Authors: Liza Marklund
‘My colleague Nina Hoffman has asked me to let you know the results of a trace on a mobile phone.’
‘Yes,’ Annika said. ‘My sister’s phone, she’s gone missing.’
‘Of course, yes, I can see the report here. Two reports, in fact, one in Stockholm and the other in Malmö.’
‘Sorry,’ Annika said, ‘but why isn’t Nina calling?’
‘She’s away on official business. It’s a little unorthodox, giving the results in this way, but if I’ve understood correctly, you and Nina have an ongoing collaboration.’
Well, Annika wasn’t sure she’d put it quite like that, but never mind.
‘We’ve looked back over the whole of the past month, from the first of May onwards, it says here. Should I tell you the results now, or would you like me to—’
‘Now is fine,’ Annika said.
‘Until two weeks ago the pattern was the same. The operator picked up signals from masts mainly located in central Malmö, between Rosengård and Värnhemstorget.’
She heard the rustle of paper.
‘Then, on Sunday, the seventeenth of May, there’s a gap in the signal. The phone is switched off, and the next time it gets switched on is Tuesday, the nineteenth of May – two days later, in other words. On that day two text messages are sent, one to a woman called Linda Torstensson, and one to a Steven Andersson. Was this something you already knew?’
Annika knew that Birgitta had written to Linda: she had lied about getting a permanent job in another supermarket. Why? She had been her boss’s favourite, so why burn her bridges?
Because she’d wanted Linda to be upset. She didn’t want Linda to contact her. She wanted to be left alone. As for what Birgitta had written to Steven, only he knew that.
‘I can see here that those two texts were sent via a mast in Södermanland, in a place called Hälleforsnäs.’
Annika braked, and the car behind blew its horn angrily. Tuesday, two weeks ago, Birgitta was in Hälleforsnäs? ‘Is it possible to see where the phones that received the text messages were?’ Annika asked.
Johansson coughed. ‘They were both in Malmö when the messages were received.’
For some reason that news calmed her. The technology was cold and definite. Steven had been in Malmö when Birgitta had vanished. At least he wasn’t lying about that.
‘The mobile was switched on two more times during the following week, on the twenty-second and the twenty-fifth of May. Three messages were sent, two to Steven Andersson, and one to Annika Bengtzon, to you, all via the same mast.’
Annika, please get in touch, you’ve got to help me! Birgitta
‘One final text was sent to your mobile on Sunday, at four twenty-two a.m., from Luleå.’
Annika’s brain froze.
Annika, help me!
‘Luleå?’
Annika could see the city in her mind’s eye, snowdrifts against panelled buildings, the heavy pulse of the steelworks, shiny railway tracks on a winter’s night. She had been there several times in connection with Benny Andersson’s murder and the hunt for Red Wolf – dear God, the children had been so young. It had been during those trips to Luleå that Thomas embarked on his affair with Sophia Grenborg.
‘Is this any help to you? Does your sister have any connection to these places?’
‘We come from Hälleforsnäs,’ Annika said.
The man let out a sigh. ‘She must have gone for a visit.’
Annika thanked him for the information and ended the call. She came off at the next junction, turned round and drove back a couple of kilometres. Then she took the road that led to Hälleforsnäs.
The Dirección General de la Policía in San Sebastián lay on Calle de José María Salaberria, a narrow alley with roadworks on one side and scaffolding on the other. Nina looked up at the brick building, which reminded her of a block of flats in a Stockholm suburb.
She stepped into the police station, a little unsteady on her feet through lack of sleep. Her Ryanair flight to Biarritz in France had taken off from Skavsta airport at the crack of dawn and she’d tried to get some sleep on board but the seat wouldn’t recline more than a millimetre, and her knees were aching just half an hour into the flight from being pressed up against the seat in front. She had given up and focused instead on how best to present the Ivar Berglund case to her Spanish colleagues.
The taxi from the airport had taken just under an hour. On the way they had crossed the border between France and Spain, but she hadn’t even noticed.
She asked for Police Commissioner Axier Elorza in Reception, and showed her driving licence, as a civilian. Her status as a police officer was as yet unsanctioned.
Europol would be granting authorization later that day, and she didn’t want to pre-empt the decision. She would be permitted to act as an observer rather than an active representative of authority, but that would be enough.
The receptionist told her to take a seat and wait.
She sat on a hard wooden bench and looked out of the window. The trial in the high-security court was due to finish tomorrow. There was a risk that Ivar Berglund would be released immediately after the main hearing, but that was unlikely. She had to gain access to the whole of the Spanish investigation into the old case in which the DNA evidence had been secured today, ideally that morning, in order for official procedures to be set in motion and to make sure that Berglund remained in custody.
‘Third floor,’ the receptionist said, pointing to a lift.
Nina got to her feet and made her way up through the building.
She found the chief of police in a cramped room with a view of the building site on the other side of the street. Axier Elorza was a small, skinny man in plain clothes, with a drooping moustache. He could easily have been one of the old men who fed the pigeons in the square in Alisios where she had grown up. But Nina knew that appearances were deceptive: Commissioner Elorza had tracked down, arrested and eliminated more ETA terrorists than any other Spanish policeman alive today.
‘Señorita Hoffman,’ the old man said, his eyes twinkling. ‘It’s an honour.’
‘The honour is entirely mine,’ Nina told him. ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’ She was a head taller than him.
‘Please, let’s set aside formalities. Do come in!’ He gestured her into his little office, evidently keen to keep her visit as informal as possible, at least at this stage. No conference room, no large delegation to share information. She sat on a chair on the other side of his desk, which was empty, apart from two bottles of carbonated water and two small glasses.
‘So, Señorita, tell me why our DNA result from an eighteen-year-old murder is of such interest to the Swedish police,’ he said, twisting the cork stopper off one of the bottles of water with his fist.
Nina sat still, her back straight. His way of stressing her title fulfilled two functions. First, he was making it very clear that she was there as a private person: it had been sensible of her to present herself to the receptionist in that capacity. Second, he was stressing her gender: female police officers were still unusual in Spain’s macho culture. His way of dealing with the water-bottle was a less than subtle way of showing his strength. She was actually rather thirsty, but couldn’t see a bottle-opener. She’d never be able to get the cap off with her bare hands but had no intention of asking for his help.
‘A murder trial is currently under way in Stockholm District Court,’ she said, even though she assumed that Commissioner Elorza already knew a fair amount about why she was there. ‘A man named Ivar Berglund has
been charged with the crime. He’s a Swedish citizen, single, a businessman with a forestry company, no previous criminal record. The evidence consists of a DNA match found under the victim’s fingernail, a match that isn’t a hundred per cent but which would probably be enough in a normal case. The problem is the nature of the crime and the defendant’s irreproachable background. The murder was unusually calculated, and there’s nothing to suggest that the defendant has a criminal nature.’
Commissioner Elorza took a sip of water, and Nina moistened her lips.
‘We’re also satisfied from an investigative perspective that the same culprit is guilty of an extremely brutal assault on a Swedish politician, a crime that was committed just a couple of days before, in the same part of Stockholm.’
‘But he hasn’t been charged with the assault?’
‘No,’ Nina said.
The old man sucked his teeth, demonstrating obvious disapproval. ‘How come?’
‘There was insufficient forensic evidence.’
‘So what leads you to the conclusion that you’re dealing with the same perpetrator?’
Nina chose her words carefully. ‘A number of reasons. The murdered man was legally responsible for a Spanish company that was owned by the assaulted politician’s wife. A child’s drawing was found at the scene of the murder that could well have been drawn by the politician’s children.’
The commissioner screwed up his eyes. ‘But that isn’t the whole truth,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely certain. Why?’
She held her hands still in her lap. ‘Both victims were subjected to established torture methods.’
The policeman leaned forward in his chair. She had his interest now.
‘Which ones?’ he asked.
She straightened her shoulders, and used Spanish terminology in so far as there was any. ‘
Fakala
,’ she said, ‘the soles of his feet were beaten.
La Bañera
, suffocation with a plastic bag. Spread-eagle, in which the victim’s hands were tied behind his back and he was then strung up by his wrists.
Cheera
– the victim’s legs were pulled apart until the muscles tore. The second victim was subjected to
La Barra
: his wrists were tied round his knees, then he was hung from a tree by his knees.’
The commissioner looked almost amused. ‘Tell me, Señorita, why have they sent you to give me this information?’
She met his gaze. ‘Because these are my conclusions,’ she said. And because I speak Spanish and we’re in a hell of a hurry.
‘You visited the scenes of these crimes?’
‘Of course.’
‘Didn’t you find it unpleasant?’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Naturally. They were terrible crimes.’ How could she explain the shadows inside her, the ones that meant she could see in the dark? That she wasn’t afraid of a lack of light because she had
been born into it? ‘Criminals are predictable,’ she said. ‘They work in the same way as everyone else. They have the same motivations and ambitions. One common denominator is that they regard themselves as powerless, and are prepared to do anything to change that. What we call evil is really only a consequence of their choice of tool, because they use violence to gain power. We have to look beyond that, and not allow their methods to stop us seeing what’s really important.’
A fleeting smile passed across the old policeman’s face. He leaned forward and twisted the cap off the other bottle, then poured the bubbling water into her glass. ‘What do you know about ETA?’ he asked.
She took a small sip. ‘Not much. A separatist group whose aim was to create an independent Basque state.’
‘
Euskadi ta Askatasuna
,’ the commissioner said. ‘Basque for “The Basque country and freedom”. Between 1968 and 2003, eight hundred and nineteen people were killed in various acts of terrorism that we believe were caused by ETA. Ernesto Jaka – have you ever heard of him?’
She assumed the question was rhetorical and said she hadn’t.
‘No,’ the commissioner said. ‘Why should you have? Ernesto Jaka was a Basque businessman, from Bilbao. Not too small, but not too big either. He dealt in raw materials, mostly oil. He was found tortured to death in a garbage container at a building site controlled by ETA. It was thought he had neglected to pay his revolutionary tax, another way of describing ETA’s protection racket.’
Nina clasped her hands. ‘I thought ETA mostly stuck to bombings,’ she said.
The commissioner nodded. ‘But sometimes they had a go at something different. In this particular case they had used the tools that were available on the building site, saws and hammers and drills. Well, you can imagine the injuries the victim suffered.’
Nina could, all too well. ‘Where did you find the DNA?’
‘On one of the tools, a saw blade, if I’m not mistaken. Obviously, most of what we found on the tools was the victim’s blood, but there were also traces of different DNA, and a fingerprint that we never managed to identify.’
‘The perpetrator cut his hand or finger when he was using the saw,’ Nina said.
The commissioner nodded enthusiastically. ‘That was what we concluded as well. We compared it to all known members of ETA but without any result, and that’s where we were for eighteen years, until yesterday.’
Nina thought. ‘Ernesto Jaka traded in oil,’ she said. ‘Russian?’
‘Mostly, but also Nigerian,’ the commissioner confirmed.
Nina relaxed her hands.
When the Soviet Union had collapsed, vast quantities of state assets were privatized, among them forestry and oil. During the 1990s a small number of oligarchs became some of the richest men in the world: the Yukos Oil Company and its owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
were perhaps the most famous examples, but there were others, not as large, not as particular, and the infighting between them was appalling. Ivar Berglund’s company had traded in a lot of Russian timber: he had the contacts, he had the opportunity.
Commissioner Elorza sighed happily. ‘Imagine,’ he said. ‘It isn’t every day we manage to reduce the number of ETA’s victims, but we can do that today. From eight hundred and nineteen to eight hundred and eighteen.’ He stood up. ‘We’ve prepared all our documentation about the case,’ he said. ‘If you’d like to follow me, I’ll—’
‘There was one more thing,’ Nina said, getting slowly to her feet. ‘I was wondering if you could help me with another matter.’
Elorza stopped in the doorway, surprised.
‘It concerns our suspected perpetrator or, rather, his brother,’ Nina said. ‘The perpetrator’s twin brother died in a car crash in Alpujarras twenty years ago. I’d like to know more about what happened.’
There was a glimmer of interest in the old man’s eyes. He took a step back into the room and closed the door again. ‘That could be difficult,’ he said. ‘An ordinary accident gets buried deep in the archives, if the file still exists.’