Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  No, probably people with real power. Rich families with generations of greed and ruthlessness behind them. The sort who would have done business with the Nazis, like the Wallenbergs.

  Damn.

  Eight minutes later he’s sitting in the back of a taxi, resting his forehead wearily against the window. The sound of the tires on the tarmac is soporific.

  A couple of police cars go past in the opposite direction. A succession of unimaginative apartment blocks flickers past, as tightly packed as those bodies on the dance floor. Like the buildings where he grew up. Places that seemed to be built for gray anonymity. For people who don’t belong.

  People who just have to be stored somewhere.

  People kept in the dark.

  Like him and his dad.

  He had been six years old when they moved out to Bredäng from Kungsholmen in the city center. He remembers how his dad had done his best to make the whole thing sound exciting, telling him that they were going to live right at the top of a big building, and would be able to see for miles.

  “Even the stars will seem closer,” he had said. “And you’re going to have so many new friends.”

  Zack had been beaten up out in the yard on the second day. He lied and said he’d been hit on the nose by a football. Then he had asked:

  “Dad, why did we move here?” even though he already knew the answer.

  Because Mom was dead.

  He remembers how his dad had tried to explain. Talking about money. Zack didn’t understand it all at the time, but enough of it. They had a lot less money now, and that meant they could no longer live in the center of the city.

  Only people who were rich were allowed to live there.

  The concrete is replaced by vegetation again, woodland on both sides of the road now, the water visible through the trees on the right. Out onto Highway 222, so empty at this time of day it feels almost unreal. Into Kvarnholmen, looping around Henriksdalsringen’s monumental apartment blocks up on their hill. Across the bridge to Södermalm. Past the quay where the Finland ferries lie ready to receive their next cargo of passengers eager to enjoy the fake luxury and the opportunity to be unfaithful to their partners. Past the junction at Slussen, then along Skeppsbron in Gamla Stan. Shimmering water everywhere. The view toward the island of Skeppsholmen, its buildings clambering out of the rocks, is like a strange mirage from another time.

  The taxi has the streets to itself and the city center goes past in a flash. Into the smart district now, Östermalm. Heavy stone buildings, old money, power passed down through the generations. Zack’s stomach clenches slightly, the way it always does when he’s here.

  The taxi swings into a cul-de-sac close to Humlegården and stops outside a smart white four-story building from the turn of the century, with stone walls and a black iron gate. Zack hands over some crumpled hundred-kronor notes to the driver and jumps out. The black metal gate swings open without a sound. He closes it behind him, follows the path across the neat lawn, and opens the heavy oak door. It never ceases to amaze him that there is no coded lock on the building.

  “That’s because there are mostly diplomatic offices here,” she always replies. “It would make things too complicated.”

  But still. What a paradise for the homeless. Especially in the winter.

  Occasionally he toys with the idea of spreading a rumor, so that the suited men with their briefcases have to climb over sleeping drunks and zigzag between pools of vomit and piss when they go to work each morning. It would do them good.

  He opens the gate of the old Asea elevator and sits down on the green leather seat as he is carried up to the sixth floor right at the top of the building. There are only two doors up there. One leads to the attic. He rings the doorbell on the other one.

  A woman of about thirty, with tousled hair, steel-rimmed glasses, and a thin, black silk dressing gown opens the door.

  Mera Leosson.

  Her sharp cheekbones stand out clearly against the whitewashed walls of the hall, and she tilts her head slightly as she studies his face with a confident eye.

  She walks up to him and gives him an intense kiss that she concludes with a little bite of his lower lip. Then she takes his hand and leads him through the spacious white hall, where works of art by Americans like Richard Aldrich, Justin Lieberman, and Gerald Davis fight for attention. Zack likes Davis’s mad tableaux, mirrors for all the desires that can exist inside a person. And he knows how proud Mera is of the paintings.

  They go through the large sitting room with its tasteful mixture of eighteenth-century furniture and modern Danish design, with more contemporary art on the walls, and into the bedroom with its vast, bespoke, handmade bed that cost roughly twice what Zack earns in a year.

  Mera takes her glasses off, opens her dressing gown, and pushes him backward onto the bed.

  * * *

  HER HEAD hits the floor with a bang. Half of Mi Mi’s face is gone and the woman next to her can no longer scream because her mouth is full of fragments of brain tissue.

  The man pulls the trigger again. The silencer makes the shot sound more like someone hitting a punching bag than a bullet firing, and he feels the pistol jerk as another woman flies backward when the bullet hits her high in the chest.

  Two of the women are lying on the floor now. A third has ended up halfway off the sofa with her legs at an odd angle.

  Only one left now.

  The oldest hag.

  Does she even know how filthy she is?

  And the noise she’s making! Bitches shouldn’t make a fuss. Women are always like that, all women, chattering and babbling, wanting attention, and sometimes you have to let them have it, even if you’re only pretending.

  But not here.

  Not now.

  The filth is going to be swept away here, and silence will reign.

  She carries on screaming a load of words he doesn’t understand, looks at him, and clasps her hands together, shaking them in front of her as if in ecstatic prayer.

  Like that’s going to help.

  * * *

  SHE’S LYING on her back as he traces his way over her with his tongue, with all of his fingers, and her skin is warm and moist with sweat.

  He closes his eyes. Uses his other senses, feels her tiniest muscles cramping, and he likes the fact that he can bring her to this, that she can take him to this place, this moment, that belongs to them alone.

  He rolls her over onto her stomach.

  Kisses the back of her neck.

  Spreads her legs.

  Pushes deep into her heat.

  But that’s too gentle for her.

  She thrusts herself back. Bouncing herself off him. Harder. Then harder still.

  Until it hurts.

  But Mera wants it like that. Wants it to hurt, until everything becomes a glowing, fluid now with no real boundaries.

  She screams out loud as the first wave washes over her. Zack is supporting himself on his arms, his hands and fingers splayed out on the silk sheet. He pushes her down. Thrusting hard. He’s getting close now as well.

  Their bodies slap against each other.

  He shuts his eyes.

  No.

  Not again. He doesn’t want to see those images in his mind, not now.

  He can see her fair hair and black-and-white face in the photographs as she’s lying on the ground. The gaping black opening just under the tip of her chin.

  The bloody knife lunging through the air, the last bullet whining, drooling wolves’ jaws hunting through the darkness. Everything explodes.

  Then it’s over.

  But it’s never over. The darkness is never over. The light that was once there, in his mom’s blond hair, no longer exists.

  He can see a smiling woman looking up at him with clear eyes.

  He lies down beside her. Breathes out.

  She twines one of her long legs around him and whispers in his ear:

  “Zack Herry. Zack Herry. Zack Herry.”

  2
>
  THE HUGE, concrete monstrosity on Kungsholmsgatan stares down at Zack reproachfully.

  A vast building, in various shades of gray. Almost scornfully ugly. As if it had been designed by a sadistic architect, with the express purpose of tormenting future passersby with its imposing ugliness.

  Like a prison, he thinks. Not just for the people locked up inside, but for everyone.

  People get shut away in there, imprisoned in their careers. Their profession becomes a drug. They hate it, but they can’t get out of it. They’ve got nowhere else to go.

  The fabric of the tight hooded jacket strains as he runs his hands through his hair. Mera’s top. White with a pink pattern, and at least three sizes too small. He’s guessing that it broadcasts the fact that he’s had a quickie from quite some distance.

  But who cares?

  He yawns so widely that his jawbone creaks, as he pushes through the door to the headquarters of the Norrmalm police. The cool summer air is instantly replaced by something stagnant and rotten. Monday air. Behind the bulletproof glass at the other end of the lobby a row of police officers sit side by side. A woman in her forties says good morning and smiles at him with warmth in her eyes, and looks embarrassed when he smiles back. But in the men’s eyes there’s nothing but coldness. Zack is younger than them, but he’s already progressed considerably further.

  He holds his magnetic card to the door and steps inside the air lock. The linoleum floor is worn, the plaster tiles on the ceiling stained. An environment tainted by indifference and a chronic lack of money.

  In the cramped, windowless changing room he squeezes out of the hooded jacket. He notices the label, Juicy Couture, before hanging it up in his battered blue locker. He has no idea what it cost, but guesses that it was expensive. Mera doesn’t have many items of clothing that cost less than a thousand kronor.

  She earns almost four times as much as him. But she still makes out that her salary is nowhere near what it should be. She’s aiming high, wants more of everything.

  Her father, Allan Bergenskjöld, runs one of the big supermarkets, ICA Maxi, out in Nacka, and earns millions every year.

  He’s proud of her, and Zack knows he would probably never have been accepted as her boyfriend if it hadn’t been for the two men from Alby who, high on Xanor, tried to rob the store one spring evening two years ago.

  Zack and his colleague Benny Christiansen had just left the scene of a traffic accident nearby when they got a call about shots being fired inside ICA Maxi.

  The first thing they saw when they entered the premises was a young employee lying on the floor by the meat counter, shot in the shoulder.

  Then they heard a pain-filled scream from the office.

  Zack had quickly crept closer.

  Heard agitated voices from within.

  “Open the safe, you old fucker. Otherwise we break the next finger!”

  Zack had seen the tall, slim Allan Bergenskjöld kneeling in front of a wall safe.

  He had begun to enter the six-digit code with trembling hands as the robbers waited impatiently behind him. Two men in balaclava helmets. One with a Glock in his hand.

  “For fuck’s sake, get a move on!”

  Zack started with the man with the pistol. Kicked him so hard in the side of the head that he crashed into a bookcase full of accounts files and collapsed in a heap.

  The second man turned around, astonished, as the heavy sole of Zack’s left boot hit him in the mouth.

  He landed on the coffee-stained carpet in front of Allan Bergenskjöld. He started yelling and tried to get to his feet, but Zack hit him in the face, laid him out facedown, and cuffed him.

  Allan Bergenskjöld had sat quietly, watching with fascination as Zack calmly and methodically searched the robber. He barely seemed to have noticed that Benny had come in and handcuffed the man who was lying unconscious among the files.

  At the fancy dinner Allan Bergenskjöld later held to thank Zack out at his huge villa in Djursholm—”a glass of wine and a bite to eat,” as he put it—Zack had been partnered with Mera for dinner.

  He had felt a certain resistance to her at first. Too rich, too well dressed, too cool.

  Too different to him.

  And yet somehow not.

  He himself is capable of a coolness that frightens him, the origins of which he can’t help wondering about.

  He had taken it for granted that she lived well off her father’s money. But as the evening progressed he had been forced to rethink his opinion of her.

  She did, admittedly, live in an apartment in a building owned by Allan Bergenskjöld, but she had built up her career on her own. Mera refused to follow in her father’s footsteps, and had even adopted her mother’s maiden name to avoid accusations of using her father’s name to open doors for her. She was strong and independent, and kept challenging Zack with her sharp mind.

  They had met again the following evening, and almost a week passed before Zack returned to his own flat. He smiles at the memory as he pulls on a white V-neck cotton top from his locker, where it was hanging between a leather jacket and pair of Acne jeans.

  He slings the jacket over his shoulder.

  Mera gave it to him on his twenty-seventh birthday, and he is very fond of it. Fitted, black, fashionably scruffy. He had never heard of the brand, Rick Owens. Then he found out by accident that it had cost twenty-two thousand kronor, and didn’t dare wear it for several weeks. Now he rarely wears anything else, on or off duty. The jacket is just the right size to conceal his holster.

  * * *

  HE GETS into the elevator and presses the button for the sixth floor. He leans against the wall of the elevator and closes his eyes. He feels a passing wave of nausea as it stops. He holds his passcard against another magnetic lock. Above the box there is a discreet white sign with black lettering.

  SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT.

  The open-plan office spreads out in front of him. The ventilation is better here than in reception, the ceiling is higher and the computer screens newer. The desktops, matte-varnished pale birch, can be raised and lowered. New black office chairs with comfortable backs made of woven leather. Windows with a view of green treetops instead of a paved inner courtyard.

  Zack sees Niklas Svensson from behind as he disappears around the corner. Otherwise the office is empty. He goes over to the coffeemaker and makes his selection. First espresso. Then ordinary black coffee, extra strong. All in the same mug.

  He hopes it helps.

  In the meeting room the core team is already in place. Niklas Svensson, Deniz Akin, Sirpa Hemälainen, and Rudolf Gräns. They’re all sitting in their usual places around the oval table, but for some reason Zack thinks they’re looking at him in an odd way.

  As if they know what he was doing last night.

  “Good morning,” he says curtly, and sits down next to Deniz.

  * * *

  SHE GLANCES up from her phone with a look that suggests that it seems to be anything but a good morning for him.

  “Everything okay, Zack?” she asks, looking at him for several seconds before evidently concluding that things are more or less okay and continuing to scroll through some news headlines.

  “Fine,” he says, glancing at the others.

  Sirpa is staring at her phone as well, while Rudolf and Niklas are quietly discussing some big police operation last night.

  “Eight patrols, and the rapid response unit,” Niklas says. “Almost like the good old days of proper raves.”

  “So where was it, exactly?” Rudolf asks, adjusting his dark glasses.

  “In some old warehouse. Owned by Heraldus, evidently. Likely to be a big fuss in the media, I’d guess,” Niklas says.

  Zack remembers the peeling lettering on the old shipyard building and feels his anxiety move down his spine like cracks in winter ice.

  Fuck. There’d been a raid at the club he’d been at? It must have happened right after he left. They couldn’t have stayed open much longer than that, surely? B
ut why? Things had been pretty well behaved last night. Someone must have talked, unless there was an undercover cop there?

  Someone who would have seen him. And now everyone knows.

  “They brought in fifteen people. Most of them have already been released, apparently,” Niklas says.

  Abdula? Did they get him? How much could he have had on him? Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Zack feels like getting up and running out of the room to call his friend. But that wouldn’t be good. Not now, not here, and not from this cell.

  He tries to take a few calm deep breaths, to slow his pulse down. He turns to Niklas.

  “When did this happen?” he asks in as neutral a voice as he can manage.

  “Last night,” Niklas says. “Or, rather, this morning. At five o’clock, if I heard right.”

  Niklas looks at Zack for a second or so too long.

  “You get out and about a bit, Zack. Do you know about this place?”

  Out and about. Just the sort of thing a respectable family man from Näsbyparken would say. Someone whose only recurrent worry is getting to preschool in time. Someone who hasn’t even been to a pub in the past five years.

  He forces himself to laugh politely.

  “Well, illegal raves aren’t really my thing. The bartenders at places like that tend to be pretty shit. Unless you have a taste for warm lager or high-energy drinks mixed with smuggled spirits.”

  Sirpa joins the conversation:

  “I thought you might actually have been there last night. It looks to me like you’re a bit short on sleep right now.”

  Sirpa, the computer genius. Straight to the point, as usual. Zack usually loves her unvarnished black humor, but right now it just makes him feel uncomfortable. Is it that fucking obvious? he wonders. Or has she heard something?

  He smiles at her.

  “I was lying in bed thinking of you, you know that.”

  “Poor you, having such terrible nightmares,” she retorts, making everyone round the table laugh. Even Zack.

  Douglas Juste comes into the room. The soles of his Carmina shoes hit the floor hard.