Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (16 page)

John wakes up seven minutes before his alarm is set to go off.

When he is certain no one is in the stairwell, he leaves the stairwell and enters the pale and still Saturday morning. The clouds have shed most of their burden and are content to sprinkle a fine shower of glittering snowflakes over the suburb. The hum of traffic is gone. Few move on the streets; while the blizzard has settled, the cold continues to keep people indoors.

He walks back to Brommanplan and finds that his assumption was right: One of the men who had seen John’s quarry is sitting on the bench where he had sat yesterday, waiting for the nearby liquor store to open. It is one of the men, but not the right one.

John goes to a bus stop and watches the man. Yesterday’s milling lines of commuters have been replaced by people drifting home from Friday night revelries or heading towards their weekend jobs. Taxis pick up huddled groups of tourists leaving the single-storey budget hotel. Red buses negotiate snow-filled lanes.

After a while, another man, red-faced, bearded and obese, joins the first man on the bench. He is the one whom his friends had interrupted when John spoke to them yesterday.

Close to the two men, half-hidden under a cluster of trees, is a public toilet: a green metal booth almost too small for a single person. Its door faces towards John, away from the men. He moves closer to the toilet and waits behind a tree.

After half an hour, one of the men walks to the wine shop and returns ten minutes later with a plastic bag filled with bottles. A moment later, the bearded man on the bench rises and walks towards the public toilet. John waits until the man is inside and moves around the toilet, keeping out of the other man’s view.

When John hears the man inside the toilet unlock the door, he walks up to the door and waits. The door opens, and the two men stand face to face outside the toilet’s entrance.

“Wha–” the man blurts.

John pushes the man back inside the toilet. The man staggers backwards, thuds back-first into the wall, and John follows, pulling the door shut behind him.

With two men inside the booth, there is almost no space to move. The air reeks of disinfectants, cheap soap and urine. The bearded man’s eyes are bloodshot and his breath is foul, but he is more alert than John has anticipated.

The man grabs John’s jacket and pulls John close. “What the hell d’you think you’re–”

John drives his fist into the man’s left temple. The man moans and raises his hands, but John strikes again, this time ramming his other fist deep into the man’s stomach.

For a long moment, the man leans on the wall, bent over in agony, spitting and wheezing. John stands silent beside him. When the man can talk again, he looks up at John.

“What have I done to you?” the man asks, shaking as he speaks.

“Do you remember me?” John asks.

“Yes, but I haven’t–”

John takes the printed image from his pocket and holds it under the man’s face.

The man looks at it and turns away. “Oh, fuck,” he mumbles.

“Where does the man in the picture score?” John asks. “Who does he buy from?”

“I’ve no idea,” the bearded man mumbles. “I don’t know him. It could be anyone.”

“Yesterday you said that you knew. I want his dealer’s name and address.”

The man groans. “Are you fucking stoned?” he rasps. “They’re not the kind of people you rat on.”

“I am not stoned,” John says, “but I’m in a hurry.” He folds the image, puts it back in his pocket and takes out his knife. The fluorescent light in the ceiling tints the blade green.

The man’s pupils balloon at the sight of the blade. “Don’t,” he says and raises his hands. Names, numbers and addresses tumble off his tongue as if the words crowded his mouth.

John stands still, knife in hand, and listens for key details among the trickle of slurred syllables. He memorizes the important details. Once he knows all he needs to know, he tells the man to be quiet.

The man breathes hard. Sweat covers his forehead. “Can I go now? I just want to leave. Please.”

“You can leave in a minute.” John uses his free hand to take a large bottle from his bag. He hands it to the man and orders him to drink it.

The man’s face is slack with incomprehension. “Why?” he asks in a broken voice. “What is it?”

“Read the label.”

“Whiskey?” the man says, confused. “Why would you give me that? It’s poison, isn’t it?” he whimpers. “You’re going to poison me.”

“It’s not poison. Drink, or I will cut your throat open.”

The man takes the bottle with a quivering hand and drinks.

When the bottle is empty, John puts the knife away and tells the man to sit down. The man obeys sluggishly. John exits the public toilet, closes the door, and leaves for the underground.

Twenty minutes later, John arrives in Hässelby.

The train wheezes to a halt at the end of the line and opens its doors. Wind and snow rush into the car, followed by a handful of frozen people. A voice announces the remaining time until the train leaves for the city.

John rises, grabs his bag, leans out and looks around.

The open-air platform is flanked by tower blocks, their windows like bright mosaic tiles against the dim morning light. Deep in the gentle snowfall, on the other side of a small outdoor shopping centre, a red light pulses at the top of a soaring chimney. It marks the end of the suburb; past the power plant is the waterfront, beyond that a wide strait where the snow blends with the sky into grey nothingness. The wind plucks at John’s clothes.

He walks down a sloping tunnel in the middle of the platform and looks over the turnstiles. A handful of people wait for their buses. No security staff. On his right, outside the station, a local bus empties passengers who march with determined steps towards the station.

John crosses the street, plods through the snow past a grocery shop, and turns a corner. He pauses in a roofed area lined with empty cigarette packets and beer cans. The thick snow muffles the sounds of voices and cars.

He has been here many times. The area, its contours, all the lights are familiar. So are the criss-crossing parkways, the parking lots and the sparse patches of pine trees. Most streets in this suburb are named after fruits that would not last a minute in the climate.

The man he looks for lives on one of them.

John doubles back along a road parallel to the underground rail. He is heading towards the previous underground train station, located closer to John’s destination but also closer to local offices and diners. It often had security staff. The end station, like this morning, does not.

When he nears the station, he turns and follows a pathway towards a massive block of flats, a towering rectangle in red brick with hundreds of windows. Apart from a man walking his dog in the distance, he passes no one.

He follows the façade to the end of the block. Along the ground floor are metal meshes over the windows, all dark except one where huge aquariums light them in a shimmering green. When he reaches the end of the block, he stops outside a door in glass and pale wood.

Inside is a dim stairwell with walls in yellow and brown. He tries to glance at the list of names inside, but the light is too weak for him to make out the numbers.

John tries the door. It is locked.

He takes a step back and looks up at the windows above the stairwell. All of them are dark. He moves back and puts the bag down on the ground, then stops as a woman in a brown coat opens the front door. At her feet is a small dog on a pink lead. When she sees John, she stops and peers at him.

John nods and smiles while he catches the door to stop it from closing. The woman’s dog barks furiously, its claws scrabbling on the icy ground as it tries to reach John. The woman frowns, shakes her head, and walks off towards a park, half-dragging her dog behind her.

He watches her disappear around a corner. When the woman is out of sight, he walks through the door and closes it behind him.

Inside the stairwell, everything is silent. The thick smell of deep-fried oil fills the air. He looks at the list of names and finds the flat he is looking for: ground floor, the first on his left, inside a corridor.

John considers the number of doors, the location of windows. If he is correct, the flat is a small studio apartment with one window set low in the building’s front, just outside the front door. Anyone inside the flat could have seen him.

He puts the bag down on the granite floor and takes out a small axe. Its head is heavy and full-sized while its wooden shaft is as short as a wine bottle. After a look around to make sure he is alone, he tucks the axe under his jacket and presses his left arm to his side to keep it in place. When he is certain he will not drop it, he walks up to the flat and looks at the dark peeping hole.

The man who lives behind the door is the next link in the chain, another component that separates John from resetting the balance. One way or another, he will get the information from the dealer and find his ultimate target.

He knocks on the door.

Silence.

He waits for a minute and knocks again.

Nothing.

John raises his hand to try a third time when he hears something scrape against the floor inside the flat. A muffled curse follows the sound. A shadow passes in front of the peeping hole.

“Who’s there?” a male voice asks from inside the flat.

“Jerry,” John whispers. “Are you Mick?”

“I don’t know any Jerry. Piss off.”

“I’m – I’m sorry,” John says and coughs. “Someone said I could buy from you. He gave me the address.”

“Who the fuck said that?” the man inside hisses.

John gives the name of the man John left near-unconscious in the public toilet at Brommaplan. He speaks with a weak, trembling voice.

Another curse sounds from inside the flat. “That fuckhead sent you here?” the unseen man asks. “I’ll knock his teeth out. This isn’t a bloody corner shop. I don’t sell anything. Now, sod off.”

John hears another male voice inside the flat. There are two men behind the door.

“Please,” John says and raises his voice. “Let me in. I’ve got cash.” He flashes the wad of bills in front of the peephole and puts the money away.

A long silence follows. “Show me your face,” the man inside says.

John leans close to the peephole. He licks his lips, looks to his sides, and stammers another plea.

“Fucking junkie,” the man mutters. “This is bullshit.” He raises his voice. “Let me see your hands.”

John raises his hands, careful not to drop the axe squeezed tight in his armpit.

“Fine,” the man says. “Get inside, quick.”

The other voice behind the door makes a protesting sound, but the first man with whom John has spoken hushes him. There is a dull metal thud as a bolt slides back, followed by the rustle of a security chain. The door opens a hand’s breadth.

John looks into a pale, narrow face pocked with acne scars. The man is in his late twenties and wears a red hooded jumper, black jeans and orange trainers. His hands are out of John’s sight, hidden by the door and the wall.

The man is a head shorter than John; behind him, John sees a dim flat crowded with boxes and plastic bags. An open built-in wardrobe houses a stationary computer, its monitor glowing with a racing car waiting at the start line. Green shabby curtains cover a window on the opposite wall.

On the floor are plastic bags, blankets, pizza boxes, piles of crumpled tissue and empty cans. A candlestick holder balances on an old portable TV with streaks of paraffin tracing its sides.

The man nods at John. “Give me the money. Hurry up.”

Just as John reaches for the shaft of his axe, the other man inside the flat looks around the door.

Behind Mick is the man who fled from Molly’s house.

Even though the printed image from the surveillance camera is poor, John has studied the photo long enough to be sure. The man has the correct features, the right hair, the matching clothes. John came to the flat looking for a link in the chain, but now the chain has rushed through his hands and reached its end.

“Come on,” the man in the doorway urges. “I haven’t got all day.”

“That’s correct,” John says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the man demands.

“And my name is not Jerry.”

The man frowns and looks John up and down. “Then who the fuck are you?” he asks.

“I am Molly Berglund’s lover,” John says, and rams the blunt end of the axe head into the man’s face.

*

Lena wakes up to the frantic beeping of her alarm clock.

Her first thoughts are on her dreams: Surrounded by large birds, she had soared through clouds, not knowing where she was going but feeling that she needed to go faster. The echo of beating wings lingers in her head.

She grimaces, reaches over to stop the beeping, and falls back onto the bed. Only the bedside clock and the street lights outside illuminate the room. The sun is an hour from rising. Disconnected thoughts whirl in her mind; were it not for the time displayed on the clock, she would think she had slept only a few minutes.

She sighs, stares at the ceiling, and closes her eyes. Now Agnes knows the truth. At least, she knows all that Lena has told her. It is good enough for now. She rises from the bed and frowns at the blanket, wondering when she pulled it over her. Perhaps she was more tired than she had thought.

That does not matter; five hours of sleep is enough. She has booked the basement gym and needs a quick session. Cool iron and gravity never fail to clear her head, and her thoughts are a dense pack of loose ends.

But there is no time this morning. She needs to get back to the office. John will soon move again, if he has not already, and he must be tired. He will leave a trace. When he does, she will be ready.

She is making sandwiches when her mobile phone rings. She takes a bite and looks at the display. It is Agnes.

Lena takes the call. “Any news?” she asks, speaking as she chews.

“The footage is ready,” Agnes says. “It came in only minutes ago. They’ve been working on it all through the night. It’s at the office.”

“Perfect.” Lena remembers that Agnes had been in the flat when she fell asleep. The younger officer must have slept less than Lena, yet she sounds alert and wide awake.

“Or we can go to John’s house at Drottningholm,” Agnes suggests. “Gren has got hold of a helicopter.”

“First the film,” Lena says. “It’s unlikely that John’s gone to the house if the road out there’s blocked by snow. And if he has, he’ll probably stay put.”

“I understand.”

“We need to find the other man. Wherever he is, that’s where John’s heading. What took them so long to get the film ready?” Lena asks.

“The quality was bad, so Gren got some company to go over the footage and do what they could to improve it.”

“Ah.”

“The full brief is on the system. It’s a lot of reading. I’m have borrowed a car. Do you want me to meet you up?”

“Sure.” Lena tears another bite from her sandwich. “I’m ready in ten minutes.”

“Are you all right? You sound like you’re choking.”

“Ten minutes,” Lena says again. “I’ll see you soon.”

Lena hangs up and does her round through her flat: Quick shower, coat, gun, notepad, phone, keys. She pauses when brushing her teeth, takes a short wildlife knife from a drawer, and puts it in the pocket of her coat. She is almost done with the mascara when Agnes calls again.

“I’m in the parking lot,” Agnes says. “Have you seen your car today?”

“No,” Lena replies. “Why?”

“It’s ploughed in. I can see only the roof.”

“I bloody knew it.” Lena sighs and crouches to tie her shoes. “Can I ride with you?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be right down.”

Forty-five minutes later, Lena and Agnes walk out of the elevator at the police headquarters. “The DVD is in room twelve,” Agnes says. “I’ll get Gren.”

Lena nods and continues down a corridor. She gets black coffee from a coffee vending machine, takes three bananas from another department’s fruit basket, walks into the room, and closes the door behind her.

She puts her food on the table and sits down in an office chair close to a whiteboard. Thirty seconds later, Agnes and Gren walk in.

“Morning,” Gren says. “How are you feeling?”

Lena peels her banana. “Never better. Run the film from the station first. I want to see this second suspect.”

Agnes switches on the projector and walks over to a computer at the back. Gren, unshaved and dressed in a grey, wrinkled shirt, sits down next to Lena. He smells sharply of deodorant. Lena wonders if he slept in the office.

A white rectangle lights up the whiteboard and changes into an image of a station floor. It is centred on the turnstiles, with the steel-and-Plexiglas ticket box on the right and the doors in the distance. Two security guards in green overalls lean on one of the turnstiles. Fluorescent lights in the high ceiling light the room. People frozen in mid-step cover the dark, wet floor.

The camera is mounted in a corner high above the floor and reveals only part of the faces of the people passing below.

“Is this the best angle we could get?” Lena asks.

“I’m afraid so.” Agnes starts the film, and people snap into movement.

Lena leans close to the screen and peers at the faces passing past the camera’s view. “This is like looking for a fish in a river,” she mumbles.

Minutes pass while she scrutinizes every man. Her eyes water with the effort. She is about to ask Agnes to take a break when she spots the man.

“That’s him,” she shouts. “Stop the bloody film. That’s our man.”

Agnes rewinds the footage a few seconds and presses play again. A man slams the station doors open and stalks across the floor, towards the turnstiles. The security guards look up. A woman jumps out of the man’s way. Agnes pauses the film just as the man fumbles for his money at the ticket stall. The picture flickers between two images, making the man’s fingers quiver.

Lena looks at the man. If she is right, those hands had held a gun minutes before he was filmed. They had cupped the cold metal, pulled the trigger, shook as the weapon fired. The man was small; the recoil must have shaken his entire frame.

She wishes she could rewind the tape and follow the man back to the flat, up the stairs, through the door, all the way to the moment after the bullet left the barrel. If only she could see his face, the size of his pupils, what words his mouth had formed. Had he gaped in surprise, laughed, or cried.

The man in the film is probably guilty, but that is only half of the picture. Murdering Molly makes him a killer; his reaction determines what kind of killer.

Agnes rewinds and plays the footage in slow motion. The man zips from one position to the next as he moves through the turnstiles and farther down the station, towards the escalators. When he has left the picture frame, she rewinds the film again. After the third replay, she leaves it running at normal speed.

Ten minutes pass before the security staff snatch their radios from their belts, spring into activity, and stop people from passing. People grimace and raise their mobile phones.

“That’s when the alert was sent out,” Gren says. “The station was shut down. It looks like John never showed up.”

Lena crosses her arms and sits back, still intent on the screen. “Have someone with good eyesight look through the tape again. Search for any sign of John, and get a usable image of the other man. I want to know where he went. Have we got footage from the platform?”

“Their camera up there is broken.” Gren makes an apologetic face.

“You can’t be serious. Who the hell is–” Lena raises a hand before Gren frowns at her. “Never mind,” she says. “It’s only ten minutes. They must be able to work out which trains stopped at the station during that time.”

“Probably,” Gren agrees.

Lena turns to Agnes. “Get them to send us the footage from all those trains. And tell them to do it fast. Agnes?”

Agnes flinches as Lena touches her arm. “What?”

“Are you all right?” Lena asks.

“Sorry.” Agnes shakes her head. “I was distracted. Are we going looking again?”

“We haven’t seen the other recording yet,” Lena says.

“Oh. Of course.” Agnes changes the disc, and the image flickers and changes into the interior of a train car distorted by the wide-angle lens.

Lena leans closer. The first film was key to finding the killer; this footage will tell her about John. She should prioritize finding the presumed killer, but she cannot exorcise the image of John from her thoughts. Frantic, alone, and armed.

“Where the hell is he?” Lena asks, squinting at the fish-eye picture.

“At the far end.” Agnes points to the screen. “There.”

Lena shakes her head. “This is rubbish. How are we meant to see what happens?”

Agnes fast-forwards a few minutes. “The tech team said they’d enhanced the sequence. Here we are.”

The picture centres and zooms in on a man in the distance. Large and restless pixels resolve into a sharper picture: two groups of blue seats, pale green walls, advertisements for mobile phones above the backs of the seats. The image quality is good, but the light is too bright: everything is cast in a bluish glare, making the scene look as if it were filmed in an icy hospital.

Lena recognizes John straight away.

He is sitting by the window, his face blank, seemingly oblivious of the three men in the booth next to his. Lena can easily read their glances and their collective poise. Body language is as subtle as a megaphone when you know what signals to look for. She sees what will come next. For a moment, she is almost overcome with the urge to shout a warning.

The trains stops, and the men make their move: One moment they sit in the adjacent booth, then two of them stand in front of John while the third keeps watch, scowling at the other passengers and blocking Lena’s view.

Agnes reads off her notepad. “We’re not sure what happens here, but witness statements indicate that they tried to rob John. One witness said he saw a knife and heard threats. That’s all we know.”

Lena glances at the younger officer and wonders when Agnes found the time to read up on the witness statements. Probably when Lena looked away for a second. The woman is uncanny efficiency dressed in a uniform.

The men who moved in on John shuffle around and look over their shoulders. Lena can sense the tension. Their robbery is not going to plan.

Without warning, a plume of dark streaks appears on the advertisement on the wall above John.

Gren points at the lines. “What’s that?”

“I’m not sure,” Agnes says. “Perhaps some kind of discolouration from the digital enhancement.”

“No.” Lena shakes her head. “It’s blood.”

She read through as much as she could of the report on her way to the city. Notes on the crime scene described it as ‘soaked’. Watching the red lines droop, she wonders how much of the blood was John’s.

The scene changes in a flurry of movement. Two of the men move away from the booth while one remains bent over John with his back turned to the camera. The two men run out of the image and, Lena guesses, the train.

The last man looms over John, then doubles over and falls on his back between the two booths. Graceless but fast, John pounces on the fallen man and holds a knife to his face.

After a moment, John turns his head and looks directly at the camera, and for eight long seconds, he meets the eyes of Lena, Agnes and Gren.

“Bloody hell,” Gren whispers. “He knows he’s being filmed. He’s looking right at us. What the hell?”

Lena is about to agree when John turns back to the man and slices his nose open.

“Christ,” Agnes gasps.

Blood fountains from the wound and stains the nearby seats. The injured man twists manically on the floor, but John pins him down and leans down, his head close to the man’s ear.

“He’s talking,” Lena says hoarsely; her throat is parched. “I think he’s whispering.” She would sacrifice days of her lifespan in return for knowing what John is saying.

John stands up, takes his bag, and walks out of the train car. Were it not for his bloodied shirt, he could have been on his way to work. But Lena knows that John is on his way to a storage depot, where he will assault and tie down a colleague so hard the man nearly lost limbs. John will make threats so vile Lena could not coax the details out of his former friend. And now John is gone.

Again.

“Stop the tape.” Lena presses the heels of her hands to the sides of her head. If she needed any confirmation that John is not their regular grieving relative, this is it. He is violent and callous, but calculating. His gaze has left her with a cold knot in her stomach: he had looked like an animal, stripped of compassion and hesitation.

The psychology department would have a field day with him. For all John’s composedness, his actions are bold and irreversible. He knows the police is watching, and he does not care. The man is a burning fuse. When the detonation comes, John would be far past saving. As would more people.

“Any more news from the patrols?” Lena asks.

“Not yet,” Gren says. “It’s only a matter of time, though. John is leaving a strong trail.”

“Not strong enough.” Lena rises and turns to Agnes. “Call the lab and make sure they work on getting better pictures fast. Tell them to call me as soon as the image of the second man is on our system. John is a loose cannon heading for a disaster, and all we do is let him slip away. Gren?”

“Yes?”