Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (101 page)

“That’s an interesting question.”

“Would there be, even remotely, a possibility for an educated guess? Kaj Samuelsson didn’t think so, and when your brother took a look, he said it was completely impossible.”

Joona leans forward, his eyes smooth and warm in the shade.

“Your brother was adamant that if you couldn’t solve this riddle, no one could.”

A smile plays at the edges of Axel’s mouth.

“He said that, did he?”

“Yes,” Joona says. “Though I’m not sure what he meant by that.”

“Nor am I.”

“Still, take a close look at this picture. I have a magnifying glass—”

“You want to know when this meeting took place, don’t you,” Axel states in a suddenly grave tone.

Joona nods and takes a magnifying glass out of his briefcase.

“You should be able to see their fingers clearly,” Joona says.

Joona sits back quietly and watches Axel minutely examine the photograph. He thinks if this had been taken in 2008, as they’d been told, his intuition had been wrong. But if these people had met after the arrest order in March 2009, the photograph was proof of criminal activity.

“Yes, I see the positions of their fingers,” Axel says slowly.

“Could you guess which notes they’re playing?” Joona asks expectantly.

Axel sighs, hands the photograph and the magnifying glass back to Joona, and then sings four notes aloud in a soft but clear voice as if it emanated from inside himself. Then he takes up the violin and plays two high, trembling notes.

Joona Linna stands up.

“And this is no joke—”

Axel Riessen looks directly into Joona’s eyes and shakes his head. “No. Martin Beaver is playing a third C, Kikuei is playing a second C, Kazuhide Isomura has a rest, and Clive is playing a four-note pizzicato. That’s what I sang, E, A, A, and C.”

Joona writes this down. He asks, “How exact is your guess?”

“It’s not a guess,” Axel replies.

“Does this combination appear in many pieces? I mean, just by identifying these notes can you deduce the exact piece the Tokyo String Quartet is playing at this moment in this picture?”

“This combination is found in only one place,” Axel replies.

“How do you know that?”

Axel turns away and looks away at a window in the house. Shadows of lacy leaves reflect on the glass.

“I’m sorry, please continue,” Joona says.

“Of course, I have not heard every piece the quartet has played,” Axel says with a shrug.

“But, again, you are sure this exact combination of notes is found in only one specific composition?” Joona asks again.

“I know of only one,” Axel replies calmly. “Measure 156 in the first movement of Béla Bartók’s Second String Quartet.”

Axel picks up the violin and puts it to his shoulder.

“Tranquillo
…
this movement is so wonderfully peaceful, almost like a lullaby. Listen to the first voice,” he says as he begins to play.

Axel’s fingers move tenderly, the notes quiver, the music sings, light and soft. After four measures, he stops.

“Both violins follow each other. Same note, different octaves,” he explains. “It’s almost too beautiful, but then the cello’s A-minor chord makes the violin’s notes dissonant … even though they’re not experienced as dissonant because they’re harmonics, which …”

He stops talking and puts down the violin.

Joona watches him.

“So you’re absolutely certain these musicians are playing Bartók’s Second String Quartet?” Joona says quietly.

“Yes.”

Joona, suddenly jittery, gets up and walks across the patio to stop by the lilac-bush hedge. This is everything he needs to determine the time of the meeting.

He smiles to himself, and immediately smoothes away the triumph with his hand. He turns back, takes a red apple from the bowl on the table, and meets Axel’s questioning gaze.

“So yes, you’re absolutely sure,” Joona confirms again.

Axel nods and Joona gives him the apple. He turns aside to pull his mobile phone from his jacket to call Anja.

“Anja, this is a rush—”

“We’re going to take a sauna together this weekend,” Anja replies.

“I need your help.”

“I know.” Anja giggles.

Joona tries to hide the tension in his voice.

“I need you to check the repertoire of the Tokyo String Quartet for the past ten years.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“Specifically what they played at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt during that time?”

“Yes, they went there annually, in fact.”

“Have they ever played the Bartók Second String Quartet?” There’s a pause as she checks her information.

“Yes, Opus 17. They’ve played it once.”

“Opus 17,” Joona repeats and meets Axel’s eyes. Axel nods.

“What?” Anja asks.

“So when did they play that piece?”

“The thirteenth of November 2009.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

The people in the photograph met eight months after the arrest warrant for Sudan’s president
, Joona thinks.
Pontus Salman lied about the date. They met in November 2009. And all of this carnage has come from that—the brutal deaths of so many and perhaps even more in the future.

Joona reaches out and absentmindedly brushes some lilac blossoms, and he can smell the barbecue on an outdoor grill in a yard somewhere. He thinks he must call Saga Bauer about this breakthrough.

“Was that it?” Anja says on the other end.

“Yes.”

“Can you use the little word?”

“Oh, yes …
Kiitokseksi saat pusun
,” Joona says in Finnish.
As thanks, I’ll give you a kiss.

Joona ends the call.

Pontus Salman lied
, Joona thinks again.
There were no exceptions or loopholes to a complete weapons embargo.

But Agathe al-Haji wanted to buy ammunition. And the others wanted money. None of them could have cared less about human rights or international law.

Pontus Salman thought that one truth—openly pointing himself out in the photo—would obscure the big lie: the date they met.

Joona pictures Pontus Salman in his mind’s eye: an oddly placid man with no emotions in his face.

Arms deals. Arms deals and the money they bring
, the whisper in his head tells him.
All of this is due to weapons smuggling: the photograph, the blackmail attempt, the dead people.

He pictures Saga Bauer standing up after their conversation with Salman. She’d left the marks of her five fingers on his desk as a silent testimony.

March 2009. That’s when the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for direct involvement in the extermination of three ethnic groups in Darfur. At that moment, all the usual supplies of ammunition from the rest of the world stopped. Sudan’s army still had their weapons—their machine guns and assault rifles—but they would be running low on, and soon be out of, ammunition. The strangled supply would strangle the militia in Darfur. Except these four—Carl Palmcrona, Pontius Salman, Raphael Guidi, and Agathe al-Haji—had chosen to put themselves above international law.

“What did you find out?” Axel asks as he stands up.

“What?” Joona is startled out of his thoughts.

“Could you determine the date of that meeting?”

“Yes.”

Axel tries to catch Joona’s eyes.

“And?” Axel persists.

“I have to go,” Joona says.

“Did they meet after the arrest warrant for al-Bashir? They can’t have! I have to know if that’s what they’ve done!”

Joona looks directly into Axel’s eyes. His eyes are calm and bright.

Saga Bauer lies on her stomach on the fluffy white rug. Her eyes are closed as Stefan slowly kisses her back. Her light hair spreads like a waterfall onto the floor. Stefan’s face feels warm as it moves across her skin.

Keep going
, she thinks.

His lips are light, tickling brushstrokes between her shoulder blades. She forces herself to keep still and shudders from pleasure.

Carl Unander-Scharin’s erotic duet for cello and mezzo-soprano flows from the speakers of her music system. The voices of the woman and the cello cross rhythmically and repetitively like entwined trickles in a dark stream. Saga lies completely still, desire rising in her body. She is breathing through a half-open mouth and she licks her lips.

His hands glide over her waist, around her hips, and then effortlessly he lifts her buttocks.

No one I’ve ever met before has touched me so softly
, Saga thinks as she smiles to herself.

She hears her own moan as she feels the touch of his tongue.

He carefully turns her body over. Impressions of stripes are left on her skin from the rug.

“Keep going,” she whispers.

“Or you’ll shoot me,” he says.

She nods and smiles openly. Wisps of Stefan’s black hair have curled around his face, and his narrow ponytail is hanging over one of her breasts.

“Come, come,” Saga whispers.

She pulls his face down to hers and kisses him and her tongue meets his, warm and wet.

He quickly wriggles out of his jeans and lays down naked over her. She lifts her legs and feels him push inside. She moans a long moan and then breathes more quickly. They hesitate for a moment to marvel at the feeling of being beyond nearness. Stefan pushes softly. His narrow hips move carefully. Saga runs her fingers over his shoulder blades, his back, his buttocks.

Then the telephone rings.
Of course
, her thought snaps out. From the heap of clothes on the sofa, her mobile phone sounds persistently with ZZ Top’s ‘Blue Jeans Blues.’ It is well buried beneath her white linen chemise, underwear, and jeans pulled inside out.

“Let it ring,” she whispers.

“It’s your work phone,” he says.

“Fuck it, it’s not important,” she mumbles and tries to hold him tight to her.

But he pulls out, gets to his knees, and searches through her jeans’ pockets while the phone nags insistently. Finally, he turns her jeans upside down and the phone falls out. It’s stopped ringing. Then a small ding announces there’s a message on the voicemail.

Twenty minutes later, Saga is running through the hallway of the police station, the tips of her hair still damp from her quick shower. Her body still vibrates, desirous and unsatisfied. Her underwear and jeans feel uncomfortable, and not quite right.

Anja Larsson’s plump face pokes up over her computer, questioning, as Saga runs to Joona’s office. He waits in the middle of the floor. His grey eyes give her a sharp glance and she feels a shudder of unease.

“Close the door,” he says grimly.

She shuts it immediately and turns back to him. She’s quietly panting.

“Axel Riessen remembers every single piece of music he’s ever heard. Every note from every instrument in any symphony orchestra.”

“And?”

“He knew immediately which piece the string quartet was playing. It was Béla Bartók’s Second String Quartet.”

“Okay, you were right. Now we know what they were playing, but we—”

“This photograph was taken in November 2009,” Joona says sharply.

“So those devils ignored the embargo. They were doing a deal for arms,” she says bitterly.

“Right.”

“And they planned that the ammunition was to be siphoned into Darfur,” she whispers.

Joona nods while the muscles in his jaw tighten. “Carl Palmcrona should never have been there. Not with Pontus Salman, not with anyone—”

“And here they are together, caught in a photograph,” Saga says triumphantly. “Toasting a deal with Raphael Guidi and al-Haji.”

“That’s right.” Joona meets Saga’s summer-blue eyes.

“They say the really big fish always get away,” Saga murmurs. “People have always said it … most people realise it … but it’s true. The big ones almost always go free pretty much.”

They silently gaze down at the photograph again. Four people in a private box. The champagne. The expressions on their faces. The musicians playing on Paganini’s instruments at the Alte Oper. “Now we’ve figured out the first riddle,” Saga says and takes a deep breath. “A dirty deal to get arms to Sudan.”

“Palmcrona was there. The money in his account must surely have come from bribes,” Joona says slowly. “But at the same time, Palmcrona did not authorise this deal. It would be impossible. He could never get it through—”

Joona is interrupted by the phone in his jacket. He answers, listens in silence, and then ends the call. He looks at Saga.

“Axel Riessen has figured out what’s going on,” Joona says. “He knows what the photograph means.”

A lone boy made of iron, fifteen centimetres high, sits with his arms wrapped around his knees. The statue is located in the back garden of the Finnish church in Gamla Stan. Axel Riessen is three metres away, leaning on the ochre wall, eating noodles from a carton. He waves with his chopsticks as Joona and Saga walk through the gate.

“Tell us what you’ve figured out,” Joona says abruptly.

Axel nods, puts the carton of food down on the windowsill of the church, wipes his mouth with a paper napkin, and then takes time to shake hands with Joona and Saga.

“You said you understand what the photograph means,” Joona repeats.

Axel looks down, takes a deep breath, and then begins to speak. “It’s all about Kenya,” he says. “The four people in the box are celebrating an agreement on a huge shipment of ammunition to Kenya.”

He stops.

“Keep going,” Joona prompts.

“Kenya is buying 1.25 million units of licenced, manufactured 5.56?x?45 millimetre ammunition.”

“For automatic rifles,” Saga says.

“Supposedly an export to Kenya,” Axel says. “But they’ll never see it. It will be diverted to Sudan and the militia in Darfur. It suddenly all came to me. Agathe al-Haji is the buyer’s representative; therefore, it is for Sudan.”

“How does Kenya fit in?” Joona asks.