Borderline (33 page)

‘Like the Frenchman,’ Annika said.

‘Exactly. It might be that the kidnappers think they could be identified, or that the leader of the group is a complete psychopath. That fits fairly well with our man. Scenario three: the ransom is paid but the hostage isn’t released. Instead the kidnappers come back and demand more money, and negotiations begin again. That usually happens when the ransom demand is high and the money is paid too quickly, because they conclude that there’s more where that came from.’

‘Could that happen to us?’

‘I don’t think so. We’ve been through the whole routine. Four: the ransom is paid, the hostage is released, but kidnapped again at a later date. That isn’t likely to happen. Five: the ransom is paid and the hostage is released. Six: the hostage escapes or is freed without any money being handed over.’

She sat there without saying anything for a long time. He waited.

‘It’s impossible to say which one it’s going to be, isn’t it?’ she said quietly.

‘He said he’d contact us again early tomorrow morning. Maybe he will, but it could just as well be late in the afternoon. We have to be prepared. We need to have the money, a car with a full tank and a driver, fully charged mobiles, water and food all ready, because it could be that the actual delivery will take time.’

She cleared her throat. ‘What are the police doing?’

‘The JIT in Brussels are reading my texts and keeping everyone informed, but right now it’s vital the kidnappers see that we’re on our own. They’ve no intention of getting caught. I’ll demand to be allowed to hand over the ransom face to face, but there’s no way they’ll agree to that.’

‘And the location where we’ll hand over the money, that’ll be somewhere in Nairobi?’

He went into the bedroom and emerged with a notepad. ‘The Spaniard’s partner left the money in a container in the Somali district in the south of the city,’ he read. ‘The German woman’s son left it in a ditch at the foot of Mount Kenya, about a hundred kilometres to the north. The Romanian’s wife is going to deliver eight hundred thousand dollars some time today in Mombasa, out on the coast. The Frenchman’s wife also left her money somewhere in Nairobi, but she wasn’t able to say where afterwards.’

‘So they don’t put all their eggs in the same basket,’ Annika said.

He sat down beside her again and leafed through his notes. ‘Usually the ransom is handed over somewhere fairly close to the site of the kidnapping, up to a couple of hundred kilometres away, maximum. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.’

‘Then what?’ Annika said.

‘It can take up to forty-eight hours before the hostage shows up,’ Halenius said.

She put her hand on his thigh. ‘Then what?’ she said quietly, looking at him. He turned away and she removed her hand. ‘I don’t regret it,’ she said.

He went back into the bedroom without looking at her. She remained where she was, mute and leaden, as a vast emptiness filled her, making it hard to breathe. With an effort she got to her feet and went to the bedroom. He was writing something on his computer.

All of a sudden she felt utterly ridiculous. ‘I’ll sort the flights,’ she said. ‘Any particular preferences?’

‘Not Air Europa,’ he said. ‘And not via Charles de Gaulle.’ He smiled forlornly at her.

She managed to smile back, then went into the children’s room.

*

The only flight with any seats left to Nairobi that night was with Air France, via Paris.

‘And it’s Air France all the way?’ Annika asked. ‘Not Air Europa?’

The woman in the
Evening Post
’s travel office tapped at her computer. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The flight to Paris, Charles de Gaulle airport, is operated by Air Europa.’

‘Isn’t there anything else?’

‘Yes, via Brussels, but that leaves in twenty minutes, from Bromma.’

She booked them on to the 16:05 flight from Arlanda to Paris, then with Air France (operated by Kenya Airways) at 20:10. The plane was due to land in Nairobi at 06:20 the following morning, East African time. She left the returns open.

The tickets would be delivered by email for her to print out.

She hung up. It was the middle of the day but dusk already, and she was in a weightless vacuum between now and later.

Halenius went home to pick up some clothes, a toothbrush and his razor. Annika spent forty minutes working frantically on her article, then packed her laptop, a few clothes and the video-camera, but there wasn’t room for the tripod because they were only taking hand-luggage. She went through the fridge and threw out anything that was about to go out of date, emptied the bins and switched off the lights. She stood in the darkness of the hall for a while, just listening to the sounds of the building.

Something was definitely too late, or far too early.

She walked on to the landing, locked the flat securely and went down to the entrance to wait for Halenius, who was going to pick her up in a taxi.

She called Sophia Grenborg while she waited. ‘We’re leaving now,’ she said. ‘We’ve agreed a ransom. The plane takes off in a couple of hours.’

‘Do you want to talk to the children?’

A shiny black Volvo with tinted windows pulled up through the swirling snow and stopped outside her door. One of the back doors opened and Halenius stuck his head out.

‘I’ll call again from Arlanda,’ she said, and ended the call.

She stepped out into the wind and smiled at his messy hair. From the corner of her eye she saw a photographer raise a camera with a long telephoto lens and point it in her direction. The driver got out, wearing a thick grey coat. She recognized him: he was one of the men called Hans. He took her bag and put it into the boot, and she got in beside Halenius as the photographer followed her through his lens.

The under-secretary of state held up his mobile. ‘The money is to be paid in American dollars, twenty-dollar bills, wrapped in thick plastic and tied with duct tape,’ he said.

‘Why have we got a Hans?’ Annika asked.

The Volvo pulled way with a soft purr. ‘Government car,’ Halenius said. ‘I need to make a load of calls. It wouldn’t be that great to read about them on mediatime.se tomorrow.’

She remembered the banker in glasses at Handelsbanken. ‘Twenty-dollar bills? That’s going to weigh at least fifty kilos.’

‘I’ve told Frida to buy two big sports bags.’

He took her hand. ‘He wants you to deliver the money,’ he said, letting go of it again.

The stone façades of the city slid past behind the falling snow.

He picked up his mobile and dialled a really long number, and she laid her head against the soft leather seat and let the city disappear behind her.

The departure hall at Arlanda airport was seething with people.

‘I can’t check you in all the way through,’ the woman at the desk said, tapping at her computer. ‘Air Europa’s IT system isn’t compatible with everyone else’s, so you’ll have to go to the transfer desk in Paris and get your boarding cards there for the flight to Nairobi.’

Halenius leaned over the desk. ‘There isn’t a transfer desk at Charles de Gaulle,’ he said. ‘And we don’t have time to stand in a check-in queue.’

The woman tapped some more. ‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘You’ve got an hour in Paris.’

Halenius’s brow was damp with sweat. ‘Have you ever been to Charles de Gaulle?’ he asked quietly. ‘The planes are parked over by the runways and you have to get a bus to the terminal. The terminals are several kilometres apart and there are no trains or buses between them. We have to get from Two B to Two F. It isn’t going to work.’

‘Yes, it will,’ the woman said. ‘You walk to Terminal F and—’

‘We won’t get in there. Not without boarding cards.’ Annika swallowed. She had had to ignore both of his preferences.

‘This is a guaranteed booking, though,’ the check-in woman said. ‘If you miss the plane you’ll be allocated seats on a later flight.’

‘We have to catch this one,’ Halenius said. ‘It’s extremely important.’

The woman tilted her head and smiled. ‘Everyone says that.’

Annika, who had been standing half a step behind Halenius, pushed forward and leaned across the desk, standing on tiptoe. ‘I was the one who made the booking,’ she said. ‘The travel agent guaranteed that we’d be able to check in the whole way through. Otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here.’

The woman was no longer smiling. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid—’

‘I spoke to airport management at Charles de Gaulle and to Air Europa’s head office in Amsterdam. Everyone gave me guarantees that this would work.’

The woman’s lips had narrowed to a thin line. ‘I can’t see how—’

‘I suggest you pick up the phone and call someone, or find someone who knows how to do this,’ Annika said, pulling out a notepad and pen. ‘Can I have your full name, please?’

The woman’s neck was flushing red. She stood up and disappeared through a door to the left.

Halenius looked at Annika in surprise. ‘I thought Air Europa’s head office was in Mallorca.’

‘I don’t know where the fuck it is.’

She watched the clanking conveyor-belt carrying luggage that disappeared through an opening to the right. Golf bags and Samsonite cases and pushchairs in plastic bags, all swallowed by the dark hole in an unrelenting stream. The ceiling arched above their heads. The passengers behind them were starting to shuffle and look at their watches. Thomas was lying on a bare floor somewhere, bleeding to death, and she was in charge of logistics. This was her responsibility.

The woman came back with an older woman.

‘So, what seems to be the problem here, then?’ the older woman said.

‘We’ve been guaranteed that we could check in all the way to Nairobi,’ Annika said, ‘but clearly there’s been some sort of misunderstanding somewhere. It would be great if we could get it sorted out.’

The older woman smiled. ‘Unfortunately, I’m afraid—’

Thomas’s swollen face was talking to her in a monotone from the computer screen. The kidnapper’s shrill voice seeped out from the baggage conveyor-belt. Halenius’s guttural groan rose up and got stuck beneath the ceiling.

She leaned across the desk. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘This instant.’

The older woman bent over the computer terminal and typed a few commands, reached towards a printer, then put two provisional boarding cards on the check-in counter. ‘There,’ she said. ‘All sorted.’

* * *

Anders Schyman felt the shock run through his body as he read the messages from the TT news agency: we were actually right.

The custody proceedings against Gustaf Holmerud had obviously taken place behind closed doors, so the precise reasons as to why he had been remanded in custody hadn’t been made public, but the district court’s decision to hold him spoke for itself: the man was being remanded for having been the ‘probable cause’ of two deaths. And ‘probable cause’ was the highest level of suspicion.

Must be Lena Andersson and Nalina Barzani, Schyman thought, reaching for the intercom. ‘Patrik? Can you come and see me for a moment?’

The head of news came bouncing across the newsroom with his ever-present biro. ‘Probable cause!’ he said, and landed in the visitor’s chair. ‘Now we’re talking!’

‘What is it we don’t know?’ Schyman said.

A vague description and some information from a mobile-phone operator would be enough to hold someone on the grounds of reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause.

Patrik chewed his pen. ‘Q’s in charge of the investigation, so Berit’s on the case.’

Everyone knew that Berit Hamrin and Superintendent Q at National Crime had a good, close relationship, but no one, except Schyman and possibly Annika Bengtzon, knew
how
good and
how
close it was or, rather, had been. Berit had had an affair with the detective that lasted several years. Clearly she had managed to stay on good terms with her former lover because he had gone on giving her information that he shared with very few others.

The reason Schyman knew about it was because he had asked her how she came to have such brilliant sources inside the police, and she had replied without a trace of hesitation or embarrassment: she slept with the superintendent in a police-force flat at five o’clock every Tuesday afternoon. Schyman didn’t know for certain if she’d stopped.

‘It must be something really significant,’ Schyman said. ‘Forensic evidence, witnesses, murder weapon, even a confession. I want to know what it is.’

Patrik Nilsson looked out at the newsroom. ‘Feels damn good,’ he said, ‘that we were on the ball.’ He glanced at the editor-in-chief, and a little shiver ran down Schyman’s spine.

‘How do you mean?’ he asked.

Patrik clicked his pen a few times. ‘It was actually Annika Bengtzon,’ he said. ‘She only said it to wind me up, I know. I didn’t think the body in Skärholmen was much of a story but she listed them for me, all those dead women, said maybe we were missing out on a serial killer, so I put Berit and Michnik on to it.’

Schyman leaned over his desk. The fact that even Patrik Nilsson occasionally worried about media ethics was an unexpected but welcome sign. ‘We don’t set the framework,’ he said. ‘Society is in a state of constant flux, and we change with it. We describe and we observe, but we don’t represent any ultimate truth. Circumstances can change from one day to the next, and when they do, we reflect that.’

Patrik stood up, relieved.

‘Find out why he’s being held,’ Schyman said.

When Patrik had shut the door behind him, he pulled out the envelope, addressed it to the chairman of the board, Herman Wennergren, took two deep breaths, then called Reception. ‘I need to get something to the board. Is someone available to take it?’

He looked at his calendar and drew a circle around that day’s date, 30 November. According to the terms of his contract, he had to give six months’ notice, timed from the date when he informed the board of his resignation, which meant that he would leave on the last day of May the following year.

He watched the new caretaker heading across the newsroom and weighed the envelope in his hand. Would they accept his resignation? Or would they persuade him to stay, increase his salary and pension, drown him in flattery and pleas?