Protected by the Shadows

by Helene Tursten

  For the first time during their conversation Krister looked angry, which pleased Irene. Any emotion was better than resigned acceptance.

  “And how did they react?”

  “They said I had to face up to my responsibilities, or something bad would happen to you and the girls. They knew our addresses—all of us. I was scared, of course, but I was furious too. So I told them to go to hell again.”

  Irene felt her pulse rate increase. It had been brave of Krister to stand up to those guys, but at the same time incredibly foolhardy. He had no idea who he was dealing with. Keeping her thoughts to herself, she asked, “And then?”

  Krister rubbed his face before answering. “They said they’d show me they weren’t messing around. Then they laughed and walked away.”

  “But you didn’t say anything to me when you got home.” Irene smiled so that her words wouldn’t sound like an accusation.

  “No . . . We were planning to have dinner with Felipe and the girls on the Saturday, and I didn’t want to spoil things. Maybe I was trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. It felt kind of unreal, as if it had nothing to do with me.”

  His voice was unsteady, and Irene could see the shimmer of tears in his eyes. She didn’t want him to break down before he had told her everything. She didn’t want him to break down at all.

  “Did they contact you again before the bomb went off?”

  “No, not until the day after. They called my cell phone. Withheld number. I recognized the fat guy’s voice. He said next time no one would survive. I was the only person who could save . . . save you and the girls. If I paid up.”

  He cleared his throat and wiped the tears from his cheeks. After a couple of deep breaths he continued. “I repeated that the debt was Janne’s, not mine, and he said that Janne was no longer in a position to pay. It was time for me to think about my own safety, taking care of myself and my family. I would be protected by the shadows, he said. I realized that ‘shadows’ meant him and his sidekick. Obviously I was going to have to pay for this protection somehow; if I didn’t, then . . .”

  He broke off, unable to suppress a sob. With great self-control he managed to pull himself together.

  “If I didn’t give them what they wanted, I would soon be meeting my friend Janne in hell.”

  “In hell . . . Were those his exact words?”

  “Yes.”

  So the fat guy was well aware that Jan-Erik Månsson was already dead, Irene thought.

  “And you have until tomorrow to come up with the money?”

  “Yes.”

  Irene asked Krister to describe the two men who had threatened him; there was little doubt that he was talking about Andreas Brännström and his associate from the CCTV footage.

  “Definitely Gothia MC,” she said. “Cocky enough to show up in their vests.”

  “They were all in black apart from that—no, wait, the guy with the ponytail was wearing ripped blue jeans, I think.”

  Irene switched off the tape recorder. Her heart was pounding, but she knew exactly what she had to do. She took his hands and kissed them, and as gently as possible said, “Honey, you can’t reopen Glady’s tomorrow.” He tried to interrupt her. “No, don’t say anything. We have to think about the safety of the staff and the customers. There’s a major risk of an attack tomorrow or in the very near future. You don’t have any money, and if they don’t get paid, we know what’s going to happen.”

  Krister shook his head wearily.

  Irene leaned closer. “You have to go undercover. You and the girls. You have to go into hiding.”

  “But . . . that’s impossible! How long—”

  Irene interrupted his objections. She couldn’t hold back the tears now, and her voice was trembling. “Janne is dead. Murdered. They’ve transferred their extortion racket to you. What if they kill you? Our whole family has been threatened, and they planted a bomb under your car. This is deadly serious, Krister!”

  She dried her eyes and resolutely got to her feet. She fetched her cell phone and called Jenny and Katarina.

  The twins immediately understood that there was a crisis when their mom called and asked them to come straight over. By the time Jenny arrived, Katarina and Felipe had already been there for a while, but still didn’t know why. Irene wanted everyone around her before she outlined her plan.

  Two pots of tea and a pile of sandwiches later, they had all listened to the tape, and were in total agreement. They had to vanish without a trace.

  It was exactly 5:00 when Irene rang the doorbell of Superintendent Tommy Persson’s terraced house in Jonsered, keeping her finger on the button until he appeared, half-asleep and blinking in confusion. He was wearing a faded blue terrycloth robe, and with his early morning stubble and his hair standing on end, he wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

  Irene got straight to the point. “Hi. Can I come in?”

  “Sure . . . sure,” Tommy said, looking even more bewildered. He stepped aside to let her pass. She could see how surprised he was when he noticed that she was carrying a small suitcase and two large paper bags containing bed linen. He closed the door and followed her into the kitchen, where she immediately set to work making coffee.

  “I’m sorry to turn up like this, but it was absolutely essential that you didn’t know I was coming,” she said before he even had time to ask a question.

  “Have you and Krister had a row?”

  “Would I come to you if I’d fallen out with my husband?”

  “No, I guess not. Listen, do you mind if I go and take a shower, see if I can wake myself up? I realize I’m not going to get any more beauty sleep.”

  When Tommy reappeared, fresh and clean-shaven, the kitchen was filled with the aroma of coffee and warm bread. Irene had brought bread and delicious jelly with her.

  When they had finished eating and were both on their second cup of coffee, she said, “Okay, I’m going to play you the recording of my interview with Krister yesterday evening.”

  She went out into the hallway and fetched the little tape recorder. She switched it on without further comment, and they sat at Tommy’s rustic pine table as his neighbors began to wake up to a new day.

  Neither of them spoke for a long time when the interview came to an end. Their coffee had gone cold.

  After a while Irene said, “So today Krister is supposed to pay Gothia MC four hundred thousand kronor. If he can’t come up with the money, he has to let the bad guys become joint owners of Glady’s. Both options are unthinkable.”

  She got up and took the cups over to the sink. She threw away the cold coffee and refilled them from the pot, being careful not to spill a drop as she returned to the table. Tommy was still staring at her in silence.

  “As you heard, all four of us have been threatened. We’re supposed to live our lives under the protection of those shadows in the future. That makes me feel really safe! We had a family meeting last night, and we’ve come up with a plan. Gothia MC made it very clear that they know our address and Jenny and Katarina’s addresses. So Krister, Felipe and the girls have gone undercover. I’ll be staying here with you until further notice.”

  “What? I don’t . . . Why?” Tommy said.

  “Why? Because we, the police, can’t guarantee the safety of my family!”

  “Of course we can—” Tommy began, but Irene cut him off immediately.

  “No. You know just as well as I do that’s not true. We’re crap when it comes to protecting anyone under threat; we have neither the time nor the resources. It takes weeks to set up a new identity, and in any case that’s not an option as far as I’m concerned. We want our lives back! Without shadows and without their so-called protection!”

  Tommy merely nodded.

  “Besides which we—the police, that is—now have a major problem. Someone is leaking information to Gothia MC,” Irene w
ent on.

  Tommy frowned; his colleague clearly meant what she said.

  “I’m almost sure of it. There’s this business with Ritva Ekholm; only a few members of our team and a couple of officers with the Organized Crimes Unit knew that she’d contacted us; that limits the number of people who had access to her name and address. We’re looking at a maximum of ten cops—no one else.”

  “Hang on Irene. The perp could have seen Ritva Ekholm and—”

  “I don’t think so. Ritva crossed the street and turned her head in their direction. She saw a man on the sidewalk and a tattooed hand waving through the sunroof. One of the guys might have seen her, but how could they know that she lived in the apartment block opposite Glady’s? The door to her staircase is on Södra vägen, not Lorensbergsgatan. There’s no way they could have seen her leaving the building.”

  Irene paused to make sure Tommy was with her; he nodded and waved a hand to indicate that she should continue. She finished off her coffee.

  “We first heard about Ritva last Wednesday morning,” she said. “I went to see her that same day, between five and six, so only a handful of us were aware that Ritva had seen something that could incriminate the men who planted the bomb. In spite of that, she was attacked on Wednesday evening. She was a dangerous witness, and they silenced her. She survived, but she’s too scared to talk. Either that or she’s telling the truth, and she can’t remember anything.”

  Tommy stared intently at her, drumming his fingertips on the table. Any trace of sleepiness was gone.

  “Could Göran Nilsson be the leak? He was supposed to work on a composite image with Ekholm, so he knew about her,” he suggested.

  “No. He wasn’t told which case it concerned, and he wasn’t given any contact details for the witness. The message gave Ritva’s name and the time she was due to come in, nothing else.”

  Tommy thought things over for a few moments. “I think you could be right about the leak, but I have no idea who it might be. Any thoughts?”

  “No. But we have to assume it could be anyone at the station. We say nothing, but we keep our eyes open. Sooner or later he or she will make a mistake.”

  “How did you come up with the idea of moving in with me?” Tommy asked.

  Irene gave a faint smile.

  “I don’t think anyone on the team is aware of how well we really know each other—that we’ve been friends ever since we started training. We haven’t hung out much since your divorce, which makes me sad, to be honest, but . . . life changes.”

  She was a little embarrassed; she wasn’t sure how sensitive the issue of their lack of social contact might be. It had been several years since he and his wife had split up, after all; surely she and Tommy should have been able to regain their close friendship, but it just hadn’t happened. Krister had also suggested that he and Tommy should meet up, but Tommy had made excuses; neither Irene nor Krister knew why. Maybe she was asking too much of him now? It was a worrying thought.

  “I get it. But where are Krister and the girls?” he asked.

  “I haven’t a clue, and that’s the way we agreed it had to be. If Gothia MC get ahold of me, I won’t be able to tell them anything.”

  She told Tommy how they had settled on their plan the previous evening. When they were all in agreement, they had set to work. The girls and Felipe went home and packed enough clothes for at least a week, while Krister also gathered up a few other things that he thought might come in handy. They were all very clear that they were fleeing for their lives.

  At four in the morning Irene and Krister picked up Jenny, Katarina and Felipe in the rented car, an almost new white Megane. Egon was there too, of course. Krister had collected the car from Avis late in the afternoon; it had been in the parking lot outside their apartment on Doktor Bex gata for only a few hours, so Irene didn’t think Gothia MC would connect it to her family. She had fixed the bike rack to the back of the car and attached her bicycle. They drove to a cash machine on Södra vägen, where each of them took out as much money as they were allowed on their various cards. They had to stick to cash over the next week. Then they filled up the car at the gas station in Ullevi before heading straight over to Jonsered, where they dropped off Irene with her bicycle and her bags. She hugged them all tightly and shed a tear, but she knew they were doing the right thing. She pushed her bike the last few hundred yards to Tommy’s house. She wanted to arrive without being spotted by any nosy neighbors. She hid her bike in the bushes by the visitor’s parking space so that no one would wonder what a lady’s bike was doing outside Tommy’s front door.

  “It’s a good six miles from here to work,” Tommy pointed out.

  “Good thing I’m fit, then.” Irene managed a half-smile. “There’s no point in going to a hotel. They’d find me right away. Nobody must know I’m staying with you. We’ll arrive at the station at different times, leave at different times. We don’t travel in the car together, we don’t talk about anything connected with home—what we’re having for dinner and so on. Sometimes I’ll cycle in, sometimes I’ll take the bus if I’m sure no one is following me.”

  “I understand why you’ve come up with the plan, but are you really going to carry on working?”

  “Of course! That’s the only way I can be safe: surrounded by cops! I don’t think the leak is prepared to facilitate an attack in the station, or when we’re out on a call,” she said, her smile a little bolder this time.

  “And how are you going to keep in touch with Krister and the girls?”

  “Through you,” she replied cheerfully.

  Tommy raised an eyebrow.

  “Krister is going to buy a pay-as-you-go card for his cell phone; he’ll send a number to your cell, but without a name attached. You pass that number on to me, and I’ll call him from a new cell, which I’m intending to buy today. Again that will be pay-as-you-go.”

  “Good idea. But what if anyone starts wondering why the whole family has disappeared? Apart from you, of course.”

  “We’re in luck there. Katarina and Felipe are free for the next two weeks before the next semester starts. Jenny is going to speak to her temporary employer today and tell him that her dad isn’t feeling too good after the incident with the car bomb, and that she needs to be around to support both him and me . . . Well, you get the idea. And I’ll contact the maître d’ and the head chef at Glady’s and explain that it’s all been too much for Krister. He’s going to be out sick for at least a week, probably longer. I’ll also inform them that the police have concluded that the restaurant is a possible target for further attacks, given the car bomb and the murder of Jan-Erik Månsson and that it must remain closed for another week.”

  Tommy nodded. “That could well be true, of course. Is Krister likely to head for the cottage in Sunne?”

  “No, we agreed that wasn’t a good idea. Far too many people know we own a place up there, after what happened . . .”

  Just thinking of the cottage and the bog made Irene’s stomach tie itself in knots. Tommy knew how traumatic it had been for her, and changed the subject.

  “Okay, so you and I are housemates. I’ve got a course this evening, but what shall we have for dinner tomorrow?”

  “As we’re both equally crap at cooking, I suggest you pick up a couple of pizzas on the way home,” she replied with a laugh.

  Bearing in mind that she hadn’t slept for more than two hours, Irene felt surprisingly bright. She arrived at work fifteen minutes after Tommy. They greeted each other as normal, and no one could possibly have guessed that they’d had breakfast together.

  Once again the team was supplemented by colleagues from the Organized Crimes Unit; Superintendent Stefan Bratt, Fredrik Stridh and Ann Wennberg arrived together just before the briefing began. All three were carrying takeaway coffees. No morning prayer without a cup of coffee, that was Irene’s golden rule. Today Ann was wearing a pale
blue short-sleeved blouse with a dark blue linen pencil skirt and blue ballerina pumps. As fresh as a cornflower, Irene thought with a stab of envy. She hadn’t even managed to have a proper wash after cycling all the way in from Jonsered. There was a decent shower in the changing room, but she had only had time to splash some water under her arms and apply a slick of deodorant.

  “Good morning. It looks like it’s going to be a lovely day, but we’re unlikely to have the opportunity to enjoy the weather. We’ve got more than enough to do,” Tommy Persson began. He turned to Jonny. “Anything new on the murder of Jan-Erik Månsson?”

  “Yes . . . I’m waiting for the preliminary report from the pathologist this morning. But Sara has been taking a look at CCTV,” he said, nodding in the direction of his colleague.

  Typical. Jonny was sitting around waiting, while someone else was saddled with the boring stuff. To be fair, he had definitely perfected the art of looking busy, Irene thought sourly.

  Sara clicked on her computer keyboard and a slightly blurred image from the CCTV camera was projected onto the white wall. It was a Renault Megane, and Irene was pretty sure Jan-Erik was driving. There was no one beside him, but she could see a dark figure in the backseat.

  “We went through the footage from various roads leading to the spot where the body was found, and we picked up Jan-Erik Månsson’s car. It passed a camera at the Råda intersection at 4:17 on Monday morning and turned onto Säterivägen. Bearing in mind where the car was found, it must have taken minor roads from then on, where there are unfortunately no cameras. However . . .”

  Sara paused as Jonny raised his hand and made a V-for-victory sign. Trying to take the credit for her hard work. Typical, Irene thought again.

  “. . . we also noticed a dark-colored Audi A4 with a sunroof following the Megane,” Sara continued, ignoring Jonny.

  “Could you see the driver of either car?” Fredrik asked.

  “Yes. Månsson was driving his own car, but there was someone in the backseat. The Audi was carrying false plates, of course, but not the same plates as in the incident involving Ritva Ekholm. This number belongs to a Volvo V50 which is registered in Kungsbacka; however, the driver matches the description of the guy who was behind the wheel when the bomb was planted under the Huss family’s car, and when Ritva Ekholm was assaulted. We’re sure it’s the same Audi in all three cases, even though they’ve switched the plates, but it’s not possible to identify the driver because as usual he’s wearing a baseball cap pulled well down over his forehead.”