Hostage (2 page)

‘You should have told us you were getting married – we would have come along,’ Alex said for the second or third time.

Fredrika shifted uncomfortably on her chair.

‘We got married in secret. Even my parents weren’t there.’

Her mother still hadn’t forgiven her.

‘They didn’t try to recruit you in the USA?’ Alex said with a wry smile.

‘Who? NYPD?’

He nodded.

‘No, unfortunately. That really would have been a challenge.’

‘I was there on a course once. The Yanks are like everybody else. Good at some things, bad at others.’

Fredrika couldn’t comment on that point. She hadn’t worked for one single hour during her time in New York. Her entire existence had revolved around the two children, and on the task
of getting Spencer back on his feet. Nothing had been the same since a student had accused him of rape two years ago. When they discovered that Fredrika was expecting their second child, they had
initially agreed that a termination was the only way out.

‘We can’t cope with another child,’ Spencer had said.

‘It’s not the right time,’ Fredrika had agreed.

Then they had gazed at one another for a long time.

‘We’re keeping it,’ Spencer said.

‘That’s exactly how I feel,’ Fredrika said.

Alex put down his coffee cup with a clatter.

‘I thought you’d come back. To the police.’

‘You mean after New York?’

‘Yes.’

The noise of the other diners suddenly seemed intrusive.

Forgive me, she wanted to say. Forgive me for making you wait, even though I knew I had no intention of coming back.

But not one word passed her lips.

‘On the other hand, I understand that you couldn’t turn down a job with the Justice Department,’ Alex said. ‘It’s not every day you get an offer like
that.’

It wasn’t an offer. I went after the bloody job, because I knew that my soul would rot if I came back to Kungsholmen.

Fredrika pushed back a strand of hair from her face.

‘That’s true.’

There was nothing more to say. After the case involving the writer who refused to speak and the graves in Midsommarkransen that Alex and his team had investigated in the spring of 2009,
everything hads started to fall apart. When Margareta Berlin, the head of Human Resources, had called Alex into her office to tell him that the special unit he had led for the past few years was to
be dissolved, the news was far from unexpected. The team was running on empty, and Alex was putting all his energy into his relationship with Diana Trolle, the new woman in his life, while Fredrika
had fallen pregnant.

‘Have you heard from Peder?’

Alex gave a start when he heard Peder’s name.

‘No – how about you?’

She shook her head sadly.

‘Not since he cleared his office. But I did hear . . . that he wasn’t doing too well.’

‘I heard the same.’ Alex cleared his throat. ‘I bumped into Ylva last week. She told me a bit about how things had been.’

Fredrika tried to imagine the hell Peder was living through, but it was impossible. She didn’t know how many times she had tried, but it was always equally difficult.

Some things just don’t heal. However hard we fight.

She knew that Alex had a different view of the situation: he felt that Peder ought to pull himself together and move on. Which was why she hadn’t mentioned it before.

‘He’s got to stop behaving as if he has a monopoly on grief,’ Alex said, using the same words as he always did when they attempted to talk about what had happened.
‘He’s not the only one who’s lost someone close.’

Alex had lost his wife Lena to cancer, so he knew the dark depths of grief. But it seemed to Fredrika that there were essential differences between losing someone to cancer and having a brother
murdered by a ruthless killer.

‘I don’t think Peder’s in a state where he can make decisions about how he’s feeling,’ she said, choosing her words with care. ‘His grief has become an
illness.’

‘But he’s asked for help, and he’s been given help. And he’s still no better.’

They fell silent, reluctant to pursue the discussion. They knew that if they did, they would end up falling out, as usual.

‘I really do have to make a move.’

Fredrika started to gather up her things. Handbag, scarf, jacket.

‘You know I’ll always keep the door open for you.’

She stopped in mid-movement, thinking that no, she hadn’t actually known that at all.

‘Thanks.’

‘You were one of the best, Fredrika.’

Her cheeks grew hot and her vision was suddenly blurred.

Alex looked as if he was about to say something else, but she put a stop to that by getting to her feet. They left the restaurant together and, in the middle of Drottninggatan, Alex held out his
arms and gave her a hug.

‘I miss you too,’ Fredrika whispered.

Then they went their separate ways.

Detective Inspector Alex Recht had a distinguished career behind him. He had spent many years in the police service, with considerable success. In 2007, his efforts had been
rewarded: he was asked to form a special investigation team. It would be small, but would bring together the most competent individuals. Additional resources would be available when necessary. Alex
had started by recruiting the relatively young but driven Peder Rydh; he had proved himself to be a talented and conscientious investigator, but his temperament could be volatile, and his judgement
was sometimes flawed. With hindsight, Alex had asked himself if he was partly to blame for the tragedy that had occurred two years ago, resulting in Peder’s dismissal from the police service.
He didn’t think so. It had been a terrible case, and the price had been high for all those involved.

But no one had paid a higher price than Peder’s brother, Jimmy.

Alex knew he shouldn’t brood on the case that had cost him so much. Following Peder’s sudden departure from the team, things had gone downhill fast. Fredrika Bergman, the only member
of the team who hadn’t been handpicked by Alex, had lost her spark, and when she then became pregnant with her second child, it seemed to Alex that she somehow disappeared from active
duty.

He was the first to admit that he hadn’t liked her initially. Fredrika was an academic, a civilian investigator with no real aptitude or interest in the job. For a long time, Alex had
tried to circumvent her, giving her the simplest tasks he could find. Until one day he realised that he was wrong. In fact, she had a considerable aptitude for the job. However, her lack of
interest was still a problem. Alex could see that she wasn’t happy within the organisation, and there wasn’t a great deal he could do to change things. The impetus had to come from her,
and one day she turned a corner. When the case of Rebecca Trolle’s dismembered body landed on Alex’s desk, Fredrika came back early from her maternity leave. The team had reached its
zenith that spring. They had never been better.

Alex picked up his coffee cup and went along to the kitchen for a top-up. He had a new job with the National Bureau of Investigation. A good job in a good team. Interesting cases related to
serious organised crime. However, he couldn’t help missing the life he used to have. Before everything fell apart. Lunch with Fredrika had merely served to remind him of everything he had
lost.

He wasn’t stupid; he realised that Fredrika had applied for the post with the Justice Department because she wanted to get away. It was hard to criticise her for making that choice. She
was a conscientious and hardworking individual, and people like that always get restless. Alex wasn’t sure what her actual role was within the department; he knew that she had a certain
amount of contact with the Security Service, but he hadn’t delved any further.

He had other things to think about.

People he had lost, in different ways.

‘You can’t keep going over it all like this,’ Diana had said only the day before. ‘You’ve got to put what has happened behind you.’

Diana Trolle.

He would have been lost without her. She knew just as well as he did what real grief felt like, how painful it could be. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether they would have fallen in love if
they hadn’t been united by a sense of despair.

Grief.

Loss.

Pain.

He had known that they existed, that they had to be taken into account. Being crushed was just part of life. Or was it? He felt a fresh wave of irritation when he thought about Peder. Why the
hell couldn’t he just pull himself together? Why couldn’t he deal with the trauma in a different way, rather than making himself unhappy all the time?

If only Peder had handled things better, he could have kept his job and carried on working with Alex and Fredrika. Because when it came down to it, that was what Alex found so upsetting: he had
lost a close colleague, someone he had enjoyed working with. And even though he knew it wasn’t fair, he found that very hard to forgive.

Alex’s train of thought was interrupted as his boss stuck his head around the door.

‘Bomb threat,’ he said. ‘Came in just now.’

‘I’m on it,’ Alex said, getting to his feet.

A bomb threat. Buildings destroyed, human beings blown to pieces. An evil act in its purest form.

A short while later, he was fully up to speed. Not one but four bomb threats, targeting different places in Stockholm. Including Rosenbad, the government building.

Alex couldn’t understand it.

Four bombs. What the hell was this about?

W
here did all this anger come from?

Eden Lundell had no idea. As the head of the Security Service’s counter-terrorism unit, she was expected to have a clear grasp of every case that passed through her hands, but she often
found it extremely difficult to follow the thought processes that lay behind the actions of certain individuals.

Right now there were a number of issues that merited closer attention, and Eden had to prioritise. Resources were limited, and she wanted to see results. Patience was a quality she had lacked
all her life, and things hadn’t improved since she came to work for Säpo.

If only they understood the origins, the source of this rage.
The rage that made young people turn their backs on respect for life, and resort to violence in order to bring about the
changes they thought were necessary. To commit acts of terrorism. Eden had asked herself many times what could possibly make her cross that line, make her take up arms and fight against people
living in the same country as her, with no evidence of antipathy.

What would drive me to commit the worst sin of all?

She had reached the conclusion that the love she felt for her family might be just such a trigger. If they were threatened or affected by misfortune in some way.

God forbid that such a thing should ever happen, because then I will lay waste the castle of my enemy.

But the anger that Eden encountered through her work didn’t seem to have a personal background. The hatred took root within young people for a completely different reason. It was
impossible to point to one single factor that could explain the whole phenomenon, however hard they looked for it.

Eden was systematically going through the latest pile of material in one of the cases on her desk. It was depressingly thin. The original information was unequivocal: the suspects were financing
acts of terrorism in Colombia. But this source could not be used in court and, therefore, Säpo had to get hold of their own information in order to confirm what they already knew and,
hopefully, lead to a successful prosecution.

All too often, the intelligence said one thing and the evidence another, always with the same result. The prosecution would lose in court, or even before the case got there. The authorities
would end up looking weak and incompetent, and as if they were constantly persecuting innocent individuals who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve the attentions of the security service.

Eden couldn’t understand why there was always the same fuss. Her years with the National Bureau of Investigation hadn’t exactly been a catalogue of successful investigations, but
that kind of thing aroused far less interest from the public and the media. However, since the terrorist attack in Stockholm, Eden felt that a great deal had changed. Expectations were higher. If
they hadn’t won the latest case in the crown court, their everyday working lives would have been much more challenging.

There was a knock on Eden’s door, and Sebastian, the unit’s head of analysis, walked in. Eden pushed the papers on her desk across to him.

‘What do you think?’

‘Exactly what I’ve been saying for the last few weeks. We’re not going to come up with anything else on these guys. Let it go.’

Eden nodded thoughtfully. ‘And what about the money we know they’re sending to terrorist organisations in South America?’

Sebastian shrugged. ‘We can’t win ’em all.’

Eden tossed the papers into the cupboard and slammed the door shut. The case was history as soon as it disappeared from view. She would focus on Zakaria Khelifi instead – the man who had
been freed by the court, while his friends were sent down.

‘When are we due at the Justice Department?’

‘In half an hour. I thought we could walk.’

That sounded like a good idea. Eden could have a cigarette on the way and think about what she could say to make the Minister for Justice realise that the government must expel the Algerian
Zakaria Khelifi from the country.

Given all the information they had, and the fact that the Immigration Court of Appeal had gone along with their view, it shouldn’t be particularly difficult. And once Khelifi had left the
country, they could finally draw a line under Operation Paradise.

The meeting was held in one of the department’s more discreet rooms. The Minister for Justice was present, along with the Secretary of State, a political expert and a
handful of civil servants who were involved. Fredrika Bergman was part of this latter group. Säpo had come to Rosenbad to put forward what they referred to as a security issue. They wanted a
foreign citizen’s residence permit revoked, on the grounds that the man could become a serious threat to national security. The case had gone from the Immigration Board to the Immigration
Court of Appeal, and now it had ended up with the government.