Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  “In theory, yes. But we’ve found two emails in Turkish on Sukayana Prikon’s computer. I’m afraid I’ve only been able to trace them to an Internet café in Bangkok,” Sirpa says.

  “So she speaks Turkish?” Niklas wonders.

  “Either her or someone else with access to the massage parlor’s email account.”

  Douglas takes over:

  “We’ve had the emails translated, but they don’t contain any names or useful leads, just rather cryptic information about the delivery of something, and that the ‘dirty washing’ would be picked up according to their arrangement. As long as Sukayana Prikon is sedated, we won’t be able to make any progress there.”

  “Deniz, you know Turkish, don’t you?” Niklas says. “Couldn’t you take another look at those emails?”

  “I only know Kurmanji, and I’m not even very good at that.”

  “I thought that was the same thing?”

  “What, like Swedish and Sámi, you mean? How much Sámi do you know?”

  Douglas clears his throat and turns toward Zack and Deniz.

  “We need more names. As far as Ösgür Thrakya is concerned, we haven’t even managed to confirm that he’s in the country, even if his organization seems to be here. And we’re not going to be able to find out much more about Suliman Yel, I’m afraid.”

  “What have we got from the latest round of interviews?” Rudolf asks.

  “The people at the Miramar pizzeria aren’t saying a word. They say they’d never seen Suliman Yel before, and have never heard the name Ösgür Thrakya. And that hairdresser’s friend claims she only knew him superficially.”

  “What about Koltberg? Hasn’t he managed to find out anything about Yel?”

  “Nothing that links him to the murder scene in Hallonbergen.”

  “Who owns the massage parlor in the city center, then?” Zack asks.

  “A homeless man whose only contact is a post office box,” Douglas says. “Presumably a front. I’ve got people looking for him. We don’t even know who was running the business. It could have been one of the two women who were murdered.”

  “If we understood Paw Htoo correctly, different people kept showing up at the parlor to pick up the money,” Deniz says. “It looks like they changed fairly regularly.”

  “They’re probably exploiting the three-month rule on temporary residency. But people can apply to the Immigration Office for permission to stay longer. I’ll check the databases to see if any Turkish citizens have applied recently.”

  “Good idea,” Douglas says. “But they wouldn’t have wanted to end up on any official databases.”

  “The most important thing right now has to be finding out more about that house Paw Htoo mentioned. We’ve got to find the girls she said were still there,” Zack says.

  “Yes, but a house in the forest isn’t much to go on,” Douglas reasons.

  “I think that house could be the key to everything,” Zack says. “If you’re going to keep wolves, you’re going to want to live well away from anyone else. In which case Paw Htoo’s house could well be the place where Sukayana Prikon was set upon by wolves. If we find that house, we find Yildizyeli.”

  “I share my younger colleague’s view,” Rudolf says.

  “And where were you thinking of looking?” Douglas says.

  Why’s he being so resistant? Zack wonders, convinced that they need to hurry.

  There are women to rescue, children. They can’t afford to hold back now.

  “We could contact the Stockholm branch of the Hunting Association,” Rudolf suggests, in his usual measured tone. “Someone might have noticed something, or had a dog that reacted when it was close to the house. And I think we should make another attempt to talk to Paw Htoo as soon as possible. She may well be able to give us more to go on. Was the drive leading to the house gravel or Tarmac? Is there a lake nearby? Things like that. I can contact the Hunting Association as soon as we’re finished here.”

  “Do that,” Douglas says drily. “At the same time, we need to bear in mind that these murders may not have anything to do with organized crime. White racial hatred is still a live line of inquiry. But we can forget all about Peter Karlson. We’ve had confirmation that he left for Spain yesterday evening. Which leaves us with Ingvar Stefansson, who may be linked to the Turks, although that’s by no means certain. Koltberg has produced a fresh report about the examination of his apartment, but he can’t say much yet about whether the jaws we found in Ingvar Stefansson’s apartment are from the wolves that attacked Sukayana Prikon.”

  “What about Stefansson himself, then?” Deniz says.

  “We still haven’t managed to find him. None of his neighbors knows anything about him. They say they’ve never even seen him.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be very active online either,” Sirpa says. “I’ve tried various ways of finding him, but I haven’t managed to link him to any interesting sites or forums.”

  Zack feels a drop of water hit his hand, and realizes that it’s sweat from his own forehead.

  He wipes his face with a paper handkerchief.

  Shuts his eyes.

  Opens them again. The white tabletop is moving in front of him. Like it is floating in water.

  He tries to focus, but it’s impossible.

  Must take something. Now.

  He manages to pull himself together.

  Think, for God’s sake. Think.

  But he can’t seem to pull everything together to form a whole.

  “I’ve finally managed to talk to Stefansson’s brother and mother over the phone, and they were both equally unpleasant, and more or less slammed the phone down on me. I think we should bring them in for questioning,” Niklas says. “They’re his closest relatives.”

  “Good,” Douglas says. “Sort that out, Niklas, and make it the first thing you do tomorrow.”

  He concludes the meeting and everyone stands up quickly to get out of the room as fast as possible.

  Zack and Rudolf are the last ones to leave.

  “Thanks for backing me up,” Zack says when the others are out of sight.

  “Sometimes the blind have to lead the blind,” Rudolf says with a smile.

  * * *

  ZACK IS doing his best to concentrate, but the letters on the screen stubbornly persist in blurring together.

  This particular job is killing him.

  Searching databases.

  He can’t understand how Sirpa can spend days on end just doing this.

  They’ve spent the last half an hour together, trying to find any Turkish citizens who own or lease property in sparsely populated areas of forest around Stockholm.

  It’s so damn important, but he’s so tired.

  That short nap in his apartment hasn’t done much good in the long run.

  The flashing of the cursor is hypnotic.

  The sound of the fan soporific.

  He feels Sirpa’s finger in his side and realizes that he’s been asleep with his eyes open.

  “Okay, go home and get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll finish the rest on my own.”

  He can’t even summon up the energy to protest.

  40

  THE WALK from Police Headquarters to Kungsholms Strand feels endless, and when Zack is finally standing in front of the door of his apartment he can barely get the key in the lock. He’s so tired that it physically hurts, and his brain is responding to the lack of sleep by giving him the motor skills of a longtime alcoholic.

  He leans forward and takes aim carefully. The key slides off and scratches the door for a third time.

  Oh, for God’s sake . . .

  He takes a deep breath and tries again.

  “Shall I help you?”

  He looks up.

  Sees Ester sitting on the bottom step.

  He forces a smile.

  “Please.”

  He holds the key out to her.

  She opens the door. Gives him his key back and waits.

  He kno
ws she wants to come in, but he can’t, not now.

  “I’m tired,” he says.

  “So I see.”

  He goes inside the flat, turns, and sees her standing there in her white summer dress, watching him, her strawberry-blond hair tickling her thin shoulders.

  “Another day,” he says, and closes the door behind him.

  Silence.

  Calm.

  He lies down on the sofa and switches the television on. Suppresses the image of the light in her eyes going out as he spoke.

  It’s six o’clock and the early evening news has just started. The murders at the massage parlor on Klara Norra Kyrkogata lead the bulletin. First a few establishing shots of Åhléns department store and the scene of the murders. Zack sees himself standing in the street talking to Deniz. Then the camera creeps closer. Karin Åkerstig is shown talking on her phone in close-up, a yellow body bag is carried out to an ambulance, then Douglas appears. He is surrounded by outstretched microphones and smartphones, explaining with professional vagueness how the police are ruling nothing out, and that it’s too early to say if there’s any connection to the previous murders. Then a television reporter appears on-screen and concludes the item with the words:

  “So the police don’t yet have any clear leads on what could be the worst mass murderer in Stockholm in modern times.”

  Great, Zack thinks. More than enough to terrify the viewers. As if ordinary people risked being shot the moment they opened their front doors.

  But at least they didn’t show any footage of Paw Htoo. They do have a bit of heart after all.

  He switches the television off. Lack of sleep has left his eyes feeling dry, but he still can’t settle.

  He feels like going up to see Ester, to apologize and ask her to come downstairs for a while.

  But he stays where he is.

  An image of Rebecka pops into his mind, but he brushes it aside.

  He calls Mera. She answers after two rings.

  “Hi,” she says. “I just saw you on the news. Where are you?”

  “At home. Are you busy?”

  “No, I just got in. I’ve been to the gym with Camilla.”

  “I miss you.”

  “So come over, then.”

  * * *

  THEY’RE SITTING curled up on Mera’s white Vitra sofa. Zack is lying back against the huge cushions, with Mera’s head on his chest. Gentle piano music is playing on the built-in speakers, she’s poured them both some wine, and Zack doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

  At last.

  “Where did you get to last night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I went home and carried on working on the case.”

  “So you didn’t go anywhere else?”

  “No, I went home, I just said.”

  He can hear how unnecessarily sharp he sounds. Like a liar. She’s got all the reason in the world to be suspicious, and he knows that sooner or later he’s going to be found out.

  When he and Mera first started seeing each other seriously, they agreed to give each other a lot of freedom. Neither of them would demand full access to the other’s life. But that freedom probably didn’t cover either drugs or sex with other people.

  Mera once asked him straight out if he used drugs. He said he’d tried cocaine a few times, and since then she hasn’t asked.

  Zack assumes she’s tried it herself, at parties. He knows there’s cocaine in pretty much every jacket pocket and handbag at most of the parties she goes to. No one even bothers to pretend otherwise.

  “Sorry,” he says, and strokes her dark, glistening hair. “I can see why you’d ask. I’m just exhausted. Somewhere out there there’s a man who’s murdered six women and possibly mutilated a seventh, and we still haven’t got any good leads to go on. It feels like we’re fumbling in the dark.”

  He kisses the top of her head.

  “I swear, once we’ve caught him, I’m going to sleep for twenty-four hours.”

  “The women he shot, did they have children?”

  “We haven’t been able to identify them properly yet. But we found some profile pictures on Skype, and one of them had some photographs in her purse of a little boy.”

  “Oh dear . . .”

  Mera curls up closer to him, and he hugs her.

  They’ve never talked about having children. Once Mera mentioned in passing that she wanted to wait a few years. Until her career was in a more stable phase. Her PR agency is making its way into smart society, and has been commissioned by Volvo and Ikea. She can’t stop now, she needs to get to a point where she won’t risk being overtaken. She needs to expand, take on more staff. Maybe get bought out.

  “Shall we go to bed?” she whispers.

  “Yes.”

  Mera creeps beneath the covers of the big double bed naked, the same as Zack.

  “Hold me,” he says.

  And she holds him.

  They lie there close together and he can feel her soft, warm skin against his.

  They lie there in silence for a while. Her caresses, which seemed full of desire at first, become calmer. She strokes his back. Slow, delicate movements between his shoulder blades.

  He drifts off.

  And finally falls asleep.

  41

  MARTIN STEFANSSON has a large number of dried-in gray stains on his white overalls. He’s sitting in the interview room with his bulky arms folded, and is very obviously annoyed at being brought in for questioning just before the breakfast break at the building site. They’ve got a lot to do before the end of the day, and the whole job’s supposed to be finished by the weekend.

  “I haven’t got a fucking clue who he hangs out with. I’ve already said, I don’t have any contact with my brother anymore.”

  “Is that anything to do with his political views?” Niklas asks from the other side of the table, where he’s sitting next to Rudolf.

  “Political views? I don’t even know who he votes for.”

  “I was thinking more of his views about dark-skinned people and Arabs. He doesn’t seem to like them very much.”

  “No, but who the hell does?”

  “Would you say your brother has a violent nature?”

  “We used to fight when we were kids, like all brothers. But I’ve got no idea if he still fights. I’d be surprised, though. He’s not the type.”

  “We’ve been trying to find him at his home. Do you know where he could be?”

  Martin Stefansson grins at them, and leans over the table. He leaves a long pause, then takes a deep breath, as if he’s about to reveal something important.

  * * *

  ZACK SITS up as straight as he can on his chair, as if to put as much distance as possible between himself and Ingela Stefansson. Her breath is a mixture of hangover and decaying teeth.

  She’s in her sixties, more or less the same age his own mother would have been if she’d lived, but she looks older. Her unwashed hair is gray and matted, and rolls of fat make doughy patterns beneath her ill-fitting, washed-out blouse. Zack tries to retain the memory of Mera’s body beside him, but it’s fading away rapidly now.

  “I’m not talking to the authorities, I’ve already told you that. You’ve never helped me, so why should I help you? You’re just sticking your noses into things that are none of your business.”

  “Right now, we’re trying to solve a number of murders,” Zack says. “And for that reason it’s extremely important that we talk to your son.”

  “Crap,” Ingela Stefansson says, waving her hand dismissively. “My son’s no murderer.”

  “We haven’t said he is,” Deniz says. “But he might be able to give us information that could help us make some progress.”

  “Have you been to his apartment?”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t there.”

  “Did you go inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve seen . . . ?”

  Ingela Stefansson’s bottom lip starts to tremble, then her face contorts into a g
rimace and she starts to cry.

  “I haven’t had it easy,” she says, pulling a tissue from her battered, fake-leather handbag. “You haven’t got any idea,” she says, with anger in her voice.

  Zack takes a deep breath. He hasn’t got the patience for this sort of crap today. He leans his head back and shuts his eyes, but the room starts to spin at once and he straightens up again.

  It doesn’t help.

  The floor seems to be slowly revolving, his vision seems blurred, and it isn’t Ingela Stefansson sitting there now.

  Mom.

  Her soft cheeks, even softer hair.

  You’re saying something, Mom. A soft whisper at first, as if you want to comfort me, but then you get angry, almost like a different person, and you stand up and threaten to hit me.

  Don’t hit me, Mom.

  Don’t hit me.

  Zack hears a sharp noise and feels the sting of a slap, and puts his hands to his face, and when he removes them again he sees that Ingela Stefansson is standing up, and that her chair has fallen over behind her.

  She must have hit me.

  Mom.

  Ingela Stefansson.

  Her fat frame wobbles as she shouts angrily at Deniz:

  “What do you think it was like? Trying to raise two boys in those circumstances?”

  Zack looks at the angry woman.

  Tries to work out what’s going on.

  Not bothered by the slap.

  Where did that image of his mother come from? She never did anything like that to him, did she? But he can’t help feeling troubled, and tries to suppress the memories by concentrating on the hysterical woman whose voice has just switched to falsetto on the other side of the table.

  “Let me tell you,” she says in a voice shaking with emotion, wagging her finger at Deniz, “if only us Swedes got as much as you people get when you come to our country demanding a load of benefits even though you haven’t done a thing to deserve them.”

  Zack sees red. He loses control, hits the table hard with his fists, and stands up, yelling at Stefansson’s mother:

  “Now you’re going to cut the fucking crap and tell us where your son is!”