by Eva Hudson
“The time now is just coming up to one fifteen, and we’ll be staying live with the developing story in and around Kungsholmen and the security situation at the National Museum, but right now let’s catch up with the sport…”
One fifteen. Remember that. If they’re handing over to the sport, then there couldn’t be any casualties. They’d stay with the bomb if people had died. Ingrid wondered how long it would be before reporters made it to Republik and how much of a head start the SUV had over the police. There were eyewitnesses to her abduction. It wouldn’t be long before they started to look for her. She felt the canisters inside her sleeves and hoped the head start was big enough: crooks would be easier to deal with than the cops.
They had been on the road for maybe ten or fifteen minutes when Ingrid remembered something that scared her more than the pistol digging into her shoulder: Skinny Boy had searched inside her backpack and he hadn’t pulled out the third component. Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t even seemed to be looking for it. The muscles in her jaw constricted: if they weren’t after the circuit boards, what were they after?
Transcript from Riksdag Committee Hearing 23
December 14 2015
BILUNGS: Sergeant, please describe what you found when you got to Republik.
HOLM: Of course. Well, the paramedics were already on the scene, attending to Mr Linden, who they estimated had been dead for half an hour. Blotches on the skin, that sort of thing. And that is what the witnesses told us too, that Mr Linden had resisted handing over his valuables and there had been a row with the man we now know is Aziz Abadi. No one had seen the assault, but a few people had heard Mr Linden fall and saw him hit his head. It is likely he knew very little about it. It would have been sudden, although possibly not painless.
BILUNGS: And you were the first police officer on the scene?
HOLM: No, that was Constable Larsson. And, um, I can’t remember his name, Constable…
BILUNGS: [Looks at notes] Pedersen?
HOLM: Yes, that’s it. But they had already left. Eyewitnesses, some of the hostages, had told them the direction they’d gone in—they left on foot, you already know this?
BILUNGS: Yes.
HOLM: So you already know they apprehended Abadi and the other gunman on one of the boats in the harbor.
BILUNGS: Yes, but three gunmen held up the Republik. What happened to the other man?
HOLM: Oh, him. Yes, he was arrested… we arrested him in an apartment in Husby later that day. You’d need to speak to Inspector Lundberg—have you done that?
BILUNGS: We will speak to everyone we need to.
HOLM: Oh, OK. But Lundberg will confirm, I think. He had removed the SIM cards from some of the iPhones he stole, but the GPS function still worked on the newer models, or maybe it was the older ones, I don’t know, and, so, anyway, that’s how we found him. The cash, the credit cards, the jewelry… that had all been passed on.
BILUNGS: If we could return to the café. What time did you get there?
HOLM: [Refers to notes] Ah… five past one. And the first thing I did was call for more officers. Too many witnesses for me and Gunnarsson—that’s Constable Oskar Gunnarsson—to interview on our own.
BILUNGS: How many people were there?
HOLM: [Pause] I would say around twenty, twenty-five. In addition to the four paramedics, there were fifteen people who had been part of the hold-up, and a few others who had entered the café after the gunmen had left.
BILUNGS: What did you do first?
HOLM: You must remember that I thought it unlikely that the minister had actually been taken. I had already spoken to her husband, Björn Friese. I had called him from the station.
BILUNGS: Yes, you’ve already testified to that. He told you that his wife was in a meeting in this very building, chairing [refers to notes]… the government’s preparation for the climate talks in Paris.
HOLM: Even though Republik’s was her favorite café in the neighborhood, Mr Friese thought it very unlikely, given the importance of her meeting, that the woman who had been taken was his wife. I mean, so certain that he remained completely calm.
BILUNGS: Did his certainty—
BORG: Sorry to interject, but before you continue I would like the witness to explain why her first response was to call Mr Friese and not proceed immediately to the Republik café.
BILUNGS: If you would like to answer, sergeant.
HOLM: Of course. I called Mr Friese first because my assumption was that—given his wife’s prominence, and indeed his own prominence—he would be contacted and asked for a ransom. I needed to let him know, to let his secretary know, that he should not accept any calls from anyone he did not know unless and until one of the K&R team was with him.
BORG: K&R?
HOLM: Kidnap and ransom.
BILUNGS: Are you happy for me to continue, Mr Chairman?
[BORG nods]
BILUNGS: So you call a man to tell him his wife has been kidnapped?
HOLM: Yes.
BILUNGS: You don’t visit him at his office, tell him in person?
HOLM: Normally, yes, it is the sort of news the Stockholm police would always want to give in person, but there was the bomb at the National Museum. There was no one of the right rank to go to Mr Friese’s office. And as I say, when I spoke to him, he was certain there had been a mistake.
BILUNGS: Do you think his certainty affected the decisions you made when you got to Republik’s?
HOLM: What do you mean?
BILUNGS: I am trying to ascertain if assumptions and preconceptions about what you would find when you got to the café had any bearing on the course of events in the hours and days to come.
HOLM: Well, um, [Pause] I had not yet had confirmation from colleagues at the Riksdag, sorry, here, that the minister was safe and out of harm’s way, but I went to the café knowing that someone, a woman, had been kidnapped. And when I started speaking to the witnesses—
BILUNGS: Which witnesses, sergeant?
HOLM: The patrons in the café. Those people who had had their valuables stolen—
BILUNGS: But you were not able to speak to them all, were you?
HOLM: I believe you are referring to the fact that some of the victims have never come forward. There are two people known to have been at Republik’s during the lockdown who fled before we arrived. We have not been able to trace either of them.
BILUNGS: Do you believe they were involved in the events we are discussing here today?
HOLM: I doubt it. It is more likely that they had some weed in their pocket or were wanted in connection with another offense.
BILUNGS: But you cannot rule out they were accomplices?
HOLM: I guess not, no.
BILUNGS: So, if you could please bring us to the point where you called the commissioner.
HOLM: Yes. Of course. But before I do that, it is important that you understand the café was now a crime scene. A murder scene, given what had happened to Mr Linden. It was my responsibility to preserve as much evidence as possible until the forensics teams could get there.
BILUNGS: And what did this involve?
HOLM: I made the decision to keep everyone in the back room of the café, the—
BILUNGS: This committee is now very familiar with the layout of Republik’s.
HOLM: But unfortunately, this was extremely stressful for two of the witnesses, Mrs Dens and her daughter Mrs Nyborg, and they became extremely agitated. Screaming, that sort of thing, claiming that we were attempting to imprison them. [Pause.] I now understand that this particular setting was very traumatic for them to be restricted to. Um, so, you know, I assume, about the case they brought against me and Gunnarsson?
BILUNGS: A lawsuit for psychological trauma, we believe.
HOLM: [Nods] While I do not want to minimize the distress they experienced, their accusations have been very damaging to me. For several months until their case was rejected, I was portrayed as insensitive and incompetent—
/> BILUNGS: It makes no difference to your standing before this committee.
HOLM: That is good to know.
BILUNGS: I must ask you again. What led you to call the commissioner?
HOLM: Right. Of course. So when Gunnarsson and I spoke to the witnesses who were still on the premises, they were very sure that Anna Skyberg was indeed the victim. She was a regular at Republik’s and the staff there knew her well. The woman—the suspect—had even ordered the minister’s regular poached egg. It seemed certain, no, likely, that Anna Skyberg had indeed been abducted.
BILUNGS: How likely?
HOLM: Looking back, I can see that maybe there were reasons that made it less likely—
BILUNGS: For instance?
HOLM: For instance, the clothes she was wearing. The witnesses said she looked like she had been for a run, she wasn’t wearing make-up—
BILUNGS: Hardly the attire of a government minister chairing an important meeting.
HOLM: [Nodding] But, with the unfolding incident at the museum—which, of course, we had a good view of from the waterfront outside the café—I felt there was a risk a major attack was happening. We all think of Utøya. The bomb blast was a diversion, a ploy to get the largest number of police officers in the wrong place. There was already one man dead and I thought there was a chance Anna Skyberg would not be the only member of the government to be taken hostage.
BILUNGS: That’s quite a leap, isn’t it, sergeant?
HOLM: Maybe, but I was almost right, wasn’t I?
BILUNGS: So you called the commissioner and recommended the shutdown?
HOLM: I called the commissioner’s office and relayed my suspicion. I am only a sergeant, Mr Bilungs, I do not have any authority to effect such an outcome.
BILUNGS: [Reading from notes] ‘Sergeant Sami Holm, who was the senior officer at the scene, recommended an immediate response.’ Are you contradicting the commissioner?
HOLM: Even if I had made a recommendation, the commissioner would have been under no obligation to act on it.
BILUNGS: But act he did.
HOLM: Yes.
14
The car turned sharply and moved downhill. The street noise faded away. The radio crackled into static. An underground parking lot.
“Here,” the white man said to the driver. “Right here.”
Ingrid felt the Beretta jab a little harder into her shoulder as the car came to a halt. The driver did not kill the engine. She heard him climb out and the chilled underground air, redolent with gasoline, was sucked inside the car. She heard his footsteps as he walked round the SUV, then a clunk before he yanked open the rear door.
“Is this her?” A new voice, another man, speaking in English.
“I can take the hood off and show you,” the white guy said.
“No.” An accent. Not local. Didn’t sound like the Somalis from the café.
The white man tapped the gun against her upper arm. “Get out now.”
Ingrid was stiff from kneeling and rigid with dread.
“Get out of the car, lady. Do not take the hood off. You understand?”
Ingrid started to move her hands, to unball them, to spread her fingers against the clean leather seat. In other circumstances, she would have done all she could to leave a trace of herself in the car—pulled out a few hairs, dribbled on the upholstery—but apart from the fact that she would only have succeeded in making the cotton hood wet, she never wanted any investigator in any jurisdiction to know that an FBI agent had been taken hostage. Especially not one carrying weapons materials that could start a diplomatic incident. Or possibly even a military one.
She pushed herself up onto the seat, twisted round and sat down. In the background she could hear two men talking quietly. A jangling of keys.
“Get out of the car.”
She edged toward the open door and reached out her right hand. It was quickly yanked and she was pulled upright. She could hear another engine running.
“I need my bag,” she said. She was surprised how confident her voice sounded.
“No bag.”
“I need Kotex.” Damn. Not Kotex. Not American. “I have my period. I need Libresse.”
She heard her bag being thrown from the car onto the concrete floor of the parking lot. Someone picked it up and shoved it at her. She clutched it to her chest like a comforter. A hand was placed on her shoulder, suggesting—firmly—that she should start walking forward.
“You can’t put her in there.” The white man’s voice again. “It’s minus fifteen. She’ll die.”
“There is blanket. Is only an hour. She no die.”
“Don’t be an idiot, man.”
“She no die.”
There was a pause. The keys stopped jangling. The background conversation ceased.
“OK, man. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”
Ingrid guessed the man whose hand was on her shoulder, whose thumb was pressing into her carotid artery, had just pulled a gun. A bigger gun than the Beretta. He grabbed the backpack out of her grasp and she heard a thud as it landed. It was a dull sound, not an echoing one: it had been thrown into another car. There was a screeching noise. No, it was more like a rip. She felt something press against her forearm: duct tape. Her legs buckled slightly as it was wound round and round her wrists, gripping them tightly together, pressing the bracelet deeper into her flesh.
“I need the bathroom,” she said. “I have my period.”
“What?”
Maybe she’d got the Swedish for ‘period’ wrong. “I am menstruating. I need to visit the bathroom.” It was, for the time being, a lie but she figured it would be something that they hadn’t factored into their plans. The FBI had a booklet called Conduct After Capture. She remembered something about trying to make your captors change tack as soon as possible. She couldn’t recall why.
Two arms grabbed her from behind, lifting her off the ground. Someone else held her feet. She knew exactly what was happening. Her legs were placed in the trunk first, then her upper body.
Please, God, no.
“Keep your head down.”
A rustling sound. Then a blanket—itchy, stinking— was thrown on top of her and the lid was slammed down. Seconds later, the sound of two doors pulled shut, a slight movement as the car was put into reverse, then a lurch as it moved backwards, turned quickly and revved away. Several more turns, an incline, and Ingrid could hear that she was back on the street.
Ingrid was lying in the fetal position, her cheek squashed against the carpet lining of the trunk, the components up her sleeves digging into her bound arms.
What the hell just happened?
She tried to work it out, to conjure up memories, but they all felt distant, unreliable, unconnected because nothing made sense. There had been gunmen. But before that there had been a bomb, or an explosion of some kind. Then… she struggled to remember. Everyone’s wallets had been taken… She saw the blood seeping from the man’s head. They were pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor of her brain, pieces that she couldn’t fit together.
Ingrid knew she should feel afraid but her overriding sensation was disbelief. A line from Conduct After Capture drifted through her thoughts: ‘It is not uncommon for hostages to go through a period of denial after their capture. This period can last from a few hours to a few weeks.’
Weeks?
The car made several turns and, after a few minutes, they were in cruise mode. The freeway. There was no way to tell if they were heading north, south, east or west and the constant traffic noise meant there wouldn’t be any church bells to listen out for, or muezzin calls, or playgrounds, but then none of that mattered: she hoped to God she would never be speaking to any investigating officer about this.
When the car had been traveling in a straight line, in the same gear, for what felt like ten minutes—it was probably only two—Ingrid reached up and pulled off the hood with her bound hands, and opened her eyes.
It wasn’t compl
etely dark. Daylight filtered in through the brake lights. As her eyes adjusted, she started to make out a few details. A tow rope. A chrome latch in the carpet. A rectangular sticker with rounded corners faintly visible on the inside of the lid.
Beneath her, Ingrid could feel the indentations marking the housing for the spare tire. She slowly stretched her legs—the fact that they hadn’t bound her legs meant that at some point she would be made to walk—and felt what she presumed was her backpack.
Like the last car, it smelt new. Perhaps she had been abducted by professional car thieves. Or maybe someone who works for a car dealership. Or a garage. She listened, assuming that there had to be at least two men in the front of the car. It was possible it was just a driver, but until a conversation started she wouldn’t be sure. She wanted them, or him, to be distracted before she attempted further movement in case she somehow jolted the car or made a noise.
What time would it be now? Two o’clock maybe? She didn’t think it could be much later. Whoever was behind the operation was extremely organized. One team for the hold-up. Another to take her from the café. A third to take her out of the city. If the local cops had a lead on the first car, it would almost certainly be a day or two before they got a lead on the second. In her experience, it would come down to a member of the public reporting a suspicious vehicle, or responding to an appeal for information. Either way, no one was coming for her anytime soon. Which, given the nature of the articles she had stuffed up her sleeves, was probably a good thing.
A crackle of static, then a ringtone. Their cell was hooked into the stereo system.
Two rings, then an answer. “Salaam?” A metallic voice, like a robot speaking from inside a steel box.
The man in the car said something she couldn’t make out. It might have been heavily accented Swedish, but more likely another language. If she had to guess, she’d go with Somali. She had no idea what they were talking about.
