Authors: Jens Lapidus
Life Deluxe (62 page)
“How do you mean?”
Natalie glanced to the side. The customer and the other Hertz guy were busy with each other. “I think it’s best if we take it in your office.”
Anton was reluctant. Natalie coaxed him. Explained that she was a big Hertz customer—that much was true: but she was never the one listed on the actual rental contracts.
Finally Anton caved. Natalie and Sascha were invited to follow him behind the counter.
An office slash kitchen. A sink in one corner, coffee cups, a coffee maker, and a mini-fridge. A small table and four chairs. The other half of the room: a wide desk with two office chairs on either side. Phones, computers, lots of binders.
Anton remained standing in the middle of the office. “So what can I do for you?”
“I’m interested in knowing whether you’ve rented out a green Volvo S80 at some point during the first half of April this year,” Natalie said. “And if so, to whom.”
Anton crossed his arms over his chest. “Unfortunately, we don’t release information about other customers.”
Natalie didn’t want any bullshit. “But Avis releases that kind of information.”
“Well, we’re not Avis. We want our customers to feel safe with Hertz.”
“But do you have green Volvo S80s in your fleet?”
“That I can say that we do, yes.”
“Did you have that car in April this year?”
“The answer is yes.”
“How many of those cars were in Stockholm? You can check that, can’t you?”
Anton scratched his head. He had an earring in his right ear. The guy looked like Anders Borg, the ponytailed Swedish finance minister.
“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. But why do you want to know all of this?”
Natalie pulled the same story that she’d told Avis and Europcar. “We’re hunting down a hit-and-run. There was an accident in Östermalm on April fourteenth, a child was killed. The police have still not been able to identify the car, so now we’re trying to take matters into our own hands. I assume Hertz will cooperate for such a cause.”
Anton continued to scratch his head. “Oh, wow. Well, let me take a look.”
He sat down at one of the computers. Typed on the keyboard. Clicked on different windows and icons with the mouse.
There were the same vintage ads on the walls in here as out by the counter.
Natalie thought of her agreement with JW. He’d said that he didn’t dare break free from Stefanovic unless someone got rid of him. She’d asked him what, then, he needed her protection for. The answer was
something entirely different. A grand coup: JW was planning on blindsiding his customers. Screwing over the people who’d put money in his hands. Given him the sensitive responsibility of laundering their money. And there wasn’t exactly a risk that his customers would go to the police.
His idea was simple. Genius. Insanely dangerous.
She had to think it over. On the other hand: she had to kill Stefanovic. JW was the key.
And also: she needed him—it felt as though he were her mirror image. As if he truly understood her, saw inside her, knew who she was. She felt for him. Maybe too much.
And if she could get a percentage of his rip-off scheme, all her problems would be solved. Except for the one question: who’d murdered Dad?
Anton pushed his chair back. “We had a total of two hundred rentals of Volvo S80s during the entire month of April. Prior to April fourteenth, we had eighty-five rentals. I’m not entirely sure, but I think we had two green cars here in Stockholm. That means that we had seven green Volvo rentals prior to April fourteenth.”
Natalie thought: the guy wasn’t stupid.
“Can I see who the seven renters were?” she asked.
“I told you, you can’t do that. We have a privacy policy.”
There were three ways to deal with this. She could set Sasha loose on him—she would get what she wanted but risk police reports and other crap like that. The second alternative was to show this Anton guy her tougher side. Threaten to set Sascha loose to him, threaten to chop off his ugly ponytail and stuff it down his throat.
Natalie chose a third way. She placed four five-hundred-kronor bills on the desk.
Anton just stared.
“If you give me a printout of who rented those seven cars, you can go buy yourself something nice this afternoon.”
She and Sascha were still sitting in the car on Vasagatan.
She’d never thought Anton would break bad—the guy seemed more blue-eyed than a Swedish tourist in Marrakech. He just smiled, pocketed the five-hundred-kronor bills, sat back down in front of the computer, hit the keyboard, and printed seven pages.
He gave them to Natalie in a plastic folder with the Hertz logo on it.
She couldn’t wait. She climbed into the backseat. Retrieved the blurry image from the surveillance cameras of the green Volvo and its driver on the seat. Picked up the seven printed pages that Anton’d give her and held them in her hand. The thing: Hertz always made a digital copy of the customer’s driver’s license.
Shit
.
Six men and one woman.
The driver’s license photos were bad. Black and white, blurry, difficult to make out. She weeded out the woman straight away.
Held them up to the light. Against the seat. Placed the printouts next to each other, one by one.
The image from the surveillance camera was beside them.
John Johansson, Kurt Sjögren, Kevin Whales, Daniel Wengelin, Tor Jonasson, Hamed Ghasemi.
Process of elimination. Hamed was out immediately. The dude was too dark.
She compared again. Kevin Whales was young, born in 1990. The man captured by the surveillance camera was older, had a wider face. She weeded out Whales.
Four remained.
Fuck, the surveillance images were so crappy. Why even have those cameras if you can’t recognize a person in a car from less than two hundred feet?
She ranked the photos. One to five.
Daniel Wengelin: straw blond, thin. Thirty-six years old. A one—he wasn’t anywhere close to the man in the car.
Tor Jonasson: a two. The hair color was right but not the rest.
John Johansson and Kurt Sjögren: both were fours.
Both were possible.
She told Sascha to drive to see Thomas.
They met up at her house. Thomas was already there. He was sitting in the kitchen.
They went into the library—they had serious business to discuss.
She said, “So what’ve they found?”
“There are a lot of people in the police force who hate me. But others actually understand why I’ve done what I’ve done. They know that
I’m still an honorable man. So I gave the fingerprint results to a buddy, along with an envelope with some extra gratitude in it. He entered the fingerprint results into an ongoing project he’s working on. Doing that enabled him to pass the stuff to the Nordic Cooperation Committee and Interpol. Then they could run searches through their databases based on the fingerprints from the Black & White Inn.”
Natalie felt her pulse pounding in her temples.
“They’ve come up with three hits. A murder in Berlin last year, an assassination attempt of a Russian politician. And another murder in Lyon seven years ago.”
Natalie wasn’t breathing.
Thomas said, “They suspect the same person.”
He picked up an envelope, opened it. Placed a document on the table.
A printout from Interpol’s
Wanted
database. First: a few lines of general information. Then a name: Semjon Averin. Then two photographs, front and profile shots.
There was more text, but she was only looking at the person in the photograph.
A clear face: it was the same person as John Johansson.
* * *
OIPC—ICPO INTERPOL
RED NOTICE
[image]
Legal Status
Current Surname: Averin (son of Michail)
Current Given Name: Semjon
Sex: Male
Date of birth: April 4, 1966
Place of birth: Kurgan, Uralskij
Nationality: Russia
Known aliases: Florencio Primo, Sergey Batista, Volk (“The Wolf”)
Physical Description
Height: 187 cm
Weight: 97 kg
Hair color: Dark
Eye color: Brown
Crimes
Murder, attempted murder, illegal weapons possession, conspiracy
Arrest warrant issued by:
Moskovskij gorodskoj sug, Moscow, Russia
Tribunal de Police, Paris, France
COMMENTS
Semjon Averin was born in the city of Kurgan in Siberia. His father, Michail Averin, served as a high-ranking officer in the Russian Air Force. His mother, Sonja, was a Communist activist. Semjon Averin’s parents divorced when he was young. His father is reported to have severely abused the boy on two occasions.
After finishing school, Averin applied to the Russian military. After completing two years of basic training, he was accepted to OMON (Otrjad Militsii Osobogo Naznatjenija). OMON is made up of a large number of special units within the national police in Russia. OMON was created in the former Soviet Union and is today under direct orders from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Every Russian police department has an OMON force that is deployed in high-risk situations such as, for example, hostage dramas, kidnappings, riots, terror threats, and so on.
However, Averin was fired from the unit after only fourteen months of service, for unknown reasons. He returned to Kurgan and found work there as a gravedigger. In 1989 he married and had a daughter. Shortly thereafter, he was charged with rape and sentenced to eight years in the gulag. On the same day that he was to be transported to the gulag, he was allowed to pay a visit to his wife. Averin managed to escape from the third floor of a building where the visit was taking place. After a number of months on the run, he was found 120 kilometers north of Kurgan, was arrested and brought to the gulag. Even though Averin had the right to serve his time in a special unit reserved for former members of the military and/or police, he was placed in an ordinary unit, probably because of his high escape risk.
According to unverified rumor, the other inmates, when they
learned of his background within the police, sentenced him to death. He survived a number of murder attempts in the prison camp and was forced to fight for his life on numerous occasions. He was given his nickname, Volk (“The Wolf”), by the other inmates because he had a reputation for biting his opponents in the throat when he was attacked. After some time, they left him alone because he was considered dangerous.
Averin escaped from the gulag in 1992. He returned to Kurgan, where he is suspected of having joined the local criminal organization. He is suspected of participating in the murder of the rival organization’s leader, Dima Romanovitj, in the city of Tjumen. In 1994 Averin is believed to have moved to Moscow.
From 1994 to 2002 Averin is suspected of having participated in various illegal activities in the service of different organizations and associations. The allegations include attempted murder, blackmail, assault, and illegal weapons possession. However, these allegations have not been proven. After this period of time, Averin is formally suspected of the following:
•
Murder of the Algerian citizen Hassan Saber, Lyon, 2003
. Fingerprints have been found on a weapon, a pistol of the model Stetjkin APS, which was discovered in a water tank on the roof of the apartment building where Hassan Saber lived. Hassan Saber was known to French police as one of the leading figures in the sex trade in Lyon. He had been shot in the eyes with three bullets from the pistol in question.
•
Assassination attempt on the regional Russian politician Alexandr Glinka, 2007
. In 2006 Glinka was elected mayor of Novgorod. His primary campaign promise was to fight corruption in the region. In June 2007 Glinka’s service car exploded outside his home. Glinka had not yet climbed into the car. His chauffeur sustained serious, but not life-threatening, injuries. Russian police estimate that the charge, which consisted of a grenade and plastic explosives, had somehow been set off prematurely and was also placed incorrectly. Semjon Averin was spotted by witnesses in a car near the scene of the crime.
•
Murder of German citizen Özcan Cetin, 2012
. Finally, Averin’s fingerprints were found on a soda can in an apartment in Berlin where the German citizen Özcan Cetin was found murdered and tortured.
To conclude, the police have not been able to make any personal or other connections between Averin and any of the victims Saber, Glinka, or Cetin. Because of this circumstance and the ways the crimes were executed, as well as the fact that they were committed in disparate parts of Europe, Averin is suspected of carrying out so-called contract killings.
Averin is not included in any DNA database.
NOTE
Despite what has been written above, the person in question should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
At Arlanda Airport again. Jorge thought about the chick with the dreadlocks that he’d met when he was returning to Svenland. Insane coincidence that they’d run into each other.
