Below Zero

by Eva Hudson

  Ingrid changed the tampon and washed her hands, then returned to staring at her unfamiliar face, gripping the safety rail as the bus swerved.

  “What a complete and utter fuck-up,” she said out loud. “What a ridiculous, idiotic…” It had become so hopeless, so impossible, that she didn’t even see any point in finishing her sentence.

  She damped a towel and fixed her make-up. “OK, then, how the hell are you going to get out of this?”

  Getting to Stockholm by the deadline was all but impossible. She had no idea if it was worth turning up late, but she knew she should try. However, she could think of one very good reason not to head for Stockholm: the message she’d left on the Nokia. The CSIs would undoubtedly have recovered it from Republik, which meant there would absolutely be some kind of police operation at Stortorget. The probability of getting caught was high. And the consequences of getting caught were way, way too high. Either a huge diplomatic incident, or a long stretch in jail; possibly both. Almost certainly both. She thought about the news reports on Dominic’s iPad. The city would be on lockdown. It was even possible the authorities would close the Christmas market as a precaution. And Magnus Jonsson, whoever the hell he was, might take one look at the cops and walk away.

  She felt her forearms and reassured herself that she still had the components. If she couldn’t get to Stockholm on time, she should leave them in a locker somewhere and get a message to Nick Angelis. They could still be used. Something could be rescued from this situation. Then she felt the bracelet: there had to be a way of taking it off, breaking the bonds and slipping away before whoever was monitoring her could respond.

  Ingrid let out a sigh: what if they had already responded? What if they could see on a screen that she was nowhere near Stockholm? Her thoughts tumbled over each other, smothering each other, canceling each other out. She was assuming they knew where the drop was being made. And when.

  Ingrid turned sharply at a knock on the door.

  Her heart jumped. “Just a minute.” Had her accent slipped? She ran the water again, buying a minute to compose herself. She unlocked the door. “All yours.”

  “Oh, hi.” Ingrid was caught off guard to find Mare standing in front of her.

  “I thought I better check on you. Saw you walk through the bus and, I mean, weren’t we supposed to drop you off near the city?”

  “Ja. I, er, fall asleep.”

  Mare smiled at her. “You weren’t doing much sleeping when I walked past.”

  Ingrid felt herself blush a little.

  “So are you going to stay with us in Malmö?”

  “I, er…” She didn’t have a clue.

  “Because, you know, if you’re thinking staying away from your boyfriend… Well, you know, it might make things worse. You know, make him angrier.”

  Ingrid suddenly felt very protective of her fake relationship: it had absolutely nothing to do with Mare and her interfering tendencies. Mare clearly sensed she had crossed a line. “Listen, sorry, honey. It’s not my place, but, well…” She trailed off. “Did Dom tell you to help yourself, you know, to food? There’s water, soda.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, you like Dom?”

  Ingrid shrugged.

  “I mean, it’s your life and everything, but, like, well, you know maybe he’s not what you need right now.” Was she really offering relationship advice? “Obviously he’s way better than…”

  “Thank you.” Did Mare not need to sleep? Could she make small talk forever? “Do you know…” Ingrid yawned, rather more dramatically than was entirely necessary, “do you know what time we get to Malmö?”

  “Around eight, something like that. Usually we just sleep on the bus for a few hours, grab an early lunch somewhere, then we’ll need to sound check…”

  Ingrid had stopped listening. Two hours before they got to Malmö, two hours further away from Stockholm. Getting to Stortorget on time was out of the question. She wasn’t going to make the drop. Whoever was monitoring her was going to find her.

  “Hey, you look like you could use some sleep—”

  “Yes.” Ingrid was distracted. “Yes, I should—” She motioned in the direction of her seat.

  “You know there’s a bunk at the back. It’s Dom’s. I guess he wouldn’t mind.”

  Ingrid started to move past her, falling against a storage unit as she did so. “Thank you,” Ingrid said, “but I…” Her words trailed off as she made her way onto the aisle and back to her seat.

  “It really suits you,” Mare said.

  Ingrid turned.

  “Your hair. It suits you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ingrid sat down gently, keen not to wake the keyboard player with whom she’d become a little too friendly. She reached forward and slid his iPad out from the seat pocket. She pressed the home button and swiped. Passcode protected. Damn.

  She exhaled slowly: two hours. Heading to Stockholm was risky enough and without the possibility of making the rendezvous there was too much at stake. Leaving the components in a locker in Malmö made more sense. She could head to Riga from there. Within an hour of getting off the bus she could cross the bridge over to Denmark where—she hoped—the cops wouldn’t be looking for her yet.

  The road outside the window was almost entirely empty and sunrise was still hours away. Her thoughts drifted against the dark shapes beyond the glass. Then, slowly, one particular thought got trapped, circling round and round like a marble on a roulette wheel: two hours was also long enough for the cops at the Freedom Hall to have reviewed the CCTV footage. Ingrid felt a chill rise up from her stomach to grasp her throat: she had to get off the bus.

  The moment the CCTV footage linked her to Mare and the band, the cops would intercept the bus. Tentatively, she leaned into the aisle to see who was awake. Mare had disappeared to the back of the bus. A roadie was raiding the cupboards for a snack.

  Ingrid bent forward and felt for her ankle pouch. She pulled out several hundred-euro notes and shoved them into her jacket pocket. Before she sat upright, she noticed a coat stored under the seat opposite hers. She checked no one was looking then stretched across the aisle and pulled it toward her.

  It was woolen, dark gray. A pair of gloves in one pocket, Samsung Galaxy and a gray woolen beanie in the other. She pressed the home key on the phone: passcode protected. Probably a good thing: she’d only be tempted to take it if it wasn’t.

  Ingrid carefully put the phone on the floor of the aisle and kicked it, sliding it along the floor like a hockey puck. She stood up, folded the coat over her arm and walked toward the front of the bus, trying not to bash any of the lolling passengers.

  “Hej,” she whispered to the driver.

  He said something in Swedish, then immediately repeated himself in English. “You cannot talk to me while the bus is moving.”

  Ingrid reached into her pocket and pulled out a couple of the euro bills. Two hundred. That should be enough. She held them out for him.

  “OK, you can talk.”

  “Where are we?”

  “We will be there in two hours.” He was overweight, jowly, his nose embellished with rosacea.

  “That is not what I asked.” She was speaking so quietly it was hard to disguise her accent. “Where are we?”

  He glanced down at his satnav, pushed a button to zoom out. “Here,” he pointed, “we are here.”

  Ingrid looked at the brightly lit display. The names of the towns did not mean anything to her, but she could see that running alongside the freeway they were on was a thin black line. A railway.

  “Where is the nearest station?”

  He took his eyes off the road and examined her, checking to see if she was crazy. Then he leaned into the satnav, tapped the screen and selected the public transit icon.

  “OK,” he said. “Hässleholm, nine minutes.”

  “I will give you this money if you drop me somewhere close. Don’t go too far off the freeway. I don’t want to wake everyone up. U
nderstand?”

  “Yes, OK.”

  Eight minutes later, the bus left the freeway and started making a series of turns that threatened to stir the passengers.

  “It’s OK,” Ingrid said, “I’ll get out here.” She studied the satnav, memorized the route to the station, tucked the cash into the driver’s breast pocket and dropped into the footwell by the door. It clunked and heaved sideways and Ingrid jumped down into the deserted street, pulling on the woolen beanie as the bus drove away. It would be back on the freeway within minutes. If the police tried to pull it over, by the time they’d checked the bus, encouraged the driver to spill, she’d have a decent head start. With any luck, she’d be in Denmark before the sun came up.

  39

  Ingrid dipped into the large, tiled doorway of a department store and examined the coat she had taken from the bus. It was a man’s trench coat that complemented her new hairstyle perfectly. Not that anyone would see it under the beanie.

  Ingrid carefully fished out the components from inside the elasticated cuffs and placed them in the pockets of the woolen coat. Then she unzipped her jacket and saw the hoodie. She needed to ditch that too now that the police would be looking for a woman in River Sticks merchandise.

  She pulled the hoodie over her head, and the morning air pierced through her remaining layers like a scalpel. She burrowed into the trench coat and turned up the collar. As she buttoned it, she felt a weight against her left breast. An internal pocket with something inside.

  Ingrid reached in, her fingers already too cold to feel the satin lining. The object was heavy and rectangular. A second phone? A wallet? She dipped her hand inside the pocket and smelt it before she felt it. A pack of cigarettes. The Camel Lights were too heavy to just contain tobacco, so she flipped open the lid, her fingers already a little slow with the cold. She tipped the contents onto the palm of her left hand and felt a thud as a heavy metal object touched her skin. A lighter. Antique pewter. She hoped it was a thrift-store find and not a dying gift from a beloved grandfather. She tipped it back inside the carton, then slipped the smokes inside the inner pocket.

  Ingrid buttoned up the coat, balled her jacket and the hoodie and tucked them under her arm. She started walking toward the station, and with each street she turned toward the center of Hässleholm, a few more people were on the sidewalks. It was a small, handsome town with modern retail chains squashed into brick-built stores that would have once housed a grocer, butcher, cloth merchant and apothecary. The paths of flattened snow told her she was getting close to the station and she soon found herself joining the trudge of early morning commuters.

  The station was bigger than she’d expected and looked like a cross between a church and a school. While keeping her distance, she scanned the front of the building for CCTV cameras, but the ones she could see were so heavily encrusted with snow they’d be useless.

  The large ticket hall was unmanned so the trickle of commuters walked straight through to the platform. Ingrid checked the route map on the wall. She had two choices: either north to Stockholm, or south to Malmö.

  South was the better option. She crossed the hall to examine the ticket machine, but as she had neither credit card nor kronor she was going to have to add fare dodging to her rap sheet. She jumped: the pile of rubbish at her feet that she thought was garbage outstretched a hand.

  “Snälla.” Please.

  Ingrid looked down at the woman’s imploring face, and then to the bags next to her which were covered in slowly melting snow. Dear God, she had slept out overnight. There had been five, perhaps ten, inches of snow. It had been well below zero.

  “Please,” she repeated. Her skin was dark, her eyes were tired and her expression was one of absolute desperation, though she was not asking for money, only to be noticed. Her dignity was compelling and Ingrid, moved almost to tears, bent down. Behind the woman was a child. The little girl’s hair was wet and her eyes were wide with fear and distrust.

  This is the European Union, Ingrid thought. This is 2014. How the hell can children be allowed to sleep rough in the snow? How the hell?

  “Hej,” she said to the child, and smiled. She pulled off her hat and both the woman and the child recoiled slightly at the sight of her scalp. Ingrid handed the beanie to the child. “Where are you from?” she asked in Swedish.

  “Syria,” the woman said.

  Ingrid’s chest heaved with hurt. A commuter walked briskly across the concourse and pushed open the door to the platform, apparently oblivious to the three people huddled on the floor.

  “Do you speak English?” Ingrid asked.

  “A little.”

  “Do you have anywhere to stay?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you have family here?”

  “No. My husband, he is…” She lowered her eyes and muttered something.

  “Where is your husband?”

  The woman looked up at Ingrid with brimful eyes. “Prison. But he good man.” The woman explained they had fled the war in Syria, crossed the border into Turkey and taken a boat to Greece. Her expression was one of horror as she relived a journey that had seen her family cross an entire continent in search of safety. And yet here she was, desperate, cold, confused and penniless. Ingrid pushed her hands into her pockets as the woman spoke. She held the components tightly in both hands and glanced up at the map above her head. Several people arrived in quick succession: commuters heading for the early train to Stockholm.

  “Would you like these?” Ingrid offered her the jacket and hoodie.

  She nodded, though they were too small for her and too big for her child. Ingrid feared all she had succeeded in doing was giving her something else to carry.

  “I am so sorry.”

  “You are American?” the woman asked.

  Without thinking, Ingrid nodded. Damn.

  “Obama,” the woman said. “Good man.” A tear rolled down her cheek as she smiled weakly.

  The components in Ingrid’s pockets suddenly felt like kryptonite in a strip cartoon, glowing, dangerous, unignorable. She pictured the glowing green stick of uranium in the opening credits of The Simpsons. Ingrid looked up at the clock on the wall as more people filed across the concourse. Presumably they all needed to be in Stockholm for jobs that started at nine o’clock? That meant she could get there too, didn’t it? She could make the rendezvous. And maybe, just maybe, she could help stop other refugees making the same journey. She had to give it a go. Her best shot.

  The ground beneath her started to vibrate. The train was approaching. It was now or never.

  “There’s some money in one of the pockets,” Ingrid said as she stood up, remembering the euros. She waved quickly to the child then sprinted across the concourse and through the double doors. She made it onto the platform just as the Stockholm train pulled in. The LED sign said it would arrive in the capital at eight forty-seven.

  That would leave her thirteen minutes to get to the Christmas market. Easy. So long as she wasn’t kicked off for fare evasion.

  Transcript from Riksdag Committee Hearing 23

  December 18 2015

  BILUNGS: Obviously I will not be asking you to state your name for the record. But could you please tell us your rank and outline your responsibilities on December 16th last year.

  AGENT 54: I am a firearms officer. I work for the Piketen

  BILUNGS: You use the present tense. You still work for the Piketen?

  AGENT 54: Yes.

  BILUNGS: But you are not on operational duties?

  AGENT 54: Not currently.

  BILUNGS: And why is that?

  AGENT 54: You know why.

  BILUNGS: It would be very helpful if you would explain why you are not currently on active duty.

  AGENT 54: You know why.

  BILUNGS: Very well. [Refers to notes] ‘The officer known as Agent 54 has been suspended from duty following the incident…’ This is from a release from the Police Authority from January this year ‘… following th
e incident in Stortorget on December 16th last year in which officers from Piketen, the Special Operations Unit of the Stockholm Police, shot and killed a member of the public. A full review of the incident has been requested…’ And so it goes on. Is that accurate?

  AGENT 54: It’s accurate that I am not currently on duty, yes.

  BILUNGS: And when is the review of your actions due for publication?

  AGENT 54: I’d be the last to know.

  BILUNGS: Fine. Is there any reason why the pending review should prevent you giving testimony here today?

  AGENT 54: No. I’ll tell you exactly what I told them.

  BILUNGS: And what is that?

  AGENT 54: That I was doing my job. The job I was trained to do.

  BILUNGS: But you were the officer who fired the fatal shot?

  AGENT 54: According to the forensics, yes, the bullet that killed the victim came from my gun.

  BILUNGS: And what weapon were you using on December 15th last year?

  AGENT 54: The MP5. I was also carrying a SIG Sauer P226.

  BILUNGS: What is an MP5?

  AGENT 54: A semi-automatic 9mm submachine gun.

  BILUNGS: For the record, I am holding up a photograph of a Heckler & Koch MP5. Could you please confirm this is the type of firearm you were using?

  AGENT 54: Yes.

  BILUNGS: Out of interest, how many rounds of ammunition can a weapon like this discharge in a minute?

  AGENT 54: I wouldn’t know. A few hundred, probably.

  BILUNGS: This particular model is capable of firing 700 rounds of ammunition in a minute.

  AGENT 54: Why ask if you already know the answer?

  BILUNGS: Is this the kind of weapon regularly used by the Piketen?

  AGENT 54. Yes. [Long pause] Though mostly we use the P226s.

  BILUNGS: The deployment of submachine guns is commonplace in built-up urban settings?