‘What sort of films were they?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t seen them,’ Halenius said. ‘The families don’t want to go public with them, but I’ll see if I can get hold of them off the record. They’re evidently fairly poor quality, the hostages sitting in a dark room with a lamp shining in their faces, saying that they’re being treated well and that their families should pay the ransom as soon as possible. The usual, really.’
Annika’s heart was pounding:
proof – of – life
, it throbbed,
proof – of – life
… ‘How did they look?’ she asked.
‘Pretty much as expected, apparently, unshaven and dirty, but otherwise okay. No signs of maltreatment, or nothing visible.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Do you think we’ll be getting one as well?’
‘Probably.’
‘When?’
‘Today, maybe tomorrow. The kidnappers seem to be doing everything in a strict sequence. You were the last person to get the initial call. Maybe Thomas is number seven on their list.’
She nodded and bit the inside of her cheek. ‘What else is likely to happen?’
‘If I were to hazard a guess,’ Halenius said, ‘I don’t expect them to be very communicative today. They know you can’t get to the bank before Monday morning, and they want us to sweat.’
She blew on her coffee. ‘Because sitting and waiting for a call is much worse than getting one?’
He nodded. ‘Kidnappers have two weapons: violence and time. They’ve already demonstrated that they’re prepared to use the first, so they probably won’t object to using the second.’
Violence and time. How long would Halenius be able to spend all his waking hours in her bedroom? How long would the media maintain any sort of interest?
‘I have to go and see Schyman today,’ she said.
‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Halenius said.
‘Has the news about the Frenchman got out yet?’
‘Not as far as I’ve seen, but it’ll probably happen today.’
‘I was wondering,’ she said, ‘what the Frenchman might have done wrong.’
‘To get himself killed? Nothing at all, probably. It might have depended on the negotiator, or the relatives, or both. Unless he tried to escape. Or there may not be a reason. Maybe the kidnappers just wanted to make an example of someone.’
She pushed the cake to him. ‘Help yourself,’ she said.
He leaned back in the armchair, her armchair, and laughed. He had such a big laugh that his whole face seemed to crack open, and his eyes narrowed until they were almost closed. ‘You’re really nothing like I imagined,’ he said.
She stood up. ‘Is that good or bad?’
He smiled and swallowed his coffee. She picked up his mug, went into the kitchen and made some more, grabbed a handful of napkins and went back to the living room. ‘What will it mean for us, when news of the Frenchman gets out?’ she asked, putting the fresh mug and the napkins in front of him.
‘The whole story gets hotter,’ he said. ‘The hunt for the kidnappers will intensify, although the Yanks and Brits are already pretty hot.’
He cut himself a decent slice of the steaming cake. The inside was still almost liquid.
‘All the eager editors who got in touch with me yesterday will be wanting a new comment today,’ she said.
He nodded, his mouth full. ‘This is seriously good with ice-cream,’ he said.
She looked at the ice-cream, wondering if she should put it back in the freezer, or if she could leave it out a bit longer … Here she was, worrying about a tub of ice-cream, trying to guess whether or not the man on the other side of the table had had enough, instead of just asking him. Her husband was missing somewhere in East Africa, and she was fretting over whether her baking was up to scratch. She started to tremble and covered her face with her hands. ‘Sorry,’ she managed. ‘Sorry, it’s just …’
‘You don’t have to respond, if you don’t want to,’ he said.
She blinked at him.
‘All those eager editors,’ he said.
She tried to smile, reached for a napkin and blew her nose. ‘This whole thing is so sick,’ she said.
He carried on eating his cake. She looked at the time on her mobile. ‘I’m meeting Anne. She’s got yoga at twelve o’clock.’
‘Make sure you talk through Schyman’s offer with him properly,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go through last night’s conversation and make a transcript of it. I’m planning to call Q later. Do you want to talk to him?’
She got to her feet, with the tub of ice-cream in one hand. ‘Why would I?’
Halenius shrugged. She stuck the ice-cream into the freezer, then put on her coat in the hall. ‘Your children,’ she said, pulling on her gloves. ‘What do they say when you’re away so much? Doesn’t it make them wonder?’
‘Yes,’ Halenius said. ‘But they’re flying down to see Angie tonight – the schools there are having their summer holidays now. It’s her turn to do Christmas.’
‘They go all that way on their own?’
He smiled and stood up, holding his mug and plate. ‘My girlfriend’s going with them,’ he said, then went into the kitchen and put the china into the dishwasher.
She unlocked the front door and left the flat.
Anne Snapphane was waiting in the Kafferepet café on Klarabergsgatan with juice and a wholewheat open sandwich in front of her. It looked as though she’d bought a copy of every newspaper she could find on her way there: the pile on the wobbly café table was even bigger than the one Schyman had brought with him the day before.
‘It’s terrible, this serial-killer business,’ Anne said, holding the
Evening Post
towards Annika. ‘And did you hear about that plane that crashed into the Atlantic? Terrorists everywhere, these days …’
Annika put her coffee on the last free patch of table, dropped her bag on to the floor and peeled off her padded jacket. ‘Wasn’t it bad weather?’ she said, taking the newspaper.
Photographs of three women smiled out at her from the front page. Above them floated ‘Police Suspect:’ and below, in screaming capital letters:
SERIAL
KILLER
‘Beautifully even lines,’ Annika said, leafing through to pages six and seven.
Elin Michnik, the talented temp, had written the article. An anonymous police source was said to support the theory suggested in the previous day’s
Evening Post
that the murders in the suburbs of Stockholm showed ‘similarities’, and that they were ‘keeping an open mind’ about the investigations.
That meant, Elin Michnik had written, that the police might well consider combining the investigations into the three murders and look for the common denominator.
‘Dear God,’ Annika muttered. ‘The epitome of non-committal statements.’
‘What do you mean?’ Anne shovelled a forkful of prawns into her mouth.
‘It’s pretty obvious that there are similarities between the murders. They’re all women, they were all stabbed, and they’re all from Stockholm. And name one police investigation where they
haven’t
kept an open mind. Well, apart from the Palme murder, obviously. And of course the police “might well consider” combining the investigations. Christ …’
Anne frowned. ‘What’s this got to do with Olof Palme?’
Annika sighed and turned the page. ‘The Palme investigation collapsed because the chief of police in Stockholm sat in his office and decided that the prime minister was murdered by Kurds. Which turned out to be utterly wrong, but by then a year had passed and it was too late.’
She carried on through the paper.
Pages eight and nine focused on the dead women’s relatives. ‘Mummy’s Gone’ was the headline running across the spread. Thomas had been demoted to page ten. A different photograph, one from his days playing ice-hockey, probably from the paper’s archive, accompanied by a flabby article about ‘the feverish hunt’ continuing. Opposite was a full-page advert.
But the next two pages were more interesting.
A pretty blonde woman sitting on a flowery sofa looking into the camera with tears in her eyes, two little children in her arms, beneath the headline ‘Come Home, Daddy!’ The caption read, ‘Held hostage with Swedish Thomas in East Africa’.
Annika sighed to herself. The Romanian’s wife. She closed the paper and put it down. ‘How’s Miranda getting on?’
Anne’s daughter was a year or so older than Ellen.
‘I’m not one to make a fuss,’ Anne said curtly. ‘As long as she’s happy, that’s great. She really does seem to like Mehmet’s new kids …’
‘Her half-siblings, you mean?’
‘… so I’m not going to be the one to upset the applecart. It’s easier if she stays there during the week, but we get on well, Mehmet and I, and his new partner, of course. We all muck in and help each other out. Always.’
Annika blinked. ‘Wow,’ she said.
‘What?’ Anne said.
Annika cleared her throat. ‘You had something exciting you wanted to talk about?’
Anne leaned forward, and one of her breasts fell into the mayonnaise on the sandwich. She’d had them enlarged to a D-cup six months ago, and hadn’t got used to judging distances with them. ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea for a programme that I’m going to pitch to the bosses at Media Time on Monday.’
Annika hadn’t got much of a grip on all the new digital channels that had sprung up while she had been away.
‘It’s a serious channel,’ Anne said. ‘They run an on-line news agency as well, mediatime.se. My idea is for an in-depth interview programme, not entertainment, serious, and all the more entertaining because of that, if you get what I mean?’
‘Like
Oprah
and
Skavlan
, you mean?’ Annika asked.
‘Exactly!’ Anne said, wiping the mayonnaise off her lambswool jumper. ‘Do you think you could help me put something together?’
Annika pushed back her hair. ‘Anne,’ she said, ‘you know what’s happened to Thomas …’
Her friend raised both hands in a defensive gesture. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘And it’s really terrible, and you need to prepare yourself for the worst. I mean, the kidnappers hardly shot the guards and translators in the head so they could take all the others off to Starbucks, did they?’
Annika shrugged and shook her head more or less simultaneously. What could she say to that?
‘Just say you’ll help me,’ Anne said. ‘That you’ll be there to support me.’
‘Of course I will.’
Anne reached for her mobile phone. ‘How can you be so sure it was bad weather?’ she asked, as she posted a status update on Facebook.
Annika looked around the crowded café. The tables were close together, the air smelt of damp wool and the windows facing the street were streaked with dirt. No one was watching her. No one was feeling sorry for her. She was fifty-four kilos of human being in a room full of DNA and nerve cells, no more, no less, and she was hidden behind dirty windows.
‘Maybe it was a terrorist, blowing the plane up with lip-gloss,’ Anne went on, putting her mobile down. ‘Or another of those lethal substances you have to put in a little transparent plastic bag before you get on a plane.’
‘Air France have had problems with planes crashing before,’ Annika said. ‘Some problem with the air-speed meters, or maybe the altimeters, I don’t remember.’
‘You always think everyone means well,’ Anne said. ‘Maybe al-Qaeda just want to make the world a better place.’
She picked up the papers from the table and offered them to Annika. ‘Do you want these?’
Annika shook her head. Anne put the bundle into her gym bag.
‘Wouldn’t you like to come along? Ashtanga yoga, breathing techniques, body control and concentration. You could do with a bit of that.’
Annika looked at the time. ‘I’m going up to the paper to talk to Anders Schyman.’
Anne stiffened. ‘What about?’
Annika nodded towards the gym bag. ‘The “serial killer”,’ she lied, pulling on her coat.
* * *
The smell lingered in the walls and the floor even after they had taken the Dane away. I thought there was a darker patch where he had been lying. Maybe it was traces of bodily fluids, unless the shadows were just deeper there.
I moved further over, towards the opposite corner, snaking along on my side with my hip rubbing on the ground. My insect bites were itching, one of my eyelids had swollen, and the grit was soothing as it scratched the scabs on my arms.
A breeze was forcing its way through the gaps in the tin panels.
I had talked to the Dane a bit before we’d set off on our reconnaissance trip: he had sat down next to me in the hotel bar and started telling me about his children and grandchildren. His son had just had a little girl and he showed me pictures of them. I’d done my best to get rid of him, because Catherine was sitting on the other side of me, and we’d had other things to discuss …
I hadn’t heard anything from Catherine or the German woman since they’d moved us into the tin shack, no talking, no screams, nothing. I stared into the darkness, trying to ignore the stain on the ground, trying to picture her face in my mind, but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t remember what she looked like. Instead I saw Ellen, my little girl, who was so like me, and my throat suddenly felt tight and I hardly noticed when the sheet of tin covering the entrance was removed.
The tall man yanked me off the ground and dragged me over towards the stain left by the Dane. I resisted instinctively, not there, not the damp patch, but the tall man hit my ear and I stopped struggling. He put me down with my back against the tin wall. The stench enveloped me and I felt the damp seeping through the blanket they had wrapped me in.
‘
Subiri hapa
,’ the tall man said, then went out again without blocking the entrance. The blinding rectangle filled the whole space, and sent flashes of lightning through my brain. Everything went white. I shut my eyes and lifted my head towards the roof.
Then the gap was filled and the skies vanished. A broad, squat figure leaned into the gloom and wrinkled its nose. ‘You stink,’ he said.
It was the man with the machete, Kiongozi Ujumla. He was so short he could stand upright in the shack. His face vanished in the dust under the roof, but I could see his eyes flash.
‘Who Yimmie?’ he said.
I felt my breathing get faster. He was asking me a question – what did he mean? Yimmie? What was Yimmie? A person? I didn’t know a Yimmie.