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.