Vanished (17 page)

Thomas looked her in the eye.

‘How do we know it’s the truth?’

The social worker swallowed, her eyes slightly moist.

‘You should have seen her, so young, so beautiful and . . . so mutilated. Her whole body was covered with scars: gunshot wounds, knife wounds, a great big wound to the head, half of her face all black and blue . . . Two of her toes had been shot off. Last Saturday the man tried to kill her again and she survived by jumping into the water and swimming away from him, and that brought on pneumonia as well. The police aren’t able to protect her.’

‘But this foundation, Paradise, can do it?’

The woman became animated, and discreetly dried her eyes – after all, she was only human.

‘It’s a fantastic set-up. They’ve figured out a way to help people go underground, to wipe them off public records so that they can’t be traced. Paradise takes care of all contacts with the outside world. They have people on duty around the clock, they supply medical assistance, psychologists, lawyers, a place to live, they help people find schools, jobs and day care. Believe me, investing in this service will benefit the community.’

Thomas squirmed.

‘Paradise itself, where is it? In Järfälla?’

The woman leaned closer.

‘That’s part of the deal,’ she said. ‘No one knows where Paradise is. Everyone who works there has had their record wiped clean. The phones are connected to military lines in other counties. The protection is truly watertight. Neither I nor the unit manager have ever come across anything quite like it – it’s an incredible organization.’

Thomas looked at the floor.

‘All this secrecy means that no one can check if it’s for real, though, right?’

‘Sometimes you just have to trust people,’ the social worker replied.

The apartment was chilled through and through. The paper bag that Annika had taped over the broken window couldn’t keep the heat in. Fatigue hit her the instant she dropped her bag on the floor inside the door. She let her coat and the rest of her things fall in a heap, then crawled under the covers of the unmade bed and fell asleep with her clothes on.

Suddenly the hosts of the programme
Studio 69
appeared in front of her. Their cold, critical spite always gave her stomach cramps.

‘I didn’t mean this to happen!’ she shouted.

The men came closer.

‘How can you say it was my fault?’ she screamed.

The men tried to shoot her. The sound of their guns roared in her head.

‘I didn’t do it, I only found her! She was on the floor when I got there! Help!’

She woke up with a jerk, out of breath. Not much more than an hour had passed. For a while she concentrated on breathing – in-out, in-out – then she started to cry, uncontrollably, convulsively. She remained in bed for quite some time until the shaking subsided.

Oh, Gran, dear Lord, what’s going to happen? Who is going to take care of you?

Annika sat up and tried to pull herself together. Somebody had to take care of things – it was her turn to be supportive.

She grabbed the telephone directory, called the community-services hotline and asked if there were any vacancies at nursing homes in Stockholm. She was told that she should contact the local authorities in her neighbourhood and discuss suitable living arrangements with a social worker.

If she liked, she could download information from the Internet or pick it up at Medborgarkontoret at Hantverkargatan 87. She jotted down the address in the margins of an old newspaper, thanked them for their help and sighed. Went out to the kitchen, tried to eat some yogurt and turned on the Text TV channel to check if anything had happened. But it hadn’t. She realized that she smelled of sweat, stuffed her clothes in the laundry basket, filled the kitchen sink with cold water and washed her armpits.

Why did I go home? Why didn’t I stay with Gran?

Annika sat down on the couch in her living room, put her head in her hands and decided that she would be honest with herself.

She couldn’t face staying at the hospital. She wanted to go back to something that she had started to regain; something she had once had, but had lost. There was something here in Stockholm, tied to her job at
Kvällspressen
, her apartment; something that was exciting and alive, not indifferent and dead.

She got up abruptly and went to get her notepad from her bag. Then she dialled the number for Paradise without further ado.

This time Rebecka Björkstig answered the phone.

‘I’ve been thinking about a few things,’ Annika told her.

‘Will you be finished with that article soon?’

The other woman sounded a bit on edge.

Annika pulled up her legs and rested her head in her left hand.

‘There are a few details that need filling in,’ she said. ‘I hope we can wrap this up as soon as possible – my grandmother has been taken ill.’

Rebecka’s voice was brimming with compassion as she said: ‘Oh, that’s too bad. Of course I’ll help you out as much as I can. What would you like to know?’

Annika swallowed, sat up a bit straighter and leafed through her pad.

‘Your employees at Paradise: how many of them are there?’

‘There are five of us working full time.’

‘Doctors, lawyers, social workers, psychologists?’

Rebecka sounded amused: ‘Not at all. Services like that are provided by the county or local authorities and Legal Aid.’

Annika swept back her hair.

‘Your around-the-clock contacts: just who are they?’

‘Our employees, naturally. They are highly qualified people.’

‘How much do they make a month?’

Now Rebecka acted slightly insulted.

‘They earn a monthly salary of fourteen thousand kronor. They don’t do this to get rich, they do it to do good.’

Annika leafed through her pad, skimming her notes.

‘Your property assets: how many houses are there?’

Rebecka sounded wary: ‘Why do you ask?’

‘To get a picture of the scope of your operations,’ Annika told her.

‘We hardly own any property, we usually rent what we need,’ Rebecka said after a moment’s hesitation.

‘What about money?’ Annika said. ‘If and when you make a profit, what do you do with it?’

A long silence followed. Annika almost thought the woman had hung up on her.

‘Any profits we make, and they don’t amount to much, go right back into the foundation. They’re used to build the organization. I don’t quite like what you’re insinuating here,’ Rebecka Björkstig told her.

‘One last question,’ Annika said. ‘That list of authorities I could talk to – have you sent it?’

‘This is a protected line,’ said the woman on the other end in a low voice. ‘I can talk freely. All the money has gone to building a channel for the really difficult cases. We now have the capacity to help clients who cannot remain in Sweden. We have contacts who help us arrange governmental jobs and housing arrangements in other countries. We can also arrange for medical and psychological care abroad, we can get people jobs and provide language training.’

Annika put her feet back on the floor and took notes. This was getting to be a bit too much.

‘But how does it work?’

The woman sounded very satisfied.

‘The procedures exist and have been very successful in two cases.’

Annika was astonished.

‘Two clients have been able to start over in a foreign country? Without changing their identity? Only by way of Paradise?’

‘That’s correct, two whole families. But neither we, nor any other organization, can issue new personal ID numbers. Only the government can do that. But, as I told you earlier, it hasn’t been necessary. About that list, I’ve compiled it. Just let me know where I can fax it and you’ll have it within fifteen minutes.’

Annika gave her the fax number of the crime desk at the paper.

‘I’ll call you back and let you know when I’ve received it,’ Annika said.

‘Fine. We’ll be in touch.’

They hung up. The silence had returned, less ominous now. The walls were brighter. She had a purpose, a responsibility, a mission that needed her input.

The runner picked up his pace, his feet beating a tattoo against the ground. His pulse rate increased, but his breathing remained regular. It merely got deeper, harder:
good!
He was in great shape, gunning along despite the fairly rough terrain. Lots of brushwood, poor forest management, large faults in the landscape. He glanced at the map, scale 1:1,500, based on aerial photos and extensive reconnaissance on the ground. The making of this map was a process he generally took part in himself: it was printed in five colours and issued by the Swedish Orienteering Association. This location was at the outskirts of his regular stomping grounds, but it was a good place to practise rough terrain.

He practised picking out the direction as he ran, holding the compass in his right hand and the map in his left, not slowing down even though he’d decided to identify all the various symbols on the map: cairns, elevated ground, bends in the paths. That was why he didn’t see the tree root. He fell headlong, taking a nosedive into the seedlings. His forehead slammed into the ground, he saw stars for a few seconds. When he mind cleared, he felt the pain in his foot.
Good grief! Only one competition left this season, and now this! What a darn shame!

The runner groaned and sat up, touching his ankle. Maybe it wasn’t too bad after all. He tried to rotate his foot; no, nothing was broken – it could be sprained, though. He got up carefully and put some weight on the foot.
Ow!
He’d better shoot for getting back to his car with the least possible effort. He studied the map to find the best route.

A few minutes ago he’d passed a muddy road in the woods that ran parallel to one of the larger faults. He could tell by the map that it led to the main road and he could hitch a ride there back to his own car. With a heavy sigh he tucked the map and the compass inside his jacket and limped off.

After limping a few hundred metres along the muddy road he noticed a few singed birch trees further in. He stopped in surprise. A forest fire? The weather had been so wet. Then he noticed the smell, pungent and metallic.

The runner checked that his map and compass were hanging inside his jacket like they should be, then left the road. He moved carefully, following some tyre tracks that ran past some trees into a small ravine. Perplexed, he stopped short at the edge of the woods.

There in front of him was a twisted metal skeleton, the burnt-out remains of what once must have been a truck, a large trailer. How in the world had it got there? And how come it was so totally gutted by fire?

Carefully he limped over to the remains, the soot on the ground turning his shoes black. It got warmer as he approached – the fire must be fairly recent.

The ground next to the driver’s seat was covered with fine splinters of glass that crunched under the soles of his shoes. What was left of the doors hung crookedly. He went over and looked inside the cab.

There was something on the floor and something in the passenger seat; shapeless, sooty and twisted. He bent over and touched the object closest to him. Something fell off. He pulled the glove from his hand and brushed away the soot. When he saw the grinning teeth, he realized what he was looking at.

The crime-desk fax was next to Eva-Britt Qvist’s desk. Eva-Britt assisted the crime-desk team with different types of research, took care of their appointments, catalogued court decisions, and so on. She wasn’t in, so Annika leafed quickly through the small pile of faxes that had arrived during the day. A communiqué from the Stockholm police press department, information from the Chief Public Prosecutor, a verdict in a narcotics case.

‘What are you doing with my papers?’

The solid-looking woman came charging in from the cafeteria, an angry furrow between her brows. Annika backed away.

‘I’m expecting a fax,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to see if it had arrived.’

‘Why do you give people my number? This fax belongs to the crime desk.’

Eva-Britt Qvist snatched the papers out of Annika’s hands and scooped up the ones that were lying on the desk. Annika looked at her in astonishment. They had hardly spoken to each other before – Eva-Britt Qvist worked during the day and Annika worked nights.

‘I’m sorry,’ Annika stammered in surprise. ‘I always give people this number during the night shift. I wasn’t aware there was anything wrong with that.’

The researcher glared at Annika.

‘And you never fill the paper tray, either.’

The other woman’s animosity pierced her like a dart, generating a defensive response of anger.

‘Oh, yes I do!’ Annika exclaimed. ‘I did it the last time I was in. What’s your problem, for God’s sake? It’s not like it’s your own private fax. Has my list of authorities connected to the Paradise Foundation arrived?’

‘What’s going on, girls?’

Anders Schyman had come up behind them.

‘Girls?’ Annika said, whirling to face him. ‘Are you going to ask us what we’re doing here all by ourselves too?’

The deputy editor laughed.

‘I knew that would set you off. What’s up?’

‘Rebecka’s going to send me a fax that will help me wrap up this series about the Paradise Foundation, but Eva-Britt here doesn’t like me giving people her fax number.’

Annika realized that she was upset and was ashamed of her lack of self-control.

‘It hasn’t arrived,’ the researcher said.

Schyman turned to Eva-Britt Qvist.

‘Then I think you should stay on the lookout for that list,’ Schyman said slowly and distinctly. ‘It’s the cornerstone of an important story we’re covering.’

‘This is the crime desk, you know,’ Eva-Britt Qvist said.

‘And this is a crime feature,’ Schyman said. ‘Stop being so territorial. Come on, Annika, I want an update on the story.’

Annika followed the deputy editor over to his office, not seeing anything except his broad back.

The couch was gone.

‘I took your advice,’ Schyman said. ‘From now on, anyone visiting me will have to sit on the floor. Be my guest.’