A temporary hiding place with a temporary friend—but within a year we had created a future together. I changed. Or, maybe I didn’t at all? Maybe it was more that once I was with my aunt and my father’s old friend I finally understood who I was, where I came from, and maybe it was difficult or even impossible to escape something you want to get closer to? That kind of fear that turns into strength and determination when it’s paired with trust. Because we made up our minds. I made them make up their minds. We would take back what belonged to us, finish what Dad had started, and we’d do it with the help of Hamid’s and Dad’s old contacts. We hired professionals to take out Zoltan’s men one by one. Always Ulcinj execution. The same method used to kill my own family while I watched. We saved King Zoltan for last, and I took care of him myself—it was the third time gunshots changed the meaning and direction of my life.
Now we had taken back the Balkan route.
And we’d do what Dad had been preparing to do—use the secret stash of the world’s most advanced machine gun to take over bigger markets.
That’s why we split up. Hamid and Aunt Vesa led the organization from Shkodër, while I, with my newly acquired knowledge of explosives and ammunition—becoming Hamid’s student had felt like getting closer to Dad—would travel to Sweden and solve the mystery of the hidden weapons. I changed my name, again—Zana Lilaj became Hannah Ohlsson became Amelia Schmidt—and with my new name, I applied to the police academy. That seemed like the best way to complete my three objectives. First, I needed to get access to the police investigation into the murders of my family, specifically the address of an apartment with a small square hole in its floor. Secondly, to get the names of the men who were arrested and interrogated at the time, but never locked up. And finally so I’d get the best cover in the world—someone in a police uniform running the Swedish illegal arms trade.
* * *
—
She asked Zofia and the boys to take Luiza to the sofa in the living room and wait there until Superintendent Grens arrived, while she went and got them some water and a bag of buns that was sitting on the kitchen counter. A few minutes to herself before the apartment filled up with voices and energy. And then it just happened. It wasn’t anything she was planning, but her legs carried her to the two men in the bedroom, and she did the same thing she’d done in Albania when they were lying on the floor after a professional hit: she kicked them. Hard. Again, again. Kicked them even though she knew they couldn’t feel it.
* * *
—
Hamid and Aunt Vesa rebuilt the Balkan route and made it even better. More weapons than ever were smuggled to northern Europe and, above all, to Sweden where gang activity had increased the most. Meanwhile, the police academy was just a long wait for that fifth semester—my training period and the access I’d come here for. To be able, from the inside, to find the key to the weapons stash and then finally destroy those who had destroyed my world.
The first burglary in the police station was also the easiest.
Already during the introductory tour Mariana Hermansson showed us, her two cadets, the archive, those shelves in the dark rooms of the police station’s basement where the files from every criminal investigation were kept, she even gave us the task of looking up a couple of old cases and rewarded us afterward with the code—here you go, you’ll have to go down there sometimes, just part of the job. Here were the traces I was looking for. Those who had been erased in reality, but who lingered on in stacks of paper in brown cardboard boxes. Early the next morning I made my first visit. Alone in that absurd collection of assaults and crime victims, I found at the top of a shelf at the end of one of the halls, the preliminary investigation.
REPORT REGARDING DALA STREET 74.
One page. In order to access the full case files—with complete crime scene investigation and list of suspects—reference was made to the restricted archive. But at that point a single page was enough. I got the address, the floor, and I could go to the apartment. I broke the lock just the way I’d learned to and stepped into a hallway that transported me back in time. The furniture was different and the smell, but the rooms were the ones I remembered so well. Perhaps I should have wept, broken down. But I didn’t. I was there for a reason. And those bastards would never force me into a cupboard again.
Somehow I just knew about that little square hole in the floor of Julia’s room. It seemed so obvious. Dad must have let us see it. Maybe he guessed that one day one of his children might have to finish what he started, what someone tried to take away from him.
And there it was, in the hole in the floor, a USB drive. The information that would lead to a stash of weapons worth one billion kronor—coordinates of its exact position, detailed descriptions of how to get there, pictures from inside the rock room with pallet after pallet of heavy machine guns that no one had ever seen before.
Getting into the restricted archive was more difficult.
Late one night I got my chance—via a webcam I placed in a small crack in the wall, I was able to record the archivist inputting his long code. And via an equally small directional antenna, I copied the frequencies on the archivist’s access card. The next night I went in, found the investigation and sat down in the kitchenette of the homicide unit and started to read about the murder of a family. The report from the forensic technicians was as horrific as the medical examiner’s. Details that not only brought me closer to my parents and siblings, they brought me inside of them. The descriptions of myself, on the other hand, from the perspective of the police, I couldn’t take inside—it was as if I were looking at a photo of someone else. That was also when, sitting there late one night reading those files, I realized that the policeman who had carried me out of the apartment, who took care of me those first few weeks, who I’d thought about so many times without having a face or a name, that he was sitting in an office just a few doors away! Ewert Grens was the one who came to the apartment that day. I remembered him as so old, so I was sure he wasn’t working there anymore.
I wanted to know more about him.
The man I had trusted, who made sure I got a new home, a new world.
I went back down to the archive, searched for his name, and read all about his career. That was how I stumbled across Piet Hoffmann, in three very remarkable investigations during which Grens’s and Hoffmann’s paths crossed—and I realized this was exactly the person I needed. So I carried out a third burglary. I used the same already successful method, webcam and directional antenna, and I captured—just like in the restricted archive—Erik Wilson’s personal eight-digit code and the electronic information on his access card.
As expected, I found exactly what I needed in the safe.
All of the information about the criminal infiltrator project—the logbooks, intelligence reports, code names.
I spent another late night in the homicide unit’s kitchenette and read until I arrived at Wilson’s notes about Hoffmann’s plan to knock out a heavily armed MC gang all by himself—and I didn’t need to read more.
My name was Amelia, I left Hannah behind long ago, but that was when I really became myself again, Zana, completely.
* * *
—
She kicked the two bodies until she didn’t need to anymore, then went in to the Hoffmann family and sank onto the sofa in an empty spot between the boys. They were shaken, but more composed than she’d expected. They had their mother, they had each other.
She never even noticed her phone ringing—it was the youngest one, Rasmus, who poked her thigh gently and pointed to her jacket pocket. She answered. Grens. Stressed.
“I just wanted to tell you we’ll soon be there and that we . . . is that Amelia?”
“Yes.”
“Are you the one who’s already there?”
“Yes.”
“The alarm, did you . . .”
“It was me. I called in the alarm.
Everything is under control.”
“I’m not sure I understand . . .”
“We’ll discuss that later. When you get here. Where are you now?”
* * *
—
I had accomplished two of my three tasks. I had the best cover imaginable for an arms dealer—a police uniform. I found the USB stick and through it located the hidden weapons stash. Now I was going to take the lives of those who took my life. In the investigation Grens led seventeen years earlier, it was clear he suspected four people who had carried out the murders on behalf of a fifth—King Zoltan, who I dealt with in Shkodër. Five men who Grens interrogated and arrested but had to release.
Now you can’t have any more kids.
Voices, fragments.
But you can still meet a new woman, think about that.
I tracked them down—police records are handy for many things—and executed them. Dejan Pejović. Branko Stojanović. Ermir Shala. In the same way they carried out their executions. I didn’t feel much. I expected happiness, elation, even a sense of closure. But it felt more like this was my right. I had one left. Dusko Zaravic. When Hermansson commanded me to follow Grens to Söderköping. Home. To Thomas and Anette. The place Hannah Ohlsson had left behind. Of course I had an excuse ready, an escape plan, if we ended up going to that brick house that once gave me a sense of security. I never needed to use the excuse. We met the social worker who gave us a name and a place, but from there, Grens chose to go on alone to meet my adoptive parents, while Lucas and I went to dig up my childhood at the local police station. What I didn’t foresee was that Hermansson would arrest Zaravic in the meantime. That they would lock him up, put him away, for three days. Beyond my reach. And when the detective decided to search his apartment to try to find something that they could hold him for, I was forced to break in and clean out a computer, a few illegally obtained guns, and even a few suits I was sure might connect him to a big hit on a wholesaler. It was a surreal moment afterward to stand in the hall of the homicide unit and watch Grens furiously accuse Wilson of having leaked the plan to search Zaravic’s apartment—and a great relief to realize the blood from the window where I cut myself wouldn’t be linked to me, because cadets weren’t expected to contribute to the DNA bank.
We were five, I was the only one left.
They were five, Zaravic was the only one left.
But our two sides wouldn’t remain mirror images much longer.
* * *
—
Amelia?”
“Yes?”
“You said Uncle Ewert was coming.”
“He’s coming.”
“When?”
“If you press your ear against the window on the balcony door, Rasmus, you’ll soon hear the sirens. Really loud.”
“Like this?”
“Your whole cheek and ear against the glass.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Soon. Several police cars. First, Ewert, then others.”
“You promise?”
“I promise soon everything will be okay again.”
* * *
—
Three days delay. That was that. But if I waited all this time, I could wait until Zaravic was released. I’d confirmed in my family’s autopsy records exactly what the distance should be between the holes in the forehead and the temple—he’d be shot in the same way as the rest.
Then came the moment when I had to change my plan.
I’d blown up Hoffmann’s house to force him to make contact, and for some respect, then Grens had invited us home for an unofficial meeting because he knew there was a dirty cop. He couldn’t know that it was me—that bringing us there wasn’t going to help him. It was in his kitchen that the detective superintendent told us about his secret collaborator. Piet Hoffmann has traveled to northern Albania—we believe that the top man of this arms smuggling operation is based there—and that he will connect us to the man who’s shooting people in Sweden. That bastard Hoffmann wasn’t doing what he was supposed to! The opposite! He was working with Grens to expose us! I had no choice. Hamid was a good man, I had became very fond of him, but he wasn’t nearly so strong as Mom or Dad, and he might break down under pressure—with a man like Hoffmann the risk was great, too great, that he would unmask me and Aunt Vesa.
I stole Grens’s phone and got Hoffmann’s new number.
I offered money, a hefty sum, to a newly hired guard at the Kronoberg jail to hide another phone and some documents inside Zaravic’s cell.
And I shot Hoffmann’s employee and exposed his family’s hiding place on the TV screen so the bastard would understand the consequences if he did not carry out his new assignment in Albania.
* * *
—
Now Amelia! I hear them!”
“Yes, they’re driving really fast.”
“The police sirens! Uncle Ewert is coming!”
“I told you, Rasmus.”
She laid a gentle hand on his tousled hair. He was so happy, so open, as only a child can be. She looked at his sibling, at Hugo sitting on the sofa and guarding his mother uneasily, taking on a responsibility that was too much for one his age, and Luiza lying between them, unaware of the drama surrounding her.
They had each other. Like siblings should.
* * *
—
Everything’s connected. So what began with Aunt Vesa killing for my sake ended when she called and said Hamid had died, but the shooter had spared her. I hadn’t realized that what I had changed in my haste would reach all the way to my beloved aunt, the only one I have left. And something happened. Inside me. I broke down. I was thrown back. Except even harder. To those days and nights with dead people. To the place where the police officer I’m waiting for now, found me, gave me back my life—the man who’s been trying to save these children over these last few days, saved me too. I know, better than anyone, what it means for siblings to pay with their lives as a threat to their parents, to be used in that way. And when our plan right now couldn’t be carried out to the end, I changed my mind. It was too late to stop Zaravic from getting ahold of the documents, but there was still time to stop his revenge—and complete mine.
I think I’ll sit down again.
And just wait for Grens and Hermansson and Sundkvist to arrive.
With the children and Zofia.
It feels good, and I’m tired.
PART
9
Howling, screaming sirens.
Flashing, rotating lights.
The whole world was angry noise and urgent lights until the car stopped in front of the apartment building and it became silence and stillness. When Ewert Grens, Mariana Hermansson, and Sven Sundkvist entered the apartment on the first floor they encountered a scene that also encompassed the same extremes. In one room, death and chaos, in the other, life and nascent calm. Two dead men and a shaken but unharmed family—and one police cadet who was a hero without even seeming to realize it. Grens rarely arrived at a crime scene so soon after the crime had occurred. His job as a detective superintendent usually meant showing up long after, searching for details that became the puzzle of circumstances and facts that made up the evidence. Perhaps that’s why he walked around feeling so uneasy even though everything had ended well. He didn’t understand what he was seeing because the acute threat had been averted.
But he understood the hatch and the hole in the closet floor that Hugo showed him, a very Hoffmann touch. Always alone, trust only yourself. He also understood Dusko Zaravic’s motives, that’s why he’d wanted to lock him up for three days, and why Hermansson in the middle of all that wreckage looked so proud as she spoke of her young protégé.
“What Amelia did must be absolutely unique. A cadet, Ewert—who read this investigation so much better than her superiors did. Who was in the right place. With just seconds t
o spare, she took the shots that saved four lives.”
Grens offered his hand to the young woman, shook it long and hard. He couldn’t even think about what would have happened if she hadn’t arrived. If Zofia, if Rasmus and Hugo, if . . . now he felt it again. Not the uneasiness of not understanding what he saw. This was more like the despair he sometimes still felt when he thought about Anni. To lose someone who was a part of you.
“Thank you. What you . . . It’s invaluable. Irreplaceable. I can’t find any better words.”
She nodded, almost shyly. The detective superintendent continued.
“But how could you—how did you know? How did you manage to get here, in time?”
He looked into her intelligent eyes, and she seemed almost embarrassed. He liked that a lot. Someone who wasn’t chasing after confirmation, thirsty for attention like so many others.
“I . . . don’t really know why. At the police academy, our lecturers talked a lot about gut feeling, said it can be dangerous, things can go very wrong if a police officer lets themselves be led by that. But that was what I felt, a—gut feeling. When Zaravic was released. And when I saw him, how he . . . I had already parked my car on Bergs Street and followed him. It took them a few minutes to break in with the crowbar, break down the door. That’s why I was able to get here in time.”
Grens’s inner pocket buzzed. Piet Hoffmann’s current number. The detective superintendent apologized and headed toward the kitchen and the balcony, pulled the door shut behind him. A strong wind was blowing, he hadn’t noticed before.
“Yes?”
“What the hell is going on, Grens? I called Zofia and got no answer, and I called you and you didn’t answer and . . .”
“It turned out fine.”
Knock Knock Page 37
