Grens was silent at first, but then started to talk furiously and very loudly.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The decision was made earlier this evening, at nineteen hundred hours, and has to be effective within twelve hours. I’m phoning you with a request for help in assisting his deportation.”
He was clutching the receiver.
“How the hell did you manage to get all this through within twentyfour hours?”
Winge didn’t for a moment lose his composure, he had been given a task and he was simply performing it.
“John Meyer Frey does not have a residence permit.”
“You’re sending him to his death.”
“John Meyer Frey entered Sweden illegally via Russia.”
“I will never contribute to a person who is being detained in Sweden being sent to his death.”
“And when he is deported, according to the papers in my hand, it will be to Russia.”
Sven Sundkvist should have been asleep. He seldom had difficulties in sleeping, with Anita’s breathing close to his face and her warm skin next to his, the security that he needed to relax.
They had started to get ready for bed about four hours ago. He had lain there beside her and she had asked what was wrong. He had no idea what she meant.
You’re different.
Am I?
I know that something’s up.
He hadn’t even noticed it himself. Not until Anita pointed it out. And then he had lain there and tried to find out what it was, why he wasn’t there; in his thoughts, he had gone through various questions and come to the same conclusion each time.
Schwarz.
I don’t understand, Sven. Schwarz?
I think it’s him I’m preoccupied with.
From what you’ve said, it sounds terrible. But, sweetheart, do we need to take him to bed with us?
He had really wanted her to understand. It was because of Schwarz’s son. When he realized that there was also a child involved, it suddenly became a different story. Because he had understood some time ago how it might end.
I’m not interested in whether he’s guilty or not.
Well, you should be.
I’m just thinking about the child.
The child?
I mean, why should the authorities have the right to decide whether a child should grow up without one of his parents, by imposing the death penalty?
It’s the law, Sven.
But I mean, the child, the child isn’t guilty.
That’s the system there.
Doesn’t make it any more just.
The people have voted for it, democratically. Just like here. We have life sentences. Or other long prison terms with no release for years. You often talk about that, don’t you?
It’s not the same.
It’s exactly the same. For the child. Death penalty or no contact for say . . . twenty years. What’s the difference?
I don’t know.
Nothing. There isn’t one.
All I know, all I understand is that Schwarz’s son, who’s just turned five, risks losing one of his parents forever if we let his father be extradited.
Don’t you understand, Anita? It’s always the family. It’s always the ones who are closest that we punish the most.
They had lain there until the argument petered out; then both got up and went down to the kitchen table, where they looked at the crossword together, as they sometimes did. She had his big black sweater on and she had been so beautiful that sometime later, once they had finished the crossword and the conversation about Schwarz was over, they had gone up to the bedroom and held each other tight as they made love. She had fallen asleep afterward. Her breathing deepened into small snores, whereas he just lay there as awake as before.
Ewert Grens stood up with the receiver in his hand and didn’t know whether to throw it at the cradle on the wall where it belonged, or smash it on the table until it broke. He didn’t do either. He just dropped it and watched it land on the chair where he’d been sitting, then opened the door onto the balcony and walked out barefoot into the snow and ice and minus twenty. He heard the cars driving past down below on Sveavägen, one by one, as he roared fucking shitbags until he was spent.
His bare feet were red when he went in a few minutes later and hurried toward the hall and the mobile phone that was ringing in the pocket of his winter overcoat.
He didn’t speak to his boss very often.
Grens had his own territory and worked harder and more effectively than most when left to his own devices, and over the years an unspoken agreement had gradually developed between him and the chief superintendent: you let me be and I’ll let you be. And he certainly couldn’t remember the last time they had spoken together at night.
“I talked to State Secretary Winge a short while ago, so I knew you were up.” Ewert Grens imagined his boss in front of him. Ten years younger than he was, always neat and tidy in a suit, he reminded him a bit of Ågestam, something about the way they were always so perfect that Ewert had recognized and learned to despise.
“Right.”
“And as I understand it, you didn’t fully comprehend your orders.”
“You could put it that way. No damn wannabe politician is going to take my investigation abroad when there is a person in the hospital who not long ago was hovering between life and death.”
“It was me who gave Winge your name. So I was the one who gave the orders. And . . .”
“Then you’ll already know how much I think this whole thing stinks.”
“And that is why I am now ordering you, on the part of City Police, to ensure that the deportation order is fulfilled.”
“Have you got your pajamas on?”
Ewert wondered whether his boss was sitting on the edge of his bed in blue-and-white striped flannel. The asshole wasn’t the type to stay up and wander around in his big house fully dressed in the middle of the night.
“Excuse me?”
“You see, it’s not my job to carry out orders that come from corrupt cowards.”
“I—”
“And what’s more, you know as well as I do that deportation equals death for Frey.”
The chief superintendent, whose name was Göransson, cleared his throat.
“He’s going to Moscow. There’s no risk of him being executed there.”
“Even you’re not that fucking stupid.”
Göransson cleared his throat again, louder this time, his voice sharper.
“To be perfectly honest, you can think exactly what you like about all this, Ewert. When you are where you are now. At home. But when you’re at work, you will follow orders. And I’ve never said this to you before. And I won’t ever do it again. But if you don’t follow my direct orders this time, Ewert, I would advise you to start looking for a new position tomorrow.”
Grens threw down the dead telephone and went over to the balcony door, opened it, and went back out. It was just as cold as before, and he didn’t notice it this time either. He sat down on one of the plastic chairs that had been left out there all autumn. Hard ice on the cushion, hard ice on the concrete floor. His bare feet almost stuck to it, his skin felt sticky against the otherwise smooth surface.
A clear, starry night.
The city lights meant that the sky was never truly dark, but tonight, it was as dark as it would ever be, every bright light in sharp contrast. It was beautiful and he rested his eyes on it for a few minutes. The sheet-metal roofs around him, cars in the distance, he realized that he didn’t sit here often enough, and had probably never done it barefoot in winter before.
It was not difficult for him to lose his temper. The anger lurked there all day. But the feeling he had now wasn’t like that, it wasn’t as simple as rage.
He was angry, frustrated, disturbed, saddened, panic-stricken, frightened, at a loss—all at once and in no particular order.
He sat out there without moving.
U
ntil he knew what to do, at least for the moment.
He would spend the next few hours on the phone. He had to make some calls. As he dialed the first number, he looked down at his bare, red feet and discovered to his surprise that he wasn’t cold.
It was nine o’clock on Thursday evening, U.S. time, when Edward Finnigan went down to the bar of the hotel in west Georgetown where he had checked in a few hours earlier. He had stayed there every time he was in town on business, and the woman with the beautiful eyes and Mona Lisa smile had nodded in recognition when he asked whether Room 504 was available.
Norman Hill was already at the table in the far corner, a glass of red wine in front of him. He was the sort who never drank a lot, always and only expensive wines, who knew all about the vintage and how it was stored, who talked about wine with the same passion as they might about lovers. Finnigan normally tasted it and asked polite questions but had never really understood what the fuss was all about. For him, alcohol was a way to relax, so who cared which grape it was that made it possible?
Hill ordered another glass of wine from the same bottle that he’d selected. Finnigan tasted it, made the sort of comment that he thought you were supposed to. He then looked at the copy of an article that was lying on the table and that was to be printed in the Washington Post in a few hours’ time. A story by an investigative journalist about a prisoner on the run, who had been sentenced to death, and about the demands that were being made for him to be returned to the cell he had escaped from.
Finnigan read it and then listened to Hill, who outlined their most recent communication with the Swedish government representatives and a resolution that guaranteed that Frey would be deported out of the country the next day.
“From one communist country to another.”
“And then here?”
“Patience, Edward.”
“When?”
“On a waiting plane.”
Edward Finnigan stood up and went to the bar to buy a cigar. He promised Hill that he would drink the wine first; it was an Australian grape from a vineyard near Adelaide, and he had learned enough to know that wine experts didn’t like to mix smells, or maybe it was tastes. Whatever, he would smoke it later, when their glasses were empty, maybe he’d even phone Alice—he longed for her.
Helena Schwarz had reacted in precisely the way Grens had feared. He had woken her and her son, he heard the boy’s distressed and sleepy shouts in the background. He had of course realized that a phone call at half past three in the morning would do that but felt that there was no alternative. Outside on the balcony, in the cold, Ewert Grens had decided to ignore all the technicalities implied by the total confidence order imposed on the preliminary investigation. And Schwarz’s wife, whom he realized he cared for in some way—her angry and alarmed reactions at the hearing that had been followed by composure appealed to him—was the first person he called.
She had alternately cried and shouted at him and he had let her do it. She understood precisely what he had understood: that John’s deportation to Russia was just a political detour on his journey west. She had several times whispered you can’t do this and had repeated that they had a son and that John had said he was innocent and that the extradition agreement didn’t apply to anyone who had been sentenced to death and Grens had waited until she calmed down, until there was silence.
She had asked him to wait on the phone while she went to check on her son and to get a drink of water and they had then talked quietly together about something he couldn’t remember until she had suddenly begged him to go too.
At first he hadn’t understood.
Go too? Where?
And she had explained and wept and explained again.
If John really was going to leave . . . if it was going to happen, with or without the detective superintendent’s intervention . . .
She begged Ewert Grens to be the one to go with him and that his colleagues should also be there: the other man who was slightly younger and seemed so kind, and the girl who her husband seemed to trust when he was being questioned.
If they were there, then at least he would have faces around him that he recognized.
The bar was still quite empty: a young couple holding hands two tables away, a man sitting on his own over by the window reading the newspaper while he waited for the chef’s cheeseburger and potato wedges. Norman Hill had just left, his thin body hidden in a gray coat and a hat that was as high as it was wide. Edward Finnigan ordered a bottle of beer and sat with his mobile phone in his hand, hesitating, before he dialed.
He had punched his best friend to the ground and then thrown a penholder at him. They could talk about that later. He had something else he wanted to discuss.
Robert listened while Finnigan gave a summary of his meetings earlier in the day and the evening’s final conversation with Hill. Neither of them mentioned the fact that the governor had asked his closest colleague only that morning when they’d argued to let the process run its course, to curb his hate and fervor and wait until everything was resolved.
The unease that had brewed in his chest and that he’d tried to get away from whenever it plagued him the most gradually evaporated until it was nothing, and nothing was not frightening. His voice, his punch, had not destroyed the support that he would soon need more than ever. Their friendship had survived their first confrontation, the one they had both dreaded for so long and had therefore always skirted around.
Robert was still there beside him, he would listen.
And Frey would be on his way in a matter of hours.
It was time for the governor of Ohio to contact the judge who once upon a time had sentenced Elizabeth Finnigan’s murderer to death, to accelerate the process of fixing a new date for the execution.
Sven Sundkvist gave up. The night was already lost to him, so just to lie there and wait for sleep made his body ache with impatience. He slipped on a pair of brown slippers and a long-sleeved, polo-neck top. He walked slowly through the terraced house—soon they would have lived there for ten years, and he couldn’t imagine them living and getting old anywhere else.
He stopped by the door to Jonas’s room. Their little boy who was getting big. He had been less than a year old when they had gone to the town one hundred twenty-five miles west of Phnom Penh; he had been so beautiful, so calm, everything they had longed for. His eighth birthday was fast approaching, he was in second grade and even had homework for English and natural sciences. Sven thought about his discussion with Anita a few hours ago about the child not having any choice. Jonas had not chosen himself to lie snuffling and snoring in this particular house, and he hoped that his son would never hold him to account for it. But if he did, he would try to explain as best he could.
But if Schwarz’s son wondered if it was true that his father had been extradited to face the death penalty, who would he then hold to account—who would have to stand there and explain?
Sven was just about to go in and kiss Jonas on the forehead as he so often did, when an irritated electronic buzz broke the silence. Jonas moaned and turned over in the bed in front of him and Sven sprinted back to the bedroom and the mobile phone that was in there. He sighed when he saw the number: Ewert, another ruined night.
Grens had phoned and quickly explained the situation to Sven Sundkvist, then Hermansson and then Ågestam.
He hadn’t had time for questions, a brief conversation, enough to get Sven and Hermansson to understand that they had to be at Kronoberg by six o’clock, and prepared, if so required, to travel and be away longer than their prescribed working hours.
He stood in the kitchen, looked out of the window at the morning that was still some way off. He knew that there wasn’t much time. And that he, for the second time in an hour, would ignore the total confidentiality stamp on the preliminary investigation.
Vincent Carlsson answered immediately.
His voice was chirpy, he was working nights, as Grens had hoped he was.
It took ten min
utes to explain the whole story in a way that was clear and he could understand. Vincent Carlsson immediately realized who he was talking to and that this was seriously potent news that had just been released by the otherwise taciturn detective superintendent.
There was still plenty of time before the first news broadcast of the day.
And by then, the planned program schedule would have been cleared and replaced, every news item taken out except the one that would dominate. Not only today’s news bulletins, but possibly all other bulletins for some days to come.
He looked at his watch, two minutes to four, then he called a meeting with the entire news-desk editorial team.
friday
IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN A CITY POLICE VAN DROVE TOWARD THE MAIN terminal at Bromma Airport. The air was cold and clear; the vehicle’s headlamps sparkled in icy patches on the road and the exhaust from the car in front hung in a compact cloud as it often does in extreme temperatures.
Ewert Grens had left his apartment on Sveavägen two hours ago and taken a taxi to Kronoberg. Helena Schwarz had phoned him twice in the space of ten minutes and begged, as she had in their first phone call, that if the decision to deport her husband was not overturned, then he and his two colleagues would be the officers who accompanied him out of the country.
And here he was, sitting in the back of the van, next to Hermansson. In front of her, Sven with a handcuff around his right wrist, the partner of which was attached to John Schwarz’s left wrist. A young, rather large police constable was driving, Grens didn’t know his name and couldn’t be bothered to ask.
The last few hours had been dreadful.
He had woken everyone who had anything to do with the case, shouted and told a lot of them to go to hell, and gradually come to accept that John Schwarz was going to be deported, whether he liked it or not, that this was politics and the powers that be had acted with greater alacrity than he could have anticipated.
He hated journalists and normally wanted nothing to do with them and had never made a secret of it, but the anger inside had driven him to contact one for the first time in his police career. He had met Vincent Carlsson two years earlier in connection with a sensational pedophile murder. Carlsson had known the father, who had shot his daughter’s murderer, and unlike most other TV journalists seemed to be almost wise and sensible. They had spoken together three times over the past few hours and Carlsson was now at Hotel Continental in the room where Ruben Frey had until recently been asleep, while his colleagues gathered and caused a commotion outside Rosenbad and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanding answers. Grens didn’t imagine that it would make the slightest bit of difference, it was too late for that, but the media spotlight would at least blind the damned bureaucrats for a while and shine light on their shit.
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