Below Zero

by Eva Hudson

  BILUNGS: Were you armed?

  RASMUSSEN: Of course. But I was not about to start a gunfight with someone holding a semi-automatic weapon. I took cover behind a tree.

  BILUNGS: And that is when you saw the kidnappers?

  RASMUSSEN: Yes. There were three of them. Once they knew they had shot the dog—they must have done because Tug had stopped barking—and possibly they knew they had also killed Möven as he had also stopped firing, they started arguing. I could not hear exactly what they were saying, but they were extremely agitated. Wild, almost. It was clear to me that they were panicking. I assume they must have been aware of the helicopter surveillance. They had, as you know, made an attempt to insulate the roof of the cabin, but the aerial team got a strong thermal reading anyway, not that I knew that then, but I did know the helicopter had been in the area and guessed that it was likely they’d seen something. I calculated that it wouldn’t be long before the aerial team requested a ground approach so… . Sorry, I, um, so I guess what I’m trying to say is that I figured help would come soon. Which is why I decided that if I made my presence known, I risked provoking more gunfire and endangering the lives of the hostages. At the time, we assumed they were holding three of them: the Bildeburg boy, the woman and Jens Luhrmann. It was only after I was sure the gunmen had fled into the woods that I approached the cabin. That’s when I found Mr Luhrmann and requested back-up.

  BILUNGS: And the boy? Where was Magnus Bildeburg?

  RASMUSSEN: I do not know. I did not see him leave. If he was taken by the kidnappers he did not make a noise. I mean, given where we found his body, it looks very much as if he simply walked out the door after the kidnappers had run off. He must have fallen. If he hadn’t been wearing the tracking device, it might have been days before we found his body. There was heavy snowfall that night.

  32

  Ingrid kept looking in the rearview mirror, expecting to see flashing blue lights. She stopped listening to the police radio. It required too much concentration. If they were coming for her, they were coming for her. She needed to prepare.

  The snow was getting heavier. In between the forceful swipes of the wiper blades, Ingrid stared at the road. It was a major highway, the sort of long-distance freeway that would be six or eight lanes in the US, but Sweden’s sparse population meant it was only a single carriageway. Up ahead she saw a sign with a list of destinations and distances. Ingrid looked at it hard, then back at the road, then at the sign again: Stockholm wasn’t on the list. She needed to turn around, only not in the car she was driving.

  In rural Sweden on the day of a major incident, she had no idea what kind of response the local cops would be able to mount to the theft of one of their own cars. One unit? Two? Was a whole convoy about to descend on her while the helicopter was summoned back to the area? She knew she didn’t have more than a couple of minutes to ditch the car.

  The illuminated sign of an ICA supermarket loomed into view. When she got closer, Ingrid also spotted the golden ‘M’ of a McDonald’s drive-thru and the logos of various furniture and pet supply retailers. She swung sharply into the parking lot, the revolver tucked inside her waistband digging a little harder into her back as she did so.

  It was almost entirely empty, with just a few vehicles parked near the McDonald’s. Everywhere was closed. Ingrid pulled up round the back of the restaurant and instinctively turned off the engine. She immediately turned it back on—just in case—then got out of the car and climbed into the cold. She walked toward the parked vehicles, the snow stinging her face, her sneakers sliding beneath her on the icy ground. None of the cars had lights on. More importantly, none of them had been left with the engine running.

  The retailers’ colored signage threw a sickly hue over the deserted and silent parking lot. It felt post-apocalyptic, abandoned, as if all human life had been wiped out by a mysterious virus before the store employees had had the chance to turn off the power.

  There was a clattering noise behind her. She turned quickly. A man, head bowed, let the lid of a large plastic dumpster fall as the rear door of McDonald’s swung shut. He raised his vision, saw her, and carried on walking in her direction. One of the cars had to be his. He was forty yards away: she had about seven seconds to make a decision.

  Ingrid pulled off her gloves and shoved them in her pocket and watched the man approach. He was young, under thirty, tallish and skinnyish, though under so many snow layers it was hard to form an accurate picture. Her heart rate quickened. He reached into his pocket and she reached behind her, slipping her hand inside her waistband. He looked up again and paid her a moment’s attention, trying to work out if he knew her, if she was someone’s girlfriend or a co-worker’s ride home. She made eye contact with him and he smiled before looking down and pulling his car keys out of his pocket. Ingrid clasped her trembling hand around the Smith & Wesson.

  “Drop the keys.”

  He stopped walking. Ingrid checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was following. A distorted wail of a police siren drifted through the valley.

  “Drop them.” She spoke in English and made no attempt to disguise her accent. She gestured with the revolver, making sure he understood his only option was to comply. But his face remained blank. Either he was numb with fear or he did not understand English.

  “Keys,” she demanded in Swedish. “Now.”

  His head dipped and there was a jangle as he let the keys drop from his grasp.

  “Good,” Ingrid said. “Now go.”

  Was it possible she was sweating? In these temperatures?

  “I told you to go.”

  But he did not budge. He seemed willing but incapable. The metallic, scraping noise of chained tires grinding over icy roads mingled with the siren. It sounded like a convoy.

  “Now.”

  He suddenly looked younger, as if he was far more scared of telling his father he’d given away the keys to the family Volvo than he was of the woman with a gash on her face and a gun in her hand. He also looked incapable of moving.

  Oh, Jesus. I’m really going to have to do it.

  Ingrid aimed the gun at the ground and pulled on the trigger. The shot split the air in two, the sound expanding through the night and creating pressure in her ears. Her numb, frozen hands could barely deal with the recoil. The man did not even look at her; he just turned and ran back toward the McDonald’s.

  Ingrid scooped up the keys, her trembling fingers shoveling up snow as she did so. She aimed the key at the cars and pressed the button. The indicator lights of a station wagon flashed under a luminous crust of snow. A clunking noise told her the doors had unlocked.

  She ran the few steps to the car, yanked the door open, and jumped in. She put the key in the ignition and turned it, holding her breath as she did so. The engine started and she exhaled a deep and grateful sigh. She checked over the instrument panel, looking for the light controls. When she looked up, she realized she couldn’t see a damn thing through the snow. She flicked both levers behind the steering wheel, turning on the indicators and the wipers. She didn’t have time to get out and clear the snow from the windshield. She just had to go.

  Ingrid slammed the door. Its loud reassuring clunk was swiftly followed by a soft slumping sound as a covering of snow to slid to the ground. She put the car into first and pulled away, the wheels spinning over the ice.

  She headed for the exit, bunny-hopping the car as she moved through the gears and turned back onto the highway. A cluster of silhouetted figures against McDonald’s open door watched her drive off. They would have already called the cops.

  She accelerated down the highway in the opposite direction to the way she had come. In the distance, right in the crevice of the valley, was the flashing blue light she’d been expecting.

  Good. The cops were a minute from the parking lot; they’d be waylaid by the McDonald’s employees, distracted by looking for the bullet. It might be two or three minutes before they called in the registration of the car she was dr
iving. She almost smiled: a four-minute head start was all she needed.

  33

  Ingrid tried to figure out how the FBI would deal with her. The helicopter would be in the air, following the car. Roadblocks would be set up a few miles down the road; two or three cars would follow, with more approaching from the other direction. It was possible the Swedes would also call in a specialist firearms unit because they didn’t know she only had four bullets.

  She checked the mirror, forgetting the rear window was still covered in snow. She found the lever for the rear wiper and flicked, instantly sweeping away a semi-circle of snow. No one was following. Ingrid put her foot to the floor, putting as much distance as she could between her and the inevitable tail.

  She listed the information the police would have on her. They knew she had stolen two cars and that she had a gun. They would also know where she had stolen the first car from, which meant they would probably assume that she was one of the kidnappers and not one of the hostages.

  Dear God, no.

  Up ahead was a blue flashing light. There was nowhere to pull off. It was just a long curving highway with no intersection in sight. She was trapped like a cowboy in a black-and-white movie, just waiting for the Indian arrows to rain down.

  After another five hundred yards or so, Ingrid could see a cluster of lights. She swallowed hard: a roadblock. She had to make a U-turn. She checked her mirrors then saw there was a truck coming in the opposite direction. It was too close for her to attempt the maneuver. She slowed down, the seconds dragging as she waited for the truck to pass. She changed down the gears, checked behind, then checked the road ahead. She was just about to make the turn when she saw that it wasn’t a roadblock: she was passing the cabin. Two police cars and an ambulance. She collapsed against the seat, overwhelmed with relief. The paramedics would be with Jens. With luck, he would survive.

  She drove on. Ninety kilometers an hour. Far too fast for the conditions. The snow was falling so thickly she couldn’t see more than a couple of hundred yards. But she had to plow on. She had to make progress. She had to escape.

  She checked the fuel gauge. A quarter of a tank. It was enough to get to Stockholm, but there was no way the cops would let her get that far without intercepting her. She hoped a sign for a bus station or a train station would hove into view, but then that was such an obvious move for a fugitive there’d probably be officers waiting for her.

  Ingrid slowed slightly to read a road sign. An arrow indicated the turn for Stockholm was up ahead. She knew it was a risk to head back to the city. More cops. More surveillance. More witnesses. But, she told herself, there were also more means of escape. Ingrid took the turn.

  She found herself on a slip road that turned sharply through the trees. When it straightened, she could see she was about to join the main freeway into the city. Three lanes of traffic in both directions. Street lighting. And people. Ingrid had just bought herself a few more minutes.

  Setting up a roadblock on a freeway took coordination, several units working in concert. There still wasn’t a police car following her, and as far as she could tell there wasn’t a helicopter overhead. It was possible, she thought, that the increase in snowfall had grounded the air surveillance. Maybe it had also caused some accidents, or delayed police officers starting their shifts: maybe the snow was her friend.

  Ingrid passed a factory, an outlet mall, a gas station and several other indicators she was much closer to Stockholm than she’d realized. After another mile, the street lights stopped and once again the highway was flanked on either side by dark swathes of forest. She kept looking for signs she was being followed, but the only other vehicles on the road were trucks and domestic cars. She considered whether she could risk driving all the way into the city, into obscurity. She quickly banished such thoughts: there was simply no way the cops wouldn’t come for her. No way.

  There was a cluster of tail-lights in the distance. An accident, or a roadblock. Ingrid looked around for a turning, an exit of any kind. But there wasn’t one. The central reservation meant she could not do a one-eighty. Her only option was to keep going. She took a hand off the steering wheel and ran it nervously through her hair. Her fingers caught on the knots and tugs in her wet hair, releasing a waft of the essential oil from the steam room. Was that really just this morning?

  After another half a mile, Ingrid made out the cause of the tailback: cars were slowing down for another intersection. There was a trail of red tail-lights of cars on a slip road waiting to join the freeway. She signaled to pull off.

  She reached the top of the slip road and immediately discovered the cause of the traffic. A roadhouse. The kind of place that in the States would serve steaks with pitchers of beer while a YouTube sensation blasted out country classics from the stage. Ingrid turned the car onto the forecourt, slowly passing the nose-to-tail cars waiting to exit. She checked her mirrors: there were no flashing blue lights behind her.

  The parking lot of the Freedom Hall was maybe a quarter full. She parked in between two other vehicles and looked at the signage on the marquee entrance. The headline act was called River Sticks and, judging by their disregard for spelling and the clothes of their fans, they were some kind of heavy metal band.

  Ingrid kept the motor running and considered her next move. Now that the car was off the road, it would take the cops a little longer to find it, but not much longer. She was surprised that no one had followed her. And then she realized why: they hadn’t needed to follow her in a car because they were tailing her electronically. She pictured a red dot on an illuminated map on a computer screen. She looked down at the glove box and feared what was inside it.

  No. Please no.

  She took a deep breath, reached over and opened it. Just a packet of tissues and some chocolate wrappers. She almost gasped with relief: no cell phone for the police to put a trace on.

  Ingrid watched the black-clad music fans trudge through the snow to their cars and made a list of her assets: a couple thousand sodden euros strapped to her ankle, a vintage Smith & Wesson in full working order and… the list stopped there.

  She was fatigued, hungry and so burned out on adrenaline she couldn’t trust her judgment. She didn’t have a clue how the next few hours—or minutes—would play out, but she did know one thing for sure: even if the cops weren’t tracking her remotely, it wouldn’t be long before they found the car. She needed to get out of the car.

  34

  Ingrid killed the engine and opened the door. As she got out, she felt the revolver brush against the seat. She pulled it out of her waistband and looked at it. Was it an asset or a liability? Might she need it again, or was it better if the police found it when they discovered the vehicle?

  All that mattered was evading capture, and knowing she wasn’t armed might move her down their priority list. She threw the gun onto the seat, closed the door and walked through the soft falling snow toward the smokers outside the Freedom Hall. They ignored her—maybe the cut on her head didn’t look so bad—so she pushed through the double doors and found herself inside a crowded ticket hall. It smelt of wheat beer and sweat.

  She stopped dead. There were so many people. Too many people. Jens had said something about Anna Skyberg’s capture being on the news. It only took one person to think they recognized her.

  She looked at the patrons lining up at the coat check. Many of the women had dyed black hair, excessive amounts of kohl eyeliner and facial piercings. The men mostly wore jeans and tee-shirts emblazoned with logos of the band, video games or retro brands. The best way to get out of the Freedom Hall that didn’t involve handcuffs was to look like one of them. She could either hide in the restrooms and hope to swipe some unclaimed gear from the coat check later in the night, or she could make a purchase from the merchandise stall.

  She crossed the lobby to examine the array of River Sticks tee-shirts, caps, and sweatshirts. No pants. No shoes. But a change of outfit nonetheless. The girls running the stall were just packing up
.

  “Hej.”

  “Hej.” One of them looked up, an expression of concern on her face. She said something Ingrid did not understand.

  “My Swedish not so good,” Ingrid said in English with a heavy Russian accent. She hoped changing her voice would deter the girl from thinking she could be Anna Skyberg.

  “Um,” the girl’s face scrunched up as she computed a translation. “Who did that to you?”

  Ingrid raised her hand to her eyebrow. “Boyfriend.”

  “You want me to call the police?”

  That’s the last thing I want. “No, tack. It’s OK.”

  The other girl emerged from underneath a trestle table. “Oh, honey, that doesn’t look good.” She had a shaved head and a tattoo of rose thorns emerging from her neckline.

  “You are American?” Ingrid asked.

  “Minnesota.”

  You have got to be kidding me.

  “Grand Rapids. You probably never heard of it. Only people who have are Judy Garland fans.”

  Ingrid had been there several times.

  “She was born there.”

  “Oh.”

  “You should dump him, you know. Any guy who does that to you. Is he here? Cos I can get the boys to have a word, if you know what I mean.”

  Ingrid shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. This was the longest conversation she’d had with anyone since she’d ordered brunch in Republik. She needed not to be so memorable. “How much?” she asked. “For the sweatshirt?”

  “Eighteen hundred kronor.”

  Ingrid had no idea how much money that was. “You take euros?”