Vanished (11 page)

Annika finished writing and relaxed her grip on her pen. This sounded really incredible. She looked up and glanced around the bar. Round tables, brass fixtures. Thick wall-to-wall carpeting, subdued make-out lighting.

Where were the holes in the story?

Annika shook her head.

‘How can you be certain that everyone who comes to you is telling the truth? They might be criminals trying to evade justice.’

Rebecka shushed her as the waiter drifted past them.

‘May I have a new glass? This one was dirty. Thank you. I understand why you would ask such a thing, but Paradise doesn’t accept people off the streets. We only accept referrals by the authorities. Our clients are sent by the police, the DA’s office, the Foreign Office, embassies, agencies working with immigrants and schools.’

Annika scratched her head.
Okay.

‘But if you’re such a secret, how do you get your clients?’

The woman received her fresh glass. The ice cubes rattled.

‘So far our clients have come to us by way of contacts and recommendations. They’ve come from all over the country. Like I said, the reason we contacted you was that we felt ready to expand our operations.’

Her words hung in the air, Annika let them reverberate a few seconds.

‘Exactly how much do you charge for your services?’ she asked.

Rebecka smiled.

‘Nothing. We charge the local social welfare authorities for our time and the costs we incur while we cover our tracks. We do not profit financially. We get reimbursed for our expenses, that’s all. Even though we are a non-profit foundation we need to be paid for our efforts.’

That’s right, she said that last time.

‘How much are we talking about, in terms of money?’

The porcelain figurine bent over and pulled something out of her bag.

‘Here are some leaflets about our organization. They are rather informal, not particularly elegant, but the authorities we’ve been in contact with have all known about us in one way or another, and they’re aware of our qualifications.’

Annika took the leaflet. A post-office box number in Järfälla was listed at the top. Then there was a list of the services that Rebecka had just detailed. At the bottom Annika read:
For cost estimates, please contact us at the address and number listed in the heading.

‘How much do you charge?’ Annika asked again.

Rebecka looked for something in her purse.

‘3,500 kronor a day per person. That’s a fairly modest rate for treatment. Here, have a look at this too,’ she said as she handed over another leaflet.

It contained more or less the same information, only in more detail.

‘Well,’ Rebecka said, ‘what do you think, is it worth writing about?’

Annika put the papers in her bag.

‘I can’t tell you that right now. First I have to talk to my superiors and find out if our paper wants to cover this story. Then I have to check the information you gave me with some of the authorities you’ve been in contact with. Could you possibly give me a name now?’

Rebecka thought for a minute while folding her napkin.

‘I guess,’ she said. ‘I could probably do that. But you have to realize that these cases are extremely delicate, everything is kept confidential. No one will talk about us unless I tell them it’s all right. That’s why I’d like to get back to you with a list.’

‘Sure,’ Annika said. ‘Once that’s done, I’d like to talk to a client who’s gone through your removal process.’

That smile again, the cool one.

‘That might be more difficult. You won’t be able to find them.’

‘Maybe you could ask them to call me?’

The dainty woman nodded.

‘Of course, that would be a possibility. But they know nothing about our procedures. We don’t tell them anything, just so they won’t be able to give themselves away.’

‘I wasn’t going to ask your clients about your methods. I want to meet a woman who will say: “Paradise saved my life.” ’

For the first time, Rebecka smiled so that Anika could see her teeth. They were small and pearly white.

‘That I can do,’ she said. ‘There are lots of them around. Anything else?’

Annika hesitated.

‘Only one thing,’ she said. ‘Exactly why do you do this?’

Rebecka quickly folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs: classic defensive body language.

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Why not?’ Annika asked calmly. ‘Your organization is very unusual, to say the least. Something must have inspired you.’

They sat in silence for a while, Rebecka’s foot swinging rhythmically back and forth.

‘I don’t want you to put this in,’ she said. ‘This is private, just between you and me.’

Annika nodded.

The woman leaned forward, wide-eyed.

‘Like I said,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve been threatened too. It was a terrifying experience, terrifying! In the end I wasn’t able to function, I couldn’t eat or sleep.’

Rebecka looked over her shoulder, glancing at the other guests at the bar, then leaned closer.

‘I made up my mind that I would survive. That’s how I began to set up this method of protection. While I was working on it, I encountered lots of people in similar circumstances. I decided to do something, to shoulder the responsibility that the authorities couldn’t deal with.’

‘Who threatened you?’ Annika asked.

Rebecka swallowed, her lower lip quivering.

‘The Yugoslav Mafia,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of them?’

Annika blinked in surprise.

‘How are you involved with them?’

‘I’m not!’ Rebecka shot back. ‘The whole thing was a misunderstanding. It was awful, just awful!’

Suddenly she got up.

‘Excuse me,’ she said and ran off to the restroom. A small heap of twisted and crumpled paper napkins remained on the table.

Annika looked after her for a long time. What the heck was going on? Had she run into more cigarette thieves?

She sighed, drank her tepid water and read through her notes. Despite the considerable amounts of information there were holes in the story, she just couldn’t pinpoint them yet. And what did the Yugo Mafia have to do with it all?

The porcelain figurine was taking her time. Feeling impatient, Annika checked her watch and saw that it was almost time to take the train to Flen. She paid the bill and had put her jacket on by the time Rebecka returned, looking clear-eyed and unperturbed.

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said and smiled. ‘The memories are so painful.’

Annika studied her; she might as well ask her question and be done with it.

‘Do you have anything to do with the missing cigarettes?’ she asked in a strained voice.

Rebecka smiled and blinked with a blank expression in her eyes.

‘Have you lost your own cigarettes? I don’t smoke.’

Annika sighed. ‘I won’t be able to write a thing until I have that list of authorities,’ she said. ‘It’s important that I get it as soon as possible.’

‘Of course,’ Rebecka said. ‘You’ll be hearing from me shortly. If you don’t mind, I’d like to leave first so no one sees us together. Could you wait a few minutes?’

Mission Impossible
, Annika thought.
The subject has left the building.

‘Sure,’ she said.

The rhythmic thumping of the train plunged Annika into a state of calm concentration before she had got as far as Årstabron. Tanto slipped past on the left, large houses with picture windows facing the waterfront. Soon the view was nothing but greenery: Stockholm wasn’t all that big, after all. The blur of pines filled her vision, dark and wintergreen, swaying in time with the train; clickity-clack, clickity-clack.

Wiping all traces of someone off the record
, she thought. Could that really be possible? An organization as proxy on all documents, one that maintains contacts with the authorities and signs contracts.
Is that actually legal?

She took out her pad and pen and started making outlines.

If city councils actually buy the services of Paradise, everything must be above board
, she figured.

Then there was the money; how much did the removal process cost?

She leafed through her notes.

Three thousand, five hundred kronor a day per person. The amount might be reasonable, she really couldn’t tell.

Methodically, Annika outlined possible costs:

Five people working on a full-time basis: say they earned fifteen thousand kronor a month, plus social security expenses, which would amount to one hundred thousand kronor a month in total. And then there was the housing: say they had ten houses that each cost ten thousand a month in rent or interest – that would cost another hundred thousand. What else? Medical care was provided by the county councils. The city councils provided welfare payments, the state health insurance paid sick benefits, and legal aid footed the bill for lawyers.

Expenditure should come to about two hundred thousand a month.

What about revenue?

Three thousand, five hundred a day would amount to a monthly total of one hundred and five thousand kronor per person.

If they help a woman and a child each month, they make a profit often thousand kronor
, she realized.

Disconcerted, she stared at her calculations.

Could that really be true?

She went through the numbers again.

Sixty cases at three thousand, five hundred kronor a pop per day for three months per case would come to nearly nineteen million.

For the past three years their expenditure had been somewhat more than seven million, which would mean a profit of almost twelve million.

Something must be wrong
, Annika thought.
I’ve based my calculations on estimates and assumptions. They might have more expenses, ones that I don’t know anything about. Maybe they have doctors and psychologists and lawyers on retainer, and lots of contacts standing by around the clock all year long. That would certainly be expensive.

She packed her stuff back down in her bag, leaned back against the seat and let herself be rocked to sleep. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

The sounds were always the same, Anders Schyman thought. Chairs scraping, a talk show droning away on the radio, CNN on the TV with the volume turned down low, papers rustling, a cacophony of male voices rising and falling, short emphatic sentences. Laughter, always laughter, in hard, rapid bursts.

The smells: the ever-prevalent aroma of coffee, a whiff of sweaty feet, aftershave. A lingering trace of tobacco on someone’s breath. Testosterone.

The management group met every Tuesday and Friday afternoon to run through larger projects and long-term strategies. The members were all male and over forty, they all drove company cars and wore identical dark blue flannel sports coats. He knew that they were referred to as ‘the Flannel Pack’.

They always met in a fancy corner office belonging to Torstensson, the editor-in-chief, which overlooked the Russian embassy. They always had Danishes and macaroons. Jansson would be the last one to arrive, as usual. He always spilled coffee on the carpet, never apologizing and never cleaning up the mess. Schyman sighed.

‘Well, perhaps we should . . .’ the editor-in-chief said, not knowing where to look. No one took any notice of him. Jansson strolled in, sleepy-eyed, his hair on end and with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

‘No smoking,’ the editor-in-chief said.

Jansson spilled coffee on the carpet, took a deep drag on his cigarette and sat down at the far end of the table. Sjölander, the crime-desk editor, was talking on his cellphone in the seat next to him. Ingvar Johansson was leafing through a sheaf of telegrams, Picture Pelle the photographer was laughing at something the entertainment-desk editor had said.

‘Okay,’ Schyman said. ‘Sit down, so we can get this over with soon.’

The noise died down. Someone turned off the radio and Sjölander wound up his call. Jansson took a macaroon. Schyman remained on his feet.

‘In retrospect we see that covering the hurricane was the right decision,’ he continued while those men still standing took a seat. He held up Saturday’s paper in one hand while leafing through their competitors’ papers with the other.

‘We were number one from the onset right up to the conclusion, and we deserve it. We displayed foresight and coordinated our resources in a new way. All the different desks and teams pulled together, giving us the heft that no one else could match.’

Schyman put the papers down. No one said a word. This was more controversial than it appeared. All these men ruled their own particular turf. Not one of them wanted to relinquish power and influence to anyone. That was why, in extreme situations, editors might hold back news in order to break a story with their own team or in their own edition. If they pulled together the power would be transferred further up in the hierarchy, to the level of deputy editors that the editor-in-chief hoped to create.

Schyman sorted through the papers and sat down.

‘Our coverage of the handicapped boy seems to be yielding results as well. Apparently the city council intends to reassess its decision and provide the care he’s entitled to.’

The silence was massive. Only the faints sounds of CNN and the ventilation system could be heard. Anders Schyman knew that the others disliked going through old issues of the paper, yesterday’s news. They lived by the credo
Today is a fresh start, you have to move forward to get ahead.
The deputy editor didn’t agree. He felt that you had to learn from yesterday’s mistakes in order to avoid making new ones tomorrow, a self-evident bit of reasoning that never seemed to register.

‘How are the preparations for the Social Democrat Congress coming along?’ Schyman asked, turning to the editor of political and community affairs.

‘We’re raring to go,’ said the guy in the flannel coat as he leaned forward with some papers clutched in his hand. ‘Carl Wennergren got a damn hot tip about one of our female politicians. It seems that she went shopping using her government-issue credit card and bought diapers and chocolate.’