To the Top of the Mountain Page 28

She couldn’t breathe. It didn’t work. She couldn’t get any air.

  ‘There, there,’ the man continued, ‘just breathe nice and calmly. You should be pleased with yourself. Two weeks you managed to stay hidden. That’s pretty good, considering your opponents. Are you alone, by the way?’

  She still couldn’t breathe. She could feel herself turning blue. And in her terror, in the middle of it all, she was thinking. Defence mechanism. She was thinking: I’ve felt this way before, there have been other times in my life when I haven’t been able to breathe.

  The man in the golden balaclava moved closer and slapped her hard. She could breathe again. Every breath was painful. She was elsewhere. On the way to another room.

  ‘Are you alone?’ the man repeated. The other three stood as though to attention behind him. One of them seemed to be injured. She had seen them before. In the same clothes. She had seen the injured one get his injury. And she had seen four others shot. A briefcase had been lifted from the blood of one of them. The golden man with the pleasant manner struck again. Abruptly. He hit her again. Harder. Shouting: ‘Answer, fucking little foreign whore.’

  ‘I’m alone,’ she said faintly. She could feel herself starting to fade. Slowly dying away. As though she were sinking back down into the kingdom of the dead. To Hades’ shadowy depths.

  The man’s disposition changed again.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said politely. ‘We won’t need any help finding the briefcase.’

  He turned, gesturing, to the shortest of the masked men. He had headphones on top of his balaclava, a small device in his hand. He went over to the wardrobe, lifted up three blankets and pulled the briefcase out. He handed it to the golden one, who opened it and nodded.

  ‘Radio and key,’ he confirmed. ‘Great. Now tell us as much as you can about this. First of all: who are you?’

  The second biggest of the men had opened her bag. He took out a mobile phone with a large display.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said, holding it up. ‘You can go online with it.’

  ‘Yeah, those exist,’ the smallest said expertly. ‘Prototypes. Expensive as hell. Small inbuilt computer. Nokia, of course . . .’

  ‘Wallet,’ said the second biggest, digging around in her bag. ‘Driving licence for Sonja Karlsson. Passport, too. Same name. Loads of cash, must be five thousand.’

  ‘A passport,’ said the golden one. ‘Were you thinking about running off abroad, Sonja Karlsson?’

  She sank deeper and deeper. Reality started to disappear. Another reality replaced it. It was like a cave, a vertical cave, a funnel down into the ground, and she sank down between cave walls, stalactites, stalagmites, and somewhere deep down, there was an opening, a door. The door to Hades.

  ‘You can talk now, you know,’ the man with the golden balaclava persisted. ‘Sonja? Karlsson? Nah. Hell, you’re a wog. Fake name. I hate fake names. Like when John Bengtsson turns up for a job interview, and he’s a bush nigger. That’s the worst kind of infiltration. No, you’re not called Sonja Karlsson. What are you? Iranian? Or Slav, of course. What’s your connection to Rajko Nedic?’

  She sank further. She could feel her arms and legs moving slowly. Like the air was water.

  She felt a blow. Not another slap, a punch in the stomach. The pain was somewhere on the the edge of existence. Only vaguely perceptible.

  ‘She seems out of it,’ the injured man said breathlessly from over by the door. ‘Make sure you don’t lose her.’

  The golden one looked at him. Nodded.

  ‘You’re right. Let’s get the essentials. Did you find the safe-deposit box, Sonja?’

  She looked at him vaguely. Only those steely-blue eyes against the gold. Boreholes. Cavities, she thought, confused.

  Her thoughts cleared. To tell would be to stay alive, after all.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking, but haven’t found it.’

  ‘Why are you looking here?’

  ‘He sells his drugs in three areas of Sweden,’ she said clearly. ‘This is one of them. The others are Dalarna and Västmanland, and then Norrbotten and Västerbotten. Those are his territories. He doesn’t have Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö. He’s trying to get in there, but it’s slow work. Certain suburbs.’

  ‘See,’ said the golden one, ‘she speaks Swedish like all those immigrants up in Rinkeby.’

  He turned to the shortest of the three men.

  ‘What d’you think?’ he asked, subdued.

  ‘She’s looking herself,’ he replied, equally subdued. ‘She’s probably done a runner from Nedic’s organisation somehow – whore, receptionist, pusher, what do I know? – and she probably thought there’d be money in the briefcase just like we did. I don’t think we’ll get much else from her.’

  ‘But we’ve got the key,’ said the golden one. ‘That’s a big step forward. I’ve got to let our supplier know. Try to find out as much as you can. Check which banks she’s checked and which are left. Find out if she’s got an accomplice. You know what to do.’ Then he added, significantly louder: ‘Do whatever it takes.’

  The second biggest man rubbed his hands together. The injured one gave a kind of hollow laugh.

  The golden one left the room.

  There were three of them left. She started to sink again. It happened quicker and quicker.

  The smallest said: ‘Your last defence is gone now, Sonja. Me, I’m not a great fan of rape, but sometimes needs must. We’ve been on the road for two dry fucking weeks now, because of you, and my friends here are really starting to fancy a bit of pussy. The more you talk, the better your chances of avoiding it. This is what we want to know: What’s your relationship to Nedic? How did you know the handover was going to happen on the Sickla estate? Are you really alone in this? Where else were you planning on looking for the safe-deposit box?’

  She was no longer sinking, she was falling. She struck the door to the kingdom of the dead. It was a door. A normal front door. She was standing outside. Her body was almost squeezing through it, slowly, painfully.

  The short one shrugged and stepped to one side.

  The injured one made his way over from the door. His baggy army trousers were bulging at the flies. He leaned forward. She could see the pain in his eyes as he grabbed at her trousers. He yanked them down, ripping them off with such force that her shoes came off. She could feel her left foot twisting strangely. Then he pulled down his own trousers. His pants. She was staring at his erection. He climbed onto her, pushing it towards her face. The stench of sweat and unwashed genitals washed over her.

  She was through the door. She was there. In that place. Hades’ shadowy depths. She saw his penis coming towards her. She could smell the stench of sweat and unwashed genitals. She could see the flash bulbs. She could see pictures of children. She could hear screams that must have been her own. And she turned away. She wasn’t there. Looked out of the window, thinking. Defence mechanism. The street outside the window. Cars passing by. Number plates. AGF. Agfa film. BED. English for where you sleep. DTR. Dithyramb, whatever that was. EID. Eider. Or first eid. Though that wasn’t how it was spelt. And in the background, behind the dark clouds, the flower shop, the video shop, the barber, the bank.

  The bank.

  The door flew open. She heard shots. The man on top of her was hit, bellowed and fell. A sticky liquid ran onto her.

  Chaos everywhere.

  And in chaos was the beginning.

  The police station in Skövde was what you might call understaffed. The duty officer was the only one there. The rest of the little force were in town. Two were taking care of a break-in which had taken place at a supermarket warehouse the night before, the others were on patrol. As a result, the duty officer found it quite strange to have seven plain-clothes officers inside the station.

  He was sixty-one years old and eagerly anticipating retirement.

  ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t call the National Task Force?’ he asked for the fourth time.

  Though his question
touched upon an unpleasant truth, Jan-Olov Hultin had started ignoring him.

  He considered his team. All members of the A-Unit were in place. They were gathered around two maps. The first was a town map of Skövde. The second was a detailed plan of a building.

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ said Hultin. ‘The hotel’s here, on the edge of town. The lone young woman who signed herself in as Sonja Karlsson, and who’s probably our Eurydice, is in a room on the corner on the ground floor. Here. There are two ways in, one from inside the hotel, one via the terrace. Besides that, there are windows on the opposite wall, though we don’t really know how high up they are. Two go in via the terrace, Hjelm and Holm. Two standing by the window, Chavez and Nyberg; take pallets to stand on. Three go in via the main door, myself, Norlander and Söderstedt. Everyone in flak jackets.

  ‘First, we’re going to check what’s going on inside. Contact via walkie-talkie. If Lindberg’s gang is there, Norlander’s going to kick the door down. Everyone else wait until you hear the door break. Then you storm in. Exercise caution. It might be a hostage situation. Which could mean calling in the National Task Force. But that’ll take time. The best thing’s obviously if we can catch them off guard. We know they’re not likely to give themselves up without a fight. Any questions?’

  ‘Neighbours?’ asked Söderstedt.

  ‘The hotel’s clapped-out and not very popular. It’s almost empty. The adjacent rooms are empty. Any neighbours are a long way off. We can’t evacuate them all without drawing attention to what we’re doing. If they’re there, anyway. My feeling is that we can carry this out without putting anyone other than ourselves in danger.’

  ‘And Eurydice,’ said Söderstedt.

  ‘Though if they’re there then she’s already in real danger. OK. Let’s go.’

  They went out to two rental cars and drove slowly and carefully through Skövde until the built-up area began to thin out. They soon arrived.

  It was 10.26 on Saturday 10 July.

  It was a miserable day. The rain was pouring down. The kind of bad weather that seems to want revenge on all those halcyon days, to even out the statistics. Visibility was nil. They switched their walkie-talkies on, put their earpieces in, and set off.

  All headed in the direction of the unassuming little hotel’s entrance apart from Hjelm and Holm, who made off around the building. Nyberg and Chavez split off by the stairs, each with a pallet in hand, and crept carefully along the hotel wall to the corner by the garden; they were heading for the windows on the corner. Hultin, Norlander and Söderstedt entered the hotel lobby. A budget version of a bellboy was loitering by the reception counter.

  ‘Room 12,’ said Hultin, showing his ID. ‘A young woman. We spoke on the phone a few hours ago.’

  The bellboy barely reacted to the sight of the detective superintendent’s ID. All that happened was that he dropped his gaze to the register lying open on the counter in front of him.

  ‘Karlsson,’ he drawled. ‘Sonja Karlsson. She’s got visitors.’

  ‘Four men?’ asked Hultin.

  ‘Three. One just left.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Five minutes, maybe. Ten.’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘I heard one start. But it wasn’t parked outside.’

  ‘OK,’ said Hultin. ‘Lock yourself in the office for a while.’

  The imitation bellboy opened his eyes fully for the first time. That was his only reaction. Then he disappeared into another room.

  Hultin, Söderstedt and Norlander entered the corridor through double doors, drawing their service weapons. Slowly, they moved towards room 12. The number glimmered like a mirage from the door at the end of the corridor.

  Hjelm and Holm took the back route. They came in from the opposite corner of the hotel, working their way past a row of unoccupied terraces, each marked off with high fences covered in climbing plants. At the last fence, they stopped. Hjelm nodded, Holm peered around the corner.

  ‘Hard to see,’ she whispered. ‘Fucking rain.’

  ‘We’re in position,’ Gunnar Nyberg whispered into the walkie-talkie. ‘There are curtains. We’ve got movement, but not much else.’

  ‘We can’t see a thing,’ said Holm. ‘We’ve got to get closer.’

  ‘They should be there,’ whispered Hultin. ‘We’ve got confirmation that three of them are there. Repeat: three are there, one’s missing.’

  ‘Eurydice?’ asked Nyberg.

  ‘Her too. They’ve probably got their weapons on her. Extreme caution advised. We’re right outside the door, we need to know exactly what’s happening. Paul, Kerstin?’

  ‘We’re moving closer now.’

  Kerstin Holm crept forward first. The saturated grass squelched loudly. Hjelm was hot on her heels. Only when they were halfway there could they see the door properly. It was a classic terrace door: wooden bottom half with glass on top, and a small set of steps below it. They crept over to the steps, keeping low. They were soaked through, wiping the water from their faces. Hjelm pointed at himself. He rose slowly. Forehead, eyes, up over the edge of the window. Water was streaming down the glass.

  Through the veil of water, he could see three men in balaclavas and a girl in her underwear. One of the men was pulling his trousers down and climbing on top of the girl, his penis in her face. He had a pistol in one hand. The other two men had their pistols jammed into the waistbands of their trousers.

  Hjelm grimaced and sank back down. He whispered into the walkie-talkie: ‘She’s about to be raped. The rapist’s got a pistol in his hand, the other two have them in their waistbands. The head of the bed’s in your direction, Jan-Olov, immediately to the right, behind the door when it’s opened. You won’t really be able to reach him. We’ve got to take him out from the terrace. When you come in, Bullet, the ace shot, will be straight ahead. The third man’s to the left, right underneath your window, Gunnar.’

  ‘OK,’ Hultin whispered. ‘Can you see anything, Gunnar, Jorge?’

  ‘Nope,’ Chavez whispered. ‘We’d have to break the window first, then open the curtain. It’s tricky.’

  ‘OK, it’s us and you, Paul,’ said Hultin. ‘Kick or smash?’

  Paul looked at Kerstin. She looked strangely tense. Like another person. Her lips formed the word ‘smash’.

  ‘Smash,’ said Paul Hjelm.

  ‘Everyone ready? Viggo will kick in the door. Three, two, one.’

  The door flew open. Hjelm saw it through the window. He saw Norlander tumble in, almost in slow motion, and take a shot to the chest from the man on top of the woman. Hjelm shot him. From behind. Through the window of the terrace door. The bullet hit the man’s chest from the right-hand side. He fell down on top of the woman. Blood was pouring out of him. The other two men raised their arms instinctively in the air. The window above them broke and they were showered with glass. Nyberg’s face and pistol poked through. Hjelm kicked the shot-out terrace door open. The woman sank down onto the floor. The injured man on the bed fired again. Right over Hjelm’s shoulder. Hjelm shot him again. Two bullets in the face. Right through his balaclava. Hultin entered the room. Norlander stood up, examining the smoking hole in his chest. Hultin, Söderstedt and Nyberg up from his window all pointed their weapons at the two men with their hands in the air. Chavez ran over, around the edge of the building, and immediately shouted: ‘Kerstin!’

  Hjelm turned round and saw Kerstin Holm lying on the terrace, her hands pressed to her head. Blood was running between her fingers. Chavez was on his haunches beside her. Hjelm staggered towards them. Just then, the big man beneath the window decided to reach for his pistol. He pulled it out and shot straight ahead. Hjelm felt himself being thrown forward, out onto the terrace, landing beside Holm. The pain hit him in waves.

  Hultin shot the man. Four shots right in the heart, without mercy.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ exclaimed Gunnar Nyberg from up in the window.

  Hultin went over to the short man standing with his arm
s in the air. He yanked the balaclava upwards, jamming his gun into the man’s mouth, and pushing him back against the wall. His face was completely white. His eyes bulging.

  ‘Jan-Olov!’ Söderstedt yelled.

  His trigger finger was twitching. The barrel of the gun rattled against the man’s teeth.

  ‘Don’t do it, Jan-Olov,’ Söderstedt persisted. ‘Walk away.’

  The barrel remained in the man’s mouth. Hultin was forcing it further and further down the man’s throat. The short man was crying and sniffing and sobbing. Then his gag reflex took over and he was sick right down the barrel of the gun.

  ‘Walk away,’ Söderstedt repeated. ‘Check what’s happening with Paul and Kerstin. That’s what counts. Now! Go!’

  Hjelm lay on his back, staring up into the rain. He could see the raindrops growing bigger and bigger. All of them growing bigger and bigger. They didn’t change character. He wasn’t about to die. He turned to Kerstin. Jorge was pressing his jacket against her head. He was shouting. Jorge was just shouting. A vague figure crept past Paul’s back. He stared at Kerstin’s face. It moved. It was forming a word, and that word was: ‘Paul.’

  ‘Yeah, Kerstin, I’m here. It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Paul, I love you.’

  ‘It’ll be all right, Kerstin, it’ll be all right.’

  Hultin tore his gun from the short man’s mouth, taking a couple of teeth with it, leaned towards him and headbutted him. He could afford to do that.

  From up in the window, Nyberg trained his gun on the short man; Söderstedt did the same from inside the room. He shrank back, sniffing, into the corner.

  Norlander was sitting on the bed, furiously ripping off the bulletproof vest. Smoke was rising from his chest.

  ‘Fuck, it hurts,’ said Viggo Norlander.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Arto Söderstedt.

  Hultin lifted the mask of the dead man by the window.

  ‘Roger Sjöqvist,’ he said, disappointed.

  He went over to the bed, and lifted the mask of the body with its trousers around its ankles. The face oozed out onto the bed. One which had once been violet.

  ‘Dan Andersson,’ he said, even more disappointed.