X Ways to Die

by Stefan Ahnhem

  Was that why he saw Milwokh’s face everywhere? Because he did.

  Like in the group of Asian tourists of various ages taking pictures with their selfie sticks and iPads ahead of him. Of course they all looked different. But not to him. Every last one of them could have been Milwokh, and he saw no alternative to pushing through the queue and searching them one by one.

  ‘Police. I’m from the police,’ he repeated over and over again, holding out his police ID while he patted them down and searched their backpacks and belt bags.

  ‘Hey! You!’ one of the guards shouted at him as he approached. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘My name is Fabian Risk, and I’m from the Swedish Police Authority.’

  ‘You’re a Swede?’

  Fabian nodded. ‘My superior, Astrid Tuvesson, is supposed to have contacted the Danish police to inform—’

  The guard cut him off and grabbed him by the arm. ‘I don’t understand you, but it doesn’t matter. Either way, I’m not going to let you run around making people uncomfortable. You’re coming with me.’

  ‘No, wait.’ Fabian resisted. ‘A killer’s on his way here. Maybe today or—’ He broke off as he spotted an Asian man passing under the arch.

  The man was wearing a baseball cap, a grey jacket and beige cargo shorts, and even though he couldn’t see his face, he wrenched his arm free and broke into a run. It was Milwokh. All the alarms in his head were going off like mad.

  The guard shouted after Fabian as he pushed through the sea of people. A child got in his way and fell over on the asphalt, crying. The mother shouted at him and the dad grabbed hold of his jacket, or maybe it was someone else. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting to Milwokh before it was too late.

  He eventually managed to push all the way up to the tills where he could climb over the barriers and finally start running after the man, who was now walking briskly past the elephant-headed mirrors towards the Pantomime Theatre.

  ‘Police!’ he shouted at the top of his lungs. ‘Stop!’ But the man kept walking without looking back. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ He pulled his gun out of its holster and disengaged the safety.

  He could vaguely hear panicked screaming all around him and out of the corner of his eye he saw people running in every direction. Only now did the man look back over his shoulder, straight at him. Then he broke into a run, just like everyone else.

  ‘I said stop!’ Fabian shouted again and fired a shot into the air, which finally made the man stop and put his hands up.

  ‘Get on the ground, face down! Arms and legs out,’ he shouted, but the next moment he felt a number of hands grab him and push him down on the asphalt.

  ‘No! It’s not me, it’s him!’ he bellowed as the guards wrenched the gun out of his hand.

  ‘Face down,’ one of the guards shouted at him, and put a knee on his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak Danish,’ he heard Milwokh say as he walked over towards them. ‘Was it me he was after?’

  Or maybe it wasn’t Milwokh? Had he been mistaken?

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ one of the guards replied.

  ‘Search him,’ Fabian said, trying to wriggle his head out from under the knee. ‘Listen to me! You have to search him!’

  The three guards exchanged looks and then one of them finally walked up to the man who at least looked a lot like Milwokh and began to pat him down. But all he found was a wad of Danish notes in one of the many pockets of his shorts. No knife, no gun, no rope. No weapons of any kind.

  ‘It’s okay, you can go,’ the guard said and the man nodded, turned his back on them and continued into the amusement park.

  67

  ELECTRICAL ROOM – NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS read the only sign on the door. No name and no letter box with stickers saying no to circulars. Nothing that suggested anyone lived there. But it took more to fool him. This was where the little Indian man had been registered as recently as a few months ago, before he’d gone to ground with Dunja.

  The lock pick’s performance was impeccable this time, too, and the moment Sleizner stepped into the hallway and quietly closed the door behind him, he was sure he was in the right place.

  True, the hallway looked much the same as other hallways, a rectangular passageway with doors on both sides. But other than a basket full of threadbare slippers and a coatrack with a see-through raincoat, it was empty. There was virtually no furniture and the bare walls were as empty as you might expect in the flat of a shady hacker who cared about nothing but the light from his screen.

  The door on the left stood ajar and led into a windowless bathroom. He turned on the naked bulb above the bathroom mirror, looked around and immediately spotted the top prize on the edge of the bath in the form of a pink Venus razor and a bottle of intimate soap of the exact same brand he’d seen in Dunja’s bathroom during one of his visits.

  This was where she lived. Just as he’d thought, Dunja, the Indian man and the Chinese elephant freak had swapped flats.

  He dragged his finger along the inside of the bath and noted that it was still wet. He was close. No question about it. With a bit of luck, he might even surprise her in the bedroom before she was dressed.

  He picked up the razor, sniffed it and counted about ten pubic hairs stuck between the blades, plus quite a bit of shaving cream. So the little slut was freshly shaved.

  He extracted the dark pubic hairs from the razor with a pair of tweezers and dropped them into a small sealable plastic bag. You never knew when they might come in handy. Then he stepped back into the hallway, popped his head into a messy kitchen whose grimy windows looked out on a smaller side street and turned to the closed door opposite.

  There were no signs on it, nothing specific to indicate it was a bedroom door. And yet he was completely convinced it was. He just knew, and why wouldn’t he? Until now, his gut had been right at every juncture. Everything was how he’d thought it would be.

  He went right up to the door, administered a few puffs of mouth spray and waited until every muscle in his body was tense and poised, then he opened the door as quietly and quickly as he could and entered.

  As expected, it was a bedroom, with an unmade bed and a nightstand topped with a stack of books. Clothes were piled on a chair in one corner. Blouses, a red bra and a pair of knickers that unfortunately smelled clean, so he didn’t bother pocketing them.

  A clothes rack with a small number of hangers stood along one wall and each item of clothing on it looked like it had been purchased at some moth-eaten second-hand dump. There were tattered dark jeans, a few sets of gym clothes and tops with different patterns, each more hysterical than the next, which was apparently part of her new feminist look, along with a shaved head, bright red lipstick and big earrings.

  He pulled out his phone and took a picture of each piece of clothing as well as the trainers and the heavy boots on the floor. Then he walked over to the nightstand to take a closer look at the books, which all seemed to be about bugging and surveillance. That was concerning, but worse was the receipt lying next to them, which revealed that they had all been purchased at Bog & Idé in Holbæk, of all places. That could be a coincidence, obviously, but something told him he should be seriously worried.

  A sudden gust from the window, which was open a crack, interrupted his reverie. Somewhere a door had opened, creating a cross-breeze that subsided as abruptly as it had arisen. He hurried back into the hallway, only to discover that it was as deserted as before. Had the little bitch really managed to sneak out behind his back? Or had a window been opened? There was, after all, one last closed door at the far end of the hallway.

  He walked up to it, pressed his ear against it and thought he could hear someone walking around whistling on the other side. So this was when it was going to happen. The moment he’d been looking forward to for months was finally here.

  The door seemed to open of its own accord the moment he put his hand on the handle, with the effect that his e
ntrance ended up not being the surprise he’d envisaged. He literally staggered into the room and almost fell over before managing to right himself.

  The room was considerably larger than all the others put together, and apart from a single removal box in the middle of the floor, it was virtually empty. Or, more accurately, emptied. But that wasn’t what made the ground disappear from under his feet. Nor was it that there was no sign of Dunja. It was the realization of what the room had once been.

  The walls were lined with desks, emptied of computers, screens and everything else. What was left were cut cables, stray extension leads and a handful of soldering irons, and on one of the desks, a small transistor radio playing the whistled melody he recognized from a Tarantino film.

  This had been a proper command centre. He could see it. The computers, screens and strange boxes with blinking, multicoloured diodes. The wire harnesses, exposed circuit boards and control panels. All to get under his skin and hit him where it hurt the most.

  Goddam fucking hell… The words echoed through his mind. Goddam bloody fucking shit hell… He had to sit down on the floor in the middle of the room to keep from falling over and try to slow his heart rate by breathing like he’d learned at yoga.

  When he stood back up, he realized he was in a different building than the one he’d originally entered, and that there was a door at the other end of the room. He walked over to it, opened it and discovered it was in fact another front door leading straight into a stairwell that would take him down to the side street. This, too, said Electrical room – No unauthorized access. Was this how she had escaped while he was in the bedroom? He could certainly feel the same cross-breeze as he had done then.

  He closed the door and looked around the abandoned room. They must have known he was coming. There was no other explanation. Somehow, they’d bloody well figured out he was going to show up today, right now.

  He’d thought he was a step ahead. That he was in control, with a firm grasp on the tiller. When in reality, the opposite was true. Pathetic, was what it was. So goddam fucking pathetic.

  The only silver lining was the removal box on the floor. Granted, it could be them taunting him again. After all, this was Dunja Hougaard, a goddam fucking bitch cunt. He prudently studied the box from every angle before finally bending down and opening it.

  The sight of the piles of circuit boards, cables and disassembled mobile phones was enough to let him know they’d been so rushed they simply hadn’t managed to take the box with them. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something they’d want him to have.

  He picked up one of the phones, which was connected to a circuit board via a number of electrodes and thin wires. That meant nothing to him, but there was bound to be someone back at headquarters who could explain it to him. Deeper down was a small, resealable plastic bag containing ten or so SIM cards. At least he knew what they were for.

  It was the eight digits, written in felt-tip on the bag, that finally made the penny drop and for the second time in just a few minutes, he had to sit down in order not to fall down.

  They could have been any eight digits. But they weren’t. Together, they formed a number. His phone number.

  68

  THE QUEUE WAS insane. They’d been inching their way forward at a snail’s pace for forty minutes now. He could almost see the slime trail behind them, and yet it would be at least another fifteen before they were in. A virtually hour-long, near-death-experience wait for one minute and fifty-eight seconds of bumper cars. That really wasn’t on.

  Yeah, that really was how long the ride lasted. He’d timed it, or his name wasn’t Ib. Not just once but all thirteen go-arounds that had taken place while they were waiting, and no matter how you counted, the average time was exactly one minute and fifty-eight seconds.

  That they had the temerity to flog all-day passes for several hundred kronor each on a day like this was nothing short of daylight robbery.

  If he was completely honest, he’d never really seen the draw of amusement parks. Waterparks were the worst. He’d rather strip naked, smear honey all over himself and be eaten alive by termites than spend one day at Lalandia. And Legoland, Bakken and Tivoli weren’t much better. They were all about one thing – to herd people into long queues and steal all their hard-earned money.

  Twice in a lifetime was enough. Two dutiful visits, no more. Once when your parents made you and once when your kids did. And yet this was his fifth trip to Tivoli, at least, and as always, he was the one who had to fork out a minor fortune for the privilege of queuing all day, surrounded by a horde of screaming brats.

  But the children, as Mette liked to say. Ib, we do it for the children. The children… her constant go-to. As though they weren’t helicoptered enough. As though they didn’t already get everything they pointed to. He wondered if they could even spell the word no.

  They were never whinier than at Tivoli. It didn’t matter how much ice cream and candyfloss you bought them. When you finally said no to some grotesquely oversized lollipop that would inevitably be left unfinished to get gross and gather dust at home, all hell broke loose. Scenes were made and you had to hear that you were the stingiest human on the planet.

  At least it was finally their turn now. Not that he was looking forward to forcing his legs into the miniscule bumper car and getting hit by a bunch of maniacs from every direction. No, he would happily forgo that. The only silver lining was that at least the queueing would be over for a few minutes.

  He hated this with a burning passion. But he did it anyway and kept his thoughts to himself. No one could say he didn’t. He even put on the safety harness after the little coloured boy pointed out that he hadn’t. Perhaps his smile was less than completely genuine, but there he was, enduring, for the sake of his family and the children, accelerating as hard as he could in a car that insisted on driving diagonally backwards.

  At least he had his baseball cap on. Mette had badgered him about leaving it at home, of course. But he’d refused, and the row had been unavoidable. She’d rehashed her litany of tired arguments. About how the Danish People’s Party’s logo bothered people and that you really didn’t have to force your own political views down other people’s throats.

  What she didn’t understand was that the hat with the DPP logo on the blue background was his bulwark on a day like this. He’d made so many compromises since he woke up that morning that without it, there would be nothing left of Ib.

  Besides, he couldn’t see what the problem was with making his political affiliation known. If anyone wanted to come up to him and have a discussion about something, why not? Like the importance of keeping Denmark pure.

  He didn’t mind explaining to people what was really going on in the world. How the Muslims’ wet dream was to come in and take their jobs and pensions while also forcing their sick values on everyone. These were facts. Not to mention all the Swedes who on days like this flooded in across the sound and made trouble. Without them, the queues would have been half as long.

  No, kick out the riff-raff so real Danes could have some peace and quiet. What was so hard about that?

  There was a loud thud and the entire car shook as he was rear-ended moments after he’d finally managed to make his car stop reversing. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he felt a sudden pinprick in his neck and then an intense pain spread down his shoulders and back.

  Was it whiplash? Was this what it felt like? It would be just his luck to get injured in a goddam bumper car. He turned around as much as he could and saw a happy Chinese bloke go by, smiling at him.

  Of course it was a Chink. Go figure.

  69

  THIS WAS MADNESS. Utter madness.

  While waiting for the two Tivoli guards to make contact with their supervisor, Fabian kept his eyes down. He could almost see time slipping through his fingers, spilling onto the table and over the edge. Every second he’d been ahead before, he was now falling behind. All while thousands of blissfully ignorant visitors were milling about just o
utside in the mistaken belief that this was just another beautiful vacation day full of sunshine and spinning carousels.

  Three times he’d got up and explained to the Danes that this was no time for red tape, that they had to call in more staff and, above all, proper police support. He’d even had Tuvesson explain the gravity of the situation to them. But each time, they’d simply told him to calm down and carried on making internal calls.

  ‘Well?’ he said when they finally turned to him. ‘Did you get hold of him?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the one whose Swedish was at least functional. ‘His daughter is graduating today, so his phone is probably turned off.’

  ‘Okay. But then someone else must be in charge, right? Or what? You can’t just disregard security every time someone’s daughter’s graduating, right?’

  ‘All right, settle down,’ said the other guard, raising a warning hand.

  ‘No, I’m not going to settle down, and you shouldn’t either with a killer about to attack this place any minute.’

  ‘Do you know how old Tivoli is?’ The guard spread his hands. ‘One hundred and sixty-nine years. So we know what we’re doing.’

  ‘Know what you’re doing? Then how come we’re sitting in here instead of being out there trying to apprehend him?’

  ‘Because you’re the one who came storming in here, firing a gun and attacking one of our visitors.’

  ‘I thought it was him, and I still do.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve made that clear. But the only one armed in that situation was you.’

  Fabian was about to argue but stopped himself. He still believed it was Milwokh he’d seen, but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Fine, it’s possible it wasn’t him, and since we didn’t bring him in for questioning, we can only pray you’re right and I’m wrong. But that doesn’t change the fact that we have to be ready when he does get here, because he will. He is coming here. Do you understand me?’