Box 21 (37 page)

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you how long this will take. It depends. But of course I understand. I’ll do my best to keep it as brief as possible.’

 

He couldn’t really see the point of aquariums. Or zoos, for that matter. Caged creatures didn’t appeal to him and he found it easy to block it all out of his mind: the strolling groups of people, the fish they were meant to be looking at. He would concentrate. On Alena Sljusareva, on her and her answers to his questions.

 

On her story, the story he had been dreading.

 

The tale of events he wished hadn’t taken place.

 

It wasn’t a normal interview, but whatever it was went on for almost three hours. She spoke about her flight from the flat and her time spent alone in the city, how her body rejoiced at being free, how she was scared that she would be found, anxious about Lydia. The worry about her unconscious beaten friend never let up. They had sworn never to leave each other until they were both free together, but just then, the instant when Alena had decided to run away, she had been convinced that she would be of more use to Lydia well away from that fifth-floor flat.

 

He interrupted her whenever she seemed to hesitate, and she would clarify, never try to change the story, at least not as far as he could make out.

 

They walked slowly among the people watching fish. She told him about going to the harbour and Lydia calling from her hospital bed to ask for the weapons and the other things that she would later put to use in the mortuary.

 

Her voice was a near-whisper when she begged him to believe that she had had no idea of what her friend had been planning to do.

 

He stopped, looked into her eyes and explained that the purpose of his inquiry was not to establish whether she had been an accessory to kidnapping and murder.

 

She asked what his reason was, in that case.

 

‘Nothing. And everything. Leave it like that.’

 

A cluster of simple chairs and tables. He bought them each a cup of coffee and they sat down among the parents
and children and the big fish on the blue plastic tablecloths.

 

She told him about the locker in Central Station, how she had broken in to the cellar and the carrier bag, which she was to deposit in the hospital toilet.

 

He decided to check the truth of what she was telling him.

 

‘What was the number?’

 

‘Number?’

 

‘The box at the station.’

 

‘Twenty-one.’

 

‘What was in it?’

 

‘Mostly my things. Lydia wanted only money for extras.’

 

‘Extras?’

 

‘Hitting. Spitting. Filming. Use your imagination.’

 

Sven Sundkvist swallowed, sensing her discomfort.

 

‘And Lydia? What did she keep in your box?’

 

‘Her money. And her two videotapes.’

 

‘What tapes were they?’

 

‘The truth. That’s what she named them.
My Truth
.’

 

‘Which was . . .?’

 

‘She told it like it was. How we came to Sweden. Who was buying and selling us as products. And what the policeman she shot had done to make her hate him. I helped her translate.’

 

‘Nordwall?’

 

‘Bengt Nordwall.’

 

Sven Sundkvist did not tell her that he had opened their box 21 and watched the tape, listening to them both. He did not mention that one of the tapes had gone missing because one policeman was protecting another and had decided to lose it, nor did he explain how ashamed he felt at his own inability to decide whether their humiliations were more or less important than his loyalty towards a colleague and a friend, and whether he ever would make official what only he knew now: there was another tape, a copy of the truth.

 

‘I saw him.’

 

‘Who?’

 

‘Bengt Nordwall. I saw him in the flat.’

 

‘You saw him?’

 

‘He saw me too. I know he recognised me. And I know he recognised Lydia.’

 

After that he found it difficult to listen to her.

 

She carried on talking and he asked her his questions, but his mind was elsewhere.

 

He was furious. As furious as he had ever been. He wanted to scream.

 

He didn’t, of course. He was after all one of the ordinary blokes, a little dull. He suppressed the scream, sensing the pressure inside his chest.

 

Instead he carried on pretending to be calm, unafraid of what she had to tell him. He mustn’t frighten her. He understood how brave she was, how the memories gnawed at her.

 

He cried out.

 

Cried out, then apologised to her. He had a pain, he explained. It wasn’t her, he had a pain here, in his chest.

 

By the time they had boarded the ferry back to the centre of town, he knew in detail what had happened during her hours of freedom, from her escape down the stairs at Völund Street to her arrest at the harbour. Fury was churning inside him, from chest to belly and back, but he felt their talk had not yet ended. He wanted to know more, about how it all worked: about those three years, the slave trade, how it was possible for a woman’s body to be sold so that someone else could top up his bank account or buy himself a new car.

 

He asked if she would have dinner with him.

 

She smiled.

 

‘I don’t think I can cope with any more now. Home. I want to go home. I haven’t been at home for three years.’

 

‘The Swedish police will not trouble you again in this matter. You have my word on that.’

 

‘I don’t understand. What more do you want to know?’

 

‘I spoke to the Lithuanian ambassador to Sweden just a couple of days ago. He had gone to the airport to see off the man you call Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp, and spoke to us afterwards about the extent of the world you’ve just escaped from. He was despairing. I want to learn more about it. Tell me.’

 

‘I’m so tired. Too tired.’

 

‘Just one evening? Just talking. Then never again.’

 

He blushed suddenly when he saw himself demanding her attention like the Swedish men she had learnt to hate.

 

‘Please forgive me. I didn’t intend this as some kind of come-on. You mustn’t take it that way. I truly want to know more. And I’m a married man and a father.’

 

‘They always are.’

 

He marched back to the hotel quickly. Another shower to wash away the heat and another change of clothes, the second in the eight hours since his arrival.

 

She had asked two older women coming to board the ferry about a good place for a meal and they had suggested a Chinese restaurant called Taravos Aniko, saying that the portions were nice and big, and if you were lucky enough to get one of the right tables you could watch the food being prepared.

 

She was already there when he arrived, wearing the same jeans and sweater. She smiled, he smiled. They ordered bottles of mineral water and a set menu that someone else had worked out, starter, main course, dessert for two, all suitably put together and priced.

 

She searched for words and he waited quietly. He didn’t want to push her.

 

Then she started speaking, beginning somewhere in the middle, with a remembered impression, and afterwards
unravelling their story. She took him on a journey to a world that he thought he knew something about and made him realise he knew nothing. She cried and whispered for a while, but she couldn’t stop talking and he didn’t interrupt. This was the first time she had described to someone else what her adult life so far had been; it was the first time she had listened to herself. He listened too and was increasingly amazed at her strength and her integrity. Despite everything, she had stayed whole.

 

He waited until she had finished or maybe couldn’t bear to say any more. Until she fell silent, her unseeing eyes empty. Now it was over, she was done and would never again tell her story on demand.

 

Sven reached down for his briefcase and put it on the table.

 

‘I’ve brought a few things which don’t belong to me.’

 

He took out a small brown box and two neatly folded dresses.

 

‘I believe these things are Lydia’s.’

 

She stared at the box, at the dresses. She knew where they had been. There was still a question in her eyes when she met Sven’s. He nodded, confirming that she was right.

 

‘Your locker is empty now. Let to someone else. I wanted to give you these. I suppose the dresses are hers. And the box too. It contains forty thousand Swedish kronor, in smallish notes.’

 

Alena didn’t move, said nothing. ‘Do what you like. Keep the money. Or give it to her family, if there is anyone left.’

 

She leaned forward and caressed the smooth, black material of one of the dresses.

 

All that was left.

 

‘I went to her home yesterday. I wanted to see her mother. Lydia often talked about her.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘She is dead. She died two months ago.’

 

Sven waited. Then he gently pushed Lydia’s belongings towards Alena.

 

‘I would like to know more about Lydia. Who she was. All I have seen is a badly beaten human being who stood up again and took hostages.’

 

Alena shook her head. ‘It’s enough now.’

 

‘I think some part of me understands why she acted as she did.’

 

‘No more, not today. Not ever.’

 

They stayed for a while longer, without talking much. The waiter finally asked them to please leave, the restaurant was closing. They got up and were just about to go when the front door opened and a man in his early twenties came in. Sven gave him a quick once-over. He was tall, blond and suntanned, easy-going, not confrontational. Alena walked over to him, kissed his cheek and put her arm through his.

 

‘Janoz. I left him. He was still here. I am so grateful for that.’

 

She kissed his cheek again and pulled him closer as she told Sven how Janoz had tried to find her for seven long months, spending time and money until he had to give up.

 

And she laughed. For the first time that evening, she laughed. Sven smiled and congratulated them both. For a moment, at least, not everything seemed hopeless.

 

‘What about Lydia? Was there someone waiting for her?’

 

‘There was someone called Vladi.’

 

‘And now?’

 

‘He got what he wanted from her.’

 

She said no more and he didn’t ask. They went out in the street. Before going their different ways Sven Sundkvist repeated his promise that she would never again have to speak to the Swedish police about this case.

 

A few steps only and then she turned round.

 

‘One more thing.’

 

‘Of course.’

 

‘Today, in the aquarium. The interview. Why was that necessary?’

 

‘The case is still open. The police have to gather all the evidence.’

 

‘Yes, I see. I have no problem with that. But you, the police, you already knew.’

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘What you asked, it was the same as the other policeman.’

 

‘The other policeman?’

 

‘He was there in the flat too. Older than you.’

 

‘His name is Grens.’

 

‘That’s the one.’

 

‘The same questions?’

 

‘Everything I told you this afternoon in the aquarium I have already said to him. The same questions, the same answers.’

 

‘Everything?’

 

‘Everything.’

 

‘You told him about Lydia calling you from the ward and the mortuary? About how you went to look for the things she wanted? About the video from the locker? About the gun and the explosives? About how you left it in the hospital toilet?’

 

‘All of it.’

 

It was two o’clock in the morning by the time Sven was ready for the narrow hotel bed. He hadn’t got anything for Jonas. He decided to sleep for a few hours and then go to St John’s Lutheran church and light a candle for Lydia Grajauskas and her mother, who had been buried there. Then take a taxi to the airport. There was a duty-free shop there, where he could get sweets, the jelly ones and the shiny gold chocolate bars.

 

He lay in the dark. The window was open on a silent Klaipeda.

 

He knew his time was running out.

 

He must decide. The truth was there and now he had to decide what to do with it.

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY 9 JUNE

 

 

 

 

 

He had test-fucked the two new girls and they hadn’t been up to much.

 

True, they were practically virgins, apart from that incident in the ferry cabin, and weren’t actually too bad; they seemed to be getting the hang of it. It was their third day in the Völund Street flat and it wouldn’t be long now before they too serviced twelve a day, like that mad bitch Grajauskas and her dirty little friend had. Or had done, until they lost their cool and went berserk.

 

The new girls needed to get their act together, though. Not hot and eager enough, he reckoned. Customers paying good money had a right to feel they were attractive and drove girls crazy, and that they were part of a couple, just for a while. Otherwise they might as well wank in the toilet.

 

He had knocked the new girls around a bit, just to keep them in order. Just a few more days and he’d have put a stop to their snivelling. It got on his nerves, all their bloody whining.

 

He had to admit it, Grajauskas and Sljusareva were pros. They got on with it, took their kit off and acted randy as hell. But it was a relief not to have their sneering grins in
your face all the time. And he was tired of being called Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp every time he showed them who was boss.

 

The first one would be here soon. It was just after eight in the morning.

 

Mostly they came straight from home, having left the wife who was starting to get fat, just wanting to experience something, an extra stop going to work.

 

He would watch the girls today. Exam time. Find out if their fucking was up to standard or if they needed some more tuition.