“What’s going on?” one of her girlfriends asked.
“Where did that man go?” Tuva asked, pointing at the chair.
“He disappeared just after you were called to the information desk,” one of the women around the table answered.
“Did you see where he went?” Jonna asked the woman.
“Who are you?” she asked, examining Jonna from head to toe with critical eyes.
“She’s a police officer,” Tuva explained. “Did you see where he went?”
“No,” one of the friends replied. “I didn’t watch him. He wasn’t that good-looking, to be honest.” Her friends agreed with her.
“But he was nice. He bought drinks for all of us,” an overweight woman added.
“What did he buy?” Jonna asked.
“Margaritas,” Tuva said. “He brought a whole tray-full.”
“Everybody got a drink. Tuva even got two,” another woman in the party pointed out.
“Two drinks?” Jonna said.
“Yes, a drunk pinched the first drink out of Tuva’s hand and drank it when she wouldn’t dance with him. The guy who was buying looked very unhappy about it, to say the least.”
“What did the drunk look like?” Jonna asked.
“Well,” Tuva said, trying to remember, “he had the body of a long-distance lorry driver and was wearing a lumberjack shirt and a leather waistcoat. He was ordinary looking. He was also drunk and apparently very keen to dance.”
“You have to point him out for me,” Jonna instructed her and took hold of Tuva. In five minutes, the ship would depart, regardless of whether Jonna was done.
“Do you see him?” Jonna asked, her eyes scanning the disco restaurant.
“There!” Tuva cried and pointed to one of the tables. “He’s sitting there.”
Jonna rushed through the restaurant towards the man, where she pulled out her police badge and ordered him to follow her off the ship. The woman accompanying the man stood up, terrified, as the man began to shout once he saw Tuva. If he was being arrested because of the drink, he would buy a new one. He stood up, but Jonna stood in his way. She did not have time for any discussions.
The man obviously had no plans to leave the ship and was going to push Jonna to one side, so she quickly moved backwards so that he lost his balance and tripped forwards. After a few staggering steps, he steadied himself with the back of a chair, whereupon Jonna quickly grabbed his arms and tied them with restraints behind his back. The man yelled and shouted as Jonna pushed him from behind towards the exit.
Jörgen was fascinated by Jonna’s fearlessness; the man was twice her size.
As they came out of the disco restaurant, the man’s intoxicated buddies saw the two of them and rushed to his rescue, but the cruise ferry’s security guards quickly intervened and, after a short scuffle, the rowdy gang was herded down the gangway and into the terminal, where they were to be refused passage. Jonna had asked the guards to detain the drunken leather waistcoats long enough for her to load their companion into her car and avoid any further rescue attempts. One of the guards – a blond, muscular guy who was the same age as Jonna – had laughed and asked how much time she needed.
Two minutes, she had answered, making a ’V’ sign. He nodded and gave her a thumbs-up.
Before Jonna left the ship, she asked the captain if there were any CCTV cameras that covered the bar and the gangway into the ship. He nodded and confirmed that there were three cameras that probably covered those areas. Jonna asked to have the tapes or DVDs with footage from the time they had allowed the passengers on board.
The captain looked doubtful at first. “Don’t you need permission for that?” he asked.
“Not necessarily,” she lied, even though she was well aware that she needed permission from the ferry company to confiscate CCTV records. Any evidence on Leo Brageler was welcome and urgently needed. Furthermore, there was a chance that the sympathetic security guard would be on the film.
After a few seconds’ deliberation, the captain asked a woman crew member to get the DVDs quickly. As they entered the terminal, Jonna asked the staff if they had seen a man with a beard leave the ship. A ticket vendor confirmed that a bearded man had just passed by, fifteen minutes earlier.
TUVA SAHLIN HAD voluntarily gone ashore, unlike the man in the leather waistcoat. She felt that she had to trust the two police officers. They had not told her anything more, except that it had something to do with Tuva’s work and, when they got to the car, she demanded some answers to her questions.
“You’ll have to explain yourselves now,” she said, after Jörgen and Jonna had forced the leather waistcoat into the miniscule back seat of the Porsche.
“I’ll explain from the beginning,” Jonna said. “And you’ll get the full story as we are driving. But first I have to make a call and also handcuff you.”
“Whatever for?” Tuva asked, looking at the restraints that Jonna held in her hand.
“It’s for your own, and our, safety.”
“Safety?”
“It’s part of the explanation that I’ll give you shortly. Until then, you will have to trust me.”
Tuva watched Jonna carefully as she punched in the number to Walter’s mobile phone. For the first time in her life, she was in police custody. The thin plastic band cut into her sensitive skin.
“I have Tuva Sahlin in my car,” Jonna reported.
“Excellent,” Walter answered and seemed to be in high spirits. “And Leo Brageler?”
“He left the ship when we called Tuva on the tannoy.”
“I see, but that’s not so important right now.”
“We have one more who has been drugged,” Jonna said before Walter could continue.
“How did that happen?” Walter replied, as if he had misheard.
“Some guy swiped a spiked drink that was intended for Tuva.”
Walter sighed. “Take Sahlin and that man to the Södermalm detention centre. Hunting the mad professor is of less importance now.”
“To the Södermalm detention centre?” Jonna repeated. “Why?”
“She has to go into protective custody,” Walter said triumphantly. “Julén is apparently there on some business and wants her there instead of Kungsholmen. She was very keen to meet her.”
“What shall I say to the custody officer, and on whose orders, by the way?”
“By order of the Chief Prosecutor,” Walter said. “Tell the custody officer that. That scarecrow has started a new investigation based on what we have discovered. Before the day is out, I’ll be back on the force. Not only that, I’m also in charge of the investigation. If the gods and the Internal Affairs nutters allow me to, that is.”
“It’s almost too good to be true!” Jonna said, barely containing her enthusiasm.
“Yes, although in practical terms, it will not happen until Darth Vader releases me from the hospital.”
Jonna wondered for a minute what that meant for her situation.
“Then I can come off sick leave and return to RSU, in other words,” she concluded, after her initial euphoria had died down.
It was a little disappointing that she would not be working as a private investigator any longer, despite the risks it entailed. But all things considered, it would be a pleasure to work within the boundaries of the law again – even as an analyst at RSU.
Her work description stipulated ten per cent operational fieldwork and ninety per cent analytical deskwork. Jonna wished it were the other way round.
“Oh, there was one more thing,” Walter confessed, a little too repentantly for him. A guilty conscience was not usually one of Walter’s weaknesses and Jonna felt a knot in her gut when Walter’s tone changed.
“I had to put all my cards on the table,” Walter began. “And I mean all of them. Even the ones I had up my sleeve.”
For a fraction of a second, Jonna’s world rocked. It was as if someone had quickly flipped a light switch on and off in a dark room.
“What do you mean by ‘
all my cards’?”
“I described the parts involving your and Jörgen’s activities, with names and everything. For once, it seems I have left nothing out.”
Jonna didn’t know how she felt about that. He, Walter Gröhn, had apparently sold her like a second-hand bookshelf on eBay. He had also offered up Jörgen Blad and, even though she did not care much about his fate, it was the principle that mattered. You just do not betray people’s confidences as you please. Least of all, if they are working for a good cause. He had said that himself. How you could be forced to commit a lesser crime to prevent other, more serious ones. They had agreed on a principle of justice, to which Jonna had fully committed.
Now she was going to pay for her actions. She had expected this day to come. In a way, she had already practised her defence for the surly Internal Affairs inspectors. But that it should happen so soon and so suddenly because of Walter, she had not anticipated. It was a knife in the back.
“But you and the fairy queen can sit easy and relax,” Walter blurted out. It sounded as if he was having a hard time not laughing.
“What?”
“Well, I made an arrangement with the scarecrow,” Walter continued, his tone lighter now. “You have never been involved in a private investigation for the simple reason that there has never been one. The new investigation was started on the basis of an anonymous tip received by Chief Prosecutor Åsa Julén. That will be the wording in the formal report.”
“And how will you make this happen, may I ask?” Jonna asked with a mixture of irritation and disbelief. She should have realized that the mischievous detective would amuse himself with something so important. No matter what the situation was, he was compelled to torment his closest associates with sarcasm, as well as various, convoluted witticisms.
“I have a written agreement – which, for now, is an audio telephone recording – with Julén,” Walter said. “If she talks, she goes down with us.”
“Doesn’t sound completely legal?” Jonna said.
“She went from cast iron to crème brûlée in the space of five minutes,” Walter painted the picture.
“Perhaps you should whisper a few words in Lilja’s ear too,” Jonna pointed out.
“As I said, there’s just some red tape that Julén has to unravel,” he continued. “In a few hours, the knot should be untangled, according to her. The movers and shakers are dancing and then the earth moves. Pity the fool standing in their way.”
“She knows everything?” Jonna asked.
“Yes; it was a precondition to get the pike to bite. Even if she was just as desperate as yours truly to get back control of the investigation and get back on track again. Presumably, the woman has a lower limit with regards to sharing information. At first, I was going to play with a few cards tucked up my sleeve and keep you out of it, but thanks to my fasting stomach, I changed my game this time. Julén pushed so hard for information on the persons I was working with. I gave my tongue free reins for once and she swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. Basically, she jumped up on the table like a Christmas ham and accepted all of my terms. I just had to serve myself. She was as pliable as …”
“Spare me the analogies, please,” Jonna interrupted. “What exactly does this mean for me?” she continued, more composed.
“It means that you are on loan from RSU to the County CID under my supervision,” Walter said. “The investigation is led by the scarecrow. I haven’t figured out what to do with Jörgen Blad now that the investigation is official. Anyway, Julén is very interested in Jörgen’s blackmail of Uddestad and the video of the scantily dressed gentlemen. Whether it’s for weekend viewing on her TV couch or something work-related was never really explained to me.
“She was, however, worried about having a journalist embedded in the investigation. I explained how the deal with the fairy queen was constructed. She bought that as well, after the usual bickering, but she didn’t want to hear about any journalists running around in the police station or in any of the meetings that she attended, unless it pertained to Uddestad’s activities – in which case, a separate investigation would be started up for that. Otherwise, I make the decisions based on my own common sense. That could be a bit challenging, however.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Jonna replied.
CHAPTER 31
“HE LIVES UP there,” Tor said, pointing at Jörgen Blad’s flat. Martin had parked the car so that they could see the entrance to Jörgen’s block of flats from across the street. The flat was dark.
“The question is, where is he?” Martin said, thinking aloud. “He’s not at his office and doesn’t answer the number the newspaper gave me. We don’t know if he has contacted the police either. He might be in protective custody somewhere. In other words, we know nothing.”
Martin would need to do some background research into Jörgen Blad. As it looked now, he knew no more than what the dunce had been able to tell him and that was not much. He needed to use the computers at work and to do a little honest surveillance work. Sooner or later, he would get his man.
Currently, his situation was quite complicated. Early tomorrow morning, he would be sitting in the internal investigation interview room and would not have access to any police databases, since he was suspended until the investigation was completed. And that could take anything from one day to one month, even though he had prepared himself carefully and stuck to his story.
Perhaps the problem was Thomas Kokk. Maybe he had sensed that something was wrong. Was that why he and the idiots at Internal Affairs have been looking so hard for him?
He needed to come up with an excuse as to why he had not returned their calls or been at home in his flat, in case they had looked for him there.
In addition, there was the towelhead that he and Jernberg had pumped full of the truth serum. It was a sure thing that he was at Forensics for an extended investigation. They would, without doubt, find traces of Martin’s innovative interrogation techniques.
Martin was just about to turn on the ignition when Tor cried out.
“There!” he said, pointing in the direction of the entrance. “There he is.”
“Who? Jörgen?”
“Yes,” Tor confirmed, agitated. “I’m dead certain.”
“Did you see where he came from?”
“From the entrance, I think,” Tor said.
They saw Jörgen get into the back seat of a sports car that was parked a dozen metres from the entrance. A woman left the driving seat to make room for the journalist to creep into the back seat.
“What in the world is that RSU diva doing here?” Martin said, talking to himself.
“What diva?”
“The one who got out of the Porsche.”
“What about her? Do you know who she is?”
“Yes,” Martin said.
“Is it an old flame?” Tor smirked.
“I don’t see the connection between the Special Investigations Unit and Jörgen, unless he has spilled the beans on Folke Uddestad. And that’s what he must have done.”
“Why would he do that?”
“RSU is a unit for special investigations and analysis. It was formed by the National Police Board. It answers directly to the NPB and is populated with lots of super-intelligent weirdos who solve crimes using unconventional methods and subject profiling. But what I don’t understand is why a clear-cut Internal Affairs case ends up with them instead of the usual internal investigators.”
“I thought you knew everything that goes on in the police force,” Tor said.
“Apparently not,” Martin said.
He made a U-turn and followed the Porsche. He let a few cars get in-between them and then stuck to the Porsche like a shadow. The Porsche did an illegal left turn and then drove south on Sveavägen. It continued down into the Söder tunnel and it eventually surfaced on Hornsgatan. After about one hundred metres, the Porsche turned into Torkel Knutssonsgatan and parked a dozen metres from the Södermalm police
/>
station.
Martin stopped the car fifty metres behind the Porsche, so that was obscured behind some parked cars. He saw Jonna de Brugge and another woman in high heels get out of the car. The woman walked as if she were cuffed. Jonna also prised a man out of the car; even he was cuffed. Unlike the woman prisoner, he did not seem as eager to follow along and Jonna had to push him forwards as they hurried towards the detention centre cell-block entrance. The journalist was obviously still sitting in the car.
Martin watched, confused, as the trio disappeared through the detention-cell-block entrance. He could not piece the puzzle together. It was as if the pieces belonged to an entirely different puzzle.
“We have to move fast,” he said, after thinking for a few intense seconds.
“Move where?” Tor asked.
“Jörgen won’t recognize me,” he said. “I’ll walk past the Porsche and up to the cell-block entrance. I’ll keep watch from there in case they come out again. If they come out before you are done, then I’ll improvise and delay them. As soon as I’m in position, you go up to the car, drag Jörgen out and stuff him in the boot.”
“In the boot of which car?”
“The one we’re sitting in, of course,” Martin answered, in a despairing voice.
“But the whole area is crawling with cops. Both uniformed and plain-clothes. It’s the Eagle’s Nest for the South Stockholm Metropolitan Police.”
“Thank you; I’m fully aware of that fact,” Martin said sarcastically. “But we may not get any more chances. And I don’t see many police officers in our immediate vicinity right now. Not a single one, to be exact.”
Martin wondered why they had left Jörgen in the car and why he had come out of the flat by himself. Under normal circumstances, a protected witness would never be allowed to stay by themselves like this. Unless he was not in protective custody. If that was the case, then what was he doing with RSU?
It was all strangely illogical. And the only way to find out was to ask the journalist. Perhaps the journalist was withholding information from RSU. Had he not told them that he was being threatened?
It was time to move from theory and questions to action and answers.
Anger Mode Page 38
