Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  Then the chief of the homicide unit lowered his head again to his briefcase. A not particularly subtle sign that for him, this conversation was over.

  “And now?”

  “No idea, Ewert. Yet.”

  “So you’ve got no problem with Paula’s identity becoming public? His death? His family’s deaths?”

  “You know that’s not the case.”

  Erik Wilson stood up with his briefcase in his hand and waited for Grens to do the same. In vain. The stubborn detective superintendent remained where he was, might even have sank lower in the visitor’s chair.

  “No, I’m not sure I do know that anymore. And that worries me. However, what I do know is that no one besides you has been proven to have opened that safe. What I also know is that so far you haven’t even been able to give me a single explanation about how this alleged theft took place. And, Wilson—it makes me damn suspicious. Makes you damn suspicious.”

  The apartment had six bedrooms, or was it seven. Maybe eight? Ewert Grens didn’t even have a precise answer to Piet Hoffmann’s question, he had barely thought about it. He’d squeezed Anni’s hand and moved into their penthouse on Svea Road—ready to start the family he’d always dreamed of—back when prices in the inner city were cheap. He couldn’t conceive of the millions that apartments like his were worth these days. So yes, technically he was rich despite never having saved more than a few thousand kronor in the bank, all because he chose to live his life without changing, while everything else around him did.

  Lots of rooms to choose from—but still they huddled around his kitchen table and the whiteboard. Because it felt right. Because this was where they met in the confusion of two investigations that intersected with each other. Because if you infiltrate for me, I infiltrate for you works better when two people sit side by side drinking coffee out of identical cups.

  That’s what they were doing when Grens’s telephone rang at 10:02 PM. Dipping fresh cinnamon buns into warm liquid in a way that reminded Piet Hoffmann of his grandfather. The detective picked up after two ring signals that vibrated between them on the table. The call they were waiting for.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s done, Ewert. Dusko Zaravic has been arrested.”

  “Did he resist?”

  “As calm as he could be.”

  Grens nodded toward Hoffmann, who nodded back—he’d understood.

  “Thank you, Mariana. Good work. Kronoberg jail?”

  “He’s on his way to an empty cell. And, Ewert?”

  “Yes?”

  “I still don’t know what you want them for . . . but your three days start right now.”

  PART

  6

  10:18 PM

  (2 days, 23 hours, and 44 minutes remaining)

  Night was here and the cool had finally settled onto the balcony making it easy to breathe again. Luiza was asleep, the boys too, and under the cover of darkness she’d stepped outside for a moment, even though Piet had asked her not to. But she needed it, liked to stand there and look out over the lit-up windows of this suburb. All those people living their lives side by side, unaware of each other.

  She tried not to think. Just be. That’s what she’d done after realizing she was in love with a man who led two lives, what she’d done while they were on the run in South America and when Piet was serving his last prison sentence. Just be—that’s also what he said you had to do to survive prison. Never think about time, past or future, never think about whose fault, just be there with a cup of coffee or a newspaper or a pot that needs washing. Until you’d served your time. Didn’t matter if it was the state who had sentenced you or your husband’s choices.

  “Zofia, it’s me.”

  Her phone had buzzed but didn’t ring, and she’d answered knowing who it was—only one person had that number.

  “We weren’t supposed to talk. Only in case of emergency. That’s what you said. Has something happened, Piet, has someone . . . ?”

  “I’m leaving Sweden for a couple of days. That changes things a little. I can’t keep as close an eye on you. So I’m gonna have to ask you to be even more careful. Neither you nor Rasmus nor Hugo can risk being seen. Nothing will happen as long as no one knows where you are. Do you promise that you’ll explain that to them? If they can do this, if they can keep hiding, everything will be just like it was before soon.”

  She looked around, a last breath of the night air, before going back inside.

  “I promise.”

  “Before we hang up, Zo—the hammer and the acetone and the pan are under the sink. You know what you’re supposed to do. Inside the bathroom, behind the plastic cover on the wall, there’s a new burner phone. Only use it over the next few days if things get serious. If the threats escalate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is an escape route.”

  “An escape route?”

  “I’ve taken security measures.”

  The phone lay silent in her hand. She was alone, again. And had to keep doing what she’d decided to do—just be. Right now that meant closing the doors of the kitchen, opening up the telephone, and putting the SIM card on the kitchen counter, cutting it up into tiny, tiny pieces, pouring acetone into a pot and dropping the pieces into it. And as they slowly melted away, wrapping a kitchen towel around the phone and hitting it with a hammer until it was impossible to ever put it back together again. The new one was exactly where Piet told her, hidden behind the ventilation cover on the bathroom wall. She’d had time to check that it worked and settle on the sofa when Hugo appeared out of nowhere and sank down beside her.

  “Sweetie, did I wake you?”

  “I was awake. The whole time. So I heard.”

  “What?”

  “Everything.”

  “What did you hear, Hugo?”

  “Dad called.”

  “What makes you think it was him . . .”

  “Mom—please? You hammered the phone. It smells like acetone. Dad does that. And I know why. So no one can find us.”

  She hugged him. Tight.

  “Go to bed now, sweetie.”

  Hugo stayed where he was.

  “We have to be ready, Mom.”

  He turned to her, really looked at her.

  “Like Dad always is. Totally prepared. For danger. I know we’re in danger.”

  Hugo sat on the sofa, holding his mother’s hand. Because it was nice. And because she wanted him to. When she next asked him to go to bed again, he did. He had a plan. He’d wait her out. Pretend to be sleeping. Until she fell asleep. He had a good trick—every time he felt his eyelids getting heavy he’d pinch his thigh hard, because that was the closest to his hand, and he didn’t want Mom to notice.

  He knew exactly the moment she fell asleep. She started breathing in a special way. He got up very quietly and started to tiptoe. You have to be good at sneaking. Because not only did he hear the hammer and smell the acetone, he caught parts of Mom and Dad’s conversation. Mom’s part. He heard “escape route.” Dad would never say that if it weren’t super important. So the escape route had to be. Hugo snuck out into the dark then over to the cabinet beneath the sink where the hammer and the other stuff was kept, and crawled inside it. When he was sure the door was closed behind him and no sound or light could get out, he turned on the flashlight on his phone. He’d lied when Dad asked. Sometimes you have to lie. “Hugo—you didn’t pack anything but your clothes, right?” Dad had fished his cell phone out of his eldest son’s pocket. “For example, we can’t have this with us.” Dad had put the phone in a drawer. So Hugo insisted he had to go pee and Dad told him to be fast, Hugo filled his mouth with water, spat it in the toilet to make it sound like pee, and the sound of the flush was loud enough to cover him going back to his room again, pulling out the drawer, and grabbing his telephone.

  Now that phone’s fl
ashlight shone around him.

  It was dirty under the sink. Old leftovers and dust balls and disgusting damp spots.

  And there, in the ceiling of the cabinet, he found it—taped to the bottom of the sink. A gun. A real one. The Polish brand Dad liked—was that what he meant when he said a escape route? Hugo pulled it loose, weighed it in his hand. He held it like that for a while, aimed it at the cabinet wall, but then taped it back again—surely Dad didn’t mean Mom was supposed to start shooting people.

  He turned off the phone’s flashlight and crawled out of the cabinet, snuck back into the dark apartment. There were two closets in the hall and he walked into them one at a time. Empty. He shone the light everywhere—found only the smell of other people. The third closet was in the bedroom and slightly larger. He passed by his sleeping mother and brother and sister and opened the closet door, stepped inside, closed it behind him, searching with the flashlight. Completely empty, just like the others. But this one also had shelves that couldn’t be seen from below. He took a deep breath and the shelves became steps that carried him upward. No. Nothing. Nowhere. He climbed back down, and it was when he jumped from the last shelf that he felt the floor buckle beneath his feet. He tried again, jumped, landed, and it rocked. An unsteady floor. He got down on his knees, flashing the light around. There. Behind the doorframe. Something black. Like a little knob sticking up. He touched it. It was like the ones on kitchen cabinets. As if it were a hatch. He tried to pull it, but it was impossible since he was sitting on the floor. On the door itself. He would have to leave the closet and pull the knob up from the outside. But he couldn’t. Not now. Mom would wake up. Or maybe Luiza, and she would wake up Mom. And everything would be ruined.

  Because what if this is what Dad meant.

  An escape route.

  10:41 PM

  (2 days, 23 hours, and 21 minutes remaining)

  He was about to call her, again. The only person who could ever make him feel anything close to peace. The woman who was soft and hard at the same time, demanding though she never made demands, and she’d taught him that love was something that could be learned, slowly. But Piet Hoffmann forced himself not to. No matter how tightly it squeezed inside his chest. Every attempt at contact meant leaving a trace, and the only traces that should exist were those he chose to leave. Instead, he did what he hoped Zofia did too—destroyed his phones. First the one that had carried her voice to him and then the one that carried a completely different kind of voice, a distorted one. So when Ewert Grens entered the kitchen to grab a new cup of coffee—which number was impossible to say—he almost stepped onto a pile of empty acetone bottles, a few of his favorite pans, his steak mallet, a couple of kitchen towels with new holes, all spread across the floor—plus tons of tiny plastic pieces that had once sat together.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Quite the pile—I suppose you also destroyed the phone? The only line you have to those who threaten you?”

  “I thought it was time.”

  “You realize what this means, the next time they try to contact you? All hell will break loose.”

  “They don’t know where my family is. Where I am.”

  “Yet, Hoffmann. Yet!”

  “And if we figure out what we need to, it will stay that way.”

  Grens grabbed a trash bag out of the cleaning closet, held it while Hoffmann filled it up.

  “Since this was obviously more than one phone, I guess you changed your number. I’ll need it. If we’re going to keep working together.”

  “I’ll be changing it two times a day. Six different numbers. You’ll get a list of all of them.”

  Ewert Grens’s coffee cup was joined by another on the kitchen table, one for himself and one for his guest.

  “I want you to sit down.”

  “Time for an investigation meeting, Detective Superintendent?”

  “You could call it that. At the world’s smallest police station.”

  Grens smiled as he put two envelopes in front of Hoffmann.

  “Congratulations on your new job.”

  “What, Grens?”

  “Open it.”

  Piet Hoffmann ripped the first envelope open with his index finger and took out the contents. A black leather case. He opened it. In the plastic pocket on the left was an ID card. POLICE stood in red letters and Police Department of Stockholm in smaller text beneath a photograph of himself in his current disguised state, a social security number he’d never seen before, and a name he’d never used. In the plastic case to the right was a real police badge, STOCKHOLM 4514 on a brass plate and the coat of arms with the golden crown.

  “Verner Larsson?”

  “Just as good as any of your other undercover names.”

  “Pretty strange, right, Grens? All these years as an infiltrator on behalf of the City Police—with no rights despite contributing to your formal and very real investigations. And now, when the investigation is at your kitchen table, you turn me into a real police officer.”

  “Yes. And you need a police badge for that. And this.”

  The next envelope contained a flight ticket and the kind of letter of introduction that usually begins To Whom It May Concern, but which was now addressed to one Gezim Latifi and explained that Verner Larsson had been educated at the police academy and, during his years as an officer at the Swedish police authority, had been considered both reliable and capable, a model officer.

  “Latifi?”

  “A police officer working in the city where that call was picked up—Shkodër, Albania. That’s where you’re headed.”

  “And why him?”

  “I needed someone I could trust. So I contacted a German colleague I’ve worked with. He has an extensive network and better judgment than my own. He gave me Latifi. One of the very few in that area that can’t be bribed—which is usually a requirement to be on the force down there. Besides, he’s nice. We spoke on the phone for almost an hour, and I’m sure he can help you with what you need.”

  “And what exactly is that?”

  “You’re looking for two individuals. The perp we’re informally investigating from this kitchen table, who is threatening you and your family, whose goal is to take over the Swedish illegal arms trade by selling the world’s most powerful machine gun. And a perp who recently ordered the murders of three hit men, which we are officially investigating from the police station. These two individuals I am quite convinced are one and the same—and it will connect both of these investigations to the tower room of a white house. I want to know who it is. And who he’s working with in Sweden. Who’s running around on his behalf shooting people on my watch.”

  Piet Hoffmann closed the black leather case, his temporary identity, put it in a pocket on his shoulder holster, and stood up—ready to go.

  “Wait a second. That’s only half of your mission.”

  “Okay. What’s the other half?”

  “I want you to find a young woman who went by the name Hannah Ohlsson, but these days she could be calling herself anything—if she’s still alive.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Someone I’m worried about.”

  “From the other investigation—the one you won’t talk about?”

  “Yes.”

  Ewert Grens produced a third envelope.

  “It’s essential you find the man responsible for those murders. That’s your top priority. But for me, personally, it would mean even more if you could take a look at the Jane Does contained in this envelope. If you could gather information and compare that with what I’m sending with you—characteristics of appearance that don’t change. Her height, eye color, shoe size, dental records, scar from an appendix surgery, and a few other things.”

  Hoffmann started to stand up again. But Grens stopped him, again.

&nb
sp; “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Zofia. Your kids. I want to know where you’re hiding them.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can protect them. While you’re gone.”

  Always alone. Trust only yourself. That’s what Hoffmann believed for a very long time, thought it was the only way to survive. Until one day he learned he could choose to rely on a detective superintendent named Ewert Grens, and a few years later he was forced to trust him.

  That wasn’t enough right now.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I know I should trust you, Grens. Unconditionally. But it’s impossible.”

  “We have to trust each other. Even though neither of us trusts a goddamn thing.”

  “On everything else. But not this.”

  “That’s the only way this collaboration is going to work.”

  “Sorry—not until you find out who that dirty cop is.”

  Hoffmann looked at the detective, and it was clear from his face that he had no intention of discussing it any further. An experienced interrogator knew when a question tore down more than the expected answer built up. So while Ewert Grens finished his last coffee of the evening, Piet Hoffmann hurried out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out to hail a taxi. Twelve minutes later he was in western Södermalm, stepping into the studio of a makeup artist who was waiting for him with a smile he could have got lost in.

  “Thank you. For seeing me on such short notice.”

  “You’re in a hurry. As usual.”

  “As usual.”

  The full-length mirror was rolled out into the middle of the studio. It was easier to meet himself this time—the pudgy accountant was more familiar.