Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  That’s us. That’s who we were.

  “There’s a picture I want you to see.”

  At the back of the album.

  “This.”

  A portrait, but a small one, about the size of a passport photo. Older than the others, you can tell from the quality of the paper and the style of clothes.

  “Your grandfather. My and Mirza’s father. You never met him. He was in prison. For a very long time. He did the same thing as your father—used the river to smuggle weapons.”

  It must be obvious to her that I don’t understand.

  “Your grandfather was a criminal. They were illegal weapons. Just like the ones your father smuggled and sold. That’s what he was successful at.”

  My red, warm cheeks. The wave that washed through me. The pride. I don’t really know what to do with it now.

  “We grew up in this house. Me and Mirza. He made up his mind when we were young. Your father wanted to be like your grandfather. But I decided to do the opposite—try to live another life. And I chose right—just look at how it turned out for your father.”

  She doesn’t sound bitter. It’s no I-told-you-so. Sad. That’s what she is.

  “And to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you, you need to leave this place.”

  “I know now that Dad was shot. Murdered. Executed. I’ve known that for the last few years. One day I just remembered. I remembered how all of them were executed. But I still don’t understand why I can’t stay here. With you. I feel more at home now than ever.”

  “Because it’s all connected. Because there are people who still care. Who had no idea, just like me, that you had survived. But they do now. And unlike me, they’re not particularly pleased about it.”

  She takes my hand again, places it in her own. Like in my rented room just a few hours ago. Or maybe that was an eternity ago.

  “You have to get out of here. There’s a plane leaving from the Tirana airport for Sweden in four hours. I’ll drive you there. They won’t see us in the dark.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  We don’t move very quickly through the pitch black. My aunt chooses roads that are off the main highways. We pass through small villages and wind through mountain slopes and scare herds of animals that have settled in for the night. The darkness is like an embrace. It holds us. Hides us.

  She’s nervous. She tries to hide it, but even though we’ve only spent a short time together I can read her so well. All through the evening in her house as she showed me pictures, trying to make me understand, and when she backed the car out of the garage—worry is her language right now.

  It takes an hour longer to drive this way, but my aunt tells me I’ll still have plenty of time to catch my flight. We don’t run across many other cars, they know better than to guess their way forward over these dark paths, and perhaps that’s why my aunt’s worry becomes even more tangible when we reach the base of a mountain and meet a vehicle that neither slows nor pulls to the side. On the contrary, it blocks the road, and its headlights are the brightest I’ve ever seen. They’re pointed straight at us.

  We stop and sit very still in our seats. I want to ask what’s happening, but my aunt is silent, staring out through the front window. Soon a car door opens, I can’t see it, but I hear it, and someone climbs out. As he approaches us—it’s a man, I can tell from how he moves—his body is just a silhouette in that aggressive light. He lacks any contours, but he’s tall, and something that must be a jacket flutters around him. He’s also holding something in his right hand. He walks all the way to our car, to my aunt’s window. Knocks on it. I don’t want to turn toward him, it doesn’t feel good, but I can make out the glow of the cigarette in his mouth, and the smoke twirling upward in the light. When my aunt doesn’t open, he knocks again, and I can’t help myself, I turn a little so I can see his face. And suddenly I’m so happy! All my discomfort slips away, and I want to hug my aunt and whisper that there’s nothing to worry about. I know him. That’s Lorik.

  “It’s him.”

  She doesn’t answer, just stares straight ahead.

  She hasn’t understood yet.

  “Aunt Vesa? Aunt Vesa? That’s who I was supposed to have dinner with. Lorik! You can open the window. Do it, roll it down. How could he . . . When I didn’t come, he came here, aunt, he likes me, don’t you see?”

  “Sit still. Don’t talk. Look straight ahead, the whole time.”

  “Aunt Vesa, listen, it . . .”

  “It’s not a good thing.”

  Lorik knocks again. Peers into the car. At me. Why would I look away when he’s standing there?

  “Straight ahead.”

  “Aunt Vesa, I . . .”

  “Straight ahead!”

  I turn my eyes away, the floodlights swallowing me.

  Then my aunt rolls down the window.

  I hear them talking.

  Albanian. Words I don’t understand. But the tone. Bitter. I understand that. Lorik sounds different. And my aunt sounds the same.

  After a while they fall silent, and my aunt leans toward me.

  “He wants to see your passport.”

  “What?”

  “Your passport. Take it out.”

  I notice it now. My aunt is trembling. It’s not just fear, it’s more than that. Terror. The word feels so extreme, but I can’t think of a better one.

  I take out my passport. Hand it to my aunt who hands it to Lorik. He flips through it.

  “Hannah Ohlsson?”

  His voice is just as sharp as my aunt’s was. It cuts. Into me.

  “Yes.”

  I speak English to him, like in the café. And he answers, his English is at least as good as mine.

  “Is that your name? That’s not what you were calling yourself when we met.”

  “I have two names, Lorik. Both are me.”

  “Your questions. About Lilaj.”

  “Yes?”

  “We don’t like them.”

  “We? I don’t understand, how . . .”

  Now I see what he’s holding in his hand. A weapon. A gun. Pointed straight at me.

  “Why are you asking questions? Why are you calling yourself Lilaj?”

  I want to hide behind my aunt. My aunt, who is shaking. My aunt, who is silent.

  And for the first time I wish I really was Hannah Ohlsson.

  “Answer me—why!”

  I don’t know much about guns. Except what you see in the movies.

  “Because he . . .”

  But I know when a gun makes that sound, it’s being cocked, and it’s ready.

  To shoot.

  “. . . was my father.”

  And it’s surreal.

  How I take it all in.

  His index finger squeezes the trigger. His eyes, which seemed so soft when we talked and laughed, now so hard.

  I even hear it when the shot is fired.

  PART

  5

  Of course the asphalt wasn’t one whit warmer in Stockholm than in Söderköping—the heat had blanketed the whole of Sweden since the beginning of June—but it felt warmer as he dropped off the cadets, parked on the south side of the Kronoberg station, and stepped out onto the sidewalk of Bergs Street. So Ewert Grens couldn’t help himself, he sank down—despite his bad knee begging him not to—and placed his palms against the ground. No. He wasn’t imagining it. Everything was pulsating. It was impossible to stand still. There was no greater uneasiness than an unbridled, throbbing inner city, choking at every attempt to breathe.

  “I want you to do one more thing. Before you go home for the day.”

  He couldn’t shake her off. The girl who had been renamed Hannah Ohlsson, who no longer seemed to exist. Not in person or in any pictures. She must have known that when she tore them to piece
s, burned them. How she would disappear without a trace. Maybe even die. But that it was better than not seeking out her past.

  “I want you two to turn the investigation after the missing person’s report filed by her adoptive parents upside down and inside out, find out what was done. Or more importantly—what wasn’t done.”

  Lucas and Amelia were halfway up the steps that led to the entrance of the police station, but they stopped and waited as he struggled to his feet.

  “What do you mean, Superintendent?”

  “I mean I want you to go through every missing person report in Sweden made the year she disappeared. Every report in every police district. People who were gone a few days or much longer or who never came back again. Then go through every Jane Doe who’s been found since then. Include records from Oslo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. People can disappear in one place and pop up somewhere else.”

  “But if . . .”

  “But what?”

  Lucas.

  The cadet who spoke without thinking.

  But now he was—and his thoughts were troubled.

  “If a body has been found. If we compare all the registries we have—dental records and fingerprint bases and DNA and . . . well, how many reasonably current unidentified bodies will there be? Would we be able to count them on two hands? If she were . . .”

  “That’s exactly what I want you to determine. Find out that she’s no longer here or in the area.”

  Lucas looked at Amelia, who looked at Ewert Grens. Neither of them seemed to think what he was saying was very clear.

  “Superintendent Grens—that she’s no longer here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Because we need to do our due diligence if we want Interpol’s help. So they can help us with the same thing—just a little farther away. In Albania. So we can go through all the unsolved murders and unidentified women’s bodies that have been found there.”

  He then left the cadets on the stairs; both seemed happy to be assigned a task that might involve Interpol. That’s what a training period was for, right? Figuring out the things that were so obvious to an old cop who was just about to retire, the day-to-day of a police officer’s life. So while Lucas and Amelia continued into the police station, somewhat symbolically, Grens headed to that little café on Sankt Eriks Street where he traded forensic technician Nils Krantz’s time and knowledge for a cup of coffee and a double-sized piece of princess cake. He then took a long slow walk along the deserted streets of Kungsholmen so he could speak with Sven in private about why it was so important that he continue watching Mariana Hermansson, their closest colleague for many years—what he didn’t mention was if Mariana passed his test, was ruled out as the leak, Grens would have to find someone to look into Sven instead. And when he finally entered his apartment building on Svea Road, he decided to take the stairs tonight instead. He was panting as he reached his floor, and saw his intruder hadn’t broken in this time—he was sitting in front of Grens’s locked door.

  “Good evening.”

  “Good evening, Detective.”

  “Maybe you need your own key?”

  “I wasn’t planning on living here for very long.”

  “I’ve never had an extra set, Hoffmann. There’s never been a need. But tonight I stopped by a shoemaker in the subway station at Odenplan and had him make me one—though why shoemakers make keys and change clock batteries is beyond me.”

  Ewert Grens handed over a blank, unused key to Piet Hoffmann, who smiled as he tried it. Yep, it worked. He opened the door, slipped the key into the front pocket of his accountant’s shirt, and for the second evening in a row, stepped into an apartment that never seemed to end. He had already placed his bag next to the sofa with the pearl-encrusted decorative pillows, his temporary home, and exchanged his dress shirt for a T-shirt and his dress pants for a pair of jeans, when the phone rang. That phone. Which he’d brought with him, against his usual rules. He let it ring while searching for the apartment’s owner, found him in the kitchen in front of the fridge, an open carton of orange juice in his hands.

  “Grens—I want you to listen this time. Form your own impression. Maybe you’ll hear something I don’t.”

  Then he pushed the answer button and held the phone in such a way that both of them would be able to hear.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

  The distorted voice. Same intonation, rhythm, way of breathing.

  “Many times.”

  And Hoffmann again forced himself to do what he’d learned to do over his many years as an infiltrator—hold the rage inside, wait, master the violence so you can strike back when it hurts them the most.

  “I apologize. But I’ve been in a bad position and judged it better not to answer.”

  “And the weapon?”

  He’d been whispering so far. Didn’t want to reveal his new voice. But now he wanted to scream.

  I know you watched me dig it up, you bastard!

  But he swallowed it, because that’s what he had to do.

  “I’ve got it in a safe place.”

  “Good. Then it’s time.”

  Hoffmann looked at Grens, who nodded. He was taking in everything.

  “Not quite yet.”

  “It’s time when I say it’s time. Because, as you know, I have documents that mean death sentences for everyone you love.”

  “I need more time. Three more days.”

  “Three days?”

  “If you want me to succeed at the mission you’ve given me, I need to prepare. You made me your unwilling accomplice because you think I have the skill set you need. So you should trust that I know what I need, and what I need is three days. If you want this to be as successful as you expect.”

  You couldn’t hear where the voice was. Despite the long silence. No cars passed by, no airplanes in the distance or birds chirping, no other voices.

  “Three days. Then I release the documents.”

  Another silence. Electronic. The voice had hung up.

  “You were very calm, Hoffmann. I wasn’t expecting that. Considering what’s at stake.”

  “That’s why.”

  “And that voice—it’s like talking to a fucking robot.”

  “You would know if anyone does, Superintendent. Have you ever interrogated a violent criminal who answered like a human being? To do what they do—what I did—you have to be able to shut down. Completely. Emotions are a liability.”

  “You don’t have to be a criminal to understand that.”

  A quick glance at the emptiest, most desolate home Piet Hoffmann had ever visited.

  And right there, at that moment, they understood each other and were in complete agreement.

  That the ugliest, most dangerous enemy would always be loneliness.

  During the call, Grens had kept holding the juice without thinking about it, and now he put it down on the kitchen table next to a half loaf of bread, a block of cheese, a stick of butter, two juice glasses, and two porcelain cups. And while the coffeemaker sputtered and coughed, he went and grabbed a whiteboard and a bag of magnets and markers from the hall and brought them into the kitchen, while Hoffmann looked on curiously.

  “What are you up to, Detective?”

  “I’ll tell you—if you tell me what you’re up to.”

  Ewert Grens nodded to a balled-up napkin that Piet Hoffmann had pulled from the bottom of his knife holster and started to smooth out. Some kind of crossword, long rows of squares filled the paper, chains of boxes with letters inside. Which he now ran a finger over, one answer at a time.

  Survive, eleven letters

  P—H—O—N—E—T—O—G—R—A—M

  Survive, eleven letters

  G—R—O—U—N—D—F—L—O—O—R
r />   Survive, fourteen letters

  N—A—S—O—L—A—B—I—A—L—F—O—L—D

  Survive, seven letters

  D—E—T—C—O—R—D

  Survive, eleven letters

  R—A—D—I—O—J—A—M—M—E—R

  Straight lines crossed out each of these word grids.

  But the last two he had left untouched.

  Survive, eleven letters

  P—O—S—I—T—I—O—N—I—N—G

  Survive, fourteen letters

  E—N—C—R—Y—P—T—I—O—N—C—O—D—E

  “What am I up to? Exactly what it says—surviving. Protecting my family.”

  “Protecting a family who might never be able to be protected again. The robot voice is right about that.”

  Grens folded the napkin together, handed it back to Hoffmann.

  “You’re good at making plans. But they won’t do you a lick of good if those documents end up on the streets. Do they know that—Hugo and Rasmus and Luiza? That if you fail—they can never live in safety again?”

  “If we fail. We. Because this time we’re going to help each other. Unlike all those other times. Right, Grens?”

  Ewert Grens didn’t need to answer. They both knew that this man with no family of his own to protect or mourn or live with would do anything for two boys who sometimes popped up at the police station, and sometimes called him their pretend grandpa. That only a year ago he’d been lying on a floor ready to die, with a murderer’s tool aimed at his heart, because that was the only way to protect those boys, the only way for them to survive.

  “I found this in an unused conference room at the police station. I asked them to transport it over—I think it will do more good here right now.”

  Grens pushed the butter and the bread aside and lifted the whiteboard onto the kitchen table, leaning it against the wall.

  “Yesterday we established an informal and provisional headquarters—in my kitchen. Turned my apartment into a new police station with just two employees. For an investigation that cannot be handled from inside the real police station because it happens to be full of police and this concerns the police. Or—one police officer who sold out, and who’s as dangerous as a loaded weapon.”