The man who had constructed his background, given him the phone number, and provided him with the money and phone had told him that over the past four years he had successfully sent more than seventy children to different parts of Europe.
He had said he had the most contacts in a country called Belgium, where you could earn big money. The work involved serving rich people, and if you were discreet and loyal, you could get rich yourself. But Belgium was risky, and you had to stay out of sight.
Never be seen outside.
Sweden was safer. There you would work mainly in restaurants and could move about more freely. It wasn’t as well paid, but if you were lucky you could earn a lot of money there too, depending on which services were in particular demand.
There were people in Sweden who wanted the same thing as the people in Belgium.
The camp wasn’t very far from the airport, and he was driven there in an unmarked police car. He stayed overnight, sharing a room with a black boy who could speak neither Chinese nor English.
The mattress he slept on was clean, but it smelled musty.
On only his second day there he called the number on the piece of paper, and a female voice explained how to get to the station in order to catch the train to Stockholm. Once he got there he was to call again for further instructions.
The train was warm and comfortable. It carried him quickly and almost soundlessly through a city where everything was white with snow. But by coincidence or fate, he never reached Central Station in Stockholm.
After a few stations a beautiful blonde woman sat down in the seat opposite him. She looked at him for a long time, and he realised that she knew he was alone. Not just alone on the train, but alone in the whole world.
The next time the train stopped the blonde woman stood up and took his hand. She nodded towards the door. He didn’t protest, and went with her like he was in a trance.
They got a taxi and drove through the city. He saw that it was surrounded by water, and he thought it was beautiful. There wasn’t as much traffic as there was at home. It was cleaner, and the air was easier to breathe.
He thought about fate and about coincidence, and wondered for a moment why he was sitting there with her. But when she turned to him and smiled, he stopped wondering.
At home they used to ask what he was good at, squeezing his arms to see if he was strong enough. Asking questions he pretended to understand.
They always had their doubts. Then sometimes they picked him.
But she had chosen him without him having done anything for her, and no one had ever done that before.
The room she led him into was white, and there was a big, wide bed. She put him in it and gave him something hot to drink. It tasted almost like the tea at home, and he fell asleep before the cup was empty.
When he woke up he didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but he saw that he was in a different room. The new room had no windows and was completely covered in plastic.
When he got up to go over to the door he discovered that the floor was soft and yielding. He tried the door handle, but the door was locked. His clothes were gone, as was the mobile phone.
Naked, he lay back down on the mattress and went to sleep again.
This room was going to be his new world.
Thorildsplan Metro Station – Crime Scene
JEANETTE COULD FEEL the wheel pulling to the right, and the car seemed to be heading along the road at an odd angle. She crawled the last kilometre at sixty, and by the time she turned off onto the Drottningholm road towards the metro station, she was beginning to think the fifteen-year-old car was finished.
She parked and walked over to the cordon, where she caught sight of Hurtig. He was a head taller than all the others, Scandinavian blond and thickset, without actually being fat.
After working with him for four years Jeanette had learned how to read his body language.
He looked worried. Almost pained.
But when he caught sight of her he brightened, came over and held the cordon tape up for her.
‘I see the car made it.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t know how you put up with driving around in that old crate.’
‘Me neither, and if you can get me a raise I’ll go and get a little convertible Mercedes to cruise about in.’
If only ?ke would get a decent job with a decent wage, she could get herself a decent car, she thought as she followed Hurtig into the cordoned-off area.
‘Any tyre tracks?’ she asked one of the two female forensics officers crouched over the path.
‘Yes, several different ones,’ one of them replied, looking up at Jeanette. ‘I think some of them are from the lorries that come down here to empty the bins. But there are some other tracks from narrower wheels.’
Now that Jeanette had arrived at the scene she was the most senior officer present, and therefore in charge.
That evening she would report to her boss, Commissioner Dennis Billing, who in turn would inform Prosecutor von Kwist. Together the pair of them would decide what should be done, regardless of what she might think.
Jeanette turned to Hurtig.
‘OK, let’s hear it. Who found him?’
Hurtig shrugged. ‘We don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, don’t know?’
‘The emergency line got an anonymous phone call, about’ – he looked at his watch – ‘about three hours ago, and the caller said there was a boy’s body lying here, close to the entrance to the station. That’s all.’
‘But the call was recorded?’
‘Of course.’
‘So why did it take so long for us to be told?’ Jeanette felt a pang of irritation.
‘The dispatcher got the location wrong and sent a patrol to Bolidenplan instead of Thorildsplan.’
‘Have they traced the call?’
Hurtig raised his eyebrows. ‘Unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile phone.’
‘Shit.’
‘But we’ll soon know where the call was made from.’
‘OK, good. We’ll listen to the recording when we get back. What about witnesses, then? Did anyone see or hear anything?’ She looked around hopefully, but her subordinates just shook their heads.
‘Someone must have driven the boy here,’ Jeanette went on, with an increasing sense of desperation. She knew their work would be much harder if they couldn’t identify any leads within the next few hours. ‘It’s pretty unlikely that anyone moved a corpse on the metro, but I still want copies of the security camera recordings.’
Hurtig came up beside her.
‘I’ve already got someone on that. We’ll have them by this evening.’
‘Good. Seeing as the body was probably brought here by road, I want lists of all vehicles that have passed through the road tolls in the last few days.’
‘Of course,’ Hurtig said, pulling out his mobile phone and moving away. ‘I’ll make sure we get them as soon as possible.’
‘Hold on a minute, I’m not done yet. Obviously, there’s a chance the body was carried here, or brought on a bike or something like that. Check with the college to see if they have surveillance cameras.’
Hurtig nodded and lumbered off.
Jeanette sighed and turned to one of the forensics officers who was examining the grass by the bushes.