Leona

by Jenny Rogneby

  Nina stood silently with hunched shoulders. She moved her eyes from me to stare vacantly down at the sidewalk.

  “I didn’t want to have to resort to these methods, Nina, but you give me no choice.”

  No answer. It was time to finish up. I had said all I wanted. Perhaps I should give Nina the tiniest feeling that she still had a choice, so that she would not feel completely run over. A false feeling, but still…

  “Nina, if you decide to report me then you can just as well do it in the morning. You lose nothing by thinking about it overnight. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  She didn’t answer. With her head lowered and with her coat and bag in her hands she turned and started stiffly walking away from me toward Stureplan.

  I let her go.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  I had expected it to be completely dark when I quietly unlocked the front door. A faint glow from inside the apartment made the hall look spooky. Shadows spread out from the doorframes. It was strange that there were any lights on at all. Had I forgotten to turn them off?

  The wig chafed on one ear and the high-heeled ankle boots pressed all the weight down against my toes. Even though I had mostly been sitting at the poker table, my feet felt as if I had spent the whole night on the dance floor.

  The brat hadn’t been there tonight. I had hoped he would be interested in an hour’s pleasure for the same amount as before. I had basically taken the money without giving him anything in return, but because he had passed out I assumed he didn’t know how the night ended. But he was impossible to get hold of, so instead I went home with another man. Considerably older.

  With a beer belly.

  And greasy hair.

  He smelled of snuff, beer, and smoke. Focusing on the money, I steeled myself and went with him in a taxi to Hjorthagen. I accompanied him to an apartment which, considering the state it was in, had probably not been cleaned in the past year. When he pulled a suitcase out of the closet with instruments that resembled something I’d seen at the gynecologist I left the apartment after a few well-chosen words. With that, my career as a prostitute came to an abrupt end. I was disappointed, in a way, because I needed the money, but realized my own efforts would be too great compared to the returns.

  I locked the security door behind me and wriggled out of the ankle boots as I pulled the leather jacket over my shoulders. Put the wig back in the suitcase. Pulled my fingers through my hair and scratched my scalp. Wearing the wig on top of my own thick hair was like having a warm, scratchy cap on my head. Even though the pads of my feet were burning I walked on tiptoe. Slowly. I knew where the floor creaked. It must be the light under the cupboard by the counter in the kitchen that I’d forgotten to turnoff…

  “Where have you been?”

  Peter was sitting at the kitchen table in his bathrobe. His voice was deep, as if he hadn’t talked in a long time. A half-empty glass of milk was in front of him.

  “Are you awake?”

  That was unusual. Peter usually never woke up at night if he wasn’t sick. He didn’t wake up even when the children were crying.

  “Where have you been, I said?”

  “Working.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  Peter looked me up and down. Tight-fitting jeans and a T-shirt were not unusual clothes for me to work in, but he apparently noticed that it was not the usual jeans and that the top was a tad low-cut. Besides that I had smoky eye makeup and dark red lips.

  “Yes. We’re working on a procuring case where we have to do surveillance on two possible pimps.”

  I recovered quickly. The lies came naturally to me, as usual. I sneaked a glance at his reaction while I took a glass out of the cupboard and turned on the tap.

  “Since when have you started working in the field? And in surveillance?”

  “Shh, you’ll wake up the kids. I hadn’t realized that it would be so late.”

  A semi-smooth transition, perhaps. Create a diversion by starting to talk about the children and the time instead. I reduced the force on the tap and held the water glass under the stream.

  “Late? Early, you mean. It’s four-thirty. It never occurred to you to call?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you and the kids.”

  I took a few gulps, feeling the chill from the ice-cold water reach my head.

  “Thanks for that. I haven’t slept a wink.”

  Peter got up. He poured the milk out in the sink and walked toward the bedroom.

  My evening had not gone as planned. Poker seldom went well anymore and now I had no plan for how I would get the money together to at least keep the family rolling while waiting for the robbery money.

  Peter went to bed. I didn’t spend any time wondering whether he bought my lie. I was tired. Went into the bathroom. With the water rippling on my face I not only rinsed the makeup away. Something else went with it. I wasn’t sure what.

  I sank down on the bed with an uncomfortable feeling in my body.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  “Damn, how nice of you to call, Leona. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody from before.”

  I had arranged a meeting with Jakob Isaksson in his workshop, a cellar at Odenplan. “Issy” was a computer nerd who had been fired from the agency two years ago because of data intrusion. We had got to know each other at an IT seminar a year or so prior. Issy would hopefully be able to help me get authorization to invisibly surf around in our computer system. He was standing outside on the street, smoking.

  “For a data nerd who works in a cellar you really keep yourself in shape, Issy,” I said, giving him a hug.

  He laughed and blew the smoke out before he dropped the cigarette and crushed it against the asphalt with a blinding white Adidas sneaker.

  “Do you ever miss the police?” I asked him on our way down the stairs to the cellar space.

  “I’m doing so much better now. If you only knew. I work when I want to and take the jobs that seem fun. There’s nothing wrong with being a self-taught hacker. You get a lot of interesting, exciting jobs.”

  The cellar passages he guided me through were endless and seemed to get narrower and narrower. With a rattling key ring in his hand he unlocked door after door.

  “A lot goes on behind the scenes, you know. These days I have the Defense Forces and Secret Service as clients.”

  “Really, they don’t care that you were fired for that intrusion?”

  He unlocked yet another steel door and let me go in first. Red wall-to-wall carpet brightened up the room, which had white-painted stone walls. At one end was a white couch with big pillows in front of a gigantic LCD screen hanging up on the stone wall. The other end was filled with large computer screens. Issy went over to a coffee machine that looked like a miniature spaceship and placed a gold-colored coffee capsule in it.

  “It’s more like they see it as an advantage. They know I can hack my way in almost anywhere, even with them. If you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em, maybe they’re thinking.”

  He pointed to the couch. I sat down. After the little spaceship stopped whistling he came over with a cup of coffee for me and sat down in the armchair opposite. He leaned over with his elbows on his knees. Looked at me.

  “So you have problems, Leona?”

  I laughed, trying to downplay it.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Most of the people who come to me do. I hope you haven’t gotten yourself too tangled up.”

  “No, no danger of that.”

  I tried to sound cheerful. Didn’t like that he was looking at me with sympathy in his eyes. There was no reason to feel sorry for me.

  “I need to be invisible. Can you help me?”

  “Within the county or all of Sweden?”

  “Just the county. Is it possible?”

  “There are two alternatives. I’ll explain…”

  “As if I were a three-year-old, please,” I said. “Hacker talk is not my strong suit.”

  Issy smiled. He was about to c
ontinue but stopped.

  “This must be the only time you don’t know what to say, Issy. When you’re going to explain something to a mere mortal,” I said.

  To my delight he was modest enough not to take advantage of my ignorance.

  “One alternative is that I give you authorization from within your squad. Then you can make yourself invisible so that nothing is logged on your ID. But keep in mind that you’re going to leave traces after yourself that show which squad you’re surfing from and which computer you used.”

  “So it could be anyone at all at Violent Crimes surfing around?”

  “Exactly. But because someone can see which computer you used, you would have to use someone else’s computer, like someone who was off for the day, so as not to point to anyone in particular if queries were made.”

  “The computers in the interview rooms?” I said.

  “Same thing.”

  “What’s the other option?”

  “That you surf from an outside computer, for example from one of my computers. The good thing about that is that no one will be able to attribute it to you. The snag is that then the computer system is not going to look the way you’re accustomed to. The graphics are different and menus and texts may be hidden and hard to find if you don’t know where to look.”

  I thought quickly. Doing it from inside the squad was risky, of course. It would be hard to find a time of day when no one was there. If I did it from outside I would be forced to get help from Issy, which wasn’t good at all. He would be sitting alongside me and would see everything I saw. Even if Issy was a nice guy, I didn’t trust him.

  “I’ll do it from inside,” I said. “I want to take up as little of your time as possible. It’ll have to be during the evening.”

  “There’s another problem, too. I have to open and close your authorization manually, because it’s not good to leave the portal open. Sooner or later someone is going to check. Right now I’m doing a job for Defense, so I can only set it up for you between eleven-thirty and twelve-thirty, during the day when I have lunch. You’ll have an hour. If you want we can do it tomorrow, okay?”

  I had hoped to be able to do it in peace and quiet when my colleagues had left for the day. But by eleven-thirty some had probably already left for lunch anyway.

  “I’ll have to adapt. How much do you want for this?”

  Issy looked at me up and down with a sly smile.

  “Forget it, Issy,” I said, laughing. “We’re talking cold cash.”

  “I’ll do it for old times’ sake.”

  “You’re an angel. How will I know when it’s free to go in?”

  “I’ll send you a text from an unknown sender when it’s arranged and another one three minutes before I cancel so you get out in time.”

  I gave him a kiss on the cheek before I started walking toward the door. At the door I thought of something.

  “Listen, by the way, how do I know that I really am invisible?”

  “Leona, don’t you trust me?”

  “Every rose has its thorns, Issy. There may be some error along the way.”

  “Test by going into an access-protected investigation first. If you get in then you know there’s a green light. Keep in mind, you’re not really invisible. Someone will see that someone is doing what you’re doing, but they won’t see who. So choose carefully which cases you go into.”

  I left Issy. It struck me that a few years ago it would have been inconceivable for me to do what I was going to do tomorrow. I was fascinated by my capacity to adapt to new circumstances. It was a good quality. I hadn’t thought about it before.

  FIFTY-SIX

  After the visit with Issy I took the car to Birkastan. To Nina’s place. Along Sankt Eriksgatan the newly fallen snow lay in narrow, black furrows along with gravel, lead, and oil. I could smell the exhaust fumes even though I was inside the car. I rubbed my nose to get rid of the odor.

  Nina hadn’t reported me yesterday, which hopefully meant that she had no intention of doing so today, either. But I couldn’t be sure.

  I got takeaway from the Thai restaurant around the corner and went in through Nina’s entry. I had never liked rickety elevators with grates, so I took the three flights of stairs up to the apartment. The spiral staircase was broad. The man I met on the stairs could pass on the inside easily, with no risk of tripping on the stairs.

  I didn’t know what the meeting with Nina would be like. Took a deep breath and rang the bell. She answered with a resolute expression. She held open the door and showed me in. I couldn’t remember ever having seen her in a pair of worn jeans and a hoodie before. Without the tailored jackets, high-heeled shoes, and glasses, she looked vulnerable, somehow. I handed over the bag of Thai food.

  “I heard that you weren’t at work today so I thought I’d come over with a bit of food.”

  Nina took the bag into the kitchen without saying a word. I hung up my jacket on the coatrack in the hall and put my shoes next to Nina’s.

  “What great shoes!” I said, picking up a dark-brown, low-heeled ankle boot. “I need something like that.”

  When I put my foot down I noticed that it was a little large, but really comfortable. I looked at the bottom of the shoe and noted that Nina was a size seven. One size bigger than me. I went into the kitchen.

  Nina took out two cream-colored placemats while I removed two square plates from the kitchen cabinet. As soon as Nina set the placemats down on the table, I placed a plate on top.

  “We’re a good team, Nina,” I said.

  The atmosphere had to lighten a little. I regretted not bringing some wine. Nina seemed to need it.

  I sat down, opened both boxes of food, and started scooping up chicken with red curry sauce. Nina sat down after lighting three block candles that stood on a designer concrete plate with black and gray stones around it.

  “Leona, I’ve been thinking about what you told me yesterday. Or to be more exact, I didn’t sleep a damned wink last night because of it. I would have preferred never finding out.”

  I didn’t answer. I intended to let her talk.

  “I can’t understand why you’ve done this, Leona. How does a police officer even come up with the thought of doing something like this? And why have you dragged me into it?”

  If I could have completely trusted Nina, I would have told her everything. We had known each other a long time, but I didn’t trust anyone. Nina could hurt me seriously. I couldn’t afford any digressions. I needed to keep a tight rein on her. Get her to understand that everything had to happen on my terms.

  “The less you know, the better for you, Nina. I had no choice other than to tell you. You’re a skilled prosecutor with full insight into the investigation, it was just a matter of time before you discovered it yourself.”

  My flattery didn’t seem to have much effect. She shook her head.

  “I felt that there was something shady about this investigation right from the start. That it was not some ordinary clumsy robber who had committed it. But I could never suspect…and least of all you.”

  “Nina, knock it off. That’s enough!” I said, getting up.

  I took my water glass from the table and turned the tap to the coldest setting. I poured a glass and turned around.

  “There’s no time to sit and think about this now. Everything is already planned. If it feels easier for you morally you can tell yourself that you have no choice, which is true if you add in the fact that you’re choosing not to sit in prison for many years in the future.”

  I gulped down the whole glass of water.

  “The end is what’s remaining,” I said. “You won’t have anything to do with the robberies themselves.”

  Nina was sitting pretty. I was almost angry that she didn’t see that herself. It was the rest of us who were doing the heavy lifting.

  “The plan is that I do a poor investigation so that no suspect is found, which means that you are going to close down the case on the basis of ‘no result.’ If we
are still forced to produce a suspect for a main proceeding we will have a defendant that we both know is innocent. Then you can make sure to submit really thin evidence during the proceeding. The defendant’s defense attorney will drive through the case like a bulldozer when he or she notices that you have nothing to go on. The indictment will be dismissed and everyone will be happy and content.”

  Nina sat quietly.

  “I’m offering you one and a half million euros to keep quiet. It’s not all that difficult, is it? You’ll never get another opportunity to get rich like this, Nina. We can sit here and talk back and forth all night, but there is nothing you can do about it, provided that you don’t want both of us to get long prison sentences. I don’t need to explain to you what the consequences could conceivably be for three robberies plus the kidnapping of the little girl.”

  “Three robberies?”

  Nina almost screamed. I nodded slowly.

  “You’re out of your fucking mind, Leona!”

  She got up and quickly started heading for the hall. I ran over and took hold of her. I pulled her back to the kitchen and pressed her down on the chair again.

  “Sit!” I shouted and held hard on to her shoulders. “It’s too late, do you understand, Nina? You no longer have any choice!”

  She became rigid. Made no resistance. Didn’t say a word. Looked at me terrified, with big eyes, as if I was going to hit her.

  I wanted to scream that now it was even more important that the third robbery went according to plan. Now that I was being forced to share the money with her. Bringing in money in other ways hadn’t worked. The only thing that worked was the robberies, and now the third robbery was needed more than ever. Threatening Nina into silence would not have sufficed. I had needed to offer her a large sum of money. In that way she would see herself as an accomplice, and not merely as a victim. Someone who was involved wouldn’t report.