Europa Blues (34 page)

‘Did you hear whether they were talking among themselves?’

‘Yeah. Different languages. A bit of Russian, a bit of Bulgarian.’

‘Ukrainian?’

‘I can’t tell the difference between Russian and Ukrainian. Bulgarian sounds different, but I can’t understand it. I know a bit of Russian.’

‘Did you hear what they were saying to one another?’

‘No, they never spoke when I was nearby. I just heard their voices from out in the corridor. Never any distinct words. I was just cleaning though, Jadwiga was the one who actually served them.’

New clip: another young girl, blonde, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. She was just about to disembark with a man in sunglasses when she was stopped on the gangway. The picture shook violently and the sound of heavy breathing could be heard over the entire conversation which followed.

‘Are you Jadwiga?’

‘Yes,’ the girl said, flinching. ‘Stop filming me. What’re you doing, you filthy old perv?’

‘We’re with the Swedish police,’ Sara said, holding up her ID.

‘Him too?’ asked Jadwiga, gesturing with her head.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Sara Svenhagen said neutrally.

‘Do you have to pant like that?’ Jadwiga said in a complaining tone.

‘I’m an old man,’ said the panting voice.

‘Do you recognise these women?’ Sara asked.

Jadwiga looked at the photographs.

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘Most of them were here, maybe all of them. Stayed in three cabins. I think they stayed in them the whole journey. Never left. I served them dinner in the evening and breakfast in the morning.’

‘She’s the most important,’ said Sara, pointing to one of the pictures. ‘Can you tell us anything about her?’

Jadwiga scratched her head and said: ‘She was Russian, I think. Some kind of Russian dialect. My Russian’s not so good.’

‘So you didn’t hear what they were saying?’

‘A bit, maybe. When I was little, we had to study Russian in school. But then just when I’d done a few years and was starting to understand the basics, we switched to English.’

‘Your Swedish is really good,’ said Sara.

‘Thanks.’

‘Bastards!’ came a cry, followed by a bang. The picture swung upwards to show the sky, as seen through the ship’s railings.

New clip. Jadwiga again, a mug in front of her and people sitting drinking coffee behind her.

‘Let’s try again,’ said Sara’s voice. ‘Are you sure it didn’t break, Viggo?’

‘Viggo?’ Jadwiga said with amusement in her voice.

‘Yup,’ said Norlander’s no-longer-panting voice. ‘I slipped.’

‘Right then, Jadwiga. Where were we?’

‘Her,’ she said, pointing to the sheet of photographs. ‘She was talking to the two others in her cabin in some weird Russian dialect. I heard a bit while I was serving them breakfast. When I served dinner the night before, they’d been completely silent.’

‘So she was in the cabin of three passengers?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jadwiga.

‘Would you be able to describe the other two?’

‘I think so. In their thirties, maybe. South Slavic appearance, I guess. If we say I’ve got a northern one.’

‘And those two, they weren’t any of these women in the photographs?’

‘No, they were in the other cabins. Four in each. They were much more rowdy. Addicts, I think.’

‘And the three in the third cabin, you wouldn’t say they were addicts?’

‘No, I thought they were social workers or something. Taking a group of old addicts somewhere. A detox trip.’

‘Would you be able to recognise the two women from the third cabin? Or help us with a sketch of them?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What did they say then?’

‘What?’

‘What did you hear while you were serving them breakfast?’

‘Let me see if I can remember. Something about the weather first, that it was good it had been such a calm night. Then something about the girls having done really well. One of them said she was proud of them. Then there was something about having to contact someone once they were through. Then they asked me if we had any rye bread. And then someone asked when they’d been checked last. One of them said she’d done it ten minutes ago. And then they asked me if I’d been into the cabins next door. I said yes. They asked if they’d been nice to me. I said yes. One of them asked for another cup of coffee. I gave it to her. Then I left.’

‘Jesus,’ said Sara’s voice. ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So they had to contact someone once they were through? Was that right?’

‘You’ve got a good memory too.’

‘Who? Did they say a name?’

‘Yeah, they said a name. But I can’t remember it.’

New clip. Jadwiga sitting at a computer. A fat man in a police uniform was next to her, jabbing at the keys and clicking away with the mouse. Half of Sara was visible next to them.

‘Mm, I don’t know,’ said Jadwiga, pointing at the screen. ‘Something like that. Eyes more slanted, maybe.’

‘Viggo,’ Sara said, a certain weariness in her voice. ‘There’s no reason to be filming this.’

‘Oh yeah,’ an unmistakable male voice replied as the camera panned over the desk and focused on Jadwiga, who made an irritated, obscene gesture to it.

‘Leave her alone,’ Sara said, even more wearily.

‘Looks like Magdalena Forsberg,’ the policeman in uniform said, looking with disappointment at the computer screen.

Jadwiga, on the other hand, suddenly looked jittery.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ the unmistakable male voice said. ‘No one thinks you’ve drawn the world’s best female biathlete.’

Jadwiga got to her feet. The camera followed her.

‘That’s it!’ she exclaimed.

Sara Svenhagen appeared next to her and said: ‘What do you mean, Jadwiga?’

‘The name,’ the young Polish woman said. ‘The one they had to contact.’

‘Magdalena Forsberg?’ the unmistakable man’s voice said.

‘Magda,’ said Jadwiga.

That was followed by a clip in which they could see something like the edge of a car-repair garage. A man with a moustache and a Shell cap was standing in front of a number of more or less broken-down buses, wiping his oily hands. He was looking suspiciously straight into the camera.

‘What’s this then?’ he asked in a broad Småland accent. ‘Are you German?
Sie können hier nicht fotografieren
.’

‘Sorry,’ Sara’s voice said. Her hand, clutching her police ID, entered the picture from one side. ‘Is this Anderstorp Car & Bus?’

‘Yeah. Turn that camera off. Don’t you need permission for that kind of thing?’

‘He’s got a point there,’ Jan-Olov Hultin said loudly.

‘Shh,’ Sara urged him, as her voice double on-screen asked: ‘Are you Anders Torp?’

‘Yes,’ the man with the moustache said, still suspicious but now with an obvious pride in his voice. ‘Anders Torp of Anderstorp.’

‘You rent out buses?’

‘Yes,’ said Anders Torp in Anderstorp. ‘From time to time.’

‘Did you rent a bus with this registration number?’

A notepad moved into shot. Anders Torp looked at it and then nodded.

‘An old Volvo, one of the smaller models,’ he said. ‘They hired it for a month. Must’ve been a few weeks ago.’

‘Brilliant,’ an unmistakable man’s voice said.

‘Is he with the police too?’ Anders Torp asked, pointing straight down the camera. ‘I’m really wondering whether you can film like this without permission. Maybe I shouldn’t answer any more questions.’

‘If you’ve got anything to hide then I suggest you do it,’ said Sara.

‘Model behaviour,’ said Hultin.

‘Shh,’ Sara retorted.

‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ Anders Torp said, offended.

‘
Då fortsätter vi resan,
’ said Sara. ‘As they say in “Yellow Submarine”.’

‘You heard the Swedish part too?’ Anders Torp said, beaming. ‘In the middle somewhere, where it goes a bit chaotic for a while? The Eagles had their backwards message, the Beatles threw in a line in Swedish. It’s great.’

‘Who hired the bus?’ Sara asked bluntly.

Anders Torp looked appreciatively at her. She had clearly broken through his mistrust.

‘A girl,’ he said. ‘Not Swedish.’

‘Where was she from? Eastern Europe?’

‘No, I wouldn’t have rented it to her if she was. You know you won’t be getting the bus back.’

‘She must’ve shown you her driving licence.’

‘And passport,’ said Anders Torp. ‘You have to, if you’re a foreigner. I think she was German. I can check.’

He disappeared for a moment. The camera turned to Sara. The unmistakable man’s voice said: ‘Yellow Submarine?’

Sara pointed to the wall of the garage. The camera zoomed in on a tattered old poster covered in psychedelic patterns. The words ‘Beatles’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’ came into view. Then the camera moved back to Sara.

‘Clever,’ the unmistakable male voice said.

‘Yup,’ Sara replied, looking pleased.

Anders Torp of Anderstorp returned. He was carrying a piece of paper. It was fluttering in the late-spring breeze.

‘Here,’ he said, pointing to the messy sheet of paper. ‘Driving licence and passport numbers.’

Sara nodded and said: ‘We’ll make a copy of it later. Was she one of these?’

She held up the sheet of photographs. Anders Torp slowly worked his way through the nine photographs. He shook his head.

‘No,’ he said.

Sara held out two more photographs, slightly larger.

Anders Torp glanced at the first of them. Then he moved on to the second and his face lit up just like it had when she mentioned ‘Yellow Submarine’.

‘This one’s very like her,’ he said, nodding.

Sara Svenhagen held a thumb up to the camera. The camera lurched and fell to the floor. They watched the sun slip in behind a cloud before the picture vanished into static.

There was a moment of silence before Jan-Olov Hultin said: ‘I’m not sure that video is a particularly good instrument when it comes to police investigations …’

Sara Svenhagen made a thumbs-up gesture to Viggo Norlander. He happily returned the gesture. This time, though, there was no camera to drop.

It was utterly clear he thought he had made an invaluable contribution.

Then Sara said: ‘So in other words, we might have a name for our so-called ninja feminist. Magda.’

‘Plus,’ said Norlander, ‘we’ve got these.’

He held up three photographs like a fan. One was a proper photograph – the picture from the environmental protection agency film, cleaned up by the technicians, showing the woman with the mobile phone. It was followed by two obvious composite photographs, computer reconstructions.

‘These two,’ Viggo said, ‘were made by a stout Karlskrona policeman, working with Jadwiga, the Polish waitress from the M/S
Stena Europe
.’ He put one of them down, holding the other up in the air.

‘Anders Torp from Anderstorp rented a bus to this woman. We should probably assume she’s the Erinyes’ driver.’

‘Her passport and driving licence were German,’ said Sara. ‘But there’s absolutely no doubt they were fake. Can you guess the name she was using?’

‘No,’ came the chorus.

‘Eva Braun,’ said Sara Svenhagen.

‘Unfortunately the camera had broken by the time Anders Torp said that,’ Viggo Norlander said in his unmistakable man’s voice.

‘Poor quality,’ Jan-Olov Hultin said neutrally.

The phone suddenly rang. Hultin answered.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yeah … yes … What do you mean, hard? … Ah … OK … Good. Thanks.’

He hung up and said: ‘That was Brynolf Svenhagen. He was agitated.’

‘Uff,’ Jorge Chavez said, staring at his watch. Being able to go and buy his wine was looking increasingly unlikely.

Hultin said: ‘We’ve got some information about our man without a nose.’

‘What’s wrong with Brunte?’ Paul Hjelm asked, receiving a sour glance from Sara Svenhagen in return.

‘It’s because the information we’ve got is fairly diffuse. They’re claiming they don’t have a cooperation agreement with Europol and they’re refusing to release the name. They’re demanding we send someone down there.’

‘Send someone down there?’ said Chavez. ‘Haven’t they heard of the Internet?’

‘Barely, I should think,’ Hultin replied, picking up the phone.

‘You’re not thinking of sending someone, are you?’

‘Yes,’ Hultin said, dialling an extremely long number. ‘We’ve already got someone on the ground in Europe. Arto can go after the weekend.’

‘But where’s
there
?’ asked Hjelm. ‘Where’s our nose-man from?’

‘That’s why I’m going along with it without complaining,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin. ‘Shtayf was from Odessa. Ukraine.’

IT WAS SATURDAY
evening in Tuscany. The Söderstedt family were on their veranda, the sun slowly sinking in the distance. Its blushing rays fell among the rows of vines, painting the hills with stripes of golden light. The scent of seventeen different varieties of basil was drifting in from the garden, and the lingering warmth of the day was making the pine-scented evening air quiver slightly in the dusk. The remaining morsels of Anja’s fantastic special pesto, made from her latest green-fingered triumph, a dark opal basil, were being eaten. It was perfect in combination with a full-bodied Brunello.

Everything – absolutely everything – was just great.

Arto Söderstedt glanced around the table. There was a dark-haired addition to the chalk-white family. The dark hair belonged to Giorgio, the seventeen-year-old son of a winemaker who had taken his eldest daughter’s virginity. Mikaela had brought him home one day and introduced him to the family. Arto Söderstedt had thought that was something momentous; it felt like he was being thanked for managing to convince her that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Hopefully, that insight would follow her through life.

In his opinion, people should feel shame only when they did something bad to another person.

Then and only then.

Giorgio was a shy young man, living in the belief that his lover’s father was, by definition, furious. That it was his duty to be furious. But not even Giorgio’s own father seemed particularly angry. They had invited the winemaker and his wife over one evening. Both had seemed nervous, as though standing trial. These were the people whose daughter their good-for-nothing son had penetrated. And so the Söderstedts had mobilised their combined good natures to convince them that everything was fine, and slowly, slowly, the boy’s parents had relaxed. The evening had ended with each of them attempting to surpass the others in their extolment of love and wine and life.