The Beige Man (11 page)

Irene leaned forward cautiously and peered up at the apartment. She could see nothing but the whirling snow.

“It’s a two-room apartment. The tenant has been away for a week or so, but we’re trying to locate him. We are interested to find out how Heinz Becker gained access to the apartment, of course. But it’s probably no coincidence that the guy who lives here chose to go away now, just when Heinz needed to borrow a place to set up his temporary brothel,” Linda Holm said.

“Is that what usually happens?” Irene asked.

“We’ve come across it a few times. It’s hard to prove who’s given the pimps access to an apartment. The tenant who’s gone away always professes total ignorance,” Linda replied.

The door of number 33 opened and two men emerged. They were carrying a large black plastic sack between them. Hunched against the snow, they hurried over to the truck and unlocked the back door. They threw the sack inside, closed the door and quickly moved around to the cab. A few seconds later the engine roared into life. The truck jerked forward, then drove off.

Superintendent Holm took her cell phone out of her pocket and answered it. Irene hadn’t heard a ringtone, and realized it must have been set to vibrate. Linda Holm made noises of agreement, then said, “Five minutes!”

She ended the call. A few minutes later the armed response unit’s van slipped quietly into the yard and parked in the spot vacated by the truck.

No one in the car spoke; they were watching the numbers on the clock on Linda’s cell slowly change. When exactly five minutes had passed, Linda Holm opened the car door. They didn’t run, but moved quickly toward the apartment block. From a car a short distance away, two officers from the trafficking unit emerged: a man and a woman.

“The elevator and the stairs,” the superintendent said when the two groups reached the main entrance at the same time.

One of the officers from the trafficking unit opened the heavy door. The pane of glass in the upper half was broken and had been replaced with a sheet of plywood. The whole thing was covered in black and blue spray paint.

Three officers ran up the stairs, and the others took the lift. One member of the armed response team was stationed by the door, while Irene ended up in the group that was detailed to block the stairs as an escape route.

She had to hurry to keep up with the other two, who had raced up the stairs. When they reached the second floor they heard a crash that reverberated through the entire stairwell. The sound of rapid footsteps indicated that the police had gained entry, but when Irene reached the fourth floor, more than a little out of breath, she was met by the grim-faced chief of the armed response unit.

“Empty. They got away,” he said.

“The truck!” Irene exclaimed.

The others looked at her inquiringly.

“The one that was parked outside. It drove off just before you got here.”

“We’ll put out a call for it right away,” the chief said. “Stensson! Get up to the top floor and ask the builders if any of their pals have just driven off in their truck. If not, get the license plate.”

The officer who answered to the name of Stensson scurried out of the apartment and headed toward the elevator. A minute or so later his voice came over the radio, “None of the builders has driven off in their truck. They’re furious, I can tell you. The number is …”

Irene didn’t hear the rest; she had already started examining the apartment.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. The air was thick
with cigarette smoke, but it didn’t completely camouflage the oily, sweet smell of cannabis. There was also the distinct aroma of unwashed human bodies.

“CSI will be here any minute,” Linda called from another room.

Irene slipped on plastic shoe covers and took out the latex gloves she had in her pocket. Then she opened a door she correctly guessed led to a bathroom and switched on the light.

The bathroom was small, and the stench was nauseating. On the floor lay a sheet that looked as if it had been used as a towel. It was stained and would no doubt give forensics plenty to work with. Some of the stains looked like blood. On the edge of the bath stood a large bottle of all-in-one shower gel and shampoo. Above the sink was a half-open mirrored cabinet. Irene gently pulled the door open. On the top shelf lay a pack of condoms, a comb, a brush and an almost empty bottle of mouthwash. At the bottom of the cabinet she could see a used syringe, with a small amount of liquid mixed with blood remaining in the needle hub. Amphetamine, Irene guessed.

“This place stinks!” Fredrik stated from the doorway.

Irene pointed to the syringe, and Fredrik nodded.

“We’ve found some packets of powder in the kitchen. Whoever was using this place seems to have taken off in a hurry. They’ve left drugs and condoms behind, and there’s a box of something that looks like Viagra in the middle of the table. But so far we haven’t found any passports or other papers.”

Irene went into the hallway. A bare bulb was hanging from the ceiling, spreading a cold light over the officers below.

“We’ll take a closer look at the apartment when CSI has finished,” Linda Holm said.

Fredrik opened a closet door and peered inside. He was about to shut the door when he stopped. Irene watched as he bent down and shone his flashlight inside.

“Irene!” he said quietly.

She went across and looked over his shoulder.

Heaped on the floor of the closet was a small denim skirt.

“Do you think it’s hers?” Fredrik asked, with suppressed excitement in his voice.

“I think there’s a good chance,” Irene said, her heart beating faster.

The girl who had bought black jeans at JC six days ago had been wearing a denim skirt, according to the assistant, and she had been bare-legged in spite of the cold. They had every reason to be optimistic about the skirt.

“If it is hers, then we’re a lot closer to establishing her identity. That means we know she’s been in this apartment and that Heinz Becker must know who she is and where she came from,” Irene said.

She and Fredrik went into the bedroom. It was dark and gloomy; the closed blinds let in very little light. There were no pictures, rugs or curtains. The institutional grey carpet was stained and worn. The room contained a double bed with dirty sheets and two pillows, but no quilt or comforter. A waste bin stood by the bed, and a quick glance revealed that it was full of toilet paper and used condoms. The stench of human excretions was beyond obtrusive. On the two rickety bedside tables there were toilet paper rolls and an old, chipped bowl. At first glance the bowl appeared empty, but then they noticed some oval-shaped blue pills at the bottom.

“Are they popping Viagra like candy, or what?” Fredrik asked, shaking his head.

“I don’t know how they dare. There could be all kinds of crap in those pills. I expect they buy them over the Internet,” the chief of the armed response unit said as he came into the room. He looked around and wrinkled his nose. “We’re leaving now. It’s a little strange that they managed to take off right in front of you guys,” he said with a teasing smile.

Neither Irene nor Fredrik bothered to tell him they weren’t part of the trafficking unit. However, they had to admit that he was right: it was very strange that Heinz Becker and his sidekick had managed to disappear along with the girls. How could they know there was going to be a raid? And how had they managed to get the keys to start up the truck?

The officers went into what would normally serve as the living room, but which was currently being used as some kind of primitive dormitory. A shabby sofa and armchair had been pushed into one corner, along with some other pieces of furniture and lamps. There were two mattresses on the floor, surrounded by the same equipment as in the bedroom: toilet paper rolls, condoms and a plastic box containing more blue pills.

It looked as if the kitchen had been the pimps’ domain. Along one wall there was a camp bed with a pillow and quilt. They had put the kitchen table in the middle of the floor, with a big television on top of it next to the large box of Viagra—at least that was what it said on the side of the box in blue writing. Every seat was littered with empty pizza boxes and booze bottles. A used syringe lay in the sink. The stench was revolting.

“CSI will be here any minute. We’re going back to HQ,” Linda Holm said, poking her head through the doorway.

“I don’t suppose there’s much else we can do here,” Irene agreed.

“No.” The superintendent didn’t even try to hide the disappointment in her voice. “I just don’t understand how they knew we were coming.”

Fredrik looked at her pensively. When they reached the top of the stairs, he suddenly said, “I’m going to stay for a while. There’s something I want to check.”

Linda Holm merely nodded. She didn’t really seem to have grasped what Fredrik said. She was lost in her own thoughts.

L
INDA DIDN
’
T SAY
a word as they drove back into town. In order to break the silence, Irene asked, “How did you find out where Heinz Becker was?”

“He advertised his cell number on the Internet,” Linda replied.

“So one of the guys from your team called him?”

“Yes.”

“And how long have you been watching the apartment?”

“Two and a half days. It takes a little while to sort out a search warrant; we have to keep the place under surveillance first, and show that we have grounds for suspicion. But we have a good working relationship with the prosecutor’s office, and in this case there was no doubt. There was a constant stream of different men going in and out of the apartment.”

“Do you think someone warned them so that they had time to get away?” Irene asked.

“That’s the only possible explanation. They left behind valuable narcotics and aphrodisiacs. They would have taken all that with them if they’d been moving out under normal circumstances, but this makes it look like they panicked and took off. Someone tipped them off.” Linda Holm’s tone of voice and grim expression made it clear that if the person responsible was ever unmasked, there would be no mercy.

“How did they manage to get the truck started? I know the snow made it difficult for us to see, but it looked to me like they unlocked the back door before they threw the sack inside, and—”

“The sack!” Linda Holm interrupted Irene and slammed the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “The girl was in the sack! Of course!”

She was gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles had gone white. She was staring straight ahead. In spite of the fact that the windshield wipers were working at top speed, it was difficult to see out. The snowfall had turned into a blizzard.

“So they’ve only got one girl left,” she murmured.

Irene had the distinct feeling that the superintendent was talking to herself, so she didn’t say anything. The situation was probably as Linda thought: one girl was in a plastic sack in the back of a truck somewhere, and the other was lying in the refrigerator in the morgue.

“Sorry, I interrupted you. What were you saying about the truck?” Linda asked. She glanced briefly at Irene, hardly daring to take her eyes off the road for a second.

“I said it looked to me like they unlocked the back door with a key. That’s what fooled me. I assumed that if they had the key, they must be builders, and …” Irene stopped. Suddenly she understood what Fredrik had realized.

“How did they get hold of the key?” Linda asked.

“Something tells me that’s what Fredrik is trying to find out right now.”

In silence they pulled into the parking lot at police HQ.

T
HE TRUCK WAS
found an hour later, hidden behind a warehouse on the island of Ringön. A telecommunications engineer who had been working on an electrical box less than a hundred meters from the storage facility reported seeing a dark-colored station wagon, probably a Passat, stop outside. Two men and a young woman had come hurrying around from the back of the building and jumped into the Passat. It had been snowing too heavily for him to be able to give any kind of description or to see the car’s license plate, but he had noticed that one of the men was tall and well-built.

“Heinz Becker,” Linda Holm said gloomily.

She and Irene had grabbed a quick lunch and were now sipping coffees from the machine in the superintendent’s office. The phone rang constantly, but there were nothing but negative reports. It was as if the pimps and the girl had been swallowed up by the snowstorm.

“The airports and ferry terminals have been alerted. How do you think they’ll try to get out of the country?” Irene asked.

“They’ll probably head south. From Skåne they can take a ferry to Estonia or Poland or Germany. Or Denmark. Then they can just carry on down through Europe. It seems like they took their passports; we didn’t find any in the apartment.”

“Then again, Skåne in a snowstorm is no joke.”

“True. Perhaps they’re lying low and waiting for a while, at least until it stops snowing.”

Irene looked out of the window. The storm was raging with undiminished strength. “It looks like we’re going to get snowed in here—even worse than usual,” she said, smiling at Linda.