Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  “Looks like some version of the sign of the devil. A hard rock concert?”

  “Don’t be silly. Hard rockers stick their index and little fingers in the air like horns, but they hold their middle fingers down with their thumb. These people are sticking their middle fingers out like jaws. Wolves’ jaws. That’s the sign of the Grey Wolves.”

  “Who?”

  “An extreme right-wing, ultranationalist organization from Turkey. They killed my grandfather.”

  She looks away from the article and stares at the jaws mounted on the wall.

  “I was terrified of wolves when I was little,” she says. “Everyone in the village hated them. They used to take our sheep. And there were rumors that they could take children too. Then I started to hear that the Grey Wolves came and took adults as well, but I still thought they were talking about animals. Until they took Grandfather.”

  She swallows hard, and Zack waits for her to go on.

  “They came one night and took him and three other men in the village. Just disappeared with them. The way they took thousands more. No one knows what happened to them.”

  “Why did they take your grandfather?”

  “He was a peshmerga, a freedom fighter. Fought for an independent Kurdistan. But that was before I was born. He was an old man with a crooked back who walked with the stick when they stormed in and hit him in the face with the butts of the their rifles.”

  “What did the police do?”

  “Nothing. The Grey Wolves worked in collaboration with the police. And the military and the government and the mafia. They were prepared to sell themselves to anyone. Smuggled loads of heroin and weapons. Carried out terrorist attacks.”

  “Shit, and I’d never even heard of them.”

  “They’re much weaker these days. They don’t get the same protection from the authorities anymore.”

  “Did you ever find out what happened to your grandfather?”

  “No. What do you think about this wall, is it enough to get a search warrant?”

  She changes the subject so abruptly that it takes Zack a moment to catch up.

  “I haven’t seen any direct threats or incitement to acts of terrorism. And it isn’t against the law to be racist or worship violence. What if we mention those mounted jaws, and the fact that they seem to have been hung there recently? That ought to get Douglas and the prosecutor interested.”

  * * *

  AN HOUR later Östman is standing in front of the collection of articles and photographs.

  “What do you think?” Zack asks, when Östman has been studying them for almost ten minutes.

  “What can I say? This collage alone would be enough for an entire doctoral thesis in criminology. He seems to tick quite a lot of different boxes, this Stefansson.”

  Koltberg has unscrewed one of the sets of animal jaws and put it inside a transparent garbage bag.

  “Definitely wolf,” he mutters. “Just like the excrement.”

  “What? Have they had time to check that already?” Zack says.

  “It all depends on what contacts you’ve got, as you know all too well.”

  Zack clenches his teeth and pretends not to have heard the insinuation. Koltberg goes on:

  “I asked a good friend at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala to take a quick look. It was a wolf that tore Sukayana Prikon’s legs off.”

  “A wolf. Fucking hell.”

  There goes any theory about the Brotherhood’s dogs, Zack thinks, feeling a wave of disappointment. For every answer they get, the less they seem to know.

  Douglas calls.

  “I think we can rule Peter Karlson out of the investigation.”

  Zack turns completely cold.

  We hit him.

  Humiliated him.

  “What’s happened?”

  “We’ve got hold of the footage from the surveillance camera in the garage below his apartment block. Peter Karlson parked there just after one o’clock on the night before last. At least an hour and a half before the women were shot. That fits with what he told us.”

  “He could have taken a taxi to Hallonbergen later.”

  “Theoretically, yes. But it’s more likely that he sat down at his computer instead. At two fifteen a comment was posted by Gustav Vasa on a nationalist website, ‘Free Times,’ where he said he’d just been to an uplifting meeting where the atmosphere was full of refreshing Nordic values.”

  Deniz isn’t going to want to hear this.

  She’s standing beside the bag containing the wolf’s jaws, talking to Koltberg.

  “You’ve heard about the excrement sample?” Zack says to Douglas.

  “Yes. And I’ve already spoken to the animal keepers at Skansen. No one there has noticed any fresh blood on the fur of their wolves, there’s been no sign that they’ve been disturbed, and no sign of any break-in.”

  “What does that mean?” Zack wonders. “That we’ve got man-eating wolves roaming the forests around Stockholm?”

  “No. I talked to Skansen’s wolf expert about that. Apparently no wild wolf has attacked a human being in Sweden in modern times, just as Sukayana Prikon’s doctor said. And trying to force them to do it on command, for instance, by tying up someone who’s already bleeding profusely in a forest, seems to be almost impossible. So there’s probably some sort of illegal wolf enclosure around here, inside or outdoors.”

  “Nothing new about Yildizyeli?”

  “No, no news at all.”

  They end the call.

  Zack looks out of the window.

  The evening sky is a gentle fire of pink-and-orange flames.

  Wolves everywhere. From out of nowhere.

  Wolf symbols here.

  And somewhere out there someone is keeping wolves as pets. And feeding them live human beings. Wolves don’t eat people. It’s against their nature. But if they’re starving, or trained to do so, wolves could presumably eat anything.

  * * *

  THE AIR is still mild and the outdoor serving areas full of people dressed in thin clothes when they leave Ingvar Stefansson’s apartment. Deniz drops Zack off at Fridhemsplan, and he strolls down to Norr Mälarstrand instead of going home.

  He tries to work out what he wants to do. Go around to Mera’s? She texted him earlier. Asked if he was coming over tonight. He replied that he would be.

  But he needs to see Abdula. And Abdula was going to “sort out a few things first.”

  Zack has learned that these things can take time.

  He gets his cell out and texts Mera again.

  Might be late. Sorry.

  He doesn’t really feel up to seeing her now anyway. He’s too restless. She’s going to want to talk, ask him about everything that’s happened today, everything she’s heard about on the news.

  But he doesn’t feel like talking.

  Not even after they’ve fucked each other’s brains out and got rid off all their tensions.

  He thinks about Rebecka, the hairdresser at Hair Daze.

  Stupid idea. Forget it.

  He stands and gazes out across Riddarfjärden for a while, looking at the reflections of the buildings and trees along the shore. Big motorboats and a couple of puttering smaller boats glide slowly across the water.

  There’s two of everything here.

  People walking hand in hand along the footpath. On the quayside a short distance away a group of friends are laughing and drinking beer. Zack would have liked to sit there with them, dangling his legs, but he turns west instead and follows the water toward Rålambshovsparken. As he walks he turns the day’s work over in his mind.

  At least they’ve managed to shrink the investigation slightly.

  Two suspects dismissed: Peter Karlson, and one member of the Brotherhood, Danny Johansson.

  But they haven’t really managed to find anything that’s taken them any closer to the perpetrator.

  It feels like everything is about the Brotherhood or Yildizyeli now.

  Possib
ly both. One gang as murderers, the other torturers. But wolves don’t fit the Brotherhood at all. And then there’s Ingvar Stefansson. The lone madman they haven’t yet managed to track down. But that’s under way. We can start by talking to those closest to him. The others have probably already got hold of them.

  A woman on Rollerblades goes past with an Alsatian on a leash, and Zack starts thinking about wolves again.

  The wolves that ate Sukayana Prikon’s legs.

  They’re dealing with something truly sick this time.

  How did they, or whoever it was, get hold of the animals? By illegally hunting them with tranquilizer darts? Smuggling them into the country somehow?

  Everything’s moved so quickly with this investigation. None of them has had a chance to stop and think things through. And the crimes are just insane.

  The smell of a barbeque reaches him from the park. And something sweeter.

  Hash.

  The smell wakes some old memories. But he steers clear of that sort of thing now.

  He misses Abdula.

  Would like to relax into the comfort of their friendship.

  He’s always been worried about running into him out in the field one day, on the other side of the law.

  But how great is the risk of that, really? Zack wonders as he walks along by the water.

  He hunts serious criminals, and Abdula is just a small-time gangster.

  He gets his cell out and checks the Aftonbladet website. It takes him a while to scroll down to the article about the chase in Tantolunden.

  It looks like the storm is passing, after all.

  He puts his cell away, turns around, and increases his pace.

  Now he knows where he’s going.

  28

  DENIZ HAS left the car at Police Headquarters, and now she gets off the metro one stop early, at Västertorp. She needs air, needs to have a quiet walk in the late evening, needs space to think.

  She starts walking slightly aimlessly toward the south, past the brown brick apartment blocks, trying to keep the railway bridge within sight. She passes a kebab kiosk with a line stretching back into the street.

  She’s never been here before, even though it’s so close. She crosses a street and finds herself in a leafy area surrounding some white-gabled row houses, and turns onto a cycle path that seems to follow the line of the subway tracks.

  She looks at the grazed knuckles of her left hand. What on earth did she think she was doing? She had no right to hit Peter Karlson.

  There’s one phrase the implications of which she really hates: abuse of authority.

  It was what she was once the victim of, and was what she was going to put a stop to when she joined the police.

  Yet that is precisely what she has subjected someone else to today. A person who has also turned out to be innocent of what she was accusing him of.

  She curses herself. Wishes she could go back in time and stop what happened in the garage.

  She behaved the way she used to when she was a teenager. She was always getting in trouble back then. Fought with anyone who provoked her, boys as well as girls. They thought they were tough and dangerous, tried to pretend they were grown up and knew a bit about life. They didn’t know shit. She wasn’t scared of them.

  But she was scared for her little brother Sarkawt’s sake. He was far too gentle and good-natured.

  One snowy November day when Deniz was fifteen years old, she saw four boys force eight-year-old Sarkawt down into an ice-cold ditch. She broke one of the boys’ arms and almost drowned another.

  After that, Social Services decided to separate her from her little brother. “For the good of both children,” as they put it.

  She wasn’t even told where he was living, and hasn’t heard from him since then. She hasn’t found out where he went. She hasn’t felt strong enough to grapple with the pain of it.

  The cycle path curves away to the east and Deniz follows it for a few hundred yards, parallel to the Södertälje road. She can see the cycle bridge across the expressway farther ahead, leading into Fruängen, her own anonymous little suburb.

  The sun has gone down now but it’s still light, and she can hear cicadas in the bushes.

  She sometimes wonders if Sarkawt has moved back to their home village. If he’s grown up to become the sort of man who pours gasoline over girls and sets light to them to defend the family’s honor.

  She wonders, like she has done so many times before, if he chose to remain in Sweden, or if he might even be dead. Why hasn’t he ever got in touch with her?

  What right did the authorities have to separate them? Those men in suits and self-righteous women sitting in their meeting rooms and making decisions when they hadn’t even met her and Sarkawt.

  People with power. They do whatever they like. In Sweden, just like in Kurdistan.

  “So do something about it then, instead of sitting here complaining,” a teacher had once said to her in high school.

  Lars Öhman, that was his name. Her favorite teacher.

  “You’re smart, and you’re good at studying. Apply to go to college. Make society better. Become a politician, a judge, a police officer, a social worker. You can become anything at all, even though you seem to have trouble recognizing it.”

  She used to think he sounded like a dreamer.

  But his words took root. The following week she knocked on his door and asked if he knew what she needed to do to get into the Police Academy.

  Now she’s been a police officer for over ten years. Usually a good one.

  But not today.

  This investigation is getting to her. Wolves, biker gangs, brutally murdered women. Plenty of lines of inquiry, but no definite direction so far.

  29

  DOUGLAS IS sitting on an uncomfortable chair beside Sukayana Prikon’s bed.

  The small hospital room is calm and peaceful, the blinds are closed, and the only light comes from a little lamp on the bedside table.

  From outside the door comes the sound of footsteps passing and disappearing down the corridor. Then everything is quiet again, with the exception of the low hiss of the respirator that’s keeping Sukayana Prikon alive.

  Douglas holds her hand, and squeezes it tight. Her hand is small and warm, with slender fingers. He lets go of her hand for a while and just looks at her, then he takes hold of it again.

  He scratches his head with the other hand and takes a deep breath that makes his whole chest swell beneath his jacket.

  He looks at the empty, flat space toward the end of the bed where Sukayana’s legs ought to form bumps beneath the yellow health service blanket. He puts his hand on her forehead and whispers softly:

  “Enough now.”

  He pauses. Then he says:

  “Enough now, if you feel you can’t go on.”

  Footsteps approach the door again.

  Stop.

  The door opens and bright light floods the room. The nurse is a sturdy woman roughly the same age as him, and she stops midstride when she catches slight of him. For a moment she looks horrified, then says:

  “Who are you and what are you doing here? Visiting time is over.”

  Douglas stands up and holds out his hand. She doesn’t take it.

  “My name is Douglas Juste, I’m a section head with the Stockholm Police.”

  “Have you got ID?”

  “You can always ask my colleagues sitting on guard outside.”

  “But I asked to see your ID.”

  He holds out his open wallet. She takes it and inspects his ID card carefully.

  “I just wanted to look in on my way home to see if she might be in a position to answer some questions. A murderer is still on the loose, and every piece of the puzzle is crucially important to us.”

  The nurse returns his wallet.

  “She needs rest. And if she does wake up she mustn’t get upset. Even you in the police have to contact us first, actually. You can’t just march in here and jeopardize a patient’s health
. I thought I made that clear to the officers sitting outside here the whole time.”

  “I was the one who ordered them to let me in. And seeing as I’m already here . . .”

  “You’ll have to leave now, please.”

  Douglas looks at Sukayana Prikon again. Her face is calm. A lamp on the control panel flashes on and off with reassuring regularity alongside her bed.

  The nurse stands in the doorway with her arms folded and an expectant look on her face. So he leaves. But he stops at the door, turns toward the bed, and says good-bye.

  While he is waiting by the elevators he hears the nurse reprimand the two policemen sitting on guard outside the room.

  He goes down to the lobby. Gets in his car and drives toward the city center. He parks untidily on Nybrogatan outside the blue canopy of Teatergrillen, and goes in through a door off to one side, with frosted glass and bearing the inscription MEMBERS ONLY.

  The staircase leads down to a velvet-red bar. A small group of graying men are sitting and talking on dark leather armchairs. On the table between them is an array of coffee cups and cognac glasses.

  At the bar sits a lone man whose rear view Douglas recognizes easily. The man turns around when he hears footsteps on the stairs.

  “Douglas, it’s been a while. Sit yourself down.”

  Douglas settles onto a bar stool. They each order a gin and tonic and talk the way they always have done. About suitable investment opportunities in the property market, and what might come up at Bukowski’s auction house this autumn.

  His friend smiles. Douglas looks at his face and doesn’t like what he sees in his eyes.

  But you have to look after your old friends, he thinks.

  * * *

  SIRPA IS sitting alone in the Special Crimes Unit. The clock on her screen says 9:01. She thinks about the murdered women. She has to stop joining them anymore.

  Under normal circumstances she would be happy with her work so far.

  She’s managed to crack almost all the email addresses on Sukayana Prikon’s computer, and has identified the men behind them. A few of them will probably be prosecuted for paying for sexual services.