Silenced (18 page)

‘Have we checked the phone number against our database?’

‘I just did,’ she said, looking pleased with herself. ‘And something came up, in fact, related to a passport reported missing. The man’s complete name and address were there.’

She handed him another slip of paper. Alex gave her a smile in return.

‘No criminal record,’ Ellen added, and then had to go because her mobile was ringing.

Alex wondered what he ought to do next. He looked at the name and number on the slip, and then at the plastic folder with all the other material. And then he looked at the report of the lost passport, which Ellen had printed out. All these passports that ‘vanished’. Without them, the stream of illegal migrants would have a hard time, Alex knew that.

We’ve turned Europe into a fortress as impregnable as Fort Knox, he thought grimly. At the price of losing control of the people who are going in and out of our country. Shameful for all concerned.

He gazed out of the window. Clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and the weekend only a few hours away. He blinked. There was no way he could face a whole weekend at home with Lena behaving like a stranger. She had become so inaccessible. For reasons he couldn’t put into words, he felt he could not talk to her about what had happened or the way the whole situation was affecting him.

Why not? wondered Alex. We’ve always been able to talk about everything.

Perhaps he ought to give it a try. Perhaps. But either way, he was definitely going to try to put in a few hours’ work over the weekend.

At first it looked as though the week was going to end as badly as it had begun. Peder Rydh was instructed to go through all the phone lists the police had had from Telia and from Jakob Ahlbin’s mobile supplier, while Joar got to go down with Fredrika to talk to Agne Nilsson. Peder felt as though he was going to blow sky high with frustration, but then he heard he was to be one of those interviewing Tony Svensson that afternoon, and calmed down. As he went through the lists, he even felt a bit exhilarated.

Every time he had to deal with material from phone tapping or surveillance, he was amazed at the vast number of calls people made every day. Often you could work out some sort of pattern, of course, like married couples who sometimes rang each other twice a day and sometimes not at all. But there were lots of other numbers and contacts to analyse. Contacts that could seem highly interesting in terms of timing, but which on closer examination turned out to be the local pizzeria, for example.

In the case of Jakob Ahlbin’s phone and any contact he might have had with Tony Svensson, it proved quite simple. Peder grinned and punched the air as he found a match.

Tony Svensson had rung Jakob Ahlbin on three occasions, and each time it was a very short call, making Peder assume he had got through to Jakob’s answering machine. They would never be able to recreate the actual content, but the very fact that Svensson had rung Ahlbin was proof enough.

He hurried out of his office and over to Alex’s. But he hovered uncertainly in the doorway; his boss looked even grumpier than usual. Peder gave a discreet cough.

‘Yes?’ said Alex severely, but softened when he saw who it was. ‘Oh, come on in.’

Somewhat heartened, Peder went in and showed Alex the telephone lists.

‘Good,’ said Alex, ‘good. Draw up an application to the prosecutor double quick; I want this bloke brought in for unlawful menace before the end of the day. Particularly now this crap’s all over the media.’

A warm feeling spread through Peder’s body. So he wasn’t being left entirely out in the cold. But with the warmth came the stress. Who had leaked the right-wing angle to the media?

He was heading for the door when Alex said: ‘Er, you haven’t got a minute, have you?’

It had been too good to be true, of course. Even before he sat down, he knew what Alex had on his mind. But the way he chose to express it came as a complete surprise.

‘In this workplace, as long as I’m in charge,’ he said, ‘a croissant is a croissant. And nothing else,’ he said, emphasising every syllable.

I’m gonna die, thought Peder. I’m gonna die of shame and I damn well deserve it, too.

He scarcely dared look at Alex, who went on relentlessly.

‘And when one of my staff – for private or other reasons – is in such a state that he can’t tell the difference between a pastry and something else, then I expect the person in question to get to grips with it and sort himself out.’

He stopped and fixed Peder with a look.

‘Understood?’

‘Understood,’ whispered Peder.

And wondered how on earth he could carry on doing his job.

They met in the living room of the older man. It was their third meeting in swift succession, and neither of them felt particularly comfortable in the company of the other. But there was no way round it, in view of recent events.

‘We knew it would generate a lot of attention,’ said the younger man. ‘It was hardly a surprise to any of us that a vicar committing suicide would be big news.’

There was no point contradicting him. Planning and setting the stage for an operation like that was one thing. Carrying it through was something else entirely. Holding your nerve and staying calm was vital.

The older man spoke.

‘There are a number of unfortunate circumstances that we need to be wary of,’ he said firmly. ‘The media reporting, for one thing. I wasn’t expecting to see articles with names and photos of the deceased until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’

‘No, I don’t think any of us were.’

‘Damn the police. Every investigation leaks like a blessed sieve.’

There was a pause.

‘This makes rather a mess of the timetable,’ sighed the older man. Particularly for our friend abroad. When do we expect her back?’

‘Monday, we thought.’

‘Does that seem credible? I mean, if the news is already out?’

‘Most of it can be explained away,’ the younger man said in a matter-of-fact tone.

He looked awful when he attempted a smile. A series of operations to correct his injury had only achieved half of what had been hoped for. And now he had decided to settle for looking this way. The crooked smile had become his trademark.

The older man got up and went over to the window.

‘I’m not very happy about the defection we had before all this happened. It disturbs me, I have to say. The fact that there’s someone out there who knows too much. I hope you’re right – that we can still consider him our friend. Things look bad for us otherwise.’

‘You know he hasn’t had his share yet,’ said the younger one. ‘That should keep him in line. And he was deep in the shit himself when he backed out. He could never shop us and keep in the clear himself.’

It was an argument that seemed to reassure the older man, who briskly moved on to the next point on the agenda.

‘I understand there was a problem with our latest daisy,’ he said, taking a seat in the wing-back chair by the bookshelf full of dictionaries and encyclopedias.

The younger man’s face hardened. For the first time since his arrival he looked visibly worried, and his words confirmed the fact.

‘That’s more of a problem. Unfortunately we weren’t able to pick our flower before he spread the good news, as it were, to some of his friends. Or one, at any rate. Who then got in touch with the vicar.’

The older man knitted his brow.

‘Have we any way of assessing the scale of the damage?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we’re pretty sure we can. And as I say, he didn’t let on to many people. Unfortunately, we haven’t got his friend’s name. But I’m on the case.’

The men fell silent. It was almost as if the sound had been absorbed by the bookshelves covering almost the full length of the walls and the expensive rugs on the floor. It was the older man who found his voice first.

‘And the next daisy?’

The younger man’s deformed smile appeared again.

‘He’s paying on Sunday.’

‘Good,’ said the older one. ‘Good.’

And he added:

‘Will this one live?’

Silence again.

‘Probably not. He seems to have blabbed, too, broken the rules.’

The other man paled.

‘This wasn’t the way we envisaged things going. We can’t have any more failures like this. Maybe we need to suspend the operation for the time being?’

The younger man did not seem capable of seeing that disaster could be imminent.

‘Let’s wait and see how our friend on the other side of the law plays his cards during the day today.’

The older man pursed his lips.

‘It shouldn’t be a problem. He knows what will happen if he makes the mistake of betraying us.’

His stomach hurt as he said the words, almost as if they made him afraid of himself.

STOCKHOLM

Tony Svensson was a creature of habit. His world basically revolved round three places: network HQ, the car repair shop, and his home. They opted for the repair shop.

It was all achieved without too much fuss. He spat and swore as the police cars screeched to a halt outside where he worked, but once he appreciated the seriousness of the situation, he stopped resisting. The officers who were there to pick him up said he even smiled as the cold metal of the cuffs closed round his wrists. As if the feeling rekindled memories from a time he had almost forgotten.

The prosecutor agreed that there was sufficient proof for suspecting Tony Svensson of unlawful menace. The emails and phone lists were more than enough. It remained to be seen whether they could get a prosecution out of it; it depended how cooperative Agne Nilsson was. Unlike Jakob Ahlbin, he was still alive and able to testify about the threats. If he was willing. Not many people dared to testify against groups like Tony Svensson’s.

Peder and Joar were to conduct the interview. The energy which interviewing normally injected into Peder failed to materialise when he had to work with Joar. He glanced sideways at his colleague as they stood in silence in the lift. A pink shirt under his jacket. As if that was the sort of thing you could wear in the force. Another of those signs.

There’s something weird about that guy, thought Peder. And I shall damn well find out what it is, even if I have to drag it out of him.

Tony Svensson was waiting for them in the interview room where they had taken him after his formal admission to custody.

‘You know what crime you are suspected of?’ asked Joar.

Tony Svensson smiled and nodded. It was obvious he had been through all this before and he was taking the whole thing phlegmatically. As if you simply had to reckon on things sometimes going wrong, and then you had to take the consequences.

Had he not been so unkempt, he might even have passed for good-looking. But his shaven head, tattooed arms and oil-rimmed nails made him look like the gangster he was. His eyes were dark. Like two pistol bullets aimed at Peder and Joar.

He’s sharp, Peder judged instinctively. That’s why he’s so cool. And because he’s managed to get his solicitor here already.

‘It would be helpful if you answered in words, so it can be heard on the tape,’ Joar pointed out in a friendly way.

Rather too friendly.

Peder went cold. There was something spooky about the role Joar was adopting. Too balanced to be true. As if he might suddenly fly off the handle, throw himself across the table and kill the person on the other side.

Psychopath, that was the word that flashed into Peder’s mind.

‘Jakob Ahlbin,’ he said in a steady voice. ‘Does that name ring a bell?’

Tony Svensson hesitated. His solicitor tried to catch his eye, but Svensson avoided his look.

‘I may have heard the name some time,’ he answered.

‘In what context?’ asked Joar.

Tony Svensson brightened up again.

‘He interfered in the private affairs of me and my friends; that was how we got to know each other.’

‘In what way did he interfere?’ asked Peder.

A sigh escaped the shaven-headed man on the other side of the table.

‘He tried to come between us, make trouble.’

‘How?’

‘By poking his nose into a conflict that had nothing to do with him.’

‘What conflict?’

‘Nothing I want to go into.’

Silence.

‘Maybe a conflict that concerned someone who didn’t want to stay in your group?’ said Joar, leaning back with his arms folded on his chest.

Just the way Tony Svensson himself was sitting.

‘Yes, maybe it was,’ replied Tony.

‘So what did you do?’ asked Peder.

‘When?’

‘When Jakob Ahlbin took an interest in things that were no business of his.’

‘Ah, you mean then.’

Tony shifted his position and the solicitor leafed unobtrusively though his papers. In his thoughts he was clearly already on the way to the meeting with his next client.

‘I tried to make him see that he should stick to his own affairs and leave other people’s out of it,’ Svensson said.

‘How did you make him see that?’

‘I rang him and told him to go to hell. And sent a few emails as well.’

Joar and Peder automatically started flicking through the print-outs they had in front of them.

‘Did you say anything else in the emails?’ asked Peder.

‘You’ve got them right in front of you, for fuck’s sake,’ hissed Tony Svensson, his patience suddenly at an end. ‘Why don’t you read them out?’

Joar cleared his throat and read out loud: ‘
Things are looking bad for you, Ahlbin. Back off from this shit while you still can
.’

‘Did you write that?’

‘Yes,’ replied Tony Svensson. ‘But I don’t fucking well see how anyone could call it a threat.’

‘Wait,’ said Peder gently, ‘there’s more.’

He read out: ‘
Pity you can’t stop fucking us about, scumbag vicar. Pity you can’t see that the one in the sorriest state after all this will be you
.’

Tony Svensson started to laugh.

‘Still not a real threat.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Joar. The expression ‘‘sorry state’’ isn’t usually used in a positive sense.’

‘But it’s bloody hard to tell, isn’t it?’ said Tony with a wink.