The Long Shadow (54 page)

The storm passed. A warm wind began to blow. It swept in through the open front door, up the stairs, through the stone hallway and into the sitting room, the library and all the other open rooms in the house.

Fatima stood up and handed the child she had been holding in her lap to Suzette and Amira. She went to the dead man on the rug and looked at him for a long minute. He was lying on his front, with his arms close to his sides, and the gun to his right. The back of his head was gone. The women had stopped screaming. No one said anything. Not even the children were whimpering.

Then she looked up at Annika and Nina. ‘Are there any more men here?’

Annika cleared her throat and tried to catch Nina’s eye, but the police officer was staring at the floor and seemed not to have heard the question.

‘There are two out in the yard,’ Annika said.

‘Zine and Ahmed?’

‘Ahmed’s out there,’ Annika said. ‘I haven’t seen Zine.’

Fatima nodded towards her and Nina. ‘You two,’ she said. ‘Take the body downstairs and put it by the stable wall. Then you’re to come back up here, roll this carpet up and leave it on the floor of the washroom behind the kitchen. Then check which other carpets up here need
washing, roll them up and leave them against the back wall of the washroom.’

Annika looked at her in astonishment. Fatima returned her gaze without moving a muscle. Then she turned to her son-in-law. Abbas was still standing there with Nina’s gun raised and ready to fire.

‘Abbas,’ she said, ‘get the electricity running again. Then you’re to gather all the guns together and lock them up where they should be. Then get the digger out, and the small trailer. Girls!’ She turned to Suzette and Amira. ‘Take the boys to the kitchen. Get them something to eat. Then take them up to my bedroom and read them a story. Try to get them to sleep.’

Amira was the first to move. She put her nephew on the floor, heaved herself out of the armchair, took Suzette’s hand and helped her up, then went to her sister and took the youngest boy from her arms. Abbas put the safety-catch back on the gun, hung it over his shoulder, leaned over and pulled Filip’s gun from him and left the room.

Then Nina moved. She went to the head of the corpse and crouched down. ‘We won’t be able to carry him,’ she said in English. ‘We need some help, or we’ll have to clean all the other carpets in the house as well.’

‘Amira,’ Fatima said to the girl, who went out quickly with the child in her arms and disappeared down the stairs.

Then Fatima said something to the servants in Arabic, and they left the room with Suzette.

Annika couldn’t bear to look at the corpse and turned away.

Amira came back with a bin-liner and handed it to Nina, who quickly pulled it over the dead man’s head and tied the handles firmly round his neck. ‘Okay, let’s turn him over first,’ she said to Annika, who did as she said.

‘Grab his legs.’

Annika did as she was told, simultaneously empty and full to bursting. In spite of the gloom the contours of the furniture were crystal-clear, the colours sharp. He would have shot her, wouldn’t he?

His body really was incredibly heavy. They couldn’t manage to lift the whole thing at once, so pulled it with its back dragging on the thick carpets until they reached the staircase.

At that moment the power came back on and the stone hallway was lit by ornate chandeliers and lamps.

Nina swung the legs over the edge of the top step.

‘You go first and pull. I’ll keep hold of the head and try to stop the bag coming off.’

Annika pulled the feet and trousers. The body slid down fairly easily, a couple of times she had to grab its stomach to slow it down.

The yard was illuminated by huge floodlights. They lowered the head to the ground and each pulled one of the legs. The bag split and blood seeped out.

The two black-clad men who had run in through the gates with Filip Andersson were lying where they had fallen, hit by several shots to the chest. Ahmed had been moved: Annika could see the dark patch where his head had been lying, clearly visible in the brightly lit yard.

‘You can put him straight on the trailer,’ Abbas said.

He pointed to a tractor with a scoop at the front and a digger at the back. Behind the digger a small trailer had been hooked up to it.

‘We’ll need help,’ Nina said.

Together they managed to get the heavy body onto the trailer.

Without saying anything they went back towards the black-clad bodies. Abbas took the arms and Nina and Annika a leg each.

‘Where’s Zine?’ Annika asked, once they’d put the two men on top of Filip Andersson.

‘He’s alive, but he’s lost a lot of blood. The only person here with the same blood-type is Ahmed, and he’s dead.’

Fatima came out into the yard in a black garment.

Abbas climbed up into the tractor, started the engine and drove off towards the fields. Fatima stopped beside them and watched the vehicle disappear over the brow of the hill.

‘They’ll never be found,’ Annika said. ‘Just like Torsten. That’s right, isn’t it?’

Fatima closed her eyes, but said nothing.

‘What did Torsten do?’ Annika asked.

‘What didn’t he do? He deserved to die.’

‘Who killed him?’

‘David.’ Fatima walked back towards the house.

Annika heard the sound of the tractor fade and disappear.

At that moment the lights in the yard went out.

She went back into the house and up the stairs to bring down the blood-stained rugs.

The crops were rustling in the fields outside the walls. Annika sat on the steps leading up to the house. Her eyes settled on the dark patch of gravel where the life had run out of the man with pale eyes. Nina sat down beside her.

‘I recognized him,’ Annika said, pointing to the dark patch. ‘He was the one who cut my finger open.’

The stars was sparkling and twinkling, clearer than Annika had ever seen them before. She felt shaky and oddly exhilarated.

They sat in silence for a long time.

‘How are you feeling?’ Annika asked eventually, to the woman next to her.

Nina picked up some stones, weighed them in her hand, then let them fall again. ‘Numb,’ she said. ‘I’d never shot anyone before. It was much easier than I’d expected.’ She raised her arms and aimed an imaginary gun, closed one eye and squeezed the trigger. ‘It’s hard to aim an AK-47,’ she said, letting her arms fall. ‘This one had a long barrel, or I don’t think I would have dared. I went down on one knee and shot him from below because a bullet of that calibre could easily pass through the body and I didn’t want to hit anyone behind him …’

‘You got it just right,’ Annika said.

Nina glanced at her. ‘I was aiming for his body,’ she said. ‘The barrel must have moved. It was pure luck I didn’t hit anyone else by mistake.’

Annika was relieved that the woman was a police officer, used to handling violent situations and trained to use firearms. ‘Why did you come?’

Nina replied, in a quiet, focused voice, ‘Filip came to see me on Tuesday, at lunchtime. He wanted a passport. I asked him where he was going. “The Costa del Sol,” he said, “to sort out some business that’s gone wrong.” I told him he could fly using just his national ID card, and then he got angry. I told him he’d have to go to the passport office, and that I’d try to speed up his application …’

She looked out into the darkness and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘That evening he called and asked if I knew where the farm was. “Astrid was always so secretive about that farm,” he said. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Stop being so sanctimonious,” he said. “It’s time you did something useful. There’s only us left now. Apart from the kid.” I didn’t know what he meant.’

She fell silent and lowered her eyes to the gravel.

‘Then he said “I bet you anything she’s at the farm,” and hung up. That was the last time I spoke to him.’

Annika waited in silence.

‘I wanted to talk to him,’ Nina went on. ‘I got the plane to Málaga this morning. That’s why I came, to talk some sense into him.’

‘But how did you find your way here?’

Nina took a deep breath and glanced at Annika. ‘Through you,’ she said. ‘You called that afternoon and asked the same thing as Filip, what I knew about the farm, but you told me where it was. In Morocco, outside Asilah. I went to the
muqaddam
, and he said I was the second white woman in two days who’d come to see him with the same question. When did you get here?’

‘Yesterday evening. They locked me up straight away.’

Nina rubbed her forehead and suddenly looked very tired. ‘They knew Filip was on his way. They probably just wanted you out of the way until it was all over.’ She sat for a long while without saying anything. Eventually she said, ‘I’ll never be able to talk to anyone about this.’

Annika couldn’t think of a response. She tried to imagine what Nina was feeling.

Was she remembering all the times she had visited her brother in Kumla Prison? Was she thinking about the big brother who used to lift her up to the ceiling at Christmas and birthdays? Or could she no longer see beyond the criminal who had been on the point of killing even more people?

‘He was going to shoot me,’ Annika said. ‘You saved everyone.’

‘I’m the last one left. It was up to me to put everything right.’

Amira came out and asked if they wanted anything to eat. Her Swedish was clear and fluent, with hardly any trace of an accent.

Annika didn’t think she’d be able to keep anything down, but she got up and followed the girl inside the house, across the open hall and down a long corridor. The kitchen was huge. It filled the whole of the eastern end of the ground floor. There were twenty-four chairs round a rustic wooden table in the middle of the floor, with space for more if need be. There was cheese and fruit, lamb, vegetables and a dish of cold couscous.

Annika and Nina sat down and helped themselves. Annika managed to swallow some vegetables and drank several glasses of water. She felt dizzy and shaky, her palms were blistered and her ankle hurt.

When they had finished, Fatima appeared. ‘You two,’ she said, nodding to Annika and Nina. ‘Come with me.’

She went into the hall, up the stairs and into the library. She sat down on one of the leather sofas, and indicated that Annika and Nina should sit opposite.

‘I understand that you’re Filip’s sister,’ she said, to Nina.

Nina raised her chin. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ Fatima said.

Nina didn’t reply.

Fatima waited. No one said anything. Annika realized she was holding her breath. ‘You’re a police officer,’ Fatima said at last. ‘Like David.’

‘Yes, but not like David. I’ve never been mixed up in the business, not like David and Filip and the others.’

Fatima nodded. ‘That’s what David said. You were the only one who got away.’

Nina cleared her throat. ‘Why are you talking about my job? This has nothing to do with it.’

‘You’re a police officer, and you killed your brother. I’ve got ten witnesses.’

Nina didn’t answer.

‘Are you going to go to your superiors and confess what you’ve done?’

Nina looked away.

‘Are you going to report him missing?’

‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘No.’

Fatima looked at her intently. Nina didn’t move. ‘The other men, do they have families?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nina said. ‘Someone will probably notice they’re missing.’

‘Can they be traced here?’

‘I presume they flew to Málaga and got their guns there. Filip didn’t have a passport, so my guess is that they chartered a boat and paid cash. I saw a car outside, an old Seat. The passenger door had been broken open.’

Fatima nodded. ‘They must have stolen it. Abbas has already taken care of it.’

Annika looked down at her blistered hands. Filip Andersson and his thugs would never be traced to Morocco. They had already been buried alongside Torsten in some distant corner of the farm. They’d never be heard of again. She shuddered. Were more bodies buried out there? ‘Where’s Carita Halling Gonzales?’ she suddenly asked, looking straight at Fatima. ‘Do you know?’

Fatima raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s taken off, I don’t know where.’

‘Why did she kill the entire Söderström family?’ Annika asked.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a journalist,’ she
said. ‘Your job is to poke about in other people’s affairs. Are you going to write about my farm?’

Annika straightened her back. ‘I’m going to do my job,’ she said. ‘I’m going to write that Suzette is alive. I want to interview her, and let her decide how much she wants to say about her new life. I’d like to quote you as well, if you’ll agree to that.’

‘What about what happened here today?’

Annika blinked.

‘You could have run away,’ Fatima said, ‘but you chose to come back. No one forced you to intervene.’ She said nothing for a time, then sighed. ‘Carita Halling Gonzales was Filip’s eyes and ears on the Costa del Sol while he was in prison in Sweden,’ she said. ‘As the years went by she became sloppy. Astrid was able to embezzle large amounts of money, and shipments were delayed and seized. When Filip realized the extent of it, he gave Carita an ultimatum: her family or Astrid’s.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Annika muttered.

Fatima pulled a face. ‘It’s not the first time Carita Halling Gonzales has tidied up. Do you know why you were let into this farm?’

Annika shook her head, unable to say anything.

‘Do you believe in God, Annika Bengtzon?’

She gulped. ‘Not exactly.’

Fatima put her hands together on her lap. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re fairly secular in Sweden. Do you respect people who believe?’

Annika nodded.

‘Then you understand that my God is the most important thing in my life. More important than my children and my family, my property and my work.’

Annika didn’t answer.

‘According to my faith a man can have four wives. I was his first, and he took one other. That’s how I see
my marriage. I’m well aware of Western practices and traditions, and I expect you to accept mine.’