The Boy in the Shadows

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  “No . . .”

  It was true. He could speak, but his voice was weak.

  “Good, so we know you can communicate. I want you to tell me what you learned about Angela’s murder and Klingberg’s abduction. And what you told to others . . . who you’ve been in contact with.”

  He didn’t understand.

  “Does anyone else know you’re here?”

  He didn’t answer; why should he give him anything?

  “Okay. We’re in no rush. But I’m going to make you tell me, do you understand?”

  Julin held up the photos that Katz had found in the hiding place behind the power socket.

  “I know you took these from my house. Look at me when I’m speaking to you!”

  “You fucking asshole . . . you made it look like I did it.”

  He couldn’t believe he was talking to him, but it must have been the hate, because he added, “And I swear, Julin, I’m going to get revenge.”

  Julin didn’t bat an eye.

  “You’re right. I’ll be honest with you—you ended up the scapegoat. And now I want you to be honest with me. Who else have you told?”

  “Go to hell . . .”

  Julin just nodded, and he left the room with the others; Katz saw a door open and daylight pouring in and being sucked back out as they closed the door behind them. He was left alone in the room. His eyes searched for something that could help him get the rope loose, but he couldn’t find anything. What did it matter? He was paralyzed. The drug they had given him had disabled his muscles.

  He dozed off again. He saw an old black woman he understood to be Marie Bennoit. She was holding a bone rattle in one hand and a brush made of chicken feathers in the other . . . she shuffled through the room, humming a song, until she transformed into Eva Dahlman, with bite marks around her neck.

  Sorry, Eva, he thought as he fell once more through a blood-red shaft, deep into himself.

  She was on the highway, halfway to Katrineholm. Her visit to Söder Hospital had changed everything. Jorma had left the ICU that afternoon and been moved to recovery ward. A single police officer had been sitting on a stool in the hallway outside his room. She had shown him her EBM ID and, to her surprise, he had let her in.

  They hadn’t seen each other since she was fourteen, and yet he looked the same. Handsome in his own way, not unlike Katz. Black hair, dark-brown eyes. But he was larger and calmer. He had a faint Finnish accent even though he’d lived in Sweden all his life. He was nice, one of the few truly kindhearted people she had ever met. As long as you weren’t his enemy.

  She must look the same, too, she guessed, because he recognized her and chose to trust her. So far he hadn’t said a word to the police who had tried to question him.

  What are they going to do? I don’t want to get the cops involved in this. Are you a cop, Eva? I can smell it on you.

  “A prosecutor,” she said. “I have to get hold of him . . . and no one has made the connection between you and Katz yet.”

  His vocal cords were damaged. He had to whisper when he told her what had happened.

  Katz had found him and told him about everything that had happened leading up to Angela Klingberg’s murder. He was convinced that there was a conspiracy against him. Jorma had helped him stay hidden. Katz was on the trail of something; it had to do with his old boss Rickard Julin from Capitol Security. But some fucking Judas had betrayed him!

  He gave her a pained smile as he told her how he had woken up in the middle of the night to find a person standing beside his bed. Then it had all gone black. He had been knocked unconscious and, after that, someone had tried to strangle him. He’d been lucky to survive. Apparently, Katz had saved him.

  But they weren’t after me. It was him. They got the wrong person.

  Since he’d woken from the anesthetic, he had only had indirect contact with Katz, through his sister and a third person named Emir.

  What had happened after that? She tried to put the puzzle together as she drove south on the highway.

  Katz had broken into Julin’s house and not found what he was looking for. Evidence, she supposed, to show that Julin was involved. Emir had said as much to Jorma’s sister. Katz had borrowed a weapon from him, a Glock. He’d called afterward to ask if he could keep the pistol for a little while longer. He hadn’t been able to find Julin, but he thought he knew where he was. That was over twenty-four hours ago, and there had been so sign of him since.

  She was coming up on Strängnäs now, and she saw the darkness of the evening rub at the car windows; contours of the landscape flying by at 140 kilometers per hour.

  Had Katz fallen in love with Angela Klingberg? Jorma had hinted at it, and that bothered her.

  Jealous . . . it’s not possible.

  The memories had come over her as she sat beside Jorma’s hospital bed. The three of them together, that summer. What a terribly destructive life they’d lived, but it was just what they’d wanted—to feel something, because pain meant you were alive. She had truly loved Katz, and had gone a little bit crazy with desire just from being in the same room as him. She’d had three or four lovers before him, older men who took advantage of her, but Katz had felt like the first.

  Her thoughts were pinging around her brain. Rickard Julin—what did she actually know about him? Almost nothing. He was former military, according to Danielsson. He’d had a high-ranking position in counterespionage before he changed professions and entered the security industry. And it was the military angle that bothered her.

  She turned off the highway at Katrineholm, and the road became smaller and the forest thicker; she had to slow down.

  She had the feeling that something serious had happened to Katz. He had taken Jorma’s car and phone when he left the apartment in Midsommarkransen.

  If you promise not to tattle to the cops, Eva, there’s a tracking function on the phone in case it gets stolen or forgotten somewhere. You just need a code.

  The phone had been at the Klingberg family’s property in Sörmland for more than a day; according to the satellite signal, it was in a forested area a few kilometers from the house.

  She had called Klingberg Aluminum and asked for Pontus. All she was told was that he was away on business.

  She increased her speed as she tested the thought that Pontus Klingberg was the one behind everything. In order to destroy the life of the man he hated most of all, his own brother, he had started by having his brother’s elder son kidnapped and murdered.

  He had managed to scare Gustav by sending Caribbean objects to him, and that had delayed the investigation. Gustav had refused to answer questions when he was interrogated, and he had asked his contacts in the police not to prioritize the case.

  Nine years later, so that the incident wouldn’t seem too suspicious, Pontus had murdered Jan and Joanna Klingberg and made it look like suicide.

  Gustav had changed his will and made his lost son, Jan, the principal heir, but money wasn’t the most important thing—Pontus wanted to avenge his humiliation.

  Finally, it had been Joel’s turn, and his wife’s. The last drop of black blood would be eliminated from the family tree. But first he had seduced her, degrading his nephew by cuckolding him.

  The only question was, why had he chosen Katz as the scapegoat?

  When he woke up, he was lying at a different angle, leaning back at a fifteen-degree angle. They had taken away one sawhorse and bound his arms under the board. He could touch the floor with his fingers.

  An empty beer bottle stood at the end by his feet. If he could get to it, break it somehow . . . but that would require his body to obey him.

  He felt the blood rushing to his head, a slight pain at his temples; it was harder to breathe. He felt the electrical tape across his forehead and skull, wound several times around the board. He might as well have been in a vise.

  Julin was standing at a sink, filling a plastic bucket with water. He could hear faint sounds from outside: a laughing magpie. The buzz of a
generator.

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again Julin was standing in front of him with a black piece of fabric in his hand. He knew the face, but it had suddenly become so foreign—it belonged to someone he had never really known, despite what he had thought.

  It was as if someone had turned out the lights. Sudden darkness. The smell of fabric. The cloth covered his whole face, stretched across his mouth and nose, pulled tight.

  Go inside yourself if you can’t escape.

  He started to gag as soon as the water started to run across the cloth. His whole stomach turned. The muscles of his chest and throat hurt. It felt as if there were water everywhere, water that he was inhaling, as if he were drowning.

  He tried to remain calm; he told himself it was an illusion, that his senses were being tricked. It’s just water. It won’t kill you.

  He coughed, breathed in, and felt his lungs filling with fluid again. More convulsions; he vomited bile.

  “I know you were in Capitol’s database, Katz; you left footprints behind. And you broke into my home. I want you to tell me what you learned.”

  It wasn’t true; Julin was just guessing about the hacking—it was impossible to trace.

  “And I want to know if you told anything to anyone else. You told your friend Jorma, of course, but he’s not a problem anymore.”

  He was wrong about that too.

  “We assumed he would be there, but not that you would be gone. You were somewhere else. Thus there might be more people who know what you know. I want names.”

  More water flowed over the cloth. He tried to breathe as calmly as possible, trying to step inside himself, sink to the bottom of his consciousness . . . but the water was everywhere and his heaves came more and more often; he started to panic, to hyperventilate, and it felt as if his lungs were about to explode.

  “Of course, none of this would have needed to happen if the police had done their job. But now you’re here, and I want to know who you’ve been in contact with.”

  I’m going to kill you. I’m going to get out of this for only one reason: to get revenge, to kill you, you fucking bastard.

  “Who does the car belong to?”

  Have to buy time, he thought, as he roared with pain. He gurgled, felt mucus and blood loosening in his throat and tried to swallow but couldn’t.

  Then it stopped. He sank down again, into sleep. Soon he would be dead; they wouldn’t let him live.

  When he woke up again, the room was quiet. Outside the window, it was dusk. He heard a blackbird singing. Julin was sitting in an easy chair on the other side of the room.

  “What are we going to do with you, Katz?” he said.

  He moved his head a bit; they had removed the tape. The water on the floor had been mopped up.

  “You’re a dead man, Julin.”

  “I’m trembling with fear.”

  Julin leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other.

  “Where’s Joel?” Katz said, as he tried to look around. The beer bottle was still on the floor, a bit closer to his feet now. “Is he dead?”

  “Why?”

  “Tell me what all this is about.”

  The effects of the drug had faded, he noticed; his thoughts were clearer and the sensation in his body was coming back. The ropes sat more slackly around his feet. Someone had loosened them a bit, or perhaps he had stretched them out as he resisted the waterboarding.

  “Money and secrets, Katz. It’s nothing personal.”

  “Who paid you . . . Pontus Klingberg?”

  Julin stood up, walked over to the window, carefully lifted the curtain, and peered out.

  “What does it matter?”

  The cabin was totally silent. Katz wondered where the others were. Had they left, with Julin staying behind to finish the job? He couldn’t picture his own death. That was what made up a life—the inability to comprehend its opposite.

  “Why did you help me in the first place? You got information for me, about Joel, and later about Angela.”

  “I expected you to be caught.”

  Julin let the curtain fall again, and then he nodded curtly at Katz and left the room.

  Ten minutes went by in which nothing happened. Katz pulled at the rope with his legs and felt it loosen further; he strained his ankle and managed to reach the bottle with his foot. Careful now . . . he needed to tip it in the right direction if it were going to roll toward him. He felt his calf start to cramp as he clenched his toes, stretched them a little farther, made contact, and tipped the bottle over. He heard the clatter as it started rolling, lost momentum, and stopped on the floor just beside him.

  He lay still for a while, listening. Still no sounds. Just the blackbird outside. He got a finger into the neck of the bottle, lifted it, felt the rope straining against his wrists and bashed the bottle against the floor. Just as the neck of the bottle broke off, he coughed very loudly and the body of the bottle rolled into the corner.

  The neck of the bottle sat on his right index finger like a thimble. When he turned his head he could see jagged edges sticking up.

  Then he heard a sound outside, a shot being fired, and then another that was more muffled. Then silence again.

  Two shots. Like an execution, he thought. But who had shot at whom? He listened intently, trying to find some explanation, waiting for someone to yell or for another shot to be fired, but nothing happened.

  He started hacking at the rope with the edge of the bottle; he could feel it chewing at the fibers and knew that he had to hurry. He pressed more firmly, swallowing hard when he realized he’d hurt himself. Blood ran from his wrist and made his fingers sticky; he couldn’t feel the pain.

  Someone had been shooting out there. But who . . . and at whom?

  The door opened and the man in the hood came in. He approached Katz with his head turned away. The scent of insect repellant emanated from his skin and clothes. He started to look for something in Katz’s jacket.

  Blood was still flowing from Katz’s wrist; the wound was deeper than he’d thought.

  The man didn’t notice when the rope came loose. Katz aimed at the shadow within the hood and smiled briefly before he drove the neck of the bottle into the man’s face with as much force as he could. There was a soft, rubbery resistance before it penetrated the flesh and stuck there, in the man’s cheek, he thought.

  The man didn’t even react. He just kept searching his jacket until he found the fabric-covered miniature bottle in the lining. His blood dripped onto Katz’s chest. A dead man, he thought, a being without life.

  Katz couldn’t explain it, but the man seemed to be afraid of the object. He put it back in Katz’s pocket and got up.

  The neck of the bottle was still stuck in his face, but he didn’t seem conscious of what had happened. Apparently, he couldn’t feel pain. He had to be on some drug; there was no other explanation.

  Then someone shouted outside, and the man left the room.

  When Katz came to again, the blood on his wrist had congealed. It was nighttime. He lay on the floor in front of the easy chair. His legs hardly held him as he stood up.

  Out on the road, where the cars had been, was a large pool of blood. The Glock had been tossed onto the gravel next to it. Katz fished it up and put it in his jacket pocket. The tire tracks on the road . . . they didn’t lead to the manor house but in the other direction, through the forest to Vingåker.

  He went back to the cabin and searched it, one room at a time. There was no sign of life. No indication that anyone had even been there. It had been cleaned. The furniture was covered with sheets. There was nothing to suggest that Joel Klingberg had been held prisoner there.

  It was inconceivable, he thought, as he followed the gravel path down toward Ormnäs Manor. Why had they tried to murder him at first and then just let him go? And who had been shot? It was as if the person behind it all was a child, playing by his own rules . . . and they might change at any time.

  She was standing in
a hall with a blackened stone floor and walnut-paneled walls. A ten-armed crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. On the right was a vaulted staircase that led up to the second floor. At the other end of the room was a ceramic stove with hand-painted tiles depicting nature scenes and sprays of flowers, with a beautiful crown molding above it.

  An oak door stood ajar. Light came from within. The crackling of a fire. She opened the door and stepped into a parlor. Windows faced a terraced garden, which was faintly lit by the moon. An oriental rug covered the floor. Empire-style furniture. Wooden-armed chairs with cushions. Mirror sconces with lit candles in their arms. Like a church, she thought, a temple.

  Two stuffed moose heads stared down at her from one of the short walls. Ten meters away, a fire burned in an enormous fireplace. The ornamentation on the mantel was a noble coat of arms.

  Pontus Klingberg was sitting in an easy chair before the fire, his feet up on a footstool. He noticed her presence but didn’t look in her direction.

  “The shield of the Bielke family,” he said, nodding at the ornamentation. “Dad bought the manor from one of the barons. The man couldn’t pay his debts. Gustav built his whole business concept on that very principle: buy cheap, preferably from desperate people. Take advantage of your superior position in the market.”

  The light from the flames danced back and forth across the floor. There were paper napkins on the rug. Spotted with blood, she saw.

  “Who are you?” he suddenly asked.

  “I know Danny Katz.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “I—I thought you knew.”

  She felt the stutter coming, noticed it in her head before she had even formulated the words. It hadn’t happened for a long time, since before the children were born. Maybe she was afraid. She ought to be, anyway. No one besides Jorma knew she was here. Danielsson could have helped her out with a service weapon, or she could have taken one from the weapons cabinet at EBM. She had the code, and the pistols were used so seldom that no one would have noticed. But she had driven here without thinking.