by Lars Kepler
25
Saga and Jeanette hurry towards the woman in high heels just as the articulated lorry rumbles out from the lorry park. It turns heavily on its axis and passes so close that they have to press up against another lorry to avoid getting crushed.
The huge tyres crunch past.
A hot cloud of exhaust fumes in the air and Jeanette coughs quietly.
Some distance away a man calls out, then wolf-whistles.
They walk around the other lorry and catch sight of the woman in platform boots. She’s standing with her hands cupped around a cigarette, the glow of the lighter reflected on her face. It isn’t Tamara. The woman’s eyes are red-rimmed, and she has deep lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth.
Her thin hair has been bleached, but the roots are completely grey.
She’s wearing a low-cut top and a suede skirt.
The woman is standing next to a Polish lorry and saying something to the men in the cab. She takes a deep drag on the cigarette and suddenly teeters backwards, almost falling between the cab and trailer. Saga and Jeanette hear the men in the lorry explain in English that they aren’t interested in paying for sex. They’re trying to be polite, saying that all they want to do is call their children to say goodnight, then get some sleep.
The woman waves them aside dismissively and moves on. She’s just knocked on the door of another cab when Saga and Jeanette catch up with her.
‘Excuse me, but do you know where Tamara Jensen is?’ Saga asks.
The woman turns stiffly towards them and brushes her hair from her face.
‘Tamara?’ she repeats hoarsely.
‘I owe her some money,’ Jeanette says.
‘I can give it to her for you,’ the woman says, unable to hold back a smile.
Saga laughs.
‘Is she here?’
The woman points towards the back of the restaurant.
‘I’ll check,’ Saga says.
Jeanette stays by the lorries and watches Saga walk between the big vehicles, a thin silhouette against the light from the restaurant.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she says, turning back towards the prostitute.
‘Listen, I’ve already found salvation,’ the woman replies automatically, tottering once more.
The engine of the lorry beside them roars into life. It wheezes and then slowly starts to move forward, spreading hot diesel fumes. The back tyre rolls straight over a glass bottle. There’s a crash as pieces of glass fly out with considerable force. Jeanette feels her calf sting. She touches her torn tights with her fingers, then looks at them and sees that they’re covered in blood. When she straightens up again the woman has vanished.
Saga walks past the restaurant and around the public toilets and showers. The glow from the yellow petrol station sign is visible through the trees. The rear of the restaurant is littered with rubbish: old milk cartons, strips of toilet paper, and the remains of scattered food.
Tamara is sitting on the ground leaning against the wall, holding a freezer-bag over her nose and mouth.
‘Tamara?’
The woman crumples the bag and slowly lowers it. Her eyes roll backwards and a deep sigh emerges from her lips.
‘My name is Saga Bauer, and I’d like to talk to you about your best friend, Sofia Stefansson.’
Tamara looks at Saga as a string of saliva runs down her chin. Her hair is greasy and her face is grey and shut-off, like someone who’s unconscious.
‘This is my best friend,’ she says, raising the plastic bag.
‘I know you know Sofia.’
Tamara coughs. She almost topples sideways, but puts her hand down to steady herself and inhales deeply from the bag again.
‘Sofia,’ she mumbles, and nods vaguely.
‘Is she an escort?’
‘She thinks she’s better than other people, but she’s just a stupid cow who doesn’t understand anything.’
Her eyes close and her head sinks onto her chest.
‘What is it she doesn’t understand?’
‘The perks of the job,’ she whispers.
‘Have you ever seen her when she’s with clients?’
Tamara sighs and opens her eyes again. She realises that she’s got a tied condom stuck to her wrist, grabs it and throws it on the ground.
‘I’ve got a really weird taste in my mouth,’ she says, looking up at Saga. ‘If you want to get me something to drink, we can talk.’
‘OK.’
Tamara coughs again, struggles to her feet and squints at Saga.
She’s very thin. Her hands and cheeks are covered in tiny scabs, and her lips are cracked and dry. A hair slide that’s lost its ornament is hanging down over her forehead.
There’s very little about her that resembles the smiling woman on the website.
Tamara starts to move, hunched over, her head drooping. When they get inside the restaurant she stands still for a moment, swaying, as if she’s forgotten where she’s going, then walks towards the counter.
‘I want a chocolate milkshake … and French fries with ketchup … and a large Pepsi … and this,’ she says, putting a big bag of car-shaped sweets on the counter.
Jeanette Fleming is walking along close to the trucks in the direction she thinks the prostitute went. Closer to the edge of the forest it’s so dark between the vehicles that she has to hold her hands up to feel her way. The air reeks of diesel, and the lorries are radiating heat like sweating horses. She passes one cab with check-patterned blinds over the windows.
Jeanette suddenly sees the woman. She’s standing a short distance away, spitting on the ground as she knocks on one of the driver’s cabs. She leans heavily on the huge front wheel.
‘Where else have you worked?’ Jeanette asks when she catches up to her.
‘I used to work in really fancy places.’
‘Have you ever had any clients in Djursholm?’
‘I only take the best,’ the woman mumbles.
The cab door opens and a heavy man with glasses and a beard looks at them. He blows Jeanette a kiss, then looks impatiently at the other woman.
‘What do you want?’ he asks.
‘I was just wondering if you’d like some company,’ she replies.
‘You’re too ugly,’ the man says, but doesn’t close the door.
‘No, I’m not,’ she replies. It’s obvious that the man is enjoying being cruel to her.
‘So what part of you isn’t ugly?’
The woman pulls her top up, showing her pale breasts.
‘And you expect to get paid for those?’ he says, but still beckons her into the cab with his head.
26
Jeanette watches the woman clamber up into the cab and close the door behind her. She waits for a while in the darkness, listening to the creak of the springs in the seats.
Headlights sweep the ground and the shadows quickly slide away. Laughter and muffled music reach her from the other end of the lorry park.
A drunk woman shrieks somewhere, her voice angry and hoarse.
Jeanette peers under the trailer. In the distance a cigarette falls to the ground in a cascade of sparks before someone stamps it out. She detects a movement from the other direction. It looks like someone’s crawling on all fours under the lorries, heading towards her. A shiver runs down her spine. Jeanette starts to walk towards the restaurant.
Another lorry is on its way into the car park, but stops with a squeal to let her pass. The brakes wheeze. A chain clanks as it sways beneath the vehicle. Jeanette can’t see the driver, but still walks across the road through the dazzling glare of its headlights.
She looks around as she gets close to the restaurant, but there’s no one following her.
Jeanette slows down a little and decides to take her torn tights off and wash the cut on her leg before she calls Saga.
She goes over to the bathroom, but all the cubicles are occupied. The blood has congealed around the wound and run down her calf.
The thin metal door of one of the toilets swings open and a woman with bleached blonde hair emerges. She’s clutching her phone to her ear and is yelling that she had a client, and that she can’t do everything at once.
The woman disappears down the hall, waving her arms angrily.
A handwritten sign saying ‘Out of order’ has been taped to the door, but Jeanette goes in anyway and locks it behind her.
It’s a disabled toilet, with thin metal walls. The white armrest is folded up, and there’s an illuminated red alarm button close to the floor.
She takes off her torn tights and throws them away. There are lots of used condoms in the bin. There’s wet toilet paper all over the floor and the walls are covered with graffiti.
Jeanette looks at herself in the mirror, takes her powder out of her purse and leans over the sink. She can hear someone in the cubicle next to her, moving around in the confined space.
She powders her face and notices that there’s a round hole in the wall between her and the next cubicle. Maybe that’s where the toilet-roll dispenser used to be. She puts her powder away again and turns around to see that the wall is moving slightly.
Someone is leaning against it from the other side.
There’s a rustling sound and a folded banknote falls onto the floor from the hole. The wall creaks. Jeanette is about to say something when a large penis appears, dangling through the hole in front of her.
The situation is so absurd that she can’t help smiling.
A memory of something she once read about a swingers’ club in France flashes into her head, about them having rooms like this.
The man on the other side thinks she’s a prostitute.
She stands there for a moment, and swallows hard. She stares at the penis, feeling her heart beating fast in her chest, then looks at the door to make sure it’s definitely locked.
Slowly she reaches out and takes hold of the warm, thick member.
Jeanette squeezes it gently and feels it stiffen and start to rise. She gently strokes back and forth, and then lets go of it.
She has no idea why she does it, but she leans forward and takes the penis in her mouth, sucks it tentatively, feeling it swell and get stiffer. She pauses for breath, puts her hand between her thighs, pulls her underwear down and steps out of it as she massages the erect penis.
She tries to breathe quietly. She thinks she’s going to stop. She can’t do something like this. She’s crazy. Her pulse is throbbing. She turns around and holds onto the cistern with one hand. Her legs are trembling as she stands on tiptoe, bends the penis down and lets it slide into her from behind. She gasps and looks over at the lock again. The metal wall creaks as Jeanette is pushed forward, and she clings onto the cistern and pushes her backside against the cool metal.
Saga is sitting opposite Tamara in one of the booths in the restaurant, waiting while she eats a plate of French fries with ketchup on the side. A streak of snot shimmers under her nose. Beneath them traffic passes by on the highway, white lights in one direction, red in the other.
‘How well do you know Sofia Stefansson?’ Saga asks.
Tamara shrugs, and drinks some of her milkshake through the straw, sucking her cheeks in. Her forehead turns white.
‘Brain-freeze,’ she gasps when she finally lets go of the straw.
She carefully dips the fries in the ketchup and eats, smiling softly to herself.
‘Who did you say you were again?’ she asks.
‘I’m a friend of Sofia’s,’ Saga says.
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Could she have faked working as a prostitute?’
‘Faked it? What the hell do you mean? We did a job together in a building’s rubbish collection room once … she got fucked up the ass … I don’t know if that counts as faking?’
Tamara’s face suddenly goes slack again, as if she were lost in some absorbing memory.
‘Why did you stop working as an escort in Stockholm?’ Saga asks.
‘You could go a long way too … I’ve got contacts, I used to be a lingerie model … just without the lingerie,’ Tamara says, and shakes with soundless laughter.
‘You once had a client out in Djursholm, a big house facing the water. He may have said his name was Wille,’ Saga says calmly.
‘Maybe,’ Tamara says, eating the fries with her mouth open.
‘Do you remember him?’ Saga asks.
‘No,’ Tamara yawns, then wipes her hands on her skirt and tips the contents of her bag onto the table.
A hairbrush, a roll of plastic bags, a stump of mascara, condoms and perfume from Victoria’s Secret roll out across the wax tablecloth. Saga notes that Tamara has three dark-brown glass ampules of Demerol, an extremely addictive opioid. Tamara presses a Valium from a blister-pack of ten pale blue pills, and washes it down with Pepsi.
Saga waits patiently until she has swept everything back into her bag again, then takes out a photograph of the Foreign Minister.
‘I don’t give a shit about him,’ Tamara says, then purses her lips.
‘Did he speak to anyone on the phone while you were there?’
‘Seriously. He was really stressed and drank a lot. He kept going on about how the cops ought to stand to attention … he said it, like, a hundred times.’
‘That the police ought to stand to attention?’
‘Yes … and that there was a guy with two faces who was after him.’
She drinks more Pepsi and shakes the cup, making the ice-cubes rattle.
‘In what way was the guy after him?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
Tamara dips two fries in ketchup and puts them in her mouth.
‘What did he mean, two faces?’
‘I don’t know. He was drunk. Maybe he meant that the guy had two sides,’ Tamara suggests.
‘What else did he say about this man?’
‘Nothing. It wasn’t important. It was just talk.’
‘Was he going to meet him?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about that … I just wanted him to be happy, so I got him talking about all those paintings on the walls instead.’
‘Was he violent with you?’
‘He was a gentleman,’ she replies tersely.
Tamara picks up the bag of sweets from the table, stands up and weaves over towards the door. Saga has just gone after her when her phone rings. She looks at the screen and sees that it’s Janus.
‘Bauer.’
‘We’ve been through all the security footage from the Foreign Minister’s hard-drive … thirteen cameras, two months, almost twenty thousand hours of footage,’ Janus says.
‘Is there any sign of the killer? Doing reconnaissance or something?’
‘No, but someone else is very visible in one of the recordings – you need to see this. Call me when you reach the building and I’ll come down and let you in.’
Saga knows that Janus is bipolar, and she’s worried he’s having a manic episode, he must have stopped taking his medication for some reason.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ Saga asks.
‘Who cares?’ he replies quickly.
‘I need to get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she says gently.
‘Sleep,’ Janus repeats, then laughs loudly. ‘I’m fine, Saga, I’m just eager to make progress, same as you.’
She walks towards the car park, looking at the traffic below, and calls Jeanette.
Sofia appears to have been working as a prostitute, just as she said. She’s probably been telling the truth all along – and is in no way connected to the murder.
So why was she allowed to live? Saga asks herself as she stops in front of the car, all too aware that they still have no idea of what the murderer wants.
27
There is a large white house with a pale thatched roof on Ceder Street outside Helsingborg. This early in the morning the surrounding parkland is draped in grey mist, but yellow light is shining from the ground-floor windows.
; Nils Gilbert wakes with a start. He must have dozed off in his wheelchair. His face feels hot and his heart is pounding. The sun hasn’t risen above the treetops, and the house and park are heavily shaded.
The gloomy garden resembles the realm of the dead.
He tries to see if Ali has arrived, if he’s taken the wheelbarrow and shovel from the shed.
Just as Nils rolls over to the kitchen door to let in some fresh air, he hears an odd scraping noise. It sounds like it’s coming from the large living room. It must be the cat trying to get out.
‘Lizzy?’
The sound stops abruptly. He listens for a while, then leans back.
His hands start to shake on the armrests of the wheelchair. His legs twitch and bounce in a meaningless dance.
He hid the signs of Parkinson’s for as long as he could: the stiffness in one arm, the foot that dragged ever so slightly, the way his handwriting changed until it was so small that even he couldn’t read the microscopic scrawl.
He didn’t want Eva to notice anything.
And then she died, three years ago.
Eva had complained about being tired for several weeks.
It was a Saturday, and she had just come home from Väla with lots of heavy grocery bags. She was having trouble breathing and her chest felt tight. She said that she was probably coming down with a real stinker of a cold.
By the time she sat down on the sofa, sweat was dripping down her cheeks.
She lay down, and was already dead by the time he asked if she wanted him to turn the television on.
So now it’s just him and fat Lizzy.
He can go weeks without talking to anyone. Sometimes he worries that his voice has disappeared.
One of the few people he sees at all is the girl who looks after the pool. She walks around in jeans and a gold-coloured bikini top, and seems very uncomfortable when he tries to talk to her.
The first time he attempted to say anything to her she looked at him like he was ninety years old or had a serious mental illness.
The people who bring his food are always in a rush. They barely get his signature before hurrying away. And the physiotherapist, an angry, large-breasted woman, just does her job. She gives him curt commands and pretends not to hear his attempts to make conversation.