“Yep, all I had to do was find the number of a talkative neighbor and ask if there was any smoke coming from the chimney, and bingo!”
Sarac sat down at the table and gently pinched the bridge of his nose, then his lips. His face felt strangely numb.
“When did you last take your migraine medication?” Natalie said.
“Yesterday, I think,” Sarac mumbled. “Unless it was the day before yesterday . . .”
TWENTY-TWO
There was a glint of light from the peephole, then Atif heard the rattle of the security chain. He noted that she had used all the locks.
“Come in!” Cassandra said. She was trying to make her voice sound firm, but he immediately noticed the fear that lay hidden beneath her composed exterior. As usual, he could smell it, right through the heavy cloud of her perfume.
He stepped into the hall and closed the front door behind him.
“Lock the door!”
Atif did as he was told, then waited for her to invite him further inside the apartment. But instead they remained standing in the hall.
“Tindra?” he said.
“She’s asleep.”
He nodded, trying not to show his disappointment. He waited for her to tell him what this was about. Then realized that she was going to make him ask.
“You wanted me to come around as fast as I could. Well, here I am.” Atif shrugged his shoulders.
He had called Cassandra a couple of days before, to tell her he was staying in Sweden for a bit longer, and had given her his number. She hadn’t sounded pleased, and pointedly hadn’t invited him to spend Christmas with them, as he might have hoped. But, little more than an hour ago, she had called and asked him to come around. She’d said it was urgent.
Cassandra put her hand in the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and waved it in front of his face.
“What the fuck is this, Atif? Huh?!” Her voice had risen almost to falsetto.
He took the piece of paper. A Christmas card with a cheerful Santa Claus on the front. Someone must have dropped it on the ground, because there was a clearly visible shoe print on the back. The marks from a heavy sole that reminded him of his own military boots. Inside the card was the usual printed greeting, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and beneath it some handwritten lines in black ink.
Hello Tindra.
Hope you’ve been a good girl this year. Because you know what happens if you aren’t good, don’t you?
Just ask your Uncle Atif!
Best wishes,
Santa
“It was on her shelf,” Cassandra hissed. “On her fucking shelf at preschool. Get it? She was over the moon, thought the card really was from Santa. That he’d written to her and her uncle. I didn’t know what to say.”
Atif nodded; he knew exactly what had happened. He could see it in front of him. The doors of the preschool were usually left unlocked; you could just walk in. Don’t ask the staff, ask one of the kids which way to go. Children always knew all about one another and were useless as witnesses. The rest was easy. Just leave a little greeting. It didn’t really matter what, the message would be clear enough. We know where the most valuable thing in your life is, and we can get at it whenever we want to.
But for the first time in his life he was on the other side. He ticked the feelings off, one by one: fear, anger, impotence, desire for revenge. Then he forced himself to set them aside. Someone had made a mistake, someone who was so afraid of his involvement that they had chosen to get at him through Tindra. All in good time; whoever it was would pay for that mistake.
“It’s all your fault, Atif!”
He didn’t answer, just stood there quietly and calmly while she went on shouting at him.
“We’d just got away from all that shit. We’d started to live a normal life.”
He could see she was thinking of saying something else but bit her lip instead. Then she took a deep breath and seemed to calm down slightly.
“Do you even know what a normal life is, Atif?” She pulled a face. “It’s a life where your cell phone doesn’t ring in the middle of the night, a life where the police don’t kick your door in every time a security van has been held up. Where you don’t have to lie to your six-year-old about what Daddy really does.”
Atif said nothing.
“A normal life is where you don’t have to feel scared the whole time.” She stared at him, seemed to be waiting for him to say something.
“Is that the sort of life Abu Hamsa’s offering?”
“W-what?” Her anger had melted away, replaced by uncertainty. Maybe even a bit of shame. But she soon recovered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She almost made it sound as if it were true.
“Tell me about the gym, Cassandra.”
She closed her lips tight and glared at him for a few seconds.
“Like I said before, Adnan and his friend Dino were going to open the gym together. Then Adnan messed things up, like he always did. He ended up in a load of debt and needed money fast. Dino bought him out, actually did him a favor. But that’s not how Adnan saw it. So when the gym opened and started to do well, he caused a big row, claiming Dino had defrauded him. He stormed in one day waving a pistol.”
“So it was war?” Atif said.
Cassandra shook her head. “No, thank God it never got that far. Adnan and his guys walked around armed the whole time, they even had plans to pick Dino up, which was fucking ridiculous. Dino’s got plenty of friends, the sort of people you don’t pick fights with.”
“So what happened?” Atif asked.
“Abu Hamsa intervened and negotiated a deal. Adnan and his men agreed to do that holdup. His cut of the takings was going to buy back his share of the gym, for the same amount he got from Dino.”
“But instead Adnan ended up in the mortuary,” Atif said. “Killed by the police because someone snitched on him. Someone who told them what was going on.”
Cassandra said nothing and started pulling the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes instead. Atif looked at the Christmas card again, turning it over and examining the boot print.
“Adnan and I had already pretty much split up.” She lit a cigarette. It took her several attempts. “After things went wrong with Dino he hardly ever slept at home. When the cops turned up to tell me he was dead, I hadn’t seen him in over three weeks.” Her voice suddenly sounded sad.
“I know it sounds mad, but the fact is I almost felt . . .” Cassandra bit her lip.
Relieved, Atif thought. You felt relieved that Adnan was dead, but just like me you can’t bring yourself to say the word, because you know it’s wrong. That it makes you a bad person.
“Don’t get me wrong, I loved Adnan.” Her voice resumed something of its earlier harshness. “But no matter how much we tried, it just wasn’t working anymore.” She took a deep drag and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “I didn’t want to tell you when you arrived. I thought it didn’t really matter how things were between us toward the end. Adnan was still dead.”
“I understand,” Atif said. And realized that he actually meant it.
He was suddenly struck by how tired Cassandra looked. Tired and worried. She was still pretending to be tough, but recent events were taking their toll.
“So what happens now? About that . . . ?” She nodded toward the Christmas card.
“I need to get hold of someone,” he said. “As soon as that’s done, I’ll be gone.”
“Is this about Adnan?”
Atif didn’t answer, but she seemed to realize anyway.
“And what do Tindra and I do in the meantime?” she said.
“Is there anywhere you can go? Some relative, anyone like that? Somewhere no one would think of looking for you, at least not immediately?” Atif said.
Cassandra thought for a moment.
“My aunt. She’s got a farm outside Leksand with her new husband. She’s been going on at me about visiting,”
she said.
Atif nodded.
“Leksand sounds good.” He felt in his inside pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out eight smooth five-hundred-kronor notes and put them on the little hall bureau.
“That’s all I’ve got on me,” he said. What he didn’t tell her was that it was also the last of his savings. From now on he’d have to use his credit card to cover expenses.
Cassandra snatched up the money. He quickly put his hand over hers and held it down.
“Cassandra,” he said in a low voice. “It’s probably a good idea not to let Abu Hamsa know about this.”
TWENTY-THREE
“Here’s my report.” Julia Gabrielsson put the blue folder down on the table between them. Oscar Wallin left it where it was. He tried to go on eating his lunch.
“I imagine he’ll be pleased,” she added with a smile.
“Who?” Wallin said.
“John Thorning. He’s the person we’re doing a favor, isn’t he?”
Wallin looked down, cut a piece of beef, and popped it in his mouth. He chewed it slowly, then wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“And exactly what do you mean by pleased, Julia?”
“It looks very likely that there was someone else in the apartment that evening. Someone who either had their own keys or who was let in by Sophia Thorning.” She paused, waiting for his question.
“And how do we know that?”
“Good, honest police work. The sort of thing the first detective ought to have done.” She couldn’t resist a smile. “All the towels had been changed, the bedclothes too. There were no dirty dishes, not so much as a single used glass. Even the bag in the vacuum cleaner was brand-new.”
“So what?” Wallin shrugged. “Sophie Thorning must have had a cleaner. They could have changed the sheets and towels while they were at it.”
“Nope!” Julia held a thumb in the air. “One: against all the odds, little Sophie seemed to want to take care of her own dirty laundry herself. The cleaning company didn’t do that.” She added her forefinger. “Two: her apartment was last cleaned on the Tuesday of that week. As you know, Sophie died on the night between Friday and Saturday. There’s nothing to indicate that she slept or showered anywhere except at home. She even had a visit from her younger brother that week. He says he’s sure Sophie was sleeping at home. He even remembered using the towels in the bathroom. Blue, not the white ones that are hanging in there now.”
Julia paused to let her words sink in.
“In other words, someone’s cleared the whole lot out,” she went on. “Someone who made a real effort to remove all trace of their own presence.”
“Hang on a minute, Julia.” Oscar Wallin put his knife and fork down. “I seem to recall that I asked you to take a discreet look at Sophie Thorning’s apartment, not start phoning members of her family and questioning them.”
Julia shrugged.
“Seeing as it was Daddy Thorning who wanted the case looked at again, I didn’t think it would do any harm. Besides . . .” She paused again, keen to drag the moment out a little longer.
“. . . I know who the mysterious visitor was. Or I soon will do,” she added.
“I’m listening,” Wallin said tonelessly.
“There was one whiskey glass missing,” Julia said, trying to work out why he didn’t sound anywhere near as impressed as he should. “And I found tiny pieces of crystal in the filter of the vacuum cleaner. Broken glass. After a bit of crawling about on the floor, I found a splinter of glass with blood on it in a crack in the floor. I sent it down to the National Forensics Lab in Linköping this morning. Sadly it doesn’t work the way it does on television, and it’s the holidays too, so we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for the results.”
She stopped and waited for him to say something. But Wallin just sat there looking at her, nowhere near as impressed as she had expected he would be. She was starting to get the impression that she’d done something wrong.
“I mean,” she said, mostly to fill the silence, “obviously it could easily be Sophie Thorning’s own blood.” She detected a hint of doubt in her own voice and cleared her throat to get rid of it. “But I’m almost one hundred percent sure that it isn’t—” She broke off midsentence, before her insecurity had time to reappear. By now Wallin ought to have been doing a Mexican wave in his delight at her findings. Instead he was just sitting there, cold as a fish.
“Of course a bit of blood obviously doesn’t mean that someone killed Sophie Thorning,” she went on, rather too quickly. “But there’s every reason to investigate the matter further. Even the sleepwalkers at the City Police ought to able to manage that. DNA tests of people in Sophie’s vicinity ought to be enough. Friends, family, workmates.”
• • •
Sarac hadn’t managed to get out of bed for two days. He lay rolled up like a larva inside the sleeping bag on top of one of the musty beds upstairs as he tried to ride out the migraine.
Every so often Natalie would bring him a tray of food, but whenever he tried to eat anything he ended up clutching the toilet, listening to the echo of his own retching on the porcelain.
He spent most of the time asleep. Although sleep wasn’t really the right word for it. It was more like a strange state between dozing and being awake.
He could hear the creaking of the old house as the heat of the radiators and chimney made its wooden fibers dry out and contract—twisting in torment, the way his brain was. It was almost as if the house were trying to tell him something. Sounds from the ground floor made their way up through the flues, following the warm air from the stove up through the house. They echoed through the old ventilation pipes and eventually emerged as barely audible whispers from the little rectangular air vent in the floor by his bed. Voices from the transistor radio in the kitchen. Music.
Got to start from somewhere
So I’ll start from the grave
We’ll count the steps along the way
Odds for a christening
And evens, a wedding day . . .
He let himself be rocked along with it. Drifted in and out.
“It’s all about confidence, David,” someone whispered right next to his ear. The voice made him open his eyes. His heart was suddenly beating faster. He tried to raise his head and look around the dimly lit room. But his head felt as if it were made of concrete; he couldn’t move it. Then he noticed a faint movement. The room had slowly, infinitely slowly started to rotate counterclockwise. Then faster. It made him feel suddenly weightless. He stared at the air vent, trying to see beyond the dusty grille. Down into the darkness.
“Everything has a price,” the voice down there whispered. “A secret wish, a fear, or a desire so strong that we’re prepared to betray absolutely everything we hold sacred. If someone confides their deepest secret to you, you can make them do almost anything.”
The room was spinning faster now, and the floor and ceiling had swapped places. He grabbed hold of the edge of the mattress, trying to cling on. Part of him wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and spare his brain all these impressions. The music came back.
Curl your lip and make me want to live
For one more day
Make me want to sleep
Through one more night
But he went on struggling, trying as hard as he could. He knew there was more. If only he listened hard enough.
“Like a spiderweb,” the voice went on. “Tiny silken threads, each one a work of art in itself. Together they make up something incredibly beautiful. And deadly. But you need to be careful, David. Sometimes you can get too far into the web and forget who you are.”
The room was rotating faster and faster, the movement so violent that he felt his legs lift from the mattress. Then his stomach, and his chest, until in the end he was sticking straight out from the bed. Ceiling, walls, window, everything was spinning wildly, making him lose sight of the air vent. He felt his grip on the mattress loosening and screwed his eyes tightly, t
ightly shut. He was thrown out into the darkness.
I owe everything
Debts I can’t escape till the day I die.
Far away he could hear Bergh’s voice. “I can protect him, protect you . . .” Then the man in the hospital, whose gold tooth was glinting in the darkness. “An agreement is an agreement, David,” the man said, as the smell of cigar smoke spread through the room. “You know what the consequences will be if you break your side. Your job, your career, your whole life, everything will be taken from you. You won’t be able to hide forever.”
The darkness turned into images, showing him the whiteboard covered in photographs, the hardened faces, the lines forming a spiderweb. The symbol of the conjoined Js.
Then suddenly something completely different. Swaying trees, rows of snow-covered gravestones. Beside them a skinny little man with a downy mustache, wearing shiny tracksuit trousers and a padded yellow jacket that was far too big for him. The man opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by a phone ringing. He smiled apologetically and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“Hello, Selim here,” the man said. He paused while the person on the other end said something. Then his face cracked into a broad smile.
“Hey, Erik J., long time no see!”
TWENTY-FOUR
They had to use a net to get the body out of the water. One of the firemen was new and made the mistake of trying to pull the corpse by its arms, with the result that one of the arms came detached from the shoulder joint and bobbed around loose inside the yellow padded jacket.
Two of his colleagues laughed and made fun of the color his face had turned until their commanding officer told them to shut up.
“This man has been in the water for about a month, maybe two,” he explained to the new fireman. “You can tell from the color and swelling.”
He pointed at the dead man’s swollen, gray-blue face, where a downy little mustache had turned into a stiff, black brush.
“They can almost double in size if the water’s warm, like Michelin Men.” The officer inserted a dose of chewing tobacco before going on. “The water loosens the skin and other tissues. That’s why we use the net and never pull on any of their limbs, if you see what I mean?”
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