Life Deluxe (55 page)

Natalie got blood on her pants. Small dark spots over her knees. They might come out in the wash. If not, she’d throw the pants out. She didn’t give a shit. What must be done, must be done. There would be more bloodstains to come.

She sat down on a plastic chair. Closed her eyes. Saw images from the past few days rolling across the inside of her eyelids.

By Sunday, Melissa still hadn’t been in touch. Natalie waited until Monday. She called at night, from two different phones. Cherkasova’s phone was off, there was no voice mail. She tried to call on Tuesday again. She asked Sascha to text her. Same deal: zero response.

That was when she decided to go to her house again.

Out there: the apartment complexes on one side, a large school on the other. Solna: not a ghetto burb like the southern territories or farther down on the blue subway line. Not a fancy burb like where Natalie lived or one of the other northern residential areas. Solna: somewhere in between. Like vanilla ice cream. Like 2 percent milk. Like Kungsholmen in relation to Östermalm and Södermalm.

Adam met her and Sascha on the street.

He had bags under his eyes. Said, “I’ve been waiting in the car since five p.m. yesterday. I haven’t seen her go in or out.”

“We’ll see,” Natalie said. She had a bad feeling about this. A small ache was growing in her stomach.

Adam knew the code to the downstairs door. He opened it.

There was no elevator. They walked up the stairs.

Natalie rang the doorbell. They waited.

Silence inside the apartment.

She rang the bell once more.

They knocked.

Adam pressed his ear to the door.

“It’s completely quiet in there. Maybe she’s sleeping.”

They knocked again.

Nothing happened.

Adam felt the door handle.

The door was open.

This felt wrong.

Adam, like a mad Navy SEAL: pulled his gun and held it out in front of him.

This felt all kinds of wrong.

They walked in.

Natalie stood in the hallway, looked around. She could see into the living room. The couch pillows and the DVDs were on the floor. One bookcase’d been knocked over. The curtains’d been torn down. Paperbacks, framed photographs, small dolls, ashtrays, and packets of cigarette all over the room. Even a pizza carton’d been torn to shreds.

Fuck
.

Sascha called from the kitchen. “Someone’s really given this place a thorough once-over. I don’t think we should touch anything.”

She took a few steps toward the kitchen.

She heard Adam’s voice. It was shaky.

“Natalie, come here.”

He was in the bedroom. She went there. The grape-sized ache in her belly’d grown to the bulk of an orange.

The curtains were drawn. Dim light. All the dresser drawers’d been pulled out. Tops, skirts, socks, and panties on the floor.

It smelled strange. Melissa was lying on the bed with a bloody comforter over her. She had some sort of rag in her mouth.

Death’d painted her in its own nuance of gray—far from a flattering image. All the color was gone from her face. All the luster was gone from her skin. Everything sweet was gone from her eyes. Melissa’d looked scared the first time Natalie’d shadowed her. But the terror in her eyes now was completely different. No matter what death looked like, it hadn’t looked good for Melissa Cherkasova. That was 100 percent certain.

Adam bent down and pulled away the comforter.

Melissa’s body was ravaged. The sheets and mattress were bloody.

Her hands were bound with cable ties.

She had burn marks on her breasts and the insides of her thighs. She had bloody cuts on her arms and stomach. There was blood around her genitals. She had two bullet wounds in her chest.

Adam covered his mouth with his hand. Natalie felt the orange lump in her belly begin to move quickly. She ran to the toilet.

Thomas arrived half an hour later. He parked his van outside the entrance. Natalie and the boys were waiting in their car.

They walked in together.

The smell was more palpable now. Or else it was just that Natalie knew what was in there.

Thomas and Adam went into the bedroom. Natalie waited in the hall. Sascha was outside in the car, phone ready in case the cops showed up for some reason.

Thomas came back out. “Fucking pigs. Did you touch anything?”

“I’ve only touched door handles, nothing else. And I threw up in the toilet.”

“I pulled the comforter off. Other than that, only door handles,” Adam said.

Thomas crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Okay, we’ve got to clean up after ourselves. And then I think we should take care of the body, for safety’s sake.”

Thomas gave everyone orders. Pulled gear out of his duffel.

“Use these sponges. Wipe door handles, the sink, the bathroom floor, and any other surfaces you’ve been near. Use more disinfectant than you think you need. Tons. Put all the bedclothes in a garbage bag.”

They worked for twenty minutes. Thomas: Mr. Wolf in
Pulp Fiction
, for real.

The big question: How would they get Cherkasova out of here?

They spread plastic on the floor and set the body down onto it. Thomas turned the bed upside down. It was a simple model, an ordinary foam mattress. He pulled out a jigsaw, plugged it in. Sawed the bed open from the underside. Lowered the body into the bed frame. It looked like a coffin. They covered it all with the mattress and more black plastic. Taped with a whole lot of duct tape.

Thomas walked out into the stairwell. Unscrewed every single lamp—in case of nosy neighbors. They carried the bed down the stairs. Melissa inside like a heavy luxury mattress.

Adam drove off with the body in the van.

Thomas said, “I don’t think they got the material. She seems to have endured a lot. They wouldn’t have done all that to her if they’d gotten
the stuff. And I don’t think there’s anything in there. They looked everywhere.”

Natalie looked up. She was still sitting. Standing in front of her were Goran, Bogdan, and Sascha. The cold storage room behind the kitchen at Restaurant Bistro 66. The place belonged to an old friend of Dad.

On the shelves: milk cartons, juice cartons, bunches of celery and other veggies, lots of limes and lemons. Cocktail fixings en masse. Large freezers on the floor.

Over the shelves: plastic wrap. On the floor: tarp. The entire room was covered in plastic.

It was a smart move—because on the floor was Marko.

Natalie got up. Four days’d passed since they found Melissa Cherkasova tortured and murdered in her apartment. Thomas’d finally found the material. A DVD taped to the back of a sewer pipe in the laundry room in the basement of the building. In total: twenty-seven mini-movies. Three different men, three different hotel rooms. Three different types of perversions. One of them was the politician, Svelander; one was unknown; one was a high-ranked police chief whom Thomas recognized. Svelander seemed to dig anal. The unknown Sven wanted to get sucked off. The final guy wanted to dress Melissa like a schoolgirl, handcuff her, and then do S&M stuff in three-hour sessions.

Natalie’d sent Sascha to inform Martina Kjellson. She would be told half of what’d actually happened: “Melissa is gone, and we’re not the ones behind it. Don’t try to contact her, don’t contact the police or anyone else. We’ll take care of this on our own.”

Natalie saw sick images in her mind. Melissa’s wide, staring eyes. The rag they’d stuffed in her mouth. Her wounded vagina.

Marko’s jeans were bloody. His T-shirt was torn. A thick gold ring on his pinkie.

Natalie walked over to him. Goran’d just given him a once-over.

He whimpered, “Let me go now.”

“Why?” she said.

He spat out a tooth. “I don’t know anything about what happened to your father.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

“Fuck, no. I swear. I have no idea. He had alotta enemies. You could say he got what was coming to him.”

What he’d just said: Natalie felt a storm rage inside her.

She kicked him in the face. He spat blood.

She got more blood on her pants.

“And what about Cherkasova?” she said.

Marko spat out yet another tooth. “Please, I’m not the one who killed her.”

“I don’t give a shit. You were the one who trashed Fitnesse Club and did what you did to the receptionists.”

She kicked him again.

Yet another tooth hit the floor.

Goran screamed, “You’ve picked the wrong side, motherfucker!”

Natalie grabbed hold of Goran’s baseball bat. Struck Marko across the legs, belly. Slammed the top of the bat down with full force in his face.

His nose turned to ground beef. He screamed.

Red was bubbling from his mouth. Blood. Teeth. Pieces of his lips.

Natalie raised her voice, “Shut up, you pig! What happened to my father?”

The storm inside her pounded against her forehead.

“I have no idea,” Markos’s voice sounded desperate.

She stomped on his forehead.

He cried, whimpered, begged for mercy.

Images of Melissa flashed by once again. She swung the baseball bat at his cock.

He howled like a maniac.

She hit him in the same place again.

He continued to scream. Cry. Cough.

She swung with both hands, like a golf club.

He made a peeping sound. That was all.

He grew silent.

Natalie dried the sweat from her forehead. Calmed down. Looked at Goran. “Cut off his pinkie with the ring on it and send it to Stefanovic. Then end him.”

She walked out of cold storage room. Sascha in tow.

She wasn’t showering in the regular shower near her room, she was using the one in the basement. Mom was sleeping. Sascha was upstairs. It was twelve-thirty at night.

She wet her hair and massaged shampoo into it: Redken All Soft. Leaned her head back and rinsed. The she squeezed the water from her hair, twisted it like a rag. Conditioner: same brand, Redken All Soft. She let it work for a while. Washed her body and arms. Filed her heels with a foot file that she’d forgotten was down here. Then she switched from the handheld shower to the overhead. Sat down on the floor. Let the warm water rain down over her. The glass shower door steamed up. She lathered herself with an extra amount of shower gel: Dermalogica Conditioning Body Wash. Washed while the water ran. There was foam all over the floor. She realized that she hadn’t shaved her legs in several days. She opened the door to the shower. Stepped out, dripping over the floor. She looked for a razor in the bathroom cabinet. There was an unopened pack. She stepped back into the shower. Let the water run. Shaved her legs with slow strokes.

It felt good to relax.

She didn’t think about the war with Stefanovic. She didn’t think about Melissa. She didn’t even think about Dad. She just enjoyed the heat and feeling her skin soften under the running water.

She saw JW’s face in front of her.

She knew what he thought about her attacks against Stefanovic, even if he hadn’t brought it up again.

JW was supposed to be in touch with her about some sort of plan—when they met at Teatergrillen the second time, he’d promised to help her. Partly by having Bladman disclose everything that had to do with Dad’s assets and making sure to give her and her lawyer full jurisdiction, and partly by choosing a side: she wouldn’t agree to them doing business with Stefanovic that actually belonged to her.

They’d spoken on the phone twice. He was slippery, said it took time. That it was difficult. Natalie wanted to call him again, and again, and again. Not just to make him deliver. She wanted to hear his voice too. Hear his excuses. Goran forbade her, but he didn’t know how hard her heart started beating every time she saw an unknown number pop up on her cell phone display.

Later, she was sitting in the kitchen, still in her bathrobe. Eating cottage cheese with tomatoes. Half high on painkillers and valerian—but she still couldn’t sleep. Made a few calls. Thomas. Goran. Things were happening all the time. News of what they’d done to Marko would
break in two days max. They’d have to wait for Stefanovic’s reaction. This ought to make him rethink things.

She put her phone down. Really had to go to bed now.

Before she got up, her phone rang again. Hidden number. Neither Goran, Bogdan, nor Thomas used a number like that. Not Adam either.

It was Viktor.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

Natalie didn’t want to deal with his shit. “Home, and with the boys. Nothing strange.”

Viktor sounded close to tears. “I haven’t heard from you in a week.” “So?”

“I’m hearing strange things about you.”

“If you’re hearing strange things, it’s bullshit.”

“I heard that you were out with Louise and some dude, Axel Jolle or something like that, that he was hitting on you like crazy, and you just smiled. He bought you drinks, tried to take you home all night. You just took it.”

“So, did you hear what we did later that night? Really interesting, actually.”

“What did you do?”

Natalie took a bite of cottage cheese. “You haven’t heard?”

“No, what happened? I swear, if you slept with him, it’s over.”