“Very funny,” she said and clutched her briefcase.
“You just...errr...” he said and showed a face that looked like a cross-eyed seal.
She felt a strong desire to thump him right in his face but reminded herself that the detention center was an unsuitable place to practice violence.
Bengt dried his tears. He shook his head and laughed out loud yet again.
“If you’ll excuse me, I am in a bit of a hurry. You see, I have a job to do. Not play silly games,” she said.
Bengt became quiet, cleared his throat and opened the door for her.
“You can enter,” he said.
She stepped into the detention center corridor and nodded to the warder in the security office. He nodded back and then turned his attention to one of the three computer screens on the desk in front of him. Two warders were talking in a low voice next to the office. She couldn’t help wondering if they were the ones who had been entrusted with fetching Gavril from his cell. She looked at her watch again.
08:45.
Fifteen minutes to go before he was to be moved. Her heart started beating a bit faster.
Bengt locked the door and led the way down the corridor which was lit up by strong fluorescent lamps in the ceiling. A bunch of keys rattled noisily with every step he took. The walls were painted a light apricot color and the linoleum floor was a weak mint-green. They passed a couple of detention cells, the doors white and reinforced with a wide band of steel at the bottom. They were all numbered.
At door number eight, Bengt stopped and lifted up the bunch of keys on the chain hanging from his belt. He looked for the right key, then he looked up at Jana again, laughed quietly and shook his head again. Then he unlocked the door and let her in. Before she went inside, she saw the two warders shake hands with two darkly dressed policemen and she immediately realized that the move would take place shortly.
“Stay outside,” she said to Bengt. “This won’t take long.”
Then she stepped into the cell and heard the door shut behind her.
“What are you doing here?”
Jana gave a start when she heard Lena Wikstr?m’s rasping voice. She was sitting on the bunk bed with her legs pulled up to her chin. The sheet hung over the edge down onto the floor. She was dressed in dark green trousers and a dark green shirt. Barefoot. Her eyes were tired. The rings under them were wide and dark. Her hair was uncombed.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed quietly yet again. “Are you here to threaten me again?”
“No,” said Jana. “I am not here to threaten you. I am here for a totally different purpose and I need your help.”
“I’m not going to help with anything.”
“You already have. By being here.”
Lena didn’t understand. And she couldn’t be bothered to try to understand either.
“How much longer will it be?”
“What do you mean?”
Jana put her briefcase down on the floor.
“Until you lock me up?”
“I might remind you that you already are imprisoned.”
“But this isn’t for real. This is just a stage. A stop on the way.”
“Two more days before the trial,” Jana answered, and looked at her watch again.
08:52.
She crouched down in front of her briefcase, opened it and stuck her hands inside to hide them. She pulled off her Rolex and opened the back of the watch case. With her long nails she loosened a little tracking device that was in there, and then put the casing back on again. She quickly put the watch back on her wrist and with the tracker in one hand she closed the briefcase with the other.
“So in two days it will come to an end,” said Lena almost inaudibly.
But Jana heard the faint words. She stopped just as she was going to get up. Lena has capitulated, she thought. She has given up.
“Yes, then it will come to an end.”
Lena turned white in the face.
“Then it will be over,” Jana went on.
“I want it to be over,” said Lena and looked down at her hands.
She suddenly looked very small, slumped down and gray.
“I don’t think I can take any more of this. I want to get away from here.”
“You are here to stay.”
“I don’t want to be stuck in prison. I’d rather die. Please kill me! I know you can. Kill me!”
“Shut up!”
“I can’t live like this. I must get away.”
Jana stood up and looked at her watch.
08:59.
It was time. Now she would do it. She raised her hand to knock on the door but stopped when she heard Lena’s voice.
“Please,” she squeaked. “Help me...”
Jana sighed. She thought a few seconds before walking across to where Lena was sitting. She got hold of the sheet, bit a hole in the cloth and then tore off a long strip. She put it into Lena’s hand.
“You can help yourself,” she said.
Then she knocked hard on the door which was immediately opened by Bengt. She remained standing in the doorway a few moments. Waiting for the right opportunity.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw them approaching: the wardens, the policemen and then Gavril between them. Just as they passed her, she took a step forward and pretended to slip. She swung the briefcase, let one leg give way and affected to cry out. When she fell onto the floor her hand grasped Gavril’s leg and quick as a flash she pressed the tracker on his pants pocket.
Bengt rushed up to help her up.
“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s my heels. They are new.”
The warders looked at her in surprise. The policemen almost disapprovingly. And Gavril, he smiled.
Jana couldn’t help look at him. However much she tried to persuade herself to stop staring, she couldn’t help it. Her heart pounded. She was so close to him but still so far away. Her hatred grew with every breath she took. Most of all she would have liked to have killed him straightaway. Most of all she wanted to stick a knife into his body, time and time again. He should die.
Die.
Die.
Die.
“You ought to be careful, little miss,” he said with a smirk before he was taken along the corridor between the warders and the policemen.
You too, Jana thought.
You ought to be very, very careful.
*
“You do know what you’re getting yourself into?” Danilo said from the passenger seat. In his hand he held a phone that showed Gavril’s position on a map. On the floor of the car, between his legs, he had put a backpack.
Jana had her eyes glued to the road. She had one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on the support in the door. The seat was soft and upholstered in the black Volvo S60 that Danilo had borrowed from a friend or rented at short notice from a local firm. She didn’t care which. The main thing was that she didn’t have to arrange a car and thereby risk being traced to it should there be a search later.
There was a pungent smell of disinfectant inside the car. They were outside the small town of Trosa. There wasn’t much traffic and they were going quite fast.
“I know very well what I’m getting myself into,” Jana answered, resolutely.
Never in all her life had she been so certain of anything, as she was now. Her entire body burned with desire to put Gavril against the wall—confront him. Then she would repay the wrong he had done to her. She would retaliate for his having killed her parents. And other parents. And their children. She would avenge their deaths if it was the last thing she did. There was no possibility to excuse his ill deeds, to move on and leave him be.
“You’re risking everything. What if you get caught?”
She didn’t answer.
She was well aware that the stakes were the very highest. She was staking all of her life on getting revenge. Despite that, there was nothing that could stop her now.
“Are you afraid?”
“I stopped being afraid when I was seven years old,” Jana answered briefly.
Danilo didn’t ask any more and silence enveloped them. All that could be heard was the sound of the tires on the asphalt.
They sat next to each other without uttering a sound the entire rest of the drive. The tracker showed them the way via J?rna to Nykvarn. After a twenty-minute drive Danilo straightened up.