Vanished (40 page)

Annika stopped, panting, humiliation thumbing its nose at her.

There was no point in trying. People were too self-absorbed. Why would they want to deal with a screaming madwoman in the next lane?

She quietened down, her head aching from all the blows, and started to cry. Ratko didn’t say a thing. Traffic lightened up at Roslagstull, they passed the Museum of Natural History and turned off on Albano. Annika let the tears stream down her face unchecked.
It’s all over now, who would have thought that it would end like this?

The car continued along several smaller roads. She noted a few signs – Björknäsvägen, Fiskartorpsvägen – then woods, trees.

Finally the car came to a stop, Annika stared straight ahead and through the windshield she could see an old shed. Ratko walked around the car and got something out of the trunk, opened the passenger door and yanked down the front seat.

‘Get out,’ he said.

She obeyed, her throat aching.

‘What do you want from me?’ she asked him hoarsely.

‘Get in the shed,’ the man said.

He shoved her and she staggered off, feeling nauseated and faint.

It was dark inside the wooden shed. The dying day couldn’t quite force its way through the cracks in the wall and left the firewood and the spider webs in the shadows.

Ratko pushed her down on a chopping block over in a comer. Annika felt terror ooze down her back as the walls tilted and rolled. He wound a rope around the block and hurriedly tied her feet up. Then he moved in closer and hissed in her ear, his voice harsh and low.

‘I get to ask all the questions,’ he said, ‘and you get to answer them. Putting on a tough act is pointless – everyone talks sooner or later. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief if you go for sooner.’

She started breathing rapidly, feeling panic well up inside. Ratko grabbed his sports bag, rummaged through it and pulled out a sub-machine gun. He stood in front of her, towering over her, and pointed the gun in her face.

‘The shipment,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

Annika swallowed, breathed, breathed, swallowed.

‘The shipment!’ he barked. ‘Where the hell is it?’

She started shaking uncontrollably all over. She closed her eyes, no longer able to talk.

‘Where is it?!’

She felt the muzzle of the gun poking her forehead and, panic-stricken, began to cry.

‘I don’t know!’ she managed to get out. ‘I only met Aida once.’

He removed the gun and slapped her face.

‘Cut the crap,’ he said, grabbing her necklace. ‘You’re wearing Aida’s gold necklace.’

She shivered and tears streamed down her face and neck.

‘She gave it to me,’ she whispered.

Annika sat still, unable to think, paralysed by fear. The man let go of the necklace and remained silent for a while. She could feel him studying her.

‘Who are you?’ he asked in a low voice.

She gasped for breath.

‘I’m a . . . reporter. Aida called the paper I work for. She needed help. I met her at a hotel. That’s when you turned up and I . . . tricked you. Then I gave Aida a phone number to call, somewhere she could go for help . . .’

‘Why did you trick me?’

His cry tore into her breathless explanation.

‘I wanted to save Aida,’ she said in a whisper.

Annika could sense that the man was moving. She saw his face appear in front of her.

‘Who was the man at the funeral?’ he asked, his eyes gleaming.

She stared at him in incomprehension

‘Who?’

‘The military man,’ he screamed, his words spraying spittle on her face. ‘You stupid fucking whore, who was that officer?’

Annika squeezed her eyes shut. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, keeping her eyes closed.

‘What the hell did you say to him?’

She panted a few times.

‘That’s . . . exactly what I asked him, who he was . . . How he knew Aida.’

‘What did he say?’

She was shaking and didn’t reply.

‘What did he say?’

‘I don’t know,’ Annika sobbed. ‘He said Bijelina at the graveside, Bijelina, Bijelina, I’m certain of that . . .’

It took a few seconds before she realized that Ratko had quietened down.

‘Bijelina?’ he asked sceptically. ‘Her home town?’

Annika swallowed and nodded.

‘I think so.’

‘What else?’

‘I don’t speak Serbo-Croat.’

‘What did the watchdogs say?’

She looked at him in confusion.

‘What dogs?’

He waved the gun in front of her face.

‘The guards, the guys from the embassy in the grey coats! What did they say?’

She searched her memory.

‘I don’t know! Nothing I could understand.’

‘I don’t give a damn what you understood! What did they say?’

Once more, he poked her in the forehead with the gun; she collapsed, closed her eyes again and lay there panting, her mouth half-open.

‘If you don’t talk,’ Ratko told her, ‘there’s no point in having a mouth, now is there?’

He moved the muzzle to her mouth, banging it against her teeth in the process. She could taste the metal, the cold. Her brain shorted out briefly and she shook.

‘What did the watchdogs say? Tell me.’

Darkness, cold – were her eyes shut or had the day come to an end?

‘For the last time, what did the guards say to the military man? Tell me.’

Annika nodded, slowly. The muzzle moved, banging against her teeth again. She could breathe, she wanted to throw up.

‘They said something several times,’ she whispered. ‘Porut . . . something. Porutsch . . . Porutschn—?’

‘Porutschnick?’ Ratko asked, his voice tense.

‘Could be,’ she whispered.

‘What else? What else did they say?’

‘I don’t know . . .’

Once more, the gun was pressed up against her lips.

‘Mich . . .’ she said. ‘Mich . . . Michich.’

‘Michich?’

The gun went away as she nodded.

‘That was it, they said Michich.’

Ratko stared at the pathetic broad in front of him and felt triumph surge between his legs. What a lucky strike! A bull’s eye! He knew, he understood; there in that dark shed, the pattern started to make sense.

Porutschnick Michich.

He hurriedly packed his things, stuffing the gun in the bag. He left the rope, it was the kind that anyone could pick up at hardware stores all over Sweden and it wouldn’t retain any prints.

‘I know where to find you.’ He reeled off the standard phrase that he used on informants once they had squealed. ‘If you so much as breathe a word of this, I’ll rub you out, understand?’

She was slumped down with her head between her legs and appeared not to hear him.

‘Do you understand?’ he screamed in her ear. ‘I’m going to kill you if you talk – is that clear?’

Her whole body was shaking and suddenly he had had enough. He looked at his watch: it was time to go.

‘One fucking peep out of you, and you’re dead. I’ll shove this gun in your mouth and blow your brains clear across Stockholm, get the picture?’

Ratko opened the door and glanced at the girl one last time. She wouldn’t talk. Even if she did, so what? If they ever caught him, they could charge him with worse crimes that this.

He went out into the winter’s night, let go of the door as he passed through and exhaled triumphantly.

Porutschnick Michich, or rather Porucnik Misic.

There it was, he could hardly believe his luck.

He opened the trunk, yanked the guns out of his sports bag and tossed them under a filthy blanket.

Luck, my ass,
he thought. It was skill! Start the interrogation with something you don’t give a damn about and then move in for the kill.

He got behind the wheel, tossed the bag in the passenger seat beside him and started the car. It ran smoothly and he headed for the free port.

Colonel Misic, a legendary figure of the KOS, the counter-intelligence group of the Yugoslav army. The man who had survived all the purges – and who had Milosevic’s ear.

Ratko turned on the heater, soon he would no longer be out in the cold in any way.

He didn’t know why, but Aida and the man had been close. The details, the exact nature of their relationship didn’t interest him in the least, but now he had the facts. He knew what had gone haywire, why they had taken his power away.

Aida must have had a protector, and she must have sent him a message before she died.

He shrugged his shoulders, shook them loose; the muscles were hard and tense. He no longer gave a damn about Aida from Bijelina, she could rot in her fucking grave over by that service station in Solna.

He turned off Tegeluddsvägen and cruised over to the harbour area, catching sight of the signpost: Tallinn, Klaipeda, Riga, St Petersburg. Found a vacant parking space and parked the car. The space was marked reserved, but who gave a flying fuck? He grabbed the sports bag full of cash and clothing and, turning his face to the bracing salt air, breathed deeply.

Floodlights bathed the area between the warehouses in shades of gold. He saw the trailer zone at the far end of the lot, on the waterfront.

This was where it all began, he thought.

Or rather, this was where it all would end.

He glanced at his watch.

It was time.

Annika heard a car start and drive off, far away, the taste of metal still lingering in her mouth. It got quiet and dark as she sat there, slumped over.

She was cold. Her body was numb, her mind was paralysed. As she slumped there on the chopping block she nearly dozed off and almost toppled over. The chill grew more intense and so did her drowsiness.

So easy it would be. So wonderful to just slip away.

The ropes around her ankles weren’t tight. She shuffled out of them, freeing her feet and then lying down on the dirt floor. Uncomfortable. Her cheek to the earth, she lay still, feeling her hands go cold and numb. The familiar note of loneliness started wobbling up and down the scale in her left ear.

Soon,
she thought.
Soon it will be all over. Soon it will be quiet.

The thought banished the buzzing.

It would be the end.

The realization brought Annika to her senses. The dirt under her face was crumbly and frozen, smelly. She was lying on one arm, and it had gone numb from the elbow on down.

She groaned.

If she remained here in the cold, everything would be mighty quiet in a very short time.

She struggled to get up, leaning on the block. The chill had penetrated her jeans and numbness had set in.

What if he came back?

The thought made her breathe first faster, then slower.

Exhausted, she began to cry again.

I want to go home,
she thought.
I bought hot dogs today, I want to go home.

She cried for a while, the tears and the cold making her shake.

I’ve got to get out of here.

Annika got up, the rope rubbing against her wrists. It wasn’t very tight, so she twisted her hands around in various circular motions for a minute or so, freeing her left hand, and the rope fell to the ground. She remained there, standing in the confining darkness, and looked for chinks of light that would show her where the door was, without seeing any.

What if he had locked the door?

She staggered over to the wall and felt her way along the wooden boards, getting splinters in her fingers, until the wall gave way and the door opened. The wind caught the door, a fiercely cold blast from the coast. She thought she could make out a small road and trees.

Dear God, where am I?

She leaned against the door post, closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

They had taken Roslagsvägen and had turned off not far from the University. She was somewhere in the northern part of Djurgården, behind the Stora Skuggan woodland area. She rubbed her dry, red eyes.

The 56 bus, she thought. It ran from Stora Skuggan to Kungsholmen.

She walked unsteadily out of the shed: there
was
some kind of a road down there. She stopped and looked up at the sky. To the right she could see some light: yellow and pink hues tinged the horizon.

It’s not the sun,
she figured.
It’s the city lights.

Annika started walking.

WEDNESDAY 5 DECEMBER

T
he eleven o’clock meeting started ten minutes late, as usual. Anders Schyman felt irritation well up inside him. A thought that had lately kept popping up in his mind took hold once more.

When I’m in power, I will establish routines that will be adhered to.

He had just taken a seat, a signal to the Flannel Pack – the community and political affairs editor, the picture editor, the sports editor, the crime editor, the entertainment editor, and the op-ed editor – to pipe down and listen, when Torstensson knocked on the door.

Schyman’s eyebrows went up. The editor-in-chief was hardly ever present at daily planning sessions.

‘Welcome,’ the deputy editor said a shade too sarcastically. ‘The meeting’s already in session.’

Dismayed, Torstensson looked around for a chair.

‘There’s one over in the corner,’ Schyman said and pointed to the far end of the table.

The editor-in-chief cleared his throat and remained standing.

‘I have something important to tell you,’ he said, his voice slightly shrill.

Anders Schyman made no effort to stand up and offer the editor-in-chief his seat at the head of the table.

‘Please take a seat,’ he said, once again indicating the chair at the far end of the table.

Torstensson slunk away, pulled out the chair, causing it to scrape along the floor, and sat down. The silence was deafening. They all stared at the little man. He cleared his throat again.

‘My assignment in Brussels has been postponed indefinitely,’ he said. ‘The party secretary just informed me that the lobby dealing with public access to information was no longer a priority issue. As things stand, I shall not be leaving the paper at this point in time.’

He grew quiet. A cloud of bitterness hung in the air. The op-ed editor made commiserating noises and the rest of the group studied the deputy editor surreptitiously.