Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  “Everyone is hiding something.”

  “Not everyone is hiding something that’s connected to a break-in at the police station.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone call. Grens could hear Mariana Hermansson breathing, could hear the forensic technicians shuffling around in the stairwell, and a medical examiner quietly recording his observations into a tape recorder.

  “Are you there, Hermansson?”

  “What are you saying? Do you think our boss broke into his own workplace?”

  “I’m saying that I think he’s responsible for the disappearance of highly classified documents. Documents that directly endanger people’s lives.”

  “What documents? What people?”

  “I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  “But you can call me claiming that the head of our department has committed a crime that would result in immediate dismissal if it were true! You know Wilson, Ewert—he’s not guilty of some break-in. It’s as unlikely as you or me.”

  “Maybe he didn’t do it personally. But he’s protecting someone. I think Erik Wilson is being manipulated.”

  “Manipulated?”

  “He seems to have begun a fairly new . . . well, relationship. Even admitted it. You’ve probably noticed it, too. A relationship that happens to coincide with the disappearance of highly classified documents from his office. Nobody got in there without his help, either conscious or unconscious, on that I think we can agree. But he doesn’t want to tell me who. No matter how hard I press the matter. I want to know, Hermansson. I want you to ferret out who it could be, start by concentrating on the police station. Put together a list of possible colleagues. Who’s newly divorced. Who’s single. Who might be unhappy enough in their present relationship to consider cheating.”

  Silence again. He thought he heard the forensic technicians discussing the best way to dust for prints far off in the background somewhere. But maybe that was just his imagination, a lifetime spent at crime scenes just like that one made it easy to call to mind something he knew by heart.

  “Ewert, I will not spy on my colleagues. And let me make one thing very clear to you—you will never again ask me to play some double-dealing game with the people I work with! I don’t care if you’re my superior officer or not. Is that clear?”

  Grens usually liked when Mariana Hermansson stood up to him. She was one of the few who dared to do so. But as he stood there with the phone pressed to his ear, something didn’t sit right. There was some note in her voice. He knew her. He knew how she worked. And to refuse to take on a superior who might be hiding the truth, who might even have switched sides, that wasn’t at all like her.

  He was about to say as much. When she cut him off.

  “And one more thing, Ewert: if you want me to make this mysterious arrest, while you drive down to Söderköping for an interrogation you won’t discuss with me, then you’re going to have to take care of the cadets today. Lucas and Amelia will have to go with you, if I’m going after Zaravic. Okay?”

  As Grens hung up the phone and headed toward the cadets’ closet office, he realized that each step was accompanied by a new uneasiness. And he couldn’t quite pinpoint where it came from or how to get rid of it. Other than that he was sure that someone in this police station had sold out to criminal arms dealers by putting highly classified documents into their hands. And that two of the people he’d come to trust and actually like around here, Erik Wilson and Mariana Hermansson, might have something to do with it.

  The enormous garage built deep beneath the Kronoberg Police Station always remained the same temperature—warm and comfortable when winter storms settled in over the capital, and pleasantly cool in the midst of heat waves like this one. Ewert Grens opened his car doors and the two cadets jumped in simultaneously—the one named Lucas, who had shoulders the width of Grens’s waist, sat down beside him in the passenger seat, and the one named Amelia, who had short dark hair and intelligent eyes, plopped down in the back. The garage door automatically slid aside, and they headed up a steep incline toward the morning sounds of Kungsholmen, up to a lowered bar that a guard opened for them. The exit toward Essinge route and the E4 highway south came next. He started driving faster, heading into their two-hour trip to Söderköping—two hundred kilometers closer to a little girl.

  “DB.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what you said, Superintendent. The first time we met. DB. Dead Body.”

  Lucas had a high, nasal voice, and an accent that sounded like it came from western Sweden.

  “That’s what you used to call murdered people. Like when you were our age.”

  “Yes. That’s what I said.”

  “And I thought—how many? How many dead people do you . . . I mean, if you keep track until your age. I mean, now.”

  “Your age?”

  “Yes. Do you keep track?”

  “Yes. I keep track.”

  “And?”

  “As of two days ago, three hundred and nine. Yesterday, three hundred and eleven. This morning three hundred and twelve.”

  The cadet fell silent. As if he lost his train of thought.

  “Oh, that was . . . very precise. You do keep track. Three hundred . . . But did you say this morning?”

  “Mmm. Another one, identical. Like the one where we met each other.”

  “Identical? So why are we sitting here? Why aren’t we already there?”

  “Because today, this is more important. This trip.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re looking for a someone who might end up a DB if we don’t find her. That’s part of police work too. Prevention.”

  Ewert Grens drove through the suburbs of Stockholm quickly, and after a while he realized he was being observed not only by his interrogator next to him, but also via the rearview mirror. Cadet Amelia. She seemed about to join the conversation a couple of times, but stopped because the two in front kept talking. Now she looked at him with eyes that appeared to apologize for her fellow cadet’s forwardness. Grens got the feeling that she understood and agreed with him that police work should save lives first, then hunt down those who took them.

  He realized he very much liked that.

  She reminded him of Mariana Hermansson. Maybe even a little of Anni. She was going to make a good cop.

  “What I said before, Superintendent.”

  Lucas’s silence was over. For now.

  “About your age. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “You didn’t mean to—what?”

  “Well . . . I mean, my dad’s a police officer, too. In a small town where not much happens. And he’s—just like you—old now. Retired.”

  The eyes in the rearview mirror. The detective superintendent would rather be looking into them. The young woman in the back seat knew it was too late to save her comrade—the more her fellow cadet babbled on trying to make it better, the worse it seemed to get.

  “I mean, what I meant was that . . . that Dad wasn’t at all like you, Superintendent, not at all, he didn’t have any plans for his future. It was like his police badge was a computer chip. Do you know what I mean? Dad just kinda stopped functioning when they took it away from him.”

  They passed Södertälje, Järna, Nyköping, and it was only there, about halfway to their destination, that Grens finally stopped thinking about badges and computer chips and what happened to old cops who didn’t plan for the future. Instead, what had been gnawing at him since this morning’s meeting with Wilson and then even more after his phone call with Hermansson came back. And soon he slowed down at a rest stop to find a place to make another call without an audience present.

  “Sven? It’s me. Are you alone?”

  “Just heading out of the garage with Hermansson. On my way to the elevator. We just got back from Regerings Street. Where are . . .�
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  “Call me when you’re alone in your office.”

  “Why . . .”

  “And don’t tell Hermansson. Tell her I was calling about the medical examiner’s report. Or whatever you want. I don’t want her wondering what this is all about.”

  “But I don’t even know . . .”

  Grens hung up.

  He took a slow walk through a still nearly deserted rest stop.

  Two laps around crumb-covered tables where travelers later in the day could picnic, and hot, smelly trash cans that should have been emptied long ago.

  Finally his phone rang.

  “Sven here, again. Alone. With the door closed.”

  “Good.”

  “And?”

  “I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “With Hermansson.”

  “With Hermansson?”

  “Yes. She . . . something’s not right, Sven. She’s hiding something. And it’s making me worried. I want you to check it out. Maybe follow her.”

  “What are you talking about? Hermansson? Am I supposed to start following her? Investigating her?”

  “That’s exactly what I need you to do.”

  “You know I’m not one to argue. But if you want me to—this is Hermansson, Ewert, Hermansson we’re talking about—if you want me to investigate her you’re going to have to tell me why.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “If you want my help, you have no choice.”

  Sven was right. Grens knew it. Detective Inspector Sundkvist was not one to argue, quite the opposite—he was almost conflict averse.

  “Some documents have disappeared from Wilson’s office. Extremely classified. How it happened I don’t know. However, not many have spent much time in the vicinity of that safe. I asked Hermansson to help me investigate it. And got the wrong answer. Wrong feeling. And I don’t like those kinds of feelings.”

  “I don’t understand—do you think Hermansson stole the documents?”

  “All I know for certain is that we have a corrupt colleague somewhere among us. Someone we trust. Whose actions risk destroying people outside the police station. I know her. I understand her. And I know that something’s off right now. Follow her. If nothing else, so that we can rule out her involvement in all this.”

  They spent the last half hour of the drive in silence. Grens made it clear he didn’t want to talk anymore, and Lucas had finally realized that sometimes the best thing you can do in a situation is nothing at all.

  Söderköping was a perfect summer town, a little more inviting, a little more charming than other places on this warm June day. People moved more slowly here, the water in the Göta Canal seemed to shine more brightly, and even the shade seemed to offer another kind of cool. The building on Gamla Skol Street was equally attractive—a wooden house from the early twentieth century, two stories and smack-dab in the middle of town. The detective superintendent hadn’t called ahead. He had tried that at dawn without success. Now he parked in front of the entrance, went up the stairs with two cadets at his heels, and rang the doorbell.

  “Yes?”

  The woman who opened the door was a couple years older than Grens himself. That fit. According to his contact at the Tax Agency, it hadn’t been that long since Charlotte M. Andersen had retired.

  “Ewert Grens, detective superintendent at the City Police. And this is Lucas and Amelia, cadets at the homicide unit.”

  “You were the one who woke me up this morning.”

  “I was the one who woke you up this morning.”

  The former head of Söderköping’s child welfare department had no intention of letting them inside. Despite both Grens and his cadets offering up their badges for her inspection.

  “Well, in that case you made the trip for no reason.”

  Back straight. Eyes that didn’t look away.

  “Because I already told you: I don’t discuss confidential matters when I’m in the midst of them, and I certainly don’t talk about them later.”

  “And yet you’re going to have to.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “The girl I’m here about is in grave danger. Every second we stand here staring at each other her chances of survival go down. Let us in and I’ll explain. Then you can decide if you’re going to stay silent or talk.”

  He looked at her, still straight backed, gaze still steady.

  And he knew she felt his seriousness and honesty.

  Because suddenly she stepped aside.

  “Thirty minutes. Then I want you to leave.”

  A person who lived alone, and who had done so for a long time. She didn’t mention it, but Ewert Grens could tell. The way the furniture was placed, the smells, even the way she moved through the rooms. The sort of things only a person who had lived the same way and for just as long would pick up.

  “You weren’t invited. So there won’t be coffee.”

  They sat opposite each other in the living room with a small round table between them. She in a green armchair with large flowers on it, he on a sofa with a blanket over it, while the cadets lingered near the doorway.

  “Zana Lilaj. She had just turned five. I was the one who found her beside her dead parents and siblings. I was the one who carried her away. I was the rock in her life until she left the safe house and came here, to Söderköping, where she was given a new name and a new life. By you.”

  The former department head looked at him. Brittle, taut. At the same time.

  “Dead parents? And siblings?”

  “Yes, that’s why . . .”

  “I never knew. That’s how it worked when I ended up with a person’s life in my hands. A few pen strokes away with no insight into their past.”

  “In that case—can you help me now?”

  Charlotte M. Andersen was touched, maybe even moved. That was easy to see. But she hadn’t lost her focus. Grens thought she had probably been a much better boss than he was.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I explained this to you on the phone. I keep my promises. That means I will never reveal her new identity. You can come in here talking about a murder investigation as much as you want. You can’t force me. Come back with a warrant—I’m not saying anything. Threaten to lock me up—go ahead, open the cell door, Superintendent.”

  The envelope was in Ewert’s inner pocket. He emptied the contents onto the coffee table that separated them. Six photographs. Taken by forensic technicians at various crime scenes. Four of them he put on the left half of the table, the remaining two on the right.

  “I want you take a close look at these four here. That picture there, closest to you—that’s Zana’s father. Killed with two gunshots. To the forehead and the temple. Do you see?”

  The former department head was stronger than she seemed. Though obviously very affected by what she saw. Still, she never looked away.

  “And this—this is Zana’s mother. This is her big sister, and this is her big brother. All shot in the same way. Back then.”

  Grens pushed one photograph after another over to the department head. Let her study them for a long time. Until he pointed to the opposite side.

  “But these two, lying here, are quite fresh. The latest as recent as this morning, so you’ll have to see that one in another format.”

  He took out his mobile phone and swiped over to the picture he’d asked Hermansson to send, then put the phone on the table as well.

  “Three men who were at the periphery of the investigation into the murders of the Lilaj family. Look carefully exactly at their temples and foreheads, and you’ll see the method of execution is very similar to the older pictures. That’s why I’m sitting here. Whoever killed her family is killing again. Zana Lilaj’s life is in danger.”

  Charlott
e M. Andersen stood up from her flowery green armchair and left the living room. Grens could hear the tap running in the kitchen. When she came back she was carrying a tray of four glasses of yellowish juice, handed the cadets two of them and put down one on each side of the photographs on the table.

  “Elderberry. I pick them myself, and it tastes delicious. Try it.”

  Then she drank, a whole glass at once.

  “I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me, Superintendent. And the more I weigh it, the heavier the side where I depart from principles gets. This is an emergency, you said?”

  “I’m not even sure if she’s still alive. Someone has made sure that the murderer or murderers have information that I don’t—what her name is and where she lives. But if it is too late, at least I want to know.”

  Charlotte M. Andersen was still fighting against her promise of confidentiality. That’s how she had lived her life for so long, steady and loyal. Never betray.

  “I gave her the name Hannah. With an h at the end, I thought it looked nice.”

  That’s why it took such incredible willpower for her to say even that much, though she knew what she was doing was right.

  “And the foster family I placed her with had the last name of Ohlsson. So—Hannah Ohlsson. Just as normal as I hoped when she was put into the national registry. Sensible, childless people who had helped with shorter placements in the past. Six months later, they adopted her. I visited regularly back then. She was doing fine. When she turned seven, we said goodbye to each other, my oversight was no longer required by law. I think I’ve run into her a few times over the years here in town, but it’s hard to say, children change so much as they age.”

  “Ohlsson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “A sweet little house about five kilometers outside of town. I’m pretty sure that at least the parents still live there.”

  Ewert Grens had honestly never been much of a runner. And age and a permanent limp after a bullet shattered his knee hadn’t made him any better. But that’s what it felt like he was doing now—running. Toward the front door and the parked car. Toward the outskirts of that beautiful summer town. Toward a house where a girl who had once been so alone had grown up and become a young woman.