On one occasion, suffering from an unusual desire to confide in someone, Andersson had asked Irene if she thought it would be better for Birgitta to move to another department. Irene had been furious and had snapped, “It’s not Birgitta who was in the wrong! She’s never groped Jonny between the legs or made inappropriate suggestions!” The superintendent had looked at her in astonishment and had left the room without a word. The matter had never been mentioned again.
“Five minutes until the press conference,” Andersson informed them grimly.
He got to his feet, signaling the meeting was over.
Chapter 6
WHEN THE HUMAN Trafficking Unit in Göteborg had been formed six years earlier, it had been an experimental project. Linda Holm had been a detective inspector in the unit, working in a team of three. Over the years the unit had become a permanent fixture and had expanded; there was now a team of eight, and a year ago Linda Holm had been promoted to superintendent. The former chief was now a project leader, traveling all over the country giving talks to police officers and other groups that might come into contact with the problems associated with the increase in trafficking. Irene had found this out during the information day she and her colleagues from the Violent Crimes Unit had attended last year.
Superintendent Linda Holm was on the phone when they got to her office. As the door was open, they couldn’t help overhearing parts of the conversation.
“… that’s okay. How long have the girls been here? I see. In that case, there’s no time to lose.”
She fell silent, listening attentively. At the same time she glanced up from her notepad and caught sight of Irene and Birgitta standing just outside the door. With a fleeting smile and an exuberant gesture, she waved them in.
“Have we got enough for a search warrant? Preferably tonight … Okay. In that case we’ll aim for tomorrow. I’ll get in touch with the prosecutor. Keep me informed. Bye now.”
Linda Holm ended the call and turned her attention to her visitors. She was a few years younger than Irene. A quick appraisal of the superintendent led Irene to reflect that there might be a grain of truth in Jonny’s anecdote. Nor was it particularly surprising that the superintendent, with her naturally curly hair, was referred to as Blondie.
Birgitta got straight to the point and explained why they were there. She gave a brief outline of the case and said she suspected the murdered girl was a victim of trafficking. When she had finished, Linda Holm nodded.
“I agree. It sounds as if there are grounds to suspect that trafficking is involved. Let’s see if we can find her on the Internet,” she said.
Superintendent Linda Holm’s fingers flew over the keys, and she quickly scrolled through the pages she brought up, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Here,” she said after a while, turning the laptop around so her colleagues could see.
There was a whole page of ads. It was obvious they were advertising sex because several of them were accompanied by photographs. Naked and half-naked girls in an assortment of sexy poses, with their first name and a brief introduction.
“This week’s available girls in Göteborg,” Linda Holm said dryly. She pointed to the flags at the side of each text. “The flags show what languages the girls speak. Impressive, don’t you think?”
Irene could see that most of them had three or four flags, and that the most common were Russian, Latvian, Estonian, German and English.
“As far as German and English are concerned, it’s usually just odd words the girls picked up while being shuttled around Europe,” Linda said.
Like most police officers, both Irene and Birgitta had come across various forms of trafficking during the course of their work, but Irene wanted to know more about the current situation. “How long do they stay in one country?” she asked.
“One to four weeks. And they spend only a few days in each town. A lot of the girls have been kidnapped; the family might be looking for the girl, and they might have reported her as a missing person, so the pimps don’t want to stay in one place for too long. They have often bought the girl from the kidnapper, and they don’t want to get rid of her until she’s earned them as much money as possible. But most of the girls are bought and sold as slaves, usually by their parents or other relatives. Or by kidnappers, as I said. Organized human traffickers dazzle the girls and their families with the promise of a good job overseas because what’s behind this misery is always poverty, when it comes down to it.”
“Don’t the girls get to keep any of the money themselves?”
“No. The pimps take their passports off them as soon as they’ve entered a new country. Then they threaten the girls, telling them they have to pay off the cost of getting them out of their home country. They often say that the girl’s family will have to pay the price if she doesn’t do as she’s told. And doing as she’s told means going along with any sexual demand that the pimp or the clients might make.”
Linda Holm paused for a moment and took a booklet out of her desk drawer. She held it up to show them. “This is an up-to-date report from the UN. It indicates that never before in the history of the world have there been as many slaves as we have today. At least twelve million people are living in slavery; the actual number is probably significantly higher. In the past people used to be enslaved to work, but these days sex slavery is at least as common. It’s more lucrative. The trade includes children and adults of both sexes, but the majority are girls and young women. The fact is that human trafficking today turns over more money than the narcotics trade.”
“Why has this happened?” Birgitta asked.
“Drug-related offenses attract severe punishments all over the world. Those who are caught can risk the death penalty. Human trafficking has generally led to more lenient sentences, plus the financial gains are huge. The law isn’t keeping up with the development of trafficking at all; it’s like an avalanche. Even if laws do exist, the authorities aren’t always interested in making use of them. And remember that the men who hold the power often have dirty pants, if you know what I mean.” The expression on Linda Holm’s face was grim as she uttered the last words.
“Sounds like your job is an uphill battle,” Birgitta commented.
“It sometimes feels that way. Things have changed somewhat in Sweden, but overseas prostitution is viewed very differently. The law often doesn’t distinguish between voluntary prostitution and trafficking. The girls are all lumped together and are regarded as whores.”
“You mean none of these girls are doing this of their own free will?”
Linda gave Birgitta a long look before answering. “Six months ago we raided an apartment we’d had under surveillance. We knew there were at least two girls in there, with two pimps. Men came and went at all hours of the day and night. I was there when we went in. As usual the apartment was a complete dump, but there was something about the smell … it stank more than usual. I went into one room and saw a teenage girl standing there changing a diaper on a grown man. The diaper was full of shit. I still wonder where a guy weighing a hundred kilos can get a hold of a onesie like the one he was wearing. And he had a pacifier, too.”
A vision of the scene flashed across Irene’s mind, and she felt nauseous. “That’s sick,” she said.
“But not all that uncommon. Do you really think a teenage girl would choose a life in captivity, without any chance of stepping outside the temporary brothel? Being constantly ready to supply the most humiliating sexual services to men they don’t even know? Because it’s these sex slaves who have to deal with the worst perversions.”
“What kind of men are we talking about here?” Irene asked.
“All kinds. The age varies between seventeen and eighty. The majority are socially well-established men with families.”
“Do we know why they do it?”
“You mean why they pay for sex with a sex slave?” Linda Holm clarified. She paused for a moment before answering her own question. “I’ve given this a great
deal of thought, and I think the answer is power. The power to be able to buy the total submissiveness of another human being. I think many of them find it easier because the girl can’t speak their language. She becomes nothing more than a mute object. A sex object. I believe that’s an important point for this socially well-established man with a family. He hasn’t really been unfaithful. He’s simply used a sex object that means nothing emotionally. The fact that at the same time he’s got a kick out of the power he has over the girl is something he doesn’t want to admit, of course. A lot of men also convince themselves they’re doing something positive by giving the girl money.”
“What happens to the girls? Do they ever get away?”
Linda shook her head. “It’s extremely rare. A very small number of girls manages to make it back to their home country. Things might be okay as long as the girl doesn’t tell anyone what she’s experienced, but the physical and mental damage is often so severe that she ends up having a complete breakdown or committing suicide.”
Linda fell silent and turned the laptop back to face her. She gazed at the small images on the screen showing this week’s offers on the sex market before she continued. “They’re consumable goods. Most of them succumb to illness and abuse. Some are murdered by the pimps or the clients. There’s actually a separate market for that.”
“A separate market? You can buy a murder victim?” Birgitta exclaimed.
“Sure. When the girl is no use to him anymore, the pimp might sell her to someone who wants to pay to kill her. Although that’s expensive.”
Both Irene and Birgitta remained silent for a little while.
“Are you saying this is going on in Sweden?” Birgitta asked eventually.
“Probably, although we only have two suspected cases so far, both in the Stockholm area. Plus several girls who drowned when they were thrown overboard from a ferry, likely by their pimps. A cheap and easy way to get rid of girls who are no longer any use.”
“You mean the girl we have in the morgue could have been bought as a murder victim?”
“Yes. From your description, she sounds very sick and in a pretty bad way. Maybe she wasn’t able to bring in money for her pimp anymore. If he could just get a hold of the right buyer, he could make some decent cash out of her one last time.”
Linda Holm carried on scrolling through pages offering various sexual services. “Look at this,” she said. She turned the laptop around, pointing to one of the ads with her pen. The picture showed two smiling teenage girls wearing nothing but G-strings, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
“Heinz Becker has been running this ad for two years. The girls in the picture are long gone. But his clients recognize it. It tells them that Heinz is back in town, and he always has very young girls on offer. That’s his specialty.”
“Who is he?”
“A middle-aged ex-soldier from the former German Democratic Republic. His father was German and his mother was from Estonia, so he speaks Estonian as well. Went down for narcotics-related offenses in the early nineties. When he got out of jail he turned to trafficking. He buys young girls from the Baltic states—with the emphasis on young. Most pimps are careful. If the girls are too young, it attracts attention. The police and border guards might start asking questions, and it can be hard to claim that the girls are there voluntarily if they’re underage. But Heinz is prepared to take that risk. He usually smuggles them in. He makes a huge amount of money while he’s on his tours, so to speak. It’s client demand that rules the market, and they’re prepared to pay more for really young girls.”
“And this Heinz is in Göteborg at the moment?”
“Yes. This ad has been on the net for three days. We’ve just located the apartment where he’s installed himself and his girls. We’re keeping it under surveillance, and we’ll try to go in tomorrow.”
“I suppose it’s difficult to get these girls to talk,” Irene said.
“Yes. And we always have to use interpreters. Of course the ironic thing is the only person the girl can talk to when she’s in a foreign country is her pimp. Occasionally one of her sisters in misfortune might speak the same language, but there’s no guarantee. The girls might well be from different countries, and the pimps often keep them apart so they don’t get to know each other. This means the pimp becomes the only fixed point in the girl’s existence and, as I said, the only person she can talk to.”
“I imagine the pimps also tell them horror stories to make sure they’re scared of the police.”
“Of course. As a rule they clam up and refuse to speak. We always have a female officer present when we question them. No male officer is ever allowed to be alone with any of the girls.”
Irene thought hard for a moment. The case involving the dead girl in the root cellar was just beginning to take shape. “Would it be possible for us to sit in when you’re questioning Heinz Becker? It would be interesting to find out if he knows anything about our murder victim. And of course it would be helpful to speak to the girls in the apartment. They might know something.”
“Sure. No problem,” Linda said with a smile that never really reached her eyes. Perhaps she had seen too much human misery. It struck Irene that the weary look in Linda’s eyes was pretty common among her colleagues.
IT WAS HIGH time for lunch after the meeting with Linda Holm, although neither Irene nor Birgitta had much of an appetite.
“How about sushi?” Irene suggested as they were riding down in the elevator.
“Um … no,” Birgitta said, looking slightly uncomfortable.
“You usually enjoy it.”
Birgitta glanced at Irene, then broke into a big smile. “Pregnant women aren’t supposed to eat raw fish,” she said happily.
It took a fraction of a second for Irene to make the connection. “Are you pregnant? I mean … congratulations!” she exclaimed in some confusion.
“Yes, I’m pregnant again. And thank you. Although somehow I don’t think Sven will be congratulating me,” Birgitta said, pulling a face.
No, he wouldn’t. He would be furious. On the other hand, soon it wouldn’t be his problem any longer since he was moving across to the Cold Cases team. But Birgitta knew that just as well as she did, so Irene didn’t bother pointing it out.
Instead she asked, “When are you due?”
“In the middle of July.”
They reached the ground floor and walked out through the entrance hall. Outside, the snow was falling heavily, as it had done all morning. Irene stopped and turned to Birgitta.
“July. Good thinking. You won’t be pushing a stroller in the snow,” she said, waving her hand to encompass all the snowy misery around them.
Chapter 7
IT WAS ONLY four o’clock, but Irene was already hurrying toward the parking lot at police HQ, battling her way through a blizzard with the wind whipping her face. Her colleagues had muttered about all the work that was piling up, but Irene had stuck to her decision to leave early for once. She had accrued a lot of paid leave, and she needed some of those hours right now. She had things to do before this evening’s dinner.
Of course it would have been better if they could have had it on Friday or Saturday, but Krister was working all weekend. Waiting until the following weekend felt like too long, so it would have to be this Thursday evening. The whole family was gathering to celebrate Katarina and Felipe’s safe return after four months in Brazil. Irene hadn’t seen them yet because they had spent the night at Felipe’s apartment, which was a small sublet on Frölunda Square. Katarina was also talking about leaving home, but she wanted to live on her own for a while before she moved in with anyone. And if she and Felipe were going to live together, she definitely didn’t want to live in his one-room apartment. Her other major problem was she had yet to work out what she wanted to do with her life. Her grades were reasonable, but not good enough to enable her to train as a physiotherapist, which was her dream job. She had no desire to try to improve her grades; three years at
high school was enough.
At least that had been Katarina’s point of view when she set off for Brazil four months earlier. Irene was quietly wondering whether anything might have changed. She was also curious to hear more about her daughter’s experiences in the vast country on the other side of the Atlantic. Neither Irene nor Krister had visited that part of the world. In fact they had never ventured outside Europe. Nowadays young people traveled all over the globe, backpacking their way through Thailand and Australia with the same nonchalance as Irene and her boyfriend at the time had cycled around the island of Gotland twenty-five years ago.
Irene had spoken to Katarina on the phone earlier in the day, and her daughter had requested the Swedish food she had been missing: her father’s blinis with red onion and whitefish roe, and stuffed cannelloni with Gorgonzola sauce and smoked ham. For dessert she wanted crème brûlée. These were all among Krister’s signature dishes. He laughed out loud when Irene relayed Katarina’s desire for “Swedish food.”
“Russian blinis and Italian cannelloni,” Krister said. “And for the grand finale, a dessert with its origins in Spain’s crema Catalana, which was refined in New York by the restaurant owner Sirio Maccioni. From there it was taken to Europe and France by the illustrious chef Paul Bocuse.”
“Wow! Really?”
“Absolutely. Talk about globalization. Within the restaurant world it’s virtually complete. We happily blend cuisine from all over the world. But the truth is we’re all cosmopolitan in our everyday eating habits. Take pizza, for example. I had my first when I was about twelve years old. The whole family had been to Liseberg, then we went to one of the first real pizza restaurants in Göteborg. La Gondola is still there today. The fact is that the taste and aroma of that very first calzone made a much deeper impression on me than our visit to the amusement park. Then we went back home to Säffle, and I told all my friends about the delicious pizza I’d had in Göteborg. Only a year or so later there was a pizzeria in Säffle, too, and these days there are several. Pizza has become part of the Swedish staple diet.”
The Beige Man Page 6