Box 21 (21 page)

 

It took a few seconds before she registered that the
telephone was ringing. The one on the wall in the other room, near the trolley with the dead person. She guessed it had rung four times, maybe five.

 

She ran past the cold boxes, opened the grey metal door, picked up the receiver and waited. She was in pain; the chemical effect of the morphine was starting to wear off and she found it harder to move now. She realised it could only get worse.

 

A moment or two later, a voice spoke in Russian and she was unprepared for that. A man was speaking Russian with a Scandinavian accent and it didn’t twig until he had introduced himself.

 

‘Bengt Nordwall. I’m a policeman.’

 

She swallowed. She had not expected this. Hoped, yes, but hadn’t dared to believe.

 

‘You demanded that I came here.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘Your name is Lydia? Is that right? I will listen as long as you—’

 

She interrupted him at once, tapped the receiver with one finger and spoke loudly.

 

‘Why did you cut the phones?’

 

‘We have—’

 

She rapped the receiver again.

 

‘You can call me, but I can’t call you. I want to know why.’

 

He paused, and she realised that he was looking to the other policemen around him for support. No doubt they were nodding at each other, making gestures.

 

‘I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t cut off any phones. We have evacuated large parts of the hospital because you have taken hostages. But we haven’t blocked any lines.’

 

‘Explain better.’

 

‘Lydia, we’ve evacuated the hospital switchboard too. That’s probably why you’ve got problems with your telephone.’

 

‘Telephones! Not one, both of them. Do you think I’m stupid? Some stupid whore from Eastern Europe? I know how telephones work! And now you know I will hurt people if I need to! So don’t give me that crap! You’ve got five minutes. I want the lines connected. Exactly five minutes for you and your mates to fix it. If you don’t, I’ll shoot one of the hostages. And this time it won’t be in the legs.’

 

‘Lydia, we—’

 

‘Don’t try to get in here, or I’ll blow up the whole lot. The hostages and the hospital.’

 

He hesitated, looked at his colleagues again. Then he cleared his throat.

 

‘If we fix the phones, Lydia, what do we get in return?’

 

‘What do you get? You’re spared finding a dead hostage. Four minutes and fifteen seconds to go now.’

 

Ewert Grens had listened in to the call and Edvardson had given a simultaneous interpretation. When it ended, he put his earphones down between Sven and Hermansson and drank what was left of his last cup of cold coffee.

 

‘What do you think?’

 

He looked at each of them in turn. Sven, Hermansson, Edvardson and then Nordwall.

 

‘Well? Is she bluffing?’

 

John Edvardson was dressed exactly like the men he had just positioned in the hospital. Black leather boots, camouflage-patterned uniform trousers with large square pockets on the thighs, grey waistcoat laden with spare magazines for the gun he had put down on one of the trolleys, and underneath it a flak jacket. The room they were in had already become overcrowded and hot. John was sweating, his forehead glistened and his shirt had large dark stains under the armpits.

 

‘She has demonstrated that she’s prepared to injure the hostages.’

 

‘OK. But is she bluffing this time?’

 

‘She doesn’t have to. She has the advantage.’

 

‘Why risk losing it?’

 

‘She won’t. If she shoots one she has still got three more to go.’

 

The two men’s eyes met. Ewert shook his head.

 

‘Why the hell take hostages in the mortuary? No windows. No other escape routes at all. Even if she shoots the whole lot, we will get her in the end. As soon as she tries to escape, or one of the marksmen gets her in his sight. She must realise that, must have known it from the outset. I don’t get it.’

 

Hermansson was sitting in the middle of the room, but had so far been silent. Ewert had noticed that she had said very little since she arrived. Perhaps chattering wasn’t her thing, or perhaps being the only woman made her reticent, as the men were all experienced and automatically took all the space they needed.

 

But now she stood up and looked straight at Ewert.

 

‘There is another possibility.’

 

He liked her broad dialect, it inspired trust. He felt he had to take what she said seriously.

 

‘Explain.’

 

She paused. She wasn’t going to let this thought go: she was confident she was right. Still, there was that odd feeling of insecurity. She detested it but couldn’t suppress it, not when they looked at her like that, like she was a little girl. She knew they didn’t think of her like that, yet that was how she felt.

 

‘Grajauskas is badly injured and must be in pain. She can’t hold out for much longer. But I don’t think she thinks like you. She has gone beyond the limit already and done things she probably thought herself incapable of. I think she’s made up her mind. My feeling is that she has no intention of trying to come out of the mortuary.’

 

Ewert stood very still, a rare sight. He constantly had to fight his restlessness, his heavy body was always pacing about, and even when he sat down he moved his arms or his feet, stamping or gesticulating or twisting his torso from side to side. Never still.

 

But now he was. Hermansson had just said what he should have understood himself.

 

He sighed, started moving again, circled their temporary desk.

 

‘Bengt.’

 

Bengt was standing in the doorway, holding on to it.

 

‘Yes?’

 

‘Bengt, I want you to phone her again.’

 

‘At once?’

 

‘I have the feeling we’re in a bloody hurry.’

 

Bengt went off to the phone in the middle of the room, but didn’t sit down at once. Precious seconds were slipping away and he had to fight down the awful sense of dread, the same feeling he had had in the garden when her torn back had haunted him.

 

He knew who she was.

 

He had known ever since he stood outside the flat at Völund Street.

 

The feeling of unease, of dread, was worse now.

 

Bengt glanced at the paper on the wall to check the number he was to use, then at Ewert, who was putting the earphone in place.

 

He dialled. Eight rings went through. Nothing.

 

He looked at the wall, at the paper displaying the enlarged number of the mobile phone.

 

He tried again. Eight, ten, twelve rings. No reply.

 

He shook his head and put the receiver down.

 

‘She’s turned them off. Both of them.’

 

Bengt’s eyes followed Ewert, who kept walking in worried circles and whose face was bright red when he shouted.

 

‘A fucking prostitute!’

 

He was about to shout more abuse when he saw the time. He checked his watch, then he looked at the clock. He lowered his voice.

 

‘One and a half minutes to go.’

 

 

 

 

 

She knew the hostages would obey. They were sitting still. Just in case, she had a look. There they were in the storeroom, the air thick with archive dust. They were sitting silently in a row with their backs pressed against the wall, their heads turned towards the noise of the opening door and they saw her. She showed them the gun, aiming it at them for long enough to remind them how death felt.

 

Her dad had fallen forward. His hands had been tied behind his back. She should have run up to him then. She hadn’t dared to. There was a gun against her head; it hurt when the man who held it there increased the pressure against the thin skin over her temple.

 

She shut the door and checked the time. Their five minutes was up.

 

The receiver was off the phone on the wall, now she returned it to its cradle. She turned the mobile handset on, pressed the button with the green icon and dialled in the code the doctor had told her to use.

 

She waited only a few seconds.

 

They phoned, as she thought they would. The black telephone on the wall.

 

She let it ring a few times and then picked up.

 

‘Your time is up.’

 

Bengt Nordwall’s voice. ‘Lydia, we need—’

 

Her hand hit the mouthpiece hard. ‘Have you done what I asked?’

 

‘We need more time. Just a little longer. To sort out the fault on the lines.’

 

Cold sweat was pouring off her. Every breath seemed to whip inside her body. It was hard to keep her thoughts together and fight the pain. She used the gun to hit the mouthpiece. Several blows this time, harder and harder. She said nothing.

 

Bengt Nordwall waited, heard her walk away and her footsteps growing fainter. She knew he would consult with the others, the men who were listening in, standing with their earphones on and trying to understand.

 

He gripped the receiver and called out, as loudly as he dared.

 

‘Hello!’

 

He picked up an echo. His one word danced around the room.

 

‘Hello!’

 

And then the sound he didn’t want to hear. The noise of the gunshot drowned out everything.

 

She had fired in an enclosed space, and the force hitting the mouthpiece was violent.

 

It was hard to know. Maybe only a few seconds had passed. Maybe it was much longer.

 

‘Now I’ve got three live hostages. And one dead. You have another five minutes. My phone lines are to be open for outgoing calls. If they don’t work, I’ll shoot another one.’

 

Her voice was steady.

 

‘I advise you to remove the men who’re in the corridor outside. I’m about to set off a few charges.’

 

Ewert had heard the shot. He had waited out her silence. When she spoke he had concentrated on the sound of her
voice, to sense if she was calm or just pretending to be calm. That was all he could do; he didn’t understand one word of their bloody Russian anyway.

 

John was leaning over to get close, mumbling the translation of what she was saying. Ewert took it in and swore.

 

He swung round in Sven’s direction. ‘Fix the goddam phones, Sven. She has to have her outgoing calls and as fast as hell.’ Then back to Edvardson. They agreed that his men should retreat a good bit away from the mortuary entrance. ‘No bugger is going to stand outside and get killed!’

 

Ewert paused for a second, breathing heavily, then put his hand on Sven’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes.

 

‘Sven, get a flak jacket and put it on.’

 

Sven almost twitched, Ewert’s hand on his shoulder; he realised he had never touched him before.

 

‘I want you to go down there. Down into the basement. I need to know what’s happening. Your immediate impressions. Eyes I can trust.’

 

Sven settled down at a point where one corridor split in two, about fifty metres from the main door to the mortuary suite. He sheltered behind the wall of the second corridor together with three men from the Flying Squad. After less than two minutes he heard the door they were guarding open and went down on his stomach, pushed himself forwards and looked in the mirror that had been positioned further down the passage.

 

The corridor was dark, but was lit indirectly by the strong light from behind the opened door. A man was moving about the faint circle of light, just an outline of his dark body, leaning over and pulling at something.

 

It took a little while before Sven realised what it was.

 

The man was pulling at an arm. He was dragging a body.

 

Sven pulled out night-vision binoculars from a bag next to a police officer, considered the risk of showing himself,
crawled to the corner of the corridor and directed the binoculars at the man.

 

It was difficult to make out his features. But he saw him suddenly let go of the arm, disappear through the door and slam it shut.

 

Sven crept forward, taking deep breaths, pressing the radio to his mouth.

 

‘Grens. Over.’

 

It crackled. They always did.

 

‘Grens here. Over.’

 

‘I saw a man, just now. Dragging a lifeless body from the mortuary. He’s gone back in, left the body in the corridor. I saw the wires. We can’t go to it. It’s fused!’

 

Ewert was just about to reply when his voice was drowned by a strange noise. The sound of a human body exploding.

 

The radio went silent.

 

Or perhaps it hadn’t, and Sven’s cry had been there all the time.

 

‘She did it! Ewert! She’s blown up the person who was lying there.’

 

His voice was weak.

 

‘Did you hear me? Ewert! Shit, that all that’s left. Only shit!’

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Öhrström was frightened. She had lived with a pain in her stomach for a long time, now a burning, screeching pain that forced her to stop mid-step to check if she could still breathe normally. She had seen the man who had presumably thrown the punches and let the wheelchair roll down the stairs, and knew that the images would haunt her for as long as she could endure living with them.

 

She hadn’t eaten anything, had tried a sandwich, then an apple, but it wasn’t any good. She couldn’t swallow, wasn’t producing any saliva.

 

She couldn’t quite take it in.

 

That he was dead now.

 

What she couldn’t work out was whether it was a relief to know exactly where he was, what he was
not
doing, that he wasn’t hurting himself or others – or was it grief? Or simply that she was preparing herself for having to tell Ylva and Mum?

 

She spent more time thinking about how to make Jonathan and Sanna understand than anything else. They were Ylva’s children, but she loved them like her own. They were her substitute children, the children she’d never had herself.

 

Your Uncle Hilding is dead.

 

Your Uncle Hilding was killed when he fell down a staircase.