Irene’s mother was the first to pull herself together. She smiled happily and walked up to the young man. “Hello! I’m Jenny’s grandmother, Gerd.”
Martin took her outstretched hand and said politely, “Martin.”
Irene also went over to him to introduce herself and the rest of the family. Katarina didn’t have her new find, Johan, with her. According to what Irene had discovered, he was in Norway with some friends, skiing. Despite this, Katarina looked beamingly happy. She introduced herself to Martin, who looked confused.
“Didn’t you say you were twins?” he asked Jenny.
“Yes, but she’s adopted,” Jenny replied quickly.
The girls were used to this reaction. They smiled at each other in understanding.
“We have to leave by seven at the latest,” Jenny told Irene.
“Why?” Krister asked before his wife had time.
As a craftsman in the culinary arts, he loved long enjoyable dinners and detested stress and haste during mealtimes.
“Martin’s band is playing tonight.”
Gerd opened her eyes wide in surprise.
“Do you have school dances on Good Friday these days?”
Then Martin smiled, and Irene saw why her daughter had fallen for this rocker. His blue eyes were mischievous but friendly. “It’s been several years since we played at school dances. Tonight is bigger. More like a concert.”
“Concert? Do you play classical music?” Sture wondered.
“Nah. It’s got more of a beat to it, and it’s really popular,” Martin replied, still polite.
“But, hello! Don’t you recognize Mackie in Black Thunder?” Katarina exclaimed and rolled her eyes.
A quick look at the gathered group of older relatives revealed their ignorance.
“They’re huge! How many records have you made? Four?” she asked Martin, alias Mackie.
“Five,” Martin answered and looked almost embarrassed.
“And it’s going really well in Germany. They have a hit there now. Top of the charts with ‘The Eagle Said,’” Katarina continued.
“Even if one is a rock star, might he want to have a glass of bubbly before dinner?” Krister asked, filling an empty glass that was standing on the tray. He didn’t pour anything for Jenny, because she was absolutely drug-free and didn’t even drink light beer.
“No, thank you. I don’t drink alcohol,” Martin declined.
Yet something else that united them, in addition to music, thought Irene.
“Okay. But you need food in your stomach. Especially if you’re going to give a concert tonight. I suggest that we start eating,” Krister said, gesturing toward the house.
Irene noted during the dinner that Katarina ate relatively little. Hadn’t she also become much thinner in the face? The wide neck of her black cotton top showed considerably sharper collarbones than Irene could remember. It still seemed as though she was dieting, despite the new boyfriend and her decision not to participate in the beauty contest. She had to talk with Katarina about this. What was wrong?
EASTER WEEKEND was busy. The two biggest motorcycle gangs’ feud about the division of prime drug and sex districts exploded into violence. On Easter morning, one of the gang leaders, and his girlfriend, were shot when they left a night club at about four o’clock. The gang had celebrated quite a bit on Easter Eve and, in their drunken state, their security precautions had slipped. A man from a passing car had loosed a rain of bullets from an automatic weapon at their leader. The driver pulled away before any of the drunken bodyguards had time to get their weapons out. Both the gang leader and the girlfriend had suffered life-threatening injuries.
Two hours later, a call came in about a car burning in a wooded area outside Gunnared. The car turned out to be stolen, and the police were pretty sure that it was the car the shooter and his driver had used. They had disappeared without a trace, having most likely had another car parked in the area.
At eleven o’clock in the evening of Easter Sunday, a heavy truck plowed through the tall wooden fence around the other motorcycle gang’s headquarters outside Alingsås. The tarp was pulled off of the rear, and a grenade launcher began to toss its containers of death through the windows of the building. The man handling the weapon was right on target. The explosions laid waste to the old farmhouse. The whole thing was over in about a minute. The heavy vehicle backed out through the hole it had made in the fence and disappeared without having been fired upon.
Left in the ruins of the house were one dead man and three who were critically injured.
IRENE SPENT a difficult Easter as a result of the first attack. The investigation was one big mess; several units within the police department were involved. The toll increased from one to two as the gang leader died of his wounds around midnight, shortly after the grenade attack.
On Monday morning, Fredrik Stridh was to begin his weekend shift. He and Irene had been detailed to go to the scene of the grenade attack outside Alingsås. Irene wanted to fill him in before they drove out there.
She found him in his office, sitting in his visitor’s chair with the back of his head resting against the wall. It looked like he was sleeping, and in fact he was. Irene had to punch him hard on his upper arm in order to get him to wake up. With an inarticulate groan, he straightened in the chair. He immediately grabbed his head and sank back against the wall for support. He closed his eyes again but to Irene’s surprise, a smile tugged at his lips. It shouldn’t have, if he was as hung over as he seemed.
“Hello! Time to start work! We’re up to here in shit! The motorcycle war has broken out!” Irene yelled.
“Okay, okay,” Fredrik mumbled and nodded. The satisfied smile still played on his lips, but his eyes started opening. Suspiciously, Irene leaned over in front of him and sniffed. No smell of alcohol. He was dead sober. She detected a contented gleam in what she could see of his eyes. Irene said with feigned harshness, “Young man, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into that has so completely sucked the life out of you?”
“How do you know it’s something bad?” he asked, looking up at her teasingly.
“You look too damn satisfied.”
Fredrick chuckled before he replied, “You’re a good judge of character. But bad was the last thing it was. I’ve celebrated a late Ostara. They don’t celebrate Easter.”
“Ostara? What’s that?”
“The vernal equinox.”
He closed his eyes again. Celebrated the vernal equinox? Who does that instead of Easter? Suddenly the light bulb came on. “Well, I’ll be damned! Have you been celebrating the Witch’s Sabbath with Eva Möller?”
A delighted smile spread across Fredrik’s face. It wasn’t necessary for him to respond.
“THIS FEELS surreal. This is what it looks like in Bosnia or Chechnya, not in Sweden,” said Fredrik.
Both he and Irene were unpleasantly affected when they walked around the remains of the farmhouse that had been one gang’s headquarters. The technicians had worked the whole night and were far from being done.
“Where the hell did those bastards get a Carl-Gustaf?” Andersson’s voice could be heard asking behind their backs.
He came zigzagging through the debris from the fire, his overcoat flapping. He couldn’t stay away from the job when big things were happening.
“I have a feeling that it’s only a matter of placing an order. These boys have big money. Everybody and everything can be bought. Even the military,” Irene said in response to Andersson’s question.