Martin threw Hisham from the chair, turned him over on his back and watched the life run out of him.
After a while, Marin heard footsteps quickly running down the corridor. He kneeled down and pretended to massage the man’s chest. A male paramedic was the first to enter the room. He politely, yet firmly, pushed Martin aside to make space for the defibrillator so that he could try to get the heart beating. After a few resuscitation attempts, the paramedic shook his head, then continued to give a heart massage until the ambulance crew arrived. Twelve minutes later, Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik was pronounced dead.
C
HAPTER 19
that same night, Martin Borg had to make an oral statement regarding the events surrounding the sudden death of the detained Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik to the custody officer for SÄPO’s Counter-Terrorism Unit. Later on, a more thorough investigation would be carried out, based on what the coroner discovered.
After quickly perjuring his way through the formal interview, he went in to Ove Jernberg. He found a greyish, pale ghost behind the desk.
“Nerves getting the better of you?” Martin asked and settled down in the chair on the other side of the desk.
Ove turned to face Martin. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m wondering if you can pull this off.”
“Why the fuck did you give him fifteen millilitres?” Ove exploded and glared at Martin.
“Now, let’s calm down,” Martin replied, popping a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth and massaging the tension in his neck. “There’s no reason to panic. He had a heart attack due to stress from putting on a phoney act. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. That’s what I told the custody officer. And that’s what you will say now.”
Ove stared at Martin with eyes like black coals. The thirty-year-old father of two looked as if he was going to jump across the table at any moment. But then he sank back in the chair and stared at the floor.
“When you are done with the custody officer, come down to the garage. We’re taking a road trip,” Martin went on, noticeably disturbed by Jernberg’s outburst. It was no longer a question of if, but when, Jernberg would become a liability.
“Get in there now and remember what to say,” Martin ordered, waving his hand at him.
Ove reluctantly stood up and went towards the door. As he opened it, he turned around. “What about the traces of the serum and anti-serum in the body? A corpse can hardly piss out the residue.”
“True,” Martin answered and reached for a magazine on coarse fishing. “But corpses can’t talk. Even if the coroner should find traces of the cocktail in the body, they can’t connect it back to us. And why would you and I want to drug someone without authority? Any motive would be unconvincing and so far-fetched that not even …” For once, Martin could not come up with a fitting metaphor. He stopped and started reading the magazine. “In any event, they probably won’t find anything,” he said, but did not sound too confident.
Ove turned without saying a word.
After even Ove had lied his way through the short interview that the custody officer was duty-bound to conduct with all persons involved, he found himself sitting beside Martin in a requisitioned civilian vehicle. At high speed, they made their way out onto the Essingeleden motorway. After passing Botkyrka, Ove first broke the silence and asked where they were going.
“Omar’s,” answered Martin curtly as the speedometer passed 170 kilometres an hour.
“To that rat hole he has in Gnesta?”
“Yes, we need more chat cocktail,” Martin said. “Even if one of the towelheads has kicked the bucket, we have to continue with the others. They’re going to sing whether they want to or not. We should probably use a smaller dose next time.”
Ove did not know what to believe anymore. Martin seemed to have lost it completely and was about to drag them both over the edge. Ove was responsible for Hisham’s death. Perhaps not directly responsible for the killing, since he had not injected him, but he was still so deeply implicated that he could end up with a prison sentence.
He had to find a way out of this madness. After the car ride to Omar’s, he would ask for a leave of absence until he could get a transfer. Blowing the whistle on Martin was not an option. Martin would bring him down as well.
“Why are you doing this? You’re breaking your own rules,” he said, trying to get an idea of what was behind Martin’s sudden passion for taking uncalculated risks.
“He’s not answering his mobile,” Martin said, with a worried frown.
“That’s not normal. You can call Omar at four in the morning and the scumbag answers like a walking answering machine. I’ve been trying to reach him for hours without so much as a single voicemail.”
“What makes you think he’s at his office?”
“He spends his life in two places: at home and at that shitty warehouse, or whatever he calls that old, derelict industrial building with a desk. If he’s not at home, then he must be there.”
The answer did not make Jernberg any the wiser. “Wouldn’t it be …”
“We have to get those fucking Muslims to talk,” Martin cut him off and floored the accelerator pedal. The Passat’s speedometer struggled up to 200. Ove looked at Martin. Ever since they had discovered the group, Martin had changed. His propaganda about the threat from Islam had become increasingly frenzied. Ove had bought a few of Martin’s arguments, but far from all of them. The perception of Muslims and Islam as a general threat to Europe was a concept that belonged in the Germany of the 1930s. He kept that to himself, however.
At first, Ove had thought that using Diaxtropyl-3S was pretty harmless under the circumstances. It was no worse than getting someone drunk and then trying to get them to talk – just a needle instead of a bottle of vodka. But the more Ove thought about what he and Martin had done, the more unsure he became. Martin’s web of contacts in the underworld was constantly expanding. The righteousness of his cause obviously meant anything goes to Martin. As he understood it, Martin even had a special connection with certain pensioned-off colleagues who, in the eighties, had frequently used contacts within the criminal underworld to achieve success.
Ove was playing a high-risk game and had an inkling of what was really going on behind the scenes. He had finally seen the darkness behind Martin Borg’s glossy façade.
Martin slowed down when they got to within a few hundred metres of the warehouse. He parked the car behind a thicket so it would not be seen from the road.
“Why are we stopping here?” Ove asked, when Martin killed the engine.
“Something’s not right,” Martin said and got out of the car. He took out his Sig Sauer, pushed in a full magazine and then put the pistol back into his shoulder holster.
Ove reluctantly opened the door and got out after he saw what Martin had done.
“What are you doing?”
Martin looked contemptuously at Ove, who had folded his arms like a sullen old landlady. “What does it look like?”
Ove did not reply.
“You can never be too careful,” Martin said and started to walk down the gravelled road.
“If we’re expecting trouble, then we ought to ask for backup,” Ove shouted at Martin.
Martin pretended not to hear and continued walking towards the warehouse. Swearing, Ove kicked the car door shut and ran after him.
The small industrial site was long since abandoned. Trees, dense bushes and thickets surrounded the industrial buildings and dandelions sprouted through the tarmac, which had long cracks in it. At the top of one of the buildings, there was light shining from some windows. Martin stopped behind one of the buildings. Jernberg stood behind him. In the yard, they saw the outlines of a Saab 9-3 and a Mercedes GL450.
“Omar’s car,” Martin thought aloud.
“Whose is the second?” Ove asked.
“Don’t know, and we can’t see the registration number from here, so we can’t check. We have to get closer.” Martin crept along the wall of the building to the next corner. Jernberg followed closely behind.
They crossed the yard, running softly, and pressed themselves against the wall by the side of the entrance to the warehouse with the lights upstairs.
“I can see the registration plate on the Saab,” Ove said.
“Check out the owner,” Martin said, without taking his eyes off the doorway.
Ove took out his mobile phone and made a short call.
“We have a Stig Wikner,” Ove whispered. “Born 1965 and living in Täby-Kyrkby. It’s clean except for a few parking tickets and a speeding offence two years ago. The car is not listed as stolen.”
“Call him,” Martin said curtly.
“Who?”
“The car owner, of course.”
“Why?”
“Just do as I say,” Martin retorted, irritated.
Ove took out the phone again. After a while, he got hold of the car owner’s mobile number. He made yet another call and talked this time to the owner.
“Stolen without the owner knowing?” Martin said.
“The owner is in the Canary Islands and thought the car was parked at Arlanda airport.”
“Not anymore,” Martin said, rubbing his tired eyes.
“So we are dealing with pros. Someone who needs a car for a longer period of time without the owner reporting it as stolen,” Ove said.
Through a small window in the door, they glimpsed a staircase and the outline of the steps leading up to Omar’s office. Martin carefully opened the door, just enough so they could squeeze through. They positioned themselves on either side of the staircase and silently climbed the stairs. Ove went first.
Adrenaline was pumping through Martin’s body. Just as he was about to tell Jernberg to draw his weapon, the door to Omar’s office opened and a cone of light shone down the steps in front of them. Two men came out of the door and stood in the doorway with the light behind them for a few long seconds. The man who came out first was short and stocky with a crew cut. Behind him was a long and lanky figure. Surprised, the two men saw that they were not alone on the stairs.
The four men stared at each other in a frozen silence.
Ove was the first to move. While he shouted that he was a policeman and fumbled for his police badge, the others pulled out their weapons. The man with the scrubbing-brush haircut shot first. Ove had only just managed to look up when the first shot came, and the bullet pierced his left lung. Then there were three more shots in rapid succession. The last bullet hit his head and he fell down and rolled onto Martin, who had retreated down the stairs.
Martin managed to aim his Sig Sauer and fire a few shots at the man in front before Jernberg’s rolling body made him lose his balance. The scrubbing brush collapsed with a whimper and fell down the steep staircase. From the corner of his eye, Martin saw the tall guy aim a pistol at him. As the man screamed something, a deafening chatter was heard from his automatic weapon.
At first, there was no pain. Only after he had succeeded in throwing himself around the corner of the stairwell did Martin see that he was injured. His jacket was torn, and his right arm was bleeding profusely. Probably just a superficial wound. Then he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs coming towards him. Martin switched hands. He was not used to shooting with his left hand. He backed away with his back to the wall. To try to throw himself through the doorway would simply be suicide.
Suddenly, the footsteps stopped. Martin tensed every muscle in his body and held his breath as the shadow of a hand holding a pistol slowly appeared around the corner.
Before Martin could react, the man fired. A bullet hit the wall behind Martin a few millimetres from his neck. The sound of the bullet hitting the wall temporarily deafened him. He quickly wiped the cement dust from his eyes, aimed at the hand and fired off all the rounds he had left in his magazine. It was kill or be killed. His left hand shook from the adrenaline and fear of death. One after another, the bullets hit the wall behind the man.
When the mechanical report of the Sig Sauer’s bolt sounded out as his last round left its chamber, a roar reverberated down the stairwell. Martin’s last shot had hit the man’s hand and his weapon fell to the ground.
After a little fumbling, Martin loaded a new magazine and quickly moved up to the corner of the stairwell. He picked up the weapon that lay at the bottom of the stairs and carefully looked around the corner.
The wounded figure was sitting a little way up the stairs, and Martin could see that his hand was bleeding. He was groaning with pain and rocking his upper body.
If there were any more trigger-happy maniacs, they would have made themselves known by now. Martin dismissed the thought and cautiously climbed the stairs towards the man, his weapon aimed at his head the whole time. The man looked up at Martin just as the gun barrel touched his forehead. He immediately fainted.
Martin frisked the man for weapons, but found none. He was no longer a threat.
After turning over Jernberg’s body, he could see that the back of his head was missing. What a bloody fool, Martin thought. Reaching for his police badge instead of his weapon cost him his life. Also, he was not wearing a vest.
Less than five minutes ago, Ove Jernberg had been alive. Now he was dead and, oddly enough, Martin felt nothing. Just one less problem. Martin noticed that the wounded man had woken up. He had ripped off one of his shirt sleeves and was trying to wrap it around his hand while he snarled through his teeth from the pain. Martin was tempted to put a bullet in his back but stopped himself, thinking how it would look after a post-mortem. He would have a hard time explaining why he had shot someone who was already wounded in the back.
A few metres farther up the stairs lay the man with the scrubbing-brush hair. Martin stepped over Jernberg and up to the other body. Scrubbing brush had landed on his back with his eyes staring at the ceiling. His mouth was wide open and Martin could discern a certain surprise in his expression. He had probably not expected to hang up his guns like this. Martin bent down and picked up the gun that lay by the man’s hand and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. He observed, quite contentedly, that he had managed to put a bullet just below his throat. The bullet had certainly severed his aorta, a large artery. He must have died instantly.