Last One Alive

by Karin Nordin

  ‘That’s not a bad idea. Why didn’t I think of that?’ Esme took out her phone and quickly sent a message to Axel. ‘What are you going to do with the Nicolescu case?’

  ‘I’m going to dig deeper into Andrea’s history. She was involved in the drug trade for a long time before she supposedly stopped. If this is drug or gang-related then maybe she has a contact who has information. Or at least someone who knows whether she was back in the business or under threat.’

  ‘Keep me posted,’ Esme said. ‘Hopefully the ballistics results will be back soon and we’ll have more to go on.’

  Esme reached around him, removed a clean mug from one of the upper cabinets, and filled it halfway. She took a sip and winced at the taste.

  ‘No milk?’

  ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ she said. ‘I’m going to need all the caffeine I can get.’

  Chapter 41

  A few hours later, after most of the team had gone home for the evening, Kjeld went to the Espresso House on Linnégatan, hoping that a change of scenery might help inspire some new ideas about the case. He sat at a corner table near the window, his back to the wall. The stream of traffic outside was muffled by the smooth jazz music playing over the loudspeakers. Kjeld turned his gaze to the window. Over the course of the last hour the rain had turned to sleet and the ground was covered in a thin layer of ice. He checked his phone but he didn’t have any new messages from Esme about the investigation. And nothing from ballistics on the firearm examination either. He had, however, missed another call from an unknown number. Damn those telemarketers. They were relentless. He reached into his rarely used satchel bag and removed his work laptop.

  He quickly connected to the internet through his phone and pulled up Andrea Nicolescu’s arrest record. The general consensus at the station, both among his teammates and others in the department, was that Andrea had been murdered in a drug deal gone wrong. Kjeld had to admit that did feel like the most likely possibility. But the peculiar connection to the Hedebrant case, albeit unconfirmed, coupled with Henny’s mysterious tipster gave him the impression that there was more to the story. Could Andrea have been involved with Emil Hermansson and his drug trade all of those years ago? What about Olsen’s comment about Second Life potentially being involved in a trafficking case out of Romania? And what about the drugs in Jonny’s system and his connection to Second Life? It felt like too much of a coincidence for Kjeld to ignore. But whatever the missing piece of the puzzle was, he was blind to it.

  Kjeld scanned through Andrea’s file. She’d had a history of drug abuse and trafficking almost from the moment she arrived in Sweden. She’d served a short stint in a women’s prison for dealing, but there was an indication that she’d gotten clean or, at the very least, stopped selling after she got out. There wasn’t so much as a parking ticket on her record in the last five years.

  Kjeld scrolled down to the information on known associates and saw a lot of familiar faces, many of whom were either serving time or dead. One, however, gave him pause.

  Vidar Rask.

  Kjeld scratched the side of his neck as he stared at the photo of the man with the bald head, close-set eyes, and scraggly beard. He’d had a few run-ins with Vidar in the past. The man was more a nuisance than an actual criminal, although he’d had brushes with the law going back to childhood. He’d come across Kjeld’s path when he was still a beat cop. Vidar wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t one of the really bad ones. He was the kind of person who did what he had to in order to survive. And if helping the police served his own agenda then he did so. That was how Kjeld had come to know him. Vidar wasn’t technically an informant, but he’d occasionally provided Kjeld with the odd tip over the years. Most of which had been helpful.

  The last Kjeld knew, Vidar was working at a sleazy tattoo parlour in Strömmensburg. He glanced at the time on his phone. It was too late to go tonight. The shop would be closed. He made a mental note to pay Vidar a visit tomorrow. Perhaps he’d heard something about Andrea that could shed some light on her death.

  ‘I’ll have a large salted caramel latte without whipped cream,’ a familiar voice ordered.

  Kjeld glanced up to see Henny paying in cash before stepping off to the side near the waiting end of the counter. Then he shifted position in his chair so his back was turned to the counter. The last thing he needed was another confrontation with her in a public space. He kept his head down as though focused on his work and hoped she wouldn’t see him.

  Then her phone jingled and Kjeld caught himself listening in on her conversation.

  ‘When?’ Henny asked. She reached into her purse to remove a pen and paper. ‘Are you certain?’ She wrote something down. ‘How did you get this number anyway?’ A pause. ‘No, I’m not going to call the police.’ Another pause. ‘It’s none of their business. And it’s none of his business either.’

  Kjeld strained to hear better, but between the background music, the coffee machine steaming the milk for her latte, and the couple chatting at the table in front of him it was impossible to make out everything she was saying, let alone hear the voice on the other end.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that,’ Henny said to the caller. ‘I’ve already got too many eyes on me. If I do that then people will know I was involved.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you promise you can arrange it for me?’

  Kjeld frowned. He wondered what she was referring to. It sounded like she was being purposefully vague, as though fearful, and rightfully so, that someone might be listening in on her conversation. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but it quickly crossed his mind that she could be talking to her tipster. Or worse, the killer.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Henny said. ‘Don’t tell anyone else.’

  ‘Large salted caramel latte to go!’ the barista called out.

  Henny rang off and reached across the counter for her beverage. When she turned to leave, however, she caught a glimpse of Kjeld. Their eyes met and her face flushed a panicked shade of white. ‘Are you following me?’

  Henny tried to get a look at his laptop, but Kjeld quickly reached over to close it before she could see any of the information on the screen.

  ‘Is there a reason why I should be following you?’

  Henny narrowed her eyes. ‘This is an invasion of my privacy. I could file a harassment complaint against you.’

  ‘This is a public coffee shop.’

  ‘There are a dozen other coffee shops in this neighbourhood.’

  ‘I like this one.’

  Henny’s lips curled into a jeering smirk. ‘I heard a rumour that someone lost his spot on the Karlsson case.’

  Kjeld narrowed his eyes at her. He knew she was baiting him. He knew he shouldn’t fall for it. But her mockeries riled him more than they should have. And he wondered how she could have learned that so quickly. ‘Where’d you hear that?’

  ‘A little bird told me.’

  ‘Is this bird an actual person or have you resorted to planting voice recorders on pigeons?’ Kjeld said, his tone heavy with sarcasm. ‘Because I wouldn’t put it past you. A bit of advice, if your informant spends most of its days pecking trash off the street and shitting on lamp poles, no one is going to take you seriously. Definitely not going to get you into the journalistic big leagues either.’

  Henny’s face turned a heated shade of red. ‘Don’t disregard me, Kjeld. My last article had over ten thousand clicks in less than an hour. You’re more photogenic than I gave you credit for. Or maybe it was just the image of you putting a poor child in danger that inspired so much public interest.’

  ‘If you post one more thing about my family I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll what? You’re a public servant. The people deserve to know what kind of person the city has hired to look out for their welfare. I wonder how long it’ll take before someone from child services sees that photograph.’

  Kjeld shook his head and looked away from her. He’d already let this conversation go too far.

&
nbsp; Henny smirked. ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you eventually. And I can’t wait to be there when you do.’

  ‘You have anything else to say, Henny? Your latte is getting cold.’

  ‘Yeah, I do. If I catch you following me again, I’ll make sure the entire city knows about it.’

  ‘I wasn’t following you. I was here first.’

  ‘That’s the great thing about the media, Kjeld. You can always spin a story two ways.’

  Chapter 42

  Tisdag | Tuesday

  A temporary reprieve from the rain fell over the city just as Kjeld pulled his car up front of Skin Deep, a walk-in tattoo parlour nestled between a second-hand clothing store and a sushi takeaway in the south-eastern corner of Strömmensburg just north of Härlanda Park. Kjeld slammed the car door shut and made his way to the entrance. A little bell jingled above his head, announcing a potential customer with apathetic fanfare.

  From the outside Skin Deep wasn’t much to look at. Bars on the windows provided the first clue as to the kind of trouble they’d had in the past. The hand-painted logo on the door was mediocre at best in its design, which didn’t bode well for the talent of its artists and was chipped from weathering. And with the backdrop of dully coloured block apartments, the entire image screamed two-star Yelp review.

  Likewise, the inside reflected a lacklustre ambience. There was no welcome desk in the foyer. Simply a poster on the wall with a list of prices that someone had routinely crossed out in marker over the years and adjusted in incremental increases instead of reprinting a new sign. A coat rack stood in the corner, the mishmash of jackets and scarves collecting dust on the hooks giving off a distinctly used odour. From the musty scent Kjeld assumed the items had been purchased at the shop next door and were never washed. The floor was cheap linoleum in a black-and-white chessboard pattern, although many of the white squares had a distinctly ashen hue from not being properly mopped in years.

  Further into the shop were four parlour chairs, each surrounded by its own set-up of ink and tools, the range of disarray distinguishing the various artists. On a Saturday night it could have been a hopping place, but at ten a.m. on a Tuesday morning it was practically abandoned. Kjeld wiped his boots off on the ratty floor mat, which smelled like wet dog shit, and stepped deeper into the parlour.

  A younger woman with her head half shaved revealing a brightly coloured Japanese koi fish tattoo and her face covered in more piercings than Kjeld could count lumbered out of the back room. She wore a tight pair of black vinyl pants, platform boots, and a purple bra covered in a fishnet crop top. She chewed on a piece of gum with her mouth open and stared at Kjeld with a bland, hazy glare that could have either been from intense boredom or coming off a weak high. Kjeld’s guess was both.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked. Her tongue was split down the middle like a snake’s causing her to lisp some of her consonants.

  Kjeld kept his focus on her eyes, glossy and smeared with an overuse of eyeliner, so as not to cringe at the way her tongue went in two different directions as she spoke. ‘I’m here to see Vidar.’

  The woman rolled her eyes as though she’d expected this and yelled towards the back room. ‘Vidar! Fucking swine is here to see you!’

  Then without so much as another glance she crossed the room and slumped down into one of the studio chairs.

  A minute later a gangly man stumbled into the main area of the parlour. He had a bald head and scraggly brown beard. His eyebrows were wild and took up most of his forehead, doubly accented by the charcoal-coloured eyeshadow that circled both above and below his buggy eyes. He tripped over his own feet as he zipped up his loose-fitting jeans, freezing when he glanced up and met Kjeld eye to eye.

  ‘Ah, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ Vidar groaned. ‘Whatever it is, I didn’t fucking do it. Go ahead and put that in your little report and—’ Vidar paused. ‘Where’s your little firecracker friend with the funny fringe? Couldn’t she deal with your bullshit anymore?’

  ‘She just didn’t want to deal with your smell.’

  ‘It’s a medical condition.’

  ‘Is that what they call it these days?’

  Vidar’s mouth spread into a sarcastic grin, teeth crooked and yellow. ‘Oh, you are a funny one today, Nygaard. I’ll give you that. Now seriously, what the fuck do you want? You know it’s bad for my reputation to have a cop in my place. Not that we’re doing anything we shouldn’t be, mind you! I’ve been out of the racket for a good six months. Swear to God. Even Siri will vouch for that. Won’t you, sweetheart?’

  Siri raised her middle finger from across the room.

  Vidar beamed. ‘True love, man. It’s a beautiful thing.’

  Kjeld held back his urge to say something cruel. Vidar Rask had been a pain in his side for years. The man was notorious among the police for getting himself involved in low-level street crimes, half-arsed racketeering schemes, and general malfeasance. Kjeld had crossed paths with him early on in his career and, like the cockroach he was, Vidar kept coming back. He was like a bad apple that somehow kept finding its way into the fresh produce, infecting everything it touched. Not that Vidar was evil or really all that bad. He put on a good show and made a considerable effort to be more bark than bite. That being said he was still in and out of the system. He couldn’t stay clean to save his life. But he had connections and, for the right price, he could be a very useful informant. Or at least he had been in the past.

  Which was the only reason Kjeld put up with him and his notably pungent body odour.

  ‘I’m not here about any of that,’ Kjeld said. He took out his cell phone and opened it up to a photograph of Andrea. ‘I just want to know about this woman.’

  Vidar’s lips turned downward in a fake pout. ‘Are you always this demanding or am I just special?’

  ‘Just look at the photo, Vidar. I don’t have all day.’

  Vidar snatched the phone out of Kjeld’s hand and held it up to his face, close enough for his eyes to cross. Then he handed the phone back to Kjeld. ‘That’s Andrea Nicolescu. Andy Nic is what most people call her. What do you wanna know about her?’

  ‘Let’s start with how you know her.’

  Vidar rolled his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know that.’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘She’s a dealer sometimes. And an addict. Which makes her a pretty shitty dealer because on any given day she’s more apt to use up all her own stock than sell it.’

  ‘Did you ever work with her?’

  ‘Why? Is this a set-up? You trying to pin something on me?’

  ‘She’s dead, Vidar. I’m trying to find out who killed her.’

  Vidar’s gaze wandered away from Kjeld. He scratched the side of his neck, inadvertently leaving deep red marks along his tattoo. ‘Are you sure she didn’t just OD?’

  ‘I’m certain.’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t want to get involved.’

  ‘There must be something you can tell me,’ Kjeld said, his patience wearing thin. ‘Have you seen her lately? Did she make any new enemies? Was she trafficking again?’

  ‘I think I saw her a few weeks ago. Maybe less. Was she trafficking drugs? I don’t know. But she was selling a bit of weed here and there. Nothing big. Probably from a personal stash.’ Vidar chewed off the chipped black polish from his thumbnail. ‘You know she used to be involved with that cartel out of Romania, right?’

  ‘Sandu?’

  ‘Yeah. That was the name.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Missing finger. That’s kind of their thing. Someone fucks up, they chop off a finger. Someone fucks up again and they chop off the finger of someone they care about.’

  ‘Is Sandu still operating with someone here in Gothenburg?’

  Vidar shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything for certain, but there’s been some new product moving around lately.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t in the business anymore.’
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  ‘I’m not in that business. I don’t get into it with foreigners, man. You know that. That’s heavy-level consequences if you fuck up. And I’d like to keep all of my body parts attached, thank you very much.’ Vidar rolled his head from one side to the other. ‘But there’s definitely another player in the game. And Andy, well, like I said. She’s an addict. Was an addict. And she never learned. She always fell back into her routine. She liked familiar. And she liked her own people.’

  ‘You mean Romanians or drug dealers?’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Hey! My grandmother’s half Romanian!’ Siri yelled from across the room.

  ‘I was just joking, babe!’ Vidar called back.

  Kjeld ran his finger over his ear, running over the divot of scarred missing cartilage. ‘What about the Second Life Wellness Respite? You know anything about that?’

  ‘What, the hippy commune?’

  ‘I heard they’re under investigation for international drug trafficking. Could that be with the Sandu cartel?’

  ‘Hell, man. I don’t know. I don’t get on with any of that weird-ass guru shit. The only thing worse than dealing drugs for foreigners? Getting involved with anyone into peace, love, and brainwashing. I saw that fucking Jonestown documentary. I ain’t getting anywhere near that place or those people.’

  ‘What about Andrea? Would she?’

  Vidar pinched his face in thought. ‘Nah, man. I don’t think she’d buy into that either. She was trash and she was mean. But she wasn’t crazy. Only crazy people get involved in that nonsense.’

  Kjeld nodded. Then he made his way back to the parlour door.

  ‘Hey!’ Vidar called after him. ‘What about me? What do I get for giving you all these answers?’

  Kjeld glanced back over his shoulder. ‘How about a bit of free advice? Get yourself to a dentist, Rask, before all of your teeth fall out. And take a bath.’