Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  A stream of blood is running out onto the pillow, and then the silenced pistol fires again and again, and blood starts to pour onto the mattress between her legs as well.

  The man stands still, breathing hard. Feeling the power, smelling the intoxicating scent of blood, but something else too. Something that worries him. He thinks of Thai superstitions, and begins to wonder if there are angry spirits drifting about the room, out to get him.

  He puts the pistol in his jacket pocket and rushes out of the massage parlor.

  The rain is pouring down.

  He likes that.

  It’s as if the gods want to help him erase any evidence.

  * * *

  THEY WAKE up early.

  Because of the cold and damp.

  And something else.

  A sound. Muted at first, then louder.

  A car approaching through the forest.

  The three girls huddle together, with Sanda Moe in the middle. She’s fifteen, the eldest. She acts as the younger girls’ mother. But she could do with a mother of her own.

  The car gets closer. Stops. The engine is turned off, doors open and close.

  The fear is paralyzing.

  They’ve taken Sanpai.

  They’ve taken Tin Khaing.

  Whose turn is it now?

  Someone is pushed in, so scarred and bleeding that at first they don’t see who it is.

  The door slams. The bolt slides shut again.

  The girl curls up in a corner.

  Tin Khaing.

  She’s wearing nothing but underpants and a T-shirt that’s far too big for her. Someone else’s T-shirt. An old man’s.

  She lies down with her back to the wall, and stares in front of her with the only eye she can open.

  Sanda Moe goes over to her. Tears some sheets from the roll of toilet paper, scrunches them up, and moistens them with water from the bucket. Then she begins gently wiping the dried blood from Tin Khaing’s cracked lips.

  Than Than Oo and Law Eh are sitting hunched up, looking on in horror. Incapable of comprehending the evil that has struck their friend.

  Law Eh wipes her hand on her filthy striped undershirt, then lays it on Than Than Oo’s bulging stomach, as if to seek comfort from what is inside.

  She feels something move beneath the warm, taut skin.

  34

  THE RAIN isn’t letting up. Quite the reverse.

  Zack runs from the inadequate shelter of the tree he’s been standing under outside Mera’s building to wave down a vacant taxi. He feels the rain penetrate his top as he gets into the backseat and leans back.

  Trickles of water form strange patterns on the side window. It’s already light out, but the streets are strangely deserted.

  The driver heads west along Kungsgatan and Zack watches ghostly images of Hötorget and Drottninggatan pass by outside the car.

  The taxi brakes as a man in dark clothes, a cap, and sneakers dashes across Kungsgatan from Klara Norra Kyrkogata, but Zack takes little notice as he yawns and rubs his eyes. They’re stinging with tiredness and pleading for rest behind his closed eyelids.

  But his body is restless. He can’t sleep yet. He needs more.

  Shit.

  It’s a few minutes before four in the morning. He would just have enough time.

  No, stop thinking like that. You need to go home and get some sleep.

  As they’re crossing the bridge to Kungsholmen he says to the driver:

  “Can you head out to Sundbyberg instead?”

  “Sure. What address?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. I’ll give you directions when we get closer.”

  The taxi swings right into Sankt Eriksgatan and then turns north onto Torsgatan, which becomes Solnavägen as they cross the E4. As they approach the center of Sundbyberg, Zack guides the driver into an industrial zone west of the railway line. He asks him to pull up outside a large warehouse with graffiti-covered walls that shine wetly in the early morning light. The heavy thud of bass music can be felt inside the car.

  Zack pays cash and goes inside the building.

  It’s much smaller than the old Heraldus dockyard where he was on Sunday night, but the ceiling is extremely high. Fifty or so sweaty people are dancing through the early morning, as sunlight shines through the dusty windows up by the roof onto rusting steel pillars and concrete walls covered in graffiti.

  The pressure from the sound system makes his heart contract in his chest. Zack recognizes the track, a new one by Avicii or one of the other stadium DJs.

  He tosses his sweatshirt onto a chair and heads out onto the dance floor in jeans and T-shirt. Most of the others look like they’re a few years younger than him. Many of them are shut off from their surroundings, others high on more than just the music.

  He needs to be here.

  Wants to disappear into dance. Forget who he is and what he’s done tonight.

  And all the other nights.

  He looks around, trying to get some idea of who might be selling. They aren’t usually difficult to pick out. Always more in control than everyone else. Careful to keep an eye on what’s going on around them, alert to discreet signals from potential buyers. Businessmen with the dance floor as their sales area.

  He feels a gentle touch against the top of his arm. Dark hair with the shimmer of a black diamond sweeps past his eyes and he sees beads of sweat on a suntanned neck before she turns toward him and he disappears into a pair of eyes that have a soft yet radiant blue color. Her cheekbones look like they’ve been chiseled by a master craftsman, they seem to reflect all the beauty of the world. Her nose is straight and her lips are a perfect brushstroke—the two halves meet in a heart shape below her nose.

  She smiles at him, a barely perceptible smile through closed lips.

  He recognizes her now.

  She turns her back on him, but goes on dancing close to him. Beneath her sparkling green sleeveless top he can see her bare waist, and beneath that a thin, ankle-length summer skirt in an Oriental pattern. The fabric hugs her figure, and she moves in a way that makes Zack believe that gravity can be defied.

  She dances a few steps farther away from him, then turns and looks him in the eye.

  He remembers seeing her in a picture in a newspaper not all that long ago. She’s the heir to some sort of fortune. But he can’t remember which family.

  Those eyes.

  For a brief moment he thinks he’s staring into himself, as if she already knows more about him than he himself will ever know.

  He dances closer. Their bodies touch. Hip meets hip. He looks into her eyes for a long time, and she doesn’t look away.

  The look goes on and on and on.

  I’m not going to look away first.

  But in the end he does.

  He feels like holding out his hand to touch her cheek, her hair, her movements, and hearing the voice he’s never heard.

  He stands still.

  Shuts his eyes.

  When he turns around again she’s gone. He looks around the room but can’t see her anywhere.

  Unobtainable.

  He feels a firm hand on his shoulder. He knows whom it belongs to before even turning round.

  Abdula.

  Their hands meet in the air.

  In a nondescript toilet cubicle they snort cocaine through pink straws. Open the door and go out and feel the heavy club music receive them with open arms.

  35

  THE HOTEL Diplomat on Strandvägen, just before nine o’clock on Wednesday morning. Cell phone conversations in English, the Financial Times and iPad minis next to coffee cups on the breakfast tables. Flour dust from freshly baked bread. Muted conversations between suited colleagues sitting on armchairs, and an atmosphere of self-proclaimed importance over the whole place.

  Zack is fresh from the shower. He’s changed into a clean pair of jeans and a black T-shirt with a low-cut neck. He hasn’t slept a wink since his visit to the club in Sundbyberg. The cocaine is keeping him awake,
but he feels sick, the world has shrunk to a narrow tunnel in front of his eyes, and a headache has settled like a band of lead around his head.

  He’s a few minutes early. The maître d’, a neatly made-up woman in her midthirties, looks askance at him. He wonders if she can see any traces of the night in his face, or if she just doesn’t like the way he’s dressed.

  She shows him to a table in a distant corner, passing a mirror on one of the wall pillars—Zack doesn’t think he looks too bad. He’s had worse days.

  The smart businesswomen make him think of the woman he was dancing with a few hours earlier; she probably dresses like that during the day, the way she was in the newspaper article he saw her in. What was it she had inherited? Or was she just the heir apparent? He tries once again to place her, but gives up.

  He slumps into the soft armchair and sees her before him. Her face, her body.

  Her black, diamond-shimmering hair.

  Those eyes, which could have been his own. He can’t quite make sense of the feelings she arouses in him. Surprise, confusion, the beginnings of infatuation? Like the poet Petrarch, who saw his Laura once and spent the rest of his life writing about her.

  Then he sees Mera’s face.

  What am I doing?

  Who do I think I am?

  He starts to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and rather nauseous.

  Someone laughs at a nearby table. He turns and sees a middle-aged man cast a quick glance at him as he says something inaudible to the red-haired woman opposite him. She giggles quietly and tries to turn her head discreetly in his direction without him noticing. But it’s not just them. Zack looks around at the other tables. All of the smart clientele are sneaking glances at him. He’s the one they’re all whispering about. He’s the one they’re laughing and shaking their heads at.

  The laughter and chatter are getting louder and louder. He can’t bear it any longer, he has to get out of there. Just as he’s getting up from his chair he sees Fredrik Bylund walk into the hotel in jeans, a creased shirt, and jacket. Classic reporter’s uniform.

  Bylund catches sight of him and Zack forces himself to raise his hand in greeting.

  Too late. Damn it.

  He sits down heavily in his chair again.

  Pull yourself together now. Focus.

  Bylund makes his way through the breakfast room without waiting for a member of staff to show him the way.

  “Zack! Okay?”

  His handshake is firm, his voice bright. But his face is etched in small wrinkles, as if he were considerably older than his twenty-seven years. He’s got big bags under his alert eyes, and he’s skinny, with sunken cheeks and sharp shoulders. He looks as if he neglects himself the way that plenty of men and women who work long hours do.

  Or does he lead the same sort of life as me?

  Bylund goes off and gets some breakfast before sitting down opposite Zack.

  “Mmh, good coffee,” he says, and stuffs half a croissant in his mouth, with all the hunger of a starving animal.

  Zack couldn’t keep anything down. He feels even more sick from watching Bylund stuff his face.

  Bylund’s cell buzzes. He sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls it out in a fraction of a second. Zack tries to swallow his nausea and notices an unusually large birthmark on the back of Bylund’s hand as he quickly reads the screen.

  “A new exclusive?” Zack asks.

  “Hardly.”

  Zack empties his cup of coffee in several gulps, and wonders whether journalists might actually be even more cynical than police officers. Bylund drains his own coffee at similar speed. They beckon over a nearby waiter with a chrome coffeepot in his hand.

  “Looks like we share an addiction,” Bylund says.

  Zack’s headache eases slightly and he feels that he rather likes this journalist. There’s something solid, honest about him, even if he does spin his stories a bit too much sometimes.

  “Seriously, though, how are you getting on?” Bylund asks once they’ve both had more coffee.

  “You know that as well as I do. After all, you write several articles each day about the hunt for the killer and all our mistakes. So what have you got going on?” Zack asks.

  “This and that. Nothing I can share right now.”

  He sounds wary now.

  “Maybe we could swap some information,” Zack suggests.

  Bylund straightens up.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Zack detects a caution in the reporter that feels out of place. Fear, almost. As if he were sitting there with dynamite in his lap, afraid it might explode with the slightest movement.

  “You know something,” Zack says.

  “I can’t let you have it. Sorry.”

  “Is it anything to do with the Turkish mafia?”

  Bylund raises his eyebrows.

  “No,” he replies.

  A little too quickly.

  “What? Tell me more,” he adds.

  Zack tries to think. What can he say, and what can’t he? And how much does Bylund actually know? Never underestimate an experienced journalist.

  He sits back heavily, suddenly exhausted. He can almost feel the last of the cocaine leaving his system, as if it were the last drops of fuel in a stuttering engine.

  He tries to drink more coffee, but its bitterness catches in his throat.

  “That’s just a sideline. I can’t say more than that.”

  “Seems like we’re both a bit too cagey today for this to be particularly worthwhile.”

  Bylund stands up.

  “I need to get going.”

  Zack looks at the time.

  “Me too.”

  Bylund stands where he is for a few moments, looking down at Zack.

  “Maybe the two of us could help each other. Soon. Very soon. But for God’s sake, make sure you get some sleep. You look like you’ve snorted a whole mountain of coke just to get yourself here.”

  36

  PAW HTOO’S wrists ache from the previous day’s twelve-hour shift. She rubbed Tiger Balm into them before she went to bed, but it hasn’t helped. Every muscle aches, but her foot is the worst.

  She takes the escalator up to Sergels Torg, limping as she crosses Klarabergsgatan and heads west. She see the perfume in the window of Åhléns, then the handbags and clothes. She’s nineteen years old and there are so many things she would like to buy. But her money goes to her family in Mae La. To Mom, Dad, Grandma, and all the brothers and sisters who never know if there’s going to be food on the table the next day or not.

  She lives with a number of other women in an apartment in Husby, ten of them in a small three-room flat.

  She’s been here just over a year now, and is going to be allowed home in October, so they say.

  Almost three months. An eternity. But she has to find the energy from somewhere. Has to bear it.

  For her family’s sake.

  It’s a little easier now. Sometimes she manages to take herself mentally to a different place while it’s going on, and the new mama-san who has taken over the running of the parlor isn’t as untrustworthy as the last one. Paw Htoo is allowed to keep half of what she earns from the extra services, and thirty percent for massages. And every third massage is off the books, which means that she gets more money.

  A Romanian woman is sitting cross-legged on the pavement, rattling a paper cup. She reaches out a beseeching hand to Paw Htoo, who feels a pang of guilt for having just dreamed of buying luxury products.

  In this woman’s eyes I’m well off, she thinks. But back home I could be the one sitting there begging, being spat at by others.

  She turns into Klara Norra Kyrkogata, crosses Mäster Samuelsgatan, and sees the Thai flag wave gently in the breeze outside the door. The flag is heavy from the night’s rain, and looks heavy, almost sorrowful.

  She pushes the door handle down.

  Unlocked.

  They’re very quiet.

  “Hello?”

  They were proba
bly partying last night, she thinks.

  They do that sometimes, when the homesickness gets too much and they need help relaxing after their long shifts. Dreaming themselves back home again, away from all the kneading of fat backs, and the tugging on stiff, smelly penises.

  Paw Htoo has an idea. She’s going to creep up to the door, yank it open, and shout at them with a deep voice, pretending to be Mama-san.

  That will get them moving.

  She smiles to herself as she tiptoes silently across the floor.

  She takes hold of the handle, pushes the door open, and screams.

  Not because she wants to.

  But because of the sight that greets her.

  PART III

  * * *

  About how a friend is always a friend,

  A doomed king’s vain prayers,

  And the women’s journey toward eternal light.

  37

  THE DARK clouds have moved away to the west and the morning sun is busy clearing away the last traces of the night’s rain.

  But Klara Norra Kyrkogata is still in shadow. There are puddles on the ground, and the water splashes as yet another police car turns into the narrow street. The driver blows his horn to make the crowd of curious onlookers move, then pulls up immediately in front of the cordon.

  “Almost identical to the murders in Hallonbergen,” Douglas tells Deniz. “The only difference is that these two seem to have been taken by surprise in their sleep, thank God.”

  Koltberg is standing outside an open door, a white coat over his navy blue suit. He is gesticulating wildly at a cop, calling him a useless incompetent. The cop stands there rather forlornly with two evidence bags in one hand. One contains a crumpled red-and-white cigarette packet, the other a used condom wrapper.

  Zack looks at him over Douglas’s shoulder. He wonders if Koltberg is actually capable of seeing people as anything but objects for examination.

  Zack is still breathing hard as a result of the sight he has just seen inside the massage parlor. One of his hands is shaking, but Koltberg not only seems unconcerned, but also appears unable to understand that other people might be upset by the sight.