by Lars Kepler
The crime scene has been cordoned off, three separate zones around the Greater Stockholm area are being closely monitored, and roadblocks have been set up.
Janus Mickelsen comes in and shakes Saga’s hand. He’s taking over command of the operation inside the house, and she quickly briefs him on the situation.
Janus has an almost hippie-like charm, with his strawberry-blond hair and pale ginger stubble. Saga always thinks he looks all peace and love, but she knows he used to be a professional soldier before he ended up in the Security Police. He took part in Operation Atalanta, and was stationed in the waters off Somalia.
Janus positions one agent at the door, even though they won’t be keeping the usual list of people visiting the crime scene. Under Code Platinum regulations, no one can know who is informed or aware of events and who isn’t.
Two Security Police officers walk over to the young woman Saga handcuffed. Her eyes are red from crying and her mascara has run down her temple.
One of the two men kneels down beside her and takes out a syringe. She becomes so scared that she starts to shake, but the other officer holds her tightly as the sedative is injected directly into her vein.
The woman’s cheeks turn red, she cranes her neck, her body tenses and then goes limp.
Saga watches them cut the zip ties, put an oxygen-mask over her nose and mouth, then lift the sedated woman into a body-bag and zip it closed. They carry the inert form outside to a waiting van.
The four other teams are already busy with their examination of the crime scene, scrupulously documenting everything. They’re recording finger- and shoe-prints, mapping splatter patterns, bullet-holes and firing angles, gathering biological evidence, textile fibres, strands of hair, bodily fluids, fragments of bone and brain, as well as pieces of glass and splinters of wood.
‘The minister’s wife and children are on their way home,’ Janus says. ‘Their plane lands at Arlanda at 08.15, and everything needs to be cleaned up here by then.’
The members of the unit have to gather information in one search. They won’t get another chance.
Saga goes up the creaking staircase and into the Foreign Minister’s bedroom. The room smells like sweat and urine. Leather straps hang from the four bedposts. There are bloodstains on the sheets.
A riding crop is visible on top of a chest of drawers, in the glow of a watch-winding case. Behind the glass a Rolex ticks silently next to a Breguet.
Saga wonders if the minister’s wife knew about the prostitutes.
Probably not.
Maybe she just didn’t ask.
Over the years you realise that you can put up with all sorts of cracks in your self-image and still cling to security.
Saga herself spent years in a relationship with a jazz pianist, Stefan Johansson, before he walked out on her.
He’s moved to Paris now. He plays in a band and he’s engaged.
When Stefan is on tour in Sweden, he calls her late at night and she lets him come over. She knows there’s no chance he’ll leave his fiancée for her, but has nothing against sleeping with him.
Saga knows she isn’t easy to live with. She has a fiery temper and a tendency to overreact in certain situations.
She goes back downstairs to the bullet-riddled body in the kitchen.
The glare from the lights reflects off the ridged aluminium floor. It feels like she’s standing on a silver bridge above a scene of bloodstained chaos.
Saga spends a long time looking at the dead man’s upturned palms, the yellow callus beneath his wedding ring, the sweat-stains under the arms of his shirt.
The team around her are working quickly and silently. They’re filming and cataloguing everything on an iPad using three-dimensional coordinates. Strands of hair and fabric are taped to transparent film, while tissue and skull-fragments are placed in test-tubes which are then immediately chilled.
Saga walks over to the patio door and examines the circular hole in the three layers of glass.
The alarm didn’t go off until the chair was thrown at the window, when the acoustic detectors and magnetic contacts reacted.
So the chair wasn’t thrown by the killer.
Saga thinks back to the look of terror on the woman’s face, her wounded wrists, the smell of urine.
Was she being held captive here?
Two men are covering the floor with large expanses of chilled foil, pressing it down using a wide rubber roller.
One IT specialist wraps the hard-drive from the security-camera controller in bubble-wrap, then puts it in a cool-box.
Janus is stressed. His jaw is clenched, and his freckled brow almost white and beaded with sweat.
‘OK … what do you think?’ he asks, coming over to stand beside Saga.
‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘The first shot to his abdomen was fired from a distance, and from a slightly strange angle.’
Blood has been oozing from the Foreign Minister’s stomach onto the floor.
A bullet leaves a ring of dirt around its entrance hole. There are two circles of powder dust on the man’s shirt.
The first two shots were from a distance, then there were two at extremely close range.
Saga bends over the body and looks at the entrance wounds in the eye-sockets, noting that there is none of the usual cratering around the openings.
‘He used a silencer,’ she whispers.
The killer must have used the kind of silencer that also muffles the flare, because there is no evidence of the percussive gases igniting. Otherwise the gas would have forced its way under the skin and left an obvious depression around the wound.
She straightens up and steps aside to make room for a forensics officer, who spreads a sheet of plastic over the dead man’s face. He presses it against the bullet-holes in an effort to gather particles from the ring of dirt, then marks the centre of the entrance holes on the plastic with a marker.
‘He was rolled onto his stomach after his death, then over onto his back again,’ Saga says.
‘What for?’ the forensics officer asks. ‘Why would—’
‘Shut up,’ Janus interrupts.
‘I want to see his back,’ Saga says.
‘Do what she says.’
They all feel like time is starting to run out. They anxiously fasten bags around the Foreign Minister’s hands, and lay out a body-bag beside him. They lift him up carefully and lay him down on his stomach in the bag. Saga looks at the wide exit wounds in his back and the messy void at the back of his head.
She stares at the floor where he was lying and sees the bullet-holes from the two final shots, then realises why the body had been rolled aside.
‘The gunman took the bullets with him.’
‘No one does that,’ Janus mutters.
‘He used a semiautomatic pistol with a silencer … Four shots fired, two of which were clearly lethal,’ she says.
A heavyset man is going around the dark-toned furniture in the living room, spraying luminol over the fabric as another forensics officer puts an armchair back into place over the depressions in the rug.
‘Get ready to pack up, everyone,’ Janus shouts, clapping his hands. ‘We’re cleaning the house in ten minutes, and the glazier and painter will be here within an hour.’
The heavyset man removes the forensic team’s floor-tiles behind them as they leave. As soon as they exit the door a team enters the house to clean it.
The killer not only took the spent cartridges with him, but also dug the bullets out of the floor and walls while the alarm was howling and the police were on their way. Not even the very best hit men do that.
They’re dealing with a perfectly executed murder, yet he left a witness. He could hardly have failed to notice someone watching him at the crime scene.
‘I’ll go and talk to the witness,’ Saga says. The woman must be involved somehow.
‘You know we’ve already got our experts there,’ Janus says.
‘I need to ask my own questions,’ Saga
replies, and sets off towards her motorbike.
9
The bomb-shelter beneath Katarinaberget in Stockholm was the biggest nuclear shelter in the world when it was built at the start of the Cold War. Today the whole place, other than the section that used to house the backup generators and ventilation units, is used as a parking garage.
The machine house is a separate building, blasted into the bedrock alongside the actual shelter.
These days it is used by the Security Police.
It’s the site of the secret prison known as the Spinnhuset. The most highly classified interrogations take place deep in the bowels of the old ice pools.
It’s still early in the morning when Saga passes the Slussen junction on her motorcycle. Her sweaty leather bodysuit feels cold against her breasts. She drives in through the arched entrance next to the petrol station, and heads down into the garage. The shift in acoustics amplifies the sound of the engine.
Rubbish has gathered beneath the peeling yellow railings, and loose cables hang from the loudspeakers.
The panels covering the wide groove in the floor rumble beneath the tyres as Saga passes the shelter’s immense sliding doors, designed to protect against a pressure wave.
As she heads down the concrete ramp, her mind ponders the unsolved riddle.
Why would the woman activate the security alarm and then stay at the crime scene if she was involved in the murder?
Why would the killer leave a witness if she wasn’t involved in the murder?
The Security Police see her as a security risk whether she was involved or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Saga brakes carefully as she circles deeper and deeper inside the parking garage.
The woman’s identity has been verified. Her name is Sofia Stefansson, and she appears to work part-time as a prostitute, though that hasn’t been confirmed.
So far they’re relying on what she said, and the very limited documentation they’ve found in her flat.
Saga can’t rule out the possibility that Sofia has been recruited by a terrorist organisation.
Maybe she was the bait; maybe she filmed what happened in bed in order to blackmail the Foreign Minister?
But in that case, why was he killed?
Saga lets go of the brakes and swings into the lowest level.
She drives past a few parked cars, tyres squealing. Red dust swirls up around the motorcycle. She parks and walks over to a blue blast-proof door.
She swipes her ID, taps in the nine-digit code and waits a few seconds. The door opens onto an airlock.
She shows her ID again and is signed in by a guard who takes her pistol and keys. After passing through the full-body scanner she is let through the inner door of the airlock.
Jeanette Fleming sits inside the staffroom. She’s a psychologist, and one of the Security Police’s specialist interviewers. She’s a beautiful middle-aged woman, with ash-blonde hair cut in a boyish style.
Jeanette is elegantly dressed as usual. She’s eating salad from a plastic container.‘You know I’m not hitting on you, but you really are ridiculously attractive,’ she says, pushing her plastic fork into the salad. ‘I somehow forget about it every time … some sort of self-preservation instinct, I assume.’
Jeanette puts the rest of the salad in the fridge. They walk towards the lifts.
‘How’s your appeal going?’ Saga asks.
‘I’ve been turned down.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
Jeanette waited eight years for her husband to decide he was ready to have children, and then he left her. She then spent three years trying Internet dating before applying for artificial insemination from the Swedish health service.
‘I don’t know, if they say no, I might go down to Denmark to do it … but I still want the child to speak Swedish,’ Jeanette jokes as she gets into the lift with Saga.
She presses the button for the lowest level.
‘I’ve only read the initial report on my phone,’ Saga says.
‘They were too rough on the girl. She got scared and clammed up,’ Jeanette says. ‘They had orders to go in hard.’
‘Who gave the orders?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jeanette replies.
The lift descends quickly. The light from the cage reflects off the rough rock walls, and the counterweight shimmers briefly as it glides up past them.
‘Sofia’s afraid of being hurt again. She needs someone who’ll listen to her, protect her.’
‘Who doesn’t need that?’ Saga smiles.
They reach the bottom and walk quickly down the hallway. At this depth everything seems still and grey.
Sofia Stefansson’s story has been corroborated by the discovery of a high dose of the fast-acting sedative flunitrazepam in her blood. Her wrists and ankles are wounded and there’s bruising on the inside of her thighs. Her fingerprints have been found on the chair that smashed the window.
If her story is true, then she’s a victim according to the law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services: she was assaulted and exploited by her customer, and should be allowed to speak to both the police and a psychologist.
But since she could also be involved in a serious act of terrorism, the law doesn’t matter.
‘I think it’s best if I wait in the control room to start,’ Jeanette says.
Saga taps in the code and opens the door to the former ice-store.
The lighting in the windowless room is very bright. A security camera is recording at all times.
The store was built to fit two hundred tons of ice to keep the shelter cool in case of nuclear war.
Sofia Stefansson is standing uncomfortably in the middle of the floor on a plastic sheet. Her shoulders are pulled back tightly, and her hands are tied behind her back. Her weight is held by the cable she’s hooked to, which stretches up to a plank beneath one of the beams. Her head is lowered and her lank hair hides her face.
10
Saga walks straight over to Sofia. She makes sure she’s still alive and then explains that she’s going to lower her to the ground.
Saga starts to turn the winch. Sofia gradually sinks to the floor. One of her legs starts to buckle.
‘Put your heels on the floor and take the strain,’ Saga calls.
The skin on Sofia’s ankles is torn, and Saga thinks of the bloody straps around the bedposts upstairs in the house.
First she was there, and now she’s down here.
Sofia is lying on her side on the plastic sheet. Her breathing is laboured. She looks even younger without makeup. She could be very young. Her eyelids are swollen and the bruising around her neck is more pronounced.
When Saga loosens the straps on her arms she starts to tremble and her body tenses up.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she gasps. ‘Please, I don’t know anything.’
Saga winches the empty cable back up towards the ceiling, then pulls a chair over to Sofia.
‘My name is Saga Bauer. I’m an officer with the Security Police.’
‘No more,’ she whispers. ‘Please, I can’t bear it.’
‘Sofia, listen to me … I didn’t know they were treating you like this. I’m sorry about that, and I will be bringing it to my boss this afternoon,’ Saga says.
Sofia lifts her head off the floor. Her cheeks are smeared with tears. All her jewellery has been removed, and her brown hair is plastered to her pale face with sweat.
Saga has experienced waterboarding. It formed part of her advanced training, but she doesn’t consider it particularly effective.
She looks over at a bucket of bloody water with a towel floating in it, and thinks to herself that the only thing torture reveals is the torturer’s own secrets.
Saga gets a bottle of water and helps Sofia drink some, then gives her a piece of chocolate.
‘When can I go home?’ Sofia whispers.
‘I don’t know. We need answers to a few questions first,’ Saga says apologetically.
‘I believe you, but I still need to know what you were doing in that house.’
‘I already told them everything,’ she whimpers.
‘Tell me,’ Saga says gently.
Sofia slowly raises her stiff arms to wipe the tears from her eyes.
‘I work as an escort, and he contacted me,’ she replies in a thin voice.
‘How did he contact you?’
‘I advertise, and he wrote an email explaining what he was interested in.’
The young woman sits up slowly, and accepts another piece of chocolate.
‘You had pepper spray with you. Do you usually have that?’
‘Yes, usually, although most people are pretty kind and considerate … I actually have more trouble with people falling in love with me than people getting violent.’
‘Is there anyone who knows where you’re going, who can come if you need help?’
‘I write the names and addresses in a book … and Tamara, she’s my best friend, she’d already had him as a client and didn’t have any trouble.’
‘What’s Tamara’s last name?’
‘Jensen.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘She moved to Gothenburg.’
‘Do you have a phone number?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know if it works.’
‘Do you have other friends working as escorts?’
‘No.’
Saga takes a few steps back and looks at Sofia. She thinks she’s telling the truth about her work.
There’s nothing that contradicts her story, even though there’s little that backs it up.
‘What do you know about your client?’
‘Nothing. He was just prepared to pay a lot of money to be tied up in bed,’ Sofia replies.
‘And did you tie him to the bed?’
‘Why do you all keep asking the same thing? I don’t get it. I’m not lying. Why would I lie?’