The Ninth Grave

by Stefan Ahnhem

  ‘Dunja, I like you. But I want to make one thing damned clear: you have so much water over your head you risk drowning. And whenever that happens, don’t count on me.’

  ‘Kjeld, listen to me now. This is Sleizner’s idea. I understand just as little as—’

  ‘I’m not getting involved. I intend to do my job, but I just want you to know where I stand.’

  ‘Sure. I hear what you’re saying,’ said Dunja, taking a deep breath. ‘I assume you didn’t just call to tell me that you’re another hen in the chicken coop. I hope you’ve got some information for me, too.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You heard me,’ said Dunja, impressed at how she managed to assert herself. ‘Well? Have you found anything? If not, I want—’

  ‘I’ve already reported to Jan, and only wanted to tell you that I’m going home now.’

  ‘But you were supposed to report to me. Sleizner couldn’t have been more clear on that point.’

  ‘The last thing I want to do is to end up in the middle of some fucking power struggle between—’

  ‘Kjeld, you said you were going to do your job. If you do, then everyone will be happy.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone and Dunja could tell that Richter was weighing the pros and cons.

  ‘I don’t remember which of you brought it up, but there is no doubt that the Swedish car with the spiked wheels and Neuman’s BMW had been inside the ferry terminal and forced the gate into Helsingør Harbour.’

  Dunja got up from the couch. ‘And then what happened? Where do the tracks go?’

  ‘Right out on to Færgevej, but it’s been driven on since and was ploughed a while ago.’

  Dunja went up to the window and noticed that the snow had started falling outside. Usually she loved snow, especially the first snowfall of winter that nestled everything in a clean white blanket and forced everyone to take it a little easier – but not today. Now the storm meant nothing more than a battle against the clock. Every additional snowflake contributed to removal of the tracks and the possibility of finding out what had happened in Helsingør Harbour.

  ‘Just so you know, I’ve secured everything that I possibly could and now I have to go.’

  ‘Kjeld, wait. Has it started snowing where you are yet?’

  ‘Yes, it’s really coming down, so if I don’t leave soon I won’t pick up the kids on time.’

  ‘But I want you to stay and—’

  ‘What do you mean, “stay”? Thursdays are my only pick-up day. If I miss that Susanne isn’t going to talk to me all weekend.’

  ‘That’s too bad. I want you to finish working first.’

  ‘I am done, dammit! Are you hard of hearing?’

  ‘You’re not done until I say you are.’

  Richter let out a long, heavy sigh and then collected himself. ‘Do you think I don’t see what the hell you—’

  ‘Who’s leading this investigation? You or me? Do as I say now, before it’s too late!’

  She was met with complete silence and Dunja realized that Richter was probably just as shocked by her outburst as she was. She had never gone after anyone that hard, not even when she’d been so mad at Carsten.

  ‘Before you go home, I want you to continue north along Færgevej and see if you can find tracks that continue along the edge of the road, or if they turn off on to a smaller street.’

  ‘What’s the point? They could have driven anywhere.’

  ‘Just do as I say, instead of—’

  ‘I’ve already started.’

  ‘Okay. How far have you got?’ She hurried over to her desk under the bookshelf in the corner, turned on her computer and zoomed in on Helsingør Harbour.

  ‘I’m at Stationspladsen, turning right on to Havnegade. Then I’ll continue north along the harbour basin.’

  ‘You can probably see where all the buildings are on the left side, no?’

  ‘What the hell do you think? It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack – a needle made of hay. There are quite a few new tracks, because the snow is pouring down like… I don’t know what. But—’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’ve more or less passed the harbour. Pretty soon it turns into Nordre Strandvej.’

  ‘Turn around and drive back in the other direction.’

  ‘Huh? Why would I do that? The only thing there is the harbour pier.’

  ‘Just do as I say, before it’s snowed over completely! If you keep stalling your kids are going to have to spend the night in daycare.’

  Dunja expected some form of protest. She’d indicated that she was joking, but Kjeld Richter was notorious for not perceiving sarcasm or having any sense of humour at all. The others at the department called him the Swede, but he couldn’t even laugh at that. Instead he went to the HR manager and filed a harassment report, and everyone had been called in to an emergency meeting.

  ‘Kjeld, that last thing I said was just a joke. Of course they won’t have to—’

  ‘Dammit, I think I’ve found… Wait.’

  ‘What? What have you found? Kjeld, talk to me. Where are you exactly?’

  ‘Do you see the railway tracks that run along Havnegade?’

  Dunja zoomed in to the railway line that passed between the road and the pier. ‘Yes, is that where you are?’

  ‘I’m right where you can drive across the tracks out to the pier. I’m just going to—’ She heard the car door open and the ferocious sound of gusty winds. ‘Jesus Christ, this weather.’

  Despite the elements, Dunja wished she was there. ‘Have you found the tracks?’

  ‘It can’t be anything else. There’s one with studs and one with… It looks like they’ve skidded out on to the pier and…’

  ‘What? What is it? Kjeld? Have you found something?’

  ‘Yes. Pieces of plastic from a tail light. But, what the hell…’

  The frustration was making her scalp itch, and Dunja wanted to shout at him to describe what he saw, but she managed to restrain herself. Neither of them said anything for a few long seconds.

  ‘So, it seems like Neuman followed the car with the studded tyres out on to the pier and it drove right into… Wait, I’ll just… Yes, dammit. It can’t have happened any other way.’

  ‘Kjeld? What happened?’

  ‘It went down into the water.’

  ‘You think the Swedish car is at the bottom of the harbour?’

  ‘I’m as good as certain.’

  ‘Does that mean that the perpetrator is down there, too?’

  ‘It’s possible, but I’m not sure. There are some footprints here, but there’s already too much snow to see whether it’s from one person or several.’

  ‘Okay, secure as much as possible. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’ She ended the call and went back to lie down on the couch to collect her thoughts.

  If Richter had read the tracks in the snow correctly, Aksel Neuman had chased the perpetrator after coming home and finding his wife murdered in bed. As far as they could tell right now, Neuman had shadowed the Swedish car all the way up to the ferry terminal in Helsingør, at which point the perpetrator must have spotted him. Then it turned into a car chase that ended abruptly on the pier.

  But where Aksel Neuman and his BMW had gone was still a question mark.

  He could be lying low because he risked being charged with the murder of the perpetrator. The perpetrator could have also managed to swim out of the car. Or perhaps he wasn’t even in the car when it went over the edge, but was hiding somewhere, and had overpowered Neuman and taken both his life and his car.

  It was a plausible scenario, but whether it was sufficiently probable was another question. If Dunja was asked to give an answer herself, it would be an unhesitating no. It wasn’t even close to being probable. But something told her that the last thing this investigation would be about was what was probable or not.

  14 June 1998

  I don’t know where you are, or if you even exist, but this le
tter is to you and no one else.

  I used to see you almost every day on the other side of the checkpoint and the barbed-wire fence. But that was a year ago. You would sit there for hours. Maybe you were passing by, or maybe you came just to look. I don’t know. In the camp there were rumours about Palestinian women who met Israeli soldiers in secret and maybe you came for my sake. I would stand at the boom, hoping.

  I knew that women from the Nablus mountains could have blue eyes, but I’d never seen them before you. You were the most beautiful person in the world. I didn’t understand it at first, but my heart started to beat twice as fast when I saw you. It still does, just thinking about you, as if it refuses to accept that it’s too late and will all soon be over.

  I can’t stop going over our last night together. Do you remember it? How it was starting to get dark and you stayed longer than usual. My shift was done and I figured it was now or never. I walked along the barricade and saw you move in my direction. I almost screamed with joy.

  I would have turned my back if I knew what would happen next, warned you about being too close to the border – even threatened you and forced you back. I would have never stood by that fence and let my eyes meet yours, so you wouldn’t have come all the way up and put your palms against mine. Your lips…

  I can’t keep going much longer. There’s not much blood left now.

  How long did we stand there in silence? A few minutes, or was it a whole hour? There was so much I wanted to say, ask, but didn’t dare. I was so afraid of disturbing the moment by trying to put my thoughts into words. How you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. How your eyes could be so blue. How I loved you already, even though we’d only ever met with a fence between us. I didn’t even get your name. All I could do was turn on my portable radio. Do you remember? They were playing Etta James. No one could say it better than her anyway. I pinched myself hard on the arm to be sure it wasn’t a dream, so hard that I still have a scar.

  I don’t know who took you away or if that’s why you never showed up again. Was it your father or someone in your village? Are you even alive? Maybe it was all just a dream anyway and for a while I thought it would be enough.

  The scar, and the idea of you, kept it all alive.

  23

  PARLIAMENT ACTUALLY CONSISTED OF seven different buildings: the East and West Houses of Parliament on Helgeandsholmen and the parliament building, Brandkontoret, Neptunus, Cephalus and Mercurius in Old Town. All the buildings were linked by underground tunnels and guarded by a hundred-odd cameras, which was a lot for just two guards stationed in the security centre to monitor. Considering the combined square metres of the buildings and the number of high-profile politicians who went in and out of them daily, the area was virtually unguarded. If you knew where the cameras were located, it was not hard to make yourself invisible.

  After almost two straight hours of looking at various surveillance videos Fabian, Malin, and one of the guards managed to identify the minister for justice as he came out of the assembly hall through door four at 2:42 p.m. Grimås stopped to put on his fur-collared coat before continuing towards the escalator.

  ‘Did you see that? He’s holding the briefcase in his right hand and the hat in his left.’ Fabian pointed towards the monitor where the minister disappeared down the escalator. Malin nodded.

  The next time the minister was caught on camera, he was walking resolutely through the big hall of the Swedish Central Bank, which it was still called even though the official Central Bank moved to Brunkebergstorg many years ago. The briefcase was still in his right hand, and he was using his left to put on his hat.

  ‘And this is the most direct route to get to the parliament building?’ Malin said and the guard nodded.

  ‘He seems prepared to go out, anyway,’ said Fabian, who noticed that nothing in the minister’s body language seemed to indicate that this was anything other than an ordinary day.

  Fabian noticed similar behaviour as they watched him go through the ‘gutter’, the name given to the first part of the underground tunnel to the government buildings in the Old Town. The minister didn’t seem nervous or hesitant as he looked out the windows at Riddarfjärden – where his first cell phone would later be found – or when he greeted other members of parliament as they walked by him. He was likely completely ignorant of what was coming.

  Seconds later, it happened. The time stamp showed 2:45 p.m. In the underground hall right after the gutter, the minister stopped mid-step and turned around as if someone was calling his name.

  ‘Play that again and zoom in,’ said Fabian. The sequence replayed, zeroing in on the minister. Even with a considerably grainier image, Grimås’ puzzled expression could not be missed.

  ‘There’s no other angle we can look at to see who’s calling him?’ asked Malin.

  ‘We only have cameras at the doors. Politicians are not particularly thrilled about being under surveillance. But let me see what I can do.’ The guard switched between a number of different camera angles. ‘Here. I think I’ve got it,’ the guard said, pressing play.

  The video showed a guard with a moustache and ample waist yell and wave to the minister, who was on his way in the opposite direction. The minister turned around and walked over to the guard, leaning in to hear him speak. The guard was at least a head shorter than him.

  ‘Are there any microphones down there?’ said Fabian.

  ‘Unfortunately not.’ The guard zoomed in on the frame of the minister listening attentively.

  ‘Do you recognize that guard?’ said Malin.

  ‘No, but everyone is supposed to have an ID number on their uniform. It’s hidden by the minister here.’

  Grimås nodded again and then followed the guard off camera.

  ‘Where did they go?’ said Fabian.

  ‘I’m not sure, but it looks like they continued straight ahead toward Brandkontoret or Neptunus, instead of turning right towards the parliament building. However—’

  ‘Change to another camera. We can’t lose them.’

  ‘Fabian, this isn’t live,’ said Malin. ‘Everything should be recorded, isn’t that right?’ She turned to the guard, who nodded with an exaggerated smile.

  But Fabian didn’t feel any calmer. It happened right then. In front of their eyes, the minister had disappeared.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the guard, switching back and forth between various videos, some of which were completely black. ‘It seems as if some of the cameras were… sprayed, or something? I get sabotage alarms if someone cuts the cable.’

  ‘Go back to the sequence where they were last seen and then fast-forward to three twenty.’

  The guard clicked a little ahead on the timeline and about half a minute later the minister came back into the frame. ‘There he is. I almost got a little worried.’

  ‘If it’s actually him,’ said Fabian.

  24

  DUNJA TRIED TO THINK about something else, but she couldn’t shake the images of all the mutilated female bodies with their shredded genitalia, slashed throats and lifeless gazes that looked like they had been thrown like garbage on the floor of a slaughterhouse. She had analysed the pictures down to the smallest detail in an increasingly desperate attempt to find a link to Karen Neuman.

  But after far too many hours on the couch she had reached a dead end and decided to go to bed. Her brain, on the other hand, refused to rest and continued to review the facts on its own. When she heard Carsten returning from his Christmas dinner, she lay completely still and hoped that if she acted asleep, she would finally get there for real.

  Maybe she should have been upfront and told him that there was no point in trying because her mind was preoccupied with sequences of one woman after another being raped, sawed or hacked to pieces. But instead she tried to pretend and left the field open, something Carsten did not wait long to exploit.

  Once he’d made up his mind, arguments like fatigue and headache were irrelevant. Her low libido didn’t hinder
him either. On the contrary, he was convinced that simply rubbing her clitoris a little harder would remedy everything. She finally relented, hoping her brain would get a much-needed break. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working.

  But somewhere deep down, she really wanted to sleep with Carsten. For that reason, she let him pump in a rhythm as even as a metronome, even moaning once or twice when he panted in her ear and asked if she liked it.

  ‘By the way, there’s something I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Why now? Can’t it wait?’ asked Dunja, trying to ignore the image of what a spiked wooden club could do to a woman.

  ‘No, otherwise I might forget. I have to go to Stockholm this weekend and won’t be home until Tuesday.’ The tip of his tongue worked its way further into her ear and Dunja wondered whether he was aware of how loud it sounded. ‘I think it’s a seminar on a new way to calculate a company’s credit rating after a merger.’

  Dunja nodded and let him continue thrusting. Could there really be five widely divergent perpetrators – six, including Karen Neuman’s? How could there be six different men who attacked an innocent victim with such studied evil, only to return to their daily lives.

  ‘Sorry I wasn’t in the mood yesterday. I promise to make up for it now.’

  Dunja nodded and tried to ignore the fact that she had got so dry, it had started to sting. Instead, she thought about all the great sex they’d had when they met. They had done it everywhere, several times a day. Everything revolved around their lovemaking. She walked around feeling constantly horny, and they’d tested every possible and impossible position.

  Now she didn’t know what to call what they were doing. It wasn’t sex in any event. She’d always heard that sex got deeper and more intimate the longer you were together. In their case, it had only got worse and monotonous to the point that anything but the missionary position felt criminal.

  She wished he could just surprise her once in a while with something unexpected – anything would be better than this monotonous bumping and grinding. Even if he just moved a little more irregularly, or better yet pulled out completely and started licking her. Or he could flip her over on to all fours and take her…