Then the phone buzzed again—confirmation that the pictures had been received.
But no, that wasn’t it.
That buzzing. It told him his text was never sent.
Fuck.
Fuck.
His phone had no reception. The signal was gone.
He hurried into the bedroom, the office, the kitchen, the hall, the guest bedroom. No signal there. Just the house’s Wi-Fi, asking for a password.
He returned to the woman who was lying as quietly as he’d told her to.
“The password. To your network.”
She looked at him. But said nothing.
“Answer me—the password for your network! I know you understand English!”
She stayed silent. So he shot her. The lower leg, as little damage as possible.
“Answer me!”
She shook her head defiantly. He shot again. Left arm.
“You can . . .”
She was in pain, it showed on her face, and she spoke haltingly a few words at a time.
“. . . keep shooting. But you’ll get no help from me.”
She looked at him, challenged him. She meant what she said.
He would have to find another solution.
He ran through every room of the house again. Emptied closets and turned drawers over. Until he opened a cabinet that looked like a broom closet. There it stood, on the shelf at the top. A router.
He remembered now. Passwords often sat on the bottom of the router, a factory code with small and large letters and numbers.
He lifted up the square black device and turned it over.
And there—there it was.
zfqbgs3dwv
He looked for the local network, entered the code.
Waiting.
Waiting.
And . . . yes.
Yes!
He was connected again, sent the pictures of the dead man again.
The only thing left was enduring the wait—for a signal to reach where it was going, out there, up there.
He counted seconds until that became too much, instead he started to pace uneasily back and forth in the house—stacked firewood in the fireplace, ran his hand over the sofa’s fabric, which reminded him of a pair of armchairs his grandparents once had, crouched under the glittering chandeliers and stood in front of a bookshelf with few books, but many photographs in golden frames. He looked at the one that was closest to him. The woman who owned the house, whose name was Vesa Lilaj, she was just a child in this picture, he was sure of it, dressed up in fine clothes at a photographer’s studio. In the next, she sat with a tiara in her hair at a fancy restaurant, probably together with her big brother, mother, and father, a glass of juice in her hand, toasting a life that seemed so obvious.
Now she was lying on the floor, shot in one arm and one leg, holding onto a life partner who had stopped breathing.
Piet Hoffmann put down the picture of the past doing its best inside a gold frame, walked from room to room, was about to give up, stop his meaningless search and send the message again, when he finally heard a weak buzz. He hurried to the table where he’d put the phone, picked it up, but suddenly hesitated, unable to push the message symbol.
If the photographs of a dead man hadn’t made it. If they hadn’t arrived in a telephone in Stockholm.
It would be too late.
9:56 PM
(6 minutes remaining)
He wept.
Not like the woman on the floor who had lost her love.
This was the same pitiful little cry as the first time he balanced Rasmus’s new toy in his hand and realized he was holding a lethal weapon, the kind that stuck fast somewhere at the bottom of the throat before it finally decided to ooze down into the gut.
But this time it was a cry of relief. The photos had made it. The proof that his mission was completed, and that Zofia and the children were still hidden in safety.
PART
7
Felt so easy to run across the dry earth and climb over the iron gate and drive away in a stolen car. Back. For one night in Shkodër, then a flight home in the morning. After a few kilometers, just at the start of the valley where the houses were denser and the people who about to go to bed more numerous, a pair of headlights pierced the darkness. A car heading in the opposite direction. And when both drivers slowed down in order not to crash in that narrow passage, they briefly caught sight of each other through their rolled-down windows. Hoffmann and Latifi. The Albanian police officer, after a toilet visit that never ended, realized his Swedish colleague had deceived him and continued the journey alone. And soon, when Latifi reached the property at the end of the road, he’d also realize there was no longer any confrontation to prevent.
Piet Hoffmann sped up without ever noticing how the potholes made the car sway and hit his body like little knives, or how the gravel let go in those sharp curves and the deep ditches came rushing closer. If running and climbing had felt easy, this felt like flying, he was done, he was free. Absolutely free! And he wanted to hear it. That’s why, for the very first time, he called that distorted voice for answers.
“Yes?”
“You didn’t get back to me.”
“Back to you about what?”
“The photographs you requested, the evidence that my mission was completed.”
“We got your little illustrations. But too late.”
He froze.
A sharp icicle fell through his body.
From his mind down to his chest.
“I sent it at 9:56, six minutes to spare. My phone confirms that.”
A short, unpleasant silence.
That was what Hoffmann heard as this icicle began burying itself inside him.
Finally the distorted voice answered.
“10:07—five minutes too late—the pictures were received. My phone confirms it. So when Zaravic was released he was met not only by his lawyer, but also by the address where your family is hiding. And, as you can probably understand, he’s already on his way.”
Drive, for fuck’s sake!”
Piet Hoffmann screamed into his phone.
“Zaravic is on his way! You have to go there, now!”
But Ewert Grens didn’t really understand.
“Lower your voice. This damn phone, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem . . .”
“Atlas Road 41. Gamla Sickla. First floor on left side. Zofia and the boys and . . . now, Grens, now!”
Last year when a boy who had come to trust him was found dead in a refugee foster home, Ewert Grens had run for the first time in a couple of decades. The detective superintendent, whose hip was shattered once and never moved the same again, for a moment chased shadows without pain and without limping.
Now, not only did he feel like he was running, he was.
With Sven and Mariana just a few steps ahead, through corridors and down stairs, toward his car on Kungsholms Street.
Another long day trapped in an apartment that wasn’t theirs. Because they had to hide. Because Dad disappearing and guns hidden under the sink and Mom destroying SIM cards in acetone were all things that meant something dangerous was going on. But it didn’t feel dangerous. Sitting on the edge of the kitchen table in front of the window looking out on a boring street where nothing happened. He’d being staring for a half hour into the darkness and only counted four cars looking for a place to park, nine people walking home, two dogs who peed on the same exact lamppost. Still, it was more than yesterday at this time; then only seven people had walked by and one dog, a little tiny one.
Four cars and nine people.
If he didn’t count the people sitting in the big black car. The people who parked on the other side of the street and then didn’t do anything else, didn’t get out. If they did, his count would be higher. Two more, it looked like anyway,
unless someone was sitting in the back seat.
“What are you up to?”
Mom. He hadn’t even noticed her. She was also good at sneaking. And it was so nice when she ran her hand through his hair.
“Nothing. Looking outside.”
“Time to sleep, Hugo.”
“Why? We’re not doing anything tomorrow.”
“Because . . . people need routines. We need them. So things can feel at least a little normal.”
He lingered on the kitchen table. If they got out of the car, at least for a little while. Then that would be eleven people. A record.
“Some people are sitting out there, Mom. You see them? In the black BMW.”
“Where?”
“There.”
He pointed. And she saw them.
“I think, they look like . . . like your dad. Security guys. Sometimes Dad makes sure we’re guarded. Because he wants to know we’re okay.”
She caressed his cheek, Mom had kind hands.
“Five more minutes, Hugo. Then you brush your teeth, okay?”
“Okay.”
Over there. At the tree, where the road turned.
What luck.
A new dog, that wasn’t here yesterday. That meant three dogs. And a tenth person, the old lady holding the leash, who looked kind of like how he remembered his grandma.
It was completely still again. Not so much as a bird or a cat to count. Then he noticed something strange. The two men Mom thought Dad had sent. They were putting something on. Stocking caps, now? In the middle of summer? And finally they climbed out of the car, making his count twelve, another new record, he thought, just as the men pulled their stocking caps over their faces. Black masks. They were heading straight toward their front door, their apartment.
Toward him.
Mom. Mom!”
Hugo screamed as loudly as he dared. But Mom was slow, she didn’t understand.
“Mom! Hurry!”
Then she came. And he didn’t need to say more. She saw what he saw, realized what he realized. The two men in black masks were on their way here. They weren’t guards—they were the danger.
“Away from the window!”
Mom grabbed him so hard it would probably leave a bruise on his arm, she never did that. But it didn’t matter, he understood why. He ran after her, in to Rasmus who was lying in bed playing a football game with the hand control on his stomach, and Luiza who was sleeping next to him and whimpering anxiously, as if she knew what was about to happen.
“The extra security door!”
“Hugo—there’s no time.”
“We have to close it, Mom!”
“Stay here, I said! With me, with us. And be completely silent.”
There was just a short staircase up to the entrance. Seven steps, he’d counted them. That’s why it was possible to hear when people came and went. He didn’t understand how the others who lived here could stand it. But now it was a good thing. They could hear when the door to the building opened and closed. They could hear two sets of feet with hard soles walk then stop. Outside their door.
Mom pulled them all close on the big bed, holding them at the same time. They sat there very, very close to each other, and it felt very serious, even Rasmus didn’t ask any questions or move a muscle the whole time—Hugo couldn’t even remember his little brother ever being that silent and still at the same time.
Then he heard something much louder than footsteps. Someone was trying to tear into their door. Hard metal pressed against the door, pressed, pressed, until it started to give.
They had a minute, maybe less.
And Hugo knew something that Mom didn’t know, that the black masks didn’t know either.
“There’s an escape route.”
“Lie still, Hugo. Quiet. In my arms.”
“A secret path. The kind Dad likes. Hurry up, Mom!”
He got up and opened the closet just a few steps away.
“Hugo, listen now, I . . .”
“Look here, Mom.”
He lay on his knees outside the closet with the door open and searching with his hand for the little knob that would open up the floor—found it, just where he remembered.
“The whole bottom, Mom, like a hatch.”
He pulled it. The unsteady floor that had rocked when he first jumped on it, now followed his hand up. He moved so Mom could see. A round hole. That became a doorway to the basement and the air raid shelter, as he hung down with his upper body and pulled away the plasterboard.
A powerful crash in the hall.
An even larger part of the front door had broken.
The black masks would soon be inside.
“Mom, I’m jumping down. It’s not that far. And then I’ll catch Rasmus. And then . . .”
“Jump, Hugo. Jump!”
She looked sad when she said it. But determined.
He crawled into the hole, braced his hands against the wood of the basement ceiling, hanging there with his feet down, straightening out as far as possible. And let go. It was a pretty good landing. When he looked up, Rasmus, younger and smaller, but more agile, always had been, his little brother landed softly, Hugo hardly needed to help him.
“Mom, listen. There’s an iron stand here, I’ll push it over and you can hand Luiza to me. Bend down into the hole. Do it, Mom!”
Her little boy. Who was so big, so wise.
With Luiza tight between her hands, she leaned over and down into the hole in the floor of the closet, stretching every joint in her body, and when Hugo reached his little sister’s foot, Zofia loosened her grip. Luiza seemed unaware that she had changed hands, that Hugo, balancing on the iron stand, had ever for one moment not been holding her.
“And now, Mom, now you can . . .”
When the front door couldn’t withstand longer, it fell heavily backward, into the hall, and the bang was as loud as a gunshot. Zofia barely had time to close the hatch, close the closet door, and turn around. That was it. Then they were in front of her.
We heard children’s voices.”
They cut off the escape route between an unmade bed and a closed closet. They were taller and wider than Piet, intense and at the same time in command, and they were carrying guns she’d never seen before. Their black masks made their eyes animal-like, staring and aggressive.
“Little boys. Your boys.”
Zofia had often imagined this. Not because she wanted to experience pain or anxiety or because she was trying to understand what Piet had experienced so many times. It was to prepare herself. As if she’d known for a long time that life would bring her to this moment.
“I used to know your husband a bit back in the day. And I happen to know he has not one, but two boys—the ones I just heard.”
But now that it was happening, she didn’t feel the way she’d always expected to. She wasn’t shaking. It wasn’t hard to breathe. She wasn’t afraid.
“You don’t wanna talk? No problem. We’ve searched for children before, found them under beds and behind shelves, dragged them out against the protests of their hysterical parents and done what we came to do. But that was just a job. Pay the rent, put bread on the table.”
Because fear came from being lost, filled with doubt—and she had no doubts. She knew exactly what she was going to do. What she had already done. Protect her children. Her only task. Every thought and every tense muscle revolved around Hugo, Rasmus, Luiza. If she didn’t sink to the floor even though her legs didn’t want to carry her, didn’t scream even though this weight on her chest wanted out, didn’t cry and beg and give the bastards something of her own. If she just held on to this and never, never, never let go, there was nothing to fear.
“But this time, Mrs. Hoffmann, this isn’t about bread. This is personal. I once had a little boy too. Who died. And I never got to sa
y goodbye—your husband made sure of that.”
The man who was talking stood in front of her with his predator eyes, while his assistant walked from room to room. Opened cupboards and turned over furniture. When he came back, he politely asked her to move, he was going to examine the bedroom closet.
She didn’t move.
Until he hit the butt of his gun against her forehead. The metal dug deep and no matter how much she focused, she couldn’t stand it, she fell back and the two masked men were able to open the closet. Look into it. See that it was empty.
“I know your boys are here.”
His voice was still controlled, just as unnaturally and unpleasantly calm.
“So where did you hide them?”
The blood ran from her forehead over her cheeks, and when she shook her head in response to his question, it changed direction, perhaps bled even more as it broke into three smaller rivers down her throat and onto her breast and quite a bit onto the floor.
“You get one more try. Before I shoot.”
He cocked his gun, looked at her with his predator’s gaze. He didn’t know she’d made up her mind.
She wasn’t going to say a word.
And she wasn’t going to close her eyes when he pulled the trigger.
Luiza lay in Rasmus’s arms. She was sleeping, her breath deep and even. He had to remember to tell his little brother later how proud he was of him, it’s easy to forget if you don’t make a point of it.
He was still standing on top of the iron stand. From there it was possible to hear what they were saying on the other side of the floor. They weren’t screaming. They barely sounded threatening. But there was a threat.
He could see Mom in front of him. That expression that just drove a person crazy. When she’d really made up her mind.
“So where did you hide them?”
The man’s voice was angrier now. And it was hard to make out what was happening, a dull blow like when you hit your leg, and a heavy thump like when you fall on the floor. But even though he couldn’t see, he just knew somehow anyway. And it didn’t feel good.
Knock Knock Page 35