Under Water (Anton Modin Book 3)

by Anders Jallai

  “Yes, I believe I do,” Modin said. “Allan, this is Kim Zetterman.”

  “Hi!” Allan Beck said. “So, you bought the hotel?”

  “My husband did.”

  “Good! Demolish the fucker. We need new blood out here. Someone who will stir the shit a little.”

  “I’d just heard that it isn’t advisable to stir anything out here, let alone the shit. This guy here appears to know everything.” She pointed at Modin with her glass.

  “That’s Modin in a nutshell. Always the good boy, as I seem to remember, the one who knows and tells all. The guard and guardian.”

  “If you mean that I make sure that children do not sniff glue,” Modin said, “then yes, I am guard and guardian. How are you, by the way? What are you doing out here in the depths of winter?”

  “I’m rehabilitating. I’ve been in detox. For the umpteenth time. I’m going to start a new life within the invisible boundaries of our village.”

  “I could do with a bit of glue sniffing right now,” Kim Zetterman said, with bitterness in her voice. “But this will just have to do for now. Care for a snow whiskey, Allan Beck.”

  Beck was holding an empty glass. He filled it to the brim and put down the bottle with a thud. This simple action was transformed into a complicated procedure, which charged the atmosphere round the table. Allan Beck and Kim Zetterman seemed to have something in common.

  “And what are you doing these days, Modin?”

  “I’m surviving.” Modin stared deep into his glass. “And I’m using the rest of the time in search of the truth.”

  “Ha!” Beck laughed. “What truth would that be? Does any exist?”

  “The truth about the M/S Estonia disaster, for instance,” Modin said, and silence beleaguered the table.

  “I heard you lost your family out there. I’m really sorry,” Beck struck a softer tone and seemed to mean what he had just said. “We’ve all lost something in life, and that can be tough. What do you want to know about the M/S Estonia?”

  “What caused the ship to sink, for example; that’s what I’d like to know,” Modin said. “Nothing you would know anything about.”

  “The M/S Estonia is dangerous. I would stay away from the entire subject.”

  “What could you possibly know about this? You’re a junkie, Allan. Give me a break.”

  Modin had instantly become irritated by Beck’s superior tone as he talked about Modin’s M/S Estonia.

  “I know enough. Narcotics, intelligence services…need I say more?”

  “Oh, stop it,” Kim said. “Can’t we talk about something more pleasant? Like sex.”

  Modin ignored Kim.

  “Fine, you got me, Allan,” he said instead. “Tell me what you think you know.”

  “In narcotics circles, the M/S Estonia is well known. That should tell you something already. The Estonian mafia and the Swedish and Estonian intelligence services were all involved. Both loads of spooks are mixed up in all of this. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Narcotics make money circulate. Not only for drugs dealers but for those who want access to untaxed wealth.”

  “Like the intelligence services?” Modin inquired, leaning forward.

  “Drugs are an easy way to put unmarked banknotes into circulation. Drugs enter the country, anyway. It’s a losing battle. So if you can’t stop the flow, then it’s better to control the trade and make some money at the same time.”

  “So, you’re saying Estonian drug lords are cooperating with Swedish intelligence services? Come on! How long has this supposed cooperation been going on?”

  “Since our Prime Minister was shot dead.”

  Modin startled. Beck was not joking. This wasn’t bar talk either. He believed what he was saying.

  “That’s quite a statement,” Modin suggested, cautiously.

  “Ever heard of Sigge Cederberg?

  “The drug dealer?”

  “Yup.”

  “Are you suggesting that Sigge Cederberg cooperated with the police in the Palme murder investigation? Is that perhaps how that old bum Christer Pettersson was framed? Sigge Cederberg had his hands in it?”

  Suddenly, Allan Beck had become sober. He leaned right over the table and said in Modin’s ear:

  “Seems like you’re starting to get the message, Modin. Sigge Cederberg did the investigation a favor. He was able to wriggle out of a few years in jail that way. Plea-bargaining. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Deals between the police and criminal elements. They’re a tradition in Sweden. It’s a dangerous trade to be involved in. If you delve too deep, you may end up with a plastic bag over your head.”

  “Excuse me,” Kim Zetterman said and pulled Beck neatly back onto his chair. “Anybody want to dance with me or shall we have sex right away?”

  She laughed harshly, throwing her head back. It didn’t help. Modin was pre-occupied. The talk about the M/S Estonia had unsettled him.

  CHAPTER 18

  Boys, I can’t take any more of your conspiracy theories. I’m going home. I can always cry myself to sleep.” She got up and wrapped her cardigan around her.

  Kim Zetterman was a sensitive soul. One hundred percent focus on her and her alone, or that was that, Modin thought, and he felt ashamed that he had ignored a woman. Where were his manners?

  She gave Modin a long look. He nodded shyly. He would have liked to get to know Kim better, but now that he had someone who claimed to know something about the M/S Estonia disaster right in front of him, he couldn’t miss the opportunity. It was a question of catching the bird in flight. Opportunity rarely knocks twice.

  “Will you be able to find your way home on your own?” Modin asked as he helped her put on her white mink coat.

  “It’s not far to the hotel. Stay seated and greet Santa Claus when he arrives.”

  “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you around, I hope!”

  She didn’t respond but just left them sitting there as her fur-clad back disappeared beyond the bar counter.

  “Good-looking chick,” Allan Beck said. “But uptight.”

  “She’s okay. She’s one of us.”

  “One of your kind, you mean. No one’s like me.”

  “No, you’re way out of the envelope.”

  “What envelope?”

  “It’s pilot’s jargon. You must fly your craft within the envelope, or else things can go badly wrong. Her man is a psychopath, a real American Psycho.”

  “I thought he was a Swede.”

  “He was. Now he’s something else.”

  “Has he broken the rules of what you consider to be nice modest Swedishness, Modin? Has he, too, left the envelope?”

  “Yes,” Modin said and tried to wiggle out of having to talk about Zetterman. “He’s trying to buy up the whole village. That’s not okay.”

  “What a load of crap!” Beck said. “Let’s have another one before we go home?”

  “Yes, and you tell me more about the Estonian drug mafia.”

  The crowds were dwindling. Midnight had struck, and The Rock closed at one.

  “Estonia was, and still is, a transit country. Drugs pass through here from what was once the Soviet Union. Until 1994, except for a number of air routes, Estonia was the only way to get large quantities of drugs from Russia. The Estonian drug cartels consisted of former Soviet Russians in general, and Estonian Russians in particular, plus one or two ethnic Estonians. They had control of the emerging criminal networks in that new democracy.”

  “And you are saying they shipped drugs on the ferries?”

  “Yes, on the tourist ferries. Wouldn’t know a better way.”

  “How did they manage to get large quantities of illegal drugs through customs?”

  “With bribery and threats. Customs officials are only human. The Estonian mafia does pretty much what it wants. You don’t entirely trust the police, do you Modin?”

  “Did the mafia have their own people on board the ferries?”

  “I would imagine so. It
would be rather odd to leave a large shipment of narcotics unguarded on a voyage lasting around twelve hours. They have people everywhere. That’s why I’m warning you. Back off. Nobody wants you sniffing around the Estonia.”

  “Did the mafia only smuggle drugs?”

  “That’s not backing off, man,” Beck said, laughing. “But I get it. I figure that there were some weapons too, as the Soviet regiments in the Baltic states were being dismantled.”

  “If I recall correctly, the Russian military finally left Estonia in that very year, 1994,” Modin said and scratched the cleft in his chin.

  “There you are. Arms smuggling is an old East European tradition. The smugglers that got caught on board the Arctic Sea last summer, a Russian ship, were Estonian nationals, you remember? Officially, it was the Estonian mafia, but it could just as well have been the CIA or Estonian intelligence. They all trade favors. Good and evil have never stood closer.”

  “As in Armageddon. We’re approaching doomsday, Allan Beck,” he said in a cloud of alcohol.

  “Well, Armageddon or not, I have to be heading home.”

  “Will we meet again?”

  “Oh, I’m sure we will.”

  Allan Beck slid across the room as if he were as sober as a judge. Then he was gone, like a flurry of snow above a meadow.

  Modin hung around for another half hour, had a beer at the bar where Kent E was performing his usual task of polishing glasses, and then left The Rock as one of the very last guests.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was bitterly cold in the square near the harbor. Kent E claimed it was around zero degrees Fahrenheit.

  As Modin walked away, he found the wind in his face unbearable. He put on his ski goggles. It was half past one in the morning on Christmas Day. Midnight Mass in the chapel had finished a short while ago and the congregation had gone home.

  Modin had left the snowmobile in the harbor square and started to trudge up the main road. It was a starry night and the moon was shining with irritating clarity. The silhouette of the woods was black against the sky in the sharp moonlight. It had stopped snowing. Modin realized that he had tunnel vision. To follow the road ahead, he had to concentrate fully. Far away at the hotel on the hill, which he could see when he raised his eyes, he noticed the shiny blue shape of a vehicle.

  His breath was fogging up his goggles and he was forced to take them off. The icy wind from the sea was biting into his cheeks and chin. He didn’t care. He was happy! Things will take a turn for the better from now on, he was thinking as he kicked a chunk of ice that scudded across the road.

  “When it’s darkest, my friend, dawn is on its way,” he sang to himself and made his way up the road.

  As he approached the hill that lead to the hotel, he saw a police cruiser parked right in front of the main entrance, its blue lights bouncing off the facade of the building rhythmically. A few young people were standing around the car talking, their heads bowed. A sense of foreboding made Modin push on up the hill, past the crowd, and into the entrance without saying a word. He exchanged a brief word with the pale receptionist, and learned that something ghastly had happened in Room 203. This explained the fact that her eyes were like saucers, her speech inconsistent, and her hands shaking. Room 203 was one of the suites facing the sea.

  “The local police is there,” she said. “They just arrived.”

  Modin rushed up the stairs, tripped over one of the steps, regained his balance, and reached the upper floor. Room 203 was at the far end of the corridor.

  There were two police officers standing outside a door that stood ajar.

  Modin felt his heartbeat struggling to get out through his sweater. The taste of alcohol was overwhelming on his dry tongue and he now had to control the wave of nausea that overcame him.

  “What happened?” Something inside Modin needed to know.

  The police officers were young and he recognized one of them as the son of a local plastics manufacturer Modin knew. It was maybe for that reason they stepped aside as he approached with firm steps. They made no attempt to stop him, although they should have.

  This was a crime scene.

  Cold shivers ran down his back and his cheeks became hot and rosy. He swallowed a few more times and suddenly got thirsty. That was a bad sign. He opened the door carefully with his elbow. The door swung open and he could see the room, lit up brightly.

  A bloodbath had taken place. There was blood on the sheets, on the pillows, on the carpet, and even on the walls. On the queen size bed, he noticed two feet wearing socks, a chalk white big toe poking through a hole in one of them.

  He stepped forward to get a closer look. On the bed was a man on his back, dead. He was wearing a pair of white underwear and a white T-shirt. It was splattered with blood, because his hands had been cut off just above his wrists. It looked unreal to see the two severed hands lying there on the carpet.

  “God Almighty, that’s Jonas Zetterman,” Modin exclaimed.

  “He’s stone cold dead,” said the elder of the police officers who had both snuck up behind him.

  “Lost all his blood,” Modin said. “Whoever did this must have really hated him.”

  “Yes, they weren’t very kind to him,” said the lanky officer. “This is worse than a drug deal gone bad in Stockholm City.”

  “Have you called for back-up?” Modin asked in an authoritative voice to activate the lanky officer and his shorter colleague. “This happens to be the IT mogul Jonas Zetterman. Know what I mean? You’ve got to seal off the whole area and keep the other guests away. This is a major incident!”

  The tall officer looked even more scared now that he knew this. He stepped aside and dialed a number on his cellphone.

  “Commando Center, this is patrol 18-24. We have a dead man in the hotel in Grisslehamn. Presumed murdered, lots of blood at the crime scene. Looks pretty horrible.”

  Modin took his own cellphone and dialed the secret number to Göran Filipson at the Security Service.

  “Hi, sorry to disturb you at this ungodly hour, but something has happened out here in Grisslehamn. I think you need to come out or at the very least send someone.”

  Göran Filipson sounded drunk with sleep but soon came around, as it sounded.

  “What happened?”

  “Jonas Zetterman. He was going to settle down in the village. He’s lying at my feet right now, dead, cut to pieces. Among the worst I’ve ever seen. Someone chopped off his hands and it looks as if he ran round the room in a panic, trying to stem the flow of blood with anything and everything he could find. They will have to repaint the whole suite! When can you be here, Göran?”

  “Two hours. Can you stay there?”

  “Yes, I’ll be at The Rock. See you there.”

  “His wife Kim is Russian,” Filipson remarked.

  “You kidding?”

  “No.”

  CHAPTER 20

  GRISSLEHAMN, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25

  Fancy meeting you here?” Modin heard Göran Filipson say. Modin looked up from where he sat in an armchair, half hidden behind a screen.

  Filipson spoke to the head of Special Ops Chris Loklinth and his sidekick Bob Lundin in the bar at The Rock.

  “We heard about the murder. A major incident. Zetterman is not just anybody.”

  “No kidding,” Göran Filipson said. “He’s rich and famous, and I assume that’s why you are here?”

  Modin noticed that Loklinth brushed the question aside. “When you people interview Zetterman’s wife, we want to be present.”

  “And why is that?”

  “A question of national security.” When Filipson didn’t respond, Loklinth added: “Do I have to be more specific? You can check with the Minister of Defense, if you want.”

  Filipson muttered something and pushed his way past Loklinth and Bob Lundin. They were standing side by side, their hands in their coat pockets, and seemed neither sweaty nor sleepy.

  “How the hell did Special Ops get a whiff about this so qu
ickly?” Filipson asked Modin. “Loklinth and Lundin…did you call them?”

  Filipson sat down next to Modin at the bar.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Modin said. “Loklinth would be the last person I’d ever call.”

  It was half-past three in the morning. Around him, Modin could see sleepy, bloodshot eyes staring at notepads and hear tired voices speaking into small tape-recorders. The police were questioning the staff of The Rock that had been here earlier in the evening when Zetterman had visited the bar. Some were talking on their cellphones, some were simply standing there staring into space, longing for Christmas to resume. The hotel, about a hundred yards in the distance, was now sealed off and only those who were staying there were allowed in.

  Modin was hunched over a cup of coffee and peered over at Kent E at the bar. He had kept The Rock open so that it could be used as a police and press center. A few journalists were already on the spot. Matti Svensson from the Norrtelje News was talking with a journalist from national radio news. No other guests were allowed inside.

  Someone said that a national TV crew was on its way.

  “It is Jonas Zetterman,” Göran Filipson said and ran his hand through his uncombed hair. “The identity has been confirmed by his wife. Is there any more coffee?”

  “Where is Kim Zetterman?” Modin asked.

  “I ordered her to stay in the hotel for the time being.”

  “Is she under suspicion?”

  “Not at present,” Filipson said and pulled the coffee cup toward him, which Kent E filled with a rather shaky hand. “I’ll have to call the Minister of Trade. On Christmas Day no less, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Of course, the death of a big businessman like Zetterman causes ripples high up in the food chain. Fuck, Göran, is everything political?”

  “Yes,” he said and went to make his call. At the same time, Chris Loklinth emerged from the shadows, followed by Bob Lundin.

  “We will have to shut down this temporary press center,” Modin heard him speak to Kent E in an authoritative voice, then clear his throat. “You have to close shop right away. Send everyone home and keep the place closed all day tomorrow. We need to maintain law and order in the village.”