by Eva Hudson
BILUNGS: Forgive me. The kidnappings took place on December 15th last year. When did you first learn of the plan?
GHEDI: [Via translator] I do not know. Maybe beginning of December.
BILUNGS: And how far advanced was the plan at that point? Had the targets already been identified, for example?
GHEDI: [Via translator] Yes.
BILUNGS: Were there other targets?
GHEDI: [Via translator] No.
BILUNGS: So you hoped that by kidnapping the wife of Björn Friese, the husband of Elise Blomquist and the son of Judge Bildeburg you would persuade the firm to take on Saladdin’s case and the judge would overturn the deportation order, is that it?
GHEDI: [Via translator] I… Yes, that was the plan. Thank you.
BILUNGS: It was a very elaborate operation. The kidnappings, the bomb at the National Museum… [Refers to notes] The police have arrested and charged twenty-two men in relation to the events last year. Three teams responsible for the abductions, the men who were responsible for the events at the Republik café, who will also be tried for murder, others for procuring vehicles, firearms offenses… let me see. Then there is you and your brother at the cabin in Järlåsa, Samir Mustafa, who has pleaded guilty to the shooting of Anders Möven… the teams who drove the hostages between the locations, the couple who operated the safe house in Husby… Nazim Khan, the bomber… it goes on. It’s an extensive list of accomplices, Mr Ghedi. It seems there was no shortage of people willing to bring the entire country to a halt that day. It all seems, how shall I put this, a little over the top to get one man legal representation in a deportation case. [Pause] There is a suspicion, both in the country as a whole and I suspect in the minds of several people in this room, that you did not all care that much about the fate of Abdullah Saladdin. What was your real motivation?
GHEDI: [Confers with translator. Via translator] Yes, yes, of course. Sir, for myself, I only wanted to help Mr Abdullah. Thank you.
BILUNGS: It had no bearing on your actions, none at all, that if you were convicted of crimes in relation to the events last year you would serve time in a Swedish prison. The consequence of that, I put it to you, was that it would delay your own deportation.
GHEDI: [Via translator] It is true I do not want to go back to Somalia, and yes it is true that many would prefer to live in a Swedish prison. In prison we do not starve, we do not get beaten, but for myself I only want to help Abdullah Saladdin. He is a great man.
BILUNGS: Very well, if we accept that was your motivation, will you accept that some of your… accomplices were motivated by the certainty that—should they be convicted—they would delay their own deportation by several years. Does that explain, partially at least, why so many people were so keen to take part in the crimes committed last December?
GHEDI: [Nods. Via translator] It is possible, yes.
BILUNGS: Thank you. Now, I would like to turn to the WP-638, the component for the Haze missile. Your fingerprints were found on the casing of the component, yet you told the investigating officers that you had no idea what it was. When did you first see the WP-638?
GHEDI: [Confers with translator. Via translator] Do you mean see? Because it was dark.
BILUNGS: Yes, I mean see.
GHEDI: [Via translator] Then I have never seen it. I touch it when I search the lady’s bag.
BILUNGS: This was after, as you claim, she overpowered you and escaped?
GHEDI: [Via translator] Yes.
BILUNGS: What were you looking for in her bag?
GHEDI: [Via translator] Food, money maybe.
BILUNGS: And you still maintain, despite your involvement in these crimes, the conspiracy to bomb a national monument, to bring the government of the nation to a standstill, that you had nothing to do with the procurement or distribution of the WP-638?
GHEDI: [Via translator] I did not. It was already in her bag.
BILUNGS: [Pause. Reads from documents] Please tell us about the woman you held hostage. Describe your interaction with her.
GHEDI: [Via translator] All I know is her name. Anna. And she was not Swedish. American, I think.
BILUNGS: What makes you think she was American? Other witnesses have thought she was Russian, possibly Latvian.
GHEDI: [Via translator] I do not know. But when she was shouting. When the man was dying, when we thought he might die—
BILUNGS: You mean Jens Luhrmann?
GHEDI: [Via translator] Yes. When she shout, she sound maybe a little American.
BILUNGS: Thank you.
37
The cold wind made Ingrid’s damp jeans feel like ice. Seven or eight police cars were parked outside the Freedom Hall, all with their lights flashing, most with their engines running. None of the officers were paying her any attention at all. That would change as soon as they checked the CCTV footage.
Ingrid shivered and pulled her new baseball cap tight over her newly shorn head. Already it had a crust of snow forming on the peak. “You’re sure?”
“Just get on, will you!” Mare said.
“Before he finds you,” Andy added.
Ingrid held onto the handrail and pulled herself up the stairs into the bus.
It smelt of upholstery cleaner and air fresheners. Behind the driver’s pit were several rows of seats, after which the bus started to look like a motor home. Cupboards with countertops and fruit hanging in hammocks. No doubt there was a supply of herbal tea somewhere. Beyond the kitchen was a stack of curtained bunks.
The coach was busy. Young, white Americans mostly talking loudly, shouting across one another.
“They’ve got guns,” one woman said, her hands cupped around her eyes as she surveyed the parking lot.
“I saw dogs earlier.”
“We gotta get outta this place.”
“If it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Ingrid stared through the tinted windows. There were maybe forty or fifty cars still in the parking lot as the last of the remaining fans were shepherded off the premises. Many stood with their phones out, filming the police as they scurried around, taking up positions and shouting to each other. A small crew of grimacing roadies trudged heavy flight cases from the venue to the bus.
Ingrid raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. It had to be close to midnight. She didn’t know where she was going to sleep, but Mare had promised they could drop her off close to a railway station. Maybe she could just ride the transit system all night. She watched through the tinted windows as a couple of police officers broke away from a conversation and started walking toward Mare and Andy. All it would take was one careful officer, one guy who had just started his shift, and it was all over. Ingrid couldn’t take her eyes off them as they approached the open door of the bus.
“You seen this shit?”
Ingrid slowly turned her head. A man in his thirties in a window seat was showing her his illuminated iPad.
“I mean, what the hell’s going on? Bombs, government lockdown. Twitter’s crazy with some hostage thing that the networks are refusing to report, apparently.” He looked up at her again. “And now this, whatever this is. Jamie says it’ll be good publicity. Says we’ll sell out in Malmö now. You with Antonio?”
“No. Um, Mare.” Ingrid turned her attention back to the police officers, worried that Mare and Andy were in the process of consenting to the police checking the bus before departure. She looked at the man with the iPad again. Thirties, extremely pale skin, a tee-shirt that read ‘I Want To Believe’, a mop of tousled mid-brown hair. Her type. She smiled at him.
“Dominic,” he said, indicating with his chin that she should sit down next to him.
Ingrid instantaneously flushed with panic: what name had she given Mare? Anna? No, no, she’d used something else. “Katja.” She hoped that was right.
“Where are you from, Katja. You don’t sound Swedish.”
“Um, Russia. St Petersburg.”
“You don’t recognize me without the make-up, do you?”
Ingrid sat down next to him and pulled off her gloves. “No, sorry.”
He mimed playing the keyboards. “I know, you’ve only got eyes for Antonio. You’re not the only one. As soon as they can pry him off the girls in whichever janitorial supplies closet they’re holed up in, we’ll be on our way.”
There was a thud, and the coach shook.
“Don’t look so scared.”
She hadn’t known she was that jumpy.
“It’s just the roadies opening up the luggage hold.”
She pictured the cops inspecting the flight cases for a stowaway. She swallowed hard.
“May I look? Please?” Ingrid pointed to Dominic’s iPad. He had a CNN article open. The headline read: ‘Terror In The Heart Of Stockholm’.
“Been a crazy day. Amazing not more people have been killed,” he said. “Everyone’s mom is calling and making sure we’re all OK. Kinda glad tomorrow night is our last night in Sweden.”
Ingrid couldn’t listen to Dominic and take in everything she was reading. A bomb at the National Museum. Government offices on lockdown: no one going out, no one going in. Police had sealed off an entire block in Hammarby. A hold-up at a café in Gamla Stan that had left one man dead. Judge Bildeburg’s son Magnus was missing. She scanned the article quickly but didn’t see any mention of a woman being taken hostage. There wasn’t one. Her insides constricted: why wasn’t there one?
Ingrid pulled off the stiff baseball cap to run her fingers through her hair, only to remember she no longer had any. She stared at the open door, expecting cops to board the bus. Beyond the tinted windows, there was the constant sound of sirens as more and more police vehicles arrived. Why were they sending more officers? Had they viewed the CCTV already?
A new thought rose up inside her like a dagger, like bile: if they bring dogs, it’s over. Over. They would absolutely have her scent by now.
“Where the fuck is Antonio?”
Ingrid turned abruptly toward the back of the bus. A large woman with a luxurious Afro haircut and a New York City accent padded down the aisle. She looked like she had just walked out of Studio 54 in the late 1970s. “I swear the next time we is all back in the States we is holding auditions for a new lead singer. He—”
“Hey.” It was a voice from the back of the bus. “Dusty, I’m here already.”
“Well lookey at that. And what’s your name, honey?” Dusty said to the groupie whose head was poking out of the curtain concealing one of the bunks. The girl looked embarrassed. “It don’t matter anyways.” The loud woman turned her attention back to Antonio. “Are we taking this one with us?”
Antonio clearly wasn’t sure.
“Well, you got about two minutes to figure that out. Now where’s that Andy? They’re saying five inches of snow in the next three hours, so I want this bus to start moving, ya hear me?” Dusty lumbered to the open door of the bus. “Now what the hell—” She was stopped mid-flow by a uniformed officer stepping on board.
“Good evening. I wish to speak to the person in charge,” he said.
“You’re looking at her. Dusty Prentiss. I manage this sorry ass bunch. We will be on our way very shortly, let me assure you of that.”
“We need to check the coach.”
“You ain’t gonna find any drugs.”
“We are not looking for drugs.”
The cop—a trim, tall man in his fifties—stepped up into the gangway, followed by an equally tall female colleague.
Ingrid tried not to look, sure they were about to haul her off the bus and straight into an interrogation suite. She looked at the seat pocket in front of her and thought about dumping the components. Pointless. They’d link them to her anyway. Her hands were trembling, but not with the cold. She kept swallowing, her mouth painfully dry.
“Um,” Dominic said, smiling. “It’s not usually this interesting.”
Ingrid smiled back at him, glad of the distraction.
“People think being in a band must be really exciting, but mostly it’s just buses and motels. Unless you’re Antonio, in which case it also involves laundry closets and fire escapes. Though maybe not in this weather.”
Ingrid’s brain was in panic mode, rattling through options and scenarios, none of which made sense. Then out of her mental chaos came one clear thought. She couldn’t quite believe what she was about to do. There were other skills she’d rather rely on. She knew she wasn’t going to be proud of herself but she reached across and put her hand on Dominic’s knee. “I don’t know. I always thought keyboard players were, how do you say, sexier.”
He beamed. “Really?”
“Oh, sure. I mean, it’s what you do with your hands that counts, right?” She was cringing inside, but the bashful smile on Dominic’s face told her her plan was working. His eyes were drawn from her face to the officers making their way up the aisle. Ingrid’s heart shook her entire ribcage.
“Good evening,” the male cop said to someone in the front row of seats. There was enough stubble on his chin to suggest he’d been working a very long shift.
Ingrid wrenched her attention back to Dominic and moved her hand to cover his.
“Hey, you’re cold,” he said.
She grabbed his hand and placed it on her thigh.
“Really cold.” His palm pressed into the damp denim. She looked into his eyes as his hand started to gently rub her thigh. It was a protective gesture, not a sexual one, but she needed him to start realizing he was onto a sure thing.
The cops were less than ten feet away, checking under the seats, asking Dusty who everyone was.
Ingrid raised her other hand to Dominic’s face. “You can warm me up, no?”
“Well, um—”
She leaned in. A kiss would be too forward, too aggressive. She pressed her nose into his jaw, a demonstration of affection rather than lust.
The cops moved forward another row. She felt their footsteps like a giant’s in a fairytale. Boom, boom, boom. Or maybe that was her heartbeat. She raised her face, gently placed her lips against Dominic’s stubbled jaw, and with her hand turned his face toward hers. He pulled away so he could look at her, his eyes examining her face intently. Why couldn’t she have found a guy like Antonio? She was throwing herself at him but he was too much of a gentleman.
“I am getting little bit warmer.” Ingrid was a useless coquette. Her usual way of flirting with a guy was to beat him in a five-mile run. She smiled at Dominic, picked up his iPad from his lap and placed it in the seat pocket. “Kiss me.”
“I, ah—”
Ingrid didn’t give him a chance. She held his jaw firmly and planted her lips on his. Then she grabbed his hand and moved it onto her waistband.
“Your pants are—”
“Shhh.”
She carried on kissing him, but her elevated temperature and quickening pulse had nothing to do with passion and everything to do with the police officers in the aisle. He started to kiss her back, and she leaned further across him so that only the back of her shorn scalp would be visible to the cops.
“Yes, sir,” Ingrid heard Dusty say, “he’s one of ours too. Say, Dom, who’s the chick?”
Ingrid’s entire body was shaking with fear. Dominic withdrew slightly from her kiss, so she nuzzled into him, faking embarrassment, making sure her face was buried in his neck.
“Um, hi.” She felt him swallow hard. “This is, ah…” he had forgotten her name.
“Katja,” she whispered.
“Katja,” he said. “She’s ah, she’s um, well, a bit shy.”
“Don’t look that way to me, sunshine,” Dusty said. “Looks like you’re the one who’s blushing.”
Ingrid cupped her hand over his jaw and pulled him into another kiss. He tasted salty, earthy, his skin smelt of soap. He must have showered after coming off stage.
“Say,” he pulled back from her, “you’re really trembling.”
She stared hard into his eyes. “You better warm me up.”
He put
an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Well, um, er—”
She kissed him again, pushing her tongue against his lips, forcing him to part his as the cops moved on to the seats behind them. She breathed heavily, though Dominic mistook her relief for something else and started kissing her back, his hand moving further up her thigh. Ingrid began to warm up and, as the threat of discovery diminished, her body started to relax.
She didn’t remember the cops leaving the bus. She didn’t remember the bus pulling out of the parking lot. But when she woke up, Dominic’s arm was still around her shoulders and the watch on his wrist said it was five past six in the morning.
38
Ingrid leaned over Dominic and peered out of the darkened windows. A freeway. No road signs. She shook her head slowly: how the hell had she let that happen? She slumped back against the seat and realized what had woken her up: period cramps. She needed to find the restroom.
She patted her jacket pockets and was relieved to find she still had the second tampon. She staggered down the aisle toward the onboard toilet. Almost everyone was asleep or dozing with headphones in.
Locked inside the WC, Ingrid stared at her shocking reflection and considered what her next move should be. The kohl eyeliner had smudged halfway down her cheeks and her nostril was slightly red around the new piercing. She kept shaking her head, unable to comprehend how deep a hole she was in.
How was she supposed to get back to the Christmas market in Stockholm for nine o’clock when she didn’t know where she was? She presumed she was somewhere south of the capital heading for Malmö, but she really didn’t know. The only thing she was sure of was that she had just three hours to get to her… She didn’t even know what to call it. Appointment? Rendezvous? Drop?
Three hours. Her head would not stop shaking.
When the clock ran down on a case, Ingrid always focused on the things she knew rather than the things she didn’t, so she decided to make a mental list of everything she knew for sure—one: she looked like a freak show; two: she was bleeding heavily and had period cramps; three: she probably had the entire nation’s police force looking for her; and four: Mare never gave her change and she didn’t have any local currency or a phone. But as her mother would say when she was feeling particularly maternal: you’ve still got your arms and your legs, haven’t you?