Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (27 page)

When Lena arrives at Arlanda Airport, her mood matches the blizzard.

She drives up the ramp that leads up to terminal five to the chorus of sirens and the thudding snarl of the helicopter. Her plan is to make sure John is inside the building and then seal off every window and vent until no one and nothing can escape. After that, they will turn the terminal upside down until they find John.

She hates airports. Not because she dislikes flying, although being stuck inside an airborne canister with hundreds of complaining drunks is not her idea of a good time. The reason she loathes airports is they are big labyrinths located too far from everything else. She is always late getting to them, and when she arrives, she inevitably gets lost.

Now this nightmarish chase will come to a conclusion either in the airport’s maze of corridors or in the snow outside. She hopes for the latter.

Both Lena and Agnes have been silent for the past ten minutes. Lena has fought to control the tumult of fear, anger and priorities in her head. Agnes looks out the window as if in a trance. The woman’s face could be made from marble.

On a different day, Lena would have been worried, but only John matters now. She feels the tug of the imagined string stronger than ever. If the name-callers back at the office found out, they would have a field day. Lena the mind-reading cop. The psychic psycho.

A string of police cars caught up with her on her way to the airport, including the Piket van. The airport’s own security staff and police force have moved into positions to make sure John or Tom cannot leave or enter the airport unnoticed. Extra personnel monitor the CCTV for hints of either of the two.

A helicopter with an infrared scanner circles the airport, waiting for instructions, and a military helicopter with the national task force onboard is minutes from landing inside the compound. A small army against one injured ordinary man. And still she worries.

Lena pokes Agnes. “Are you awake?” she asks, expecting to start Agnes out of her reveries.

Unruffled and calm, Agnes turns and looks at Lena.

“Right,” Lena says. “I’ll park just outside. Get on the radio and find the one who’s in charge of the terminal’s security, what’s his name?”

“Circovic.”

“Tell him we’re here, and ask if there’s been any sign of John or Tom. Or anything else.”

“Sure.”

Lena continues up the ramp, then brakes hard to avoid colliding with a coach parked at an angle across the road.

“What the hell?” she says, staring at the standstill. Horns blare incessantly. She does not have to leave the car to know that something is wrong; the wide road is the arterial to the terminal. Stopping for longer than a minute means vicious parking tickets. Were it not for the weather, she would have driven around the mess.

She peers down the street. The blizzard turns everything more than fifty metres away into a grainy haze. Given the security checks, she was prepared for queues outside the terminal, but this is bizarre. The airport is a clockwork built to cope with hard wind, heavy snow and rotten weather in general.

This is no ordinary traffic jam.

“No sign of the suspects,” Agnes says and puts down the radio.

Lena shakes her head. “John’s here. This is his fault. No, I don’t know for sure, but I trust my gut feeling. Wherever he goes, chaos follows.”

“They’ve got the entrances tightly monitored.”

“Do you really believe that helps?” Lena asks.

She knows how this is planned: the police, the Piket and the task force will work alongside each other. The police and the airport security will try to locate John while the Piket remains outside, going in as soon as John has been spotted. The task force will deploy at a central location and rush in behind the Piket. Too many officers will raise concern and tip John off. If anyone asks, it is a drill.

Lena listens to the chatter over the radio and reads between the lines of taut exchanges between officers. Even the Piket are nervous. To an outsider, the huge number of officers involved would look ridiculous, but the rumour of John’s actions has reached the farthest capillaries of the force. The term
rabid dog
is used more than once in the communications. Voices brim with adrenaline.

“To hell with it,” Lena mumbles and cuts the engine. Snapping commands over her radio, she orders the officers under her command to spread out in teams of two. When her instructions have been acknowledged, she steps out of the car.

As soon as she leaves the vehicle, the wind rams her and pushes her into the side window. The road is a horizontal tornado of furious travellers, motionless cars and whirling snow. She tries to slam the door shut, fails, leaves it open, and stalks towards the terminal.

Terminal five is a flat, rectangular building a few hundred metres long and with several wide entrances facing the street. She walks up to the nearest entrance and shows her card to the security staff and the police officer stationed at the doorway. The men are tense but professional; there is no such thing as lax airport security this side of the millennium. She hopes they have the wits to look out for Tom as well as John. Behind her are eight other police officers. The Piket team still wait in their van.

“Where’s Tom?” Lena asks.

“He hasn’t shown up,” the police officer says just as his radio beeps. “One moment,” he says and turns away.

“Great.” Lena runs her hand through her hair. “Absolutely wonderful. Just what we need. Agnes, we’ll do a sweep down the hall, starting at gate one. What?”

The police who spoke on his radio points to the street. “There’s been an incident at the taxi line.”

Lena’s skin grows cold. “What kind of incident?”

“A fight. And car thefts, I think.”

Lena catches her breath. Hell and absolute damnation.
It is John. It must be.

But it makes no sense; he would not leave the airport without finding Tom. John would run if he had to, although only if he had good reason. The police’s presence would make him cautious, not scared. He would stay close to Tom.

The police officer’s choice of words sinks in: he said cars, not car.

Lena steps closer to the officer. “How many cars were stolen?” she asks.

“Two. One taxi, one private.”

The pieces fall into place. She is right. John is not running; he is still hunting Tom.

“I can’t fucking
believe
this,” Lena says. “What the hell is Tom doing outside the airport? Where did they go? What type of cars did they steal?”

“I’m not sure, but I can a–”

“Where’s the taxi line?”

The officer points. “At the other end of the terminal.”

Lena backs away. “I want to know what kind of cars they took,” she shouts. “The makes and colours.
Now.
”

She turns to the other officers who wait behind her. “Back to the cars. Agnes, make sure every single road from the airport is blocked. And tell the others to follow me.”

Lena runs to her car and fumbles with the keys. Agnes gets in the passenger seat just as Lena revs the engine and turns the siren back on.

“The helicopter too?” Agnes asks as she fastens her safety belt.

“All of them.” Lena wrestles the car into gear and rips past the other police cars.

John is not getting away. She will reel him in, whatever the cost.

*

Lena overtakes a truck, cuts across a junction, and swerves as her car loses traction. Wrenching the steering wheel to avoid sliding into the ditch, she floors the gas and drives onto a smaller road.

Leafless bushes scrape the sides of the car. On her right is a flight control tower, a pillar of black and white rising out of the white landscape. If she is right, the shortcut will take her to the road on which John and Tom drove away. A helicopter swoops over her car and turns in the direction of where she is heading.

“Can you see who that is?” Lena asks Agnes and points to the air. “I want to talk to them.”

Agnes leans forward and glances up. “It’s too small to be the task force. It must be one of ours.”

“Open a channel and put the radio on loudspeaker,” Lena says.

Agnes works the radio’s control panel, puts the radio between the car seats and pushes a button. “Calling helicopter Caesar twelve,” Agnes says.

A loud rasping noise is followed by a man’s voice. “Helicopter Caesar twelve here,” he shouts over the sound of the rotor blades. “Come in?”

“This is Detective Franke,” Lena says just as the car rattles over a metal grille. A yellow gate appears out of the blizzard. “Oh, for fuck’s sake – hold on, Agnes.”

Lena lowers her head and grits her teeth as the car smacks into the gate. A gunshot-like pang later, the car rushes on and leaves the shattered gate behind. Agnes’s side window is smashed into a matrix of fine lines where the gate struck the glass.

A small roundabout takes them on to the road that leads away from the terminal. The helicopter is a shadow above. Behind her, more police cars and the Piket van clear the roundabout. Sirens start up again. Blue flashing lights fill her rear-view mirrors like stroboscopes.

“Hello?” the radio sounds. “Are you there? Over.”

Lena breathes and shifts gears. “Tell me you know where the cars went,” she shouts.

“We’re looking for them right now. We received the descriptions a moment ago.”

“Screw the descriptions,” Lena snaps. “Look for two speeding cars. It’ll be them.”

Agnes taps on the control panel of the car’s communication unit. “They’ve blocked the road south,” she says to Lena. “The queues are going to build up fast.”

“Wait,” the man in the helicopter says.

“I can’t bloody wait,” Lena shouts.

“They’re just ahead. I almost missed them. They are not on the highway.”

Lena brakes hard, remembers the other cars behind her, and floors the gas pedal. Agnes holds on to her seat and looks at Lena in alarm.

“Where are they?” Lena asks. “I need directions, fast.”

“They’re on a road parallel to the highway. In the forest, on your right. I think they’re heading back to the airport.”

“Don’t let them out of your sight,” Lena says. “We’re going back to cut them off. Out.”

She slows down and looks for a good spot to turn around. Tom and John are returning back into the tightening net. For once, things are going her way.

“If you go back,” the man in the helicopter above says, “you’ll miss them.”

“You said they’re heading back?” Lena asks.

“Yes, but not to the terminal. The cars are driving towards a gate.”

“A gate to what?”

“The airfield.”

“Where’s the turn?” Lena asks.

“Just ahead of where you are.”

Lena sees the sign. Hoping the drivers behind her are paying attention, she slows down, turns right onto the narrow road, and stops. On their sides are sparse woods draped in a pale gloom by the blizzard.

“You drive,” Lena tells Agnes. “If they crash and run, I’ll go after them.”

Shielding her eyes, Lena leaves the car and runs around to the passenger door while Agnes scoots over to the driver’s seat. As soon as Lena is back inside, Agnes accelerates hard, forcing Lena to cling to the door handle.

Lena peers into the distance and curses the weather. Were it not for the helicopter above, they would never have found the fleeing cars. At least she cannot be far behind them; Agnes, who usually makes a point of obeying every traffic law in existence, guns the car like a racing driver on a crusade. The other police cars are somewhere behind them, but Agnes has outrun them in seconds.

Lena’s phone rings. An unknown number. Going this fast, she does not want to take her hands off the handle, but the call might be important. As quickly as she can, she accepts it and switches on the loudspeaker.

“Franke here –
Jesus
, mind that tree – who’s this?”

“This is Jan Bjurman,” a man says. “I’m head of security at Arlanda. I’ve been appointed crisis coordinator, but I’m not sure – are you in pursuit of the car thief?”

“We’re heading towards the airfield just south of Arlanda,” Lena shouts, holding on to her seat.

“I see,” he says. “That’s good.”

“In what way?” Lena demands.

“The airfield is surrounded by a fence six metres high,” he explains. “We’ve got patrols with IR sensors nearby, and the gates are reinforced. You need a code and swipe cards to get through.”

“Is this road in use?” Lena asks, noting that there is less snow here than she expected.

“It’s used by trucks and maintenance vehicles, so we keep it ploughed. It’s also a dead end.”

Lena holds on as the car drifts through a curve and accelerates again. Agnes leans forward and stares at the road as if challenging it to fight.

“I can’t see the task force,” Lena says. “Are they close?”

“They should be.”

“Tell them to stay back.

“But my directives are – why?”

“John’s got a fucking gun is why. He’ll shoot at them.”

“I don’t have the authority to tell them what to do. But they know the suspect is armed.”

Lena almost laughs. She considers telling him that the problem here is not the gun, but the man wielding it. “Try anyway,” she says.

“I’ll talk to them. No promises.”

“And make sure no one is close.”

“The security on the other side has been told to give you room.”

“What about planes?”

“We have to let inbound flights land. They can’t circle in this storm. All outbound flights are grounded, but passengers are restless. People whisper about terrorists.”

“There,” Agnes says and points ahead.

Lena hangs up on the manager and squints into the whiteout. A few hundred metres ahead, red tail lights appear and vanish again, so quickly she almost thinks she imagines them. On cue, the radio beeps.

“Helicopter Caesar twelve here. You’re close to the cars.”

“Are we gaining on them?” Lena asks.

“Slowly. The leading car swerves a lot, but it’s going fast. It’s less than a kilometre to the gates.”

“How far apart are the cars?”

“It’s hard to tell. I’d say a hundred meters. Maybe less.”

Lena strains her eyes for another glimpse of the lights. A thousand metres left to the end. Scenarios flutter in her imagination as she tries to picture the closure: A dash through the snow, John giving up, a stand-off, or John committing suicide. A whirlwind whisking her away to a dull Kansas where she can sleep and toilets are not haunted.

The car rocks from side to side as the forest rushes past. In front of them, the lights creep closer and are soon in constant view. Two dual smears of red in the white. Reluctantly, she pulls her pistol, checks the clip, and puts the weapon back in its holster. Its grip is even colder than her hand.

“You’re closing the gap,” the man in the helicopter reports.

Lena wheezes as the car drifts sideways through another curve and rockets onto a straight stretch. They have to be near the gates.

“Damn it,” Agnes whispers.

“What?”

“They’re going faster.” Agnes flinches as they zip past a tree so close it touches the side of the car.

“You can still catch up with them, can’t you?” Lena asks. “The helicopter says we’re gaining.”

“That’s not the problem. The gates are just ahead.”

“The cars are right up at the gate,” the officer in the helicopter says. “Christ, they’re going really fast. I think the first car’s going to try to–”

“Hold on,” Agnes says and goes faster.

Lena and Agnes burn through the blizzard. The wind tries to shunt their vehicle into the forest, but to Lena’s amazement, Agnes keeps the car on the road. Metre after metre, they gain on John and Tom.

“I see the bastards,” Lena says. “You’re right. They aren’t slowing down.” She pauses. “He’s going to try to break through.”

The fence bleeds into view like a horizontal dark line beyond the cars. There is no way John or Tom can stop in time. Tom will crash, and John will not hesitate to run his car straight into Tom’s.

At the last moment, Tom’s car veers right and smashes into the fence next to the gate.

“Oh no,” Lena says. “No, no,
no
.”

Had Tom hit the gate, the thick metal bars would have reduced him to a sticky paste, but the fence is more brittle. Made to withstand frost and wire cutters, the mesh is tough enough to keep out animals and trespassers; however a car travelling at breakneck speed is a different matter.

For a moment, Lena thinks Tom has run clean through, but one of the car’s wheels stays tangled in the frayed metal strands and sends the car spinning. It turns violently, slams into a metal railing on the airfield, and stops.

Lena jumps in surprise as klaxons awake like a choir of banshees: Tom has set off the intruder alarm. Red warning lights flare up and cast the twisted fence in a fiery glow. The volume sends splinters through her head. It is the last thing she needs.

John brakes hard in front of the hole made by Tom’s car, and Agnes turns sharply to avoid colliding. Lena and Agnes’s car lurches into the forest, slides between trees and boulders, crosses a mound with a grating hiss, and comes to a spine-juddering halt less than thirty metres from John’s car.

“Mother of a–” Lena takes a deep breath and swallows hard. She cannot believe she is still alive.

Shaking herself into action, she flings her safety belt away and shoves her door open. John is on the far side; Lena and Agnes’s car will provide cover if John shoots at them.

“Brief the coordinator,” Lena says and climbs out. “Make sure his people inside the fence pinch Tom.”

John’s car is next to the hole. She cannot see through its windows, but the doors look closed. John is inside. The helicopter climbs, seeking an altitude safe from gunfire. Snow cascades from trees from the noise and the wind. Competing with the klaxons are more sirens. The other police cars, closing in.

John cannot run or shoot them all. Whatever he chooses to do, his flight ends here.

*