“Out,” she said.
They stepped out of the car and into the forest. The silence was like a lid. The late night was just turning into day and the first rays of the sun were appearing between the fir trees. The woman pushed her along with the gun pressing against her back. Hades went first. He was hanging his head as if he had done something wrong and was ashamed.
The path they were walking along was narrow. Now and then she stumbled on the roots which stuck up from the soft ground. The branches scratched her arms and wet the thin cotton of her sweater. The further they went into the forest, the weaker became the headlights from the van.
One hundred and fifty-two steps, she counted silently and continued counting as they approached a dip in the terrain.
The dense forest opened up in front of them.
“Keep on walking!” said the woman and pushed the weapon hard between her shoulders. “Move on!”
They went down into the dip using their hands to push away thick branches.
“Stop there!” said the woman and took a firm grip on her arm.
She pushed the girl toward Hades and put them next to each other. She gave them a last glance before walking round them and disappearing behind them.
“You thought you were immortal, didn’t you?” she said.
She hissed the words.
“You couldn’t have been more wrong. You are nothing, just so you know. You are completely worthless little insects that nobody wants! Nobody wants anything to do with you! Do you hear me? Not even Papa cares about you. He needed you to kill, nothing else. Didn’t you know that?”
The girl looked at Hades and his eyes met her panic-stricken look.
Please smile, she thought. Smile and say that it’s just a dream. Let that little dimple on your cheek become even deeper. Smile. Just smile!
But Hades didn’t smile. He blinked.
One, two, three, he indicated with his eyelids. One, two, three.
She understood what he meant and blinked back, in confirmation.
“Of course you didn’t grasp that. You’re totally brain-dead. Programmed. But now it’s over.”
The woman spat out the words.
“Now it’s over, you damned monsters!”
Hades blinked again. Harder this time. One, two, three. And then again. The last time. One. Two. THREE.
They threw themselves backward. Hades got a firm hold of the woman’s arm and twisted it to make her drop the gun. The woman was caught unawares and instinctively pulled the trigger. A shot went off. The sound echoed between the trees.
But then she couldn’t resist the pressure from Hades any longer and shrieked with pain when he forced her arm back.
The girl got hold of the gun and immediately pointed it at the woman. Then she saw Hades sink down on the grass. He had been hit.
“Give me the gun,” snarled the woman.
The girl’s hands shook. She stared at Hades who was lying still in the grass. His throat was bare and he was breathing heavily.
“Hades!”
He turned his head toward the girl and they looked into each other’s eyes.
“Run,” he whispered.
“Come on now, give me the gun,” shouted the woman.
“Run, Ker,” Hades whispered again and coughed violently.
“Run!”
The girl backed a couple of steps.
“Hades...”
She didn’t understand. She couldn’t just run off. Couldn’t leave him.
“Run!”
Then she saw it.
His smile.
It spread right across his face. And that very same moment she understood. That she must.
So she turned around and ran.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
JANA BERZELIUS DROVE alongside the Motala Str?m River for more than thirty minutes without finding a single appropriate place. People were around at every potential site and it would presumably have been regarded as odd if she had gone to the water’s edge and thrown a mobile phone straight into the river.
She maneuvered the car into a parking space on Leonardsbergsv?gen and turned the engine off. She thought about how she could get rid of the phone. A feeling of frustration grew inside her and finally it bubbled over. She hit the steering wheel. And again. With both hands.
Hard.
Harder.
Then she leaned her head back and caught her breath. She put her elbow against the car door and the fist of her right hand against her mouth. She sat like that a long while and just looked out across the barren landscape. Everything was gray. Depressing. The trees had no leaves, the ground was brown from the dirty snow that had recently melted. The sky was just as dark gray as the asphalt on the road.
Then an idea started to take form inside her head. Jana opened her handbag and pulled out the plastic bag with the mobile in it. Why hadn’t she thought of this before!
She sat up properly in the driver’s seat and put the phone next to her bag. The number that the text message had been sent to belonged to the Migration Board. That much was clear. But she hadn’t bothered to try to phone the number—yet.
She started the car, absolutely certain she would make the call. But first she had to buy a prepaid card.
She quickly turned out from the parking space and set course for the nearest petrol station.
*
Mia Bolander sat rocking on the chair in Henrik Levin’s office. She was biting her thumbnail while reading the list with the combination numbers.
Gunnar stood in the middle of the room, Henrik sat at his desk.
“SAL manufactures containers in Shanghai, China,” said Henrik and adjusted the desk pad so that it would be parallel with the edge of the table.
“They own, or rather they owned, the first three containers on Juhlén’s list and they have been scrapped.”
“What about the others?” said Mia.
“Four of the others were owned by SPL Freight and the rest by Onboardex. The strange thing is that they have all been scrapped. So we must find out what the containers were filled with. Henrik, you take SAL, Mia, you take SPL and I’ll take Onboardex. I know it’s Sunday but we can surely get hold of somebody. We must get an answer to why Juhlén had combinations for scrapped containers in his computer.”
Gunnar strode with decisive steps out from Henrik’s office.
Mia slowly got up and left the room dragging her feet. Henrik sighed and suppressed a strong desire to tell her to get a move on.
He put the landline phone in front of him, and dialed the number to SAL in Stockholm. He was automatically connected to an exchange abroad where a digitally recorded voice said in English that the telephone wait time was five minutes. Eventually he heard a male receptionist answer in English with a German accent.
Henrik explained what he wanted in rather limited English and was connected to a female administrator in Stockholm with a drawling voice.
After briefly introducing himself, Henrik got to the point.
“I want to check a couple of shipping containers that you owned in the past.”
“Have you got their identity numbers?”
Henrik slowly read out the combinations and heard how the woman clicked the letters and numbers on her keyboard.
Silence followed.
“Hello?”
“Hello, yes?”
“I thought you had hung up.”
“No, I’m waiting for an answer from the system.”
“I know that the containers were scrapped by you, but I want to know what sort of goods they contained.”
“Well, as far as I can see they weren’t scrapped.”
“They weren’t?”
“No, they aren’t in the system at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re missing.”
“All three of them?”
“Yes, all three. They have disappeared.”
Henrik immediately stood up and looked straight at the wallpaper.
His thoughts were whirling around.
He thanked her for the information with a stuttering voice, then left his office and in five quick strides was in Mia’s room.
She was just putting the phone down.
“That’s odd,” she said. “According to SPL they have never received those containers. They’ve vanished without trace.”
Henrik went straight into Gunnar’s room and almost bumped into him in the doorway.
“Well,” Gunnar started.
“Don’t say anything,” said Henrik. “The containers are missing, aren’t they?”
“Yes, how did you know?”