He shook his head.
“I’m glad to be able to work on something else. Grateful . . . though maybe that’s not the right word.”
They continued their walk, heading toward Hornsberg; they crossed the pedestrian bridge to Kungsholms Strand and turned back toward the city. She realized that her current case had started buzzing in her mind again, the list of names of possible front men. It was the workaholic inside her, refusing to take time off. If she understood correctly, the names had come from tapped phones. She ought to take a closer look at anyone who was listed as an owner of a new company, she thought. The Swedish Companies Registration Office had a helpline.
“Like I said, if there’s anything you need help with, just ask.”
Katz, she thought. She must not forget him, let him vanish. Hoffman was her boss and colleague, nothing more.
“Maybe you can help with something else. Does the name Ramón Suárez mean anything to you?”
“No. Does it have to do with your case?”
“An old friend needs help finding a missing person. It’s more vice than financial crime. How about Peter Wallin?”
Hoffman’s work instincts seemed to awaken.
“Oh yes, I know quite a bit about him. He ran a strip club in the city in the late 2000s. Wild Horses. He was under suspicion of cooking the books for a while, and being a pimp on top of that, but he managed to wiggle out of the trap just before they had him. Kind of a creep. He eventually ended up in the porn industry. But I don’t know what he’s up to these days.”
“Did you ever hear the name ‘Jenny’ in connection with Wallin? A prostitute?”
“To be honest, I try to forget everything about my time in vice.”
She let the conversation die out. A little while later, they arrived at Sankt Eriks Bridge.
“Thanks for the company, Eva.”
He had placed a hand on her shoulder. That’s just the sort of person he was, she thought. He touched people to show he appreciated them. She had seen it in the office; he didn’t have the usual Nordic stiffness. He was physical, with both male and female colleagues. Sensual, but with no ulterior motives.
She felt the warmth streaming from his hand. She didn’t want to like his touch . . . and yet she very much did.
“I’ll get the bus from here,” he said. “Next week it’ll be Norra Djurgården. One of our chamber commissioners lives out there. I’m planning to ask him to show me around his neighborhood.”
So this was just a plan he’d put in place, she thought; it had to do with the welfare of his staff, nothing more. She ought to have realized that.
The bus stopped five meters away from them. He gave her an awkward wave as he stepped on. She watched him for a long time, his outline through the back window, as he took out a paperback book and started reading it.
As soon as she got home, she called the Swedish Companies Registration Office and got hold of an on-duty administrator. She briefly explained her reason for calling. It only took a few minutes for him to bring up the data.
“Two of the companies are active,” he said. “One of them imports perishables from Denmark. Meats and cheeses. Danish salami, and those cheeses that smell like sweaty feet. The other deals in clothing and has contracts with a number of Italian denim designers. The third, a real-estate company, was very recently liquidated by the minority shareholder, who lives in Split.”
“Why wasn’t it the majority shareholder?”
“He recently passed away, a certain Zoran Abramović.”
At least there was one name she could cross off the list, she thought. A dead man wouldn’t be of much help. But the real-estate branch was something her Bosnian colleagues had asked her to keep an eye out for.
“The company was registered with us in mid-July. The liquidation was finalized exactly two weeks ago. That’s all I can give you right now.”
After she hung up, she took a turn through the children’s room. She ought to spend the day cleaning, she thought when she saw the mess inside, or take a trip out to IKEA and buy the vanity table she’d promised Lisa over a year ago.
Become a better mother.
She went back to the living room. A half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s stood on the coffee table. She had the urge to pour a big glass, go numb, maybe for the rest of the weekend, because she couldn’t stand the loneliness, but she managed to tamp down the impulse.
She turned on her computer instead. For lack of anything better to do, she googled the name “Zoran Abramović” and was startled to see all the hits that popped up on her screen. The man had been shot by the police during an armored-truck robbery a few weeks earlier.
She stood up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. The name was ringing a bell in the back of her head, but it was so faint that she barely noticed it.
When she returned to the computer, she found that a digital copy of the preliminary investigation of the robbery was available on the Prosecution Authority’s server. Three accomplices had been apprehended, and none of them had uttered a peep during interrogation. Abramović had been shot in a firefight with a task force team. An unidentified robber had managed to escape. The police had opened an investigation into the shooting death.
She wrote a quick email to the Internal Affairs unit in Kungsbron to ask if she could obtain a copy of their report. She knew she wouldn’t get an answer until they opened again on Monday, but now she was out of excuses to put off cleaning.
She went back to the kids’ room and tidied up the worst of the mess. She had just got out the vacuum cleaner when she heard a ding from her computer.
A woman from Internal Affairs had emailed back. Yet another divorced workaholic, she thought as she clicked on the attached file.
She read the report with a growing sense that something was wrong. The officer who had shot and killed Abramović was referred to simply as “NN” in the report. On the surface, it appeared that everything had been done by the book, with debriefings and several lengthy interrogations. The officer had explained that he had been left with no choice because Abramović had threatened his life and fired a volley of shots from his automatic weapon. None of the others on the task force had been nearby to see what had happened. Case closed. And what’s more, no chance of getting a name. The identity of the officer in question was protected.
She called up the woman who’d emailed her to ask a few follow-up questions, after which she took a taxi to the office.
She turned on the computer in her office, at the very end of the deserted hallway, and accessed Kobra again. She searched the intranet methodically in the echoing weekend silence of the deserted building, but it wasn’t long before she came across an interesting coincidence.
According to one investigative report, which had been carried out for an unrelated reason and compiled by the criminal police a few months previously, a certain Lars-Göran Hillerström, a suspected middleman, had met sporadically with an employee of the security firm that had been the target of the robbery. Joakim Åslund, from the firm’s logistics division, had committed suicide two weeks ago.
And Hillerström, she found in a recent report from the murder squad, had recently been shot while out jogging in Judarskogen. A gang-related crime, according to a memo. The case was lowest on the priority list, which included a dozen murder and manslaughter cases that were currently under investigation in the county.
Furthermore, as the log noted, Abramović had called the police tip line one month before his death.
Little India was on the lower level of Kungshallen, a three-story food court at Hötorget. Jorma went there at lunchtime three days in a row and sat at the table closest to the self-service counter, his hood drawn up over his head. He sneaked glances at the counter, looking for men who fit the description. He fingered his beard, which he’d let grow out. It would have to suffice as a disguise for the time being. He read newspapers people had left behind. No one was writing about the robbery anymore. There was hardly anything about Hillerström
either. The underworld was self-cleaning. The police didn’t seem to expend much effort when dealing with gang murders.
On the third day, he gave up. At the counter, he waved over a teenage Indian kid with a downy mustache whom he’d seen working every day. He asked if they had a regular client of around thirty, tall with thick blond hair, who always ordered the same chicken meal.
“Yeah, we do. We call him the chicken tikka man. Why do you ask?”
“I need to get hold of him. It’s private.”
“Should I ask him to contact you if he shows up?”
“No. In fact, I was planning to surprise him.”
He scribbled his mobile number on a receipt that lay on the counter and handed it over along with a five-hundred-kronor bill.
“Call me next time he shows up here, as fast as you can. I’ll give you another five hundred when you do.”
“There won’t be any trouble, I hope?”
“No, no, it’ll be a happy reunion.”
The guy’s eyes roved about the hall; he looked over at the escalators and back at Jorma.
“You’re not going to believe it . . . but there he comes.”
Jorma turned around slowly and saw two men coming down the escalator; one of them had white-blond hair and was a head taller than the other. He placed another bill on the counter.
“Thanks. Just act normal. Don’t even look in my direction.”
The food court was almost full by now. Office drones from the city. Tourists and shopaholics who had taken a break from shopping at PUB and on Drottninggatan to eat food from a dozen international kitchens.
The men had taken a seat at the table closest to the escalators. They ate lunch as they conversed. Jorma took an empty tray and moved closer. He pulled his hood closer around his face. He tried to figure out what they were talking about, but it was impossible.
The shorter man was powerfully built, around twenty-five. He was average-looking. The blond man was a bit older. He had prominent cheekbones and pale eyebrows. Thick, nearly white hair. Jorma tried to picture him with a balaclava covering his face, but his brain couldn’t form the image.
At one point he took an earbud from his jacket pocket and showed it to the other man. Surveillance gear. Jorma was absolutely positive now: these guys were cops.
“Excuse me, is it okay if I take a seat here?”
The voice came from behind him. He turned around to discover a skinny junkie type holding a tray of food. Unnaturally large pupils. Currently high.
“Where the hell did all these people come from? This is worse than the Christmas rush. If you just shove over a little, I’ll have enough room.”
The shorter cop was looking their way; Jorma turned so his back was to the cop.
“Sorry, I’m waiting for someone,” he said. “Did you check to see if there are tables one floor up?”
“No. It’s fucking full up everywhere.”
His mind was working in high gear. They would land on the cops’ radar any second now.
“I’ll eat fast, I promise. And if a spot opens up anywhere else, I’ll move right away.”
The man gestured toward the busy tables behind them.
“The police are here,” Jorma said quietly. “If I were you, I’d get out of here damn quick.”
The guy looked at him in surprise and gulped, then nodded gratefully and vanished into the crowd with his tray.
Jorma’s heart was pounding. He was prepared to get up and run at the slightest odd movement. But nothing happened. When he turned around, he discovered that the shorter man had left the table. But the blond man was still there. Jorma tried to catch a glimpse of his hands, his right hand, but the man was searching his pockets for something.
Then he took it out—a mobile phone. He looked at the screen.
Half his little finger was missing. The image came back to Jorma, the one that had been blocked by his shock—the man in the woods, removing his glove and flexing his hand, one finger of which was too short. It was the same guy.
He followed him through the drizzle, heading west on Kungsgatan. The man was walking fast; he turned left on Drottninggatan, passed all the knickknack shops and tourist traps disguised as restaurants, and crossed Apelbergsgatan before stopping at a traffic light.
Twenty meters behind him, Jorma slowed down, allowing others to walk by him, keeping an eye on the man through the gaps between umbrellas. The man walked up Drottninggatsbacken and took a left onto Tegnérlunden.
It was less crowded here. Just a group of schoolkids on their way to classes at Adolf Fredrik’s Music School. Jorma let the distance between them increase. Once the man was out of sight, he walked up the little hill next to the Strindberg statue. He caught sight of him again. He was walking down toward the Barnhus Bridge.
The man was walking purposefully, block after block through Kungsholmen; he passed the Sankt Erik Eye Hospital, then he crossed the street and turned onto Celsiusgatan. Then he suddenly stopped short, bent down, and tied his shoe. A door to Jorma’s left swung open and a young girl on crutches came out. He gave her a friendly nod and slid inside. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the cop turn around and cast a long glance in his direction.
A minute later, when he dared to come out again, the man was gone. Jorma jogged down toward Kungsholmsgatan. He rounded the corner and stopped in a different doorway. He saw the outline of the gangly figure taking something from a car in one of the parking spots in the police car park and then passing through the glassed-in entryway. He made an internal call from a wall phone inside, waving at a uniformed colleague with the receiver pressed to his ear. He walked through the automatic doors, vanishing from sight.
Jennifer Roslund. Once he had a name, it was easy to find out about her. Born in 1987 in Stockholm. Raised in Vallentuna by her mother, Beata Roslund, a nurse at Danderyd Hospital. Her father’s name was Carl-Adam Tell. He was a former chief doctor at Karolinska Hospital and before that had owned a small pharmaceutical company that held patents on allergy medications; he had been dead for a year.
After gymnasium, Jennifer applied to a folk high school in Skåne. That was how Katz had found his first lead on her. During her studies at Österlen—life drawing, oil painting, sculpture, all in the “picturesque surroundings and creative environment” that the school’s kitschy website advertised—she had started using her mother’s name and Jenny instead of Jennifer.
For someone from her generation, she had left few digital traces behind; she wasn’t on social media, didn’t show up on Instagram or Facebook. And there were only two photos of her online, at least under her real name. One was with her folk high school class, taken on a field trip to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2006, and the other was from the same year, when she had participated in a poll in a Skåne daily paper and responded “yes” to the question of whether she would ever consider becoming vegan.
Starting in 2008, she was missing from every Swedish registry. According to the national registration database, she had emigrated. Her last known address—the one the Tax Authority demanded before releasing their grip on her—was a P.O. box in Zurich.
Katz stepped out of the car when he noticed the woman who had stopped her Land Rover outside the clubhouse. He watched her remove a checked golf bag from the trunk, place it on a trolley, and scan the car park for the person who had called her an hour earlier to find out if he could meet her and ask a few questions about her daughter.
She knew who he was even before he had time to introduce himself.
“Beata Roslund,” she said, with a surprisingly firm handshake. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m supposed to meet someone by the short course. It might be best if you follow me over to the driving range. We can talk on the way.”
She was a slender woman in her late fifties who looked like a slightly faded model. Lanky legs, flat-chested. Her face would have been beautifully sculpted it if weren’t for the scar tissue on her left cheek and the black patch over one eye. She had described her ap
pearance to Katz over the phone, joking that he should be on the lookout for a woman who looked like she could scare the daylights out of small children.
“So you think something bad might have happened to Jennifer,” she said as they followed a path to the greens of Täby Golf Club. “That she and her boyfriend might have been involved in blackmail. Isn’t this a job for the police?”
“Maybe. But someone would have to report her missing first.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“And you say her boyfriend is dead. Murdered.”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“Don’t be alarmed if I seem blunt. But my daughter has spent her entire adult life placing herself and others in catastrophic situations. Whatever it is that’s happened to her, I no longer care.”
She turned onto a new path and Katz followed her.
“How long has it been since you last saw her?” he asked.
“Face to face? Almost six years.” She lifted her eye patch, flipping it up onto her forehead. “Since she did this . . .”
Her cornea was milky; the blind eye stared at nothing. There was more scar tissue on her cheek; her skin looked like melted plastic.
“I answered the door and noticed that she had some sort of container in her hand, that she was aiming for my eyes. I would have gone completely blind if I hadn’t managed to turn my head a bit. She threw acid in my face. Because I wouldn’t give her money for drugs.”
Heroin muted every life-sustaining feeling, Katz thought as he looked away from the disfigured eye. Every shred of empathy. Hadn’t he been just the same? Capable of almost anything?
“Jennifer is an evil person,” she said. “I know it sounds horrible to say that about your own child, but it’s true. She wasn’t born evil . . . I don’t believe in original sin. The accident turned her evil.”
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