by Lars Kepler
“Yes, but I—”
“What did he do to you?”
“We followed him from the synagogue and down to …”
Joona doesn’t notice that what he’s grabbed is a fire extinguisher, a big one, and it’s coming down with him. He no longer has any sense of time or of where he is. The pain in his head and a fierce ringing in his ears is all he knows.
31
the message
Behind the dark veils of pain, Joona can feel her hand on his back.
“What’s going on?” asks Saga Bauer in a low voice. “Are you hurt?”
He tries to shake his head but is in too much pain to speak. It feels as if a hook is being drawn through his brain: down through the skin, the cranium, the brain membranes, and the heavy, floating brain fluid.
He drops to his knees.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” says Saga.
He feels her lifting his face but he can’t see anything. His entire body is bathed in pearls of sweat that pour from his armpits, his neck, his back.
Saga is hunting through his clothes. She thinks he’s having an epileptic fit and is trying to find some kind of medicine in his pockets. Joona realises she’s opening his wallet and looking for the sign of a flame, the symbol for epileptics.
The pain starts to recede. Joona wets his mouth with his tongue. He looks up. His jaws are tense and his whole body aches from the migraine attack.
“You guys can’t go in there yet,” he whispers. “I have to—”
“What the hell happened here?”
“Nothing.” Joona picks his gun up from the floor.
He gets to his feet and staggers as fast as he can through the plastic curtains and into the room. It’s empty. An emergency exit sign is lit on the other side. Saga has followed him and she questions him with a look. Joona opens the emergency door and sees a steep half set of stairs leading to a steel door at street level.
“Perkele,” he swears in Finnish.
“Talk to me!” Saga says angrily.
Joona always pushes the direct cause of his illness as far from his consciousness as possible. There was an incident many years ago … it keeps giving him this pulsing pain, this pain so severe that he almost passes out. But he refuses to think about the incident.
What the doctor says is that this is an extreme form of migraine with a physical cause. The antiepileptic drug Topiramate is the only medicine that seems to help. Joona is supposed to take it daily, but when he’s working and needs a clear head, he stops. Not only does it make him tired, it dulls his mind. He knows he’s playing a game of roulette. Without the medication, he might manage for weeks without a migraine, yet another time he’ll be hit by one after only a few days.
“They were torturing a guy … a neo-Nazi, I think, but—”
“Torturing?”
“With a cigar,” he answers as he turns around and heads back into the hallway.
“What happened?”
“I … couldn’t …”
“But Joona,” Saga says tentatively. “Maybe … if you’ve got a physical problem, you shouldn’t be working … operatively, that is …”
She puts her hand to her face.
“What a shitty situation,” she whispers.
Joona walks towards the room with the clown lamp and hears Saga’s footsteps behind him.
“And why in the hell are you even here?” she asks to his back. “Säpo’s SWAT team is going to raid this place any moment. If they see that weapon in your hand, they’ll shoot first and ask questions later … it’ll be dark, there’ll be tear gas—”
“I have to speak to Daniel Marklund,” Joona says stubbornly.
“You’re not supposed to even know about him!” she exclaims as she follows him up the spiral staircase. “Who told you about him?”
Joona starts down another hallway, but stops when he sees Saga gesture a different way. He follows her, but pulls out his gun when she starts to run. They both turn a corner, and Joona hears her yell something.
Saga has come to a halt in a room with five computers. In one corner stands a man with dirty hair and a beard. He matches the picture of Daniel Marklund in Joona’s mind. His lips look dry. He’s licking them. He holds out a Russian bayonet knife in one of his fists.
“Police,” Saga says, flashing her ID. “Put down the knife.”
The young man shakes his head and waves the knife in the air in front of him, flashing the blade in different directions.
“We just need to speak with you,” Joona says as he holsters his gun.
“So speak.”
Joona walks closer, looking into the young man’s frightened eyes, totally ignoring the knife being waved directly at him. He ignores its sharpened point.
“Daniel, you’re really not good at this,” he says with a smile.
Joona can smell the scent of gun grease on the blade.
Daniel is waving the bayonet knife in faster circles and wears a look of concentration. He growls, “Don’t think only Finns are good at—”
Lightning fast, Joona grabs the young man’s wrist, twists it, and takes away the knife. He gently puts it down on the table.
The room is silent. The men look at each other, and then Daniel Marklund shrugs.
“Usually I only deal with the computers,” he says apologetically.
“They’re going to raid us any moment now,” Joona says urgently. “Tell us why you went to Penelope Fernandez’s place.”
“Just dropping by to say hi.”
“Daniel,” Joona says darkly. “This knife business could lead you to a prison term. But right now I have more important things on my plate. Don’t waste my time.”
“Does Penelope belong to the Brigade?” Saga asks quickly.
“Penelope Fernandez?” Daniel Marklund smiles. “She’s against us. She’s made that perfectly clear.”
“So what’s the connection?” Joona asks.
“What do you mean, she’s against you?” Saga puts in. “Is there a power struggle going on?”
“Doesn’t Säpo know anything?” asks Daniel with a tired smile. “Penelope Fernandez is a complete pacifist. She’s a firm believer in democracy. So she doesn’t like our methods—but we like her.”
He sits down on a chair in front of two computers.
“Like her?”
“We respect her.”
“Why?” asks Saga. “Why should you—”
“You guys really don’t know how much some people hate her, do you? Why don’t you just Google her name? People have said some really brutal things about her, and there are always people who go too far.”
“What do you mean, ‘go too far’?”
Daniel gives them a testing look. “You do know she’s disappeared, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Saga replies.
“That’s good,” he says. “Though I really don’t expect the police to make much effort to find her. That’s why I went over to her place. I wanted to check her computer to see who might be behind this. I mean, there was a group, the Swedish Resistance, who sent a message to their members last April telling them to kidnap ‘the communist whore Penelope Fernandez’ and make her into a sex slave for the movement. But take a look at this.”
Daniel Marklund clicks a few keys on one of his computers and turns the screen to Joona.
“This one is connected to the Aryan Brotherhood.”
Joona takes a quick glance through a vulgar chat page about Aryan penises and how they are supposed to execute Penelope.
“But I don’t think these groups are involved,” Joona says.
“Not them? Then who? The Northern Brotherhood?” Daniel speculates, now eager to help. “You need to get going! It’s not too late!”
“How do you know?”
“You guys are always so slow. This time I caught a message on her mother’s answering machine. That’s got to give you an edge. You’re not too late yet.”
“You caught what?” Joona asks.
�
�She tried to call her mother yesterday morning,” the young man answers as he scratches his dirty hair.
“Penelope called?”
“Yes, it was her.”
“What did she say?” Saga asks breathlessly.
“Säpo doesn’t have a monopoly on listening in to phone calls.” Daniel gives a crooked smile.
“What did Penelope say?” Joona repeats, raising his voice.
“People are after her,” Daniel says.
“Exactly what did she say?”
Daniel gives Saga Bauer a glance and asks, “How much time do we have left?”
Saga looks at her watch. “Three or four minutes. Maybe.”
“Then listen to this,” Daniel says as he clicks a few keys on the second computer.
There’s a hiss in the speakers and then there’s a click and Claudia Fernandez’s voicemail message comes on. Three brief tones are heard followed by crackling noises due to a very bad connection. Underneath all the noise, one can hear a faint voice. A woman’s voice. It’s hard to make out what she says. A few seconds later, a man yells, “Get a job!” Then the connection is gone.
“Let me try again with the filters on,” Daniel mumbles.
“We’re running out of time,” Saga warns.
Daniel moves a dial, looks at crossing sound curves, and replays the recording.
“This is Claudia Fernandez. I can’t answer the phone right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call back as soon as I can.”
The three tones sound different this time. The crackling is now a weak, metallic crinkling in the background.
And Penelope’s voice is clear.
“Mamma, I need help. People are after me—”
“Get a job!” a man’s voice says, and then it’s silent.
32
real police work
Saga Bauer looks at her watch and says they have to go. Daniel Marklund makes a halfhearted joke about manning the barricades, but there is fear in his eyes.
“We’re going to hit you hard,” Saga says. “Hide that knife. Don’t make any resistance. Give up at once, hands high, and don’t make any sudden moves.”
She and Joona leave the tiny room.
Daniel watches them go, and still sitting in the desk chair, dumps the bayonet knife into the wastebasket.
Joona and Saga wend their way through the labyrinthine headquarters of the Brigade and exit onto Hornsgatan. Saga rejoins Göran’s task force. They’re gathered in Nagham Fast Food and are chowing down on french fries. Their eyes are shining and hard as they wait for orders.
It comes two minutes later as fifteen heavily armed security police pour from four black trucks. The SWAT team forces all the entrances open and floods the inside with tear gas. Once they trample in, they find five young people sitting on the floor with their hands over their heads. They’re led outside cuffed with plastic strips.
The security police take the Brigade’s weapons into custody: one old military pistol, a Colt, as well as a decorative rifle, a shotgun with its barrels bent, and a carton of cartridges. Additionally four knives and two throwing stars. They were fairly poorly armed.
Driving along Söder Mälarstrand, Joona picks up his mobile phone and calls his boss. After two rings, Carlos answers, pressing the Talk button with his pen.
“How do you like the Police Training Academy, Joona?” he asks.
“Not there.”
“I know, since—”
“Penelope Fernandez is still alive.” Joona interrupts him. “She’s running for her life.”
“Who says so?”
“She says so. She left a message on her mother’s answering machine.”
Carlos’s end of the connection falls silent. Then he draws a deep breath.
“Okay. She’s alive. All right … what else do we know? She’s alive, but—”
“We know that she was alive thirty hours ago at the time she made the call,” Joona says. “And that someone is after her.”
“Who?”
“She wasn’t able to say, but—if it’s the same man I ran into, we absolutely don’t have any time to lose.”
“You’ve said you believe this man is a professional killer.”
“I’m absolutely sure of that. The man who attacked Erixson and me was a professional hit man … a grob.”
“A grob?”
“Serbian for ‘grave.’ These guys are expensive. They usually work alone. They’re well paid to follow orders precisely.”
“It all seems a bit far-fetched.”
“But I’m right,” Joona says doggedly.
“You always say that, but how has Penelope got away from this kind of killer? It’s been two days,” Carlos says.
“If she’s still alive, it’s because his priorities have shifted.”
“You still think he’s searching for something?”
“Yes,” Joona replies.
“What is it?”
“Don’t know for sure, but maybe a photo …”
“Why do you think so?”
“That’s my best theory at the moment.” Joona quickly relates what he found at Penelope’s apartment: the books taken out of the shelf, the picture with the lines of poetry, Björn’s quick visit and how he held his hand over his stomach when he was leaving, the palm print on the glass door, the bits of tape, and the corner of a photograph.
“So you think the killer is after that photo?”
“I believe he started in Björn’s apartment. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he poured out petrol and turned the neighbour’s iron on high. The alarm went to the fire department at five past eleven that morning and before they could even get the fire under control, the entire floor had been destroyed.”
“That evening he kills Viola.”
“He probably assumed that Björn had taken the photograph on the boat so he followed them, went on board, drowned Viola, and then searched the entire boat with the intention of sinking it afterwards. Something made him change his mind. He left the archipelago, returned to Stockholm, and searched through Penelope’s apartment—”
“You don’t think he found the photograph, do you?” asks Carlos.
“Either Björn has it on his person or it is hidden at a friend’s place or in a safe-deposit box. Any place at all, really.”
Silence on the line. Joona can hear Carlos breathe deeply.
“But if we find it first,” Carlos says, thinking out loud, “and this killer finds out we have it, then all of this is over.”
“That’s right,” Joona says.
“Because … if we on the force, we the police, see it, then it’s not a secret anymore. It will cease being something to kill over.”
“I only hope it’s that easy.”
“Joona, I can’t … I can’t take this case away from Petter, but I presume—”
“—that I’ll be busy lecturing at the Police Training Academy,” Joona says.
“That’s all I need to know,” Carlos says with a laugh.
On the way to Kungsholm, Joona checks his voicemail and finds a number of messages from Erixson. In the first, Erixson says he can keep working from the hospital. Thirty minutes later, he asks if he can’t be part of the work on the ground, and twenty-seven minutes later he yells that he’s going crazy without anything to do. Joona calls him and after two rings, he hears Erixson’s tired voice go “Quack.”
“So I’m too late?” Joona asks. “You’re already crazy?”
Erixson hiccups as a reply.
“I don’t know what you know,” Joona says. “But we’re in a big rush. Yesterday morning Penelope Fernandez left a message on her mother’s answering machine.”
“Yesterday?” Erixson was immediately alert.
“She said someone was chasing her.”
“Are you on the way here?” Erixson asks.
There’s noise on the line and Erixson asks someone to leave him alone. Joona hears a woman’s strict voice telling him it’s time for physical therapy and
Erixson hissing back that he’s on a private call.
Erixson pumps Joona for information, and Joona obliges. He explains that Penelope and Björn were not together in the apartment on Sankt Paulsgatan the night before Friday. She was picked up by taxi at exactly 6:40 a.m. and was driven to the television station to be part of a debate. A few minutes after the taxi left, Björn entered the apartment. Joona tells Erixson about the palm print on the glass door, the tape, and the corner ripped from a photograph. He says he’s convinced that Björn had waited for Penelope to leave the apartment so he could get the photo quickly without her knowledge.
“And I believe that the person who attacked us is a hit man and he was looking for that photograph when we surprised him.”
“Maybe so,” Erixson whispers.
“It wasn’t his priority to kill us. He just wanted to get out of the apartment,” Joona says.
“Otherwise we would be dead.”
“We can conclude that the hit man doesn’t yet have this photograph,” Joona continues. “If he’d found it on the boat, he wouldn’t have bothered with Penelope’s apartment.”
“And it’s not at her place because Björn had already taken it.”
“My theory is that his attempt to blow up the place means that the man behind all this doesn’t really need the photo in his hand, he just wants it destroyed.”
“But why would such a photograph hang on the door of Penelope’s living room? And why is it so damned important?” asks Erixson.
“I have a few theories,” Joona says. “Most likely Björn and Penelope took a photograph of something and left it in plain sight because they didn’t realise that it was documenting evidence and what that evidence really meant.”
“That’s right,” Erixson chortles.
“As far as they knew, the photo wasn’t something they needed to hide, let alone that someone would murder for it.”
“But then Björn changes his mind.”
“Maybe he figured something out. Maybe he realised that it’s dangerous and that’s why he went to get it,” Joona says. “There’s still a great deal we don’t know. Now we’ve just got to slog along through routine police work.”
“Exactly!” Erixson exclaims.
“Can you gather everything you can find—all the telephone calls made this past week? All text messages? All bank withdrawals? All that stuff: receipts, bus tickets, meetings, activities, working hours—”
