Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Authors
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Part I
The house
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
The airport
Thorildsplan Metro Station – Crime Scene
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Huddinge Hospital
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Monument – Mikael’s Apartment
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Village of Dala-Floda, 1980
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Central Bridge
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Monument – Mikael’s Apartment
Village of Dala-Floda, 1980
Huddinge Hospital
Town of Sigtuna, 1984
Svartsjölandet – Crime Scene
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Huddinge Hospital
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
The living room
Harvest Home Restaurant
Bondegatan – Commercial District
Monument – Mikael’s Apartment
The door
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Indira – Restaurant
City of Uppsala, 1986
The kitchen
Danvikstull – Crime Scene
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Hammarbyhöjden – a Suburb
Kärrtorp – a Suburb
The plastic
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Monument – Mikael’s Apartment
The road
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Zinkensdamm Sports Complex
Toronto, 2007
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Monument – Crime Scene
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Stockholm, 2007
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Allhelgonagatan – a Neighbourhood
Earlier, Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Grisslinge – a Suburb
City of Uppsala, 1986
Grisslinge – Bergman House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Hammarby Sjöstad – Petrol Station
Skanstull – a Neighbourhood
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Gamla Stan – Stockholm’s Old Town
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Part II
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
The Chapel of the Holy Cross
Free Fall
Free Fall
Gröna Lund – Fair
Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde – Island of Djurgården
Karolinska Hospital
Bandhagen – a Suburb
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Tongues
Karolinska Hospital – Bistro Amica
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Denmark, 1988
Karolinska Hospital
Stockholm, 1987
Karolinska Hospital
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kungsgatan – Stockholm City Centre
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Zinkens Bar
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Zinkens Bar
Sierra Leone, 1987
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Sierra Leone, 1987
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Edsviken – Lundström House
Stockholm, 1988
Glasbruksgatan – a Neighbourhood
Glasbruksgatan – Crime Scene
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Edsviken – Lundström House
The shells
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Stockholm, 1988
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Denmark, 1988
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Jutas Backe – Stockholm City Centre
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
St Johannes Cavern – Crime Scene
Denmark, 1988
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Glasbruksgatan – Silfverberg House
Sista Styverns Trappor – a Neighbourhood
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
The impure parts
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Stockholm, 1988
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Greta Garbos Torg, Södermalm
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Denmark, 1988
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Victoria Bergman, Vita Bergen
Bella Vita, Victoria Bergman Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Sunflower Nursing Home
Stockholm, 1988
Sunflower Nursing Home
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Swedenborgsgatan, Södermalm
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Johan Printz Väg – a Suburb
Edsviken – Lundström House
Hammarbyhöjden – a Suburb
Tantoberget – Island of Södermalm
Part III
Denmark, 1994
Södermalm
Barnängen – Södermalm
Gilah
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Judar Forest – Nature Reserve
Denmark, 1994
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Nowhere
Sjöfartshotellet – Södermalm
Fagerstrand – a Suburb
On the table
Swedenborgsgatan – Södermalm
Village of Polcirkeln, 1981
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Glasbruksgatan – Silfverberg House
Skanstull – a Neighborhood
Hundudden – Island of Djurgården
Skanstull – a Neighborhood
Nowhere
Baltic Sea – MS Cinderella
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Johan Printz Väg – Ulrika Wendin’s Apartment
Klara Sjö – Public Prosecution Authority
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Vasastan – Hurtig’s Apartment
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Observatory Hill
Central Station
Mariaberget – Södermalm
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
Stockholm, 1988
Harvest Home Restaurant
Wollmar Yxkullsgatan – Södermalm
Stockholm, 2007
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Icebar, Stockholm
Långholmen Island
France, 2007
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Barnängen
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Institute of Pathology
Nowhere
Rosenlund Hospital
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Sunflower Nursing Home
Johan Printz Väg – Ulrika Wendin’s Apartment
Sunflower Nursing Home
Denmark, 2002
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Sunflower Nursing Home
Denmark, 2002
Rosenlund Hospital
Sunflower Nursing Home
Nowhere
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Hundudden – Island of Djurgården
Nowhere
Hundudden – Island of Djurgården
Klippgatan, First Flight of Steps – Södermalm
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Klippgatan – Second Flight of Steps
Gilah
Hundudden – Island of Djurgården
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Arlanda Airport
Martin
Nowhere
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Kiev
Nowhere
Lapland – Northern Sweden
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Lapland
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
Kiev
Village of Dala-Floda
Kiev – Babi Yar
Dala-Floda
Kiev – St Sophia’s Cathedral
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
Copyright
Translated by Neil Smith
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781448161737
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VINTAGE
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London SW1V 2SA
Harvill Secker is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Erik Axl Sund 2016
English translation copyright © Neil Smith 2016
This translation is comprised of three works that were originally published separately in slightly different form in 2010, 2011, and 2012 as: Kråkflickan, copyright © 2010 by Jerker Eriksson and Håkan Axlander Sundquist, published by Print, It, Lithuania; Hungerelden, copyright © 2011 and Pythians Anvisningar, copyright © 2012 by Jerker Eriksson and Håkan Axlander Sundquist, published by CPI Clausen & Bosse, Germany. Published by agreement with the Salomonsson Agency.
Erik Axl Sund have asserted their right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846557569
In memory of
a sister, those of us who failed,
and those of you who forgave
WAS OVER A hundred years old, and the solid stone walls were at least a metre thick, which meant that she probably didn’t need to insulate them, but she wanted to be absolutely sure.
To the left of the living room was a small corner room that she had been using as a combination workroom and guest bedroom.
Leading off it were a small toilet and a fair-sized closet.
The room was perfect, with its single window and nothing but the unused attic above.
No more nonchalance, no more taking anything for granted.
Nothing would be left to chance. Fate was a dangerously unreliable accomplice. Sometimes your friend, but just as often an unpredictable enemy.
The dining table and chairs ended up shoved against one wall, which opened up a large space in the middle of the living room.
Then it was just a matter of waiting.
The first sheets of polystyrene arrived at ten o’clock, as arranged, carried in by four men. Three of them were in their fifties, but the fourth couldn’t have been more than twenty. His head was shaved and he wore a black T-shirt with two crossed Swedish flags on the chest, under the words ‘My Fatherland’. He had tattoos of spiderwebs on his elbows, and some sort of Stone Age design on his wrists.
When she was alone again she settled onto the sofa to plan her work. She decided to start with the floor, since that was the only thing that was likely to be a problem. The old couple downstairs might have been almost deaf, and she herself had never heard a single sound from them over the years, but it still felt like an important detail.
She went into the bedroom.
The little boy was still sound asleep.
It had been so odd when she met him on the local train. He had simply taken her hand, stood up and obediently gone with her, without her having to say a single word.
She had acquired the pupil she had been seeking, the child she had never been able to have.
She put her hand to his forehead; his temperature had gone down. Then she felt his pulse.
Everything was as it should be.
She had used the right dose of morphine.
The workroom had a thick, white, wall-to-wall carpet that she had always thought ugly and unhygienic, even if it was nice to walk on. But right now it was ideal for her purpose.
Using a sharp knife, she cut up the polystyrene and stuck the pieces together with a thick layer of flooring adhesive.
The strong smell soon made her feel dizzy, and she had to open the window onto the street. It was triple-glazed, and the outer pane had an extra layer of soundproofing.
Fate as a friend.
Work on the floor took all day. Every so often she would go and check on the boy.
When the whole floor was done she covered all the cracks with silver duct tape.
She spent the following three days dealing with the walls. By Friday there was just the ceiling left, and that took a bit longer because she had to glue the polystyrene first, and then wedge the blocks up against the ceiling with planks.
While the glue was drying she nailed up some old blankets in place of the doors she had removed earlier. She glued four layers of polystyrene onto the door to the living room.
She covered the only window with an old sheet. Just to be sure, she used a double layer of insulation to block the window alcove. When the room was ready, she covered the floor and walls with a waterproof tarpaulin.
There was something meditative about the work, and when at last she looked at what she had accomplished she felt a sense of pride.
The room was further refined during the following week. She bought four small rubber wheels, a hasp, ten metres of electric cable, several metres of wooden skirting, a basic light fitting and a box of light bulbs. She also had a set of dumb-bells, some weights and an exercise bike delivered.
She took all the books out of one of the bookcases in the living room, tipped it onto its side, and screwed the wheels under each corner. She attached a length of skirting board to the front to conceal the fact that it could now be moved, then placed the bookcase in front of the door to the hidden room.
She screwed the bookcase to the door and tested it.
The door glided soundlessly open on its little rubber wheels. It all worked perfectly. She attached the hasp and shut the door, concealing the simple locking mechanism with a carefully positioned lamp.
Finally she put all the books back and fetched a thin mattress from one of the two beds in the bedroom.
That evening she carried the sleeping boy into his new home.
THE STRANGEST THING about the young boy wasn’t the fact that he was dead, but that he had stayed alive so long. Something had kept him alive where a normal human being would long since have given up.
Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg knew nothing of this as she backed her car out of the garage. And she was unaware that this case would be the first in a series of events that would change her life.
She saw Åke in the window and waved, but he was on the phone and didn’t see her. He would spend the morning washing that week’s accumulation of sweaty tops, muddy socks and dirty underwear. With a wife and a son who were mad about football, it was a constant feature of daily life, this business of thrashing the old washing machine almost to the breaking point at least five times a week.
While he was waiting for the machine to finish, she knew he would go into the little studio they’d set up in the attic, and continue with one of the many unfinished oil paintings he was always working on. He was a romantic, a dreamer who had trouble finishing what he started. Jeanette had nagged him several times about getting in touch with one of the gallery owners who had shown an interest in his work, but he always said the pictures weren’t quite ready. Not yet, but soon.
And when they were, everything would change.
He would finally make his big breakthrough, and the money would start to pour in, and they could finally do everything they had dreamed of. Everything from fixing the house to travelling anywhere they liked.
After almost twenty years she was starting to doubt it was ever going to happen.
As she swung out onto the Nynäshamn road she heard a worrying rattle somewhere down by the left front wheel. Even though she was an imbecile when it came to cars, it was obvious that something was wrong with their old Audi and that she was going to have to get it fixed again soon. From past experience she knew it wouldn’t be cheap, even if the Serbian mechanic she went to out at Bolidenplan was both reliable and competitively priced.
The day before, she had emptied their savings account to pay the latest instalment of the mortgage, something that happened every three months with sadistic punctuality. She hoped she would be able to get the car fixed on credit. That had worked before.
Jeanette’s jacket pocket started to vibrate violently, as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony almost drove her off the road and onto the pavement.
‘Yep, Kihlberg here.’
‘Hi, Jan, we’ve got something out at the Thorildsplan metro,’ replied the voice of her colleague Jens Hurtig. ‘We need to get there at once. Where are you?’ There was a loud screech on the line, and she held the phone away from her ear to protect her hearing.
She hated being called Jan, and could feel herself getting annoyed. It had started off as a joke at a staff party three years earlier, but since then the nickname had spread through the whole of the police headquarters on Kungsholmen.
‘I’m in Årsta, heading onto the Essinge bypass. What’s happened?’
‘They’ve found a young dead male in some bushes by the metro station, near the teacher-training college, and Billing wants you there as soon as possible. He sounded pretty agitated. Everything points to murder.’
Jeanette Kihlberg could hear the rattle getting worse, and wondered if she ought to pull over and call a tow truck, then get a lift into town.
‘If this bastard car holds together I’ll be there in five, ten minutes. I want you there as well.’ The car lurched, and Jeanette pulled into the right-hand lane just in case.
‘OK, I’ll get going – I’ll probably be there before you.’
A dead man’s body found in some bushes sounded to Jeanette like a fight that had got out of hand. It would probably end up as a manslaughter charge.
Murder, she thought, as the steering wheel juddered, is a woman killed in her own home by her jealous husband after she tells him she wants a divorce.
More often than not, anyway.
But the fact was that times had changed, and what she had once learned at police training college was now not only open to question, but just plain wrong. Working methods had changed, and policing was in many respects much harder today than it had been twenty years ago.
Jeanette remembered the first time she was out on the beat, around normal people. How the public would offer to help, even had confidence in the police. The only reason anyone reports a crime today, she thought, is that the insurance companies demand it. Not because people have any expectation of the crime being solved.
But what had she been expecting when she quit her social-work course and decided to join the police? The opportunity to make a difference? To help people? That was what she told her dad when she proudly showed him her letter of acceptance. Yes, that was it. She wanted to be the sort of person who stood between people who did bad things and people who had bad things done to them. She wanted to be a real person.
And that was what being in the police meant.
She had spent her whole childhood listening in awe as her father and grandfather talked about their work in the police. No matter whether it was Midsummer or Good Friday, conversation around the dining table would always revert to ruthless bank robbers, good-natured pickpockets and clever con men. Anecdotes and memories from the darker side of life.
Just as the smell of the Christmas ham used to conjure up a whole roomful of expectation, the men’s talk in the living room provided a backdrop of security.
She smiled at the memory of her grandfather’s lack of interest and scepticism about new technological tools. Nowadays handcuffs had been replaced by self-locking plastic ties, to make things easier. He had once told her that DNA analysis was just a passing fad.
Police work was about making a difference, she thought. Not about making things easier. And their work had to adapt to keep pace with changes in society.
Being in the police means that you want to help, that you care. It’s not about sitting in an armoured police van, staring out helplessly through tinted windows.
HAD BEEN AS grey and as cold as the winter’s morning. He arrived on Air China in a country he had never heard of before. He knew that several hundred children before him had made the same journey, and like them he had a well-rehearsed story to tell the border police at passport control.
Without hesitating over a single syllable he delivered the story he had spent months repeating until he knew it by heart.
During the construction of one of the big Olympic venues he had got work carrying bricks and mortar. His uncle, a poor labourer, organised somewhere for him to live, but when his uncle was badly injured and ended up in hospital he had no one to look after him. His parents were dead and he had no brothers or sisters or other relatives he could turn to.
In his interview with the border police he explained how he and his uncle had been treated like slaves, in circumstances that could only be compared to apartheid. He told them how he had spent five months working on the construction site, but had never dared hope he might ever become an equal citizen of the city.
According to the old hukou system, he was registered in his home village far away from the city, and therefore had almost no rights at all in the place where he lived and worked.
That was why he had been forced to make his way to Sweden, where his only remaining relative lived. He didn’t know where, but according to his uncle they had promised to get in touch with him as soon as he arrived.
He came to this new country with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, a mobile phone and fifty American dollars. The mobile’s contact list was empty, and there were no texts or pictures that could reveal anything about him.
In actual fact, it was new and completely unused.
What he didn’t reveal to the police was the telephone number he had written down on a scrap of paper hidden in his left shoe. A number he was going to call as soon as he had escaped from the camp.
The country he had come to wasn’t like China at all. Everything was so clean and empty. When the interview was over and he was being led by two policemen through the deserted corridors of the airport, he wondered if this was what Europe looked like.
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.
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 Åke 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.
‘Anything useful?’
The woman shook her head. ‘Not yet. Obviously there are a lot of footprints; we’ll take impressions of some of the best ones. But don’t get your hopes up.’
Jeanette slowly approached the bushes where the body had been found, wrapped in a black garbage bag. The boy, a young adolescent, was naked, and had stiffened in a sitting position with his arms around his knees. His hands had been bound with duct tape. The skin on his face had turned a yellow-brown colour, and looked almost leathery, like old parchment.
His hands, in contrast, were almost black.
‘Any signs of sexual violence?’ She turned to Ivo Andrić, who was crouched down in front of her.
Ivo Andrić was a specialist in unusual and extreme cases of death.
The Stockholm police had called him early that morning. Because they didn’t want to cordon off the area around the metro station any longer than necessary, he had to work fast.
‘I can’t tell yet. But it can’t be ruled out. I don’t want to jump to any hasty conclusions, but from my experience you don’t usually see this sort of extreme injury without there being evidence of sexual violence as well.’
Jeanette nodded.
She leaned closer and noted that the dead boy looked foreign. Arabic, Palestinian, maybe even Indian or Pakistani.
The body was visible in some bushes just a few metres from the entrance to the Thorildsplan metro station on Kungsholmen, and Jeanette realised that it couldn’t have remained unseen for very long.
The police had done their best to protect the site with screens and tarpaulins, but the terrain was hilly, which meant it was possible to see the crime scene from above if you were standing some distance away. There were several photographers with telephoto lenses standing outside the cordon, and Jeanette almost felt sorry for them. They spent twenty-four hours a day listening to police-band radio and waiting in case something spectacular happened.
But she couldn’t see any actual journalists. The papers probably didn’t have the staff to send these days.
‘What the hell, Andrić,’ one of the police officers said, shaking his head at the sight. ‘How can something like this happen?’
The body was practically mummified, which told Ivo Andrić that it had been kept in a very dry place for a long time. Not outside in a wet Stockholm winter.
‘Well, Schwarz,’ he said, looking up, ‘that’s what we’re going to try to find out.’
‘Yes, but the boy’s been mummified, for fuck’s sake. Like some damn pharaoh. That’s not the sort of thing that happens during a coffee break, is it?’
Ivo Andrić nodded in agreement. He was a hardened man who was originally from Bosnia, and had been a doctor in Sarajevo during the almost four years of the Serbian siege. He had witnessed a great many unpleasant things throughout his long and eventful career, but he had never seen anything like this before.
There was no doubt at all that the victim had been severely abused, but the odd thing was that there were none of the usual self-defence injuries. All the bruises and haematomas looked more like the sort of thing you’d see on a boxer. A boxer who had gone twelve rounds and been so badly beaten that he eventually passed out.
On his arms and across his torso the boy had hundreds of marks, harder than the surrounding tissue, which, when taken as a whole, meant that he had been subjected to an astonishing number of blows while he was still alive. From the indentations on the boy’s knuckles, it seemed likely that he had not only received but had also dealt out a fair number of punches.
But the most troubling thing was the fact that the boy’s genitals were missing.
He noted that they had been removed with a very sharp knife.
A scalpel or razor blade, perhaps?
An examination of the mummified boy’s back revealed a large number of deeper wounds, the sort a whip would make.
Ivo Andrić tried to picture in his mind’s eye what had happened. A boy fighting for his life, and when he no longer wanted to fight someone had whipped him. He knew that illegal dogfights still happened in the immigrant communities. This might be something similar, but with the difference that it wasn’t dogs fighting for their lives but young boys.
Well, one of them at least had been a young boy.
Who his opponent might have been was a matter of speculation.
Then there was the fact that the boy hadn’t died when he really should have. Hopefully the post-mortem would reveal information about any traces of drugs or chemicals, Rohypnol, maybe phencyclidine. Ivo Andrić realised that his real work would begin once the body was in the pathology lab back at the hospital in Solna.
At noon they were able to put the body in a grey plastic bag and lift it into an ambulance for transportation to Solna. Jeanette Kihlberg’s work here was done, and she could go on to headquarters, at the other end of Kungsholmen. As she walked towards the car park a gentle rain started to fall.
‘Fuck!’ she swore loudly to herself, and Åhlund, one of her younger colleagues, turned and gave her a questioning look.
‘My car. It had slipped my mind, but it broke down on the way here and now I’m stranded. I’ll have to call a tow truck.’
‘Where is it?’ her colleague asked.
‘Over there.’ She pointed at the red, rusty, filthy Audi twenty metres away from them. ‘Why? Do you know anything about cars?’
‘It’s a hobby of mine. There isn’t a car on the planet that I couldn’t get going. Give me the keys and I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it.’
Åhlund started the car and pulled out onto the road. The creaking and screeching sounded even louder from outside, and she assumed she would have to call her dad and ask for a small loan. He would ask her if Åke had found a job yet, and she would explain that it wasn’t easy being an unemployed artist, but all that would probably change soon.
The same routine every time. She had to eat humble pie and act as Åke’s safety net.
It could all be so easy, she thought. If he could just swallow his pride and take a temporary job. If for no other reason than to show that he cared about her and realised how worried she was. She sometimes had trouble sleeping at night before the bills were paid.
After a quick drive around the block the young police officer jumped out of the car and smiled triumphantly.
‘The ball joint, the steering column, or both. If I take it now I can start on it this evening. You can have it back in a few days, but you’ll have to pay for parts and a bottle of whisky. How does that sound?’
‘You’re an angel, Åhlund. Take it and do whatever the hell you like with it. If you can get it working, you can have two bottles and a decent reference when you go for promotion.’
Jeanette Kihlberg walked off towards the police van.
Esprit de corps, she thought.
DURING THE FIRST meeting Jeanette delegated the preliminary steps in the investigation.
A group of recently graduated officers had spent the afternoon knocking on doors in the area, and Jeanette was hopeful that they’d come up with something.
Schwarz was given the thankless task of going through the lists of vehicles that had passed the road tolls, almost eight hundred thousand in total, while Åhlund checked the surveillance footage they had secured from the teacher-training college and the metro station.
Jeanette certainly didn’t miss the monotony of the sort of investigative work that usually got dumped on less experienced officers.
The main priority was getting the boy’s identity confirmed, and Hurtig was given the job of contacting refugee centres around Stockholm. Jeanette herself was going to talk to Ivo Andrić.
After the meeting she went back to her office and called home. It was already after six o’clock, and it was her night to cook.
‘Hi! How’s your day been?’ She made an effort to sound cheerful.
As a couple, Jeanette and Åke were fairly equal. They shared the everyday chores: Åke was responsible for the laundry and Jeanette for the vacuuming. Cooking was done according to a rota that involved their son, Johan, as well. But she was the one who did all the heavy lifting when it came to the family finances.
‘I finished the laundry an hour ago. Otherwise pretty good. Johan just got home. He said you promised to give him a lift to the match tonight. Are you going to make it in time?’
‘No, I can’t,’ Jeanette sighed. ‘The car broke down on the way into the city. Johan will have to take his bike, it’s not that far.’ Jeanette glanced at the family photograph she’d pinned up on her bulletin board. Johan looked so young in the picture, and she could hardly bear to look at herself.
‘I’m going to be here for a few more hours. I’ll take the metro home if I can’t get a lift from someone. You’ll have to phone for a pizza. Have you got any money?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Åke sighed. ‘If not, there’s probably some in the jar.’
Jeanette thought for a moment. ‘There should be. I put five hundred in yesterday. See you later.’
Åke didn’t reply, so she hung up and leaned back.
Five minutes of rest.
She closed her eyes.
Hurtig came into Jeanette’s office with the recording of that morning’s anonymous phone call to the emergency call room. He handed her the CD and sat down.
Jeanette rubbed her tired eyes. ‘Have you spoken to whoever found the boy?’
‘Yep. Two of our officers – according to the report, they arrived on the scene a couple of hours after the call was received. Like I said, they took a while to respond because the emergency operator got the address wrong.’
Jeanette took the CD out of its case and put it in her computer.
The call lasted twenty seconds.
‘One-one-two, what’s the nature of the emergency?’
There was a crackle, but no sound of a voice.
‘Hello? One-one-two, what’s the nature of the emergency?’ The operator sounded more circumspect now, and there was the sound of laboured breathing.
‘I just wanted to let you know there’s a dead body in the bushes near Thorildsplan.’
The man was slurring his words, and Jeanette thought he sounded drunk. Drunk or on drugs.
‘What’s your name?’ the operator asked.
‘Doesn’t matter. Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes, I heard that you said there’s a dead body near Bolidenplan.’
The man sounded annoyed. ‘A dead body in the bushes near the entrance to the Thorildsplan metro station.’
Then silence.
Just the operator’s hesitant ‘Hello?’
Jeanette frowned. ‘You don’t have to be Einstein to assume that the call was made somewhere near the station, do you?’
‘No, of course. But if –’
‘If what?’ She could hear how irritated she sounded, but she had been hoping that the recording of the call would answer at least some of her questions. Give her something to throw at the commissioner and the prosecutor.
‘Sorry,’ she said, but Hurtig just shrugged.
‘Let’s continue tomorrow.’ He stood up and headed for the door. ‘Go home to Johan and Åke instead.’
Jeanette smiled gratefully. ‘Goodnight, see you in the morning.’
Once Hurtig had shut the door she called her boss, Commissioner Dennis Billing.
The chief of the criminal investigation department answered after four rings.
Jeanette told him about the dead, mummified boy, the anonymous phone call, and the other things they’d found out during the afternoon and evening.
In other words, she didn’t have much of any significance to tell him.
‘We’ll have to see what the door-to-door inquiries come up with, and I’m waiting to hear what Ivo Andrić has discovered. Hurtig’s talking to Violent Crime, and, well – all the usual, really.’