Despite the bright sunlight in the room, despite all the damnable noise.
He stretched. His back was as sore as it usually was after sleeping on the narrow sofa, his stiff leg ached when it reached the floor. He was slowly falling to bits, one day at a time. Fifty-nine-year-old men who exercised too little and ate too much generally did.
A cold shower in the changing room that he seldom used, two cinnamon buns and a bottle of banana-flavored drinking yogurt from the vending machine.
"Ewert?"
"Yes?"
"Is that your lunch?"
Hermansson had come out of her office farther down the corridor, she had heard him, the limping, it was just Grens lumbering around. "Breakfast, lunch, I don't know. Did you want something?"
She shook her head, they walked slowly, side by side.
"This morning, early… Ewert, was it your voice?"
"You live here in Kungsholmen?"
"Yes."
"Nearby?"
"I don't have far to go."
Grens nodded.
"Then it was probably me you heard."
"Where?"
"Up in the remand yards on the roof You get a good view from up there."
"I heard. And so did the rest of Stockholm."
Ewert Grens looked at her, smiled, something he didn't do often.
"It was a choice between that and firing a bullet through a wardrobe door. I understand that some prefer the latter."
They had come to his door. He stopped. It felt like she was going to come in.
"Did you want something, Hermansson?"
"Zofia Hoffmann."
"Yes?"
"I'm not getting anywhere. She's disappeared."
The banana-flavored yogurt was finished. He should have bought one more.
"I've checked with her work again. She hasn't been in touch since the hostage drama. The children's nursery, same story."
Mariana Hermansson tried to peer into his office. Grens closed the door a bit more. He didn't know why, she had come there several times a day since he employed her three years ago. But he had just been asleep there, nearly seven hours on the sofa-it was as if he didn't want her to know that.
"I've located her closest family. Not many of them. Her parents, an aunt, two uncles. All in the Stockholm area. She isn't there. The kids aren't there."
She looked at him.
"I've spoken to the three women who are described as her best friends. With neighbors, with a gardener who works for the family for a couple of hours every now and then, with several members of a choir where she sings a couple of times a week, with the oldest son's football coach and the youngest son's gymnastics teacher."
She shrugged.
"No one has seen them."
Hermansson waited for a response. She didn't get one.
"I've checked the hospitals, hotels, hostels. They aren't anywhere, Ewert. Zofia and the two boys, they can't be found anywhere."
Ewert Grens nodded.
"Wait here. I want to show you something."
He opened the door, closed it behind him, careful that she shouldn't see in or follow him.
You came to Aspsås prison as Wojtek's contact man in Sweden.
You were there to knock out the competition for them and then establish Wojtek and expand.
One single moment and you were someone else.
One single meeting with a lawyer, a messenger, and they knew who you really were.
You called her. You warned her.
Grens lifted up a padded envelope that was lying on his desk and was now emptied of three passports, a receiver, and a CD with a secret recording. He went back out to the corridor and Hermansson with it under his arm.
"She received two short phone calls from Hoffmann. We don't know what they were about and we haven't found anything to indicate that she was involved in any way. We have no reasonable grounds to suspect her of anything whatsoever."
Grens held up the envelope so that Hermansson could see it.
"We can't issue a warrant for her arrest abroad. Even though that is where she is."
He pointed at the postmark.
"I'm convinced that it was Zofia Hoffmann who sent this. Frankfurt am Main International Airport. Two hundred and sixty-five destinations, fourteen hundred flights, one hundred and fifty thousand passengers. Every day."
He started to head for the vending machine-he needed another yogurt, another cinnamon bun.
"She's well gone, Hermansson. And she knows. She knows that we have no grounds to get her or even look for her."
* * *
The sun was high.
It had been warm since early morning. He had fought with the damp sheets and a pillow drowned in sweat from his hairline, the temperature rising a couple of degrees every hour until now, just before lunch. The heat and the sharp light forced him to stop abruptly in front of the great gate until what was double had disappeared.
Erik Wilson sat quietly in the front seat of the rented car.
He had been here for five days, back in Glynco, Georgia, at a military base called FLETC, to continue the work that had been interrupted when Paula rang about a buyer in Västmannagatan who had paid with a Polish bullet to the head.
He started the car again, rolled slowly through the gate and past the guard who saluted. Three more weeks. Cooperation between the Swedish and European police and American police organizations was essential for the farther development of their CHIS work, and this was where they had the strongest tradition and knowledge, and as Paula was out of contact while he worked behind the walls of Aspsås, it was the perfect time to finish the course he had started in advanced infiltration.
The heat was incredible.
He still hadn't gotten used to it-normally it was easier, less invasive. At least that's what he remembered from previous visits.
Maybe it was the climate that had changed. Maybe it was he who had gotten older.
He liked driving along the wide, straight roads in this great country that was built around traffic. He accelerated when he reached the 1-95, sixty kilometers to Jacksonville and the other side of the state boundary, half an hour on a day like today.
He had been woken by the phone call.
It was still dawn, sharp sunlight and the birds with their piercing song had come alive outside his window.
Sven Sundkvist had been sitting in a bar eating breakfast at Newark Liberty International Airport.
He had explained that he would continue his journey in a few hours.
He said that he was on his way south because he needed immediate assistance with an investigation.
Erik Wilson had asked what it was about-they seldom talked to each other when they met in the corridors of the police headquarters in Kungsholmen, why should they do so here, seven thousand kilometers away? Sundkvist hadn't answered, and instead had repeatedly asked when and where until Wilson had suggested the only lunch restaurant that he knew, somewhere where you could sit without being seen, without being heard.
It was a pleasant place on the corner of San Marco Boulevard and Philips Street, quiet in spite of every table being taken and dark in spite of the sun blasting on the roofs, walls, and windows. Sven Sundkvist looked around. Men dressed in suits and ties who glanced at each other on the sly as they gave their best arguments accompanied by grilled fish; negotiations that involved European wine and mobile phones on the white tablecloth. Waiters who were invisible, but were by the table the moment a plate was empty or a napkin fell to the floor. The smell of food blended with candles and the scent of red and yellow roses.
He had been traveling for seventeen hours. Ewert had phoned just as Anita had turned off the light and snuggled up to him, her soft shoulder and breasts against his back, the first deep breaths on his neck as thoughts slowly evaporated and could not be caught no matter how hard he tried. Anita had avoided saying anything when he packed his bag and avoided looking at him when he tried to catch her eye. He understood her. Ewert Grens had for so
long been part of their bedroom, someone who lived in his own time bubble and therefore didn't realize that others had their own too. Sven didn't have the strength to talk to him about it, to put down limits, but understood that Anita had to do just that sometimes in order to cope.
The taxi from the airport was one of the ones without air conditioning and the heat had been as unexpected as it was forceful. He had traveled in clothes made for the Swedish spring and landed in a place near Florida's beaches with full summer heat. He walked toward the entrance of the restaurant and drank some mineral water that tasted of chemical additives. They had had offices on the same corridor for ten years and had worked together on several investigations, but all the same, he didn't know him. Erik Wilson was not someone you went out and had a beer with or maybe it was Sven you didn't do that with, or maybe they were just too different. Sven, who loved his life in a terraced house with Anita and Jonas, Wilson who scorned it. Now they were going to meet, tolerate each other, one asking for information and one with no intention of giving it.
He was tall, considerably taller than Sven, and even taller when he stood on his toes to scan all the guests in the restaurant. He seemed satisfied and sat down at the table at the back of the exclusive premises.
"I'm a bit late."
"I'm glad you're here."
The waiter appeared from nowhere, a glass of mineral water for each of them, two slices of lemon.
I've got one minute.
When he realizes why I'm here, one minute more to convince him he should stay.
Sven moved the white candle and silver candlestick and put a laptop down between them. He opened a program that contained several sound files, pressed a symbol that looked like a long dash, a couple of sentences, exactly seven seconds.
"We have to make him more dangerous. He will have committed some serious crimes. He'll be given a long sentence."
Erik Wilson's face.
It showed nothing.
Sven tried to catch his eye. If he was surprised to hear his own voice, if he felt uncomfortable, it didn't show, not even in his eyes.
Another snippet, a single sentence, five seconds.
"He'll only be able to operate freely from his cell if he gets respect."
"Do you want to hear more? You see… it's quite a long, interesting meeting. And I… I've got all of it here."
Wilson's voice was still controlled when he rose, as were his eyes, emotions that must not be shown.
"Nice to meet you."
Now.
This was the minute.
He was already on his way out.
Sven opened the third sound file.
"Before I leave, I'd like you to summarize exactly what you are guaranteeing me.
"You perhaps think that you know what you are hearing?"
Erik Wilson was already walking away, he was halfway ro the door, that was why Sven almost shouted what he said next.
"I don't think you do. That's the voice of a dead man."
The guests in glossy suits hadn't understood what he said. But they had all stopped talking, put down their cutlery, looked at the person who had blemished their discretion.
"The voice of a man who two days ago stood in the window of a prison workshop window with a gun to a prison warden's head."
Wilson had reached the bar that was to the right of the door when he stopped.
"The voice of a man who was shot on the order of our colleague, Ewert Grens."
He turned around.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about Paula."
He looked at Sven, hesitated.
"Because that's what you call him, isn't it?"
A step forward.
A step away from the door.
"Sundkvist, why the hell-"
Sven lowered his voice, Wilson listened, he wasn't going anywhere.
"I'm saying that he was eliminated. That you and Grens were both involved. That you are an accessory to legitimate murder."
Ewert Grens got up, an empty plastic cup in the trash, a half-eaten cinnamon bun from the shelf behind his desk gone in two bites.
He was restless, time was running out. He prowled between the ugly sofa and the window with a view over the Kronoberg courtyard.
Sven should have started his meeting with Wilson by now. He should have started the interview, to demand answers.
Grens sighed.
Erik Wilson was crucial.
One of the voices was dead. Grens would wait for three of them, they would listen, but only when he wanted them to.
Wilson was the fifth voice.
The one that could confirm that the meeting really did take place, that the recording was genuine.
"Have you got a minute?"
A blond fringe, swept to one side, and a pair of round glasses leaned around the door.
Lars Ågestam had exchanged his pajamas and robe for a gray suit and gray tie.
"Well, have you?"
Grens nodded and Ågestam followed the large body that limped over the linoleum to the sofa and sat down where the fabric was worn and shiny. It had been a long night. Grens, whisky and the county commissioner's computer in his kitchen. They had for the first time spoken to each other without mutual loathing. Ewert Grens had even used his first name. Lars. Lars, he had said. They had just then, just there, been almost close and Grens had tried to show it.
Lars Ågestam leaned back in the sofa, folded.
He wasn't tense.
He hadn't prepared himself to meet someone threatening and insulting.
All previous visits to this room had felt like an attack, difficult and full of animosity, but with the music gone and the feeling from last night still lingering, he giggled suddenly because it struck him it had almost felt good to come in.
He had two files on the table in front of them and opened the first one that was on top.
"Secret intelligence reports. Three hundred and two in total. The copies I printed out last night."
He then lifted up the second file.
"Summaries of the preliminary investigations into the same cases. What you knew, what you could investigate. I've managed to go through a hundred of them. One hundred of the cases that were closed or where prosecution did not result in a conviction. I've used every minute I've had since we met at my place to find, analyze, and compare them with what actually happened. In other words, the information that some of your colleagues already had, that's reported here, in the secret intelligence reports."
Ågestam was talking about copies that were taken from a laptop that had been on the desk of one of the top ranking officers. Grens hoped that the door was still working as it should.
"Twenty-five of the cases ended in nolle prosequi-the prosecutor realized that there wasn't sufficient evidence to secure a verdict and the cases were dropped. In thirty-five cases, the accused was acquitted-the court disallowed the prosecutor to proceed."
Lars Ågestam's neck was turning flaming red as it normally did when he got agitated. Ewert Grens had witnessed it every time they faced each other with contempt. Only this time the anger was targeted at someone else and it was almost unsettling; disdain had been their only means of communication, where they felt secure-if they couldn't hide behind it, it felt awkward. Where did you start?
"If, and I'm quite sure about this, if the prosecution had had access to the facts that the police, your colleagues, Grens, already had and that were kept from us, if all the information in this damn file of secret intelligence reports hadn't been hidden on a computer in a commissioner's office, then all these cases, all of them, Grens, would have ended with a conviction."
Sven Sundkvist ordered some more mineral water, more lemon slices. He wasn't hot anymore, the exclusive restaurant was cool and the air was easy to breathe, but he was tense.
He had only had one minute.
He had gotten Wilson to stop, turn back, sit down again.
Now he had to get him to participate.
&nb
sp; He looked at his colleague. His face was still expressionless. But not his eyes. There was an uneasiness in their depths. They didn't waver, Wilson was far too professional for that, but the voices in the recording had surprised him, disturbed him, demanded answers.
"This recording was in an envelope in Ewert Grens's pigeonhole." Sven nodded at the symbol on the screen that meant sound file.
"No sender. The day after Hoffmann's death. The pigeonholes, about as far from your office as mine, wouldn't you say?"
Wilson didn't sigh, didn't shake his head, didn't tense his jaw. But his eyes, the uneasiness was there again.
"The envelope contained a CD of the recording. But there was more. Three passports issued under different names, all with the same photograph, a rather grainy black-and-white picture of Hoffmann. And at the bottom of the envelope, an electronic receiver, the small silver metal kind that you put in your ear. We've been able to link it to a transmitter that was attached to a church tower in Aspsås. The spot chosen by the sniper who Grens eventually ordered to fire, as he was guaranteed to hit the target from there."
Erik Wilson should have grabbed the edge of the white tablecloth and pulled it from the table, turning the floor to broken glass and petals. He should have spat, cried, snapped.
He didn't. He sat as still as he could, hoping that nothing would show. Sundkvist had said they were accomplices to legitimate murder.
He had said that Paula was dead.
If it had been someone else he would have continued walking. If someone else had presented him with that goddamn recording he would have dismissed it as nonsense. But Sundkvist never bullshitted. He himself did. Grens did, most policemen did, most people he knew did. But not Sundkvist.
"Before I leave, I'd like you to summarise exactly what you are guaranteeing me.”
No one except Paula could have recorded that meeting or had the motive CO do so. He had chosen to let Grens and Sundkvist in on it. He had a reason.
They burned you.
"I want to show you some pictures as well."
Sven turned the screen toward Wilson, opened a new file.
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