Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  “Watch where you’re going!”

  “Damn idiot. He knocked the kingpin over.”

  He catches sight of her again. She appears in his field of vision between two outsized stroller parasols. She’s changed direction, is running south now, toward the green hill covered with allotments.

  Several people have stopped to watch the woman running. Then they see him. A well-built man, six feet three inches tall, chasing a skinny little Asian woman. A mugger?

  Someone gets their cell phone out. Not to call the police, but to record the chase.

  Zack leaps over a picnic blanket and zigzags past a circle of teenagers throwing a basketball between themselves.

  The distance is shrinking. Seventy-five yards. Fifty.

  The trees are getting closer. He has to catch her before she makes it into the maze of little paths winding between the bushes and allotment cottages. Twenty yards now. The world has shrunk to a tunnel. Every sense except sight has been disconnected. The chase is the only thing that matters.

  Ten yards.

  Five.

  He throws himself forward, feet first, and knocks her to the ground like a defender brutally tackling an opponent in a football match. She screams and falls headfirst into a family picnic. Juice, rosé wine, and pasta salad spill across the Burberry blanket and designer picnic basket with its plates, cutlery, glasses, and bottles.

  A toddler starts crying. Her mother screams. A man in a linen jacket snatches the child away but says nothing.

  The woman rolls across the grass, away from the wreckage of the picnic, and Zack manages to grab one of her ankles.

  Zack sits astride the woman. And puts his knee down on a packet of vanilla wafers.

  He’s surrounded by people shouting and yelling, but he has switched off, can’t hear anything. He grabs the woman’s flailing arms and presses her down into the grass.

  That smell is there again.

  The smell of grass.

  He hates that smell.

  Zack is knocked aside before he has time to register the fact that someone has kicked him hard in the ribs. He loses his breath and suddenly feels a number of heavy hands on his back and shoulders.

  Two male voices:

  “Leave her alone, you bastard!”

  “Kajsa, call the police. Quick!”

  Zack is still clutching one sleeve of the woman’s jacket, but other hands are trying to loosen his fingers, and he can feel the woman trying to pull free of her jacket.

  A heavy man sits down on his back and he yelps:

  “I am the police!”

  But the men don’t seem to hear him.

  Zack is still clutching onto the jacket, but it feels light now. Far too light. He pulls it toward him. Empty.

  His first instinct is to lash out and hurt the man. But he stops himself. These people are innocent. Picnicking fathers. They don’t deserve to be hurt.

  “I’m a police officer,” he shouts again. “Get off! I’m a police officer!”

  The man sitting on top of him is unsure.

  “What do you mean, police? Where’s your ID?”

  “If you move a bit, I can get it out.”

  A voice from behind:

  “The bastard’s bluffing. Don’t let go of him.”

  Soon I’m going to hurt you really badly after all.

  I know how to.

  And I’m fucking good at it.

  Almost too good. As if some higher power were guiding my hands, my body, my thoughts, helping me keep my cool, even though I might be in mortal danger. It’s like some sort of almost superhuman courage takeover.

  “Let him get his ID out,” someone else says. “But keep hold of him.”

  The man on his back gets up, but stands with his feet on either side of Zack, with his hands on his shoulders. Zack gets up onto his knees and reaches for his ID. He opens the left-hand side of his jacket in an intentionally expansive gesture so that his holster and service pistol are clearly visible.

  “Shit, he’s telling the truth.”

  Zack looks around as he holds out his ID, trying to see where the woman is.

  She’s vanished again.

  “Listen, well . . . Shit, sorry, pal,” the man who was sitting on Zack’s back says. He’s wearing a black Mötley Crüe T-shirt that’s stretched uncomfortably tight across his stomach. He looks like he’s in his forties. “We thought . . . well, you know . . .”

  The others are standing around him in a circle. Completely silent. Worried. Have they committed a crime? Violence against a public official, perhaps? Or aiding a fugitive?

  Zack manages to suppress his anger.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, looking at the three men who were holding him. “You thought you were stopping an idiot who was chasing an innocent woman. More people should do that.”

  Then Zack catches sight of her.

  She’s just stepped out onto the path fifty yards away. She looks back toward the allotments, evidently assuming that Zack has gone in there after her. When she can’t see him she slows down slightly and turns off toward the mini-golf course.

  Zack waits until she’s got her back to him, then hurries after her. He’s badly bruised and is having trouble taking deep breaths. There’s a stabbing pain in his ribs and his shoulder is burning. It feels like he’s treading water, but he’s gaining on her fast.

  She doesn’t see him until it’s too late. There’s no time for her to accelerate quickly enough and he catches up with her next to a hot-dog stall down by the water. There are loads of people here too. Everyone in the food line is staring. Zack changes tactic and decides against bringing her to the ground. Instead he takes a firm grip of her upper left arm and makes her slow down. Eventually she stops, still facing away from him. Her breathing is heavy and hoarse. Her shoulders are rising and falling quickly. Zack begins to draw her aside gently, away from prying eyes. He tries to identify a quieter spot. Maybe up by the allotments? He swings around and starts walking toward the vegetation.

  It seems like the woman has given up, and Zack relaxes. They enter a narrow path, and walk around some large mock-orange bushes in bloom. They’ve just passed four pensioners on a bench when the woman suddenly does a quick jujitsu maneuver with her arm and Zack’s hand ends up at a very painful angle. Then she pulls free and draws a stiletto, the thin blade becoming a shimmering snake as she raises it toward him.

  A white-haired woman on the bench screams, and out of the corner of his eye Zack sees people stop and stare.

  I should have been prepared.

  She’s holding the knife in front of her. Moving slowly around him in a circle. An alert look in her eyes.

  Zack holds up his ID, both to her and everyone around them. He has no desire to find himself lying beneath another overweight busybody.

  The woman ignores the ID. She’s staring intently at Zack’s face, still circling him with the knife raised. Zack sees that the distance between them isn’t shrinking.

  The pistol isn’t an option under the circumstances. Too many people in the vicinity. He goes on holding his police ID in front of him and waits for the right moment.

  His years of martial arts training come into their own now. When other people would be at their most anxious, he is as focused as he can be.

  Calm. In spite of being tired and out of breath, and in spite of the threat.

  “I’m a police officer,” he repeats. “See for yourself.”

  She takes her eyes off him and looks at his ID, and the battle is won. With a movement so fast that the woman doesn’t have time to react, Zack whips out his telescopic baton and jerks it open.

  A Bonowi EKA Camlock, the police’s new model. Zack likes it. It can be opened easily with two fingers, or a quick snap of the wrist. Like now.

  The lightweight black steel shoots out of the handle with a metallic click and the baton hits the woman’s wrist with a dull thud.

  The knife blade flashes in the sunlight as it spins through the air. Before it lands on the du
st of the path Zack has already locked the woman’s right arm behind her back.

  They head slowly away from the water. Zack walks behind her, still holding her arm locked behind her back. He pushes her arm higher up, leans forward, and says in a low voice:

  “What the hell was the point of all that?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” the woman replies, in perfect Swedish.

  7

  THE MASSAGE parlor’s neon sign is switched off and the door locked. On a sagging blue sofa in the lobby the woman who ran so fast sits with her legs crossed, tugging absentmindedly at the multicolored wristbands on her left arm. The flickering light of the television on the wall casts shadows on her face and Zack once again detects the smell of liniment—he could do with rubbing a couple of pounds into his shoulder.

  He and Deniz have pulled over a couple of chairs and have started the interrogation, but their questions are being met with silence.

  “Come on,” Zack says. “I’m going to find out anyway, it will just take a bit longer. Are you Sukayana Prikon?”

  The woman goes on studying her wristbands. She’s no longer scared. Just stubborn.

  Zack is surprised by her coolness. Four of her employees have been brutally murdered, but she’s just sitting there like a teenager forced to listen as her parents preach at her.

  A way of blocking emotions, he thinks. Unless she’s more hardened than most people. Not many people would pull a knife on another person, no matter what the circumstances.

  Zack wonders what she could have been through earlier in her life, what it was that’s made her so thick-skinned.

  “Okay, let’s try this instead,” he eventually says, and takes out his police cell and the note Douglas gave him. He keys in the number and the woman’s phone starts to ring in her red handbag.

  “So we know who you are. Sukayana. At least that’s what your murdered staff called you.”

  She lets out an audible sigh, looks up from her hands, and stares into the wall with cold black eyes. What lies behind that gaze?

  Nothing?

  “Yes, that’s me,” she says.

  “Well then, Sukayana. Tell us about the women. Who they were, what their names were, where they were from,” Zack says.

  “From Thailand, like me. Good girls, all of them. Reliable, clever. Popular with clients. The only thing they had trouble with was punctuality, but that had started to get better.”

  “And their names?”

  Sukayana hesitates for a moment, then replies:

  “Prataporn Sirawhat, Pehn Shinanaroi, Armorn Rattanakosin, and Pakpho Rikritwata.”

  Zack takes a spiral-bound notepad and ballpoint pen from his inside pocket and hands them to her.

  “Can you write the names down?”

  She writes quickly, in neat, clear handwriting.

  Zack can see the mutilated women in his mind’s eye. The blood, the brain tissue. Which one was which?

  “We’d like you to identify them for us. Later.”

  She looks him in the eye, and for the first time there’s someone behind her gaze.

  “Why did you run when we arrived?” Deniz asks.

  “I panicked. I thought that lunatic was coming for me.”

  Zack nods. A natural reaction.

  He’s still sweaty from the chase. He’s never felt under such scrutiny as when he led Sukayana Prikon back through Tantolunden toward the massage parlor. He was prepared for more attacks by middle-aged dads, but instead Deniz ran to join him and people began to realize what was going on.

  The walk to Lindvallsplan was uneventful, until they encountered a man with a large Alsatian. When the dog began to bark at a small terrier, the woman started to panic. She tugged and jerked to get free, and when that didn’t work she crouched behind Zack and Deniz and screamed at them to protect her.

  It was as if the dog and its bared teeth had woken hidden memories.

  When she eventually calmed down and Deniz asked how she was, she simply said:

  “I just don’t like dogs.”

  “Was it you who found the women in the flat?” Zack asks her.

  Sukayana Prikon shakes her head.

  “One of them sent you a text message. To the number I just called. ‘Help us. He kill all.’ A few hours later you called her number several times. And when she didn’t answer you traveled out to their flat. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  She shakes her head again, but she can’t hide her fear. And her pupils are unnaturally small.

  “Didn’t it worry you when you received the text?” Deniz asks.

  Sukayana Prikon doesn’t answer.

  “Who could he be? The man in the text, the one who killed them all?”

  “I’ve got no idea.”

  “What were you doing last night, Sukayana?” Zack asks.

  “I was at home asleep. I work twelve hours a day. At night I sleep.”

  “Is there anyone who can confirm where you were?”

  “No.”

  Her tone is hard, resistant.

  “We’re going to need to know more about your business activities if we’re going to find the perpetrator,” Deniz says.

  “There’s not much to say. It’s a perfectly ordinary massage parlor.”

  “Do you run the parlor on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have any partners?”

  “No.”

  Quick answers, Zack thinks. Too quick?

  “Who are your clients?”

  “All sorts. Businessmen, cleaners, students. Lots of regulars.”

  “And it’s just massage?” Zack says. “No . . .”

  “Sexual services, you mean? Just because it’s a Thai parlor? We don’t do anything like that.”

  “We found large quantities of lubricant and condoms in the flat out in Hallonbergen. That suggests prostitution,” Deniz says.

  “It suggests they had a life outside the parlor. If you can see past your prejudices.”

  Sukayana Prikon is about to say something else, but stops herself. Zack thinks he can see something else in her eyes, a resignation bordering on grief behind her hard exterior, and she gives him a look that says: So, young man, what does someone like you know about this world?

  The theme tune of the afternoon news comes on the television and Zack looks up at the screen. 4:00 p.m. Is it already that late?

  Sukayana Prikon shifts position on the sofa, folds her arms, and fixes her eyes on Zack. In an almost derisive tone she says:

  “What do you actually think? These poor women, why wouldn’t they jerk off a Swede for five hundred kronor? They can earn the average annual Thai salary in a week here in Sweden.”

  “So they were prostitutes, then?” Deniz asks.

  “I didn’t say that. When they were here they provided Thai massage. What they got up to in their spare time is none of my business, is it?” Sukayana Prikon replies.

  Zack wonders whom she’s protecting. Herself, or the murdered women? Their pimps?

  Or their clients. The flabby Svenssons who exploit young women when they’re at their most vulnerable.

  A quick fuck after work, then home to their wives and children.

  But who am I to moralize?

  The television is showing a report from a shopping center on the edge of the city. The CEO of a property company is commenting on claims that the firm is charging tenants extortionate rents.

  “That’s simply not true. Our rents are at a level that’s very reasonable for the market, and in this context it’s important to remember that . . .”

  Sukayana Prikon looks up at the television. Snorts at the CEO.

  “In my homeland they’re all like him: corrupt.”

  She reaches for the remote and switches the television off.

  Deniz changes tack:

  “Sukayana, who might have wanted to murder your employees?”

  “I’ve got no idea. Like I said, they were nice. Minded their own business, and were careful not to cause any
problems.”

  “So there was no client who’d got angry with them, or behaved in a strange way?” Zack asks.

  Who lost his temper because he wasn’t allowed to treat them however he wanted?

  “No. Not that I’ve seen.”

  “Do you have a register of clients?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Right now we’re not ruling anything out in our search for potential perpetrators, and anyone who’s come into contact with the four women recently is of interest, not least your clients.”

  “I’ve got some names and addresses among the invoices, but no more than that. Most of them pay cash, and I never write down their names.”

  “But you must have some sort of accounts?”

  “Of course. But there I usually only write down first names.”

  “We’d like to see them anyway,” Deniz says. “And we need to contact the victims’ families. How can we get hold of them?”

  Sukayana leans back in the sofa and looks like she’s thinking.

  “I don’t think any of them had relatives here in Sweden. You’re probably going to have to try to find them in Thailand.”

  “How did you come into contact with the women?” Zack asks.

  More silence. Deeper this time without the buzz of the television.

  “This is a murder investigation, and the common denominator between the victims is you. We’re not going to give up until we get answers. You can talk to us, or you can spend all night sitting in a gloomy interview room.”

  Sukayana Prikon looks at her wristbands again.

  Deniz goes on in a gentler voice than Zack:

  “We’re not corrupt, not like that guy in a suit on the news. We’re actually very good at our job, but we can’t solve this without your help.”

  “There’s a company,” Sukayana Prikon says after a brief pause. “Recruitment Solutions Ltd. They help me to find good workers from Thailand.”

  “Have you got their number?”

  “I’ll see.”

  She digs through her handbag and pulls out a cell phone with a sparkling pink cover.

  “No, I haven’t got it. I usually check their website when I call them.”