And then a kick. Back leg forward, rotate, kick. Hard.
She kicked him right on his forehead.
Thomas collapsed and ended up lying by her feet.
Lifeless.
At that very same moment she realized what she had done. The adrenaline boost turned immediately into horror. She put her hands over her mouth and took a step back. What have I done? She removed the hand from her mouth, held it in front of her and saw it shaking. How did I...? Now she became aware of her surroundings. What if somebody had seen her? Twice she looked round to make sure she was safe. Nobody could be seen. The hangar was empty. But what should she do now?
A vibrating sound came from the lifeless man’s clothes. It developed into a ringing sound that got louder.
Jana bent down and checked one of his pockets, but found nothing. She pushed him over to get her hand into the other one, and there she found his cell. “Missed call” it said on the screen. Hidden number.
She decided to take the phone with her. She threw a quick glance at the lifeless body, took off her gloves, turned round and walked out.
The dark shadows hid her as she made her way to where she had parked. The docks were just as desolate as before.
When she got into her car she immediately opened Thomas Rydberg’s phone and went through the list of calls received. Hidden number several times. Then there were a couple of complete numbers and she quickly wrote those down on a parking receipt. In the list of outgoing calls, there were numbers connected to names, and Jana made a note of these too. Nothing seemed weird or out of the ordinary.
It wasn’t until she checked the list of outgoing text messages that she found something strange. In one of them it said: Del. Tues. 1. That was all.
She stared at the short message, wrote it down, as well as the date it was received. Since an active phone can be traced with simple means, she quickly slid out the SIM card and put the telephone in the glove box.
She took a deep breath and leaned her head against the neck-rest and felt calm again.
It shouldn’t be like this, she thought. I ought to react, scream, cry, shake. I’ve just killed a man!
But she didn’t feel anything.
And that worried her.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Saturday, April 21
THE CHILDREN USUALLY woke up as early as six, as they did this Saturday morning too.
Henrik Levin stretched and yawned widely. He looked at Emma who was still asleep. The children were making quite a noise upstairs and Henrik decided to get up. He checked his mobile but no new messages had come during the night.
His pajamas were comfortably warm as he went up the stairs to the children’s room. Felix had tipped the whole box of Legos over the floor and smiled happily when he saw his dad in the door. Vilma was sitting on her bed and rubbing the sleep out of one eye.
“Well now, what do you think? Breakfast?”
With whoops of joy Felix and Vilma ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. Henrik followed after them. He closed the door to keep the sound down and laid the table with bread, butter, ham slices, juice, milk and yogurt. Vilma opened the pantry cupboard and reached out for the box of cereal.
Out of the ordinary, Henrik boiled two eggs for himself and during the time that took he buttered bread for the children, adding spread or ham to each slice according to their wishes. Felix managed to turn the cereal box upside down and transformed the kitchen table into a buffet with the colorful fruity rings.
Henrik sighed. There was no point getting out the vacuum cleaner. That would wake Emma and she deserved to sleep in for a change. But he couldn’t let the kitchen look like a battlefield.
Henrik poured out the boiling water from the pan and let the eggs cool under the cold water tap. Then he bent down and tried to pick up all the cereal. He managed to tread on some of them under the table and the crumbs fell into the gaps in the rush matting. He hated crumbs. He considered it a cardinal sin to leave a table with crumbs on it. It must be left clean. Wiped down, and preferably sparkling clean.
He looked out through the window. Today he would try to find time for a run. If he got the children ready with breakfast, getting dressed and brushing their teeth, then Emma would surely let him take half an hour to get some proper exercise. Besides, he had let her sleep in. So he should be on her good side.
Felix pushed some cereal off the edge of the table. Vilma’s joyful laughter encouraged him to do it again. He pushed off a green ring, then an orange one. With his index finger he flicked one that landed in the flower pot. Vilma laughed out loud and Felix flicked off yet another, and one more after that.
“Stop it. That’s enough,” Henrik said.
“All right then,” said Vilma.
“All right then,” said Felix.
“Stop copying me,” said Vilma.
“Stop copying,” said Felix.
“You’re stupid.”
“Stupid is stupid.”
“Stop that now,” said Henrik.
“It was him,” said Vilma.
“It was her,” said Felix.
“Now stop that.”
“Stop it yourself.”
“All right, now we’re finished.”
Henrik was just about to pick up the eggs from the cold water when he heard his cell ringing.
“Good morning! Sorry to call so early,” said Gunnar ?hrn in a clear voice.
“That’s all right,” Henrik lied.
“We’ve had a call from a witness who saw Hans Juhlén a few days before his death. We ought to check that. Can you come?”
“Can’t Mia take it?”
“I can’t get hold of her. She’s not answering.”
Henrik looked at Felix and Vilma.
He sighed.
“I’ll come.”
*
The loaf of bread had gone moldy. Mia looked at the green fungus that was growing threadlike on the slice of bread. She threw the whole bag into the waste bin and thought of an alternative for breakfast. She had heard her cell ring, but didn’t bother to look it up. She didn’t want to talk to anybody. She wanted to eat. The fridge didn’t have much to offer her, nor the freezer compartment. The pantry cupboard had long since been emptied of everything edible except for a packet of fusilli. She pulled out a saucepan, measured a liter of water and threw in a couple of handfuls of the twisted pasta. Boil for twelve minutes, it said on the packet. Far too long, Mia thought, and turned the timer to ten minutes.
She went into the living room and flopped down on the sofa. With the remote in her hand she surfed between the channels, trying to choose between various repeats from the previous week. Garden Wednesday, Wilderness Year, Spin City and Border Guards.
Boring shows.
Mia sighed and threw the remote aside. What she needed now was a good film channel. But then she’d need a new TV too. With a really good picture. Plasma. Or LCD. With 3D. Henrik had bought one, a 50-inch model and Mia had been green with envy. A friend of hers had also bought a huge flat thing. Everybody had one. Except her.
The gray weather outside the window meant you could hardly tell it was daylight, even though the dawn was several hours ago. She hadn’t come home until four in the morning and she had fallen asleep with her clothes on. When she woke up she had her phone in her hand and the battery was dead.
It had been a good evening out in other words, one of the better ones for a long time, and Mia had got talking to a guy who was nice as well as generous. But she nevertheless declined his invitation to go home with him. Now she regretted it. If she’d been at his place, she would certainly have been given a decent breakfast with freshly squeezed juice. Then they would have been able to lie closely entwined in front of his big-screen TV. She assumed he had one. It would all have been better than sitting alone staring at her old TV.
She considered going off to the Ingelsta shopping mall and checking the price of a new one.
She had two kronor left in her account. At least she was in the black. And she didn’t actually have to buy one today. She could just go and look at what was available.
The timer buzzed in the kitchen. Mia went in and took the pasta off the hotplate. I’ll just go looking, she thought.