“Who’s that?” Jörgen asked and grabbed Serge’s printout from Jonna’s hand. Now it was his turn to read it.
“The last lay juror from case 145432-3,” Jonna said. “Her life is in great danger. Or, at least, someone in her immediate family is. We have to do something.”
“Like what?” Walter said sarcastically. “Call her and say, ‘Excuse us, but we think that you will kill someone soon. Could you please lock yourself in and throw away the key until the Security Service figure out what the problem is?’”
“As police, it’s our obligation always to prevent crime. Even when we’re not on duty,” Jonna solemnly stated.
Jörgen flew from his chair as if he had received an electric shock. Now it was his turn.
“I’ll get the telephone number for that Tuva Sahlin,” he said and started to key frantically on his mobile phone.
A fantastic opportunity had presented itself. Jörgen Blad had the chance to save a life. This would look insanely good in the journalistic masterpiece he was composing in his head.
“Well, there was another thing,” Walter finished. “I asked madame Chief Prosecutor to examine the carpenter’s effects, to see if he had had a bag or something like that with him at the building site. And, not surprisingly, his lunch box contained a familiar object.”
“The angel of death,” Jonna guessed and saw confirmation in Walter’s eyes.
THOMAS KOKK READ the report from SKL a second time. He was not sure how to interpret the contents. The laboratory in England that SKL used was very keen to determine the origin of the compound. The substance had shown itself to be so sophisticated that they had obviously informed both MI6 and MI5, the British intelligence agencies for foreign and domestic operations.
According to the British laboratory and SKL, there were only a handful of companies and nations that could have developed something like this. It would have required huge resources and extensive knowledge of the latest research into progressive genes. This was the future technology for production of pharmaceuticals. One recurring word in the report was “genetic programming”. In other words, coding the compound so that it quickly started cell changes in the body according to a predesigned template. And with a precision that would turn the Creator himself green with envy.
In practical terms, you could create cancer in a human body overnight. You could even choose which type of cancer and where it would grow in the body, as well as how much and how fast the cancer should spread. You could decide if it should go into remission after a year and totally disappear or if it should consume the body until death finally ended it.
You could influence the brain and the organs in the body with ease, according to your own wishes, make someone suddenly start growing by controlling their hypothalamus gland or even change a person’s personality. Anything was possible when you could influence all the areas of the brain.
The compound could make a person constantly happy or persistently angry. In the same way, it could cure naturally occurring diseases. Theoretically, it could prevent the process of aging too. Perhaps even reverse it. This was as close to playing God as science could go.
However, there was no universal compound that could manage all of the body’s functions. Each marker, or unique control mechanism, that you wanted to be able to programme required a huge amount of research. Different companies specialized in different areas. The traces of the compound that were found in mother and daughter Sjöstrand, Lennart Ekwall and Lisbeth Ekwall had no less than sixty-three markers. Presumably, they would have found identical samples in Bror Lantz and his wife if they had been allowed to take tests. The compound was considered the most advanced to date. You could control sixty-three different functions, which gave over three thousand unique combinations. That was a small sea of possibilities.
The samples of the food from the homes of Karin Sjöstrand and Lennart Ekwall showed traces of the compound. Their food had been poisoned.
Kokk had ordered his best investigators to investigate the companies that were on the shortlist and had also asked the National Military Intelligence Agency, or MUST, to assist if they concluded that a foreign power was providing the technology for the drug.
MUST had given him nothing. Ever since SÄPO let the spy Stig Bergling escape through the basement to Moscow during a parole visit to his girlfriend, the relationship between the two intelligence agencies was strained, to say the least.
One of the pharmaceutical companies that SÄPO’s investigators succeeded in identifying was a German company called Dysencomp AG. Dysencomp claimed to be on the brink of a breakthrough and would be the first company to release an intelligence medicine. They used a Swedish supplier for research on adaptive compounds for medicines. The Swedes contributing to Dysencomp’s anticipated successes worked for a company in Uppsala that specialized in research into brain markers.
Kokk did not get any farther in his reflections before Agency Director Anders Holmberg came in the door. He sat in the chair facing Kokk and unbuttoned his jacket. His pupils were enlarged, like an animal in danger.
“Listen,” he said, looking Kokk in the eye. “You and I have problems. And not just any old problems. We may very soon be out of a job and, in the worst case, be forced to find a good lawyer.”
Kokk looked up, surprised. “I’m not sure I understand you,” he said, his mind starting to work overtime.
“Don’t understand me? What kind of answer is that? The politicians in the government will want somebody’s head to roll for this failure. You, in your role as head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, are first in line, you might say. I, as Agency Director, am a strong number two. Your team leader, Martin Borg, is more or less swinging from the gallows already.”
“Yes, but …”
“Unless we do something proactively in this matter,” Holmberg interrupted, “we will be on unemployment benefit for the rest of our professional lives. Do you understand what I’m saying? We have to fix this together, now.”
Holmberg’s face was flushed. He knew without a doubt that he would never need to avail himself of unemployment benefits because, as an agency director, he had a comprehensive golden handshake for life, regardless of the terms of his dismissal. He could even be arrested for espionage and sentenced for treason without being concerned about losing the index-linked seventy-eight thousand crowns per month that his handshake would guarantee, if he had to use it. But this was not just a question of the money, but also about saving his reputation and the social network that he had built up over so many years.
“Can you define the term proactive?” Kokk said. The conversation was turning quite unpleasant.
“Absolutely,” Holmberg said, determinedly. “Someone else must take the fall for your and Martin Borg’s failure. It’s the same method that politicians and greedy executives use when they get caught red-handed. We have to find a scapegoat.”
“A scapegoat,” Kokk said, curious. “Who would that be?”
“The Prosecutor or someone in our own organization,” Holmberg suggested.
“I don’t know …” Kokk hesitated, but was interrupted again by Holmberg.
“There must be someone we can sacrifice.”
Kokk could not fully take in what he was hearing. It was all too surreal. His world was crashing down around him and he had a ringside seat. Thoughts swirled around in his head – nightmares. He was not even sure that it was not illegal to have this conversation.
“Who are we talking about?” Kokk finally asked.
“How about the operations leader Martin Borg?” Holmberg smiled. “That Ove Jernberg was a low-ranking officer, although he’ll also have to take some of the blame as well.”
Kokk sat as if paralyzed and could not utter a word. The fellow must be losing his mind.
“Borg is one of those who have had little respect for me and the new, modern organization I’m trying to build,” Holmberg said. “I know that he intensely dislikes the reforms within SÄPO. He and many others have criticized
the formation of RSU in the organization.”
Kokk looked at Holmberg, speechless.
“We, or to be more exact, you shall make sure that Borg takes the blame for our failure,” Holmberg went on, with no remorse in his voice. “With a bit of luck, Internal Affairs will do that anyway, but we must reinforce the perception that it was his information that we followed when we agreed to drag that collection of Muslims off to the prison cells.”
“How do I do that?” Kokk asked. His mouth was dry.
“You will fabricate some pre-dated memos addressed to Borg, in which you strongly question the detainment of the Islamists. You don’t believe they have anything to do with Drug-X. Complain about lack of communication too. You will also backdate some memos to me in which you, with some reluctance, back up your team leader and his suspicions towards the Islamists. You could also mention that you suspect that Gullviksson was on Borg’s side and that you feared they were working against you.”
Kokk considered lifting the phone and calling the chairman of the constitutional court committee. These infringements were so serious that they lacked precedent.
But where should his loyalty lie? Should he save himself and Holmberg from certain defeat by letting Borg take all the heat? To be sure, he had suspicions about what had happened in Gnesta, but to fabricate accusations against Borg, and posthumously against Jernberg, without a fair investigation was something else indeed. It was a miscarriage of justice.
Right now, Kokk wanted most of all to be in his mountain cabin, frying Swedish meatballs in total seclusion. If he made the wrong decision and lost his job, he would be forced to sell the cabin – his sanctuary and nest egg. And even if he could avoid ending up in one of the penal institutions, what possibilities were there for a former SÄPO chief who had been implicated in a scandal of this magnitude? Damn Borg, Kokk swore to himself. Why had he listened to him and the analyst team’s waffle about terrorist princes? And where was the man? He had left the hospital and was now incommunicado.
CHAPTER 28
The very day that he saw them for the last time, Cecilia had asked him to go with them and see how nicely she got Lucas to trot. The pony had begun to trot “at the passage” with a beautifully bent neck and tail held up like an Arab stallion.
He had hugged her and said what he always used to say, that he was forced to work. But this time, he had, for a brief moment, been close to changing his mind. A fleeting premonition came to him, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had come. He discarded it as a whimsical feeling.
She answered that she understood, but, in her eyes, he saw her disappointment. Next time, he had thought. Next time, I will go with her.
From the kitchen window, he saw her little hand waving through the car window for the last time. He remembered how quiet the house was when they left him. As if death had already taken them from him. Then the ominous feeling returned.
Visitors were standing outside the door. The doorbell was muffled and metallic. An echo.
He was at first greeted with silence. Then a woman with a tense voice asked for his name.
Seconds turned into infinity.
The words would not come to him. He was unable to speak, trying to find the meaning in what she had said. What was she telling him?
Passed away as a result …
The words sounded unfamiliar and somehow not. It was about death. Just as he, day after day, looked for an antidote in his work. Suddenly Death stood in front of him, wearing civilian clothes. A male colleague stood beside her. He explained that even Anna, his wife, was deceased.
A new word. Deceased. Passed away. They were deceased and had passed away.
The ground beneath him gave way and he fell into darkness.
He had been ambivalent over the fourth one. There were no more feelings of guilt. The last one remained. He looked at the angel of death for a brief moment before he stuffed it in his pocket and closed the front door. It would spread its wings one more time.
The hunt for him would soon start. It was inevitable. He was surprised that it had taken them such a long time, how wrong they had been. The answers were staring them in the face.
IN A DESERTED part of the forest to the south of Stockholm, Martin Borg and Tor Hedman torched Omar’s Mercedes. All traces of DNA had to be destroyed. After a few minutes, Omar’s car was in flames and the evidence of Tor’s involvement in Gnesta went up in smoke.
With the bonfire, at least the tracks leading to Tor were wiped away. Naturally, they would identify Jerry Salminen using dental records and therefore link Tor to the incident. These two were connected like Siamese twins in the police database. But there would be no evidence that Tor was at the crime scene. Not so much as a strand of hair was left from which to obtain DNA. So far, so good.
Right now, Martin himself was the weakest link. With good reason, he suspected that it was going be a rough ride for him. The internal investigation proved to be a little more complicated than he had first thought. He could feel that something was not quite right. Thomas Kokk and others had been calling his mobile phone constantly ever since he had left the hospital. The wankers at Internal Affairs tried to contact him eight times; two of the calls left angry text messages that more or less ordered him to return to Kungsholmen immediately. They had already given him a time for his personal interview in the investigation, which was tomorrow morning at nine-thirty. Even the shrinks would be present. Fuck it, I’m not an escaped criminal, he thought.
It probably had something to do with the latest story that was circulating in the press. Martin’s entire investigation into the Islamists was in all the papers. If that was not bad enough, the deceased towelhead was innocent, according to the media. They were claiming that his death in custody was payback for the fatal shooting in Gnesta. How could they come up with that story when the towelhead was dead before their visit to Gnesta? Martin felt his frustration building. All of the Muslims were now released, and on the radio they were babbling on about how the Security Service were at a dead end in the investigation into the judiciary murders.
Why had they released the towelheads? Martin did not know yet and it made him furious. He could hardly ring in and ask. If he did, he would be forced to present himself immediately, which was unthinkable under the circumstances. The situation did look rather black at the moment. Traces of the truth drug would be found during the post-mortem on the towelhead. Perhaps the scalpel slicers had already found it. It would be tricky to talk his way out of that, even if he blamed it on Jernberg. But what could they really prove?
Both Omar and Jernberg were dead. He could blame Jernberg for all the irregularities with Omar and claim ignorance. That Jernberg must have injected the Muslim with Diaxpropyl-3S while Martin was in the toilet, or something like that. The reason Jernberg would do that sort of thing would be difficult to sell. Even for Martin. But there were no other options.
Hopefully, the material on the hard drive would significantly improve Martin’s chances of riding out the storm – if the hard drive contained what Tor promised. And, as the icing on the cake, it would lead Martin to the journalist sitting on the Folke Uddestad evidence.
That man has more good luck than he deserves, Martin thought and studied the heap of tatters sitting next to him in the car. Together with that Jerry character, Tor had battled with hardcore gangs of Albanians, Yugos, Somalians and other piles of shit.
It was a bloody miracle Tor was still breathing. What surprised Martin the most was that he was in cahoots with this thug. He had assessed the risks. They were manageable. There was a bigger purpose and nothing could be allowed to stop him now.
“All right,” Martin said, after they got out of the car and were standing in front of a broken-down allotment cabin with white-painted window frames. “So this is where you live.” He looked disdainfully at the small, red wooden hut.
Tor nodded. “Yes, it’s not really my cabin, but I can use it as much as I want and as long as I please.” He reached for a key in the
drainpipe.
“Who owns this dump then?” Martin asked, kicking the wooden cladding.
Tor glared at Martin. “Someone I know,” he said curtly and stepped over the threshold into the cabin.
JÖRGEN HAD MANAGED to trace the telephone number for Tuva Sahlin through directory enquiries. He requested the number as a text message and as a direct connection. Before Jörgen could speak, Jonna grabbed the mobile phone from his hand.
“Hello? Is this Tuva Sahlin?” Jonna asked politely when she heard a voice at the other end.
“No,” a young woman’s voice answered. “She’s not at home – nor is my Dad.”
“Do you know where I can reach her?”
The line was quiet for a few seconds.
“To whom am I speaking?” the young woman questioned suspiciously.
“I’m sorry,” Jonna replied, sounding as if she meant it. “My name is Jonna de Brugge and I am calling from the Stockholm police. We need to get hold of Tuva Sahlin.”
“I see,” the young woman said, now with a hint of anxiety in her voice.
“Do you know where I can get hold of her?” Jonna continued.
“Yes and no,” she answered. “But why do want to talk to her?”
Jonna got the impression of a daughter in her upper teens who, with mounting uneasiness, was letting her thoughts run riot. What business would the police have with her mother?
“To whom am I speaking?” It was Jonna’s turn to question.
“Elina,” the voice said. “Tuva is my mother.”
“I see. How can we get hold of your mother?”
“You can’t,” the daughter said. “She’s, like, on her way to Finland, or maybe it’s Åland. Don’t remember. It was one of those, like, ferry cruises, and she’ll be coming home, like, tomorrow.”
“Like, tomorrow,” Jonna repeated. “Does she have a mobile phone that we can reach her on?”
“Yes, or no actually,” she said. “She has one, but she has, like, forgotten it at home. She does that a lot.”
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