She’s sitting on a massage table to the left of the door. Her round face is framed by a short bob, tears are streaming down it, and she’s dressed in the same sort of shimmering kimono as her colleague.
So young. No more than a teenager.
She looks at Zack.
Save me, her eyes are screaming.
I’m going to save you, he thinks. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of this.
He looks at Westberg again. His eyes are glinting with excitement. It’s as if he knows everything is over, but has decided to enjoy it. Then something else crosses his eyes.
A bitterness behind his hatred, the feeling that might perhaps be the cause of it.
A loneliness that can only be sated by misdirected desire.
He keeps moving the pistol between Zack and Deniz.
“I’m not going alone,” he says, as if in response to Zack’s thoughts. “Today I’m going to take all the fucking pigs with me.”
55
FOR SOME reason Zack finds himself thinking of chess. A deadly game where he’s one of five remaining pieces on the board.
You have to dare to be provocative, but without taking too great a risk. One wrong move and it can all be over.
He glances quickly around the room. A few shelves holding massage oils and neatly folded towels. A cane chair. A small table with some gossip magazines on it.
Nothing he can use.
His eyes settle on a red curtain behind Westberg. He wonders what it’s hiding. The entrance to another room? Or a corridor, like in Sukayana Prikon’s massage parlor at Hornstull?
The woman who’s got Westberg’s arm around her neck starts shouting loudly in Burmese. It sounds like, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,” and Westberg tightens his grip of her neck and yells:
“Shut up, bitch!”
She falls silent and her brown eyes open wide as she struggles for air.
The other woman makes to get off the massage table to help her, but Westberg points the pistol toward her:
“Sit down, whore!”
She sits back down.
She starts hyperventilating, and Zack can also hear a strained hiss as the woman in Westberg’s grip finally manages to breathe some air through her constricted windpipe.
“Sten, it’s over now,” Zack says calmly. “Reinforcements are on their way, if they aren’t already here.”
But it’s as if he isn’t listening.
He’s still pointing the pistol at them.
“Pigs, pigs, pigs. I’m not going to let you stand in my way.”
“Let them go, Sten,” Zack says. “My partner and I are the pigs, not them.”
Westberg is breathing hard, his mouth open. Every sinew in his body is tense, to the point of bursting, and the woman he’s got in a stranglehold is gasping for each breath.
“Everyone in here is going to die, pigs and whores alike,” he screams.
His outstretched right hand is trembling and the barrel of the Beretta is bobbing up and down in the air with quick, jerky movements.
Zack wishes he could send him flying into the wall with a kick or a blow of his baton, but they’re almost ten feet apart. He can’t get to him quickly enough.
Westberg would shoot him. Or the woman. Or both of them.
He aims the pistol at her head again. Presses it hard against her temple. She shuts her eyes and starts to shake and cry.
“Let’s get started then,” Westberg says.
“Sten . . .” Zack says, but he just smiles and pulls the trigger.
The noise makes Zack put his hands in front of his face, but Westberg just laughs, and when Zack looks up again he sees that the woman is still alive. Westberg fired the pistol next to her head.
“That scared you, pigs!” he says.
He presses the pistol even harder against her temple and she grimaces, her face twitching.
Zack detects a slight movement behind Westberg.
The curtain.
There’s someone there.
A hand at the edge of the fabric. An eye peering out. The curtain is pulled slowly and silently aside.
Zack tries not to look, he doesn’t want Westberg to notice where he’s looking. He focuses on the woman on the massage table instead. She’s still staring at Westberg and her colleague, and doesn’t seem to have noticed what’s happening behind them.
“Well, that’s enough messing about,” Westberg says. “It’s high time we put an end to this business.”
A black-clad arm and shoulder become visible behind the curtain. A leg. Someone slipping into the room sideways.
Abdula.
Westberg’s finger is on the trigger. As if in slow motion, Zack watches it slowly squeeze tighter. Soon the critical point will be reached.
Abdula is fully visible now.
It’s too late, Zack thinks. Far too late.
Abdula’s clenched fist strikes Westberg on the temple with immense force. He screams with pain and surprise and lets go of the woman as he stumbles to the side, waving his arms to keep his balance. But he’s still holding the pistol, and spins around as Abdula throws himself at him from one side, while Zack moves in on the other.
A shot goes off and Abdula’s body jerks in the air. He falls just as Zack’s kick hits Westberg’s hand.
The pistol flies into the wall and bounces onto the floor right in front of Westberg.
Zack can hear his own breathing and his pulse ringing in his ears.
Time seems to slow down again, and from the corner of his eye he sees the two Burmese women hugging each other as they sink to their knees, screaming out all their pent-up mortal dread, he sees Deniz finally realize she can take her hands down from behind her head, he sees Abdula lying far too still, and he sees Westberg bend down toward his own weapon.
Zack leaps forward to shove him aside, but realizes he isn’t going to make it in time.
Two more shots, but with a different sound.
A Sig Sauer.
Time speeds up again.
Blood splatters across Westberg’s chest. He falls to his knees, a look of total shock on his face.
Zack turns around and sees his boss in the doorway next to Deniz.
Douglas Juste.
In a suit.
With his service pistol in his hand.
He fires again.
And again.
Westberg’s body jerks with each shot. He falls sideways and lies motionless. His eyes stare up at them sightlessly.
The women stop screaming, but they go on hugging each other and gasping for breath as they stare at the suited man in the doorway.
A good person?
Or another sadist?
Zack crouches down beside Abdula. In the weak light he can’t see any blood on his long-sleeved black T-shirt.
Where was he hit? Is he alive?
“He wasn’t armed,” Deniz yells somewhere behind him. “He wasn’t armed!”
“Of course he was,” Douglas says calmly, pulling on a plastic glove. Then he picks the pistol up off the floor, goes over to Westberg, and presses it into his hand.
Zack turns toward Douglas.
What’s he doing?
He sees Deniz slowly shaking her head, as if she can’t believe her eyes, but then he hears Abdula cough and turns his attention to him again. Abdula is clutching the left side of his stomach, and when Zack pulls his hand away and pulls his top up he sees blood gushing out of his gut.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Zack quickly snatches up a scrap of cloth from the floor, screws it into a ball, and presses it against the wound as he takes out his phone and dials Control.
“Äspholmsvagen, Skärholmen. Several people shot. Some fatalities. At least one seriously injured. Shot in the gut. Ambulance required IMMEDIATELY!”
He hangs up.
His other hand is already wet with Abdula’s warm blood.
Deniz checks Westberg’s pulse. His face has already set in a grimace, and it looks almost as if he’s
smirking, as if he’s happy with the devastation he’s caused. Zack feels like cutting that smirk off with a blunt knife.
Then everything happens all at once. A powerful blast, the violent shaking of the floor and walls, windowpanes shattering, a rain of glass flying through the air and falling on the two dead police officers in the lobby.
What the hell . . . ?
Zack hears screaming out in the street and realizes that there’s been an explosion.
Have Yildizyeli gone on the attack?
Deniz runs out, her pistol drawn.
Zack lets go of the scrap of fabric and puts Abdula’s hand on top of the wound instead.
“Keep pressing,” he says, but by the time Abdula groans something inaudible in reply, Zack has already left the room and run out into the street, pistol at the ready.
Black smoke is billowing from Westberg’s Mercedes, or rather what’s left of it. The entire roof has blown off and is lying in the road several yards away. All the windows have been blown out, and the inside of the car is ablaze with hot orange flames.
An elderly couple are sitting on the pavement on the other side of the street, blood dripping from their hands and faces.
Deniz runs over to them, but Zack remains where he is, staring at the car and trying to understand what’s happened.
He can hear ambulance sirens in the distance as the thick smoke makes him cough.
The Turks, he thinks. I was right.
But why has the bomb only just gone off?
Because it was on a timer.
Zack checks the time. 11:53. The bomb must have gone off at about 11:50. What had Westberg’s secretary at Merkantus said? Something about a meeting with a foreign client?
He was going to meet the Turks.
And their plan was for him to be blown up on the way there.
Then Westberg changed his plans.
But even if Sirpa hadn’t managed to track him down, he would probably still have been sitting in his car at the time, on his way to Arlanda Airport after two more murders. Then he’d have been blown up on his way to Terminal 5 instead.
His number was up today, one way or the other.
Two bright yellow ambulances swing into the street, sirens blaring, and Zack runs back in to Abdula.
* * *
IN THE intensive care unit of Södermalm Hospital a monitor begins to bleep.
A doctor with a goatee looks from the screen on the monitor to the patient’s face, back and forth, as if he were watching a tennis match.
He sees her move her head slightly. Blink cautiously a few times, and twitch.
Then Sukayana Prikon opens her eyes.
56
THE SMOKE from the fire has made its way into the massage room. Abdula is coughing from deep in his lungs, his face contorting in pain. A thin trickle of blood is seeping from his mouth.
Zack turns toward the door, wants to shout at someone to get the paramedics to hurry up. But there’s no one there.
He wipes the blood from the corner of his friend’s mouth. Abdula is staring up at the ceiling, and seems to be trying to stay in the room, and he looks improbably small lying there on the floor.
As if he were shrinking as the life runs out of him.
“Hang on, my friend,” Zack whispers. “Just hang on. They’ll be here any minute.”
He wants to scream, cry, but that will have to wait.
He needs to focus on saving Abdula now.
Then he’ll have his revenge.
Take down the bastards who are responsible for this.
Abdula is breathing more calmly again after his fit of coughing, but the smoke is still billowing in, a scratchy smoke that smells of burned plastic, and Zack is worried Abdula is going to start coughing again.
Two paramedics in green-and-yellow outfits come into the room. They close the door behind them and Zack stands up.
“He’s been shot in the gut. I’ve put a makeshift compress on the wound, but he’s coughing up blood.”
The paramedics lean over Abdula. One gently lifts the compress and inspects the wound.
“You’ve done a good job,” he says to Zack. “But he needs to get to a hospital at once.”
* * *
OUT IN the street the fire brigade have just arrived, but the car is still burning and black smoke is pluming up from the wreck. The heat hits Zack’s face.
A crowd of curious onlookers has gathered outside the police cordon. People holding handkerchiefs over their mouths, young people filming the fire on their cells. Agitated voices in a number of different languages. Women in niqabs, short men in shabby suits. Children staring and pointing, at the fire, at the flashing blue lights, the police officers, and the fire brigade.
Zack holds the door open as they wheel out the gurney with Abdula on it. He looks out at the street, at the burning car, and thinks that it looks more like Aleppo in Syria than a Swedish suburb.
A short way along the street Douglas is talking on his cell, and giving out orders to three uniformed police officers.
How could he have got here so quickly?
Douglas ends his call. He seems to see straight into Zack’s head and comes over to him.
“I know what you’re thinking. Westberg was an old acquaintance from my days at boarding school in Sigtuna. We met up occasionally. Had a drink or two. He called me after you chased him out at that garage. Wondered what the hell we were playing at. Wanted me to see to it that he was left in peace. He’s always been a tough bastard, but last time we met I got a feeling that he was crossing the line. You have to believe me, Zack. I knew nothing about his sadistic side, or how perverted and desperate he was.”
“You got here quickly.”
“Sirpa told me what she’d found out, and that you’d set off after Westberg.”
Zack looks at his boss. At his face, which is showing not the slightest sign of sorrow or regret. He’s just shot an old schoolmate and seems to feel nothing.
“I had to shoot him,” Douglas says. “I thought he was armed. It was kill or be killed.”
Then Zack realizes that Abdula’s gurney is about to be rolled into the ambulance and runs after it, calling to the paramedics to wait.
They stop at once and Zack reaches the gurney. He leans over Abdula and strokes his forehead, but Abdula’s eyes are closed. He can’t see him.
But maybe he can sense that I’m here.
You’ve got to make it, he thinks. You’ve got to.
Then they push the gurney inside, the doors close, and the ambulance sets off.
Zack sits down on the pavement, resting his arms on his knees, and leans his head on his hands.
He shuts his eyes and listens to the sounds and voices around him. Water spraying from hoses, people shouting, excited voices in several languages.
He barely notices the woman who sits down next to him and puts an arm around his shoulders.
She holds him tight, and he leans his head against her chest and recognizes the faint smell of perfume.
Deniz.
He keeps his eyes closed and stays in her embrace. Takes several deep breaths and realizes that it isn’t over yet. They still don’t know who mutilated Sukayana Prikon, and they have no idea where the house in the forest is.
Where are Ösgür Thrakya and his men hiding? And where’s Fredrik Bylund?
Zack was expecting the find the journalist here. Possibly dead. But now more police patrols have checked the area, and there’s no sign of another body. So what’s happened to him?
Have the Turks got him? That almost has to be the explanation.
“Was it Abdula you were trying to contact when we were on our way here?” Deniz asks.
Deniz has met Abdula before, albeit very briefly. She recognizes a criminal when she sees one, and Zack knows she has trouble understanding his choice of friends. But he also knows that she understand the value of friendship.
“Yes. He lives around here. I just thought he might be able to take a look and let us know the sit
uation.”
“Don’t you want to go to the hospital?”
“I’ll go a bit later. It feels like we aren’t done here yet.”
“Do you feel up to coming with me to question the women from the massage parlor?”
“Yes.”
She stands up, then helps him to his feet. He can’t help thinking how exhausted she looks, and feels like giving her a hug, to show her he cares about how she’s feeling.
But there’s no time for that now.
The Burmese women are sitting in the back of a patrol car. Not the best place to conduct an interview, Zack thinks as he opens the driver’s door and sinks onto the seat.
Deniz gets in the passenger seat. She turns around and tries to smile at the women. One has long, glossy hair tied up in a ponytail that hangs over one shoulder. She seems to be in her twenties, and still has red marks on her neck from where Westberg was holding her.
The younger woman is holding her friend’s hand, and looks up at Deniz and Zack with frightened eyes.
“How are you?” Deniz asks.
They shrug their shoulders.
“Do you understand Swedish?”
“English is better,” the woman with the ponytail says.
“What are your names?” Deniz asks in English.
“My name is Nang Mon, and this is Ah Noh,” she says.
Zack recognizes the names from his conversation with Sirpa. Two of the eight women who tried to blackmail Westberg.
The only two who’ve survived.
“We’ll make sure you get away from here shortly, and we’ll help you to contact your families, but first we need to ask you some questions. Is that okay?”
“Yes,” Nang Mon says.
“Are you from Burma?”
“Yes. But we lived as refugees on the Thai side of the border after our village was burned down. We belong to the Kachin tribe, we’ve been persecuted by the military for many years.”
Yet another persecuted minority, Zack thinks. How many can there be?
“Tell us about Sten Westberg,” Deniz says. “The man who was holding you when we arrived.”
“He is a bad man.”
“In what way?”
Nang Mon turns her face away and looks out through the side window.
Zack Page 33
