Box 21 (40 page)

 

All these people. All these people on their way somewhere.

 

Ewert Grens envied them. He had no idea where he going.

 

He was tired. Just a few minutes more.

 

He drove through the city centre to St Erik’s Square in the slowing evening traffic. After drifting on along the smaller streets for a while, he turned left, past the Bonnier building and into Atlas Street. Downhill, left again. He parked in
front of the door, suddenly surprised at the thought that less than a week had passed since he had come here for the first time.

 

He turned the engine off. How silent it was, as silent as a big city can be when the working day is over. All those windows, all those fancy curtains and potted plants. Places where people lived.

 

He sat in the car and time passed. Maybe a minute. Or ten. Or sixty.

 

Her back had been torn and inflamed. She had lain naked and unconscious on the floor. Alena Sljusareva had been screaming in the next room, hurling abuse at the man she called Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp.

 

Bengt had been on the landing. He had been waiting there for almost an hour. Grens recalled the scene perfectly, where Bengt had stood.

 

You must have known even then
.

 

Ewert Grens stayed where he was for a little longer. Not time to leave yet. Another minute, several minutes, whatever it took for him to calm down. He had to go to the place he still called home, although he often had no wish to be there.

 

Another couple of minutes.

 

Suddenly the heavy door opened.

 

Four people came out. He looked at them, recognised them.

 

Only a couple of days ago, he had taken Alena Sljusareva to the port to ensure that she boarded a ferry that would take her over the Baltic Sea, back to Lithuania and Klaipeda.

 

They had got off the ferry when it docked on Swedish soil. The man was wearing the same suit he had previously, another time in Völund Street. Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp. As soon as he had cleared passport control, he turned round and waited for two young women – girls, in fact, of sixteen or seventeen. He held out his hand and demanded to have their passports, their debt. A woman in a tracksuit, with
the hood pulled up over her head, had come forward to meet them and kissed them lightly on each cheek, the way people from the Baltic states do.

 

Now, they filed out of the door in front of him: Dimitri first, followed by his two new girls with bags in hand, and the hooded woman.

 

Grens watched them walk away.

 

Then he phoned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was put through to the person he wanted and asked a few questions about Dimitri Simait.

 

God knows he had enough on his plate, but never mind. He wanted to know if that fucking pimp still had the right to claim diplomatic immunity and asked to find out who his female contact was.

 

A little additional information and then he’d have both of them in the bag.

 

When this was all over. When Lang was inside. When Bengt had been buried.

 

When he was certain that Lena was able to go on, without the lie.

 

 

 

 

 

The day had passed without him noticing.

 

He had woken up in a narrow hotel bed, in Klaipeda, then driven from Arlanda to Lena Nordwall, where she sat freezing in the hot sun, then on to his Kronoberg office and from there to the Prosecution Service building, where Ĺgestam had been waiting, nearly at the end of his patience.

 

Sven Sundkvist wanted to go home.

 

He was tired, but the day that was almost done had not quite finished with him yet. Instead it seemed its longest hours were waiting for him.

 

Lena Nordwall had run after him as he walked away from their futile talk in the garden, towards the hockey kids and his car. She had been short of breath when she grabbed his arm and asked if he knew about Anni. Sven had never heard the name before. He had known Ewert for ten years, had worked closely with him and come to regard him as a friend, but he had never heard the name before. Lena Nordwall told him about a time when Ewert had been in charge of a patrol van, a story about Anni and Bengt and Ewert and an arrest which had ended in tragedy.

 

He tried to stand still, but wasn’t able to stop trembling.

 

There was so much in life he didn’t understand.

 

He had no idea where Ewert lived. He had never, not once visited him. Somewhere in the centre of Stockholm, that was all he knew.

 

He laughed a little, but his face wasn’t smiling.

 

Strange, how one-sided their friendship had been.

 

He kept inviting and Ewert allowed himself to be invited. Sven believed in sharing, thoughts, emotions, strength, while Ewert hid behind his right to privacy.

 

He got Ewert’s home address from the police staff records. He lived on the fourth floor of quite a handsome block of flats in the middle of the city, on a busy stretch of Svea Road. Sven had been waiting outside for nearly two hours. He had tried to distract himself by scanning the rows of windows. Not that he got much out of it. From a distance they all looked identical, as if the same person inhabited all the flats.

 

Ewert arrived just after eight o’clock, his big body rolling on his stiff leg. He opened the door without looking round, and disappeared into the building. Sven Sundkvist waited for another ten minutes, feeling nervous and lonelier than he could ever remember.

 

He took a deep breath before pressing the intercom button. No reply. A longer ring this time.

 

The loudspeaker crackled as a heavy hand picked up the receiver on the fourth floor.

 

‘Yes?’ An irritated voice.

 

‘Ewert?’

 

‘Who is it?’

 

‘It’s me, Sven.’

 

The silence was audible.

 

‘Hello, Ewert? It’s me, Sven Sundkvist.’

 

‘What are you doing here?’

 

‘I’d like to come up.’

 

‘Come up here?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘Now?’

 

‘Now.’

 

‘Why?’

 

‘We need to talk.’

 

‘We can talk tomorrow. Come to my office.’

 

‘It would be too late. We have to talk this evening. Open up, Ewert.’

 

Silence again. Sven stared at the still live intercom. A long time passed or, at least, it felt like that. Then the lock clicked and Ewert’s voice spoke, low and indistinct.

 

‘Fourth floor. Grens on the door.’

 

The pain in his stomach was bad now, as bad as when he’d watched that video. He had carried this pain for long enough. Time to hand it over, as it were.

 

He didn’t need to ring the bell. The door was open. He peered into the long hall.

 

‘Hello?’

 

‘Come in.’

 

He couldn’t see anyone, but Ewert’s voice was calling from a room further in. He stopped on the doormat.

 

‘Second door to your left.’

 

Sven Sundkvist wasn’t quite sure what exactly he had expected, but whatever, it wasn’t this.

 

It was the biggest flat he had ever seen.

 

He looked around as he walked slowly down a hall which never ended. Six rooms so far, possibly seven. High ceilings, elegant tiled stoves everywhere, plush rugs on perfect parquet floors.

 

Above all, it was empty.

 

He tiptoed, hardly breathed, feeling like an intruder even though nobody was about. He had never before been anywhere that felt so deserted. It was so large and clean and unimaginably lonely.

 

Ewert waited in something that might be called the library, one of the smaller rooms with bookshelves along two walls, from floor to ceiling. He was sitting on a worn black leather armchair in the light of a standard lamp.

 

Sven hardly noticed the rest of the room, because a few things caught his attention. On the wall by the door was a small embroidered wall hanging with MERRY CHRISTMAS in yellow letters on a red background. Next to it two black-and-white photographs, one of a man and the other of a woman, both in their twenties, both in police uniform.

 

A huge, never-ending place. But it was obvious. The two photos and the embroidered cloth were at its very heart.

 

Ewert looked at him, sighed, gestured to him to come in. He kicked a stool that he had been resting his feet on in the direction of his guest. Sven sat down.

 

Ewert had been reading when he rang the bell and interrupted. Sven tried to see what the book was, to find a way of starting the conversation, but it was lying to one side and he couldn’t see the title. So instead he got up and pointed at the door.

 

‘Ewert, what is this?’

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘Have you always lived like this?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

 

‘I spend less and less time here.’

 

‘Our little terraced house would fit into your hall.’

 

Ewert nodded at him, wanted him to sit down. He closed his book, leaned forwards, red in the face. He was getting impatient with this meaningless chitchat.

 

‘Sven, it’s Sunday night, I believe.’

 

Sven did not answer.

 

‘After eight o’clock. Isn’t that so?’

 

It wasn’t really a question.

 

‘I have a bloody right to be left alone. Don’t I?’

 

Silence.

 

‘Why this invasion of my privacy? Can you tell me that?’

 

Sven tried to stay calm. He had encountered this anger before, but never the fear. He was certain of that. Ewert had
never shown that before. But here, sitting in his own leather armchair, his aggression was masking his fear.

 

He looked at his older colleague.

 

‘The truth, Ewert – you know how hard it is to face.’

 

Sven ignored Ewert’s obvious wish that he should stay put. He stood up and wandered over to the window, stopped to look down at the cars in the street as they hurried from one red light to the next, and then went to lean against a bookshelf.

 

‘Ewert, I spend more time with you, just about every day of my life, than with anyone else, more than with my wife and my son. I haven’t come to see you because it seemed like a nice idea. I’m here because I have no choice.’

 

Ewert Grens was leaning back, looking up at him.

 

‘What a lie, Ewert. What a fucking big lie!’

 

The man in the armchair didn’t move, only stared.

 

‘You have lied and I want to know why.’

 

Ewert snorted.

 

‘Seems I’m being visited by the inquisition.’

 

‘I want you to reply to my questions, yes. Snort away. Call me names, by all means. I’m used to it.’

 

He went back to the window. There were fewer cars and they drove more slowly. He longed to get out there, once this was over.

 

‘Officially, I’ve been on sick leave for two days.’

 

‘You seem fine to me. Well enough to play the interrogator anyway.’

 

‘I wasn’t ill. I was in Lithuania. In Klaipeda. Ĺgestam asked me to go.’

 

Sven Sundkvist had anticipated an outburst, of course. He knew that Ewert would stand up and shout.

 

‘That little prat! You went to Lithuania on his orders? Behind my back!’

 

Sven waited until he had finished. ‘All right. Sit down again, Ewert.’

 

‘Fuck off!’

 

‘Sit down.’

 

Ewert looked briefly at Sven and sat down, putting his feet on the stool.

 

‘I met Alena Sljusareva in an aquarium, a Klaipeda tourist trap. I got the answers we needed, step by step, the whole story. How she delivered the gun and explosives to Grajauskas. Very instructive.’

 

He waited. No reaction from Ewert.

 

‘I know that the two women communicated by mobile phone, several times. Before and during the hostage drama.’

 

He watched the silent man in the armchair.

 

Say something!

 

React!

 

Don’t just stare at me!

 

‘Before Sljusareva and I parted company outside a Chinese restaurant at the end of the evening, something odd happened. She wanted to know why I had asked all those questions, as she had already answered them. In an interview with another Swedish policeman.’

 

He said nothing.

 

‘Has the cat got your tongue?’

 

Nothing.

 

‘Say something!’

 

Ewert Grens burst out laughing. He laughed until tears came to his eyes.

 

‘What do you want me to say? What’s the point? You’re fucking babes in the wood, you two! Haven’t got a clue!’

 

He laughed even louder, wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve.

 

‘As for Ĺgestam, it goes without saying. But you, Sven! Christ, little boy lost!’

 

He stared at his uninvited guest, who had invaded his house and taken away his right to be alone.

 

He was still chuckling, though, and shaking his head.

 

‘The perpetrator, Grajauskas, is dead. The plaintiff, Nordwall, is dead. Who cares about the whys and wherefores?
Who? Eh, Sven? Not the taxpayers who pay our wages, that’s for sure.’

 

Sven Sundkvist stayed by the window. He felt like shouting to drown all this out, but kept quiet. He knew what it was about, after all, this fear masquerading as anger.

 

‘Is that how you see it, Ewert?’

 

‘It’s how you should see it too.’

 

‘I never will. You see, we talked for a long time, Alena Sljusareva and I. We went for a meal together. And when I asked, she told me about the three years she and Grajauskas spent in flats all over Scandinavia, being bought and sold as sex slaves. Made to perform twelve times a day. I thought that I was well informed, but she told me things about imprisonment and humiliation that I will never truly understand: about Rohypnol to endure it and vodka to deaden their senses, just to be able to live, to cope with the shame, in order to never let it get close.’

 

Ewert got up and walked towards the door, waving at Sven to come with him.

 

Sven delayed a little, looking at the photos of the two young people. Full of hope. The man’s eyes fascinated him especially, so alive and eager, different eyes which he hadn’t seen before. They didn’t fit in with this flat.