Читать книгу: «The Silenced», страница 6
Four
“The girls are watching television. I was thinking of going for a run round the Altorp track. I’ll be gone an hour at the most. Then I thought we could have a nice, cozy evening together.”
Stenberg’s wife came into his study with a cup of coffee in her hand. She put it down at a safe distance from the keyboard, leaned over, and kissed him on the head.
“You look tired.” She ran her hand through his hair, forcing him to look up from the screen. “Is it anything in particular? Anything you want to talk about?”
“No,” Stenberg muttered. “Just a lot going on.”
“Is the prosecutor general causing trouble again?”
He nodded absentmindedly and looked at the screen again.
“The prime minister trusts you, Jesper, now more than ever. The fact is that the whole party trusts you, so you can’t let little things like that get in your way. We need a modernized justice system; we’ve needed one for ages. Otherwise people will gradually lose faith in the system. The contract between citizens and the state, all the things we discussed ad infinitum at law school. You already had a vision back then, a conviction that made people take notice of you. It made me notice you.”
“I know, darling. But trying to reform state institutions is a constant uphill struggle: various government and other entities everywhere having their say on things, with everyone terrified of losing influence.”
“What about Wallin? Can’t you let him do some of the heavy lifting?”
Stenberg felt his jaw tighten. Even here at home in his study, his inner sanctum, Wallin cast his baleful shadow.
Karolina raised her eyebrows. “Is it Wallin who’s the problem?”
Damn. She knew him far too well. Noticed the slightest change in his expression. She could even hear things he didn’t say. Keeping his affair with Sophie Thorning secret all those years had taken all his willpower and concentration. Yet he knew he probably wouldn’t have been able to lie if Karolina had confronted him, if she’d asked straight out if he was being unfaithful and looked at him the way she was right now. Fortunately she never had.
He filled his lungs, then slowly breathed out through his mouth.
“What’s this all about?” Her tone of voice was perfect, a fitting combination of concern and empathy. Karolina would have been a brilliant lawyer, but instead she had put his career ahead of her own. Taken on the role of supportive wife and mother to his children. Her grandfather had been foreign minister; her father, Karl-Erik, was a member of the party’s inner circle. She had opened doors for him that he could never even have dreamed of. And how had he thanked her? With betrayal, lies, and infidelity.
For a couple of moments the feeling he had had last winter was back, the conviction that he ought to tell her everything. Beg for her forgiveness. But he couldn’t ask that of her. It wasn’t Karolina’s responsibility to lighten his burden.
“Oscar Wallin …” He took a sip of his coffee to make what he was thinking of saying sound less loaded. “He’s very ambitious. You saw him with John Thorning. Wallin is forming new alliances, and, to be honest, I’ve started to have doubts about his loyalty.”
Karolina leaned against the edge of the desk.
“Wallin couldn’t be national police chief. We agreed on that. You, me, and Daddy. Appointing Eva Swensk gained you support within the party, support you’re going to need in the future. We’re going to need …”
She paused and stroked his hair again. He liked her hands, even though she herself didn’t. Those long, strong fingers. The hands of a person who could be practically anything she wanted to be.
“Right now it’s more important than ever to think strategically. You have to see things in a longer perspective, not just focus on the present. If you’re convinced that the goal is the right one, you mustn’t hesitate to make unpalatable decisions. Keep your eye on the prize.”
He shut his eyes. He’d seen this trick before and was starting to get a bit tired of it. Karolina’s lips were moving, but the voice coming out of her mouth belonged to someone else.
“If we win the election, the prime minister will probably step down at the next party conference. Go out at the top. And if we lose …”
She pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.
“If we lose, he’ll have to accept the consequences and resign at once. Either way, the party will be looking for a younger, more energetic successor. Someone whom can reform politics the way he’s reforming the justice system.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Stenberg said, but more and more often these days he wasn’t sure whom he was replying to: Karolina, or her father.
* * *
Julia Gabrielsson held up the little plastic bag of marijuana she’d found on Eskil Svensson’s coffee table. Waved it slowly in front of his pallid face.
“So, to sum up: a mysterious man calling himself Frank contacted you early in February and paid you to take messages to and from Sarac inside the home, and then a bit more for helping Sarac escape. But that’s as much as you know.”
Eskil was sitting on the sofa between her and Amante, shaking his head.
“And you don’t know where this Frank came from or what he wanted with Sarac?”
“Like I said, he showed up in the pub one evening and started buying me drinks. Then he asked for a favor. It didn’t sound too difficult and the money was good. Then it sort of grew …” He pulled a pained expression and seemed to be avoiding looking at the bag of marijuana between Julia’s fingers.
“And you started to acquire a taste for the money. I get that.” She put the bag down on the table in front of Eskil. “This is quite a stash. I’d guess about a year in prison, wouldn’t you say, Amante?”
“Maybe two,” he said somberly as he stared at Eskil. “Possession with intent to supply—that’s serious stuff.”
Julia was having trouble keeping a straight face. Amante was a fast learner.
Eskil turned even paler. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
“Come off it. That’s my weed. I’m not some fucking dealer. Look, I’ve told you all I know. The only thing I did was get the master key copied. Then we decided what time was best if you wanted to escape without being spotted. Sarac got out and hid in the trunk of my car during the shift change. Then I let him out at the railway station and gave him a train ticket, a travel card for Stockholm, and a bit of cash. That’s all.”
“And then you got caught,” Amante said.
“No, for fuck’s sake! Haven’t you been listening?” Eskil threw his arms out. “They accused me of stealing drugs.”
“The sleeping pills and tranquilizers that you gave Sarac.”
“That’s right. I understand the tranquilizers. I mean, the guy wasn’t well. But he already had a bag full of sleeping pills, so I can’t see why he wanted two more. But he said it was important—that he needed to have exactly twenty-five before he left. Otherwise he wasn’t going anywhere.”
“So it was the pills that got you the sack?” Julia said.
“Shit, you two are unbelievable,” Eskil groaned. “Aren’t there any entrance requirements for joining the police? I’ve already told you what happened. No one fired me. They couldn’t prove anything, so I was given six months’ wages in return for handing in my resignation. I didn’t want to work there anyway. You’ve seen what it’s like there. It’s a fascist setup. The staff have to give urine samples, all kinds of crap like that …”
“This mysterious Frank,” Julia said. “Tell us about him again.”
Eskil let out a theatrical sigh.
“Like I’ve already said a thousand times: he and Sarac had been on that island together last winter. Where a load of people got killed. That’s why he wanted to talk to Sarac.”
“And you don’t remember anything else about Frank apart from the fact that he might have had a slight accent, paid well, and acted like a cop?”
“No. I mean, it’s several months ago now. Actually, he did have a bit of a limp, even though he looked like he was in good shape.”
Julia started waving the bag of weed again. “What do you think about getting a sniffer dog out here?” she said to Amante. “Turn this apartment upside down. Maybe ask the neighbors if they’ve noticed drug dealing going on here.”
“Do you want me to call right away?”
“Probably just as well. Eskil here isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. I doubt we’re going to get anything else useful out of him.”
She turned toward Eskil and could almost see the cogs turning inside his head. Amante slowly got to his feet and pulled out his cell phone.
“Wait,” Eskil said. “Wait, for fuck’s sake! I’ve got something you might want to see.”
He started to dig about in the pockets of his dressing gown. He fished out a smartphone with a cracked screen and started to look through it.
“Here,” he said eagerly, holding the phone out to Julia. “Sarac made me take a picture.”
The screen showed a grainy photograph of a man with sharp features. He was half facing away and seemed unaware that he was being photographed.
“That’s Frank. See what I mean about him looking like a cop?”
Five
The rain started falling just as they passed the sports ground on the edge of the village. Tiny drops to start with, barely enough for Julia to switch the windshield wipers on. But gradually the rain got harder, wiping out the distinction between the summer’s evening and the forest spreading out on either side of the road.
“What do we do now?” Amante said. “Call Pärson and tell him that Sarac isn’t in the home after all? That we’ve got a picture of the man who lured him out and probably killed him?”
Julia shook her head.
“It’s too soon to talk to Pärson. This is the Security Police’s case now, and you heard me promise to let go of it completely. And seeing as it was Pärson who tried to convince us that Sarac was in that home, I’m not entirely sure where he stands. But regardless of who we go to with all this, it would be better to wait until we’ve got something more definite than a grainy digital photograph and a first name.”
“So what are you thinking, then?”
“I don’t know yet. I need some time to think.”
Besides, I’m still not entirely sure where you stand either, she thought. You seem a bit too eager to press on with this case.
“Sure,” Amante said. “We’ve got at least a four-hour drive home, so take as much time as you need.” He started fiddling with the car radio and managed to find three different commercials before he ended up with a soppy Whitney Houston ballad.
They were approaching a junction beside an old house. From a distance it looked almost abandoned, but as they drove past, Julia could see the ghostly glow of a television in one of the windows.
“Just think, people choose to live out here,” she said, mostly to give her brain something else to think about for a few minutes. “So far away from absolutely everything.”
“A surprising number of people are prepared to die for the chance to do that,” Amante muttered.
“What did you say?”
He looked up. Didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d spoken out loud.
“Just that a surprising number of people are prepared to risk their lives to get here. Hundreds of thousands of them.”
Julia saw an opening and decided to make the most of it.
“Lampedusa must be a nightmare. Isn’t it? I can understand if you’d rather not talk about it.”
“At its worst, there were two boats arriving each week.” Amante’s voice was lower all of a sudden, more monotonous. “Well, maybe not boats, exactly. Some of them were little more than a small hull and an engine. The bigger ships were even worse. No food, no toilets, hardly any drinking water. Cargo holds so packed that the air sometimes ran out down there. Did you know …”
The words seemed to catch in his throat.
“Did you know that dead people can stay on their feet if they’re packed together tightly enough? Rigor mortis turns them into statues. Men, women, children, whole families. If you listen carefully you can almost hear them still calling for help.”
He turned away. The radio went on playing the slushy song.
“Three thousand dead each year, but the EU is reducing the funding. They’d rather spend billions of euros rescuing banks than spend a few million saving people who happen to have the wrong color skin.”
“And you said that out loud to someone who didn’t like it?”
He smiled that little smile again. “More times than I should have. A lot more.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Not a damn thing. The boats kept coming, people kept dying.”
“And you were transferred?”
“You could put it like that.”
Something in his voice told her the conversation was over, and she resisted the temptation to ask any more questions. At least for the time being.
They passed a road sign. Just under three hundred kilometers until they were home. Sooner or later she would have to make her mind up. It would be difficult to carry on with this case on her own. Besides, she was starting to appreciate Amante’s company, albeit slightly reluctantly. The smile that was so hard to read. The unconventional way he went about tackling problems. The way he quickly adapted to different situations. But, perhaps most of all, the way he talked about the victims, the dead.
“My dad was in the police,” she said. “My grandfather too. They didn’t really talk that much about police work at home. Mom didn’t like it. She probably didn’t want me to hear their stories. But I still realized—worked out that what they did was something different, something you couldn’t really understand if you hadn’t experienced it yourself. That was probably what made me want to become a police officer. To start with, I thought it was all about adrenaline. About putting yourself in danger. It took me several years to realize that it was actually about something else entirely. About seeing people when they’re at their very worst. Drunk, distraught, furious, humiliated, beaten up, raped, or dead. About seeing that and trying to do something about it. About failing more often than succeeding, but still not giving up.”
She fell silent, thinking about Sarac’s mutilated body. And his distorted grimace.
Amante said nothing. But she was sure he was listening carefully—that he understood exactly what she meant. The light of the car’s headlights reflected off a pair of eyes at the side of the road. She noticed a fleeting movement and switched her foot from the accelerator to the brake, but the animal was gone. A cat, or maybe a fox?
“You said you didn’t know all the details about Skarpö,” she said. “There were two other people who were found out there with Sarac. Right beside him, to be more accurate.”
Amante turned to look at her. “Who were they?”
“The first one was a woman, Natalie Aden. She worked as Sarac’s personal assistant after his car accident. Her intervention saved Sarac’s life. We should at least talk to her. Show her Frank’s picture and see if she recognizes him. But I think we ought to start with the second person. If anyone can identify Frank, it’s probably him.”
“Who are we talking about?”
“Atif Kassab. Seven years ago he was a notorious member of the Stockholm underworld. A nasty bastard. He retired and left the country with his mother. Didn’t show up again until last winter, at his brother’s funeral. Looks like someone managed to persuade him to go back to work.” She dimmed the lights as a car came toward them. “Kassab blew Superintendent Peter Molnar’s brains out on Skarpö, along with another three people, and took a couple of bullets himself. It looked like he wasn’t going to make it for a while, but thanks to Natalie Aden’s actions he survived as well.”
Unfortunately, she added to herself.
“Kassab said nothing when he was questioned, and kept quiet all the way through his trial: never said a word about why he was on the island or who had hired his services. He was given a life sentence—didn’t even bother to appeal against it.”
“Strange.”
Julia nodded. “Very. But there are plenty of things about Skarpö that are strange. Atif Kassab is being held in one of the ‘phoenix’ high-security units south of the city. It’s a long shot, but I suggest we go and see him as soon as possible.”
“So we’re going to ask a cop killer for his help?”
“Yes, to track down another one,” Julia said. “What do you think?”
Amante didn’t answer, but from the corner of her eye Julia caught another glimpse of that cryptic smile.
Six
Phoenix. The bird that catches fire, dies in the flames, and is then reborn out of its own ashes with shimmering new plumage.
The name couldn’t be more inappropriate. No one in the prison was transformed into a better version of himself and emerging as a new, well-adapted individual with sparkling new feathers, ready to be embraced by society. The majority would end up back behind bars within a couple of years, for crimes just as bad as the first time around.
Maybe that was the cycle of repetition that the name hinted at? A sort of ironic wink: We all know how this is going to turn out, don’t we?
Atif Kassab pushed his breakfast tray aside and laid three cards facedown on the table in front of him. He noticed himself looking up at the camera in the ceiling above him. One of several hundred. The phoenix units were built to house the most dangerous prisoners in the country, those deemed most likely to try to escape. No doors or gates led to the outside world; the only way out was through an underground tunnel that led to another unit. A prison inside a prison.
He looked at the men at the other tables in the dayroom. Fifteen of them in total, an interesting mix of murderers, drug dealers, and bank robbers. They weren’t all particularly dangerous or likely to abscond. The state had overestimated the capacity needed in the phoenix units and had had to dilute their occupants with ordinary criminals to keep the smart new facilities from sitting half-empty.
But a number of the men had no boundaries at all. In the wrong situation they could be lethal, both to themselves and those around them. The big, square guy at the table in the middle, the wall-eyed one called Rosco, was the current unofficial boss of the unit. Rosco had come over and introduced himself in the first few days. Shook hands gangster-style, spouted a load of names of people Atif didn’t know and gangs he’d never heard of. In here he was a cop killer, someone viewed with respect. But the conversation was about more than mere pleasantries. Rosco was evaluating him, trying to work out if he was a threat, if he was going to upset the balance of power.
Atif had no interest at all in prison politics. He kept himself to himself, read books, and worked out in the small gym. Rubber straps and Pilates balls. No weights, nothing that could, according to Prison Service regulations, turn already dangerous criminals into mountains of muscle. But the exercise on offer was enough for his body to recuperate gradually from its injuries. The doctors had removed four meters of gut, drained almost a liter of blood from his torso, and patched up a number of less serious injuries. He had survived, and he knew whom he had to thank for that. He hoped he would be able to convey his thanks in person one day.
Atif stared blankly at the cards in front of him, then closed his eyes. He tried to conjure up an image of his house back home in Iraq. The scent of the almond tree in the back garden. The starry sky up above. But in spite of the fact that he regularly tried to keep the memory alive, it was getting hazier, losing its color, like the old pictures in his mother’s well-thumbed photo albums. Pale imitations of what had once been. Something that was now lost. He wondered how she was. If she was still in the nursing home in Najaf, or if his aunt had moved her farther south, away from the fighting in the north. He’d written a couple of times, hoping to hear if the money was arriving each month. But he hadn’t yet received a reply.
Atif turned the first card over. The seven of hearts. Tindra had turned seven three weeks ago. He’d sent her a card. He came close to writing that he missed her, that he’d do anything to hear her voice, no matter how briefly. But he didn’t want her to come here. To have to go through all the security checks just so they could sit on opposite sides of a table. He still wouldn’t be able to hold her.
Besides, her mother would never let her visit him. Cassandra needed to keep him as far away from her as possible, a decision he couldn’t blame her for. He had wounded and killed people last winter, people who had families, friends, and business acquaintances outside the prison walls. People who were waiting for a chance to get their revenge. But as long as Abu Hamsa was protecting Cassandra and Tindra, no one would dare do anything. Which was rather ironic, to put it mildly, given that the old man was his worst enemy. Abu Hamsa had manipulated him, commissioned him to track down a ghost when it was actually the old man himself who had had Adnan killed, leaving Tindra without a father.
Abu Hamsa had sent him a message via Cassandra. Don’t tell the police anything, serve your sentence, follow my instructions. She hadn’t needed to say more than that. Didn’t have to utter the words that were hanging in the air.
Or else …
So Atif had played along. He followed Abu Hamsa’s instructions obediently, played patience and waited to be dealt the right cards. Something that changed the field of play.
Atif moved his hand to the card next to the seven of hearts. But before he could turn it over, the door of the dayroom opened and the head screw, Blom, walked in. He looked like a cover boy from Men’s Health. High cheekbones, spray tan, and short, tinted hair in a gentle wave across his forehead. Right behind him, between another two gym-pumped screws, Atif could just make out a birdlike little man in prison clothes that were too big for him.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” the head screw said, as always slightly louder than necessary. “This is our latest resident. Perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself, Gilsén?”
Blom stepped aside. The little man remained where he was between the two guards, clutching the paper bag he was holding in his hands. The smell of his fear managed to overpower Blom’s body lotion.
The senior guard waited another few seconds. Exchanged a malicious glance with his colleagues.
“Well, I daresay you’ll all have time to chew the fat later on. Follow me, Gilsén, and we’ll get you installed in your suite. It’s probably not quite up to the standard you’re used to.”
The guards lumbered out of the dayroom with Gilsén between them. Atif watched the men over at Rosco’s table lean closer to each other, covering their mouths so that the cameras and microphones wouldn’t pick up what they were saying.
A few minutes later the guards returned without Gilsén. Atif watched them from the corner of his eye. Waited.
The head screw glanced quickly at Rosco. The square man looked up and for a moment seemed to meet Blom’s gaze. Then the guards left the dayroom.
Atif turned the next card over. Ace of spades.
He held it in his hand for a few seconds. Imagined he could almost hear Abu Hamsa’s hoarse voice.
Follow my instructions.
Or else …
A heavily built, tattooed blond thug—Atif had never bothered to remember his name—and a bearded Turk of much the same caliber stood up from Rosco’s table. They slipped off toward the cells without any hurry. As they passed Atif, one of the men nodded toward him. Atif didn’t return the greeting. Instead he turned the third card over.
A joker. He must have forgotten to remove them before he started to play solitaire. He picked it up and carefully folded it until it formed a solid little rectangle that he put in his top pocket. Then he got slowly to his feet and followed the two men.
* * *
If you take an ordinary pencil, sharpen it properly, and strengthen the shaft by wrapping tape around it fifty times, you’ll have made a primitive but functional weapon. A single stab won’t be fatal—at least, not if you’re inexperienced, are in too much of a rush, and aim for the heart and snap the pencil against a rib. Someone with more experience would aim at the softer parts of the body, the sides of the torso or the throat. Then make several shallow jabs and hope to hit an artery or an organ full of blood, like the liver or kidneys.
But if you’re really serious, you work in pairs. Attack the torso and throat at the same time. And stab so many times that the victim is eventually left swimming in his own blood.
The two men who opened the unlocked door to Joachim Gilsén’s cell were both experienced and serious.
“Hello, Gilsén, we’d like a word with you,” the tattooed man said, stepping aside to let his associate in.
The little man leaped up from his bed. Saw the improvised weapons in the man’s fists.
“Guys, w-we …” He held his hands up in front of him, but the two men shepherded him toward the far corner of the cell.
“Hang on a m-minute. We can talk about this. I’ve got money, I can get …”
The tattooed man put his hand on Gilsén’s chest. Pushed him slowly, almost gently, back against the wall.
“H-Help! Help me, someone!”
The bearded man grabbed hold of Gilsén’s jaw and forced his chin up until the man’s cries became a gurgle. He raised the weapon toward his exposed throat.
“Tell us about the money …”
Atif kept his arm almost completely outstretched, using the force in his hip and the speed from the two rapid steps that carried him into the cell. He hit the bearded man in the back of the neck, right where the nerves, muscles, and spine meet. A silent, brutal blow that reverberated all the way from his clenched fist to his teeth. The bearded man collapsed like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer.
The tattooed man turned around with a look of astonishment as Atif kicked him in the crotch. He fell to his knees and dropped his weapon as his hands went automatically to his crown jewels. Atif grabbed hold of his bull neck and kneed him in the face. He let the inert body fall to the floor and took a couple of steps back.
“Are you … okay?”
Gilsén didn’t answer; he just stood there, glued to the wall with his eyes wide open. Atif felt the adrenaline burning in his throat and struggled to subdue the nausea it brought with it.
“Are you okay?” he repeated, gently touching the little man’s arm.
Gilsén took a gasping breath that sounded almost like a sob.
“They, they tried …” He stared at the two men on the floor and the weapons lying by his feet. One of the men groaned feebly and Gilsén hurried toward the bed in horror. He slumped down onto it, wrapped his arms round his knees, and began to rock back and forth.
In the distance an alarm sounded.
“W-Why?” Gilsén stammered a few seconds later. “Why did you help me?”
Atif straightened up. “Let’s just say that someone outside is concerned about your welfare.”
“Abu Hamsa. The deal …”
Atif waited for the rest, but before Gilsén could go on, the cell door was yanked open. Blom rushed in, followed by three more guards with drawn batons.
“Hands in the air, Kassab!” the head guard shouted. In one hand he was holding a can of pepper spray the size of a small fire extinguisher. Atif obeyed and had already laced his fingers together behind his head when Blom pressed the button.
Atif’s eyes caught fire and his airways shrank to the size of straws. The pain made him double over. Bloody hell, an eight, verging on a nine. One of the guards struck him on the thigh with his baton as hard as he could. Gym muscles, more air than real strength, and the blow was nowhere near as painful as the spray in his eyes. But Atif played along, groaning out loud and staggering. Better that than have the idiot continue to hit him and maybe take aim at something more sensitive than his thigh muscles.
The guards threw themselves at him, tugging at his arms. They tried to kick his legs out from under him, in line with the self-defense manual. Atif put up no resistance, letting them force him down against the concrete floor. He twisted his head to one side and through a cloud of tears saw Gilsén still rocking back and forth on the bed.
A joker, Atif thought as the guards put cuffs on him. A card that can mean absolutely anything.
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