by Kepler, Lars
It’s Gustav Eriksson, from Hasselfors Garden Supplies. One of his colleagues is standing a little further in among the benches.
Valeria waves to them, then walks closer and pulls the door open.
Gustav is a thickset man in his sixties who always starts to rattle the coins in his pocket whenever he talks business. He has glasses and a salt-and-pepper moustache, and always wears baggy jeans and pink or yellow shirts and jackets.
Valeria’s been buying compost and manure from Hasselfors for over ten years.
She assumes he must have been passing and wanted to check if she was likely to place another order before spring.
‘Gustav?’
‘Spring’ll be with us before you know it,’ he says, rattling the coins in his pocket.
His heavily built colleague picks up a potted tomato plant and some of the soil runs out through the hole at the bottom.
‘I’m still working it out,’ she says. ‘But I’m going to need quite a lot this year.’
He lets out a low, embarrassed chuckle.
‘You’ll have to excuse me calling in so late, I very nearly turned back, but when I saw that you already had a customer in here, I assumed it was OK to—’
There’s a heavy thud and Gustav stops mid-sentence. Then there’s a second, wetter thud and Gustav slumps onto the cupboard in front of her.
She doesn’t understand.
His legs are jerking spasmodically, but his face is slack even though his eyes are wide open.
Valeria sees the other man beside him, and is about to tell him to call an ambulance when she sees the hammer in his hand.
A dark pool of blood is spreading out beneath Gustav.
The man with the hammer is almost two metres tall, with a thick neck and round shoulders. His nostrils are flaring and he looks tense. His breathing is rapid and his pearly earrings are swaying in an agitated manner.
It’s like a dream.
She tries to move backwards, away from him, but her legs feel oddly numb, as if she were wading through water.
The man tosses the hammer aside, as if he no longer understands what he’s holding, and turns towards her with a quizzical expression.
‘Don’t go,’ he mumbles.
‘I’ll come back,’ she whispers, and turns slowly towards the door.
‘Don’t go!’ the man bellows, and sets off towards her.
Valeria breaks into a run, and overturns the bench holding the blackberry bushes behind her, and hears him trip over it and roar like an animal. She rushes between the shelving, jumping over bags of compost.
She realises that he’s right behind her, and bumps into one of the shelves as she passes through the beam from the car’s headlamps, knocking two terracotta pots to the floor.
Valeria reaches the door and just manages to grab hold of the handle when the man catches up with her.
She spins round and lashes out with the torch, hitting him hard in the cheek. He staggers sideways and she kicks him between his legs. She sees him bend double and sink to his knees.
She turns back to the door again.
The old lock has caught, and she hits the rusty latch with her knuckles and tugs at the door.
Reflected in the shaking glass she sees the man creeping towards her.
Valeria turns the handle and hears herself whimper as he grabs hold of one of her legs. With a single tug he pulls her to the floor. She collapses onto her front and puts her hands out to brace her fall, then rolls onto her side and tries to kick him.
He yanks her backwards hard.
Her raincoat slides up and she scrapes her stomach and chin.
Before she has time to get to her feet he’s on top of her, hitting her in the back. She loses her breath, coughs and is struggling to breathe when he hits her again.
He backs away from her, growling, breaking the pieces of the fallen pots.
Gasping, she gets up on all fours and sees the man pull plants onto the floor as he makes his way back to Gustav. He starts kicking the lifeless body and roaring with rage.
She gets to her feet and reaches out to the glass to steady herself as he returns to her.
‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ she manages to blurt out, and tries to fend him off with one hand.
He catches hold of her arm and hits her hard across her left cheek, and she stumbles to the right, hitting her head against the glass and falling to the ground in a shower of broken glass.
He stamps on her chest, yelling that she’s about to die, that he’s going to slaughter her, and is coughing and bellowing as he sits astride her, grabs hold of her throat with both hands and starts to squeeze her neck.
She can’t breathe, and struggles to get him off her, but he’s too strong. She twists sideways and tries to reach his face.
He starts to hit her against the floor. The third time the back of her head flares, she loses consciousness.
She dreams that she’s in a lift, heading down to the ground fast, and wakes up because of an excruciating pain in one leg. The man is biting her thigh through her jeans, then he gets up with a roar and kicks at her feet.
Warm blood is oozing from the bite.
Only half-conscious, she watches as he tears plants down from the benches, then picks up a pruning knife from the floor.
The large man goes back to Gustav and slits his throat with a deep cut, then slices him open from his navel to his neck. He heaves Gustav up onto his shoulder and walks to the door. Little spasms run through his body, and blood pours down his back.
He passes Valeria and kicks the greenhouse door open. The hinges break and the glass shatters as it hits the ground.
Valeria gets to her feet, and almost throws up from the pain. Blood is running down under her raincoat from the back of her head. She staggers forward, fumbling for support, and slips out through the door.
There’s a muffled explosion from the turning circle as the car starts to burn. Dirty petrol flames are tossed sideways by the wind. The large man smashes the windows with a spade, then takes a step back as the flames flare up and fixes his gaze on Valeria.
She turns and starts to run into the forest, gasping with pain from her thigh. Whimpering, she forces her way through the undergrowth, almost falling but somehow managing to stay on her feet.
His heavy breathing is right behind her. She treads in a water-filled hole and is trying to shield her face from low-hanging branches when he hits her on the back of the head with the shovel.
Knocked out, she falls headfirst through the dry branches onto the frosty lingonberry twigs. With a roar he lashes out again but misses her head and loses his grip on the shovel.
She comes round and realises that the man is dragging her through the forest by one leg. Valeria has lost her boots and her raincoat is dragging behind her. She tries to grab hold of a slender birch tree, but isn’t strong enough.
28
Joona Linna is now a Finnish landscape architect called Paavo Niskanen, according to his passport and bank card. Apart from his actual body, there’s no longer anything that can be linked to his true identity and life in Stockholm.
No paperwork, no electronics, not even any items of clothing.
He’s cut open the spare tyre, stuffed it with explosives and detonators, then welded the rubber wall closed again.
Distances in western Europe are short compared to Sweden.
It’s only five hundred kilometres from Béziers in the South of France to Geneva in Switzerland on the A9 autoroute, but because he chooses to drive on smaller roads the trip takes seven hours.
Joona keeps telling himself that everything’s going to be all right. He knows that Nathan will have made sure Valeria has got protection. It would have been better if she’d come with him, but she’ll be safe until Joona manages to find Jurek.
He crosses the narrow extension of the La Laire Rau river and the unmanned Swiss border, drives along the Chemin du Moulin-de-la-Grave and approaches Geneva beneath a sky heavy with rain.
Joona
parks in Rue de Lausanne and slings his bag over his shoulder. He walks through the extravagant entrance of the railway station, into the café, and fetches the envelope from the counter containing the key card from Lumi.
That means she’s here.
She managed to escape from Paris.
Before Joona walks into the marble-clad reception of the Warwick Geneva Hotel he covers his head with the hoodie.
As he’s heading up to the second floor he keeps his head lowered so the security cameras in the lift don’t pick him up.
The carpet in the corridor silences his steps. He stops outside room 208 and knocks.
The peephole in the door goes dark.
He knows Lumi is standing to one side, covering the lens with something – a sofa cushion, maybe – in case the person outside is ready to shoot through the door the moment she looks through it.
The corridor is still empty, but he can hear faint music from somewhere.
The peephole gets lighter, then darker again.
Joona nods and Lumi opens the door. He goes inside quickly, locks the door behind him and puts his bag down on the floor.
They hug, he kisses her on the head, breathing in the scent of her hair, and holds her tight.
‘Dad,’ she whispers to his chest.
He smiles as he looks down at her, she’s got her light brown hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, and she seems to have grown slightly slimmer, her cheekbones are more pronounced and her grey eyes darker.
‘You look great,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ she says, lowering her gaze.
He walks further into the double room, turns the light out, closes the curtains and turns back towards her again.
‘Are you absolutely sure?’ she asks seriously.
‘Yes.’
He can see that she’s trying not to say anything. She just nods and goes and sits down on one of the armchairs.
‘Have you got rid of everything?’ he asks as he fetches his bag from the hall.
‘I’ve done what we agreed,’ she replies in a heavy voice.
‘Did it go OK?’
She shrugs and looks down.
‘I’m so sorry you’re caught up in this,’ Joona says, pulling out a plastic bag. ‘Put these clothes on … they’re probably a bit too big, but we can buy more on the way.’
‘OK,’ she murmurs and gets to her feet.
‘Change everything, underwear, hairclips—’
‘I know,’ she interrupts, then goes into the bathroom with the bag swinging from her hand.
Joona takes the pistols out of his bag. He slips one into the shoulder holster beneath his left arm, then tapes the other to his right shin.
Lumi emerges as he’s adjusting his clothes. Her new sweater is baggy and the trousers hang loosely from her slender hips.
‘Where’s your gun?’ he asks.
‘Under the pillow on the bed.’
‘You’ve checked the hammer and spring?’
‘You did that before I got it,’ she says, folding her arms over her chest.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she insists.
‘Do it yourself, that’s the only way to be sure.’
Without saying anything she goes over to the bed, pulls out her Glock 26, removes the magazine, takes the bullet out of the chamber and disassembles the gun, putting the pieces on the bed and then examining the recoil spring.
‘I’m starting to get used to disappearing,’ Joona says, trying to smile. ‘And I know all this can feel a bit over the top.’
Lumi doesn’t respond. She puts the gun back together again, tests the mechanism a couple of times, then reinserts the magazine.
Joona goes into the bathroom and finds her discarded clothes in the bathtub. He puts them all in a bin-bag, gathers up the rest of her things, grabs her shoes from the floor next to the door and leaves the hotel again.
The air is chill and the sky a steel grey. Dark streaks of cloud are hanging above the huge railway station. The streets have been decorated for Christmas, with sparkling Christmas trees and garlands on the lampposts. The pavements are full of people and there’s still a lot of traffic. Joona walks with his head down, turns left down Place de Cornavin, past a basic hamburger joint and a brasserie. By the large pedestrian tunnel leading to the station he sets about discarding Lumi’s things in different bins.
On the way back he goes into a Chinese restaurant and orders a takeaway. While he’s waiting in the dimly lit bar area he thinks about the time he spent with Lumi up in Nattavaara, and how they got to know each other again, talking about all the things they’d been through in all the years that had passed while they were apart.
Lumi looks like she’s been crying when she lets him back into the room. He follows her to the sitting area and puts the food down on the table by the sofa.
‘Do you drink wine?’ he asks.
‘I live in France,’ she says quietly.
He takes out the cartons of food, then gets out glasses, napkins, and chopsticks.
‘What’s been happening at college? How’s it all going?’ he asks, taking a bottle of red out of the minibar.
‘I’m happy there … there’s a lot going on at the moment.’
‘That’s the way it should be, though, isn’t it?’
‘How about you? How have you been getting on, Dad?’ Lumi asks, opening the cartons.
While they eat he talks about what’s happened since he was released from prison, about his work as a neighbourhood police officer, and about Valeria and her nursery.
‘Are you going to move in with her?’
‘I don’t know, I’d like to, but she’s got a life of her own, so … well, we’ll have to see.’
She puts her chopsticks down and turns away.
‘What is it, Lumi?’
‘It’s just that … you don’t really know anything about me,’ she says.
‘I haven’t wanted to bother you, you’ve got a whole new life … which I’d love to be part of, but I understand that having a dad who’s a police officer isn’t much to boast about among all those artists and authors.’
‘Do you think I’m ashamed of you?’
‘No, but … I only meant that I don’t exactly fit in.’
Her voice reminds him of Summa’s. He feels like saying that, but holds back. They finish eating in silence, then drink the last of the wine.
‘We’ll be leaving early,’ he says, starting to clear the table.
‘Where to?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘No,’ she whispers, and turns her face away.
‘Lumi,’ he says, ‘I understand that you don’t want to go into hiding, that it doesn’t fit in with the way your life looks now.’
‘Have I complained?’ she asks in a thick voice.
‘You don’t need to.’
She sighs and runs the palm of her hand quickly over her eyes.
‘Have you seen Jurek Walter?’
‘No, but his accomplice was following me, and—’
‘What accomplice?’ she interrupts.
‘Jurek’s been watching you,’ Joona goes on. ‘He’s been mapping your life, he knows your routines, and he knows who you spend time with.’
‘But why would Jurek get an accomplice?’
‘If he’s going to get his revenge the way he wants, he needs an accomplice who’s as loyal as his brother was,’ Joona explains. ‘He knew I’d drop everything and try to protect you the moment I realised he was still alive … and his strategy was to grab you before I could get to Paris, while his accomplice would seize Valeria in Stockholm. That had to happen simultaneously, he thinks like a twin.’
‘So why was the accomplice following you, then?’
Joona puts the empty cartons in the bin, feels a sting of pain behind his eye and grabs hold of the writing desk with one hand to keep his balance.
‘Because I realised Jurek wasn’t dead just moments before he launched his plan,’ he repli
es, turning back towards her. ‘I called you, you did exactly what you had to do, and you managed to get away from Paris … Sending the accomplice after me was an emergency solution, an attempt not to lose the only way he could find you … We were quick and managed to get a small head start, but that’s all.’
‘There’s no logic to any of this, Dad … besides the fact that there’s no evidence that Jurek’s alive, no one’s seen him, not even you … I mean, why would the person who was following you have any connection to Jurek?’
‘I know Jurek’s alive.’
‘OK, let’s assume that – after all, that’s why we’re sitting here.’
‘I killed his twin brother, but not him,’ Joona goes on.
‘And who am I in all this?’ she asks.
‘My daughter.’
‘I’m starting to feel like some sort of hostage,’ she says, then holds her hands up in a gesture of resignation. ‘Sorry, that was an exaggeration … but this is affecting my whole life, so I have a right to know what we’re doing.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Joona says, sitting down on the sofa.
‘Where are we going tomorrow, what’s the plan?’
‘The plan is to stay alive until the police catch Jurek … I’ve given them loads of material, so it’s not impossible that they’ll be able to find Jurek if they get a move on.’
‘How are we going to stay alive?’ Lumi asks in a gentler voice.
‘We’re going to drive up through Germany and Belgium to Holland … there are some derelict buildings surrounded by fields in the province of Limburg, not far from Weert.’
‘And that’s where we’re going to hide?’
‘Yes.’
‘For how long?’
He doesn’t answer. There is no answer.
‘Will you feel calmer there?’ Lumi asks, sitting down on the armchair.
‘Have I ever told you about my friend Rinus?’
‘You mentioned him when we were practising close combat in Nattavaara,’ she nods.
After his time as a paratrooper, Joona was recruited for a top-secret training course in the Netherlands, where he was trained by Lieutenant Rinus Advocaat.
‘Rinus has always been a bit paranoid, and has created the closest thing you can get to a completely safe house … It looks like a group of derelict buildings from the outside, but …’
