The Spring Tide (20 page)

‘Yes.’

‘I read that stuff about child labour, it doesn’t look good that.’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps you should make a donation?’

‘To?’

‘A children’s hospital, in Walikale, pay for the construction and the equipment, plough a few million into the local health care, that would certainly make things look a lot better.’

‘Perhaps. The problem is the actual mining, we can’t get at the land we want.’

‘Have you moved too fast?’

Bertil smiled a little. Erik was phenomenal at seeming to be an outsider. In every situation where there were ‘a few hitches’.

‘You know exactly how quickly we’ve been moving, Erik, you saw all the planning yourself, didn’t you?’

‘We don’t need to go into that.’

Grandén didn’t like to be reminded that he still had his fingers in the jam jar. Officially, he had licked them clean a long time ago.

‘Is that why you seem a bit off?’ he asked.

‘No.’

Suddenly Bertil came close, very close, to saying too much. It might have been the wine, lack of sleep, the pressure, or just the need to unburden himself. Just relax a little, with an old musketeer.

But he stopped himself.

He wouldn’t have had a chance to explain. The taped
conversation
. And even if he could, if he actually were to confess to his old friend the reason for the conversation, then he knew how Erik would react. What he knew was that Erik was the same type of person as him, through and through. Cast in the same egocentric steel mould. If he were to hear about the conversation it is highly likely he would have signalled to the waiter for the bill, thanked his old friend for a long and profitable friendship and then disappeared from Bertil’s life.

For good.

So he steered the conversation towards Erik’s favourite subject instead.

‘What actually is this appointment that’s coming up?’

‘Confidential. But if it falls into place then you’re going to be saying “Skål!” to one of Europe’s most powerful men next time we sit here.’

Erik Grandén pulled in his lower lip a little. An organic movement that was his way of indicating maximal subtext.

In Bertil’s eyes, he just looked affected.

He assumed he must have passed out for a while. How long? That he didn’t know. When he came to, he felt a cold draught through the narrow passage. Something must have been opened at the other end, the end that he was aiming for, and had created a cold draught. It was probably the cold that had caused his body to shrink a few millimetres and loosen. Just a little. But enough so that by manically pushing with his feet he could get through the bend and lie outstretched again.

He breathed out, several minutes, and could only note that it would be impossible to slither backwards. If he was going to get out of here, there was only one way. One direction, and that was deeper in.

He started to slither again.

And slither.

And because his sense of time had disappeared long ago, he had no idea how long he slithered, but suddenly he was there. Almost at the edge of the end of the passage. He slithered the last little bit and looked out.

Into an enormous cavern hewn out of the rock.

What he saw there, he would never forget.

First it was the light. Or lights. Many stands hung with
spotlights
that spread a flashing rotating red and green light over the whole cavern. A strong light. It took a while for Stilton’s eyes to adjust.

Then he saw the cages.

Two of them. Rectangular. Three metres wide and two metres high. Set up in the middle of the cavern. Built of steel frames with grey metal netting between.

And inside the cages, the boys.

Two in each cage, around ten or eleven years old. Naked, except for a pair of small shorts in black leather. In an almost reckless fight with each other. Without gloves. Bleeding a bit here and there on their bodies.

And the spectators.

Several rows around the cages. Spurring them on. Shouting. Cheering. Their hands full of banknotes that changed owner several times during the course of the fight.

Cage fighting.

With betting.

If he hadn’t been forewarned through Acke’s story, it would have taken a long time for him to understand what he was seeing.

It was bad enough anyway.

Even though he had used one of
Situation Sthlm
’s computers a couple of hours earlier and searched for ‘cage fighting’ and read a lot of extremely frightening information. How it had started in England many years ago. Parents who let their children fight in metal cages. To ‘train themselves’ as one father had put it. He had seen a video on YouTube where two eight year olds fought inside a steel cage at Greenlands Labour Club in Preston. It had almost made him sick to watch it.

But he continued to click.

Methodically, he had sought out more and more obscure information. How cage fighting had spread to other countries and escalated year by year. With more money and betting involved, and parallel with the spread it had moved further and further from public view. Eventually it ended up entirely underground.

Hidden from the everyday world, but well known to those who enjoyed seeing children fighting each other in cages. Like under-age gladiators.

How the hell could that be kept secret, Stilton wondered.

And how could they get the children to take part?

He understood that when he read a text that explained that the child who won a fight rose a step on a special ranking list. The one at the top of the list after ten fights won money. The world was crawling with poor children. Homeless children. Kidnapped children. Children without anyone who cared about them. Children who might have a chance to get somewhere by fighting in cages.

Or children who simply wanted to try to win a bit of money to help their mum.

Repulsive, Stilton thought. He read about how fights were often arranged by youths who themselves had started in the cages. And how they had a special tattoo which indicated who they were.

Two letters: KF. With a ring round them.

Like one of the people who beat up the rough sleeper at Västerbron.

Kid fighters, according to Acke.

That was why he was down here.

He found it hard to keep looking at the cages. One of the young boys had been knocked down and lay bleeding on the floor of the cage. A metal hatch was lifted slightly and the boy was dragged out. Like a carcass. The other boy danced around inside the cage while the spectators whistled and cheered and then became silent. A new fight was about to begin.

That was when he sneezed.

Not just once, but four times. The dust in the passage had lodged in his nose. By the fourth sneeze he had been discovered.

Four of them pulled him out of the opening and one knocked him down. In the fall, he hit his head against the rock wall. He was dragged into a smaller cavern, out of sight of the spectators. There they pulled his clothes off him. There were still four of them. Two slightly younger, two slightly older. He was lifted
up and thrown against the cold granite wall. Blood from his head wound ran down over his shoulders. One of the younger assailants pulled out a spray can and wrote TRASHKICK across his naked back.

Another one pulled out a mobile phone.

One of the disadvantages of mobiles is that you can phone someone by mistake when the phone is in your pocket. An advantage is that you can easily get at the last number you phoned. That was what happened when Mink’s mobile received a call. A call-back from someone who had been alert and focused during the last conversation but who now was in a totally different state. So different that Mink could only hear a weak wheezing. But the number on the display showed who it came from: Stilton.

Mink quickly worked out where he must be.

More or less.

Årsta is large if you don’t know where to start looking, so it took a while for Mink to find nothing. In the end he phoned Vettan and spoke to Acke and got Acke to give him a more detailed description of where in Årsta it was. Approximately. It helped, a little. Mink got a good impression of the area. Good enough that he eventually could find Stilton. Huddled up against a grey rock face. Naked and bloody. His clothes thrown around him. He was holding his mobile in his hand. Mink could see that Stilton had been badly beaten up. But he was alive. And communicating. He managed to get his trousers and jacket on.

‘You need to go to hospital.’

‘No!’

Stilton hated hospitals. Mink considered forcing him. He decided not to, and phoned for a taxi.

The first that arrived immediately turned back when the driver saw the two of them. The second taxi stopped and
the driver suggested that they should phone for an ambulance. Then left. The third taxi had just taken someone to a nearby address not far away when Mink waved it down. By then, Mink had learnt his lesson and put Stilton out of sight. Behind some bushes. He quickly explained to the taxi driver that his mate had been beaten up and needed to be bandaged up a little and before the driver could reply Mink pushed two five-hundred-crown notes through the window.

The day’s winnings.

‘I drove a taxi for many years, so I know what it’s like sometimes, drunks and shit, but this is OK, we’re going to Wiboms väg in Solna, a thousand crowns without the meter, not bad for a short drive, eh?’

Olivia sat in her kitchen and was eating an ice cream. With her laptop open. Suddenly she dropped the ice cream on the floor and stared at the screen, all eyes. She had gone into the Trashkick site out of pure curiosity. First she’d seen a naked man being beaten up, in a rock shelter somewhere, rather dark images, and then the body was thrown out somewhere and landed beside a stone wall.

‘Stilton?’

At first she felt like the ice cream she had just been eating. Ice cold, inside. Then she keyed in Stilton’s number.

And waited.

Elvis quickly lapped up the melting ice cream on the floor.

Would he answer? He did, in the end, although it wasn’t him. It was an unfamiliar voice that answered on his mobile.

‘Hello, this is Mink answering Stilton’s mobile.’

Mink? Was that one of the people who had beaten him up? Pinched his mobile? Why didn’t he answer himself?

‘Hi, my name is Olivia Rönning and… is Tom there? Stilton?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘In Vera’s caravan. What do you want?’

Vera’s caravan? That Vera? The one who’d been murdered?

‘How is he? I saw online that he’d been beaten up and…’

‘He’s OK. Do you know him?’

‘Yes.’

White lie, a bit, Olivia thought. But I’ll make it even whiter.

‘He’s helping me with a job at the moment. Where is Vera’s caravan?’

Mink needed help with the wounded Stilton. Above all he needed bandages and plasters. Olivia could get that. So he told her how to find Vera’s caravan and asked her to hurry.

Olivia found her first-aid kit and threw herself into her car. It wasn’t entirely clear to her why she was doing this. Sympathy for the beaten-up Stilton?

Presumably.

But mainly pure impulse.

When Olivia got close to the caravan and cautiously looked in through the window she met with a really strange sight in the weak light of the lantern. A thin little figure with a pointed nose and a ponytail was crouching in front of an unclothed Stilton. The little guy was putting on some yellowy-brown goo from an old glass jar. For a moment Olivia considered rewinding, getting back in her car and buying more ice cream.

Knock, knock!

Mink opened the door.

‘Olivia?’

‘Yes.’

Mink stepped back into the caravan with the jar in his hand and continued to apply the ointment to Stilton’s chest. Olivia climbed the two steps up into the caravan and went inside. She put her first-aid kit down. Stilton looked at her.

‘Hello, Tom.’

Stilton didn’t answer.

On the way to Ingenting forest, Olivia had caught up with her impulse. Why did she want to go to the caravan? And above all, what would Stilton think about it? Did he know she was going to come? He ought to have realised when that Mink guy told her where the caravan was, surely? Or was he too dazed to twig what was happening? Wasn’t it really an extreme infringement of his privacy to just come here? They had only met in that dustbin room. She looked at Stilton who kept his gaze directed towards the floor. Was he furious?

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Have you been…?’

‘Drop it.’

Stilton cut her off without looking up. Olivia didn’t know whether she ought to leave. Or sit down. She sat down. Stilton
gave her a quick look and then sank down onto the bunk. He was in so much more pain than what could be seen. He needed to lie down. Mink pulled a blanket over him.

‘Have you got any painkillers here?’ he asked.

‘No. Wait, yes, there.’

Stilton pointed at his backpack. Mink opened it and got a new little bottle out.

‘What’s this?’

‘Stesolid.’

‘That’s not a painkiller, that’s a…’

‘Two pills and water.’

‘OK.’