“About ten.”
“Can you call me as soon as you get anything that matches the time?”
“You bet. What is this about? Is it something important?”
“It has to do with locating a girl who’s been kidnapped.”
There was silence for a moment.
“I think I can get some of the guys to hurry up,” he said. “I’ll call you this afternoon.”
An abandoned house, she thought, as she hung up, with a hiding place that only a few people knew about . . . blasting . . . she knew they were connected.
Fifteen minutes later she was back at EBM on Hantverkargatan. To her surprise, Danielsson was waiting for her in her office. Four printed-out photos were on her desk. The top one showed Eva herself outside the gates of Klingberg’s estate in Djursholm.
“Can you explain to me what this is all about, Eva?”
This was the end; she couldn’t keep lying anymore.
“How did you get those?”
“We were alerted by the elder daughter, who became worried about her father and went there to see what had happened. I was first on the scene. There are surveillance cameras around the property. Someone had deleted the video, but we found a back-up function.”
“What are you going to do . . . detain me?”
“Maybe.”
He stood up from the visitor’s chair, took the photographs from the desk, and looked at them skeptically.
“There were two bodies inside. Pontus Klingberg and Katz’s former boss, Rickard Julin. Do you know what this means? It’s going to be a fucking mess!”
“Who else knows I was there?”
“I’m the only one, so far. The surveillance videos landed on my desk, and I haven’t released the contents yet. But, naturally, it’s only a matter of time until I have to.”
“How long?”
“Time’s already up. Now tell me what the hell is going on!”
“I can’t.”
“You have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. My daughter’s safety is at stake.”
He looked at her for a long time, realized she wasn’t going to tell him anything, that nothing would help—not threats, not pleading.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he said. “But I’ll give you three hours to finish whatever the hell it is you’re up to. Then I’m going to bring you in for questioning and demand an explanation for why there is a picture of you outside a house that contains two bodies, and not only that—you were with one person who is wanted for murder and another who is a known criminal.”
She went up to the desk and looked at the other photographs. Katz and Jorma were also in the picture. “Are you the one who’s hiding him?” said Danielsson. “You don’t have to answer now. But you’re going to have to, and soon, damn it. I’m putting my career on the line for you. And I don’t really know why. Because we slept together? Don’t think so. Whatever we started, it’s over. You’re not my type, Eva, I’m starting to realize that.”
He gave her a pained smile and went to the door.
“Eva Dahlman,” he said. “Your maiden name . . . victim of an attack much like the one on Angela Klingberg, in 1984. Danny Katz was convicted of the crime. But you refused to testify against him.”
She looked beseechingly at him.
“Can you help me with one more thing? One last favor, I promise.”
He just sighed, and she took that as a yes.
“A phone number. I think it’s in the Dominican Republic, to a cellphone. It must be possible to trace the phone, see where the user is.”
“Why don’t you just call and ask?”
“I can’t. It’s very important that this person doesn’t suspect anything. I’ll explain everything later.”
The phone call came early in the morning. Klingberg’s voice sounded distant, as if reception was bad wherever he was. Katz had to leave immediately, had to drive west, toward San Juan de la Maguana. The route had been programmed into the car’s GPS. He would receive further instructions on the way. It was important that he not take anything with him, just the clothes he was wearing and the cellphone.
Tell the hotel staff that you’re going on a trip and you’ll be back in a few days. Leave your bags and luggage in the room. And, believe me, I have the ability to make sure you do as I say.
It was dark in the garage. The electricity hadn’t been restored yet. A valet brought up the car for him.
He weaved his way through the old city center and followed Avenida George Washington until he was out of the area. Slums lined the highway; shacks of sheet metal and plastic that would blow away during the hurricane season. Children in rags played among the garbage.
One hour later, as he turned northwest, he found himself in the Middle Ages. Farm workers with hoes and machetes in the fields. Carts pulled by oxen. No more white faces, except in the passing cars.
The traffic became lighter and lighter the farther into the countryside he drove. The scenery changed, becoming greener; the ridges were forested. The valleys he drove through were like savannas. The cloud-encircled top of Pico Duarte towered three thousand meters above sea level, directly to the north.
He stopped at a rest stop. A man in broken sandals tried to sell him gas from a plastic can. The man had a faint Creole accent. When Katz declined, he took the can and vanished into the fields.
He opened the hood of the car and pretended to inspect the engine. He stood there for five minutes, during which time no cars passed. He stepped around to the other side, opened the door, and took out the miniature satellite phone and the charger he’d placed under the mat on the passenger side. He tore off a piece of the electrical tape he’d brought along, walked back to the open hood, and taped the objects under the radiator.
He had to find an outlet soon so he could call Eva.
Then he got back into the car and drove on. One hour later, he had arrived in San Juan de la Maguana.
The city was a sleepy provincial hole. Men in straw hats sat in the shade of tattered umbrellas, waiting for nothing. Beggar children ran after the car. Katz stopped outside a pharmacy in what appeared to be the center. He sat there with the air conditioning on for ten minutes before Klingberg called.
“I’m guessing you’ve arrived.”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I understand you made a stop along the way?”
The car itself was bugged, Katz thought; Klingberg had either linked into the GPS or stuck a transmitter somewhere on the Land Rover.
“The engine sounded strange; I was afraid it was going to overheat. But it was a false alarm.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I hope you were able to enjoy the scenery. The sierra. The sea as you drove out of Santo Domingo. My old neighborhood in the summer when I was young. I spent a few months each year on the island with my grandfather. Only happy memories, on my part.”
He stopped talking and breathed very close to the receiver.
“You’re getting close,” he said. “From now on, you have to listen carefully to my instructions. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He answered in the affirmative.
“Keep driving west toward Las Matas de Farfán. A few kilometers after the village you’ll see a small church. You’ll turn off there, onto a smaller country road. I’ll call you again once you’re there.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer. Katz started the car and drove on.
She had to get hold of Katz, to inform him of what had come up. If she managed to find Lisa, her muddled thoughts said, he had to know. So he could come home again.
But no one answered the fucking satellite phone.
Danielsson had managed to locate the number she’d found in Sandra Dahlström’s address book. It went to a subscription in the Dominican Republic. Two days earlier, someone had called it from an unknown number. The call lasted for three minutes. Before that, there had been no activity on the number at all.
She looked over at
the house that stood brooding behind the overgrown garden. Lisa . . . she dared to think about her a little more now that there was a ray of hope.
She’d gotten lucky at the Blasting Center. The man she had spoken to called in the afternoon with what he hoped was good news. Two days earlier, at 12:05, four explosive charges of two kilos each had been detonated under the rock at Margretelundsvägen in Traneberg. It was a delayed excavation for the new Tvärbana light-rail line between Alvik and Solna.
“The explosions would have been clearly audible within a radius of five hundred meters,” he had explained to her, “and the vibrations might have been felt in an area double that size.”
So this was where Lisa was locked up—along the route Klingberg had driven the same day he had staged his own disappearance.
The reason Klingberg had been in Traneberg had nothing to do with his brother’s kidnapping, as Katz had first thought when he followed Joel’s route. Nor did it have anything to do with the fact that Katz lived there, with trying to make it look like Katz was behind the disappearance, or with the fact that the family’s luxury yacht had once been in the shipyard nearby. Julin had been with Klingberg, she thought. Julin dropped him off there and then drove the car to the parking garage in the center, where he ran into Jonas Åkesson.
She’d come here as fast as she could as soon after she had talked to the man at the Blasting Center, and there it was—the abandoned house, two hundred meters from where they were blasting, hardly visible behind the overgrown garden.
The house had been purchased by Capitol Security ten years earlier. Marianne Lindblom, her faithful helper at EBM, had checked it out for her. There was a building permit for a new office building on the property, but the company had never had the old house torn down; it had been allowed to remain and decay. She sat in the car, watching the property through binoculars as she waited for Jorma to show up. No movement so far; no car traffic. The shipyard and the other small industries in the area were closed for the day. The phone rang and she took the call without thinking, in the hope that it was Jorma. It was Ola.
“Any news?” he asked.
“No.”
“I feel like I’m about to go crazy. I can’t work, can’t eat, can’t sleep. My thoughts just keep going around and around.”
“We’re going to find her.”
“How do you know that? We have to face it—she might be dead.”
She didn’t want to think about that. And she couldn’t tell him anything she knew. She couldn’t even involve the police, because if there was one thing she understood, it was that Klingberg was a man who kept his word.
“Where are you? I have to see you . . . just to talk a little. Erika can’t stand me.”
She looked at the house. The painted yellow façade, the missing balcony floor, the roof that had partially caved in. It had been beautiful once upon a time, a luxurious, architect-designed villa, three stories, a view of Ulvsundasjön. She guessed that there must be about ten rooms inside. And a basement. It was impossible to see what was behind it. Outbuildings. A garage?
“Are you listening to me, Eva, are you still there?”
Near the water and a place where they’re blasting . . . And what if she was wrong? It couldn’t be. This was her only chance.
“I’m here.”
“So what are the police actually doing? I haven’t heard anything from them in a day. Are they ignoring us? They can’t do that, damn it! You have to use your contacts. I’m going crazy because I can’t do anything. And Arvid, what the hell am I supposed to tell Arvid? He doesn’t have any idea what’s going on . . .”
A broken man, she thought. If the worst were to happen, he would never recover. Nor would she.
Then she saw movement farther down the road, at the curve. She hoped it was Jorma’s car approaching at high speed. But it wasn’t. She saw a small car, which stopped fifty meters from the house. A woman stepped out, looking around suspiciously. She was wearing a gray cardigan.
“I have to go now,” she said. “I’ll call later. There’s something I have to do. Try to take it easy for now. We’ll work this out.”
He was approaching the border with Haiti. Thick jungle along the road. Here and there he saw a clearing, tobacco fields in the forest. He didn’t see any people; there was no traffic. Colorful butterflies were flushed out of the ditches as he drove by.
Klingberg had called him again and guided him on to smaller roads, which brought him farther and farther into the wilderness.
He turned on the car radio and listened to the staticky broadcast from Port-au-Prince. He flipped between music stations that alternated between playing salsa and Jamaican reggae. He found a talk show with a female host, but the French they were speaking was so full of Creole expressions that he hardly understood half of it. On the other end of the FM dial, a Dominican station was broadcasting the news in Spanish. A minor hurricane was expected to reach the east coast within twenty-four hours. People in Punta Cana and La Romana were advised to stay indoors and continue to follow the news on the radio; it might become necessary to evacuate parts of the coast.
He was at a higher altitude now. A flock of chattering parrots flew down the mountainside. The ground was cut through with streams. Mud spattered onto the windshield. As the road bent sharply to the left, the Land Rover started to skid and Katz couldn’t stop it until he’d come out of the curve.
At the edge of the road, just where he’d stopped, was an altar. The severed head of a snake lay in a pool of blood on a piece of white cloth. Next to it stood a bottle of rum, a crucifix, and a candelabra holding red candles. Shoes had been nailed to the tree trunks in the clearing.
He continued through the forest for another hour as the road got worse and worse, a sea of mud that created a narrow path through the trees. Then it suddenly broadened again; the landscape opened up.
There were half-overgrown sugar-cane fields on either side of the road.
Ramshackle metal shacks with signs in French and Spanish.
There were more buildings here: sugar-cane mills, a concrete structure that he guessed was a sugar refinery. Small homes made of corrugated iron and bamboo with verandas. And a larger building in colonial style, surrounded by palms. A few feral dogs ran across the yard, barking.
The phone rang just as he stopped. The reception was poor; he could hardly hear Klingberg’s voice.
“You’ve arrived. There’s a room ready for you in the big house.”
The house didn’t seem to have been inhabited for several years. The shutters were closed. The furniture was covered in damp sheets. A thick layer of undisturbed dust blanketed the floor in the parlor.
No electricity. Empty water calabashes in the kitchen. Rat droppings on the floor.
He walked into a library with a wall of shelves that were full of leather-bound books. The titles were in Spanish and French. On the opposite wall was a gallery of paintings. Oil portraits of the former owners of the house, he guessed, in chronological order. The oldest one depicted a man with a plumed hat and a clay pipe in his hand; it appeared to be from the seventeenth century. The most recent was a portrait of Gustav Klingberg in his forties, dressed in a chalk-stripe suit with a bloodhound lying at his feet.
Katz went up to the second floor and found the room Klingberg had mentioned. A bottle of mineral water stood on a table. A canopied bed draped in mosquito netting towered in the middle of the room. There was heavy mahogany furniture along the walls. Behind a balcony door was a terrace with a view of a pool full of sludge.
The entire afternoon went by without a trace of any other people. He walked around aimlessly in what he guessed had once been a plantation belonging to the Klingberg family. The sugar mills didn’t seem to have been used for several years. The buildings had been emptied of machines and inventory.
One of the sheds contained slaughtering masks and bolt pistols as well as a slaughtering pen ingrained with blackened blood. Pig skulls and other animal bones were piled behind the doo
r.
He took one of the bolt pistols from the wall and weighed it in his hand. The construction was simple; a spring drove the bolt itself out of the cylinder. The iron had rusted, but the spring mechanism seemed to work. Katz stuck it in his pocket. At least it was a weapon.
He kept walking along a half-overgrown mud path, peering into old workers’ dwellings: huts with trampled earthen floors and roofs of corrugated metal. The windows and doors had been removed, but rusty bunk beds remained. Yellowed advertisements for Haitian rum hung on the wall. There were rotted clothes and shoes in the wardrobes.
More rainclouds were gathering on the horizon. The sky was gray as a corpse.
Someone had painted a bleeding black man being licked by dogs on the door of one cement building. Legba, or St. Rochus, the patron saint of the Haitian slaves. The building had no windows, and the door was locked with a thick padlock. A wooden barrel that was half full of salt stood outside the door.
He kept walking along the road he’d driven in the car, then turned onto a path that led to the edge of the forest and a smaller building.
He saw a chapel as he approached and, next to it, a small cemetery. There were only two graves there, marked with iron crosses. There were glass-encased photographs attached to the crosses. One was of an old black woman. She was lying in a casket, wrapped in a white shift. He read the name and the years: Marie Bennoit, born September 27, 1921; died November 11, 1978.
He looked at the other cross. The blurry picture showed a young boy with biracial features; he, too, was lying in a casket. There was no name, just the years of birth and death: 1963–79. The boy looked like Kristoffer Klingberg.
Swarms of mosquitoes followed him as he walked back toward the house. Night was falling quickly. There was no moon, no stars; the layer of cloud was growing thicker. He saw the pack of feral dogs again; they were on the road, growling, showing their teeth, but when he picked up a rock from the ground they ran off.
A storm broke; big lightning bolts split the sky and made the mountains light up as if from fluorescent bulbs. It started to rain, big, warm drops of water that fell thicker and thicker and whipped at his face. Strong gusts of wind plowed through the sugar-cane fields like invisible giants.
The Boy in the Shadows Page 25
