This novel is the first title in the Walter Gröhn trilogy, which includes:
Anger Mode
Project Nirvana
The Weakest Link
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Nordic Noir Books,
an imprint of Massolit Publishing Ltd, London
www.nordicnoirbooks.com
Distributed in the UK by Turnaround Ltd
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Cover artwork: Stevali Production
Layout and design: Stevali Production
Originally published in Sweden as Vredens Tid in 2009
by Massolit Förlag, Stockholm (www.massolit.se)
Copyright © 2009 by Stefan Tegenfalk
www.stefantegenfalk.com
English translation copyright © 2011 by David Evans
The moral right of Stefan Tegenfalk to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any method whatsoever, including electronic or mechanical, photocopy, recording or storage in any data retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. The events and persons described have no basis in real life, except for Anna Lindh, Olof Palme and Stig Bergling. RSU is the author’s own invention. Some locations do exist. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-908233-00-4
Typeset by Stevali Production, Sweden
Printed and bound in July 2011 by Nørhaven, Denmark
A fully developed human brain is considered to be the most complex of Nature’s creations. The brain is made up of more than one hundred billion nerve cells, and it uses electrical impulses and chemical hormone triggers to control and coordinate bodily functions like blood pressure, fluid balances, and body temperature. In addition, it handles our mental functions such as intellect, emotion, memory and learning.
“The more mankind researches the brain, the less is known about it.”
David H. Ingvar (1924–2000), Professor of Clinical Neurophysiology, University of Lund, 1983–1990
Author’s note
Lay juror. In Swedish criminal and civil cases, the jury consists of a judge, who is also the court president, three lay jurors and a court secretary. Lay jurors are appointed by political assemblies and do not have to be qualified lawyers.
“Law Speaker” is an honorary title given to a senior judge.
Prosecutors work for an independent authority within the Justice Department and are the only public officials who can initiate criminal investigations.
Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot down on the streets of Stockholm on 28 February 1986. The murder investigation remains open.
Anna Lindh was a Swedish Foreign Minister who was stabbed to death on 11 September 2003 in Stockholm. After three trials, Mijailo Mijailović, of Serbian parentage, was convicted of her murder.
Stig Bergling was an employee of SÄPO who was convicted of treason for leaking secrets to the Soviet military intelligence service, GRU.
Contents
Sunday, 14 September 2004
Autumn 2009
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
EPILOGUE
Project Nirvana
SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2004
THE WRISTWATCH GLASS was cracked and the watch hands had stopped at eleven minutes past five. The red Winnie-the-Pooh rucksack, which she had thought herself too old for, lay not far from her body. From a rip in the battered back pack, a small, soft toy pony could be seen. It was light brown and had a small, white star between its dark eyes, just like the pony she used to ride every Sunday.
It was cold. She was lying face down in the muddy earth, eyes covered in mud, legs and arms lifelessly extended in all directions. She saw nothing. Felt nothing. Her heart had long since stopped beating.
A BATTLE SCENE opened up before Hans Jonasson of the Uppsala County Traffic Police when, during a routine drive along Route 72, he made an emergency stop on his police motorbike next to what was left of the car. As one of the most experienced police motorcyclists in the area, he had seen a great deal of death on the roads and the sight of the car crash on the road was all he needed to detect the presence of Death once again at this spot. The kinetic energy from both cars had transformed them into unrecognizable piles of twisted metal. One of the cars had catapulted into the field and had ploughed a large welt in the muddy topsoil. The other car, still on the road, was sliced into two parts. Bits of glass and metal were spread around the pieces of wreckage like fragments of a falling star. Hans quickly confirmed the absence of skid marks on the tarmac. The collision must have occurred with a brutal impact. Considering the appearance of the vehicles, it would have taken a miracle for anyone to have survived.
He made the call to the county communications centre while he was running to what looked like the front part of the car in the road. He took off his gloves and touched the mangled metal with his hand. It was still warm and what was left of the engine’s cooling system was hissing. A human body was wedged inside the demolished steel. The head was hanging forwards and the face was shredded to pieces. Hans squeezed inside and put his fingers against the neck, searching for a pulse. His fingertips registered a weak beat, and the lungs emitted a shallow wheeze. His first impulse was to try to bend up the metal to get the person out, to put the body in the prone position until help arrived. But the casualty could not be moved until the ambulance crew arrived – especially not the head and neck. The only thing he could do was to stop the bleeding and ensure that the airways were more or less open. After staunching the worst wounds using rudimentary bandages made from bits of clothing from the victim, he ran to what was left of the back part of the car. It was empty.
A car approached from the east. From this direction, visibility was better because of a long straight, leading to the tight curve of the road. Hans raised his hand in a stop signal and ordered the passengers to remain in the car. He then swore silently to himself because he had forgotten an obvious, routine precaution and ran back to his motorbike. He lit an emergency flare and placed it just ahead of the curve in the road, where he had been forced to brake, before continuing into the muddy field and towards the second car wreck.
The dark SUV had somersaulted and landed back on its wheels. The roof was partially caved in and the side windows were shattered. The front of the car had been folded back into the roof supports and the laminated windscreen had been partially ripped out of its frame. A youngish woman with long, wheat-blonde hair was sitting clamped between the seat and the steering wheel. Her head was resting lifelessly against the now oval shape of the wheel. From
her nose and half-open mouth, blood had flowed and congealed. Hans tore open what was left of the car door and carefully leaned inside to search for a pulse on the woman’s neck. An unpleasant chill met his fingertips as they touched her skin. He shifted his fingers slightly, but was still unable to find a pulse. He carefully lifted her head and looked into her lifeless eyes.
More vehicles had arrived at the accident site up on the road. Curious onlookers were shocked at the mangled body that lay in the crashed car on the road. Someone was groaning and retching at the side of the road. An elderly woman held her hands to her face and wept. The sound of approaching emergency vehicles echoed from the edges of the forest while Hans was searching through the remains of the SUV. Suddenly, he stopped by the floor on the passenger side. Something resembling a child’s car-seat cushion was wedged between the seat and the floor. The seat belt was not secured, so it was unlikely that a child had been sitting there. Still, he instinctively looked around. The field was bare and the muddy ground was easily visible around the car. He turned towards the road where the first emergency vehicle had arrived. Next to the side of the road and a few metres from the tyre tracks of the SUV, there were some bushes. He made a quick mental reconstruction of the series of events – and immediately turned ice-cold.
She had blonde hair braided in two pigtails and was lying like a discarded rag doll in the bushes close to the road. Hans felt his pulse quicken yet another notch. He yelled to the ambulance crew making their way towards the SUV and an out-of-breath junior doctor with a red emergency kit broke away.
Hans summoned the doctor. With his mouth open and gasping for breath, the doctor threw himself to his knees by the side of the girl, who was lying with her face down in the mud. He pulled his stethoscope from his bag with one hand while putting his finger on the girl’s throat to find a pulse.
“Well?” Hans impatiently inquired.
The young doctor did not answer. Instead, he changed the position of his fingers while hanging his stethoscope around his neck.
“Can you find a pulse?” Hans continued.
After a few more attempts, the young doctor shook his head. He carefully turned over the girl’s body. The face was covered with blood that had dried with the topsoil from the ground into a red-brown mud mask. The doctor wiped the mud from the girl’s face, and her light-blue eyes stared emptily at the clear autumn sky. According to procedure, he still tried to revive the heart with a small, portable defibrillator but, as he feared, it was way too late. The doctor explained that she was probably dead even before she hit the ground. Her neck had presumably been broken at the moment she was catapulted from the car.
Hans nodded at the doctor, who had become pale.
“Bloody shame,” muttered the young doctor and slowly stood up with stethoscope in hand. He stroked his chin, as if he was feeling for beard stubble. Hans could see he was having a hard time holding back his emotions. He was not alone in that.
Not far from the dead girl’s rucksack, there was a diary. Small pink ponies adorned the cover. The little padlock had been torn off and, on the front, in the pretty, framed nameplate, someone had written “Cecilia” in ornate handwriting.
Hans picked the book up from the ground and opened it. It was written in straggling handwriting, with many spelling mistakes. He started browsing the diary at random and after a while arrived at the last entry. At the top of the page, he read today’s date and the time. It had been written less than an hour earlier. Something cut through the wall of indifference that he had built up during his years of police service. Sensitivity was not an advantage in his occupation and those who succumbed to their emotions never lasted long – this he knew.
He took a deep breath and tried to shake off these feelings. Where was his professional detachment when he needed it?
Less than an hour ago, she had been breathing. Living the trouble-free life only a child can. Unaware of all the dangers that are a part of life. Loved and full of dreams.
She was ten years old.
AUTUMN 2009
CHAPTER 1
THE INTERCITY X2000 train from Gothenburg to Stockholm was heavily delayed. Bror Lantz, who had been looking forward to a relaxing trip in first class, was starting to feel disturbed and irritated by the chaos that reigned on the delayed express train. The coffee he drank directly after leaving Gothenburg was a foul-tasting budget brand. Several toilets were out of order, and matters did not improve when even more toilets broke down during the trip to Stockholm. The new vacuum-based sewage disposal system was clearly substandard. Irritated at having to stand at the back of a line of nearly ten metres to queue for one of the few remaining toilets, he recalled yesterday’s seminar on the criminal justice system.
He had started to resent his adversaries within the profession, something he had never done before. Mostly, he shrugged his shoulders at their cacophony and instead argued for his own causes, but during the train journey he had a growing feeling that certain forces within the Justice Department were running a conspiracy against him. The day before the seminar in Gothenburg, the Chief Magistrate of the Stockholm District Court had voiced his intention, “off the record”, to relieve Bror of his position as a judge in the court. And had this process not de facto been in motion ever since the rumours had started? The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that it was actually what was happening to him.
That Bror was unconventional was no news to him or to anyone else. Through the years, he had been in stormy seas many times because of his liberal point of view. In particular, because of his interpretation of the court sentencing guidelines, which he believed were excessively conservative and counter-productive. But for someone to start slanderous witchhunts against him was something new. His irritation grew at the same pace as this realization.
His mobile phone rang several times, but he did not answer – except for one time, when it was Elsa, his wife. She was disturbed about something, but Bror ended the call abruptly by saying that the train was delayed and that she could eat dinner without him. Unless there was a death in the family, she could wait until he came home. Then he immediately turned off the phone.
As Bror disembarked onto the platform in Stockholm, he felt neither joy nor relief at reaching his destination, just a universal irritation, especially at the people around him. He truly despised mankind and all it stood for at this moment. Everything was one vast, slow torture filled with the smells and voices of people crowding around him.
Bror pushed his way roughly between an elderly couple that he thought was walking too slowly. The old lady fell to the ground, but Bror continued on without apologizing or even turning around. His bad temper transformed into anger as he approached the taxi rank.
OJO MADUEKWE ALWAYS woke up before the alarm clock rang – except for today. From the clock radio, Eva Dahlgren’s husky voice sang the hit “I’m Not in Love with You” and Ojo regained only sufficient consciousness to press the snooze button as the song was ending. He turned over and burrowed his head in the pillow again. Just as sleep was regaining its hold on him, he pulled himself together and got out of bed. He stayed sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at yesterday’s pile of clothes on the floor, and he yawned. His mouth tasted like used cat litter, and his head throbbed to the sound of the traffic outside the window.
He stood up and stumbled towards the window, pulling up the blinds and squinting out at the afternoon dusk. Everything seemed normal and the taxi was still parked outside. Three months without a break-in attempt. Even the bedroom was as it should be. The only thing that testified to yesterday was a glass of water on the night table.
He tried to retrieve any memory about how or when he got back home. After spending a short while searching his memory, he gave up. The only thing he recollected from the office party was that he had danced and drunk more in one evening than he normally did in one year.
Ojo retrieved a newly ironed shirt from the wardrobe. The socks and trousers from yesterday, however, wou
ld be good enough for today. He put on his jacket and the black ordinary shoes, turned off the hall light, and locked the door behind him.
The throbbing in his head had quietened slightly and he no longer felt quite as hung over. However, he was very hungry. He stopped at the pizzeria on Finn Malmgren Square. The Turks who owned it gave taxi drivers a thirty per cent discount.
After finishing his meal, he went back to the taxi. Only a few minutes passed before he received his first fare. On the data display, he read:
Pickup: Wahlbergsgatan 12, Segervall
Drop off: City Terminal
He turned the taxi meter on so that the minimum fare was added. The couple that climbed into the taxi was in their twenties. Ojo asked if they were going to the City Terminal, even though he already knew the answer. The man confirmed it with an indifferent mumble.
After dropping off the couple, Ojo parked at the Terminal’s taxi rank. The electronic taxi system was as dead as the desert outside his home village and he was far back in the cyber-queue. Few ordered a taxi at this hour, so he put his hope in taxi rank pick-ups instead.
An independent from Kurdistan was in front of him in the rank. He knew who that guy was – a hustler who would charge two thousand crowns to Arlanda airport from the city. Rip-offs gave the taxi industry a bad reputation, especially with the tourists who were often treated badly by some of the independents. A rape also contributed to their bad reputation – even though the police had caught the guilty taxi driver. Unfortunately, anyone could drive a taxi. It did not matter if they were con artists or rapists, as long as they were taxpayers.
It was six-twenty and Ojo had still not got any fares at the taxi rank. Impatience – but, most of all, stress from not getting any cash – crept over him. At this rank, he was not going to get rich. Perhaps it was worth taking a chance that there were customers down by the nearby taxi rank on Vasagatan.
Anger Mode Page 1
