Jorge Chavez was, in other words, a marvel of patience. Hjelm glanced sceptically at him. It was a front, it had to be a front. It couldn’t be possible for a person to change so dramatically.
‘Not everyone is coming,’ he said tryingly. ‘Arto’s not.’
‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ Jorge answered cryptically.
‘Should we make sure our friend gets hold of his wine in time, then?’ asked Hultin. ‘Press play, Viggo.’
The remote control in Viggo Norlander’s hand zapped life into the VCR machine over by the whiteboard. As the camera panned slowly over a drab-looking harbour, Sara said: ‘While you’re watching the whole of the Karlskrona harbour area go past, I might as well start by saying that Viggo and I have sat through the whole of the Environmental Protection Agency’s epic about the Polish poacher, Wojciech Bienek. His customers turned out to be German, Japanese and American. We paid particular attention to the film shot inside the ship. None of our Slagsta girls appeared there.’
Once the camera had finished its panning shot across the harbour, there was a long, shaky sequence of paving stones rushing by. Every now and then, they caught sight of a brand-new Italian shoe, a right foot, which had obvious specks of dirt on it. In the background, a mumbling could be heard: ‘For God’s sake, where’d the vegetable go?’
Viggo Norlander cleared his throat loudly.
‘That should’ve been cut, Sara,’ he said severely.
‘I thought it was worth keeping,’ she replied peacefully.
‘I think so too,’ Hultin said neutrally.
Just then, the vegetable appeared on-screen. Sara Svenhagen’s chlorine-green hair appeared opposite a weather-beaten man in a uniform, sitting in a tiny little cabin with greasy sea charts on the walls. He looked down at a piece of paper and said: ‘Nope, I’ve got nothing on that bus or its passengers other than that they booked three cabins.’
‘Sounds like there’s some information after all,’ the vegetable said encouragingly. ‘How many people was the booking for?’
The weather-beaten man read from the paper, not without some effort.
‘Eleven adults,’ he said eventually.
‘Adults?’ asked Sara Svenhagen.
‘Not children,’ he explained.
Then he froze, a strange grimace on his face.
‘Thanks, Viggo,’ Sara said, turning to the Tactical Command Centre. ‘Eleven adults means three more than our eight from Slagsta. We’d already accounted for two more: the driver plus the woman with the mobile phone, who we’ll come back to. Now it seems like there was one more. The Erinyes seem to be growing relentlessly. Keep going, Viggo. You’re all going to have to pay attention now, it’s just a short clip. Very MTV.’
Norlander pressed a button on the remote. The weather-beaten man disappeared along with his grimace. The picture cut to one of a young Slavic-looking woman dressed in white, standing in front of a variety of kitchen implements hanging from a wall.
‘Just women, yes,’ she said in near-perfect Swedish. ‘Three cabins. Three in one, four in the other two. Four-bed cabins. Talk to Wislawa, I think she’s the one who had those cabins.’
The picture changed again to another dark-haired girl, this time younger and clad in a bikini, sitting in the sun on the deck. The camera shook slightly, but the notorious cameraman managed to resist the temptation to pan down her body.
‘Where are you from, Wislawa?’ Sara’s voice asked, out of shot.
‘I’m Polish,’ the girl in the bikini replied in good Swedish.
‘Did you hear whether they were talking among themselves?’
‘Yeah. Different languages. A bit of Russian, a bit of Bulgarian.’
‘Ukrainian?’
‘I can’t tell the difference between Russian and Ukrainian. Bulgarian sounds different, but I can’t understand it. I know a bit of Russian.’
‘Did you hear what they were saying to one another?’
‘No, they never spoke when I was nearby. I just heard their voices from out in the corridor. Never any distinct words. I was just cleaning though, Jadwiga was the one who actually served them.’
New clip: another young girl, blonde, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. She was just about to disembark with a man in sunglasses when she was stopped on the gangway. The picture shook violently and the sound of heavy breathing could be heard over the entire conversation which followed.
‘Are you Jadwiga?’
‘Yes,’ the girl said, flinching. ‘Stop filming me. What’re you doing, you filthy old perv?’
‘We’re with the Swedish police,’ Sara said, holding up her ID.
‘Him too?’ asked Jadwiga, gesturing with her head.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Sara Svenhagen said neutrally.
‘Do you have to pant like that?’ Jadwiga said in a complaining tone.
‘I’m an old man,’ said the panting voice.
‘Do you recognise these women?’ Sara asked.
Jadwiga looked at the photographs.
‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘Most of them were here, maybe all of them. Stayed in three cabins. I think they stayed in them the whole journey. Never left. I served them dinner in the evening and breakfast in the morning.’
‘She’s the most important,’ said Sara, pointing to one of the pictures. ‘Can you tell us anything about her?’
Jadwiga scratched her head and said: ‘She was Russian, I think. Some kind of Russian dialect. My Russian’s not so good.’
‘So you didn’t hear what they were saying?’
‘A bit, maybe. When I was little, we had to study Russian in school. But then just when I’d done a few years and was starting to understand the basics, we switched to English.’
‘Your Swedish is really good,’ said Sara.
‘Thanks.’
‘Bastards!’ came a cry, followed by a bang. The picture swung upwards to show the sky, as seen through the ship’s railings.
New clip. Jadwiga again, a mug in front of her and people sitting drinking coffee behind her.
‘Let’s try again,’ said Sara’s voice. ‘Are you sure it didn’t break, Viggo?’
‘Viggo?’ Jadwiga said with amusement in her voice.
‘Yup,’ said Norlander’s no-longer-panting voice. ‘I slipped.’
‘Right then, Jadwiga. Where were we?’
‘Her,’ she said, pointing to the sheet of photographs. ‘She was talking to the two others in her cabin in some weird Russian dialect. I heard a bit while I was serving them breakfast. When I served dinner the night before, they’d been completely silent.’
‘So she was in the cabin of three passengers?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jadwiga.
‘Would you be able to describe the other two?’
‘I think so. In their thirties, maybe. South Slavic appearance, I guess. If we say I’ve got a northern one.’
‘And those two, they weren’t any of these women in the photographs?’
‘No, they were in the other cabins. Four in each. They were much more rowdy. Addicts, I think.’
‘And the three in the third cabin, you wouldn’t say they were addicts?’
‘No, I thought they were social workers or something. Taking a group of old addicts somewhere. A detox trip.’
‘Would you be able to recognise the two women from the third cabin? Or help us with a sketch of them?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What did they say then?’
‘What?’
‘What did you hear while you were serving them breakfast?’
‘Let me see if I can remember. Something about the weather first, that it was good it had been such a calm night. Then something about the girls having done really well. One of them said she was proud of them. Then there was something about having to contact someone once they were through. Then they asked me if we had any rye bread. And then someone asked when they’d been checked last. One of them said she’d done it ten minutes ago. And then they asked me if I’d been into the cabins next door. I said yes. They asked if they’d been nice to me. I said yes. One of them asked for another cup of coffee. I gave it to her. Then I left.’