Protected by the Shadows

by Helene Tursten

  Dr. Enkvist leaned over the motionless figure and gently touched his shoulder.

  “Kazan? Can you hear me?” he asked softly.

  The long eyelashes twitched, and after a little while Kazan opened his eyes a fraction. He blinked two or three times, and mumbled something unintelligible. Suddenly his eyes were wide open and full of sheer panic, his hands waving frantically in the air. The drip stand rattled alarmingly and began to sway.

  “It’s okay, Kazan. Calm down. It’s only me, Dr. Enkvist. How are you feeling?”

  His tone was still warm and soothing, and it seemed to have an effect on Kazan. After a moment the fear subsided, and he looked straight at Irene.

  “Hi, Kazan. My name is Irene Huss, and I’m a police officer. I have a few questions I hope you’ll be able to answer.”

  “Go to . . . hell,” he managed to force out.

  Demonstratively he turned his head away; there was no point in addressing the back of his neck. Irene had to get him to look at her.

  “We found the cocaine you hid in the closet,” she said calmly.

  She saw his body stiffen under the blanket. He didn’t move for a long time, then slowly he turned his head back.

  “You . . . no, no. Fuck! Fuck! I’m a dead man . . . fuck!”

  It was clear that the last few words came from a place of sheer terror. Dr. Enkvist began to move his lips, and Irene was afraid he was going to put a stop to the interview before it had even started.

  At that point an alarm went off out in the corridor. This time it was the doctor who stiffened. With a dubious glance at his patient, he said, “I have to go.”

  “Of course. I’ll stay here,” Irene said quickly.

  Enkvist was already half-running. The door closed behind him with a soft hiss. Saved by the bell, Irene thought. Or rather the alarm.

  “As I was saying, Kazan: we’ve found the lot. Eight big fat packages of cocaine. You could say we hit the jackpot.”

  He was certainly paying attention now.

  “I’m . . . toast. They’re . . . they’re going to kill me. Fuck!”

  Irene leaned closer, trying to keep her tone measured. “Who’s going to kill you?”

  Kazan clamped his lips together and looked as if he wasn’t going to say another word. Irene could almost see the thoughts flying around like terrified birds in his befuddled brain. Before she could rephrase her question, he seized her wrist. His grip wasn’t tight, but she could feel that his palm was sticky with sweat.

  “I need . . . I need . . . protection! A new . . . identity!” he gasped.

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . they’re going to kill me!” His last words were no more than a whisper as he loosened his grip.

  “You can’t have a new identity just because you claim you’re in danger. You have to tell me why. Otherwise, no chance.”

  There was a shimmer of tears in Kazan’s brown eyes; the color reminded Irene of dark amber.

  “I know . . . something. Fucking . . . huge!” he said with sudden eagerness.

  “Big enough to merit a new identity?”

  He nodded and grabbed her hand, as if he were trying to draw her closer to make sure she heard every word.

  “Meeting . . . Thursday.”

  “This Thursday? The twenty-fifth?”

  He nodded, and the fear in his eyes began to give way to a glint of wickedness. It almost looked as if he was smiling.

  “The twenty-fifth . . . that’s when it all goes bang!”

  Irene hadn’t misinterpreted his expression; he really was smiling. And wasn’t what he had just said a line from the chorus of a Magnus Uggla hit from years ago, “King for a Day”? Surely Kazan couldn’t be referring to the song, or could he?

  “What do you mean, it all goes bang?”

  He was still smiling even though he found it difficult to speak. “Meeting . . . Pravda . . . restaurant.”

  “Who’s having a meeting?”

  Kazan swallowed a couple of times, then pointed to the glass of water on his bedside table. Irene helped him to insert the straw between his dry lips. He sucked greedily at the tepid water, then sank back on his pillow.

  “Our bosses . . . and theirs.”

  “You mean the Gangster Lions and Gothia MC?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are they going to discuss?”

  “The war. Disrupting their . . . business.”

  Irene heard the sound of agitated voices and running footsteps in the corridor. Clearly something serious had happened. She knew she didn’t have much longer; the over-protective Dr. Enkvist would be back at any moment. She had to get Kazan to talk about the cocaine they had found, and the murder of Patrik Karlsson. Time to stop pussy-footing around.

  “This war began when you and Fendi set fire to Patrik Karlsson. Am I right?”

  The light in Kazan’s eyes died, and he clamped his lips firmly together once more.

  “Remember you have to tell me the truth, or I can’t help you,” Irene went on.

  She had absolutely no authority to promise him a new identity, but in his befuddled state, Kazan didn’t seem to realize this.

  “Patrik . . . thought . . . he was selling to . . . another gang.”

  “He didn’t think he was selling to the Gangster Lions?” Irene was taken aback.

  “No . . . no . . . Latin Kings.”

  The name was vaguely familiar, but it took Irene a few seconds to place it. The Latin Kings were a relatively new gang that had emerged in the western part of the city over the last couple of years, consisting mainly of South Americans and the odd individual with a different ethnic origin, usually the Balkans.

  “So you and Fendi claimed that you were members of the Latin Kings. You arranged to meet Patrik to buy drugs in the old Gothia MC HQ on Kolgruvegatan. Right?”

  Kazan nodded and closed his eyes, as if to indicate that the conversation was over as far as he was concerned. Irene continued implacably:

  “So where had Patrik gotten the drugs from?”

  “Enrico . . . Gonzales.”

  She certainly hadn’t expected that name to come up in this context; Gonzales was a major dealer who had been found shot dead, along with his companion David Angelo, on board a luxury yacht in the marina on the island of Getterön outside Varberg. They had been murdered on the morning of Sunday, 1 May, almost four months earlier. As the season was just getting started, there were no other boats in the marina, and no one in the nearby houses had heard or seen anything. Both men were riddled with bullet wounds from an automatic weapon. Two hidden storage compartments were found on the yacht: one was empty, but the other contained several pounds of cocaine. All the indications were that a deal had gone wrong. Gonzales and Angelo had been robbed of the narcotics that had been concealed in the empty compartment, but the killers had missed the other one. There were no traces of the perpetrators, but a witness claimed to have been woken up by the sound of powerful motorbikes heading toward Getterön at around three o’clock that morning.

  Narcotics and the Halland police were in charge of the investigation, which was going nowhere fast. No one was talking; anyone who might know something was too scared to speak up. Was that where the gang war had started to escalate?

  “So Patrik acquired over four pounds of cocaine after the murder of Gonzales and Angelo, and he wanted to sell. Why didn’t he want Gothia MC to have it?” Irene pressed on.

  “Needed . . . money. He owed . . . the gang.”

  It wasn’t unusual for gang members to get into debt, then find they couldn’t pay. Instead they were forced to carry out tasks that no one else wanted to touch—high risk projects like murder, for example. It seemed that Patrik Karlsson had made a big mistake.

  “But how did you come into contact with each other? Did you already know him?”

&nbs
p; “No . . . Fendi. Bought from . . . Patrik before. Friends.”

  “Did Patrik know that Fendi belonged to the Pumas, one of the Gangster Lions’ subchapters?”

  Kazan shook his head slowly.

  “So Fendi got in touch with Patrik, who told him he had a lot of cocaine to sell. Fendi passed the information on to you, and you decided to call Patrik and pretend that you wanted to do business with him. Is that correct?”

  In her peripheral vision Irene saw the ECG graph spike twice in close succession, but Kazan didn’t appear to feel any ill effects.

  “Kind of,” he mumbled.

  “But you never intended to give him any money. You and Fendi beat him up and set fire to him. Didn’t you?”

  Eyes still closed, Kazan nodded.

  “We never meant to . . . kill him. He had . . . huge fucking knife.”

  Patrik’s long knife, adorned with a skull, had been found on the floor, with only his fingerprints on it. Maybe there was some truth in what Kazan said.

  It was possible that Irene’s summary of the course of events was correct, but at the same time she knew something didn’t fit.

  “Why would the Gangster Lions buy drugs from a member of Gothia MC? You have your own suppliers.”

  Kazan started laughing silently and opened his eyes. They were sparkling, but not with merriment. The look he gave Irene was pure evil. How could she have ever thought that his eyes were beautiful?

  “Who says . . . the Lions were buying?”

  Had he totally lost it, or had she misunderstood?

  “But you belong to the Lions. Or have you gone over to the Latin Kings?” she asked.

  “I don’t belong . . . to anyone,” he boasted.

  “You don’t belong to anyone?”

  It took a second or two before she realized what he meant.

  “You’re telling me that you and Fendi were buying for yourselves,” she said dubiously.

  “Yesss!”

  Kazan smiled, looking very pleased with himself. Maybe the idiot really didn’t understand what he’d started. His coke-addled brain had simply come up with a crazy idea: he was going to become a major player in his own right, start his own gang. That was why he needed capital, which was where the theft of the drugs came in. When he had sold the stash they had found in his closet, he would have plenty of money to buy more drugs. After a while he would be top dog—or so he thought. In reality he had no chance. He wasn’t smart enough, plus he was too much of an addict himself. He hadn’t even been able to resist the temptation to try the product; the overdose must have come as a nasty surprise.

  Now Irene could see why he was demanding a change of identity. The Gangster Lions would find out that he had been doing his own thing, aiming to set up in competition with them. He would also be in danger from Gothia MC once they knew for sure that Kazan had killed Patrik Karlsson. Thanks to the police informant they already had a good idea that Kazan and Fendi were responsible. It didn’t matter which of the gangs got a hold of Kazan first; the outcome would be the same. Maybe they had already dealt with Fendi; that would explain why the police hadn’t been able to track him down since his initial interview with Fredrik.

  Irene decided to push a little harder on the subject of the meeting. “This restaurant, Pravda, where is it?”

  “Gårda.”

  Irene had never heard of a restaurant by that name, but if it was in Gårda, it was no more than half a mile from the police station. Was he lying? Or delirious?

  “What makes you think this information is worth a new identity?”

  Once again she saw that glimmer of suppressed amusement in his eyes. He whispered, “The twenty-fifth, that’s when it all goes bang . . .”

  He broke off and looked past Irene at the door. She heard it fly open and heavy footsteps approaching from behind. Before she could turn around, she felt something cold and hard on the back of her neck. The barrel of a gun.

  “Stand still! Keep quiet!” a voice hissed roughly.

  The man was standing so close that she could smell his disgusting breath. She looked down into Kazan’s amber eyes, which were wide with fear. His lips were moving, but he was incapable of making a sound. A movement behind her and to the side indicated that there was another person in the room. The pressure on her neck remained unchanged. She heard the rustle of clothing as the other man moved toward the foot of the bed. She realized that he wanted to stand on the other side to get a better firing angle. Right-handed. She caught a glimpse of a pistol with a long barrel. Silencer.

  That was her last lucid thought before the darkness closed around her.

  Irene was vaguely aware of being lifted and placed on a gurney. People were talking to her. They opened her eyelids, shone a light into her pupils. If it hadn’t been for the constant pain at the back of her neck, she would have told them to go to hell and leave her alone so that she could get some sleep.

  Slowly she grasped what had happened. Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. She tried to sit up, but the pain in her head made her sink down again.

  “Steady. You have a concussion,” a professional female voice informed her.

  Irene tried to ask about Kazan, but her attempt at communication was cut off immediately.

  “Take it easy. Your colleagues will be here at any moment. They’ll talk to you, tell you everything you need to know. Here’s the doctor,” the nurse said.

  Dr. Enkvist’s concerned face appeared in Irene’s limited field of vision. She might not have been fully conscious, but she thought he had aged ten years.

  “You were struck with the butt of a pistol. You have a concussion,” he said.

  Once again Irene tried to speak, but he had already turned to the nurse.

  “We’ll keep her in for observation overnight,” he said firmly.

  “But we don’t have any beds,” the nurse objected.

  “Then she can stay in here.”

  “But I have to . . .” Irene protested feebly.

  “Right now you don’t have to do anything, and in fact you’re not capable of doing anything. There is a possibility that a blood vessel has been damaged, which means you could suffer internal bleeding between the cerebral membranes or deeper inside the brain. It happens fast, and it can be fatal. You need to be in the hospital,” he said, his grave expression leaving her in no doubt of the seriousness of the situation.

  Irene started to feel nauseous. She couldn’t stop herself from throwing up; fortunately the nurse saw what was about to happen and managed to get a kidney dish under her chin. It had been a long time since Irene had eaten, so she didn’t have much to bring up. Food was the last thing she wanted, but she was thirsty. She had a desperate, burning thirst. She started retching again.

  Irene was aware of the nursing staff checking on her at regular intervals; they didn’t allow her to sleep until the early hours of the morning. The bed was pretty uncomfortable, but she slept deeply. Waking up wasn’t much fun. Her head felt as if she had been to one hell of a party the night before, apart from the fact that she didn’t usually have lumps on the back of her neck to accompany her hangover. At least then the pain was self-inflicted, unlike now.

  It was seven-thirty by the time she came round properly. Tommy was standing beside her bed, looking serious.

  “Are you awake? And how are you feeling?” he asked.

  Irene tried to moisten her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, but the result was depressing. Her tongue felt as if it were covered in coarse sandpaper, just like the rest of her mouth. Eventually she managed to croak:

  “Awake, yes. Feeling—not so good.”

  “I understand. The doctor says you have to rest for at least a day or two. And that’s non-negotiable,” Tommy said when he could see that she was about to protest.

  Irene realized she wasn’t going to be able to work that day.
Better to rest and come back with fresh energy, she told herself. She had a drink of water and suddenly felt ravenously hungry. She could hear voices and the clink of crockery out in the corridor; was she hallucinating, or was the seductive aroma of coffee drifting into the room? Breakfast would definitely be very welcome.

  “What happened to Kazan?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

  “They shot him. He died instantly.”

  Irene closed her eyes and let out a groan. The only witness who had been prepared to talk had died, literally before her eyes. Although that wasn’t entirely true; she had no memory of the shooting. It must have happened when they knocked her out, or just after.

  “So what did he say to you?” Tommy asked.

  Irene quickly went through what she recalled of the attack itself, and what Kazan had told her. When she told Tommy that he had confessed to the murder of Patrik Karlsson, his troubled face lit up. The information that the drugs Patrik was intending to sell came from the Gonzales/Angelo homicide cheered him up even more.

  “Wow, the first real lead in a double homicide! Our colleagues in Halland will be delighted. And the killers came from Gothia MC . . . But why did Kazan and Fendi have to kill Karlsson?”

  “According to Kazan, that wasn’t their intention, but Karlsson pulled a knife on them.”

  They wouldn’t find out the definitive truth about the course of events unless they found Fendi Göks, and he seemed to have vanished in a puff of smoke.

  “Is that why Kazan wanted a new identity? Because he was afraid Gothia MC would want to avenge Karlsson’s murder?” Tommy said.

  “Yes, plus there’s the stolen cocaine of course. Even if Gothia MC don’t know about that yet, they soon will, thanks to our informant. And they’ll think it’s their property.”