Zack

by Mons Kallentoft

  Something comes flying through the air at high speed, over the fence. Something black and white.

  It hits the yellow door with a thud and immediately two more shots go off. Someone screams, and Zack looks up and sees that the jogger with the headphones has fallen. She’s lying completely exposed outside the open gate, clutching one arm and slowly rocking back and forth.

  Zack rushes up to her, takes hold of her good arm, and pulls her with him.

  She yelps with pain, and another shot goes off, and he hears another scream, farther away this time.

  “He’s hit. He’s been hit!”

  One of the female officers shouting.

  Who’s been hit? Theodor? The boy with the football?

  Zack tugs the young woman’s arm harder. Her headphones have fallen out, and are dragging on the ground behind her. Zack hears the chorus of an old Nirvana song as he pulls her behind a thorny hedge. He kneels down beside her and examines her arm, while yelling as loudly as he can:

  “Maria, are you and Theodor okay?”

  No answer.

  He looks up and tries to get eye contact with Deniz. She’s on her knees behind the lilac hedge, with her pistol aimed at the cottage. She’s got her coms radio in the other hand, and he can see her talking into it. Good, he thinks. Getting a fix on the situation.

  Zack tucks his pistol into his waistband and turns the woman’s bleeding arm over. Another hole there.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Linnea.”

  “Okay, Linnea. The bullet’s gone right through. You’re going to be fine. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  Sobbing, she shakes her head.

  Zack tears off a large piece off his own T-shirt and ties it tightly around her arm.

  Linnea groans with pain, and Zack can hear Deniz’s voice from over by the hedge.

  “I’ve called for backup and an ambulance. Are you okay, Zack?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how the others are doing.”

  He looks back at Linnea again.

  “We need to move, get you away from danger. Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”

  He runs another ten yards with her, then he leaves her behind a large tree.

  “Just stay here, and try to keep your arm up. An ambulance is on its way.”

  He runs back toward the cottage at a crouch. When he gets close to the fence he stops behind a hedge and calls to the female officer again:

  “How are you doing?”

  Her voice is weak when she finally answers:

  “Theodor’s dead. He’s not breathing.”

  Zack’s field of vision contracts.

  Here and now are the only things that matter.

  His whole body is action now, muscles moving toward a single goal, set free from all thought.

  “Deniz, cover me!” he shouts and leaps over the fence. He hears a whining sound close to his ear while he’s in the air, and as he lands and rolls, over his shoulder he hears Deniz fire back several times. He reaches the wall of the cottage and stands up with his pistol drawn. More shots are fired through the window and Zack yanks the door open and fires two low shots toward where the shooter must be.

  A man screams.

  The floor rocks when he collapses. Something bounces across the wooden floorboards.

  Metal?

  A hand grenade?

  Zack takes a chance that it’s the pistol and rushes into the single room of the cottage. A man in a short-sleeved check shirt and dark green shorts is lying curled up on the filthy wooden floor with his hands over his crotch.

  No grenade.

  The man’s pistol has slid under the kitchen table.

  Zack ducks beneath the window and reaches under the table to pick up the gun. Then he stands up against the wall, as close to the window as he dares, and yells:

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  And finally everything goes quiet.

  The man on the floor looks up at him, but says nothing. He just lies there, taking deep, rattling breaths.

  It’s Ingvar Stefansson. Skinny, short hair. Considerably less hair that on his passport photograph, but it’s definitely him.

  Zack looks around the room. A kitchen sofa, a table covered with a stained, pale blue cloth, and two simple chairs. A few shelves on the walls. An embroidered picture in a frame. That’s all. There’s no second door, no large piece of furniture to hide behind.

  “Are you alone here?” Zack asks.

  The man nods, still pressing his hands to his groin.

  A dark stain is slowly spreading across his shorts, and Zack wonders if he managed to shoot him in his familly jewels.

  “Put your hands behind your head!” Zack says. “I need to look at your injury.”

  Stefansson reluctantly lets go, and only then does Zack see the blood pumping out of his thigh.

  The large aorta. He’s dying.

  He hears footsteps behind him and turns to see Deniz in the doorway.

  “He needs urgent medical attention. Can you call the ambulance and tell them he’s been hit in the aorta on the left side of his groin?”

  She nods.

  Zack puts the pistol down out of reach, then kneels beside Stefansson. The pool of blood is starting to spread across the floor and his breathing is getting weaker.

  Zack pulls off the thin tablecloth, rolls it into a ball, and presses it hard against Stefansson’s groin. It turns dark red almost instantly.

  “I’ve got nothing to do with the murders,” Ingvar Stefansson says.

  So he knows, Zack says. Peter Karlson must have warned him.

  “So why were you shooting at us?”

  Ingvar Stefansson smiles weakly. A friendly smile.

  “You have to make a stand. I’m the thin red line.”

  His breathing is even weaker now. His face is pale, his eyes are becoming dull, and Zack can see the life slowly running out of him. But he goes on talking:

  “There’s a war going on in this country. A race war. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Stefansson takes one arm from his head and fumbles for Zack’s hands as they press the cloth to his crotch. He feels across the back of Zack’s right hand with his fingers, and Zack lets go of the bloody rag and lets him hold his hand.

  No one should have to die alone.

  Stefansson looks at Zack, and there’s a strange conviction in his eyes. The look of someone who thinks he’s found the answer.

  He takes one last breath, then peace settles across his unshaven face.

  44

  POLICE VEHICLES and ambulances are squeezed into the narrow footpaths around the allotments. Dense crowds have gathered behind the cordons, and up in the trees curious bystanders are perched next to professional photographers with huge telephoto lenses. Aftonbladet and Expressen are both broadcasting live on their websites.

  “The idyllic setting of the allotment cottages of Tantolunden today became the scene of a blood-soaked tragedy when two people were shot by a man armed with a pistol,” Aftonbladet’s reporter is saying, with ill-concealed excitement in his voice. “At least two people were killed in the exchange of fire, and another injured. According to Aftonbladet’s sources, those who died are a policeman and the man who is suspected of shooting and killing six people in the past few days. The hunt for Stockholm’s worst mass murderer in modern times may well be over.”

  Within the cordon that atmosphere is considerably more subdued. The raw jokes and noisy laughter that often characterize crime scenes, even where the most brutal crimes have been committed, are here replaced by quiet voices.

  Zack looks around his colleagues. Somber expressions, anger, and sorrow in their gestures.

  Was this what it was like when Mom was killed?

  He’s never been involved when a fellow officer has been killed before. But he knows that the feelings in the air are about more than a desire for revenge and a democratic society’s need to strike back hard at anyone who attacks the upholders of the law.
r />   It’s about the awareness that each of them feels at times like this.

  The sense of staring at your own mortality.

  No one can bear to go around the whole time thinking that life could end at any moment. But when a colleague gets killed on active duty that awareness comes back with a vengeance. The awareness that it could end anytime. Even when you’re only on a routine job.

  Like Theodor, Zack thinks, looking at the yellow body bag.

  And now he’s dead. A father with young kids. For no good reason. Hit in the forehead by a stray bullet from an idiot who was aiming at something else. An idiot who didn’t even know that Theodor Larsson existed.

  Blood.

  Grass.

  The scent of summer blossom.

  A dead man in the midst of all this greenery.

  Zack’s legs go weak and he sits down on the ground. He rests his head on his knees and he can hear his own breathing clearly, just like he did that night so long ago. The night when he looked straight up at the stars and didn’t dare look away. The night when he wished he could drift off into space and forget everything.

  And then footsteps. Getting closer.

  Shoes on grass.

  Closer and closer.

  A hand on his shoulder.

  “Zack, how are you doing?”

  He lifts his head quickly and stares at Douglas, trying to work out what’s real and what isn’t.

  Douglas crouches down.

  “Do you feel up to talking?”

  “Sure,” Zack says, coming back to the present as he slowly stands up. “Here, or what?”

  “No, let’s go to the back of the cottage. It’s quieter there.”

  They walk into the garden, past the broken bucket full of garden tools, and see an inquisitive old man stick his head up above his hedge as he pretends to rake the grass.

  Douglas turns his back on the man and looks at Zack.

  “I thought you might want to know what’s likely to happen.”

  “That I’m going to be suspended.”

  “Probably, yes. At least temporarily. You have, directly or indirectly, been the cause of three deaths in three days. That’s probably some sort of record in the history of the Swedish police.”

  Douglas’s tone of voice hardens.

  “You’re going to be thoroughly investigated. And with every justification. If we weren’t in the middle of a murder investigation, I’d personally see to it that you ended up filing reports for six months.”

  Douglas takes a step closer and practically hisses:

  “Whatever it is you’ve been getting up to in your free time, you need to put a stop to it. You’re barely holding it together, and I’m starting to have serious doubts about your judgment. I need you in the group, but there are limits. The bodies are piling up around you and you’re exposing yourself and—even worse—your colleagues to danger.”

  Douglas stares at Zack, and Zack looks down at the ground.

  Part of him wants to shout back that it wasn’t his fault if people fell off roofs or got hit by stray bullets, but he keeps his mouth shut.

  Douglas is right.

  He’s far too close to some sort of ultimate boundary, and maybe he would have taken different decisions if he’d been himself. Decisions that could have saved lives.

  The drugs are turning me into what I’m supposed to be fighting, he thinks briefly, but drops the thought at once.

  “We need you,” Douglas goes on. “But we need you in decent condition. This is just getting worse and worse.”

  Zack nods but doesn’t meet his gaze.

  “Can you handle a quick run-through?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Come with me.”

  They leave the little garden and Douglas waves Deniz over from where she’s talking to Johan and Jennie, the two cops she positioned at the rear of the cottage before the shooting started.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go and sit in the command vehicle.”

  They open the van’s sliding door and are met by a smell of tannic acid and summer sweat. They sit there in silence for a while, just breathing. None of them really feels like talking.

  “We could have called in the rapid response unit,” Deniz finally says. “We even talked about it. Why didn’t we make sure we were prepared for every eventuality?”

  “There was no good reason to call them in. You were going to bring in someone with no criminal record for questioning. Deniz, listen to me: no one could have predicted this. No one,” Douglas says.

  Deniz is staring at the seat in front of her, and Zack can see that she’s trying to deal with the worst moment of her career so far. She has just led an operation in which a fellow officer was killed, along with one other person.

  “I can get hold of some psychologists. You need debriefing.”

  “We need to solve this case,” Deniz says.

  “Don’t mention psychologists again,” Zack says irritably.

  Douglas meets their replies with a dubious look, but drops the subject.

  “Well, today Ingvar Stefansson gave us the clearest possible evidence that he was capable of killing other people,” he goes on instead. “That probably came as a surprise to all of us. Do you believe he was the man who killed the masseuses?”

  “He told me he didn’t do it,” Zack says. “Why would he lie when he knew he was dying?”

  “To protect someone else. Maybe he knew the murderer and wanted us to stop looking for him,” Douglas says.

  “In which case surely he would have confessed to the killings himself?” Zack counters.

  “Maybe he wasn’t involved at all,” Deniz says. “Maybe the whole of this line of inquiry is a dead end. Which means . . .”

  She swallows hard before going on:

  “. . . that Theodor’s death was totally fucking pointless.”

  There’s a knock on the door of the van. Douglas opens it.

  Koltberg, looking as smug as ever. He’s wearing an almost unbelievably crisply pressed blue linen suit.

  He holds up a plastic bag containing Ingvar Stefansson’s pistol.

  “An old Luger,” he says. “There’s no similarity at all between this relic and the Beretta that the women were shot with. There were no other weapons in the cottage, but we have found a Samsung cell and a laptop. They’ll be going straight off to Forensics.”

  “Good work,” Douglas says.

  Koltberg nods. A sort of yes, I know nod.

  He looks at Deniz and Zack with what looks almost like sympathy.

  “Just solve this, for God’s sake,” he says. “There are so many bodies it’s starting to look like a Greek tragedy.”

  He leaves the door open as he walks off, and Zack looks out at their surroundings.

  So many journalists. They’re everywhere. Their newsrooms must all be deserted, he thinks. But no Bylund in sight so far. What could he be working on that’s more important than this?

  A helicopter circles the welding-arc blue sky. Zack leans out and looks up. Presumably one of the media companies trying to get some good aerial shots of the scene of the drama.

  “Let’s suppose Stefansson didn’t shoot those six women,” Douglas says. “Where do we go from here?”

  “I’ve got something I want to look into,” Zack says. “Just a short conversation.”

  “Who with?” Deniz asks.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Do you really think this is the time for secrets?”

  “Calm down,” Douglas says. “I’m sure Zack has his reasons. You and I can work out our main priorities in the meantime.”

  Zack gets out of the van. Out into the chaos. He steps over the fence into the allotment and finds a quiet corner by one wall of the cottage.

  Bylund answers after the first ring.

  “Are you on holiday, or at death’s door?” Zack asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Four new deaths in two days, and no sign of you.”

  “We’ve g
ot other people there.”

  “As if that would stop you.”

  Silence on the line. Then Bylund says, very carefully, as though he were weighing his words:

  “I’ve got other things to do.”

  “Come on. What sort of information are you sitting on? How many more people have to die?”

  Zack can hear Bylund’s breathing down the phone. Then he says:

  “I haven’t got anything.”

  “Tell me. I’m asking you seriously. There’s a risk that more people will be murdered, and that has to be more important that a few juicy headlines in Expressen, for fuck’s sake.”

  Silence.

  “How many more people have to die?” Zack repeats. “You know something, and your silence is making you complicit in what’s going on.”

  Zack can almost hear Bylund wrestling with his conscience on the other end of the line. Then he says:

  “You’re out on very thin ice, Zack. Be careful.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who should be careful,” Zack says, and ends the call.

  45

  DOUGLAS IS writing something on a pad when Zack climbs into the van again.

  Deniz looks at him as he sits down.

  “Well?”

  He shakes his head.

  “It was a long shot. Which didn’t pay off.”

  Douglas stands up.

  “I need to organize the ongoing work out here, and try to sort out some sort of improvised press conference. Start thinking about which lines of inquiry you want to delve deeper into.”

  He leaves the van as two overweight police officers in suits make their way under the cordon. Åke Blixt and Gunilla Sundin, both in their sixties. They’ve seen and heard everything. Internal investigators. As popular as cholera.

  They catch sight of Douglas and set off toward him at once.

  “How are you, Douglas?” Blixt says.

  “We are where we are. We don’t believe the man in the allotment cottage was responsible for shooting the six women.”

  “No?”

  “No, but I haven’t got time to go through all the details right now.”

  “I understand. Look, we need to talk to Zack Herry and Deniz Akin.”

  “I know. But you can’t right now.”