Without a Trace (22 page)

So Kag ran five companies in Marbella while he was sitting on a bench in Orminge shopping centre.

She wasn’t able to find out exactly where the companies were based. The only thing she could see was the postcode, which told her that all five were in the area inland from Puerto Banús on the Costa del Sol, in
el barrio
known as Nueva Andalucía. She couldn’t get any further details about the ownership structure, nothing about the composition of the boards, or any detailed information about turnover and level of activity.

But all of this could be uncovered by the Spanish police in the blink of an eye.

She Googled ‘policia nacional marbella’, reached for her phone and dialled the number. She peered at her watch and hoped it wasn’t siesta time. Mind you, the Spaniards had
aire acondicionado
these days. She had read somewhere that it had fundamentally changed Spanish society, more than any other single phenomenon. For the first time in the history of civilization they no longer took four-hour lunch breaks during the afternoon when the sun was at its hottest. Instead they switched on
el aire frío
and carried on working.

‘
Policia nacional, buenas tardes. Cómo puedo ayudarle?
’

Nina shut her eyes and asked for the duty superintendent, the words pouring out of somewhere inside her brain that she hadn’t known existed: her voice and intonation changed, assuming a lower tone. She had missed Spain: she missed the smells, the heat, the greenery.

The superintendent came on the line and she introduced herself, explained who she was and why she was calling. The police officer sounded surprised and rather sceptical.

‘I know I’m not following official procedures here,’ Nina said, ‘but this is a very unpleasant case, extremely brutal, and it would be a huge help if I could have some assistance getting hold of information about the murder victim’s businesses.’

She could hear a radio in the background, a jingle,
radio ora, tam-ta-dam, la lejor selection de música
…

‘Excuse me,’ the superintendent said, at the other end of the line. ‘This might sound like a strange question, but are you from the Canary Islands?’

She took a deep breath and, to her astonishment, felt tears spring to her eyes. ‘
Si, señor, nací en Tenerife
…’

‘Well, then,’ the police chief said, ‘why didn’t you say so straight away? What was it you wanted help with?’

She gave him Kag’s details and the names of the companies, and heard the superintendent’s pen scratch as he made notes.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you before the weekend.
Hasta pronto
.’

The dog had been killed using ‘unusual methods’. That was what it said. It was an article in the local paper. I remember it well – it was at the bottom of the page on the left-hand side. It described how the perpetrators, two ‘young boys’, had caught the dog and bound its paws together. Then they had put fireworks in the dog’s anus and ears, and set light to them.

I can still feel the boundless terror I experienced as I read those words. I can conjure it up at any moment, the incomprehensible disgust, the nausea, the disbelief: how could it be true?

The picture that illustrated the article showed a solemn uniformed police officer, Stefan Westermark. He was the officer who had caught the ‘young boys’.

‘You just can’t understand how normal lads could do something like this,’ he said in the caption.

The boys’ excuse was that the dog was only a stray that hung around outside the blocks of flats in Fisksätra, shitting in sandpits.

When Ingemar finally agreed to get a pet, I knew exactly what sort of dog I wanted. Not some inbred puppy with a family tree, but a stray from a dogs’ home. I wanted to do good – I wanted to make amends, make a difference.

But the dog I rescued from suffering and being put down doesn’t like me.

It doesn’t understand that I mean it well.

Suddenly Annika was lying awake and staring at the wall, fragments of the nightmare already dissolving into fog.

She had been back in Hälleforsnäs, the small town where she’d grown up, by the stream below the old works. Midges were buzzing about. Birgitta had been there, and Sven, her first boyfriend. He looked so sad.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ Jimmy said.

She turned her head. He was half sitting up, reading his iPad. She realized she was thirsty and needed a pee. The disquiet of the dream faded and she took a deep breath, hearing the rain beat against the windowpane. Through the open bedroom door she thought she could make out the children’s breathing as a chorus of warm gasps, but that must have been her imagination.

Birgitta still lived in Hälleforsnäs. She passed the stream by the works every day – she had walked those streets all her life, and now her daughter was doing the same. They visited Mum up at Tattarbacken and bought pizza from Maestro on Friday evenings. Then she saw the women of Solsidan in her mind’s eye, with their coffee-machines and polished stone floors.

‘What is normal life, really?’ Annika whispered. ‘The calm, happy, normal thing that everyone else has, where is it?’

Jimmy lowered his iPad, which lit his face from below, and smiled. ‘Every life is abnormal, an endless process of crisis management. If it’s not something to do with the kids, it’s health or work. The rest is just the gaps in between.’

She hauled herself up into a sitting position beside him, plumping up the pillows behind her back. ‘Are you happy?’

He switched the pad off, his face vanished and his head became a dark silhouette against the pale wallpaper. He pulled her closer to him. ‘Is it important? Are you?’

She snuggled up beside him, and noticed that he was a bit sweaty between the legs. She breathed in his scent. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s important. You’re important, and the children, and belonging somewhere …’

He ran his hand over her taut stomach and kissed her.

‘I need to pee,’ she whispered, and disentangled herself from his arms.

By the time she got back to the bedroom he was already asleep.

*

I went looking for Mum.

Naturally I heard what the grown-ups said, that she was gone, that she’d gone home to God, but I thought she must have left me something, that she would find a way to communicate with me, to let me know that everything was all right, that it was just a terrible mistake. The bird on the windowsill looked at me with Mum’s bright eyes. Perhaps it flew between the sky and Heaven. (The bird version of Mum didn’t have her tired, dead eyes after the chemotherapy, but the real ones, the ones she had when she still had hair.) Maybe she was hiding among the weeds in the field down towards the porcelain factory … Maybe she was in the wind.

But she never spoke.

I waited and waited and waited. I was so clever and alert and focused. I really was prepared: at night I would look out of the window until dawn to make sure I didn’t miss her, but she let me down, night after night after night.

In the end I turned my back and stopped longing.

I burned the photograph album containing all the pictures from her youth on a mound of stones at the edge of the forest.

*

Johansson was sitting in the meeting room on the eighth floor, crying, when Nina got there. No one else had arrived, and she stopped in the doorway, unsure whether to step inside or walk away. He noticed her presence, coughed and blew his nose. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

She stayed where she was. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked cautiously.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I’m not too bad,’ he said shakily. ‘Coffee?’ He held up a flask and a mug.

She didn’t really drink much coffee – at home she always made tea – but she stepped into the room and nodded. ‘Thanks, I’d love some.’

He poured her a mug and passed it to her. ‘Sugar and milk?’

‘Thanks, it’s fine as it is.’

Silence descended. Nina sat on a chair a suitable distance away from him and let the mug warm her hands. ‘Why are you so sad?’ she asked quietly.

He sat and thought for a while. ‘Is it possible to be anything else?’ he said eventually. ‘Considering the way the world looks?’

‘Do you mean in general terms, or from our perspective here at work?’ Nina asked warily. She heard how bureaucratic the question sounded. The chair suddenly felt uncomfortable, and she shifted position.

Johansson evidently took the question seriously because his brow furrowed as he pondered his response. ‘Both, actually,’ he replied. ‘Or, rather, they’re connected, aren’t they, our work and the reality of the world out there? They’re two aspects of the same thing, the whole, and the splinters that we work with.’ He blew his nose again. ‘But of course it feels good to make a contribution. That’s why I joined the police. Well, I’m sure you understand that – you’re a police officer too.’

Nina drank some coffee. How much did he really know about her? How much were people told when a new member of staff was employed? ‘Have you always worked at National Crime?’ she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too nosy.

He shook his head. ‘I was transferred here after the accident.’ He reached for a bundle of papers and began to sort through them.

Nina took a few deep breaths. ‘The accident?’

Johansson looked surprised, as if the whole world had been kept updated about his life story. ‘Yes, I got shot in the leg during a training exercise. Just a flesh wound. I was in the rapid response unit back then, but it went horribly wrong. The bullet hit me in the thigh and it looked like I was going to bleed to death, but one of the guys in the group had medical training. He tied a tourniquet, and, well …’ He carried on sorting his documents. ‘I got a bit sensitive after that. Over-sensitive, according to my kids, but that’s not the sort of thing doctors diagnose.’

Lamia trotted into the room with her laptop in her arms. ‘Yep, that’s the way it is,’ she said. ‘Johansson’s a former tough guy who got shot and lost his edge.’ She went over to the big man and kissed his cheek. Johansson smiled shyly at her, and she turned to Nina. ‘How are you getting on? Do you feel at home here yet?’

Nina had never felt at home anywhere, and refrained from answering.

The blonde smiled and patted her arm, then sat down in her usual place and opened her computer. ‘Q’s got an important visitor from Rosenbad so we’re going to have to look after ourselves today. They might call in a bit later.’

Nina’s skin burned where Lamia had touched it, and she rubbed her arm.

Lamia looked up at them. ‘How are we going to do this? Who wants to start?’

Johansson distributed his papers: printouts of the report from the Nacka Police. It included an interview with Ingemar Lerberg’s staff: two secretaries, Märta Hillevi Brynolfsson and Solana Nikita Levinsky, the results of their door-to-door inquiries and a thorough analysis of Lerberg’s political activities. It also contained an account of the as yet fruitless search for the person who had notified the emergency services.

Nina handed round a summary of the murder at Kråkträsken. Lamia was clutching some printouts, but hadn’t made copies of them.

‘The cordon at the crime scene on Silvervägen has been lifted,’ Johansson said. ‘We’ve got access to a set of keys if anyone wants to go and take a look. The second round of door-to-door inquiries in the area didn’t come up with anything. There’s no post-mortem report for the victim at Kråkträsken yet, but they’ve found fragments of skin under one fingernail so it might be possible to get some DNA. The staff at Lerberg’s business, Hillevi and Solana, have been questioned several times. But you can read that for yourselves.’

Nina picked up the papers eagerly. She liked transcriptions of interviews, the spontaneous and fragmentary dialogue – they became film scenes in her head. She could sense the anxiety of the two employees.

Lead interviewer
: This new client, what was the name again? Ah, here it is, ASCL …

Solana
: Asia Shipping Container Lines.

LI
: Yes, Asia Shipping.

S
: Ingemar negotiated the contract. It’s only a trial to begin with, but it’ll give us one hell of a boost …

LI
: Have you met the client?

S
: Who, me? God, no! I look after the invoices. But once the contract is up and running we usually get a freelancer to do the invoices and I become office manager. I’ve been doing this for ages now.

Nina leafed through the document, reading random extracts.

Lead interviewer
: Have any threats been received?

Hillevi
: Threats?

LI
: Towards Ingemar or the company, anything you’re aware of?

H
: No. Not … no.

LI
: The three big clients, the shipping companies from Panama and those other countries, do you have any contact with them?

H
: Me? No, not me.

LI
: Have they ever expressed any dissatisfaction with the way your company has managed things?

H
: How do you mean?

The text woke memories of the monotonous routine of work in Katarina District, all the interviews she had conducted and typed up, all the weapon-cleaning and reports to fill in. The nights in patrol car 1617 with its hard suspension, the people she took in for questioning, who didn’t want to talk, the smells at the bottom of the food chain, bad coffee and acid reflux.

Lead interviewer
: Have you noticed any change in mood recently?

Solana
: In Ingemar, you mean? No. Should I have?

LI
: I was wondering if you might.

S
: I mean, I’ve been with him so long, ages really. I was working for him back when he was in Parliament, when Ingemar was a Member of Parliament, I mean, and … well, he’s been the same cheerful person the whole time. Well, maybe not when those horrible things were being written about him, that was really awful.