Ultimatum

by Anders de la Motte

  His clothes caught fire, then his hair. The skin on his back.

  He leaped. And fell.

  Forty-Eight

  “The call came in just after three o’clock,” Wallin said in a subdued voice. “According to the officer in command, the building was completely ablaze when the fire brigade arrived. Their initial priority was making sure the fire didn’t spread to the forest. It was sheer luck that one of the firemen saw something floating out in the water.”

  A nurse walked past and Wallin leaned a bit closer to Julia. A distinct smell of smoke was coming off his clothes, making her nose twitch.

  “I headed out there at once, but there wasn’t much to see. It’s going to take a while before the ruins cool down enough for Forensics to start their work. It was a stroke of luck that a neighbor had borrowed the boat, otherwise he wouldn’t have . . .”

  Wallin gestured toward the locked door of the intensive care unit a short distance away. Julia didn’t say anything. Her whole body felt numb, her head full of thick sludge. When was the last time she got a decent night’s sleep? She couldn’t remember.

  “What do you think he was doing out there?” Wallin said.

  “You mean, do I think he’s responsible for the fire?”

  Wallin held his hands up in halfhearted protest. “I didn’t say that. But can we at least agree that someone set light to the boathouse to destroy evidence?”

  “But what evidence? Actual evidence that proved Sarac was dismembered there, or fake evidence that suggests some sort of conspiracy? If there was any biological evidence of Sarac left there, it’s been destroyed now. And the cement floor will probably have cracked in the heat.”

  She tried to gather her thoughts, but it was pretty much impossible. If anything, her head seemed to be getting more sluggish.

  “We agree on that much, anyway,” Wallin said. “There’s something else I should tell you. I’ve checked with people I know at the Security Police, but no one’s willing to say where Sarac’s body has gone or even which unit took it. Officially they’re referring to the need to keep the investigation confidential, but unofficially my guess is that the body’s been cremated.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  Wallin shrugged. “Someone who’s one step ahead of us.”

  “We’ve still got the pictures and the blackmail letter.”

  “Yes, but we still don’t know who it was sent to. And even if the pictures are genuine, they only link Stenberg to Sophie Thorning’s death. They’d cost him his career, but they aren’t enough to catch a murderer.”

  “They provide a plausible motive,” she said in the absence of a better argument.

  “True. But what good is that when we have no body, no murder weapon, and no crime scene?”

  “So what do we do, then? Just give up?” Her voice cracked slightly at the end of the sentence and she cleared her throat.

  “Not yet. There’s one more thing I want to check. Lie low for the time being. Don’t talk to anyone!”

  She nodded. Wallin turned and started to walk toward the exit. She would have liked to do the same; it felt like she’d completely run out of energy. The shoot-out in the Scout cabin had kept her busy all night, and just as she was on her way home, Wallin called and she headed straight for the Karolinska University Hospital instead. But she couldn’t just leave Amante to fight for his life in there. She had to see him.

  A doctor came out through the double doors; it looked like he’d pressed the button to open them automatically. When he disappeared around the corner, she darted forward and caught the doors just as they were closing.

  At first she thought she was in the wrong room. That the man inside the plastic tent was someone else. If it was actually a man. The body in the bed surrounded by tubes looked more like a mummy, a corpse that had been embalmed and wrapped in bandages in advance of its final journey.

  But then she noticed an eye in the bandage covering the head and face. It opened, and a thin, bandaged arm rose in her direction. Julia gasped. She knew she shouldn’t be there, that she had acted on a foolish impulse. Even so, she took a step forward. She needed some sort of clarity.

  “Omar,” she said. “It’s me, Julia.”

  Amante raised his arm a few more centimeters toward her, and for a moment she came close to holding his hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Fffff . . .” Amante hissed. He seemed to want her to move closer. One of the machines beside the bed began to bleep.

  Julia took another step toward him. She leaned over. Smelled the cream they had covered his body with, and beneath it the smell of burned flesh.

  “F-Find him,” Amante whispered in her ear.

  Forty-Nine

  Jesper Stenberg was standing in the spacious walk-in closet he shared with his wife. He inspected his reflection in the mirror as Karolina adjusted his tie. Power red, in a perfect double Windsor. Tailor-made white shirt, hand-sewn Italian shoes, and the Brioni suit she and the girls had given him for his birthday. As the icing on the cake, the heavy cuff links his in-laws had given him, and which he actually thought made him look a bit old-fashioned. But he didn’t have the heart to say anything. Today was Karolina’s day too. The reward for all her sacrifices.

  “Take everything off again and hang it in the travel case so it doesn’t get creased in the car. I’ll find a bit of concealer for the rings under your eyes. You were up during the night again. From tonight on, you’ll sleep better, I promise.”

  Stenberg nodded distantly. Even though he’d showered and shaved, his head still felt heavy. The nightmares were refusing to give up without a fight, replaying the moment of Sophie’s death over and over again, then Boman’s face looking out from her window high above.

  He looked at his wife. Admired her lithe, gym-trained body as she walked through the room. Sophie Thorning had been short and slight. White porcelain skin, blonde hair. Firm buttocks, perfect breasts. A body made for sex. Karolina’s body was more reminiscent of her father’s. Straight-backed, broad shoulders. Dark hair, high cheekbones. She carried herself elegantly. She pulled off the difficult trick of being tall without it becoming her single memorable feature. He admired his wife, admired her self-control, her style, her strength.

  Karolina seemed to sense him looking at her. She turned her head and smiled at him. But in his sleep-deprived state, her smile turned into John Thorning’s smug grin. John Thorning, whose suited corpse was slowly rotting in his expensive oak coffin.

  Isn’t it odd the way all obstacles disappear, one way or another?

  Stenberg shook his head gently. He needed to steer his brain away from thoughts like that, mustn’t let it sink into paranoia.

  Karolina was right. That evening they would turn over a new page. Enter a new, happier era. He owed it to her to put the past behind him. That was how he had to look at it. He would do it for her sake.

  Stenberg straightened his back. A double espresso, then his brain would start working normally again. Karolina would set him on the right track. Toward the future.

  • • •

  Natalie had sought out a quiet corner of the vast hotel lobby before calling Atif. She didn’t really want to leave Tindra alone in the room, but she didn’t have any choice.

  “You wanted me to call when everything was done.”

  “Yes. Did it all go okay?”

  “All according to plan. I’ve transferred the money and paid for the house and all the plane tickets. Your mom and your aunt and her family are traveling the day after tomorrow.”

  “Good. What about Tindra? How is she?”

  “As well as can be expected, considering everything she’s been through. She keeps asking for her mom, and she’s sleeping a lot.”

  The line went silent for a few moments.

  “How are you doing?” she said. “Have you sorted out t
he things you mentioned?”

  “One of them. I’m hoping to get the second one resolved this evening.”

  “You sound tired. You’re being careful, aren’t you? Tindra needs you. We need you,” she added, after a short pause.

  There was a click on the line and he was gone. She knew there was no way of knowing over the phone, that it was just wishful thinking. But she was still sure she had heard him smile.

  • • •

  Julia had driven straight home and fallen into bed. She shut her eyes and waited for sleep to put a stop to the maelstrom of thoughts in her head. She gave up after three-quarters of an hour or so. She just lay there instead, staring at the ceiling.

  Wallin was right. Someone was one step ahead of them. Someone who had found out that they were taking an interest in the boathouse and had gone out there to make sure there were no loose ends. But was that person Amante? She doubted it, not only because she had heard what he whispered in the hospital. She had called one of the forensics experts, and it looked like the car inside the boathouse was Amante’s, so if he was a pyromaniac, he was an incredibly inept one.

  Julia was more and more convinced that he had gone to Källstavik for the same reason that she had set off there: to watch the scene, make sure no one destroyed the evidence. Presumably he had been inexperienced enough to park near the building and thus present an easy target.

  Amante was her colleague and was maybe even on the way to becoming her friend. She put her arm over her eyes and tried to suppress the image of his burned body. She only half succeeded.

  She sat up and looked at the time. Just past twelve. She went out into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee.

  Trying to burn Amante alive was clearly a risky strategy for the perpetrator. Yet he had evidently thought it was surmountable. It wasn’t too hard to realize why. Amante had been suspended from duty, the car was his own, and he had recently been treated for a nervous breakdown. Add to that the fact that Amante had previously been apprehended at the scene, and you could easily mistake him for a mentally unstable individual with an unhealthy fixation on the minister of justice. Someone who might well be capable of burning himself alive in his boss’s boathouse in his frustration at being suspended. Unless perhaps Amante’s stepfather would rather deal with the matter more discreetly, so that his unstable stepson’s slip-up didn’t affect his own political ambitions. Either way, there was no way Pärson, Kollander, or anyone else would let her dig any deeper.

  Wallin was right, as usual. Without the evidence of the boathouse, all that was left was a blackmail letter without a recipient, and a few digital photographs that may or may not have been manipulated. And her own conviction. Hers and Amante’s, she corrected herself. And actually, as of today, Oscar Wallin’s as well. Because Wallin had implied that he believed her, hadn’t he? That he was thinking of helping her somehow?

  Wallin was her only hope now. Her only chance of getting justice for Sarac and Amante.

  Fifty

  Atif was dreaming about the tiger again. But this time it lies on top of a cracked lump of concrete. The ground around it is frozen; the branches of dead trees stretch out above ruins covered by snow.

  The tiger’s breath rises like smoke from its mouth. The beast is looking at him, its head tilted slightly.

  What are you frightened of? it seems to be saying. Come closer.

  The tiger is wounded—he can see that now. There’s red around its nose, and a large bloodstain is slowly spreading across one of its sides. A gunshot wound.

  “Who shot you?” his dream self asks, but he already knows the answer. “It was Susanna, wasn’t it?”

  The tiger raises its head slightly. Sniffs tentatively at the dry, cold air.

  But you’re not dead, he thinks. Not yet. Not until you’ve finished your hunt.

  With an effort the tiger stands up, then jumps down from the concrete block and disappears among the ruins.

  He woke up because he was freezing. The windows of Natalie’s Golf had misted over, and he opened the door to let out the damp air. At the same time the pain came back to life. A definite six. He felt his stomach. His fingers came away wet. He had bled through the bandage. Fucking hell.

  He looked at the bandage and his wet shirt. Tried to work out how much blood he’d lost in total. Possibly half a liter or thereabouts. He picked up the bottle of water from the passenger seat and drank a few gulps. The cold water made him shudder. He thought about Natalie’s phone call, worried for a moment that it too had been a dream. But the call log on his phone reassured him. Tindra and Natalie were safe; they’d always be safe now. All he had to do was summon the last of his strength. Find the man he was looking for. Finish the job.

  He straightened up, wiped the windshield. At that moment a garage door along the street opened and a car pulled out. Atif caught a quick glimpse of the driver as the vehicle passed him. He started the car, did a sharp U-turn, and followed the other car.

  • • •

  The operations room in the Violent Crime Unit. The same people as usual, Pärson and Kollander included. Julia stayed in the background. She didn’t want any more work thrown her way.

  “To summarize the situation after last night’s events,” Pärson said as the image of a cabin appeared in the projector screen behind him. “A total of four individuals were found dead in or in the vicinity of the Scout cabin.”

  He waved at the police officer operating the projector to change the picture. Four photographs of equal size appeared.

  “The victims are: Kassab’s sister-in-law, Cassandra Nygren; Eldar Jafarov; and two of his thugs whose names I’m not even going to try to pronounce. All the evidence suggests that Atif Kassab was in the cabin and was the target of the attack, but his sister-in-law somehow got in the way.”

  Pärson shifted his weight to the other foot, evidently not used to having to stand up.

  “When the Rapid Response Unit conducted a search of Eldar Jafarov’s villa in Älvsjö this morning, they found his wife, Susanna—Abu Hamsa’s daughter—dead in the living room.”

  Another picture. Susanna was lying on the floor. The rug beneath her was dark red. She was staring blankly at the camera. Just under her right eye was a small, black hole.

  “Susanna Jafarov seems to have been expecting a visitor. She was wearing a bulletproof vest and beside her body was a shotgun from which one cartridge had been fired. Traces of blood on the steps suggest that she hit her target. The DNA match against Kassab’s records will be ready this afternoon, but that’s mostly a formality. We already have pictures from the security cameras mounted outside the property.”

  Pärson gestured once more to the guy operating the projector. Julia noted that he had chosen not to point out that there had been two detectives sitting outside the front of the property who evidently hadn’t noticed anything going on inside the house. Hardly surprising.

  The screen came to life, playing a video clip of a man moving across an illuminated backyard in a crouch. The image froze and the operator zoomed in on Atif Kassab’s angular face until it filled the whole screen.

  “At the risk of stating the obvious, we are looking for Atif Kassab. He’s armed and is judged to be extremely dangerous. And he’s wounded. We don’t know how badly, but we’re urging all officers to exercise extreme caution when he’s found. There’s already a national alert out for Kassab. We’re also looking for his niece, Tindra Nygren, seven years old, who may be traveling with him, plus an as-yet-unidentified woman who rented the Scout cabin and called herself Anette. Regional Crime has been on high alert since last night. The preliminary investigation is being led by District Prosecutor Schill, and head of the operation is Superintendent Kollander here.” Pärson nodded toward the head of Regional Crime. “Any questions before the head of the operation takes over?”

  One officer said something Julia didn’t hear, but whatever
it was, it sparked a discussion. Obviously she ought to get involved and show an interest in their biggest case since Skarpö. But Pärson had given all the most interesting jobs to his buddies in the Tic Tac Club and the rest to people Kollander liked. And she didn’t exactly belong to either of those groups.

  As expected, not a word was said about the fire at Källstavik. Pärson and Kollander had presumably received orders to hush it up. Kollander had now stood up and was evidently sharing pearls of wisdom. Julia quietly got to her feet and crept out, and began to walk toward her office. Her phone rang as soon as she had closed the door.

  “Wallin here.” He sounded much the same as usual, but she thought she could detect a note of tension in his voice. “I’ve managed to find an image specialist. One who’s good and seriously fucking discreet. He can help us figure out if those photographs are Photoshopped or genuine. Can you get away at three o’clock?”

  She looked at her watch. “Sure.”

  “Good, we need to meet someplace no one else knows about.”

  She thought for a moment. “What about Hunter’s hideout? I’ve still got the keys.”

  “Perfect. See you there.”

  Fifty-One

  They met in the parking lot in front of the office building. Julia had pulled all the tricks she knew to avoid being followed. First she checked the car to make sure there was no tracking device on it. Then she switched off the police radio and her cell phone. She headed north on the motorway with the blue lights flashing, and used an access road to pull a bold U-turn. She repeated the same maneuver ten minutes later. Then she added a few extra little tricks that pursuers tended not to appreciate. She hadn’t seen a single indication that anyone was following her.

  She very nearly didn’t recognize Wallin at first. He wasn’t wearing his suit, and was sporting a jeans-trainers-hoodie outfit that made him look almost like a teenager. Beside him stood a guy in his thirties. Blond, well built, and in a T-shirt that was slightly too tight, revealing the bottom half of a tattoo on one arm.