Project Nirvana (29 page)

“We were watching you the entire time,” a woman’s voice said, behind Walter.

He turned around and saw a familiar face. The blonde woman was from one of County CID’s surveillance teams. Walter could not recall her name, but he had often seen her in the corridor. “Watching?” he said. “But I said . . .”

“I know what you said,” she said, between Walter’s gasps for breath. “The SWAT-team commander ordered that you be followed anyway.”

Walter looked at her, speechless. She looked a little ashamed.

Walter looked around. “And who the hell ordered the arrest here?”

The plain-clothes policemen looked at Walter, uncompre-
hending.

“We got him, didn’t we?” one officer said.

“I don’t care about that,” Walter roared. “I want to know who ordered the arrest.”

“I did,” answered the woman from the Surveillance Unit.

Walter turned to face her again.

She introduced herself. “Nilsson. Field office at Surveillance.”

“You couldn’t wait a few minutes? Didn’t it occur to you to talk to me before letting all hell break loose?”

Nilsson looked at Walter, blankly.

“No,” she paused, “we didn’t want to let Hedman . . .”

“What if there had been other hostages in the car?” Walter interrupted. “Hedman could have taken someone from the street.”

“He didn’t. We’ve been following you the whole time,” she responded. “So we knew that it was just the two of you in the car.”

“How the hell could you follow us without being seen?”

“One of the marksmen shot paint onto the car roof when you left. The helicopters have been able to spot and track the car from the air. What’s the problem?” Nilsson’s voice had changed.

“The problem is that you did the exact opposite of my instructions,” Walter said.

“Don’t yell at me,” she said. “I’ve only followed orders.”

“For Christ’s sake, not in the middle of the city,” Walter said, waving his arms. “Look around you. It’s pure luck that no one got injured or killed.”

“I know,” Nilsson said, “but the Command Centre still told us to intervene. I asked them to wait but . . .”

“I’ve heard enough,” Walter said, holding up his hand. He sat down, with his back resting against the house wall.

“Are you all right?” Nilsson asked, bending down. “Let us take you to Karolinska.”

Walter shook his head. “Just drive me to the nearest bed. I’m so damned tired.”

Alice McDaniel walked
into the police station later that evening. She had analyzed her situation not just once, but ten times. She felt she was losing her mind. Perhaps she already had lost it. After hearing Leo Brageler’s name on the TV, she opened her laptop and searched for him. By an incredible oversight, she hadn’t previously checked Leo Brageler on Google.

There were a few hits. Mostly on Swedish news websites. There was an article in the
Guardian,
which said that the Swede Leo Brageler was wanted by the authorities and was responsible for several fatalities among the Swedish court. The article was short and uninformative. Her next decision would have made her partially paralyzed predecessor get out of his wheelchair and walk.

She was going to report a client to the police. In a foreign country where she had not the slightest knowledge of the legal system.

The perturbed police officer looked at the brown-haired British woman.

“Exactly what crime do you wish to report?” he said, in decent English.

She told him about the theft of her bag and that she believed that her client had stolen the bag. Using a third person.

“Your client’s name is?”

“Leo Brageler.”

The police officer started to write, but stopped in mid-sentence. “You did say Leo Brageler?”

“Yes, the fugitive.”

The police officer studied Alice for a moment. Almost immediately, he decided that she was telling the truth.

“One moment, please,” he said, and disappeared behind a door.

A feeling of insecurity washed over Alice as she was left alone by the reception desk. Was she really doing the right thing? Perhaps she should be doing this back home in the Isle of Man. Have a serious talk with the telephone company and prepare for a lawsuit after a few rounds with the local police. But what evidence did she have? How could she prove that her private telephone number had fallen into another party’s hands without her consent? Above all, how could she prove that it had even happened?

An older police officer came out and asked her to join him behind the reception desk. Alice was shown to an interview room with bars on the window. It felt unpleasant. The unpleasantness was partially alleviated by the cordial manner of the two policemen.

“We’ll move you to another department,” the older police officer said.

It sounded as if she was being arrested. “Am I being charged?”

The elder of the two policemen smiled. “Absolutely not,” he said. “The people in charge of the search for Leo Brageler are located in another part of the building.”

Fifteen minutes later, a plain-clothes policeman came to fetch her. He had closely cropped hair and was as tall as Alice. He introduced himself as Lars Jonsson and said that he was a CID detective. She guessed his age to be around fifty.

Alice McDaniel was given a chair with moss-green fabric. This room had no windows and the air was stale. On the pale wooden table, there was a microphone. This country has a preference for light types of wood, she noted, and gazed at the spartan walls.

After a few minutes, the doorway was filled by an enormous man.

“Ivan Cederberg, acting Detective Inspector,” the giant greeted her with a firm handshake.

“Alice McDaniel, solicitor from the Isle of Man,” she responded and pulled her hand away before the man ripped her arm off. He gestured politely for her to sit back down in her chair and asked her if she needed “refreshing” in atrocious English. She politely declined his offer. As he was about to continue with his linguistic potpourri, there was a knock on the door. After a brief exchange of words with another man in the doorway, the giant’s neck changed colour. He had obviously become quite upset.

“I am becoming unluckily taken up with others,” he said, and showed a few teeth in a friendly grin.

“Shame,” Alice said, as seventy thousand Wembley fans roared victory in her head.

“Dan Lambreus is to taking over,” he said, introducing the man who had just entered the room.

A middle-aged man, with bowed legs and long, pianist’s fingers, introduced himself. This one had a fox-like appearance. If this game of musical chairs continued, at this rate she would get to meet most of Stockholm’s CID detectives.

The new detective’s English was, however, exemplary and she could finally begin to give her statement.

For a few
seconds, Jonna’s heart began to turn somersaults. Tor Hedman was walking straight towards her as Martin Borg started his car. Her overwrought brain was desperately trying to join the dots. That these two individuals were in the same place at the same time was anything but a coincidence. Then she realized that it was not Hedman. The man had the same body shape, but lacked his drawn, sunken face. Hedman was also at least ten years’ younger.

Borg’s black Saab 9-3 pulled out and drove back onto Upplandsgatan. Jonna ran back to her car as fast as she could. Sixty seconds later, she sped onto Upplandsgatan at high speed. She hoped that Borg had caught a red light at Vanadisvägen. If he was taking the same route back.

At the corner of Vanadisvägen and Upplandsgatan, she had to decide whether to turn left or right. The traffic lights down by Vanadisvägen were green. She hoped that Borg was taking the same route back and pushed the accelerator to the floor. A black Ford Mondeo drove out in front of her and she had to slam on the brakes.

She overtook it swiftly and had reached such a high speed by the Vanadis roundabout that her car went into a sideways skid. She managed to compensate for the skid in time to take the exit into Sankt Eriksgatan, but realized that she had lost Borg when she saw the queue of cars in front of her. There was not a black Saab 9-3 anywhere to be seen. She drove into the oncoming lane and accelerated past the queue until she got to the T-junction at Karlsbergsvägen, where she gave up the chase. She had once again botched a lead – big-time. This was definitely not one of her better days. She pulled up to the kerb and killed the engine. Thoughts spun around in her head, mixing themselves into a migraine cocktail. On top of everything else, she was going to have a migraine. She was in dire need of food and, even more so, sleep. She checked the time and wondered why neither Rolf Meiton nor anyone else from the Command Centre had been in touch. There must be updated information about Walter.

She took out her mobile phone and saw that she had missed several calls. Then she remembered that she had put her phone on mute outside the street entrance. Two of the calls were from Walter. Either Meiton or someone else had used Walter’s phone, or he was finally free.

She called back. After five rings, she heard Walter’s voice.

“Don’t you answer when your phone rings?” he began, in a tired, cranky voice. “Isn’t that the point of a mobile phone? To be able to answer the phone at any location.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, but incredibly tired.”

“And Hedman?”

“He’s sitting here with us. Cederberg expressed a sincere and immediate desire to interrogate him.”

“What about . . . ?”

“We’ll catch up on all the details later,” Walter interrupted. “Did you discover Martin Borg’s address?”

“Unfortunately, I lost him.” Jonna said, sheepishly.

Silence.

“Go home and sleep,” said Walter. “Tomorrow, we have a lot to do. We still have a very interesting guest at the station. I’ll see you there tomorrow morning at eight on the dot.”

Before Jonna had time to answer, Walter had hung up.

Her bed looked
unusually inviting. Jonna took off her clothes and threw them on the chair in her bedroom. As she was creeping under the duvet, she heard a buzzing sound from the bedside table.

Her mobile phone was obviously still on mute. The number on the display was unrecognized and Jonna hesitated briefly before she answered.

“Excuse me for ringing so late,” a familiar voice tentatively apologized.

Jonna sat up in bed. “Don’t worry, it’s not that late,” she replied, looking at herself in the bedroom mirror. She was almost cross-eyed with fatigue.

“I was supposed to contact you if I remembered anything about that Leo Brageler,” Alexander Westfeldt said.

“And have you?” Jonna asked. “Remembered anything, I mean.”

“No, not really.”

“No?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. I’m calling you for more personal reasons.”

“Really?”

“Look, I know it sounds pathetic,” he continued, “but I thought it was worth taking a chance.”

“Taking a chance on what?”

Jonna hoped that her intuition was not playing a cynical trick on her, or that her fatigue was not making her delusional.

“I was perhaps a bit tight-lipped when we met.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to invite you for a coffee sometime. That is, when you are off duty. If you feel uncomfortable about accepting free coffee, you can pay half.”

Jonna laughed to herself. “Sounds like a tempting offer. Coffee and half the bill.”

“I just thought, since you were a police officer, that perhaps . . . Well, I’m sure you understand.”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Jonna teased him.

“Now I’m tangled in a web of urban myths. My apologies.”

“I’m just like any other girl,” Jonna said, giggling softly and trying not to think of the events of the past twenty-four hours. High treason was probably going to be the next transgression on her “to do” list.

“Actually, I wanted to ask you out when we were in your office, but I’m not that bold,” he said. “Telephone or internet chatrooms are more my style.”

Jonna stood up and felt the migraine hitting her with full force. She retreated to her bed again. “Sure, we can go for a coffee sometime,” she said. “Today, I’m exhausted and have a migraine as well. Perhaps tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s a pity,” Alexander answered. “The thing is I have to prepare for a trip to Peru tomorrow. The flight leaves in the afternoon. It’s the final part of my internship as an archaeologist.”

“I see,” Jonna said, disappointed. “Let’s do it when you get back.”

“Absolutely,” he said in a relieved voice. “We can talk again in the summer.”

“The summer?”

“I’ll be gone for four months.”

Four months? He’s calling me to ask for a date in four months?

“That’s quite a long wait,” Jonna said, hearing her voice turning cool.

“Nothing I can change,” Alexander excused himself.

Jonna thought about what she should say. Four months? She needed to know if she was interested in him right now. Not in four darn months. She was tired of waiting.

“Then it will have to be tonight,” she said.

“Tonight? I thought you said you had a migraine?”

“Yes, but it comes and goes,” Jonna rambled.

“Sorry, I’m not much help with migraines,” Alexander apologized.

“I’m sure you are, or maybe not . . .” Jonna said without thinking.

“I don’t want to be pushy,” said Alexander.

“You aren’t,” Jonna said. “Now that I think of it, I have to buy milk. Besides, I seem to be out of bread, ham and things. To be honest, my fridge is empty.” Like my head, she thought.

“Sounds like you need to visit the supermarket,” Alexander smiled.

“I guess.”

“Name the time and place,” he said.

Jonna looked at her alarm clock.

“In one hour at ‘Lavazza Bean’ on Stureplan square?” she suggested.

“Sounds very chic.”

“It’s all right,” said Jonna.

“See you there.”

Jonna hung up. She remained seated on her bed and stared at the mirror. She thought her eyes reminded her of a raccoon. She hurried to the bathroom and started to search the bottles under the sink. She found a jar with the label “Shower Tan”. Sandra had given it to her last Christmas.