It was just after lunch on Wednesday 5 June.
Ewert Grens and Sven hurried up one of the hospitals many staircases, from the sixth to the seventh floor.
It had been a strange morning.
They had been restless for a few minutes, all five of them. Carefully moved a leg, slowly tilted a head against a shoulder. As if their bodies were aching, as if they didnt dare attract her attention, and for precisely that reason were unable to sit still.
Lydia sensed their fear and left them to it. She knew how hard it was even to breathe when you were sitting down, looking up at someone who had just claimed the right to your body. She remembered the
Stena Baltica
ferry and how the threat of death silenced your instinct to cry for help.
Suddenly one of them collapsed and fell forward on his face.
One of the young men, a medical student, had lost his balance and fallen out of the circle around the body.
Lydia quickly aimed the gun at him.
He lay bent over, face down, his knees still on the floor, his hands tied behind his back. His body shaking, being upright required too much effort. He was weeping with fear. He had never imagined anything like this before; life had just happened. He was young and everything was eternal; only now did he realise that it might end instantly, when he
was only twenty-three years old. His body kept shaking. He wanted to live for much longer.
On knee!
Lydia went over and pressed the muzzle against the back of his neck.
On knee!
Slowly he straightened up, still trembling, tears running down his cheeks.
Name?
Silence. He just stared at her.
Name!
He found it hard to speak; the words stuck, didnt want to come.
Johan.
Name!
Johan Larsen.
She leaned over him and pressed the muzzle against his forehead. Like the men on the
Stena Baltica
had done. She kept it there while she addressed him.
You, on knee! If again . . . boom!
He sat up straight now. Held his breath. His body . . .he couldnt get it to stop trembling, not even when the urine started trickling down his leg, staining his trousers without him being aware of it.
Lydia looked them over, one by one. Still no one met her eyes, they didnt dare. She felt around inside the plastic bag with the supermarket logo, pulling out the explosive and the detonators. There was a small stainless-steel table next to the trolley and she divided up the pale brownish dough, kneaded it, still holding the gun in her good hand, until the mass had became soft and pliable enough to fix round the door she had only recently come in through and the other two doors in the room. She used half of it. She divided up the remaining half, putting a fifth of it on each of the people kneeling on the floor in front of her, around the trolley containing a dead, naked body. When she had finished, they
carried death between their shoulders, a pale membrane of plastic explosive stuck at the back of their necks.
She had been in the mortuary for over twenty minutes now. It had taken her about ten minutes to get from the surgical ward on the seventh floor down to the basement.
She realised that her disappearance would have been discovered some time ago, that the police would have been alerted and be looking for her.
Lydia went over to the female student, the one who looked like her, with her reddish-blonde hair and thin body. The one who had tied the others up.
Police!
Lydia held the doctors mobile phone up in front of the students face. Then, after putting her hand on the explosive taped to the other womans shoulder as a reminder, she cautiously loosened the ties.
Police! Call police!
The student hesitated, frightened that she might have misunderstood. She looked around anxiously and tried to make eye contact with the greying doctor.
He spoke to her, keeping his voice calm and steady, hiding his own fear. She wants you to call the police.
The student had understood and nodded. The older man made his voice sound reassuring, he obviously had to force himself. Do it. Just do what she asks. Dial one, one, two.
Her hand shook, she dropped the phone, picked it up again, dialled the wrong number, looked quickly at Lydia and said sorry. Then she got it right: one, one, two. Lydia heard the line connecting. She was satisfied and indicated to the student that she should lie down on her stomach. She took the handset from her, went over to the doctor and pressed the phone to his ear.
Talk!
He nodded, waited. His forehead was glistening with sweat.
The room was silent.
One minute.
Then a voice answered. The doctor spoke with his mouth close to the phone.
Police.
Silence, waiting. Lydia stood at his side, holding the phone. The rest of them had closed their eyes or were looking at the floor in front of them, lost, far away.
A new voice.
The doctor replied.
My name is Gustaf Ejder. I am a senior registrar at the Söder Hospital. I am calling from the hospital mortuary, in the basement. I was here with four medical students when a young woman dressed as an inpatient came and took us all hostage. She is armed with a gun and is aiming at our heads. She has also put what I think is plastic explosives on our bodies.
The student called Johan Larsen, the young man who had collapsed a little earlier, shaking uncontrollably, suddenly shouted at the phone.
It is plastic explosive! I know! Its Semtex. Almost half a kilo. There will be a big fucking bang if she detonates it!
Lydias first reaction was to swing the gun towards the shouting man, but then she relaxed.
She had picked up the word
Semtex
and his voice had been so wild that the message would get across to whoever was listening at the other end.
She took out the pages she had torn from her notebook and, with the phone still pressed against the doctors ear, lined up the pieces of paper on the floor in front of him with an almost empty sheet on top. It had just a couple of words written on it. Then she indicated that she wanted him to keep talking.
He did what she wanted.
Are you still there?
Yes.
The woman wants me to read a name she has written
on a piece of paper. It seems to have been torn from a notebook. It says Bengt Nordwall. Thats all.
The voice asked him to repeat what he had just said.
Bengt Nordwall. Nothing else. What she has written is pretty hard to read, but I am certain Ive got it right. Her English when she speaks isnt that easy to understand either. My guess is that she comes from Russia. Or maybe one of the Baltic states.
Lydia took the phone away from him and indicated that she wanted him to sit upright again.
She had heard him pronounce the name she had written down.
She had also heard him say Baltic.
She was satisfied.
Bengt Nordwall stared up at the sky. Grey, solid grey. The rain had followed his every step this summer. He sighed. This was supposed to be a time for winding down and relaxing, for gathering your strength for yet another winter. It would be one of those autumns again when, by mid-October already, people went into hiding in their offices, fed up with everything except their own company.
Silence everywhere, nothing to distract you from the sound of raindrops pattering on the cloth of the parasol.
Lena was sitting next to him, engrossed in a book. As usual. He wondered if she actually remembered the stories beyond the next day, let alone the next book, but reading was her way of unwinding. She would curl up in a chair, stuff a cushion behind her back and forget everything around her.
He was sitting in the same place as he had two days ago when Ewert had been next to him on the garden seat and it had rained just as hard. They had both been soaked to the skin, but their conversation was more important. They were so close, a closeness that can only develop with sufficient time.
He hadnt guessed then that he would meet up with Ewert
only the next day, outside that Baltic whores flat. Bengt could still see her. The skin on her back, torn apart by the whip. He felt bad, worse than uncomfortable. Not her. Not another terrible beating again. Not now.
Their garden wasnt big, but he took pride in it. It was good for the kids, somewhere for them to run around. The last two years he had worked part-time, he was fifty-five and would never again experience young lives growing up around him. He had just this one chance and wanted to enjoy the children as much as possible. They were older now, of course, and could do most things on their own now, but he wanted to be there for them and joined in their playing from a distance. This summer even the kids had got fed up with playing outdoors. The sodden lawn was left alone, no footballs slammed into the roses and no one hid in the lilac bush while someone else counted to a hundred. Instead they sat holed up in their rooms, in front of their computer screens, caught up in an electronic world he knew absolutely nothing about.
Bengt looked at Lena again and smiled. She was so lovely. The long, blonde hair, her peaceful, intent face a peace that he had never found. He remembered Vilnius. For a few years he had been the head of security at the Swedish embassy there and one day she had materialised at a departmental desk, a young and curious civil servant. He couldnt understand why she had chosen him, but that was exactly what she had done: she had picked him, and somehow he, who had already been discarded once, had been lifted back into the realms of the eligible people who married and settled down.
A washed-up policeman, twenty years her senior.
He was still terrified that she might wake up one morning, look him in the eye, realise that she had made a mistake and ask him to leave.
Sweetie . . .
She didnt hear. He leaned towards her and lightly kissed her cheek.
Lena?
What?
Lets go in.
She shook her head.
Not yet. Soon. Just three more pages.
Rain. He had been certain it couldnt be any worse, but now it got heavier and sounded like it would soon rip through the protective material above their heads. The lawn around them slowly surrendered to the water and became boggy marshland.
Bengt looked at his wife. She was holding the book up in front of her face with both hands, hiding behind a chapter with three more pages to go.
But the other woman was insistent.
Lena was in front of him, but it wasnt her he saw. Instead Bengt saw the other woman, her whipped back slashed, her skin ripped to shreds, congealing blood everywhere. He tried to push the sight out of his mind, but the image of the bloody whore wouldnt go. When he closed his eyes it just got clearer; he saw her carried out on a stretcher, unconscious. He opened his eyes again but she was still there, her stretcher being manoeuvred through the splintered door. He cowered behind the feeling of unease, which then tipped over into a fear he didnt want to feel.
Whats the matter?
Lena had put the book down on the armrest and was looking at him.
He didnt reply at first. Then he shrugged. Nothing.
I can see somethings up. Penny for your thoughts?
Another light shrug of his shoulders, as carelessly as he could. Nothing, really. Im fine.
She knew him too well, knew that whatever it was, it was definitely not nothing.
Its a long time since Ive seen you like that. You seem scared.
The fucking awful welts on one of them, and the other
one running round the flat screaming. Naked, beaten young bodies. Perhaps he ought to tell Lena. She had every right to know. The images haunted him. He had been utterly unprepared for it.
Your phones ringing.
He looked at her, at her finger that was pointing at his jacket pocket, and he scrabbled to find the phone. The noise was stressing him out. Only four rings, then it would stop.
Nordwall.
He held the phone pressed to his ear. The call didnt take long, just a minute or so. He looked at his wife.
Somethings happened. They need an interpreter. I have to go.
Where?
Söder Hospital.
He got up, kissed Lenas cheek again and then bent his head to get out from under the parasol. Out into the pouring rain.
Söder Hospital. The Lithuanian girl. A mortuary.
Fear sunk its claws into him again.
The guard in the green uniform was sitting on the only bed in the room, with a bandage wound round his head. He had bled a great deal and the white fabric was stained a pale red. The nurse standing next to him had a Polish name on her ID tag. She had brought him two brown tablets that Ewert assumed were painkillers.
The guard didnt have much to tell.
Lydia had been in the dayroom, quietly watching TV. The two lads from Ward 4 had been there too. The lunchtime news was on, some channel or other, he couldnt remember which. She wanted to go to the toilet, no harm in that. Why refuse her? She was so small and frail, with one arm in plaster and a bad hip that made her limp. He hadnt considered her dangerous, and besides, he couldnt follow her when she went to the toilet, could he?
Ewert smiled. Of course you bloody well should. Your job was to watch her: when she slept, when she went for a dump.
The guards head hurt and he patted the bandage, touched the back of his neck. It had been a hard blow. She had flushed the toilet he heard that, the water had rushed into the bowl twice. When she came out, she had signed to him
