Ultimatum

by Anders de la Motte

  A scornful grin, followed by tooth sucking, which was making a whistling sound from the corners of Gilsén’s mouth.

  Atif sipped his morning coffee. The clock on the wall said it was five minutes past eight. Less than twenty-four hours in isolation with Gilsén felt like a week. And of course there were no distractions. No newspapers, no Internet, no television. He hadn’t even been allowed to take any books from his cell. Naturally, the whole thing was the idea of the sadistic Blom. A chance to give him a bit of extra punishment. And on top of that, he had to keep an eye on Gilsén. By now news of the fight would have reached beyond the walls. Whoever had paid Rosco and his guys to murder Gilsén would raise their bid. It was only a matter of time. And it wouldn’t make the slightest difference that Gilsén was being kept in here with him for his own protection. Just like last time, the screws would turn a blind eye at just the right moment. Because while Gilsén was sharp as a razor blade when it came to business, he was seriously fucking stupid. During his time in custody he had managed to make numerous complaints against prosecutors, police officers, and prison guards. He had written long diatribes to the judicial public advocate, the European Court of Human Rights, and the media about how badly he was being treated by the judicial system and how his rights were being infringed in all manner of ways.

  Atif had read the papers and therefore had a pretty good idea about the little man’s business dealings. Gilsén mostly targeted retired businessmen, golden oldies who had just sold their companies and were sitting on pots of money. He had a flashy office on Strandvägen, complete with sexy secretary and all. He offered dinners and trips as he persuaded his victims to lend money at an extortionate rate of interest. Ten, sometimes fifteen percent, and as surety for this they were given shares worth three times the amount in some sham company.

  Gilsén’s opening gambit was smart—Atif reluctantly had to admit that—and the next phase was also pretty clever. He made payments for the first couple of months, enticing his greedy victims to invest more and more of their millions into his projects and to recommend him to their friends. The little bastard was so convincing with his porcelain smile and verbal diarrhea that he persuaded his victims to carry on transferring money long after they ought to have realized that things weren’t right. Yet still no one reported him. Because as long as Gilsén kept answering the phone and feeding them excuses, there was still hope that their savings could be rescued. Besides, they still had the shares they had been given in exchange.

  But Gilsén had grown careless. He boasted about the nature of the business to his secretary-slash-mistress, and when he later dumped her she sent a recording of the conversation to the police. Ironically, it was Gilsén’s own drivel that finally made his victims realize that they had been duped. That sort of poetic justice appealed to Atif.

  Oddly enough, neither Abu Hamsa nor any of his associates had been drawn into the trial, even though Gilsén’s complex financial transactions had been made via Hamsa’s currency exchange business. Gilsén maintained that he had been working alone, and the prosecutor never managed to work out who Gilsén’s original backers had been, or where the money eventually ended up. All they had managed to salvage were a few paltry millions sitting in a current account. The rest was gone. And even though Gilsén was extremely talkative, he steered well clear of more contentious subjects.

  So why would anyone want to kill him? If Gilsén hadn’t blabbed by now, he probably wasn’t going to. The golden goose would be out in a couple of years and could start laying new eggs.

  Presumably Gilsén had picked on the wrong victims. The only question was who and in what way? And why did Abu Hamsa want to keep the little shit alive at all costs? Gilsén must know something that could improve his own position, and it wouldn’t take much to squeeze the little man’s secrets out of him. The problem was that Atif didn’t dare touch him. Not while Abu Hamsa was holding Tindra and Cassandra hostage. So he would have to wait. He passed the time thinking about the previous day’s visit and trying to work out if he could exploit the fact that he knew who the man in the grainy photograph was.

  If only he could have a bit of peace, that is.

  “Kassab, Kassab!” Gilsén snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Where did you go, my friend?”

  Atif looked up and grinned back and him. And clenched one fist under the table.

  “What were you thinking about? Penny for your thoughts.”

  You don’t want to know, Atif thought, taking another sip of coffee. You really don’t want to know.

  • • •

  Jesper Stenberg hung his jacket up on the stand next to the double doors of his office and put his briefcase down on the floor beside his mahogany desk. He completed his morning routine by going over to the tall windows and looking out. The leaves of the trees surrounding the little triangle of grass that someone had rather optimistically named Rosenbadsparken were slowly taking on a deep-green color. In a couple of weeks the torrent of tourists would be at its height: even now, a little after nine o’clock, they were flooding across the bridges toward Gamla stan, the palace, and the island of Riddarholmen.

  He should really have gone with his family to their country retreat out in Källstavik. He could be lying in the hammock, relaxing with a book. Going for evening dips in the lake with the girls down by the jetty. The whole Astrid Lindgren thing. But he knew that was an illusion, something better in the imagination than in real life. Country life was Karolina’s thing, not his. She even thought their villa in Danderyd was a bit too close to the city. Karolina had pretty much grown up in Källstavik. But he got restless there after just a couple of hours. The rustling of the trees and lapping of the water always gave him cabin fever.

  Besides, he didn’t feel like listening to yet another of his father-­in-law’s lectures. He liked the man and appreciated all his efforts and favors. But recently there had been rather too many suggestions: “Bear that in mind, Jesper.” “It’s important that you don’t do this, Jesper.” As if he were a child, or at best a complete novice who couldn’t manage the most basic tasks without being coached. The old man seemed to have suppressed the fact that Jesper had been a successful lawyer for seven years, and before that had spent three years as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

  But what bothered Stenberg most was probably Karolina’s behavior. The way she toyed with him, constantly manipulating him in line with her father’s instructions. Karolina worshipped her father. She’d set him on such a lofty pedestal that the old boy could practically touch the sky. One single bad word about Karl-Erik—a single sigh or raised eyebrow—was enough to get him in trouble. Karolina’s relationship with her father had always annoyed him. It was like a secret club to which he was occasionally admitted but where he could never become a member. Perhaps it was that feeling of exclusion that had led him to carry on with his affair with Sophie . . . Maybe that had nurtured his need to have something of his own, something they weren’t part of. But he knew that argument was something of a retrospective construct. The shamefaced married man trying to rationalize his mistakes.

  His coffee was already waiting on the coffee table and he poured himself a cup before settling down at his desk. He wondered briefly if he could postpone the meeting. Come up with some sort of excuse. But he needed an update about the night’s events in case he was asked about them. Just as well to get it out of the way. He pressed a button on his phone.

  “Ask him to come in.”

  There was a short knock, then Wallin was standing in his room.

  “Good morning.” The same ingratiating tone as usual.

  “Sit down, Oscar.” Stenberg nodded toward one of the armchairs on the other side of the desk. He had neither the time nor inclination for small talk. “What else do we know about what happened last night?”

  Wallin opened his obligatory blue folder.

  “At 23:57 yesterday evening the
command center received a report of a shooting outside a restaurant at Regeringsgatan 26. An all-cars alert was issued, and patrol 1940 was first on the scene, at 00:03, according to the report . . .”

  Stenberg made a circular motion with his hand. “Fast-­forward, please.”

  “Of course.” Wallin smiled and leafed through the folder. “As I said on the phone, the victim is Fouad Nazari, sixty-seven years old, better known as Abu Hamsa. The person who shot him was on the roof of a building on the other side of the street. No forensic evidence so far, and my guess is that there won’t be any either. This was a professional job. A single shot to the center of the head. Probably half-jacketed, maybe even hollow-tipped, considering the result.”

  Wallin paused, evidently waiting for Stenberg to say something.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “The bullet expanded on impact. Created a pressure wave through the skull that blew the victim’s occipital lobe off. Judging by the pictures, it wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  Wallin put down a photograph of a woman in a white coat spattered with blood.

  “Thank you, that’s enough.” Stenberg gestured to Wallin to remove the picture. He realized from the other man’s smile that he’d walked straight into the trap. Another blonde, bloodstained woman he wanted nothing to do with. He swallowed and quickly collected himself.

  “What do we know about the victim? You said earlier that Nazari wasn’t just anyone.”

  “Abu Hamsa was a well-known figure. Officially he owned a group of relatively small businesses. A handful of foreign exchange bureaus, a solarium, part ownership of a recruitment company, and a number of bars. All we’ve got in police files is a couple of traffic violations. But Abu Hamsa had long been regarded as one of the biggest players in organized crime. Something of a mediator, someone the other factions trusted and did business with. Hamsa’s name has cropped up on the edges of a number of different investigations, most recently the Gilsén case.”

  “Gilsén? The fraudster, you mean?” Stenberg straightened up. He knew both the prosecutor and the defense lawyer in the case and had followed the trial carefully in the media.

  “The mafia’s banker, that’s right. Joachim Gilsén and Abu Hamsa knew each other well. Hamsa was questioned when Gilsén was brought in. It seems probable that he helped launder money through his exchange bureaus, but the prosecutor didn’t think there was sufficient evidence to bring charges. And Gilsén refused to testify.”

  “Okay,” Stenberg said, in an attempt to move the conversation on. “A known gangster with links to an even better-known fraudster has been shot by a sniper on a street in the middle of the city. I assume that the resources of the Stockholm Police are out in force?”

  “Of course, which makes sense for a number of reasons.” The schadenfreude in Wallin’s voice was unmistakable. “I happen to know that no fewer than five members of Parliament have links to addresses in the close vicinity. Mostly pied-à-terres, but also more personal connections. Children, mistresses, lovers . . . One of the MPs is also the deputy chair of the Justice Committee, so the national police chief has probably received a number of calls already today.”

  Stenberg sighed quietly to himself. That had become an almost obligatory ingredient in Wallin’s recent presentations. After the blue folder and the veiled allusions to Sophie, it was time to snipe at the national police chief.

  “All the news media are leading with the Abu Hamsa murder, and of course they’re linking it to Skarpö. We managed to contain the negative PR on that occasion thanks to the geography and bad weather. But this case is very media-friendly. Cell phone pictures, pools of blood, witnesses, and buildings spattered with blood. Shaken and half-cut diners happy to be interviewed for online streaming. As I see it, the ­commissioner’s erstwhile colleagues in Regional Crime have got a particularly hot potato on their hands. If Kollander and his gang don’t solve this case in the next week or so, they’re going to be in pretty hot water.”

  “Is there any connection, then? To Skarpö?” Stenberg asked.

  “Well, there aren’t really any clear similarities.” Wallin shrugged his shoulders. “But there’s already speculation about a power vacuum and turf wars. That could be true, of course, but I’m more inclined to think it’s connected to the Gilsén case. There’s actually a rather interesting connection between the two cases, even if it is rather tenuous.”

  “And that connection is?” Stenberg said. He was tired of this game now.

  “There were four other people with Abu Hamsa when he died. Eldar Jafarov, who’s a combination of driver and right-hand man. Two hired bodyguards—bulky guys who’ve been on a lot of weird courses in the States.”

  “Get to the point, Oscar.”

  “The fourth person was a woman. Cassandra Nygren. She’s the one in the picture you saw. Around thirty, bartender, croupier, and glamour model. Bleached blonde, nipped and tucked, well upholstered. The mistress type, if you take my meaning.”

  Stenberg didn’t answer. He realized he had clenched his teeth together. Another discreet little reference to Sophie Thorning. Another reason for stuffing Oscar Wallin’s career into the freezer the first chance he got.

  “Cassandra Nygren,” Wallin went on. “She has a child by an Adnan Kassab, who was killed in a shoot-out after a failed robbery in the western district last fall. Little Tindra, seven years old, and her father’s brother is Atif Kassab, the hit man who was convicted of four murders out on Skarpö, among them Superintendent Peter Molnar.”

  Stenberg quickly dropped the revenge fantasy he had just conjured up. He straightened his back. Wallin went on:

  “I also happen to know that Atif Kassab is currently in isolation after a fight in a phoenix unit. Apparently he dispatched a couple of fellow inmates to the ER. Either way, Kassab’s only company in isolation is another high-profile prisoner that he, according to the incident report, appears to have taken under his wing. Care to guess who?”

  “Joachim Gilsén,” Stenberg said. He had to admit, Wallin was occasionally more than just a pain in the backside.

  “I said it was an interesting connection. And Abu Hamsa didn’t usually have any bodyguards apart from Jafarov. So he must have been genuinely concerned for his safety. My guess is that Hamsa knew someone was out to get both him and Gilsén and took measures to protect them both. Unfortunately, he was only fifty percent successful. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.”

  Stenberg nodded as he observed the man in front of him. Wallin was an unpleasant, manipulative little shit, but there was no doubt that he took his job extremely seriously. Or that he could still be of some use.

  • • •

  The screws let Atif out into one of the ten small segments that the circular exercise yard had been divided into. Through the wire fence he could see Gilsén a few segments away. He was walking anxiously back and forth. When he caught sight of Atif he looked up and raised one hand in greeting. Atif ignored him. The distance between their segments was too large for them to be able to talk, which suited Atif fine. See but don’t hear.

  The door to the segment next to him opened and a rectangular man stepped out into the shadow of the building. Rosco.

  He sauntered over to Atif, nodded to him, and then leaned against the fence separating them.

  “Cigarette?” Rosco pulled a packet of Marlboros from the top pocket of his prison shirt. Atif shook his head.

  Rosco lit a cigarette and took a deep drag before looking over at Gilsén’s segment. The little man had started doing push-ups, but it didn’t seem to be going well, and after just a few he moved on to what were probably meant to be sit-ups.

  “Pathetic little shit,” Rosco said. “He’d sell his own mother if the price was right.”

  Atif didn’t answer. Rosco took another drag.

  “You’ve heard about Abu Hamsa?”

  Atif tilted his head sligh
tly. Met the other man’s gaze. Or half met it.

  “Bad way to die. Skull blown off in the street, even though he had bodyguards and everything. No one’s safe anywhere.”

  Atif remained silent.

  “There’s no reason for us to fall out, Kassab. Whatever deal you had with Abu Hamsa, it’s just as dead as he is now. The old man was fucking your sister-in-law; he was doing that long before your brother died. You can’t be protecting him out of loyalty . . .”

  Rosco raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Atif looked over at Gilsén once more. He was bending his knees now, with his arms stretched out. He looked utterly ridiculous.

  “They’ll be looked after,” Rosco said. “Cassandra and the little girl. No one will touch them, not as long as you and I are in agreement.”

  He picked a strand of tobacco from his tongue. Spat on the ground.

  “What do you say, Kassab? Have we got a deal?”

  Atif turned slowly toward the thickset man. Looked at him hard for several seconds.

  “I’ll take that cigarette now,” he said.

  • • •

  Atif was lying on his bed with his fingers laced behind his head. His body felt better with each passing day. His muscles were slowly growing, more sinuous than bulky. Just the way he wanted. Stamina was always better than raw strength. You had to think long-term, have enough strength left for the last round.

  The only thing he didn’t like about his body was the gray hair that was starting to appear at his temples and on his chin. Coarse, almost like horsehair. A discreet reminder that nothing lasts forever and that his days, however you chose to look at it, were numbered. He wouldn’t be getting out for at least another fifteen years. He’d be past sixty by then. An old man. And Tindra would be over twenty, a grown woman with a life of her own. A life that probably wouldn’t have any room for an ex-con uncle she hadn’t seen since she was a little girl.

  He thought about how much he’d like to see her again. Hear her voice, feel her little arms around his neck. Her breath against his cheek. Now . . . soon. While she still remembered who he was.