To the Top of the Mountain (35 page)

Hultin was silent. He was thinking. What would happen if Söderstedt didn’t know what he was talking about? Not much, a failed crackdown, no risks on the scale that there had been with the Kentucky Killer. It was quite vague, and God knows how Söderstedt had found the mystical Orpheus and Eurydice. The Florento sisters?
Gula Tidningen
?
THIS WEEK
’
S
‘
I LOVE YOU
’? Could it be Nedic behind it? Throwing them off the scent using the restaurant’s phones? But would Hultin ever forgive himself if he let the chance go by? And would the A-Unit be able to forgive him?

He looked at the crooked red line on the map. Was it really Lindberg’s men? A golden balaclava . . . Småland, Skåne, Halland, Västmanland . . . It was true, it was no chance route. They had turned. A bend down by Ängelholm, and then northwards. They were in pursuit. And taking the chance to get hold of some titbits on the way to the real trophy. It made sense. And the blue line? Zigzagging through western Sweden. Why? And the yellow? Dalarna? But the dates fitted perfectly. They had all begun at the same time, all three of them. The robberies and the messages in
Gula Tidningen
had begun the very same day, Midsummer’s Eve, the day the Sickla Slaughter had taken place. And, sure enough, the red and blue lines were going to collide. For the first and surely the last time. And, of course, Eurydice had to be protected. She – if it was a she – would, in all probability, die.

Jan-Olov Hultin nodded. Briefly. Neutrally.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’re going to Skövde.’

37

IT WAS 10.26
on Saturday 10 July.

He was lying in a flea-bitten bed in a little campsite cottage just outside Arboga, beginning his third weekend alone. He wondered how much longer he would be able to bear it.

Four hundred and one, another one gone.

The rhyme was mocking him. How many safe-deposit boxes with those now-hypnotic numbers – 4, 0, 1 – had he tried the key in? Fifty? Even more? He didn’t know. The weekdays were like a haze. All he did was drive the car and go into banks and find his position using the road atlas and send short messages over the Internet. There was nothing else.

Until the weekends. Then it all came crashing down on him. The longing. The hopelessness. The knowledge of defeat.

Their dreams would remain dreams.

But worst of all was the longing. His entire being – body, soul, spirit, everything he could imagine – was screaming for her. The weekends were a long, drawn-out agony. A walk to Golgotha.

Hymenaeus has been called to Thrace in vain.

He hugged the flea-bitten pillow until the feathers started slipping out and floating around the room. His eyes fell on the small digital clock. It had just turned 10.31.

That was when he felt the jolt.

The jolt passed through his entire being like electricity; a violent impulse which shot through every nerve cell in his body, out to the more ethereal connections of his soul and his spirit. All was pain. There was only pain, and pain was all. Apart from a short, brief realisation:

Without knowing it, he must have turned round.

Orpheus must have turned and thrown a glance over his shoulder.

And Eurydice sank back into Hades’ shadowy depths.

It was 10.26 on Saturday 10 July.

She was lying in a flea-bitten bed on the ground floor of a hotel in Skövde, beginning her third weekend alone. She wondered how much longer she would be able to bear it.

Had she made a mistake after all? Had the viper not actually headed out into the country to put the money in a rural safe-deposit box? Was something missing from her calculations? Wasn’t there something she should remember – something she should take into consideration? Something she was blocking out?

She thought. It had always been her only defence mechanism. And she felt, at that moment – when the weekend arrived and almost drowned out the overactivity of the past week – that her thoughts took her a step closer to the truth.

One factor was missing from her calculations.

Uncle Jubbe . . .? Wasn’t there something there?

Shouldn’t she
know
where this bank was?

Time to be seized by misgivings . . .

He was pale, she was dark, and she missed him. That was the only thing that was crystal clear. That was the only unquestionable fact of life. The only pure, utterly unblemished part.

They wouldn’t be able to stay apart for much longer now.

She hugged the flea-bitten pillow until the feathers started slipping out and floating around the room. Her eyes fell on the small digital clock. It had just turned 10.31.

That was when she felt the jolt.

The door opened. She hadn’t even locked it.

Three men in balaclavas, two black and one gold, strode into the room, closing the door behind them. A fourth clambered in through the door out onto the little terrace outside. All four had pistols in their hands, and all four were dripping with water.

She froze.

‘Bloody rainy,’ said the golden one, pointing his pistol at her.

She stared into his icy blue eyes. That was all that could be seen behind the golden balaclava.

She couldn’t breathe. It didn’t work. She couldn’t get any air.

‘There, there,’ the man continued, ‘just breathe nice and calmly. You should be pleased with yourself. Two weeks you managed to stay hidden. That’s pretty good, considering your opponents. Are you alone, by the way?’

She still couldn’t breathe. She could feel herself turning blue. And in her terror, in the middle of it all, she was
thinking
. Defence mechanism. She was thinking: I’ve felt this way before, there have been other times in my life when I haven’t been able to breathe.

The man in the golden balaclava moved closer and slapped her hard. She could breathe again. Every breath was painful. She was elsewhere. On the way to
another room
.

‘Are you alone?’ the man repeated. The other three stood as though to attention behind him. One of them seemed to be injured. She had seen them before. In the same clothes. She had seen the injured one get his injury. And she had seen four others shot. A briefcase had been lifted from the blood of one of them. The golden man with the pleasant manner struck again. Abruptly. He hit her again. Harder. Shouting: ‘Answer, fucking little foreign whore.’

‘I’m alone,’ she said faintly. She could feel herself starting to fade. Slowly dying away. As though she were sinking back down into the kingdom of the dead. To Hades’ shadowy depths.

The man’s disposition changed again.

‘Thanks,’ he said politely. ‘We won’t need any help finding the briefcase.’

He turned, gesturing, to the shortest of the masked men. He had headphones on top of his balaclava, a small device in his hand. He went over to the wardrobe, lifted up three blankets and pulled the briefcase out. He handed it to the golden one, who opened it and nodded.

‘Radio and key,’ he confirmed. ‘Great. Now tell us as much as you can about this. First of all: who are you?’

The second biggest of the men had opened her bag. He took out a mobile phone with a large display.

‘Look at this,’ he said, holding it up. ‘You can go online with it.’

‘Yeah, those exist,’ the smallest said expertly. ‘Prototypes. Expensive as hell. Small inbuilt computer. Nokia, of course . . .’

‘Wallet,’ said the second biggest, digging around in her bag. ‘Driving licence for Sonja Karlsson. Passport, too. Same name. Loads of cash, must be five thousand.’

‘A passport,’ said the golden one. ‘Were you thinking about running off abroad, Sonja Karlsson?’

She sank deeper and deeper. Reality started to disappear. Another reality replaced it. It was like a cave, a vertical cave, a funnel down into the ground, and she sank down between cave walls, stalactites, stalagmites, and somewhere deep down, there was an opening, a door. The door to Hades.

‘You can talk now, you know,’ the man with the golden balaclava persisted. ‘Sonja?
Karlsson?
Nah. Hell, you’re a wog. Fake name. I hate fake names. Like when John Bengtsson turns up for a job interview, and he’s a bush nigger. That’s the worst kind of infiltration. No, you’re not called Sonja Karlsson. What are you? Iranian? Or Slav, of course. What’s your connection to Rajko Nedic?’

She sank further. She could feel her arms and legs moving slowly. Like the air was water.

She felt a blow. Not another slap, a punch in the stomach. The pain was somewhere on the the edge of existence. Only vaguely perceptible.

‘She seems out of it,’ the injured man said breathlessly from over by the door. ‘Make sure you don’t lose her.’

The golden one looked at him. Nodded.

‘You’re right. Let’s get the essentials. Did you find the safe-deposit box, Sonja?’

She looked at him vaguely. Only those steely-blue eyes against the gold. Boreholes. Cavities, she thought, confused.

Her thoughts cleared. To tell would be to stay alive, after all.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking, but haven’t found it.’

‘Why are you looking
here
?’

‘He sells his drugs in three areas of Sweden,’ she said clearly. ‘This is one of them. The others are Dalarna and Västmanland, and then Norrbotten and Västerbotten. Those are his territories. He doesn’t have Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö. He’s trying to get in there, but it’s slow work. Certain suburbs.’

‘See,’ said the golden one, ‘she speaks Swedish like all those immigrants up in Rinkeby.’

He turned to the shortest of the three men.

‘What d’you think?’ he asked, subdued.

‘She’s looking herself,’ he replied, equally subdued. ‘She’s probably done a runner from Nedic’s organisation somehow – whore, receptionist, pusher, what do I know? – and she probably thought there’d be money in the briefcase just like we did. I don’t think we’ll get much else from her.’

‘But we’ve got the key,’ said the golden one. ‘That’s a big step forward. I’ve got to let our supplier know. Try to find out as much as you can. Check which banks she’s checked and which are left. Find out if she’s got an accomplice. You know what to do.’ Then he added, significantly louder: ‘Do whatever it takes.’

The second biggest man rubbed his hands together. The injured one gave a kind of hollow laugh.

The golden one left the room.

There were three of them left. She started to sink again. It happened quicker and quicker.

The smallest said: ‘Your last defence is gone now, Sonja. Me, I’m not a great fan of rape, but sometimes needs must. We’ve been on the road for two dry fucking weeks now, because of you, and my friends here are really starting to fancy a bit of pussy. The more you talk, the better your chances of avoiding it. This is what we want to know: What’s your relationship to Nedic? How did you know the handover was going to happen on the Sickla estate? Are you really alone in this? Where else were you planning on looking for the safe-deposit box?’

She was no longer sinking, she was falling. She struck the door to the kingdom of the dead. It was a door. A normal front door. She was standing outside. Her body was almost squeezing through it, slowly, painfully.

The short one shrugged and stepped to one side.

The injured one made his way over from the door. His baggy army trousers were bulging at the flies. He leaned forward. She could see the pain in his eyes as he grabbed at her trousers. He yanked them down, ripping them off with such force that her shoes came off. She could feel her left foot twisting strangely. Then he pulled down his own trousers. His pants. She was staring at his erection. He climbed onto her, pushing it towards her face. The stench of sweat and unwashed genitals washed over her.

She was through the door. She was there. In
that place
. Hades’ shadowy depths. She saw his penis coming towards her. She could smell the stench of sweat and unwashed genitals. She could see the flash bulbs. She could see pictures of children. She could hear screams that must have been her own. And she turned away. She wasn’t there. Looked out of the window, thinking. Defence mechanism. The street outside the window. Cars passing by. Number plates. AGF. Agfa film. BED. English for where you sleep. DTR. Dithyramb, whatever that was. EID. Eider. Or first eid. Though that wasn’t how it was spelt. And in the background, behind the dark clouds, the flower shop, the video shop, the barber, the bank.

The bank
.

The door flew open. She heard shots. The man on top of her was hit, bellowed and fell. A sticky liquid ran onto her.

Chaos everywhere.

And in chaos was the beginning.

The police station in Skövde was what you might call understaffed. The duty officer was the only one there. The rest of the little force were in town. Two were taking care of a break-in which had taken place at a supermarket warehouse the night before, the others were on patrol. As a result, the duty officer found it quite strange to have seven plain-clothes officers inside the station.

He was sixty-one years old and eagerly anticipating retirement.

‘Are you sure you shouldn’t call the National Task Force?’ he asked for the fourth time.

Though his question touched upon an unpleasant truth, Jan-Olov Hultin had started ignoring him.

He considered his team. All members of the A-Unit were in place. They were gathered around two maps. The first was a town map of Skövde. The second was a detailed plan of a building.

‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ said Hultin. ‘The hotel’s here, on the edge of town. The lone young woman who signed herself in as Sonja Karlsson, and who’s probably our Eurydice, is in a room on the corner on the ground floor. Here. There are two ways in, one from inside the hotel, one via the terrace. Besides that, there are windows on the opposite wall, though we don’t really know how high up they are. Two go in via the terrace, Hjelm and Holm. Two standing by the window, Chavez and Nyberg; take pallets to stand on. Three go in via the main door, myself, Norlander and Söderstedt. Everyone in flak jackets.

‘First, we’re going to check what’s going on inside. Contact via walkie-talkie. If Lindberg’s gang is there, Norlander’s going to kick the door down. Everyone else wait until you hear the door break. Then you storm in. Exercise caution. It might be a hostage situation. Which
could
mean calling in the National Task Force. But that’ll take time. The best thing’s obviously if we can catch them off guard. We know they’re not likely to give themselves up without a fight. Any questions?’