“You have to get out of the country as soon as possible. From London it will be easy for you to keep traveling.”
“Okay,” Manuel said.
For him the most important thing was to leave the basement.
“I have brought two small suitcases for you to pack your belongings. Wash up quickly. It’s important that you look tidy. I will drive you there. That will cost a little. Do you have money?”
“How much will it cost?”
“Three thousand dollars.”
Manuel nodded.
“Is it so far?” Patricio asked.
Ramon laughed.
“No, but it is your only option. We have to pass Stockholm. You will have to sit in a closed van. It is the van of a paint company. Understood?”
Manuel and Patricio looked at their new passports. Abel and Carlos Morales were the names that would get them out of Sweden.
Manuel was a little unhappy that Ramon was charging so much to drive them to the airport but said nothing. He knew what the answer would be.
They arrived at the airport a little before eight. Ramon dropped them off at the parking lot and gave the brothers final instructions on how they should act. Manuel took out his gun and handed it to Ramon without a word. The latter smiled a little and surprised the brothers by immediately taking out the ammunition, carefully cleaning off the weapon, and then disappeared for a minute or so into a nearby patch of woods.
“I’m dropping you off here,” he said when he returned. “With a little luck you will be fine.”
He looked at them almost tenderly and gave them each an unexpected hug good-bye, then jumped into the van and left the area.
The airport was much smaller than they had imagined. It basically consisted of a hangarlike building with a cafe and a departure lounge that looked more like a bus terminal.
At his brother’s question if they should split up and buy tickets separately, Manuel simply shook his head. He felt as if he were incapable of speaking.
The flight with a departure time of 21:40 to London was fully booked, they were told at the ticket counter in the terminal. The woman behind the counter saw their disappointment and tried to comfort them with the fact that there was a flight the following morning. Could they wait until then?
“Our brother in England is sick,” Manuel said. “There is no possibility that we can make it on this flight?”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s full, but there are three seats left on the early flight tomorrow morning.”
The brothers looked at each other. Manuel felt as if luck was deserting them. They had managed to get this far but no further. So close. He looked at the young woman behind the counter. Her eyes were so blue.
“We’ll take two tickets,” he said finally.
Sixty-Seven
The first thing Ann Lindell did when she reached the police station at shortly after eight in the morning was to check if any tips had come in during the evening and night. The police had set up a special telephone number that the public could call with observations related to the escape of and search for the Alavez brothers.
Twenty-eight calls had been received, of which three could be considered of interest. The first one that Lindell decided to follow up on had come in from an older couple, reporting a breaking and entering of their holiday cottage in Börje. The burglar was believed to have spent the night in their shed and had stolen some food items but had otherwise not caused any damage. The remarkable thing was that the burglar had chopped up a fallen apple tree and even taken the trouble to stack the wood. At first the man thought it was a nephew who had taken the trouble to do this. The nephew would often help the couple with practical tasks that they themselves could not or did not have the strength to do, but the nephew had known nothing about this when his uncle called.
Lindell decided that Ola Haver and a technician should go to Börje and perform an initial examination.
The second tip came from a woman who claimed to have seen “a dark-skinned man of suspicious appearance” behave strangely outside her home. Lindell looked up her address, checked the time and called up the woman.
“Admittedly I am an old woman, but I am not blind.”
“I’m sure you aren’t,” Lindell said.
“He was all sweaty. At first I thought it was one of those who messes about.”
“What do you mean?”
“They scurry back and forth.”
Her voice was sharp as a saw blade. Lindell smiled to herself.
“The strange thing was he made the sign of the cross. One reads so much about religious fanatics. Do you know how old I am?”
“No,” Lindell said.
“Eighty-nine this fall. On Sibylla-day.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“No, I can’t believe it myself. My husband says I am like an antelope. He is a retired forester and knows such things.”
“I believe it,” Lindell said, “but if we go back to the man that you saw. Why are you calling now, several days after you saw him?”
“I saw it in the paper. He looked like the one in the picture. The one you are looking for. I told Carl-Ragnar I had to call.”
“That was excellent,” Lindell said. “Could we possibly come by with some photographs for you to look at?”
“You will do as you like. I am home until noon. Then I have to go to the hospital.”
“Nothing serious, I hope,” Lindell said and immediately cursed her amateurishness.
After the conversation, which had continued for several minutes with talk about the woman’s many female friends who were doing poorly, she dialed first Bea’s number then changed her mind and called Sammy Nilsson instead. She gave him the delicate task of compiling a collection of pictures and visiting a charming lady who lived in Slobodan Andersson’s neighborhood.
The third tip had come in that morning regarding an observation made in the vicinity of the Fyris river. A man with the unusual surname Koort from Bälinge had seen two men camping not far from Ulva mill north of Uppsala. They were foreigners and according to the notes that had been made, the man had thought they worked in the nearby strawberry fields. But when he had bumped into the farmer yesterday by the river and mentioned the two men, the farmer had denied that any of his employees were camping.
Lindell dialed the number. Mrs. Koort answered. Istvan Koort had left to go fishing.
“He will be back for lunch, hopefully without fish,” his wife sighed.
“Does he have a cell phone?”
“Not when he’s fishing.”
“Where was he going?”
“He tends to stay around Ulva.”
Lindell asked her to call as soon as he returned home.
After the three calls, Lindell felt more confident that the Alavez brothers would soon be located and arrested. The likelihood that they would manage to remain hidden in the long run were small. She checked the time. Five to nine. Time for a first cup of coffee.
At 06:43, three minutes delayed, Ryan Air flight FR51 took off from Skavsta airport outside Nyköping. Abel and Carlos Morales were on board. The check-in had gone smoothly. A brief glance in their passports, some phrases in English, and a wish that they have a good trip. That was all.
Then they had gone aboard and taken their seats without saying a single word to each other. From the window, Manuel had watched the contours of the city recede into the distance. It was his last glimpse of Sweden before he leaned back and closed his eyes.
At 07:57 local time, the plane prepared for landing at Standsted airport, north of London. Manuel drank the last of his coffee and checked his watch. A couple of minutes to nine.
Epilogue
The landscape resembled a brown-green weave in which the cultivated fields were patterns in a warp consisting of the sharp mountain ridges. After a moment he grew dizzy from staring out the window and closed his eyes.
The ripple of voices of expectant travelers rose the same speed as the plane sank through the layers of air. He opened his eyes and looked around. As far as he could tell, he was the only white man in the cabin.