Borderline

by Liza Marklund

  He folded the paper and put it on the windowsill. ‘I’d better start things up.’

  He stood up and walked past her without touching her.

  She took a long shower. Her body felt bigger than before, slower somehow. The drops of water hit her skin like pins.

  She took the opportunity to clean the bathroom, scrubbing the vomit stains from the toilet, polishing the mirror, wiping the basin and tiled floor. She could hear Halenius talking English on his mobile.

  She got dressed, a clean pair of pale blue jeans and a silk blouse. Halenius ended one call and made another. She went into the children’s room and carried on clearing out their wardrobes.

  At ten past nine the landline rang and her heart stopped.

  She flew into the bedroom, slipping past Halenius to the unmade bed. His movements were focused and jerky, starting the recording equipment, checking keywords, notes and pens, shutting his eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. Then he picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello? Yes, this is Jimmy.’

  His lips were bloodless, and his eyes haunted.

  ‘Yes, we received the message about the hand.’

  He fell silent. His shoulders were so tense they seemed to be made of wood.

  ‘Yes, I know we have to pay, that’s—’

  He was interrupted and sat in silence for a few moments. She could hear the kidnapper’s squeaky voice rattling from the receiver.

  ‘She’s managed to get a ransom together, but it isn’t—’

  Another silence.

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Halenius said, ‘but you have to try to see it from her perspective. She’s scraped together every penny of the insurance money, and borrowed all she can from her family and friends, and now there isn’t any more.’

  Silence again, chatter.

  ‘First we want proof of life … Yes, that’s an absolute condition.’

  She noticed that sweat had broken out on his forehead. She hadn’t grasped until now how demanding and unpleasant he found these conversations. She felt a huge, uncontrollable wave of tenderness: he didn’t have to do this but he was doing it anyway. How could she ever repay him?

  ‘You’ve chopped his hand off. How do I know you haven’t chopped his head off as well?’

  Halenius’s voice was neutral, but his fingers were shaking. She heard the kidnapper laugh loudly, then say something in reply.

  Halenius looked up at her. ‘Her email? Now?’

  He nodded to her, then to his computer. She slid across the mattress towards the desk, turned his computer towards her and logged into the newspaper’s email server, then pressed ‘send/collect’.

  Four messages landed in her inbox. The one at the top said sender unknown. She felt her pulse quicken as she clicked to open it.

  ‘It’s empty,’ she whispered.

  ‘Empty? But …’

  ‘Hang on, there’s an attachment.’

  ‘Download it,’ he said quietly.

  It was a picture, dark and out of focus. Thomas was lying on his back on something dark, his head was turned to one side showing his chiselled profile, his eyes were closed as if he were asleep. Annika was filled with relief and warmth, and a pang of guilt drifted through her. Then she saw the stump. Where his left hand should have been, his lower arm now seemed to merge with the floor. She pulled back instinctively from the computer.

  ‘That’s not proof of life,’ Halenius said into the phone. ‘He looks stone-dead.’

  The kidnapper laughed, loud and long. His high-pitched twittering seeped into her bedroom. She got up and opened the window to get rid of it.

  It was cold outside, but not freezing. Hesitant snowflakes hung on the air, unsure whether to fall or fly. It was darker now than when she had woken up. She turned round, and the cold embraced her from behind.

  Halenius was listening intently, leaning forward. ‘She’s managed to scrape together one million, one hundred thousand dollars. That’s right, one point one million.’

  Silence. Even the kidnapper seemed to be waiting at the other end.

  Then he said something, a light crackle.

  Halenius was waiting with his mouth open. ‘That’s not possible,’ he said. ‘Stockholm is close to the North Pole and Nairobi is right on the equator … No, we can’t hand over the money today. We … No, we … Yes, we can fly to Nairobi as soon as possible, perhaps this evening … My mobile number?’

  He read it out, the kidnapper said something, and the conversation ended. Annika heard the click as he hung up.

  ‘We’ve got twenty-four hours,’ Halenius said, putting the phone down.

  He led her to the sofa, then sat on the armchair facing her and took her hands in his. ‘This is going to be a trial,’ he said.

  She nodded, as if she understood.

  ‘He accepted my offer of one point one million dollars. He wanted the money in Nairobi in two hours, which he knew we wouldn’t be able to do.’

  ‘Why one point one?’ she asked.

  ‘It shows that you’ve really tried, that there’s no more to be had. He’s going to be in touch during the day, I don’t know how, with instructions on how to hand over the money.’

  She pulled her hands back, but he caught them. ‘We have to fly to Nairobi, this evening at the latest. Can you sort out tickets?’

  She nodded again. ‘Sit down next to me,’ she said.

  He sat beside her on the sofa, but didn’t touch her.

  ‘Do you think he’s alive?’

  Halenius scratched his head. ‘According to the handbook, he ought to be, because otherwise the kidnappers wouldn’t have sent that picture. But with this man I just don’t know. The Frenchman’s wife paid up even though her husband was dead, so they managed to deceive her.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  He thought for a few moments. ‘According to the rulebook? Commercial kidnappings usually have one of six distinct outcomes. The first is that the hostage dies before the money is paid.’

  ‘That sounds like poor business,’ Annika said.

  ‘True. The hostage might have died trying to escape, or in a rescue attempt, or from a heart attack or some other illness. Sometimes kidnap victims have starved to death. The second scenario is that the ransom gets paid but the hostage is still killed.’

  ‘Like the Frenchman,’ Annika said.

  ‘Exactly. It might be that the kidnappers think they could be identified, or that the leader of the group is a complete psychopath. That fits fairly well with our man. Scenario three: the ransom is paid but the hostage isn’t released. Instead the kidnappers come back and demand more money, and negotiations begin again. That usually happens when the ransom demand is high and the money is paid too quickly, because they conclude that there’s more where that came from.’

  ‘Could that happen to us?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We’ve been through the whole routine. Four: the ransom is paid, the hostage is released, but kidnapped again at a later date. That isn’t likely to happen. Five: the ransom is paid and the hostage is released. Six: the hostage escapes or is freed without any money being handed over.’

  She sat there without saying anything for a long time. He waited.

  ‘It’s impossible to say which one it’s going to be, isn’t it?’ she said quietly.

  ‘He said he’d contact us again early tomorrow morning. Maybe he will, but it could just as well be late in the afternoon. We have to be prepared. We need to have the money, a car with a full tank and a driver, fully charged mobiles, water and food all ready, because it could be that the actual delivery will take time.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘What are the police doing?’

  ‘The JIT in Brussels are reading my texts and keeping everyone informed, but right now it’s vital the kidnappers see that we’re on our own. They’ve no intention of getting caught. I’ll demand to be allowed to hand over the ransom face to face, but there’s no way they’ll agree to that.’

  ‘And the loc
ation where we’ll hand over the money, that’ll be somewhere in Nairobi?’

  He went into the bedroom and emerged with a notepad. ‘The Spaniard’s partner left the money in a container in the Somali district in the south of the city,’ he read. ‘The German woman’s son left it in a ditch at the foot of Mount Kenya, about a hundred kilometres to the north. The Romanian’s wife is going to deliver eight hundred thousand dollars some time today in Mombasa, out on the coast. The Frenchman’s wife also left her money somewhere in Nairobi, but she wasn’t able to say where afterwards.’

  ‘So they don’t put all their eggs in the same basket,’ Annika said.

  He sat down beside her again and leafed through his notes. ‘Usually the ransom is handed over somewhere fairly close to the site of the kidnapping, up to a couple of hundred kilometres away, maximum. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.’

  ‘Then what?’ Annika said.

  ‘It can take up to forty-eight hours before the hostage shows up,’ Halenius said.

  She put her hand on his thigh. ‘Then what?’ she said quietly, looking at him. He turned away and she removed her hand. ‘I don’t regret it,’ she said.

  He went back into the bedroom without looking at her. She remained where she was, mute and leaden, as a vast emptiness filled her, making it hard to breathe. With an effort she got to her feet and went to the bedroom. He was writing something on his computer.

  All of a sudden she felt utterly ridiculous. ‘I’ll sort the flights,’ she said. ‘Any particular preferences?’

  ‘Not Air Europa,’ he said. ‘And not via Charles de Gaulle.’ He smiled forlornly at her.

  She managed to smile back, then went into the children’s room.

  *

  The only flight with any seats left to Nairobi that night was with Air France, via Paris.

  ‘And it’s Air France all the way?’ Annika asked. ‘Not Air Europa?’

  The woman in the Evening Post’s travel office tapped at her computer. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The flight to Paris, Charles de Gaulle airport, is operated by Air Europa.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything else?’

  ‘Yes, via Brussels, but that leaves in twenty minutes, from Bromma.’

  She booked them on to the 16:05 flight from Arlanda to Paris, then with Air France (operated by Kenya Airways) at 20:10. The plane was due to land in Nairobi at 06:20 the following morning, East African time. She left the returns open.

  The tickets would be delivered by email for her to print out.

  She hung up. It was the middle of the day but dusk already, and she was in a weightless vacuum between now and later.

  Halenius went home to pick up some clothes, a toothbrush and his razor. Annika spent forty minutes working frantically on her article, then packed her laptop, a few clothes and the video-camera, but there wasn’t room for the tripod because they were only taking hand-luggage. She went through the fridge and threw out anything that was about to go out of date, emptied the bins and switched off the lights. She stood in the darkness of the hall for a while, just listening to the sounds of the building.

  Something was definitely too late, or far too early.

  She walked on to the landing, locked the flat securely and went down to the entrance to wait for Halenius, who was going to pick her up in a taxi.

  She called Sophia Grenborg while she waited. ‘We’re leaving now,’ she said. ‘We’ve agreed a ransom. The plane takes off in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Do you want to talk to the children?’

  A shiny black Volvo with tinted windows pulled up through the swirling snow and stopped outside her door. One of the back doors opened and Halenius stuck his head out.

  ‘I’ll call again from Arlanda,’ she said, and ended the call.

  She stepped out into the wind and smiled at his messy hair. From the corner of her eye she saw a photographer raise a camera with a long telephoto lens and point it in her direction. The driver got out, wearing a thick grey coat. She recognized him: he was one of the men called Hans. He took her bag and put it into the boot, and she got in beside Halenius as the photographer followed her through his lens.

  The under-secretary of state held up his mobile. ‘The money is to be paid in American dollars, twenty-dollar bills, wrapped in thick plastic and tied with duct tape,’ he said.

  ‘Why have we got a Hans?’ Annika asked.

  The Volvo pulled way with a soft purr. ‘Government car,’ Halenius said. ‘I need to make a load of calls. It wouldn’t be that great to read about them on mediatime.se tomorrow.’

  She remembered the banker in glasses at Handelsbanken. ‘Twenty-dollar bills? That’s going to weigh at least fifty kilos.’

  ‘I’ve told Frida to buy two big sports bags.’

  He took her hand. ‘He wants you to deliver the money,’ he said, letting go of it again.

  The stone façades of the city slid past behind the falling snow.

  He picked up his mobile and dialled a really long number, and she laid her head against the soft leather seat and let the city disappear behind her.

  The departure hall at Arlanda airport was seething with people.

  ‘I can’t check you in all the way through,’ the woman at the desk said, tapping at her computer. ‘Air Europa’s IT system isn’t compatible with everyone else’s, so you’ll have to go to the transfer desk in Paris and get your boarding cards there for the flight to Nairobi.’

  Halenius leaned over the desk. ‘There isn’t a transfer desk at Charles de Gaulle,’ he said. ‘And we don’t have time to stand in a check-in queue.’

  The woman tapped some more. ‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘You’ve got an hour in Paris.’

  Halenius’s brow was damp with sweat. ‘Have you ever been to Charles de Gaulle?’ he asked quietly. ‘The planes are parked over by the runways and you have to get a bus to the terminal. The terminals are several kilometres apart and there are no trains or buses between them. We have to get from Two B to Two F. It isn’t going to work.’

  ‘Yes, it will,’ the woman said. ‘You walk to Terminal F and—’

  ‘We won’t get in there. Not without boarding cards.’ Annika swallowed. She had had to ignore both of his preferences.

  ‘This is a guaranteed booking, though,’ the check-in woman said. ‘If you miss the plane you’ll be allocated seats on a later flight.’

  ‘We have to catch this one,’ Halenius said. ‘It’s extremely important.’

  The woman tilted her head and smiled. ‘Everyone says that.’

  Annika, who had been standing half a step behind Halenius, pushed forward and leaned across the desk, standing on tiptoe. ‘I was the one who made the booking,’ she said. ‘The travel agent guaranteed that we’d be able to check in the whole way through. Otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here.’

  The woman was no longer smiling. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid—’

  ‘I spoke to airport management at Charles de Gaulle and to Air Europa’s head office in Amsterdam. Everyone gave me guarantees that this would work.’

  The woman’s lips had narrowed to a thin line. ‘I can’t see how—’

  ‘I suggest you pick up the phone and call someone, or find someone who knows how to do this,’ Annika said, pulling out a notepad and pen. ‘Can I have your full name, please?’

  The woman’s neck was flushing red. She stood up and disappeared through a door to the left.

  Halenius looked at Annika in surprise. ‘I thought Air Europa’s head office was in Mallorca.’

  ‘I don’t know where the fuck it is.’

  She watched the clanking conveyor-belt carrying luggage that disappeared through an opening to the right. Golf bags and Samsonite cases and pushchairs in plastic bags, all swallowed by the dark hole in an unrelenting stream. The ceiling arched above their heads. The passengers behind them were starting to shuffle and look at their watches. Thomas was lying on a bare floor somewhere, bleeding to death, and she was in charge
of logistics. This was her responsibility.

  The woman came back with an older woman.

  ‘So, what seems to be the problem here, then?’ the older woman said.

  ‘We’ve been guaranteed that we could check in all the way to Nairobi,’ Annika said, ‘but clearly there’s been some sort of misunderstanding somewhere. It would be great if we could get it sorted out.’

  The older woman smiled. ‘Unfortunately, I’m afraid—’

  Thomas’s swollen face was talking to her in a monotone from the computer screen. The kidnapper’s shrill voice seeped out from the baggage conveyor-belt. Halenius’s guttural groan rose up and got stuck beneath the ceiling.

  She leaned across the desk. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘This instant.’

  The older woman bent over the computer terminal and typed a few commands, reached towards a printer, then put two provisional boarding cards on the check-in counter. ‘There,’ she said. ‘All sorted.’

  * * *

  Anders Schyman felt the shock run through his body as he read the messages from the TT news agency: we were actually right.

  The custody proceedings against Gustaf Holmerud had obviously taken place behind closed doors, so the precise reasons as to why he had been remanded in custody hadn’t been made public, but the district court’s decision to hold him spoke for itself: the man was being remanded for having been the ‘probable cause’ of two deaths. And ‘probable cause’ was the highest level of suspicion.

  Must be Lena Andersson and Nalina Barzani, Schyman thought, reaching for the intercom. ‘Patrik? Can you come and see me for a moment?’

  The head of news came bouncing across the newsroom with his ever-present biro. ‘Probable cause!’ he said, and landed in the visitor’s chair. ‘Now we’re talking!’

  ‘What is it we don’t know?’ Schyman said.

  A vague description and some information from a mobile-phone operator would be enough to hold someone on the grounds of reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause.

  Patrik chewed his pen. ‘Q’s in charge of the investigation, so Berit’s on the case.’