‘Right now, I don’t give a toss about your children. The only thing I care about is going over there to see what’s making that noise before it’s too late.’
Without another word, the man turned and walked back to the cockpit, and moments later they were on their way.
Fabian kept a lookout through his binoculars and at regular intervals told the men to turn off the engines so he could listen for the sound of the outboard motor and adjust their course accordingly.
When he finally saw it again, there could be no doubt. It was a rubber dinghy. Far away, but definitely a rubber dinghy. Too far away for him to see anything other than that there was a dark shape cutting through the waves, leaving a white trail of roiling water in its wake.
‘See that?’ he called to the others, pointing. ‘Over there.’
The men in the cockpit nodded, and he saw the portlier one pick up the VHF microphone and say something while his colleague kept them on a straight course.
They were finally closing in on him. This case was finally going to be brought to an end. This sick, twisted case where nothing had been like anything else. It was still too early for a victory lap. But they were close now. So close he could make out the white foam behind the dinghy even without binoculars.
He pulled out his gun and checked to make sure the magazine was full. He hadn’t brought a bulletproof vest. But there should be no need for one. So far, Milwokh hadn’t used a gun for any of the murders, and there was nothing to suggest he was armed with one this time either.
His phone vibrated, welcoming him to Denmark. He took the opportunity to type out a text to Tuvesson about being minutes away from an arrest. But when the boat suddenly slowed down and the engines began to idle, he put the phone back in his pocket and hurried over to the cockpit.
‘What’s going on? What are you doing?’
‘We have to turn around, I’m afraid,’ the portly one replied.
‘What? What do you mean, turn around? We’re minutes away from catching up.’
‘That’s unfortunate, yes, but we have to—’
‘The only thing you have to do is what I tell you to do!’
‘Sorry. We’ve had a no and we can’t just—’
‘What do you mean, a no?’ Fabian cut in. ‘Who told you no?’
‘Denmark’s Naval Operative Command.’
‘But they gave us a green light just an hour ago. I don’t understand.’
‘Well, that makes three of us. But the order was unambiguous. They want us to leave Danish territory asap,’ said the man with the moustache. ‘So we might as well turn around before they get properly surly.’ He accelerated and turned the wheel as far as it would go.
‘No, no, no! Just calm down and hold on a minute.’ Fabian went back out to the deck and saw a big freight ship astern, heading north about fifty yards from them. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why the Danes had suddenly changed their minds. He pulled out his phone and was about to call Tuvesson when it suddenly lit up and vibrated in his hand. He’d received a text in Danish from a withheld number.
Like I told you in Snekkersten. The last thing you want to do is disappoint me.
The two sentences screamed Kim Sleizner. It couldn’t be anyone else. A week ago, that same man had saved him from drowning in a jacuzzi in Snekkersten. He’d gone there to arrest Eric Jacobsén, and it would have ended very badly if not for Sleizner.
The Danish detective chief superintendent had wasted no time afterwards making it clear to Fabian that he now owed him, and that repayment in the form of information on the whereabouts of Dunja Hougaard would be greatly appreciated.
The problem was that Fabian had no idea where she was. He’d been trying to reach her himself with no success. He’d explained as much to Sleizner, who apparently didn’t believe him and had now found a way to make the Danish Naval Operative Command force him back out into international waters.
The whole thing was absurd and completely unacceptable, but unfortunately tallied with what he’d heard about Sleizner. Calling Tuvesson and asking her to contact Sleizner, or preferably someone above him in the hierarchy, would only be a waste of precious time, and Milwokh would be long gone before they were granted permission to enter again.
He raised his binoculars and watched the Swedish-flagged freight ship MS Vinterland pass by them, blocking most of the view with its enormous, dark blue hull. Somewhere on the other side of it was Milwokh, free now to disappear in almost any direction.
He thought about Dunja, who two years earlier had jeopardized her entire career to help him gain access to a perpetrator’s car, which the Danish police had impounded, and how it was thanks to her they’d finally had a break in the case.
Whether it was because of that, or simply because frustration had morphed into pure rage, he would later be unable to say. But the moment he felt the cold steel in his hand, he knew he had no other choice.
‘Turn the boat around,’ he said, sounding significantly calmer than he felt.
The two men’s eyes went straight to the gun in his hand.
‘Hold on. Are you threatening us?’ the portly one said with a glance at his colleague.
Fabian nodded. ‘I want you to turn the boat around, and I want you to do it now.’
‘You can’t do this. It’s not our fault. We’re not the ones who decided to—’
‘I’m fully aware of that. The idiot who did is called Kim Sleizner and he’s just trying to mess with me. But that’s my headache. All you have to worry about is turning the boat around and getting past that freight ship as quickly as humanly possible. And this—’ He held the gun up. ‘Think of it as a good argument for when you have to explain this to your boss later.’
The men looked at each other and when the portly one finally nodded, the other reversed their course. A few minutes later, they cut through the backwash from MS Vinterland and once again had an unobstructed view to the west.
Fabian spotted the rubber dinghy, which looked like it was heading north-west towards the Danish coast, almost immediately.
‘There it is,’ he said, pointing with his arm outstretched. ‘Now all we have to do is catch up and I’ll take care of—’ He broke off when the phone on the communication panel began to ring.
‘I figured,’ said the portly man. ‘It’s the Danes. What do you want me to tell them?’
‘Nothing. Ignore it.’
‘But we can’t just—’
‘We can when I’m holding this.’ Fabian waved his gun around, fully aware it was against every regulation and might net him six months behind bars. But it wasn’t up to him any more. Milwokh had to be arrested. He’d deal with the consequences later.
‘Naval Operative Command calling KB 202. Over.’
‘Hadn’t we better answer, so they know we’re okay?’
‘KB 202, do you copy? Over.’
‘No one talks to them until I say so,’ Fabian said, his binoculars trained on the rubber boat.
‘We notice that you’re back in Danish territorial waters. What is the reason for that? Over.’
‘Look, I get that you’re trying to arrest the bloke,’ said the man with the moustache. ‘But we can’t just not answer. Just can’t. It goes against every—’
‘Fine, I’ll do it. You just make sure we stay on this course.’ Fabian walked over to the radio and picked up the microphone without lowering his binoculars. ‘This is Fabian Risk aboard KB 202. You are correct, we are back in Danish waters. The reason is that we’re in pursuit of a suspect attempting to escape in a rubber dinghy. His name is Pontus Milwokh and he is wanted for several murders. We will arrest him with or without your permission. I suggest you take up any problems you might have with that with my superiors. Over and out.’
‘We have received strict orders from our admiral and cannot accept—’
‘You might as well stop talking,’ Fabian broke in, keeping his binoculars fixed on a dark shape that looked like a body curled up in the foetal positi
on in the dinghy. ‘I know exactly who issued that order. His name is Kim Sleizner and you can tell him I don’t give a flying fuck about his pathetic territorial pissing. Besides, I thought out meant out. Over and out.’
He put the microphone down and levelled a stern look at the two men in the cabin, to make sure they didn’t get any ideas, before raising his binoculars again.
A vague suspicion had been growing stronger in his mind for a while, but he’d pushed it down, hoping he was wrong. Hoping Pontus Milwokh really did lie curled up, defenceless, in the dinghy. That this would finally end.
But it turned out his gut was right.
The rubber dinghy was drifting aimlessly on the waves, abandoned, a rolled-up black blanket and a water bottle the only signs there had ever been a person on board.
34
IT WAS JUST before half past two in the morning, which meant Fabian had been up for almost twenty-four hours, so no wonder he was feeling tired. But that wasn’t the reason he was so distracted he hadn’t heard a word of what Klippan and Lilja had been saying.
‘He could either duck his head under water and drown himself or he had to wait until the bath filled all the way to the cables and be electrocuted,’ Klippan said, topping up his coffee mug.
His mind was somewhere else entirely.
‘We’ll know which one he opted for as soon as Flätan is done with the autopsy.’ Lilja turned to Fabian and waved at him. ‘Hello. Are you awake?’
Fabian nodded and tried to look engaged.
‘Anyway,’ Klippan went on. ‘When we heard most signs point to Milwokh having drowned, we felt the best course of action was to get some shut-eye.’
‘So we were in the middle of turning out the lights and leaving,’ Lilja said.
At first, the thought had been so faint, he’d assumed it was nothing to get hung up on. A gut feeling he dismissed as a result of being stressed and disappointed and, above all, having had nothing to eat all day.
‘That’s when it hit me,’ Lilja continued and turned to the whiteboard, which was chock-full of the same seven letters in all kinds of combinations. ‘It turns out Milwokh has scrambled the letters in his name more than once.’
The thought had come to him the moment the coastguard had radioed them about the attack on the Hallberg-Rassy in the middle of Öresund.
Lilja sighed. ‘Am I the only one still awake here, or what?’
‘No, I’m listening.’ Fabian made a concerted effort to push his own musings aside. ‘You’re talking about Milwokh, who, if I understood you right, has changed his name again. So that’s not really his name, or what?’
‘It is. Or at least it has been since he was granted asylum. But…’
‘And this is where it gets really interesting,’ Klippan added.
But it was hard, virtually impossible. Because something wasn’t right about the relative timing of the bathtub murder and the events out on Öresund.
‘The thing is, that wasn’t the first time Milwokh came to Sweden,’ Lilja continued. ‘As a matter of fact, he grew up in Skåne and has lived most of his life here.’
‘Irene,’ Klippan said. ‘I think you’d better start from the beginning.’
‘All right, sorry. As you know, he rented a car that was parked near the laundry room where Moonif Ganem was murdered, which made us bring him in for questioning. At that point, he was calling himself Pontus Holmwik, and that is what his fake driving licence said, too.’ Lilja turned to the whiteboard and pointed to some of the many jumbles on it, with arrows pointing this way and that. ‘A week or so later, Klippan realized it’s the same exact letters that are on the door of the flat next to the one I just moved into. P. Milwokh. Are you with me so far?’
Fabian nodded.
‘It turns out there are more combinations.’
‘Five thousand and forty, to be exact,’ Klippan interjected. ‘And since we’re talking about factorial calculations, the proper term is permutations.’
‘As you can tell, we’ve spoken to Molander,’ Lilja said. ‘The point is that there’s a ‘permutation’ that’s slightly more interesting than the others. This one.’ She underlined the name Wikholm. ‘Maybe that rings a bell?’
Fabian had no choice but to shake his head.
‘Oh, come on, Wikholm. You don’t remember? Soni Wikholm.’
Lilja was right. Something about that name did sound familiar. He’d come across it in some case or other.
‘Soni Wikholm was the name of the papergirl who discovered your old classmate Seth Kårheden murdered in his own home. You know, the one who had his moustache cut off.’
Fabian nodded. ‘Wasn’t she the one filming around Johan Halén’s house out in Viken, as well?’
‘Exactly, which was why we found her in a shallow grave outside Mörarp just over a month ago.’
‘Fine, but what has she got to do with our killer?’
‘They’re brother and sister.’ Lilja spread her hands. ‘Soni Wikholm’s brother is or was called Pontus Hao Wikholm. They were adopted together from China by Ing-Marie and Börje Wikholm out in Påarp. Isn’t that nuts? I was actually at their parents’ house just a few months ago, going through boxes of Soni’s stuff in their basement. And one of the boxes belonged to her brother, and do you know what it was full of?’
Fabian shook his head.
‘Dice.’ Lilja paused for effect. ‘Dice, dice and more dice. An insane amount of them, along with some well-read library copies of Luke Rhinehart’s The Dice Man.’ She spread her hands and accidentally knocked over Klippan’s coffee, flooding the desk. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Klippan replied, rushing over to try to save as many documents as possible. ‘At least it’s a big break in the case. I’ll fetch a cloth.’ He left the room.
‘You don’t seem very excited.’ Lilja turned to Fabian. ‘Don’t you get it? We’ve finally figured out his MO. He uses dice. That’s how he makes his decisions.’
Fabian nodded. ‘Yes, I do get it. I came to the same conclusion myself when I found this in Ester Landgren’s room earlier tonight.’ He held up a small evidence bag containing the brushed-metal dice. ‘And the boy on the yacht told me he used a dice there as well.’
‘Okay. Then why didn’t you say something?’ Lilja snatched the evidence bag out of his hand and studied the dice.
‘When was I supposed to do that? We’ve barely been in the same room until now.’
‘Fabian, what’s the matter?’ Lilja handed the bag back.
‘What do you mean?’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ Lilja nodded and bit her lip.
‘Well, nothing, apart from Theodor being in police custody in Denmark, Matilda talking to ghosts and Sonja seeming to be doing worse than ever. Oh, actually, there’s one more thing. I’m bloody tired and I’m going to have to go home and get some sleep soon.’
‘Sure, we’re all tired and we all want to go home and sleep.’ Lilja pulled up a chair and sat down across from him. ‘Did you know that this Sunday, we will have been working together for exactly two years, you and me?’
‘No – like I said, I’ve been a bit busy, but, sure, that sounds about right.’
‘I didn’t know you then. I found you difficult. Maybe it’s a Stockholm thing, but I felt like you were keeping us at arm’s length.’
Fabian made as if to speak, but was silenced by a raised hand.
‘I remember thinking you were an arrogant prick, actually.’ She chuckled. ‘For a while, I even suspected you of being behind the murders. Certain things seemed to suggest it. But I know you better now. Much better. And though two years may not be that long in the grand scheme of things, it’s more than enough for me to be able to tell when something’s wrong.’
‘Irene, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Fabian tried to look at her with honesty and weariness in equal measure. ‘I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot. But maybe we can get into that more some other time, when things
have quietened down a bit. As for right now, nothing’s wrong. Other than the things I’ve already told you about.’
Lilja nodded. ‘With all due respect to what you and your family are going through – it’s awful in every possible way, and I don’t know how I would have kept going in your position. But don’t come in here and tell me that’s all it is. That those things are what’s on your mind, because if you do, I’m going to get proper mad at you.’
He was burning to tell her, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t know until tomorrow how Stubbs’s meeting with Conny Öhman had gone.
‘For fuck’s sake, Fabian. I’m so sick of your bullshit.’ Lilja got to her feet with a sigh. ‘Sometimes I don’t know why we work together at all.’
The door opened and Klippan entered with a coffee urn and a dish cloth. ‘I made a fresh pot while I was at it, in case anyone wanted…’ He trailed off and looked back and forth between Lilja and Fabian. ‘What’s going on? Did something happen?’
‘No.’ Lilja turned to Fabian. ‘Fabian’s just a bit tired and is going to head home and get some sleep.’
‘Right – or, like I said, there’s more coffee.’ Klippan held up the urn and started wiping down Lilja’s desk.
‘I don’t think Milwokh, or whatever you want to call him, was behind the bathtub murder,’ Fabian said.
Lilja turned to Klippan and then back to Fabian. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Several things suggest otherwise. None of the other victims had a choice of how to die, for instance. In all other cases, that was the dice’s job. Not the victim’s.’
‘Fine, so it’s different from the others. But they’re all murders. And besides, they’ve all been different. You said so yourself, just yesterday. That there were no common denominators and that that was in fact the common denominator.’
‘I know. And maybe that’s true. Like I said, I’m not sure. But another thing that bothers me is the timing. I don’t see how he could have committed both the bathtub murder and the sword attack on board the Hallberg-Rassy.’
‘Wasn’t it the same thing with Molly Wessman and Lennart Andersson?’ Klippan said. ‘Didn’t those murders happen on the same day, too?’
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