MemoRandom: A Thriller (22 page)

She put a glass of water and some pills in front of him. Sarac did as he was told. He forced the pills down, suppressing the urge to gag with a serious gulp of water. Then he lay back on the sofa and closed his eyes. He realized all of a sudden that he felt a bit disappointed that Natalie was going away so soon. Leaving him on his own out here. But of course she had better things to do on Christmas Eve than sit in the forest on some damn island keeping him company. He would just have to deal with his sudden craving for social interaction the way everyone else who was on their own did: by watching television.

Besides, he had made up his mind about something. As soon as he had gathered enough strength, he was going to go down to the old orchard and find out what was so special about it. He had a feeling that whatever was down there was something he ought to keep to himself.

“Hello,
Khalti,
it’s Atif.”

“Atif,” his aunt said. “It’s good to hear from you.”

“I just wanted to hear how Mom is. I’ve been trying to call, but she’s not answering.”

“Dalia’s fine, Atif. I think there’s some problem with the phones again. The power cuts seem to knock out the exchanges.”

A few moments of silence followed.

“She has a right to know,” his aunt said in a low voice. “Even if she has trouble distinguishing times and places, she still has a right to know. Adnan was her youngest son, she talks about him all the time.”

“I know,
Khalti,
” he said.

“Do you want me to tell her? It might even be easier if it came from me,” his aunt said.

“No.” The sharpness in his voice surprised him. “No, thank you,
Khalti,
” he said, rather more gently. “I’ll tell Mom as soon as I get back.”

“And when will that be, Atif? I thought you were only going to be gone a few days. That’s why I agreed not to say anything.”

“Soon,” Atif said. He understood from his aunt’s silence that he was expected to say something more. “I’ll be home soon. There’s just something I need to take care of first.”

“What sort of something, Atif? Is it anything to do with Adnan?”

“No,” he lied. Even he could hear how false it sounded. But he couldn’t tell the truth. Couldn’t say that his only defense against his mother’s accusations was the thought of a dead man. The thought that Janus would be held to account for what he had done to her, to Cassandra and Tindra. To him.

A beep on the line warned him that he had a call waiting.

“
Khalti,
I’m afraid I have to go now. Someone’s trying to get hold of me.”

•  •  •

Atif cautiously nudged the mail slot open. The apartment was dark, just like last time, and the pile of mail was still on the hall floor. It had only taken him thirty minutes or so to get there. His new hotel was much closer to the city and the cheap car he had bought from a less-than-fastidious dealer out in Barkarby was running like clockwork. Yet he couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that he was too late.

There was a rattle from a door farther along the corridor and Mrs. Strömgren looked out.

“Isn’t he there?” she whispered.

Atif shook his head. “It’s all quiet and very dark. You’re sure it was him you saw?”

“As sure as I can be, Constable. He was wearing a short, shiny jacket with a colorful dragon across the back and sides. It’s visible a long way off, even if you can’t see well. I called you as soon as I found the note with your number.”

Atif nodded.

“Well, I’ll wait a while longer. If he doesn’t turn up this time, I’d be very grateful if you’d call again, Mrs. Strömgren.”

The woman nodded, then closed her door.

And opened it again.

“Perhaps you’d like to wait in here, Constable? I’ve got some coffee ready.”

Atif thought for a moment and realized he hadn’t eaten any breakfast. He could just as easily wait in her apartment as out in the stairs.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you.”

The apartment smelled of heavy furniture and a lonely old person, pretty much like his mother’s little room in the nursing home. Otherwise it looked more or less exactly as he had expected. Walls and tables covered with ornaments, pictures, and photographs. Mrs. Strömgren as a young woman beside a man in glasses, presumably Mr. Strömgren. The same couple a few years later with a baby, then a chubby little girl and another little bundle. Then a long series of school photographs, confirmation pictures, graduations, weddings. Four lives documented neatly in chronological order. At one end of the wall was a little table with a solitary picture of Mr. Strömgren and a candle. A short pause before life went on once more.

More photographs, more lives. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Birthdays, Christmases, holidays. The sequence was repeated until it almost reached the end of the wall.

“Oh yes, Constable,” Mrs. Strömgren said when he’d drunk his coffee. “It occurred to me that he might have gone to collect his dogs. He’s got two horrible creatures. Sven and I had a dog before Maj-Lis was born. A cocker spaniel. A lovely little thing, she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

She refilled Atif’s empty cup.

“But these are very different. I’ve met them on the stairs several times. Square heads and mean little eyes. Sometimes he even lets them run loose between the basement and his apartment. They’ve never hurt me, but the look in their eyes makes me shiver.”

Atif raised the cup to his lips, the flower-patterned porcelain so fragile that he had to hold it between his thumb and fingertip.

“Have you been down in the basement, Constable? He’s got a storeroom down there. Big sacks of dog food that smell
absolutely awful. I’ve had to complain to the residents’ committee about it.”

Atif almost dropped his cup and caught it at the last moment in his left hand. A little splash of hot coffee landed on his jeans. He shook his head.

“No, I haven’t been down there. Do I need a key?”

•  •  •

The sound hit him the moment he opened the door to the basement. In actual fact it wasn’t noise but a faint pressure hitting his eardrums, the reverberations of something bouncing off the stone walls down there until all that was left was a lingering vibration. The smell was the next thing he noticed. A cloying, suffocating smell that must be from the dog food. But there was something else as well, something sharper.

He carried on down the steps, following the old woman’s instructions and turning right into a narrow little corridor. He could still feel the pressure in his ears. He recognized it, put his hand in his pocket, and closed his fingers around Bakshi’s switchblade. The smell was getting stronger, almost overwhelming. He thought he could detect several familiar smells: sulphur, iron, adrenaline. The metal door wasn’t properly shut; the lock seemed to have caught. He took the knife out and opened the blade. He held it facing downward so he could attack someone with it if he had to. Then he cautiously nudged the door open.

The room was big, maybe five hundred square feet, and the far wall was only just visible. Just inside the door was a wall of steel mesh, and beside it sacks of dog food stacked almost the whole way to the ceiling, obscuring the view of the rest of the room. He turned right and followed the wall of sacks. Enough light was filtering through from the fluorescent lamp in the middle of the room for him to see where
he was going. In the distance he could hear a faint whimpering, followed by a metallic rattling sound. He stopped and sniffed the air again. He was sure now. It was gunpowder he could smell.

He peered around the end of the wall of sacks. There were metal cages lining the walls, like the one he was peering out from behind. They were all closed, and he could make out storage racks inside them. Most of them were full of sacks, boxes, and large plastic tubs.

In the center of the room there were four folding chairs and an old-fashioned wooden table that looked as if it had been found in a Dumpster. Its worn top was covered with drink cans and an ashtray.

The whimpering was still going on, along with the metallic clanking. Atif noticed movement in the cage in the far right corner. Then a short yelp.

He stepped cautiously into the middle of the room. The smell of powder was stronger now, catching in his nostrils. But there were other smells there too. Animal smells: rage, urine, blood.

He found an explanation when he looked inside the last metal cage. Two burly dogs, one dark, one slightly paler, growled at him. Shaking their square heads and making the chains around their necks rattle as they licked their red noses. Atif was reminded of the wild dogs in Iraq. But these were different. Shorter legs, bigger jaws, and considerably more muscular bodies. As he got closer they curled their top lips back, revealing rows of sharp white teeth.

The man was lying on his back further inside the cage. He was suntanned. His eyes were staring up blankly, and the bomber jacket with the dragon pattern was open. In the center of the chest of his white T-shirt there were two dark patches, the same blackish-red color that was slowly creeping across the concrete floor under his body.

The dogs were walking about in the blood. The smell seemed
to make them a bit high, aggressive. The lighter one barked and snapped at the other one. Then it spun around on the spot and seemed to bite at its own rear end before suddenly pissing itself. The darker dog went on growling, staring at Atif. He moved a bit closer, trying to see more detail. He jumped when the darker dog suddenly leaped at the mesh.

The other dog seemed to be venting its frustration on the dead man. It sank its teeth into the padded jacket and shook its head, spreading a cloud of stuffing into the air. The darker one turned and joined it. The two dogs tore at the corpse’s clothes, growling and snapping at each other as they ripped the fabric apart.

Atif stood there watching them. The man in the cage was obviously very, very dead, and he couldn’t think of a single good reason to venture in there. Not until one of the dogs tore open the inside pocket of the man’s jacket and a cell phone fell out onto the floor.

Damn it!

Obviously the smart option would be to get out of there at once. There was no way he wanted to be found down there with a steaming-fresh murder victim. The sound of the gunshots was still hanging in the air. He’d heard the outside door close as he was heading down the steps to the basement, so he must have missed the killer by a matter of seconds. He wondered whether anyone had called the cops.

With his criminal record he could end up locked away for months, probably years, for something like this. It was bad enough that he’d left his name and fingerprints upstairs in the old woman’s apartment. Anyone smart would have left by now and been on their way toward Arlanda.

But the cell phone by the wall in there was unquestionably his best lead. Possibly even his only chance of making any progress and finding out more about Erik Johansson and whoever was responsible for Adnan’s death. Of tracking down Janus.

He quickly went through the other cages. Five different sorts of dog food, a few boxes containing leashes, muzzles, the studded collars that most suburban warriors chose to dress their dogs up in. One cage containing dietary supplements, protein powder, and various other gym accessories. The man seemed to have made his living importing a variety of goods.

In one box he found a heap of cheap T-shirts. He pulled out a bundle and wound them around his left arm. He used a roll of packing tape to hold them on. Then he turned the table in the middle of the room upside down and kicked off one of its carved legs. Weighing it in his hand, he went back to the cage.

The two dogs bristled the moment he approached, showing their sharp, red-stained teeth. The cell phone was on the far side of the body, almost tucked in against the wall. It may well not give him anything. This whole line of inquiry might be one big dead end, with no chance of leading him anywhere else. But without the phone he would never know.

He opened the door of the cage and took a step back. He’d been hoping the dogs would make a run for it, perhaps toward the food bowls in the far corner. But instead the animals remained where they were, beside the body.

Atif looked at his watch; time was running out. He bit his lip, then stepped cautiously inside the cage. The dogs stared at him with bulging eyes and curled their lips back so far that he could see the pink flesh of their gums. Atif held out the table leg, trying to push the dogs back ahead of him, away from the body. He succeeded reasonably well. The dogs carried on growling, launching quick attacks at the end of the table leg.

The phone was just a foot or so away from him now, right next to one arm of the body. Atif crouched down slightly, all the while trying to maintain eye contact with the dogs. He
stretched his left arm out slowly toward the phone. He took his eyes off the dogs for a moment. He saw movement but didn’t have time to react as the paler of the dogs threw itself at him and sank its teeth into the bundle of T-shirts wrapped around his arm. The pain took him by surprise, almost making him lose his balance. The dog was clinging on, refusing to let go. He could hear the fabric creak. Unless the sound was actually from his arm itself?

The darker dog leaped forward too and snapped at his leg, missing by about an inch and making Atif stagger back. Shit, there was no way he could let himself end up on the floor with these beasts on top of him.

His back hit the wall of the cage and he regained his balance. His left arm was hurting badly, one of the dog’s sharp canine teeth seemed to have penetrated the layers of cotton, and the pressure from its powerful jaws was crushing his lower arm. It was probably a five, possibly a six on a pain scale of one to ten. The animal was gurgling and rolling its eyes, showing their ghostly whites. The blood around its snout was staining the white fabric. It wasn’t showing any sign of letting go of his arm.

Atif straightened up and angled his body so the paler dog was blocking any attack by the other one. The pain was getting worse, and he had to get the dog off him somehow, at once. He held out the arm with the dog attached to it, then swung the table leg as far back as he could. Then he brought it down on the animal’s back with all the force he could muster.