Marked for Life (18 page)

“By the way,” said Jana. “You're too late, the meeting is already over.”

Mia clenched her teeth, swore out loud, then pressed the accelerator hard and shot off with her tires screeching.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

THE MAN WAS
lying there asleep when they climbed in through the window. Hades first, then the girl after him. They moved nimbly and silently. Like shadows. As they had been taught to do. They crept up on either side of the wide bed. At first listening for sounds, but the silence of the night was evident.

The girl carefully loosened the knife that was fastened to her back and held it in a firm grip. Not shaking. Not hesitating. She looked at Hades. His pupils had dilated, his nostrils too. He was ready. And at the agreed signal the girl took a quick step forward, climbed up onto the bed and cut perfectly across the man's throat. The man gave a start, he made a noise, was choking, struggling for breath.

Hades stood still, studying the jerky movements. He let the man feel mortal dread and panic a moment. The man opened his mouth as if screaming, his eyes wide open. He stretched out one hand in a desperate attempt to get help.

But Hades just smirked. Then he raised his gun and peppered the man with all the bullets in the magazine. He shouldn't have done that. That wasn't the order. He should just keep guard. Protect her. But he shot anyway.

The girl looked at the man who lay lifeless between them. A bloodstain gradually spread across the white sheet. From the slash in his throat, the holes in his chest, stomach and brow.

Hades was breathing heavily, a dark look in his eyes.

The girl knew that what he had done was wrong, he had broken the rules, but still she smiled at him. Because it felt good. When they stood there in the half-dark bedroom and looked at each other they were both filled with a euphoric feeling of being part of something bigger. Now they were the tools that they had so long been trained to be.

At last.

Together they climbed out through the window and made their way back to the van. The woman was waiting for them there. Her face still showed nothing. Showed no pride at all. Instead she herded them brutally into the empty back of the van and the girl immediately sank down on the floor. Hades sat down too. He sat directly opposite her, with long outstretched legs, and his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

The woman closed the doors and ordered the man who was driving to immediately take them away.

The girl leaned forward and took the bloody knife from the holder on her back. She pulled her legs up to her chin and looked closely at the blade. With her index finger she pushed the red blotches back and forth across the shiny surface. She had managed it, the first mission had been accomplished. Now they would return. Home.

And be rewarded with the white powder.

CHAPTER
THIRTY

HENRIK LEVIN AND
Mia Bolander parked outside the pizzeria for a quick dinner. They both assumed they would be working all evening. Henrik ordered a salad and Mia asked for a calzone.

“So it could be a settling of accounts?” Mia said.

“Yes,” said Henrik. “After all, as recently as last year two people suffered gunshot wounds in a gang fight in the district Klinga. Everything pointed to it being about the drug monopoly in the town.”

“But where does Hans Juhlén fit in? Do you see him as some sort of gang leader?” said Mia. She didn't give Henrik time to answer, but went on: “I think it's more like a contract killing ordered by someone who wanted to be rid of Juhlén, someone who let the boy carry out the murder.”

Mia took a large bite of her calzone.

“I'm still not convinced he was murdered by the little boy,” said Henrik.

“What would convince you then? Everything points to it being the boy who killed Juhlén. Absolutely everything,” said Mia. “The murders can in some way be explained as settlements ordered by gangs, but carried out by children.”

She looked at Henrik.

“You're sick in the head,” said Henrik “Children killing... It's not...”

Henrik became silent.

Mia stared at him. “But it does happen. And now if you'll excuse me while I eat more of my calzone.”

Henrik leaned over the table. “What I mean is,
how
do you get a child to kill somebody? And who turns a child into a murderer?”

“Good questions,” said Mia.

They ate in silence a while.

“Perhaps it's all just a coincidence. I mean the murders might not be connected at all,” said Henrik and wiped his mouth with a serviette.

“Drop it, can't you?”

Mia shook her head, ate up the last of the calzone, then pushed the plate to one side. “Shall we be off?” she said.

“Yes. We just have to pay first.”

“Oh yeah, shit. I've forgotten my wallet at home. Can you cover me?” said Mia with a big ingratiating smile.

“Of course,” Henrik answered and got up from the table.

* * *

It was ten o'clock on Saturday evening and Gunnar had completely run out of steam. He sat in his office and pondered the murders, the damned investigation. However he looked at all the motives, he couldn't piece it together. Juhlén, the unidentified boy and Thomas Rydberg. The blackmail letters, the deleted documents and the number and letter combinations. The heroin. The letters carved into the boy's flesh.

Gunnar sighed.

When they had gone door-to-door in the area near the docks, a witness said he had seen a dark car in the parking lot at around five o'clock on Friday.

At first he had claimed that it had probably been a black BMW, one of the bigger models, and Gunnar had immediately started a comprehensive check of all the X-model BMWs in the town. But then the witness changed his mind and started to say that it could just as well have been a Mercedes or a Land Rover, so Gunnar stopped the check. When the witness then changed his mind again and said that the car wasn't dark at all, he had dismissed the information completely.

Gunnar then phoned Henrik who told him that they had had no results after reaching out to the known heroin addicts in town. Nor had the conversation with Thomas Rydberg's wife led to anything that could help them in the investigation.

Now Gunnar had 42 unanswered emails and nine voice messages on his cell. All from journalists who had questions—and expected answers—about the entire investigation. Directly. Now.

Gunnar had no answers to give them, and he ignored everybody who had tried to reach him. He actually thought about going home. It wouldn't be bad at all to stretch out on the sofa with a cold beer in his hand. But it would be even nicer if he had some company.

He got up from the chair, turned off the office light and walked across to the elevator. He thought about phoning Anneli. When the doors opened again down on the ground floor, he was standing with his cell in one hand. She might get the wrong idea. Like that they should start over again. No, no, no, he wasn't going to phone.

He put the cell back in his pocket, then he pressed the button for floor 3 again and went back up to the office. No point in going home really; he could just as well keep on working.

He walked down the corridor to his room, turned the light on and started to write a letter with an appeal for help.

It was addressed to Europol.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

Sunday, April 22

JANA BERZELIUS WOKE
up lying on her back, her right hand tightly clenched. She started to loosen up her fingers, closed her eyes and consciously tried to relax. There had been something different about her dream last night. A picture of something she had never seen before. But she couldn't quite pinpoint it.

She dragged herself out of bed and went to the bathroom. Once up, she felt a sudden shudder go through her body.

The wind was roaring outside and the rain was beating against the window. She wondered what time it was. Because of the dark she couldn't really tell whether it was still night or early morning.

She went back into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. The covers lay in a pile on the floor, as usual. When she reached down to pick them up, she tried again to remember again what had been new in her dream.

She lay down and shut her eyes. The images immediately came back. The face. The scarred face and the voice that shouted at her. He held her in a firm grip. Hit her. Kicked her. Shouted at her again. He had a tight grasp of her neck, she couldn't breathe. She fought to come out of his grip, to get some air, to survive. He just laughed at her. But she didn't give up. She had a single thought. To never give up. And just as everything started to black out, she saw the detail that hadn't been there before.

A necklace.

A shining, glimmering necklace lay by her side. She reached out for it. Something was written on it. A name. Mama. Then everything went black.

Jana sat up and immediately pulled out the notebooks that lay in the cupboard of the bedside table. She spread them out across the bed. Then she thumbed through them back and forth, from notebook to notebook to try to find anything she had written about a necklace or an image of a necklace. But she searched in vain. Then she did something she hadn't done for ages.

She turned to an empty page, picked up a pen and started to draw.

* * *

For the greater part of the night, Henrik Levin had lain awake pondering the investigation. When the clock struck six, he got up, made some coffee and ate a bowl of yogurt with some sliced banana. He wiped the sink draining board and the kitchen table down twice, then brushed his teeth before waking up Emma to say that he must work yet another Sunday. When he opened the front door, he heard the children waking up and hurried out so he wouldn't have to see their disappointed faces.

One of the leads that he was busy following, and which he had been thinking about during the sleepless night, concerned the drugs that the forensic team had found in the docks. He thought that a larger search of the dock area was needed, and that they ought to immediately interview the staff.

Henrik felt how cold it was when he placed his bare hands on the cold steering wheel. As soon as he turned the key in the ignition, the CD player started at full volume. Markoolio's voice sang joyfully about Phuket, about summer all year round and then “Thai, Thai, Thai.” Henrik immediately turned the CD off and backed out from the drive.

In the silence he thought about the previous evening. After the pizza stop and before they called it a day, he and Mia had managed to start up a conversation with yet another couple of known heroin addicts. They had even spoken to a man who had been of use in earlier investigations about narcotics and who had given them important information that eventually led to them catching underage dealers. Henrik had hoped that this time too he could get the man to talk. But just like the other heroin addicts, he had been extremely taciturn.

“But bloody well tell us if you know anything,” Mia had said three centimeters from the man's face. After that she had threatened him with various nasty consequences if he didn't give them information that would help the investigation.

Henrik had got hold of her arm and made her sit down on a chair. Then she had calmed down. Most of all they wanted names. But to snitch in the underworld after all meant virtually signing your own death warrant.

Stopped at a red light, Henrik found himself thinking that he ought to put more emphasis on the weapons that had been noted in the investigation, a Glock and a .22 Sig Sauer. Besides, he must phone the transportation department and remind them to hurry along with trying to identify any vehicles that the speed cameras might have caught on the road in the area where the boy had been found dead.

Henrik felt energetic. He was hoping for a productive day.

When he got out of his car in the police garage, it was half past seven. He saw there was a light on in Gunnar's room and he soon saw Gunnar sitting in front of his computer, fingers tapping away keenly on the keyboard.

“Did you have trouble sleeping, too?” said Henrik.

“Oh no. It was just a bit awkward trying to fit on a sofa here in the office,” Gunnar answered without taking his eyes off the screen in front of him.

Henrik smiled. “I thought I'd go through the files again. I just can't fathom these murders,” he said.

Gunnar whirled around on his chair and looked at him.

“Do go through it all. I'm just going to forward some emails from curious reporters to the press officer. Twenty-two left.”

Gunnar whirled back and went on writing.

Henrik went to the conference room, turned on the lights and looked down from the window at the empty roundabout. Norrköping had not woken up yet. On the large table he laid out the files which summed up the cases with Hans Juhlén, the unknown boy with carving in his neck they were calling Thanatos, and Thomas Rydberg, and sat down to look through them all.

The file about Thomas Rydberg still consisted mainly of thirty or so pictures that Anneli had taken at the scene the day before. The last four pictures were taken outside in the docks area. Henrik looked at them absentmindedly and felt a tiredness creep up on him. He closed the ring file noisily and wandered off to the kitchen where he drank a large glass of water. A thought suddenly occurred to him that he had seen something on the photos.

He banged the glass down and hurried back into the conference room and opened the Rydberg file again. Once more he looked through the photographs, page by page, photo after photo. He was close to giving up again when he got to the very last photo. It was an overview of the crime scene, and Anneli had probably been kneeling when she took the photo. The wide-angle showed forensics busy working. In the background through the open doors of the hall you could see the container depot. Several different-colored containers stood there.

He tried to see what was written on them. But it was too small to see. Instead he quickly got up, ran down the corridor to Gunnar's room.

“Have you got a magnifying glass?”

“No, look in Anneli's room.”

Anneli's office was in perfect order and every item had its given place. Henrik opened the desk drawers, one after the other. In the bottom one he found what he was looking for and hurried back to the conference room. Now he could see the details he needed on the photo. The picture was taken from too far away for him to be absolutely certain, but on one container there were some letters and numbers.

Henrik immediately opened the Juhlén file and got out the list with the ten combinations. He started to compare them and suddenly gave a start. The combination had the same format: four letters and six numbers.

* * *

At a quarter to eleven Henrik Levin and Gunnar Öhrn got in the car to drive to the docks. They had arranged to meet the harbor director who would show them round the container depot.

When they turned in to the parking area a man of short stature with reddish hair and black glasses was standing there waiting for them. He was wearing a blue checked shirt and light jeans. He gave them a friendly smile and introduced himself as the managing director, Rainer Gustavsson. He asked if they wanted some coffee, but Henrik politely declined and asked instead to be taken directly to the container area. Rainer Gustavsson took the lead.

They were just loading a large ship, container after container lifted up by the gantries on the dock. Metal hit against metal, cranes were moved and trucks driven in an endless line. Several longshoremen in blue overalls with company logos were standing on the deck. They were all wearing safety helmets. Two men checked that everything was safely stowed and fastened. They knocked on the steel wires and now and then one of the men pulled out a spanner to tighten them.

Henrik looked up at the hull where the containers towered five high.

“It requires a lot of working hours to load a ship,” said Rainer. “And it must all be done quickly. If something goes wrong and delays the ship, money starts ticking away directly. Efficiency is everything in the freight world.”

“How many containers can you load on a ship?” Henrik asked.

“The largest ships that come to us can take six thousand six hundred containers. But there are ships in the world that can take more than eighteen thousand containers. If you lose one minute for every container, then that would mean more than three hundred hours delay. That's why the loading is very important and in recent years we have made wide-ranging investments in the docks to improve the logistics. Now we have a complete system to deal with everything from notification, in-delivery, examination, estimates, repairs and out-delivery. Thanks to our two new ship-to-shore gantry cranes we can also handle larger and larger container ships,” said Rainer.

“What sort of goods do you handle?” said Gunnar.

“Every type imaginable.” Rainer straightened his back as he said that.

“How do you check the contents?” said Gunnar.

“Customs does that. But sometimes it's hard to determine who is responsible for the freight.”

Rainer stopped and looked at the two men.

“We've had quite a few investigations here over the years. The local council as well as the Environmental Protection Agency have stood in front of fully-loaded containers, looked inside and tried to work out what they contain.”

He took a deep breath and lowered his voice a little. “Not long ago we had three people from Nigeria who had filled a container with scrap from old cars. They wanted to send it from here to Nigeria because they thought the scrap was valuable. What we regard as scrap here, can be useful there. But they didn't know about documentation. That meant that the council had to take over the case and the entire container had to be emptied to evaluate its contents. Some car parts were confiscated as they were seen as hazardous waste. I don't know what happened to the container after that.”

Rainer started walking again.

Henrik and Gunnar came up on either side of him.

“But how often does that happen? That you have to empty a container?” said Henrik.

“Not so often. Freight is governed by customs formalities. The seller is obliged to declare the goods for export and the buyer must declare for import. There's a whole set of regulations for sea freight. Sometimes the parties to an agreement don't even know the delivery conditions in the other party's home market. Then things can go wrong.”

“How so?” said Gunnar.

“Confusion can arise as to who will pay for insurance, when the risk is transferred from the seller to the buyer and so on. There are international regulations, but discussions can nevertheless arise about legal responsibility,” said Rainer and threw out both hands. “Here we are!”

The containers were piled like enormous building blocks of metal. On the right stood three orange-colored ones on top of each other. After them another three were stacked in the same way. Gray, rusty and with the name Hapag-Lloyd on the sides. Fifty meters further on there were another 46 containers. Blue, brown and gray, mixed together.

The wind found its way through the narrow space between them, resulting in a weak howling sound. The ground was damp and the dark clouds looked threateningly dark.

“Where do the goods come from?” said Henrik.

“Mainly from Stockholm and the Mälardal region. But also from Finland, Norway and the Baltic states. And of course Hamburg. Most of the goods from abroad are reloaded there and then they come to us,” said Rainer.

“We found narcotics in the place where Thomas Rydberg was murdered. What would you know about that?”

“Nothing.”

“So you have no idea whether there is any drugs trade in the docks?”

“No.”

Rainer answered quickly, looked down at his shoes, stamped on the ground.

“But of course I can't be certain it doesn't happen. But if that sort of illegal trade took place on a large scale, then I think I would have noticed it.”

“Has there been any other illegal trade? Like liquor?”

“Not any longer. A lot of ships here have even forbidden consumption of alcohol onboard.”

“But earlier?”

There was a little delay before he answered.

“We've had problems with ships from the Baltic states. They were selling bootleg liquor and we caught youths buying vodka directly from the ships.”

“But now have you discovered any trading at all?”

“No. But it's hard to prevent, we have six thousand meters of quays to keep an eye on, and we can't have staff just patrolling the docks. We don't have the resources for that.”

“So there could be drugs trading going on here?”

“Yes, you can't categorically say that there isn't any.”

Henrik walked up to a blue container and studied the length of it. Drops of water were running down its corrugated metal side. He then went round to the doors. There were four galvanized lock mechanisms from the top down, and in the middle was a box covering a sturdy padlock. On the right-hand door there were numbers and letters.

He immediately recognized that type of combination.

“It's been confirmed that Hans Juhlén, who was the head of the Migration Board's asylum department, was here in the docks,” said Gunnar.

“Oh yes?” said Rainer.