The Long Shadow

by Liza Marklund

  She went back to her old articles and reread them.

  One effect of fentanyl poisoning was lethargy. The mother and two children had been found lying on either side of a closed bedroom door, unable to cry out to each other or open it, yet still fully conscious. They had been dead within minutes.

  No, there probably hadn’t been any cries.

  Annika looked up at the horizon to try to suppress her nausea. The ferry had left the Mediterranean and entered the Atlantic.

  She got up and bought a bottle of mineral water, then carried on with her article.

  They had broken in through the terrace door. The gas-alarm was shrieking but everything else was silent. Then they had switched off the alarm, the hardest part of the job over. Now they had plenty of time.

  They began by stealing the safe, a time-consuming and noisy job, then carried it out to the woman’s car. She had driven off, with the safe in the boot, and probably the gas canister, which hadn’t been found.

  The car, and the remains of the safe, were dumped in the airport car park.

  The thieves had stripped the villa of art, rugs and jewellery. They hadn’t known they had just four hours to live.

  Annika saved and then closed the document. The ferry was swinging south, leaving Spain and Europe behind, and was rapidly approaching the Moroccan coast. The sun had passed behind some clouds and the sea was grey. Rain hung heavily above the Rif mountains. She could make out buildings along the shore, tall and white, as well as a number of cranes.

  She closed her laptop. She received a message on her mobile from Meditel, a mobile operator, welcoming her to Morocco. She put everything away in her bag and went out on deck. The wind tugged at her hair. She felt better immediately.

  The construction boom from the Costa del Sol seemed to have spread across the strait. She could see people on the beaches, cars on the roads, shops with big plate-glass windows. She had never been to Africa before, but this was nothing like she’d been expecting.

  The ferry slowed, the deck and walls shaking as it approached the quayside. She looked at her watch: they’d been late leaving Algeciras and the crossing had taken almost half an hour longer than the promised two hours. It was now a quarter to five. She paced about restlessly, hoping that the muqaddam observed the Spanish custom and stayed open for part of the evening.

  The lorry drivers and workmen gathered on deck five, chatting to each other in a mixture of French, Spanish and Arabic. None of them seemed to be in any great hurry. She positioned herself strategically beside the door through which she had entered the ship, hoping to get off quickly, but nothing happened. There was a lot of banging and crashing below her, and she presumed that gangways and ramps were being fixed in place.

  Then the door opened – not the one she was standing next to, but the corresponding one on the other side. She ground her teeth in frustration but went meekly to the back of the queue.

  It took ages.

  First she had to fill in a form, listing all her personal details, her profession and her address in Morocco, the purpose of her visit and how long she was planning to stay. She knew better than to say she was a journalist, and put ‘writer’ as her profession. Two Customs officials and two border guards were checking all passports and travel documents with irritating thoroughness.

  ‘What do you write?’ one of the customs officials asked suspiciously in English, fingering the laptop in her bag.

  ‘Textbooks for schoolchildren,’ Annika said.

  They let her through without any further questions. She had to go down two decks, across the car deck and along a narrow metal corridor to reach the gangway. She stepped ashore in Morocco and took a deep breath. The air smelt of sea and burned rubber.

  She was channelled into a glass corridor, like the one she had walked through to reach the ship in Algeciras, surrounded by a similar view of articulated trucks, containers and cranes. She stopped inside the terminal building, sat down on a bench in the arrivals hall and called Knut Garen. Meditel worked fine: the police officer sounded as if he was next door.

  ‘The arrest warrant has been made public,’ he confirmed. That was all Annika needed.

  She took out her laptop and connected to the Internet on her mobile. It would probably cost a fortune, but she opened her usual Outlook Explorer page and composed a new message to Anders Schyman. Using Bluetooth, she sent off all three articles about Carita Halling Gonzales: the arrest warrant, her as a person, and the crime, plus one of the pictures she had taken outside the prison in Málaga on her mobile when they had visited Martinez. Carita was in one of the pictures, albeit only in the corner, but you could see that she was blonde, carrying a leopard-print handbag and wearing high heels. The ‘Swedish jet-setter’ in person.

  Finally she attached two pictures of the area where Carita had lived, one general shot with the pool and waterfall in the foreground, and then one of the house with the police cordon. In the email she included some captions for the pictures, explained briefly what had happened, gave Carita’s full name and told Schyman that her parents lived outside Borlänge. She said he could do what he liked with the articles.

  It took for ever to send the email. She was worried the connection would fail and she’d have to start all over again, but it didn’t, and eventually the pictures and articles had been whisked into cyberspace. She breathed out and packed everything away.

  That’s for all those damned notes, she thought, as she walked out of the terminal building.

  35

  The sky was overcast but the light was sharp. She squinted up towards the city, which sprawled up the mountainside. How to get to Asilah?

  ‘Taxi?’ an older man in blue jeans and a greyish-blue jacket asked, as he leaned against the outside wall.

  ‘Asilah?’ she said quizzically.

  ‘Twenty-five euros,’ the man said.

  Twenty-five euros? All the way to Asilah? That was less than half what she’d paid to get to Arlanda Airport that morning. ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘My car is over here,’ he said, in heavily accented English.

  She followed the man towards a car park alongside the terminal. His neat haircut and relaxed gait reminded her of someone she knew – Thomas’s dad, maybe? He walked to a yellow Mercedes with a taxi-sign on the roof, opened the door to the back seat, and closed it after she had got in.

  ‘So you’re going to Asilah?’ the man said, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘It’s a very nice little city.’

  She put her bag beside her on the vinyl seat. ‘Will it take long to get there? I’m in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘Not long at all. This is a very good car. It’s been to Rabat, Casablanca, the Sahara, all over the world!’

  He started the engine and steered through the harbour with a practised hand, then out into the streets of Tangier. It was just like Marbella, Annika thought. The streets were lined with palms. Modern white buildings rose up towards the sky, and there were bars, cafés and car-rental companies along the pavements.

  ‘A million people live in Tangier now,’ the taxi-driver said. ‘Everything’s new. Europeans come over here and buy up the land. They build hotels and golf courses and shopping centres. It’s very good business for people here, legal business. Very good.’

  She watched the buildings sweep past and decided not to ask about the illegal business. She presumed part of it consisted of what Knut Garen had identified: the hash plantations up in the mountains, and the distribution chain leading to Europe.

  How on earth had Suzette managed to get into the country without a passport? The check on the ferry had been rigorous. Annika had rarely had to answer questions about her occupation and the purpose of her visit before. How had Suzette, at just sixteen, with no money, managed to get through without Customs and the border guards sounding the alarm?

  ‘This is a very good place to live,’ the driver said. ‘The atmosphere is relaxed, good food, good weather.’

  They were driving through a residentia
l district with a forest of television aerials and satellite dishes on the roofs. She saw women on their way to shops and markets, some with their hair covered, others without. They passed petrol stations, mobile-phone shops and a large football stadium that was still under construction. The residential housing thinned out and industrial buildings took its place. They passed a Hotel Ibis, a large Volvo showroom and a Scania dealer.

  Suzette had been here for several summers, driving along this road, looking out at the fields, car showrooms and petrol stations, sitting in her grandmother’s arms and playing with her friend Amira. For her Africa had been perfectly normal.

  ‘The factories produce goods for the European market,’ the driver said, pointing. ‘Moroccan workers are much cheaper than Europeans.’ He gestured to the other side of the road, to a thin line of trees along the shore. ‘Families come out here at weekends,’ he said. ‘They cook on open fires, read books, play with their children.’

  ‘How come you speak such good English?’ she asked. ‘Have you lived in England?’

  He cast a quick glance at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Never,’ he said.

  ‘Did you learn it at school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you’ve got English friends?’

  He didn’t answer, and she didn’t ask any more questions.

  They were heading south along the coastal road. It clung to the Atlantic: to her right Annika could see vast sandy beaches, completely deserted. To her left there were rolling fields and hills, soft and friendly, nowhere near as harsh and dramatic as the Mediterranean coast of the Costa del Sol. There seemed to be flowers everywhere, an overwhelming display of blossom.

  The man carried on talking, telling her how people from Qatar had discovered the Moroccan coast and had started buying up land and building huge villas with big pools, and other things that were probably perfectly true but not terribly interesting. She shut out his voice and looked at the landscape.

  How was she going to find a muqaddam in Asilah? Where could she start? Who should she ask?

  Then she looked at the man behind the wheel and slapped her forehead: God, she was stupid! She had the best guide in the world sitting right in front of her. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but do you know if there’s a muqaddam in Asilah?’

  He looked at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘A what?’

  She tried to make the word sound right. ‘A muqaddam?’

  ‘Ah, a muqaddam!’ He swallowed all the vowels, pronouncing the word as mqdm. ‘Of course there’s a muqaddam in Asilah.’

  She looked at the time. Half past six. ‘Does he have an office?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How late is it open?’

  ‘Until five o’clock.’

  Her spirits sank. Oh, well, if the driver could help her find the office, she could book into a hotel and go back there first thing in the morning …

  ‘We’ll probably make it in time,’ the driver said. ‘We’re only a few kilometres from Asilah now.’

  She looked at him in astonishment, then at the time again. It had just gone half past six. ‘But didn’t you say the office closed at five?’

  The man’s eyes twinkled in the rear-view mirror. ‘You didn’t put your watch back when you got off the boat, did you? It’s half past four here.’

  She’d completely forgotten that there was a two-hour time difference between Spain and Morocco, even though they were on the same longitude. She adjusted her watch. As she raised her head, she saw the sign for Casa García rush past. That was the restaurant Rickard Marmén had recommended. They must have reached Asilah.

  A moment later the driver slowed.

  ‘Can you help me?’ she asked. ‘I need to ask the muqaddam something, and my French is really bad.’

  He pulled into a car park, pulled up and turned to face her. ‘You want to ask about someone?’

  ‘A woman called Fatima. She lives on a farm somewhere near here.’

  He nodded, and looked as though he were thinking. Then he asked, ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘That’s the problem. I don’t really know. Do you think the muqaddam would?’

  He nodded, more firmly this time. ‘Her name is Fatima? If Fatima lives on a farm near Asilah, then the muqaddam will know.’ He switched off the engine. ‘We’ll park here, and walk to the muqaddam.’

  They followed a sign showing the way to the Quartier Administratif. Annika stayed half a metre behind the man, letting him set the pace. He wasn’t walking very quickly. They reached a pedestrian street with low residential buildings on both sides. There were pots of flowers and herbs along the pavement. The driver stopped a man dressed in white and asked something in Arabic. The man answered and pointed, the driver nodded, the man bowed, then they talked and talked and talked. Eventually they moved on.

  ‘That green door up ahead,’ the driver said, raising his hand. ‘Fatima? On a farm near Asilah? Does she have a husband?’

  ‘I think he might be dead,’ Annika said.

  The driver walked up to the green door and knocked. Without waiting for an answer he pushed it open and stepped into darkness. Annika was unsure whether or not to follow him. She decided it would be best to wait outside.

  The driver went along a dark hallway, then into a room on the left at the far end. A triangle of light fell onto the floor when the door opened. Then it shrank and disappeared as the door was slowly closed. She heard him greet someone, then a stream of Arabic. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  Some young boys were playing on a bicycle a bit further down the street. They became shy when they saw her watching them, so she turned away. A girl with plaits wearing a school uniform walked past with a pink school-bag on her back. A woman in a long dress, her hair covered, strolled along on the other side, talking animatedly into a mobile phone.

  The door off the hallway opened and Annika turned as the triangle of light reappeared. The taxi-driver came towards her, with a man in traditional Arab dress behind him.

  ‘Muhammad, the muqaddam in Asilah,’ the driver said, taking a position beside Annika, as though he were about to introduce her. Annika’s mouth was dry. How did you say hello in Arabic?

  But the muqaddam held out his hand and said softly: ‘Bonjour, madame.’

  Annika took his hand. ‘Bonjour,’ she muttered, embarrassed.

  ‘Muhammad knows Fatima’s farm,’ the driver said. ‘It’s up in the mountains.’

  ‘C’est une ferme très grande,’ the Arab man said in his gentle voice. ‘Les routes sont très mauvaises. Vous avez besoin d’une grosse voiture pour y aller.’

  ‘What?’ Annika said, bewildered.

  ‘The roads are bad,’ the driver said. ‘You need a big car. He’s explained to me where the farm is. Do you want me to drive you?’

  ‘One more question. Fatima’s husband, does he live on the farm too?’ she asked, looking at the muqaddam.

  The driver translated. The civil servant shook his head, then raised and lowered his hands. ‘He’s dead,’ the driver said.

  ‘What was his name?’

  More gestures, more shakes of the head.

  ‘He was European.’

  Annika looked at the driver. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d be very grateful if you could drive me to the farm.’

  ‘Another twenty-five euros.’

  ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

  ‘But first I need to eat,’ he said.

  The thought of food made her feel weak at the knees. The only thing she’d had all day was the baguette in the café at the ferry terminal in Algeciras. ‘Okay,’ she said.

  They thanked the civil servant for his help. He went back inside the building and locked the door. It was five o’clock.

  The taxi-driver, whose name also turned out to be Muhammad, thanked her for her offer of dinner, but politely declined. Annika watched him sit down in a local bar, where he immediately struck up a conversation with some other men in grey-blue jackets.

  She walked r
ound the corner and got a table in the Spanish restaurant, Casa García. They would take an hour for dinner, Muhammad had decreed, so she ordered a starter (jamón ibérico), main course (pollo a la plancha) and dessert (flan). Afterwards she was so full she could hardly move. She paid by card, then walked towards the medina, the old centre of the city. She wasn’t worried that Muhammad would disappear -she hadn’t paid him anything.

  The sun was sinking quickly into the sea. She stopped at the north gate of the city and looked out over the small harbour. Colourful little fishing-boats were bobbing up and down in the shelter of the jetty. This was supposed to be one of Morocco’s main shipping ports for cannabis? She had trouble believing that.

  But, of course, she couldn’t see the go-fast boats that Knut Garen and Niklas Linde had told her about. And it wasn’t certain that they’d use the main harbour in the centre of the city to load a cargo of hash. She went for a walk among the thousand-year-old buildings within the city walls. They had been freshly painted, and looked as if they had gone up the day before.

  The taxi driver, Muhammad, was waiting for her in the car. She slid into the back seat. He started the engine and drove out of the city. ‘You got some good food?’ he asked.

  ‘Very good,’ she said.

  ‘Morocco has very good food, good couscous.’

  She didn’t tell him she’d eaten at a Spanish restaurant.

  Asilah disappeared behind them, drowning in the setting sun. The car headed east, across a railway line and under a motorway. Then the tarmac came to an end, replaced by a gravel track. Muhammad braked, turned the headlights on and steered the big Mercedes over the rough surface. The track was visible in front of the car as a slightly paler strip through the dusk, and she could make out bushes, crops and rocks along the side of the road.

  When the last light of the motorway had disappeared behind a ridge, darkness closed around them. Muhammad wound his window all the way up, as if he wanted to shut it out.

  ‘Is it far?’ Annika asked, wondering if it would have been better to wait until morning before setting out for the farm.