Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  That’s good. Important.

  Tomorrow Douglas can get people to check their alibis for the night of the murder, but Sirpa doesn’t imagine that’s going to provide anything useful. The men are just ordinary men. With wives and children. A few of them have got criminal records, for tax offenses and drunk driving. But nothing remarkable. Nothing that makes her think they’ve found the killer.

  She clicks to open a document. Stares at the top line.

  dirtysanchez@woomail.com

  It now looks extremely unlikely that it’s Peter Karlson. So who is it, then?

  She’s tried all the legal methods at her disposal to trace the identity of the sender, but it seems hopeless. She knows it isn’t, though. Everyone leaves a digital trail behind them. But this individual is clever. As long as she sticks within the law he’ll be able to get the better of her.

  She stretches and carefully bends her legs. Her joints creak quietly. Then she takes a deep breath and lets her fingers dance across the keyboard again.

  She tries to locate Ingvar Stefansson instead. She begins by drawing up a list of properties that are registered to members of the Stefansson family and his other relatives. They’ll try to get hold of his closest relatives tomorrow, and question them as soon as possible.

  Evening has laid its silent shadow over Police Headquarters.

  She needs to come up with something.

  Do good.

  30

  ZACK LOVES the sound of leather striking leather.

  The basement on Agnegatan is actually a boxing club, but he comes here fairly often anyway. Because of the generous opening hours, but also because the people who hang out here are serious. And some of them practice martial arts, just like him.

  He looks around the premises, dressed in a white T-shirt and loose black shorts. It’s past nine o’clock, but there are still a dozen people there. He recognizes most of them, but not all. Not the girl with the shaved head, for instance. She’s standing over in the corner, kicking the punching bag fixed to a stand on the floor. Her face is wet with sweat as she attacks it with rapid kicks. Right, left, right, left.

  Two lads of eighteen or so are sparring in the ring. Zack watches them as he stretches his warmed-up leg muscles. Too much desire, too little technique. Just like him when he started.

  But he was younger, only twelve years old when he reluctantly went with two older friends to a dojo in Skärholmen and took part in his first karate training session.

  After just fifteen minutes he found himself in the starting position, learning the basic movements. Elbows back, fists close to the body, backs of the hands facing downward. Twist the fist on the way out. Get your elbows in, Zack! Alternating strokes. Left arm out when the right is on its way back. Following sensei Hiro’s movements the whole time. Again and again, until his thigh muscles trembled with the exertion. He had to rest. Zack, back in the starting position! Shoulders back. Standing straight.

  Again. And again.

  He ended up becoming addicted to karate.

  Six years later he became a black belt, and started to train at kickboxing and wushu.

  In the end he contacted sensei Hiro again with his own ideas of how you could combine techniques from different disciplines, and maybe even introduce some modern elements.

  Sensei Hiro took him on again.

  * * *

  ZACK GOES over to the oblong black punching bag hanging from chains in the roof. He puts his sports bag down, sits on the floor, and softens up his bandaged feet by twisting them at different angles.

  Then he stands up, starts bouncing lightly on his feet, and attacks the bag. He holds back for the first few minutes, then kicks harder and harder. He uses his hips to kick.

  Lets himself be swallowed up in the moment. Finds clarity in it. Expands.

  Just like out at the bikers’ clubhouse, or when he was chasing Suliman Yel.

  He died because of me.

  He kicks with all his strength. Feels the sweat running down his temples and back.

  He made his choice.

  I was only doing my job.

  The large bag sways with the kicks and starts to swing violently. He meets it as it comes toward him with even harder kicks.

  He switches to waiting for the bag to swing back, then dodges it at the very last moment. A quick swerve of the hips to the right, then a rapid ura mawashi geri. The chains rattle as he swings his left leg around the bag and hits it hard with his heel high up on the opposite side.

  All the pent-up energy from the working day finds its way out in his kicks. His thighs are burning with exhaustion, and he’s enjoying the physical challenge. He carries on dispensing kicks until he can barely lift his legs anymore.

  He takes a break. Goes over to the stainless-steel water cooler and drinks straight from the jet of water.

  A wiry man with the skipping rope comes toward him.

  Zack goes back to the punching bag. He takes two batons out of his sports bag and clicks to extend them, and starts whirling them around his hands like drumsticks. He bounces around the bag on his toes, then attacks it with the batons in what looks almost like a dance.

  The young men and the woman with the shaved head stop to watch him, wide-eyed, almost as if he were from a different planet.

  Zack whirls the batons over his head, behind his back, in large, sweeping arcs in front of his body.

  He shoulder still aches slightly from breaking down that door, but he ignores it.

  He spins around, dispensing blows, slipping out of the way of the bag, attacking it with both batons at the same time. Twists around. Strikes again. The batons make a whistling sound in the air, and the blows sound like whip cracks.

  A quarter of an hour later he feels he’s done enough for the evening. He sits down on the floor and unwraps his feet. Checks his iPhone. He’s received a message from Abdula.

  * * *

  AS HE heads west along Fleminggatan he thinks about Ester. He wonders if she’s been sitting outside his door this evening waiting for him.

  Others might have reported her situation to Social Services, but Zack doubts that any good would come of that. There’s no question that she has a wretched life, but the alternatives are hardly any better: being shuffled between different foster homes where, at worst, sadists and men with a taste for young girls might be waiting to get their claws in her.

  At least Veronica is kind toward Ester, even if there’s no way she could be described as a functional mother.

  Outside Stockholm Kebab at Fridhemsplan subway station, four loud mouthed men in their twenties are stuffing their faces with doner kebabs. One of them is swaying noticeably, and white kebab sauce is dribbling down his shirt collar.

  Zack takes a look inside, sees seven people at the white tables, but no Abdula. He decides to wait outside, and stands and watches the anonymous faces of people entering or exiting the subway.

  One of them could be the murderer, he thinks. Anyone. We know so little about him.

  Someone shoves him in the back. He slips to the side instinctively and raises his arms in front of him.

  It’s the drunk from the gang of young men. He glares at Zack and says angrily:

  “What the fuck, watch where you’re going.”

  The drunk is standing far too close. Stupidly cocky and provocative from the alcohol. One of his friends comes over and tries to pull him away.

  “Perra, come on. We’re going.”

  Perra waves him away and carries on glaring at Zack.

  “I’m just wondering why this fucker was shoving me.”

  That voice. He sounds like Seb.

  The same threatening tone when Seb came up to Zack on the football pitch a few weeks after he’d seen him down on the tracks with the boy.

  Zack can still remember how frightened he was. Remembers the heavy, cold rain. Remembers the way Adam, Ernesto, Alex, and Nabila ran off and left him alone when Seb and his two friends came walking across the pitch. And then Seb’s hate-filled voi
ce:

  “It was you who snitched, wasn’t it, you little bastard?”

  The drunk waves his kebab in front of Zack’s face. Some of the sauce lands on his face.

  Like Seb’s saliva.

  “Watch yourself, you bastard.”

  Those words.

  Zack looks at the drunk’s friends. Anger is bubbling inside him far too quickly now.

  “Are you going to get him away from me, or do I have to do it myself?”

  They see the look in Zack’s eyes and are sober enough to realize that they need to leave.

  They lead their protesting friend away. Off toward the subway.

  Zack massages his temples.

  Shuts his eyes.

  He’s back on that rainy football field

  “Okay, you little bastard. Not so tough now, are you?”

  Seb was wearing a red Champion sweater and Buffalo shoes. He was at least a head taller than Zack, and a good fifty pounds heavier. And he had his two friends with him. The guy with the trucker’s cap and the one with the buzz cut.

  Zack could probably have run away from them. He wanted to run away from them, but a different part of him made him stay.

  If he ran, he’d have to run again tomorrow.

  But he’d never been in a fight with anyone, except for fun. And there were three of them. Older than him. Bigger.

  They were standing in a ring around him and started shoving him.

  One of them spat at him, hitting him on the cheek, and someone kicked him in the shin.

  They shoved him some more. Zack was expecting one of them to hit him, so he could start hitting back.

  But Seb pulled out a butterfly knife.

  “What have you got to say now, you little shit?”

  Then there was a muffled sound and the boy with the cap was on the ground.

  “Ooow!” he yelled, clutching his cheek.

  He looked at his hand, saw the blood, and his face contorted with fear.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Seb shouted, and Zack noticed the stones on the ground.

  Someone was on his side.

  The rain was pouring down, and Seb yelped when a stone hit him hard in the back.

  “Come on, then, you bastard! Come out and I’ll cut you!”

  And he did come out. It was the dark-haired boy Seb had been dangling over the railway track a few weeks earlier.

  He looked completely crazy as he ran toward Seb with a metal rod in his hands.

  The metal pole hit him hard in the shoulder, then the hand holding the knife. Seb ran off.

  The boy with the buzz cut looked terrified. He started to run, but Zack knocked him to the ground without really thinking about it. He sat on his back and pressed his head down into the cold, wet grit.

  It didn’t feel like him doing it.

  But it felt good.

  He didn’t want to stop.

  He rubbed the boy’s face on the ground hard, until he shouted, with a sob in his voice, that he gave up. Only then did Zack release his grip and let him go.

  “Come on,” the boy with the metal rod said.

  And they ran into a doorway and sat down at the bottom of a staircase.

  “My name’s Abdula,” the boy said.

  “My name’s Zack.”

  “Thanks for helping me down by the tunnel.”

  “Thanks for helping me today.”

  “Seb’s mental. Properly, I mean. I think he’s got something wrong with his brain. Do you want to come upstairs?”

  Now Zack can see Abdula coming up the escalator, wearing a tight black T-shirt and a blue hooded top. He’s standing one step below two teenage girls, but he’s still taller than them. And probably heavier than the pair of them put together.

  He sees Zack and they embrace.

  “Sorry I’m late. The was some sort of holdup at Skanstull.”

  “No problem,” Zack says. “I just got here.”

  They go into the kebab shop and each orders a doner kebab to go.

  “Where do you want to go?” Abdula asks.

  “How about AG?”

  “You can’t quite tear yourself away from familiar territory, can you?”

  “Don’t think we’ll find anything better around here.”

  “Okay. There were lots of nice things to look at there last time.”

  They head off in silence, eating as they go. The air is still mild, and the last pinkish light in the sky hasn’t yet given way to darkness.

  “Any more drug raids coming up?” Abdula asks between mouthfuls.

  “Not that I know of. But you’ve seen how little I know these days. I almost got caught myself during that last raid.”

  “They got one of my mates before he had time to flush everything away. Pocketful of crank. Started babbling to the cops that it was for his ADHD.”

  Zack laughs.

  “Seriously, man,” Abdula says, “I’m kind of worried about him. The stuff he had on him came from a new lab in Lund, and even if he’s a decent guy, I’m not sure he’s the sort who’ll be able to keep his mouth shut when your friends start putting pressure on him.”

  Zack says nothing for a while, struck by the absurdity of the conversation. His best friend has just told him about a new Swedish lab producing methamphetamine, and what does he do? Ask to hear more? Put him under pressure? No, he laughs and carries on walking, as if they were talking about some funny television program or something.

  “Have you found out any more about the raid?” Zack asks after a while.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you might have talked to some of the people who were questioned.”

  “I’ve only heard a few things indirectly. It sounds like your friends weren’t after anyone particular; they just received a tip-off that loads of drugs were being taken at the club. And they were right about that, of course.”

  Zack nods.

  “I’ll try to have lunch with some of the guys in the drug squad sometime soon. If I hear anything about what they’re planning, I’ll let you know, okay?”

  Abdula holds out a clenched fist. Zack bumps his knuckles against Abdula’s.

  “Right now we’re checking out a possible flare-up between the bikers in the Brotherhood and a Turkish organization called Yildizyeli,” Zack says. “Could be connected to the murders of those four women in Hallonbergen. Yildizyeli are said to be involved in prostitution and trafficking, among other things. Have you ever heard of them?”

  “No, not my area at all, but I can check.”

  “Anything you could find out about the organization and someone called Ösgür Thrakya would be very interesting.”

  “Okay.”

  The bouncer outside the AG restaurant looks askance at Abdula, but lets them in.

  The décor seems to have been inspired by a sophisticated slaughterhouse. The walls are covered with white tiles, and chunks of meat have been hung up on general display behind the glass doors of the fridge. The music is loud, as is the level of chatter from the clientele. They order two very expensive beers and check out the smart middle-class crowd.

  “Look at them,” Abdula says, shaking his head. “They think they’re so cool. That they’ve found a style of their own. But if some fashion magazine told them the top they’re wearing is passé, they’d chuck it away the next day.”

  Zack nods.

  “It’s tragic,” Abdula goes on. “Look around, Zack. It’s like that kids’ game, what’s it called . . . ? Follow the leader. This is like a fucking macro version of follow the leader. Everyone here obeys the slightest nod given by the interior design magazines and fashion designers. They’re just too stupid to realize it.”

  “But it was the same when we were growing up. Don’t you remember being thirteen? If you didn’t have a pair of Fila shoes, you hardly dared go out.”

  “True,” Abdula says. “But that’s the point. We were thirteen. These people are adults.”

  The beers arrive and they raise their glass
es in a toast.

  “Speaking of Fila,” Abdula goes on, “do you remember Nabila, that skinny guy from Pakistan? That time we forced him to put firecrackers through the headmaster’s mailbox and he got his hand stuck?”

  Zack laughs.

  “Don’t! I still have nightmares about what happened to his fingers.”

  They go on relating anecdotes from the past, and order more beer from a young waitress with fair hair cut in a short, unkempt style.

  “Here you go, gentlemen,” she says, giving Zack a barely perceptible wink before moving on to the next customer.

  They both watch her as she walks away and gets a bottle of Laphroaig down from the shelf. Then they look at each other and shake their heads. Raise their glasses in another toast.

  “It was always good having you around,” Abdula says. “A white guy who looked nice and harmless. They never suspected anything—before it was too late. Like that time with the kiosk in Tyresö.”

  “Tyresö—I’d almost forgotten that!”

  “Your performance there was worth an Oscar, the way you lured him away to help you with your bike.”

  “While you stole as many sweets as you could get your hands on.”

  “Forty-four pounds. I remember us weighing it.”

  “I was sick that might. Dad couldn’t figure out why the vomit was so brightly colored.”

  Abdula laughs.

  They fall silent for a moment.

  “Actually, it was fucking awful really,” Abdula says. “And do you remember how jealous all the others were, specially Abbe? He couldn’t believe that you and I had so much freedom.”

  “While all we wanted was what he had. A normal Swedish life. I still remember what it was like around his house. Nice and tidy. And it always smelled of baking.”

  “I was so fucking impressed when you sometimes did the cooking when the three of us were around at yours,” Abdula says. “And that you used to clear up and wash the dishes while your dad was asleep.”

  “A bit different to the way Abbe grew up.”

  “He had everything going for him. But he was too weak,” Abdula says.

  “How long has it been now, ten years?”

  “Something like that. I was there when they found him. The syringe was still in his arm. That was when I decided. Needles weren’t for me.”