The Long Shadow (30 page)

He put his head to one side and smiled. In another setting she would probably have found him quite charming. ‘You think coke looks like it does in the films, then? Powder in little white bags, something like that? That’s such bollocks. Coke’s hard. Comes in blocks. Big as your thumb, pretty much.’

He held up his left hand to show the size he meant.

The small of her back was aching. She adjusted her position against the concrete wall.

‘You practise with grapes,’ he said. ‘Big grapes. You have to swallow them whole without breaking the skin. They put us in a hotel room. There were eight of us. We were there two whole days, just practising. Then we moved on to swallowing rubbers and lumps of coke.’

She felt the urge to vomit rise in her gullet. ‘So you swallowed condoms full of cocaine? How many?’

‘I know someone who once took a whole kilo. That’s probably the world record. I used to take half a kilo, which is pretty normal.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘You can’t fly into Stockholm Arlanda any more – they’re too thorough there. You go to Skavsta or Västerås. It always went okay for me. It’s the west Africans who get picked up.’

‘I meant in terms of your health.’

‘You just have to be careful when you swallow. It’s only dangerous if a rubber breaks.’

‘Because then you die?’

The young man just smiled.

‘But you got caught in the end,’ Annika said. ‘How did that happen?’

The smile disappeared as if he’d been slapped.

‘It can’t have come as any surprise when you got caught,’ Annika said. ‘All your friends had started to
disappear around you. You were the last one arrested. Why didn’t you run while you had the chance?’

‘I shouldn’t have had to,’ he said. ‘People ought to keep their mouths shut.’

‘Are you quite sure that someone betrayed you?’ Annika said. ‘You don’t think you could have been bugged or watched?’

He laughed, a hard, sharp sound. ‘Of course I was bugged! No one ever says anything over the phone.’

‘So how did you hear about your jobs?’

He fell silent.

‘Anyway, you’ve been talking as well, haven’t you?’ Annika said. ‘So you can get back to Sweden?’

Martinez sat up, annoyed. ‘But I’ve only said obvious things, the things they already knew! I haven’t said anything about Apits. They want me to talk about the whole fucking lot, but I don’t know anything!’

‘Apits,’ Annika said. ‘The freight company that owns the warehouse where the raid happened?’

‘I’m not saying a fucking word about Apits, or about the Colombians,’ the young man said, huddling on the corner of the bed again.

‘Not even if it gets you a ticket home to Sweden?’ Annika said.

He hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms tightly around his legs. ‘My mum and sister,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows where they live.’

Annika saw genuine fear in his eyes. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘What do you mean by that?’

He shook his head.

Annika tried to hold his gaze. ‘What do you mean, everyone knows where your mum and sister live? You’re worried about their safety if you say what you know?’

‘I don’t want to say anything else,’ the young man said.

A heavy silence descended on the little cell. The ventilation unit rattled and groaned. Martinez scratched his head hard. Carita was fingering the buttons of her blouse. Annika looked at the time. Five minutes left.

‘Do you know anything about other activities?’ she asked. ‘For instance, do you know anything about using gas in break-ins?’

The young man raised his eyebrows. ‘Using gas in break-ins?’

‘Do you know anyone who does that sort of thing?’

‘That’s those fucking Romanians,’ he said. ‘I don’t work with Romanians.’

‘You haven’t heard anything about the break-in at the Söderström family home? Just after New Year. Gas was used and they all died just before you were arrested.’

There was a noise at the door. The guard was cutting the visit short by a few minutes.

The young man sat up. ‘When’s your article going to be in the paper? When can I get out of here?’

Annika got up from the floor on stiff legs. Carita smoothed her skirt and stood up from the bed. Only Martinez didn’t move.

‘
Vamos
,’ the guard said bluntly.

Annika went over to the young man and held out her hand. ‘I hope things sort themselves out for you,’ she said, and realized that she meant it.

And before she knew what was happening, the young man had jumped up and was giving her a proper bear-hug. ‘Help me,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Help me get away from here.’

Lotta was sitting in the car, with the engine idling and the air-conditioning on.

‘Málaga’s a really authentic city,’ she said. ‘There’s proper street-life, a genuine tradition of work and siesta.’

‘Have you taken any pictures of the prison?’ Annika asked.

The woman looked at her in surprise. ‘It’s not remotely photogenic,’ she said. ‘And the light is far too harsh.’

Annika shut her eyes for a few seconds. Pictures had to be taken, and she had an interview to write up. She dug around in her bag and took out her mobile, noting she had three missed calls, then went back out into the blinding sunlight. She switched on the mobile’s camera function and walked right round the building, squinting as she took pictures every ten metres or so. When she got back to the car she opened the passenger door and leaned inside. ‘There’s a bar on the left,’ she said. ‘I’d like to sit down and write up an outline of the interview. Do you want to come along and get something to drink?’

‘I was just about to suggest that,’ Lotta said. ‘This heat makes you so thirsty.’

Carita came up to her and said, in a low voice, ‘What did he whisper to you?’

Annika looked at her in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just before we left, when he hugged you. What did he say?’

Annika searched her memory. ‘Nothing special,’ she said. ‘That he wanted help to get out.’

Carita shook her head sadly. ‘Poor lad,’ she said.

The bar was dark and reeked of smoke. The EU ban on smoking in bars and restaurants evidently hadn’t hit home in Spain, in the way it had throughout the rest of Europe, because people were smoking everywhere.

They got a table towards the back of the room. Carita ordered a
cafe cortado
, Lotta a glass of wine, and Annika pushed the boat out with a Coca-Cola.

‘When in Rome,’ Lotta said. ‘I like the Spanish tradition of having a glass of red with lunch. It’s very civilized.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Annika said, taking out her pen and notepad. ‘I can drive us back.’

Lotta raised her eyebrows. ‘Why? We’re in Spain. They’re not so strict as they are in Sweden.’

‘If there are three of us in the car, two sober and one tipsy, who do you think should drive?’

Lotta shrugged in annoyance. ‘That’s so uptight,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you don’t get tipsy after one glass of wine.’

Annika bit her tongue. She was on the point of declaring open warfare, not about anything important, just to let out some of her frustration. Instead she forced herself to smile. ‘Of course,’ she said.

Then she began to structure her article with keywords, scrawled notes and arrows. She put together a quick sketch of the cell and the young man, describing
the smell and the damp and the shadows, then moved on to a chronological account of his life.

‘The people seem a lot more genuine here than in Puerto Banús,’ Lotta said. ‘I took some pictures of women leading their goats to market while you were in there, their whole lives etched in their furrowed faces.’

‘Yes,’ Carita said. ‘You won’t find any of them in Puerto Banús. They can’t afford to live there.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to find anything genuine on the Costa del Sol,’ Lotta said. ‘It’s nothing but golf-obsessed pensioners and tax evaders. That’s why it’s such a nice surprise to find something real here in Málaga. It could make a really good exhibition.’

‘Have you worked at the
Evening Post
long?’ Carita asked.

Lotta chuckled. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘this whole tabloid journalism business really isn’t my thing. I’m an artist deep down, but everyone has to eat.’

Annika took her Coke and moved to the next table to get away from the sound of their voices. She started sketching out Martinez’s offences when he was younger: the gang, the shoplifting contests, his brother dealing hash, then he himself starting to smuggle drugs while he was still legally a minor.

‘It’s got terribly expensive down here,’ Carita was saying. ‘Not just property, food costs a lot more, and the restaurants are expensive. Ordinary people can’t afford to go out for Sunday lunch any more.’

Lotta sighed. ‘It’s so sad when tradition is forced out by commercialism. It’s the same where I live, on Södermalm. Do you know Söder?’

Annika concentrated on trying to listen to the young man in the cell. Smuggling coke in sports bags on the train, his brother reporting him sick to the school, his mum thinking he was with his dad.

‘It was lucky I bought my flat in time,’ Lotta was saying. ‘I’d never be able to afford it today.’

‘Same here,’ Carita said. ‘I inherited some money from my parents. That was how we were able to afford the house in Nueva Andalucía.’

‘So your parents are dead. How sad,’ Lotta said. ‘Was it long ago?’

‘Eight years now. I inherited a biotech company that they’d set up.’

Annika looked up. ‘A biotech company?’ she said. ‘What was it called?’

She remembered her former neighbour out in Djursholm, Ebba Romanova, who had set up and been bought out of a biotech company; she had got 185 million kronor for her trouble.

‘Cell Impact,’ Carita said. ‘Why?’

‘Have you ever heard of a company called ADVA Bio?’ Annika asked. ‘One of my neighbours used to own it.’

Carita laughed. ‘I don’t know anything about the biotech business. That was why I sold the company straight away.’

‘You should always focus on what you know,’ Lotta agreed. ‘I’m going to concentrate on exhibitions from now on. That’s where I feel I belong.’

Carita began to gather together the things she had spread out on the table. ‘Have you had many exhibitions?’ she asked, putting her sunglasses, powder and lipstick in her handbag.

‘Four,’ Lotta said. ‘All with everyday life as their theme. I sold several of my women’s portraits from Tehran.’

‘Shall we go?’ Carita said. She stood up without waiting for an answer.

Annika looked down at her notes. ‘Two minutes,’ she said.

‘We’ll get the car,’ Carita said.

Quickly Annika thought through the end of the interview, the details about drug-smuggling, practising with swallowing whole grapes, the hard blocks of cocaine, the problem of security at Arlanda.

Her pen paused when she remembered the fear in the young man’s eyes.

I’m not saying a fucking word about Apits, or about the Colombians. My mum and sister, everyone knows where they live
.

She gathered together her things, drank the last of the Coke and went out into the sunshine.

The missed calls were from the newspaper, Thomas’s mobile and the central exchange of the main government offices in Stockholm. She waited until she had got up to her room before she called back. It had been cleaned and the bed made. Every trace of Niklas Linde had been swept away.

She decided to return the calls in the order they had been made.

‘How’s it going?’ Patrik snapped.

She sat on the bed. ‘I’ve met the drug-runner who’s been arrested. He’s not having much fun.’

‘What pictures have we got?’

She took a couple of deep breaths. There was no point in complaining about Lotta: she’d only get told off for not being able to work with other people. ‘We couldn’t take a camera inside the prison,’ she said, ‘but we’ve got the outside of the building. It looks like shit.’

‘That works,’ Patrik said. ‘“This is where the Swede is being held.” What else are you doing today?’

‘I’m meeting a Swedish police officer who’s working on a massive seizure that was intended for the Swedish market.’

‘Hmm,’ Patrik said. ‘Sounds pretty cold. What pictures will you have?’

‘He’s not here officially, so we’ll have to sort something out.’

‘Just make it fucking dramatic. What else?’

‘I was at the press conference about international co-operation to stop cross-border financial crime, and I’ve got a decent long interview with two Scandinavian police officers about the Costa del Crime, drugs and money-laundering. I’ve got a good source in the police down here who can help me sort out the rest of the interviews we want.’

She refrained from saying that one and the same policeman would fulfil most of those roles.

‘What about the girl spilling the beans about her jet-set lifestyle?’

‘I’m still hoping to find her.’

‘And she’s not allowed to be anonymous.’

No, Annika had got that. Close-ups from the front were the order of the day.

One of Patrik’s other phones began to ring and he hung up abruptly. She sat there with her mobile in her hand, wondering whether to call the next number.

What could Thomas want with her? They hadn’t talked about meeting up.

She pressed ‘call’ and listened to the phone ringing. No answer. Disappointed, she let the phone sink to her lap. The room was silent. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

They had to learn to talk to each other. Their failure to communicate was what had caused their marriage to break down, she could see that now, not his unfaithfulness or her sniping, not because he worked too much or because she asked too much of him. She hadn’t talked, and he hadn’t listened.

Her head felt heavy when she recalled their phoney conversations about things that were completely irrelevant, when they would shout at each other about terrorism and integrity, circling each other in a destructive spiral that led nowhere but into the darkness.

She put her mobile down and went into the bathroom. Immediately the phone rang on the desk. She stumbled back into the bedroom.

‘Annika Bengtzon? Hello, this is Jimmy Halenius. Are you busy?’