by Kepler, Lars
Saga sits down on the floor beside her and puts one arm round her shoulders. In a low voice Mimmi tells her about the man from the Russian security service. She doesn’t remember his name, but he had tracked the woman and child all the way through Ukraine and Poland to Sweden. They’re both seriously mentally ill. They met at the Serbski Institute, and managed to escape from there. They have a secret pact, they travel around, focusing on a particular family and killing them all, one after the other.
‘They always start with the youngest child,’ she whispers.
‘Where are they now? Do you know?’
She takes a deep, shaky breath and explains that the man from the Russian security service is going to get them out of Sweden and make sure they face justice in Russia.
‘I know you’re not supposed to do that sort of thing, but here in Sweden all they’d get is medical treatment and then they’d be released, and then they’d come here and kill us … in Russia they’ll be sent to Penal Colony 56 for the rest of their lives.’
Saga brings up a picture of Jurek on her phone.
‘Is this the man?’
Mimmi lowers her gaze and nods.
‘Do you know where Valeria and Pellerina are now?’
‘No,’ she says faintly.
‘I have to find them, because they haven’t killed anyone—’
‘My little brother, they killed him, they burned his face, then broke his arms and—’
She starts to sob loudly with her mouth open.
‘Mimmi, did you see that happen? With your own eyes?’
The girl just goes on crying.
‘You never saw who killed your brother, did you?’
Mimmi calms down slightly, but her breathing is still ragged.
‘He told us all about it,’ she sniffs. ‘Every detail, he was so sorry he hadn’t got here in time to save Axel.’
‘This man doesn’t work for the Russian security service. It was him who killed your brother, and somewhere Valeria and Pellerina are lying buried in coffins … because that’s what he does.’
The girl gets to her knees and is sick in the bucket. She pauses for breath, then throws up again. She sits down heavily, leans back against the wall and wipes her mouth on her sleeve.
‘Show me,’ Saga says.
Joona is standing by the dining room window again, looking at the playhouse. The light from Jim’s torch is shining through the open door and three windows, spreading out like a cross of light over the snow.
The footprints have disappeared completely now.
He can see the large dining table and the man on the floor reflected in the glass. He’s lying on his side with his hands over his head. Joona has told him that they’ll soon have tracker-dogs at the house but the man maintains his silence, although Joona suspects that he’s starting to realise his mistake.
The light inside the playhouse suddenly changes, and Saga crawls out with the torch. She turns and helps the girl out.
They walk back towards the house through the deep snow.
In spite of the poor light and clouds of breath around their mouths, Joona can see the change in their sombre faces.
He meets them in the hall, then follows them downstairs to a den with brown leather furniture and a billiard table.
The ceiling is low and there’s a faint basement smell.
The girl tries to push the billiard table aside and Joona goes over and helps her.
The small metal castors under the legs of the heavy table leave deep marks in the Persian rug.
None of them says anything.
Slowly they roll the table aside until it hits the wall. A picture frame rattles and one of the balls bounces off the side-cushion.
Joona and Mimmi pull the large rug in the opposite direction.
A jagged rectangle, approximately one metre by two in size, has been cut into the floorboards. Joona takes out his knife, nudges one edge up, takes hold of it with his fingers and lifts the panel.
The beams and insulation under the house rise up with the boards.
He takes a firmer grip and catches his lower arm as he drags the panel out of the way.
The girl has sunk down onto the floor by the billiard table and covered her ears with her hands.
Joona goes over to the opening and feels ice-cold air flowing up through it.
‘Oh, God,’ he whispers.
‘Hurry up,’ Saga whimpers.
On the ground beneath the house are two unpainted coffins with straps around their lids. They’re surrounded by splinters and sawdust. The only sound is Saga’s rapid breathing.
86
Joona is pacing restlessly up and down the corridor outside the Emergency Room of the Karolinska Hospital in Huddinge, waiting for news.
He’s lost count of the number of times he’s passed the two badly worn chairs outside the treatment room and the table covered with information leaflets.
His hair is a mess, his face tired and worried, his eyes an intense silver-grey, and his shirt and trousers crumpled. He’s washed the worst of the blood and dirt off his face and hands.
Unfiltered images from the confusion in that basement room keep overwhelming him. Fragments of the scene, suddenly lit up by the beam of the torch are rushing through his mind.
The images are horrific.
Nathan’s brutal death, the two coffins under the house, the stench of the bodies, the fear in the paramedics’ eyes, and the screams of the teenage girl as she was led away by a female police officer.
For something like the fortieth time, Joona stops at the windows in the black doors at the end of the hospital corridor, sees the backs of the two uniformed police officers standing guard outside, then turns and starts to walk back again.
Security in the hospital is tight: sixteen officers are guarding the Emergency Room, but Joona knows that nothing is over until they’ve caught Jurek Walter.
The doors at the far end of the corridor swing open automatically and an elderly woman is wheeled in on a trolley.
Joona thinks back to Saga’s panic-stricken reaction.
She was holding the torch with both hands, but couldn’t stand still. The shadows kept shaking and lurching aggressively up the walls.
Her angst was like a caged animal’s, there was no way for her to vent it.
Joona keeps pacing the corridor. Four wooden rails run horizontally along the walls to stop trolleys and beds from damaging the walls. The lights in the ceiling glint like misty clouds off the grey linoleum floor.
He can’t stop thinking about it.
The clasps made a loud snapping sound when they came loose, and he tore at the straps, scratching his back on the rough edge of the sawn floorboards.
The harsh light of the torch cut through the dust his shoes had churned up from the dry ground.
He grabbed hold of the lid of the first coffin with both hands and wrenched it aside.
Valeria was lying there, covered with a grey blanket, like a corpse wrapped in a winding sheet after an earthquake.
Her grey, dirty face was still, her lips were cracked and her eyes closed.
She didn’t react until the harsh light hit her face, and she started fumbling for the lid with her hands.
‘No more,’ she sobbed, trying to get up.
‘Valeria, it’s me, Joona,’ he said. ‘We’ve found you, we’re here now.’
Her whole body was shaking, she couldn’t believe it was him, she kept flailing her arms, and managed to hit him in the mouth.
He helped her out, and the blanket slid off as she struggled over the edge of the coffin. She was blinking in the light, dazed and confused, and almost fell, then started to crawl towards the other coffin.
‘Pellerina,’ she whimpered as she tried to force the lid open.
She was too weak, and couldn’t use her swollen hands; her nails were broken and her fingertips caked with blood.
‘Open the coffin!’ Saga cried. ‘You’ve got to get it open!’
Joona stops i
n the corridor and leans against the wall with both hands. Two nurses hurry past in pale blue uniforms.
He looks down at the strips of tape on the floor that indicate where trolleys and beds should be parked, but all he can see is the basement room in the house: yellow jackets with wide reflective strips, wet boots, and him pulling Valeria away from the second coffin and passing her up to the first paramedics to reach the scene.
One of the paramedics started to cry.
The stretcher hit the side of the staircase, knocking flakes of paint to the floor.
Saga dropped the torch, it hit the edge of the floorboards and landed on the dry soil next to Valeria’s coffin and rolled under the house.
Joona cut the straps on the other coffin, dropped his knife and heaved the lid off.
Saga screamed until her voice broke and someone tried to hold her back, but she pulled free and fell on her knees at the edge of the roughly sawn hole, whispering her sister’s name.
Pellerina was lying in the coffin in a pair of baggy trousers and a padded blue jacket. Her pale face was completely motionless, and she didn’t react to the light of the paramedics’ torches.
Her little round mouth was sunken, her cheekbones very pronounced.
Joona gently lifted Pellerina’s body out of the coffin, holding her to his chest like a sleeping child, with one hand behind her neck and her head against his cheek. He couldn’t hear a heartbeat, couldn’t feel a pulse.
‘No, no, no,’ Saga sobbed.
Another stretcher arrived just as Joona detected faint breath from Pellerina’s mouth.
‘I think she’s alive. Hurry up, she’s alive!’ he cried. ‘Take her, she must have hypothermia …’
Trampling on the empty plastic bottles and bags in the other coffin, he lurched forward and held the girl up to the two paramedics. They laid her down gently on the stretcher. Saga stroked her cheek and kept telling her that everything was going to be all right now.
Joona walks to the end of the corridor again, looks at the two police officers, then turns and walks back to the door of the treatment room.
He runs his hand through his hair, then sits down on one of the chairs. It creaks as he leans back, resting his head against the wall.
Just as he’s getting up again the door opens and a doctor in a short-sleeved white tunic and trousers comes out.
‘Joona Linna?’ she says.
‘Is she conscious?’
‘I tried to tell her she should rest before seeing anyone, but she was adamant that she wanted to see you.’
‘How is she?’
‘It’s too early to say, she’s extremely weak.’
The doctor explains that they’re still waiting for test results, but that in her opinion Valeria’s condition is no longer life-threatening. When she was brought in she was suffering from sepsis, acute dehydration, malnourishment and, above all, hypothermia. Her body temperature registered 32 degrees in the ambulance, but they’ve managed to bring that back up to normal levels in the past five hours using hot air and internal warming. Her hands and toes were frostbitten, but it now looks unlikely that they’ll have to be amputated, as first feared.
Joona thanks the doctor, taps gently at the door and goes in.
Valeria is lying in a hospital bed with the rails on both sides raised. Her face is pale and thin. She’s connected to a pulsoximeter, ECG and blood-pressure monitor, is being fed oxygen through her nose, and has cannulas on the insides of both elbows.
‘Valeria,’ he says softly.
He walks over and touches her hand. She opens her eyes and looks at him tiredly.
‘Thanks for finding me … bastard cop,’ she smiles.
‘They say you’re going to be fine.’
‘I’m already fine.’
She purses her lips and he bends over and kisses her. They look at each other for a moment, then become serious again.
‘They won’t tell me anything about Pellerina,’ she says quietly.
‘Me neither … she barely had a pulse when we found her.’
Valeria’s eyelids are heavy and she lets them close. Her dark curls are spread across the pillow, almost reaching the thin pine headboard set into to chrome frame of the bed.
‘What happened in that house?’ she asks, opening her eyes again. ‘I mean, why were they doing that to us?’
‘It’s too soon to talk. You need to rest. I’ll sit here with you.’
Valeria moistens her dry lips.
‘But I need to know,’ she says. ‘I figured out that they were angry with us, they thought it was our fault their son died.’
‘It sounds like Jurek told them some story, but I don’t know the details, Saga was the one who questioned the daughter,’ Joona says, pulling a chair over to her bed.
He only has time to tell her that Nathan and a colleague from the Södertälje Police were killed in the operation before Saga comes into the room. She’s obviously been crying a lot, her eyes are red and swollen.
‘Pellerina’s been sedated,’ she tells them in a subdued voice. ‘Her condition’s critical, they’ve raised her body temperature, but they’re having trouble with her heart, it’s beating far too fast …’
Saga’s voice cracks and she swallows hard.
‘They had to use a defibrillator to slow it down … What if she never wakes up?’ she whispers after a pause. ‘Then that coffin will be the last thing she ever experienced … darkness, loneliness.’
‘We talked the whole time,’ Valeria says, then has to cough.
‘Did you?’ Saga asks, staring at her with a despairing look in her eyes.
‘She wasn’t scared, I swear, she wasn’t,’ Valeria goes on. ‘She was cold and thirsty … but we were lying next to each other and she only had to say my name and I’d talk to her … she was sure you were going to rescue her, and you did.’
‘She doesn’t know I was there,’ Saga whispers.
‘I think she knows,’ Valeria says.
‘I should get back to her,’ Saga says quietly, and blows her nose.
‘Of course,’ Joona says.
‘Did you hear that the prosecutor in Södertörn has remanded the father in custody?’ Saga asks, tossing the tissue in the bin next to the basin.
‘Yes,’ Joona says.
‘So why were they doing that to us?’ Valeria asks.
‘It was Jurek, he destroyed that family,’ Saga says. ‘They hadn’t done him any harm, but he needed that location, and he needed their loyalty for a few weeks … So he murdered the youngest child and blamed you and Pellerina, got them to hate you.’
‘That’s appalling,’ Valeria whispers, and coughs weakly again. ‘Can’t someone stop him?’
‘Yes,’ Joona replies.
‘Not you, you’ve done more than enough already,’ she says quickly.
‘Valeria, I’m staying here until you’re feeling better,’ Joona says. ‘But this isn’t over yet. Jurek Walter isn’t finished, he’ll be coming back for you … there’s no need to be afraid now, though, there are sixteen police officers here in the hospital, and that will keep him away … But sooner or later the level of protection will be reduced.’
‘What are you planning?’ Saga asks.
‘I’m going to carry on with the constellation … it’s a gamble, but the star that represents Pollux’s heart … it’s located on a small island in Lake Mälaren.’
‘You know you can’t do this on your own,’ Saga says heavily. ‘I’d be happy to go with you, you know that, but I have to stay with Pellerina, I have to be here when she wakes up.’
‘I can handle it.’
‘Listen to her,’ Valeria says, her voice agitated.
‘Joona, you can’t do this alone,’ Saga repeats. ‘It’s too dangerous, you know that, you have to talk to Carlos.’
‘There’s no point.’
‘A small team from the National Response Unit,’ Saga pleads.
‘No,’ Joona says.
‘How about Rinus Advocaat –
can’t you call him? He could be here in a few hours,’ Saga says.
Joona’s face stiffens and he puts one hand on the chrome bedframe.
‘I didn’t think you knew about Rinus,’ he says quietly.
‘You talked about him after Disa’s death,’ Saga says. ‘You were almost dead yourself, but I understood that you trusted him. Can’t you ask him to help?’
‘No,’ Joona replies, looking at her with eyes that have never been darker than now.
‘Oh, no …’ Saga says with fear in her voice. ‘Joona? Tell me it isn’t true.’
‘How bad is it?’ he asks gruffly.
‘When Jurek took Pellerina, I panicked and tried to get hold of you, I had no other choice.’
‘Saga …’ Joona says, getting up heavily.
‘I was panicking,’ she says, almost inaudibly. ‘I thought you could tell me where Jurek’s brother’s remains were.’
‘What did you do?’ Joona asks.
She rubs her eyes hard to get rid of the tears.
‘It’s probably nothing, but I thought that if you were going to hide, then you’d need help … Nils would do anything for you, but he isn’t tough, not in that way … which is why I thought of Rinus, so I called him at home in Amsterdam, and spoke to a guy called Patrick … he said Rinus was at work, and I gave him my number … no one ever got back to me.’
‘Is there any way Jurek could have had access to your phone?’
‘Sorry,’ Saga whispers.
‘Then he’s going to take my daughter,’ Joona says, and starts to walk towards the door.
‘Run!’ Valeria says.
Joona hears Saga apologising once more in the treatment room just before the door closes behind him.
87
Lumi systematically moves the night-sight across the middle of zone 1, lingering on the bushes and garden furniture, before moving on to the abandoned main house.
Everything is peculiarly quiet tonight.
She looks at the boarded-up door and the warped sheets of plywood over the windows.
She lowers the sight to get a broader overview and looks out. She mustn’t let her concentration slip.
The temperature has stayed below freezing over the past few days, and the sky is unusually clear for this part of Europe.
