by Kepler, Lars
‘Listen, I work for the Security Police as an operational superintendent, and I need to interview this girl in a place of safety … It’s possible that she witnessed a double murder, and it’s highly likely that the murderer will come after her … Trust me, you don’t want us in this hospital any longer than necessary. We’ll leave as soon as you’re done. She’s had an operation for a heart defect, Fallot’s Tetralogy … I know you’ve done an ECG, but I need to know if she’s showing any signs of serious trauma.’
‘I understand,’ the doctor says. Her eyes are dark with stress.
While the doctor is talking to Pellerina, Saga leaves the room, checks the corridor and looks over towards the entrance, scrutinising the people waiting beyond the glass screen in the reception area.
Her immediate evaluation was that the churchwarden had been dead for two weeks, but the dates on the food in the fridge suggest that he was buried in the grave more than four months ago.
The Beaver is the accomplice Jurek picked. She may have toyed with the idea before, but she always considered it impossible.
Now she knows Joona was right all along.
The Beaver stayed in the chapel, keeping an eye on the grave, keeping the churchwarden alive.
Four months in a grave, she thinks.
And now Jurek has taken her dad.
She tries calling him again, but Lars-Erik’s phone is still switched off.
Saga puts out an alert for her dad’s car, then calls the Security Police and asks one of the technical experts to track his mobile.
While she’s talking she sees a thin man walk through the door. She breaks off the call and cautiously draws her pistol. When she’s sure it isn’t Jurek she slips it back in its holster.
She glances the other way along the corridor, then takes out her phone again and calls Carlos Eliasson’s direct line at the National Operational Unit.
‘Jurek Walter’s back,’ she says bluntly.
‘I’ve heard what happened at your sister’s school.’
‘She needs a secure apartment at once,’ Saga says, looking over towards the entrance again.
‘We can’t provide that, that’s not how it works, the personal security unit need to conduct an evaluation. Being worried isn’t enough, you know that, the same rules apply for everyone.’
‘Then I’m taking a leave of absence, I need to find somewhere to hide.’
‘Saga, you’re starting to sound like a certain superintendent with a Finnish—’
‘Valeria,’ she interrupts, raising her voice. ‘Has she got protection? Tell me she’s got protection!’
‘There’s no tangible threat,’ Carlos says patiently.
‘She has to have protection! This is your damn responsibility … You know what? Just shut up, Jurek’s back, that’s what’s happening.’
‘Saga, he’s dead. You killed him, then you found his—’
‘Just make sure Valeria gets protection,’ Saga interrupts, then ends the call.
She looks around the corridor again as thoughts whirl through her head. Joona was right all along, and she and Nathan Pollock have wasted valuable time on a distraction. Joona took the threat seriously, he had his escape route prepared, and managed to save both himself and his daughter.
The police officer guarding the door looks at her with bemusement as she walks back into the treatment room.
The doctor shakes Pellerina’s hand, then comes over to Saga.
‘She’s a lovely girl, really smart.’
‘She is, isn’t she?’ Saga says with a terrible weight in her chest.
‘There are no problems with her heart,’ the doctor goes on. ‘But Pellerina has had a terrible fright. I don’t think she saw the violence, she seems to have had her eyes shut the whole time … It’s a bit hard to tell, but she’s not showing any signs of dissociation or disorientation, and she has no psychomotor problems.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’d prefer her to see a psychologist, because she’s going to need to talk about what’s happened.’
‘Of course.’
‘If she starts to get anxious or has trouble sleeping, you’ll have to come back. Sometimes it—’
‘Good,’ Saga interrupts, and goes over to Pellerina.
She quickly wraps the yellow blanket round her sister and picks her up, walks past the doctor into the corridor, and orders the police officer to walk with them to the car.
She puts Pellerina in the back seat, fastens her seat belt, then thanks the policeman.
Saga drives away from the hospital, thinking that they should head north, to some place that has no connections to her. She’ll find some isolated summer cottage, break in and hide out there with her sister. They can stay there while the police do their job. But first she needs to get a new phone so she can’t be traced. Saga pulls over to the kerb at Skanstull and is searching online for shops that sell used mobiles when Carlos calls.
‘Saga,’ he says in an unsteady voice. ‘I sent one of our cars that was in the area to check on Valeria and … I don’t know how to say this, but she’s gone, she’s been taken … We found a man’s remains in a burned-out car, there’s blood everywhere, the greenhouses are wrecked …’
‘Have you set up roadblocks?’ she asks, almost in a whisper.
‘It’s too late for that, this all happened several days ago … we should have handled this differently.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve organised a safe apartment for your half-sister,’ Carlos says in conclusion.
45
Valeria twists sideways a little to relieve the pressure on the sores on her heels and injured shoulders.
As before, the low lid of the box stops her moving too much.
She has to sink down onto her back again.
It’s totally dark, and she’s long since lost all perception of time.
The pain in her thigh from where she was bitten was horribly intense at first.
She’s wet herself twice, but that’s almost dried now.
She doesn’t think about hunger, but she’s extremely thirsty, her mouth is completely dry.
Occasionally she sleeps, an hour or so, maybe less. There’s no way of knowing. Once she heard a thudding sound and a woman screaming in the distance.
It’s as cold as a fridge, maybe colder. She can keep her fingers warm, but her toes have gone numb.
Behind the sweet smell of the wooden box, she can detect the stale odour of soil.
She stopped calling for help fairly early on, when she realised it was Jurek Walter who had done this, just as Joona had predicted.
She’s been buried alive.
This is Jurek’s doing, and the stocky man who came to her greenhouse is his new accomplice.
He was horrifically strong and aggressive.
She had already lost her wellington boots when he grabbed her by one ankle and pulled her into the forest. Her raincoat slid up and dragged behind her like a cape. When it got caught on a branch he stopped and tore it off her.
He threw her in the boot of a car and drove off along a bumpy track.
Valeria tried to open the boot with her wounded hands, but lost her balance when the car lurched badly.
She was bleeding from the bite on her thigh.
She tried again, but it was impossible.
Suddenly she remembered what Joona said about situations like this. Sometimes he would tell her about the training he’d given his daughter up in Nattavaara.
The jack, she thinks.
There’s almost always a jack in the boot of a car.
Valeria felt across the floor of the boot in the darkness, found the catches for the hatch, loosened them, then managed to move sideways and open the panel. She felt around the edge of the spare tyre, fumbling across a wrench and a warning triangle before she found a nylon bag containing the jack.
She positioned it as close to the lock as she could, then turned the screw with her fingers until it reached the lid of the boot, then fixed the
handle in place.
The car lurched and she slumped onto one shoulder, but managed to hold the jack in place and started to turn it.
The boot was so cramped that she scraped her knuckles with each turn.
The metal started to squeak as the lid was forced upward, but then the car came to an abrupt halt.
She went on turning the handle as fast as she could, but gave up when the engine was switched off and the driver’s door opened.
She fumbled for a weapon, got hold of the wrench just as the boot-lid opened, and lashed out. But he was prepared, grabbed the wrench, threw it away, yanked her hair back and pressed an ice-cold rag to her mouth and nose.
When she came round she was in this darkness. She’s called for help, tapped out SOS, searched for anything she could use to open the box, she’s pushed her hands and knees up and to the sides with all her strength, but the most she’s heard is a faint creak in the wood.
She warms her fingers under her thighs and dozes off, but the pain from the sores in her heels wakes her up and she tries to move her feet.
Suddenly she hears a thudding sound above her, then the heavy dragging. Her heart starts to beat faster when she hears voices. She can’t make out the words, but it’s a man and woman arguing.
Valeria thinks she’s been found and starts calling for help when there’s a sudden bang as someone stamps on the box.
‘For fuck’s sake, she needs water, otherwise she’ll die today, maybe tomorrow,’ the man says.
‘It’s dangerous, though,’ the woman says in an agitated voice. ‘It’s far too—’
‘We can do it,’ the man interrupts.
‘I’ll hit her if she tries to get out,’ the woman says. ‘I’ll split her head open!’
The sudden light burns Valeria’s eyes when the box opens. She squints and sees a man and a woman standing above her.
Valeria is lying beneath the floor of a room with bullfighting posters on the walls.
A hole has been sawn through the tiles, insulation and floorboards.
The man is pointing a hunting rifle at Valeria and the woman is holding an axe. They look perfectly ordinary, like neighbours, or the sort of people you’d see in the supermarket. The man has a blond moustache and anxious eyes, the woman’s hair is pulled up into a ponytail and she’s wearing pink-framed glasses.
‘Please, help me,’ Valeria gasps, putting one hand on the edge of the box.
‘Stay there!’ the man commands.
The coffin is lying on the ground in the sealed crawl-space beneath the house. Valeria is weak, but tries to sit up. The man hits her in the face with the butt of the rifle. Her head lurches back, but she keeps hold of the edge of the box.
‘Stay where you are, you bitch!’ the man roars. ‘I’ll shoot you, OK! I’ll shoot!’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she sobs.
‘Lie down!’
Warm blood is trickling down her cheek. Valeria reaches up with one hand and grabs hold of the floor. The woman brings the axe down, but Valeria has already lost her grip when the blade cuts deep into the floorboard.
The man shoves her in the chest with the barrel of the rifle and she falls back into the coffin, hitting her head on the bottom.
She had time to see the thick straps in the ground next to the coffin. They’re the same sort as the ones she uses in her nursery, and she knows the winches have a tensile strength of ten tons.
‘Give her the water,’ the woman says in a tight voice.
Valeria is gasping for breath, she knows she needs to establish contact with them, she mustn’t get hysterical.
‘Please, I don’t understand—’
‘Shut up!’
A teenage girl with a length of wood in one hand approaches the coffin with a look of terror in her eyes. She tosses a plastic bottle of water into the coffin, then pushes the lid shut again with her foot.
46
Pellerina was immediately placed in the police protection programme, with the highest level of security the state could offer.
Saga bought two used phones with pay-as-you-go accounts, and added the other number to each phone so that she and Pellerina could talk to each other.
She made sure she wasn’t being followed, and drove around Stora Essingen before heading to Kungsholmen and driving into the car park beneath Rådhusparken, where she parked next to a black van with blacked-out windows.
The lenses of all the security cameras had already been covered over.
Saga got out of the car, walked round and shook hands with the tall, blonde bodyguard.
‘I’m Sabrina,’ she said.
‘The threat level is extremely high,’ Saga said. ‘Don’t trust anyone, and don’t reveal the address to anyone, no matter who they are.’
Saga fetched Pellerina, said a quick goodbye and promised to come and see her as soon as she possibly could, then opened the door of the van and strapped her sister in.
‘I want my own phone,’ Pellerina said when Saga gave her the used one.
‘You’ll get it when I come and see you, it’s broken and I need to get it mended,’ Saga lied.
Pellerina looked at her helplessly through her thick glasses and started to cry.
‘I was really careful with it.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Saga says, wiping the tears from her sister’s cheeks.
Because Saga has been involved in personal security operations before, she knows that the apartment allocated to Pellerina is on P O Hallmans gata 17, and has an advanced security system, with reinforced doors and bulletproof windows.
Saga gets back in Nathan’s car and watches as the van backs out and disappears through the folding doors and up the ramp.
As she was driving from Högmarsö to Södermalm Hospital she made three calls to the IT and telecoms department of the Security Police. They’re trying to trace her dad’s mobile, but it can’t be activated remotely and it isn’t giving off any kind of signal. The last time he used it was when he spoke to Pellerina in her painting class, and at that point his signal was picked up by a base station in Kista.
She knows they’re trying to get information from other masts to try and triangulate the signal and identify his location at the time of the call more precisely.
Saga knows there’s no point, but she keeps trying to call her dad. The endless ringing without any answer is like a dark memory of the night her mum died.
The voicemail clicks in and she ends the calls before she hears her dad’s formal message and calls Nathan Pollock instead.
He’s still out on Högmarsö with the forensics team. The sharp wind distorts his voice.
‘How’s Pellerina?’ he asks.
‘She’s going to be OK, she’s in a secure location now,’ Saga replies, swallowing the lump in her throat.
‘Good.’
‘She was lucky.’
‘I know, it’s incredible,’ Nathan says.
‘But Jurek’s got my dad,’ she whispers.
‘Let’s hope that isn’t the case,’ Nathan says.
‘I know he’s taken Dad and Valeria.’
She takes a deep breath, clears her throat, and presses one hand against her eyes. Tears are burning behind her eyelids.
‘Sorry,’ she says quietly. ‘This is all so hard to accept, even though I was warned.’
‘We’re going to solve this,’ Nathan says. ‘We need to focus on—’
‘I have to look for my dad,’ she interrupts. ‘That’s my duty, it’s all I can think about, he’s probably still alive, and I have to find him.’
‘We will, I promise,’ Nathan says. ‘We’ve got plenty of people out here, we’ve already searched every inch of the churchwarden’s home and the garage, but there’s nothing that can be linked to Jurek or the Beaver … Erland Lind didn’t have a computer, but we found his phone under the bed.’
‘Maybe that can give us something,’ Saga whispers.
‘The dogs have been right through the forest, but there don’t seem
to be any more graves out here.’
There’s a lot of disruption on the line and she hears shouting in the background.
Saga leans back against the headrest and runs her fingers over the rough leather of the steering wheel.
‘I’d be happy to come back out, if that would be useful?’ she asks. ‘We need to talk to Carlos about whether to issue a nationwide alert or—’
‘Hang on a moment,’ Nathan interrupts.
Saga sits with the phone to her ear and hears him talking to someone. The wind keeps catching the microphone and the voices vanish.
A woman gets into her car, starts the engine and drives to the ramp, and waits while the doors open.
‘Are you still there?’ Nathan asks.
‘Of course.’
‘You need to hear this: forensics have found something on the inside of the coffin lid,’ he says. ‘They’ve taken photographs of it using raked light, and have discovered two words … the churchwarden must have scratched the letters with his nails before he died, they’re almost illegible.’
‘What does it say?’ she asks.
‘It says “Save Cornelia”.’
‘Save Cornelia?’
‘We have no idea who—’
‘The churchwarden’s sister is called Cornelia,’ Saga interrupts, starting the car. ‘She didn’t have any contact with her brother. She lives fairly close to Norrtälje – that’s less than twenty kilometres from the river where I shot Jurek.’
47
Saga drives to Svartnö, turns the car round and pulls over to the side of the road. She watches the quayside and dark grey water in the rear-view mirror.
When she sees the ferry approaching land she gets out of the car and walks down the slope.
Nathan is standing alone on deck with both hands on the railing.
The cables cut through the water with a hiss.
The ramp lowers and scrapes the quayside.
Nathan waves to the ferryman in his cab, then walks ashore. Saga hands him his car keys and gets in the passenger seat.
Nathan gets in, adjusts the seat and starts the engine.
Cornelia lives on the outskirts of Paris, a small residential area just east of Norrtälje.