by Jens Lapidus
Emelie started talking quickly—she seemed stressed. Nikola had a bad feeling in his stomach.
Emelie called someone she called Jan. “Can you come over to Alby and take a look at a crime scene? Break-in. Thanks.”
Nikola just stared. Teddy had made the place nice, but it was all wrecked now. Chairs—overturned. Duvet—scrunched up on the floor. Wardrobe doors—wide open.
Then he remembered something. He went into the little bathroom. It wasn’t as messy in there, probably because there wasn’t as much to mess up. The cabinet was open. Teddy was a man of simple tastes: some deodorant, a razor, a can of shaving foam, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a pot of plastic toothpicks. It didn’t even seem like his uncle had any aftershave.
Nikola went over to the toilet. He lifted the lid from the cistern, peered in. It was dark, but he spotted what he was looking for—whoever had been here hadn’t found it, at the very least. He reached into the water. Remembered what Isak had said: Björne—“who never backed down, always had a piece hidden in the toilet, just in case.”
The water was cold. He pulled the bag out and opened it. A Zastava. Teddy’s old gun: Nikola had heard him talk about it before. It was loaded.
Emelie was talking nonstop on the phone. To the guy named Jan. To others, Nikola had no idea who. It was a beautiful afternoon, the sky still that shade of blue it was during the summer. They got into a taxi. After a while, she put down the phone.
“I was just talking to Teddy’s friend. Loke Odensson. You know who he is?”
“No, but I’ve heard Teddy talk about him.”
“He’s a computer nerd. He’s going to help us.”
“How?”
“Matteo didn’t see the license plate on the undercover car. But I was thinking: he said that the car smashed into a lamppost when it drove off. Matteo’s sure—there has to be a dent on the front wing. Loke was just looking up all the body shops that repair that kind of damage on Volvos in Stockholm. There were quite a few if you include the unauthorized ones. But that’s where we’ll have to start looking. There’s a chance the car’s been dropped off at a garage somewhere. Loke’s going to send a list of the addresses.”
“Should we split up?”
“Probably best, yeah. Do you have a car?”
“No, but I can borrow one.”
Fifteen minutes later, Nikola jumped out of the taxi outside Chamon’s place. Emelie gave him a stern look.
“Call me the minute you get into the car?”
“Yeah, no worries.”
The furrow on her brow suddenly looked even deeper. “When’s all this crap going to end?”
Nikola shrugged.
62
She read the preliminary report from ten in the evening until five in the morning. The main hearing would begin in three days, and she could hardly spend her nights searching for dented Volvos. The prosecution’s evidence was strong. The question was whether it was strong enough. So far, Emelie had searched in vain for anything that came to Benjamin’s defense. She was still clinging to hope: they had to prove he was guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. If she could create even the smallest of doubts, he would have to be released.
His DNA and fingerprints had been found in the house—that was expected. He’d been found in a car nearby and hadn’t even been able to say anything of substance in his most recent interview—she noted that he hadn’t even told the interview leader, Kullman, who he’d been with; he’d just mentioned an “acquaintance.” That wasn’t enough for him to be sent down.
But they had found worse things: gunpowder residue on Benjamin’s hands. The National Forensic Centre’s weapons experts had analyzed it. The residue was a match for similar particles on the expanding bullets that had penetrated the back of the victim’s head and made his face explode. And above all: the T-shirt and jeans from the woods, covered in Benjamin’s DNA and the victim’s blood.
Since seven that morning, Emelie and Nikola had been visiting car garages. She’d started at one end of town, Nikola at the other. Checking off places in order.
Bilia was her first choice. They were Volvo-authorized workshops, and there were fourteen of them in the county. Tumba, Tyresö, and so on. She tried to work out the best possible route. In a few places, she asked them to call ahead to the next garage and ask whether any dark blue Volvo V70s with a dent in the front fender had been dropped off for repair. She double-checked everywhere anyway—went to all of them herself. Trusted no one.
The taxi bill would’ve been enough to break an oligarch, the way Emelie was planning on driving around. So she’d borrowed Josephine’s car instead, a “quick little X1,” as Jossan herself had put it.
Plus, she’d forced herself to flush the Stesolid pills down the toilet. Something had made her make up her mind: she needed to be able to do this without them—no more benzo for her. Stesolid: a quick fix, but not quite as quick to come off them. Maybe she’d flip out, maybe she’d just fall to pieces. Still: she was taking that risk. She needed to cut them out. She had to be 100 percent herself now.
Instead: she smoked with the window down. Hoped Jossan wouldn’t be able to smell it. She stopped in Skärholmen Centrum—wolfed down a Big Mac and fries in under five minutes. She drank some tea with an odd name to calm down. Hoped everything would work out.
She talked to Jan. He hadn’t found anything worthwhile in Teddy’s flat. She was constantly checking up with Nikola. She spoke to Loke: wondered if there was any other way to track an unmarked police car. If he could find a policeman with a scar on his face.
She called Matteo again, asked if he could remember anything else about the car, but the combination of his drunken state and the attack had plunged everything into a haze. She even called Teddy’s old friend Dejan—she got the number from Matteo—and he replied politely, sounded hungover, seemed to be worried about Teddy. But he had no idea, he said.
Thirty-six hours without sleep now. Like the homestretch in a huge transaction. But worse, obviously—this time, someone was really in danger.
She began the same way everywhere she tried: drove up to the garage and walked around, studying the cars parked outside. Then, once she’d checked every single one, she asked to talk to someone instead. “My husband brought our car in, but I don’t know the registration number,” and so on—they saw her as harmlessness personified: young, white, well-behaved woman. And it worked everywhere she tried: they let her in—usually, there weren’t more than ten, twenty cars inside.
In a few places, she spotted dark blue Volvos, the right model. She called Loke—he was on standby the whole time, and she read the license plates out to him. He checked. All of them were registered to private individuals, no connection to the police. Or not as far as Loke could see, at least. Teddy wasn’t just in her hands now—she had to rely on Nikola, on Loke. And Matteo, whoever he was.
It was a long shot, no matter which way she looked at it: that the car had even been brought in. But according to Matteo, it had been a real bump. “That kind of dent isn’t something you can just drive around with. ’Specially if it’s a copper’s car. They always fix ’em up straightaway. Anal like that, the bastards.”
It was even more of a long shot that they would be able to connect any car they found to whoever was behind Teddy’s disappearance, but she had to try. She couldn’t give up now.
Bilia, Nacka branch. She turned off, past the gas station. Its angular logo shone in huge letters above the bright orange entrance. Huge windows in this branch: this wasn’t somewhere they just fixed cars—they sold them here, too. You could tell they wanted to show them off. Volvo and Renault. Ads everywhere: One Stop Shop—from servicing and repairs to retouching and chips. Free service for three years. Win a rental car!
She climbed out of the car. Started walking across the huge parking lot. She tried to light a cig—her twenty-first of the day. It was windy, her hair was blowing all over the place, so she moved between two parked cars and squeezed up against the wall of the building.
The flame took; she breathed in. She turned her head. She was staring straight at a dark blue Volvo V70 with a huge dent on the right-hand bumper, above the front wheel. She moved around it. Three antennae at the back, dark windows. If anything looked like an undercover car, it was this.
She called her last-dialed number: Loke O.
PERSONAL RECORDING
15 January 2011
JS: Thanks for coming at such short notice. Something happened.
M: What?
JS: Your name’s out.
M: What the hell? You promised me—
JS: I know, I know. But one of the fucking prosecutors got involved, and wants you to testify—
M: That’s completely ridiculous. What the hell am I supposed to do?
JS: Look, listen: I refused to give your name to the prosecutor. But then they requested my phone records from the network, and they can see who I’ve been calling these past few weeks. You’re one of them. This is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever been involved in. The prosecutor looked you up, and they’ve got your name.
M: I’m not going to testify against Sebastian and the others. I’m not doing it. Tell the prosecutor. That was never the plan.
JS: Believe me, I’ve tried. My detective inspector spoke to the prosecutor. But the prosecutor’s saying it’s their duty to get to the bottom of the information I got from you. They say they can’t leave things as they are, unverified, you know? And that means you have to testify publicly. They’re bastards, the lot of them.
M: Shit, shit shit…I can’t.
JS: They’ll catch up with you sooner or later, and then you’ll have no choice but to testify.
M: So tell the prosecutor I’ll testify, but only against that man from the place in the country….And there’s one thing I never told you about the computer Cecilia handed over to the kidnappers.
JS: What?
M: There’s a copy, on a hard drive. I’m willing to do a deal with the prosecutor. Tell them that.
JS: Christ, Mats, it’s the Slavs they want.
M: I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to talk about Sebbe. I’m just not. But that bastard Peder, or whoever’s computer it was…whoever had me kidnapped…maybe.
JS: Yeah, that information’s also really valuable in terms of negotiating, considering what they were willing to do to you…if you know what I mean. Someone’s clearly extremely keen on stopping that information from coming out.
M: Am I in a position to negotiate?
JS: I don’t know. Maybe not you.
63
He woke to the sound of keys. The door of his cell swung open. A man in a dark blue prison guard’s uniform was standing in the hallway outside. He wasn’t wearing a name badge.
“Interview time.”
The man was holding a pair of handcuffs.
Teddy held out his hands and let the guard put them on. No point kicking up a fuss.
He limped a few feet—his foot hurt like hell—before the guard opened another door and pushed him in. The interview room smelled shut-in. At least the chairs weren’t screwed to the floor like they were in most other prisons.
“Wait here,” the guard said, and closed the door. Teddy heard the lock turn.
There were no windows, no phone. There was usually a phone, a secure line, so those in custody could make supervised calls to their relatives.
He wondered what they thought he’d done. The only criminal things he’d done the past few months were getting at Anthony Ewing, blackmailing Fredric McLoud, and setting fire to a few of Kum’s cars. But there was no way on earth any of them would’ve gone to the cops. They each had their own reasons for keeping quiet.
Teddy had eaten the sandwich they’d thrown into his cell, wrapped up in foil. He’d shat in the bucket in the corner. There was something off about this place. But still: the room they’d been keeping him in must’ve been a prison cell at some point in time—that was 100 percent. That was the only thing he knew to be true in the whole building. People had been locked up there before him. Everything else was off.
The door opened.
A cop came into the interview room. Sturdy boots, sweatshirt, normal jeans, an empty holster on his belt. He rolled a TV cart into the room. Someone closed the door from outside. Teddy studied the man’s face. It was the guy who’d attacked him when he got out of the taxi, who’d arrested him. The pig with the scar on his face.
“Najdan Maksumic,” he said. “Or would you rather I called you Teddy?” He had an odd way of talking, like he suffered from chronic hoarseness.
Teddy met his gaze: his eyes looked watery somehow.
“I want a lawyer.”
The policeman slowly pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“What am I accused of?”
“I’ll get into that. Serious drug offenses, for one.”
“In that case, I want a lawyer.”
“Yes, Teddy, you’ll be needing one, but we’re going to have a special little interview first. It’s not going to be the kind of interview you’re used to.”
Teddy asked: “What’s your name?”
“We’ll get to that later.”
That’s when he realized: he wasn’t being held in police custody at all; he wasn’t in prison. It was all fake. The long grass, the overturned goalposts, the guard without the name badge, the lack of a phone. He didn’t know where he was, where they’d taken him, but he was certain: this wasn’t an aboveboard operation. This was part of the other stuff somehow. Plus: this man was a real police officer, that much was clear. But he was completely unfazed by being found out—Christ, maybe the plan was that Teddy wouldn’t have the chance to talk about it afterward.
“If we keep things calm, this’ll be quick,” he said, turning on the TV screen.
Teddy’s hands were still bound. He wondered what the hell they were doing. The man went out.
—
It took a few seconds for the picture to appear. It was split. On each side of the screen, he could see a woman in what looked to be the same situation he was in. Handcuffed, in an empty room. One of them seemed to have wires of some kind attached to her arm. Teddy recognized them.
The woman on one side was Cecilia. The other was Lillan. He took a closer look: Cecilia had what looked like a white clip attached to her finger, and that linked up to a machine on the table. It looked like an old-fashioned tape recorder. He watched the man with the scar enter the room where Cecilia was sitting. He turned to the camera.
“That’s a lie detector on the table. As you can see, it’s attached to Cecilia. I learned to use them in special courses in Langley. This country doesn’t allow me to use them, unfortunately, but they’re actually more reliable than many people in Sweden think.”
The man moved over to Cecilia and held something against her neck—it might’ve been the Taser they’d used on Teddy.
“I want you to realize how serious these interviews are. If you lie, I won’t just see it on the detector. I’ll punish you for it, too.”
He put the Taser to Cecilia’s neck.
She shook.
Cried out.
Through the TV screen, her bared teeth looked almost like a wolf’s.
“Everyone understand?” The policeman turned to the camera again. His scar looked like it had been daubed on with oil paint.
Teddy stared at the screen. Cecilia was crying. Lillan was breathing heavily. He didn’t know if they could see or hear him.
The policeman pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Cecilia.
“So, Cecilia, let’s get going. Just a few calibration questions first. Answer yes or no.”
“Please, let me go.”
“No, no, I’m going to ask you some questions now. Is your name Cecilia Emanuelsson?”
Cecilia was rocking slowly.
“Answer the question, please. Is your name Cecilia Emanuelsson?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Do you live on Brä
nnkyrkagatan?”
“Yes.”
“Were you married to Mats Emanuelsson?”
A slight pause before she answered: “Yes.”
“This is going well.” The man turned some dials on the machine.
“Were you ever unfaithful to Mats Emanuelsson while you were married?”
Cecilia’s rocking stopped with a jolt. Teddy had seen her move like that before.
“No, never. Why?”
“Just curious.” The man turned the dials on the machine again. “Okay. Now, I’d like to know the following. Did Mats Emanuelsson take his life by jumping from a ferry in January 2011?”
Cecilia started rocking again, like everything but her arms was in a rocking chair.
“Answer the question, please.”
Her face was pale. “Yes, he did.”
“Do you have any idea why he jumped?”
“No, not really, but he’d been kidnapped a few years earlier. I don’t think he was well….”
The man got up. “Just answer yes or no.”
Cecilia closed her mouth.
He raised the Taser. “Do you know why he jumped?”
“No.”
“Did you talk to him in the weeks before he jumped?”
“No, not that I remember.”
Teddy could hear the blood pounding in his head. He wanted to kick out, tear the door open, and floor that bastard with the scar. But he knew: he had no chance. Not with handcuffs, locked doors, and a pretend cop with a weapon somewhere outside.
The man asked: “Have you seen Mats over the past three months?”
“What do you mean? He’s dead.”
“I’ll repeat the question. Have you seen Mats over the past three months?”
“No, I haven’t.”
The policeman studied the lie detector for a few seconds. It felt like Teddy was in the room with Cecilia; he could even hear her breathing.
“There was a fire in your apartment about nine years ago, wasn’t there?”
“Yes.”