Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (24 page)

Trailing behind the Piket team, Lena watches them search the floor, opening every door, investigating every cupboard, eliminating all hiding spaces. No John. The team declares the area clear and extends the sweep to other floors.

Lena puts her hand on the arm of a hulking Piket officer as he jogs by. He stops and stares hard at her from behind his mask.

“What?” he asks.

Lena points to the emergency exit at the end of the corridor. “Couldn’t the shooter have left that way?”

“That door’s jammed. It won’t budge. If we can’t get it open, the shooter couldn’t. We need to secure the rest of the floors before we force the door open.”

“Jammed?”

“You should be outside.”

Lena removes her hand, and the man runs out into the stairwell. She is alone.

Her hands are shaking badly. John is gone, vanished again. The certainty troubles her in so many ways she feels sick. His absence is as palpable as lack of air, as clear as if she could reach out and touch the vacant space where he had been.

She can hear herself explain the idea to Gren.
Yes, I can sense him when he’s close. I’m clairvoyant, obviously. Here’s my idea for a costume and a cape. Or a straitjacket.

Breathing slowly in her mask, she leans back against a wall and wonders if her deteriorating mental health is the root of all her recent thoughts. When the wall that separates a fragile mind from a broken one is breached, how will she know? Did it feel like an epiphany in reverse? A slight vertigo and then an endless fall?

The voice she heard in the bathroom haunts her. Perhaps that fateful raid had chased away Lena’s sanity and left her behind like an empty shell, ready to be filled by something more sinister. The thought has crossed her mind more than once.

Shaking herself, she continues down the corridor towards the emergency exit. Her palms are soaked with sweat. Halfway down the corridor, papers and catalogues clutter the floor in the otherwise neat office. She kicks the papers to the side and advances on the door with her gun raised. Her fingers are away from the trigger; her nerves are electrified, and she flinches at every imagined hint of movement.

When she reaches the door, she peeks through its window down into the stairwell. Spiral stairs, alarm bell on the wall, a dull soft glow of daylight from the door below. No John.

She lowers her gun and pulls the handle. As the Piket officer said, the door is stuck. She cannot find any locks or latches barring the door, but she cannot open it. The door feels as if it has been welded into its frame.

When her fingers brush against the wall near the lock, she pulls her hand back with a start. Crouching slowly, she leans closer, lifts her mask up, and sniffs.

Glue.

She rushes out of the office, down the stairs, and through the smoke. Once she is outside, she rips off her mask and stops in front of Agnes. When she opens her mouth to speak, all she manages is a bout of dry coughing.

“Back door,” Lena eventually croaks, blinking and resting her hands on her knees. “John.”

Agnes puts a hand on Lena’s shoulder to keep her from keeling over. “John’s at the back door?” she asks and glances down at Lena’s hand.

“No, he’s –
shit
.” Lena coughs and grimaces. Her sluggish mind reminds her that she is still holding her gun, and she tries to holster it discreetly. “He’s gone. Tell the Piket to go around the building.”

“They already have.” Agnes gestures at the far end of the block. “They sent a small team just after they hauled those people away. I don’t think they saw the suspect.”

Lena closes her eyes. Snow settles on her hair while she stands still. Her energy ebbs out of her. “Not again,” she whispers. “We were so close. What about Tom?”

“Sorry,” Agnes says. “He’s not here. The Piket checked everyone. I’ll talk to them again.”

“Call the headquarters and have them put up road blocks,” Lena says. “Get the underground trains not to stop at–” She tries to remember the name of the nearest station, but her memory fails her. Her body is starting to rebel against the prolonged push; she is tired, exhausted, and her headache sends splinters of light through her cranium. And she is hungry.

“I know what to do,” Agnes assures Lena, then walks away and raises her phone.

Lena slumps against the car, crosses her arms on the roof, and rests her head. She tries to shut out the turmoil and plan. Tom is gone: A relief and a problem in one sentence. The man has not been found mutilated, which is a boon, but he is also missing. He could have left before Lena or John got to the office, but then John too would have left. Which, she realises, is precisely what he did.

She turns to look at the subdued and frozen group of people that ran out when the fire alarm went off. With luck, one of them knows where Tom is. Rubbing her cold hands, she walks over to the group.

“Who here works for Lundberg Invest?” she asks. “I know some of you do, so just raise your hands. Now, if you will.”

A few seconds pass without anyone putting their hand up, then a dark woman in a grey office suit waves cautiously at Lena.

Lena jerks her head. “Come with me.”

“Wait.” The woman looks terrified. “I don’t work for them.”

“Then why the hell did you raise your hand?”

“I just – I know some of them, and they’re not here.”

“That’s funny, because I know they are.”

“They were,” the woman says and points at the office. “I talked with – um, some of them earlier today, and they’ve gone on a conference.”

Lena knows the woman does not want to say with whom she talked. Lundberg Invest will be worth looking into, but that will have to wait. “Where?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Then who does?” Lena’s patience hangs on a thread.

“Katarina. She’ll know.”

Lena stares at the woman until she goes on.

“Ah, she’s the receptionist,” the woman continues. She turns around and looks at the group around her. “Katarina? Are you here?”

A chorus of shrugs and turning heads tells Lena the receptionist is missing. “Was she in today?” she asks.

The woman nods. “Perhaps she left when the alarm went off.”

“Have you got her number?”

The woman gives Lena a phone number. Lena calls, but there is no answer. She tries the number dialled from the phone booth. Voicemail. Raising her eyes to the sky, she breathes out slowly. There has to be a quick way to find out where they are.

“Agnes?” Lena shouts.

“I’m right here,” Agnes calls and jogs over to Lena.

“Tell someone to get in touch with an employee at Lundberg Invest. We need to know where they are, and where they’re going.”

“Got it.”

Lena walks towards the entrance. The teargas prickles her eyes and her sinuses, but it has dissipated enough for her to breathe freely. She studies the patterns of white powder in the broken glass that covers the floor. On the floor near the desk are two bullet cases. They are almost as thick as her thumb. A sweat breaks out on her neck.

Agnes appears by her side. “I’ve called,” she says. “They’re working on it. What’s happening?”

“The receptionist knows where Tom is,” Lena explains, “but she’s disappeared. I’m going to have a look at her desk.” She walks around the desk and sees the broken monitor. “Oh, bloody hell.”

Agnes follows her gaze. “John did that?”

“It could be.” Lena wonders if John has taken the receptionist with him, or if she is hiding somewhere in the office.

“That must be her handbag.” Agnes points to a brown leather bag slung over the back of the office chair.

Lena upends the bag on the desk. Make-up, wallet, hair brush, tissue, pepper spray, and a mobile phone. Its screen is lit. She picks it up and sees her own phone number. Unless the receptionist has fled, she is either with John or somewhere in the office.

Or John has silenced her and hid her himself. The image of Niklas glued to a wardrobe door flashes through her mind.

Lena runs out with the phone in her hand and shouts for the Piket team leader. Outside the police tape barricade, hundreds of people gawk at the scene. Almost everyone is clad in hues of black and grey, hands deep in pockets or holding mobile phones and cameras. Part funeral gathering, part voyeur convention. She wishes she could hijack the Piket van and run them all down.

The Piket team leader stands next to the officers who monitor the people who have left the building. He looks up at Lena with a shadow of annoyance on his face.

“The receptionist’s gone,” Lena says. “I think John’s taken her.”

The team leader makes a hushing gesture. Lena is about to tell him she can be as loud as she damn well pleases but then realizes her mistake: One of the spectators murmurs
hostage
, and the word races around the crowd. Thumbs work touch screens manically as the news is passed on. Half the city will know in minutes. The press will be here in no time. Pictures of the scene will already be descending on blogs and newspapers.

A crease forms on the team leader’s forehead – the closest he comes to a scowl, Lena supposes – and he motions for Lena to follow him in behind the van. Out of earshot, he asks her to tell him more.

“The woman is gone,” Lena says impatiently, “but her bag’s still there. Her computer screen has been smashed.” She stabs with her index finger at the building and speaks through her teeth. “John. Has. Her. Or at least he’s the reason she’s gone. Trust me on this one.”

Glancing at the office, he nods. “We’ll do another sweep.” He barks a series of commands in his radio and turns to leave.

“Sweep?” Lena runs around him and stops in his path. “John’s already gone. We need to start looking for him.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?” The team leader locks eyes with Lena. His voice is hushed but strained. “Because if you haven’t, I’m not going to waste time searching every bloody block. My priority is time and the safety of my team. We have called in the National Task Force, and they’re mobilising as we speak. They’ll go in as soon as the suspect is sighted again.”

Lena’s headache intensifies. With the
National Task Force deployed, all bets were off, and John’s chances to escape shrank to almost nil. He could get away with overwhelming and kidnapping unprepared individuals, but the task force was another beast entirely.

And they were not discreet. The press would chase them like dogs. Rumours would fly wild.

“Where exactly would they go in?” Lena demands. “John’s gone, and the task force aren’t searching for him. I am.”

The Piket team leader leans close to Lena’s face. “Then I suggest you better start looking, Detective.”

Lena opens and closes her mouth, then turns away. Everyone is losing their mind. Perhaps John is to blame: Molly’s elusive avenger is turning into a void that will claim them all. A human black hole swallowing the unwary.

She stalks back to her car and finds Agnes sitting in the passenger seat and speaking on her phone. Agnes looks up at Lena and shakes her head: No sign of John. Thirty minutes have passed since the shots were fired. John can be in Stockholm proper, and all Lena can do is wait for someone to spot him.

Looking at the entrance, a thought comes to her. She knocks on the car window to get Agnes’s attention and motions for her to hang up.

After a few seconds, Agnes lowers the side window. “There’s no sign of him so far,” she says.

“You’re good with computers.” Lena has long since learned that her own temper disagrees with the tardiness of technology, while Agnes is happy to wait minutes for a computer to open a file.

Agnes frowns. “A little. Why?”

“Can you make the receptionist’s computer work?”

“Maybe, if it’s just the screen that’s broken.”

“You’d need a new screen?”

“That might do it. The computer itself didn’t look broken, but I didn’t look close–”

“I’ll find a screen.” Lena waits while the Piket team files into the office to search again and follows them up the stairs. One of them turns to look at her, but Lena waves apologetically and mumbles about double-checking a detail.

Once they are inside the vacated office, she ducks into a room, yanks the cables out of the smallest monitor she finds, and carries it downstairs, its cables trailing behind her. She prays the forensic team has not arrived yet. If Gren hears of what she is doing, he will fire her on the spot.

Agnes waits for Lena behind the desk downstairs. The computer hums under the table; Agnes has managed to start it up. The crowd outside seems impossibly large. A news broadcast team moves among the people. Their camera’s spotlight flashes over Lena, and she crouches behind the desk.

“It works,” Agnes says and kneels down next to Lena. “I’m not even logged out. Do you want me to check recent documents?”

“Anything that helps,” Lena says quietly.

Agnes nods and turns to the computer. Lena’s eyes stray to the spent bullet casings on the floor, left there by John when he released the salvo towards the police outside.

She wishes she knew what had gone through his head while the bullets crossed the distance between his hand and the police. Fury, hate, terror, confusion or glee. So many options. What she fears the most is that he felt nothing.