by Jens Lapidus
“You guys all do that.”
“Not me.”
“Nah, maybe not you, cutie. But your friends.”
“Can I have the phones?”
“Of course.”
An hour later, a taxi pulled up on Nikola’s street and the driver handed over a bag. Nikola sat down at the kitchen table and studied the first phone. An old iPhone 4—considering how often Chamon changed his phone, he probably didn’t want any expensive handsets. It no longer needed a pass code—Loke must have disabled it. Nikola scrolled through the phone: no names or numbers saved, no apps other than the usual. He saw a couple of meaningless SMS messages that seemed to be to Chamon’s parents, plus a number of calls made to numbers he didn’t recognize—probably other pay-as-you-go phones. Nikola pulled out the second phone. It was the same story: very few functions or apps, almost no calls or messages. But this one had the Find iPhone app installed. That wasn’t like Chamon. Nikola felt a bad feeling creeping up on him. He opened the app. The feeling intensified.
The number saved in the app wasn’t Chamon’s. It was a number that had clearly been able to track where Chamon’s phone was.
A small bell started ringing at the back of his mind. He knew something, though he couldn’t quite work out what. He recapped everything for himself: Chamon had been in one of many wards in the hospital, and yet the killers had found him insanely quickly. Chamon was as careful as a principal with his phones. He never left any footprints or allowed anyone to know where he was, yet someone had been able to follow him through the Find iPhone app on his phone.
Was it possible? Could the killers have somehow connected to the app? Used it to track which ward Chamon was on?
Nikola checked the phone number that was linked to the app. He didn’t recognize it, but he pulled out his own phone, made sure his number was hidden, and dialed it.
The ring signal sounded like it had been amplified.
“Uh, hello?” said a voice on the other end.
Nikola breathed in.
He knew who it belonged to. The listless tone. The sluggishness.
The lightning appeared without warning—his head felt like it was about to implode. He practically collapsed. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He ended the call.
That voice.
23
Morning in Norway. Emelie felt like vomiting when she woke up.
She and Teddy had been carted off by the police the minute the paramedics determined that they weren’t injured. To begin with, she had protested loudly: surely they weren’t suspected of anything; they were the victims of the crime here. They were witnesses, the injured party: that assessment couldn’t be any different in Norway than it was in Sweden. The female officer had still asked, politely and cutely—everything Norwegian sounded cute to Emelie—whether she had anything against staying a few more days.
“Yes, I want to get back to Sweden as soon as possible,” she had said.
“Well, I’m afraid we need to keep you here for now—we have the right to hold witnesses for up to twelve hours. And, as I’m sure you understand, we have a number of questions we’d like to ask you.”
Emelie had been put into a cell.
Everything was so similar to Sweden, and yet it was all so different. The cells were the exact same size, but the color of the epoxy walls was lighter. The bench that had served as her bed for the night was concrete. They were wooden in Sweden, but the PVC mattress was the same. The only real difference was that instead of a normal window, this room had a skylight eight feet up—she couldn’t see anything but white sky. The policewoman had seen Emelie look up at it as she locked her in. “That window was mandated by the European Commission for the Prevention of Torture. We didn’t have anything like that before.” Norway wasn’t five years behind Sweden, like everyone said. It was ten years behind.
She had spent most of the night thinking about Teddy and her father, making odd comparisons. Teddy had saved her life through his driving, and yet he was just like her father. A man who would never change, who was drawn to a bad life. Or maybe it was the bad life that was drawn to him. Her father had always cared about her, looked after her when she was younger, and yet he had drunk away so many days and opportunities to be happy. What did that really mean? How could a person have so many contradictory sides?
* * *
—
She heard a beep, and her cell door clicked. Here in Norway, everything was electronic. The door opened—she assumed it was time for an interview. The Norwegian police hadn’t questioned her in anywhere near as much detail as she had expected. Emelie remained where she was on the bed.
“Time to go home now,” said a voice she recognized. She looked up. It was Nina Ley.
She was wearing a football shirt with Fly Emirates across the chest, and she was chewing gum. She was holding Emelie’s bag in one hand. Nina looked sadder than ever.
“What are you doing here?” Emelie asked.
“I wanted to make sure you got home safely,” said Nina. “How are you, by the way? It must have been awful.”
Emelie stood up. “I’m okay, but how are Mats and the driver?”
“Alive, but both in critical condition, Mats was in the operating room all night, now he’s on a respirator in Oslo University Hospital. The bullet penetrated his forehead at a slight angle and exited an inch above his ear.”
A flicker of hope appeared in Emelie.
Nina said: “You should be pleased you brought Teddy with you. He’s a real Ayrton Senna, he is.”
“Where is he?”
“He went home with a colleague of mine a few hours ago.”
They spoke more on the way to the airport. Emelie could feel her irritation levels rising.
“Unfortunately, our Norwegian colleagues haven’t managed to arrest anyone yet, but we’re working closely with them.”
“At the very least, one thing should be clear to you now,” said Emelie. “This isn’t just about Adam Tagrin. There are others involved.”
Nina laughed, sudden and shrill. “You know that I know. Why else do you think I let you meet Mats? But my problem—and I know that you know this—is that I haven’t been able to trust my own damn organization.”
“Will you let me go through your files?”
Nina continued to chew her gum. “I can’t go that far, I’m afraid.”
Emelie felt her cheeks turn hot. She raised her voice.
“What are you doing, exactly? You’ve been sitting on the films that Mats gave you for over a year, but all you’ve managed to do is identify Katja. You’re completely incompetent.”
Nina’s mouth was a small circle. Perhaps she had swallowed her gum.
* * *
—
Three and a half hours later, Emelie pulled her front door shut behind her. She was thinking about calling Teddy; they really needed to talk about what had happened in Oslo.
She sat down in the kitchen. The sun was glittering in the windows on the other side of the courtyard. It was three thirty in the afternoon. She had hung a picture on her kitchen wall: Mom and Dad on a beach in Mykonos. The picture was over thirty years old, taken only a few weeks after her parents first met, when they decided to travel to Greece together. Her father was tanned and wearing a vest. His shoulders were relaxed, one foot partly buried in the sand, and he had an arm around her mother’s waist. Mom didn’t just look young, she also looked happy: her eyes were beaming at the camera like she was proud. Emelie took a closer look at her mother’s eyes: did anything in them suggest what was to come? Had her father already had an unhealthy interest in beer and cocktails while they were on the island?
I’ll never be able to love the way Mom seems to love Dad, Emelie thought. She could feel tenderness, compassion, and she could get turned on—but loving someone? She wasn’t sure she knew what that meant. She wondered
whether she even had the ability.
She should pay her parents a visit—it was months since she had last seen them. She pulled out her phone and called Marcus.
“What happened in Norway? You know you had a police interview and a detention hearing you were supposed to attend this morning?” he said. “You should be glad you’ve got me.”
Emelie explained as carefully as she could. “And I’m not really okay, by the way. This whole thing’s awful.” She glanced up at the picture on the wall as she spoke. “So I’m thinking about going to see my parents for a few days. Could you hold the fort at the office? Check my schedule, cancel all my meetings, visits, and interviews?”
“Holding the fort is all I do all day,” said Marcus.
* * *
—
An hour later, Emelie was standing in a rental car garage with an overnight bag in her hand. It was often difficult to get to Jönköping by train, and maintenance work meant she would have had to change in Nässjö. In any case, the tickets for the last departure of the day were sold out. She was renting a car instead. It would take longer, but she could, at least, be by herself, and she would arrive today. That was important: right now, all she wanted was to get away from everything as quickly as possible.
She squeezed the key she had just picked up from Europcar. One hundred feet away, a car flashed: it was hers, a Seat Ibiza, small and cute.
She was alone in the garage, and she stood still for a moment, gathering herself. She had at least three and a half hours of driving ahead of her, but she felt like stepping on the accelerator and doing the journey in half that time.
Suddenly she heard a sound. Someone was approaching. Emelie moved toward her car, but for some reason she paused before she reached it. The footsteps behind her fell silent. What was going on?
She thought back to the parking garage beneath the hotel in Oslo, where they had climbed into the car with Mats.
She took a few more steps, thought she heard the same sound behind her again, but it stopped the minute she paused. Was there someone else in the garage, only moving when she moved? Someone who didn’t want to be heard?
She could hear her own breathing, and it struck her that whoever had attacked them in Oslo wouldn’t stop at Mats. She should have talked to Nina about that, tried to get a better understanding of the threat.
She turned around, but the garage was empty behind her. All she could see were the rows of cars.
Her heart was racing. She was alone down here, completely defenseless.
Maybe she was just paranoid, but she felt she should have stopped all this a long time ago. She regretted even taking on Katja’s case, even more so going to see Mats. She pulled out her phone and called Nina, but there was no answer.
Another sound behind her—it wasn’t her imagination, she was sure of that now. She spun around, but she still couldn’t see anything but cars. She looked down at the phone she was clutching in her hand.
She called Teddy.
He answered before she even heard it ringing.
“Teddy, I think someone’s following me,” she said quietly.
“Where are you?”
She explained.
“Go back up to reception,” he said. “I’m coming as quickly as I can. And don’t hang up. I want to hear that you’re there.”
She pressed the phone to her ear, turned around and started walking back toward the elevators.
She couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, but her heart was still racing, like she had just done three workout classes in a row.
A clicking sound: the lights in the garage went out.
She heard herself drawing in air through her nostrils.
“What happened?”
“It just went dark in here,” she whispered.
“Do you know where the exit is?”
“I think so.”
It wasn’t completely dark; she could make out an emergency exit sign glowing in the distance. She walked toward it, feeling sick.
Steps, could she hear footsteps behind her? She didn’t know. She just wanted to get out. Away from the darkness. She sped up. The emergency exit—it was just what she needed, in more ways than one.
She was jogging now.
Quicker.
Then: BANG. Something struck her head. She cried out. Saw stars.
She dropped her phone.
Maybe she fell.
* * *
—
The room was bright. The paper on the bed rustled. On one wall, there was a poster of a human head in cross section. The throat, the neck, the nose. The mouth, the upper section of the spine, the brain. Each part looked like a labyrinth. Emelie was lying down.
Teddy was sitting next to her. “Good, you’re awake.”
The headache was like a bass drum in her head. She tried to sit up.
A middle-aged woman in a white doctor’s coat placed a hand on her shoulder. “Just stay lying down.”
“What happened?”
Teddy answered: “I found you on the floor in the garage. Think you must have run into a pillar.”
The woman held out a hand. “My name is Fatima Eriksson, I’m the doctor on call. We’ve been struggling to get through to you, but I don’t think you were entirely unconscious. Do you remember anything since you fell?”
Emelie shook her head.
The doctor held up a mirror. Emelie studied her own face: her lank hair—she hadn’t showered since Oslo—the bags beneath her eyes, the dry lips, the white tape on her forehead.
“Or maybe someone knocked me down. They turned the lights out.”
Teddy looked needlessly happy. “Nope, there was a power cut right across that part of town. No one turned off the lights in the garage. And I’m pretty sure it was the pillar you ran into, because there was a fleck of blood at roughly your height.”
Dr. Eriksson also looked provocatively happy. “It’s good, at least, that you’re yourself again. It’s not a particularly big wound, it’ll heal nicely, didn’t even need stitches. I think it was mostly a stress reaction. And everything else is fine, too.”
Emelie sat up. “Everything else?”
“Your baby, it wasn’t harmed,” said the doctor. “I should congratulate you.”
24
There they stood. The moon was playing hide-and-seek between the clouds, and the six-foot fence towered up in front of them. “Ketaminol vet,” Z whispered with a wink. Their bikes were leaning against a couple of trees roughly one hundred yards away.
They snickered—it was the first time Roksana had felt hopeful since those madmen broke Z’s fingers. On the other side of the fence was the goods entrance for the AniCura Veterinary Clinic where one of Billie’s girlfriends had worked as a trainee six months ago. The girlfriend was a sweet girl who only really smoked on special occasions, but Z had added cannabis to the sticky chocolate cake they had eaten for dessert when she came over one evening—his chocolate cakes were always perfect, smooth as caramel in the middle. After just a few bites, the girl had started talking freely about how much she loved golden retrievers and gray horses, and about all the various animal medicines. After her second slice, she had told them the code to get into the clinic.
Ketaminol vet was the shit.
Roksana looked down at her feet—her new Eytys sneakers were covered by the loose blue shoe covers Z had decided they should wear. “Either that or you’ll have to chuck the shoes in the garbage afterward, and I’m guessing you’re not gonna want to do that? I don’t want them to be able to find any shoe prints or dirt that could lead them to us.”
Again: a question mark flashed up in her mind. What were they doing? What would happen if they were arrested?
The fence was easy enough to climb. The goods entrance was smaller than Roksana had expected, with no loading bay, no double doors. Z
pulled on a pair of workman’s gloves and punched in the code. The door was heavy.
They came into a hallway that smelled of concrete and horse dung. They opened another door and the lights came on automatically as they stepped inside. They moved forward: a hallway, a kitchen, a staff room, two offices. Posters advertising sterile dressings for horses, deworming tablets for dogs, animal toothpaste. Roksana wondered what flavor it was.
The storeroom lit up automatically as they stepped inside. It was small: white shelves from floor to ceiling, full of boxes. They closed the door and Roksana held her breath; for some reason, she felt like they had to be quiet. As though someone might be on their way down the corridor, even though it was the middle of the night. She pressed her ear to the door.
“What are you doing?” Z whispered.
“Listening to make sure there’s no one outside.”
“The clinic’s closed. There’s no one here.”
The corridor was silent on the other side of the door. Roksana turned to Z. “Then why are you whispering?”
They grinned at one another and started studying the contents of the shelves. Osphos, Eryseng Parvo, and so on. Weird names for weird medicines. She didn’t understand the order they were in, but maybe the medicines were organized by animal or by the type of condition they were supposed to treat.
“Oh, come on,” Z hissed after five minutes of searching. “It should be here. That’s what the cake girl said.”
Right then, Roksana spotted the cabinet. It was at one end of the room, glossy white plastic and no bigger than a small fridge. The girl had mentioned something about the controlled drugs being locked away.
Ten minutes later, Z’s forehead was glistening, and he was furious. Roksana had never seen him like that before. He was trying to break open the cabinet with the bolt cutters they had brought with them. To begin with, he had tried cutting the lock, but it was impossible to get a good grip—the cutters kept slipping every time. Next, he had attempted to shove the cutters into the gap between the door and the cabinet, using them like a crowbar. The fabric beneath his arms had turned damp.