Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so.”

  They stare at each other. Zack can see how calm his boss’s eyes are. The self-assurance and power possessed by truly upper-class people. The right not to have to explain themselves to their subordinates. The right not to explain everything.

  The right to hide something?

  A few seconds of silence pass.

  Neither of them blinks. Their eyes are locked together.

  Zack knows he can win this duel, but he also knows that his anger is all too visible. He looks away.

  The class struggle is over.

  He lost.

  Deniz breaks the tense silence.

  “What about the racism angle? How are Niklas and Rudolf getting on?” she asks.

  “Nothing so far, apart from Peter Karlson. But he is of course interesting enough on his own, both as a racist and a crazy client.”

  Douglas is talking as if nothing had happened, but Zack is having trouble engaging in the conversation again. He hates that sort of power struggle, and he hates losing even more.

  He looks around the room again while Deniz answers Douglas’s inquiries about how she’s feeling after the shooting.

  Then Douglas beckons the ruddy-cheeked waiter and gets out his American Express card.

  The waiter bows as he approaches the table.

  “Was everything all right, Douglas?” he asks.

  “As always, Sven.”

  Sven the waiter goes off with the card as Douglas’s cell buzzes. He reads the screen quickly.

  “It’s Sirpa,” he says. “She thinks she’s managed to connect Peter Karlson with one of the email addresses in Sukayana Prikon’s computer. It looks like he was trying to figure out the murdered women’s work schedules.”

  24

  GARISHLY PATTERNED fabrics hang from the orange walls. The sofa is covered with brightly colored cushions.

  The woman, who looks like she’s from Southeast Asia, says she’s twenty-two, but looks no more than sixteen. She’s standing with her arms folded, trying to look tough, but her voice trembles with fear as she looks up at the two tall, uniformed police officers who have just walked into the massage parlor on Bondegatan.

  “I’m not saying anything,” she repeats.

  “So we heard,” one of the policemen says in a voice that indicates that his patience is wearing thin. “But you’re going to have to show us where you keep your accounts. I assume your paperwork is all in order?”

  * * *

  THERE’S A sweet scent of incense in the apartment on Sköntorpsvägen in Årsta. A worn mattress is just visible on the floor behind a half-open door, and the only light comes from a bare lightbulb, the cable of which is fixed to the ceiling with duct tape.

  “Leave me alone,” the woman says. “I go back to Thailand next week.”

  “But we just want to . . .” the police constable says.

  “No. No talk. Go now.”

  * * *

  POLICE CONSTABLE Benny Göransson kicks at an old takeout box that’s lying on the living-room floor. The remnants of dried noodles skitter across the plastic rug.

  The rooms are empty. The drain in the shower has dried out, and is giving off a faint smell of sewage.

  He gazes out at the brick apartment blocks on the other side of Skönstaholmsvägen.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s been anyone here for a long time,” he says to his partner.

  * * *

  THE WOMAN who opens the door looks like she’s in her forties. She’s heavily built and tall, for an Asian.

  They sit down in the kitchen and she opens the dark curtain that protects her from being seen from Valhallavägen.

  “I want to be secret,” she says. “No name, okay?”

  The police officers exchange a glance and make an instant decision.

  “Okay,” they say.

  Her Swedish is poor, but the information she provides is pure gold.

  She tells them that men come each week to collect money from the business.

  “Which men?”

  “Big men. Nasty. They were here yesterday.”

  “Do they take the money you earn from providing massages?” one of the police officers says.

  “Yes. And . . . the other.”

  “The other?”

  “Not here. But other parlors. Men who buy private time with Thai woman.”

  She tells them the names of two massage parlors and the police write them down carefully.

  Then she tells them about women who have disappeared. Young women who are supposed to have been put on the plane back to Bangkok, but who never arrive home. She tells them about relatives who wonder, but don’t dare go to the authorities to raise the alarm.

  “So no one know they’re missing. Now say no more, no more.”

  The officers leave the parlor and the woman quickly packs her bag. She puts her passport in a money belt and leaves the apartment for the last time.

  25

  THE AFTERNOON sun burns through the window. The absurdly expensive automatic blinds have already stopped working, and Zack can feel sweat seeping out along his hairline.

  Behind him he can hear Sirpa’s nimble fingers on her keyboard. Just she, Deniz, and he are left there in the office. Douglas is at a management meeting, the Oracle, Rudolf, is conducting an interview with Sonny Järvinen, and Niklas has gone off to pick his daughters up from school. Tommy and Sam appear to have finished for the day.

  Zack waits impatiently for his computer to connect to all of its networks. Few things make him feel as stressed within the force as this built-in sluggishness.

  Or when it feels like he’s treading water.

  Like now.

  He chased a man to his death today, yet all he can think about is how to make progress with the investigation. And how to get himself a fix.

  But they’re not getting anywhere. One of the members of the Brotherhood, Danny Johansson, has left the country and had his dogs put down. Several people have verified the information about Suliman Yel’s presence in the nightclub, and Sirpa hasn’t managed to find out anything else about the link to Peter Karlson.

  Zack stares into his screen and feels the day’s events settle heavily on his head and shoulders.

  A fix.

  He needs some sort of boost.

  Anything.

  He thinks about Mera, her slim, fit body.

  White lines on white enamel.

  It’s almost five o’clock. A maximum of an hour’s report writing, then he’s free for the evening.

  The computer finally lets him into the system. He opens the browser and brings up Aftonbladet’s website. The story about the police chase through Tantolunden has been deposed by a Swedish Idol competitor caught smoking marijuana, a cat performing tricks on a skateboard, and an article with the headline “Latvian Super-Swarm Invades Sweden.”

  But it’s still very visible on the site, and has now attracted 178 comments from readers. Zack follows Douglas’s advice and doesn’t read them, and checks his email instead.

  Still no questions from journalists. He wasn’t expecting any either. They’re going to have to put in a bit of hard work if they want to get hold of him. The film clip is very grainy, and even if someone did manage to identify him, he’s not exactly an easy person to find.

  His phone number is protected, and he’s all but invisible on the Internet.

  The biggest danger probably comes from within the building he’s sitting in. The Stockholm Police is notorious for its media leaks. Ten thousand in cash for a tip-off is hard for some staff to resist.

  He opens a blank report template and is about to start filling in the results of that day’s interviews when Sirpa calls to him above her screens:

  “Your new nickname suits you.”

  “Nickname?”

  “The Karate Cop. Right now you’re one of the most discussed Swedes on social media.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Karate Cop’? You’re kidding?”
<
br />   She shakes her head.

  “Come and see.”

  Zack goes around Sirpa’s desk and leans over her shoulder. She guides him around the Net to various sites that analyze web traffic.

  “That big column is you. Mirjam from Swedish Idol is gaining fast, but you’re still king of the hill.”

  “Yippee,” Zack says drily.

  “Enjoy your fifteen minutes in the limelight. Tomorrow you’ll be forgotten again,” Sirpa says.

  Zack sighs and turns to look at her other screen. It’s showing some screen grabs from an Outlook account.

  He looks at the email address: dirtysanchez@woomail.com.

  “Is he the one you think is Peter Karlson?” he asks.

  “It could be. Sukayana Prikon, or someone else, tried to delete a load of emails from Sawatdii’s email account very recently, but I’ve managed to reconstruct most of them.”

  Zack leans closer to the screen and reads one of them.

  Hello,

  I received a very enjoyable treatment from Prataporn on my last visit, but because my diary is practically full I’d like to know what her work timetable is so that I can book another appointment. Or do all the masseuses work the same hours? It would be good to know.

  Until next time,

  A happy customer

  “I agree,” Zack says. “It looks like he’s trying to map their movements.”

  “He tries again with similar questions in other emails.”

  “Why do you think they were sent by Peter Karlson?”

  “Dirty Sanchez is a term for degrading anal sex with a defecation theme. The pseudonym Gustav Vasa likes to write about the extreme degradation of women, and Peter Karlson was himself accused of anal rape a year ago. He’s also the sort of man who might well try to bring his fantasies to life.”

  “Were his emails the only ones that Sukayana Prikon tried to erase?”

  “No, there were plenty more. But there are four or five from Dirty Sanchez among them. I just can’t find out who he is, and it’s really bugging me.”

  “What about Gustav Vasa, his favorite alias? Has he posted anything on his blog today?”

  “Yes, a few hours ago. Read it for yourself. He seems a bit shaken after Rudolf and Niklas’s visit yesterday evening.”

  She opens the blog on one screen. The latest post is visible in the left-hand column.

  Dear friends,

  This will be my last post for a few days. I’m taking a short break from the blog. But the struggle doesn’t stop. We can all make a difference. Each and every day.

  What does he mean by that? Zack wonders. That he’s made a difference by murdering four foreign women?

  He wants to ask Sirpa what she thinks, but she’s already moved on to something else. Her fingers are tapping at the keyboard like rain on a tin roof, and she’s staring at the screen with eyes that never seem to blink.

  The window of the browser looks like the screens of computers in old films from the eighties. Black background with green letters. He guesses she’s in the Darknet, the hidden part of the Internet, trying to find information about prostitution or the trade in women that might help their investigation. Sirpa has shown him things before on the Darknet, things he only thought existed in horror films. Forums where children, women, and human organs are bought and sold just like any other commodity.

  “Keep going for it,” he says, and leaves her alone, but she doesn’t even hear him.

  He wonders, not for the first time, if she’s ever mapped her colleagues’ lives, if she knows things about him that she’s never admitted.

  He thinks about Rebecka in the hair salon. She could unmask him at any moment. What would he do if she tried to blackmail him?

  I’m being paranoid, he thinks.

  Call me.

  Would I rather see her than Mera?

  The person I’d most like to see is Abdula.

  He makes a mental note to ask him about Rebecka when they meet later that evening, find out if he knows anything about her that he could use as a counterattack if she does try to blackmail him. Abdula always has a good idea of what’s going on.

  Avoiding his computer and the blank report, Zack goes over to his pigeonhole. A single brown envelope, letter size, is sticking out of it, and he picks it up. The address label was printed on a computer.

  The clumsy cops in the Special Crimes Unit

  Police Headquarters

  106 75 Stockholm

  The envelope had to find its way into his pigeonhole, of course. The caretaker is part of a gang of miserable old men who dislike Zack and think he’s too young and inexperienced.

  Zack opens the envelope, expecting to read some poorly spelled sentences about how useless the police are, and how they ought to try to catch proper criminals instead of trapping innocent drivers for speeding offenses.

  The envelope contains a folded letter-size sheet with a single sentence.

  The words make Zack’s pulse race.

  I’m going to kill all the fucking Thai whores in this city.

  Zack turns the sheet over, looking for any clues. Nothing. He puts it down on the nearest desk, not wanting to contaminate it with any more fingerprints.

  “Deniz,” he calls. “Come and look at this!”

  She pushes her chair back and walks over to him. Without her scarf, the compress on the side of her neck looks like a white flag against her skin.

  “Read this,” Zack says. “But don’t touch it.”

  She reads.

  “Who sent it?”

  “Don’t know. The letter and address label were printed on a computer. No sender.”

  “It sounds like Peter Karlson, obviously. He’s getting more and more interesting.”

  “Koltberg will have to look at this. He might be able to find some fingerprints or fibers.”

  The door to the corridor opens and Östman comes in with some papers in his hand, his beige corduroy suit hanging limply on his body. They call him over.

  He looks troubled, the way he always does whenever anyone asks him to do something.

  “What do you think?” Zack says.

  Östman throws his arms out and pulls a face as if someone just asked him to guess how much plankton there is in the Pacific Ocean.

  “It could be the killer, of course, if he’s an extrovert character with a streak of vanity. But it could be someone else entirely. Someone who’s heard the news about the murders. Or it could just be a coincidence, some angry citizen who’s decided to send us this message now. It’s impossible to say.”

  He walks away and leaves his papers in Douglas’s pigeonhole.

  Zack reads the sentence again.

  “Koltberg can analyze the ink,” he says to Deniz. “He might even be able to find out the make of printer. But unless it’s an extremely unusual model, that won’t be much use.”

  He puts on a plastic glove and slips the letter into an evidence bag.

  “Östman, can you put this in Koltberg’s room?” Zack asks. “You’re going past on the way out, aren’t you?”

  Östman looks at his watch with an exaggerated gesture.

  “I didn’t know it said caretaker on my visitor’s card. But sure, I can take it.”

  He snatches the bag and leaves them.

  Zack and Deniz look at each other, trying hard not to burst out laughing.

  “Can you imagine him as the charmer he’s supposed to have been?” Deniz whispers.

  Zack shakes his head.

  “It feels like he needs the longest holiday in the world.”

  Holiday.

  What had Peter Karlson written?

  I’m taking a short break from the blog.

  Is he thinking of leaving the country?

  “What is it?” Deniz wonders.

  “Have you got any plans for the next few hours?” he asks.

  “Are you thinking of asking me on a date? If you are, the answer’s no.”

  “Don’t worry, I was thinking about Peter Karlson.
”

  “What about him?”

  “Right now he’s our only candidate as the author of this note, isn’t he? And Sirpa’s managed to find similarities between him and Dirty Sanchez, who seems to have been trying to figure out when the masseuses worked.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “He recently wrote a post on his blog saying he was going to take a break. Maybe he’s thinking of running. Do you think we should go and apply a bit of pressure?”

  “What do you think Douglas would say?”

  “That we should wait until we’ve got a bit more meat on the bones. Or until tomorrow morning at least, when everyone’s here. But I have a feeling that might be too late.”

  “So what you’re suggesting is a bit of informal questioning?” Deniz says.

  “Something like that.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  26

  EARLY EVENING at the Sturehof.

  Flattering light falls on the white tablecloths from lamps with lacy shades. Voices talking quietly, well-dressed groups trying to look like they’re just having a relaxed meal after work or shopping, but who keep glancing around surreptitiously to make sure that they’ve been seen.

  Like a more neurotic version of the Opera Bar, Zack thinks.

  Mera likes it here, and keeps trying to get him to go for either lunch or dinner. She hasn’t succeeded yet.

  Zack stares at Peter Karlson’s neat neckline as they follow a waiter into the large, open dining room. Presumably he feels at home here, he thinks. Safe. And that makes it more likely than he’ll reveal something.

  They were lucky. Karlson stepped out of the elevator in the entrance of the tower at Hötorget just as they were waiting for it.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “I’m on my way to get some dinner.”

  “Good,” Zack replied. “We’re hungry too. Where were you thinking of going?”

  “Sturehof. But I’m afraid I’ve only booked a table for one.”

  “I can sort that out,” Deniz said.

  Then she phoned and warned a maître d’ that she knows.

  She waves to him from a distance as the waiter leads them to a discreet table partially hidden behind a pillar.