Box 21 (18 page)

that she wanted to go back to bed and that he should come with her. He didn’t think there was anything strange about that. He had followed her back here, to Room 2, and closed the door behind him, as per usual.

 

And then suddenly she had a gun in her hand.

 

He didn’t know how. All he knew was that she knew how to use it. He heard her cock the gun before holding it to his head. After a few moments, he realised that she was serious.

 

It was a bare, shabby room.

 

The guard had felt the back of his head gingerly, sighed and left. Ewert had stayed, sitting in the visitor’s chair and looking around.

 

A metal bed. Next to it a bedside locker on castors. By the window a small table and a chair, the one he was sitting in. It was a spacious room, meant for four patients, but it had been cleared to let one badly abused woman recover alone.

 

He sat in silence. His thoughts bouncing off the cold, white walls.

 

He was waiting, mustering his strength. He needed it more than he had realised when the call on the way back from Arlanda Airport made them switch lanes and drive over the Väster Bridge towards the hospital. Then it had been all about a sad murdered junkie and the chance he had waited for, to tie a crime firmly to the man who had ruined his life together with Anni. Now the situation had spiralled into a hostage drama with enough Semtex to blow parts of this crowded building to smithereens.

 

Ewert Grens was a senior policeman and better than most at investigating murders. But big operations, that was different. It was a long time since he had stopped doing big operations, the mobilisation of cars and men while events were still taking place.

 

So he had just stood there, with a fresh eyewitness
statement against Lang in his possession, one floor below the room where another drama had unfurled: a prostitute had knocked her guard down and escaped.

 

And seven floors above the mortuary, where the same woman had taken five people hostage, and slapped some light-beige death between their shoulders.

 

He had a patrol car bring his police uniform from the cupboard at Kronoberg where it was kept.

 

Soon he would be appointed Gold Command, in charge of both operations.

 

Two human dramas had landed on his desk.

 

On his way into the hospital, Slobodan glanced quickly back at the car. He could see Jochum Lang’s shaved, tanned skull and broad neck through the wet car window. Truth be told, he was fond of that fucking baldie, who had been like an older brother, someone you were maybe a bit scared of, but mostly admired. But it was about self-respect: at thirty-five a guy had to look after himself, get some respect even from those who didn’t expect it. Too bad if some folk had different ideas. Besides, this time it was Jochum who was up shit creek; he shouldn’t have let a witness see him when he was about to waste that screwball junkie.

 

Lisa Öhrström. Dialect from up north. Between thirty and thirty-five years old. One seventy-five, dark hair, narrow black-rimmed specs, usually kept in breast pocket.

 

Slobodan took the lift to the sixth floor, followed the empty corridor to the medical wards and stopped halfway along at a glass booth with a woman inside.

 

Her back was turned; he knocked lightly on the glass, and she turned round. Not her. At least twenty years too old.

 

‘I’m looking for Doctor Öhrström.’

 

‘She isn’t here.’

 

Slobodan smiled. ‘I can see that.’

 

She didn’t respond to his smile.

 

‘Doctor Öhrström is busy. Can I help you?’

 

This was the ward sister, or so her ID tag said. She seemed tense and her expression was worried.

 

‘The police have been here. They have just finished talking to Doctor Öhrström. Is that what it’s about?’

 

‘Yes, in a way. Where did you say I could find her?’

 

‘I didn’t.’

 

‘Where is she?’

 

‘She’s with her patients. And there’s more waiting. It’s been quite a busy day and we’re running late.’

 

He stepped out into the corridor, pulled out a chair and settled down, a demonstration that he had no intention of going away.

 

‘I’d like you to fetch her, please.’

 

He was sitting at a small table by the window in the room that had until recently accommodated an abused victim and was now a crime scene, using his mobile to issue commands. When the battery ran out he replaced it with a newly charged one and carried on.

 

Ewert had called for all available patrol cars to come to the Casualty unit at Söder Hospital, a place he had judged to be a suitable distance from any potential explosion. He wanted all traffic from the ring road stopped. The hospital access route was already blocked and the chief executive had agreed to evacuate the area where the mortuary was situated. Everyone must leave.

 

He stood up, glanced at Sven Sundkvist, who was just entering the room, and pointed at the door. Without a word they both went out into the corridor. The last few minutes had been intense.

 

‘I want an explosives expert.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Can you sort that out?’

 

‘Sure.’

 

They were at the lifts and Sven turned to the one that had just arrived. ‘Going down? Or shall we use the stairs?’

 

Ewert waved a hand. ‘Not yet.’

 

He produced an envelope and handed it to his colleague.

 

‘I found this by her bed. The one thing in the entire room that didn’t belong to the hospital.’

 

Sven took the envelope, looked quickly at it and gave it back, before walking into the nearest ward. He found what he was looking for on a shelf above the wash basin and returned, pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves.

 

‘Right. Let me see it.’

 

He opened it. A notebook, blue covers. Nothing else. He glanced at Ewert, then started leafing through it. Some of the pages had been torn out, four were covered with tightly written script. A Slavic language of some sort, as far as he could see.

 

‘Hers, presumably?’

 

‘Presumably.’

 

‘I don’t understand a word of it.’

 

‘I want it translated. Sven, can you take care of it?’

 

Ewert watched Sven restore the blue notebook to the envelope and then held out his hand, taking charge of it. He pointed towards the stairwell.

 

‘We’ll use the stairs.’

 

‘Now?’

 

‘We don’t want to be stuck in a lift if something happens.’

 

They started to walk down the steep concrete stairs and passed the big red stain that until recently had been Hilding Oldéus. The green-uniformed lads had carried off the rest. Ewert shrugged as they passed.

 

‘We’ll have to deal with that later.’

 

After a few more steps, Sven stopped. He stood still for a second or two, turned and went back to the red stain.

 

‘Ewert, hang on.’

 

He stared at the stain, his eyes following its edges. The blood had splashed high up on the wall.

 

‘What drives us? Look, the remains of someone who was alive not so long ago. What drives people?’

 

‘Sven, we haven’t got time for this.’

 

‘I don’t understand. I know something about how human beings work, up to a point, but I don’t understand it.’

 

Sven crouched down; his body swayed a little and he almost lost his balance. He stood up again.

 

‘We know who Hilding Oldéus was. He had quite a lot going for him. He was bright, for instance, no question about it. But he hauled a burden of shame about on his back. Just like most of the rest of us fools. Shame, where does it come from?’

 

‘We’ve got to get moving. Bloody quick.’

 

‘You’re not listening to me, Ewert. Shame eats you up from inside. Shame drives a lot of people. We shouldn’t be chasing criminals, you know, we should go for the shame that make criminals commit crimes.’

 

‘I don’t have time, Sven. Come on.’

 

Sven didn’t move. Ewert’s irritation was only too obvious, but he ignored it.

 

‘Hilding thought he knew who he was, at heart. And decided he would have nothing to do with that person, didn’t want to know the real Hilding, not at any price, because he was ashamed of him. Why do you think that was?’

 

Ewert sighed. ‘No idea.’

 

‘He probably had no idea either. Heroin shut off that awareness. That much he did know. It shut the door on his shame.’

 

Sven looked down at Ewert. He hadn’t been listening and was already heading down the stairs.

 

‘Listen, we’ve got a prostitute who’s pointing a gun at the people down there, so please excuse me, Sven. Let’s talk about this some other time.’

 

One floor down. Sven caught up with him.

 

‘Hey, Sven.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘A negotiator. I need someone who is good at hostage negotiations.’

 

‘He’s on his way.’

 

‘What?’

 

‘It was her only demand.’

 

Ewert stopped in mid-step. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

 

‘I just heard when I phoned in your request for reinforcements. She got one of the hostages to speak for her, a senior doctor. He described the mortuary situation on her behalf, as it were. She doesn’t speak Swedish and not much English either.’

 

‘And?’

 

‘When he was done with the preliminaries, she made him read out a name she’d written down for him on a piece of paper. Bengt Nordwall.’

 

‘Bengt?’

 

‘Yep.’

 

‘Why?’

 

‘Search me. Control took it to mean that she wanted him here. I would’ve come to the same conclusion.’

 

Ewert hadn’t come across Bengt on police business for a long time. Then, yesterday, there he was outside that broken-down door. Now they were to meet again, only a day later. He preferred their private relationship, talking in the rain, breakfasts. His one friendship out of uniform.

 

They hurried through the ground floor, following a few hundred metres of corridor leading straight to Casualty. They gave cursory nods to the hospital staff they met, hoping to escape their questions. No time to stop and explain, not yet. Along to the front door and out on to the ramp where the ambulances usually pulled up several times daily, unloading heavy stretchers and injured people.

 

This was the point where all available patrol cars had been told to meet up. Not much time had passed since the alert went out, but already Sven counted fourteen cars parked in the large waiting area. Or fifteen, including the one coming through the large automatic gates with its blue light still rotating.

 

Ewert waited for another five minutes. Eighteen marked cars, pulled up side by side. He had unfolded a map of metropolitan Stockholm across the roof of the nearest one.

 

The men gathered behind him. No one said much. They were all waiting for him to speak. He was the boss here, Gold Command, a large, noisy DSI with thinning grey hair, a slight limp and a stiff neck after a tricky encounter with a wire noose. Said to be a peppery old bastard. They had all heard of him, but no one had worked with him or even seen him in action. He was known to skulk in his room, working on his investigations alone and listening to Siw Malmkvist. Not many people were allowed in, but then, hardly anyone fancied knocking on his door in the first place.

 

They waited patiently until he turned round and looked thoughtfully at them. Seconds went by before he started to speak.

 

‘We have a female perpetrator. Yesterday she was carried unconscious from her pimp’s flat. She was brought to this hospital and has been cared for here. So far, so good. So far, we’ve come across this kind of thing before.’

 

He looked around. They were listening intently. How young they are, he thought. Good-looking and strong, but what do they know? They probably hadn’t come across this kind of thing before.

 

‘But, for some reason, at lunchtime today, she recovers enough to do something we could never have foreseen. She gets hold of a handgun, God knows from where. She can hardly move but all the same she damn well manages to knock her guard out cold and walks off, gun in hand. Finds her way to the mortuary in the basement and steps inside, locking the door behind her. And then she takes the five people who were down there hostage. Then she sticks plastic explosive all over them and phones us.’

 

Ewert Grens spoke calmly, addressing colleagues he had never seen before and who had probably never seen him.

 

He knew what he had to do, what was expected of him.

 

He arranged for an even bigger evacuation. According to the information from the mortuary, she had about half a kilo of explosives and detonators, but she could have rigged some more or hidden it anywhere. She had passed through large parts of the hospital on her way down there and could have stuffed the shit into all sorts of nooks and crannies.

 

He extended the area to be cordoned off outside the hospital. Not only was the access road closed, but he also had tall wire-net barriers erected along the ring road, the whole way, where the commuter traffic was just now growing dense.

 

Through the proper channels, he also asked for assistance from the national police force, especially that the Flying Squad should be available and prepared for a possible raid within the hour. He had phoned one of the squad’s senior men, John Edvardson, whom he had met several times and knew to be a clever man, as well as a Russian speaker. They talked through the situation. Even with Bengt there, Ewert felt it was important to have a second man on hand who could communicate in the language they would be negotiating in.

 

Sven was standing a couple of metres away watching his colleagues clustering at the ramp and taking orders from Ewert. They were there, completely alert. Truly present. Concentrating on the situation at hand and nothing else.

 

He wasn’t. Deep down he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the prostitute from across the Baltic, pointing her gun at five medics who had had the bad luck to be in the mortuary at the wrong time, or that Jochum Lang had just been identified as Hilding Oldéus’s killer, a few floors up.