Borderline

by Liza Marklund

  Halenius ate in the bedroom (Kidnap Control), but Berit sat down with them at the kitchen table. The children chattered about the snow and their sledges and how funny it was not being at school on a normal Friday. At the end of the meal, when they were waiting for Ellen to finish, Kalle fell silent and withdrew into himself, the way he sometimes did.

  ‘What’s up, sweetheart?’ Annika asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about Daddy,’ he said.

  She wrapped her arms round him, her big boy, and rocked him until Ellen had put her plate on the draining board and he wriggled free to go into their room and watch a film, an unbelievable luxury for a Friday afternoon.

  ‘Have you had a chance to look at the papers?’ Berit asked, rinsing the gratin dish with hot water.

  ‘Don’t know if I want to,’ Annika said.

  ‘I wrote a piece about the mother who was found outside the nursery school in Axelsberg – I got hold of a talkative detective last night.’

  ‘Have they picked up the father yet?’

  ‘Looks like he’s got an alibi. He works for a haulage company that uses time stamps. He was on a job up to Upplands-Väsby all morning.’

  ‘Or so he says,’ Annika said.

  ‘His mobile supports his version of events.’

  Annika threw her arms out, and water from the dishcloth sprayed across the kitchen window. ‘Yeah, but how difficult is it to hide your mobile in someone else’s car? Or make sure it doesn’t send signals to a base station while you go off and kill your ex?’

  Berit filled the kettle. ‘Now we’re talking conspiracy theories.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Annika said. ‘Thieves and murderers are usually fairly fucked up, but if you were going to go off and kill someone, wouldn’t you switch your mobile off while you were doing it?’

  Berit stopped, holding a spoonful of instant coffee in mid-air. ‘You’ve got a point there,’ she said.

  Annika put Finding Nemo on the children’s television (she had an almost new, but bulky and old-fashioned set that Thomas hated; he’d bought a flatscreen model as soon as they’d got back from the US, and the old one had ended up in the children’s room), then went back out into the kitchen.

  ‘Schyman had a proposal for me,’ she said, sinking down at the kitchen table and reaching for her coffee. ‘The paper will pay the ransom if I agree to give them exclusive rights to the whole story.’

  Berit nodded. ‘I know. He asked me to try to persuade you to agree to it. Do you want to?’

  Annika looked around the kitchen, her domain during the kidnap crisis. She was in charge of logistics, tasked with making sure they had food and water, and keeping the mobiles charged. ‘He said it as if it was to my advantage. As if I ought to want to, as if I should somehow enjoy exploiting my own tragedy.’

  ‘Maybe he’s trying to help you.’

  ‘I’m not going to do it. No way.’

  ‘If you want, I could do the writing.’

  She smiled at Berit. ‘That would be one reason to agree to it. Thanks, but no thanks.’

  Halenius’s mobile was ringing on the other side of the wall. He answered. It sounded as if he was speaking English, but she couldn’t make out the words. Annika got up and put her almost untouched mug on the draining board. ‘Let’s go and sit in the living room – these chairs make my arse go numb.’

  Berit stood up on slightly stiff legs. ‘I see what you mean. You’ve never thought of replacing them?’

  ‘They came from Thomas’s parents.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Halenius’s voice was fainter in the living room, but Annika could still hear English.

  She curled up on the sofa and reached for the Evening Post from the pile of newspapers. She leafed quickly through the articles about Thomas, six pages plus the centrefold, including pictures of her and the children. Thank you very much. ‘Nice work,’ she said tartly, ‘considering there was hardly a single fact to go on.’

  There were articles about the conference in Nairobi, about Nairobi as a city, about the Kenyatta conference centre, about Frontex, about Thomas, about Thomas’s really, really, really important job, about the Swedish EU commissioner who was responsible for Frontex, about the video that had been posted online from a server in Mogadishu, about Mogadishu as a city, about Somalia, about the civil war in Somalia, and an overview of other kidnap videos. The one featuring Daniel Pearl wasn’t mentioned.

  ‘Elin Michnik is a real star,’ Berit said. ‘All the boys in the newsroom have got it into their heads that she’s related to Adam Michnik of the Gazeta Wyborcza, but she isn’t.’

  Annika had no idea what the Gazeta Wyborcza was and had no intention of finding out. ‘She seems to have forgotten about Daniel Pearl,’ she said, turning the page.

  The article about the murdered mother behind the nursery school was covered in detail here, and here Berit had written an overview of the three other women who had been murdered outdoors in Stockholm during the autumn.

  ‘Do you believe the theory about a serial killer?’ Annika asked, holding up the page with the headline ‘THREE DEAD WOMEN, THREE STABS IN THE BACK’.

  Berit had taken her coffee with her into the living room and sipped it. ‘Not remotely,’ she said. ‘And the headline isn’t accurate. One of the women, the young girl found at the beach in Arninge, was stabbed forty-five times. From the back, the front, the sides, even from below. She had knife-wounds to her genitals.’

  Halenius had stopped talking inside Kidnap Control (the bedroom). In the children’s room Nemo had been caught in the dentist’s aquarium in Sydney.

  Annika scanned the article about the young immigrant woman.

  ‘Her fiancé is still in custody,’ Berit said. ‘If he’s convicted, he’ll be deported. He arrived here as a refugee when he was fifteen, but was never granted residency. When he was due to be deported he ran away from the camp and went into hiding. He stayed under the radar for four years, until his engagement to his cousin was announced about a year ago.’

  The landline rang, and Annika stiffened from her toes to the roots of her hair. Her hearing intensified until she could hear the echo of the kitchen tap dripping, Halenius tapping at his computer and switching on all the recording equipment. Then he answered: ‘Hello?’ Annika couldn’t make out what he was saying, not even what language he was speaking; she didn’t hear him hang up. She just saw him come out into the living room with his hair all over the place.

  ‘Sophia Grenborg wants to talk to you,’ he said. ‘I told her you’d call her back.’ He put a note with a phone number on her lap and went back to Kidnap Control (would she ever be able to sleep in there again?).

  Her pulse slowed, but not by much. After the kidnappers, Sophia Grenborg was the last person on the planet she wanted to talk to.

  She pulled out her work mobile, fourteen missed calls, and dialled the number before she had time to change her mind.

  ‘Annika?’ Thomas’s former mistress said, in a cracked voice.

  ‘What do you want?’ Annika said, adrenalin surging through her head.

  Sophia Grenborg sobbed down the line. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she managed to splutter.

  Bitch! How dare she?

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I had to call and find out what’s happening, or what has happened. Is it true? Has he been kidnapped? Is he being held hostage? Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. No, we don’t know where he is.’ She got up from the sofa, too restless to remain seated. ‘Did you want anything else?’

  Sophia Grenborg blew her nose and took a deep breath. ‘I know you’re angry with me, but you won.’

  Annika lost her train of thought. An insult was poised on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it in surprise.

  ‘He chose you,’ Sophia said. ‘You and the children. I think about him every day, but I don’t imagine he ever thinks about me. I don’t even have the right to feel sad.’ And then she cried some more.

  Annika screwed up her eyes. Be
rit was watching her thoughtfully. She sat down again. ‘Of course you’ve the right to feel sad,’ she said.

  ‘Is anyone helping you? What are they saying at Thomas’s work? Have they heard anything? Have you heard anything?’

  Annika glanced towards the bedroom. ‘We haven’t heard anything,’ she lied, feeling strangely guilty.

  There was silence on the line. Sophia Grenborg had stopped crying. ‘Sorry I called,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Annika said, and meant it.

  ‘How are the children? Are they coping? Are they horribly upset?’

  ‘They’re watching a film,’ Annika said. ‘Finding Nemo.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sophia Grenborg said.

  More silence. Annika waited. Sophia cleared her throat. ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ she said, ‘if there’s anything at all I can help with, something practical …’

  How about mortgaging your massive house in Östermalm to pay the ransom? Annika thought.

  ‘Don’t call the landline again,’ Annika said. ‘I want to keep it clear in case Thomas rings.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sophia Grenborg whispered. ‘Sorry. Say hello to the children.’

  Like hell.

  Annika clicked to end the call.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to fall out with you,’ Berit said.

  ‘As long as you don’t take my husband away from me, I’m gentle as a lamb,’ Annika responded.

  ‘Hmm,’ Berit said. ‘Maybe I could help you with the kids. Take them out to the country over the weekend, so you get a bit of space to deal with this.’

  Berit lived at a stables outside Norrtälje, although she had no horses apart from the neighbour’s, just a Labrador bitch called Soraya. Kalle and Ellen had been out there plenty of times. Annika and the children had even lived in the guest cottage when their villa in Djursholm had burned down.

  Annika felt her shoulders relax.

  And in the children’s room Nemo had just been reunited with his father in the sea off Sydney.

  * * *

  The mosquitoes on Gällnö were large and noisy. They sounded like nasty little jets when they flew around my bedroom on summer nights while I was a boy. Biiissszzz, biiissszzz, biiissszzz, they used to go, but that wasn’t the problem. It was when they went quiet that you had to turn the light on and go on a bug hunt, and I was good at bug hunts, smashing insects with blood-filled stomachs, making centimetre-wide stains on the pink wallpaper. Mum used to moan that I was spoiling the wall, and of course she was right. Over time the wallpaper around my bed took on more and more of a rust colour.

  There were many more mosquitoes in the tin shack than in the last hut; they were much smaller than the ones out on Gällnö, and completely silent. They swirled like specks of dust in the darkness and only made a noise if they happened to fly right into my ear, which had happened several times. When they bit I didn’t feel it. Not until afterwards, when the bites would swell up to the size of half a tennis ball. They itched terribly, and I tried to rub them on the bare floor where I could get at them, but it didn’t help.

  I was extremely hot and sweaty, the sort of heat that comes from within and filters out through your pores as steam.

  ‘Is there malaria here?’ the Romanian asked. ‘Is this a malarial region?’

  I still didn’t know his name, but I couldn’t ask it now: then he’d know I’d never learned it or, worse, forgotten it.

  ‘Yes,’ the Spaniard said, ‘but the ones in here aren’t malaria mosquitoes. They’re not active in daylight, only at dusk, at night and around dawn. But there is malaria here. Not much, perhaps, it’s a bit too dry, but it’s hot enough. There’s definitely malaria.’

  We were feeling brighter. We had been given some food, ugali, and water, and some sort of vegetable, a bit like spinach, boiled and salty. It was good, although the water wasn’t clean. The Dane was the only one who didn’t want any food. He drank a bit of water, then lay still, breathing very shallowly. He wasn’t rattling as much, which was a relief.

  One by one we had been helped up and allowed to empty our bowels and bladders in a bucket in the corner, it stung as I pissed and smelt strong. None of the others looked towards the bucket when anyone else was there: it was a sort of tacit understanding.

  ‘It’s a parasite, isn’t it?’ the Romanian said. ‘Malaria’s a blood parasite?’

  ‘Plasmodium,’ the Spaniard confirmed. ‘The illness is an advanced form of interaction between mosquitoes and human beings, spread by the mosquitoes’ saliva, and is found throughout almost all of sub-Saharan Africa.’

  ‘How long does it take before you get ill?’ I asked, thinking of the steam inside my body.

  ‘Half an hour after you get bitten the parasite has established itself in your liver. But it takes at least six days before the symptoms start to show, and sometimes considerably longer, even up to a couple of years …’

  ‘Hakuna majadiliano,’ a guard outside shouted. I thought it sounded like the tall one.

  None of us knew what he meant and Catherine wasn’t there to translate. It sounded almost like hakuna matata – wasn’t that a Disney song? The children had the film on DVD. The Lion King, maybe?

  Silence fell inside the shack. Even the Dane’s breathing was inaudible. Everyone lay still in the darkness.

  Then there was a clatter behind the door and the sheet of tin was removed. Light shone in like a square metre of laser beam. It blinded me, but I could hear several guards come into the shack. ‘Moja ni hapa,’ they said. ‘Nyakua naye kwa miguu.’ I felt the draught as they grabbed the Romanian. They picked him up by his legs and shoulders and dragged him towards the doorway. He was whimpering, maybe because it hurt as they hauled him out but possibly from fear.

  We hadn’t spoken about the Frenchman. Not at all. Not a single word.

  It was as if it had never happened.

  And now the Romanian was gone, and I still didn’t know his name.

  They put the tin door back in place. The darkness returned, deeper and heavier than before.

  A shiver ran through me.

  * * *

  Anders Schyman scratched his beard. They mustn’t lose the initiative now. They had two really big stories on the go, and they had to keep hold of both – the kidnapping and the potential serial killer in the suburbs of Stockholm. Patrik had called a few of his old contacts and found a police inspector who had said that there were similarities between the three murdered women: they were women, they had been stabbed to death outside, and they’d lived in the greater Stockholm region. The conversation with the inspector had been recorded and saved on the newspaper’s secure server. Schyman had listened to it and couldn’t work out if the policeman was being sarcastic, or if he was so screwed up that he was actually serious. Either way, it gave them a mandate to run the serial-killer angle with more weight in tomorrow’s paper, and if nothing spectacular happened with the kidnap story, the hypothetical serial killer was a potential alternative lead.

  The editor-in-chief slurped his coffee. He usually drank it until four o’clock in the afternoon, then had to stop or switch to decaffeinated: otherwise he couldn’t sleep.

  The follow-up articles on the kidnapping were proving to be a problem. The fact was that they had blown all their ammunition on that day’s paper. There really wasn’t much else they could do but rehash the same things once more in a slightly different guise, which was neither unusual nor especially difficult, but they needed some sort of basis for it, some sort of news.

  Obviously he couldn’t refer to his long conversation with Halenius: that was strictly off the record. It was common for journalists to know far more than they wrote or broadcast: politicians’ wives who had been found guilty of fraud, celebrities taking drugs, police investigations that dragged on and on and on …

  One of his first jobs as a summer temp in the newsroom of the Norrland Social Democrat up in Älvsbyn had been to cover the police investigation into the theft of some
bank boxes in the forested hinterland. Shortly after the first theft, notes with a distinctive colour and unpleasant smell had begun to appear in shops and restaurants all around Norrbotten. They weren’t the result of any dye cartridges in the bank boxes, but something else entirely. The police were at a loss, but that had been only the start. Over the following months large quantities of stinking brown Swedish banknotes appeared all over Europe, as far away as Greece. It took the police almost a year to investigate the whole thing, but in the end they had a reasonable idea of the sequence of events: the thieves, a group that the police were already aware of, had stored and smuggled the money inside animal carcasses. The foul-smelling brown substance was blood. As a young reporter, Anders Schyman had been fed information throughout the course of the investigation, on the understanding that he wouldn’t write anything until the time was right, but it never was. The story never came out, either through him or anyone else. Why had he been so loyal? And why hadn’t the police wanted him to write about it? Were they trying to cover up the fact that they’d messed up? Had they? If so, how? Because they’d never caught the thieves?

  Why on earth was he thinking about this now?

  He went back to the outline of the first edition, the editor’s vision for the following day’s paper (or wishful thinking, if you prefer).

  Of course there were the stories of the other kidnap victims, the rest of the EU delegation, but kidnapped foreigners were about as interesting to the Evening Post’s readers as reheated porridge. Another front page would be justified if one of them died, and only then in the context of the threat to Sweden’s Thomas Samuelsson, the man on whose shoulders the security of all Europe rested.

  He skimmed what the rest of the European media were doing with the story. They might be able to make something out of the Romanian’s wife. She’d agreed to be photographed, and now the pictures were on sale via an agency in Paris. They could always publish it and pretend it was Annika and the children until people read the caption: they could lead with an enticing headline, drawing readers to one of the inside pages.

  He looked at his watch. Still a few hours before the deadline, but Schyman wasn’t expecting any miracles. They’d have to get things moving.