Ultimatum

by Anders de la Motte

“Take those cuffs off. And our conversation isn’t to be recorded or observed, is that understood?”

  Blom squirmed slightly.

  “Our internal rules are very clear: everything that happens in the unit, with the exception of conversations with lawyers, is to be documented and stored.”

  “Kassab is going to be questioned as a witness in an ongoing murder investigation.” Amante’s expression and tone of voice left little room for doubt about what he thought of the other man. “As long as that investigation is going on, discussions relating to it remain confidential, according to the Code of Judicial Procedure. Your internal rules—”

  “Don’t cover police interviews,” Julia finished for him, flashing Amante a sharp glare. “So if you wouldn’t mind removing Kassab’s handcuffs and asking your colleagues to leave the room . . . And, as we’ve already said, all cameras and microphones need to be switched off.”

  Blom glowered at Julia, then at Amante. Then he left the room without a word.

  • • •

  “You look a bit the worse for wear, Kassab,” said the short-haired blonde who’d introduced herself as Gabrielsson.

  Atif shrugged. He stared down at the table between them in the claustrophobic little room. Tried simultaneously to blink away the tears that wouldn’t stop running.

  “Tear gas or pepper spray?”

  He looked up. Screwed his eyes up to focus better, but that just made it worse. “Pepper.”

  Gabrielsson nodded. “We got to try it in self-defense. Hurts like hell. And I’m sure we only got a tiny dose compared to what He-Man out there gave you.” She gestured toward the dark glass in the wall. “I heard that the other two are in the infirmary. I’m guessing you don’t want to say what it was about.”

  Atif didn’t answer.

  “Still not very talkative, I see,” Gabrielsson said.

  He went back to staring down at the table. His eyes were stinging, tears still running down his cheeks. He been put in an isolation cell immediately after the fight. Hadn’t been given a chance to wash off the damn pepper spray. Now it seemed to have caught in his skin and beard, making his whole face burn, which was obviously what the screws intended.

  The cop put a photograph on the table in front of him.

  “Do you recognize this man?”

  Atif looked at the picture. Blinked a couple of times. There was something wrong with the picture, something about the eyes, but he still recognized the man.

  “That’s David Sarac.”

  Gabrielsson exchanged a glance with her colleague, who for some reason hadn’t introduced himself.

  “What about this one?” She put another picture down. A grainy photograph taken with a cell phone, showing a man who was half turned away.

  Atif stared at it for a few seconds. “No.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Never seen him before.” Atif pushed the photograph away. “If that’s all, I’d like to go back to my cell now.”

  “Maybe we could help you somehow.”

  Atif screwed his eyes up. “You’ve shown me your pictures, asked your questions, and got your answers. Can I go back to my cell now, please?”

  “Take another look, please.” Gabrielsson tried to push the photograph toward him again, but Atif ignored her.

  “We’re done here,” he said, looking up at the camera in one corner of the ceiling.

  A sudden sound made him start. There was a small yellow jar on the table in front of him.

  “Here,” Gabrielsson’s colleague said. “It’ll help with the pepper spray.”

  Atif met the other man’s gaze, then slowly picked the jar up. “Vaseline?”

  “The pepper sticks to it. Smear a decent amount on and leave it for five minutes. Then wipe it all off with a paper towel. Do it a couple more times if it doesn’t seem to work. But don’t try using water.”

  Atif looked at the cop. Tried to work out if he was making fun of him. He couldn’t see any sign of that. “Thanks,” he said, putting the jar in his pocket. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Amante.”

  “North African?”

  “Spanish.”

  Atif squinted at the man. The reply was quick—a bit too quick. “You look more Arabic than Spanish. Tunisian, Moroccan, maybe. Do you speak Arabic?”

  “Maybe.”

  There was something about the guy that didn’t make sense. His blonde colleague was a cop, down to her fingertips. But this man was different. Atif went on watching him for a few more seconds.

  “You’re not a cop, are you? It’s obvious from your eyes. Your whole style, actually.”

  Amante shrugged his shoulders. “Does it matter?”

  Atif thought for a moment. Then decided to play along.

  “Okay, what’s this about, then, Vaseline?”

  “We’ve found a body. A dismembered body, in a very bad state.” Amante leaned over the table and tapped at the grainy photograph of the man looking away from the camera. “We think he’s involved, but all we know about him is that he calls himself Frank and speaks with a slight accent.”

  Atif looked at Amante, then at Gabrielsson. He pulled the photograph toward him and looked at it, more carefully this time. When the blonde cop had put the picture down he hadn’t recognized the man. But now, as his tears softened the man’s sharp features, he suddenly saw who it was.

  “A dismembered body, you said?” Atif glanced at the other photograph, David Sarac, but with the wrong eyes.

  Amante nodded. “Do you recognize him?”

  Atif thought for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Vaseline, but I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  • • •

  Julia waited until the prison had disappeared from the rearview mirror before she said anything.

  “Do you usually go around with Vaseline in your pocket?” She took her eyes off the road and pulled a face to let Amante know she was joking.

  “I get a rash on my wrists,” he said without looking up from his cell phone. “Vaseline’s the only thing that helps. My therapist says it’s psychosomatic. That’s why I don’t like handcuffs.”

  Julia tried unsuccessfully to work out if he was teasing her. First she’d had to rescue Amante when he flared up out of nowhere and came close to telling the head screw where to stick his internal regulations. And then, out of the blue, he suddenly managed to get Kassab to open up. He handled the interview almost like a professional. She couldn’t make any sense of him.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think it’s going to be a cold night. Might even get some rain. The wind’s swung around to the north.”

  “And if we forget the weather forecast for a moment and focus on Kassab?”

  “He knows perfectly well who Frank is.”

  Julia nodded. She’d picked up the same signals. Eyes widening slightly, the faint but unmistakable change in Kassab’s body language.

  “I agree. Kassab lied, and didn’t really try to hide it. Almost as if he wanted us to realize that he knew but wasn’t going to say anything.”

  Neither of them spoke for a few seconds.

  “Was he right, by the way?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Kassab. When he said you look like you come from North Africa.”

  “My biological father is from Morocco. My mom left him when I was ten.” Amante turned away, his tone of voice suddenly unforthcoming.

  “Okay,” Julia said, in the absence of anything better. She stifled an impulse to ask more questions that wouldn’t be answered. Another little piece to add to the puzzle of Amante. The question was whether it left her any wiser or just more confused. He was looking more and more like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle where half the picture was made up of dark cloud
s.

  They reached the main road and she turned right toward the city.

  “So you don’t think we’ll get any further with Kassab?” she said, to shift the conversation back to safer territory. Amante took the bait after just a few seconds.

  “No . . . not unless something happens that suddenly makes him want to talk to us. But I can’t really imagine what that might be.”

  Nor can I, Julia thought.

  Eight

  It had been raining for about five minutes, when there was a crackle in the Sniper’s earpiece. A surprisingly cold summer rain, pattering rhythmically on the paneled roof around him and forcing him to pull up the hood of his dark Windbreaker. Rain and cold didn’t usually bother him. He had been freezing cold before. In trenches where the mud stiffened to form ice-cold armor around your body. Among the trees on the damp slopes by the Sarsang Reservoir and in the mountains above the Lachin corridor, where he had stuffed his mouth with snow to stop his clouded breath from giving away his position. And then on the rooftops above the ruins of Agdam, where the wind cut right through his clothes and sometimes carried with it the cries of the dead.

  Much later, when his first war was over, he went on freezing, in countries and places that had already faded from memory. Yet there was still something about this rain that he had never experienced before. A new sort of chill. It didn’t really surprise him. The whole of this country was cold, even in the summer. The light, the colors, the people. The peculiar jagged language that came out of their mouths. Efficient, functional, so free of emotion if you compared it to his own beautiful mother tongue.

  When had he actually started to get nostalgic, to think more about the past than the future? He didn’t know. But he was fairly sure that his conversations with Father Ivor had something to do with it.

  Two hours had passed since he lay down on the groundsheet and unfolded the support for his rifle. Even though it was almost midnight, a thin strip of light was still lingering on the horizon. As if the day refused to be beaten, thus denying him the darkness he had been counting on, and which would have made him invisible up there. It troubled him and had made him consider abandoning the job. But then he heard the voice in his earpiece.

  “Under way,” it whispered.

  Time to make his mind up. He was more visible than he had anticipated, more exposed than felt comfortable. But rain made people look down. Turn up their collars and open umbrellas, concentrate on avoiding puddles ahead of them. Besides, this was no ordinary job. A favor—that was how he preferred to look at it. One life in return for saving another. Or several, to be more accurate.

  With a practiced hand, the Sniper removed the rubber covers from both ends of the large telescopic sight and laid his cheek against the butt of the rifle. The plastic was cold and smooth against his skin, exacerbating the chill from the rain. In spite of the hazy nocturnal light, the image was crystal clear. A street, a row of parked cars, a few illuminated windows, a restaurant.

  According to the gauge, the distance was forty-eight meters, and the difference in elevation eleven meters between the street and the roof where he was lying. He had already adjusted the sight in light of all the data the expensive instrument had given him. It was a luxury that he could only have dreamed of as a young conscript equipped with an old Mosin-Nagant rifle with a battered telescopic sight. Even so, he found himself looking back on those days more and more fondly. He toyed with the forbidden thought that what he was doing now wasn’t the same thing as back then. That the people in his sights weren’t enemies but targets he was firing at for a price, and that his soul, in spite of all his donations to the monastery, was therefore irrevocably lost. Father Ivor would have said that was because he no longer took the trouble to remember his targets’ names but instead actively tried to forget them.

  A large, dark-colored Audi glided along the street and pulled up outside the restaurant. The driver remained in the car as the front passenger door opened. The Sniper trained the crosshairs of the sight on the man and followed him as he stepped onto the pavement. He was thickset, muscular in that way that made his clothes look like they didn’t fit properly. The bulletproof vest that the man was presumably wearing under his leather jacket only emphasized the impression of stiffness.

  The Sniper moved the crosshairs to the bodyguard’s head and adjusted one of the settings so that his angular head almost filled the lens. He felt his pulse quicken and took a couple of deep breaths to slow it down. The rain went on drumming on the roof.

  The bodyguard down below looked about him, then walked slowly around the car and took a large black umbrella from the boot. He put it up, then opened the rear passenger door wide and took a couple of steps toward the front door of the restaurant. Then he stopped and slowly scanned the facades of the buildings on the other side of the street.

  For a moment the Sniper thought their eyes met through the telescopic sight. A shiver ran down his neck, all the way to his stomach. If everything had gone the way he had planned, the bodyguard would have had no chance of seeing him. His night vision would have been disrupted by the streetlamps, and the night sky would have made him blend into the dark rooftop. But as it was, things were very different.

  The bodyguard continued to stare up toward him. His mouth opened slightly, as if he was about to say something into the microphone in his collar.

  The Sniper held his breath. Waited.

  He let his finger slide over the trigger. Carefully squeezed the cold metal until he felt it reach the sweet point. He had been spotted a couple of times before and had naturally planned for that eventuality. He just had to get up in a crouch, work through the five practiced hand movements that would get the rifle and groundsheet into his rucksack, then walk calmly toward the exit. The car they had given him was parked a block away, and he could be on his way to the airport within five minutes, maximum. The only trace of his presence would be a rapidly disappearing dry patch on the paneled roof.

  The thought calmed him down. He let go of the trigger and stretched his forefinger as he continued to study the man below. Waiting for his next move.

  The bodyguard turned around, opened the restaurant door, and held it open. There was movement within. The Sniper moved the rifle and put his finger back on the trigger. A man stopped in the doorway. There was a blonde woman on his arm. Behind her he could make out another well-built bodyguard.

  “The target is leaving,” the voice in his earpiece said. “Proceed. I repeat: Proceed.”

  The Sniper moved the rifle another few centimeters and squeezed the trigger halfway. He noticed his heartbeat again and took half a breath to settle it. Time switched gears. Suddenly everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

  The rain went on drumming an irregular, chill rhythm on the black roof. The woman below laughed. The sound echoed between the buildings. Bloodred lipstick, white teeth.

  An infinitely drawn-out second passed.

  Two.

  Just as the pair stepped out onto the pavement—the instant before they would be hidden by the bodyguard’s large ­umbrella—he fired.

  Nine

  Julia wasn’t properly awake when she got hold of her phone as it buzzed about on her bedside table. The central number of the Violent Crime Unit flashed on the screen.

  “H-Hello?”

  “What the hell are you playing at, Gabrielsson?” Pärson was shouting so loudly that Julia had to hold the phone away from her ear. She felt across the bedside table and found the light switch, then her alarm clock.

  Ten past two on Monday morning. Pärson was still bellowing.

  “—that you and a fucking civilian went and questioned Atif Kassab in prison on your day off. Would you care to explain to me what the fuck is going on?”

  “We were following up the last leads regarding the dismembered body in Källstavik, boss.” She did her best to keep her voice calm. Placed extra emphasis on the last w
ord, because she knew Pärson liked it when she played subordinate.

  “The dismembered body? You mean the case the Security Police are investigating? The case that I ordered you to drop on Friday?”

  Julia got out of bed, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Well . . .” she began as her brain tried to come up with a suitable response.

  “Shut up. I don’t want to hear it. You and I will have to have a talk about this at a later date. Right now you need to get some clothes on and come into the office. We’ve got a shooting in the city center. An execution, to be blunt. The victim was shot in the head by a sniper when he and his mistress were leaving a ­Michelin-starred restaurant. The media are all over it, the head of Regional Crime is on his way over in person, and the national police chief’s people won’t stop phoning. I need every detective we’ve got, even the ones who can’t follow orders.”

  “Understood,” Julia muttered. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  But Pärson had already slammed the phone down.

  • • •

  Atif had only been locked up with Joachim Gilsén for a few hours before he realized one thing very clearly: he loathed the man. He loathed his squeaky voice, his salesman’s grin, his habit of sucking his crowned teeth like they were sweets. He loathed the nervous way Gilsén moved his head the whole time. Twitch, twitch, twitch, like a bird. Not to mention the crap he talked. A drawn-out monologue of rationalizations, excuses, and evasions.

  “The way I see it, those greedy bastards only have themselves to blame. Do you get it?”

  A twitch of the head.

  “It’s hardly my fault that their money burns holes in their pockets.”

  Another twitch, followed by a grin.

  “It’s really us taxpayers who helped them make a profit, thanks to all the deductions they can claim for property expenses. We’ve helped stuff millions into their bulging bank accounts.”

  Double twitch.

  “All I do is take some of that back. I mean, who’s stupid enough to believe they can get a guaranteed fifteen percent return? The idiots are practically begging to be turned over.”