Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  “No.”

  “And you’re sure about that because . . . ?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. But that these two could get some cop to risk everything for them—nah. I don’t believe it.”

  “Who else? The Polish mafia you infiltrated on our behalf?”

  “Unfortunately they found out who I was. As you may remember. But after that—well, they don’t exist anymore.”

  “The Colombian drug cartel you infiltrated on behalf of American DEA?”

  “No. They didn’t know anything. Still don’t.”

  “The African smugglers you infiltrated on my behalf?”

  “No, they . . . I probably never told you that, but they’re not around anymore either. Grens, listen: I’ve already been through all my enemies. Every single one, and it’s not a short list. It doesn’t make sense. This isn’t anyone’s MO. How they act. Express themselves. Make contact. I don’t recognize it. And I’m completely convinced I have never met whoever is threatening me right now.”

  They drank whatever was left in their glasses. And it still felt good in their chests. But Grens didn’t refill again. He’d learned that chemically induced high spirits have a tendency to change shape when you least expect it.

  “It’s three o’clock. I’m going back out to the balcony for a while. Take the opportunity to study these papers now, Hoffmann. Tomorrow’s getting closer by the minute.”

  He stared out over the rooftops for a half hour while the sun rose. Golden yellow light and warm air made life seem easier. He was convinced—he should make his bed out here in the summer.

  When his accidental guest opened the balcony door and stepped out into another reality, he seemed to make the same discovery. For a moment, life met life. At its most vulnerable and powerful.

  “You’ve got it good, Grens.”

  “I end up here sometimes. When it’s hard to sleep. Pretty often, I’d say.”

  Piet Hoffmann leaned over the railing, much like the detective often did. As if he too had to stare down at where it all might come to end.

  “Two more names pop up in those documents. Your colleagues, Grens, claim in their notes that Pejović and Stojanović were often observed with two others with similar backgrounds. Dusko Zaravic. Ermir Shala. I saw them together, in different constellations, sometimes all four of them. Back when I used to live the life. I’m not claiming they were any kind of gang or entity even. More a network that took whatever assignments popped up, they helped each other out, traded favors. If you fucked with one, you fucked with them all. Zaravic and Shala were just as violent as their dead comrades.”

  Five motorcycles drove by on an otherwise almost empty Svea Road. A roaring sound that grew louder the higher up it went, without breaking the night’s silence, it was more as if it were part of it. Stockholm. Big city, small city.

  “So if I’m going to infiltrate them. Get close. That’s where we have to start, Detective. With the two names that are still alive.”

  Hoffmann left the railing and walked the length of the large balcony. When he stopped, it was quiet again, only faint voices coming from some patio.

  “Ermir Shala, I’ve never had much to do with. But Dusko Zaravic. He and I, well . . . you’ll see that he’s only done time once in Sweden. Plenty of interrogations and arrests and prosecutions, but no other convictions.”

  “I interrogated both of them seventeen years ago. Just like I interrogated the two who are dead. All four were at the periphery of a large investigation, an entire family was executed—but I never managed to figure out how the family was connected to a bunch of Balkan gangsters. One of the few times I let a murderer get away.”

  “Then you know, Grens—the sort that always wriggle away. The only time one of them was locked up—Dusko Zaravic for assault, kidnapping, and a whole bunch of drugs, he got nine years and served six and a half. Because I put him there. One of my jobs as an infiltrator. I succeeded where your police force never could, Grens. He spent the first few years in the Bunker with full restrictions. No leave, no visits. Then his son got sick. Leukemia, I think. And Zaravic couldn’t be with his little boy, while he was sick and dying. I have my own boys now, so I get it. And I’m quite grateful he doesn’t know about me. Grateful that Wilson, as he always did, made sure to keep my contribution out of it.”

  Grens rose and they stood shoulder to shoulder.

  Two people who didn’t trust anyone, but who would have to trust each other.

  “It’s like this, Detective. Either Zaravic and Shala are the perps who shot their peers because someone who wants to take over the weapons market gave them enough money to do it. Or they’ll be the next ones with two holes in their heads. Either way—I need them far away from me to be able to infiltrate. With Shala and Zaravic out there, I can’t move as freely as I need to, can’t do what you want me to do. So I suggest you arrest them.”

  “Arrest them?”

  “Seventy-two hours. Three days. As long as you can keep a person locked up without an arrest warrant.”

  “Arrest them for what?”

  “Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Make something up. It wouldn’t be the first time—would it, Grens? When you call and tell me you’ve got the cell doors locked, well, right then the clock starts to tick. For my infiltration work and yours. Simultaneously.”

  Piet Hoffmann breathed in the mild air, watching the beautiful colors of the sun rise in the sky.

  “Three days, Grens. When the time comes. That’s how long we’ll have.”

  Ewert Grens had never figured out which of the many churches on Kungsholmen rang its bells so beautifully on the hour. A bright, hopeful song. At varying volumes, sometimes almost intrusive, other times more like a cautious whisper, depending on the whims of the wind. This morning five metallic chimes rang out loud and clear as he walked down a corridor that was just as deserted as it was a few hours ago, but now considerably lighter.

  It took him a while to make his way to his office—he put the plastic folder back on Hermansson’s fancy chair and then grabbed a coffee at the machine, put another folder next to Sven’s phone, and then took one to the desks in the cadets’ cubbyhole, then one more stop at the coffee machine. This had always been his favorite time of day. Before sound and movement filled up the department, and it still felt possible to think clearly.

  Piet Hoffmann had been lying on one of the elegant sofas in his living room when Grens snuck out about a half hour ago. A sofa Grens never sat in, in a room he rarely visited. His guest was snoring quietly with his cheek against a lumpy decorative pillow that Anni bought a long time ago. Hoffmann’s sudden appearance had made the detective superintendent’s work that much more difficult. His primary mission—finding the little girl who had hopped around her dead family long ago—had expanded to include two more objectives: track down the two Balkan men who needed to be locked up for seventy-two hours so that Hoffmann would have room to maneuver, while simultaneously sussing out which one of his colleagues had switched sides.

  He emptied his coffee cup, grabbed one of his Siw Malmkvist cassette tapes from the pile on the bookshelf, and started to dance to the music as he had so many times before, both here alone in his office and long ago with Anni.

  The girl.

  That’s where he had to start. Slowly circle in on her. Before someone with very different intentions did the same.

  He looked at a faxed copy of an assessment that had been signed seventeen years ago. Charlotte M. Andersen. She had been head of Söderköping’s child welfare department, and she was his next step. She’d once decided the fate of a five-year-old girl, new identity, new family, and now she would know where the trail lead. A trail he had once erased, according to his own protocols, after telling a child in a safe house with no parents—no family—that she would soon have to leave a place that represented the last bit of security she possessed. She was separ
ated from the only adult she trusted—a police officer name Ewert Grens, who had carried her in his arms all the way there.

  He looked at the alarm clock that stood on his rickety coffee table next to his sofa. Quarter past five. Too early. He waited. For fifteen minutes. Then he called the number he’d found online for one Charlotte M. Andersen who lived on Gamla Skol Street in Söderköping. No answer. He waited five minutes, tried again. Waited five more, called again.

  Finally, at 5:55 AM, she answered.

  “Seriously? Eight times before six o’clock? Who are you? What do you want?”

  Her voice was tired. Angry.

  “My name is Ewert Grens. I’m a detective superintendent in Stockholm. I need your help.”

  “And you need it—this early?”

  “I can call in five minutes if that suits you better. Or five minutes after that. And so on . . .”

  The woman who, according to Grens’s contact at the Tax Agency, was now retired still sounded tired and angry. Now after a long sigh she added defeat.

  “Very well . . . what’s this about?”

  “Zana Lilaj.”

  Silence. A long one.

  “A little girl. You gave her a new name. A new life.”

  Quiet for so long that Ewert Grens thought the woman might have hung up.

  “Hello, are you . . .”

  “I’m here.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sitting here with the document you signed. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the kind of decision you made every day, or even every year. You surely remember it. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Who I’m talking about.”

  Silence—again. And it occurred to Grens that this former department head was acting professionally. Because if she admitted she’d made the decision, even if she didn’t reveal a name, she’d have given this unfamiliar voice somewhere to start looking.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Ewert Grens.”

  “And you’re a superintendent at . . . ?”

  “City Police, Stockholm.”

  “Hang up. And wait. I’ll call you back.”

  Seven minutes. Until the switchboard connected them again.

  “Well, at least I know you’re a police officer. But . . .”

  “Her name? Currently?”

  “. . . it doesn’t matter. You won’t get anything from me. You’ll just have to . . .”

  “I’m investigating a murder.”

  “. . . look elsewhere.”

  “Her life could be in danger.”

  A final long silence. And when the former department head spoke again it was in a voice that was neither angry, tired, nor defeated. Cold—that’s how she sounded.

  “You can call me and say whatever you want. My mission then—helping a five-year-old girl—wasn’t just about finding a new name or social security number or home. It included a promise to never, ever under any circumstances reveal her new identity. Retirement hasn’t changed that—I consider this promise permanent. Have a very nice morning, Detective, as I intend to do.”

  She hung up. So Ewert Grens called again. And again. And again. But their conversation had reached a dead end.

  That was his assessment.

  Because when he finally stopped manically calling her, his own phone started to ring loudly, and he picked it up.

  “Good. You changed your mind. If you’ll just give me her . . .”

  “Grens?”

  A man’s voice. It wasn’t Charlotte M. Andersen, changing her mind and calling him back.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Officer on duty here.”

  “And?”

  “Regerings Street 79. We were called there a half hour ago, and I thought you should know.”

  “Yes?”

  “A new corpse. Two bullet holes—forehead, temple.”

  Ewert Grens jumped up quickly from his desk chair, but he didn’t head immediately for the elevator, he turned in the opposite direction, the phone still at his ear, and walked toward Mariana Hermansson’s office.

  “Anything else?”

  “The officers on the scene describe a male, well-built, approximately fifty years old, and one meter and eighty-five centimeters tall. Also noted: there is a gun in a shoulder holster. Also noted: a wallet in the inner pocket of his jacket. The shooter made no attempt to disguise that this was anything other than another execution. Even left the victim’s ID behind, untouched.”

  “Wait.”

  The plastic folder was where he’d put it an hour earlier, still on Hermansson’s transparent chair. Grens flipped through it looking for a document hidden somewhere in the middle of the stack.

  “And the name? Let me guess.”

  There. The picture of two of the four who were still alive. Had been alive when Hoffmann was talking about them last night on Grens’s balcony.

  “. . . Dusko Zaravic? Or Ermir Shala?”

  The two who, according to the notes that the police’s surveillance team had kept, were part of an unofficial network that included the recently murdered Pejović and Stojanović. Doing security and rough jobs for various weapons dealers.

  “Ermir Sh . . . How did you know that, Grens?”

  “Shala?”

  “Yes. At least according to the driver’s license found in his wallet. How . . .”

  The officer on duty was never able to finish his question because Grens had already hung up.

  He had to make another call immediately.

  Only one of the four was still alive.

  Dusko Zaravic.

  The one who Hoffmann had once informed against and sent to prison.

  He might have been paid to carry out three executions on behalf of a new competitor in the arms trade. He might be the one who had an inside man on the police force—who had managed to buy off one of Grens’s colleagues and who was now threatening Hoffmann. In that case, there were also personal reasons for carrying out the threat because Zaravic would know that it was Hoffmann who prevented him from visiting his dying son. Piet Hoffmann who now had his own sons to lose.

  The story continued to evolve and intertwine and so far the detective had found himself at least one step behind. Now he had to find a way to get one step ahead. And so he pushed one of the few numbers he had saved in his phone.

  “Hermansson—are you awake?”

  “Now . . .”

  She stood up and left her bedroom. He was good at picking up on that sort of thing, how Sven—who he would call next—always rolled over to the side of the bed, barely awake, and whispered so as not to wake up Anita, while Hermansson, who lived alone, slammed her feet onto the floor and spoke loudly to clear her throat after a night’s sleep.

  “. . . I am. Seriously, Ewert . . . again?”

  “You have a notebook? Pen?”

  The creak of a cupboard door opening. The sound of paper being ripped out of a notepad. He could follow her movements through the phone, was just waiting for the scrape of a chair being pulled out.

  “Good, Hermansson. Now write down ‘Regerings Street 79.’”

  “Why?”

  “Dead man. Two bullet holes.”

  She started writing, the scratch of her pen.

  “Another one? A third?”

  “Go there as soon as we get off the phone. And remember—I want you to send a picture of the dead man to my phone. Okay? Now on the next line ‘Dusko Zaravic.’ First name is spelled with a ‘k,’ and the last name with ‘z.’”

  She dashed this down quickly. This was serious.

  “And you’ll understand why when you check the folder in your office. Dusko Zaravic has to be found today—and he needs to be arrested and locked up.”

 
“Arrested? Why?”

  “Use your imagination. Lock him up for the full seventy-two hours we can hold him without proof.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s either the executioner or he’s the next one to be executed. I want him behind bars. Out of the way. So we can figure out the truth.”

  A fridge.

  That’s what she was opening, he knew the sound.

  “And you, Ewert? Where do you plan on hiding while we turn ourselves inside and out?”

  “I’m planning to take a drive.”

  She was pouring something into a glass, something that gurgled.

  “Driving?”

  “I’m leaving Kronoberg Station in an hour. Headed to a small town two hundred kilometers south of here. I need an answer someone doesn’t want to give me.”

  One side of the pillow was covered with tiny plastic beads, in a pattern that looked like some kind of tree with sprawling and swaying branches, and it had left an imprint on his left cheek.

  Piet Hoffmann sat up on one of Ewert Grens’s elegant sofas. He hadn’t slept long, but heavy, which was rare for him. And here—of all places. At the home of the police officer who once gave the command to shoot him in the head. Life seemed so straightforward when he looked into Luiza’s eyes, but in its other guises it was quite bizarre.

  He’d pressed the number the first time just after three when Grens had disappeared onto the balcony. But changed his mind before anyone answered. He tried again just before five and she managed to answer just before he hung up in confusion. But this time he let the signal go through while opening that place in his heart where only Zofia’s voice was allowed.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t relax here. But the kids are asleep, all of them. How . . . Where are you?”

  He was there. That’s what it felt like.

  “Close.”

  With her, pressed against her warm skin, lying next to each other and listening to Hugo tossing and turning and Rasmus’s quiet snoring and Luiza’s stable breathing.

  “A few more days. Then this will be over. But you have to stay in the apartment. You can’t go out. The boys can’t go out. Don’t even open a window. Promise me. And Zo—please hug Hugo and Rasmus and Luiza extra hard for me.”