Box 21

by Anders Roslund

  She had made the hostages line up with their backs to a wall and was now sitting on a chair in front of them, about three metres away. It seemed a good distance; she had full control without getting too near. No one had said a word since the first phone call; they had all withdrawn into themselves and kept their eyes closed a lot of the time. They were afraid. You could always tell.

  She looked around. The mortuary, she knew, consisted of several rooms.

  There was the narrow room, like a hall, where she had stood for a while, steeling herself before taking the gun out of the plastic bag and marching into the big room where five white coats had been examining a corpse.

  In the wall behind the five kneeling hostages a door opened into an even larger room. A storeroom of some kind, with filing cabinets and trolleys and electronic equipment.

  She had known all this before she came here. She had studied the information brochure that the Polish nurse had lent her, and then drawn the ground plan in her notebook and ripped the page out.

  There was another room, behind her, and she knew about that too.

  She hadn’t been in there yet; she had had enough to do with the hostages, who must be made to respect her enough to obey her and had to be watched. But she knew what was behind the large grey metal door. It was the biggest of the rooms, the cold store where the used bodies were kept.

  Suddenly one of the male students, the young medic who had wept earlier, started to gasp for breath faster and faster until he was hyperventilating.

  She stayed where she was, lowered her gun and looked on as he fell forward again, with his hands tied behind his back. He was shaking badly where he lay, his face pressed against the floor.

  ‘Help him!’ The doctor who had spoken for her on the phone earlier sounded hoarse now. He shouted but he couldn’t move. He stared at her, his cheeks and neck red with distress.

  ‘Help him! Help!’

  Lydia hesitated and observed the man shaking on the floor. Then she got up, raised the gun again and went over to him. Her eyes scanned the others to check they stayed put, backs against the wall, as they were meant to be.

  Which was why she didn’t notice.

  Didn’t notice that his hands were free.

  He was lying there, shaking, face down, with his untied hands behind him.

  She bent down, ready to press her plaster cast against the back of his neck, and that was when he threw himself at her and she fell over backwards. He kept hitting her head with one hand, while trying to pull the gun from her grip.

  He was much stronger than her. He was like the rest of them. The men who had lain on top of her, hitting her, raping her, men she hated and would never allow to abuse her again.

  That must have been what gave her strength.

  At least that was what she thought later.

  His hand was tugging at the gun, but she was able to hold on for long enough, until her finger squeezed the trigger and the shot echoed in the quiet room. The man who was humiliating her suddenly let go, fell over sideways. His body was heavy when he hit the floor, his face contorted with the pain that radiated from his leg.

  The bullet had hit him just below the kneecap.

  He wouldn’t walk again for a long time.

  A team of men from the Flying Squad were investigating positions in the basement when a faint voice called out from just outside the door to the mortuary suite. Even as they got closer, it was hard to make out any words, it was more like groans. When they saw him, he was lying on his side across the corridor, face down and with his head just outside the mortuary door. He was bleeding from his knees and his head. It was obvious that he was in need of immediate medical care due to blood loss.

  They belonged to an elite group and moved slowly, step by measured step, taking every precaution as they had agreed earlier. The bleeding man might have been set up as bait, but they had to bite. Nothing happened when they reached him and lifted his damaged body on to a field stretcher.

  Twelve minutes later they carried the casualty into the operations centre, where Ewert was waiting impatiently. He had been informed about an incident involving a man, a medical student called Johan Larsen, who had been one of the five hostages. The former patient had used a large-calibre weapon to shoot him through both kneecaps and then repeatedly used the butt of the gun to hit his face, especially his forehead. As soon as the stretcher arrived, Ewert went over to it, but was brusquely shoved out of the way by the A&E doctor who told him to hold it, the patient needed medical care.

  He had so many questions.

  He needed so many answers.

  Lydia sat back down in the chair, watching the four remaining hostages. She felt tired. It had been a horrible few minutes.

  As soon as she had shot him, she had understood that it wasn’t enough. From the start she had demanded their respect, tried to impress on them that she was serious. It hadn’t worked. When he was on top of her, pushing her down, just like all the other men, she had realised exactly what she had to do.

  Push down, push down, again and again. She must keep her grip on power and they must be made to fear her.

  She didn’t want any more rebellions. They might succeed next time.

  She had been on the floor, gun in hand and the student screaming with pain and holding his right knee. She had got up, checked the four lined up against the wall, then looked at the man who had attacked her. She showed them her weapon, pointed to it.

  ‘Not again. If again. Boom.’

  Then she had taken a few steps towards him until she was positioned straight above him, astride his body. She had shown the gun to the four over by the wall again and then another shot rang out, his left knee this time. He screamed wildly; she leaned down, looked at the others and then she said Boom, boom and shoved the muzzle into his mouth, holding it there until he was silent. She pulled it out, turned it around and used it to beat him about the face until he lost consciousness, hit him the way the others had always hit her.

  Then she pulled the pad of plastic explosive off from between his shoulders and pointed at the woman and the older man. She loosened the rope around their wrists enough to make it possible for them to pull the unconscious man to the entrance, using sign language to make them understand. They were to put him outside in the empty corridor then return to be tied up.

  She stayed quite still, aiming at them with her gun.

  Soon the man she had shot would be found. They’d take him away and make him talk.

  That was good.

  What he had to tell them would surely convince them that she meant business and would never give in. For as long as this lasted she would have the respect she wanted.

  She wanted to talk to them, the people outside.

  No more waiting. It was time to let them know what she wanted.

  She gestured with the gun. The woman was to use the mobile again. It would be her third phone call. First the call to announce that she had taken hostages, then the useless attempt.

  The student dialled the number and put the phone to the older man’s ear. He waited, then he cocked his head. ‘Dead.’

  She heard him, but wasn’t sure she had understood and waved with her gun. ‘Again!’

  ‘Dead. No tone.’

  He drew the edge of his hand across his throat, like they did in American movies when someone was going to die.

  Lydia understood. With the gun still aimed at the hostages, she checked the phone on the wall behind them.

  She lifted the receiver. Silence.

  Two telephones, her only means of communication. They had cut them off.

  She screamed something incomprehensible in Russian at the hostages, shouting and gesturing towards the storeroom. They understood and got up, their legs and backs aching after hours on the floor. They trooped next door, where they sat down again with their backs against another wall.

  She felt sure they would obey her, but all the same, before closing the door on them, she pointed at the safety catch, waved the gun at them and said: ‘If a
gain. Boom.’

  Then she closed the door and hurried past the corpse towards the metal door in the wall opposite.

  She opened it and went alone into the large space which was the actual mortuary.

  John Edvardson had been only thirty-four years old when he was offered the post as operational head for the national Flying Squad. He had trained as an interpreter, studied Russian and politics at university, and then gone to police college. After graduating, a few years of active police service had been enough to speed him past the queue of self-selected candidates for the Flying Squad post. It had caused a lot of grumbling in the ranks, as always when egos smart, but John had turned out to be the excellent choice his superiors had hoped for. He was wise and popular, a no-nonsense man who didn’t feel the need to shout about it.

  Ewert had met John several times. There was no friendship between them – Ewert wasn’t interested in that – but he had learnt enough about the other man to understand what kind of person he was and how good he was at his job, a perfect partner to have at your side in the makeshift operations centre with its clutter of hospital kit.

  John took hold of Ewert’s arm and led him away from the young man with a bullet in each knee.

  ‘You don’t need to interview him now. Not yet. I asked one of my lads to talk to him while they carried him here.’

  Ewert listened with his eyes fixed on the doctor who was examining the damaged knees.

  ‘I need to know.’

  ‘You won’t get a lot out of him. Maybe later. Anyway, the casualty, Larsen, is positive that the stuff is Semtex. We don’t know how he can be so sure. He clammed up at that point. His description fits well enough. It’s a “pale brown dough” which she has distributed over the hostages and every door in the room. She also seems to have detonators. Larsen is convinced that she will use them if she needs to.’

  ‘He should know.’

  ‘You see what all this means, don’t you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘We can’t act. A raid is impossible. If we go in, it’s almost certainly goodbye to the hostages.’

  Ewert turned to face John and slammed his hand hard on a wheeled stainless-steel table. The noise was terrific. The impact set the metal vibrating.

  ‘I don’t get it! Since when did lousy prostitutes carry arms and take hostages?’

  ‘Larsen kept talking about her control. It was very frightening, he said. She was well prepared, had brought rope to tie them up and enough ammunition and explosives to keep us off her back.’

  ‘Control, eh?’

  ‘That’s what he said. Control. And courage. He repeated it several times.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about her control. John, I want you to position your men wherever you think is best. And I want police marksmen. If we have to, we’ll shoot her.’

  Edvardson was on his way out when Ewert called him back. The envelope with the blue notebook was on top of one of the unused trolleys. Ewert handed over a pair of surgical gloves and then slipped the notebook into John’s gloved hands.

  ‘This is Grajauskas’s. Can you read it?’

  John turned the pages slowly. He shook his head.

  ‘No, I can’t. Sorry. It’s Lithuanian.’

  ‘Sven! What’s happening about that bloody interpreter?’

  As Ewert Grens turned to the corner where Sven was sitting, the A&E doctor examining Johan Larsen’s bullet wounds waved to attract his attention.

  ‘DSI Grens!’

  ‘Yes?’

  Ewert was all set for a quick interrogation of Larsen, but the doctor raised his hand, making a stop sign.

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘I need answers.’

  ‘Hold it. He’s in no condition to answer anything.’

  ‘Couple of damned kneecaps! People are being held at gunpoint down there!’

  ‘It’s not his knees. Can’t you see? Shock is setting in. If you don’t respect it you might never get any answers.’

  Larsen’s face was white and absent. He was dribbling. Ewert’s hand closed over the handkerchief in his pocket, the one he used to wipe her chin. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to glance at Larsen’s drooping, half-open mouth. He had been about to thump the steel table again, but held still with his arm outstretched.

  ‘She takes hostages and tells us all about it. She fills the whole sodding place with explosives, but she makes no demands!’

  He completed the movement of his arm, the steel surface reverberated and the sound bounced off the walls.

  ‘Sven!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Phone her. Phone her now! It’s time for a chat.’

  Lydia had never been inside a real mortuary before. She stopped and looked around as the grey metal door slammed behind her. The room was bigger than she had imagined, twice as big as the Klaipeda dance hall she and Vladi had gone to in their teens. It had pale yellow walls, with white tiling near the autopsy tables. The light was harsh and clinical. Cold boxes, stacked three rows high, running almost all the way along one wall. They had steel doors, the same size as small fridges, about fifty by seventy-five centimetres.

  Fifteen per row. That made forty-five boxes with people inside. Chilled bodies, resting. She couldn’t grasp it, didn’t want to.

  She thought of Vladi, as she sometimes did. She missed him. They had grown up together, gone to the same school, had liked walking hand-in-hand. They went for long walks together, making plans to leave Klaipeda. Sometimes, if they reached the edge of the town, they would turn round to look at it, the massed houses and tower blocks, and together dream for something else.

  She thought of him as hers. He thought of her as his.

  Lydia crossed the hard floor. Large grey tiles. She hadn’t seen Vladi for three years and wondered where he was, what he was doing, if he ever thought about her.

  She thought about her parents. Her dad in the Lukuskele prison. Mum in the Klaipeda flat. They had both done their best. There hadn’t been much love, perhaps, but there hadn’t been any hatred or violence. They each had their own things to deal with. She wondered if they too had had dreams once, if they had walked to the edge of the town and looked around, longing for something different.

  It was good that her mum didn’t know where she was now, a beaten-up whore in a mortuary who was using a gun to threaten people. It was good too that Vladi wouldn’t know. She wondered if he would’ve understood, and thought he might. He would have realised that when someone has been kicked around for long enough, there comes a time when she has to kick back. That’s just the way it was. You simply reached a certain point and there was nowhere else to go.

  It took a few seconds before she registered that the telephone was ringing. The one on the wall in the other room, near the trolley with the dead person. She guessed it had rung four times, maybe five.

  She ran past the cold boxes, opened the grey metal door, picked up the receiver and waited. She was in pain; the chemical effect of the morphine was starting to wear off and she found it harder to move now. She realised it could only get worse.

  A moment or two later, a voice spoke in Russian and she was unprepared for that. A man was speaking Russian with a Scandinavian accent and it didn’t twig until he had introduced himself.

  ‘Bengt Nordwall. I’m a policeman.’

  She swallowed. She had not expected this. Hoped, yes, but hadn’t dared to believe.

  ‘You demanded that I came here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your name is Lydia? Is that right? I will listen as long as you—’

  She interrupted him at once, tapped the receiver with one finger and spoke loudly.

  ‘Why did you cut the phones?’

  ‘We have—’

  She rapped the receiver again.

  ‘You can call me, but I can’t call you. I want to know why.’

  He paused, and she realised that he was looking to the other policemen around him for support. No doubt they were nodding at each other, making gestures.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t cut off any phones. We have ev
acuated large parts of the hospital because you have taken hostages. But we haven’t blocked any lines.’

  ‘Explain better.’

  ‘Lydia, we’ve evacuated the hospital switchboard too. That’s probably why you’ve got problems with your telephone.’

  ‘Telephones! Not one, both of them. Do you think I’m stupid? Some stupid whore from Eastern Europe? I know how telephones work! And now you know I will hurt people if I need to! So don’t give me that crap! You’ve got five minutes. I want the lines connected. Exactly five minutes for you and your mates to fix it. If you don’t, I’ll shoot one of the hostages. And this time it won’t be in the legs.’

  ‘Lydia, we—’

  ‘Don’t try to get in here, or I’ll blow up the whole lot. The hostages and the hospital.’

  He hesitated, looked at his colleagues again. Then he cleared his throat.

  ‘If we fix the phones, Lydia, what do we get in return?’

  ‘What do you get? You’re spared finding a dead hostage. Four minutes and fifteen seconds to go now.’

  Ewert Grens had listened in to the call and Edvardson had given a simultaneous interpretation. When it ended, he put his earphones down between Sven and Hermansson and drank what was left of his last cup of cold coffee.

  ‘What do you think?’

  He looked at each of them in turn. Sven, Hermansson, Edvardson and then Nordwall.

  ‘Well? Is she bluffing?’

  John Edvardson was dressed exactly like the men he had just positioned in the hospital. Black leather boots, camouflage-patterned uniform trousers with large square pockets on the thighs, grey waistcoat laden with spare magazines for the gun he had put down on one of the trolleys, and underneath it a flak jacket. The room they were in had already become overcrowded and hot. John was sweating, his forehead glistened and his shirt had large dark stains under the armpits.

  ‘She has demonstrated that she’s prepared to injure the hostages.’

  ‘OK. But is she bluffing this time?’

  ‘She doesn’t have to. She has the advantage.’

  ‘Why risk losing it?’

  ‘She won’t. If she shoots one she has still got three more to go.’

  The two men’s eyes met. Ewert shook his head.