Eighteen Below

by Stefan Ahnhem

  “Look, she’s awake,” said one of them.

  “I’ll take care of that,” said another.

  The blow hit her with such force that everything went away for a few seconds. Unfortunately, it came back in time for her to feel the pain from the next blow. She wanted nothing more than to go numb and fade away into darkness. Away from their laughter and the cold. Away from the pain — to transform as quickly as possible into an unconscious pile of meat. A punching bag without functioning nerve endings.

  But it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  “Don’t you think she’s tender enough by now?” she heard one of them say.

  “No,” said another, and a kick hit her so hard that it sounded like something inside her head broke. At least it didn’t hurt as much now. “Okay, now she is,” said the same voice. And then those laughs she hated more than anything.

  Someone approached her. She could hear him crouch down beside her, breathing heavily. Why could she still hear? Why could she still think? One hand touched her forehead, pushing her head back; the other grasped her jaw and forced her mouth open.

  One of the others — it couldn’t be the first one, because his hands were still on her — shoved something into her mouth. Something hard and oblong, lubricated with stuff that made it slide down her throat. Her gag reflex did its best to force it back up again, but the fingers in her mouth, so many of them, kept pushing the cylinder deeper into her. She tried to gasp for breath, but it was impossible, and the gagging turned into violent convulsions. What were they doing? Was this how she was going to die?

  Then the fingers finally left her mouth. The hands let go of her and once again she could fill her lungs with air. Her relief was almost indescribable, even though something was still inside her, triggering her gag reflex. But whatever it was they had forced into her was too far down. It felt like a string, or some sort of line that came up and out her mouth.

  “Okay, everyone ready?”

  “Hell yes! Let’s do this!”

  A lighter, or at least it sounded like a lighter, and something flared to life. She didn’t understand what.

  Then the blindfold was ripped from her eyes and she could see them before her in their hoods and happy smiley faces. One of them had a blinding cell phone in hand. Another held a lighter. The sky above them was dark, so a few hours must have passed since they found her.

  Only then did she realize that something was still crackling nearby. Like a sparkler, only weaker. She lowered her gaze and saw the red sparks creeping toward her, into her mouth. The flame burned her tongue, and she tried to put it out with her saliva, tried to spit it out, but it was impossible. The fire cut through her and moved into the back of her throat. She screamed, but it only made the pain worse as it moved down her throat and burned up everything in its path.

  The bang was hardly audible. It sounded like a dull, distant thud somewhere deep in her ribcage. As if her heart had just beaten for the last time.

  Each unanswered call felt like a blow to the face. It was completely incomprehensible that Søren Ussing wasn’t answering the second his phone rang, considering how royally they had messed up. If there were ever a time they should be on tenterhooks, waiting for her call, this was it.

  Fareed had managed to find the killers’ Swedish cell phone numbers, and with the help of their position he had directed Dunja to Ellehammersvej in one of Helsingør’s many industrial areas. And there they were, all four of them, balaclavas over their faces, on the other side of the fence under a large silo, standing around Sannie Lemke in a half circle.

  She wanted to run up and overpower them, but she was unarmed and wouldn’t stand a chance. Her only option was to call for backup, so when Ussing’s voicemail picked up she tried again, using the general emergency number this time.

  From behind, she heard the sound of a slide being drawn back followed by the pressure of a barrel on the back of her head. She dropped her phone and put her hands in the air.

  “Let’s just take it easy here,” she said as calmly and sensibly as she could, as she tried to figure out if she’d miscounted. But no, there they were, all four of them, on the other side of the fence. Where had the fifth one come from?

  The pressure of the barrel eased. She had been around the block enough times to take this as a sign that it was okay to turn, and just as she expected, the butt of the pistol struck her from the right. But her attacker hadn’t expected Dunja to throw her head back, and she heard the cartilage of his nose take the brunt of the hit.

  The pistol hit the ground, and before the man could regain control Dunja spun around and knocked his legs out from under him. He fell to the ground like a heavy seal, and she knew right away that whoever it was under that smiley, it wasn’t anyone from the martial arts club. He had none of the unpredictable swiftness she’d encountered on the highway.

  The man groaned and touched the blood that was starting to run down his neck as he tried to stand up again.

  “You stay there.” Dunja approached him, grabbed his balaclava, and tore it off. The blood from his broken nose was smeared across much of his face. Yet she had no problem recognizing the man — the boy, really — whose life she had once saved. The thought had been with her since she found the necklace. But she hadn’t seriously believed it. She still couldn’t understand. How had he ended up here? And why? There were supposed to be four of them. Not five.

  “Theodor…” she managed at last. “Why?”

  He rose slowly, his eyes on her, and she could see his lower lip vibrating like a forewarning that the tears would soon be upon him. Behind her she heard happy shouts and car doors opening and closing, and when she turned around she saw that the headlights were on and illuminating two long corridors in the darkness.

  “Theodor, we’ll get out of this one way or another. But first you have to help me.” She turned back to him, only to find that he had raised the pistol and was aiming it at her with trembling hands. “No, Theo, this isn’t you.”

  “Shut up!”

  She heard an engine revving on the other side of the fence, and soon the car had backed onto the road and vanished into the darkness.

  “See for yourself. They don’t care about you.”

  “I said, shut up!” With the pistol in hand, he took a step away from her, then another. When he was far enough away, he turned around and began to run.

  Dunja rushed in the other direction, around the fence and into the adjoining industrial area where Sannie was leaning against the wall beneath the silo, naked and bound. She got down on her knees and took the woman into her arms, her fingers searching until she felt a faint pulse. This was what she had feared, what she had done everything to avoid. The promise she had fought not to break.

  “Sannie, I’m sorry…” she said, although her words wouldn’t change anything.

  With the last of her strength, Sannie opened her eyes and met her gaze.

  “But we know who they are, and I know exactly where they’re heading right now, and what their car looks like, do you hear me? I even have the licence plate number. All I have to do is call my colleagues and they’ll be caught. I swear to you. They will be punished.”

  Sannie coughed and opened her mouth like she was about to say something. But there were no words. Only blood. It flowed at an alarming rate from the corners of her mouth, down her chest, and onto the asphalt below her, quickly forming a puddle.

  Her eyes were still open, looking at Dunja, but her gaze was gone.

  And so was the pulse against Dunja’s fingertips.

  She gently closed Sannie’s eyelids, first one, then the other. Then she lay the body on its side, stood up, and filled her lungs with the damp night air.

  Once again, Sleizner had managed to stick his repulsive, corrupt tentacles into the investigation. And once again, it had ended in the worst possible way. But this was the final time. She would
make sure it never happened again if it was the last thing she ever did.

  Dunja went back out to the road and over to the position she had been watching from earlier. Her phone was on the ground where she’d dropped it. The screen was cracked, but it lit up, and she quickly found Fareed’s number.

  “How did it go?”

  “Not good. I was too late. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Okay, what do you want me to do now?”

  “Resign from TDC.”

  103

  Astrid Tuvesson hadn’t so much as touched the bottle. She hadn’t even taken it in her hands to see whether the cap had been opened or if the metal ring beneath it was still intact. Taking a little sip when the bottle was open was nothing compared with breaking the seal. That was where she drew the line. But she had kept her fingers in check and didn’t even know what the bottle contained.

  Nor did she have any idea what was happening outside. Whether they were looking for her or even knew she was in trouble. She hadn’t heard any noise for over an hour and a half. Aside from the hum of the compressor, which switched on or off now and then, it had been so quiet that if she held her breath she could hear her own heartbeat. And if there was anything that made her worry, it was the silence.

  Maybe she was being naive, but somehow she’d expected that it wouldn’t take long for Cliff to start wondering why she wasn’t calling or answering her phone. And even if he wasn’t the quickest to action, after a while he would see no option but to send the task force in to look for her. They ought to be able to find the basement quick enough. The question was how long it would take them to find the freezer, which was probably hidden under the cloth and a bunch of junk again. But if she could find it, so could they.

  That was what she had been thinking. Or rather, hoping. Now she didn’t know what to think. She wasn’t panicking. At least not yet. She looked at the glowing hands of her watch and found that she was coming up on an hour and forty-five minutes of being locked inside the freezer. It was almost time to call for help and make as much noise as she possibly could.

  An hour and forty-five minutes…no wonder she was cold. Of course, she always felt cold, and just as Gunnar always nagged her, it was likely her smoking that was the culprit, causing her veins to constrict. But she hadn’t smoked in hours and she was still shaking like an aspen leaf.

  At first she’d tried to share her body heat with Sandra Gullström, who was lying beneath her. She’d held her, repeating over and over that help was on the way. But soon she realized it was pointless and would only make her cool faster. Gullström was beyond rescue, and if someone didn’t come soon, Astrid’s body, too, would turn into one big block of ice.

  And then there was that bottle. It was so close to her. What was the harm in feeling the cap? Opening it was the forbidden step. She knew that. Opening it, even just to smell the alcohol. That would be the beginning of the end.

  She picked up the bottle and weighed it in her hands. It felt full. She held it by the bottom with one hand, her grip steady so as not to drop it, and let the other hand slide up its side. The chill of the frosted glass didn’t bother her in the least, and on the other side she could feel the damp label, which had come a bit loose at the edges.

  It was a bottle of Explorer vodka, she could tell right away. That characteristic label, the Viking ship with its red-and-white sail that stuck out past the rounded edge, coming to a little point on the left side. That was always the part you started picking at when withdrawal hit and you were trying to stay away.

  She let her hand move up the neck, and to her surprise, the perforations of the screw-top were broken. The lower ring was loose, and her pulse automatically increased — and with it, her craving. She dropped the bottle like it was contagious and tried to calm her breathing. No touching, no touching it again, she repeated to herself until she realized she’d forgotten to look at her watch.

  One hour and fifty-two minutes. She had missed the time by two whole minutes, and she should immediately start shouting for help as loud as she could and kicking her feet against the wall. Every ten minutes, for sixty seconds, that was what she had decided. No more, no less. The whole point was to create an orderly schedule to keep the panic at bay.

  This time, though, she decided to make as much noise as she could for at least two minutes. Maybe three. But even after a moment, her shouts began to turn to screams, and no matter how much she tried to get her voice under control, desperation took over.

  Astrid had no idea how long she screamed. But scream she did. So loudly that they would hear her even if they were only in the vicinity of the house. For the first time, she screamed for her life, and although she was fully aware that it wouldn’t lead to anything but wrecked vocal cords, she couldn’t stop herself.

  Only when she lifted the bottle in trembling hands, loosened the cap, and let the first sip fill her mouth was she finally able to bring herself to be quiet. How she had longed for it. She swallowed and shuddered with pleasure as the burning warmth spread through her body. She took another sip, a little larger this time, and couldn’t remember why she’d waited so long.

  104

  Theodor had done everything they’d asked. He had helped out by standing guard and it was all supposed to be over now. Behind them. It would finally be the end of this nightmare, and no matter how horrible and real it was right now, in a few years it would seem like nothing but a bad dream. And after another few years, barely even that.

  At least that’s what he’d claimed, that bastard Henrik. Instead, everything had gone to shit, and here he was, running alone through the night with a broken nose, revealed as one of them. A fucking masked killer who attacked innocent people and delighted in their pain. A monster…

  He didn’t know what they had done this time, except it had to do with a firecracker. But he hadn’t heard one go off, and he didn’t really want to think about that. He just wanted to erase his memory and reboot his whole system.

  Those bastards had ditched him. Instead of helping him with the policewoman, they just took off. After he had done his bit to help them.

  They would get what was coming to them. Goddammit, he would show them. Including Alexandra. He’d had such strong feelings for her. But they could go to hell, all four of them. No, wait, he would send them to hell. After all, he was the one with the gun.

  Nothing mattered anymore. Everything was fucked. He was fucked. He always had been. Broken from day one. And there was nothing in the world that could fix him. He should have been scrapped from the start.

  Theodor had been running for a long time; this road was super long, and he could only hope he was heading in the right direction. The traffic sign above him read Helsingborg with an arrow pointing right — toward a stuck-up shithole that thought it was special. Yet the sign gave him a burst of fresh energy, and just a few minutes later he could see the ferry landing a hundred metres off. Long lines of cars were waiting, unusually long for a Friday night. Either one of the crossings had been cancelled or a ferry was about to leave at any minute.

  He wasn’t planning to enter the actual terminal area. At least not yet. There, among the neat rows of cars, a pedestrian would stick out way too much. The last thing he wanted was for them to catch a glance of him in the rear-view mirror before he found them. So he kept to the road on the other side of the perimeter fence and was able to survey the situation and take his time finding their ugly old Saab.

  The whole point was for him to show up without warning. To just suddenly be there. He could already picture how they would try to make a joke of how they had ditched him, and make room for him in the back seat like it was no big deal. But no way in hell would he get in. Instead he would just stand there and look at them; he wouldn’t say a word. Long enough that they would realize they had dug their own graves.

  The Saab was almost at the front of its line, directly under one of the streetlights th
at illuminated the area, and although Theodor was at quite a distance he could see that Henrik was behind the wheel with Alexandra beside him and Beavis and Butthead in the back seat. He was willing to bet that they were all grinning at each other and handing the phone around to check out their latest video.

  He increased his pace but didn’t break into a run. When he was about thirty metres away, he approached the fence and moved up close to the pole of a streetlight. It was higher than he’d expected. On the other hand, there was no razor wire on top, so it wouldn’t be a problem to climb over, run to his goal, and end this whole fucking mess.

  He just needed to collect himself, slow down his pulse, which was hammering like a sewing machine, and focus on the next few minutes. His last minutes. He stuck his hand under his hoodie and took out the gun, keeping it as close to his body as he could; he checked to make sure the clip was full, stuck it back in his waistband, and decided that he was past the point of no return.

  It was surprisingly easy to climb over the fence, and under cover of darkness he crossed the lanes that led away from the ferry and approached the next fence, which was much lower — he swung himself over it without losing speed. He was in the right area now and was amazed to find that he felt no hesitation as he strode toward the car. They didn’t deserve to live, none of them. Neither did he. When he had about twenty metres left to go, Theodor pulled out the gun and held it in front of him with both hands.

  Fifteen metres.

  Ten.

  His pulse was pounding so fast that he could barely tell one beat from the next.

  Seven.

  He had never been so nervous. But he felt no hesitation. He was looking forward to the moment when it would all be over. He had finally reached the final scene of his life.

  Three.

  If only it weren’t for the blue lights in the distance, he would have reached his goal by now. Maybe he would have fired a shot or two. Instead he was forced to lower the gun and back away into the darkness.