Clicks to start it, then says: ‘16 May 2010, time ten past four. Interview with Jokso Mirovic regarding the explosion in Linköping on 10 May and the murder of Hanna Vigerö in Linköping University Hospital in the early hours of 13 May.’
Malin pulls out her mobile.
Plays the clip from the surveillance camera outside the bus station, and Jokso Mirovic sees his face and smiles, then Malin shows him the recording from the bank, and this time Jokso Mirovic doesn’t smile.
‘That’s you in both clips. We know that,’ Zeke says. ‘So you might as well confess and tell us how this all fits together, OK?’
Jokso Mirovic looks at them. First at Zeke, then at Malin, and she tries to catch his gaze, make sense of what she sees there, and she manages it, and finds a gentle desperation, the same desperation she felt the time Tove was in the hands of a killer and she was racing through the forests of Östergötland in her Volvo to save her.
The sort of desperation that knows calmness is vital. That knows panicking equals death.
He must feel like shit, Malin thinks.
As well he might, considering what he’s done.
But he’s tough. If he’s done what the rumours suggest. A hundred stab wounds, and testicles rammed down a paedophile’s throat.
He hasn’t been registered as living in Sweden since 2004, when he lived in Gothenburg. Since then he’s had Thailand listed as his place of residence.
‘Tell us,’ Malin says. ‘That’s the best thing you can do now. For your own sake.’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit. I’ll talk.’
Jokso Mirovic takes a deep breath, then he starts talking.
He leans closer to the tape recorder, to make sure that every word is clearly captured.
He doesn’t seem to want to put any emotion into what he says, just lets his mouth and tongue move, moving things forward. He talks with a slight accent.
‘I live, or rather lived, with my two young children in Phuket. As you know, that was where I was heading when you picked me up.
‘I’ve withdrawn from my earlier life. The children are three and six years old, a boy and a girl. The boy’s name is Marko, and the girl’s is Elena. Their mother’s dead, she died in a helicopter crash when our son was a year old, so I look after them on my own.’
Jokso Mirovic falls silent. Takes a deep breath.
‘You should have seen my children swimming in the pool of the house we live in on Phuket. They used to spend all day in there. You should have seen Marko the first time he dared to jump in on his own, you should have seen Elena. She was even happier than he was.’
Jokso Mirovic collects himself before going on in a more factual tone: ‘On New Year’s Eve a year and a half ago I met the brothers Henry and Leopold Kurtzon at Sri Panwa, a smart resort close to where I live. We got on well and spent a bit of time together. They were a bit like the sort of carefree people I used to deal with, and seeing them was almost a form of nostalgia for me. We seemed to have things in common, somehow.’
‘Go on,’ Malin says.
‘I’m just pausing for breath,’ Jokso Mirovic replies, and his eyes are empty and cold now, but deep down there’s a hint of something pleading.
‘Six months ago the brothers came to me with a plan. They were aware of my past. They must have got the impression I was capable of anything. Maybe they’d heard rumours about what I did during the war.
‘They wanted me to kill some children and their parents in Sweden. They said they wanted help and that I would be perfect for the job. I asked why they thought I’d be good, why I would do something like that, and they said they’d checked me out. I told them I’d given up any sort of criminal activity, and that I’d never killed anyone. And certainly not any children.’
Jokso Mirovic pauses.
Looks up at Malin and Zeke, and his eyes say: I’ve killed plenty of people, you know it, and I know it.
‘They refused to tell me why they wanted me to kill these people. They offered me two million kronor up front, and another two million when the job was done. I turned them down.’
Sudden irritation in Jokso Mirovic’s voice. Restrained anger, and he clenches his fists so tightly that they turn white, then he lets go, as if remembering that he can’t allow himself to get angry right now.
‘What happened?’ Malin says.
‘I told them to go to hell.’
‘And then?’
‘Then one day my children were missing when I went to pick them up from the art class they sometimes go to where we live. Some men claiming to be from Interpol had turned up to get them, and the staff at the school believed them. They left a letter for me.’
The light in the ceiling flickers and everything goes dark for a few seconds, and when the light comes back on it’s not as bright. Malin gets the impression that the room’s shrunk.
‘What did the letter say?’ Zeke asks.
‘It said they’d taken the children. That they were holding them at a secret location. That they’d kill my children if I didn’t help them with the murders. That I should follow their instructions, and come up with my own suggestions of how to kill the family in Sweden.’
‘And you didn’t go to the police?’
‘To the Thai police? No. They had Elena and Marko. I knew this had to be about a huge amount of money, that was the only reason the Kurtzons would have wanted that family wiped out. I realised that if I did anything to try to find my children, they’d get to hear about it and kill them.
‘So I set to work. Suddenly I had two million in my account for expenses, transferred from a bank in Antigua. I started with the father. I shot out one of the tyres on his car, and he died in the following crash, and none of your lot had any suspicions at all.
‘It was harder with the girls. Two six-year-old girls don’t die just like that, and the bank was the brothers’ idea. They called me and explained their plan: they wanted me to detonate a powerful bomb, far more powerful than necessary, outside a bank, so that it would look like the family had been the victim of a terrorist attack.
‘I told them they were crazy. Then a month ago I was sent a recording of my children sobbing with terror, calling for me, screaming that a big lizard was trying to eat them up, screaming out loud.’
‘Have you still got the recording?’ Malin asks. ‘That would make it a hell of a lot easier for us to believe you.’
‘It’s on my iPhone. The one you seized when you picked me up. I’ve got pictures of Elena and Marko on there as well.’
Jokso Mirovic falls silent.
Stares straight ahead.
‘Can we have the iPhone in here? Now?’
They sit in silence in the room for something like ten minutes before the door opens and a uniformed officer comes in and puts the iPhone on the table without saying a word.
‘Go ahead,’ Zeke says.
Jokso Mirovic takes the device and brings up pictures of two young children playing in a sparkling pool, a little dark-haired boy with big brown eyes swimming without armbands, with a slightly bigger girl behind him.
‘That’s Marko and Elena.’
Jokso Mirovic closes his eyes. Composes himself.
Malin looks at the pictures of the children. They’re young, their eyes open wide, their whole lives ahead of them.
Are you still alive? she thinks. Are the Kurtzon brothers holding you somewhere?
Jokso Mirovic picks the iPhone up again, clicks a button, then puts it back on the table.
Malin closes her eyes.
Listens to the clear sounds that start to emerge from the device.
‘Daddy, where are you? . . . where are you, I’m scared . . . Daddy . . . [crying, sniffing] . . . Daddy . . . Daddy . . . we’re locked up, you’ve got to come . . . they’re going to hit us . . . Daddy . . . where are you? . . . rescue us . . . there are monsters here and they’re trying to bite and . . . they’re screaming, Daddy . . . [howling, screaming] . . . now I’m screaming . . . Daddy . . . Daddy . . . wh
ere . . . where are you?’
The children’s words take hold of Malin, their fragile, infinitely terrified voices strike like a red-hot spear right into her very core.
That’s Tove screaming.
Malin’s own younger brother.
If my life has any meaning, she thinks, it’s to save these children from that.
What sort of person would I be otherwise? What sort of pit would I belong in then?
Next to Malin, Zeke is noticeably shaken as Jokso Mirovic goes on: ‘You heard them. What was I supposed to do?
‘The mother used to go to the bank at the same time every Monday to withdraw money before she did the shopping. So I detonated the bomb by remote from the other square, I could get a good view from there. The mother survived because she was bending over.
‘But the girls died.
‘Just like they were supposed to.’
What’s that I can hear in your voice? Malin wonders.
Remorse. Bitterness.
Is your story true?
Could that recording be fake? And those pictures of entirely different children? No, no, no.
The children’s fear, their utter dread, was real. Mirovic is telling the truth, she’s never been more certain of anything in her life.
And why would you be lying? You’re confessing.
The children.
Marko and Elena.
You want us to rescue the children.
Me to rescue your children.
And Jokso Mirovic looks up at her.
‘I know they’re still alive. My children. You have to find them.’
‘How do you know they’re still alive?’ Zeke asks. ‘The Kurtzon brothers might have got rid of them.’
‘I know they’re alive. I can feel it. The brothers have still got them.’
‘What about the brothers? What sort of people are they?’ Malin asks.
‘Leopold’s the decisive one. Henry’s more reserved. But they complement each other. Make up a sort of whole.’
‘Hanna Vigerö,’ Zeke says, his gaze and voice perfectly steady.
‘I killed her at night. It was easy, I just had to sneak into the hospital and put a pillow over her face. I switched off the alarm on the monitor she was attached to. My wife was hooked up to a similar one after the helicopter crash, so I know how they work. I switched it off for a few minutes, then switched it back on again.’
‘And then? What were you supposed to do after that?’
‘The brothers told me to lie low. I protested, said I’d done everything they asked, but they said I wasn’t finished yet, so I went underground. But after a while I couldn’t do that any more, I had to get to Thailand, and find a way of getting to Marko and Elena, try to find them. Otherwise it would never end. I had to take the chance.’
‘Do you know where they are at the moment?’
‘No. The brothers were renting a villa at Sri Panwa for a month when we first met. But that’s a long time ago now. They’re not there. Maybe they’re in Thailand. That’s where the trail starts, that’s why I had to get back there. But they could just as easily be in Sweden. I’ve been watching their flats on Strandvägen, but they weren’t there, and they haven’t been back. I haven’t managed to get hold of any other address.’
Jokso Mirovic falls silent.
Malin looks at Zeke, who looks back at her.
Is he telling the truth? Zeke seems to be wondering, as if his system is refusing to take in the terrified, tormented children’s voices on the phone. Are the Kurtzon brothers really holding two little children captive somewhere? The boy and girl from the photographs. Are they in Thailand? Sweden? Are the brothers torturing them? Are they really making them scream in terror?
‘Every word I’ve said is true,’ Jokso Mirovic whispers. ‘The recording is genuine. You have to rescue my children.’
And Malin looks at him again, meets his pleading gaze.
Thinks about the parents at the gates of Nazi concentration camps, and later those run by the Serbs, forced to choose between their children, which one they took with them into the camp, and which one died at once.
Then she shakes her head, and fixes her eyes on Jokso Mirovic’s face.
Sees his scar almost vibrating in the cold light.
‘Daddy . . . where are you . . . where are you . . . I’m scared . . . Daddy . . . [crying] . . . they’re screaming . . . Daddy . . .’
Malin takes a deep breath, and thinks: I would have done the same as you. I’d have done the same as you.
So we died so you could save your own children? Our lives in exchange for theirs. How are we supposed to understand that?
Mummy and Daddy died for their sake as well.
Do you think that makes us feel less afraid, that we’ll forgive you?
You killed us, and that guilt is yours, no matter what your excuse is.
We’re close to you now, Jokso Mirovic.
We’re the draught you can feel on your neck.
We’re whispering: ‘So you didn’t kill us for the money? Do you really care about the children, about Elena and Marko, in their dark, stinking, damp room of fear? You did it for the money, didn’t you, you’re the lizard, the spider, the snake, the vicious, hungry beast’s sharp teeth, aren’t you, you are greed itself, aren’t you?’
Malin watches as Jokso Mirovic stands up in panic.
He starts waving his arms about, shouting out: ‘I didn’t do it for the money. I didn’t get any money. I’m not a monster.
‘Do you hear? Leave me alone. I’m trying to save my children. You can understand that, can’t you? I killed you for the sake of my children.’
Then Jokso Mirovic falls silent, slumps down onto the black floor of the interview room and covers his eyes with his hands.
Malin knows what he can see, knows what he can hear.
She feels a draught against her ear, hears two girls’ voices singing.
You have to find them, Malin. They’ve been locked up by our uncles, you have to save the captive girl and boy. Otherwise it’s all been for nothing.
54
Malin can see Elena and Marko Mirovic in front of her.
Little huddled-up creatures shaking with fear.
Locked up in a dark, cramped room.
A chamber.
A chamber of darkness.
The room stinks of excrement, urine, and fear. It’s a room where all empathy has been replaced by the logic of evil, the children will die in that darkness, and I have to help them, because no one else is going to.
‘Do you think he’s telling the truth?’
The man sitting on the other side of the table in the cafeteria of Police Headquarters in Stockholm is called Conny Nygren. Malin is taken aback by his words in this depressing room furnished with pine trellis panels covered with plastic plants snaking their way up to the ceiling. The panels divide the long grey laminated tables with their uncomfortable metal chairs. A clock on the wall says it’s a quarter to eight. A quick evening coffee, black, with a dry pastry. The hours since the interview have been spent bringing Linköping up to speed, and dealing with paperwork.
Conny Nygren is a detective inspector with the Crime Unit of the Stockholm Police. His face is furrowed and grey, and he’s thin as a rake, apart from his stomach, which sticks out like a cannonball above his belt. His nylon shirt stretches tightly across his gut, and he ought to be tired and lethargic, Malin thinks, but the detective opposite her possesses an energy that she rarely sees in fellow officers, even recent graduates.
‘I think he’s telling the truth,’ Malin says. ‘The photographs and the recording of the children are genuine. No doubt at all.’
‘I agree,’ Zeke says.
‘I believe him too,’ Conny Nygren says. ‘And I think the recording’s genuine. His story is improbable, but just improbable enough for it to be true. There’s nothing new in this job, is there?’
‘Money,’ Malin says after a brief pause. ‘Does it ever do any good?’
; Conny Nygren laughs.
‘I won seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand on the horses once. Which meant I got to see the Caribbean,’ he says. ‘Can’t think of anything negative to say about that.’
‘We can regard this case as solved now,’ Malin says. ‘Jokso Mirovic is responsible for the bombing in Linköping and the murder of the Vigerö family. He did it to save his own children, blackmailed into it by the Kurtzon brothers. If Mirovic hadn’t been caught, the brothers could have just waited for their father to die, then got Mirovic to get rid of Josefina Marlöw. Seeing as she didn’t have any other family, the money would probably have gone to them without anyone suspecting a thing. Now we just have to focus on catching the brothers and rescuing Mirovic’s children.’
Zeke nods slowly.
Conny Nygren shakes his head.
‘If they haven’t already killed the children. To stop them being able to testify against them.’
‘We have to assume they’re still alive,’ Malin says. ‘That the brothers are holding them somewhere. They must have heard that we’ve got Mirovic by now, and are probably getting pretty desperate. That makes me even more worried about the children. Up until now they’ve been holding them so they could blackmail Mirovic. Now the only reason for the brothers to keep them alive is that they might need them as hostages if they try to make a run for it, or have to negotiate. We have to find the brothers and the children as soon as possible. It could soon be too late.’
She doesn’t want to say what she’s thinking: that it could already be too late.
‘The Kurtzon brothers’ plan is shot to hell, and they know it,’ Conny Nygren says.
‘So where do we think they are? Sweden, or Thailand?’ Zeke asks.
‘Well, they’re not at that place he mentioned, Sri Panwa, at any rate,’ Conny Nygren says. ‘We made a call, and they’ve confirmed that the brothers did rent a villa there, but that they’re not there now.’
‘They didn’t have any other address for the brothers in Thailand?’
‘No. And we haven’t got any in Sweden apart from Strandvägen. No summer house owned by the family, nothing,’ Conny Nygren says. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t got a place here where they’re holed up. We’re keeping an eye on the apartments on the off chance that they show up there.’
Savage Spring Page 38
