‘Jesus,’ said Sara’s voice. ‘You’ve got a good memory.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So they had to contact someone once they were through? Was that right?’
‘You’ve got a good memory too.’
‘Who? Did they say a name?’
‘Yeah, they said a name. But I can’t remember it.’
New clip. Jadwiga sitting at a computer. A fat man in a police uniform was next to her, jabbing at the keys and clicking away with the mouse. Half of Sara was visible next to them.
‘Mm, I don’t know,’ said Jadwiga, pointing at the screen. ‘Something like that. Eyes more slanted, maybe.’
‘Viggo,’ Sara said, a certain weariness in her voice. ‘There’s no reason to be filming this.’
‘Oh yeah,’ an unmistakable male voice replied as the camera panned over the desk and focused on Jadwiga, who made an irritated, obscene gesture to it.
‘Leave her alone,’ Sara said, even more wearily.
‘Looks like Magdalena Forsberg,’ the policeman in uniform said, looking with disappointment at the computer screen.
Jadwiga, on the other hand, suddenly looked jittery.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ the unmistakable male voice said. ‘No one thinks you’ve drawn the world’s best female biathlete.’
Jadwiga got to her feet. The camera followed her.
‘That’s it!’ she exclaimed.
Sara Svenhagen appeared next to her and said: ‘What do you mean, Jadwiga?’
‘The name,’ the young Polish woman said. ‘The one they had to contact.’
‘Magdalena Forsberg?’ the unmistakable man’s voice said.
‘Magda,’ said Jadwiga.
That was followed by a clip in which they could see something like the edge of a car-repair garage. A man with a moustache and a Shell cap was standing in front of a number of more or less broken-down buses, wiping his oily hands. He was looking suspiciously straight into the camera.
‘What’s this then?’ he asked in a broad Småland accent. ‘Are you German? Sie können hier nicht fotografieren.’
‘Sorry,’ Sara’s voice said. Her hand, clutching her police ID, entered the picture from one side. ‘Is this Anderstorp Car & Bus?’
‘Yeah. Turn that camera off. Don’t you need permission for that kind of thing?’
‘He’s got a point there,’ Jan-Olov Hultin said loudly.
‘Shh,’ Sara urged him, as her voice double on-screen asked: ‘Are you Anders Torp?’
‘Yes,’ the man with the moustache said, still suspicious but now with an obvious pride in his voice. ‘Anders Torp of Anderstorp.’
‘You rent out buses?’
‘Yes,’ said Anders Torp in Anderstorp. ‘From time to time.’
‘Did you rent a bus with this registration number?’
A notepad moved into shot. Anders Torp looked at it and then nodded.
‘An old Volvo, one of the smaller models,’ he said. ‘They hired it for a month. Must’ve been a few weeks ago.’
‘Brilliant,’ an unmistakable man’s voice said.
‘Is he with the police too?’ Anders Torp asked, pointing straight down the camera. ‘I’m really wondering whether you can film like this without permission. Maybe I shouldn’t answer any more questions.’
‘If you’ve got anything to hide then I suggest you do it,’ said Sara.
‘Model behaviour,’ said Hultin.
‘Shh,’ Sara retorted.
‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ Anders Torp said, offended.
‘Då fortsätter vi resan,’ said Sara. ‘As they say in “Yellow Submarine”.’
‘You heard the Swedish part too?’ Anders Torp said, beaming. ‘In the middle somewhere, where it goes a bit chaotic for a while? The Eagles had their backwards message, the Beatles threw in a line in Swedish. It’s great.’
‘Who hired the bus?’ Sara asked bluntly.
Anders Torp looked appreciatively at her. She had clearly broken through his mistrust.
‘A girl,’ he said. ‘Not Swedish.’
‘Where was she from? Eastern Europe?’
‘No, I wouldn’t have rented it to her if she was. You know you won’t be getting the bus back.’
‘She must’ve shown you her driving licence.’
‘And passport,’ said Anders Torp. ‘You have to, if you’re a foreigner. I think she was German. I can check.’
He disappeared for a moment. The camera turned to Sara. The unmistakable man’s voice said: ‘Yellow Submarine?’
Sara pointed to the wall of the garage. The camera zoomed in on a tattered old poster covered in psychedelic patterns. The words ‘Beatles’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’ came into view. Then the camera moved back to Sara.
‘Clever,’ the unmistakable male voice said.
‘Yup,’ Sara replied, looking pleased.
Anders Torp of Anderstorp returned. He was carrying a piece of paper. It was fluttering in the late-spring breeze.
‘Here,’ he said, pointing to the messy sheet of paper. ‘Driving licence and passport numbers.’
Sara nodded and said: ‘We’ll make a copy of it later. Was she one of these?’
She held up the sheet of photographs. Anders Torp slowly worked his way through the nine photographs. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said.
Sara held out two more photographs, slightly larger.
Anders Torp glanced at the first of them. Then he moved on to the second and his face lit up just like it had when she mentioned ‘Yellow Submarine’.
‘This one’s very like her,’ he said, nodding.
Sara Svenhagen held a thumb up to the camera. The camera lurched and fell to the floor. They watched the sun slip in behind a cloud before the picture vanished into static.
There was a moment of silence before Jan-Olov Hultin said: ‘I’m not sure that video is a particularly good instrument when it comes to police investigations…’
Sara Svenhagen made a thumbs-up gesture to Viggo Norlander. He happily returned the gesture. This time, though, there was no camera to drop.
It was utterly clear he thought he had made an invaluable contribution.
Then Sara said: ‘So in other words, we might have a name for our so-called ninja feminist. Magda.’
‘Plus,’ said Norlander, ‘we’ve got these.’
He held up three photographs like a fan. One was a proper photograph – the picture from the environmental protection agency film, cleaned up by the technicians, showing the woman with the mobile phone. It was followed by two obvious composite photographs, computer reconstructions.
‘These two,’ Viggo said, ‘were made by a stout Karlskrona policeman, working with Jadwiga, the Polish waitress from the M/S Stena Europe.’ He put one of them down, holding the other up in the air.
‘Anders Torp from Anderstorp rented a bus to this woman. We should probably assume she’s the Erinyes’ driver.’
‘Her passport and driving licence were German,’ said Sara. ‘But there’s absolutely no doubt they were fake. Can you guess the name she was using?’
‘No,’ came the chorus.
‘Eva Braun,’ said Sara Svenhagen.
‘Unfortunately the camera had broken by the time Anders Torp said that,’ Viggo Norlander said in his unmistakable man’s voice.
‘Poor quality,’ Jan-Olov Hultin said neutrally.
The phone suddenly rang. Hultin answered.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yeah… yes… What do you mean, hard?… Ah… OK… Good. Thanks.’
He hung up and said: ‘That was Brynolf Svenhagen. He was agitated.’
‘Uff,’ Jorge Chavez said, staring at his watch. Being able to go and buy his wine was looking increasingly unlikely.
Hultin said: ‘We’ve got some information about our man without a nose.’
‘What’s wrong with Brunte?’ Paul Hjelm asked, receiving a sour glance from Sara Svenhagen in return.
‘It’s because the information we’ve got is fairly diffuse. They’re claiming they don’t have a cooperation agreement with Europol and they’re refusing to release the name. They’re demanding we send someone down there.’