in his arms. He hoped so, because almost the whole pregnancy had passed without him really noticing. He hadn’t had time—he’d had other things to think about. His job, for example.
The National Crime Squad had contacted him.
They wanted to talk about last spring’s investigation of the murder of Hans Juhlén, a Swedish Migration Board department chief in Norrköping. The case was closed and Henrik had already put it behind him.
What had initially seemed to be a typical murder investigation of a high-ranking civil servant had turned into something much more, much worse. Something macabre: the smuggling of illegal refugees had led the team working the case to a narcotics ring that had, among other activities, been training children to be soldiers, turning kids into cold-blooded killers.
It was far from a routine case, and the investigation had been front-page news for several weeks.
Tomorrow, the National Crime Squad was coming to ask questions about the refugee children who had been transported from South America in shipping containers locked from the outside. More specifically, they wanted to talk about the ring leader, Gavril Bolanaki, who had killed himself before anyone could interrogate him.
They’d be reviewing every minute detail yet again.
Henrik opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness. He glanced at the alarm clock, saw that it was 10:15 and knew the dishwasher would soon signal the end of its cycle.
Three minutes later, it beeped.
CHAPTER TWO (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
HER HEART WAS pounding and her pulse racing.
Jana Berzelius breathed as quietly as possible.
Danilo.
A wave of mixed emotions flowed over her. She felt simultaneously surprised, confused, irritated.
There was a time when she and Danilo had been like siblings, when they had shared a daily existence. That was a long time ago now, back when they were little. Now they shared nothing more than the same bloody past. He had scars on his neck the same as she, initials carved into flesh, a constant reminder of their shared dark childhood. Danilo was the only one who knew who she was, where she came from—and why.
She had sought out Danilo last spring to ask for his help when the shipping containers filled with refugee children began appearing outside the small harbor town of Arkösund. He had seemed helpful, even favorably inclined, but in the end he had still betrayed her. He had attempted to kill her—unsuccessfully—and then disappeared underground.
Ever since then, she had been searching for him, but it was as if he had vanished into thin air. She hadn’t been able to find a single trace of him in all those months. Nothing. Her frustration had intensified in proportion to her desire for revenge. She daydreamed of different ways to kill him.
She had sketched his face in pencil on a white sheet of paper, drawing and erasing and drawing again until it was a perfect likeness. She had saved the picture, pinned it to a wall in her apartment as if to remind herself of the hatred she felt for him—not that she could ever forget it.
In the end, she had given up on her search for him and returned to her everyday life with the belief that she would probably never find him.
He was gone forever.
Or so she had thought.
Now he stood fifty feet from her.
She felt her body tremble and stifled an impulse to throw herself forward—she had to think rationally.
She held her breath so that she could hear the men’s voices, but she couldn’t make out a single word. They were too far away.
Danilo lit a cigarette.
The worn duffel bag lay on the ground, and the man with the birthmark was crouched down next to it. He pulled the zipper, exposing its contents. Danilo nodded and gestured with his right hand, and both of them went with quick steps through the alley and disappeared down the stone steps toward Strömparken.
Jana clenched her teeth. What should she do? Turn around and go home? Pretend she hadn’t seen him, let him get away? Let him disappear from her life yet again?
Silently, she counted to ten before stepping out of the shadows and going after them.
* * *
Detective Inspector Mia Bolander opened her eyes and immediately clapped her hand to her forehead. Her head was spinning.
She got out of bed and stood there naked, looking at the man whose name she had forgotten, who lay on his stomach with his hands under a pillow.
He hadn’t been completely with it. For twenty minutes, he had paced the room and repeated that he was a waste of space and didn’t deserve her. She had told him again and again that of course that wasn’t true, and in the end she had convinced him to get into bed with her.
When he later asked considerately if he could massage her feet, she was too exhausted to say no. And when he had put her big toe in his mouth, she had finally reached her limit and asked straight out if they couldn’t just fuck. He had gotten the hint and taken his clothes off.
He had also moaned loudly, licked her neck and given her hickeys.
That shithead.
Mia scratched under her right breast and looked down at the floor where her clothes lay in a heap.
She dressed quickly, not caring if she made noise. She just wanted to go home.
She’d only intended to make a quick stop at the pub. Harry’s had had a Christmas-themed karaoke night, and the place had been packed with women in sparkly dresses and men in suits. Some had been wearing Santa hats and had probably gotten drunk earlier in the night at some Christmas party somewhere in Norrköping.
The man whose name she had forgotten had been standing at the bar, holding a beer. He seemed to be around forty and had straight, blond hair that was oddly styled—parted straight down the middle. She had seen a colorful skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his neck. He had otherwise been neatly dressed in a sport coat with overstuffed shoulder pads and a tie.
Mia had sat down a few stools away from him, fingering her glass and trying to get him to notice her. He finally had, but it took even longer for him to walk over and ask if he could join her. She had answered with a smile, again running her finger around the top of her glass. He’d finally understood that he should buy her another drink. Three pints of beer and two seasonal saffron-flavored cocktails later, they’d shared a taxi home to his apartment.
She could still taste the saffron. She went out in the hall, into the bathroom and turned on the light. She was blinded for a second and kept her eyes closed while she drank water out of her cupped hands. She squinted into the mirror, tucked her hair behind her ears and then caught sight of her neck.
Two large red hickeys featured prominently on the right side, under her chin. She shook her head and turned off the light.
She took his sport coat from the hook in the hall and rifled through the pockets. His wallet was in the inside pocket and only held cards—no cash at all.
Not a single krona.
She looked at his driver’s license and saw that his name was Martin Strömberg, then she replaced it and put her boots and jacket on.
“Just so you know, Martin,” she said, pointing a finger toward the bedroom, “you are a goddamn waste of space.”
She unlocked the door of the apartment and left.
* * *
Jana Berzelius stopped at the top of the hill near Norrköping’s Museum of Work and looked around. She couldn’t see Danilo or the man with the birthmark anymore.
She surveyed all the street corners in front of her, but neither of the men were there. She didn’t see another living soul, in fact, and was amazed at how deserted the industrial landscape could be on a chilly Wednesday evening in early December.
She stood there silently for ten minutes, watching. But she didn’t hear a single sound or see the slightest movement.
Finally, she accepted that they were gone. She had lost him. The anger welled up inside her. There was only one thing to do now, and that was to leave, go home with the feeling of again having been tricked.
But what had she thought was going to happen? What had she been thinking? She shouldn’t have followed him; she should just leave him alone and take care of herself.
There was nothing else she could do, really.
Walking along Holmensquare, she suddenly had the strange feeling that someone was following her, but when she spun around, the only thing she saw was a short man walking a dog off in the distance. She glanced up at the apartments along Kvarngatan and saw advent candelabras in many of the windows. The sky was pitch-black and still crystal clear.
Shivering, she pulled her shoulders up before continuing across the square and into the tunnel. Halfway through, she was again gripped by the feeling of being followed.
She stopped, turned and stared into the darkness behind her. She stood still, breathing quietly, listening.
Nothing.
She crossed Järnbrogatan with quick steps and rushed through the pink archway that marked the entrance to the Knäppingsborg neighborhood.
Then she suddenly heard a sound behind her.
There he stood, alone.
Thirty feet from her.
His chin was down and his jaw was clenched.
She met his gaze, dropping her briefcase, and prepared herself.
CHAPTER THREE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
“JUST SWALLOW IT!”
Pim gave a start and met the man’s eyes. He stood, leaning over the table with his face a few inches from hers. He was wearing a dark gray shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
She looked at the capsule in her hand. It was larger than a grape tomato and had more of an oval shape than she had expected. The contents were tightly packed in layers upon layers of latex.
Noi sat next to her and looked pleadingly at Pim, nodding almost imperceptibly in encouragement. You can do it!
They were sitting in a room above a pharmacy, the stairs to which had really been more of a ladder. A fan on the floor hummed from one corner of the room. Even so, it was hot and smelled musty.
She’d had no problem swallowing the tablet that neutralized her stomach acid. It had slid right down. But the capsule looked so huge, she thought now, pressing against the coating with her pointer finger and thumb.
The man grabbed her arm and slowly pushed her hand toward her mouth. The capsule touched her lips. She knew what she was supposed to do and her mouth instantly went dry.
“Open up!” he said between clenched teeth.
Pim opened her mouth and placed the capsule on her tongue.
“All right then, chin up and down the hatch with it.”
She looked at the ceiling and felt the capsule drop far back on her tongue. She tried to swallow, but she couldn’t. The capsule refused to go down.
She coughed it up into her hand.
The man slammed his fist onto the table.
“Where did you find this piece of garbage?” he said to Noi, who turned white as a sheet. “I can’t afford idiots, do you understand that? Time is money.”
Noi nodded and looked at Pim, who avoided meeting her gaze.
“Try again,” Noi whispered. “You can do it.”
Pim shook her head slowly.
“You have to!” Noi insisted.
Pim shook her head again. Her lower lip quivered and her eyes watered. She knew that she was lucky, that she should be happy that she had this opportunity. She wasn’t used to good luck, but when Noi told her about the possibility of earning quick, easy money, her heart had leaped in excitement.
“Okay, that’s it! Get out of here!” The man grabbed Pim’s arm and pulled her to standing. “I have plenty of others who want to earn some cash.”
“No! Wait! I want to!” Pim screamed, resisting. “Please, I want to! Let me try again. I can do it.”
The man held her tightly. He glared at her for a moment, at her narrow, bloodshot eyes, red cheeks and compressed lips.
“Prove it!” he said.
With a bottle in one hand, he grabbed her jaw, forced her mouth open and squirted lubricant into her mouth three times.
He held up the capsule.
“Here,” he said.
Pim took it and popped it into her mouth. She attempted to swallow. Poking it with one finger to move it farther back into her mouth, she only gagged more.
She grew more panicked.
She stuck the capsule down her throat again, thrust her chin up. But that only resulted in more gagging.
Her palms were damp with sweat.
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, poking the capsule as far down her throat as she could.
She swallowed.
Swallowed, swallowed, swallowed.
Slowly, it slid down toward her stomach.
The man clapped his hands together and grinned.
“There you go,” he said. “Only forty-nine left.”
* * *
The first blow was aimed at her head, the second at her throat.
Jana Berzelius deflected Danilo’s fists with her lower arms.
He was in a rage, darting from side to side, trying to land blows from every direction. But she fought against him, got her right fist up, ducked, jabbed with her left and then kicked. She missed but repeated the movements, quicker this time, striking Danilo’s knee. His leg buckled slightly, but he kept his footing. She knew she had to make him lose his balance and fall, so she kicked again—this time at his head. But as she did, he grabbed her foot, wrenching it forcefully to the left. She was twirled around and landed flat on her back on the cold, hard ground. In almost the same movement, she rolled to the side, hands in defensive position, and jumped to her feet.
Danilo was standing completely still in front of her, waiting, his nostrils flaring and teeth bared.
He rushed toward her, throwing himself forward. At the same moment, she bowed her head, holding her fists in front of her face. Using all of her strength, she raised her foot and kicked in defense.
She hit her target.
As Danilo crumpled to the ground, she pounced on top of him and was about to put one knee on his chest when, with a primal roar, he threw his weight around so that they rolled together and he ended up on top. He sat astride her, punching her in the ribs with all of his strength.
Grabbing her hair, Danilo pulled her head toward him, lifting it from the ground. She tried to lift her upper body to lessen the pain, but his weight on her chest made that impossible.
“Why are you following me?” He leaned forward, hissing in her face.
She didn’t answer. She was thinking feverishly: this can’t happen, she couldn’t let him win. She knew far too well what he was capable of. But she was trapped, her arms under his legs. She reached out with her fingertips, trying to find something to defend herself with, but there was only ice and snow.
An unpleasant feeling began to wash over her. She hadn’t counted on ending up on the bottom. She had been intending to ambush him—she’d had the advantage from the beginning.
She clenched her fists and flexed her muscles, summoning all of her energy. Swinging her legs into the air, she drove her knees into his back. Danilo arched backward, losing his grip on her hair. She kneed him again and again, trying unsuccessfully to hook one leg around his neck.
He wouldn’t budge.
He grabbed her hair again.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he snarled, beating her head against the ground.
The pain was incredible. Her vision went black.
He slammed her head against the ground again and again, and she felt how the strength ran out of her body.
“Stay away from me, Jana,” he said.
She heard his voice as if in a fog, far away from her.
She didn’t feel the pain anymore.
A warm wave washed over her, and she realized she was about to lose consciousness.
He raised his fist, holding it near her face without striking her. It was as if he was hesitating. Meeting her gaze, panting, he said something unintelligible that echoed as if in a tunnel.
She heard a shout that seemed to be coming from far away.
“Hey!”
She didn’t recognize the voice.
She tried to move, but the pressure on her chest made it impossible. Fighting to keep her eyelids open, she looked straight into Danilo’s dark eyes.
He glared back at her. “I’m warning you. Follow me one more time and I’ll finish what I started here.”
He held her face a half inch from his.
“One more time and you’ll regret it forever. Understand?”
She did, but was unable to answer.
She felt the pressure on her chest release. The silence told her Danilo was gone.
She coughed violently and rolled to her side, closing her eyes for a long moment...until she thought she heard the unfamiliar voice again.
* * *
Anneli Lindgren laid a plate with two pieces of crispbread on the kitchen table and sat down across from her live-in partner, Gunnar Öhrn. Both worked for the county police, she as a forensic expert; he as a chief investigator.
Steam rose in wisps from their teacups.
“Do you want Earl Grey or this green tea?” she asked.
“Which are you having?”
“Green.”
“I’ll have that, too, then.”
“But you don’t like it.”
“No, but you’re always saying I should drink it.”
She smiled at him and as she opened the tea bags, music came drifting in from Adam’s room. She heard their son singing along.
“He seems to like it here,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Of course.”
She could sense Gunnar’s anxiety in the question, so she answered quickly and without hesitation. It was the only way to avoid any follow-up questions. He was always nervous about everything, overthinking, analyzing, obsessing about things he should have let go of long ago.
“Are you sure? You like it here now?”
“Yes!”
Anneli dropped her tea bag into her cup and let it swell with hot water as she listened to Adam’s voice, the music and lyrics he had memorized, and watched the color from the tea leaves seep into the water, counting the number of times she and Gunnar had lived apart but then together again. It was too many to remember. It might be the tenth time, maybe the twelfth. The only thing she could be sure of was that they had lived together off and on for twenty years.
But it was different now, she tried to convince herself. More comfortable, more relaxed. Gunnar was a good man. Kind, reliable. If he could only stop harping on every little thing.
He rested his hand on hers.
“Otherwise we can try to find a new apartment. Or maybe a town house? We’ve never tried that.”
She pulled her hand away, looking at him without bothering to voice an answer. She knew the look on her face was enough.
“Okay,” he said, “I get it. You’re happy here.”
“So stop nagging.”
She sipped her tea, noting that there were approximately ninety seconds left of the song Adam was playing. One guitar solo and then the refrain three times.
“What do you think about the meeting with the National Crime Squad tomorrow?” he asked.
“I’m not thinking anything in particular. They can come to whatever conclusion they want. We did a very good job.”
“But I don’t understand why Anders Wester would come here anyway. I have nothing to say to him.”
“What? That really sexy guy is coming?”
She couldn’t help teasing him. There was something in his unnecessary worry, his jealousy, that she got a kick out of. But she regretted it immediately.
He glared at her.
“I’m only kidding,” she said.
“Do you really think so?”
“That he’s handsome? Yes, at one time I did.”
She tried to look nonchalant, amused.
“But not anymore?” he asked.
“Oh, stop it,” she said.
“Just so I know.”
“Stop! Drink your tea.”
“Are you sure?”
“Stop nagging!”
She heard the guitar solo. Then Adam’s voice singing the refrain.
Gunnar got up and poured the contents of his teacup into the sink.
“What are you doing?” Anneli asked.
“I don’t like green tea,” he said, heading for the bathroom.
She sighed, at Gunnar and at the music she could barely stand. But she didn’t want to end the evening with yet another argument. Not now, when they had just decided to try living together again.
She was already tired.
So tired.
* * *
“Hello? Are you okay?”
Robin Stenberg knelt down beside the woman who was lying on the ground in the fetal position. The chain from his ripped jeans clattered as it touched the hard concrete. He saw she was bleeding heavily from the back of her head and was just about to poke her when she opened her eyes.
“I saw everything,” he said. “I saw him. He went that way.”
He pointed toward the river, his hand trembling.
The woman tried to shake her head.
“Ffff...ffeh...ehlll,” she tried to say, her voice thick.
“No,” he said. “You didn’t fall. You were attacked. We have to call the police.”
He got up and dug around in his cargo pockets, looking for his cell phone.
“Nuuuh...” she said.
“Shit, you’re bleeding really bad,” he said. “You need an ambulance or something.”
He paced back and forth, unable to stand still.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he repeated.
The woman moved a little, coughing.
“Don’t...call,” she whispered.
He found his phone and typed in the passcode to unlock it.
The woman coughed again.
“Don’t call,” she said again, clearer this time.
He didn’t hear her as he typed in the emergency number. Just as he was about to hit the green call button, his phone disappeared from his hand.
“What the...”
It took a few seconds before he understood what had happened.
She had gotten up and now stood before him with his cell in her hand. Blood was dripping down from her head over her left ear.
“I said you shouldn’t call.”
For a moment, he thought it was a joke. But when he saw her threatening look, he understood that she was serious. He saw how she was examining him and despite being fully dressed, he felt almost naked.
Her eyes swept quickly over him, noting his black hat, heavily lined eyes, tattoo of eight small stars on his temple, pierced lower lip, lined denim jacket and worn-out military boots.
“What’s your name?” she asked, more a command than a question.
“R-Robin Stenberg,” he stammered.
“Okay, Robin,” she said. “Just so we understand each other, I fell and hit my head. Nothing more.”
In shock, he nodded slowly.
“Okay.”
“Good. Take this now and go.”
The woman tossed his cell to him. He caught it clumsily, stumbling backward a few steps and began to run.
It wasn’t until he was inside his apartment on Spelmansgatan and had locked the door behind him that the magnitude of what he had just witnessed sunk in.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THE INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok was swarming with people. Long lines wound around from every desk, and from time to time the clerks yelled out names of people who were requested to contact the information desk. The sound of suitcases arriving on the conveyor belt at baggage claim thundered through the hall.
Large groups were chattering noisily, babies were crying and couples were arguing about their travel plans.
“Passport, please.”
The woman behind the check-in desk put her hand out.
Pim held her passport with both hands to hide the fact that they were trembling. She had been told not to panic, to relax, to try to look happy. But as the line in front of her got shorter, her anxiety grew.
She had fiddled so continuously with her ticket that it was now missing a bit of the paper in the corner.
Her stomach hurt.
The nausea came in waves, and she wished she could just stick her finger down her throat. She wanted to spit—the amount of saliva in her mouth increased with every wave of nausea—but she knew she couldn’t. So she swallowed, again and again.
Two lines away, Noi stood obsessively flicking her backpack strap. They avoided looking at each other, pretended they were strangers.
For now, it was as if they had never met.
Those were the rules.
The woman behind the counter tapped on her computer keyboard. Her hair was dark and pulled into a tight ponytail. The airline emblem was embroidered on the left pocket of her black jacket, underneath which she was wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar.
Pim stood with one arm on the counter. She leaned slightly forward in an attempt to reduce the pain in her swollen belly.
“You can put your bag on the belt,” the woman said, examining Pim’s face. Taking a deep breath, Pim swung her suitcase onto the conveyor belt.
Nausea ran through her like an electric shock.
She grimaced.
“Is it your first time?”
The woman looked at her questioningly.
“Going to Copenhagen, I mean?”
Pim nodded.
“You don’t need to worry. Flying isn’t dangerous.”
Pim didn’t answer. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She kept her eyes on her shoes.
“Here you go.”
Pim took her boarding pass and immediately left the counter.
She wanted to get out of there, away from the woman, away from her wondering gaze.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
No one.
“Hey! Wait!” The woman behind the counter called to her.
Pim turned around.
“Your passport,” she said. “You forgot your passport.”
Pim went back and mumbled thanks. Clutching her passport to her chest with both hands, she walked slowly toward security.
* * *
Alone again, Jana Berzelius sank slowly to her knees. The pain was excruciating.
She just wanted to close her eyes. Carefully, she touched the back of her head, feeling the wound. Her fingers were immediately covered in blood. She wiped them on her jacket and looked around. Her maroon hat lay fifteen feet to her left, next to her briefcase. She carefully crawled to it, feeling the hard ice against her legs, knowing she couldn’t stay out here on the cold ground.
Then she noticed the bitter taste of metal. She spit and saw that it was red.
As red as the color of her hat.
She counted to three and struggled to her feet again. It felt like someone was stabbing her in the head, and the world was spinning. She supported herself with one hand on the wall of the pink archway.
She didn’t yet have the strength to walk.
So she stood there, letting the blood run down her neck.
* * *
Pim was shaken awake by the plane flying through turbulence.
She clutched the armrests, breathing quickly. Nausea radiated through her body, causing her heart to pound even faster.
She craned her neck in an attempt to see Noi, who was sitting in a window seat seven rows behind her. The headrests were in the way.
The plane was quiet. Most of the passengers were sleeping, and the flight attendants had withdrawn behind the curtains. The lights were off, but here and there a reading light glowed above someone’s seat. Some people were reading, others watching movies on the tiny screens mounted on the seat backs in front of them.
The plane shook again, this time more forcefully.
Her palms were damp with sweat, and she kept her death grip on the armrests, closing her eyes and trying to focus on taking long, slow breaths.
Her stomach was aching.
She suddenly had the urge to go to the bathroom and glanced over the headrests toward the bathrooms at the rear of the plane. After a brief moment’s consideration, she unlatched her seat belt and slowly stood. Walking carefully down the aisle, she gripped one headrest after another along the way to keep her balance.
Her stomach cramped up again, and she started panicking.
The plane’s jerky movements made her sway and bump against the seats.
A quiet voice from the cabin crew encouraged all passengers to remain in their seats and fasten their seat belts.
Pim stopped, hesitating, but continued toward the bathrooms.
She had to go, there was no stopping it. No waiting, either.
Not even for a minute.
She stumbled forward and had just reached the back of the cabin when the plane suddenly dropped. She lost her balance and fell to the side, but she was able to keep herself mostly upright until she reached the door of the bathroom. Rushing in, she closed the door behind her and locked it.
The pain in her stomach was unbearable.
She opened the lid and looked into the toilet. The stink of industrial toilet cleaner and urine hit her in the face. On the floor lay damp, trampled, ripped hand towels. The white plastic faucet dripped, and she could hear the thunder of the engines clearly.
Pim gave a start when there was a knock at the door.
“Hello? I’m sorry, but you must return to your seat,” yelled a voice in English.
Pim tried to answer, but her body crumpled in pain. She pulled down her pants and sat on the cold seat.
“Can you hear me? Hello?” the voice outside continued.
“Okay,” Pim said.
Then she could say nothing more.
Panic had captured her in its iron fist. The pain in her stomach slowly sank farther down in her gut.
She held her breath, sitting absolutely still for thirty seconds. Then she got up and again looked into the toilet.
There it was. A capsule. Lying there in the toilet.
“I’m sorry, but you really have to return to your seat now! All passengers!”
There was pounding on the door and the handle jiggled up and down.
“Yes! Yes!”
Pim wiped herself, tossed the paper in the wastebasket, pulled up her pants and carefully reached her hand into the toilet to retrieve the capsule.
She retched when she saw the brown film on its surface.
Holding it under running water, she carefully rubbed the rubber membrane with soap and water a few times.
She knew what she had to do now. She had no other option.
When the pounding on the door started again, she opened her mouth and placed the capsule on her tongue, tilting her head back, her panicked gaze fixed on a point on the ceiling.
She sweated profusely as the capsule slowly slid down into her stomach.
* * *
It was early morning when Jana Berzelius saw her reflection in her two-hundred-square-foot bathroom. She had managed to stumble home and pass out on her bed the night before. She decided to work from home today, having no desire to put in an appearance at the Public Prosecutor’s Office, or risk questions or curious glances from colleagues or clients. She didn’t want anyone to see her in the rare moments when she wasn’t totally put together.
She rested her hands on the square sink mounted on a black granite countertop. There was no cabinet underneath, instead only a shelf with folded snow-white washcloths in two perfect stacks. The shower was enclosed with dark tinted glass and the showerhead came directly out from the ceiling. The floor was Italian marble, and the room also held two closets and a white bathtub. Everything was sparkling clean.
Jana stood there in a camisole and panties. Her skin was covered in goose bumps.
Her face was swollen and her neck ached.
She cleaned the wound on the back of her head, replacing the bloody bandage with a clean one.
She was thinking about Danilo. She had thought about him all morning. He had attacked her, abused her and again tried to kill her. The thought of it all made her tremble in rage. If that skinny Goth kid hadn’t appeared, she might not be standing here—she might be dead.
Danilo had been vicious and brutal. He had had the advantage and had left her feeling completely powerless.
It was a strange and unpleasant feeling.
She shook her head and tucked her hair behind her ear, his words echoing in her head.
I’m warning you. Follow me one more time and I’ll finish what I started here.
She tried to massage her aching muscles but gave up, letting her hand fall back to the sink.
One more time and you’ll regret it forever. Understand?
The message was unmistakable. It was a death threat, and she was completely certain that he meant it.
But what was he so scared of that he would want to kill her?
He was the threat—a threat to her, her career, her life. So why did he want to kill her? He could destroy absolutely everything for her if he wanted—but as long as he stayed away from her, he was no threat. As long as she stayed away from him, she was no threat to him, either.
She shouldn’t have followed him. I have to keep him out of my life, she thought, becoming aware that she stood at a crossroads. She had to make a decision.
She had nothing to gain from him. Next time, he would kill her. She knew that for a fact. She simply couldn’t let there be a next time.
Never.
Never.
Never.
She’d made up her mind. He would never be a part of her life again. She was finally going to put her past behind her.
Her hands trembled against the cold, hard porcelain.
The walls were closing in on her, and she was having trouble breathing. She understood that letting him go was the most important decision of her life. It meant letting go of her horrific childhood, her past, and moving on with her life—but she had lived her entire life with the uncertainty of who she was and had just begun to find answers.
She looked into the mirror. Her eyes narrowed.
There is no time for hesitation, she thought, turning around and yelling as if Danilo were standing there. She hit the door, aiming again, kicking, screaming.
Panting, she sat down on the floor.
Her mind was racing. Memories of him washed over her like a tidal wave. His face in hers, his ice-cold eyes, his hard voice.
I’m warning you.
“I have to,” she whispered. “I don’t want to, but I have to.”
She got up carefully and repeated this again and again, as if to convince herself that she was making the right decision. Slowly she stepped back to the sink and forced herself to breathe calmly.
From now on, everything is different, she thought.
From now on, I’m done with Danilo.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
GUNNAR ÖHRN AND County Police Commissioner Carin Radler stood in front of the oval table in the police department conference room on the third floor. Gunnar glanced at the clock just as Detective Inspector Mia Bolander came into the room, almost ten minutes late for the meeting with the National Crime Squad.
“Sorry,” she said, mumbling an inaudible explanation. She sat down at the table, avoiding Gunnar’s tired look by fixing her gaze out the window.
He closed the door and sat down next to her.
Around the table sat Mia, Gunnar and Carin, as well as Anneli Lindgren, Henrik Levin and technician Ola Söderström. Mia noticed one more person in the room.
She guessed from his appearance that he was VIP brass.
“What about Jana?” she whispered to Gunnar.
“What about her?” he hissed back.
“She’s not here?”
“No.”
“Why not? Why should we have to be here if she doesn’t have to?”
“Because we were told to be here.”
“But she should be here. She was in charge of the preliminary investigation in the case, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” Gunnar looked at her. “Do you want me to call her?”
“No.”
“Then be quiet.”
Carin Radler cleared her throat.
“Now that we are all here, let me introduce the commissioner of the National Crime Squad, Anders Wester.” Gesturing toward him, she continued, “He and I have had an internal conversation and I’ve called this meeting so that you will all be informed of what he has to say about the investigation that was carried out last spring.”
“Isn’t it better for us to spend our time working on new cases rather than closed ones?” said Gunnar.
Carin ignored him and sat down.
Mia smiled wryly. This was going to be interesting, she thought, her eyes drifting to Anders Wester. She examined his bald head, black-rimmed glasses and blue eyes. His lips were narrow and his face seemed relatively pale. His posture was less than impressive, with stooped shoulders and feet that pointed inward.
“Thank you,” Anders began. “As Carin said, we have already begun a discussion about the investigation you carried out last spring, and that is what I’m here to talk to you about today.”
“Get on with it then,” said Gunnar.
“It happens at times—” Anders straightened his shoulders a little “—that some districts attempt to lead federal murder investigations on their own, without the help of the National Crime Squad. Sometimes the outcome is good. Sometimes not so good. We have brought to Carin’s attention the mistakes that were made in last spring’s investigation.”
The room was quiet. Everyone exchanged glances, but no one spoke.
Then Gunnar scratched his chin and leaned forward over the table.
“Come on, you can say it! You think we did a bad job,” he said.
“Gunnar...” Carin said, holding up a hand to calm him.
“A mistake was made, yes,” Anders replied.
“A mistake?” Gunnar said. “What do you mean, a mistake?”
“It’s called a lack of cooperation. As you know, Gunnar, our purpose is to fight serious organized crime, and in order to carry out our purpose as professionally as possible, we have to cooperate on a national level. It sounds obvious, for most...”
“Listen. We did everything... There wasn’t any more we could do.”
“Except contacting us earlier. Playing special ops is not recommended. Not at the county level.”
“What should we have done, do you think?”
“You should have brought us in much earlier, as I said.”
“We let you take over.”
“Yes, but even that didn’t go according to plan.”
Gunnar chuckled.
“And whose fault was that?”
“Gunnar...” Carin gave him a look of warning.
Mia stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Gunnar continued, “but we exposed a gang that had for many years been trafficking drugs via illegal refugee children. We captured their leader, Gavril Bolanaki, and everything was handy-dandy until you took over and started negotiating with Bolanaki.”
“You know very well that he had important information.”
“Oh, yes. I know that you were going to protect him in exchange for his information. Names of middlemen, pushers, places. But he never got around to revealing anything, did he?”
“No. Exactly. What are you getting at?”
“That your ‘protection’ didn’t work very well. Admit it. You never got any information.”
“His case is closed. He killed himself. There wasn’t much more we could do there.”
“Who told you he had information anyway? Bolanaki himself?”
“I am convinced that Gavril Bolanaki would have been a resource for us,” Anders said. “But as I said, that case is closed.”
“Exactly. That must be a tidy way of solving an investigation. Say to hell with finding answers and just end it. It’s obvious you are very competent in this kind of operation.”
“Gunnar!”
Carin slammed her hand down on the table.
“Anders is claiming that we didn’t do our job,” said Gunnar. “But I disagree. We’re the ones who got Gavril Bolanaki, and I think it’s time to say it was you, Anders, who didn’t do your job because you were supposed to protect him.”
Anders smiled.
“That’s funny. You don’t understand what I’m saying, Gunnar. There is no ‘you’ and ‘us.’ The police are one single organization, and I hope you’ll have learned this when the new authority takes over.”
“Oh, yes, thank you. We know that the National Crime Squad is changing its name to the Department of National Operations. But we don’t know anything more than that. We have no idea how the organization will look in detail.”
“No, because it hasn’t been fully decided yet,” Anders interrupted.
Gunnar exchanged an angry glance with Carin, which Anders noticed.
“Maybe it’d be better if Carin explained it to you. Carin is very well-informed about the reorganization.”
“But I am not?”
“You will be now, because unlike you, I choose to share the information I have rather than hiding it.”
“How nice.”
Anders stood behind Carin and rested his hand on her shoulder.
“Carin has been offered the position of regional police chief for Eastern Sweden, and has accepted. Over the course of the year, she will work together with the six other regional chiefs to finalize the details of the new organizational structure and create an action plan for 2015. At the same time, she will be finishing out her assignment here as county police commissioner until she steps into her new position at the start of the New Year.”
Carin stood up, adjusting her jacket, and said, “We have a tight timeline and it will be quite a challenge. Replacing the twenty-one police districts with a single authority can’t be done overnight. As I’m sure you know, we initiated the change in 2010, and now we’re down to the final steps. I understand that you have questions, and I will try to answer them as best I can. Your participation in this process is important to me.”
Carin nodded at the team sitting around the table. Henrik and Anneli smiled, Ola gave her a thumbs-up and Gunnar clapped cautiously.
“Well, congratulations,” Mia said, her arms crossed.
Carin nodded in reply and sat down.
“Carin is right. Your participation and your opinions are important.”
Gunnar sighed loudly. Too loudly.
Anders rubbed his hand across his balding head.
“You know what, Gunnar? I truly believe there are many advantages with the new Swedish Police Authority. But the greatest advantage is probably that the boundaries will be erased, that it will become easier to work together. Don’t you think so?”
* * *
The farm fields were covered in snow, the white blanket taking on a blue cast in the growing darkness. Narrow paths led into the dense forest. Lights from houses and farms glimmered through the trees.
Pim sat with her head resting against the vibrating window on the X2000 express train between Copenhagen and Stockholm. The train had left Copenhagen at exactly 6:36 p.m. and would reach Norrköping in less than four hours.
She touched the passport stuffed into her waistband and felt a gnawing anxiety in her belly. She turned around toward Noi, who sat in the row behind her, arms hanging limp, mouth open. Her gaze was locked on a point far beyond the window.
“Are you sleeping?” Pim asked.
“No,” Noi said, slowly.
“Are you sure someone is going to meet us?”
Noi didn’t answer. She closed her eyes.
“Noi? Noi!”
Noi slowly opened her eyes again and continued to stare out of the window. “I’m freezing,” she said, closing her eyes again. Her head fell gradually forward until her chin met her chest.
“Who’s coming to meet us? Noi? Noi!”
Noi slowly lifted her head back up to meet Pim’s eyes.
Her pupils were awfully small, Pim noticed.
“What’s going on? Are you feeling okay?” Pim asked.
“Nothing...sleep...” Noi slurred.
“Who’s going to meet us? Can’t you answer me?”
But Noi didn’t answer.
Pim pulled her knees up to her chest and sat huddled on the seat, watching the landscape rush past outside. Apart from her anxiety over the drugs still inside her, she felt a different kind of uneasiness now. She remembered clearly the last time she had felt this way.
It had been just one month ago. She’d been sitting on the floor and looking at her dead mother’s face. Her little sister, Mai, hadn’t yet understood what was happening. She’d thought her mother was sleeping, because that was what Pim had told her.
But she hadn’t been sleeping. She’d had the fever. Dengue fever.
Her mother had had bloodshot eyes and large bruises on her body. She’d screamed from the pain in her muscles and joints.
That one time, Pim had wished her father were there. She’d wished him there so that she could be allowed to be a child again.
Just a child.
She had wished that a grown-up would come in and make everything right. But it had been pointless to even think about it, a fruitless hope. Her father had abandoned them long ago. He had a new family; he couldn’t come to her aid then.
And when her mother had refused to go to the hospital, Pim’s last hope had vanished.
“It’s best for me to be here,” her mother had said.
“But they can help you.”
“Help costs money, Pim.”
“But...”
“Promise me instead...that you’ll take care of Mai.” Her mother had coughed out the sentences while frantically clawing at her arm until the fluid-filled blister had popped.
“No... I can’t do it myself!” Pim had said, starting to cry. “She’s only eight years old.”
“You’re fifteen. You can do it.”
Now Pim looked down at her hands, thinking of Mai and wondering what her little sister was doing that very moment. Was she sleeping? Did she feel alone or scared? But Pim was only going to be gone for five days, and soon, soon she would be home with Mai again.
Her lower lip started to quiver and she suddenly felt another, stronger pain—this one from the pills in her stomach.
I have to make sure I get home again, she thought.
* * *
Gunnar Öhrn sat at the desk in his office with his legs spread apart. He stretched his arms up and grunted when he felt the twinge in his shoulders. The pain went all the way up to what used to be his hairline. He felt too heavy and old, but he pushed those thoughts away. He didn’t have time to worry about things like that.
Investigation reports were piled on the bookshelf behind him. He was going to start somewhere in the middle, being effective and focused, reading carefully to shake off this feeling of tiredness.
He picked up folder after folder, flipping through a couple of documents in each one, but hadn’t gotten any further than this when there was a knock at the door. Anders Wester appeared with two coffee mugs in his hands.
“Did I wake you?” he said.
“What do you mean, wake me?” Gunnar asked.
“It looked like you were sleeping.”
“I was just thinking. Since when is that forbidden?”
“This damn weather.”
“I don’t feel like talking.”
Anders put the mugs on the table, sitting down in the chair across from Gunnar and resting his fingertips against each other.
“How is she?” Anders asked.
“Who?” Gunnar said.
“Anneli.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“She looks tired.”
“I’m not into small talk.”
“I just want to know how she is.”
“You shouldn’t give a damn about her, do you hear me?”
“Calm down,” Anders sneered. “I was just asking how she is.”
“And I’m working.”
Gunnar shifted his weight in his chair, feeling the sweat on his back seeping through the material of his shirt. He looked at Anders, who sat composed and still, hands now by his mouth, fingertips still pressed against each other. He had an expression of superiority on his face, a crooked smile visible at the corner of his mouth.
“Coffee?”
“Oh, are we going to take coffee breaks together now, too?”
“Here you go,” Anders said, pushing the mug toward Gunnar, who looked at it with disgust.
“I don’t understand how you can dare to come in here,” Gunnar said.
“I value your opinions,” Anders replied.
“You have nothing to do here.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“To think that you have the balls to question our investigation.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“We’re doing ours, too.”
“Clearly not, because I’m here.”
“There must be another reason you’re here. I really want to tell you to go to hell.”
“I know.”
“But then I risk retaliation?”
“You might anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I just said.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Anders continued smiling, rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.
“No, Gunnar. Why would I threaten you? I just want to make sure that you’re all doing a good job here in Norrköping.”
“I have worked in law enforcement my whole life. I know how to do a good job.”
“Then I’ll have to see that you do a better job, then.”
“You can sit here, leaning in to seem more dangerous,” Gunnar said, leaning back in his chair, “and you can say whatever you want. I’m still not going to listen.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Anders said.
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think you do. It seems like you don’t understand the importance of cooperation. That we are going to cooperate. Regional and National Crime Squads. Norrköping and Stockholm. You and me, Gunnar.”
Gunnar didn’t want to hear any more. Sweat ran down his temples, but he didn’t dare wipe it away for fear of showing Anders how upset he really was.
“Obviously, we will cooperate,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You and me. Anything else I can do for you?”
Anders stood up.
“No,” he said, putting his hand out and giving Gunnar a firm handshake. Unnecessarily firm, for unnecessarily long.
And Gunnar responded.
Just as unnecessarily hard and for just as unnecessarily long.
CHAPTER SIX (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
HIS COAT SPARKLED with snowflakes.
Karl Berzelius stamped the snow from his shoes before he got into the taxi outside the Louis De Geer Concert Hall.
He raked his hand through his thick gray hair and straightened his coat underneath him.
Margaretha was already sitting in the backseat with her purse on her lap. She wiped her delicate eyeglasses with a tissue before replacing them on her nose and carefully folding the tissue and putting it back into her purse, closing it with a click.
“Fantastic,” she murmured as the taxi swung out onto the cobblestones.
“What did you say?” Karl asked, looking out the window.
“The concert was fantastic. The best I’ve heard in a long time. Makes me happy.”
“Yes, it is one of the most played pieces in the entire piano repertoire.”
“I understand why.”
“Rachmaninoff, hard to beat.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the snowdrifts. As the car turned to the right, he turned his gaze up to the garlands that hung over the street, watching the thousands of lights swaying back and forth.
“It’s the second Sunday of Advent this week,” Margaretha murmured. “And Christmas soon...”
She said it quietly, but he heard her.
“Yes? And what about it?”
She didn’t answer at first, as if she were biding her time. Then came the question he had expected. “Maybe it’s time to invite her over?”
He looked at his wife, saw how she was hugging her purse and knew that she was waiting for his reaction.
“For Christmas, yes,” he replied.
“Or earlier, maybe even this Saturday so that we could...”
He held his hand up, signaling that he’d heard enough.
“Please, Karl.”
“No.”
“But I don’t want to wait until Christmas, and I think it’s a good idea if we...”
“She hasn’t called.”
“But I’ve called her.”
He glared at her, making Margaretha hug her purse even more tightly.
“Have you spoken with her?” he asked.
“Yes, and you should, too. It’s been a long time since you did,” she said, adding his name. “Karl.”
He cleared his throat.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” he said.
“So we should just leave her alone?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“That’s enough! If you want to see her, do it. Invite her over. Do what you want! But leave me out of it!”
There it was again. The anger, irritation. He surprised himself with it. He heard her sigh but didn’t care.
He turned his gaze back to the window.
Back to the swaying lights.
* * *
Jana Berzelius opened her inbox and glanced through new emails that she had received during the late afternoon. The first was from Torsten Granath, an invitation to the regional prosecutorial chamber’s traditional Christmas dinner at the Göta Hotel in Borensberg. The next two were regarding a hearing about an assault at a pub, to be held at Norrköping’s district court within a week. The last one contained a two-page document that had to do with an amendment decision in the Swedish Prosecution Authority statute book.
Twenty minutes later, she turned off her computer and walked slowly into her bedroom, taking off her clothes, folding them and putting them on a chair. She turned on the light in her walk-in closet and stood before the mirror that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. She pushed her long, dark hair to the side, letting it fall over her right breast.
She stood and examined herself for a moment, studying her arms, hips and thighs. She let her hand caress her shoulder, down to the curve of her back, her buttocks. Her whole body shuddered as she surveyed her bruises. They had darkened, and would gradually disappear—along with her thoughts of Danilo.
She pulled a drawer out, forcefully grabbed a silk bra and matching panties, flung them onto the bed and went into the bathroom. She showered quickly, put on the underwear and swept a thin bathrobe around herself.
In the kitchen, she poured a glass of wine, stood by the window and looked at the dense clouds. After taking a big sip, she held the cool glass to her temple. Leaving the window, she went into her office and unlocked the door to the secured inner room.
Standing on the threshold, she turned on the light and looked into the small secret space. Her gaze traveled across the bulletin boards, whiteboard, pictures, photographs, books and notes. Every detail of her childhood that she could find, she had recorded here. She carefully stroked her neck with her fingertips. She felt the uneven skin, the three letters that would never disappear, that were immortalized in her pale skin. K. E. R. Ker—the goddess of death.
Her eyes focused on the drawing in the middle of the bulletin board, attached with staples in every corner. It was a sketch she had drawn of Danilo after their encounter last spring. After all these years, she had searched for him then in his home in Södertälje.
Tell me instead what you as a prosecutor are doing in my place, he had said to her. He hadn’t any idea who she was when she had suddenly appeared in his home.
I need your help.
He had laughed.
Oh, really? You don’t say. How interesting. And what can I help you with?
You can help me to find out something.
Something? And what is this something about?
My background.
Your background? How could I help you with that when I don’t even know who you are?
But I know who you are.
Really? Who am I, then?
You are Danilo.
Brilliant. Did you work that out all by yourself, or did you perhaps read my name on the door?
You are someone else, too?
You mean I’m schizoid?
Show me your neck?
He had fallen completely silent.
You’ve got another name written there, she had said. I know what it says. If I guess right then you must tell me how you got it. If I guess wrong then you can let me go.
We’ll change the agreement a little. If you guess right then I’ll tell you. Sure, that’s no problem. If you guess wrong, or if I don’t have a name on my neck, then I’ll shoot you.
She had guessed correctly.
She took another sip of wine, went into the room, sat on the chair and put the glass on the desk in front of her.
She felt some sort of melancholy about what she had to do.
No one knew that she had a room dedicated to all of the unsorted memories of her childhood, and no one would ever know, either. She hadn’t said a word about it to anyone. Not her father or mother. The room had been her own business and no one else’s.
Last spring, she had gotten more answers about her background than she had wanted. She had found out about the man who had made her into what she was, into what she had been: a child soldier.
She still remembered his words: From a crushed child you can carve out a deadly weapon. A soldier without feelings, without anything to lose, is the most dangerous there is.
She was made to call him Papa.
But his real name was Gavril Bolanaki.
Now Gavril was dead, and from Danilo—or Hades, as was carved into his neck as a trafficked child—there was nothing left to gain.
She got up suddenly and started to pull the pictures of the shipping containers from the walls and folded them up. She ripped down the pictures of the house on the island outside Arkösund, where she had lived with Danilo and the other children. She put the photographs of mythological gods and goddesses into an envelope and piled the books about Greek mythology in stacks. She erased the notes from the whiteboard. She took empty boxes, lined them up along the wall in the bedroom, and put all of the pictures, books, photographs and notes in them. Finally, she took down the sketch of Danilo and put it on the boxes.
In the kitchen, she poured a new glass of wine and drank it standing up. Then she went back into the bedroom, opened her nightstand drawer and looked at the journals hidden there.
For a moment, she considered just leaving them there, but she regretted the hesitation and put them into the boxes, too.
After two hours, both the hidden room and one more glass of wine were empty.
With her finger on the switch, she looked around the room and realized that, without all of the materials of her investigation, the room looked remarkably naked.
She had cleaned up everything that revealed her background. It was meaningless to keep it. She should let it remain a secret, live her life as buttoned-up as the oxford shirts she wore in court.
She closed her eyes.
And turned off the light.
She stood still, listening to the sound of her heart pounding.
Her life would take another direction from now on, no longer driven by shadows from the past.
She felt a shiver go down her spine and wondered if it was relief she felt.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
TRAIN ATTENDANT MATS JOHANSSON kept his eyes looking out the window. The late night’s intense calm had settled in on the X2000 between Copenhagen and Stockholm. It was the sort of quiet that made him relax.
He always longed for peace and quiet, which is why he and his wife spent every summer in a little red cottage in the middle of a forest in Småland. The cottage had a white veranda, and they sat there every warm summer evening and looked out at the majestic trees and the emerald green lawn. They puttered around in the garden each day, planted carrots and tomatoes. But this time of year there was nothing to do there, Mats thought. Not in cold, harsh Sweden.
He saw the clock turn 10:12 p.m., knew that there were ten minutes left before they would arrive in Norrköping and went with calm, steady steps down the aisle, keeping his balance as the train swayed.
When he opened the door to the fifth car, he saw a young woman standing outside the bathroom. Her hair was dark, shoulder-length and glossy.
She was pounding on the locked door and yelling, turning toward the people sitting closest to her, but no one would meet her panicked eyes.
The train slowed down with wavelike motions, and the brakes squeaked lightly on the rails.
The young, desperate woman yelled again.
Mats went to her quickly, and when she saw him coming closer, she rushed forward and grabbed his arm. Speaking in a language he didn’t understand, she dragged him to the locked bathroom door and gesticulated wildly.
He understood that something serious was going on.
The clock read 10:22 p.m. when he finally was able to force the door open.
He saw the toilet. To the left of it was a wall-mounted changing table. He stepped cautiously forward and saw a young woman propped up in a sitting position on the floor. Her fingers were bloody. Her face was pale and her lips were blue. Some sort of white foam dripped from her lower lip onto her chest.
Mats covered his mouth with his hands and stared in horror at the dead woman’s body.
* * *
Mia Bolander reached for the cell phone that was lying on the table. She scrolled through the status updates on Facebook but was irritated, as usual, by all the people who had posted pictures of freshly baked cakes, Christmas decorations and things as idiotic as pictures of future vacation destinations.
How the hell do they have the energy? she thought, releasing her phone onto her lap.
She drew her hand through her blond hair and yawned, sinking into the sofa. She cast a glance at the fifty-inch television that she had bought on a payment plan last spring and sure, it was a great deal, but now she was behind on her payments. Two months, maybe, but as soon as she got her next paycheck, she’d rectify that, for sure. It kind of sucked, though, paying so much for a TV that was now almost a year old. She’d rather put the money toward a new one, and had seen an awesome one with a curved screen. If she had only been a little less impulsive last spring, she’d have bought one like that instead.
Mia wound a blond lock around her finger. She was tired and not satisfied with how the day had gone. Nor her life, for that matter.
She was turning thirty-one in two months and had discovered new wrinkles on her forehead and around her eyes. The skin above her breasts also seemed less tight and made a fanlike pattern when she wore a tight sports bra.
She tried to convince herself that she still looked good, but it didn’t work. In spite of her regular workouts, with strength training three times a week, she didn’t feel attractive. She never slept enough, ate at odd times and drank too much.
All wrong.
She spent money on unnecessary things and was always broke. She had a tiny apartment and only occasional relationships with men who seemed all but normal. The last one had seemed loving and tender, but as soon as they went back to his place, he had shown a sick interest in her feet. A foot fetishist.
He’d had a corny name, too.
Martin.
He had satisfied her, but she never wanted to sleep with him again. Not with someone who wanted to suck her toes.
That was crossing the line.
She had spent just over half her life finding out what a mature sex life had to offer. She had lost her virginity when she was fourteen and spent the rest of her teen years experimenting with horny classmates and older high schoolers. She had a heavy make-out session with a teacher at an end-of-the-year party when she was in ninth grade, had a threesome with two guys in a bathroom and had on one occasion given blow jobs to three heavy metal dudes at a house party. In her twenties, she had tried bondage with a tattooed man from Falun. She had dressed up as a flight attendant, a nurse and an innocent girl wearing a corset. Whipped and been whipped. Had sex at secret clubs and in public places. Her sex life required a constant stream of new men.
She was, therefore, not interested in a long-term relationship, and had never understood how someone could be with the same person year after year. She had sat in the police department cafeteria and listened to her female colleagues gush about how their male partners were wonderful, insightful, exciting, generous, warm and romantic one day, then bitch the next day about their bad habits and how they left beard hairs on the sink and shit-stained boxers on the bedroom floor for days. She had heard them say that they had met the man they wanted to grow old with, have children with, that he was The One. Mia had never felt that way. She didn’t want just one.
She wanted many.
Preferably.
She looked out the window at the darkness outside. She rubbed her hands across her face and thought about brushing her teeth, but she felt too lazy and instead put her feet up on the table.
Her thoughts wandered to the two-hour morning meeting with the National Crime Squad. She’d had a hard time deciding in the last half hour if she should do something, say something. Anders Wester was an unpleasant man. He had criticized their work and been really hard on Gunnar. She had never seen Gunnar so irritated and tense.
But he had been the only one who had defended them, and the only one from the investigation who had said anything during the meeting. Maybe she should have said something, stood up for herself and her colleagues. But no one else had, either. It wasn’t only her responsibility.
Carin could have been more assertive in the conversation. But she surely didn’t dare, Mia thought. Not having just received a new position—in the new Police Authority, where everything would be changed for the better and everyone would take part and live happily-ever-after. What bullshit!
She lay down on the sofa, crossed her arms over her head and stayed there for a long time before picking up her cell phone.
She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she’d regret it.
Still, she looked for Martin Strömberg’s number.
But just as she raised the phone to her ear, someone called.
She saw from the display that it was Henrik Levin.
“Yes?” she answered.
“You have to get down to the train station. Right now!”
* * *
The X2000 to Stockholm with departure time 10:24 p.m. stood still on Track 1 at Norrköping’s Central Station. It had taken an hour to evacuate all of the travelers and get them on a bus to Nyköping where a regional train had been waiting to take them to their planned destination.
All of the platforms had been roped off, parking lot and building, too.
Henrik Levin stood at the police tape and watched as Mia Bolander parked her wine-red Fiat Punto at the intersection of Norra Promenaden and Vattengränden. He waved when she got out of the car. She pulled her white hat down over her ears and zipped her jacket all the way to her chin to keep out the cold.
“So what happened?” she asked, ducking under the tape.
“A young woman was found dead in a bathroom. Her name is Siriporn Chaiyen, Thai national. We found her purse with her passport and other possessions in it.”
“How old?”
“Eighteen.”
Henrik saw her raise her eyebrows.
“Come on,” he said, showing her the way to the train and the bathroom in Car 5 where Anneli Lindgren crouched down with tweezers in her hand. The small room was illuminated with bright lights.
Henrik and Mia stood in the doorway and studied the dead woman. She was young, with a characteristically Southeast Asian appearance.
“A suicide?” Mia asked.
Anneli looked up.
“No...” she said, getting up from the floor. “At first glance, it looks like an epileptic seizure, like she asphyxiated. But exactly how she died, I’m not sure yet.”
“So what are we doing here?”
“We can eliminate suicide,” said Henrik. “And it’s probably not an epileptic fit.”
“Who found her?”
“A train attendant, Mats Johansson,” Henrik said. “He is unfortunately in shock, but we were able to speak with him for a moment before he was taken to Vrinnevi Hospital. He said that he had been rushed by a crazy woman who had forced him to open the bathroom door. I know what you’re going to ask next—who was that woman?”
“Yes. But what, don’t I get to?”
“Well, you should, but I don’t know the answer.”
Mia gave him a questioning look.
“Why not?”
“She disappeared from the train.”
“And where is she now?”
“No one knows.”
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
IT SMELLED STRONGLY of bleach in the corridor of the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping.
Pathologist Björn Ahlmann looked up as Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander walked into the room. Björn stood at his stainless steel autopsy table with a serious look on his face. His eyes flashed a silvery blue.
The fluorescent lights cast their harsh light on the tiled walls, the double troughs and channels for drainage.
Henrik stood a bit from the table and observed the woman lying there. He thought how small and thin she looked. Above her breasts, her sternum was clearly outlined and her ribs stuck out under her smooth skin.
Her complexion was pale and her long black hair lay over her forehead and shoulders. It looked like she was gazing out into the room with a mixed expression of amazement and sorrow.
But there was no gleam in her small, narrow eyes.
“I saw the announcement in the paper. It was tiny, as if death doesn’t interest anyone anymore,” Björn said with a sigh.
“Everyone is probably too preoccupied with their own worries,” Henrik said.
“How did she die?” Mia asked. “Do we know now?”
“You didn’t have to come here to find out.”
Björn passed the autopsy report to Henrik, who glanced expertly through the main points.
“As you see,” he said, “the cause of death is asphyxia, a complete blockage of oxygen to the brain.”
“So she suffocated?” Henrik asked.
“Yes. The result of an overdose,” Björn said. “Heroin. She had fifty capsules in her stomach.”
“Fifty?” Mia asked, whistling.
“Yes, you heard right. Fifty,” Björn said.
“And the capsules?” Henrik asked.
“They’ve been analyzed,” said Björn, pushing his glasses up his nose. He nodded toward the report. “Everything’s in there.”
Henrik contemplated the lifeless body. The nails on her fingers and toes were painted pink. He took a deep breath and felt depressed, as he always did when victims were young.
“Anything else you can give us?”
“No, there’s nothing that sticks out. Besides that she was a teenager, fifteen years old.”
“Fifteen? On her passport it said she was eighteen.”
“I can only say what I know,” said Björn, giving him a serious look. His glasses flashed as he turned toward the body again.
“Christ,” said Mia. “Someone’s using young women to smuggle. That’s just shitty, plain and simple.”
“She wasn’t a young woman,” said Henrik. “She was just a child.”
* * *
It was hard to stretch out her legs enough as she ran up the steps, yet she increased her speed. Running the last bit quickly and easily, she slowed down toward the top, stopping and panting for a moment on the landing.
In her apartment, she did one hundred sit-ups. The back of her neck itched from sweat. Jana Berzelius pushed her hair to the side and stroked her fingers across the inscribed letters.
After a quick shower, she put on a discreet amount of makeup, though she had to do extra touching up in those places where her skin was still discolored. She looked at herself, turning first to the right and then to the left, checking to see if the bruises showed through the layers of makeup. She reluctantly dabbed on a little extra blush and decided that would have to do.
With her briefcase in one hand and her overcoat in the other, she went down to the basement. Her high heels drummed rhythmically as she walked quickly over the concrete in the garage. She unlocked her black BMW X6 from thirty feet away and placed her briefcase on the black leather passenger seat.
A shiver went down her back. She felt ready to work, again checking her face in the mirror, repeating to herself that no one would suspect anything through the makeup.
But she was still nervous. She hesitated a moment before pushing the start button and driving out of the garage.
* * *
Anneli Lindgren sat on the edge of the bed, her hair loose and not yet brushed. She opened her nightstand drawer and took out a pair of heart-shaped diamond earrings, weighing them in her hand. She carefully fastened them to her ears and stood, remaining there for a moment in her nightgown, gazing out the window. The wind rustled the frosty leaves on the trees. A rabbit bounded away, and she followed it with her eyes until it disappeared into a yard.
She lifted her hand to her ear, twisting one of the earrings and thinking about when she had received them. It was a long time ago now, during a period when everything had been different, free. She still remembered that time in his apartment, how she had looked at him with red, warm cheeks. He had opened a dresser drawer, taken out a plastic fastener and a soft whip, forcing her arms up over her head. She’d lain on the bed protesting, keeping her legs together, twisting away when he pulled her panties down. He’d hovered over her, kneeling, watching her attempts to get free. He had smiled when he began to caress her from her knees up to her upper thighs, smiled even wider when she had stopped protesting, spread her legs and let him enter her.
He had carried the package in his sport coat, then placed it on her naked stomach and said something that sounded like love. But she hadn’t been looking for love—she had only wanted to quench her desire. For once, at least, she had been able to give herself up to the desire she felt for him.
For Anders.
“The meeting starts in ten minutes.”
The door to the bedroom squeaked when Gunnar came in with a towel around his hips.
“Yep...” she said absentmindedly.
Gunnar laid his hand on her shoulder, and she felt the warmth from his damp skin. He gently caressed her neck, under her hair, over her right shoulder. She felt the shoulder strap of her nightgown slip off. When he then tried to caress her breast, she carefully pushed his hand away.
“What’s wrong? What were you thinking about?” he asked.
“About you. And us,” she said, leaving the window. “We have to get going. We can’t be late to this meeting.”
She opened the closet and grabbed the first shirt she touched. She just wanted to get out of the bedroom without him seeing the blush on her cheeks.
The blush of shame.
* * *
Jana Berzelius entered the conference room on the third floor of the police station in Norrköping. She sat at the oval table and glanced furtively at the team that was already seated there. Anneli Lindgren was taking down important details about the dead woman from the train; Mia Bolander was drawing ten pointy flowers in the margin of her notes. Ola Söderström was adjusting the screen of his laptop. Gunnar Öhrn was sitting with his hands folded on the table.
“Ah, so you also had to show up?” Mia said without raising her eyes.
“Yes,” Jana said, her head held high and her back straight. Her jacket was black, her skirt was knee-length and her hair was stick straight.
“But don’t you prosecutors usually wait until we’ve done the heavy lifting? Or at least until we have a suspect?”
“Not all do,” Jana said.
Henrik gave Mia a tired look, as if he wanted to tell her to skip the bullshit. She knew very well that preliminary investigations were led by the prosecutor if the victim was under eighteen years old.
“And not all come rushing into the initial briefing,” Mia continued.
“No,” Jana said. “But that’s how it is to be devoted to your work.”
“Thanks, I know what that means,” Mia said, glaring at her.
“Well, then,” Henrik said, tossing the autopsy report on the table, thus beginning his report on the preliminary examination that Björn Ahlmann had performed on the dead woman from the train.
“So you’re saying she had swallowed fifty capsules of heroin and cocaine,” Gunnar summarized when Henrik was done. Standing, he continued, “One capsule had begun to leak, and she died of an overdose. We’re dealing with an obvious case of narcotics smuggling, right, Ola?”
“Yes,” Ola said, opening the screen of his laptop. “The woman was a ‘bodypacker,’ a person who transports illegal narcotics within her own body. A courier, drug mule, pack mule...”
“Pack mule?” Mia repeated. “‘Bodypacker’ sounds more accurate.”
“I agree,” said Ola. “And that’s one typical name. But despite the fact that drug mules are a well-known problem, it’s hard to catch them. Every year, between sixty and seventy million people cross the Swedish border.”
“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Henrik said.
“Right. Many more mules get through than are caught. Customs largely works based on intelligence. Sure, they are always trying to find patterns in the modus operandi, but these drug mules crop up everywhere, frequently change their identity and come from all different countries.”
“In this case, from Thailand,” Henrik said.
“But she could just as well have come from Japan. Or China. Or Malaysia or something,” Mia said, rubbing her nose.
Gunnar cleared his throat.
“Her passport was issued in Thailand, so we can assume that she is a Thai national. So, Ola, continue.”
“Lots of mules come via budget flights from Spain. Often what happens is that vulnerable people are recruited in the Málaga area. But a lot also come from West Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern countries and South America. A lot of narcotics pass through Holland. Schiphol Airport has such a huge problem that the border police sometimes don’t even arrest the drug mules. Instead, they just send them back on the next flight out. It is, as you might guess, a lengthy process to secure evidence against bodypackers.”
Ola crossed his arms and rested his elbows on the table, continuing.
“If they are arrested, the police have to decide if the mules should be X-rayed at the hospital, then further decisions have to be made about whether the suspects should be kept under constant observation until they have answered nature’s call. The swallowers have to use a nonflushing toilet, and then the jail guards have to dig around in the toilet to find the capsules and confiscate them.”
“Sounds lovely,” Mia said.
“We used to use an emetic to make them vomit. The mules would take a huge dose and then after just a couple seconds, the proof would come up. It was effective, but the Swedish Prosecutor-General decided sometime in the nineties that it shouldn’t be allowed anymore, that it violated human rights,” Ola said.
Jana straightened up, saying, “From what I know, it takes about five days for the capsules to pass through the body.”
“That’s right,” said Ola, “but it varies a lot. It can take as short as two days or as long as two weeks. Most use a laxative or enema, but not everyone has access to these, and it has happened that smugglers have died from injuries related to constipation. The most common cause of death, though, is leakage, as with our victim.”
Ola closed his computer.
“But drug mules, or rather those who employ the mules, are constantly learning better ways to smuggle. It’s not common to use cutoff rubber gloves or condoms anymore. Now, the capsules are machine-made, wrapped in multiple layers and coated with beeswax. Generally the mules are carrying between fifty and seventy capsules in their stomachs, and every capsule contains about ten grams of narcotics. The capsules are then divided into ‘balls’ of two-to three-tenths of a gram. One ball of heroin could cost one hundred fifty kronor on the street—a third of what it cost a few years ago.”
“But experienced drug mules can smuggle more than seventy capsules, can’t they?” Gunnar asked.
“Yes. Some mules swallow over a hundred capsules. Last year an Eastern European man was arrested at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport. He had 1.2 kilograms of heroin and cocaine in his stomach. The street value was hundreds of thousands of kronor,” said Ola.
“Denmark is also a common stop. They fly into Kastrup and then take the train over the Öresund Bridge into Sweden. I would dare to guess that this is what happened here,” said Gunnar.
“I think so, too,” said Ola. “The dead woman wasn’t traveling alone. It’s common that the leader of the operation will send a number of mules, because they figure that a few of them will get stopped by customs. If he sends twenty, for example, maybe eighteen will get through and he’s made his money.”
“Fifty percent, then,” Mia said.
“No, not exactly. Eighteen of twenty isn’t half. It’s ninety percent,” Jana corrected, fixing her gaze on Mia without moving a muscle in her face.
Mia clenched her jaw.
“I was talking about our girls! Two girls were sent, and one of them died, so only one got through. Half. Fifty percent. Exactly.”
“There could have been more mules on the train,” Henrik said, clasping his hands around one knee.
Mia sighed.
“But we’re focusing all of our energy on the female friend who disappeared. And we assume that she is also a mule,” Gunnar said. “Otherwise she probably would not have run.”
Jana nodded at Henrik.
“Were there witnesses?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Henrik. “We have a number of passengers who have provided information.”
“And the train attendant? Where is he?”
Henrik opened his mouth to answer, but Mia spoke up quickly.
“He’s in shock.”
“I didn’t ask about his condition. I asked where he was,” Jana said without looking at Mia.
“He’s at Vrinnevi Hospital,” she said curtly.
“Have you talked to him?”
“Only briefly. I’ll question him after we’re done here,” Henrik said.
“If you’re lucky,” Mia said. “He’s being treated. He might have to go to therapy, delaying the investigation even further.”
Gunnar pretended not to hear her, walking instead to the whiteboard.
“According to the train attendant, the second woman ran straight out from the train, and this is confirmed by the security camera footage that Ola checked.”
“Exactly,” Ola said. “I studied the film from Central Station this morning. At exactly 10:23 p.m., a young woman runs off the train. Like the victim, she has Asian features, and I assume that she is the woman we’re looking for. On the film you see clearly that she runs from Platform 1 straight toward the parking lot and then disappears into the darkness.”
“So we have a picture of her?” Jana asked.
“Yes, not as clear a picture as I’d like, but I think it will help.”
Ola leaned forward across the table.
“You can see that she’s completely panicked,” he said. “I mean, she’s sprinting as fast as she can from the train. But what’s strange is that she stops, looks at something in the dark, hesitates and then speeds up.”
“As if she’s trying to find someone?” Henrik asked.
“Yes, as if she’s looking for someone,” Ola said. “And at the same time you see red brake lights, like a car is slowing down in front of her.”
“You think she jumped into a car,” Henrik said.
“Yes, someone was probably waiting at the station, waiting for her and her friend. And we need to find out who that someone is.”
“So the narcotics may have been destined for here, for Norrköping?” Jana asked.
“Well, that’s a reasonable possibility,” Henrik said. “We’ve seen signs that something is going on in the area when it comes to narcotics. Not least since Gavril Bolanaki disappeared.”
“You mean that the market has increased?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said Gunnar. “As you all understand, these women are just pawns in a much larger game...” He leaned forward with his hands on the table and looked at the team. “We need to find the woman who ran. She could be our key into this whole operation. If we find her, we have a good chance of finding who was controlling her.”
CHAPTER NINE (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
THE SOUND OF waves woke her up. Her head was pounding, and Pim blinked a few times to clear her eyes. She sat up on the thin mattress and noticed that she had been covered up by a blanket. Next to her was a bucket with no handle.
How long had she been sleeping?
She tried to open her mouth but couldn’t. Tape stretched from one cheek to the other. She wanted to rip it off, but her hands were bound behind her back with a coarse rope. She twisted and turned until she was breathless. Trying to take short quick breaths, she felt like she was going to suffocate.
She had felt like this before. Often, when they played, her little sister, Mai, had sat on her, held her hands tightly and yelled, Try to escape, Pim. Try to escape, if you can!
Then she had to fight to get free, to cast the weight off her chest. Mai had almost choked with laughter. It was just a game. But it wasn’t now.
No part of this was a game.
The room had no windows. It was small, with a wooden floor and ceiling. It was cold and damp.
She thought about Noi and began to cry. She should have stayed with her, shouldn’t have left her alone on the train.
She slowly pulled one leg up, shifted her weight onto her knees and sat up. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for a way out.
Where was she?
She had no idea.
And no one else had any idea that she was sitting there with her hands bound, her mouth taped shut, in a strange country.
Her legs shaking, she stumbled forward toward the wall, stood with her back to it and began feeling for something sharp.
Finally she found an uneven spot in the planks and immediately began to rub the rope against it. She pushed her back against the wall, up and down, to the sides, fighting and tearing to get the rope to break.
* * *
Jana Berzelius placed her notepad in her briefcase and left the conference room.
Outside the window, she saw snow falling heavily in the light gray darkness. She placed her hand on the shiny handrail and walked down the stairs from the third floor to the garage. The stairwell smelled like dust and Pine Sol. She stepped slowly, listening to the echo of her high heels and thinking about the investigation they had just begun. She was back to doing what gave her purpose—that meant something: a job, punctuality, achievement. She felt energetic and strong again. She wanted to focus on what lay ahead, on her future.
At that moment, her cell phone rang. She stopped, pulling it out of her pocket, but when she saw it was her colleague Per Åström she silenced it and put it away.
She had reached the first floor and was about to continue down the next flight when she stopped suddenly.
Through the glass door that led to the main entrance and reception area of the police station sat the thin, black-clad kid she had met the other evening at the entrance to Knäppingsborg.
Robin...Stenberg.
What was he doing here?
He sat with his elbows on his knees, one leg bobbing up and down with nervous energy.
She took a step forward, wanting to go into the reception area and talk to him, but a stronger impulse convinced her to instead leave the station.
Then Robin got up from the chair and was soon out of her field of vision.
She continued down the stairs, barely conscious of the fact that she was walking more quickly now that her thoughts were back at Knäppingsborg, seeing Robin’s slim body, the panicked look on his face, the stars tattooed on his temple and his worried voice saying that he had to call for help.
That he had witnessed her violent encounter with Danilo gave her an uneasy feeling.
She pushed open the door to the parking garage just as a police car swung out from a parking space and disappeared in the heavy snowfall, its lights flashing.
* * *
Henrik Levin pushed the gray button that opened the door to the Psychiatric Clinic at Vrinnevi Hospital. They had hoped that someone would soon come forward with information that would help them find the missing woman, and he realized now that he had the most faith in the train attendant, Mats Johansson.
Henrik shook hands with Mats’s doctor and exchanged a few words with him before being allowed into the patient’s room.
A woman was sitting on the bed, and he met her brown eyes. She drew her hand through her curly hair before standing and quietly introducing herself as Marianne.
“I’m Mats’s wife,” she added, taking Henrik’s jacket and hanging it carefully on a hook on the back of the door. As quietly as possible, she moved her chair closer to the bed, sat down and took her husband’s left hand in hers.
“Mats,” she whispered. “You have a visitor.”
Henrik stood on the other side of him and observed his angular face, the wide mustache, the thin hair and pale skin. Mats’s eyes moved under his closed eyelids.
“He’s been dreaming a lot,” Marianne said, smiling apologetically. “It’s horrible, of course, to witness such a thing...and on his train, too... He’s been rambling quite a bit.”
“What does he say?” Henrik asked.
“Mostly nonsense, actually.”
Marianne chuckled.
“I heard that,” Mats said, opening his eyes. He lifted himself up on one elbow with a great deal of effort and looked at Henrik.
“Hi,” Henrik said, putting his hand out. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin. I need to talk with you, ask a few questions.”
“Okay,” Mats said, weakly shaking Henrik’s hand.
“As I understand it, you found the woman in the train bathroom.”
Mats nodded.
“Yes, I found her. She was lying in there...on the floor.”
“Can you tell me anything else about it?”
Mats bit his upper lip.
Henrik took the close-up picture from the security camera out of his pocket.
“I’m going to show you a photo now, and I want you to look at it very carefully.”
Mats sat up and looked at the photograph for a long time—at the black hair, the narrow eyes, the pale skin.
“Do you recognize this woman?” Henrik asked. “This isn’t the one you found in the bathroom.”
Mats nodded.
“This is the girl who was standing outside the door, who ran away when I opened it. I couldn’t stop her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I had to stay with the girl in the bathroom. Noi, her name was.”
“Noi? You mean Siriporn? The girl who died?”
“No...” Mats looked confusedly at him. “I mean Noi.”
Henrik cast a glance at Marianne.
“Think carefully, Mats,” his wife said.
“Was her name Noi?” Henrik asked.
“I don’t know.” Mats sighed. “But that’s what she said, the other one, the one who ran away. When I came down the aisle, I saw her standing there, banging on the bathroom door. She was yelling ‘Noi’ again and again. I assumed that was the girl’s name. And when I had opened the door, she ran away. I called out to her to stop, but she didn’t.”
Henrik thought for a moment.
“Where were they while the train was moving?”
Mats rubbed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. He seemed tired now, weary of thinking, of remembering. He took a deep breath before he answered.
“Both were in Car 5, but they weren’t sitting together. They were each in their own seat, one in front of the other, if that makes sense. There were plenty of open seats. The train wasn’t full.”
“How were they acting?”
Mats wrinkled his forehead as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Were they nervous, uneasy, sullen, angry?”
“No, they mostly just slept.”
“Where did they get on the train?”
Mats lay down with his head on the pillow and looked at the ceiling.
“They got on at the start, in Copenhagen.”
“And they were heading for...?”
“Norrköping. That’s why she screamed...why I needed to open the door. They were supposed to get off.”
Mats paused, closed his eyes. Marianne stroked his cheek in an attempt to comfort him, but he turned his face away.
“I’ll leave you to rest now,” Henrik said. “Thank you for seeing me.”
Marianne nodded in response.
Henrik met her gaze and saw that she was holding her husband’s left hand in both of hers.
* * *
“So Anders is still in town?”
Gunnar Öhrn glared at Carin Radler, who was sitting in a visitor’s chair in his office.
“Yes, and the next time you call a meeting, it’d be best if you let him know,” she said, crossing one leg over the other. She bounced one high-heeled foot up and down.
“Or he’ll make sure he’s here in the building,” Gunnar said.
“Which he’s doing anyway after he’s gotten settled in the hotel.”
“Is it certain that he’s staying here?”
“Considering that we have just had a case of narcotics smuggling fall into our laps, yes.”
“He’s not going to give up?”
“Anders has fought for many years to stop narcotics trafficking. It’s thanks to his efforts that we’ve been able to arrest multiple central figures who control the different narcotics markets in Sweden. Just last spring, coordinated raids flushed out a huge gang in Gothenburg. Anders had comprehensive responsibility for the whole operation, and long prison sentences are waiting for those who were arrested.”
“Yes, I’d heard that he got to show off in the newspapers.”
Carin raised her voice.
“His war against drugs has given results, Gunnar!”
“And now he wants to do the job for us?”
“No, but he is extremely competent when it comes to questions of narcotics, which we can naturally benefit from.”
Gunnar sneered. “So we’re supposed to be best friends now?”
“You know that he’s working hard for the new Police Authority, and I am, too.”
“I understand your new role, but his?”
“He is running to be the National Police Commissioner, as I think you are well aware.”
“So he’s looking for more power, you mean.” Gunnar rubbed his eyes.
Carin uncrossed and recrossed her legs, answering in a calm voice. “I know that you don’t like him. But he is actually a good boss. Just like you.”
“Cut the flattery. You and I both know that I may not be here long.”
Carin sighed. “The problem with this reorganization is that we’re faced with completely new, maybe even unforeseen, challenges, and that will require a lot from everyone.”
“So who’s to stay?”
“I can’t answer that right now.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“I understand you’re worried.”
“I’m not one bit worried. But my colleagues are worried, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell them.”
“Tell them that we have a narcotics case that we have to solve. That’s where our focus should be right now.”
“In cooperation with Anders,” Gunnar said with a sigh.
“Yes, in cooperation with Anders,” Carin replied.
* * *
Mia Bolander came into the police station cafeteria, took a pear from the fruit bowl and stuffed two more into her pockets. It was really too many, but she knew she couldn’t put them back once she turned around and caught sight of Henrik Levin and Ola Söderström. She rubbed the pear on her knit cardigan and sat down across from them.
Henrik removed the blue lid from his glass container, the steam from the red curry stew warming his face.
“That’s a small lunch,” Mia said.
“There wasn’t much left after dinner last night.”
“What, did Emma eat everything?”
“She’s pregnant, you know.”
“When’s she due?”
“December 31.”
“She’ll have to keep her legs crossed tight for the baby’s sake. It’s no fun to have your birthday on the last day of the year, because then you’re the last to get your driver’s license or get into bars.”
“No, it’s...”
“And you have to ask your buddies to buy drinks for you.”
“Right, of course.” Henrik sighed. “But the main thing is that the baby is healthy.”
“Everyone says that. The main thing is that the baby is healthy and has ten fingers and ten toes and develops a little faster than all the other kids. Just imagine how it is for people who have ugly babies. I mean, really ugly, not just the normal ugly.”
“What do you mean, people? You mean, what if I have an ugly baby?”
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
“But I’m the one who’s going to have a baby.”
“Take it however you want.”
Mia examined her pear.
“If we’re being honest, though?”
“But aren’t all babies cute?” Henrik asked.
“Parents say so, yes. But have you ever heard someone say, ‘Oh, what an ugly baby’?”
“No, because there’s no such thing as an ugly baby.”
“No, it’s because no one would dare to say so. But everyone has thought it at one time or another.”
“But not everyone thinks that babies are ugly!” Henrik protested.
“Haven’t you ever thought it?” Mia asked.
“No. Never.”
“See, it’s because you’re a father. If you weren’t, you would have. You agree with me, don’t you, Ola?”
Ola held his hand up. “No comment.” He wasn’t going to join in Mia’s fun.
“Wimp. You agree with me,” Mia said.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Ola said.
They all fell quiet. Ola broke the silence. “Going back to our previous conversation, Henrik, did that train attendant actually have anything to say?”
Henrik didn’t have a chance to answer before Gunnar Öhrn came into the cafeteria and interrupted them.
“Mia!” he barked.
“Yes?” she said, turning around.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes. It’s important. In my office in five minutes.”
Mia sighed and took a bite of the pear.
* * *
Gunnar sat in his office and knew that as soon as he had given Mia the assignment, he should let Anders Wester know that a new witness had turned up at the train station. But it was hard.
He fiddled with his phone and pulled out Anders’s number. It still felt unnatural having the National Crime Squad looking over his shoulder, as if their department had suddenly become a class of special needs kids with Anders Wester as their “normal” peer mentor.
He knew that if she could hear his thoughts, Anneli would say, Knock it off! You’re being childish!
He began to type in Anders’s phone number, but when he came to the last digit, he changed his mind and deleted it. He had absolutely no desire to talk to Anders, or to have anything at all to do with him, really.
Just then, someone knocked on his door. Mia stuck her head in. “You wanted something?”
Gunnar rubbed his hands over his face several times.
“Sit down,” he said, pointing at the chair in front of him.
“What is it?” she said, sitting down.
“I just want you to interview a witness who was in the parking lot yesterday when the train with the dead woman rolled into the station. He says he saw a man. Find out what he saw. His name is Stefan Ohlin.”
“Sure, sure, sure.”
Gunnar took a deep breath.
“And one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Your attitude is a little, well, how should I say this. It’s too much.”
“Are you going to fire me or what?” Mia crossed her arms over her chest.
“No, I’m not going to fire you. But...you’re sucking energy out of the group with your attitude, and I want you to get it together.”
“Okay. I should shut up, you mean?”
“That’s exactly the attitude I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean? I’m just saying what I think.”
“Well, stop doing that, then. Keep your opinions to yourself and focus on doing a good job instead!”
Mia didn’t answer, just pursed her lips.
“This is how it’s going to be,” Gunnar said. “We have the National Crime Squad looking over our shoulders, and I want you to help me live up to their expectations. We can’t give them any reason to question our work.”
“Sure,” Mia said, nodding slowly.
“Good. So then, I want you to start by interviewing this Stefan guy. Here’s his number. He’s a teacher at Vittra School in Röda Stan, the neighborhood with all the red houses, and wants us to meet him there.”
“Henrik and I will go...”
“You go by yourself.”
“Okay. I’ll leave right away.”
Mia got up and walked toward the door.
“And, Mia...”
Gunnar looked at her with a frown.
“Yes?”
“Show me what you’ve got. Please?”
“I will,” Mia said with a wide, bright smile.
She looked happy, Gunnar thought. Way too happy.
Then he understood.
She had been telling him to go to hell.
With her smile.
* * *
Jana Berzelius did not seem to be in any hurry when she entered the Public Prosecution Office on Olai Kyrkogata 50, in the middle of downtown Norrköping. But in reality she was in a terrible state. She didn’t know how to handle the fact that she had seen the skinny kid Robin Stenberg at the police station. Hadn’t he understood that she was serious? The last thing she wanted was for the police to get involved.
She put her briefcase on the floor and stood behind the desk in her office without sitting down. She didn’t want to sit; she just wanted to stand, wanted to escape the unpleasant feeling that Robin Stenberg was about to do something at the police station that wouldn’t turn out well for her.
It was quiet on her floor. The only thing she could hear through the glass wall was a colleague’s steps and the electronic hum of a printer spitting out copies of a report, a court order or some other document that was hundreds of pages long.
A photograph hung on one wall of her office. It showed a family standing on the steps of a large yellow summerhouse. Jana looked at the girl’s eyes, meeting the gaze of herself as a nine-year-old girl, and remembered that day. The sky had been clear and the air dry and warm.
The sunshine had made the house stunningly gorgeous. Her mother always said that you couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place. They had driven from Norrköping to Arkösund, walked down to the cliffs and looked over the sea.
Then it had been time for the family picture. The three of them, together. She’d been wearing a white dress and had stood unmoving on the stone steps in front of the house, her mother and father standing next to her. Her mother had stood still while her father stamped his feet impatiently, his voice stern, as always.
“Hurry up!”
“Just one last adjustment.”
The photographer waved his hand, signaling that they should move closer to each other.
“Now smile, all of you! One, two, three.”
Click.
“I want all of you to smile at the same time. One more time. One, two three.”
Click.
“Are you happy now?” Karl asked.
“No, one more. Now we’re smiling, come on now, little girl, you, too—give me the prettiest smile you can.”
But she didn’t smile.
“Let’s try again!”
“Wait!” her father said, turning toward her. “Why won’t you smile, Jana?”
She didn’t answer.
“If you smile,” he said, “I’ll buy you a toy. Would you like that?”
She looked at the ground, feeling unsure of herself. His voice was suddenly soft, his face so kind.
“What do you say?” he asked.
“What kind of toy?” she asked.
“Whatever you want.”
“Really?”
“If you smile.”
She had a strange feeling in her stomach. She thought that a smile would buy her what she wanted most of all in the whole world—a doll to hold tight at night, so she wouldn’t feel so alone.
A doll, for a smile.
The photographer signaled again.
“Okay!” he yelled. “Now then. One, two, three!”
She smiled.
Click.
“There we go! That’s it.”
She had sat expectantly in the car on the way home. As they approached downtown, she couldn’t keep it in any longer.
“Are we going shopping now?” she asked.
But her father had kept his eyes straight ahead the whole time.
“No,” he said.
“But we were going to buy a doll...”
“I don’t have time right now.”
“You promised,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t promise it would be today.”
She had tried to catch his eye but couldn’t. Then she understood. His voice had been soft.
She had felt a small shudder pass through her body. She had been afraid that he would notice, afraid that he would see that she had learned how to tell when something was wrong. When something was terribly wrong.
Jana moved her gaze from the photograph to the window. Her hands were clenched into fists. That day, as a nine-year-old in the car on the way home from their summerhouse, she had learned not to trust anyone. If she wanted something, she had to rely on herself. There was no one else to do it for her. She couldn’t leave anything to chance.
If she wanted to stop the gnawing sense of uneasiness in her body, she would have to find Robin Stenberg. Tonight.
CHAPTER TEN (#u5f0fac24-39c8-53af-8805-e26c62e75021)
MIA BOLANDER PARKED outside Vittra School and walked through the gate into the schoolyard. She was met by happy cries, running children and flying snowballs.
Three little girls with their hats pulled down over their foreheads came running toward her. Their cheeks were red from the cold and snot was running down the upper lips of all three.
“Who are you?” they said in chorus.
“I’m Mia.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“A man who works here at the school.”
“What’s his name?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a secret.”
“Why is it a secret?”
“Because it is. I need to know how to get to the third grade classroom.”
“The yellow group is over there.”
One of the girls pointed with her mitten toward one of the entrances.
Mia stepped inside and was met by the smell of the damp outerwear that hung lined up on hooks in the hallway. The floor was wet with melted snow. A hand-written sign instructed everyone to take off their shoes in the cloakroom. Mia ignored the sign, walked forward, turned to the right and took the stairs to the second floor.
She walked through the lounge, looking for the right classroom, and finally found it all the way down the hall.
The class was empty except for a man, a few years older than herself, who was standing in front of a whiteboard writing the day’s lesson. She knocked on the door frame and walked in. She noticed the map of Sweden, the calendar and the colorful alphabet on the walls.
“Mia Bolander, police.”
“Wonderful, great that you could come right now,” the man said, introducing himself as Stefan Ohlin. “You had some questions?”
“Yes, about your testimony.”
“Come in. Sit down.”
Stefan pulled out a chair from a round table and gathered up the notes that lay on it.
“Group work,” he said. “The yellow group is learning about the Bronze Age.”
Mia nodded and looked at his reddish hair and beard, freckled face and hands.
“How long can we talk?” she asked.
“Fifteen minutes max. They’re at recess now.”
“I noticed. The playground is a lively place.”
He was silent for a moment.
“So...” both said at the same time.
“I’m sorry. You start,” Stefan said.
“Okay,” said Mia. “You were at Central Station yesterday?”
“Yes. I was waiting for my wife, who was coming on the commuter train from Linköping just before eleven o’clock. She’s also a teacher. At the university there.”
“But you were there early?”
“Yes, I’d met a buddy who just had a kid and left their house around ten in the evening. Because we live a ways out, in Krokek, there wasn’t any point in going home, which takes twenty to twenty-five minutes round trip, so I went downtown and waited.”
“What time was it then?”
“Well, what would it have been, around ten fifteen or ten twenty, maybe.”
Mia pulled out a small notebook, looking for a blank page to write on but didn’t find one. All the pages were full of scribbles. She began taking notes on the brown cardboard back.
“Where were you parked?”
“Right in front of the taxi stand.”
“And while you sat there waiting, what did you see?”
“Yes, that’s the thing. There was a car parked right behind me, and a man sitting in it.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I only got a quick glimpse.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Stefan thought, resting his chin on his hand.
“No, cars have never been my thing. But I would guess that it was a Volvo, an older model. Or a Fiat.”
Mia wrote again.
“Color?”
“Dark. Blue, maybe.”
“Hatchback?”
“No.”
“License plate?”
“The thing with memory is that it only gets worse with age. I used to be so good at remembering things like that, but...maybe a G in the beginning, and a U. Or maybe vice versa.”
“Any digits?”
“It started with a one, but then...no, I don’t really remember. I think there was a four and a seven.”
“Okay, so 147?”
“No, probably 174, I think.”
“Good,” said Mia. “Then we’re only missing the letters. Tell me about the driver...”
“Sure. I left my car to go into the convenience store. I wanted something sweet, I’m addicted to Daim bars, but anyway, when I walked into the shop, I ran into the driver, I mean, the man. He stood in the doorway with a lighter in his hand, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should go in...”
“So he never went in?”
“No, not that I saw. But I bumped into him accidentally and he dropped the lighter.”
Stefan glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“The children will be coming back soon.”
“Okay, can you describe the man for me now?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have hardly noticed him if he hadn’t been acting so nervous, as if he didn’t want to be seen. In any case, he was wearing dark clothes, had his jacket collar pulled up to his nose, was wearing a hat.”
“Did he have a mustache? Beard? Light or dark hair?”
“He had dark hair. It was sticking out on the sides. I thought he looked foreign.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was his hair that made me think that. And his eyes.”
“Which were?”
“Also dark.”
“A dark-haired man, possibly foreign. How old?”
“Oh, hard to say. Around thirty, maybe.”
“Anything else that stood out about him?”
“No...it was mostly that he was acting so nervous...but I hope I’ve been able to help anyway.”
Mia closed her notebook.
“Your observations are very important to us,” she assured him, getting up from the chair to leave.
“Wait!”
Stefan held his hand up in the air, smiling.
“GUV!” he said. “I just remembered the license plate. GUV 174.”
* * *
“We have a description of a man who might have picked up the girl,” Mia said into the phone.
Henrik Levin sat in his office with the phone to his ear. His gaze was fixed on his bulletin board as he listened to Mia tell about her meeting with the teacher at Vittra School.
“You’re saying that we’re looking for a foreign-looking man, with dark clothes and dark hair,” Henrik said. “I know that this isn’t going to sound good, but there are quite a few people who fit that description.”
“I know,” Mia said. “I’ll check with the convenience store and see if they have a security camera, since he poked his head in there. Maybe we’d get a better description.”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“The teacher seemed a bit unsure, but ask Ola to search for license plate number GUV 174 or something similar. It should be a Volvo or Fiat, a dark color.”
Henrik combed his hand through his hair and shifted his weight in his chair, feeling a pang of hope.
“Bye,” Mia said, ending the call with a normal closing. No swearwords, nothing cynical, no sighing. Just “bye.” Henrik was almost shocked. What had happened to her?
“Did you get somewhere?”
Ola Söderström suddenly appeared, leaning against the door frame, smiling. His ears were sticking out from under his striped hat. He always wore a hat, no matter whether he was inside or outside, no matter what the season.
“Good thing you came by. I have some new information for you. First, I want you to look for a car with the license plate GUV 174.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Then, I have the feeling that the dead woman on the train, or rather, her passport, was fake. Björn Ahlmann said she was fifteen years old, but according to her passport, she was eighteen. And the train attendant thought her name was Noi, not Siriporn.”
“But Noi isn’t a given name, it’s a nickname. It’s common in Thailand, especially because first names can be so long.”
“How do you know that?”
“My cousin married a Thai woman. They met in Phuket. Love at first sight. They just clicked.”
Ola snapped his fingers.
“Even if the passport is fake, we shouldn’t underestimate its importance,” he continued. “I’ve sent a request to all of the airlines. I haven’t heard anything yet, but we can still hope that her name is on the passenger list somewhere. It would be good to know where they came from.”
“Both of their names should be on some list,” Henrik said.
“If they flew on the same plane, that is. They may not have.”
Ola scratched with his hand up under his hat.
“It might help that they looked Asian,” he said. “I mean, more people would have noticed her, or them, on the train.”
“Right,” Henrik said. “If you don’t find anything from the license plate, we have one relatively poor description of the man who was driving the car. Check it out, see if you can get anything from that. The capsules we found in the woman’s stomach were supposed to be delivered to someone, after all, and I’m wondering who.”
“I know where to look,” Ola said.
“Great. So get to it.”
* * *
The sound of the doorbell made Jana Berzelius jump up from the chaise lounge. It was late in the afternoon, and she went suspiciously toward the door. She wasn’t expecting any visitors; she never had any.
She padded silently into the hallway and looked through the peephole. She clenched her jaw when she saw the face of her colleague, prosecutor Per Åström.
He rang one more time, then knocked, too.
Slowly, she turned the dead bolt, leaving the chain fastened.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You haven’t been answering your phone.”
“I’m really busy.”
“With what? Why are you avoiding me?”
Per threw up his hands.
“Look,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other in eight months...”
“We see each other multiple times every week at work.”
“You know what I mean. I want to see you again. There. That’s what I came here to say.”
“Great,” Jana said, closing the door and resting her forehead against it, eyes closed.
The doorbell rang again. And again. Short, quick buzzes as if a child were standing outside and wanted to come in.
She hesitated before opening the door again.
His eyes—one blue and one brown, characteristic heterochromia—met hers.
“One more thing,” he said. “Would you have dinner with me tonight?”
“No.”
“Great! Should we go to The Colander? The usual?”
“No.”
“Eight o’clock?”
“No.”
“Perfect! Should I pick you up?”
“No. I want someplace new.”
Per looked confused, pulled at his blond hair.
“Are you sick?” he said.
“Just need a change. Let’s go to Ardor, eight thirty. I’ll meet you there.”
Then she shut the door.
* * *
“I didn’t find any car with license plate GUV 174,” Ola said upon meeting Henrik Levin in the hallway. His arms were filled with file folders.
“As I suspected,” Henrik said with a worried look. “Mia said that the guy seemed a little unsure. Or the plate could have been fake.”
“Possible,” Ola said, thinking for a moment. “It’s too bad, though. This was the best tip we had to go on, right?”
“Yes, and we haven’t gotten any more info from the street,” Henrik said. “Our usual sources have been silent. Either they don’t know anything or they don’t dare say.”
“Typical,” Ola said.
“Yeah, but I still think something about it is strange. A young girl dies with her body packed full of narcotics—someone should have seen or heard something. It’s not usually the case that someone hides their tracks so well. This is no amateur we’re dealing with. They clearly have their eye on importing and distributing. Someone has to be willing to talk.”
“Had an eye, you mean. Obviously something went wrong with the girl on the train.”
“Absolutely, but as I said, they’re calculating for some waste, as in all import/export businesses.”
Ola held out the files.
“I did a little searching of my own and printed out all of the files on men with connections to drug trafficking. I thought someone must know something. Two of the files are thick as Bibles.”
“Great,” Henrik said, taking the files. “If we aren’t going to get anything from the streets, we’ll have to do our own digging.”
* * *
In spite of the growing blister on her skin, Pim continued fighting to get the ropes around her wrists to snap. Even with the chill in the room, sweat was running down her back.
Suddenly she heard footsteps outside the door.
She hurried to the corner of the room, overturning the bucket in the process. She picked it up and huddled with her knees to her chest, taking short, silent breaths, sitting completely still, listening.
The door slid open and a man stepped into the room. He was wearing dark clothes, and his eyes were as dark as night. He put a plate of food on the floor.
Pim looked at the food, then pushed it away.
He stood in front of her, stared, and then in a single movement ripped the tape from her mouth. The pain was immense. She wanted to scream, but she was too scared to make a sound. She didn’t say anything when he violently loosened the ropes around her wrists. She only rubbed one hand carefully against the smarting sore on the other wrist.
She heard him say something before the door closed behind him.
She carefully picked up the plate and looked at the sandwiches and plastic gloves. Only then did she think about the capsules that were still in her stomach.
She returned to the corner, picked up one of the sandwiches and forced herself to chew.
Touching one of the thin gloves, she looked at the bucket and knew what she had to do.
* * *
Henrik Levin turned slowly out of the general parking lot of the Ektorp shopping center. Next to him sat Mia Bolander in an oversize down jacket.
“He didn’t say shit,” she muttered, waving one of Ola Söderström’s files in Henrik’s face before tossing it in the backseat. She balanced the others on her lap.
“I don’t get it. He’s committed hundreds of break-ins and has been caught for possession a thousand times, and now he’s on disability for a slipped disk. And he’s not even thirty? And he’s got five kids. Completely unbelievable. Completely fucking unbelievable.”
“Yeah...” Henrik sighed.
“If they’d placed the camera at a smarter angle at the convenience store, we wouldn’t have to drive around chatting with criminals,” Mia said.
The afternoon traffic moved slowly down Kungsgatan. A bus stopped in front of them and released a single passenger, who immediately jaywalked across both lanes. Henrik considered honking his horn, but changed his mind.
“Who’s next?” he asked instead.
Mia flipped through a new folder, looking at the picture for a moment.
“Stojan Jancic,” she read. “Born in Serbia. Was sentenced for, among other things, a felony narcotics charge after being arrested for selling a mix of Ecstasy and ketamine. Three years in prison.”
She entered the address into the navigation system and closed the folder.
Twelve minutes later, they were there. Henrik made a U-turn across both lanes and parked in a spot reserved for visitors.
A streetlight flickered on when they got out of the car. The light stretched over a gravel field.
Stojan opened the door on the second ring. His hair was sticking out at all angles, his jeans were filthy and his T-shirt had large holes along the neckband.
“Come in,” he said after Henrik had introduced them and their errand.
Mia was quiet and kept her hands in her pockets as they stepped into the apartment and sat at the kitchen table.
Henrik leaned against the kitchen counter and took a notebook from his pocket. He squinted out the gray-streaked window that faced the parking lot.
“Your tattoo...” he said. “Does it mean something?”
“No, well, yes, well, fuck. I don’t know,” Stojan said.
He sat across from Mia and rubbed his hand across his neck, over the large cross and the black letters above it that spelled “Respect.”
“I mean, is it a sort of identification?”
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Emelie Schepp
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Swedish public prosecutor Jana Berzelius is back in the twisted second instalment of Emelie Schepp’s award-winning series, perfect for fans of Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson.When a girl overdoses smuggling drugs across the Swedish border, the trail points to the one man Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy.Notorious criminal Danillo Pena knows the truth about Jana’s old identity – and, as one of Sweden’s best-respected public prosecutors, Jana can’t risk that information becoming public knowledge. With Danillo closing in, Jana knows she must hunt her nemesis down…and kill him, before he can reveal her secrets.But, as she prepares for the fight of her life, Jana discovers an even more explosive betrayal—one that will take her deep into a deadly network of crime.