Maybe someone will save us.
In spite of everything.
* * *
ZACK WAKES up on the sofa at quarter past five in the morning. His back is sore from having slept in such an awkward position.
But he feels rested.
He must have fallen back to sleep when he was lying there looking at the stars, and he quickly calculates that he’s slept for a total of nine hours since the previous evening. It’s been a very long time since he slept that long in one night.
He goes out into the kitchen and switches the coffeemaker on. Then he gets out the black leather folder and spreads the pictures of his mom out on the floor.
He turns them the wrong way up to make himself see them in a new way. Goes through the investigation in his head. Tries to identify mistakes in his own reasoning and conclusions.
What is it that I’m not seeing?
51
COME ON, answer.
Sirpa has the phone clasped between her cheek and shoulder. Her fingers are dancing across the keyboard as she hunts for more information about Dirty Sanchez.
She feels exultant. Almost giddy with excitement she gazes out across the open-plan office of the Special Crimes Unit.
We’ve got him now.
An hour ago she was in her kitchen putting coffee in the French press when the laptop in her bedroom bleeped.
Ignoring the pain in her legs, she hurried in to look at the screen.
It now longer said: “Waiting for connection.”
It said: “Connected.”
Dirty Sanchez had walked into the trap.
She immediately went into his hard disk, found his real name, and yelped out loud in delight.
Zeus jumped up onto the bed, wagging his tail and barking like an idiot, but she barely noticed him.
So he, of all people, was Dirty Sanchez. Not Ösgür Thrakya, not Peter Karlson, not Ingvar Stefansson. Him.
Poor Zeus only got a brief minute outside. A quick pee, then back in again. Then Sirpa set off for work.
Answer, for God’s sake.
After eight rings she gives up and calls Deniz instead. She picks up at once.
“Hi, it’s Sirpa. I can’t get hold of Zack. Is he with you?”
“No, I’ve just been to the Miramar. We got a tip that Ösgür Thrakya had been seen there, but it was shut up, no lights on anywhere. I’ve been trying to call Zack as well, but he’s not answering. He seems to have gone off on some one-man mission.”
“Sten Westberg, that businessman Zack bumped into at Mehmet Drakan’s garage, is Dirty Sanchez. He must have been there to pick up that bag full of money. Just as Zack thought.”
“What did you just say? How do you know that?”
Sirpa gives a brief summary of what she’s been doing.
“Last night he opened the email and clicked the link, so now I’ve managed to download loads of files from his computer.”
“Wow. Is that legal?”
“No, it’s a massive invasion of privacy. But we’ve got a mass murderer on the loose out there, haven’t we?”
“We have.”
“I’ve only had time to go through a few of the files so far,” Sirpa goes on. “But it’s enough to confirm that he’s a real perv. I’m going to carry on going through his emails, Word documents, and all sorts of other stuff now, but I wanted to let you know right away. I can keep trying to get hold of Zack if you like.”
“Good. I’m on my way in.”
Sirpa hangs up and dials Zack’s number again. She’s getting impatient now.
She stares at the passport photograph on the screen. Sten Westberg, CEO of the property company Merkantus, ranked seventy-sixth on the list of Sweden’s highest earners.
But also the man behind the email address [email protected].
She scrolls quickly through some of the emails she managed to download when Westberg was online earlier that morning.
He doesn’t appear to send many emails from that address, and she is able to look back through his history fairly quickly. A few mails from Sawatdii that she recognizes from Sukayana Prikon’s computer, one concerning registration with a new porn site, www.barelylegal.com, two emails in English containing inquiries about the cost of different hotels in the Philippines.
She assumes he’s planning some sort of sleazy sex holiday, and moves on to another email.
What’s this?
She reads the first lines, holding her breath.
Then sees the photograph.
Fucking hell . . .
The motive for murder.
Here it is.
Pay us 100,000 kronor, or we tell what you done with us.
Money transfer through Western Union by June 13 at the latest.
She stops short when she sees the date. June 13. Last Monday. That was when the first women were found murdered.
The rest of the email contains instructions of how he should transfer the money, and what number to call when it’s all done. The international dialing code is +95.
She quickly googles to find out which country that is.
Burma.
She looks at the picture again.
The picture that was supposed to get him to pay up.
And who wouldn’t pay?
Westberg is standing with the trousers of his suit pulled down, in front of a naked woman on her knees, her face turned away from the camera.
Sirpa guesses the woman herself set up a remote-control camera somewhere in the room.
Smart.
And courageous.
Then she realizes that the woman in the picture could be one of the murder victims. Was this the last thing she did when she was alive? Give a blow job to a bastard in an expensive suit?
The email was signed by eight people. Maybe they thought there was strength in numbers, that he wouldn’t dare attack them if there were so many of them.
Six of the names match the names in the fake passports of the murdered women. She can’t find any trace of the other two, no matter how hard she tries. They don’t occur in any official Swedish databases, and seem to be invisible on the Internet. She can’t even find them on any sex websites.
She clicks to open another email, a long exchange of mail between [email protected] and a Turkish email address that she traces back to a server in Italy. From the exchange it is clear that Westberg has helped the Turks to acquire cheap premises, in exchange for backhanders in cash.
“My position as CEO in the company will serve as a guarantee against unwanted inquiries,” he writes in one of his early emails.
Such a high salary, Sirpa thinks, yet he still wants more. She’s seen it countless times before. And presumably money wasn’t the only form of payment.
Zack still isn’t answering.
She’ll give him another try in a while.
52
ZACK GETS his cell out of his pocket and calls Fredrik Bylund for the fourth time. Sirpa and Deniz have both called him several times, but he doesn’t want to take their calls in case Bylund tries to call at the same time. They can manage without him for an hour, even if he has an idea that Deniz is annoyed with him for disappearing without telling her.
No answer this time either.
He’s at the Grand Hotel, and has just moved from the lobby to the Cadier Bar. The dark paneling is decorated with gold, but the service is clumsier than at the considerably simpler cafés he usually frequents. He had to wait ages before anyone took his order, and then had to wait even longer for his espresso, which was lukewarm when it arrived.
But it’s all fine. He feels better than he has all week.
Properly rested, and temporarily free from both angst and cravings.
But it doesn’t look like Bylund is going to show up.
Zack calls Expressen’s newsroom and is told that Bylund isn’t there at the moment because he was working late yesterday evening but might be in later.
There are some newspapers on the table in front of Zack. Dagens Nyhete
r, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Industri. No copy of Expressen.
He spots the name Merkantus on a headline in the front of the business paper, and pulls it out of the pile.
Sten Westberg’s company.
Zack leafs through until he reaches the article.
CRISIS AT MERKANTUS
Merkantus’s management team is in trouble. After a long period of dissatisfaction, the company’s owners at Heraldus are planning to make sweeping changes.
After the recent collapse of two proposed deals, confidence in the management of property company Merkantus is at rock bottom. Dagens Industri has learned that the company’s proprietors at Heraldus are planning a comprehensive restructuring of the entire company.
Heraldus today declined to comment on this.
“We’ll be issuing a statement when we’re ready to do so,” Harald Sundborn, Heraldus’s head of information, said.
Heraldus, one of Sweden’s so-called “big five,” has long been renowned for its almost ruthless attitude toward management teams that have failed to live up to expectations.
* * *
HERALDUS.
That’s what she’s going to inherit, that woman in the club out in Sundbyberg.
The one with the deep blue eyes and glossy dark hair.
But what’s her name? He can’t think of it.
Her eyes, her mouth.
He looks up from the newspaper and notices a commotion at the other end of the room.
Camera flashes. Agitated voices. At the center of attention a slim woman in a long, black dress who has sat down at a round table.
Noomi Rapace.
Lisbeth Salander.
She’s being interviewed by a suited man with thinning hair while a young photographer in a crumpled shirt and three days of stubble darts about taking pictures of her from every possible angle.
Around the table stand two men and a woman who look like they’ve been plucked from a commercilal set in an office. PR people, Zack guesses. There to make sure the reporter asks the right questions, and that the star gives the right answers.
The smart side of society. The one so many people are striving to join.
Luxury, attention, and endless ingratiating smiles.
So unlike his own world.
He realizes that he’s sitting there staring at Noomi Rapace, and she glances in his direction, smiles, and raises one eyebrow slightly.
Zack wonders about setting her a test. Seeing how long she dare hold his gaze.
Then he pulls himself up. Come on, you’ve got a killer to catch.
Focus.
Someone’s phone buzzes nearby, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s his. He snatches his jacket from the seat opposite him and grabs his phone from the inside pocket. At last, Fredrik Bylund is getting back to him.
Then he sees the name on the screen.
Sirpa again.
Fucking hell.
Just as well to take the call. After all, something might be going on.
“Hi,” he says.
“Zack, Sten Westberg is Dirty Sanchez.”
Two minutes later he puts his phone back in his pocket, all thoughts of meeting Fredrik Bylund forgotten.
He can smell victory.
They’re close now.
He beckons a waiter over, having to make exaggerated gestures to get noticed. As he holds out his credit card he thinks about what Sirpa has just told him of the attempt by the eight women to blackmail Westberg.
His motive is crystal clear. They could have wrecked his entire career.
One businessman’s honor versus six Burmese women’s lives.
Apparently not a difficult choice.
We need to get hold of him at once. We may still have a chance to save the last two women.
And maybe also the girls in the forest.
“There you go. Thanks.”
The waiter hands his card back along with a receipt.
Eighty kronor. That’s what he normally pays for lunch.
But no doubt Westberg doesn’t.
There’s a logic to the fact that his name was on those contracts, Zack thinks. It’s one way of ensuring a bit of quick extra money now that his position as CEO is looking uncertain.
He thinks of the bag in the garage. The scrap of paper on top of the bundles of notes.
Dirty money for Dirty Sanchez.
But a wealthy and apparently functional business leader as a mass murderer? Has there ever been a similar case?
And why the excessive brutality? Zack doesn’t understand.
An attempt to focus attention elsewhere, perhaps. Or because he hates women, or because of his violent desire for them, as Östman suggested.
But he doesn’t fit the profile. Westberg isn’t a lone wolf. Zack himself saw him having lunch in the Opera Bar with some other suits, men he seemed to know well. And he has a sociable job that involves meeting new people all the time.
What else had Östman said?
A man used to moving in criminal circles. . . . Probably not someone who belongs to any organized group.
That fits fairly well, on the other hand. Westberg has a business arrangement with Yildizyeli, but doesn’t belong to it.
He could have got hold of the murder weapon from the Turks. Or anywhere. It’s easier to get hold of a gun than mashed potatoes made from real potatoes these days, as Zack’s older colleagues often put it.
But there’s more that doesn’t quite make sense. Why would the Turks tolerate Sten Westberg destroying their property? It can’t be that hard to get hold of business premises illegally in Stockholm. So why haven’t they stopped him?
If he really is the murderer.
Where does Sukayana Prikon fit into the picture? She wasn’t involved in the blackmail, after all, at least not according to that email.
So her mutilation must be the result of someone else’s work. Yildizyeli’s.
Is that actually connected to the murders at all?
Zack runs his hands through his hair.
Tries to think logically.
Suppose Westberg is the murderer. If that is the case, then he probably didn’t get the Turks’ approval for the murders. But he went ahead and killed the women anyway. Why? To prevent his life being ruined by the women blackmailing him. If that hidden-camera picture of him with the Burmese woman had found its way into the media, his lovely office would have been replaced by a prison cell.
So why not just make the payment through Western Union? After all, the amount is peanuts to someone like him.
Zack thinks of his own encounter with Westberg. Of the derision he saw in his eyes. His scornful sense of superiority. And he realizes what this is all about.
Power.
Sten Westberg hates those women because they were trying to strip him of the power to which he believes he is entitled. He hates them because he is a successful white man and they’re just insignificant Asian prostitutes who don’t know their place.
He simply can’t do as they demand. That would destroy his whole self-image. He would be allowing himself to be led by the nose.
Under normal circumstance he probably wouldn’t take such a massive risk. But his power was already under serious threat.
Westberg is about to lose his job. And with it his title, his power, and his financial security.
And then who is he?
What does that make him?
Desperate.
And desperate people are dangerous people. They do crazy things.
Like committing murder. Like challenging ruthless criminals.
His business dealings with the Turks also act as his defense.
They don’t suspect anything.
Do they?
Zack feels a chill run through him.
The garage in Farsta.
Zack showed Mehmet Drakan his police ID.
Drakan may have remembered his name, may have checked out which department he works in. May have seen on the television news that the Special Crimes
Unit has been brought in to investigate the murders at the massage parlors, and he may now be wondering why one of the unit’s detectives was chasing Westberg.
They know.
Just like we do.
We’ve got to get hold of the killer before they do. Force him to lead us to the house in the forest.
An image comes into Zack’s head: Sten Westberg being torn apart by wolves in some isolated shack somewhere.
He calls Deniz on her cell as he runs out of the hotel.
53
ZACK RUNS north along Grevgränd, turns left into Arsenalsgatan, then carries on running north along the side of Kungsträdgården.
His breathing is easy, and he feels he could run forever at this speed.
On the other side of the street the Japanese cherry trees line up in perfect rows. In an hour or two the park will be full of locals and tourists eating ice cream, but there aren’t many people about at the moment.
Zack reaches the junction with Hamngatan and stops outside Max’s hamburger bar on the corner as one of the Djurgården trams glides past.
It was his suggestion to meet here rather than at the hotel. Now they won’t have to weave through the backstreets, which will save them precious minutes.
He sees her approaching from the west in the Special Crimes Unit’s Volvo V50. She pulls over, with two wheels on the pavement, and Zack jumps into the passenger seat before the car has even stopped moving.
“Head for Engelbrektsgatan.”
“Engelbrektsgatan?”
“Merkantus, the property company, has its headquarters there. It’s time to bring in our beloved CEO.”
“For murder?”
“For anything. What matters right now is getting hold of him. And stopping him. Preferably before the Turks get him—I think they’re looking for him as well now.”
“But Sirpa tracked him down illegally. The prosecutor will never accept that.”
“We’ll have to come up with something else. We could have got an anonymous tip-off from a public-spirited hacker, something like that. We’ll think of something.”
“Has Douglas given the go-ahead for this?”
“I haven’t asked. I get the impression that he’s trying to protect Westberg.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
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