*
The pay-as-you-go SIM card cost fifty kronor. Jana Berzelius paid with the exact change and said no thanks to the receipt that the assistant offered her. She left the little kiosk and had to walk sideways so as not to bump into the display shelf with all the candy and chewing gum.
She chose the place to purchase the card carefully. She considered going to a gas station at first, but then changed her mind. Gas stations had security cameras and she didn’t want to risk being recorded.
Once she was back in her car, she pulled off her gloves, opened the envelope with the SIM card and put it inside Thomas Rydberg’s cell phone. Then she turned the phone on and remained sitting with it in her hand for quite a while before dialing the number that the text message had come from. She waited to see if the call would go through. She had expected that the person she was ringing wouldn’t answer, that the phone would have been turned off, or the number was no longer in use.
When she heard the first ring she was genuinely surprised. Her heart started to beat faster. She put one hand on the steering wheel and squeezed it hard. Suddenly she heard a voice with a name.
The name astounded her.
*
The temperature in Henrik Levin’s office had gone up a couple of degrees. Gunnar ?hrn sat with a sheet of paper in front of him. Mia Bolander was leaning against the wall, and Henrik sat on a chair, one leg crossed over the other.
“So no company had received the containers. They are all missing?” said Mia.
“Yes,” said Henrik. “But that isn’t so unusual. Shipping freight containers can fall overboard in heavy seas and the risk is greater if the crew hasn’t secured them properly. Or if they’ve been loaded wrongly.”
“Evidently a lot of containers are lost every year. It’s hard to get any exact figures but I heard that it can be between two thousand and ten thousand,” said Gunnar.
“That’s quite a wide range,” said Mia.
“Yes,” said Henrik.
“And the companies didn’t seem especially concerned,” said Gunnar.
“No, it’s evidently quite normal,” said Henrik.
“They will be well insured,” said Mia.
There was silence in the room for a few moments.
“Okay, so if these containers, the ones we’ve been looking for, are somewhere on the seabed, then that isn’t particularly strange. The strange thing is why Hans Juhlén had the combinations in his computer,” said Henrik.
“What did they contain? I mean, they must have contained something,” said Mia.
“Nobody can tell us that either. All they know is that they all came from Chile and that they arrived via Hamburg, were reloaded here in Norrk?ping and then shipped back to Chile again. But they never arrived back home; they disappeared somewhere on the way back across the Atlantic,” said Henrik.
“So there’s a whole lot of valuable goods lying on the seabed, in other words? I ought to become a diver,” said Mia.
“The first container on the list was recorded as missing in 1989,” said Henrik. “Another two went missing in 1990 and 1992. The last one disappeared a year ago. In between, the others went missing. So why did Hans Juhlén have these ten container combinations, all of them missing, in his computer?”
He recrossed his legs and sighed silently.
Mia Bolander raised her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. Gunnar scratched his head just as Ola S?derstr?m appeared at the door. He came in and leaned up against the wall with the ghost drawing on it. The drawing fell to the floor. “Sorry,” said Ola.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Henrik, as Ola picked up the drawing and handed it to him.
“Nice ghost,” Ola said.
“My boy is in a difficult period right now. Everything is about ghosts.”
Henrik put the drawing on his desk and went back to his musings.
“Ghosts?” said Mia.
“Yes, he dreams about ghosts, draws ghosts, watches films about ghosts,” said Henrik.
“No, I mean...ghosts! When we questioned Yusef Abrham he said something about ghost containers, didn’t he?” said Mia.
“Yes,” said Henrik.
“That illegal refugees die en route. Sometimes all of them.”
“But the containers were on their way from Sweden, not to Sweden.”
“Yes, you’re right,” said Mia.
“But what could have been inside them?” said Ola.
“It’s almost impossible to get any information about that,” said Henrik.
“Perhaps they were empty?” said Ola.
“That doesn’t seem likely. Why would Juhlén keep the numbers then, since most of them disappeared years ago?”
He got up from the chair and went on: “The document was deleted Sunday evening, correct? Ola?”
“Yes, at 18:35,” said Ola.
“Hang on a moment... What time did he pick up the pizza?”
“At 18:40 if I remember right,” said Ola.
“How far is it between the Migration Board and the pizzeria that we’re talking about?”
Mia pulled out her phone and entered the addresses in a map app.
“Eight minutes by car.”
“But that assumes one is already sitting in the car, doesn’t it?”
“Yes...”
“Then it is impossible that Hans left his office, got into his car, drove to the pizzeria in just five minutes, isn’t it?”
“Yes...”
“So somebody else in his office must have deleted the document,” said Henrik.
*
“I don’t know how we could have missed this. But now it is clear that Hans Juhlén himself could not have been able to delete the document from his computer,” said Henrik into the phone.
Jana regretted that she had answered when Henrik called. He just went on and on.
“He died some time between seven and eight in the evening. The document was deleted at 18:35. So somebody else did it.”
“Yes.”
“We must find out who.”
“Yes.”
Jana was silent for a moment or two, then she said, “The young security guard who worked at the Migration Board on Sunday...why don’t you phone him again. Ask him if he saw anybody else in the building at the time. And now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m busy.”
“Okay,” said Henrik. “I just wanted to let you know.”
Jana Berzelius ended the conversation and stepped out of her car. She had parked a bit out of the way and could see the terraced house she was going to in the distance.
She crossed the street with quick strides and kept away from the street lamps as best she could. Now and then she looked over her shoulder to ensure that nobody noticed her.
She checked the windows but there was no movement from the curtains. She was grateful for the darkness when she entered through the white-painted fence and went up to the front door. The letterbox outside had the number 21 on it. And a name. Lena Wikstr?m.
*
Mia Bolander took a noisy bite of the juicy pear she had found in the fruit bowl in the staff kitchen.
Henrik had tasked her with immediately phoning the security company that patrolled the Migration Board. She took another big bite while she punched in the number. A receptionist answered immediately at the other end of the line.
“Mia Bolander, Norrk?ping CID.”
But the words were hard to distinguish with a piece of pear still in her mouth. Mia swallowed and started again.
“Hello, this is Mia Bolander, detective inspector. I need to get hold of...”
She stretched across to reach the carelessly scribbled name on the notepad and read it out loud.
“...Jens Cavenius. It’s urgent.”
“One moment please.”
Mia waited thirty seconds and managed to eat the rest of the pear.
“Unfortunately Jens Cavenius is not working today,” said the receptionist.
“I must get hold of him immediately. Make sure he phones me, otherwise I’ll trace his number myself. Okay?” said Mia.
“Yes, right.”
She gave the receptionist her number and thanked her for her help.
It didn’t take more than five minutes, and then Jens Cavenius phoned.
Mia got straight to the point.
“I need to know about your observations from Sunday, so think carefully. Did you really see Hans Juhlén?”
“I went past his office.”
“Yes, but did you see him?”
“No, not exactly, but the lights were on in the room.”