‘I know.’
He pulls a paper and pen towards himself, starts writing something down. I quickly disappear into my own thoughts. Useful idiot. That’s what I am. That is what I’ve been.
‘I was thinking …’ says Birck.
‘Yes?’
‘Now you know Grimberg’s motives about the Angelica murder, does that change anything for you?’
‘You mean do I want to say, fuck it, and go home?’
‘Sort of thing.’
I pause for thought.
‘Yes, partly.’
‘But?’
‘That would be a selfish thing to do. The correct course of action from a policing point of view, on the other hand, would be to try to make some progress, given the new information.’
‘So you’re trying to do it again, only better,’ Birck says with a crooked smile.
‘Something like that.’
Birck hands over the piece of paper, a list of fifteen names. Eleven men, four women, name and current age. No faces yet: we still haven’t searched for any pictures.
‘If we’re right, then it was one of these.’
(Sandra Amiri, 36)
Josef Anyuru, 40
(Olivia Berggren, 34)
Marcus Bylander, 45
Mohammed Fattah, 36
Hernan Fernandez, 47
Jesper Hansson, 37
Karl Jansson, 51
Tobias Lundin, 44
(Miriam Redar, 38)
Lehel Reljanovic, 35
Patrik Sköld, 40
Jon Wester, 51
(Ann-Sofie Österdahl, 53)
Somewhere among them, a murderer.
48
I call him in vain, hoping to hear his voice.
Grim’s asleep, the nurse informs me, as he has been for most of the day. He’s extremely tired. He’s got another X-ray coming up and he needs to rest up before that and the planned operation. They need to get the bullet out.
It sounds dangerous. When we end the call, I’m nervous.
During the afternoon, Birck and I augment the list of fifteen names with new information about them, as and when we find it: their specific responsibilities at SGS, how long they served, and who their immediate superior was.
We make few telephone calls and send as concise emails as possible. We’re investigating our colleagues. It feels almost like investigating ourselves, and it doesn’t feel right. There’s always the risk that someone might react. Someone might see us, might already be watching us from a distance.
The list of candidates gets shorter.
Josef Anyuru, 40, Operative in the field A, 2009–2011. Immediate superior: Karl Jansson.
Mohammed Fattah, 36, Handler, 2008–2011. Immediate superior: Jon Wester.
Hernan Fernandez, 47, Handler, 2008–2010. Immediate superior: Jon Wester.
Karl Jansson, 51, Group Leader, operative unit A, 2010–2011.
Tobias Lundin, 44, Operative in the field B, 2008–2010. Immediate superior: Ann-Sofie Österdahl.
Lehel Reljanovic, 35, Operative in the field B, 2009–2010. Immediate superior: Ann-Sofie Österdahl.
Patrik Sköld, 40, Operative in the field A, 2008–2010. Immediate superior: Karl Jansson.
Jon Wester, 51, Director of Operations, 2008–2011.
Eight remaining names. Of them, five are still in the force, those who have left being Mohammed Fattah, Karl Jansson, and Jon Wester. Fattah works for the armed forces, Jansson seems to have retrained as a social worker — a fairly common career development — and Jon Wester works for the private security sector, another not uncommon destination for those who’ve tired of policing and are looking for a more lucrative alternative.
‘So what are we going to do?’ I say.
‘We’re going to meet Sköld tonight.’ Birck is scrolling through a document on screen. ‘We’ll start with him.’
The hours pass slowly. Tomorrow, Sam’s coming home.
I don’t know what to expect.
I call Karolinska again. No answer.
Birck draws a ring around Patrik Sköld’s name on the list, and adds a question mark alongside.
49
It’s evening, Monday the seventh of December. Cold, raw air out there, no snow.
Patrik Sköld lives on the second floor of Surbrunnsgatan 62, just north of the City Library and the green open space of Observatorielunden. The journey there I spend in the passenger seat, with the list of SGS staff in one hand and the list of informants in the other. I don’t know what it is I’m looking for.
Birck runs an amber light, out onto Sveavägen. A horn beeps behind us. Birck ignores it.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asks instead.
‘Me being a useful idiot.’
‘We’ve all been there, at some point,’ he says consolingly.
We wait by the entrance to Surbrunnsgatan 62, shivering in the icy wind, hoping that someone arrives or leaves soon. It’s best to avoid the intercom, best to be cautious. Someone has daubed the words I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul on the wall of the building opposite, in jerky, uneven letters.
The door clicks and is pushed open from the inside by a young man. We smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. Two flights of stairs later, we’re outside Sköld’s door — a reinforced modern one. It’s thick, and it doesn’t allow any noise to pass through from the other side. Birck knocks. We wait. Nothing.
Birck places his hand on the door handle, attempts to open it. It’s locked, and he knocks again, harder this time.
Nothing.
‘Oh dear,’ he says quietly. ‘This doesn’t bode terribly well.’
I retrieve my phone from my pocket, find the number, and call. Birck looks puzzled.
‘Switched off.’
‘Try again. Could be the network.’
I ring again. It takes a second before the automatic click cuts in.
‘No, it’s switched off.’
Fuck. He’s done one.
Birck sinks to a crouching position, opens the letterbox, and attempts to peer through it.
‘Trainers on the hall rug, bit of junk mail. Nothing else. It’s dark in there, though, so you can’t see much.’ He stands up. ‘Fuck. We had him. We were sitting in his fucking car. We let that bastard get away. What the hell do we do now?’
We call the locksmith. It’s the only way.
‘Christ’s sake,’ Birck says while we’re waiting. ‘We got too close. He disappeared, from right under our noses. Shit, I knew we should’ve been tougher. We should’ve brought him in.’
‘Yeah. We should’ve.’
Fucking hell. Fucking hell.
Birck turns to the door.
‘Do you think it’s a door you can kick in?’
‘It’s reinforced. You’ll get a pain in your foot, not much else. Wait for the locksmith, he’ll be here soon enough.’
There’s no way to contain our frustration. We watched Sköld drive off. We stood there watching him drive away.
The locksmith arrives, and in the ten minutes he spends working on the lock he doesn’t say much. Birck asks to borrow a couple of pairs of latex gloves from the packet poking out of his bag. The locksmith grunts in reply.
When he thinks he’s finished, he pushes the handle down to check that the job is indeed done. He then stands up, removes his gloves, informs us he’ll send the invoice as usual, and adds a mumbled remark about us using his services during office hours from now on.
The door to Patrik Sköld’s apartment is ajar. We pull on the gloves.
There’s a light on in there somewhere, further in. We step over the trainers and the leaflets on the floor. There are a few winter clothes hanging on the rail in the hall, but mostly just empty coathangers, as though he’d just left. Bad.
Shit. How the hell are we going to explain this to Morovi? I pull out my phone to put out a search call.
Birck tries a light switch. The hall is illuminated. Beyond it, a living room that leads onto a bedroom, and in the far right-hand corner, the kitchen. The home is sparsely furnished, with high ceilings; the floor is old and creaky. The clothes are neatly ordered, the bed made. On the table in front of the living room sofa, there’s a copy of one of the National Police Authority’s reports alongside a book, Frederick Forsyth’s The Devil’s Alternative.
‘Mm hmm,’ Birck says, irritably, looks around before heading into the kitchen and switching on the light, then recoiling. ‘Jesus, Leo. Close the door.’
There’s a little table at one end of the kitchen, and two chairs. That’s where he’s sitting, leant back yet still slumped, surrounded by a red shawl of blood. His firearm is lying on the floor, and on the wall a metre or so behind Patrik Sköld is a smear of blood and brain debris. It smells.
Sköld’s face is pale, his eyes open, staring. His mouth has been scorched by the muzzle flash. A nauseating sight.
‘Watch where you put your feet,’ I hear Birck say.
That’s when I notice, not before.
He’s wearing his uniform.
50
There’s a laptop on the desk, its screen dark. Directly in front of Sköld are two pieces of paper. I pick up one of them.
It’s a document stating that Patrik Sköld, ID number and officer number given, is hereby suspended from duty with immediate effect. The background to this is the compelling evidence of a serious narcotics offence in 2009, which took place during a live investigation with Södertälje Police. During the inquiry, it also emerged that Sköld has been guilty of forgery on a number of occasions.
Taken together, the allegations are so serious in nature that Sköld’s position as a police officer must be called into question, and the disciplinary committee unanimously approved his suspension. For more detailed descriptions of the case, the document refers to the appendices.
‘Forgery?’ Birck studies the document over my shoulder. ‘They mean the false plates on that car.’
‘I guess so.’
Serious narcotics offence, Södertälje Police. That must’ve been the case he mentioned to us.
‘He’s got the sack,’ Birck says.
‘It says, “suspended”.’
‘Haven’t you worked for Internal Affairs? You know what suspended means. He’s finished.’ He pauses. ‘It’s Monday today. We met him a few days back.’
‘Yes?’
He examines the piece of paper again.
‘The disciplinary committee reached its verdict in an unreasonably short time. They must’ve had this prepared well before.’
‘Or else Sköld’s been being watched for longer than he let on. That’s almost how it sounded. Didn’t he say something about having eyes on him?’
‘Yes, he did. The question is, whose?’
Birck picks up the other piece of paper. It’s a note. Handwritten.
They got me, and the abyss opened up beneath me.
I’ve got nothing else, and I can’t take any more.
I hope it doesn’t make too much of a mess.
P.S.
Then in the bottom corner, added later — you can tell not just from its position but also from the handwriting. It’s sharper, hastier; he’d probably made up his mind and was getting impatient, wanted to act:
I never came any closer than this. I found the file on his computer in winter 2010. I had a bad feeling about it and I opened it.
That’s how it started, for me.
I don’t know if it was him or whether someone did it for him. Destroy this note.
Then there’s a password.
That’s it.
I look at Birck, who’s looking at Patrik Sköld sitting there on the chair.
‘Do you still think it was him?’
‘I don’t know.’ He crouches down and studies the dead policeman. ‘I’d say it was a fairly typical suicide. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Yes.’
‘But,’ he goes on, ‘you do wonder whether he actually did this himself, or if it’s supposed to look like that.’
Birck’s eyes slide from the soot in Sköld’s mouth, to the position of the weapon, to the splatter on the wall. He moves around slightly, examining Sköld’s body.
‘Staged suicide?’ I say. ‘Doubtful.’
‘Yes, but a perpetrator who knows how things should look to fit a particular story can probably dupe most people.’
‘We should call someone,’ I say.
‘Soon.’
He turns on the computer. The fan whirrs into life, humming gently as he enters the password.
The screen displays a neat desktop. The wallpaper is the police heraldic emblem — a shield beneath a royal crown, laid across two laurel branches, each complete with a broad axe. I’ve never liked it. It looks threatening, almost violent.
There’s only one window open, the media player with a video clip ready to play. The first frame is waiting, frozen. The scene is indoors, inside an apartment, and I know which one.
The camera wobbles as Angelica adjusts its position, presumably on one of the small shelves in the kitchenette. The unmade bed comes into view. She looks like she’s concentrating. There’s a clock on the wall behind the bed, and it’s quarter-to nine in the evening. Outside the flat’s windows it’s dark, you can just about tell. What day are we looking at? Not the day of the murder, anyway: the objects on the little bedside table are not the same.
Once she’s finished, Angelica stops in the centre of the shot, looks into the camera before allowing herself a weak smile.
‘I’ve got the list. Give me the money. You know what’ll happen if you don’t.’
She gives him a playful wave goodbye, before reaching for the camera and pressing a button.
The screen goes black for a second.
The wall clock now shows a few minutes past nine. The gloom in there makes the colours grey-blue. Angelica takes a few steps backwards, having just set the tape rolling again. She turns to the mirror and runs a hand through her hair. The dress she’s wearing only reaches as far as her thighs, accentuating her hips.
The sensation of seeing Angelica moving, hearing her voice: ghostly. Like temporarily stepping over to the other side.
There’s a knock at the door. Angelica disappears out of shot. Muffled sounds, no discernible words.
She returns. A man walks into the edge of the shot. His hands are visible, you can see them unbuttoning the shirt he’s wearing. Angelica is counting some money with her back to him. The dress has a deep-cut back, showing off her sharp shoulder blades.
Then she places the notes on the bedside table. The man’s shirt falls to the floor.
‘Here,’ he says.
‘Wouldn’t you rather do it on the bed?’
For a split-second, Angelica’s eyes dart towards the kitchenette.
‘No, here.’
‘I don’t want to do it standing up,’ she protests. ‘It hurts.’
‘Who’s paying who?’
She gives him a smile, but it’s a hostile one, you can almost feel it. She takes his hand and tries to pull him towards her, into the shot.
She doesn’t manage it. She’s too nervous for it to seem natural. The man remains out of view, you can hear him:
‘What are you playing at?’
‘I’ve been working all day,’ she says. ‘I’d really like to lie down.’
‘Working all day,’ the man repeats with something approaching revulsion. ‘Sexy.’
His voice has no accent; it’s bland, devoid of distinguishing characteristics. It could belong to absolutely any man, perhaps even Grim.
She makes no further attempts, presumably w
orried that he might get suspicious. He suspects nothing so far, or does he? You don’t know. He’s the one who pulls her towards him. He forces her to her knees. All you can see is the sole of one of Angelica’s feet. A slathering noise accompanies the man’s heavy grunts.
‘Oh fucking hell,’ says Birck
‘I don’t know why you’re messing about,’ the man says gruffly.
Something rustles. Two five-hundred kronor notes sail nonchalantly to the floor. He lets go of her; she’s gasping for breath. Then it starts again.
This is no longer paid-for sex we’re watching, but an assault.
Angelica is gagging, you can hear it. He lets her go. She catches her breath. They go again.
‘Fucking hell,’ Birck says again. ‘I can’t watch this, it’s making me feel sick.’
He says this standing alongside a policeman who’s shot his own head off. I don’t bring that up. He still forces himself to go on watching, as do I. A split-second will do it, if the man bends over or takes a step to one side. That’s all we need — him stepping into the shot. We’re close now.
He stops Angelica, and gets her onto her feet. What he’s just done seems to have drained her of energy, made her body weak. He pushes her against the wall. They’re completely out of sight. You can hear the man putting on a condom, then his body slapping against hers, her whimpering every now and then. That’s all that’s happening, until she pants and moans, asks him to do it harder, faster.
Her mask is convincing — well used, presumably. You could almost believe she was sincere.
When he does empty himself, he does so without a sound, silently. He moves away, takes two steps backwards. He groans as he pulls off the condom and you can hear him putting his clothes back on.
‘Can you open the window?’ Angelica asks. ‘It’s got so warm in here.’
To do that, he has to pass the camera lens. It’s her last chance. She lies down on the bed and stretches out, looking at him.
The man doesn’t answer. He gets dressed.
Watching a defeat.
Then it happens.
He walks past the camera, its eye capturing him on his way to and from the window. It happens quickly, just a few seconds.
The Thin Blue Line Page 17