Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  “Good morning!”

  The formal note in Douglas’s voice annoys Zack. The exaggerated politeness, as if he were saying hello to distant acquaintances rather than people he knows well.

  Zack has never met anyone who so obviously inhabits the role of boss the way Douglas does. He could have been in charge of any publically listed conglomerate. Tall and energetic. Always freshly shaven. Always well dressed. His hair still free of gray at the age of forty-nine.

  But Douglas can afford it. He comes from old money. Industrial money. His great-grandfather helped found a number of engineering companies in the Mälar Valley. Several of them are still going successfully, with factories in Lithuania, Poland, China, and Kenya.

  Zack has never heard a decent explanation as to why Douglas is sitting in Police Headquarters rather than in some fancy director’s office. “He wanted to go his own way,” someone once said. “Rebelled against his father,” was another suggestion.

  One day I’ll ask him myself, Zack thinks. Because there’s something broken in there. Douglas is the kind of man who smiles with his mouth but not the rest of his face. A man whose prestigious relationships always go wrong.

  But he worked with Mom before she died. And he always speaks well of her.

  Douglas sits down at the end of the table closest to the door, runs his hand through his wavy blond hair, and adjusts his papers as he does the obligatory little cough that always precedes his opening phrase.

  “I’ve been given unofficial assurances that our unit isn’t going to be affected by the restructuring of National Crime. Not unexpected, admittedly, but still good to hear.”

  Douglas starts almost every meeting with a piece of news from above, preferably something that shows that he has a seat at the table during informal discussions at the very highest level.

  “Yes, these constant reorganizations,” Douglas sighs, and is rewarded with some murmurs of agreement.

  Who gives a shit? Zack thinks. His head feels like it’s about to explode with exhaustion and his thoughts are with Abdula, who could well be in custody.

  What happened out at the shipyard? Did anyone recognize me?

  He needs to forget about that for the time being. He has to concentrate on Douglas as he moves on to the next item on the agenda.

  “The verdicts on the weapons smugglers from Västerås have been delivered. You all remember them, I take it?”

  The others nod. It was one of the unit’s first cases. It had started when a total of fourteen very realistic replica Kalashnikovs had been found in various raids in different parts of the country within a short space of time. The police feared that a process of mass distribution of automatic weapons was under way, and the Special Crimes Unit had been given the task of locating the source and stemming the flow.

  Zack and his colleagues eventually managed to trace the weapons back to an illegal factory in the countryside of northwest Pakistan. They also found a container with 173 automatic guns in Gothenburg harbor, and arrested the three individuals suspected of being primarily responsible for their import.

  Zack had saved the lives of four Gothenburg police officers during the operation, and was given a medal for his efforts. He also ended up with a price on his head from an Islamic hate site, and since then his identity has been protected.

  “As usual, the sentences are ridiculously short,” Douglas goes on. “Six months, one year, and three years. That’s not punishment, that’s more like a pause for breath.”

  “Come on, what the hell? We won!” Deniz says. “We got the bastards. And now they’re off the streets for a while and the smuggling route has been broken.”

  Deniz Akin, the complete opposite of Douglas Juste. Scruffy, blunt, and brutal. Nothing can stop her from getting ahead, away from where she comes from.

  Zack looks at her. He and Deniz work together most of the time, and he likes having her as his partner, even if he’d prefer to work alone. But he can’t deny that they work well together. Trust each other, the way people can only do when they’ve faced danger together.

  Deniz is thirty-five, and he thinks she’s beautiful, with her long dark hair and that large tattoo on her upper right arm. A condor in flight above a large wave.

  Sometimes Zack wonders if he should point out how unlikely an image that is. Condors fly many thousands of feet up in the Andes Mountains, not over the sea. But he likes her too much. Besides, if Deniz was a condor, she wouldn’t care that she was supposed to stick to mountains. She’d break free and head down to the sea anyway.

  Maybe that’s what she had in mind when she got the tattoo?

  Zack will never forget the rainy night during a fruitless stakeout last autumn when Deniz first opened up to him and told him a bit about her background.

  About her escape from Kurdistan.

  She was only twelve years old when she saw something she wasn’t meant to see. Something she can never forget, no matter how much she might want to.

  Deniz’s best friend, Jasmina, was supposed to be marrying a cousin, which had all been arranged a long time before. But Jasmina had fallen in love with a boy from the next village, and rumor had it that the pair of them had been meeting in an abandoned barn.

  The official cause of death was self-immolation. Jasmina had been unable to bear the shame, and had set fire to herself.

  But Deniz knew the truth. She had been hiding behind some rocks, and watched as Jasmina’s four brothers stood in a circle around her. She had seen them pour gasoline on her clothes, and had seen them light the match.

  She fled that same night. She put her little brother on her back and ran.

  It would have been quicker to go alone, but she wanted to save five-year-old Sarkawt as well. She didn’t want him to grow up into the sort of young man who got a congratulatory slap on the back from the older men if he killed his own sister.

  In the mountains they had been hunted by wolves. It had sounded as if the wild animals’ howling had come from all directions at once as the echoes bounced between the dark mountainsides. They had taken refuge in a cave, pressing through a narrow crack that the wolves couldn’t get through. They had sat there in the darkness all day and all night, while the wolves padded about outside, licking their lips hungrily.

  She took to stealing things for the first time. Food and money. She got lifts with traveling salesmen, had to flee again, and eventually made contact with some well-disposed smugglers who were on their way to Greece. She had given them all the money she had, and they had been carried over six hundred miles on bumpy country roads.

  It had been pitch-black when they reached the border. She carried Sarkawt on her back again as she crept through a minefield after the smugglers, and she had shielded his eyes to stop him seeing the swollen corpses of drowned migrants as they waded across the ice-cold river Evros at dawn.

  Then the smugglers left them, and she found herself abandoned on Greek territory. No money, no food, and with a very hungry little boy clutching her hand.

  Deniz has seen the very worst side of life, and knows that it can literally be about eating or being eaten. Fighting or dying.

  Zack wonders how she would react if she knew his secrets.

  But perhaps she knows more than he thinks?

  Keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t go too far.

  Is that what’s going on?

  Douglas goes on talking about sentences and punishments, and mentions a few other criminals who are about to be released, two members of the Red and White Crew who are suspected of being behind an unsolved mutilation in Hall Prison.

  “After serving an unreasonably lengthy sentence in the brutal Swedish justice system, these two deeply remorseful citizens will now do everything in their power to find their place as law-abiding members of Swedish society,” Douglas says in a voice dripping with irony.

  Zack is no longer listening. His eyes are stinging and his mind is working at top speed.

  How long would Abdula have to serve if they caught him?


  And what about me?

  Deniz’s impudent voice breaks into the conversation again, and something in her tone makes Zack drop his thoughts of Abdula and think about Mera instead. Her face earlier that morning, in the hall of her penthouse.

  So different from Deniz, yet with certain similarities. They’re both hardworking career women with sharp minds and sharper elbows. But while Deniz works with reality, Mera works with fiction, more or less. She’s a PR consultant with her own business. She invents stories for companies to make people want to buy their products. Corporate storytelling. Making them empathize with yogurt.

  Zack finds her ruthlessness sexy.

  He can see her standing naked in front of him. Feel the warmth as he runs his fingers over her skin, her sweet scent as he breathes close to her, her taste. The way she likes it when he gets his handcuffs out. More than he does, actually.

  “Bit shaky today, Zack?”

  Douglas rouses him from his musings. He nods toward Zack’s trembling right hand as it rests on the pale tabletop.

  Zack hasn’t even noticed it. Out of reflex he moves his hand to his thigh, out of sight of the others.

  “No problem. I didn’t sleep too well last night, that’s all. The bedroom was too damn hot . . .” he says.

  But Douglas doesn’t look away. There’s sympathy in his eyes, a sort of paternal look that irritates Zack. But it isn’t just him. The whole damn table is looking at him, stripping him with their eyes.

  What do they think of him? What do they know?

  What if we get called in to work on the illegal club? But they’re the Special Crimes Unit, so they shouldn’t be involved. Unless some particularly ugly fish got caught in the net last night.

  He looks at Sirpa. She’ll manage to find out the names of every last bastard who was there if she’s asked to. She’ll find her way behind encryptions and fire walls to gather information. What will she do if she finds Zack’s name in obscure places in the nocturnal jungle where off-duty police officers really shouldn’t be?

  And then there’s Rudolf, the elder statesman, who seems to be staring at him through his big, black sunglasses, and Zack is suddenly worried the old man can read his mind.

  The wall behind Rudolf seems to be slowly bulging into the room, and Zack gets a feeling that the wall behind is pressing toward him.

  What the hell’s going on?

  He suddenly gets up from his chair, almost knocking his coffee over with one hand, excuses himself, and hurries out of the room.

  He yanks open the door to the restroom and shuts and locks it behind him.

  For a while he just sits there in the comforting, silent darkness. He leans against the wall, exhausted, but jumps when the hand dryer roars into action and blasts hot air on his right arm.

  He fumbles for the light switch. The sharp glare makes him hold up his hand instinctively and jerk backward.

  He takes a lurching step toward the washbasin, rests his hands on the cool surface, and sees pink and red spots dance before his eyes as he looks down at the gleaming porcelain. The dryer finally falls silent. He takes two deep breaths and then looks up at his reflection.

  Not a pretty sight.

  It’s as if all pigmentation fled his skin during the early hours of the morning, and he seems to have aged a year for every hour he actually slept. He turns his head to see more of the whites of his eyes. They’re almost pink today. His eyedrops have been fighting a hopeless battle against the effects of a lack of sleep.

  He shuts his eyes again. Turns the tap on and rinses his face a few times. He takes another deep breath, leans closer to the mirror, and looks himself right in the eye.

  Zack.

  Pull yourself together.

  Remember who you are.

  For a moment he sees his face in a different mirror, in a different men’s room, only a few hours ago. He hears the girls giggling, sees Abdula smiling behind his shoulder, feels the sting in his nose.

  No. Look at yourself.

  Detective Inspector Zack Herry. That’s who you are. No one else.

  Nothing else.

  When he opens the door to the meeting room the conversation falls silent instantly. Everyone is looking at him.

  They’ve been talking about me, he thinks. About what I was doing last night.

  So say so, he thinks. Don’t just sit there.

  But he can’t see any accusation in his boss’s eyes. Only concern and sympathy.

  Douglas turns to the others again.

  “Well, as I was just saying. National Crime will be moving out of the second floor, and . . .”

  Zack stops listening. Looks around at all the brilliant detectives in the room.

  What the fuck am I doing here? he thinks.

  He closes his eyes again and tries to focus.

  We’re a diverse bunch. And I’m the best among us.

  But the words don’t ring true.

  A rapid knock on the door makes Zack jump so violently that Douglas gives him a questioning glance.

  Internal Investigations, Zack thinks.

  They’ve come to get me. It’s over. Thank you and good-bye, coke-snorting cop.

  Douglas’s assistant sticks her head into the room and says in her warm, soft voice:

  “There’s a Mr. Westberg on the phone. He says it’s extremely urgent.”

  Douglas pulls an irritated face.

  “I can’t talk right now, tell him I’ll call back in fifteen minutes.”

  The assistant closes the door and Douglas clears his throat again.

  “Well. Seeing as just for once we don’t have an ongoing case to discuss, I suggest we take the opportunity to clear some of the backlog of paperwork.”

  He checks his list.

  “Deniz, the aliens unit have been onto me regarding that old report about the Albanians. And, Niklas, you’ve got that report to finish about the Tindra kidnapping?’

  They both nod and let out a quiet sigh.

  Zack breathes out. The illegal club is going to be some other department’s headache. But he still needs to find out what the raid was all about. And he has to get hold of a list of who was arrested.

  “Rudolf, have you got anything you’d like to add?” Douglas wonders.

  They almost always conclude like this. With Rudolf given the opportunity to add some comment or make a suggestion before they get up and leave the room.

  Everyone falls silent and turns toward the sixty-three-year-old man in the sunglasses and loose, crumpled suit. He’s sitting opposite Zack, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped together in his lap.

  “Thanks very much,” he says in a calm, amiable voice, “but I haven’t got anything of note to add. No doubt like the rest of my colleagues, I am busy considering the wise words about crime and punishment aired by the chair of today’s meeting.”

  Zack glances at Douglas, smiling inside. A pinprick wrapped in cotton wool.

  Typical Rudolf.

  Rudolf suffered a minor stroke ten years ago and was left blind. Permanently condemned to a life of darkness.

  His colleagues in the regional crime unit were extremely upset. But just as they were trying to think of a suitable leaving gift for their much-loved detective superintendent, Rudolf himself called to tell them he was planning to return to work the following week.

  His bosses exchanged condescending glances. What did they want with a stumbling blind man in regional crime? Other police officers who got injured, had breakdowns, or otherwise ended up useless could always be put to work filing or sorting out case notes, but what could they do with Rudolf? A man who could no longer even see his own hands?

  “I want to do my job, just as I’ve always done,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing, nor with my brain. I’ll need help from other people’s eyes, that’s true, but there are one or two detectives in this building who could use a bit of help from my brain in return.”

  The protests quickly died away.

  Rudolf h
ad always been good at deduction, but it was as if he could see connections even more clearly now that he could no longer use his eyes. As if he were better able to think outside normal parameters. Sometimes it seemed to Zack that he had an almost uncanny knack of identifying the way perpetrators thought and predicting their next move. As time went by, he was given the nickname “the Oracle.”

  When Zack and Rudolf started working in the same team Zack often forgot that his older colleague couldn’t see. Sometimes he would ask Rudolf to come and look at a photograph or read something, and he felt like an idiot every time he realized his mistake.

  But Rudolf never reacted badly. It was almost as if he appreciated the fact that Zack didn’t get hung up on his disability.

  Zack often wonders what Rudolf can see in his internal theater.

  What can you see right now?

  Are you looking at me, or are you staring into the very deepest darkness?

  3

  SUKAYANA PRIKON steps off the escalator, walks through the door, and feels the enclosed air of the shopping center hit her.

  She feels stressed, just like the people walking in the opposite direction. But theirs is a different stress.

  Not like hers.

  Forty-five minutes have passed since she found Mi Mi’s text message:

  Help us he kill all

  She’s tried calling ten times since then. She’s tried the others as well. Their phones ring, but no one answers.

  The text was sent at 2:47, and Sukayana Prikon curses herself for the hundredth time for having her cell switched off last night.

  But why wouldn’t it have been? It’s always switched off at night, after all. She has to be able to get some sleep without those dirty men calling and disturbing her.

  Almost every morning when she switches her phone back on there’s someone who’s left a message.

  “I’m so horny, can’t you get someone for me?” they slur in their 3 a.m. messages.

  As if she ran some sort of escort agency.

  Why don’t they answer?

  The shopping center has been designed to form a little square. To her left there’s a bronze sculpture of five horses, and behind them an escalator to the floor above.