Jana pulled out her mobile, took a picture of the screen and then immediately exited from the register. Then she grabbed her things, quickly took off her shoes and ran in her stockinged feet with them in her hand toward the elevator. She pressed the button and the doors opened immediately. She sneaked up to the staff kitchen, carefully pulled the chair away from under the door handle, before rushing back to the now open elevator, and pressing the button for the garage.
The doors closed slowly and just as they did so she heard the neighboring elevator give a ping as the doors opened and somebody stepped out.
*
The heavy bag rubbed against his hip, and Gunnar changed his hold on it when he entered the lift.
Anneli went in after him.
The department was empty and silent, as it usually was at night. They both went along to Anneli’s room, turned on the light and left the two bags inside.
*
“Hello!” Matilda called out. “Is someone there? Hello?”
She banged on the door and felt the handle which...easily went down. She pushed open the door and almost bumped into an astonished Gunnar.
“Oh, God!” said Matilda. “Lucky that you’re here. I’ve been locked in.”
“What did you say? Locked in?” said Anneli who had just come out from her room.
“Yes, in the kitchen! The door locked itself. I couldn’t get out.”
Gunnar went up to the door and felt the handle. Up and down, no problem at all.
“Strange. This door can’t lock itself. You can’t lock it at all,” he said.
“But... I couldn’t get out,” said Matilda.
“Well, how did you open the door now?”
“Well, I...opened...”
“So it was unlocked?”
“No, it was locked. I couldn’t open it.”
“But then you could.”
“Yes.”
Matilda felt like an idiot. How could she explain to them? She had been locked in! But now she couldn’t face having to explain the whole thing to them.
“Well I couldn’t get out,” she mumbled to herself and walked off with a grumpy expression back to her desk.
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
Wednesday, April 25
HENRIK LEVIN WOKE UP. Didn’t know where he was, but realized after a few seconds that he’d fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room. It was pitch black in the room. He picked up his mobile; the display said it was 02:30, so he had only slept a couple of hours. The display turned off and it became black around him again.
At seven o’clock he woke up to the sound of a smothered ringing tone. He had dropped the phone in his sleep and now he had to look on the floor to find it. It was under the sofa, and when he reached it he turned the alarm off, stretched out and felt that he had had far too little sleep.
After a quick breakfast with Emma and the children, he drove to the station. Gunnar ?hrn was the first to meet him and they made their way together to the conference room.
“It seems as if everyone in the containers has been shot. There are marks on the skeletons to indicate that,” said Gunnar.
“So they were killed and then dumped into the sea,” said Henrik.
“Yes.”
“But why were they killed? Was it about money? Drugs? Were they refugees who didn’t pay? Did somebody betray them? Were they smugglers?”
“I don’t know, but I’m thinking along the same lines. Above all I can’t really see what role Hans Juhlén had. Why was he murdered?”
“Ought we to bring in his wife for questioning again?”
“Perhaps, but I think we can get some more out of Lena. To be honest, Henrik...”
Gunnar stopped and looked in both directions. Then he looked at Henrik. Sighed.
“This has turned into an extremely complicated series of events. I don’t know any longer what we should concentrate on. First Hans Juhlén, then the boy and last Thomas Rydberg. And then this mass grave at sea—it’s rather hard to digest. And hardly something we can make public. Yet Carin is on me like a polecat.”
“She wants a press conference?”
“Yes.”
“But we’ve got nothing concrete to give them.”
“I know, and we must tone it all down. It already feels as if this is getting too much for us. I might have to ask the National Crime Squad for help and you know what I think about that.”
A shadow fell across Gunnar’s face.
Henrik pondered.
“Wait until we’ve questioned Lena again,” he said.
Gunnar looked at Henrik as he said that. His eyes were red, shiny. He threw out his hand.
“Okay, I’ll wait until we know some more.”
*
At a quarter to seven, Jana Berzelius drove down the slip road to the E4, the motorway to Stockholm.
The sun was up and it dazzled her from the east. The music on the radio was interrupted for news and weather reports and the meteorologists warned about black ice on the roads.
The traffic got heavier after Nyk?ping and the sun disappeared too. The sky turned dark gray and the temperature went down to zero. The hard rain beat against the asphalt. She stared straight ahead on the wet road. Listened to the noise inside the car. The forest dashed past on both sides of her. The fencing was rubbed out in the periphery. Taillights turned into red streaks.
At J?rna the lines started. While she waited for the traffic to start flowing again, she opened an app on her mobile and entered the address for Danilo Pe?a. She couldn’t use the car’s own GPS—it would have been extremely risky as her journey could easily be tracked should anyone do a check.
The app presented a clear route and she could see that she was only ten minutes from her destination. The rain stopped but the heavy gray clouds remained. She turned off the motorway and drove toward the center. A right turn and she was in Ronna. Here were blocks of flats with green, blue and bright yellow balconies. On the streets there were lots of neon-colored signs with handwritten texts in languages other than Swedish.
A gang of five youths sat in a smashed bus shelter, an elderly lady stood some way away supporting herself with a brown stick. A car with a punctured tire, a bicycle with the front wheel missing and an overflowing wastepaper bin.
She looked for number 36 and found it far down along Smedv?gen. She parked on the street and considered putting money in the parking meter, which was covered with graffiti, but it was out of order. On her way to the high-rise building, she passed several cars, all with crosses or icons hanging from the rearview mirror by the windscreen. By taking small steps she avoided the pools of water that had formed on the ground.
In the entrance hall sat three ladies with shawls, chatting to each other. They stared quite openly and disapprovingly at Jana when she came in through the door. A child’s scream, loud voices and the banging of doors echoed in the stairwell. It was cold and damp. Smelt of cooking.
The list of tenants showed that she would have to go to the eighth floor, so she took the lift. When the lift doors opened again she looked out cautiously. On the door closest to the stairs it said D.Pe?a.
She stepped out of the lift and raised her hand to knock on the door but that same instant discovered that it wasn’t properly shut. She gave it a push and the door swung open.
“Hello?” she called out and stepped into the hall.
No furniture at all, just an old mat on the floor and yellowy-brown wallpaper.
She called out again and got an echo in answer.
For a moment she hesitated, but then felt bolder and stepped straight into the living room. A ripped-open sofa, a little table in front of it, a television, a mattress without any sheets, a pillow and a checkered blanket. The wind howled through the crack in a window.
She went through the living room toward the kitchen. Stopped, held her breath and listened for any sound.
She stood like that for a few seconds, then stepped through the doorway into the kitchen. That same moment she saw a fist coming at her and the blow knocked her to the floor. She saw the fist again and immediately raised her forearm to shield herself. The other forearm came up, the blow hit her wrist and the pain was intense.
Up, she thought.
I must get up!
She twisted her body toward the left, quickly put her right hand in under her chest and pushed herself up.
Then she saw a man and what he had in his hand.
“Don’t move,” he said. “If you want to live.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE