Ultimatum

by Anders de la Motte

  Three left, two hands in pockets.

  “Get in.” The Somali nodded to Atif, then at the backseat.

  Atif shook his head slowly. “I’d rather sit in the front; I’m a bit too tall to sit in the middle of the backseat.”

  The Somali stared at him, and the other two suddenly looked bewildered. Another hand emerged from a pocket. Empty. One of the Somali’s hands was the only one left now, which was logical. He seemed to be the leader of the group, so he was the one carrying the weapon.

  “Get in!” the Somali said once more.

  Atif opened and closed his hands and turned his body slightly so he was standing with his back against the hood of the car.

  “No,” he said. He held the Somali’s gaze.

  The young man stepped forward. Accepted the challenge. Did his best to outstare him, but he didn’t stand a chance, even if it took him a couple of moments to realize that. He pulled his hand clumsily from his jacket pocket. A pistol, as expected. The final argument of an idiot.

  The Somali pressed the gun to Atif’s forehead, holding it at an angle as if he were in a movie. Atif didn’t move a muscle, just went on staring at the young man.

  “In the car, fuck-face!” the Somali yelled. His voice cracked a little with excitement. The idiot evidently thought he’d won.

  Atif noted the position of the others out of the corner of his eye. Kenny and the other guy were still sitting in the car, just as he had hoped. The two outside the car were grinning confidently. Rows of perfect teeth.

  “You watch too many movies,” Atif said.

  “W-What . . . ?” The Somali eyes flickered momentarily. “Okay, get in the car, motherfucker. Otherwise I’ll blow your head off!”

  “You don’t hold a gun like that,” Atif said with exaggerated calm. “At least, not if you want to hit anything. And you never press the barrel to someone’s head. Do you want to know why?”

  Before the Somali had time to answer, Atif’s hand flashed up and clasped the guy’s hand and twisted it. He squeezed the young man’s fingers with all his strength and broke his index finger against the edge of the trigger guard as if it were a dry twig. The moment the Somali opened his mouth, Atif punched him in the throat, turning his scream into a gurgle.

  One of the two men behind the Somali took a step forward and whipped a butterfly knife from his pocket. But by the time he’d managed to pull the blade out, Atif was already aiming the barrel of the pistol at his chest. The guy stared at him, then at his friend. Then at the Somali who was rolling around on the blacktop.

  “Drop the knife,” Atif said. “On the ground, nice and gentle. Then kick it under the car.”

  The knife clattered over the asphalt. Atif backed away, then turned toward Kenny and the other guy inside the car.

  “Out! Both of you!”

  The young men obeyed instantly.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them; that goes for all of you.”

  Kenny and his friend walked jerkily around the car and stood beside the other two. The Somali on the ground was whimpering and gasping, but none of his friends seemed the least bit interested in helping him. They stared at the gun, then at each other. The fear in their eyes was unmistakable. Atif aimed the pistol at Kenny.

  “The rest of you can go,” he said. “Now. Right away.”

  They were already twenty meters away before Kenny found his tongue.

  “P-Please.” He held his hands up in front of him. His arrogant attitude was utterly gone now. His lower lip trembled, and he had tears in his eyes.

  “Down on your knees.”

  Kenny did as he was told. His hands were shaking, and the tears began to trickle down his cheeks.

  “P-Please,” he sniffed. “You know my grandfather. You’re old friends.”

  Atif took a step forward. “Where were we going?”

  Kenny opened his mouth, but seemed too frightened to understand the question.

  “Where were you going to take me? Who?”

  “E-Eldar. Eldar Jafarov. In Älvsjö. We were going to get fifty thousand. I mean, I . . . we don’t work for him. A friend told us. Please, don’t shoot . . .”

  Lights started to go on in the nearest block of apartments. Atif could see figures moving in the windows. Someone would call the cops anytime now. He looked down at the sobbing Kenny and waved the barrel of the pistol.

  “Run along home to your grandfather. You get to stay alive thanks to him.”

  The young man staggered to his feet.

  “Actually, wait a moment!” Atif said.

  Kenny looked like he was going to shit himself again.

  “Pull your pants up.”

  “W-What?”

  Atif raised the gun slightly and nodded encouragingly. He waited until Kenny’s pants sat where a normal person would have them.

  “There, that’s better. You can go now.”

  The Somali had gotten to his feet, with his back against the car door. He was clutching his throat with both hands and breathing raggedly. Atif aimed the pistol at his face.

  “Another rule of having a gun is that you never point it at someone if you’re not prepared to shoot them.”

  He stared at the young man and waited until mortal dread appeared in his eyes.

  “Bang,” he said. The young man whimpered. A large wet patch spread across the front of his pants. Atif put the pistol in his pocket and set off toward the station.

  Twenty-One

  “Resign? But I don’t understand . . .” Natalie stared at her boss on the other side of the desk. She had suspected something was wrong when Lena called at short notice to ask her to come in on a Saturday. She’d had a whole bus ride in which to persuade herself that there probably wasn’t anything to worry about. An activity which turned out to be a complete waste of time.

  “I received a phone call yesterday evening. A policeman who told me that you have a previous conviction for stealing drugs from a hospital where you were a trainee doctor. But there’s no mention of that on your résumé, nor in the criminal record statement you gave us. How do you explain that?”

  Natalie lowered her head. Tears were stinging behind her eyelids. Being found out was bad enough, but what made it even worse was Lena’s tone of voice. More disappointed than angry.

  “You’ve done an excellent job here, Natalie. My colleagues and I really have appreciated your cheery demeanor and the caring way you’ve handled our patients.”

  Lena sighed, then pushed a sheet of paper across the desk.

  “The other partners wanted instant dismissal, but I persuaded them to let you resign instead. I want you to sign this, empty your locker, and hand your keys and pass card over to me before you leave.”

  Natalie looked at the document, but the letters blurred together and formed an indistinct mass. She grabbed a pen and scribbled her signature. Then she stood up. Her brain was babbling excuses, even considering begging and pleading, but she nipped those thoughts in the bud before they turned into words. She knew who was behind this. That fucking bastard Oscar Wallin. She shouldn’t have called him again, and she definitely shouldn’t have provoked him the way she had. But the realization that Sarac was dead had upset her, made her want to take it out on someone.

  She looked down and pressed her hand against her eyes to hold the tears in. Wallin would have enjoyed seeing her humiliation, and she wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction, even if he wasn’t there.

  “A real shame it had to end like this.” Lena held out her hand. “Good luck.”

  On the way out, Natalie ran into the physiotherapist with the dimples. She turned away before he had time to react.

  It wasn’t until ten minutes into the bus ride home that the shock faded and she began to think clearly.

  Revenge! And nothing feeble either, like scratching Wallin’s car or ordering por
n to be delivered to his office. This attack on her demanded locusts, frogs, and hailstorms. She wanted to hurt him so badly that he really felt it. Because of him, she was on her way back to square one. Or, to be more accurate, square zero. No job, no income, and no prospects. Welcome to the rest of your life, Natalie!

  She considered following through with her earlier threat and calling the first paper she thought of to tell them everything she knew about “heroic policeman” David Sarac. Tell them what she had really been doing out on the island and who was responsible for her being there.

  But there were two reasons why she stopped herself. The first was that she would be forced to drag David Sarac down into the shit. He had been her patient, her responsibility. And during their time together she had come to like him, to care about him. She had put herself in danger for his sake. In order to get at Wallin she would have to repeat the whole of Sarac’s whispered account of the Janus affair. The words he had spat out into the snow while she did her best to stem the bleeding and save his life. The confession of a dying man.

  The second reason was more practical. She was harboring a wanted murderer at home on her sofa, a man Wallin and all his little cop friends were searching for everywhere. As long as she was doing that, she couldn’t go to the police or anyone in the press.

  She’d assumed that Wallin would understand the concept of the balance of fear and leave her in peace. But she had evidently underestimated him. He was never going to let go of her, never going to let her get away.

  Fact: as long as she was within reach of Wallin, she’d never stand any realistic chance of making a new life for herself and would always be looking over her shoulder. She would always be worrying that everything could be taken away from her at any moment.

  Conclusion: her only option was to leave the country and start again somewhere new, beyond Wallin’s reach. Thailand, maybe. She’d thought about that before but had no great desire to sleep on an inflatable mattress, hand out nightclub flyers for foam parties, or trick tourists into hiring clapped-out mopeds. That sort of thing was for twenty-year-olds who didn’t know any better. A place of her own, that was more her style. A bar, maybe a strip of beach where she could rent out beach chairs and little cabins to backpackers. But that sort of thing took capital. A lot of capital.

  What she needed was a three-stage rocket. Take her revenge on Wallin, get hold of capital, leave the country. Easy peasy . . .

  Unless it wasn’t quite as difficult as she imagined. After all, she did have one advantage that she’d been lacking only a few days before. All she needed was a good plan, her irresistible charm, and a bit of luck.

  As agreed, she gave the distinctive knock before unlocking the door to her apartment.

  “Honey, I’m home,” she said, and received a grunt in response. She’d heard him get back late the previous night. She’d even had time to start worrying about him. Whatever he had been up to, it seemed to have worn him out.

  She put the paper bag containing her things from work down on the kitchen worktop. The mug with the words World’s Best Receptionist, her contract of employment, the job description and letter in which she had resigned “voluntarily.” The remnants of what had been her ordinary life.

  She looked at the things for a few seconds and swallowed hard, then opened the cupboard under the sink and threw them all into the garbage.

  • • •

  The run-down office block lay next to a junkyard and another abandoned building that, judging by the rusty sign, had once belonged to a wholesale greengrocer. At least half of the premises in the little industrial estate on the outskirts of Sollentuna were empty, and big, glossy signs by the entrance announced that the area would be covered with housing within a couple of years.

  Julia followed Amante up the stairs. The paint was peeling from the walls and the whole stairwell smelled of damp.

  “How come your friend knew about this place?”

  “She helps lawyers track down concealed assets during bankruptcies and divorces. Safe-deposit boxes, cars, boats, machinery, property—anything. She gets a percentage of whatever she finds.”

  “And now she’s found Frank Hunter’s hiding place?” Julia wasn’t convinced. But something about Amante’s body language told her she probably wasn’t going to get a better answer.

  “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

  They reached a landing with three doors. Two of them had names of businesses crossed out, but the third was completely anonymous. Amante dug out a key ring and tried one of the keys in the lock. It didn’t fit, nor did the second. But the third one slid in and the lock clicked. Julia opened her mouth to ask where the key ring had come from, but Amante preempted her with a slight shake of the head. Don’t ask; then I won’t have to lie. She wondered how much it had all cost. A lot, probably. But money seemed to be the least of Amante’s problems. He looked better today. At least he appeared to have had a shower and changed his clothes.

  The office consisted of a single room with a small kitchen area and bathroom. The blinds were down and the room smelled stuffy. By one wall lay a camping mattress with a sleeping bag on top of it. In the middle of the room were two wooden chairs, a small camping table, and a camera tripod. On the table stood a laptop, with an unplugged charger on the floor alongside.

  “He must be a minimalist.” Julia heard how tense she sounded. She shouldn’t be here, obviously. She ought to be up at National Crime taking part in the investigation into Abu Hamsa’s murder and the hunt for Atif Kassab. But Pärson was still insisting on wasting her talents on deskbound duties, and she hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to come out here. See with her own eyes if this was the right place.

  “What do you think?” Amante said.

  Julia didn’t answer. Instead she opened the door to the bathroom. She found a large first-aid kit on top of the toilet’s cistern. She opened it and noted that several rolls of gauze bandages, one roll of tape, and half a bottle of disinfectant had been used. She went over to the mattress, opened the sleeping bag, and found rust-red stains down toward the bottom of it.

  “The person who slept here had a leg injury. Probably below the knee.”

  “Eskil said Frank had a limp, didn’t he?” Amante said.

  Julia straightened up and stood silent for a few seconds.

  “We’re on the right track, aren’t we?” he added. “Should we set up a cordon? Get Forensics out here to look for clues?”

  Julia didn’t answer. She was still uncertain. Amante had a point. In a normal murder case that would have been their next move. But this one was as far from normal as it was possible to get.

  “Clues about what?” she said. “Sarac certainly wasn’t dismembered in here. In fact, there’s nothing to tell us that Sarac ever set foot in the place.”

  “So should we get Forensics? Look for his fingerprints?”

  “If we did that, I’d have to talk to Pärson. Tell him we’ve continued breaking every rule in the book. Reveal that we know Sarac’s escape was hushed up even though my source asked me to keep quiet. I’m only going to do that if we find something definite. Something that can’t be misinterpreted and won’t lead to us being instantly transferred to the property store.”

  Julia made a sweeping gesture with her arm.

  “This is just a shabby office building where someone’s been sleeping. That’s how Pärson will see it, and it’s certainly not the sort of thing he’s going to send Forensics to examine on a Saturday afternoon.”

  She was aware of how flimsy her argument sounded. But Wallin was right. They couldn’t go to Pärson with this, not until they had watertight evidence. Maybe the computer could tell them something. Amante had started fiddling with the laptop and charger and was trying to connect them to a socket in the wall.

  Julia went over to the tiny kitchen area and looked at the drainboard. One glass and one plate, both c
arefully washed. No remnants of food in the sink. The garbage can was empty and the fridge contained nothing but a few small packets of soy sauce. Nothing with a best-before date. Nothing to give them any clues about the person who had been living there.

  She closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind, tried to detect the rhythm of the room. But it was hard, much harder than usual. Maybe that was because the room used to be an office, that the person sleeping there had never made it their own. Unless there was something else bothering her.

  Amante swore loudly. “The laptop’s password protected.”

  Julia opened the cupboard above the sink. She found a crumpled plastic bag with something inside it. She carefully emptied the contents onto the drainboard. It took her a few moments to register what she was looking at. Sleeping pills. White oval pills, twenty-five in total. Sarac’s smile appeared in her mind again.

  “You were here,” she said half out loud. “You and Frank Hunter met in this room.” And this time she was almost certain that Sarac’s ravaged face nodded at her.

  Twenty-Two

  He could still see her falling. See her hanging between ground and sky with her eyes open wide, her mouth gaping, for a moment almost weightless. And then he heard the sound when she stopped being weightless. A muffled, awful sound—a sigh rather than a bang. The sound of something breaking. Something that could never be mended.

  Then the dry voice inside his head.

  A necessary sacrifice.

  It was her or you.

  You had no choice.

  Only when the voice became a scream—a scream that burned in his chest, tearing his vocal cords and echoing off the bedroom walls—did Jesper Stenberg wake up.

  • • •

  He unlocked the front door from inside and opened it. The moment the small box on the wall began to beep, he realized that he’d forgotten to switch the alarm off. He had thirty seconds before a whole fleet of police cars began racing toward the villa. His sleepy fingers slipped on the buttons and it took him two attempts before he managed to get the beeping to stop.