A quick call later, and Tom confirmed it: “She’s checked into the Ferrum. She’s in Kiruna.”
Jill breathed out in relief.
“But she still isn’t answering her phone.”
“I’ll call her,” Jill said. Ambra might just be ignoring Tom’s calls. But the phone didn’t even ring; it went straight to voice mail. Jill sent her a message instead.
Call me. Please!
“That woman she interviewed in Kiruna? Could she know?” Jill suddenly asked. She glanced at her watch; it was almost ten-thirty.
“Elsa Svensson, good idea,” Tom said. He found her number using his smartphone.
“Shall I call?” Jill asked, but Tom shook his head and called her from his phone. He did, at least, turn on the loudspeaker.
“Hello?” They heard a bright voice.
“Hi, my name is Tom Lexington. I’m sorry for calling so late.”
“Don’t worry, I couldn’t sleep anyway. Tom, did you say?”
“I wonder if you know where Ambra Vintner is? You know each other?”
“Yes. Ambra is here in Kiruna.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Yes.” There was a long silence. “But I am actually starting to get worried about the girl. You know, Tom, I’ve tried calling her, but I can’t get through. Yes, I’m very worried now. She went away to talk to her old foster father and now I can’t reach her. I don’t know what to do.”
Jill felt her throat tighten with worry. Tom thanked Elsa and hung up.
“She sounded really worried,” said Jill.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Mattias said, though his voice didn’t sound convinced.
Ordinarily, Ambra could look after herself. But she hadn’t been her usual self lately. What if everything had come crashing down on her? Jill bit her lip, could feel the sobs burning her throat.
Tom got abruptly to his feet. There was a new darkness in his eyes.
“What are you going to do?” Mattias asked.
“What do you think?” he replied. His voice was rough.
Mattias nodded. “Call me as soon as you know anything.”
Tom left them with long strides. Jill stared after him. He was an extremely annoying man. “What’s he going to do?”
“He’s going to find her.”
“In Kiruna? How do you know?”
“Because that’s who he is.”
“But it’s a hell of a long way.”
“I guess he already has a plan.”
* * *
Tom drove to the hangar where the helicopter he occasionally borrowed was kept. He unlocked the building, turned off the alarm, and went inside. Stopped dead. Breathed in the familiar smell of fuel, oil, and metal.
Suddenly, and without warning, it felt as though he were running out of air as his throat tightened and it became difficult to breathe. It was his first attack in weeks. He closed his eyes, forced himself to relax. He didn’t have time for anxiety. Not now. He would just have to struggle through it, he thought grimly, pulling off the cover. He studied the sleek, silent machine, took control of his body, forced his muscles to behave. The last time he was in a helicopter, he crashed. The scars from his injuries were still visible. He still woke drenched with sweat after nightmares about a ball of flames stinking of jet fuel.
A bullet had hit the rear rotor blade. By then, his sniper was already dead. The helicopter started to spin, and the crash was violent. In normal circumstances, of course, you didn’t just assume someone was dead, you didn’t leave your comrades behind. You wanted to take home any bodies. But the scene had been chaotic, and the mission’s primary objective was to rescue Isobel, so they made the decision to leave him. He understood their thinking. People usually died in that kind of crash; the fire became explosive. But when the helicopter hit the ground, the seat he was strapped into had been thrown almost fifty meters from the impact site and he’d survived.
There were burns on his hands and face. Both hands were sprained, and he had huge bruises from the four straps of his seat belt. For a long time, he floated between life and death with those criminals, until suddenly they sold him to an even worse group of bandits. But his new captors did, at least, manage to get in touch with Sweden and Lodestar, and demanded a ransom. His insurance had covered the ten million they’d asked for and so he’d been released at last.
He finally managed to bring his breathing under control. Wiped the sweat from his forehead. It wasn’t just the PTSD and the panic attacks he’d brought back from Chad. He also found it difficult to fly. Confined spaces were hard; it felt hugely uncomfortable to strap himself in. And the sound of helicopters . . . He shuddered. But he had no other option. It was around 750 miles to Kiruna. The helicopter could manage just over 110 miles per hour, which meant a little over seven hours, including two stops to refuel along the way. Since he was flying at night, he would have to call ahead and ask the refueling stations to open. He would have to pay bribes and keep in contact with air traffic control the whole time. So long as he didn’t have another panic attack, he should be there before dawn. The plus side was that he could land by the house and pick up the snowmobile immediately.
He went through his plan once more while he changed into overalls and a thick jacket and pulled on his helmet. He stared at the gleaming machine. Placed his hand on the curved glass. Took a deep breath.
“Well then, now it’s just you and me, you beast.”
Chapter 61
“I’ll report you for threatening a government official!”
The head of social services in Kiruna, Ingemar Borg, was shouting so loudly that Ambra had to hold her cell phone away from her ear.
“I’m not threatening anyone, but you need to check on those kids,” she said, trying to stay calm. It was just a simple conversation; she hadn’t harassed or threatened him.
But Ingemar Borg didn’t even want to talk about the girls. “What’s your problem? You’re spreading lies about us up here. I’m going to talk to your boss and make sure you lose your job, sue you.”
Yeah yeah, tell me something I haven’t heard a thousand times before.
“But Uno Aalto is . . .” Ambra began. Then suddenly all she heard was silence on the other end. Ingemar Borg had simply hung up on her.
For a while Ambra thought about calling him back. But Ingemar Borg seemed to be a dead end. She could hardly count on any help from his direction.
She glanced at the time. Jill had called and sent messages last night, but she hadn’t had the energy to respond. She loved Jill, but they had so much to straighten out that it would have to wait. Once she was done here, she would talk with her. And Tom, he had called again, though he hadn’t left a message. He would have to wait, too, she thought bullishly. She called Elsa instead.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, my dear,” Elsa chirped. “Everything is just fine.”
They said good-bye and Ambra shook off the strange feeling that Elsa was hiding something from her. She impatiently dialed the number for the Kiruna police again, let it ring at least twenty times before she gave up. She doubted they would be particularly helpful either. Their earlier conversations hadn’t exactly ended in mutual understanding.
Her fingers drummed the wheel of the car she had rented, and she felt the powerlessness surrounding her. What the hell should she do? She didn’t know anyone in Kiruna, other than a bed-bound old lady in the hospital. She drummed a little more, glanced at the snow outside, tried to come up with a plan. Her thoughts turned to calling Tom after all, finding out what he wanted, but she didn’t want to risk any more bad news. What if he just wanted to ease his bad conscience? Or even worse, wanted to tell her he was going back to Ellinor after all. No, not now. She needed to solve this thing. But wait . . . Ambra grabbed the wheel when the thought came to her. She sat upright in the seat. Tareq! She did know someone in Kiruna! The freelance photographer, Tareq.
With her eyes on the snowy road, she managed to bring up his nu
mber on her phone.
Please, please answer.
“Hello?”
Yes! Ambra bounced with relief in her seat. “Hey, Tareq! It’s Ambra Vinter. I’m in Kiruna. Can you help me out with something? It’s nothing official, and it might be crazy, but I need pictures. I need your equipment and I need you.”
“I agree, it sounds a little crazy. You sound a little crazy,” he said.
“But you owe me for this because you dumped me at that gay bar. Bring your film camera, too. Send me your address and I’ll come get you right now. Pleasepleaseplease.”
Tareq laughed. “Woman in need. Not even I can resist that. Give me half an hour.”
Ambra managed to find Tareq’s house and waited impatiently outside. When he came out, he dumped his equipment in the car, climbed into the front seat, and gave her a quick hug. “So, what’re you up to now?”
“There’s a Finnish sect leader who’s going to carry out an exorcism on two girls being fostered by a religious fanatic. I need pictures.”
“Aha, of course,” Tareq said, pulling off his gloves and scratching his forehead.
Ambra took off the hand brake and pulled away. She did a U-turn and drove down toward the main road. It was a four-wheel drive Volvo, like the one Tom had—don’t think about Tom now—powerful as a wild animal and a pure joy to drive. “Thanks for helping me out.”
“It sounded too exciting not to, plus I have nothing booked today. Is this through Aftonbladet?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she replied, thinking that there was a real risk she wouldn’t even have a job to go back to if this went wrong.
“Understood,” Tareq said, sounding completely unfazed.
“Sorry if I put pressure on you before.”
“No, it’ll be an adventure. But tell me everything now.”
And so Ambra gave him a broad outline of the foster children, crazy sects, and Finnish exorcists. Tareq shook his head and said Jesus Christ over and over again.
After driving for ten minutes, she managed to find the right exit and turned off onto a smaller road.
They pulled up some distance away from the house. Ambra turned off the motor, and everything went dark.
“What do we do now?” Tareq asked as he took pictures through the windshield like a regular private detective.
“Wait, I guess.” She stared at the dark house, wished that she knew how to do this kind of thing. But she wasn’t going to leave here without saving those girls and getting evidence of what was going on. They wouldn’t be abandoned. She would do for them what no one had done for her.
“A car’s coming,” Tareq whispered. His camera clicked away quietly.
“I can see,” Ambra whispered back. The car stopped outside the house, and Uno Aalto stepped out.
“That’s him, the exorcist.”
“Ugh, God, what a creep,” Tareq said quietly.
Ambra nodded. His full support was a huge comfort. “Thanks for believing me,” she whispered.
“Of course. There are crazies like that everywhere. If you knew how many times my mom was told to take me to a mullah to drive out the homosexuality in me.”
“Shit.”
“I know. Fanaticism is depressingly similar across religious lines.”
Tareq took a series of images as they watched Uno knock on the front door. The house had been in complete darkness, but a flickering light suddenly appeared in one of the windows, just as Esaias Sventin opened the door. There was also a shadow in the window, just behind the faint glow. It could be Rakel.
“Someone else is coming,” Tareq whispered as the noise of a loud engine approached. A snowmobile pulled up, and two more men entered the house.
“What do you think they’ll do to the girls?” Tareq asked with a concerned look. “I mean specifically.”
Ambra had read everything she could find about exorcisms. And she had been subject to Esaias’s rage herself. “In many cases, it’s about praying for the ‘afflicted’ one. There are clips on YouTube. The exorcists scream at the possessed person, wave the Bible in the air, hit the victim, hold them down. It’s often young women who need to be ‘controlled.’ But there are cases where people have died after the spirits have been ‘driven out,’ as they put it.”
“Not recently, though?” Tareq’s handsome face was pale.
“Yeah, sadly. Small children abused until they die while exorcists try to drive out the devil.”
“My God.”
“It’s so awful, because it often happens over a long period of time. And no one steps in. There are several cases where young women have been starved and beaten for months because their families thought they were possessed and that it was the only way to cure them. It happens in the name of some kind of twisted love.”
Tareq looked like he was going to be sick, but Ambra continued. She had spent the last few weeks reading, taking in everything. “One woman was found to have severe epilepsy during her autopsy. That produced the symptoms that the preachers and family interpreted as evil spirits. The woman starved and froze to death after months of abuse in her own home.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. And this all happened recently. There’s a long list of cases, and those are just the ones we know about. Like I said, it’s depressing.”
“We should call the police,” said Tareq.
“We need evidence. Plus, I did call them. Several times.” She added that last part guiltily.
Tareq grinned at her. “Are they sick of you?”
“A little.”
He raised the camera again and pointed it at the house. It clicked away. “Then you and I need to go see what evidence we can get.”
Ambra nodded and looked out the window. There were moments in life that defined who you really were as a person. Moments that forced you to choose what kind of person you wanted to be.
And as she sat there in the warm Volvo on the edge of Kiruna, a memory came back to her.
She was four years old, standing between her mother and father. One hand in her mother’s warm grip, and one in her father’s secure palm, with a wildly happy feeling in her chest.
They were outdoors, standing by an especially fun-looking playground. The sand looked soft and smooth, and there were yellow buckets and blue spades dotted around. There was a red slide and a set of shining swings, and it was full of laughing children.
“Want to go down, my love?” her father asked, nodding toward the red slide. His voice was happiness and laughter and promises of ice cream in the sunshine.
Ambra nodded, and then she began to slide, quickly, with a giddy feeling in her stomach and bubbling laughter in her throat. He caught her just as she reached the bottom and lifted her up in the air.
“Where’s Mommy?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck.
Her father carried her to a bench where her mom was sitting with a girl who’d hurt herself.
“Where are her mommy and daddy?” Ambra asked.
“We’ll try to find them, but until then we’ll wait here. A sad child is everyone’s responsibility.”
And Ambra nodded, because she really did understand. And she’d felt proud of her parents for helping other children.
Ambra didn’t remember what happened after that. But she did remember what her parents had impressed on her, as early as they could. That it was a person’s duty to stand up for those who needed help.
“We need better pictures,” Tareq said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “They’re probably in the basement.”
They climbed out of the car and crept over toward the house. “Man, it’s cold,” Tareq whispered. Ambra agreed. The temperature had dropped quickly. They moved around the snow-covered building. It was deathly quiet, and she felt a sudden hesitation. What if this whole circus she had started was just a hysterical overreaction? It could just as easily be an innocent gathering of old men going on in there.
“If they’re in the basement, there should be a window around here that
we can look in,” she said, trying to remember where. Her eyes swept along the edge of the house. There was so much snow. “Here, I think,” she said, dropping to her knees and starting to dig. Tareq helped her.
“Look, a window,” she whispered. She gently dug her way down to the windowpane. It seemed to be covered with some kind of dark fabric, but they could make out a faint light through it.
“I can’t see a thing,” Tareq whispered just as they heard a loud scream from inside. “Do you think that’s them?” he asked.
“Don’t know. But it did sound like a kid.”
Yet another scream.
“Tareq, you have to take pictures, no matter what happens. That’s your main job. As many pictures as you can.”
“What are you going to do?”
She knew what she had to do, just hoped she had the nerve. “I’m going to try to get in.”
“You don’t want me to follow you?” he protested.
“No,” she said firmly. If anyone was going to break the law and end up in trouble, it would be her, not Tareq. “I’ll try to get rid of the fabric so you can see in.”
“Be careful,” he whispered as she rounded the corner.
Ambra took hold of the handle and pressed it down. The door swung open, and after she took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air and courage, she stepped over the threshold.
The house looked just like before. The walls, the simple pictures, the furniture. She had to stop. She’d forgotten the smells, the everyday scent of food, bodies, textiles, all of which threw her back to that time. She heard a creaking sound and almost jumped out of her skin. Technically, she was breaking and entering.
She crept on, toward the basement. She was so afraid that she took a wrong turn at first, went left instead of right, started to sweat, thought she heard another sound, stopped, could barely hear anything but her heartbeat. Breathlessly, and with a thousand thoughts racing through her head, she waited, but after a moment she realized it was just the house creaking and sighing, and she moved on. Eventually, she found the door to the basement. As carefully as she could, she went down the stairs, remembering how afraid she had been of it, its dark wood, slippery steps. It smelled like sawdust and untreated wood, and oil from the lamp. She heard mumbled men’s voices through the door at the very back, approached it, stopped, so damn afraid. They were there, on the other side. She bent down. There was no key in the lock, and she peered through the keyhole.
High Risk Page 53
