by Eva Hudson
“Shhh.” But the dog did not quieten. If anything its howl became a snarl, and the officer yanked on the leash, squeezing the dog’s windpipe. “Down,” she said. “Lie down. I need to listen.”
Ingrid heard the dog paw at the ground, accompanied by the soft shuffle of snow being clawed and redistributed. The officer said something quietly to the dog. Under less stress, Ingrid told herself, she’d understand at least fifty per cent more of what she was saying. Under less stress, she also reckoned she might make better decisions than to hide in a goddamn tree.
“It’s nothing. Come on.”
The dog whined as the officer pulled on the leash.
“Now,” she said firmly. “This way.”
The dog yelped. Then the trudge of feet moving through crisp snow.
“Come on.”
Ingrid waited till they were ten feet away before daring to draw breath. She clung to the trunk, grateful and amazed that she hadn’t pissed all over herself or shaken so violently with the cold that she’d lost her footing. She tracked the flashlight through the trees and listened to the receding staccato static of the police radio.
When she could no longer hear their footsteps she climbed down to the branch below. She waited and listened again, then dropped down to the ground, landing in over two feet of virgin snow. She’d had worse landings.
She was shivering so violently she was reminded of Jens: she had to keep moving. She stepped onto the path, checked up the hill in the direction the cop had gone and decided to follow the path downhill. It was too dangerous to walk through the trees, and with any luck she had already encountered the greatest threat she would meet on the path.
Ingrid started to jog, shaking the snow from her head as she ran, the components jiggling inside her sleeves with each footfall.
In the distance she could hear yelling. It was the cop but she couldn’t make out what was being said, and she wasn’t going to wait to find out if the cop was shouting at her. The low snarl of the dog trembled through the night.
Gunfire. A semi-automatic. The carbine. Ingrid glanced toward the rat-a-tat-tat, bright flashes tracing through the darkness. The dog barked ferociously, seething like a beast from a horror movie. And then it stopped, the silence beckoning through the trees: it must have been shot. Ingrid couldn’t hear the cop either.
She hammered down the path toward the road as quickly as her frozen limbs would carry her. Her knees jarred each time her sneakers thudded into the compacted snow, her lungs burned as they drew down the icy air. Her ears were filled with her pulse, her breathing, the shish-shish of her jacket, her feet as they slid on the path beneath her.
Another crack of gunfire. Ingrid reached under her jacket and pulled the revolver from her waistband. Her hands were so numb she could barely feel it. She wasn’t sure if her frozen fingers would be able to pull the trigger.
The closer she got to the road, the more she realized she didn’t know what she would do when she got there. A helicopter and a beat patrol had already identified the location. It wouldn’t be long before the entire area would be lit up with flashing blue lights. She stopped running. She needed to think. She needed a plan. She didn’t even know which direction to head in.
Ingrid bent over, resting her hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath. She watched as puffs of steam dissipated into the night. Her priority, she decided, had to be getting out of the area as quickly as possible, in any direction. And then she absolutely definitely had to get dry. She would die if she didn’t.
Was that a better option than getting caught, she wondered, an unmarked grave versus decades in jail? Was that preferable to the hell that would be unleashed if she cracked in an interrogation suite? Ingrid shook her head. She’d lost too many people too young to think like that. It was always better to stay alive. Always. She owed Megan that much. She started walking and thought about what she’d do when she made it to the road. She had a couple thousand sodden euros strapped to her leg and a vintage pistol in her hand, both of which could persuade someone to hand over their car. Then there was hitching. Trucks stopped in Sweden, especially in the cold. She pictured a middle-aged trucker with food stains down a sweatshirt stretched tight over his belly, taking one look at the gun and offering to take her anywhere she wanted to go. But then he’d probably have had the news on all day, maybe even scanned the police channels on his CB radio. Hitching was too risky.
“Something will come up.” Megan’s voice. “It always does.”
The Smith & Wesson shook wildly as her convulsions deepened. She needed to get the blood circulating, so she forced herself to scissor her arms and willed her legs to carry her more quickly. Her limbs were slow and her movements jerky. She felt like a robot from a 1950s sci-fi film.
“Come on!”
She staggered down the path, lurching and stumbling until something made her stop. A new noise. It was a low hum. A car engine, ticking over. A car driver, lying in wait. It felt as though the air in her lungs had been sucked out, as if her ribs were about to snap as her chest caved in. She stumbled forward, lumbering like Frankenstein’s monster, and after another bend in the path she saw them. Lights. Flashing blue lights. It was the cop’s car.
31
The Swedes, like Minnesotans, often kept their engines running in winter to stop them seizing up. Throughout her childhood, the good folks of Jackson County had left their vehicles spewing exhaust fumes outside 7-Elevens while they bought beer and pretzels. It was only after she’d joined the sheriff’s department that Ingrid found it remarkable that none of them ever got stolen, though once Mrs O’Hagan had run out of gas she’d spent so long gossiping.
Ingrid hid behind a tree, scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at the car. When no one got out, she crept toward it and peered through the rear nearside window. Her breath was short and shallow. She brushed the snow from her face then wiped the window: the back seat was empty. Nervously, she moved to the front seats: the car was empty. Exhale.
Ingrid checked over her shoulder toward the path before opening the passenger door. The warmth from the car’s interior felt like a blast from a fan heater. The light from the bulb above the rearview mirror beckoned to her like a camp fire. Another glance up the path: no footsteps, no flashlight. On the passenger seat was a bar of Marabou chocolate. The taste of family. Of childhood. Ingrid grabbed it, pulled off her glove with her teeth and attempted to tear the wrapper, but her hands were convulsing so violently that it took several attempts. She shoved the chocolate into her mouth and was shocked at how sweet it was. She hoped the sugar would help reduce the shivering.
Ingrid stood for several moments, leaning on the roof of the car, hoping the warm air would soothe her. The police call handlers on the radio were busy. Calm and efficient voices, repeating messages, seeking clarification. There was something reassuring about the one-sided dispatch reports, something familiar, even if she could only understand a quarter of what was being said.
One phrase kept being repeated: ‘Nationalmuseum’, and her thoughts zeroed in on the road closures and cordons that should have told her something bad was about to happen. Could that really be the same day? Her eyes drifted to the back seat where she spotted a blanket. Her frozen brain was slow to process information, but she started to wonder if she should take her wet layers off and wrap herself in it.
Idiot!
Why the hell was she letting the heat escape? She shook her head in fury and slammed the door. The blanket wasn’t going to save her: the goddamned car was. The fact she hadn’t realized straight away showed how poor her cognitive function had become.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Not just getting in, but taking it. Stealing the car was the sensible choice, the logical one. Wasn’t it? Ingrid looked up as a truck passed down the road, its engine noise muffled by the shroud of snow that hugged the valley, its tires drifting snowflakes across the gritted road surface in its wake. She’d gotten used to British snow, the wet kind. She’d forgo
tten about the hard, brittle snow of home, the kind that billows like sand. She became mesmerized by the waft of snowflakes and watched as the truck’s tail-lights disappeared into the murk. She shook her head: you should at least sit in it. Ingrid had already broken so many laws that her taking a car seemed like a misdemeanor.
She staggered round to the driver’s side, her wet clothes weighing her down like a diver’s suit. She reached out for the door handle. Her right hand was shivering so jerkily it took three attempts to grab it. The door felt heavy, as if made of bronze, and required more effort than expected to pull it open. Her movements were slow and labored, and everything took vast quantities of concentration and application. The only exception was the frenetic chattering of her jaw.
Ingrid sank onto the driver’s seat, took a few deep breaths, then hauled the door shut. She searched the instrument panel for the heating controls, turned the fan to maximum and pulled off her other glove. She barely had the strength to hold her hands in front of the vents. They were too cold to feel anything anyway, so she let them drop down onto her knees. Her jeans were soaked through. A twinge of period cramps radiated across her abdomen.
Damn.
She let out a sigh as she realized her backpack and the maxi pads were still in the cabin. She smacked the heel of her hand into the steering wheel, making the component inside her sleeve slide up and down.
Ingrid felt her body weaken, her muscles slacken, and she slumped over the steering wheel. She remembered bending under the table in Republik and sliding the third component inside her backpack. Her stomach gripped like a fist, forcing the partially digested chocolate bar back up her esophagus and into her mouth. She swallowed.
There was no way she could go back for it. Not through the snow, not toward the men with guns and the cop. All that effort, all that endeavor, and she had left one of the components behind. She couldn’t believe it.
“Put it behind you.”
She couldn’t. She was cross. Riled. Furious. All she could see was the crumpled Russell Athletic logo of the open backpack, the Libresse just visible through the zipper.
“I told you to put it behind you.”
Ingrid smiled, but not at Megan’s cheesy advice. A new picture had formed in her head, that of a CSI officer explaining the contents of the backpack to a detective.
“One pair of underwear, you say?”
“Yes. Calvin Klein.”
“A toothbrush?”
“Uh-huh.”
“A packet of Libresse. Opened. Two napkins used, both found inside the cabin, both with the blood of the male hostage on them?”
“Yes.”
“And this, this… what did you call it?”
“A component…”
Ingrid wondered what it was really called. Maybe it had been invented by someone who had lent it his name—it almost certainly was a man— or maybe it was one of those scientific things that had been given a joke name that had stuck, like the planet the nerds still called Xena.
She wondered what kind of DNA profile they’d get from her bag. There were bound to be stray hairs and skin cells. They’d find something for sure but, as far as she knew, she wasn’t on a DNA database in London. Even if there was a reciprocal arrangement between European labs, the Swedish police shouldn’t be able to trace her.
Unless they caught her.
Ingrid looked down at her hands. They seemed to be shaking less. And she could now feel the warmth of the heated seat coming through her wet jeans. She looked in the direction of the path. There was nothing but darkness. She reached behind for the safety belt, strapped herself in and put the car into gear. Slowly, she maneuvered the vehicle, turning it to face the road, then eased it down the slipway and onto the highway, grinding the unfamiliar gears as she did so. Ingrid didn’t know which direction she was going in, but would follow any signs she saw for Stockholm. The dashboard clock read 23:11: she had ten hours to get to Stortorget. Easy.
A short convoy of cars sped toward her but slowed when they saw the flashing lights. Ingrid kept her eyes peeled, looking for a road sign that would tell her where the hell she was.
A new voice crackled over the car radio. Not a dispatcher. Someone in the field, speaking quietly.
The dispatcher asked the officer to repeat themselves.
Ingrid made out the word ‘cabin’. Then the word for ‘helicopter’. Then ‘hostage’. Her mouth fell open. She forgot to breathe. Fear poured through her like molten metal.
Her fractured brain could only make out the odd word and phrase. The dog was dead. Gunfire. Request for back-up. The word ‘location’ was repeated several times. And the word ‘car’.
Dear God, no. No!
“OK. Will do. Tracing the car now.”
Ingrid was driving a very efficient, and extremely visible, tracking device.
Transcript from Riksdag Committee Hearing 23
December 16 2015
BILUNGS: For the record, would you please state clearly your name and rank.
RASMUSSEN: Ilse Rasmussen. I am a sergeant with the Uppsala County police department.
BILUNGS: Thank you. I would like to take you straight to the night of December 15th last year. Can you tell the committee what you found when you arrived at the cabin in Järlåsa?
RASMUSSEN: Certainly. We had received a call from a local resident—in fact, we had received several: the entire population of Sweden was looking out for unusual activity that day—saying that an old cabin had been visited by men of, as he described them, ‘African descent’ in recent weeks and that there had been a lot of cars pulling up and driving away throughout the afternoon—
BILUNGS: Excuse me. [To clerk] Has this witness been called?[Clerk shakes head] Will this witness be called? Seems he has valuable information. [Clerk refers to notes]
RASMUSSEN: Um, sir, there will be a good reason why the witness has not been called. He was the man killed that day. Anders Möven.
BILUNGS: Yes, of course. I’m sorry. So it was Mr Möven who called you?
RASMUSSEN: Well, he called one-one-two. If he had called the station it is possible we may have responded sooner. The dispatch center had so many calls to allocate that day.
BILUNGS: So when did you receive the information?
RASMUSSEN: It came through to us just after 9pm. There is a shift change at 10pm, and so the day crew left it for me to investigate when I clocked on. I took Tug—that was my dog—and arrived at the cabin shortly after ten thirty-five. As you probably all know by now, I left the engine running—it did not occur to me that anyone would be stupid enough to steal a police car—and Tug and I set off through the woods to the old Eriksson place.
BILUNGS: The Eriksson place?
RASMUSSEN: Sorry, that’s the cabin. Owned by the Eriksson family.
BILUNGS: I see.
RASMUSSEN: It’s famous—locally—for being the cheapest building on the most expensive piece of land. There’s an old dispute… Sorry, did you want to say something?
BILUNGS: I don’t mean to be rude; I simply want to guide you back toward the events of December 15th.
RASMUSSEN: Yes, of course. Sorry. I tend to talk a lot when I am nervous.
BILUNGS: Relax, Miss Rasmussen.
RASMUSSEN: Sergeant Rasmussen.
BILUNGS: Sergeant Rasmussen, indeed. So, you were on the path? When did you hear the first gunshot?
RASMUSSEN: Um, I am not sure. I was very close to the cabin. Maybe around ten forty-five.
BILUNGS: So you did not hear the shots fired by Anders Möven?
RASMUSSEN: No. When we interviewed his wife, she said he had opened fire on a fugitive in the woods around ten thirty-five. I must have still been in the car at that time. Certainly I did not hear his shots. Obviously I would not have entered the woods without back-up if I had. No, I did not know anyone was in the woods until shots were fired at me when I approached the cabin. But, if I may, I think it is relevant that—before then—while Tug and I were walking along the path, Tug cle
arly picked up the scent of someone, or something, and given that Anders Möven told his wife he saw someone in the woods, I think it is likely it was a person. Tug was barking, he wanted to run into the woods, but I could not see anything. You know, I only had a flashlight, and the trees are pretty dense up there, but I couldn’t see anything. And you have to remember that, at this point, there was no report of gunfire, and I wasn’t really expecting to find anyone at the Eriksson place. All I wanted to do was get to the cabin, rule it out, and get back to the car.
BILUNGS: Are you suggesting that your dog was barking at the female hostage?
RASMUSSEN: Yes. Well, probably. We know she was there, the DNA evidence from the Russell Athletic bag confirmed that, as did Mohammed Ali Ghedi. And the photos sent to Björn Friese, of course. It’s fairly remote up there. Not a place for a casual hike at ten thirty at night when it’s minus twenty.
BILUNGS: Quite. But you couldn’t see anything?
RASMUSSEN: No.
BILUNGS: To be clear, you did not see the suspect?
RASMUSSEN: You mean the hostage?
BILUNGS: [Pause] Does it seem wrong to call her a suspect?
RASMUSSEN: Um, I guess not. No.
BILUNGS: Please, continue.
RASMUSSEN: So, yeah, sure. So Tug and I continued up toward the cabin. When we were about a hundred yards away, he pulled on his leash so hard I had to let him go. We know now that he had found Anders Möven, who forensics say had received a gunshot wound to the leg from the Beretta we later recovered. Of course, the fatal shots, those from the semi-automatic rifle, the carbine, were fired at Tug, you know, to silence him I guess, and Möven received a direct hit to the head, probably because he was leaning over, trying to soothe the dog. Obviously, when Tug stopped barking I knew he had been killed. I did not know about Möven until the next day.
BILUNGS: But you did not radio for back-up?
RASMUSSEN: No, quite the opposite. I switched my radio off. It was clear to me that I had found the cabin where the hostages were being held. I knew that a police helicopter had already surveilled the area and that back-up would not be too far away. I considered that, should my radio be heard, should I make a sound, then I too could be the recipient of a round of automatic fire.
