Project Nirvana

by Stefan Tegenfalk

  Jonna passed by the yellow taxi and parked fifty metres farther down. Shortly afterwards, she saw Borg get out of his taxi. He started to walk towards Jonna, but disappeared into a doorway after a few metres. Was this where he lived?

  She got out of her car and started to run towards the street door that he had disappeared into. As she arrived, she saw that it was a car hire firm. Through the dirty glass of the shop window, she could make out Borg’s back and shoulders. He was writing something. To the left of the door was a garage entrance. Twenty minutes later, she watched a black Saab 9-3 driving out of the garage.

  It has to be Borg, she thought.

  The black Saab passed her, but she wasn’t able to see who was driving. Jonna followed at a safe distance. Despite being flooded with adrenaline, her lack of sleep was beginning to take effect. She changed lanes without looking and almost sideswiped a white Opel. The woman in the Opel gesticulated wildly at Jonna.

  The Saab continued into Frejgatan and stopped at the bottom of Upplandsgatan, close to Karlbergsvägen. Jonna tried to find a parking space that would not call attention to her car and also give her a clear view. It was impossible. Every centimetre of the kerb was occupied with parked cars. She could forget double parking. That would get Borg’s attention immediately.

  She backed up fifty metres to Vidarögatan. A hundred metres later, she found an unoccupied parking space. She would have to leave her car to watch Borg. It would take nearly two minutes to return to the car and during that time he could drive quite a distance on the side streets of Vasastan before she caught up with him.

  She positioned herself in a street entrance with a good view of the Saab and waited. The cold air and fatigue were taking their toll on her. What was she getting herself into?

  A mother with a small child passed by. In one hand, she had a bag of groceries, in the other the child’s hand. Most likely on her way home to make food. Perhaps her husband had already prepared dinner. They would soon be sitting at their kitchen table, completely oblivious to the events unfolding on the street below them. That a dirty cop was sitting in the black hire car. That another cop was breaking every rule in the book to find out what he was up to. The family was living in an alternative reality. A snapshot of a society that once was a shining example of low rates of criminality, high morals and freedom from corruption. Since she had started working in the police, all of her preconceived ideas had been turned upside down. She had never been in doubt. Never regretted her choices. But she felt as if she was on thin ice with black, icy-cold water beneath her.

  A tall figure came around the corner from Karlsbergsvägen. Jonna’s eyes followed him idly. He stopped for a few seconds, as if he had forgotten something. He must be well over six feet, Jonna thought, as the mother with the child passed by him. He continued walking up Upplandsgatan and then made a beeline for the Saab. As soon as the car lights went on, a shocked Jonna realized who it was.

  Jörgen Blad was boiling with rage. Neither his photographer nor Jonna had told him that the man they were watching had left the police headquarters.

  He had been standing in the cold outside the main entrance for no reason. One hour later, Miguel had called and asked where he was. The Argentinian was dying for a lager and to chat about his recent adventure. Jörgen calmed down only when Miguel said that the drinks were on him.

  “What a blast,” Miguel said excitedly. “What’s really going on?”

  Jörgen gazed out of the window, deep in thought. Pedestrians were hurrying along the pavement outside.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “It could be something to do with what happened last year.”

  “The stuff you were mixed up in?”

  “Could be,” Jörgen shrugged.

  “Then you’ll let me in on this one?” Miguel asked anxiously.

  Jörgen looked into his eyes. “Depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “If you pull that stunt on me again.”

  “You mean, not letting you know what was going on?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I explained that,” Miguel justified himself. “It all happened too fast.”

  “Really?” Jorgen retorted. “Yet you had time to take a walk, ride the underground and jump in a taxi for a hot pursuit.”

  Miguel took a big gulp of lager and stared into his glass.

  “I apologize,” he said, resignedly. “You’re right. I should’ve called.”

  “If this story breaks, your participation will be on my terms.”

  “Absolutely,” said Miguel, emptying his glass. “Want another?”

  Jörgen shook his head. “Got to go home to Sebastian. Besides, I’m dog tired.”

  Jörgen left the Gröne Jägaren with an increasingly unpleasant feeling of déjà vu.

  Chapter 16

  Alice McDaniel aimlessly zapped between the TV channels. In the next twenty minutes, she would have to decide if she was going to miss her flight back to London. One of the news channels showed lots of police cars and road blocks. In the corner of the screen, a photo of an elderly man was displayed while a reporter started an interview with another person. The man in the picture looked alert but worn out, with dark bags under his eyes. A stereotypical police officer. They looked the same in Britain.

  Another image appeared. The face of this man was furrowed. Heavy features with lots of skin blemishes. His hair was greasy and his eyes dim. She changed channels and the picture of the policeman appeared again. He was obviously the story of the day. It was a pity she did not understand a word of Swedish. She was about to change the channel when she heard two words that made the hairs rise on her neck.

  He was now consigned to his own fate. The Mentor had promised to produce a dead “perpetrator” for Gnesta, but would that really be enough?

  Martin looked at the time, concerned. Hedman should have been here fifteen minutes ago, he thought, wiping condensation from the inside of the windscreen.

  His fear that his plan had failed increased by the minute. Hedman had for some unfathomable reason taken that damned Gröhn as his hostage. Not the old couple nor the doctor.

  Detective Inspector Walter Gröhn. That Hedman was slow-witted was obvious, but Martin hadn’t dreamed that he was so irrevocably brain-damaged.

  “Bloody hell!” he swore out loud, hitting the wheel with his fists. Gröhn and the other morons at County CID had probably managed to turn Hedman. Perhaps the stupid bastard had already started to spill his guts. He was suddenly interrupted by giggling outside the car.

  Martin dried the condensation from his side window and saw a few girls passing the car, all wearing the niqab. Four of them, covering their faces with differently coloured veils.

  Everywhere. They will soon be everywhere, he thought. They were flooding the ports of Europe. Wave after wave, washing over the flood gates. Martin’s blood boiled again. Instead of dealing with the Islamic problem, he was forced to waste time on something as irrelevant as Tor Hedman. An imbecile who did not even have the wit to turn up to his own execution.

  Walter’s offer of less jail time in exchange for a double-cross was on the table. Most villains in Tor’s position would have taken the deal. Tor still hesitated over the generous, yet unbeknown to him, bogus offer.

  He sat transfixed in the car, not moving a muscle. Condensation fogged the glass, so Walter opened his window a few centimetres.

  Cold air seeped in through the opening.

  “We’d need at least two hours to set you up with a wire and tracking device,” Walter said. “We don’t have that. Borg will get suspicious if you are too late. Without a bug, we can’t keep tabs on you.”

  Tor was going crazy from Walter’s chatter. Borg was a psycho and as unpredictable as the counterfeit Bulgarian painkillers he had been forced to take. Would Borg really bump him off? If To
r did as Walter suggested, would he really get a light sentence? Who could he trust?

  None of them, he answered himself. Even Ricki had turned on him. Jerry was the only person he had trusted. If Jerry had been alive, he would not have found himself in this mess. He only had himself to blame for getting this deep in the shit.

  “Will I have a shooter?” Tor asked.

  Walter had not anticipated this request. “Forget about the bugs,” he said. “I’ll put in a good word for you with . . .”

  “Will I have a shooter?” Tor repeated. “If I’m going to be bait, then I must be tooled up. You said it yourself, Borg wants to do me in.” Tor was insistent.

  “No,” Walter answered.

  “Then I’m done with this fucking shit,” Tor said, pulling a Mora hunting knife from his pocket with his damaged right hand. “Cut the tape off and get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Cut it!” Tor snarled.

  Walter carefully sliced open the duct tape along his forehead. “Is your finger still on the trigger?”

  “Just keep cutting,” Tor hissed.

  Walter’s hand shook, not from fear but from fatigue.

  His body protested at his lack of sleep. Carefully, he cut the tape around his chin, but nicked his skin with the knife. Blood dripped down the side of his neck. “You don’t have to do this,” Walter said, turning around slowly.

  Tor stared at Walter with impassive eyes. “I can take care of myself.”

  “But we can . . .”

  “Shut it,” Tor stopped him.

  Walter had finished cutting. He had removed all the duct tape, except for some that was still stuck in his hair. The sawn-off barrels no longer chafed his neck.

  “Get lost,” said Tor, waving his gun in Walter’s face.

  “I can’t help you if you keep running,” Walter said. “This is your last chance. Take it.”

  Tor was not interested in Walter’s sermon. His only concern was to remove the tape from his left hand, so that he could drive the automatic Mazda. He motioned Walter to get out of the car and with some difficulty struggled over to the driver’s seat. Then he revved the engine and took off at high speed down the street.

  Walter watched as Hedman made a sharp left into Malmskillnadsgatan and then disappeared around the corner. Moments later, the sound of breaking glass echoed off the buildings. Walter started with surprise before starting to run down the road. He never heard the footsteps behind him.

  Panting, he turned the corner and saw plain-clothes police officers with firearms drawn, advancing towards the Mazda. The front of Hedman’s car was rammed into the back of a Volvo estate car. The side windows were smashed and a white Audi blocked the Mazda from behind.

  Tor moved inside the car. Two shots were heard and the police took cover behind their cars. Shotgun pellets hit a house wall and fragments flew through the air. One police officer opened fire on the Mazda. Three rounds in rapid succession went into the driver’s door. It was quiet for a brief moment. The only sound heard was the distant sirens of emergency vehicles.

  Suddenly, Tor’s arms emerged from the broken window, waving feebly. Three police officers carefully approached, weapons aimed at the car window. One tore open the driver’s door and then the other two roughly wrestled Hedman onto the wet tarmac. It was all over in a few seconds.

  “We were watching you the entire time,” a woman’s voice said, behind Walter.

  He turned around and saw a familiar face. The blonde woman was from one of County CID’s surveillance teams. Walter could not recall her name, but he had often seen her in the corridor. “Watching?” he said. “But I said . . .”

  “I know what you said,” she said, between Walter’s gasps for breath. “The SWAT-team commander ordered that you be followed anyway.”

  Walter looked at her, speechless. She looked a little ashamed.

  Walter looked around. “And who the hell ordered the arrest here?”

  The plain-clothes policemen looked at Walter, uncompre-

  hending.

  “We got him, didn’t we?” one officer said.

  “I don’t care about that,” Walter roared. “I want to know who ordered the arrest.”

  “I did,” answered the woman from the Surveillance Unit.

  Walter turned to face her again.

  She introduced herself. “Nilsson. Field office at Surveillance.”

  “You couldn’t wait a few minutes? Didn’t it occur to you to talk to me before letting all hell break loose?”

  Nilsson looked at Walter, blankly.

  “No,” she paused, “we didn’t want to let Hedman . . .”

  “What if there had been other hostages in the car?” Walter interrupted. “Hedman could have taken someone from the street.”

  “He didn’t. We’ve been following you the whole time,” she responded. “So we knew that it was just the two of you in the car.”

  “How the hell could you follow us without being seen?”

  “One of the marksmen shot paint onto the car roof when you left. The helicopters have been able to spot and track the car from the air. What’s the problem?” Nilsson’s voice had changed.

  “The problem is that you did the exact opposite of my instructions,” Walter said.

  “Don’t yell at me,” she said. “I’ve only followed orders.”

  “For Christ’s sake, not in the middle of the city,” Walter said, waving his arms. “Look around you. It’s pure luck that no one got injured or killed.”

  “I know,” Nilsson said, “but the Command Centre still told us to intervene. I asked them to wait but . . .”

  “I’ve heard enough,” Walter said, holding up his hand. He sat down, with his back resting against the house wall.

  “Are you all right?” Nilsson asked, bending down. “Let us take you to Karolinska.”

  Walter shook his head. “Just drive me to the nearest bed. I’m so damned tired.”

  Alice McDaniel walked into the police station later that evening. She had analyzed her situation not just once, but ten times. She felt she was losing her mind. Perhaps she already had lost it. After hearing Leo Brageler’s name on the TV, she opened her laptop and searched for him. By an incredible oversight, she hadn’t previously checked Leo Brageler on Google.

  There were a few hits. Mostly on Swedish news websites. There was an article in the Guardian, which said that the Swede Leo Brageler was wanted by the authorities and was responsible for several fatalities among the Swedish court. The article was short and uninformative. Her next decision would have made her partially paralyzed predecessor get out of his wheelchair and walk.

  She was going to report a client to the police. In a foreign country where she had not the slightest knowledge of the legal system.

  The perturbed police officer looked at the brown-haired British woman.

  “Exactly what crime do you wish to report?” he said, in decent English.

  She told him about the theft of her bag and that she believed that her client had stolen the bag. Using a third person.

  “Your client’s name is?”

  “Leo Brageler.”

  The police officer started to write, but stopped in mid-sentence. “You did say Leo Brageler?”

  “Yes, the fugitive.”

  The police officer studied Alice for a moment. Almost immediately, he decided that she was telling the truth.

  “One moment, please,” he said, and disappeared behind a door.

  A feeling of insecurity washed over Alice as she was left alone by the reception desk. Was she really doing the right thing? Perhaps she should be doing this back home in the Isle of Man. Have a serious talk with the telephone company and prepare for a lawsuit after a few rounds with the l
ocal police. But what evidence did she have? How could she prove that her private telephone number had fallen into another party’s hands without her consent? Above all, how could she prove that it had even happened?

  An older police officer came out and asked her to join him behind the reception desk. Alice was shown to an interview room with bars on the window. It felt unpleasant. The unpleasantness was partially alleviated by the cordial manner of the two policemen.

  “We’ll move you to another department,” the older police officer said.

  It sounded as if she was being arrested. “Am I being charged?”

  The elder of the two policemen smiled. “Absolutely not,” he said. “The people in charge of the search for Leo Brageler are located in another part of the building.”

  Fifteen minutes later, a plain-clothes policeman came to fetch her. He had closely cropped hair and was as tall as Alice. He introduced himself as Lars Jonsson and said that he was a CID detective. She guessed his age to be around fifty.

  Alice McDaniel was given a chair with moss-green fabric. This room had no windows and the air was stale. On the pale wooden table, there was a microphone. This country has a preference for light types of wood, she noted, and gazed at the spartan walls.

  After a few minutes, the doorway was filled by an enormous man.

  “Ivan Cederberg, acting Detective Inspector,” the giant greeted her with a firm handshake.

  “Alice McDaniel, solicitor from the Isle of Man,” she responded and pulled her hand away before the man ripped her arm off. He gestured politely for her to sit back down in her chair and asked her if she needed “refreshing” in atrocious English. She politely declined his offer. As he was about to continue with his linguistic potpourri, there was a knock on the door. After a brief exchange of words with another man in the doorway, the giant’s neck changed colour. He had obviously become quite upset.

  “I am becoming unluckily taken up with others,” he said, and showed a few teeth in a friendly grin.

  “Shame,” Alice said, as seventy thousand Wembley fans roared victory in her head.