The Treacherous Net

by Helene Tursten

Irene had a headache, which was unusual for her. If the storm would only break, the pressure behind her eyes would surely ease. She was sticky with sweat. Her short-sleeved cotton blouse was plastered to her back. Only two days to go until her vacation. It felt like an eternity. Not that she was short of something to do; the work was piling up on her desk. She just hoped nothing else would happen; neither she nor the department would be able to cope with that.

  An agitated teenager dragged her thirteen-year-old sister along to the police station in Partille. She wanted the girl to tell the police what had happened the previous evening, the Tuesday after midsummer.

  Their story could have ended there at the small local station, but the female officer who took their statement realized how serious it was. She decided to pass it on and called police HQ on Skånegatan. The call was immediately put through to Irene Huss.

  When Irene walked into the station at Partille, she noticed that everything was back to normal following the attack in the fall. The station was always unmanned at night, and the shooting had taken place on a dark November night. That had been the prelude to what was now an all-out war involving several gangs—with and without motorbikes.

  The female officer introduced herself as Åsa Nyström. She had provided coffee and a fresh pastry for the older sister. The thirteen-year-old was sitting there with her arms and legs crossed. The can of Coke and the pastry on the table in front of her hadn’t been touched.

  Emma Lindskog was twenty years old and worked at Bokia in the Allum shopping mall. Her younger sister was named Lina. Emma did the talking while Lina stared sullenly at the floor from under her fringe.

  Irene was slightly surprised by Lina’s attitude. The plump girl was wearing skintight jeans and a black crop top, leaving a wide gap to show off the glittering stone in her navel. One red sandal flapped against the sole of her foot as she nervously waggled it up and down. Her eyes were heavily made-up, and she was wearing a thick layer of foundation, despite the fact that it was summer. Admittedly there hadn’t been a great deal of sunshine so far, but most people avoid wearing too much makeup in case the sun were to break through. Lina didn’t seem to be a fan of that approach. Nor was she prepared to rely on the sun to lighten her hair; instead she had taken matters into her own hands and doused it in peroxide. The result was a dirty-white lifeless mess, but in order to mitigate the impression of a tangle of steel wool, she had added strands of bright pink and blue. She reminded Irene of her daughter Jenny’s most extreme punk period.

  Everything passes eventually, Irene thought as she smiled at Lina.

  The effort was wasted. Lina gripped her upper arms even more tightly and hunched her shoulders. If she had been a tortoise, she would have retreated completely inside her shell.

  Her sister looked sensible and mature. Her hair was dyed black and cut in a short, trendy style. Her makeup was beautifully applied, and the thin yellow summer dress showed off a slim, toned body. Her toenails were dark red, and she was wearing high-heeled gold sandals.

  “Emma, Lina—could you please tell Inspector Huss what you’ve just told me?” Åsa Nyström began.

  Lina snorted and shifted uncomfortably on her chair. The line of her compressed red lips looked like an angry scar.

  “I’m on vacation, but I promised Mom and Dad I’d look after . . .”

  Lina’s snorts had almost reached hurricane force. This was a girl who didn’t think she needed anyone looking after her.

  Emma ignored her. “ . . . Lina. She’s only thirteen . . .”

  “Fourteen!”

  That was the first word Lina had uttered since she walked into the station. Irene tried another encouraging smile, then turned her attention back to Emma.

  “Thirteen. She’ll be fourteen next month. Our parents are visiting our grandparents in Kalmar; Grandpa had an operation. They’ll be home tomorrow.”

  “Do you have any other siblings?” Irene asked. She shouldn’t really have interrupted Emma, but she wanted to get an idea of the family setup.

  “No. Just Lina. We’re seven years apart. Anyway, I happened to hear her chatting to a friend on her cell yesterday afternoon. She was outside on the patio, but the door wasn’t closed . . .”

  “It so was! You pushed it open!” Lina hissed.

  At least she’s saying something; that has to be progress, Irene thought. She kept her gaze fixed on Emma, who took no notice whatsoever of her sister’s outburst.

  “Lina said she was going to meet this guy she’d found online. She said they were crazy about each other. He was going to pick her up at the bus stop in his car at seven o’clock. Then she tells her friend he’s seventeen! Hang on, I thought—how can he be driving if he’s only seventeen?”

  “It was his brother who . . .” Lina exploded, before clamping her lips tight shut again.

  “We had something to eat at about six, and I kept an eye on Lina. At five to seven she set off, and I followed her. She didn’t see me. There are some tall bushes by the bus shelter, and I went and stood behind one of them. At exactly seven o’clock this big van pulled up. Lina went over and the door opened. I didn’t know what to do, so I yelled. As loud as I could!”

  “What did you yell?” Irene asked.

  “‘Lina! No! Don’t get in!’ Or something like that.”

  If looks could kill, Emma would have been stone dead by that point. Lina didn’t say a word, she just glared. But Irene could see the glimmer of tears in her eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “He slammed the door and took off like a bat out of hell,” Emma said.

  “Did you see what he looked like?”

  “No. The windows were dark, and I was kind of behind the van and off to the side.”

  “Can you describe the van?”

  “It was dark blue.”

  “What make?”

  “I don’t know—I’m rubbish at that kind of stuff. I’m going to learn to drive in the fall.”

  “Did you see the number?”

  “No, I was just thinking about Lina, how to stop her getting in . . .”

  “Was there anything written on the van?”

  Emma thought for a moment. “I think there might have been some white letters on the side, but I couldn’t see properly from where I was standing.”

  “Anything on the back?”

  “No.”

  So it was only Lina who had seen the driver. Irene stole a glance at the sullen figure hunched in her chair. It was important to take things slowly.

  “Lina, when you got in touch with this guy online, were you on snuttis.se or a similar website?”

  No reaction. Lina kept her gaze fixed on the floor.

  “Did he call himself Filip, Gustav, Helge, Ivar, Johan, Kalle, Ludvig, Martin . . .”

  Lina suddenly looked up. Irene stopped as she picked up a flash of surprise in her eyes.

  “So it was Martin.”

  The girl clamped her lips even more tightly shut, but Irene could see that she was growing anxious.

  “He sent you a picture of himself, didn’t he?” Irene said.

  Thank goodness she had had the foresight to slip the photograph of Pablo Eros into her purse. Without a word she placed it on the table in front of Lina, who gasped and took a deep breath.

  “How . . . how come . . . how do you . . .”

  “Is this the guy you were going to meet?”

  Lina nodded reluctantly, unable to tear her eyes away from Pablo’s smile.

  “But he said he couldn’t come and pick you up himself, so his brother would come instead?”

  Lina nodded again. She was staring at the picture as if she had been hypnotized. Irene thought about what she should say next. She couldn’t afford to lose the girl now, but at the same time Lina had to understand that Irene was telling her the truth.

  “I don’t have psychi
c powers. I was able to come up with the name he used because he follows a certain pattern. I know of other girls this guy has been in contact with, and . . .”

  “You’re lying! He’s mine! We . . .”

  Lina broke off and her face closed down once more.

  Goddamn kid! Irene pulled herself up as soon as the thought crossed her mind. That was exactly the problem: Lina was just an immature kid in a young woman’s body.

  “Lina, listen to me. The guy in the van is the one who’s been chatting with you. The guy in the picture doesn’t exist. I can prove it if you . . .”

  “Prove it then, you . . . bitch!”

  The tears welled up, dissolving the black eyeliner. It looked as if thin streams of lava were pouring down her cheeks.

  “For goodness sake, Lina—she’s a police officer!”

  “Like I care!”

  By now Lina was sobbing and sniveling. Åsa Nyström got up and handed her a bundle of paper tissues, then bent down and gave her a quick hug.

  “He fooled you. He’s a cunning bastard.”

  Before Lina had time to protest about the embrace, Åsa was on her way back to her seat.

  “Lina, the guy in this picture is an Italian actor named Pablo Eros. The photograph is twelve years old. He died two years ago. I can understand why you fell for him—he’s really hot,” Irene said.

  Lina didn’t seem to be listening.

  “The driver of the van was the person who contacted you online. He’s done it before—told girls he’s the good-looking guy in the picture, then arranged to meet them and said his brother will come and pick them up.”

  Irene paused to allow her words to sink in.

  “Things didn’t go too well for those girls. Your sister saved you.”

  Lina rubbed her eyes and tried to pull herself together. “So what . . . what happened to . . . to them?” She blew her nose.

  Irene waited until she had finished, then answered as calmly as she could. “He raped them. And we know that he killed at least one of them.”

  In spite of the fact that Lina’s makeup now bore a close resemblance to army camouflage, Irene could see that her face had lost its color.

  “You’re lying,” Lina whispered, but without a trace of conviction.

  “Unfortunately I’m not, Lina. And the girls who believed his lies were older than you. You shouldn’t feel dumb. He’s very, very clever. This man is extremely dangerous. He’s a murderer.”

  The room fell completely silent, apart from the frantic buzzing of a fly, banging into the window over and over again in a futile attempt to escape. In the distance Irene could hear the rumble of the approaching storm. Soon the blessed rain would come and wash away the oppressiveness of the still air. She felt as if her headache was already beginning to ease.

  “We’re trying to catch him before he has time to rape and possibly kill more girls. Will you help us?” Irene asked. She held her breath and didn’t let go until Lina nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  “We’ve put together a facial composite with the help of Lina Lindskog. She’s the only person who’s actually caught a glimpse of our guy. He called himself Martin in his dealings with her, which means she ought to be number thirteen,” Irene said.

  Her colleagues looked attentively at the picture projected on the wall. They saw a slim clean-shaven face, shadowed by a dark blue cap pulled down over the forehead. The eyes were hidden by dark aviator sunglasses. The hair that was visible looked greasy and light brown. The nose was straight, the lips narrow. It was difficult to imagine a more ordinary appearance. He could be anywhere between twenty and forty.

  “I’ve checked all the guys on our list; the only one who resembles the composite is the one who killed himself almost two months ago,” Irene informed them.

  “How long had he been in touch with Lina?” Tommy asked.

  “Nine weeks. He can certainly tell when they’re ready. Lina would have gone anywhere with him. She was crazy about him,” Irene replied, wondering if the others could hear the sadness in her voice.

  Lina had been utterly devastated. But she wasn’t stupid; she had realized that she had been fooled. She had marched off to the bathroom and washed off her ruined makeup. Then she was ready to help with the composite. Irene had brought the sisters to HQ, and with the help of Lina’s description and a specialist computer program, a police expert had constructed the image of the man who had groomed her.

  It hadn’t been easy, because to a thirteen-year-old, anyone over eighteen is ancient. In fact, Lina had confided to Irene, the only thing that had worried her had been Martin’s age—seventeen. She had mentioned it to him, but he had simply dismissed her concerns and told her that age is irrelevant when it comes to love, which had made Lina forget her reservations.

  All the time Lina was talking, Emma had sat beside her, gently stroking her younger sister’s back.

  Afterward Irene had taken the girls down to the café and bought them ice cream. With her face scrubbed clean of makeup, Lina appeared extremely young and vulnerable. As she sat there licking her cone, she looked like exactly what she was: a little girl. When Irene thought about what could have happened if Emma hadn’t been on her guard, she felt a hard knot in her stomach.

  It was Monday, August 4. Over the past few days it had finally gotten a little warmer; otherwise the summer weather had been pretty bad on the west coast, which was unfortunate for those who had taken their vacations in June and July. Even though this applied to Irene and Krister, they had spent a lovely week in England and a decent fortnight in the cottage in Värmland. Irene hadn’t felt fully rested until the last week, and would have liked a few more days before she went back to work.

  “It seems as if the bad guys have taken some time off too. July has been quiet; let’s hope things stay that way in August,” Efva Thylqvist said, smiling at her team.

  Fredrik Stridh and Tommy Persson were absent; they still had another week off. However, a young woman whom Irene had already met had joined them.

  “May I introduce Åsa Nyström, who will be standing in for Birgitta for the time being,” the superintendent said.

  Åsa smiled and nodded to everyone around the conference table. Irene hadn’t paid all that much attention to her when they met in Partille three and a half weeks earlier; now she saw a woman aged about thirty, with curly chestnut hair and greenish-blue eyes. She was quite tall and looked muscular. She had a round face and a wide mouth that looked as if it smiled easily, revealing deep dimples. She could be described as attractive, but not classically beautiful.

  “Perhaps you’d like to say a few words about yourself?” Efva Thylqvist suggested.

  Åsa Nyström got to her feet and looked at her new colleagues. “Okay, so my name is Åsa Nyström, and I’m thirty years old. As you can hear from my accent, I was born and bred in Göteborg. When I graduated from high school . . .”

  She paused for effect, a mischievous expression on her face.

  “. . . I had no intention of joining the police. It wasn’t even on my radar. My family tends to go for artistic professions. I wanted to be an actress, so I applied to drama school and got in! I spent three years training, and then . . .”

  A look of resignation played across her face.

  “. . . then I realized I’d gotten it completely wrong. I just didn’t enjoy trying to imitate reality in front of a select few night after night. And I also realized nobody was going to ask me to play the leading lady.”

  She placed one hand coquettishly at the back of her neck, pouting and fluttering her eyelashes. Then she slowly rolled up one sleeve of her shirt and showed off an impressive bicep. She grinned as the others started to laugh. This girl certainly isn’t shy, Irene thought. And I wonder how she got those muscles. A scar was clearly visible just above Åsa’s left eyebrow.

  As if she had heard Irene’s unspoken question, Åsa
continued.

  “I started kickboxing when I was fifteen. That was in 1993, and women’s boxing wasn’t very common in Sweden. Maybe I was already looking for a challenge back then. It took three years at drama school for me to realize what I really wanted to do: I applied to the police training academy as soon as I finished.”

  “You’ve already requested time off later in the year; is that because of your kickboxing?” Efva Thylqvist asked with genuine interest.

  “Yes. I’ve got a four-day training camp in September, and the world championships in October.”

  “Wow! How often do you train?”

  “Five to seven times a week.”

  Efva Thylqvist seemed to be weighing up the team’s newest recruit. Irene felt the look on the superintendent’s face didn’t bode well.

  “Do you have time to fit in anything else, apart from work and training? I see from your file that you’re married; you must have a very understanding husband. What does he do?”

  There was a flicker of something in Åsa’s eyes, but Irene thought she was the only one who had noticed.

  Åsa’s voice gave nothing away as she replied. “He’s a musician. But we’re in the process of getting a divorce.”

  Irene had the feeling that things were going badly wrong. This was no longer a presentation on Åsa’s part; it was more like an interrogation. But Thylqvist seemed totally oblivious to what she was doing.

  “Which is also an artistic profession, of course. What kind of music does he play?”

  “Hard rock. He’s the drummer with Hell’s Metal Warriors.”

  Thylqvist’s face stiffened. “Perhaps you could tell us something about your career so far.”

  “When I’d finished training I moved back to Göteborg. I drove a patrol car around Frölunda and Hisingen for a while. I liked being out and about, but I felt like I should be doing something else, so I applied to cover the summer vacation in Partille. And now I’m here.” The dimples appeared once more as she steadily met the superintendent’s gaze.

  Efva Thylqvist smiled back, but without much warmth. She turned to Irene. “You’ve got the biggest office, and you’re used to sharing. I thought Åsa could move in with you.”