Box 21 (14 page)

 

It must never happen again.

 

She got up. Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp had kicked her hip and she limped a little. She turned on the tap and let the water run. She flushed the toilet twice. She went over to the bin and with her good arm, removed the top layer of paper towels.

 

Lydia recognised the plastic bag, an ordinary supermarket carrier. Inside was everything she had asked for. The handgun, the ammunition, the Semtex, the video, the ball of string. She didn’t know how Alena had managed to do what she wanted, but she had. She had gone to box 21 at the Central Station, evaded the policemen who presumably guarded number 3 Völund Street, and got through the two locked doors to the cellar.

 

She had done her bit.

 

Now it was all up to Lydia.

 

Almost all the patients wore white, baggy items of regulation hospital clothing. Lydia’s long white coat had been much too large to start with, but she had asked for an even bigger one. It flapped round her body, which didn’t exist. In one coat pocket she had a roll of white hospital tape. First she secured the gun with it, after winding tape twice round her waist, and then the Semtex. Gun to the right, plastic explosive to the left. The video and string she left in the bag, which she pushed down inside her panties, adjusting them to make sure it was secure.

 

One last look in the mirror.

 

Her battered face. Cautiously, she fingered the many large bruises round her eyes. Her neck was a thick roll of white bandage around a supporting collar. Her left arm hung there, stiff with plaster.

 

It would never happen again.

 

Lydia opened the toilet door and limped out. Just a few steps along the corridor. The guard saw her, but she shook her head at the TV sofa and pointed towards her room. She wanted to get back to bed. He understood, nodded. She moved slowly, making signs to show that she wanted him to follow her to her room. He didn’t get it. She tried again, pointing at him, then at herself and then the room: he was to come with her, she needed his help. He raised his hand, understood, no need to explain any more. He mumbled ‘OK’ and she thanked him by curtseying as well as she could manage.

 

She waited for him to get safely inside her room, until she could hear him breathing behind her.

 

Then everything happened fast.

 

Still with her back to him, she pulled at the tape that held the gun on the right-hand side of her ribcage. Then she swung round. She showed him the gun, and released the safety catch in one quick movement.

 

‘On knee!’

 

Her English was clumsy, and heavily accented. She pointed with the muzzle of the gun to the floor.

 

‘On knee! On knee!’

 

He stood still in front of her. Hesitated. What he saw was a young woman who had been admitted to Casualty yesterday, still unconscious. She limped, had a plaster cast on one arm and a bruised face. The sagging coat made her frail, like a nervous bird.

 

Now she was threatening him at gunpoint.

 

Lydia saw him hesitate, raised her arm and waited.

 

She had been only nine years old.

 

Death had been on her mind then. She had never thought of it before, at least not like that. She only had nine measly years behind her, when a man in uniform, not that different from the man in front of her now, had held his gun to her head and screamed
Zatknis, zatknis!
with his spit spraying into her face. Dad had been shaking and crying and shouting that he’d do anything they wanted, just take the gun away from his daughter’s head.

 

Now she was pointing a gun at another person. She pressed it to the man’s head, the way others had done to her. Lydia knew exactly how it felt, knew the hellish fear that tore at your insides. Just a little extra pressure from the finger on the trigger and, from one moment to the next, your life would be over. She knew he’d had time by now to think of everything ending: no more smells, tastes, sights and sounds, no more sensations of being touched, no more being with others in any way. Everything will carry on as before, only I won’t be there. I’ll have ceased to be.

 

She thought of Dimitri and his gun, which he had pressed against her head more times than she could count, and of his smile, which was just like the smile on the face of that military policeman when she was nine, and like the smiles of all the men who had later gone down on her, invaded her, forced their way in.

 

Lydia hated them all.

 

She stared at the guard and knew how he felt, understood what having a gun against your head was like, and kept it there, holding her arm raised high and glaring at him in silence.

 

He sank to his knees.

 

Then he clasped his hands behind the back of his neck.

 

Again Lydia used the gun to point; he was to turn his back to her.

 

‘Around. Around!’

 

He didn’t hesitate this time, turned round on his knees until he was facing the door. She grabbed the gun by its muzzle, aimed with the handle at the back of his head and hit out as hard as she could.

 

He fell over forwards, unconscious before he hit the floor.

 

She pulled out the bag, carried it just like any ordinary shopping bag and hurried out of the room, down the corridor towards the lifts. It took a minute or so before one came. People passed her, but didn’t see her, absorbed as they were by their own journeys.

 

She stepped inside and pressed the lowermost button. Standing there, she didn’t think of anything in particular. She knew what she had to do.

 

All the way down. And when the lift stopped, she stepped out and walked along the bright white corridor towards the mortuary.

 

 

 

 

 

Jochum Lang was sitting on one of the seats by the entrance to Söder Hospital when Alena Sljusareva walked past him. He didn’t see her, because he didn’t know her. And she didn’t see him, because she didn’t know him either.

 

Jochum felt uneasy and was trying to shake it off. It was a long time since he had beaten up someone he knew.

 

It’s his own fault. He’s only got himself to blame.

 

He just needed a few minutes alone, that was all, just a sit-down, to think things through and try to get a grip on why he felt so tense.

 

Hilding had clung on to the lift doors. All the time he was weeping and pleading and calling Jochum by his first name.

 

Sure, Hilding was a fucking addict, at it all the time. And he would keep at it until his emaciated body couldn’t take any more. He had his kit and he would do anything, grass on anyone, to get another hit. On the other hand, he had no enemies, there was no real hate, and no purpose in life whatsoever, except messing up his blood with Class A substances in order to shut off all the feelings he didn’t want to have.

 

Jochum sighed.

 

This time had been unlike any other, somehow. Before, it had made no difference whether he knew who they were or not, or if they had wept and pleaded for their lives.

 

None of it mattered a shit, not really.

 

It’s his own fault.

 

The hospital entrance hall was a strange place. Jochum looked around. People were moving about all the time, some sentenced to stay, others relieved to get out. No one laughed here, it wasn’t that kind of place. He didn’t like hospitals at all. They made him feel naked and vulnerable, powerless, unable to control other people’s lives.

 

He got up. The doors opened automatically for him. It was still raining; small lakes had formed on the tarmac, floods of water trying to find somewhere to go.

 

Slobodan was waiting in the car, a few metres away from the bus stop. He was parked in the taxi zone, two wheels up on the kerb. He didn’t turn round when Jochum opened the car door, he had seen him coming out.

 

‘Took your bloody time.’

 

Slobodan looked ahead, turned the key and revved the engine. Jochum grabbed his wrist.

 

‘Hold it.’

 

Slobodan stopped the engine and turned to Jochum for the first time.

 

‘What?’

 

‘Five fingers. A kneecap. As per the tariff.’

 

‘That’s what you pay for messing with our goods.’

 

Slobodan was acting the boss. He was picking up bad habits, like his loud sighs and the way he waved his hands about to show how little he cared.

 

‘And?’

 

Jochum had been doing the rounds with Slobodan since way back, before the little shit even got his driving licence. His bossiness was hard to take and Jochum considered telling him so.

 

Not now. He’d make himself clear some other time.

 

‘The guy struggled, hung on to things. I couldn’t push him
into the lift. Suddenly he got hold of one of the wheels on the chair and off he went. Down the stairs and into the wall.’

 

Slobodan shrugged, started the engine again, revving it, turned the windscreen wipers on. Jochum’s rage was gnawing at his insides and he grabbed Slobodan’s arm, forced his hand off the wheel, pulled out the car key and pocketed it. He grasped the other man’s face with his hand, pressing his fingers into the cheeks, turning his head so that they were face to face, forcing Slobodan to pay attention.

 

‘Someone saw me.’

 

Sven drove into Söder Hospital via the Casualty entrance, the way he often came on professional business. They were known here. Plenty of parking space too.

 

They didn’t say anything. They hadn’t spoken since the alert, when Sven changed direction and headed for Väster Bridge, away from his birthday celebrations that he had promised to be home in time for. Ewert understood how important it was to Sven, even though he didn’t understand why; he had rejected all that from his life. Or maybe it was actually the other way round. He found it hard to think of anything suitable to say, something comforting, and though he tested out several phrases in his head, they all sounded awkward and pointless. What did he know about missing a woman and a child?

 

Everything.

 

He knew everything about it.

 

They got out and hurried up the ramp into Casualty. Side by side they marched towards the lifts. General Medicine, sixth floor.

 

When they emerged, a woman was waiting for them, a doctor called Lisa Öhrström. She was quite young, quite tall and quite good-looking. Ewert’s eyes rested on her too intently and he held her hand for a fraction too long. She noticed and looked quickly at him. He felt embarrassed.

 

‘I let the visitor in,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t see them leave the ward together.’

 

She pointed at the stairs, just next to the lift. A body was lying face down on the first landing. The blood had flowed out into a large reddish pool around it.

 

He was still now, blood congealing around his mouth, his hand didn’t scratch his nose, his eyes didn’t flicker, his arms didn’t flap. This bodily peace was new. It was as if his damned twitchy fearfulness had leached away with his blood. They walked down to him, twelve steps. Ewert knelt and examined the dead body as if hoping to find something, anything. He knew of course that he wouldn’t. Lang was an experienced hitman who knew all about precautions like wearing gloves and he left absolutely nothing behind.

 

They were waiting for Ludwig Errfors. Ewert had phoned him immediately. That decision had been easy. With someone like Lang, you had to get your side of it right. Errfors was not one for making mistakes. He was simply the best.

 

A few minutes more, just enough time for Ewert to sit down on a step and think about the dead man. He wondered if Oldéus was the sort who had thought about dying. If he knew the speed with which his drug-taking hurried him on towards death? If he had been afraid? Or did he want to die? Bloody fool. It was easy to work out that with his lifestyle he’d end up like this, cluttering up an ugly staircase, before he was thirty years old. Ewert sighed, snorted at the unresponsive corpse.

 

I’d like to know where I’ll end up, he thought as he got up and went over to Hilding again. Will I be in the way too? Will someone snort at me? There’s always some sod who snorts.

 

Ludwig Errfors was a tall, dark man, about fifty years old. He arrived wearing his civilian outfit, jeans and a jacket, just as he always did in his office at the forensic medicine headquarters in Solna.

 

He said hello and pointed at the body that until recently had been Hilding Oldéus.

 

‘I’m afraid I’m in a hurry. Can we get started right away?’

 

Ewert made a small gesture.

 

‘Ready when you are.’

 

Errfors knelt down to examine the body. He started to talk, with his face still at floor level.

 

‘Who is this?’ he asked.

 

‘Dealer, small time, heroin addict. His name was Hilding Oldéus.’

 

‘Why call me in?’

 

‘We’re after the butcher who did this. We’ve been chasing him for a while and need a proper examination of the corpse.’

 

Errfors moved his black bag closer. After pulling on a pair of surgical gloves, he waved his white hands irritably at Ewert to make him go away. At least up to the top step.

 

He felt for the pulse. Not there.

 

Next, the heartbeat. Nothing.

 

He shone a light into both eyes, recorded the rectal temperature, palpated the abdomen.

 

His routine examination did not take very long, ten or fifteen minutes. Opening the body up, the real work, came later and took longer.

 

Sven had escaped from the stairwell long ago and stood looking down the eternity of blue corridor that ran from the lift area to the ward doors. He remembered the last time he had seen Errfors at work. He had left the room in tears. It was just as tough for him now. He couldn’t cope with death, not like this, not at all.

 

Errfors changed position, looking quickly from Ewert to Sven and back to Ewert again.

 

‘He can’t handle it,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Remember last time.’

 

Ewert called to his colleague.

 

‘Hey, Sven.’