Last Will

by Liza Marklund

  “Almost right,” Q said. “Our Latvian colleagues found them. They were all over the house. Have you got any theory about why?”

  “Why she shot them, or why she was so careless? Something went wrong. You said one of the victims was a doctor? She was wounded somehow.”

  “A pail of hardened plaster was found by the bodies,” Q said. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to bring in the next contestant now.”

  Annika stopped in the doorway.

  “How much of this can I write?” she asked.

  “I thought you were in quarantine.”

  “If I’m lucky, I’ll be let back into the fold today,” she said.

  Or I’m going to be thrown out head first, she thought.

  “I’ll tell you when it’s time,” he said. “We’ve got to smoke out the Kitten’s client.”

  “What do you know about him?” Annika said, hoisting her sodden bag onto her shoulder. “Apart from the fact that he’s got access to a great deal of money?”

  “If it is a he,” Q said, shutting the door in her face.

  She got out of the elevator, stepped into the newsroom, and entered a whole new world.

  The news desk was gone, as was sports, and the coffee room contained three television cameras, its walls now covered with blue sheets.

  She stopped for a moment to get her bearings, unsure of where to go. Berit had told her about the changes, but Annika hadn’t realized how comprehensive they were. Across the sea of unknown faces she could just make out the news desk over where the opinion-piece desk used to be. Entertainment and culture sat next to each other where IT support had once been. A new world, a new age.

  I hope Schyman knows what he’s doing, she thought, as she headed off toward her office on the far side of the newsroom.

  The curtains were gone, the sagging beige drapes that had hung in her room since the Creation. Now the glass walls were covered with the same blue sheets as the walls of the cafeteria. Above the sliding door was a flashing sign with the words on air, and she paused for a few seconds before opening the door and going in.

  Where her desk used to be was now a large mixing panel with hundreds of controls and flashing lights. A girl with a ring in her nose and enormous headphones was perched on top of a tall bar stool and speaking into a large microphone as she adjusted two of the controls. She gave Annika a completely blank look as she talked fast into the microphone about a traffic accident on the Essinge motorway.

  Annika stopped, frozen to the spot, as the girl babbled away, then slid one of the controls, and a Madonna track started to play.

  “What are you doing here?” Annika said to the girl.

  “What do you mean?” the girl said, pulling off the headset. “I’m doing a live program. What do you want?”

  “This used to be my office,” Annika said.

  “What, back in the dark ages, you mean?”

  She put the headset back on, turned away, and started to type into a computer. Annika took a step forward and saw a list of hit songs flash past on the screen.

  She walked out of her room and closed the door carefully behind her.

  Berit was sitting and working on a laptop by the old stationery store. Annika recognized her old bookcase and the filing cabinet containing old court reports and other background information.

  “So they let you keep your furniture?” she said, and Berit looked up over her reading glasses.

  “Annika!” Berit exclaimed, pulling off her glasses. “How lovely! Are you back for good now, then?”

  “Don’t know,” Annika said, pulling over a chair. “I’m seeing Schyman at three o’clock.”

  She looked around as she sat down.

  “God, this place really has changed,” she said. “There’s a girl talking on the radio in my old room.”

  Berit sighed.

  “Just be grateful you missed the whole circus,” she said. “It’s been so chaotic that I just wanted to go home and hide. But things seem to have settled down, at least in terms of the move.”

  “What happened to the crime desk?” Annika asked, craning her neck to look at where Berit’s desk used to be.

  “The online edition is based there now,” Berit said. “And crime is just me and Patrik now, of course. That’s his chair you’re sitting on. This is where we hang out now, but we’re allowed to work from home as much as we want.”

  “That sounds good,” Annika said, then pointed at Berit’s desk. “Nice new laptop as well.”

  “Oh yes,” Berit said. “So we don’t have to drag ourselves in to work, and the paper doesn’t have to provide space for us all. How are things with you?”

  “Not great, to be honest,” Annika said, her shoulders slumping. “I’m worried about what Schyman’s going to say. I don’t want to be kicked out. You can’t just sell your lifelong ambitions, no matter how much money’s on offer. I need something to do with my time.”

  Berit looked at her thoughtfully.

  “It’s normally possible to have a proper conversation with Anders Schyman,” she said. “Don’t back down! And remember, you don’t have to give him an answer to anything he suggests there and then. Go home and think about it, whatever he’s offering.”

  Annika nodded, suddenly on the verge of crying again.

  “Screw it,” she said, forcing the tears aside. “So what are you up to? Have you got anything good in the works?”

  Berit arched her back and picked up several printouts.

  “Oh yes, wait till you hear this,” she said. “Are you okay for time?”

  “I’m free until 2:59,” Annika said.

  “Bandhagen,” Berit said. “I’ve been to see the woman and the girls several times, and this story just keeps getting weirder.”

  The block of flats in the darkness, the overexposed film, shadows in the windows, police in riot gear. Annika nodded.

  “Is the father still missing?

  “He’s being held in a prison just outside Amman,” Berit said. “There was a hypothetical connection between the family and the Nobel killings, but it’s absurdly tenuous. Here …”

  Berit put her glasses on and leafed through her papers.

  “Do you remember Neue Jihad?”

  “The blokes who went missing in Berlin,” Annika said.

  “Exactly. The mother of the family in Bandhagen, Fatima Ahmed, is the cousin of the youngest lad. Five years ago, when the boy was fourteen, he was here on vacation for three weeks, staying with the Ahmed family.”

  Berit waved one sheet of paper.

  “This is a copy of the visa application, from when the family invited the boy to visit Sweden. Non-Europeans often have to prove they have somewhere to stay. This is the only official paperwork anywhere in Europe that connects them, so it must be behind the raid on the flat.”

  She put the document down and picked up another one.

  “This is a letter saying that the father, Jemal’s, temporary residence permit to stay in Sweden has expired and won’t be renewed.”

  “Can they just decide something like that without going through a whole procedure?” Annika asked. “Without really looking into it? Surely the decision can be appealed against?”

  “Good questions. No answers.” Berit said.

  “And what about his wife and the girls? Are they being chucked out as well?”

  “Fatima and Dilan, the older daughter, have permanent residency, so they’re safe. The younger girl, Sabrina, is a Swedish citizen, seeing as she was born here.”

  “So why can’t the father have permanent residency?”

  “A pure technicality,” Berit said. “To get a permanent residence permit you mustn’t be away from Sweden for more than ten months if you’re intending to stay here. Jemal has spent time in Jordan helping his elderly parents—they’ve evidently got a small farm outside somewhere called Al Azraq ash Shamali. On one occasion he was gone for a year and two months, although that was several years ago. He was at the front of the queue to
get a permanent residence permit, and would have gotten it at the beginning of this year if he hadn’t been arrested and thrown out.”

  “But why is he in prison?” Annika said. “Surely no one actually believes any of that stuff about Neue Jihad anymore?”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Berit said. “Over the past six months I haven’t heard a whisper about any other theory.”

  “But the police didn’t believe in Neue Jihad for a moment,” Annika said.

  She moved her chair closer to Berit’s desk and leaned forward.

  “This is how it is,” she said. “The woman who shot Wiesel, von Behring, and the security guards on the quayside is an American assassin known as the Kitten. She got away on a motorbike on the footpaths along the edge of Lake Mälaren, and got over to Latvia by boat. Her accomplice in the boat she escaped from the City Hall in was probably a former American marine.”

  Berit’s eyes were wide open.

  “The Kitten’s very good, and very expensive,” Annika said. “Whoever hired her has access to a lot of money.”

  “But she must have made mistakes,” Berit said in a low voice, “otherwise you wouldn’t know any of this.”

  “She’s made several,” Annika whispered. “First she dropped one of her shoes on the steps down to the water, with her fingerprints on it. Then something must have gone wrong while she was making her getaway. She must have broken her leg or something, because she was patched up by a doctor in Jurmala outside Riga. After that she shot and killed the doctor and her accomplice.”

  “Cinderella of Death,” Berit said.

  Annika smiled.

  “How the hell have they managed to keep this quiet?” Berit wondered. “And why has Q told you?”

  “National Crime and the security police have been collaborating with several different police and security bodies abroad on this,” Annika said, “so the pressure to keep this one quiet has been greater than their desire to let any of the details leak out. Telling me was evidently a big deal too, because he’s managed to keep me quiet as well. I mean, I haven’t said a word in six months! I wouldn’t have done that if he’d left me to dig out the details one by one.”

  “But now you’re telling me …”

  “My loyalty has been with the investigation,” Annika said, “and Q knew that. But now I don’t know what the hell’s happening. I don’t know if I’m still going to have a job in a few hours’ time. If I keep my job, then it’s time for me to write something. And if I get the sack, I’ll happily hand it all over to you.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Berit said, suddenly sounding rather weary.

  She leaned back and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “How confident are the police about this?” she asked. “Are they sitting there guessing, or is this all based on facts?”

  “Witness statements,” Annika said. “They’ve got fingerprints, they’ve got international support from police authorities abroad, and there’s the whole business of the cell phones. They’ve been checking text messages, numbers used to call other numbers …”

  “We could spend a long time talking about that,” Berit said, reaching for another folder. “Telephone surveillance and bugging are particularly interesting aspects of the Justice Department’s new legislation.”

  “Guess what my husband thinks about that,” Annika said.

  “Listen,” Berit said, reading from one file. “The meaning of the term ‘involvement’ shall be understood in a broader sense than merely referring to those suspected of actions punishable by law. This means that a person need not be a presumed culprit in order for him or her to be regarded as likely to commit a crime. It can thus be deemed sufficient grounds if a person is objectively thought likely to promote a future criminal act.”

  She let the paper fall to her lap.

  “And that means?” Annika asked.

  “In the future it will be possible to break terrorism laws without doing anything at all,” Berit said. “Planning or preparing to commit a crime is already against the law, but from now on it will be possible to convict someone of terrorism simply because they might be suspected of planning a crime at some future date.”

  “But that’s completely mad,” Annika said, aware that she sounded extremely skeptical.

  Was this what Thomas spent all that time at work doing?

  “It’s nothing but superstition,” Berit said. “The security police can sit and listen in to see if people are thinking bad thoughts, or if they might possibly—and entirely objectively, of course—be capable of thinking bad thoughts in the future.”

  “But maybe that’s necessary?” Annika said weakly, in an attempt to defend the people making the decisions. “Maybe that has to be done to protect democracy?”

  “Democracy?” Berit said. “So what are the actual threats against democracy?”

  “Well,” Annika said, “terrorism, from al Qaeda—they want to bring down democracy …”

  “Really?” Berit said. “They’ve said that the attacks were revenge for the American military presence in the Middle East, for the USA’s various wars, a million or so dead Iraqis and America’s hard-nosed support for Israel’s policy of occupation. They picked targets that represented the USA’s supreme global financial and military power: the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.”

  “But their real motivation was hatred of western democracy and the liberated status of Western women?” Annika tentatively suggested.

  “So now democracy has to be defended by placing restrictions on it?” Berit said. “You see how stupid that sounds?”

  “Why haven’t you written anything about this in the paper?” Annika said quietly.

  Berit sat for few moments without saying anything.

  “I’ve tried,” she said eventually. “The article was rejected. It was too partial, apparently.”

  She stood up.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s go and get some lunch. At least the cafeteria is still there, and the food hasn’t changed. They’ve been warming up the same dishes since you …”

  Berit let the sentence die away, and looked embarrassed.

  “Since I left?” Annika said with a smile. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve made my decision, I’ve worked it out, so I don’t have to wait for the axe to fall.”

  “I still think you should hold out for as much money as you can,” Berit said.

  Annika clutched the strap of her bag tighter.

  The Kitten unlocked the front door of her apartment, stopped, and listened for a few seconds to the sounds around her, the roar of the expressway in the distance, the signal from a reversing truck, some kids laughing and playing in the pool.

  Everything normal.

  She pulled the door open and stepped in onto the marble floor.

  This pad was one of her favorites.

  She sighed with contentment, and let her little cabin bag fall to the floor.

  The apartment was completely white. White marble floor, white walls, white south-facing terrace with the Mediterranean as a backdrop. The furniture was all white or pale beige. She liked to relax properly when she wasn’t working.

  The apartment was one of four she owned through various companies along the Spanish coast. When she wasn’t away working or planning jobs she moved around between them. Three times a year she let an agency rent them out, just so the neighbors would be confused about who owned them, and unwilling to get to know her better.

  Not that anyone had ever shown any sign of wanting to get to know her.

  The Costa del Sol could have been made to fit her requirements.

  People from all around the world gathered in the little port of Puerto Banús and along the narrow streets around Orange Square in Marbella, so she never had to worry about fitting in. She could come and go between her apartments without anyone paying her any attention at all. Tens of thousands of apartments along the coast stood empty for months at a time until their wealthy Northern European owners deigned to show up for a bit of sun
and golf. In newly built complexes like this one, no one kept an eye on who was doing what.

  She posed as an insurance broker, which her research had shown to be the most suitable job as far as the neighbors were concerned. Everyone backed away quickly on the few occasions when she ever mentioned what she did, terrified that she was going to try to sell them insurance cover they didn’t need.

  Another advantage of the area was its geographic location, the fact that it was so well connected. Málaga was a small regional airport with direct flights to all the major cities in the northern hemisphere. She was half an hour by boat from North Africa (on clear days she could see the Atlas Mountains from her bedroom window), two hours by car from Portugal, and three-quarters of an hour from British Gibraltar.

  She almost never felt homesick.

  Her mom was always nagging at her to come home for turkey at Thanksgiving, but these days she avoided the USA as much as she could. Passport controls with fingerprints and photographs were out of the question now, of course, and not just since she dropped that damn shoe up at the North Pole. For years she had made her way in and out of her home country by water, usually from Toronto, across Lake Ontario to the forests outside Buffalo. From there it wasn’t too far to her mother’s family estate outside Boston.

  She knew she was a source of constant disappointment to her mother, but that was something the old woman would just have to live with. Her brother and sister were very well behaved, after all: her brother was a brain surgeon and her little sister an opera singer. An opera singer!

  Whose idea of a fucking career was that? the Kitten thought with a snort.

  Leaving her cabin bag on the hall floor, she went over and opened the electric blind in the bedroom. It was such a relief to get away from that wretched damned North Pole at last. It’s hardly surprising that so many of them turn up down here every winter, she thought.

  She went out onto the bedroom terrace, extremely happy with the decision she had made on the way back: never again. No more jobs up there among the icebergs. Her client had been a real loser anyway, and she didn’t want to work for people like that. It could be dangerous, even though only her agent had any idea of who she was and how to get hold of her.