Ultimatum

by Anders de la Motte

  They caught up with the motorcycle just before the small village that consisted of little more than a cluster of bungalows and a gas station. The motorcycle turned off at the gas station and pulled up at its little hot dog stand. Without saying anything to Amante, Julia got out of the car. She walked toward the stand, but when she was almost there she pulled out her phone and pretended to take a call. The biker, a man in his fifties, had taken his helmet off and was chatting to the attractive woman in the stand—she was maybe half his age—before she put together his order. The smell of fast food reminded Julia that it had been a while since she had eaten anything.

  She waited until the man had gotten his food, put his helmet back on, and driven off before walking up to the window.

  “Hello,” she said.

  The woman behind the counter returned the greeting.

  “Regulars, eh?” Julia said, nodding toward the disappearing motorbike. “I’ve just come from the nursing home. It was the staff who told me to come here.”

  She smiled, trying to come across as friendly and unthreatening as she read the menu.

  “Well . . .” The young woman hesitated over her reply, but Julia’s smile seemed to convince her. “You could say that. Some of them stop off here practically every night.”

  “Best place for an evening burger, the girl in the gatehouse said. You probably know her: fair hair, keeps herself in shape. Maybe a little grumpy?”

  “Mia. Yes, she can be a bit sullen.” The young woman gave a wry smile and Julia reflected it back to her.

  “Mia—that was it. Smart too. You seem to know what’s going on as well. Who works where and so on.”

  “This is a pretty small place: everyone knows everyone else. The doctors live in town, but most of the other staff up there come from around here.”

  “You don’t happen to know if anyone’s left recently?” Julia said. “Someone who maybe lost their job last winter, something like that?”

  Another long shot, based on something Security Mia had said. People have lost their job for less. But Julia could tell from the evasive look in the young woman’s eyes that she’d guessed right.

  She leaned over the counter and held out her police ID. She saw the woman’s eyes open wide.

  “It’s vital that we talk to that person, right away.”

  • • •

  The man looking out from the gap in the door was wearing underpants, a T-shirt, and a grubby dressing gown, even though it was late afternoon. His eyes were red and a cloying, burned smell that Julia recognized all too well drifted out across the crooked front steps. She cautiously took hold of the door handle from the outside.

  “Eskil Svensson?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Food delivery from Isa in the kiosk.” She held up the plastic bag and let it dangle from her forefinger. The smell from it made her stomach rumble.

  The man in the robe seemed just as hungry as she was. He reached out one hand for the bag without letting go of the door with the other.

  At that moment Julia tugged the door toward her, which made the man lose his balance and tumble out onto the porch, where he landed at their feet. Before he had time to react, she put one knee against the back of his neck and twisted his arm behind his back. Then she winked at Amante.

  “Police,” he said, sounding rather breathless. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  Four

  “The girls are watching television. I was thinking of going for a run round the Altorp track. I’ll be gone an hour at the most. Then I thought we could have a nice, cozy evening together.”

  Stenberg’s wife came into his study with a cup of coffee in her hand. She put it down at a safe distance from the keyboard, leaned over, and kissed him on the head.

  “You look tired.” She ran her hand through his hair, forcing him to look up from the screen. “Is it anything in particular? Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No,” Stenberg muttered. “Just a lot going on.”

  “Is the prosecutor general causing trouble again?”

  He nodded absentmindedly and looked at the screen again.

  “The prime minister trusts you, Jesper, now more than ever. The fact is that the whole party trusts you, so you can’t let little things like that get in your way. We need a modernized justice system; we’ve needed one for ages. Otherwise people will gradually lose faith in the system. The contract between citizens and the state, all the things we discussed ad infinitum at law school. You already had a vision back then, a conviction that made people take notice of you. It made me notice you.”

  “I know, darling. But trying to reform state institutions is a constant uphill struggle: various government and other entities everywhere having their say on things, with everyone terrified of losing influence.”

  “What about Wallin? Can’t you let him do some of the heavy lifting?”

  Stenberg felt his jaw tighten. Even here at home in his study, his inner sanctum, Wallin cast his baleful shadow.

  Karolina raised her eyebrows. “Is it Wallin who’s the problem?”

  Damn. She knew him far too well. Noticed the slightest change in his expression. She could even hear things he didn’t say. Keeping his affair with Sophie Thorning secret all those years had taken all his willpower and concentration. Yet he knew he probably wouldn’t have been able to lie if Karolina had confronted him, if she’d asked straight out if he was being unfaithful and looked at him the way she was right now. Fortunately she never had.

  He filled his lungs, then slowly breathed out through his mouth.

  “What’s this all about?” Her tone of voice was perfect, a fitting combination of concern and empathy. Karolina would have been a brilliant lawyer, but instead she had put his career ahead of her own. Taken on the role of supportive wife and mother to his children. Her grandfather had been foreign minister; her father, Karl-Erik, was a member of the party’s inner circle. She had opened doors for him that he could never even have dreamed of. And how had he thanked her? With betrayal, lies, and infidelity.

  For a couple of moments the feeling he had had last winter was back, the conviction that he ought to tell her everything. Beg for her forgiveness. But he couldn’t ask that of her. It wasn’t Karolina’s responsibility to lighten his burden.

  “Oscar Wallin . . .” He took a sip of his coffee to make what he was thinking of saying sound less loaded. “He’s very ambitious. You saw him with John Thorning. Wallin is forming new alliances, and, to be honest, I’ve started to have doubts about his loyalty.”

  Karolina leaned against the edge of the desk.

  “Wallin couldn’t be national police chief. We agreed on that. You, me, and Daddy. Appointing Eva Swensk gained you support within the party, support you’re going to need in the future. We’re going to need . . .”

  She paused and stroked his hair again. He liked her hands, even though she herself didn’t. Those long, strong fingers. The hands of a person who could be practically anything she wanted to be.

  “Right now it’s more important than ever to think strategically. You have to see things in a longer perspective, not just focus on the present. If you’re convinced that the goal is the right one, you mustn’t hesitate to make unpalatable decisions. Keep your eye on the prize.”

  He shut his eyes. He’d seen this trick before and was starting to get a bit tired of it. Karolina’s lips were moving, but the voice coming out of her mouth belonged to someone else.

  “If we win the election, the prime minister will probably step down at the next party conference. Go out at the top. And if we lose . . .”

  She pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.

  “If we lose, he’ll have to accept the consequences and resign at once. Either way, the party will be looking for a younger, more energetic successor. Someone whom can reform politics the way he�
��s reforming the justice system.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Stenberg said, but more and more often these days he wasn’t sure whom he was replying to: Karolina, or her father.

  • • •

  Julia Gabrielsson held up the little plastic bag of marijuana she’d found on Eskil Svensson’s coffee table. Waved it slowly in front of his pallid face.

  “So, to sum up: a mysterious man calling himself Frank contacted you early in February and paid you to take ­messages to and from Sarac inside the home, and then a bit more for helping Sarac escape. But that’s as much as you know.”

  Eskil was sitting on the sofa between her and Amante, shaking his head.

  “And you don’t know where this Frank came from or what he wanted with Sarac?”

  “Like I said, he showed up in the pub one evening and started buying me drinks. Then he asked for a favor. It didn’t sound too difficult and the money was good. Then it sort of grew . . .” He pulled a pained expression and seemed to be avoiding looking at the bag of marijuana between Julia’s fingers.

  “And you started to acquire a taste for the money. I get that.” She put the bag down on the table in front of Eskil. “This is quite a stash. I’d guess about a year in prison, wouldn’t you say, Amante?”

  “Maybe two,” he said somberly as he stared at Eskil. “Possession with intent to supply—that’s serious stuff.”

  Julia was having trouble keeping a straight face. Amante was a fast learner.

  Eskil turned even paler. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “Come off it. That’s my weed. I’m not some fucking dealer. Look, I’ve told you all I know. The only thing I did was get the master key copied. Then we decided what time was best if you wanted to escape without being spotted. Sarac got out and hid in the trunk of my car during the shift change. Then I let him out at the railway station and gave him a train ticket, a travel card for Stockholm, and a bit of cash. That’s all.”

  “And then you got caught,” Amante said.

  “No, for fuck’s sake! Haven’t you been listening?” Eskil threw his arms out. “They accused me of stealing drugs.”

  “The sleeping pills and tranquilizers that you gave Sarac.”

  “That’s right. I understand the tranquilizers. I mean, the guy wasn’t well. But he already had a bag full of sleeping pills, so I can’t see why he wanted two more. But he said it was ­important—that he needed to have exactly twenty-five before he left. Otherwise he wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “So it was the pills that got you the sack?” Julia said.

  “Shit, you two are unbelievable,” Eskil groaned. “Aren’t there any entrance requirements for joining the police? I’ve already told you what happened. No one fired me. They couldn’t prove anything, so I was given six months’ wages in return for handing in my resignation. I didn’t want to work there anyway. You’ve seen what it’s like there. It’s a fascist setup. The staff have to give urine samples, all kinds of crap like that . . .”

  “This mysterious Frank,” Julia said. “Tell us about him again.”

  Eskil let out a theatrical sigh.

  “Like I’ve already said a thousand times: he and Sarac had been on that island together last winter. Where a load of people got killed. That’s why he wanted to talk to Sarac.”

  “And you don’t remember anything else about Frank apart from the fact that he might have had a slight accent, paid well, and acted like a cop?”

  “No. I mean, it’s several months ago now. Actually, he did have a bit of a limp, even though he looked like he was in good shape.”

  Julia started waving the bag of weed again. “What do you think about getting a sniffer dog out here?” she said to Amante. “Turn this apartment upside down. Maybe ask the neighbors if they’ve noticed drug dealing going on here.”

  “Do you want me to call right away?”

  “Probably just as well. Eskil here isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. I doubt we’re going to get anything else useful out of him.”

  She turned toward Eskil and could almost see the cogs turning inside his head. Amante slowly got to his feet and pulled out his cell phone.

  “Wait,” Eskil said. “Wait, for fuck’s sake! I’ve got something you might want to see.”

  He started to dig about in the pockets of his dressing gown. He fished out a smartphone with a cracked screen and started to look through it.

  “Here,” he said eagerly, holding the phone out to Julia. “Sarac made me take a picture.”

  The screen showed a grainy photograph of a man with sharp features. He was half facing away and seemed unaware that he was being photographed.

  “That’s Frank. See what I mean about him looking like a cop?”

  Five

  The rain started falling just as they passed the sports ground on the edge of the village. Tiny drops to start with, barely enough for Julia to switch the windshield wipers on. But gradually the rain got harder, wiping out the distinction between the summer’s evening and the forest spreading out on either side of the road.

  “What do we do now?” Amante said. “Call Pärson and tell him that Sarac isn’t in the home after all? That we’ve got a picture of the man who lured him out and probably killed him?”

  Julia shook her head.

  “It’s too soon to talk to Pärson. This is the Security Police’s case now, and you heard me promise to let go of it completely. And seeing as it was Pärson who tried to convince us that Sarac was in that home, I’m not entirely sure where he stands. But regardless of who we go to with all this, it would be better to wait until we’ve got something more definite than a grainy digital photograph and a first name.”

  “So what are you thinking, then?”

  “I don’t know yet. I need some time to think.”

  Besides, I’m still not entirely sure where you stand either, she thought. You seem a bit too eager to press on with this case.

  “Sure,” Amante said. “We’ve got at least a four-hour drive home, so take as much time as you need.” He started fiddling with the car radio and managed to find three different commercials before he ended up with a soppy Whitney Houston ballad.

  They were approaching a junction beside an old house. From a distance it looked almost abandoned, but as they drove past, Julia could see the ghostly glow of a television in one of the windows.

  “Just think, people choose to live out here,” she said, mostly to give her brain something else to think about for a few minutes. “So far away from absolutely everything.”

  “A surprising number of people are prepared to die for the chance to do that,” Amante muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  He looked up. Didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d spoken out loud.

  “Just that a surprising number of people are prepared to risk their lives to get here. Hundreds of thousands of them.”

  Julia saw an opening and decided to make the most of it.

  “Lampedusa must be a nightmare. Isn’t it? I can understand if you’d rather not talk about it.”

  “At its worst, there were two boats arriving each week.” Amante’s voice was lower all of a sudden, more monotonous. “Well, maybe not boats, exactly. Some of them were little more than a small hull and an engine. The bigger ships were even worse. No food, no toilets, hardly any drinking water. Cargo holds so packed that the air sometimes ran out down there. Did you know . . .”

  The words seemed to catch in his throat.

  “Did you know that dead people can stay on their feet if they’re packed together tightly enough? Rigor mortis turns them into statues. Men, women, children, whole families. If you listen carefully you can almost hear them still calling for help.”

  He turned away. The radio went on playing the slushy song.

  “Three thousand dead each year, but the EU is reduc
ing the funding. They’d rather spend billions of euros rescuing banks than spend a few million saving people who happen to have the wrong color skin.”

  “And you said that out loud to someone who didn’t like it?”

  He smiled that little smile again. “More times than I should have. A lot more.”

  “So what happened?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Not a damn thing. The boats kept coming, people kept dying.”

  “And you were transferred?”

  “You could put it like that.”

  Something in his voice told her the conversation was over, and she resisted the temptation to ask any more questions. At least for the time being.

  They passed a road sign. Just under three hundred kilometers until they were home. Sooner or later she would have to make her mind up. It would be difficult to carry on with this case on her own. Besides, she was starting to appreciate ­Amante’s company, albeit slightly reluctantly. The smile that was so hard to read. The unconventional way he went about tackling problems. The way he quickly adapted to different situations. But, perhaps most of all, the way he talked about the victims, the dead.

  “My dad was in the police,” she said. “My grandfather too. They didn’t really talk that much about police work at home. Mom didn’t like it. She probably didn’t want me to hear their stories. But I still realized—worked out that what they did was something different, something you couldn’t really understand if you hadn’t experienced it yourself. That was probably what made me want to become a police officer. To start with, I thought it was all about adrenaline. About putting yourself in danger. It took me several years to realize that it was actually about something else entirely. About seeing people when they’re at their very worst. Drunk, distraught, furious, humiliated, beaten up, raped, or dead. About seeing that and trying to do something about it. About failing more often than succeeding, but still not giving up.”

  She fell silent, thinking about Sarac’s mutilated body. And his distorted grimace.