The Tunnel

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  So the insider hadn’t been able to handle the pressure. If he had allied himself with the cops, it was too late to talk to him now. And there was no guarantee that he had anything to do with it. Maybe he owed a debt to the wrong sort of people, as Hillerström had claimed, and had tried to solve the problem by contacting people in the underworld. And when the robbery went to hell he thought that suspicions would be directed at him. Thought it was all over. Took his own life rather than squeal.

  “Hello, are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry . . . I think I’m a little bit in shock, actually.”

  “That’s okay. Shall I transfer you to someone else?”

  He pictured the guy again. He thought too highly of himself to be a candidate for suicide, Jorma thought. Someone had offed him.

  “No. I’ll call back a little later once I’ve recovered.”

  Teatergrillen was more Ola’s type of place than her own. Or maybe Hoffman’s . . . though she knew nothing about him. She never set foot in this sort of restaurant. She didn’t fit in. She always got the feeling that people could smell her working-class background.

  She walked down the stairs to a hall with a built-in sofa on one side and a hardwood bar on the other. A waiter glided by with a servile smile. She tried to see herself through his eyes: a woman in the throes of a midlife crisis, all dolled up in a baggy black trouser suit and sandals with heels that were too high. She felt like she was at a masquerade. As if she had picked her clothes out of someone else’s wardrobe.

  To the right, a set of stairs led to the ladies’ room. Terrycloth towels lay in neat piles on a rack next to the fancy sink. She checked her handbag, making sure that the pack of condoms was still there.

  She looked younger in the mirror, thirty-five rather than forty-three. Blue-gray eyes, thick, medium-blonde hair, full lips with a noticeable Cupid’s bow. High cheekbones that made her look vaguely Asian. The scars on her neck, the ones Klingberg had given her once upon forever ago, were hardly visible anymore.

  She thought about calling it all off, turning on her heel and going home instead, starting up her computer and getting back to work on the Bosnia project in the company of a bottle of JD. The man who was waiting for her had no idea what she looked like, much less what her name was.

  You can’t escape your nature, she thought a minute later, as she stood in the dining room and looked around at all the upper-class patrons. The paintings on the walls depicted the rooftops of some city, maybe Paris. The wall-to-wall carpet was so thick that her feet sank a centimeter into it. Next to each table was a bucket of ice on a stand. Booths with red benches. Bordello atmosphere, she thought. A fitting place to meet.

  She peered to the left, toward one of the smaller booths with a table set for two. A lone man, a few years younger than she was, was sitting there with a glass of champagne and a menu. He gave her a questioning look.

  “Rita?” he said.

  She had no idea why she’d gone with that name. It belonged to her mother, the woman she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years.

  “Yes. And you’re Marlon?”

  “Please, have a seat. Would you like a glass of bubbly?”

  She sat down on the bench across from him as he poured from the bottle. She took in the person she might sleep with before the night was over. A black T-shirt under a black jacket. Fit. A handsome face. Tanned. A bit young for her taste, but maybe that was what she needed—a boy toy.

  “Or would you like something to eat?”

  “Thanks, I’m fine.”

  “Let’s get right to the point instead. Feel free to tell me how you want it in greater detail.”

  He had lowered his voice, even though it wasn’t necessary. It was very loud in the restaurant.

  “How do you want it?” she said.

  “Like I said in my preferences: I like it rough . . . not violent, but rough. I like to dominate . . . and be dominated.”

  His gentle voice clashed with his words.

  “I have a suggestion,” he said. “Let’s finish our glasses and then get out of here. Do what we came here to do.”

  The scent of aftershave in the car—the same brand Ola had used once upon a time; she couldn’t remember what it was called.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as he drove toward Valhallavägen in a discreetly luxurious Audi.

  “To my place.”

  “Do you live nearby?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a porn magazine in the compartment between the seats. She picked it up and looked at the cover. A man was doing something to a tied-up woman.

  “For inspiration?” she asked.

  “Maybe . . . it’s up to you.”

  She remembered a film she’d seen with a girlfriend at Rigoletto in the late nineties. The people in it had worn blindfolds and masks as they had orgies in a palace-like building out in the countryside. Tom Cruise had a troubled relationship and suspected his wife was unfaithful, and somehow he ended up in this house where a sex sect had their meetings. Her friend had thought that the movie was degrading to women. She had pretended to agree, but the fact was, it turned her on.

  I’ve always been like that, she thought as she watched Humlegården sweep by outside the windows, I’ve never understood the codes that dictate what I’m supposed to think and feel as a woman.

  Marlon kept driving south, toward Gärdet. This part of the city was a blank spot on her mental map. He turned left onto a smaller street, in a neighborhood she didn’t recognize. He stopped in front of a door that slid aside and continued down into a garage.

  “Are we there?”

  “Having trouble containing yourself? I got the sense that you’re used to this . . . that you do this kind of thing more often than I do.”

  There was a joking tone to his voice. Or was it . . . did he take her for a professional? It occurred to her that the app might be used by prostitutes.

  He turned off the car, breathing close to her. Then he got out, walked around, and opened the door on her side. He took her gently by the shoulders and led her over to a lift.

  The funkis-style apartment was decorated in a minimalist fashion. Modern art adorned the walls. There were glossy lifestyle magazines on a concrete table. A dress and a pair of tights hung across the back of a futon.

  “Your girlfriend’s?” she asked as he dimmed the lights by remote control.

  “Something like that.”

  “Out of town?”

  “Just for a little while.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-four. Why?”

  The faint scent of incense lingered in the air.

  “No reason. What do you do? I’m sorry, I’m just curious . . . what do you do professionally?”

  “Does it matter?” His tone was playful but she knew he was irritated by her questions. “I’m in advertising.”

  “What kind of advertising?”

  “All sorts. TV ads, mostly.”

  They walked through a kitchen. There was post on the counter, brown office envelopes with windows. She tried to find a name and address, but it was too dark in the room. He didn’t have any kids, though. The flat was far too neat.

  “What about your girlfriend . . . does she have other lovers too?”

  It was like she couldn’t help it. Tourette’s syndrome, she’d thought when she was younger. The compulsion to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  “Don’t know. I’ve never asked.”

  He had opened a sliding door into a bedroom. A plastic bin full of various sex toys stood on the floor. Objects that looked like they would hurt.

  “Is there a bathroom nearby?”

  He pointed toward the hallway.

  “Out there.”

  “Thanks. Gotta pee.”

  As soon as she was inside, she locked the door behind her and stood with her back to it. She remembered the times she had come home in the middle of the night, aged fourteen, after hanging out with Katz and Jorma Hedlund in Häss
elby Gård, and heard sounds from the bedroom. Rita had been with a different man every night. Her father had been in prison at the time. Those fake moans, the realization that she wasn’t enjoying it in the least, that it was all an act. It had never occurred to her before, but maybe her mother had fucked for money.

  Who am I? she thought as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Who have I become?

  An image of Katz flickered through her mind. And then one of Hoffman. Why not him instead? Why not pursue a normal affair, like sleeping with your boss?

  When she returned to the bedroom, the TV was on, showing a muted porno. She meant to say something, but she knew she would stutter; she could already feel them in the back of her head, the knots of words that always popped up at inopportune times, words that got jammed between the speech area of her brain and her mouth.

  “Do you want to watch this while we do it?” he asked.

  “Mmm.”

  He pulled her close; he was stronger than she’d expected. He kissed her, gently at first, then more passionately. His erection pressed against her thigh. She smelled his deodorant again. She saw the flicker of the movie, three men tying up a woman, putting a muzzle on her, like a dog.

  “I want to try something. When I come . . . I want you to squeeze my throat. Hard.”

  Something about a lack of oxygen, she thought. It made your orgasm more intense. There was even a name for it, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She had read about it somewhere, maybe in a sex column in a regular old evening tabloid.

  It had been three days since his last recon, and he felt ready. He would find out who was behind the execution; he owed Zoran that much. And he owed it to himself, too.

  He lifted his binoculars and looked at the house. Hillerström was in the office wing. He took a binder from a shelf and removed a document from a plastic sleeve. He returned to the desk, took a hole punch from a drawer, and began to punch holes in some papers.

  Jorma focused on the back of the room. Bookcases, a built-in safe. Framed portraits of his daughters on the wall. The man lived an average bourgeois life. The neighbors had no inkling that he was a criminal.

  He took out the prepaid phone he kept in reserve in the glovebox. It wasn’t too late to call for reinforcements. Katz, he thought. Or Emir. But he hesitated. No one knew what he was caught up in, not even his sister, who was probably starting to worry about him by now.

  Something told him that he had to run this race on his own and avoid putting anyone else in danger.

  He drove over to the parallel street and parked. He opened the gate to the neighbor’s property. No one was home; he had already checked.

  He followed the gravel path to the back of the house. There was a trampoline on the lawn. He climbed onto it and peered over. Everything seemed fine.

  He went over the fence where it was shielded from view by the garage. The critical part was just ahead.

  Hunching over, he ran to the cellar entrance. He looked around the corner and checked on the office wing. Hillerström was still sitting with his back to the window. He hadn’t noticed a damn thing.

  The door was unlocked. He didn’t even need to use the picklocks. He cautiously pulled it open. No alarms.

  He found himself in a wine cellar. Dusty bottles lay on shelves along the walls. Further on there was a small spa area with a hot tub and sauna.

  He passed a laundry room where clothes were hung to dry. A pile of white boxer shorts lay on a work surface. Neatly ironed shirts hung from a clothes rack.

  The stairs up to the ground floor creaked softly. He entered a living room. A display cabinet of expensive whisky stood in one corner. Hillerström seemed to be into seventies retro, or else he just had bad taste: next to the window was a bar with beer taps, and one contrast wall was covered in wallpaper that depicted a tropical beach.

  He heard the sound of a radio in the distance. It sounded like Gershwin.

  He passed a narrow servants’ passage and a room with an aquarium and a piano.

  It was inconceivable. He had just been sitting in the apartment in Kransen, playing, and now he was here.

  He entered the kitchen. Floral wallpaper and matching curtains. A brick stove hood. On the other side of a narrow door was the office.

  Hillerström was talking to someone on the phone in there, giving a forced laugh.

  He took up position beside the door. He held the revolver in one hand and the zip ties in the other. He just had to walk in. He was looking forward to it.

  “Jorma . . . what the hell are you doing here?”

  He aimed the revolver at Hillerström’s face as he slowly approached the man.

  “Shut up! Get down on the floor, hands behind your back!”

  “Okay, okay, I hear you . . .”

  Hillerström sank to the floor. Jorma put the ties on him, pulling them as tight as he could.

  Then he yanked him up into a sitting position. He struck him in the face, two hard punches. The man’s right eyebrow swelled up within a few seconds.

  “Take it easy, for God’s sake! What do you want with me?”

  “Shut up, I said!”

  “Come on now, Jorma, let’s discuss this. My daughter is on her way home from school. She just called and said she forgot one of her books . . .”

  The guy suffered from some kind of verbal diarrhea that apparently got worse when he was scared. Jorma pressed the barrel of the gun to his eye. He searched his pockets and found car keys, a tin of snus, and a wallet.

  “Where’s the car . . . in the garage?”

  He received a nod in response.

  “Is the garage door locked?”

  The swollen face twisted into a grimace as someone came in through the front door. There was a dull crash as it slammed shut.

  “Hello . . . Dad . . . I’m home.”

  The cheerful voice of a young girl. Unaware of what was going on in her father’s office.

  “Dad . . . are you there? I’m just going to grab my maths book.”

  “If she enters this room, I’ll shoot you first, and then her.”

  “Okay . . . take it easy.”

  Hillerström cleared his throat to collect himself.

  “I hear you, sweetie . . . I just don’t want to be disturbed in here. I’m working on some important papers. We’ll talk on the phone later, okay?”

  “Okay, Dad . . . I found it. It was on the kitchen table.”

  The front door slammed again, and they could hear steps on the gravel path as the girl vanished.

  Two minutes later, he took Hillerström out through the door that faced the garden. A black Lexus gleamed in the dark light of the garage. Jorma opened the trunk. It was empty aside from a bag of newspapers. He pointed the barrel of the revolver inside. Hillerström climbed over the edge and whimpered as the trunk closed on him.

  The garage door opened by way of a button on the wall. Jorma took a pack of wet wipes from the glovebox and dried the blood off his hands. He fished a cigarette out of a pack and lit it. His fingers trembled as he stuck the key in the ignition.

  A patrol car was waiting at a red light on Drottningsholmsvägen as he approached the intersection next to the Stora Mossen metro stop. Hillerström had gathered his courage again, or maybe he was suddenly panicking. He was kicking wildly in the trunk. A cyclist who had stopped alongside the car looked around in surprise.

  Green light. The cop rolled by without paying him any attention.

  He took a left on Ulvsundavägen and continued northwards through the sparse traffic.

  It was eleven a.m. when Katz arrived at his destination, a yellow-brick building from the late eighties, squeezed between rentable office space and a catering firm. The old tenant’s sign was still mounted on the facade: “Kontiki Self Storage.” He loitered for a few minutes. A taxi stopped to drop off two young men who quickly vanished into the building. A couple walked by from the other direction: a guy with cornrows and an Asian girl. The guy glanced at the buildings, found the street nu
mber, took the girl by the arm, and pulled her through the front door.

  A little while later, Katz found himself in the same building. A man with the arms of a bodybuilder was leaning nonchalantly against the wall just inside. A depressed-looking Rottweiler was tied to the radiator.

  “Looking for someone?” asked the bodybuilder.

  “A friend told me you could pay to watch.”

  “It costs five hundred kronor.”

  Katz handed over a bill, and the man stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “You’re the last one in,” he said. “Follow the hallway to the end.”

  The room was a sort of atrium, with a glass ceiling. An old loading dock ran along one wall. There were no windows and thus no one could see inside. There were about fifteen people there, mostly men. Two half-naked women sat on a sofa, sharing a joint.

  Film equipment was set up: cameras and spotlights. There was an Oriental rug on the cement floor. Plastic palm trees were scattered about the room.

  The guy with the cornrows was standing at the coffee machine and trying to choose a Nespresso pod. His girl was nowhere to be seen. Katz went to stand next to him.

  “Excuse me, but do you know how this thing works?”

  Katz took the pod from him and inserted it into the slot.

  “Thanks. These machines are more complicated than a fucking spaceship. Are you here to watch?”

  “Maybe. You?”

  “My girl’s gonna work. She’s getting ready right now.” The man gave him a nicotine-stained smile as the coffee began to trickle into the paper cup. “Two thousand kronor for three scenes. And tonight I’m giving her a ride to an apartment in Huddinge where she’ll bring in another five thousand—seven grand in less than a day.”

  The coffee was ready. The man blew on it before taking a sip and nodding toward a door at the other end of the room.

  “My fourth one. From Pattaya. I exchange them when their tourist visas run out. There are any number of girls down there who want to come up here and earn some money.”

  Katz struggled to sound friendly.